ethbro

10 ms·

61.
by ethbro 6y ago
We just went through 4 years of the nu80s again. Which puts us on track for nu90s. As far as I can remember, "This is capitalism, baby!" didn't play quite so well with the latter crowd. Then again, free trade and outsourcing
62.
by ethbro 6y ago
I'd hazard to say most people outside of tech (in free speech countries) don't care about encryption as a key feature.
63.
by ethbro 6y ago
I haven't seen much difference between the two, if I understand what you're differentiating, as the type of executive that tends to project hop doesn't generally care about the underlying project, past its ability to further
64.
by ethbro 6y ago
I see it as a tail wagging the dog scenario. Government concerned about shortages + wasted N95 masks by untrained public -> recommendation against the public wearing masks -> additional evidence for airborne & asymptomatic transmi
65.
by ethbro 6y ago
What would the result have been if, in late February, the US government had said "Everyone should use a mask"?
66.
by ethbro 6y ago
Thanks for the thoughtful treatment. It's absolutely a can of worms, with no obvious best answers. The distinction (whether intended in Gates' source or of my own mind) I find interesting is between veracity and velocity. Like you
67.
by ethbro 6y ago
Or that they clarified his point with him, post-interview, after typing up and reading the transcript.
68.
by ethbro 6y ago
If you take the text at face value, he's making a pretty modest proposal: (1) The current velocity of disinformation is high -> (2) this leads to socially harmful outcomes -> (3) providing P2P encryption in turnkey form via socia
69.
by ethbro 6y ago
Boiled down to: nobody ever gets a promotion for maintaining the success of something that's already successful. Which is a shame, but the corporate game theory optimality of leapfrogging between hot projects has held true at essential
70.
by ethbro 6y ago
His point is more nuanced than that, and oversimplified complex ideas virally spreading through social media is part of what he talks about. "Q: As someone who has built your life on science and logic, I’m curious what you think when
71.
by ethbro 6y ago
I feel like this is the real base problem here. There's an incredibly broad set of permissions (at the cloud or OS level). Any app / tool may be written to use any subset of those. And what it uses is rarely documented (because de
72.
by ethbro 6y ago
My takeaway from a one year oceanography course is that ocean currents have more in common with biology than computing: they're complex, can change as the result of propagation of relatively small changes, and are inconceivable in scal
73.
by ethbro 6y ago
It's definitely a continuum depending on industry. In more monopolistic areas (insurance, banking), my experience has been closer to government. In more cutthroat areas (tech, retail), it's been on the other end of spectrum.
74.
by ethbro 6y ago
> What use is oversight when the agency can destroy all the evidence? What use is {x} when someone can {attempt to avoid x}? Because we live in the real world, and no authority is omniscient and absolute.
75.
by ethbro 6y ago
> there are times where I think they are asking to be regulated Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by corporate incompetence.
76.
by ethbro 6y ago
Catalogue of Prohibited Foreign Investment Industries X. Art, Sports and Entertainment Industries 1. News agencies 2. Business of publishing, producing, master issuing, and importing of books, newspaper and periodical 3. Business of publis
77.
by ethbro 6y ago
Nobody in the US has an appetite for forcing TikTok into a 49% joint venture and mandating key escrow.
78.
by ethbro 6y ago
> The Chinese government sets their (extremely authoritarian) rules on censorship for companies to legally operate in China but the rules apply to everyone equally. Censorship requirements are the least restrictive Chinese law. Look at
79.
by ethbro 6y ago
You laugh, but that's exactly how jarring it was. It sticks in my memory because I remember being somewhat annoyed at the writing level hitherto, reading through that sentence, realizing what I'd just read a few sentences later, g
80.
by ethbro 6y ago
It isn't journalism: it's opinion. It's in the Food section [0], and tagged with "Critic's Notebook" anywhere the article is linked. That apparently being one of their blog / opinion lines for food. It doe
81.
by ethbro 6y ago
I stand by my decision. The world is a better place.
82.
by ethbro 6y ago
I read the first 100 pages of the first book and then literally threw it into a fire. I believe the "Nope" sentence was something akin to "{character} thought that {thing} because {thing}." Jesus Christ. Would it kill yo
83.
by ethbro 6y ago
A more cogent comparison would include total available markets at the time. 75m MAU in 2008 is very different than 2.6b in 2020.
84.
by ethbro 6y ago
We used to call "super apps" portals. Mistaken valuations of their stickiness generally led to the first cratering of internet company values.
85.
by ethbro 6y ago
> If Microsoft acquires TikTok how would they go about vetting all of the code to remove any malicious components? Rename it "Skype for Teens". Make no changes to the codebase.
86.
by ethbro 6y ago
I hear car washes are a good option. If I understand what we're really talking about here...
87.
by ethbro 6y ago
Apparently in the US there are about: 7M fly fishers [1], 9M skiers + snowboarders [2], about 3.2M SCUBA divers [3], 14M "active camping households" (3 or more times in a year) [4], and 48M hikers [5]. To pull a few outdoor activi
88.
by ethbro 6y ago
I've worked at both kinds of shops. I'd never work at somewhere that follows the above strictly again. It's been my experience that you get crappy software, produced with great effort and much gnashing of teeth, if your devel
89.
by ethbro 6y ago
It's a weird sport from a human perspective. You get folks who just do it as a hobby (because it's not that expensive), die hard folks who live it (but aren't that wealthy), plus ultra-wealthy folks (who are generally jealous
90.
by ethbro 6y ago
In my experience (~10 years of doing this sort of work) software engineers typically understand how their users use the software in the abstract, but not in the actual experience. E.g. It is well understood that users rely on a hotkey &quot

More ›