taylorswift_

I completely agree with this. Why would the average Joe trust the chain you describe more than a Corporation with a physical address and humans to interact with?

What are your thoughts on stuff like the many blockchain real estate related projects? e.g. "tokenized real estate" "100% liquidity" etc etc.

that's why I said "part" of a conversation. If it's known that China (or any nation) is actively working against our citizens interests, it certainly makes sense to include in any conversations relating to foreign affairs with that country. Does that benefit people addicted to drugs in America? No. But it may benefit people who could *potentially be addicted in the future.

I discovered scooters recently and have rode them in three major cities during the past month. I have to say it is the most genius consumer tech product I've seen in a long time. I instantly felt a sense of "wow" after riding the first one (bird). The entire experience is so simple, so elegant (ui/ux), cheap, efficient, and most importantly FUN. I looked up bird and lime to discover they'd each received over 400M in funding and it makes perfect sense to me. This is a disruptive technology that's going to see major adoption in every city across the entire planet. You have to ride one to understand, especially in an urban, downtown, waterfront or metro type area. They're going to easily cut into bikeshare and short-trip rideshare services. Take a ride and you'll see, #scootlife!

Also worth noting, none of the technology is itself "new", but rather bird & lime particularly have packaged existing technologies together to make a product with all the qualities mentioned above. Innovation is usually just a twist on something that's already out there.

How do you reason such? Most if not all of the illicit fentanyl comes from China, where it is an uncontrolled substance. IMO this should definitely be part of a comprehensive conversation.

> Discussing which tools work best is an important question in software development.

I completely agree, but would you write an article titled "Spoons still blowing away Forks in digging holes"?

Why do people care which framework "blows" the other one away? In my opinion, it literally doesn't matter at all and arguing over such things seems amateur.

Use whatever tool gets the job done.

> What's worse is that they're not entirely wrong.

If your startup dies because of your choice in javascript framework, you were doomed from the get go.

Oh I'd love to go to that lake...

I agree it's foolish conjecture and I believe we are certainly not "alone". I had an experience when I was 10 that infused fear and curiosity in me.

I'd like to say I am hopeful about our future but we are just evolved organisms from a long chain of creatures designed to compete for survival... it's in our own nature to self-destruct.

but how do you know it exists if you've never been there? who told you?

> there are no reptile aliens secretly ruling Earth.

perhaps not ruling it...

where is this lake in WA state? have you been there? are you reptilian?

That's actually a great idea in my opinion, not sure why you were down voted. It seems that the incumbent large internet companies will easily be able to afford this burdensome regulation but new startups all the way through medium sized small businesses may struggle or even be suffocated by it. It would seem reasonable to have a tiered system where the penalties only kick in when the business has scaled.

I disagree, what is unique about Reddit that a smart team of engineers can't reproduce easily?

Like facebook their main advantage is network effect only.

Interesting, outside of the academic merits of the research, I wonder if they could partner with Blizzard (or other similar RTS game studios) and start shipping games with AI that is very difficult to beat? That would usher in a new era of solo and offline game play that could be very fun and challenging! Plus we'd be training Skynet, err, I mean the neural network in the process!

Once upon a time, it was completely preposterous to think that a human could fly in the air.

When I'm worth $20Billion+ from building technologies that have already impacted the world, then maybe people will take me seriously!

this. First, the thing that none of the decentralize advocates recognize is that outside of HN and the tech community, no one cares! When you mention the word "decentralized" to Joe Schmo of the world, you already lost him. He has no idea what you're talking about and doesn't care.

Second, there is no way that a decentralized social network is going to have the quality and feature development that a centralized company will have. There is a reason people build great things in this world from buildings, to widgets, to software etc. It's called incentive. Capitalism drives innovation and it's a requirement to have the quality of product that is needed to draw eyeballs off existing platforms.

Lastly, I don't buy the argument that centralized companies can't be responsible with data. Do we trust banks to hold our money? The future is not decentralized social networks.

I'm sorry but I don't see a comparison between what people *willingly post online to public forums compared to their personal health ledger... it's not apples to apples

thanks for this. so what's your advice for a social startup building a new platform in today's data-privacy concerned world?

Well the world has changed clearly. When facebook/myspace started out, would they have been able to achieve success if they were bogged down with data privacy compliance?

I don't think it's an equal comparison... the effects of social media on societies is a somewhat subjective matter. It's more likely that social media is just another tool that exposes the underlying human nature.

That said, if a fire occurs in my shelter and I don't have sprinklers installed, I could die.

can social media kill you though? I mean all this talk of regulating social networks is under the assumption that it's something you need to have. I would argue that safe shelter is a true human need, but posting cat gifs or pictures of drunken escapades or political musings does not seem equally comparable and thus I do not see how regulation does anything other than hamper competition.

thanks, wow responding to a letter like your first link could significantly bog down resources for a young company... you can imagine if you launched and even received moderate user growth early on, but then started receiving such letters, your productivity could go down the tubes.

Is anyone talking about the harmful effects on startup companies that may want to create new social platforms to compete against the incumbent players? All the talk about regulating facebook, twitter, etc are actually great for those companies because they can afford compliance. But it raises the bar of entry so high that new companies wouldn't be able to compete since with limited resources they wouldn't be able to focus on the critical period of acquiring users and instead would be forced into building compliance features.

I firmly believe that the majority of people still don't care about their privacy in the first place or they wouldn't use such platforms. IMO this is government overreach and anti-competitive.

In my opinion you can't simply discard the debate as comparing apples to oranges... There are many similarities. It's a drug addiction at the end of the day.

If there were 0 people who recovered from opiate addiction without being hooked on a maintenance drug for the rest of their lives then it'd have more credence. If you give an alcoholic xanax for the rest of their life because it affects the same area of the brain but they aren't drunk anymore, are they recovered?

Not to mention, that seems like a pretty horrible and bleak outlook to make people believe they can't make a full recovery without being medicated for the rest of their life.

Again, I've known many people who have taken these drugs and a large number of them relapse bad. In fact, from what I hear the withdrawl from suboxone is 10x worse than from heroin.

I read this, as a recovering addict that went through my own hell mostly from alcoholism, and wondered where the "science" part was?

For instance this sentence "More than 13 percent of its participants died after treatment,1 mainly of overdoses that could potentially have been prevented with evidence-based care." The argument is that they "could" have been prevented but how do they really know that? How many people in general die of an overdose after X number of stays in a rehab? Through my own experiences going to rehab, I have known of many people who die. The fact is you can't predict which people will "get" it any better than you can predict if it will rain next month.

I also disagree with this notion that being on suboxone or methadone indefinitely is a legitimate solution. Like what? You're advocating to stay on a drug the rest of your life? That isn't recovery at all, it's a band-aid that will likely lead to relapse and promotes a perpetual notion of being sick.

I also disagree that their supposed evidence that CRAFT gets twice as many people into rehab has much relevance. How many of those people relapsed? How many of the people that didn't go to rehab ended up overdosing OR recovering? We don't get the whole picture so the "evidence" is mute.

They knock 12-step which is fine but it turns out that it works for millions of people.

There is no silver bullet here.

While I have mixed feeling about the "tough love" approach, I can tell you from personal experience that the only reason I'm not buried right now is because at a certain point the floor dropped out too low, my family and friends abandoned me, I lost everything for a moment, and the pain and horror reached a level that finally I had a change of psyche on my OWN and realized I wanted to get better.

In my own humble opinion the only "science" that matters on this subject are the opinions of those whom have lived it and recovered. Go survey the opiate addicts that didn't end up dead and find out what worked for them.

posting my response above but I am with you...

Have you also read "Abstinence Helps Reduce Opioid Addiction, According to New Study"?

Is it me or have we reached the end of the road of mobile phone innovation? Is this going to be Apple's downfall as something like 70% of their sales are from iphone? We've had many years now of mobile phone enhancements and features but it seems like there isn't a lot more we can do on a phone. The next breakthrough ipod/iphone isn't going to be a phone at all. How many more times can we put a better chip or a better screen or a new camera into a phone at this point and have consumers seriously give a crap? Feels like things are going stale.

Congrats on 3 years! If I don't pick up a drink by Jan I'll have two years myself.

At the end of my twenties the floor literally dropped out from under me. I had a good job as a software dev at fairly large media company, had nice apartment, ambitions etc. But I had deep dark secrets that I kept hidden and throughout my twenties I drank and used drugs (coke/pills) over. I considered my upbringing to be pretty normal in a middle-class neighborhood on the West Cost, and I started drinking and partying in high school like everyone else. However I found myself drinking progressively more towards the end of my twenties and no longer a party it was more to cope with stress, anxiety, and life in general.

I ended up losing multiple high-paying jobs, flying around the country trying to restart, going to about 6 rehabs in ~2 years, losing my mind, losing all hope, wanting to die. I almost died a few separate times from acute alcohol withdrawal. I was fired from one job with an internationally recognized media company the morning after I had seizures from coming off alcohol in a rehab. It got to the point where every time I drank alcohol, I ended up detoxing in a hospital. Finally somewhere in that dark period I was able to get honest with a therapist for the first time in my life about some sexual abuse that had happened when I was younger, and about the other addictions like pornography that plagued my life in my twenties. I got sober for 1.5 years and relapsed one more time, this time it was the final wake up call I needed.

Fast forward and I'm the ceo of a startup company prepping to launch an amazing product, I've been a successful consultant helping build another product that is currently in operational use processing millions of dollars in financial transactions, I feel completely resurrected in mind, body and soul. I have a mens meeting I go to weekly, I go to AA, I workout 4-5 days a week, I eat healthier than ever in my life, and I get regular sleep.

The urge to drink or use drugs has completely left my body and mind. I have traveled all over, spent some of the best time with my friends and family, started my life in a new city, made amends, and found tools to help deal with life on lifes terms.

I hated 12 steps and tried everything possible including drinking to work around it but in the end I'm thankful it's there and I go to meetings regularly.

The most shocking thing to me now is both when I think about how far I've come, and how lucky I am to be alive.

No one ever tells you when you're young that you can live a perfectly normal, fulfilling, and happy life without using drugs or alcohol!

Congrats again and thanks for your share.

> There isn't going to be another big Reddit or Digg like community.

What makes you so sure of this? I would argue that this is wildly inaccurate as there will almost certainly be another platform (probably many as you look outward into the future). Imzy was poorly designed, branded and executed (internet safe space?). While their effort and aspirations were righteous, they didn't deliver something people wanted. Honestly I watched that platform since the day it launched and knew it wouldn't last. Digg is old news. I've seen others like topick.com that tanked as they weren't innovative enough. Gab.ai is gaining some traction but it's product isn't innovative and it's too political so it won't scale.

The barrier of entry isn't that high for a new social platform, it's only a matter of time before something newer, less corporate, less "reddit" comes along and gets people's attention. The same could be said for facebook, twitter, and others. No one has a monopoly on ideas.