Mark Zuckerberg's manifesto for Facebook offers a social dystopia

I still won't use "OK Google", because it's the new Bluetooth headset, only douchebags use it in public. Come on Google, how much do you lose by allowing custom phrases?

We saw a similar effect at Google with porn queries, particularly during the day. As soon as image search came to mobile Google, many porn queries moved to mobile; as of 2013 porn queries were twice as likely on mobile search as desktop.

The problem is this is also going to be Facebook's downfall at some indeterminate future date. Because if some other social network ever becomes more popular than Facebook, Facebook is over.

Amazon has a radically higher multiple than Facebook. About six times higher, being charitable with Amazon's flaky net income.

Facebook will hit $13 or $14 billion in net income for fiscal 2017. Explain to me how a 27 or 28 pe ratio is unsupportable when you're growing net income at 30% or higher.

Meanwhile Google is growing its net income at 18% with a PE of 30. A far more lopsided ratio than Facebook has now, and one that is going to get much worse in just the next four quarters.

So you're wrong on both counts. Facebook has the superior value proposition based on valuation to net income + factoring growth rate.

Also, a surprisingly large fraction of users cannot touch-type. They've been trained to go to Google to search, so they type in g-o-o-g-l-e-ENTER and get where they intended, and never notice the autocomplete suggestions showing up in the Omnibox or the fact that they could just type their whole query in and get answers.

I've long been in favor of ending the Sherman act for this reason. You can target companies that are politically opposed to you by just a bit of rhetoric and government over reach. One interesting way to think about what good breaking up companies do is think of Standard Oil's breakup leading to a butterfly affect so to speak that encouraged the increase usage of carbon base fuels. There were relatively crappy electric car models in the 1900s, there was actually a point where the electric car worked better than gas (1). If Standard Oil was to remain together and lack of competition meant higher oil prices this could have led Ford and others to research ways to make the electric model more capable for the masses as consumer demand would seek such alternatives. 100 years later, we may be in a much better position environmentally..maybe. Just a butterfly effect thought nonetheless. All that said, the best thing to do in order to combat monopolies in the free market is to legalize insider trading and spoofing. The markets will figure it out. Insiders acting on information they know without having to go through SEC hoops would be able to react more quickly and damage firms in ways that could work to destabilize such giants.

1.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...

These are disasters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina

Those are disasters.

If google was down for 2 weeks, there would be some big problems for some companies and some people. But there are plenty of work arounds: phones still work just fine, amazon would be up, etc. If it was the whole information grid down, yes that'd be a large hit to the economy. But 9/11 essentially shut down business for 2 weeks as well. Google going down, not really a disaster. 9/11... Disaster.

People who find success often become delusional megalomaniacs after achieving that success, when they see their success as evidence of their own greatness, not before. The idea that it's the megalomania (or a black turtleneck) that makes you successful, or even makes you brave enough to attempt the things that might make you successful, is an illusion.

A defining commonality of delusional megalomaniacs is their destructiveness and their danger to the people around them and themselves. Worse, they tend to attract followers who both amplify the reach of that destructiveness and who create an echo chamber that reflects back and amplifies the megalomania that attracted them, making the situation worse.

> That sort of delusional megalomania seems to be a necessary motive force for tackling hard, risky problems.

There's no evidence of this. Everything difficult was not solved by assholes, and Zuckerberg didn't solve anything difficult.

The self-image comes into play when you're trying to act in a certain accordance with what's in your head. If you think you're bound for great things, you'll look for great things to tackle and you won't be satisfied until you're at whatever version of success you have in your head. If your self-image is happy & settled-down, you'll similarly stress over this. Eventually though, you'll probably get what you wanted because the law of attraction is quite real.

When you talk about accomplishment, it's a relative term though I understand you mean money in this case. Self-image is self-directed, and typically comes from a desire, which naturally comes from a lack. You will see many buy into the trap that money = happiness, and they will thus imagine themselves as some rich, successful tech CEO. After that, self-image has to match up with real-world, so work. The ones who truly believe they are will eventually succeed, and the ones with little willpower will fail. This goes for every facet of life.

That's why it's good to ponder "who am I?" because it's actually a step after "what do I want?" If you can see it, you can be it. Some will call it megalomania and others will call it dedication. Without knowing the person intimately, it's hard to understand which it is, but I'm an optimist and lean on the side of most successful people got there through a lot of hard work -- where their self-image was tested again & again.

The truth is nobody can tell you that you are or aren't successful. Ultimately, it's a personal decision and comes down to if your ideal version of yourself is staring back at you in the mirror.

Yes, mining has an environmental impact, but 1 ton of aluminum used in a car does not necessarily mean 1 ton of aluminum was mined for it.

Where's the evidence for that? I read Hitchens' utterly biased hit piece on her, I didn't see real evidence, just accusations and editorializing.

> "She raised billions of dollars and very little of it ended up helping the people she was supposed to be caring for."

Be specific. She raised billions, but very little helped the people? Give us numbers, and show us original sources. Hitchens' hit pieces didn't contain these. (As I recall, even Hitchens acknowledged that Mother Teresa didn't live luxuriously herself.)

>> There are plenty of others like Benny Hinn...

Hinn, Popov and others shysters aren't caring for the sick, feeding the hungry. Red herring.