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Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

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Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#161

Post by Schroedingersat »

swalsh wrote: post #150
kidsil wrote: post #131

Reading this conversation reminded me of something Steve Jobs once said: "Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again"

Intelligence has diminishing returns. Not enough, and that is a problem, but as you get more it becomes worth less and less by itself. The most valuable commodity in our economy is productive attention. A dude with a 105 IQ who "grinds" 16 hours a day will out-compete a dude with a 130 IQ who has a million ideas and thoughts, but can't grind them to reality. Of course someone who is high in both, can become Elon Musk…

You forgot the bit where you inherit an apartheid emerald fortune.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#162

Post by [deleted] »

renaudg wrote: post #130
DoctorOW wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the work you do to your credit or your boss's? I fundamentally reject the argument that being financially invested in engineering projects makes him an engineer.

Here's the game he wrote at age 12 : https://blastar-1984.appspot.com/

[deleted]

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#163

Post by cochne »

dis-sys wrote: post #143
currenciessfe wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are both right and wrong. Bloomberg IS a tech company. But the journalists obviously don't mingle with that part.

> Bloomberg IS a tech company. This is like saying Microsoft is a charity - worst joke I heard in Sept 2022.

I think it’s a tech company. They employ lots of software engineers who develop a software product which is their central business. Why do you think it is not a tech company?

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#164

Post by onehair »

bmitc wrote: post #126
andrewflnr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter started as a protocol. It should have never been a company. That was the original sin. Dorsey seems to have figured it out.

That’s easy for him to say after he’s become a billionaire making it a company. Can one give any actual credence to such a sentiment? I mean, Twitter is an internet version of Post-It notes. I don’t even know what he means that it started out as a “protocol”.

No one is born knowing it all. People learn along the way, people change, people get greedy for a moment then have more time to relax once they've arrived to a comfy state, then reflect and either get more greedy or have enough head space to realize what they've done and regret. Granted, Rare are those who regret and what to do better, but yes, I can give credence to such sentiment.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#165

Post by bmitc »

joenot443 wrote: post #116
DoctorOW wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the work you do to your credit or your boss's? I fundamentally reject the argument that being financially invested in engineering projects makes him an engineer.

I'm of the opinion that engineering things is what makes someone an engineer. If you're under the impression that Musk's entire career has been in management, I'd encourage you to do some more reading.

I’d encourage you to do the same.

Give concrete examples.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#166

Post by wanderingbort »

rocqua wrote: post #146
wanderingbort wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could do that effectively then what is the point of spending money to upvote? Also look into the current state of play to earn games [1] and some NFT auction methods where people are selling their participation quite openly [2] It’s no longer a Sybil attack if it is real people who value their moral “vote” less than the market rate of that vote. It’s just an open market encouraging wealthy participants to on-b…

The idea would be a fixed price for an upvote. Not to create a market, but for two other advantages. It creates a cost for bots and hence a cost for massive spam campaigns. And it creates compensation to the system for processing and displaying the content. As for people selling their vote, this occurs even without costs in the form of vote brigading, and seems pretty controllable on e.g. reddit.

The market isn’t the price of the vote, it’s the price to buy someone’s vote. That’s a race to the bottom.

Right now the cheapest option is a bot. A perfect anti-bot solution shifts this so that the cheapest option is the global poor.

Zoom out, is the problem is manipulation not bots. Bots are just the best weapon today. Does this new scheme present a sustainable solution to manipulation?

I don’t believe it does. over time, power and wealth will be more able to pay the per vote cost and raising it will disproportionately deny real peoples voice.

Looping back, this is why I asked if any of it was needed once we assume the presence of a working moderation scheme (which you credit as the protection today from vote buying).

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#167

Post by kevinmchugh »

SilverBirch wrote: post #156

I think to a certain extent there's an overwhelming culture in the SV VC world of being completely credulous. That exchange just seems like a uniquely weird situation of two people talking absolute bollocks and neither being willing to mention the elephant in the room. It's no wonder the second their plan hit the real world it exploded on impact. You would have thought the guy who ran twitter would actually understan…

Consider they're at least somewhat aware this conversation would be subpoenaed during a lawsuit should the acquisition go sour. Musk's "can we talk on the phone?" means "tell me more, but without the evidence trail"

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#168

Post by biztos »

viridian wrote: post #118
brethil wrote: post #58

Is he talking about ActivityPub[1, 2] and the Fediverse[3]? Just look at Mastodon[4, 5] if you're looking for something like twitter without the centralization and the corporate greed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub [2] https://activitypub.rocks [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) [5] https://joinmastodon.org/servers

For those scared of all the links, here's a simple summary from someone who runs a server with an instance of one of these applications. * ActivityPub is just an open, flexible protocol for sharing content * The fediverse is a nice, human friendly way to describe all the various services using activitypub to talk back and forth to each other. The value in this is that these projects are diverse, it's not all twitter…

I had not heard of Pleroma before, it looks nicely lightweight:

https://pleroma.social

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#169

Post by PontifexMinimus »

viridian wrote: post #118
brethil wrote: post #58

Is he talking about ActivityPub[1, 2] and the Fediverse[3]? Just look at Mastodon[4, 5] if you're looking for something like twitter without the centralization and the corporate greed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub [2] https://activitypub.rocks [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) [5] https://joinmastodon.org/servers

For those scared of all the links, here's a simple summary from someone who runs a server with an instance of one of these applications. * ActivityPub is just an open, flexible protocol for sharing content * The fediverse is a nice, human friendly way to describe all the various services using activitypub to talk back and forth to each other. The value in this is that these projects are diverse, it's not all twitter…

> Mastodon is in a constant state of chasing new, usually niche or controversial features which have led to a lot of bloat

For those of us who haven't been following Mastodon closely, can you list some of these features?

(My own point of view is that in communication products, like in programming languages, creeping featuritis can be a symptom of poor overall design.)

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#170

Post by kevinmchugh »

bmitc wrote: post #126
andrewflnr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter started as a protocol. It should have never been a company. That was the original sin. Dorsey seems to have figured it out.

That’s easy for him to say after he’s become a billionaire making it a company. Can one give any actual credence to such a sentiment? I mean, Twitter is an internet version of Post-It notes. I don’t even know what he means that it started out as a “protocol”.

Twitter could be used from devices other than a desktop PC when it launched. This was genuinely novel and drove a lot of adoption.
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