zeteo

27 ms·

181.
by zeteo 10y ago
And how do you account for survivor bias? I don't think the CEOs of Blackberry or Nokia would have agreed that they cared less about the customer than Jeff Bezos. "Customer obsession" is not actual, actionable advice because
182.
by zeteo 10y ago
Conspicuously missing are a couple of other ingredients of Amazon's success. There are plenty of companies out there with "customer obsession" and a "day 1" mentality. There are few others with such good investor re
183.
by zeteo 10y ago
How many people have a) many thousands of dollars sitting around to pay for lawyers b) the requisite leisure to attend arbitrary court dates and locations c) the ability to deal with the loss of the above if the company wins the case based
184.
by zeteo 10y ago
The subtext here is that customers don't have any actual rights when dealing with a large corporation. The terms of service have become so lengthy and obscure that it's virtually certain for a corporate lawyer to find some justifi
185.
by zeteo 10y ago
The broadcaster has also spent billions for their network [1] but that doesn't absolve them from responsibilities. Like it or not, Twitter has become a major platform for public speech and it's practically impossible to pack up an
186.
by zeteo 10y ago
I think we should expect more, the same way we'd expect food producers to not poison us and truck operators to not run us over. Twitter has become a major platform for public discourse (including elections) and needs to at least have s
187.
by zeteo 10y ago
Twitter is a platform for people to communicate and you can't easily move your followers. This would be more like the giant local mall booting out shop operators based on their political views.
188.
by zeteo 10y ago
> Tweeter and all others you mentioned are private corporations. Their goal is to turn profit to their shareholders - NOTHING MORE. Not sure what that's supposed to mean. Would it be OK for a food company to use expired ingredients
189.
by zeteo 10y ago
How about some form of transparency at least when deleting undesirable statements? It's not like you can go and tweet to your followers somewhere else.
190.
by zeteo 10y ago
Imagine if the local water or electric monopoly could vary your service by how much they liked your views. It's time for some antitrust regulation of the big tech companies. If you control a platform then you have an obligation to be f
191.
by zeteo 10y ago
This is pretty naive. Do you think Google is now cross-checking news stories with the encyclopedia entries on vice presidents and nuclear fusion? Please go to factcheck.org, which is what they'll actually use. They're dealing with
192.
by zeteo 10y ago
Remember, we're talking about Google introducing fact checking. In this context, "fact checking is not enough" is a very different position from "fact checking is subjective".
193.
by zeteo 10y ago
You can put spell checking into an algorithm. You can't reduce fact checking to an algorithm. How is this besides the point? The algorithm they have is "whatever websites X, Y and Z say".
194.
by zeteo 10y ago
> Fact checking is like spell check. No it's not. Spell checking relies on very precise rules. Fact checking relies on assessing context and, more often than not, the speaker's intention. For example, let's take the statem
195.
by zeteo 10y ago
> Was the Roman economy only as developed as that of Europe circa 1300 or was it as advanced as that of western Europe on the eve of the Industrial Revolution in say 1700. The question is ill posed. It assumes that economies move on a li
196.
by zeteo 10y ago
Kelvin taught at Glasgow, Brahe was a cathedral canon, and De Broglie did his best work for his PhD thesis.
197.
by zeteo 10y ago
I don't have a good theory - it's just based on reading biographies. Almost no famous thinkers lived on passive income (although, as I've said, annuities and bonds have been widely available for over 500 years). And probably
198.
by zeteo 10y ago
Well, Lavoisier's tax farming was not passive income: "Lavoisier's researches on combustion were carried out in the midst of a very busy schedule of public and private duties, especially in connection with the Ferme Générale.
199.
by zeteo 10y ago
Note that having a job seems necessary though. Maybe it's a case of the golden mean? On one side you have people whose job absorbs all leisure. On the other you have some who draw sufficient income without having a job at all. These ar
200.
by zeteo 10y ago
There's a long tradition of important advances in knowledge being made by people with an undemanding job [1] [2]. The 19th century university became a hotbed of research because the teaching workload was relatively light and they didn&
201.
by zeteo 10y ago
In addition, "workfare" is a well-tested approach that has given good results in the past [1] [2]. What's to stop someone on UBI from joining a gang, anyway? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Works
202.
by zeteo 10y ago
At the age of 23 Einstein had just found a boring job, out of the public eye, that left him plenty of time to dream and think big thoughts [1]. Untimely attention from Harvard might well have ruined all gifts he was about to give to physics
203.
by zeteo 10y ago
I've never found these lists particularly constructive. If someone makes an error in logic you should be able to take it apart from first principles. Memorizing dozens of vague "fallacies" seems more like a cheap way to try t
204.
by zeteo 10y ago
> Monopolies are not illegal in the United States. Monopolization is illegal Next up: the 18th amendment did not implement Prohibition, since it still allowed alcohol consumption; it merely forbade obtaining it. The links present a unila
205.
by zeteo 10y ago
I'll try again to restate the big picture and see where we disagree: - monopolies are illegal since 1890 - excepting natural monopolies (utilities), which are strictly regulated instead - since the 1980s, also excepting companies that
206.
by zeteo 10y ago
You are correct that natural monopolies are allowed to exist under US law, but the trade-off is that they're strictly regulated. Each state has a utilities commission, usually appointed by the governor.
207.
by zeteo 10y ago
There's nothing in the FTC link that says monopolies are not illegal. In fact they say this: > The Sherman Act outlaws [...] any "monopolization, attempted monopolization, or conspiracy or combination to monopolize." If yo
208.
by zeteo 10y ago
The laws are very strong. Back in the day, they would block a merger if it affected 7% of a market, and vertical integration was a big no-no. None of those laws have been repealed. The enforcement guidelines were weakened during the Reagan
209.
by zeteo 10y ago
Maybe some people think monopolies are OK but the law says they aren't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act#Original... . Are you suggesting a legalization campaign for monopolies?
210.
by zeteo 10y ago
What people also don't seem to realize is that the US has serious anti-monopoly laws on the books (even if enforcement has been kinda lax lately). Remember Microsoft in the 90s? With Amazon running many competitors' infrastructure

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