It really speaks to the great improvement of the human condition, that the big complaint about the top companies of today is that they are showing us personalized ads, rather than burning the earth or poisoning babies.
Good point. It’s almost as though the tendency of activists to punch up at The Man du jour results in their own priorities reconfiguring in opposition. Seems a little myopic to me. Maybe we should be celebrating these companies for finding a way to generate economic growth by increasing the efficiency of the economy, instead of putting more carbon in the atmosphere or enslaving people.
It's funny what you say here, but the truth in what you say actually makes it more sinister if we consider that many of these personalized ads are paid for by companies that are poisoning the earth and babies.
(assuming that bayer and johnson and johnson may have given fbk or big G money for ads at some point, and perhaps companies that make plastic or pump poison into the ground and water to extract gas, other companies that use plastic, etc)
To think that these 'top companies" make it easier to use data to change an ad slightly so that it sways the opinion of open group of people one way and another group another - and get be put right in front of someone's eyes at the moment they are feeling down or researching something else -
This kind of propaganda power is indeed saying a lot about the improvement of the well educated and powerful humans of today.
As to the "great improvement" of humans today.. I'd say a majority are being influenced, and it's more often about extracting money from the majority than it is to personalize in a do-no-burn, let's-un-poison kind of way.
The complaint isn't that they are showing us personalized ads, it's that you can't participate in modern society without sacrificing a ton of privacy or being incredibly inconvenienced.
Yes, it means having all of your data available for any criminal or civil court case. It means that any data breach will likely also include details about your life that you would like to remain private. Sure, it's not abused by the government right now but what happens in a regime change? What if that regime hates black people or homosexuals or muslims? So yea, it means a bit more than being shown personalized ads. How'd that Ashley Madison leak go? How about the OPM hack? How about Equifax, where's my SSN at now? Who knows my credit score? Then it also goes to conversations that used to be private. Mark Zuckerberg started deleting all his old conversations on Facebook, but how many of our chats, blogs, conversations, and comments are going to linger on?
"Sure, it's not abused by the government right now" - actually I think it has been by many governments many times.
There has been some push back on occasion, (facebook wanting to withhold data against the NY AG looking for insurance fraudsters with pm data?) and in some cases the gov has backed off, a few times the courts made them back off some (the dreamhost site visitors data requests from sessions and co?) -
There are many more examples, however I agree with your comment and I think that in general most people are unaware of massive gov overreach with data requests at the moment, so most would say the data is not being grossly over used / abused by (the US) gov right now.
However that could change quickly, just as the cambridge analytica made people start to question some things with private companies use / abuse.
The polygraph test is an interrogation technique. The examiner uses the reading to guide the questioning. I think taking a human out of that loop would be as difficult as a Turing test.
Same here. These services charge $5 more for a family plan, which lets you use five or six accounts. So you can make an extra account for your home devices, and then you have extra memberships you can give away for free to your family/friends. It’s not a great user experience but works well as a solution.
Seems to me Uber has led to a huge increase in the number of hired rides. So in most cases, the Uber driver isn’t replacing anything, except perhaps the passenger driving themselves for free.
If I were to speculate about the outlines of the “shell company” loophole you describe - I figure you would form a company to own the property, and then sell the company instead of the property directly? Is that right, and if so, any reason you can’t do that for a house?
Hah, I'm the opposite. Despite having pretty great transit here, my needs don't quite line up with the transit network, and so some times are far longer than they are by car, to the point of 20min drive vs 1.5-2hr transit. Given that, I got a car... and now prefer it whenever possible.
If I want to engage my brain at all I'll listen to a podcast or something, but often those half hour periods of relative disengagement are very nice breaks to have.
That said, I do choose 10 minutes of walking over 2 minutes of driving in anything but a torrential downpour, or 2 minutes of walking over an extra 30 seconds hunting a closer parking spot. Maybe it just all comes down to not wanting to deal with (potentially unpleasant) people.
If it takes 1.5 hours longer by public transport than by car that means you do not have good public transport. Maybe good compared to surrounding areas but still bad.
I’ve considered buying an expensive car with advanced stop-and-go traffic self-driving mode, but it’s more effective to live next to the train station.
Eh. Having the car self-stop is overrated in my experience. It's really hard to trust it, and not particularly difficult to drive stop-and-go yourself, so long as you accept that you can't rush it.
Adaptive cruise control for fast but varying speeds is great, however - it makes the spacing much better, which makes things more relaxing. It also reduces the active brain load to 'what lane do I need, what's coming up in the next mile, and do I need to be preparing to stop/exit', rather than needing to worry about the car in front of you so much. For me at least, it also makes things like lane changes more deliberate, so instead of "need to change and keep speed" it's something more like "I'll get there when it's safe, and change lanes if it's really clear", which is a much better mindset.
+1 for the adaptive cruise control in fast but varying speed traffic. The variant that my Hyundai has is also really pleasant for stop-and-go traffic, too. As the space shrinks below the minimal set, it'll basically progressively slow down all the way to the point of coasting for quite a while before it finally comes to a full stop (if the traffic hasn't started going yet). A small thing, but since cruise control only disengages if it comes to a complete stop, it in effect makes for a really pleasant stop-and-go commute as it very rarely has to come to a complete stop and disengage along the way. Also has the secondary effect of drastically improving my gas mileage vs. when I manually drive the same commute.
My previous experience with adaptive cruise control with another manufacturer wasn't nearly as polished, so I didn't think much of it when I bought the car. But it quickly became one of my favorite features!
I bought an old $5000 truck, which I know I can find parts for easily. It's got 200k miles on it so far, and I expect to put another 200k on it (assuming I will eventually need to spend ~3k on a refurbished engine).
Unfortunately an old truck is one of the least safe vehicles you can drive. But as far as miles per dollar nothing beats a common $5000 vehicle, that's for sure.
The answer is similar with current computer market. Most of people in the world still choose the cheaper PC, even Mac is more beautiful, solid and fancy.
