1,471 karma · joined February 4, 2012
Slight concern that the developer on ACLU's behalf is something called Quadrant 2, Inc, which seems to be owned by an individual operator as opposed to a larger established company. Not sure what the company's track record or policies are.
But just an aside there. This is cool to see and great to have as a reminder.
Also, you didn't at all address the question about whether it makes sense to stop streamings in the event of a police encounter or not. If not, when shouldn't it be allowed? I think, at least in many states, you do have the right to record police encounters, especially if it's on your own private property or in a public place. But maybe I'm mistaken?
Perhaps you can read more carefully, think more carefully, behave more civilly, and try again.
A Monday Morning Quarterback doesn't leave a lot of question or uncertainty. That's the kind of the point. They take potshots post facto and frame what "should've" been done as obvious or what happened as ridiculous/blatantly stupid. I don't see how my comment can reasonably be read that way.
I'd ask that you either explain your rude remark in rational terms, or apologize if you don't think you have a great rationale.
What maybe doesn't seem fair (haven't thought about it deeply enough to say for sure) is pretending your HQ is where you really just have a satellite while the core of your IP creation, expenses, exec decision making etc is in the US. It's like you're getting the benefits of being in the US (whatever you think they are), but not paying the full price for those benefits.
What I hate about rules like this is that it basically forces you to follow them. You have a fiduciary duty to shareholders as an officer and/or director, and so you have hard time justifying not using a technique like this.
I don't know the background for these policies, so asking the first question non-rhetorically.
Curious what others think about this. All for tax optimization in whatever ways the rules allow, but this rule seems silly. Transferring intangibles like IP to a "headquarters" in a low-tax territory in order to avoid domestic taxes doesn't seem right. On a first principles basis, what seems fair is to pay sales/vat taxes on revenue in whatever territory it's generated in and to pay income taxes at whatever the domestic rate is in the country you're actually headquartered in. It's silly that FB is clearly headquartered here (along with many other US-based companies that utilize this loophole) but tries to claim these substantial IPs are housed elsewhere. Alternatively, I could see a system wherein your net income is taxed proportionally in each territory where you actually have expenses. So, if 80% of your expenses (payroll, etc) are generated in the US, you'd pay US corporate income tax on 80% of your net income, and the remaining 20% could be taxed ratably in each jurisdiction where you have associated expenses.
In any case, yet another example of an overly complicated and clearly suboptimal, subjective system that ultimately costs billions in overhead and legal fights to adequately resolve.
I wonder what FB's policy on this will be going forward. In many ways, these livestreams are a public good and provide transparency and additional accountability in these situations. If people elect to stream them, it seems wrong to shut it down. On the other hand, perhaps there is a public good in not showing an ongoing live police operation?
I think I'd lean toward not agreeing to shutdown such streams, unless perhaps it's a hostage situation or terror event of some kind. (Getting into squishy definitions there, I'm sure, which is why I qualify it provisionally.)
As to this particular incident... I wish the deceased hadn't resisted. It seems in this case the police exercised much more caution and restraint than has been the case in many other recent examples of shootings. And I think one thing generally stands: if you threaten to kill a police officer and especially if you do so while holding a weapon (or certainly pointing it at them), you're likely to be shot.
And to be more specific on my question, I get that they don't allow apps to punish users explicitly for OS-enabled choices. But what about rewarding users? Ie you can play/use the app however you want. But we'll give you 50 coins/10 loyalty points/whatever if you enable location tracking?
I mean to follow this all the way through... it should mean that apps can't choose to show, say, rewarded video ads (presently a $1B+ revenue/yr industry on iOS) only to users who have do not restrict ad tracking. Because then by definition only users who don't restrict ad tracking could get the reward from viewing the video. Will this be the case? It's an important question and a lot of startup value could be effected depending on the answer.
The interested reader may also like this slideshare overview of Thinking in Systems ch. 1-3: http://www.slideshare.net/sandhyajohnson/thinking-in-systems...
Another of her well-known works is Leverage Points, which is also great and goes into more detail on some of that which is summarized in OP's linked article. http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to... , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_leverage_points
Having worked in automated systems analysis and optimization across several fields, I think Meadows' thinking is very instructive. Some of her notions which stand out in particular to me:
* The importance of the effect of feedback loops in complex system. When unexpected or counterintuitive behavior occurs, a hidden or misunderstood reinforcement feedback loop is often at root.
* The requirement that systems that seek to automate or optimize complex interactive systems be constantly-adaptive because the system itself will interact with the observation/analysis/optimization acts. This can seem like crazy voodoo at first, but it is undeniable when you start to experience it in action.
* Understanding of cost externalities vs benefit rewards for system actors and how they relate to system sources/sinks (or "stocks and flows"). This drives so much of our economy, as well as the subsystems which feed it and she has some illuminating thoughts and analyses on addressing these issues broadly.
This all of course goes well beyond the more basic material on oversimplification vs complexity in simulation or interventions, limits of rationality in system-actors, nonlinearity vs linear thinking, boundary conditions/non-boundary conditions, etc.
Are you perhaps displacing? Do you think it's actually fair to take the view that because other people may have made note of an issue repeatedly in the past, it is therefore to be frowned upon if any new person also makes note of it from their own perspective? I guess you'd also tell Alan Kay, who made the actual comment under original discussion here, to muzzle it because his thought is boring? In any case, by your own logic, shouldn't you not have replied at all because no doubt many, many other people have replied to this issue as you are here, given that it is apparently such well-trod ground? Aren't you then being hypocritical?
And do you actually think it's fair-minded to call what I specifically wrote a "complaint"?
I think the random id would be preferable from a user pov. But this may represent Apple's attempt to play nice with mobile ad companies and app pubs that rely on ads in at least making it easy for them to identify no-track users. (Then again, they could accomplish that in a more direct way by just having a flag here, which they may also do?)
This will cause some hacks in the industry, though. We might see a resurgence of device fingerprinting within apps, and it might lead to an increase brand-like advertising vs pure performance marketing. Also, users that have ad tracking enabled might be considered more valuable and unless the practice is banned by AAPL (or maybe it already is), I could see apps that rely on ad revenue to a large degree incentivizing users to enable ad tracking.
I wonder if the default setting will be to limit ad tracking or not. I assume not, but this could have a really large impact if it's on by default.
Scenario 1: You start at the high end of the range or just a bit above it, I think you risk the employer coming in low as a counterplay, expecting to meet in the middle. Now, it's up to you whether you do actually meet in the middle, or hold firm and move them way up, or just end the negotiation entirely. But I think this opens up their strong counterplay and establishes their ability to take the reasonable-seeming ground that it's fair to meet in the middle (even if it isn't).
Scenario 2: They throw out the first price. Scenario 2a: They throw out the first price, and it's low for the range. Now you can counterplay by going high. You also can take the strong moral high ground here by showing comp data and basically saying that it seems like they're not being fair or don't value your experience and skills correctly, which is a concern to you. Often, this will be enough to get them to offer a higher price, and you can then spring from there to continue negotiations from this higher spot. Whether they offer a higher price or not, you can start high and employ meet-in-the-middle even from the low starting point. So, Scenario 2a is no worse than Scenario 1, and has some chance of being better.
Scenario 2b: They throw out the first price, and it's mid- or high for the range. Hey! Free money! Now you can safely shoot higher and hopefully end up somewhere between where they started (already on the good side of the range) and where you countered. :-D So, again, Scenario 2b is at least as good as Scenario 1. Very rarely will a company demand no negotiation whatsoever (and maybe you want to tell them kiss off if they do, unless they have a very good philosophical / values-based reason for doing this, and they do it consistently with all candidates), so you're only bettering your position by opening the possibility for them to start somewhere above the low-end of the established market range.
By combining all the above logic, you don't want to go first.
In practice, I think this works a lot better for prospective employees too. :-) I personally think companies should offer first, for this reason (even though it's bad "negotiation" on the company's part... I actually don't think employing people is a zero-sum game, let alone a one-turn game... so I think you're better off trying to position them well. But of course not all employers think this way, and it seems in fact most do not.)
The issue for me at the moment is just carving out the time / paying the opportunity cost to go for it. Not quite ready to dive in yet, but I think about the methods once in a while.
Thanks for the reply and advice! I think it'd be sage to bear in mind if/when I start.
I like the way this article describes architect vs gardener writers. I've always felt this internal conflict of modes when trying to write. I actually think there is a similar spectrum for coders. As a programmer, I definitely architect-first (within whatever scope I'm in) as opposed to feel-it-out-as-I-go. Yet great programmers I know just get started and sort of see where they land. (Iterative refinement is key in both styles, in my experience, and I'm sure the same is true of writing.)
In writing, I always think I should architect the story and setting, so as to validate whether it will be interesting or not at a high-level. But when I try to do this, I seem to end up with uninteresting, low quality results and the process itself feels contrived and burdensome. When I free flow, I seem to do a lot better. But I'm not sure if that's because I just don't have practice in trying to hold all the bits of a story in my head and craft it into a good outline which I can then flow from, and/or if it's because I only write short bits of material (ie the free flow might become unwieldy at length).
Curious what others think about the architect vs gardener coder bit, and also how those who write relate their writing approach to their coding approach.
For something like salary negotiation where results are more well-bounded and there is a lot more commoditization (ie replacements are relatively easy to find, or are perceived to be relatively easy to find), you generally don't want to anchor. An anchor that's way out of whack is easy to shoot down (show comp data). Anchoring slightly high/low doesn't buy you much as there is no real anchor... you're just in the established/known range... and so it's more valuable to see where the counterparty starts off an dplay from there.
There are unique situations / exceptions of course. For example, you might have uniquely valuable skills for a given company (or be able to convince them you do) and therefore move into a less-bounded zone of negotiation, in which making the ask/establishing the anchor would again be a good idea. But for a normal, well-established position, there is literally no benefit in "anchoring" as the bounded range is already fairly well established and that is the anchor.
But this isn't too broad. Looks like a very specific issue to this trial... not even this patent claim or case, let alone a broader implication for patent claims in general.
It sounds like VirnetX's lawyers simply referenced a previous case too often in the judge's estimation, and so he's throwing the verdict out, meaning a retrial would be necessary. Case doesn't seem to set any precedent (or, what precedent it does set on referencing previous trials might cut both ways for patent plaintiffs and defendants). Noting regarding merits of claims or anything as far as I can tell from the reporting.
If anyone more expert can weigh in or correct, that'd be appreciated too!
> A candidate-gene study != GWAS. It's particularly bizarre to criticize GWASes for the sins of candidate-gene study when GWASes were literally partially designed to avoid those problems.
Obviously. I don't understand why you are referring to candidate-gene studies, as I haven't mentioned them at all. Are you saying that GWASs did not exist prior to 2012? Are you saying that GWASs somehow have not had to develop more rigorous analyses, change their standards for publication, or discussed and improved replication techniques in recent years? That somehow false positives, FDR, and FWER are of no concern in any published GWAS study today? That early GWA studies didn't struggle with effect sizes and power or that there aren't plenty of examples of published GWA studies that are underpowered or even which published spurious results? That there aren't fundamental questions about the assumptions underlying most GWAS analyses (eg potential epistasic effects vs common GWAS assumptions of SNP independence / additive effects... which is a big question in the field currently).
I'm talking about GWA studies. And I'm just pointing out well-known issues the field has wrestled with. For example, here are a couple of the early, fairly influential papers overviewing issues with GWAS (not candidate-gene studies):
2008.. http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=181647 "GWA studies are an important advance in discovering genetic variants influencing disease but also have important limitations, including their potential for false-positive..." This and this paper, 2009: https://projecteuclid.org/download/pdfview_1/euclid.ss/12717... both helped move the field forward in more rigorously examining analysis and defining how replication could be achieved.
These are helpful papers which moved the field forward substantially and didn't just point out issues then-currently facing the field, but also pointed out solutions (many of which were subsequently adopted). It demonstrates that GWAS has struggled with such issues. I imagine you are familiar with some of this, as you mentioned Ioannidis. So... what are you even saying here? Power, effect sizes, false positives, FDR, FWER, etc have been major issues since GWAS' early days, and despite a great deal of progress over the past few years, it's still an ongoing area of discussion, research and debate in the field.
When I say caution is warranted and that we shouldn't over-generalize results, that's because the field has learned this the hard way.
> GWASes were literally partially designed to avoid those problems.
Yes, they were. And also, as I'm saying, they suffered from analytical and publishing issues for a number of years, despite being designed to address some of the early issues in single gene association studies. In the past few years, things have gotten much better. But there is still cause for concern and a lot of ongoing debate in the field.
> Don't equivocate. If you have criticisms of actual GWASes as they are run and good reason to doubt that the hits are noise and will not replicate in well-powered followups (contrary to what we actually see, in this GWAS and others...), give them; don't swap in criticisms of candidate-gene studies and pretend they're the same thing, because they're not.
I'm in no way equivocating, and you are the individual here discussing candidate-gene studies, not me. I have no idea why you're referencing them when I'm talking specifically about GWA studies.
GWA studies, currently, today, as of right now... still have issues with FDR and FWER at a base level, despite improvements in analytical rigor. With study power. With changing data collection techniques and quality control. With population sample bias. With concern for heterogeneity when applied to difficult-to-definitively-diagnose or subjectively defined traits (such as mental health diseases) in particular. With myriad issues.
It's still a relatively nascent, immature field and it is absolutely silly and unhelpful to dismiss a call for caution in interpretation, especially in the light of public press which is historically prone to jump to conclusions, under-report detail, under-qualify nuance, and overstate results.
If you want some recent examples of this debate in the field regarding GWAS, not candidate-gene studies, see a number of articles from even the past few years, including the following couple examples:
2013: http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v14/n7/pdf/nrg3457.pdf This is also in Nature.. and it was published because the editors in the field thought it held an important message for the field... despite what you seem to be saying here.
2016: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4756503/ "Identifying disease-associated SNPs facilitates the clinically relevant task of identifying higher-risk individuals. However, the large amount of reclassification that we demonstrated in individuals initially classified as Higher Risk but later as Average Risk or Lower Risk, suggests that caution is currently warranted in basing clinical decisions on common genetic variation for many complex diseases." [Emphasis added] This example is very on the nose in calling for exactly the same sort of caution that I'm calling for here, and which you for some reason seem to be disputing the merit of. This paper specifically addresses problems that arise when different numbers of SNPs are used in calculated genetic risk scores, as well as other issues common in the field today.
Now, I am not saying the GWAS are generally spurious or in any way bad science. I am saying we should treat them with caution, because it is a nascent field. Because there are a lot of underlying analytical assumptions and heavy analytical techniques involved in deriving results. Because the field has already seen a lot of flux over its short lifespan. Because there has been some incidence of spurious publication in the past. Because there are active and ongoing debates in the field about quality control, replication, analytical technique, etc. Because there are issues with population sampling. Because pathways aren't well-understood in many cases. And because, as I initially said, it's easy to get false positives here. It's hard to get appropriate power with a high degree of quality control. It's hard to get fully independent replication data of appropriate power. The field has challenges (against which brilliant and valiant efforts have and are being made), yet those challenges and qualifying statements rarely come to the fore in the public press regarding GWA studies.
Are you actually disagreeing that caution is duly warranted, or are you just picking at nits?
The point is that the iPhone / iOS devices could be more open (to user control and modification at the OS level, to third-party peripherals, to third-party software distribution and installation, etc)... but, due to fiat policy rather than any significant technical constraint, it is not.
Is that hard to "get"?
http://www.pcgamer.com/tim-sweeney-thinks-microsoft-will-mak...
I found a couple articles on this (the Phaleron mass grave site has been in the news for a while): http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2016/03/24/arc... , http://www.livescience.com/54432-mass-grave-unearthed-in-gre...
But none are specific about what it is that DNA studies would hope to confirm/deny or inform, or how exactly they'd do it.