This is my first month experiencing AT&T’s data throttling (I’m grandfathered into an unlimited plan). I knew my internet speeds would be slowed down, but this is just ridiculous.
Also, This:
Cook something, learn how to cook something or get out of the kitchen. Standing around for six months trying to recruit a chef to cook a meal you don’t have a recipe for is barmy.
Great analogy.
Non-Technical Cofounders Should Know Programming
Here’s an anecdote that captures my own observations perfectly:
“How many of you want to start a company?” David Tisch asked. All hundred hands went up. That’s why we were there, crowded into a Wharton classroom to seek startup advice from an industry luminary.
“Keep your hand up if you are technical.” Five hands remained. Maybe six.
“Keep your hand up if you are looking for co-founders.” The only remaining hand belonged to a CS freshman in the corner.
This is why I’m learning to program.
Dangers of Personalized Internet
Sarah Kendzior for The Atlantic:
For the next month, I woke up to a barrage of horrifying stories that seemed to signal an epidemic of child torture in America…That’s when I realized: Yahoo had decided I liked child murder.
It’s not that I’m against personalized search, it’s that the algorithms just aren’t advanced enough yet. We don’t have mathematical equation that can tell the difference between real interest and impulse curiosity. Google doesn’t yet know that I was searching for cameras online but bought the camera at a physical store later that day. I may be a white male living in New York City between the ages of 26-35, but maybe I have of the same interests as females aged 36-50 (pinochle, anyone?).
The main problem is that the algorithms were created mainly to serve advertisers. Search results do need to be useful, but only useful enough to keep users from using other sources. However, the money exchange is between advertisers and the search engines, so the algorithms need to specifically cater to ads in order for the search engines to survive.
At the very least, this leaves users prone to a skewed perspective based on previous clicks and pageviews. If a user’s political views tend to be more leftist and Google starts favoring left-leaning search results for neutral search terms, that can provide a false perception of the current political state1.
This bias already exists in the mainstream media world, where the drive for higher viewers and page views create a trend towards shocking headlines. This directly results in inaccurate public perception:
We live in one of the safest eras in recent history to raise kids. Violence against children has dropped over the past four decades, yet the perception that times are more dangerous has made American parents more over-protective than ever before.
As the world of personalized internet experience exists now, it will only serve to splinter us more, widening the gap between demographics, race, and gender rather than working towards greater equality and unity.
The solution will be finding a way to make internet algorithms more organic and user-centric. I do believe it is possible for a computer to someday closely emulate the human brain2 and this “human” element is needed to create an unbiased and beneficial personalized internet experience.
As is stands, all the power is still in the hands of the advertisers. There isn’t much that can be done as long as the advertisers are the ones paying the bills. Until this changes, I’ll keep my ad-blocking extensions installed and advocate against a personalized internet.
- If a user is mostly seeing left-leaning results, they may miss out on a huge upsurge of positive right-wing support that may not be covered by leftist organizations. ↩
- I’d argue that we’re almost there already. ↩
Good Guy Twitter
The Innovator’s Patent Agreement:
The Innovators Patent Agreement (IPA) is a… commitment from a company to its employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes.
Twitter is leading the way in forging a brighter future for patent law. Thank you, Twitter.
Monopoly and Monopsony of Amazon
And the peculiar evil genius of Amazon is that Amazon seems to be trying to simultaneously establish a wholesale monopsony and a retail monopoly in the ebook sector.
Fascinating take on Amazon.com’s growth and economic stranglehold.