DogOnTheWeb

I would love to see a night-mode solution for televisions, either via an HDMI pass-through device or a film if necessary.

Do any products exist for that use case?

Stephen Levy covers it heavily in "In The Plex".

If my memory serves, they censored Google.cn, but did not block users in China from the un-censored Google.com. The PRC alternated between blocking and unblocking .com.

My understanding of the final straw was the hacking of gmail to steal the communications and network info of Chinese dissidents and activists.

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China#Giving_up_Google_...

1. Subscription products are not reliant on advertising. Payment technologies are not. Neither are ecommerce operations, or in-person services. Just because a firm can advertise their products does not mean it is reliant on advertising. A firm advertising is not the same as it having an advertising revenue business model.

Advertising revenue is ad CPM (how valuable the ad is and how well it's targeted) multiplied by ad impressions (which is why people measure page views, time on site, minutes watched, etc.) Both matter in the model.

2. Beyond China and other authoritarian governments, the Cambridge Analytica affair is perhaps the defining example of this. It showcased nonconsensual data harvesting with malicious use of the data against those users to impact politics both domestically and internationally: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-ana...

Here another example from just a week ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-pub...

> "Central to the work of Americans for Prosperity is i360, the Kochs’ data operation, which profiles Americans based on their voter registration information, consumer data and social media activities."

In brief:

1. Products reliant on advertising for revenue are incentivized to increase the amount of ads shown (per user and in total). This leads to product strategy which prioritizes growth and engagement above all. The line between "highly engaging" and "addictive" products becomes very thin, arguably disappearing entirely.

2. In order to provide highly targeted ads, companies must necessarily collect, store and organize a tremendous amount of data on their users. We have seen over and over again that this data can then be requested, stolen or tapped by governments, hostile actors and other powerful organizations for nefarious purposes without the consent of the user.

(Sample size of one)

I worked at a unicorn startup five years ago in the bay which no longer exists. Anyone who bought the options -- and the company was very cagey on providing cap table info -- was left with nothing.

Presumably permitting will allow the city to control the amount of scooters on the streets to control public space congestion and ensure that those who operate in the city are following rules regarding placement, education and safety.

I joined the supervisor hearing today late, but there was important context there that is missing in this article.

- They mentioned several companies that were waiting for permits to launch, and applauded companies like Scoot (which is planning to launch e-bikes) and Waybots for working with them.

- They mentioned that SFMTA was first contacted about these scooters to in February and immediately began working on a permit process which is due to begin next month. That's light speed for a government agency.

- The only reason there was a sudden rush in deployment was that one company (Bird or Lime) decided to jump the gun and launch on St. Patrick's Day. The others that deployed didn't want to lose first mover advantage. At least one of these three hadn't even contacted SFMTA until after deployment.

- Lime did not even send a representative to the meeting at all. Apparently they decided to just contact TechCrunch after the fact.

The supervisors were rough on them and Aaron Peskin even had the nerve to call them "techbros", but they brought this on themselves by trying to use the old "move fast and break things" play that this city has seen before.

I've had it several times. It's not going to be the best burger you've ever had, but it is quite delicious and leagues above the standard veggie burger.

Awesome! Best of luck to your team.

Exactly this. For Spotify to succeed they only needed to get a handful of label conglomerates on board. It could be done, but getting all of the heavyweight newspapers just in the United States to sign up would be a herculean effort. There is consolidation in the industry (particularly among hyperlocals), but it's not as consolidated as major label music.

That's essentially what Medium is. If you consider that their goal is to get newspapers to publish on their platform, their premium subscription is basically what OP is describing in his post.

Edit: Samschooler beat me to it.

And who can forget the offices were once ovens for Nabisco.

The layout is like none other. You'll walk down a spiral stairway, through some cubes, turn the corner to a ramp, more cubes, more narrow hallways and ramps.