Pyxl101

> The research community does not have a better explanation for the disparity than social bias

That's not really true. There is a lot of research showing that men and women have different interests and make different life choices, and that these choices impact career demographics. One of the most well-researched differences is that men tend to be more interested in "things", especially mechanical things, and women tend to be more interested in "people".

Here is a journal article from Frontiers in Psychology that investigates how these differences-in-interest impact STEM field participation: "All STEM fields are not created equal: People and things interests explain gender disparities across STEM fields" (1):

> In the current study, we investigated the gender differences in interests as an explanation for the differential distribution of women across sub-disciplines of STEM as well as the overall underrepresentation of women in STEM fields. (...) We found gender differences in interests to vary largely by STEM field, with the largest gender differences in interests favoring men observed in engineering disciplines (d = 0.83–1.21), and in contrast, gender differences in interests favoring women in social sciences and medical services (d = −0.33 and −0.40, respectively).

> Importantly, the gender composition (percentages of women) in STEM fields reflects these gender differences in interests. The patterns of gender differences in interests and the actual gender composition in STEM fields were explained by the people-orientation and things-orientation of work environments, and were not associated with the level of quantitative ability required. (...)

Some studies show that these things-vs-people differences begin to manifest extremely early in life, before humans could be influenced by social factors. One famous study of this phenomenon is "Sex differences in human neonatal social perception" (2):

> Sexual dimorphism in sociability has been documented in humans. The present study aimed to ascertain whether the sexual dimorphism is a result of biological or sociocultural differences between the two sexes. 102 human neonates, who by definition have not yet been influenced by social and cultural factors, were tested to see if there was a difference in looking time at a face (social object) and a mobile (physical-mechanical object). Results showed that the male infants showed a stronger interest in the physical-mechanical mobile while the female infants showed a stronger interest in the face. The results of this research clearly demonstrate that sex differences are in part biological in origin.

It is also known that testosterone levels affect decision-making and career choices, and that women tend to be more financially risk-averse than men. Since men's testosterone levels tend to be much higher than women's, and since men are less risk-averse, that results in demographic differences. For an investigation of this, see the article "Gender differences in financial risk aversion and career choices are affected by testosterone" (3). For another study on sex and brain differences see (4). There is a lot of research out there exploring the differences between men and women, and how those differences play out in our lives.

Every person should be supported in choosing whatever career interests them, and should not be judged based on demographics. I'm not advocating for any kind of discrimination. I am just observing that even with total equality of opportunity, if there are biological trends in interest differences, then we will see differences in overall job demographics.

(1) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.0018... (2) https://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf (3) https://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15268.full (4) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/

Please also consider the rates at which different population groups commit serious crimes, such as murder and rape. We are talking about prison populations after all - people convicted of minor drug offenses like possession are a small percent of the prison population.

The publication "Homicide Trends in the United States" by the US Department of Justice has crime data broken down by race, for example. See pages 11 and 12: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

The data shows that people of different races commit serious crimes such as murder at considerably different rates.

The FBI also publishes crime statistics aggregated by race: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Elizabeth Holmes repeatedly lied to a wide variety of different people about the capabilities of her technology.

It's fine to have an ambitious plan that might not work out. It's fine to have a dream so crazy you have no idea how to achieve it. It's not fine to lie about what technology you have today or its capabilities. It's one thing to make forward-looking statements that are optimistic, and another thing to misrepresent where you are right now, or what you have already done, or to deliberately mislead people. Elizabeth Holmes has done this repeatedly.

Here are some examples of the lies that Holmes told, according to the SEC (1):

1) Holmes lied about how many blood tests her technology could perform. It could at best perform a dozen or so, but she lied and claimed it could perform hundreds.

2) Theranos gave fake demonstrations of its technology to major partners such as Walgreens. Holmes made it look like blood test demonstrations given to Walgreens were being performed on Theranos technology, when in fact third party commercial technology was being used.

3) Theranos gave investors fake demonstrations and fake information about its clinical trials. When investors visited Theranos, they frequently had their blood tested, and were given the impression these tests were run on Theranos machines. In fact, Theranos often ran these blood tests on third party commercial machines.

4) Holmes lied about military contracts. She told multiple investors as well as journalists that Theranos technology had been deployed by the Department of Defense on the battlefield in Afghanistan, and on medevac helicopters that transported casualties. Completely untrue.

5) Theranos made ridiculously unreasonable financial projections. In a year when Theranos had on the order of $100 thousand in revenue, she told investors that Theranos was on track to make $100 million in revenue.

It would be fine for her to say that she planned to do all of these things. It is not fine for her to lie to investors claiming that these things had already happened when they had not.

Lying is never OK, and lying like this is fraud. No sane investor would trust Holmes after what happened.

(1) https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2018/comp-pr2018-4...

I believe you are referring to a different case than this one. That Android decision was in July 2018:

> In July 2018, the Commission fined Google €4.34 billion for illegal practices regarding Android mobile devices to strengthen the dominance of Google's search engine.

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4581_en.htm

Here are a few key claims about what Google did, from the European commission press release:

> Google's provision of online search advertising intermediation services to the most commercially important publishers took place via agreements that were individually negotiated. The Commission has reviewed hundreds of such agreements in the course of its investigation and found that:

> Starting in 2006, Google included exclusivity clauses in its contracts. This meant that publishers were prohibited from placing any search adverts from competitors on their search results pages. The decision concerns publishers whose agreements with Google required such exclusivity for all their websites.

> As of March 2009, Google gradually began replacing the exclusivity clauses with so-called “Premium Placement” clauses. These required publishers to reserve the most profitable space on their search results pages for Google's adverts and request a minimum number of Google adverts. As a result, Google's competitorswere prevented from placing their search adverts in the most visible and clicked on parts of the websites' search results pages.

> As of March 2009, Google also included clauses requiring publishers to seek written approval from Google before making changes to the way in which any rival adverts were displayed. This meant that Google could control how attractive, and therefore clicked on, competing search adverts could be.

> Therefore, Google first imposed an exclusive supply obligation, which prevented competitors from placing any search adverts on the commercially most significant websites. Then, Google introduced what it called its “relaxed exclusivity” strategy aimed at reserving for its own search adverts the most valuable positions and at controlling competing adverts' performance.

> Google's practices covered over half the market by turnover throughout most of the period. Google's rivals were not able to compete on the merits, either because there was an outright prohibition for them to appear on publisher websites or because Google reserved for itself by far the most valuable commercial space on those websites, while at the same time controlling how rival search adverts could appear.

From: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-1770_en.htm

Can you elaborate? Why would a transform be needed only on mobile devices? Why wouldn't the OS handle whatever's needed to produce audio in a platform-agnostic way, especially on the web? Very interested to know more.

Is there a non-paywall version? I can't read this article.

Some states allow pharmacists to substitute generic drugs for name brand prescriptions. To my knowledge they don't need the doctor's permission, and can make the change on their own unless the doctor specifically requests the name brand medicine for some reason.

These were interesting but some were surprisingly low amounts of money. I was hoping for some stories of people with 8 or 9 figure windfalls!

My thinking is that it's probably a good idea not to change your lifestyle unless the windfall is, let's say, at least 2 if not 3 orders of magnitude more money than you'd normally earn in a year.

Sure. Why not? There are lots of companies in the world that sell proprietary software. Nothing wrong with that. A lot of great software in the world, from a user experience perspective, is proprietary. Think about the devices, computers, and websites that you use on a daily basis - most of these are probably proprietary. I don't think there's any moral obligation for someone to give their work away for free as open source.

Let's just not confuse proprietary software with open source software.

Thanks for pointing that out. That is a clearer name for their proprietary license.

On that note, the title of the article is misleading. Redis hasn't changed its open source license. Redis remains BSD-licensed. This article is about the change in the proprietary license of certain Redis Modules.

Amazon would not pay less NYC tax than other businesses. The NYC tax breaks that Amazon was planning to take advantage of are open to every company that qualifies:

https://www.nycedc.com/program/relocation-and-employment-ass...

https://www.nycedc.com/program/industrial-commercial-abateme...

These programs are designed to encourage specific behavior, like companies moving to and making capital investments in particular areas of the city. Any company that does so qualified for a formulaic tax break. NYC did not offer any tax breaks to Amazon beyond its existing incentive programs.

I also use Siri all the time for voice dictation and it's pretty good.

The only reason to actually type a message on an iPhone, instead of voice dictate, is if you're in a place where speaking will bother other people or violate your privacy. Otherwise, press the microphone button and dictate what you want to write!

It's also completely free, for unlimited use, which is worth keeping in mind.

It always seemed very strange to me that it's legal for company-expensed credit card purchases to generate individual, personal rewards for the card holders. (And these awards aren't even taxed?) Something feels underhanded about it, though I can't put my finger on it.

New York City wasn't going to give Amazon a special discount. The company qualified for existing incentive programs that are already available to everyone: the Relocation and Employment Assistance Program, and the Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program.

https://www.nycedc.com/program/relocation-and-employment-ass...

https://www.nycedc.com/program/industrial-commercial-abateme...

It doesn't make a lot of sense for a city to offer incentive programs and then complain when companies attempt to use them. The city should make up its political mind about what incentive programs are available, and who qualifies for them, as part of the decision about whether to offer such programs. Programs should then be implemented neutrally, in a way that does not play favorites or pick winners and losers. Many other companies have benefited from these programs - the entire point of these programs is to achieve some kind of policy objective by being used.

The uproar in this case seems more like political brinkmanship, not any kind of sound economic policy designed to benefit the constituents of the city. These incentive programs were presumably passed in the first place to benefit constituents - that's why they're there, to attract additional investment to areas of the city that otherwise would not receive it. ("The Relocation and Employment Assistance Program (REAP) provides a refundable business tax credit for commercial and industrial businesses relocating to designated areas of New York City and making capital improvements to their space")

If people in NYC think that these incentive programs are a bad idea, harmful, inappropriate, or whatever else, then they should direct their anger at their political representatives, and cancel those incentive programs - not direct anger at the companies who take up the offer that the city put forward.

I'm on a PC and the site was also behaving strangely for me. The site doesn't display a scroll bar, so I could not scroll down and read the article. It worked using a different browser.

> Like if you deal drugs, you will also evade taxes.

Not necessarily. You could choose to pay taxes on that income to the IRS. The IRS provides a way to report illegal income and pay taxes on it.

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17

> Illegal activities. Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Form 1040, line 21, or on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity.

Does anyone pay taxes on income from illegal drugs? Probably not "street dealers", but I would suspect people who earn income from marijuana businesses that are legal in some states but illegal federally probably do pay tax on that income.

Furthermore, IRS tax returns are confidential. The IRS is generally prohibited from tipping off police about reported illegal income, though there are various loopholes: https://money.cnn.com/2013/02/28/news/economy/illegal-income...

On what basis are you claiming software engineers are not engineers? What constitutes being an "engineer"?

For the record, the National Counsel of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, which is the US body that regulates engineering licensure and "Professional Engineering", recognizes Software Engineering as a branch of the engineering disciplines:

https://ncees.org/engineering/pe/software/

"Professional (Licensed) Engineer" is not typically used in software development, but if you care about having this credential, you can become a credentialed Professional Engineer in Software Engineering.

Google defines engineering as "the branch of science and technology concerned with the design, building, and use of engines, machines, and structures". An engineer is "a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or public works". Software engineers certainly fit that definition from my perspective, because software is a type of virtual or abstract machine.

Software engineering certainly qualitatively feels like other branches of engineering to practice, such as electrical engineering or computer (hardware) engineering. I've never designed a structure, but I imagine the principles are the same: understand the requirements of the customer or sponsor; devise a design that accomplishes those goals within the constraints of the medium you're working with, using principles of scientific reasoning to evaluate what is possible and whether a design will meet your needs.

Last but not least, software can be just as critical to human life and safety as the artifacts designed in other kinds of engineering. (But being critical to health or safety is not a prerequisite for something to be engineering. It's still engineering if you're building a rocket that only robots will fly on, after all)

There may be people whose work on computers does not constitute software engineering. Running some calculations in Excel is probably not engineering. But I think there are plenty of us who build large scale systems that need to operate with high availability under demanding requirements, the properties of which need to be painstakingly planned and analyzed and sometimes mathematically proven -- we who are trained as scientists and engineers, and who apply these principles in our work -- many of us consider our work to be engineering, and consider ourselves engineers. I certainly do.

I'm sorry to post off-topic but... I find this very hard to ignore:

When did Medium gain these huge annoying banners that can't be dismissed at the top and bottom of the page?

> Never miss a story from Conversations with Tyler, when you sign up for Medium. Learn more. Get Updates

I tend to read at larger than 100% font and these banners take up a disproportionate amount of space. At 125% zoom these banners together seem to take up about a third of the total vertical reading space.

If this B.S. has to be there for some reason, why not it put on the side of the page which is otherwise unused whitespace? Sigh. Or why not put it at the end of the article? If people really like Conversations with Tyler, and want to read more, then they've presumably read to the bottom of the page.

What you're missing is the process by which new blocks are added onto an existing chain. Let's say that you take the "true" Bitcoin or ETC blockchain, if you want to think of it that way, and now multiple actors are proposing to add blocks onto it, potentially multiple blocks. Which one of those additions wins? The one that's the longest and has the most work behind it - that one wins.

If you propose an addition that is one block long, and I propose an addition that's 2 blocks long, then my chain wins. (These all have to be valid blocks that solve the mining challenge). Miners select the chain with the most work. That's the consensus mechanism by which the blockchain is established (among nodes operating all with the same rule sets).

At any given instantaneous point in time, there may be multiple instantaneous forks of the main blockchain - people who have mined out valid next blocks and are fighting to get them accepted as the primary chain. Imagine that two different miners by coincidence mine out the next block. One of those chains has to win. The chain that wins is the one that propagates through the network most quickly such that other miners begin building upon it and extending the chain - the one with the most work wins. The other chain(s) die and the transactions on it have to be resubmitted.

When multiple branches exist on the blockchain, some consensus process has to reconcile which of them wins. That process is that miners select the longest chain. Don't act as if one single block is magically appended to the chain and everyone knows which block that is; a consensus process operates to select that block (or sequence of blocks), and it operates by selecting the longest chain. When two or more blocks are mined out simultaneously by different miners, the one that wins is likely to be the chain that propagates more quickly to other miners. Since miners build on the longest chain, then the miner who distributes their chain more widely among other miners is likely to win, since those miners will begin building upon it (seeing it as the longest chain thus far).

To continue the story, let's say that you and I both simultaneously mine out the next block of Bitcoin. You don't tell anyone about your block, and keep it to yourself. I distribute my block to the entire network. Thus, other miners start building on my block, and it becomes part of the main bitcoin blockchain. Once that happens, it doesn't matter if you start telling other people about your block -- it's not part of bitcoin any more because my chain exists which is much longer (my block + whatever other blocks people have mined out on top of it).

> You could split off the ad selling wing from the rest of it for a start.

Normally when businesses are split up, they are broken into multiple pieces that each have their own revenue and are viable standalone businesses.

In this case, the ad-selling part of Facebook is the entire business as far as financials are concerned. It's the only material source of revenue for Facebook. If you were to split the ad-selling wing from Facebook, then the "remaining part" would have no revenue. A regulator action along these lines is tantamount to crippling or shutting down the business.

Source: Facebook Q3 2018 earnings show that the only material revenue is advertising at $13.5 billion (Q3 2018): https://investor.fb.com/investor-events/event-details/2018/F...

For comparison, Microsoft reports earnings from many separate lines of business including Windows OEM, Office, Office 365, Enterprise Services, LinkedIn, Azure, server products, Gaming, etc. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2018-Q3...

Specifically, the energy that is sound will gradually dissipate into energy that is heat. Brownian motion happens on the microscopic level; we perceive it on the macroscopic level as temperature. Temperature is essentially the combined, average kinetic energy of Brownian motion.

Most types of energy gradually turn into heat, including light, macroscopic kinetic energy, released gravitational potential energy, etc.

If you catch a baseball, the kinetic energy of the baseball turns into heat within your muscles (and skin, in the form of friction between the ball and your hands). If you walk down stairs, the gravitational potential energy that you're releasing turns into heat as well, as friction in your joints. Light shining on your skin turns into heat and warms it, as on a bright and sunny day. The electrical energy of a computer converts largely into heat, hence the need for cooling.

There are also theories that all matter may eventually decay, including all atoms and eventually even protons after 10^34 years (though proton decay has not yet been experimentally observed). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_decay

As someone on Quora wrote, "Heat is energy's final grave". The concept of "heat death of the universe" derives from the idea that, eventually, most forms of energy will decay into heat.

Nicotine is a nootropic, that is, a drug that has a positive effect on the performance of cognitive tasks involving attention and memory, and may even boost IQ. Starting points for further research:

"Nicotine as a cognitive enhancer." (1992): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1579636

"Nicotine treatment of mild cognitive impairment" (2012): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3466669/

"Cognitive Effects of Nicotine: Recent Progress." (2018): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29110618

A study measuring higher effective IQ (1994): https://www.gwern.net/docs/nicotine/1994-stough.pdf

> We therefore hypothesised that nicotine is acting to improve intellectual performance on the elementary information processing correlates of IQ. [W]e tested this hypothesis using the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) test. APM scores were significantly higher in the smoking session compared to the non-smoking session, suggesting that nicotine acts to enhance physiological processes underlying performance on intellectual tasks.

"Will a Nicotine Patch Make You Smarter?": https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-a-nicotine-p...

These may be reasons why people choose to use it. I've certainly spoken to people who believe they're more productive or effective on nicotine.

I don't know what the current research is on whether these benefits are short-term only or can be sustained long-term. I'm not an expert on this - I'm just casually interested in nootroptics. I don't consume nicotine or tobacco.

There is also debate about how addictive nicotine is by itself. While tobacco is extremely addictive, there is evidence that nicotine, alone, is habit-forming but only mildly addictive or perhaps even nonaddictive (but still habit-forming). Psychopharmacologist Paul Newhouse makes this point in the Scientific American article above.

An essay by Gwern Branwen presenting an overview of data on nicotine addiction: https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine

> My take away is that there is addiction but it’s drastically overestimated by almost everyone and may been conflated with the habit-formation capability

An in-depth review and critique of the evidence of nicotine addiction: "A critique of nicotine addiction" (2000): https://www.gwern.net/docs/nicotine/2002-frenkdar.pdf

> We submit that an objective evaluation of these data leads to the conclusion that [nicotine] is not an addictive drug and that the popularized equation of the addictive properties of nicotine [...] has little to do with science.

If you have ever paid with a credit card, then the store likely knows exactly who “Customer #12345” is. Stores are tracking purchases this way whether there’s a loyalty account or not.

Discussion of this: https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/retailer-data-t...

Citizens United does not allow unlimited (or any) payments to a campaign. Citizens United was about the rights of a corporation to spend money publishing its own speech. Political speech is expressly protected by the first amendment, and the court decided that restraint of it was unconstitutional: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

> Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy—it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people—political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence. Premised on mistrust of governmental power, the First Amendment stands against attempts to disfavor certain subjects or viewpoints or to distinguish among different speakers, which may be a means to control content. (...) Political speech is indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation. (...) All speakers, including individuals and the media, use money amassed from the economic marketplace to fund their speech, and the First Amendment protects the resulting speech.

What Citizens United wanted to do was distribute a documentary film critical of Hillary Clinton.

If someone feels that Citizens United was wrongly decided, then I would encourage that person to read through the case in detail to understand the issues evaluated by the court - specifically, the contradictions in reasoning, chilling effects, and violations of precedent that would result from deciding the case in the alternative. Difficult topics would need to be untangled such as: why should it be unlawful for Citizens United to distribute a political documentary when it's OK for media producers like Fox News or CNN or 60 Minutes or Netflix to do so? They engage in political speech whenever critiquing a policy position or candidate.

One must consider the sweeping consequences of what it would mean to restrain corporations, including the news media, from engaging in political speech. How does journalism and freedom of the press remain in this world, or what bright line distinguishes Citizens United from any other producer of documentaries like e.g. Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11)?

When I hit turbulence, I just try to keep in mind that airplanes are extremely robust and can handle considerably more turbulence than a typical person might imagine. For example, see how much airplane wings can bend without breaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--LTYRTKV_A

Amazon's denial also came from Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy, who wrote:

> @tim_cook is right. Bloomberg story is wrong about Amazon, too. They offered no proof, story kept changing, and showed no interest in our answers unless we could validate their theories. Reporters got played or took liberties. Bloomberg should retract.

https://twitter.com/ajassy/status/1054401346827243520

Given that the alleged incident concerned Amazon Web Services, I would hesitate to make the assumption that anyone knows more or would be more involved than AWS's CEO and CISO. Of course, you can accuse them of lying, but it seems unreasonable that they would both somehow not know.

I don't know much about Michael Cava but I'd guess from his LinkedIn job description that he's involved in Amazon.com security specifically and not AWS. He is not listed as an officer or director in the investor relations website: https://ir.aboutamazon.com/board-of-directors while Jassy is.

Cava's job as he described it on LinkedIn sounds like it involves retail operations security, and not AWS data center security:

> Serve as the Chief Security Officer for Worldwide Operations and Customer Service. Lead a team of security, loss prevention, inventory control and business continuity professionals providing physical security design standards, access control management, loss prevention and shrink reduction programs, inventory quality assurance, crisis management and investigative services in support of Amazon's global fulfillment, logistics, delivery and retail operations. (emphasis mine)

For a good example of how reporters can be mislead, or can mislead themselves by buying too heavily into a narrative, and not examining alternatives with enough scrutiny, read about the Killian Documents Controversy (about George W Bush's military service, reported by Dan Rather 60 Minutes); or read about "A Rape On Campus" (the Rolling Stone article that was retracted in its entirety):

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

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

In both cases, it seemed to me that the reporters involved crafted a story in their heads about what happened, and then only sought information that confirmed their story while ignoring information that contradicted it. The Duke Lacrosse case is an example of the same thing happening in a criminal prosecution:

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

Another theme that I've seen is experts giving an interview about some very specific/narrow topic, which is then spun, taken out of context, or generally misquoted by reporters and presented as something different. This happened with document verification in the Killian controversy, and also seems to have happened with this Bloomberg story, according to another comment in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18278023 . In the Killian case, document examiners explicitly told CBS that they were relying on poor material that could not be authenticated (see Wikipedia section "Response of the document examiners"), but CBS went ahead and characterized the documents as having been authenticated by experts.

> by falsely convincing them that an ad view on a screen is worth 1,000 times less than an ad view on printed paper

What makes you believe that this hypothetical comparison is false?

The problem with traditional advertising is that everyone sees it, regardless of their interest in the subject matter or lack thereof. As an advertiser you have to pay to show your ad to a lot of people who aren't likely to be interested.

What Google and Facebook brought to the game was targeting. If you can target your ads to people who are already interested in that subject -- or even just more likely to be interested than the average person -- then your ads will in fact be more effective dollar per dollar. You avoid paying to show the ad to everyone else who is unlikely to be interested.

Some companies like Coca-Cola engage in brand advertising, where their goal is to build awareness and respect for their brand among everyone in the general population. This kind of advertising has less need for precise targeting. But not all companies need this kind of advertising. Plenty of smaller companies are looking to advertise to people who are likely to want their specific product, whether it's a video game or women's clothing or a product for parents of young children, etc.

To give a made-up example, if you're trying to sell an indie video game, then you'll spend your small advertising budget much more effectively if you target your ads to people who enjoy video games, than if you target the general population. If you're selling a first-person shooter video game, then you'd like to target your ads to people who play first-person shooter video games (and not necessarily target video game players who only play Farmville or Bejeweled).

It's very possible for me to imagine that highly targeted advertising to a segment of people who are interested in a product like that will be 1000 times more effective than traditional advertising that everyone sees. You're paying to show it to far fewer people, and each person is far more likely to act on it.

I can have a conversation with someone while driving a car. Is that not multitasking?

To anticipate an objection, I would agree that the competence of both tasks diminishes somewhat. However the overall competence of both is sufficient.

My brain also seems capable of detecting when more attention is required, and automatically stopping the lower priority task. For example, if I had to quickly merge across many lanes on a busy freeway, then I would likely cease conversation during that maneuver. I don’t have to think too much about this consciously. The brain understands that driving is paramount and it will automatically preempt anything lower priority when more cognitive attention is required.

I would be interested to know what the research says about phenomena like that. There must be research like this supporting aviation, space flight, and nautical activities.

It seems easiest to multitask across different modes, e.g., I can work with my hands or drive a car while listening to an audiobook. I can have a social conversation with friends over voice chat while playing a video game.

Maybe the degree to which you can multitask depends upon the type of task and to what extent your brain can perform it automatically. The rote tasks involved in driving for example require very little attention to perform safely and correctly.