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Ah, I love this stuff. Tim Roughgarten's work on selfish routing was my bible through an undergrad research project, it's succinct and packed with excellent proofs. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/selfish-routing-and-price-ana...
Also, it implies a couple of engineers could slip through arbitrary code to be executed under selective conditions. That's terrifying.
Re:Reddit’s Plan to Recover from Its Meltdown on Wednesday October 07, 2015 @04:02PM (#10348622)
Aside from some veiled (but still unacceptable) misogyny, I don't see anything objectionable in the default subs. The ratio of homophobic, racist, and antisemitic remarks seems in the ballpark of any southern high school.

Is this something to still actively fight and change? Yes. But you yourself pointed out that reddit isn't making the content, nor are they encouraging it. What if the solution is MORE connected free speech, not less? The more representative a user base reddit gets, the less bigoted they'll be. I'm more worried about secretive and niche networks of extremists.

Re:LinkedIn's Add Connection settlement on Friday October 02, 2015 @08:52PM (#10322156)
> almost certainly they will reach the max number of complainants and end up only paying each person the minimum.

it's like some kind of crazy realized game theory problem.

Re:Apple buys UK-based speech technology startup VocalIQ on Friday October 02, 2015 @08:05PM (#10322047)
Oh man, this is really impressive. I'm usually incredulous of applied NLP but this seems to have fantastic possibilities so close to implementation, it just needs a hip little web app wrapper. I hear gradients are in.
Re:The word ‘robot’ is meaningless on Wednesday September 30, 2015 @10:46PM (#10308921)
Also true for pretty much every other term I've seen mainstream journalists 'learn'... hack, app, cloud, algorithm...
Re:Stop Googling. Let’s Talk on Sunday September 27, 2015 @11:23AM (#10286807)
We've spent generations filling our every waking moment with more forced broadcast stimuli, I don't blame 'millennials' for wanting to put up a minimum filter and default to their own bubble of controlled media. Why should we talk if you don't have something more interesting to say than my phone?
Re:The Uber endgame: privatized public transit on Wednesday August 26, 2015 @12:01PM (#10123828)
Actually, you can look find cases of this already. Complete neighborhood-wide monitoring of every car down to the license plate, and every individual's basic outline are captured by surveillance planes.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/mysterious-planes-over...

This. Nobody who could conceivably make an account is just waiting to hear about this hot new thing called microblogging.
Also, sometimes you're trying to get somewhere very reasonable in Manhattan, but you can't hail a cab because of your, say, skin color. Uber solved that.
Re:Is Polygamy Next? on Tuesday July 21, 2015 @04:42PM (#9925640)
I see my spouse as the no-contest first-place winner in my list of important people in the world. The math doesn't work out for this to be mutual in more than two people.
How does this benefit me after the initial MVP build? Most of my time in conversation with Designers is spent guiding them back to the same set of reusable components, reminding them we already have a way of doing X, and should be as consistent as possible.
Re:The “Sharing Economy” Is the Problem on Monday July 06, 2015 @10:15PM (#9843284)
As someone who has run coops, been a member of coops, and generally been exposed to real living based on the highest ideals of marxism, it sucks for bringing about change. The union cab companies mentioned in the article didn't bring about reliable, phone-hailed, driver-rated system I get to enjoy now, Uber did. That being said, they do treat workers poorly, at about the accepted standards of unskilled labor (is Wal-Mart any better?)

I think we'll have longer-term changes that won't necessarily take the shape of the most recent anti-capitalistic movements people were raised on. Patreon, for example, is incredibly empowering for niche communities of artists and otherwise unsustainable but culturally valuable projects.

I don't think we've yet realized all the transformative possibilities a connected world has for allowing a lives to be flexible to the individual. My generation missed the boat on a mortgage and a career until retirement. Maybe we can figure out new norms for the average jane's work and life goals. Ones that look less like running on a hamster wheel.

Re:Quantifying Creativity in Art Networks [pdf] on Wednesday June 17, 2015 @05:42PM (#9735501)
Waiting on the game-theoretical sequel which allows me to plot my optimal art career based on networking the gallery world.
Wow, this made me realize journalists can really write about anything without being concerned about spreading harmful, false information. I don't get the feeling the author has gained a more responsible approach to writing, just fresher blurbs to put in their health articles.
I actually thought it was playful, a funny wink at apple.
Re:Disputed Shakespeare Play Is 'Proven' Genuine on Monday April 13, 2015 @02:26PM (#9369407)
Exactly, it's not like they were scoring William Shakespeare versus every other (possibly unknown) playwright alive at the time, nor do they have the training data they'd need for it.
Re:Poor Kids of Silicon Valley on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @05:57PM (#9187674)
The Bay Area engineer is likely there to work for a company that obsoletes one or two of those unskilled laborers. I think the really scary part will be 10 years from now when everything's automated
Re:Amazon Unveils One-Hour Delivery Service on Thursday December 18, 2014 @04:15PM (#8769651)
They store it in New Jersey, for NYC, if you were wondering.

http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2014/07/amazon_warehouse_...