63 karma · joined October 22, 2020
>The barrier to creating a new social network once network effects have locked in a few major players is enormous.
So...that is what I said, that the barrier to entering the market is enormous.
I wholeheartedly disagree that the cost is "nothing, nada, zilch". The network effects of having everybody using a couple of sites is what makes the cost of switching high, not the technical triviality of creating a new website.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
The barrier to creating a new social network once network effects have locked in a few major players is enormous.
In this situation, the market is more efficient when the large incumbents are granted a highly-regulated monopoly status.
That's how power companies work. You don't have new power grids cropping up, but the main providers are held to much stricter standards that a normal private company in terms of their quality of service and how much they can charge.
If we allow mass-scale social media to continue existing, we need these sorts of strict regulatory standards. These companies have become mad with power, and there's no way to unseat them through ordinary competition.
Fortunately, it was archived:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170910060455/http://www.wipp.e...
Some interesting excerpts:
>We decided against simple "Keep Out" messages with scary faces. Museums and private collections abound with such guardian figures removed from burial sites. These earlier warning messages did not work because the intruder knew that the burial goods were valuable.
>Note our use of irregular geometries and denial of craftsmanship. None of our designs uses any of the regular or "ideal" geometric forms, and only crude craftsmanship is sought, except for the precision of engraved messages. Why? the geometry of ideal forms, like squares and cubes, circles and spheres, triangles and pyramids is a fundamental human invention, a seeking of perfection in an imperfect world. Historically, people have used these ideal forms in places that embody their aspirations and ideals. In our designs, there is much irregularity both of forms and in their locations and directions, yet done by people with obvious knowledge of pure geometry. This shows as understanding of the ideal, but at the same time a deliberate shunning of it...suggesting we do not value this place, that it is not one that embodies our ideals.
>In short, to ensure the probability of success, the WIPP marker undertaking will have to be one of the greatest public works ventures in history.
>...it is largely a self-correcting process if anyone intrudes without appropriate precautions, and it seems unlikely that intrusion on such buried waste would lead to large-scale disasters. An analysis of the likely number of deaths over 10,000 years due to inadvertent intrusion should be conducted. This cost should be weighted against that of the marker system.
That would be an efficient use of resources. This whole "law-making" thing isn't hard at all, what do they do all day in Congress?
It would be too inefficient and fraud-prone to actually work, but it's a nice idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_power_point_tracking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuously_variable_transmis...
In my anecdotal experience, it's every bit as good as google, and I simply did not notice a difference in the results when I switched.
It must be down to what people search for, or maybe how heavily Google has customized their personal results to fit their behaviors. I mostly use web searches for looking up technical documentation, and 5-second tasks like weather forecasts and unit conversions.
Facebook has no room for freeloaders.
It's also not about knowing what a specific user sees. The targeting configurations that advertisers use should be made public, but nobody needs to know which individual users see which individual ads.
So, you should be able to click a "?" link in the corner of any ad and see which demographics or groups the ad is targeting. And likewise, you should be able to look at individual demographics or groups and see which ads are targeting them at any given moment.
This sort of transparency would go a long way towards restoring trust, but I suspect that it would also reveal what a cesspit their ad market is. The advertisers would also probably object, because many would consider their targeting parameters to be a sort of trade secret. And whoever pays the piper calls the tune.
>Whatever you do, do the best you can, because the film lives forever. No, "because that day it was raining and the actor don't have time."
>I said, "would you go to every theater and tell the audience?" No! The audience sits in the theater: good movie? Bad movie? That's all.
And he practiced what he preached, sometimes going through hundreds of takes to get a stunt just right.
They bought a bunch of PS3s to make a cluster back when the machines could run Linux, but Sony removed the ability to run a custom OS when people started to actually use it.
I think the military got a special contract for continued support, but why shouldn't that be a feature that is expected of any complex computing device?
People do also modify their car and motorcycle ECUs, it's called "chipping". Again, this is expected of a product that you purchased and own, and it's still illegal to operate vehicles that don't pass local environmental and safety inspections.