I think it is dependent on which accent you have. In my experience as an american (who has met a lot of foreigners), I have found that germans and the dutch seem to have the least problem with the american accent. (Australians too, for a non-european example). There can be a number of reasons for this to be the case, but this is what I have noticed.
Couldnt disagree more. Teens are the most-dependent age group on fb's fake social interactions.
I am 32 and I could leave fb in a second. That is because I realize that im not being social by liking posts or commenting on photos or any of the other common flows. Thats not social! Plus there is not nearly the peer pressure at my age that there is for teenagers to do that type of stuff.
(i never used fb for photos though, which is a big lock-in. my comments are just regarding the social interactions)
Why are they fake social interactions? Any bit of connection to other people is a social interaction. For some, it's a major part of their social interaction with peers. For others, it's a small bit part. It's definitely not 'fake' though. They are other people clicking that like button, and not some anonymous random internet strangers, like on Reddit or HN where the up/down arrows are used. You KNOW someone was looking at your post, and felt a connection enough to you or it to signal so through a comment or a 'like'.
Flickr has an estimated 87 million users [1], and Instagram has 100 million. Note sure what your definition of "second rate" is (quality or quantity?) but Flickr is much better quality than Instagram, especially after the recent update. Regarding email, Outlook, GMail, and Y! Mail are pretty much all tied at 290'ish million users worldwide, but Y! owns the top spot in the US [3]. Most of Y!'s media properties are #1 in their respective areas as well (News, Sports, OMG, etc).
This article is incoherent and mostly hand waving. The fact that everyone is disagreeing with it for different reasons either speaks to its shallowness or to the fact that it is just wrong about the valley being ideologically homogeneous.
The part you put in parenthesis is the true problem that every hacker should be contemplating every day.
there are two types of iced tea in the south and this is how you order them: (sweet) tea where the 'sweet' is optional and: tea, unsweetened where the waitress gives you a funny look.
I remember I was 10 or 11 the first time I ordered iced tea and it came sweet- I thought their machine had broke in the most disgusting manner possible.
I don't think Gruber makes any pretense of acting as an objective journalist at all, he's just a guy that writes about things that interest him. It's true that the things he chooses to write about frequently fall into the "Apple gets this right, everyone else is on crack" category, but (usually) he's got a valid observation to make. If there's any pro-Apple bias, it's in the specific topics that he chooses to write about (things that make Apple look good) as opposed to bias in the content itself.
There's a difference between being selective when you choose what to write about and actually being biased in how you present a topic once you've committed to write about it. I think he's guilty of the former but (usually not) the latter.
The fact that he spends so much time countering what he sees as invalid criticisms of Apple by market analysts ends up making a huge difference in the mix of topics he covers. I totally think DF would be a lot more interesting if he actually tried to cover a much wider swath of topics and perspectives though. There are weeks on end that are nothing but "claim chowder" articles and harrumphing about dumb analysis by other people, which can be justified sometimes but it seems like he could be doing so much more.
I dont find the pretense of acting as an object journalist particularly relevant. Actions speak louder than words. (my point being that MG is less of a journalist than people think, thus making him a fan-blogger like Gruber which is the comparison that this thread originally was about)
There is a fine line between blogger and journalist nowadays. In fact its closer to overlapping circles than a hard line. So while you made a good case that DF is more of a blog than a journalism site, I dont think its 100%.
If you were to ask me if MG is a blogger or journalist, I would scratch my head and probably answer that he is a blogger who works (worked?) for an opinion-dominated news site.
Its hard to separate bloggers from journalists. I dont think Gruber is to blame for that. MG and techcrunch have no qualms about it though.
It could be that their bias is a legitimate bias. Or, it could be that it isn't. Rather than attacking someone for a bias, wouldn't it better to prove it by writing about it ... just like they do?
The difference between the US and Zimbabwe is that if the US had a civil war and inflation ruined the currency, it would send the world into the second dark ages. Civil wars cant happen in the US? thats good to know, but i wont take your (implied) word for it.
What about if China suddenly asked for something in exchange for the tons of american paper currency they have accumulated? It is unlikely anytime soon, but they will only take it as long as it has value. So the more you inflate, the more you have to send to China to maintain the American lifestyle.
Our economy is becoming less rugged over time. A large shock becomes more and more likely to significantly disrupt our system. There is no redundancy or backup operations. Our cpu core's are all at 120% load.
<sarc>Also, its a good thing that stuff like population pressure and infectious diseases are a thing of the past (two of histories best methods for shocking a political/economic systems). You know, because the global population is under control and our climate is capable of withstanding everything we throw at it with complete aplomb. </sarc>
However when everything is going well, Keynesianism works well. I will give it that.
China moving away from US currency implies they don't want to trade with us - unlikely. But if they did do this, they'd sell the currency on the global market, the cost of the dollar would go down, and US exports would likely boom due to increased competitiveness. In other words, it remains in China's interests to keep their US reserves. And in everyone's interest -- as far as the numbers show, the safest asset on earth (as crazy as it sounds) is US government debt.
