Ah, no. These people are shady AF. They intermingle funds and shuffle them around behind the scenes. This whole system is a black box surrounded a tower of cards.
Not accesible, that’s a good one.
671 karma · joined November 23, 2011
Not accesible, that’s a good one.
That’s why we have environmental regulation, as imperfect as it is.
This implicitly means a society does make choices about how energy is used. Therefore, a discussion about societal priorities amongst individuals is essential.
Likewise with regulation related to finance and money.
Energy and money. Among the most highly regulated things in all societies.
I agree with the poster that POW cryptocoin systems are a shocking waste of electricity.
In addition, the only use cases that have proved viable are illegal or highly destructive to the social fabric.
When you look at the sheer amount of money transferred from losers to winners, it’s clear that this is not a benefit to anyone. The scams, the hacks, the thefts. Bitcoin and it’s ilk are parasitic systems that weaken the host.
To compare to Ferraris, well Ferraris are a niche product, are already regulated, and have a historical component that accounts for their hedonic properties.
To compare bitcoin to hello kitty backpacks is just a category error, which belies that the argument is disengenuous.
The Huffington post is one. On an older phone or tablet, the site is unusable on iOS. It will crash, and sometimes freeze. Long articles fill in excruciatingly slow.
I would think in a data driven business, that there has to be significant numbers of people who actively avoid the site, and that they would want to minimize this.
Yet there seems to be no improvement over time.
I’ve sometimes wondered if it’s because literally every person in engineering and management at company like Huffington Post have fast devices, and they don’t notice how bad it is.
I find it paradoxical.
I find it weird though that it uses an example of autos, because of the hypothetical presence of asymmetric information, which doesn’t seem to describe the real world well at all.
The quality of cars has risen dramatically and steadily over the years. There are multiple mechanisms which compensate for the difficulties a lay person has valuing a complex product.
In addition to government regulations, brand reputation is hugely important in motivating automakers to make reliable products.
The subject is of keen interest to buyers, who actively seek out information about potential quality of a new car purchase. In the pre-internet area it was harder, but sources of information like Consumer Reports were well used.
Since brand perception is expensive to build, and easy to lose, my anecdotal perception is that automakers try really hard to make great products. Especially because if the sell someone a lemon, the customer will be stuck with it for some time, increasing the opportunity for various types of reputation harming communication.
In the used car market the forces that drive quality are passed right through. While there is perhaps a higher chance of being stuck with a lemon, there are plenty of countervailing forces.
In anycase it struck me as odd that the example the paper used to show the intuition behind it was one that my perspective is almost the opposite of.
I guess the general principle I’m alluding it is that in markets that have a high potential for asymmetric information problems, the problems are obvious, and potential buyers will actively use strategies to compensate.
Our household has a long tail of Apple products, that get passed down, or put to different uses.
This is hugely important for Apple business strategy. Not only does it please the customer to have well made, long lasting hardware, it cements the “ecosystem” into a much more embedded place in the lives of users.
Apple has competive advantages and disadvantages, but it absolutely must maintain customer loyalty. To even break out service revenue is a little uniformative, because the feedback loops they get from having a tightly integrated system are huge.
Apple has struggled with the online platform aspect of its business, compared to Google, Amazon, etc...but even if it’s not a market leader, if they can get a “good enough “ product that prevents users from leaving the ecosystem that is huge.
A paradigm example is Apple Maps which was a source of embarrassment for a while. Going up against Google in this space seems insane.
But they finally got it good enough that my guess is vast majority of iPhone users use Apple Maps, not Google. Ideally, Apple wants to prevent as many people as possible from having to get a google account as they can!
What I find mystifying is why as an average user it’s impossible to figure out why it happens, is it normal, is your phone broken?
Apple docs and support provide no insight into one of the primary usability issues.
Other than that, it’s quite a nice phone. I picked it up cheap on Craigslist and it’s going strong for two years.
The road to zero carbon emissions passes through reducing carbon emissions by converting existing demand for electricity to renewables.
Currently, and increasingly in the future, there is this huge “externality” in the full costs of burning fossil fuels, which is not being connected to the use.
Basic economic theory argues that externalities need to be handled by “non-market” means. Which essentially means regulation.
For whatever reason, the particulars of nuclear power enable enough political will to make a serious attempt at regulation aimed at minimizing (horrific) externalities.
The problem of human induced climate change presents a scary political reality, in which the political structures required to apportion the “true” cost of fossil fuel use might be not be possible. Or possible in a way where the cure is worse than the disease.
If these costs were indeed born by users, the competitive position of nuclear power might be improved.
However, this is not a sufficient argument to relax regulatory requirements for nuclear power.
Arguing that if Gab is punished collectively because the shooter posted there, then Twitter should be too, because he posted their as well, is fallacious in its structure.
The original comment you responded to was alluding to the fact that Gab was founded, in part, because twitter and the other big platforms are actively trying to purge “hate speech” from their platforms.’
Yes, the Synagogue shooter posted on both platforms. But Twitter has been trying to minimize and reduce such content, up to banning users, while Gab is actively choosing editorial policies that attract users that spread hate speech!
Gabs existence itself is proof that Twitter is working on this problem and trying to minimize hate speech, and is succeeding to some degree. Gab, on the other hand is trying to increase the amount of hate speech in the world! That is what makes them so deserving of being “De-Platformed.”
The implicit psychological construct behind this little “mini-panic” around fringe groups be “de-platformed” is a common one: something bad is happening, and we are losing freedoms/rights/capabilities we (society) has in the past.
It’s a variation on the notion that “the world is going to hell a hand basket.” The rhetorical fallacy is called “false idealization of the past.”
In fact, the access of everyday people to a variety of mediated forms of communication is at historically unprecedented levels.
In virtually the entire history of human society, access to powerful methods of communication was completely under the control of the elite power structures of the society.
The problem that these new communication platforms are trying to deal with is unprecedented. It turns out there are unexpected consequences of allowing access to mass communication, and means of spreading propaganda, to “fringe” groups like “white supremecists” The problem is unique in a couple of ways.
One is that it is only very recently, very recently, in our society (the US in this case) that the precepts of white supremacy have been “fringe!” In fact these are the hateful ideologies that built much of our modern world, on the backs of those unfortunate to have not been born “white.”
This has been hard fought-for progress, and banishment to the “fringe” of these ideas is a major success. The attempts to drive these ideas even further to the fringe represents a triumph of humanistic values. Especially as reactionary groups inevitably fight back with whatever means they have at hand.
It just happens to have happened right around the time that technology put methods of mass media into the hands of more and more everyday people.
Using “De-Platforming” as a method of social control is entirely civilized, and justified. We have bedrock principles of free speech in the US, but those are almost entirely based around the idea of preventing the government from jailing speakers it diagrees with.
To raise an alarm about, “well, what if your currently considered ‘progressive’ movement is deemed deserving of De-Platforming in the future” is a false alarm, because there simply are no historical examples to draw from. These technologies are too new. (Not just the technology, also the increasing ubiquitousness of networked communication.)
It also pretends that in some philosophical sense, all ideas are equally valid, and is divorcing the content of ideas from the form.
I don’t agree that all points of view are equally valid, and viewing ideas through the lens of “form” over “content” is antithetical to the very core concept of ideas and thought itself.
IMO, people are too quick to trot out “slippery slope” fears about difficult problems. However, we can’t get “off of the slope” in a metaphysical sense. We are alive, until we aren’t,and must navigate the treacherous slopes of reality to the best of our capabilities. As both individuals and as members of society.
Another example from audio production, adjusting signal processors while processing is bypassed, and being convinced the sound is changed.
Another one I’ve been noticing is how the resolution of the gain control affects perception of the “power” of the amp. If the resolution of the volume knob is high, meaning it takes more turning motion for the same level increase, the amp “feels” weaker to me, biasing my perception of sound.
The mother of all dilemmas when it comes to comparing audio gear is that the louder source always sounds “better.” This a very powerful perceptual distortion.
So while I think stereotypical audiophile practices are non-sensical, I have no doubt that they really make the systems sound better to the practitioners!
Damn the little tip about tapping the clock to jump is so handy, I have actually searched for how to do this and never came across a description of this feature.
Even though I think the Democrats have more to offer, say, the rural communities in WI, than the Republicans, they cannot change the demographic and technological forces that are at the root of such voters disillusionment. The Democrats, for better or worse, attempt to stay tethered to objective reality.
Trump came along with grandiose promises of restoring the status of rural and working class Americans, and (apparently) some voters were so frustrated and angry that they voted for this imbecile.
Whenever I see “man on the street” style reporting on Trump voters, the voters themselves come across as imbeciles. I’ve seriously wondered if this was some kind of editorializing (maybe unconscious) by liberal news editors to make Trump voters look bad.
Really,they got nothing from Trump. Set aside all the culture war baggage, and the core argument of substance that Trump voters offer is that Trump is somehow going to “bring (good) jobs back.”
In reality, Trump has been a political wrecking ball, and is riding in the success of all the workers who actually keep America functioning. (In government and private sector.)
He had made everything worse that he gets his hands on.
Like half the population in the US, I keep wondering when Trump voters will wake up to see the naked buffoon, stomping on everyone he can as he fights for survival. I’m worried now they won’t, and we will see more people succumb to totalistic conspiracy mongering. (Like the Qanon fiasco.)
In the meantime, elite workers with the opportunity to exploit the system to their own benefit, will simply continue to do so.
I haven’t really bought the propaganda that the humanities provides unique value, beyond a general education.
I have to admit now though, when I observe the appalling lack of reasoning and critical thinking skills in the general public, that perhaps there is more value than I thought in having members of society educated in these apparently impractical areas of knowledge.
Just anecdotally speaking.
As a simple example of the kind of perspective I think we need more of, in the field of politics, having more citizens with backgrounds in sociology, history, psychology, government, philosophy might provide more sophisticated populace, who could bring helpful perspective to everyday political discourse.
Just a thought.
In addition to the work itself, the framing or presentation is essential to complete the artistic product. Printing the images out on nice material and framing them would help.
John Cage’s 4’33” is (IMO) a brilliant performance piece. It requires the context of a stage, of live musicians to be effective. It doesn’t work so well as a recorded piece!
What I see as striking about the foundation of Qanon, is that their setup for the conspiracy theory, involves an almost leftist condemnation of the existing power structure in the US. And I agree with the general thrust of their diagnosis. This condemnation of some vary obvious problems in the US is actually kind of rare in the “mainstream media.” It’s strking a chord with many ordinary people.
On the particulars, as to who is behind the grand “conspiracy” and who is working for our salvation, they are completely off the rails. I was just surprised that their introductory propaganda didn’t sound as crazy as I expected.
The core of the game theoretical solution was the creation of a digital token which (miraculously) was purported to be useful as a general purpose currency. (i.e. it could at least theoretically have value, and built in scarcity.)
To take control of the distributed ledger would require the expenditure of significant resources, and the ultimate result would be the attacker would gain some control over the ledger. If the attack was successful enough to do this, the assumption is it would destroy the value of the currency, which the attacker needs to stay high to realize any return on the attack.
Somehow Satoshi and early adopters bootstrapped this system early enough, and did enough social engineering, for it to take off.
It's not clear that the value of the tokens needs to stay high to provide incentives to the miners to continue mining. A catastrophic loss in the value of bitcoin would cause the shakeout of many miners. But the system might remain as secure as before. Meaning, I don't understand if the incentive system works to maintain proof of work method for maintaining the integrity of the ledger, if a token does not have significant value, in another realm.
The problem I see with other blockchain systems, is that the bizarre economic speculation we see happening in the crypto currency space needs to happen to boost the price enough to make it worth mining.
I could see a privately used blockchain being used between largish entities that are "frenemies." For example financial institutions the don't fully trust each other creating a pool of entities that incentivizes the members to act collectively to prevent cheating. In that case, it's using the cryptographically secured ledger as the "truth." Kind of like using a permanent escrow service. I have no idea whether this is an efficient way to solve this problem. Do banks really have disputes about the actual value of accounts relative to each other that they currently have no simple way to resolve?
This case would not need the tokens, and would not need miners. It would be a way of distributing the trust aspects to a wider group, but not to the public.
In the wider world my intuition is that a successful, trust-less, distributed ledger requires the kind of current fantastic waste of the who crypto-coin proof of work system.
If a given crypto currency project can't get their public blockchain to be secured in a pretty damn close to trust-less manner, the vexing problems of trust, when it comes to keeping track of debts and assets on distributed system, are not solved.
To see the problem with Bitcoin, think about the actual cost per transaction, if you include mining costs. I remember seeing estimates of $30-$50 per transaction. That is horrifying, because the majority of that cost is wasted electricity. Currently, the majority of the cost of a bitcoin transaction is being borne by either the miners, or the speculators who are required to keep new money coming in to the system. (Otherwise, miners selling their block rewards could crash the price.)
So, I think there is a great confusion in "marketplace of hype". The hype, the "sizzle" comes from the dramatic climb in price of Bitcoin and cousins. Since it became clear to the hypesters that Bitcoin had virtually no utility as a currency, they decided to extract the "blockchain" element to carry the expectations of investors. Bitcoin and the like do have real utility as an almost perfect vehicle for pure speculation, for which there is perennial human demand.
I would love to hear if someone can point out something I'm missing here!
For example, a few years ago I noticed that Walgreens would generally have pretty good pop music playing. But what was most striking was the songs were not hits, or perhaps older hits, even though most were from major label productions.
I have surmised that companies providing these playlists might be able to negotiate better deals with the publishers, directly, giving the publishers (and writers) an opportunity to monetize their back catalog.
The economic argument for government providing public services is actually that for public goods, the incentives on the individual lead to sub-optimal outcomes (that’s partly just the definition of a public good).
Just because voters vote for government that may be less good at providing that public good (let’s say police protection) is not an argument that this completely eliminates any benefit from that service being provided as a public good.
From the simple example, the Democrats may provide less optimal policing than Republicans (wasting money on nanny state directives) does not mean the service can effectively provided by the private market.
You’re positing that sort inverse incentives apply when voters are choosing the governmental provision of public services. This seems unlikely to be true in the aggregate because voters do not get to choose politicians who are going to pursue policies to benefit themselves, as an individual, when they vote. As you point out, they may vote for totally psychological benefits.
So the tension is not really over the size of government; it is over making the correct determination of how much of a good or service is comprised of being a “public good.”
Classic public good problems, like imposing the correct costs on pollution, can’t be solved by wishing them away.
What you’re complaint more seems to be with is that democracy allows elements of self, or class, interests into individuals voting choices. The solution to this would be some kind of perfect benevolent dictator, who would make the optimum determination as to which goods should be provided by the government, and dedicate the correct resources to them.
The problem with this, of course, is again the incentives on the holders of power distort their decision making to their own benefit, as had be shown over and over in the real world.