BTC has always had more in common with rare gemstones like Taaffeite than currencies or even metals.
No practical value, no industrial value, no means to materially change the rate of production, nothing special at all except that it is rare, only a few people care about it, and its price will always depend primarily on the behavior of a very small number of market participants.
If PG actually meant a single word of his essay, he'd fire Dan Gackle and he'd radically change how HN moderation works.
But, as per usual, Paul Graham is full of shit. He is interested in challenging other people, but he is absolutely and totally unwilling to be challenged in any material way.
And heaven forbid you challenge any aspect of one of his most highly valued portfolio companies... lol... you'll be banned right out of this place.
because Paul Graham absolutely LOVES declaring some things heres and he LOVES to suppress speech.
He just wants to be the one who declares what is heretical and what is not.
This is an outrage. Only private companies like Google, Facebook, LexisNexis, Experian, Equifax, Corelogic, Nielsen, Acxiom, Datalogix, Epsilon, Spokeo, Radaris, ID Analytics, eBureau, Intelius, PeekYou, Rapleaf, and Recorded Future should profit from information about me.
I get what you're saying, and broadly agree that data brokering is dirty and gross.
But the government selling your data to the highest bidder is worse than a private firm doing it - because they have the significant advantage of being the source of truth of that data itself. Every other firm is likely needing to piece together the public data that's out there, or that they've gathered themselves, and package it up. The government can just sell the data out of its operational database and guarantee its accuracy. The incentives here are really grim.
We need to tell the government that this is not ok. They might even then think of stopping private firms from doing the same.
Importantly you also absolutely can’t avoid giving your data to the government. And if you try to lie and create a fake “DMV profile” for yourself to keep your data secure you’re gonna end up in serious trouble.
Also, google can't tell me that I'm not allowed to drive if I don't give them personal information. I can't just go to DuckDuckGo's DMV instead of giving my data to the government.
Given the general sentiment of "people shouldn't be allowed to drive once L5 driving automation is implemented" on forums like this and even among the general public, not being allowed to ride in Google (or Uber's) cars could become a particularly big deal.
Even so, it is possible for DuckDuckGo to introduce privacy-respecting self driving car services. The point still stands that nobody, ever, will be able to provide a competitive, privacy respecting, competitor to the DMV.
Here we go. Your "personal" data is (and has been for a long time) a public record, which is in practice available to anybody who wants to ask the government for it.
Even Facebook is protecting my data better than the DMV. Even back-alley shady deals that share my data with undisclosed partners are preferable to literally allowing anyone who asks to have it.
It's crazy how much information on ordinary people is considered public -- including voting information like party affiliation, which is just absurd to me. People shouldn't be able to just ask the government which party I'm registered with.
They're not selling your data to the highest bidder. It seems like they're selling it to people that appear to demonstrate a need for the data per their policies, and there is no bidding process, but rather a fee structure for all users. This is quite a bit different than providing to select groups after a winner-take-all scenario.
This kind of information is available on most if not all property and business. I'm not sure why it would be different for automobiles? Public records are public. Would you feel better if this was provided for free to anyone vs. some sort of revenue-generator for the state? The last question is not rhetorical. I'm honestly not sure which one would be practically best, though data availability for free sounds like the best option to avoid corruption.
They also have the unique ability to effectively compel you to provide that information. At least with private companies you have [the illusion of] of choice.
The government is supposed to be governing. They're the referee. If a private entity does something that is illegal, the government can punish them. If the private entity does something that we agree ought to be illegal but isn't the government can change the laws. When the government does illegal/should-be-illegal things itself, you have an entity who's incentives are to not address the problem.
No, not particularly. But bear in mind that I'm making a distinction between Muslim terrorist propaganda (censorship OK) and people arguing on behalf of the Quran (censorship generally not OK).
The algorithms that ban Muslim terrorist propaganda also routinely ban non-terrorist Muslim content. They have essentially the exact same failure modes as anti-Nazi algorithms that also ban some politicians.
Why are you tolerant of these problems in one case, but extremely bothered by them in the other?
Ebay doesn't have this problem and the solution is extremely obvious. Amazon has no third party seller rating. There is no way to confirm the trustworthiness of a third party seller. People cannot review sellers, they can only review products so sellers can easily get away with reputation loss without having to create new accounts by simply moving on to the next product because Amazon as a whole absorbs the reputation loss. I personally loathe buying on Amazon because of this.
> Amazon has no third party seller rating ... People cannot review sellers
Sellers have reviews and ratings just like products. You can leave public feedback and a star rating for sellers you've purchased from [1]. On the 'Your Orders' page click on 'Leave Seller Feedback'. This page also describes how to do it [2].
You can see these ratings while selecting which seller's offer to buy from. For example, many 3Ps are selling '5 Hour Energy Shot Berry - 24 count' [3]. Alongside each seller's offer, you can see their star rating and positive feedback percentage. For the first seller I see a 5-star rating and "96% positive over the past 12 months (1,122 total ratings)". You can click on that to see individual feedback.
It's my understanding that these ratings influence whether a seller's offer will be chosen for the 'Buy Box', which is the default offer that's shown on the product detail page. When an offer appears in the BuyBox, underneath it will say something like: "Sold by 7-Eleven, Inc and Fulfilled by Amazon". The seller name is a hyperlink to the seller's profile page where you can see their ratings and reviews [4].
Amazon also has a slightly different problem than Ebay, as I understand it, because Amazon is trying to have a single product detail page for each "product". There should be in theory exactly one page for "24-pack of 5 Hour Energy Berry". I'm not experienced with Ebay, but it looks like every Ebay listing is completely separate and independent. Doesn't that make it harder to comparison-shop for the best offer for a specific product among multiple sellers? Is there an easy way to see all offers for one specific product? I couldn't see an easy way to do this while experimenting with Ebay search right now. Amazon is trying to make this comparison shopping easy by consolidating all offers for the same product into one page, and then selecting a recommended offer based on various factors (including seller rating, shipping speed/reliability, etc.) that matter to customers.
(However, because there is a single page for each product, and sellers have some ability to create and modify pages, that occasionally leads to abuse, like the kind being discussed elsewhere in this thread.)
pssht. I emailed jeff@amazon.com to complain about the general problem of counterfeit BeyBlades and provided links to scam items. Rather than take down the scam links, or even acknowledge the problem which was causing my inability to trust amazon for these purchases, the response was that they could refund any specific items I bought that were scams.
Your video card would be shipped in that fashion if the product was certified SIOC (Ships In Own Container); wherein the seller certifies that their packaging is adequate to ship to the customer with only cosmetic damage to the packaging.
For SIOC products, I believe there's always an option to include an Amazon box _around_ the original box, however it's optional because that second box is considered to be waste, as the product packaging is already supposed to be good enough for shipping purposes.
The one that contacts you and wants to “help you sell more”.
The point is that each of these types of teams has no insight into the underlying structure of how Amazon actually works. As a business you are forced to buy into the racket in the hopes that you are not accused of being an IP infringer...try hiring a decent law firm to help you get out of this debacle....oh wait they all can’t help because they work for Amazon already.
States attorney or class action? Going after Amazon for structuring a system enabling fraud on purchases they get a commission on sounds like a good position for anyone able to represent consumers in bulk.
No practical value, no industrial value, no means to materially change the rate of production, nothing special at all except that it is rare, only a few people care about it, and its price will always depend primarily on the behavior of a very small number of market participants.