Are they even that? Their modus operandi has been to steal user credentials. Ads (which aren't targeted at all, the ads aren't even good, according to what people have said) are just an excuse to gather more data (Facebook syncs with your phone, it wipes out addresses in your phone book). It comes down to Zuck and who he is
The ads are effective, and the way they are effective is via targeting.
From the customer perspective, it works. The main problem is price competition for access to audiences. That's why fb revenues are what they are. The ads work, largely because ofntracmjng/targeting.
But chess is a turn-based game where there's no deception (in the sense that both players can see all legal moves for both themselves and their opposition at all times), whereas in table tennis, it's in real time, it's fast as hell, the table is small, and the ball can have 2 or 3 different spin types from the same arm/hand/wrist movement , and can land in a number of different spots.
People don't understand that defense contractors are extremely wasteful in their spending, and the contractor's job is not to produce the latest and greatest. They have a dual mandate.
1. To keep supply chains active so we can continue to be able to wage tomorrow's war with yesterday's technology by introducing rent-seekers and middlemen into companies and processes where they shouldn't be.
2. To keep Wall Street, defense contractors, and defense lobbyists happy.
I gotta ask, while I have the attention of HN - why are defense contractors allowed to be public, for-profit corporations that serve Wall Street interests ahead of national defense interests? Am I the only one that sees a massive conflict of interest that can affect (or, probably has affected) our national security in profoundly damaging ways.
It almost feels like Healthcare companies, who are supposed to be focusing on our health and wellbeing, seem to focus on shareholder returns and denying service to the same people that pay the premiums. What's wrong here?
The answer is because we tried to DIY and found that the government at best works as a developer with manufacturing better off outsourced. It is 'under-orderly' compared to a planned system, but the private sector works. There is a reason why it is a norm for military industrial development.
Wall Street and Defense Contractors and Defense Lobbyists wouldn't make too much of a difference anyway when they are already jobs programs. Any sort of industry would have lead to it being an Industrial complex problem.
That people think it would make a difference mystifies me as much as when people claim that 401ks are just to make people dependent upon the market in retirement. When in reality they would be dependent upon the market either in a state funded pension system too because that is where the money comes from.
>Now if only the NSA would vet key people in our government
They probably did that for a while.
Sadly, they as an agency were un-vettable to the general public, and abused that position to create tons of blatantly unconstitutional programs that they tried to hide.
I agree, I know some people hate the surveillance stuff, but unfortunately we only hear the bad mostly of what it does, we never hear the actual good impact some of these agencies do. I wish they'd release some sort of annual report, but how do you do that without telling your enemies that people are "trying" or being "caught" doing things. It's a pain in the butt.
There are truly evil people in this world, way worse than we probably realize. Our military is not perfect, our country is not perfect, no country or military is, but we generally do our very best to do what is right historically speaking. It's hard to see that if you get lost in the politics of things.
> we generally do our very best to do what is right historically speaking. It's hard to see that if you get lost in the politics of things.
or there's a much simpler explanation: the awful things we do very visibly (or simply casually declassify and admit to decades later¹) are a perfectly reasonable basis to condemn basically the entire history of this country and there's no reason to believe in some sort of political dark matter that balances the moral equation.
¹ for instance, if you were right, you'd think there'd be more widely-agreed success stories coming out like this, but no, it tends to be more in the vein of "we destabilized another democratically elected government because that's not the side we think should have won". i wonder what's up with that
>I think it's grossly unethical and negligent that our DOJ/FTC allowed them to acquire film studios, subsidize them with outside business unit profit, put ads across their own properties, then give it all away for "free". This destroys actual healthy industries.
Film & entertainment is not the only area in which Amazon engages in this type of behavior.
They need to be broken up, and Bezos needs to pay his taxes.
> but the corollary to that is "this is the most aligned the incentives between model providers and customers will ever be" because we're all just burning VC money for now.
Please say this louder for everyone to hear. We are still at the stage where it is best for Anthropic's product to be as consumer aligned (and cost-friendly) as possible. Anthropic is loosing a lot of money. Both of those things will not be true in the near future.
Yeah, especially that same offender who was let off easy with 12 unindicted co-conspirators because he "belonged to intelligence" and had deep ties to Mossad.
Yeah, I'd totally let that guy manage my billions after all that.
My brother, in Sunni Islam practicing countries, they can kill you for drawing a stick figure.
Traditional American values include freedom of speech.
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