Tag: Constants and Variables
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Who are the customers?
The most basic question about any organization is: Who are the customers? In a small or midsized business the answer is straightforward. Customers are the people who pay for the product or service. A business that wants to succeed must please its customers. Simple closed feedback loop. For larger organizations the obvious answer is usually…
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What’s the real diff?
Via NiemanLab, this is a good piece of reporting on a sneaky and obscure part of the tech world. A company called Clickout Media is acquiring many of the sites that write about videogaming. After it acquires a site, Clickout turns it into a front for bitcoin and gambling. Clickout’s specialty has a revealing name:…
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Balancing the vectors
Most of us can’t do anything about Altman’s crime. Publishers are in a unique position, able to make an economic difference to Altman’s minions. Publishers are caught between two countervectors. On one side they recognize that many authors are already wired up to Altman’s machine. On the other side they recognize that Altman is a…
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Not new at all.
The vast majority of headlines in sciency websites are clickbait. Half of them are ads or promotions. Others are “Study suggests A could cause B”. Wake me when you prove causation by a controlled experiment**, not by stats. Some headlines are simply rebranding an old thing as new or rebranding a universal as a particular.…
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China is helping more
Via Protos, China is rooting out and executing fraudsters and mafia leaders. They’ve closed down several ‘pig-butchering’ factories operating in China and nearby countries, especially Burma. Before Mao the Chinese government was sometimes operated BY the tongs and mafias, but the post-1980 version is hardass. The US government has mostly been operated BY the gamblers,…
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Swindlers vs salesmen
First input, unquestionably true: Social media is THE OPPOSITE OF AN ECHO CHAMBER. Algorithms are designed with GREAT PRECISION to give you what you hate, not what you want. After you’ve seen an item, sometimes you think about it and want to go back and look again. YOU CAN’T GET THERE. The algorithm knows that…
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No Bud Light in spam
Big corporations weirdly assume that everyone is “non-binary”. They pitch all their advertising toward the 2%, not the 98%. Spammers are realistic. Most of the spam in my inbox is unrelated to sex because most of life is unrelated to sex. The “offers” range from insurance to roofing to supplements. When the spam is sex-connected,…
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Constants and variables on libel
Quick take… A fairly obscure Canadian musician named Ashley MacIsaac lost money, and will likely lose a lot more, because Google’s explainer AI told people that he was a sex offender. Apparently there is a known sex offender with the same name. Constants and variables show that AI itself isn’t the main factor here. Constant:…
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Missing the divide
Via NiemanLab, a survey tried to distinguish active vs passive news consumers. Do you spend money and time seeking out news, or do you happen to hear about things? The separation is clear, though the author didn’t seem to catch it. Upper status people spend money and time seeking “news”. Lower status people don’t bother.…
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Work done, for now
The latest courseware is finally DONE and submitted. I’ve been aiming for maximum quality this year, which meant more work and more refined proofreading. My big goal this year is all three parts of the KSTP motto in the top icon: Laugh at your ills, pay your bills, behave yourself. The first part is the…
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It’s not an algorithm.
We constantly bitch about the obnoxious results of algorithms on the web. New thought: The most obnoxious shit happens when there ISN’T an algorithm. An intelligence, whether you call it a brain or an algorithm or a program, does three things: 1. Take input from the world. Different types of intelligence take input in different…
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From an extremely different era 23
Still thinking about sanctions and blockades, zooming out to a broader timeline. Wilson played the blockade game ferociously. After he was gone we turned against it, remaining firmly impartial and non-interventionist until we were ACTUALLY ATTACKED BY AN ACTUAL FOREIGN NATION on 12/7/41. Harding didn’t quite start the rebellion but he did lead it. Coolidge,…
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When was the line?
Listening to these auto history podcasts adds a new dimension to one of my standard themes. I’ve often hammered the Big Point that our blockades and sanctions help the target country to develop its own skills. Blockades hurt ordinary Americans by depriving our industries of export revenue, and raising the prices of needed imports like…
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Great talk, not much action
Speaking of honest and dishonest… Bernie is rigorously honest in this speech. He pulls us away from all the Machiavellian fake disputes and nonsense and gossip that politicians and journalists deluge us with. He gets down to plain facts in a way that FDR and Henry Wallace would understand and appreciate. Unfortunately Bernie failed to…
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