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What Happens Next Will Amaze You

idlewords.com

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Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#131

Post by thaumaturgy »

"San Francisco is filthy and has a homeless problem it refuses to take care of and does its best to either ignore or address indirectly. It is full of tech elite who are completely disconnected from the world around them. ... I live in San Francisco."

I thought this was a little hilarious. For so many people who live in the Bay Area, a favorite way to pass the time is to complain about how terrible it is. I too thought it was terrible, so I made the irrational decision to no longer live there.

Everything else in the piece was pretty solid, as usual.

I want to hijack the bit on the EU cookie law to bring up a recent annoyance though: does anyone else here have their browser configured to block cookies by default? I do, on my main browser. Have you got any idea just how many sites completely fail to work at all with cookies turned off? I don't just mean sites that require a login or paywalled sites like NYTimes, and I don't mean sites where some functionality is crippled. I mean sites like Washington Post, which (apparently intermittently) fail to render any content at all. For those of us that are actively taking some steps to protect our privacy, the web is gradually becoming outright hostile.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#132

Post by vidarh »

seiji wrote: post #115
vidarh wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's so easy. At a past company we once decided we'd test some assumptions about one of our forms by capturing keyboard events. As in, we added a handler for keypresses that'd call back to the server, so we could capture and play back exactly how users interacted with the form. It provided some useful insights (one thing that surprised me was how bad people were at recognising and operating drop downs), but we ve…

Or they might write something, change their mind and enter something else Facebook explicitly does that (log every field input even if never "submitted") and uses unsubmitted thoughts to build more detailed models of you. The "trace-per-character" behavior terrified me when Google Suggest first launched. It's a neat tech example, but there's no way people can understand "everything I type, live, as I type, will be re…

At least with live suggestions, people explicitly see that their keypresses are acted on, whether or not all of them understand that this means it is transmitted somewhere.

With a form with a submit button and no feedback indicating what's going on, it's a lot more insidious.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#133

Post by idlewords »

kasey_junk wrote: post #124

Let me start by saying I love idlewords writing and largely agree with his proposed rules (even if he did demonize something like 1/3 of my working life with 1 sentence). > Ban on Third-Party Ad Tracking My experience in finance makes me skeptical that this will play out the way that he hopes. Most of the financial regulation in the world started with laws "average people can understand". Things like Banks should hav…

I think this is a very trenchant criticism of what I said, and I appreciate you not taking offense at me!

For a) I imagine data sharing is fine, except that you can't share behavioral data about users, and you can't use any of the shared data for advertising. That said, I know very little about how publisher networks work and would appreciate pushback.

b) is unfortunately quite right. If you're sufficiently pessimistic, one thing that makes having giant tracking agencies better is that they're more likely to not get hacked or leak your data. But I agree that this is a real problem and one that my proposals from this talk will exacerbate.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#134

Post by mildweed »

pascalmahe wrote: post #23

Thank you for this talk. Especially the part about fighting against the tobacco industry. It really made me realize that this is a fight that can be won. I honestly thought this was a lost battle. It will, however, be a more subtle battle as the advertising industry (Big Ads ?) cannot be linked to something as clearly detremental as lung cancer and will be quick to point out that the technology developped can help fi…

"Big Ads" is very apt. Advertising agencies are very much like start-ups: often their goal is to get acquired by one of the major agencies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_advertising_agencies

Those top 5 agencies are the ones who can afford to do privacy-invading advertising, because they can do it at scale.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#136

Post by beachstartup »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #131

"San Francisco is filthy and has a homeless problem it refuses to take care of and does its best to either ignore or address indirectly. It is full of tech elite who are completely disconnected from the world around them. ... I live in San Francisco." I thought this was a little hilarious. For so many people who live in the Bay Area, a favorite way to pass the time is to complain about how terrible it is. I too thoug…

> a favorite way to pass the time is to complain about how terrible it is

you forgot the kicker - while claiming to be superior to west LA, manhattan, chicago, etc, etc, etc.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#137

Post by JoeAltmaier »

idlewords wrote: post #133
kasey_junk wrote: post #124

Let me start by saying I love idlewords writing and largely agree with his proposed rules (even if he did demonize something like 1/3 of my working life with 1 sentence). > Ban on Third-Party Ad Tracking My experience in finance makes me skeptical that this will play out the way that he hopes. Most of the financial regulation in the world started with laws "average people can understand". Things like Banks should hav…

I think this is a very trenchant criticism of what I said, and I appreciate you not taking offense at me! For a) I imagine data sharing is fine, except that you can't share behavioral data about users, and you can't use any of the shared data for advertising. That said, I know very little about how publisher networks work and would appreciate pushback. b) is unfortunately quite right. If you're sufficiently pessimist…

I wish I believed that giant corporations were immune from hacking.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#138

Post by idlewords »

[deleted] wrote: post #130
colordrops wrote: post #30

From the article: > In a television interview this week, Musk said: "I'm trying to do useful things." Then he outlined his plan to detonate nuclear weapons on Mars. > These people are the face of our industry. It's hard to take the rest of the article seriously when the author is purposely misquoting people to make them look bad. The comment in question was said on Late Night with Stephen Colbert, when asked what the…

[deleted]

It's a living

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#139

Post by Draiken »

hliyan wrote: post #35
buffoon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with him. Billionaires are prescriptive. "I will solve this problem". It doesn't hurt to ask what problems need solving. Ultimately this just isn't altruism but it is promoted as whilst people are in deep shit all around him. I'm not really sure what my point is but I suspect it is a new form of hypocrisy.

There's truth in that, but in Musk's case, he's already done a great deal for the world with Tesla and SpaceX. If Mars is what he wants to do with the rest of his money, that is his choice. Certainly better than what certain other billionaires are doing with theirs.

As much as I'd love to own a Tesla car and it does show a lot of innovation in the right direction, it's still a luxury sports car that only few very rich people can own.

If he built an electric car for the masses, that would be a big deal for the world.

Of course he's pushing inovation, but he still hasn't done "a great deal for the world".

Maybe he caused some changes in the US, I'm not in a position to see that, but saying he changed the world is quite a stretch

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#140

Post by idlewords »

coldtea wrote: post #41
hliyan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's truth in that, but in Musk's case, he's already done a great deal for the world with Tesla and SpaceX. If Mars is what he wants to do with the rest of his money, that is his choice. Certainly better than what certain other billionaires are doing with theirs.

Huh? What have SpaceX and Tesla done "for the world"? Provide rich people with electric sports cars?

SpaceX did fire a cheese into space. http://www.space.com/10459-wheel-cheese-launched-space-priva...
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