bobbygoodlatte

They're not deceived, it just looks like a display error. If you open up an individual item, many have an "Open Image" button next to them that show the full filing document.

Here's a random example: https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?201811269133824807

Includes the individual's name & his employer, which isn't listed as Coinbase.

Looking through these entries, I believe these are contributions made using Coinbase, not by Coinbase. I.e: political donations processed using cryptocurrency, not ones made by the company or its employees.

Just speculating here based on the repeated small dollar amounts.

I might add: 4. They're looking to make a profit. Either by selling ads, products, or by building an audience to exploit later.

Saying outrageous things you don't believe can unfortunately be quite lucrative.

Perhaps it falls under your second category, but I think the profit motive makes them even more motivated & nihilistic than a mere troll.

Social media algorithms amplify the most engaging content, and extreme versions of political statements are very engaging. I don't think it takes deliberate messaging tactics by one side or another for our current political climate to emerge.

Helpful feedback. Thanks!

181 Fremont is Instagram HQ and there's an adjacent tower with a huge Facebook SF office. I'd call that a real presence.

"Y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music, movies, microcode (software),

and high-speed pizza delivery."

—Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson

You might enjoy this TED talk from last year from Hugh Herr. He and MIT developed an interface that allows proprioceptive sense in a bionic limb. Pretty wild stuff. https://www.ted.com/talks/hugh_herr_how_we_ll_become_cyborgs...

Linear http://linear.app

Beautiful design, extremely fast, keyboard shortcuts. Still in private beta for now, but you can request access on the site.

I wonder what Steve might say about smart phones today.

They were intended to be bicycles of the mind, but perhaps they've become a 'gerbil wheel of the mind' for most consumers instead?

I think it depends what the lower limit of this technology is in terms of cost-per-ton. If the technology can get 100X cheaper, it would be immoral not to pursue it. If it only gets 2-3X as cheap as it is today, it might create the moral excuse you cited and be a net-negative.

My instinct is it could be an extremely important technology for fighting climate change. And while it develops it's important to continue to insist that it doesn't excuse the emissions it might offset.

That makes sense. But even if the trinkets were just a facade of culture, they were at least more unique back then. I visited the Grand Bazaar about 6 years ago and remember seeing the exact same mass-produced products in many of the shops. Globalization & mass manufacturing made the trinkets you can find in the Bazaar a lot more homogenous :-/

On the contrary, wouldn't having started your career at a market bottom meant 11 years of market growth and expanding career opportunities?

This is good advice for an individual and relatively useless advice when given to society as a whole. Yes, people should think for themselves. If you have kids you might even be able to teach them how to think for themselves.

But at scale, at the level of a population, an expectation of individual rationality loses out to the realities of these manipulative techniques. On an individual level they might not work, but on a population level they tend to work.

If a population is being manipulated by political propaganda, then yes it's good advice to an individual to think critically / rationally. But that only affects change on the tiniest margin. The propagandists will still win overall.

I think this is a very important point. Even when an individual user can opt-out via settings, the societal-level impact is almost entirely determined by the defaults.

I think when critics accuse YouTube of "stepping on the scale" here, they under-consider how warped that scale is already. The existing YouTube algorithm isn't neutral or fair, and is laughably easy to game. It's already biased—it's just biased towards extremes.

YouTube waded into this moral quagmire a long time ago. Being biased towards "engagement" is just as troubling as having a more human-relatable bias.

Now they're starting to take responsibility for the recommendations this algorithm spits out. I think that's a good thing.

Clickbait may be a virtual game for publishers, but it's having real-life, dangerous effects

I'd say "engagement is the new oil". As long as users keep scrolling, clicking & viewing the money keeps flowing :-/

Data without engagement is less valuable, unless you want to monetize it in less-ethical ways. For the time being, big tech companies aren't stooping to the level of outright selling user data, despite what critics claim.

And just like the production & consumption of oil, capitalizing on maximum user engagement produces some severe negative externalities—particularly in politics.

Interesting point. I also think the non-fungibility of Airbnb's listings will help them maintain their margins. For many Uber customers, a ride is a ride is a ride.

This particular straw man argument comes up every time taxes are discussed.

Obviously the marginal effect of one person paying more in taxes is close to zero. There's no hypocrisy in advocating the group pay more collectively without unilaterally taking it upon oneself first.

With a linear emission rate, the relative inflation percentage drops pretty substantially year over year. 100% year 1, 50% y2, 33% y3, etc etc.

At a certain point the inflation rate drops below that of fiat currency. Pretty smart IMO

I'm not so sure gamers are a price-averse demographic

Of course this is great advice for an individual. It's always possible to effect change at the margins. But this sort of advice at a population-level feels meaningless. It's entirely fair to search for root causes to large-scale dysfunction. Otherwise the trend will just grow worse

Most likely to make the News Feed more engaging

Depends on the party making the offer.

A verbal agreement from an honest businessperson can be as good as gold. And when someone reneges on a verbal agreement it's generally a clue that they wouldn't be great to work with.

But this is surprising from Google. Most likely a one-off mistake

Very cool. I just signed up as an investor :)

I agree it's not wrong. While this article is light on specific proposals, I would likely agree with the author on many reforms.

But if those reforms actually happen, I bet the executive team at Buzzfeed won't be happy

There's something ironic about Buzzfeed advocating for content distribution reforms on Facebook. Buzzfeed owes its entire existence to gaming Facebook's engagement algorithm via clickbait.

What if the fix Buzzfeed is asking for involves less distribution for outlets like Buzzfeed? I'd support that.

I'm not sure why Facebook is always singled out with these comparisons.

If FB is the new cigarettes (which feels like an absurd comparison), then Twitter and Youtube are just as bad — and they've done even less to counter the negative externalities their engagement algorithms create.

I think Twitter dodges this criticism mostly because of how popular the platform is with journalists.

I'm curious how these systems would function against a malicious entity. For example, if someone flooded the sensor with laser light.

That sort of behavior might be made illegal (if it isn't already), but I'd be curious to know if self-driving systems have ways of dealing with it, or if they just shut down