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> I, the engineer, do not want them to do this.

You don't matter, consumers matter.

> Before Google and Apple, I didn't have this problem.

And you didn't have distribution either.

> But it wasn't always this way!

Indeed, there wasn't even distribution. Do you actually remember what was shipping mobile software back in 2005?

> I want them to pay back the negative externalities they've leveraged onto us.

Again, you as an engineer don't matter, only as a consumer. And consumers have never had so many options and at such low prices.

He's one of the greats of the crazy diets: people should eat more white sugar and fructose, people shouldn't exercise because it stresses the body, people should reduce or eliminate vegetables from their diets, and so on.

Also the king of cherry-picking parts of studies that agree with his view and ignoring everything else, no matter how prevalent.

It isn't just technically worthless, it is technically wrong. I know that none of it is even the point, but that's where the article loses itself: there is no point but to make an appealing critique of nothing in particular.

It isn't even wrong.

Any competitor that gets big enough to challenge YT will attract the same scrutiny from content rights owners. and will face the same copyright issues that YT does.

The problem isn't in the content hosting industry, it isn't even on the content producing industry. It is on the policy & legal side.

Another way that I like to express that is "create a desert of profitability around you".

I once had a strategy professor define the Google business model somewhat like that, where "Google tries to make every other business around it free or irrelevant". It results in a few different effects:

- By reducing the cost of other links of the value chain, there is more money available to spend on the links you actually generate revenue on. This shifts profits along the value chain to that link. One example is dramatically reducing the cost of phones and internet access, thus allowing customers to spend more time and money online, which generates revenue and profits for Google

- By making the other links free or irrelevant, you reduce the odds that a competitor in those links will strengthen their position and will extract more profits from the rest of the value chain. One example is using Android to prevent a monopoly on the smartphone side. If Apple had a monopoly or near monopoly, it would be able to extract larger economic profits from the other links on the value chain, including Google

A desert of profitability shifts consumers to you, and keeps competitors away.

We've seen it before:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-google-news-effect-spain-r...

Everyone loses. And smaller, local, independent companies lose more.

> So the internet was created with public funds; you and I paid for it.

Very little of the current infrastructure was built with public funds Most of the hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure around the world come from companies, some government owned, some private.

> The registrars were then privatized

Actually, they weren't. They never existed in a public fashion. You're mixing up registry and registrar.

Today, it isn't a monopoly, so anyone can create their own registrar if they want. So if they don't find a registrar wanting to do business with them, they can spend a few thousand $ and create their own.

On the "government-run neutral registrar", I'm not sure if that's a good solution. I've rarely ever seen a government keep something neutral...

> So not "every online community" should be barred from censorship on their own properties, but if you're running a core information service, you're danged skippy that censorship is not okay.

Google or GoDaddy aren't running the DNS system, or even street signs.

They are running a phone book service, which is also run by many other companies, each under their own ToS. They can reject service to anyone (well, except protected classes).

> Do you think it acceptable for casual users of the phone network to keep their own list of phone books that include self-published phone books that the major phone book book publishers won't list?

I didn't really get your point, too many books in it. Care to rephrase it, please?

> A power the US government gave them.

With no requirements that they should not refuse service to anyone.

> Also, no one is saying "force."

Then what are you saying? Should Google be "xxxxx" to accept Stormwhatever? What is "xxxxx"? Honest question, what are you proposing?

> Again, using power given to them by the US government.

And doing so per the conditions specified by the US government.

First Amendment lawyer Ken White describes the Daily Stormer as a "sewer of humanity." In a statement to Ars, he argued that the article about Heyer "is repulsive, and arguably advocates for killing people in general, but it's not actionable incitement under the law. GoDaddy, of course, can kick Nazis off its platform as it likes, though."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/godaddy-blacklis...

> You weaken your own rights by choosing to interpret "speech" literally instead of as participation in public communications and discourse, which increasingly occurs over channels that do not require everyone to be within shouting distance of each other.

Are you implying that every online community and service should be forced to accept absolute freedom of speech?

Porn is speech, should YT and Fb be forced to host porn?

> As a registrar Google is serving the public and I doubt you can deny someone this service in a moral sense.

Actually, you can deny anyone except protected categories.

> Can a doctor deny to treat them if they end up in his office for serious injuries?

Yes, the doctor chooses not to treat patients with the illness or injury you suffer from.

> What if all registrars deny them, is it morally right to effectively erase them from the internet for simply expressing their thoughts?

Nobody is being erased from the internet. Also, they can open their own registrar system.

So no, there's no obligation for Google, or any other registrar, to host their information.

> "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Please notice that the quote is not "I disapprove of what you say, but I'll offer you my house for you to say it".

> To support someones right to free speech is not the same as supporting the content of said speech.

Supporting someone's right to free speech doesn't mean enabling them to.

I support the right of the Nazis to voice their (IMHO completely absurd) speech, but if I had a business, I'd have guidelines against that type of speech in my business. In the same way, I wouldn't welcome one into my house. None of those measures infringes on their freedom of speech.

> If private companies have the abilities to squelch speech from the public internet

Nobody is doing that.

Nobody is mandated to give you a medium for your speech. Go on the corner and scream all you want.

the orientation is horrible. why is north up? just no.

I'm looking forward for the summary of this post.

Sorry, but the little content available on the page, the Amazon ads and the very short run time makes my BS detector sound like an air-raid alarm.

Do you have anything beyond "I'm making $3.5k using methods I won't disclose on an initial investment that I won't disclose"? What's your return on your investment? Sharpe Ratio? If you apply your investment criteria in historical data, do you beat the market?

How different is it from the guy who invested his tuition money on Tesla?

Yes, they can, but you can only create "muscle memory" by practice. And practice includes reading cases, trying to figure things out and getting it wrong, discussing how to do it and so on.

You can read a hundred books about coding, but until you actually try, you don't really know anything.

So a technical background with an MBA can be a killer combination. You know how things work across the company, and that gives you a huge edge over everyone else.

I have an undergrad in computer engineering, and an MBA from a top-10 or top-5 (depending who you ask) school. I learned a LOT from it, even though my experience after my undergrad degree was mostly in business.

Businesses, finance markets are far more complex than people usually think, and if you like to learn, an MBA is a great way to build a solid base for being a product manager, or a director who actually understands the sides of the company: how products are made, how they are sold/monetized/etc. and how to manage the overall structure of the company.

Sadly, I know a lot of great product managers, directors, etc. who are former engineers and have little understanding of competitive strategy, market forces, economics, marketing & finance.

In terms of learning, I took a generalist approach, but focused mostly on strategy & game theory, finance and technology. Here's some of the key things I learned, which I actually use frequently:

- Overconfidence bias: we usually think we're better than the average on something we know how to do (driving) and worse than the average in something we don't (juggling), even if almost nobody knows juggling and everyone knows how to drive

- No alpha (aka can't beat the market): you can only consistently beat the market if you're far better at financial analysis than a lot of people who do it every day all day. So don't bother trying.

- Value chain vs. profits: you'll find that most of the excess profits in the value chain of a product will be concentrated in the link that has the least competition

- Non-linearity of utility functions: the utility of item n of something is smaller than item n-1. Also, the utility of losing $1 is smaller than (1/1000) utility of losing 1000. This explains insurance and lotteries: using linear utility function, both have a negative payout, but they make sense when the utility function isn't linear

- Bullwhip effect in supply chain: a small variation in one link of the supply chain can cause massive impacts further up or down as those responsible for each link overreact to the variation (also explains a lot of traffic jams)

- Little's law: in supply chain (and a lot of other fields): number of units in a system = arrival rate * time in the system

Sadly, a lot of people in my class weren't that interested in learning, and focused solely on the networking and entertainment parts of the MBA.

The impeachment process isn't judged by the Supreme Court.

Maybe we should just add lithium to the water supply, although that would drive conspiracy theorists crazy!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1699579

"Using data for 27 Texas counties from 1978-1987, it is shown that the incidence rates of suicide, homicide, and rape are significantly higher in counties whose drinking water supplies contain little or no lithium than in counties with water lithium levels ranging from 70-170 micrograms/L; the differences remain statistically significant (p less than 0.01) after corrections for population density."

Edit: on a second thought, it wouldn't drive them crazy, it would literally calm them!

Edit 2: I'm not proposing adding therapy-level doses of lithium to the water, just equalizing it to the water in other regions.

Stallman's answer:

"I am skeptical of advice from people who disagree with what I stand for."