BookmarkSaver

I feel like you and others are being purposefully obtuse, to some degree.

Can you seriously not distinguish between the tiny selection and low res quality of text faces, and the wide variety of highly specific and detailed set of reactions now available to us? There's only so much you can do with text before you have to be extremely creative (a level of effort excessive for quick casual conversations) or rely on the other party being familiar with your specific vocabulary of text-faces.

I don't think there's any comparison to be made. The term "fake news" was primarily popularized by a guy who was blatantly lying and who's grasp of the English language barely extends to 5 letter words and who doesn't even really bother with the grammar. "Fake reviews" are literally just fake reviews, it's not even really a technical term, it's just what they are.

Or the staggering number of anti-GMO laws and business ad campaigns.

What experience do you "cranky elders" have that makes this seem dangerous? What possible malicious intent can be applied to the knowledge that someone shares rent with their roommate, or the occasional bar tab settlement? There aren't even dollar amounts attached, and usually just cryptic emoji messages.

Just saying "Information is power" makes it sound like there's been no thought put into the objection at all, I've not seen a single concrete explanation as to how this level of data collection is or could be dangerous. It seems like cowardly hiding behind a blanket principle because of paranoia about anything that can possibly be related to "privacy".

>I'm very painfully aware that other people often feel amazingly entitled to have some say in how I spend my life. I have spent a lot of decades arranging a life in which, no, not too many people have any say whatsoever.

I have absolutely no clue how this has anything to do with Venmo whatsoever.

It's enabled by default. It isn't an "obsession", it was something the company threw in there and that users don't care enough about to disable. I'm sure usage of it would vanish almost instantly if something like the actual $ amount was published in addition to the message.

The thing with PayPal is that it always seemed primarily targeted towards customer-business interactions. Trivial payments between friends didn't seem like a high-priority usecase back in ~2012. I noticed the same issues as you when I tried to Google its mobile history.

Venmo definitely won the first-to-market/network effect game. That said, I'm not complaining. Unless it looks like they are on course for bankruptcy or there is a major data leak, it's CX is pretty much exactly what I want it to be. The only unnecessary part is the social feed, but that has absolutely no impact on me unless I want it to (and sometimes it's amusing to see the messages my friends attach to them if I happen to look at it).

When I started using Venmo, PayPal was cumbersome to use (I don't even know if it had decent mobile app 6 years ago) and tended to have additional costs. Also the UI pummeled you with all sorts of random information and options, when all anyone wants to do is send $x to y-person as fast as counting cash in your wallet takes. For a group of people sitting in a restaurant, PayPal was (is? I dunno) annoying. Venmo is effortless.

I just looked up Square Cash, and it seems like it launched in 2015 according to Wikipedia. Everyone I know (who I would want to send money to/from) was already using Venmo by 2012, 2013 at the latest. I've yet to encounter a single instance where I wanted to switch, nor (anecdotally) have I heard someone voice a single complaint about Venmo in-person.

Venmo got to market with a pretty much pure product before anyone else, and has yet to give any cause for switching.

Guys, people aren't "exposing their finances" on Venmo. People don't use it to buy stuff, or pay off CC bills, or anything. Nor are the transaction amounts exposed.

It's used for balancing payments/debts between individuals. I don't consider "A paid B for brunch yesterday" or "X paid Y for Rent+cable" in any way to be "exposing finances". It's just another random (albeit unnecessary) social network, one that takes literally no effort to use or disable.

Shocking, young people don't care if others know that they went out to dinner with some friends. It's amazing to me that this level of exposure seems "nuts" to you all and leaves you "speechless". Like, how paranoid and antisocial are you all? Who cares about this stuff? Or is this all just some crazy slippery-slope thing going on in your heads?

>it's so successful because, despite there being lots of ways to pay back friends

It was far and away the simplest and easiest way to quickly transfer money electronically, at least around ~6 years ago. The "big players" that have payment apps either weren't launched or were just getting started, and PayPal just had/has this bizarre level of BS required for a process that should just take like 2 or 3 simple steps.

Nowadays I have friends that occasionally put amusing messages and stuff in their payments, but I don't really get the feeling that people are actually showing off much. Most of the payments I see are between SOs or roommates splitting utilities+rent and such. There are probably plenty of people who do enjoy this part of the app, but Venmo just seems like a great product regardless, so I don't know how key it actually is.

What if someone flushed a bunch of it down a toilet raw, for whatever reason? Same location for concentration as excrement, and honestly makes even more sense for disposal than actually throwing it into the sound directly.

>How it happened is only relevant to the engineers who build and maintain the thing. I, on the other hand, could not care less how it happened

I'm sorry, this is just stupid. If you cannot see the distinction between a feature that was intended to spontaneously record audio, and a bug caused by faulty voice-processing, then that's on you. The distinction is pretty critical

Yeah, the American populace might not care, but the victims do care, and how upset they are made directly affects all other efforts in that area. Peacemaking and nationbuilding only gets more difficult the more people that have lost family members to the invaders.

If we'd gone into Baghdad WWII style, carpet bombing and all that, we'd probably still be fighting a significant war in Iraq. Or the country would be depopulated. Presumably the appearance of ISIS was largely a reaction to western actions in the region, and its initial strength was proportional to the outrage that could be drummed up. Sure, there are probably asinine military commanders that don't account for this, but it isn't the universal rule.

>I am not sure why some people instantly assumes that the whole purpose of making drones more autonomous is to make them more precise: historically, the DoD/US military have made virtually zero efforts to even try to reduce civilian "casualties".

????

That's not even close to true. On any level. You are confusing the inevitable willingness to tolerate civilian casualties with an outright disregard. Civilian casualties have consequences, and they are avoided. Not strictly, but it is a cynical fantasy to imagine that there is a complete disregard for civilians.

Ok... but even accounting for civilian casualties due to increased use of drones, civilian victims (and overall casualties) of US military operations has done nothing but drop as technology improves.

This is just throwing in an unfounded qualitative thought, not an actual empirical argument against precision weapons.

I'm unclear as to what the moral difference is. It's more moral to kill someone if they can fight back? Then why are we giving our soldiers tanks? Guns? Fighter jets? Knives?

Why not just send them in with their fists.

This line of reasoning has no rational basis.

You mean, like a gun?

>Uber and Tesla self-driving cars kill drivers and pedestrians

As opposed to the hundreds a day dying from conventional drivers? There are what, like 2 deaths attributable to self-driving cars so far? Some dystopia.

IMO the real dystopia is being unable to contextualize statistics and news reports, which have become a pervasive part of people's leisure consumption.

There is an entire world of straight-up fabricated "journalism" disguised as reputable reporting which gets immense circulation on social media networks. It is very easy to not experience this sort of thing, using fairly basic but overall uncommon steps. For instance, I don't use Twitter and I've filtered all my random acquaintances (e.g. random people I knew in high school) from my FB feed years ago. But there are patently false links being passed around at an enormous rate on these sites, and people that don't personally invest themselves into that sort of social media, or simply don't discriminate between who they see stuff from, get exposed to it a lot.

I feel like this is an incredibly childish and almost insulting reduction of a complicated and important feeling that the author is trying to come to terms with, and one that is likely very common, even if not universal. He spent pages explaining and examining this attitude, and doesn't appear to be using it as a justification at any level, I don't think it is appropriate or helpful to frame it this way at all.

>they are also engaged primarily in self-serving funny business

Such as?

Because it seemed like a legitimate misunderstanding rather than a complete unwillingness to even glance at the NSAs mandate.

IIRC yes. I also think I heard that Israel was involved. Anyway, who did it wasn't my point, my point was that all governments are engaged in this level of competition. The NSA exists (and has such a monstrous budget) because it is in constant, direct conflict with extremely capable and dangerous opponents. (not trying to pick out deranged criminals acting indepenedently from a crowd)

They really aren't. 500 million sounds like a lot, but it is very unlikely any call by anyone in your family is caught in this net. As someone pointed out, with 250 million people owning phones in this country, as well as vast networks of systematic and/or automated calling, the portion of calls actually being tracked here is pretty tiny.

It's also a situation where having useless data costs next to nothing (economically at least, philosophically is a different debate), but missing even a small detail could be critical.

It's funny watching what is essentially the equivalent of the Yankees getting criticized for not scoring enough touchdowns this season by people who are dead serious and consider this topic of grave concern. If these people aren't even able to Google the NSA before venturing their opinion on something so complicated, then it seems unlikely just giving them the basic facts is actually going to do something. People should feel bad about this level of willful ignorance.

>We have not been made (substantially) safer.

How do you know that?

>Were property crimes up significantly prior to the installation of the ANPR readers? No. Are they down significantly after? No.

I get that this comparison sounds similar, but it really doesn't make any sense. The most powerful nations in the world are constantly trying to gain as much access to our secure systems, communications, and infrastructure. Even though these efforts are almost entirely hidden from every level of the public, we still have plenty of stories of things like Stuxnet or the Chinese obtaining classified engineering data.

The NSA exists to combat this. They aren't fighting crime. They aren't fighting what is essentially an economically guaranteed statistical effect (property crime). They are an intelligence gathering and signal analysis agency tasked with thwarting foreign actors, which we know are actively pouring massive resources into activities hostile to us. That is why they exist, and that is why their successes (and failures) are almost entirely unknown to the general public.

>but what else is the NSA ostensibly carrying out all this domestic espionage for if not to preempt domestic terrorism

Yeah... foreign terrorism only occurs when foreign entities stand at the border and throw things into our country. LMAO.

>Then why so much domestic spying, the entire point of this conversation thread?

Oh yeah, that makes sense. Let's only worry about what other nations are doing, until their agents and activities enter our country. Then we might as well stop bothering. Makes sense.

<Furthermore, are you trying to tell me you think they've done a good job in their counterintelligence work? Honestly, given what we have observed in the Middle East for decades and what happened in 2016?

What are you referring to? Do you have a security clearance? Do you think that other nations aren't constantly attacking our electronic infrastructure and security? What in the world makes you think that you would be aware of any success whatsoever of intelligence gathering in the Middle East? What makes you think that the situation couldn't have gotten much worse that it did?

Domestic mass shootings are no where even close to the NSA's mandate.

Intelligence agencies DO NOT trumpet triumphs.

The NSA is not the FBI.

There's no arguments to be made here, there's just ignorance of incontrovertible and uncontroversial facts which can be easily looked up.

What is the expectation here? The commenter has absolutely no idea what they are talking about. The arguments are being made are clearly without any understanding of how any intelligence agency operates, and absolute ignorance of the NSA's mandate, much less any actual data about its activities.

It's like reading a post by someone bitching about the modern Hollywood blockbuster culture by citing Superman's plot arc in the new Avengers movie, except that somehow it isn't a trolling attempt. What sort of attention does that blatant misconception and willful ignorance deserve?

This entire thread is proof that people will vehemently spout opinions on topics that they don't even have the slightest understanding of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency

Try reading literally just the first paragraph.