Even worse - it's sold to the lowest bidder so they can sell it back to you for profit. This is a perfect example of why GDP isn't a good measure for how well a country is doing - if the kids do it themselves they may learn a bunch and enjoy it and make their lives better, but it doesn't create jobs or profit, so the incentives are against it.
Does anyone know the URL for the actual site? Seems weird to write about a website and not link to it, and searching for it just brings up more articles that don't link to the site
Yeah, the whole area within miles of downtown LA had 3 Teslas, and the area around Redmond WA (where the Microsoft HQ is) had exactly one (and it wasn't even a Microsoft employee, apparently it was someone from Pure Storage). Which is obviously laughable, as my floor of the apartment parking garage alone (Seattle, 3 years ago) had 7 (out of maybe 18 total parking spots), and my floor at the work garage (in Redmond) had way more.
All in all, at this point, I am just curious how they obtained/gathered those specific datapoints. It isn't even a case of "some data is missing", it is more like "99%+ of data in the most Tesla-dominant areas in the US is missing".
I agree with point #1, but then this ban should also include the US controlled sites - having the main office in the US doesn't mean the data is any more secure, or that the products do less harm socially.
For point #2, this seems like you're saying "they don't have a leg to stand on, and we want to do the same thing". If we don't support the way they control the internet, we shouldn't be doing adopting the same policies. I don't think governments should have any ability to control communication on the internet, so this feels like a huge overstep regardless of the reasons given for it
Re #2 -- while there is a tit-for-tat element here, forcing a sale of TikTok or removing it from the App stores, is still worlds apart from the type of censoring of information that the Chinese government engages in. So it's not a case of "we want to do the same thing". If you've lived in China (I have) you'll know what I'm talking about.
Good clarification - I'm not saying we're adopting all the same policies, but it is a step in that direction, and I think we need to have a clear line saying we never do anything close to that. Similar to the "first they came" poem, this could be used to justify further expansion of this power, and that poem does start with "First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist"
Agreed that there's always a risk that something like this sets a precedent for abuse of power to control information by the US government. And we know that the US gov is not beyond spying on its citizens (Snowden, NSA). However, there are still fairly robust safeguards in place in the US by virtual of the political structure, to make this much less likely to happen. Those same safeguards make it unlikely that while Trump and Elon would almost certainly exercise the degree of control that Xi has if they could, they are prevented from the worst by the structure in place.
The problem in China is that there weren't strong safeguards to prevent a totalitarian control (CCP is supposed to be democratic within itself in that leaders are elected, though it's all restricted to party members, of course), and when Xi came into power he was able, within a few years, to sweep aside all opposition, primarily through "anti-corruption campaigns". So he now has a degree of control and power that would be a wet dream for Trump. (And you should see the level of adulation in the newspapers there.)
Now in the US we have a separate problem, and that is we have a system where unelected people like Elon and Zuckerberg, Murdoch, etc., exercise a tremendous amount of influence over the population through their policies and who are pursuing a marriage between authoritarian politics and big business (by the way, there's a term for this, it's called "fascism"). That is a serious problem -- but it's separate from the TikTok issue and shouldn't be used to discount the dangers of the CCP having control over a highly popular social network in the US.
> this decision is not an emotional one but for the nation, just like the opposite party does for its nation
I'd argue that it is an emotional decision for both, and it does seem ironic that the US would be following China in restricting a platform that people see as a major tool for free speech. Whether you agree with that or not the optics are terrible, and the users are very aware of it. If this is really a big concern then they would also ban facebook/instagram/snapchat, but they aren't being included in this, despite having a worse track record.
Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat are not functionally owned & operated by an unfriendly foreign government that would have incentive to destabilize the USA via civil unrest by influencing our algorithms.
They are owned and operated by unfriendly actors with no allegiance to the government - they just need to be profitable. If there was a publicly owned and operated alternative I would feel better about that, but for example Facebook has been shown to experiment with their algorithm and increase depression rates in the past. If the argument is that the US should own/operate it then I'm not opposed to that because we could remove the profit incentive, but then meta/snapchat would have to become parts of the government instead of independent companies, and with them already being global I don't see how that would actually be implemented. Right now the proposal is to continue letting them do all the harm and data collection, so the reasoning for the change doesn't match up with the actions being taken.
The US government protects Facebook, and is what enabled them to become they company they are today. There are plenty of examples of their loyalty to the US government. They make back doors available and allow the US government to moderate content. Seems like they are very aligned!
Theoretically that can happen. But functionally, that hasn't happened - and in fact, the primary incentive is for that not to happen (bad business, etc).
I think there would need to be some basis in fact for these claims, right?
I find this line of argument particularly uncompelling and offensive - it’s like saying the arresting of a Soviet spy per a valid warrant by the courts is against the constitutionally rights and is also hypocritical given how the US protests against people being disappeared.
Not OP, but personally it's just sad to see someone that you view as a historically great mind getting distracted by nonsense, like if a great mathematician suddenly stopped their research to focus on flat earth and contrails
> view as a historically great mind getting distracted by nonsense
Are you saying that thinking about "wokeness" is a distraction, regardless of the person? Or that specifically PG thinking about "wokeness" is a distraction? Or maybe even "thinking about wokeness in that way" is the distraction?
It seems like if "wokeness" is important, then having more people thinking about it is better, regardless of their outcome from thinking about it. If "wokeness" isn't important at all, I'd totally understand you, but seems there are way more people out there thinking about it more than PG, since it's the first time I see him say anything about it at all.
Thanks for engaging. Is it nonsense if it greatly affects government and workplace policies? Especially now at a time where the incoming POTUS has demonstrated a lack of respect for a wide swath of people.
(Just to be clear, despite the above comment, I do not align with "wokeness".)
Also worth noting companies like Cutco use a similar script and a cold-calling approach, it doesn't work nearly as well as it used to though because most people don't answer numbers they don't know, so they train people to leave a message and say that a close friend (the reference) told you to call them
I'd like to see it change the way dental insurance works, so that e.g. an AI diagnosis will legally be fully covered by the insurance, and anything that can't be verified through that would be considered an elective procedure. In the US dental insurance works basically opposite of health insurance - they only cover the basic checkups and you have to pay for any real medical needs. It's like if car insurance only covered oil changes and tire rotations but not accidents
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