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What Happens Next Will Amaze You

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Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#71

Post by keyme »

vlehto wrote: post #43
phaer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should just spend that money on like... I dunno. Better park benches or something. That'll solve everything. How about ending hunger worldwide? It's mostly a distribution problem nowadays. Or what about providing things like sanitation, electricity or some form of education for each and everyone on this planet? I guess what I want to say is that there are much, much more elemental things to spend your money on t…

>How about ending hunger worldwide? It's mostly a distribution problem nowadays. It's also incentives problem if you are not all in communist. If you simply send food from Europe to Africa, it disincentives food production in Africa. Which causes unemployment and hinders economic growth with it. And it also causes huge security of supply problem and might cause starvation if something happens to the shipping. My best…

I'm sure this will work brilliantly, considering that no one who needs your money there has a bank account or credit card. Cash also won't work due to the tiny problem of all the warlords and corrupt government/police/military/paramilitary taking all this money away by force.

The only way to make a shit place better for people, is if some rich guy finds an investment opportunity there, that as a side effect, might directly benefit workers. Spoon feeding people, in the long run, does nothing good. No matter how much money you have to donate (it's finite).

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#72

Post by neuro_imager »

vlehto wrote: post #43
phaer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should just spend that money on like... I dunno. Better park benches or something. That'll solve everything. How about ending hunger worldwide? It's mostly a distribution problem nowadays. Or what about providing things like sanitation, electricity or some form of education for each and everyone on this planet? I guess what I want to say is that there are much, much more elemental things to spend your money on t…

>How about ending hunger worldwide? It's mostly a distribution problem nowadays. It's also incentives problem if you are not all in communist. If you simply send food from Europe to Africa, it disincentives food production in Africa. Which causes unemployment and hinders economic growth with it. And it also causes huge security of supply problem and might cause starvation if something happens to the shipping. My best…

Its principally a corruption issue.

Western governments and corporations reinforce crony, incompetent governments in developing countries so that their resources can be exploited.

These crony governments then steal (literally) from the population who need it. Until the poor governance issues are resolved, a lot of foreign aid is wasted.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#73

Post by JustSomeNobody »

mtbcoder wrote: post #66
Fiahil wrote: post #63

The company I work for is going to pivot towards re-targeting (we're making recommendation engines, now). So, I've come to explore a bit this new industry, and I am under the impression that it's completely rotten to the core. The reason? I have been in meetings where no one would blinked an eye (even, sometimes, applaud the idea) when people would ask if we could turn on a laptop's webcam, and read if a visitor have…

Just out of curiosity, how would turning on a web cam determine if a visitor saw an ad or not? I'm missing the logic.

There probably wasn't any logic to it. It was probably the equivilant of when a PM or not technical person asks a developer, "Can't we just put in an IF statement?"

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#74

Post by arethuza »

hliyan wrote: post #29

This seemed a bit uncalled for: "Here's Elon Musk. 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." Italics mine.

"Then he outlined his plan to detonate nuclear weapons on Mars."

This isn't a new idea - Kim Stanley Robinson mentions nukes being used to melt underground polar ice in his Mars trilogy.

After all, we'd all think using nukes to move an asteroid on a collision course with Earth was a good idea - so its not like a "harmless" use of a nuke is impossible.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#75

Post by morgante »

These advertising proposals are actually surprisingly reasonable and acceptable. It's nice to see someone admitting that eliminating advertising entirely, or eliminating all JavaScript, is not a tenable goal.

Having worked at several publishers, this is actually an advertising model we could support. It would work better for users, publishers, and most advertisers. The only people who would lose out are the AdTech firms.

Unfortunately, I think getting there requires that the people who want this sort of thing start acting reasonable. Instead of constantly demanding the death of all JavaScript, or an end to a century-old business model, demand measured change like this.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#76

Post by morgante »

gjm11 wrote: post #64
gadders wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you answered your own question there.

It is only in the United States that "modern Scandinavian-style social democracy" is apparently indistinguishable from socialism. Socialism means large-scale state ownership -- or some other kind of collective ownership by The People -- of "the means of production", in the hope of controlling production to match need. Scandinavian-style social democracy means high taxes, a generous welfare state, and quite a lot of g…

Uh, considering that many major European parties explicitly identify as "socialists," I'm not sure it's the US that's confused.

It's the US that is confused with the notion that socialism == communism.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#77

Post by [deleted] »

sandworm101 wrote: post #3

Don't tell us here on hackernews or any other geek forum. Go to a RNC or DNC event. Go convince Trump and/or Hillary that corporations and rich people should pay 1950s-style tax rates. Go sit in front of wealthy old people and suggest socialism for the benefit of the young. Go tell the afraid and well-armed that they need to spend less money being so afraid and well-armed. Make sure to bring your running shoes.

[deleted]

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#78

Post by seiji »

Fiahil wrote: post #63

The company I work for is going to pivot towards re-targeting (we're making recommendation engines, now). So, I've come to explore a bit this new industry, and I am under the impression that it's completely rotten to the core. The reason? I have been in meetings where no one would blinked an eye (even, sometimes, applaud the idea) when people would ask if we could turn on a laptop's webcam, and read if a visitor have…

adtech is a modern example of the banality of evil: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/the-banality....

It's not secret Machiavellian billionaires running around shoving ad tracking upon us, it's ourselves just trying to get a tiny glint of social approval for out thinking everybody else without regard for consequences at scale.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#79

Post by seiji »

rl3 wrote: post #46

>I've also met people on the YouTube ads team, and they hate their lives and want to die. Maybe those informational widgets that pop up when you Google suicide-related terms didn't actually arise from a sense of humanity or civic duty, but from a desire to reduce employee turnover in their ad divisions. /s Macabre humor aside, I actually wonder if there's any organizations out there funding ads targeted at suicidal i…

Asking google for suicide topics usually starts off with a big info box (non-ad unit) of:

  Need help? United States:
  1 (800) 273-8255
  National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
  
  Hours: 24 hours, 7 days a week
  Languages: English, Spanish
  Website: www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org
As for YouTube ad engineers, pretty much everybody on the planet knows forced pre-roll youtube ads are a bad idea. Nobody wants to watch them. So, the engineers implementing these things must be under corporate (read: clueless) pressure to crapify the user experience solely to appease management.

(edit: It's also hilarious how ad tech people refuse to recognize how evil and backwards their entire business models are. They vehemently defend, downvote, and mob-mentality their way through the cognitive dissonance of hurting hundreds of millions of users in exchange for retaining their jobs. Because, after all, if I'm doing the work, it can't be bad, right? I'm not a bad person, so the people arguing against me must be the evil ones.

One comment theme that seems to get instant downvotes on HN: the concept you are not entitled to track and record every client-side user action. So many people assume invasive tracing and recording of all user behavior is "just how the world works" and "if we don't do it, we'll fall behind." Kinda military-oligarchy mindset, isn't it? If we don't have all the power, who knows what people will do!)

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#80

Post by yummyfajitas »

pjc50 wrote: post #51
renlo wrote: post #16

When websites become regulated web developers will be like the general contractors of today. Only licensed web developers will be able to legally build websites, keeping everything up to the regulatory code. There will be inspectors and red tape. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Building codes are there for a reason. Have we had our equivalent of Tacoma Narrows or Triangle Shirtwaist yet? The event that Schneier said would be the "privacy Exxon Valdez"? Possibly the OPM hack qualifies as the latter. Provided we get codes that recognise the difference between personal, small business, and large business, it won't be so bad.

Various governments are already attempting to push "building codes" for privacy in software.

http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/features/deleting-a-whatsap...

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/08/421251662/...

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