tokenizer

Perfectly valid concern that will be had by many until the processes become extremely standardized. I see this as in it's alpha stage even if the company is beginning to sell kits.

The kits need to become guaranteed through whatever safety certifications vehicles in my area have to be beholden to before I think of purchasing one. I think we'll see future shock and controversy surrounding it before this happens.

As someone that works in email disseminations for large public companies across the globe, it's really bad idea to not have one click unsubscribes, due to the actual weight large email services weighting the act of a user marking an email as spam.

It's a crappy process to deal with, and can affect you for a critical day or two. An example being that one of clients collected email in a greasy was, and increased their email blasts from 25,000 to 75,000.

I'm sure they wanted to reach more people, but yahoo and a few others marked ALL of the messages as spam due to massive increase in volume from this client.

Advice: Do things in a non greasy way, and while you may grow slower because of it, your users, and their email providers, will like you more for it.

Good point. It definitely depends on where policy is being thought up. I would say your point is a solid thing to be worried about, considering the pull the executive public-business class has on the world.

My question to you is that if feel like economical arguments trump moral/ethical arguments in terms of legitimate public policy?

>> If you have applied to do the job shouldn't you already have the knowledge? If you can't do a job you have got it dishonestly or their was a failing in the hiring process.

Great point. Unfortunately, I could never ethically apply for any job thought if this was true. The employers hide far too much knowledge for me to say truthfully if I KNOW something.

For instance, I KNOW javascript. But do I really?

Sure, I can make websites more enhanced with form validation, do some html scraping, enhance the design, or even collect analytics. But that's not what they asked. They asked if I knew javascript.

I definitely don't know how to create a really great search tool for a pure front-end app. I've never created a video game in the language. I'm horrible at implementing graphics in it with canvas. So do I really know the knowledge for what they are asking me for?

Great point. I feel like your highlighting the core issue this is bringing up: worker autonomy.

IMO, why wouldn't you want more worker autonomy than less when it comes down to knowledge based crafting? We see innovation as the key to success in reality, yet managers and executives FEAR it I say!

I find this to be an interesting point. I'd reckon the laws wouldn't change.

Pilots, who fly with autopilot still have to be attentive to potential failures within the system. I find it really fascinating that we'd hold cars to lesser scrutiny, because if these cars show up in the marketplace, and thousands or accidents are blamed on them, they could be set back by years, or worse, banned.

Do you not think it's common now? Maybe the reason why we don't have such a stigma towards it (in terms of worry being talked about surrounding legalization) is because the reports of stoned persons killing people is less common?

Do you feel like you could back up this fear with data, proving the fear reality, or do you feel like it might be a fear of the unknown?

Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which is even named after the royal family (who does that anyway?) are countries that offer us a glimpse of neo feudalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-feudalism).

This is a potential problem for every country. While western governments are considered much different than both Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the trajectory is leaning towards the paradigm those two countries occupy. This is of course, inequality, which is the measure that slavery falls onto one side at the end.

We can look at this policy as a policy, or we can have an intellectual argument on the merit of this type of governance. GOVERNMENT is literally what society as a whole, consents to being legitimate use of force. Military, Law, and Order.

No obviously we can assert that the power of the Sauds and the Thani is illegitimate today in the western world, because we ourselves have in our past moved away from the concentrated and hereditary control of power, into the hands of the super rich (the other end of the inequal spectrum).

So while I applaud hrw.org for pointing attention to this horrible policy, and more intellectually honest headline could read, "Qatar's People: Overthrow your illegitimate rulers.".

Any westerners who are reading this article and are upset or angry, need to fight against neo-feudalism in the US and European countries. The only way we can truly help the people of Qatar and Saudi Arabia is by stronghand political means. Not seeing anything from the US regarding these matters speaks volumes of their slide into neo-feudalism in my opinion. This is something seen both by anti-authoritarian leftists AND rightists(is this a word?).

> There are plenty of ideas for addressing the surveillance problem but perhaps it is time to take a step back and look at the "big picture".

The "big picture" for me are the effects of the loss of privacy. What was once one of the most horrendous forms of punishment/torture, is now mainstream. Also, this only gives more power to already too powerful of people (you already mentioned the nukes). I think we've already proven we don't need mass surveillance to not blow ourselves up.

> Another part to this is whether conspiring online actually constitutes a crime.

""To be classified as a crime, the act of doing something bad (actus reus) must be usually accompanied by the intention to do something bad (mens rea), with certain exceptions (strict liability)."" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime

In other words, it's up to the most powerful, who are also in control of the surveillance to decide this, not us. Also, the "big picture" issues here aren't really surveillance itself, but MASS surveillance, SECRET courts, and CLASSIFIED evidence.

Exactly. Theoretical potentialities regarding the subversion of the using population thereafter by the government is too speculative and too far ahead to worry about.

I agree that the government usually messes things up, but in this case, we need to think of the people suffering the most; the people serving prison time for this drug. Once we can get them freed, and have the using population treated as law abiding citizens, we'll see how it goes IMO.

IMO the battle is won in stages, and the first step in the legalization of Marijuana at the Federal level.

The next step is when we recognize the victims of the War on Drugs, specifically persons who were sent to jail because of Marijuana. You expand the affected to be people who've committed all non-violent crimes, and advocate for reform from that angle.

I don't care what the law really has to say regarding Heroin, as long as victims/addicts get helped instead of aggregated and exploited by a pseudo-warrior class.

Exactly. I don't see current companies (including Samsung and Xiaomi) making enough of an impact to dethrone Apple or Google from their places unless one of these smaller companies can literally rival the touchscreen shift in market disruption.

That depends on if there's any more massive paradigm shifts, and if those shifts are created by new players or not.

My guess is that, due to Apple and Google's expertise in touch screen and motion capture software, you won't see any new players coming out of the woodwork with a new phone everybody wants.

That said, the crowdsourcing of Firefox and Ubuntu phones could potentially disrupt things a little longer come 2014.

The problem is that your real worth, and your potential worth are two different things. Facebook/Tencent finds their users and especially their youth valuable. Factoring that into their value, they think they're worth 4 billion.

That said, that's far too high of a real worth for this company, illustrating how a prospective buyer can really drive up your companies pricetag. It may factor in real revenues and growth potential, but this price is largely market speculation. Very risky, but apparently worth it for some big players. My advice to the little guy is to stay out of it cause if one thing goes wrong the whole price could come tumbling down.

The FREEDOM Act?

What a horribly rhetorical name... Also:

Page 11 line 18: A judge considering a petition to modify or set aside a nondisclosure order shall grant such petition unless the court determines that alerting a target, an associate of a target, or the foreign power of which the target is an agent, of the interest of the Government in the target; or otherwise seriously endangering the national security of the United States.

This sounds like more of the same.

No mention of "NSA" or "National Security Administration". Most of the changes involved are regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or National Security Act. Almost all amendments contain provisions for terrorism, non disclosure agreements, or vague notions of harming national security.

How about repealing some laws instead of passing even more legalese?

ALSO: The word "terrorism" was found twice on the first page, and only 8 more times thereafter. That's MUCH better than the 158 references found in the Patriot Act, found here: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ56/pdf/PLAW-107publ...

You're right, however things can take a long time to run out of steam. Also, it's very interesting how much of economics relies on everyone believing in the system.

I'd recommend checking this video out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH9YPtk5VB4. This is what many people think. While some can definitely brush it off, many aren't.

I'd say that it isn't to mislead someone, but to allay their feelings. It's out of kindness and not malice that's for sure.

I like this comment, I think it explains why it's not as simple as being honest: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6624928

> All of these implicit value transmissions are harmful to audiences, but the effects tend to be distant in time or space

Well I see harmful effects now. The word "consumers" for one. Children being manipulated for profits. Over-sexualization. Creating the idea that things will make you happy, and make this one of the most popular concepts in society. Dividing people through the message of "Individuality", even though that only really means buying things your neighbor wants.

> I've always found it interesting that prior to us paying for services with our private data, we paid for it with our attention.

And now we pay with both our private data, and our attention, as both are extremely related when you want to either control, convince, or confuse someone.

> existing money becomes worth less over time, then you can simply continue to print more money

Only, the act of printing more money. deepens the problem of your currency losing value. The US thinks it's impervious to inflation, but many including myself see it simply postponing the inflationary event, which will most likely coincide with a currency crisis.

I'd recommend Peter Schiff or Max Kaiser for an interesting look into the Fed's QE policy minus Mainstream Media hype/

The problem with the FED, and every Keynesian economist is that they think the US will indefinitely be the world currency reserve, and that 5,000 years of gold based monetary policy is less stable than the post war economics that have given us rising inequality, lowering employment, indefinite QE, China calling for a de-Americanized world, and an interest rate ceiling of 1% (look it up, Bernanke said it!) that was the bottom rate of Greenspan.

I just love when current economists tell me I'm naive, and that government debt isn't the same a debt debt... Or that there isn't a borrowing limit. The limit, is when other governments stop buying your currency. See China-Australia trading deal, China's ease on buying bonds, and look up an interesting theory on how Japan will soon stop buying US bonds, due to it's self-inflicted inflationary policy, which will force it do invest in it's own money supply soon.

Talk about moving the measurement to create concession. Ads are a problem. Never have there been more advertisements. Not only do people have Billboards, TV ads, Radio Ads, and Newspaper ads like we've had in the 20th century (all of which are still pervasive and virtually unavoidable), But we're not talking about a problem in avoiding all of the new types of advertising only really initiated in this century.

Perhaps the problem isn't Ad Avoidance, but Ad Overload. People will either find a means to limit their exposure, or the Ad industry will see effectiveness drop to a level that isn't profitable to the cost.

I understand that jingles and subconscious inserting one liners are impossible to ignore and extremely valuable, but I think the question rests on how many of these virtually empty platitudes a human mind can carry.

Let's assume Obama had no idea, nay, not even a clue that Merkel was being spied on. What should the actions of the US be?

Good Foreign Policy: Call for an investigation with a reputable committee, and actually change laws or procedures, that make this action, or the discovery of this action impossible to happen going forward.

Bad Foreign Policy: Apologize to the leader of the nation, offer no solutions, and attempt to sideline the dramatic news.

Now instead of what should be the actions of the US in this situation, what do you think they will actually do?

Do intentions even matter? I mean, this is the problem with only having a left and right divide. No talk of the authoritarian vs libertarian aspect of policy.

As far as I'm concerned, you elect an authoritarian on the left, to pacify that side, and pass authoritarian policies. To say that they're really good guys, and shouldn't be held accountable, is defending the status quo IMO.

Obama and the Supreme Court are pro authoritarianism, and will not question more power, nor will they dismantle it.

IMO it's semantics, but the rhetoric and reaching is usually more prevalent.

For instance, they're basically saying more leisure time spent on the internet, means less time for everything else. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to see how that sentence is just too simple. Of course it's correct. Any more specific however and it's wrong. A great example is the three assertions in the articles headline.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6615835

Great points. You summarized exactly what I felt when I read the article. So...

> The other question is thus: Does it matter?

Absolutely not. Any, and I repeat, any of the problems encountered with a computer or the internet, can easily be more attributable to the human condition, and the way our civilization and organizations work. It's the exact same argument as guns don't kill people.

Lets take the title as an assertion, and see if holds any ground when asked as a question. So the assertions are: "The internet hurts your sleep schedule, productivity and personal life"

The internet hurts your sleep schedule?

First of all, what's the internet? Is it a physical object? No it is not. Does it force me to interact with it? No. People or myself may force me to use it however. When I look into the science, it tells me that what really affects your sleep, is bright lights close to your face. This actually seems like more of a problem with display screens and is more of a criticism of our modern, electrical society, which is fine. This doesn't mean that it's the Internet's fault though.

The internet hurts your productivity?

Hah. So where are we getting our data from? From before the internet was invented? Yes? Well No. Actually the data is more about what a time sink on average, certain services are on the internet. Again, what's the internet?? Unfortunately people use whatever definition suits them. Again, all I'll say is the problems are most likely born from personal or social pressures or vices or defects, and while I may agree to more accurate phrase (Facebook hurts your productivity), the internet is where I and many others make their living everyday. To generalize it as unproductive is just incorrect.

The internet hurts your personal life?

If you let it hurt your personal life, or you let someone use the internet, and that person hurts your personal life, then I guess you could argue a more exacting phrase (My naked photos being on the internet hurts my personal life). But then again, with such a general definition of internet, then a fair retort is the evidence we have of people's personal lives being improved everyday because of the internet. Girl dying of cancer? Reddit donates to her in a caring creative way. Veteran needs some love on their B-day? /b/ from 4chan has over 10 people attend and give the man company. The internet is keeping you single because of anime and porn? The internet got this guy a girl friend and a job in Cologne.

It's like your said earlier: Does it matter? No. Because people are different, technology is agnostic to our anthropomorphism, and all of our problems stem from humans, human groups, or human civilization.

That's still not actually doing something about it.

IMO voting is the same as praying. I mean, sure; Your ruler may decide to grant one or more of your wishes, but you'll never know if it was them, or simply chance.

Also, my point was regarding boycotting, and how free association and volunteerism become ineffective when dealing with government or government sponsored corporations. Boycotting on free market ideals, means they don't make money if most people don't like them. This can't happen when the operation itself if funded through tax dollars and currency controls.

While you make a good point about resources being finite, and people that can access those resources when said resource is scarce fair better than those who do not (especially water), you're point is actually a non point.

With such speculation, I could have a premonition of an alternative future where the initial settlers near all freshwater die, as the more aggressive and desperate peoples fight for the area, and this potentiality has as much merit as yours.

Also, why even say Detroit will come back if the original inhabitants are all but gone, and the area has been resettled by others? If Detroit's coming back in 2045, then [insert any maritime city/town/village/location/space] is too!

Boycotting only works effectively in a free society. If someone taxes your by force, and hands some of that money to these companies, then short of becoming an elected member of government, you can't do anything about it.

Exactly. I don't take things like this serious. Given your example, one could look at studies of watching TV and spending time on the computer, and postulate that one would be exercising the brain more.

The catch? The computer is just a tool. Some people use it 24/7, only consume sedentary media, and can skew these results. While some other folks utilize the device to save time on their shopping, social communication, taxes, personal growth, hobby development, and professional networking device.

A computer is a tool. If studies show that more people choose to use it in a reckless and hedonistic manner, then that's more telling of us humans than the effects of the internet. If those same people can't ruin their lives on computers, they'd do so at a bar, or at a casino, or in front of their TV all day.

Could be titled, "How [thing] hurts your [other things]".

Of course a newer, more utilized tool eats into your other activities that don't revolve around that tool.

Less time spent driving to the store, walking around the store, and purchasing the items, and driving back home? More time spent on Amazon.com?!?!

What about less time spent socializing offline, but more time spent playing MMOS?

IMO this is all about one major sociological/technological device eating into our other habits. Depending on the person, it could eat into bad habits, or good ones.

They mentioned 2.7 minutes less working, but what about the productivity gains from the internet?