Because of self-driving vehicles currently safely operating in the US, some of the more impressive results various DARPA challenges have resulted in in recent years, and of course a single experiment in a highly controlled environment.
No it won't, and it will come with a few of it's own (getting American's past the bootstrap narrative is probably the biggest single one) but it is a step in the right direction.
That being said if you can think of another example where we put 3.5 million people out of work nearly overnight along with an entire support system built on their salaries and needs, I'd love to hear it. The only similar thing I could think of would be the rise of automation in American factories, and even then that didn't replace EVERY human with a machine, and carried with it a certain PR cost for the companies involved, whereas I think a shipping company removing humans from their trucks would have a PR boon, not bust.
UBI has nothing to contend with the boostrap narrative. You just shift the target. Rather than pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to not starve or die of exposure, you pull yourself up by your bootstraps to do anything at all beyond basic survival with a roof and bread. You want a car? Go work for it. You want TV? Go work for it. Etc.
UBI is only meant to reduce the demand for total income enough that people can recreationally work for things they want, because there isn't enough work to go around for all the things they need. If you wanted to live on a UBI without additional income, you could spend your days at parks or libraries, but by design you should not have the income to be purchasing luxury goods - if you want those you can seek work for them, and because of the drop in labor demand UBI causes, you should still be able to find something.
I have a hard time believing under any economic system Americans would be content with bread when their neighbor is eating steak. That is the whole basis of the consumerist culture that powers a good portion of American capitalism.
And the Soviets are a terrible example. Centrally planned economies of course destroy all individual incentives to accel or improve.
But if you seriously think the only way economic systems like the US's can function is by threatening starvation and exposure to incentivize working, then what is the point of progress to begin with if we are stuck in the same vicious cycle regardless? All progress is effectively meaningless if at the end of the day you are still laboring to not die of hunger.
And the Soviet's didn't have bread to begin with. Their people starved not because of "free" stuff, but because there was "no" stuff so long as the central planning existed and was as inept as it was (that, or intentionally restricted).
>And the Soviets are a terrible example. Centrally planned economies of course destroy all individual incentives to accel or improve.
Which economy is not centrally planned? We have more and more central planning every year.
The Soviet Union did not collapse because of central planning. It collapsed because everyone was lazy and stole shit from the factories. No productivity, no quality. People were drinking at work and were utterly incompetent. This is what happens when you remove the incentives for improvement. If you guarantee people they can eat, no questions asked, they just stop caring after 10-15 years. They just forget to care, this is the new reality for them. No repercussions, why even bother. Who are you to tell me to work harder? Why should I work at all? I am ENTITLED to your money so I can buy food.
And when the proletariat smells they can get other people's money, will they stop at just a pinch, so they can buy the very basic necessities? Or will they go and protest and push for more money in 15 years? Those fucking 1%-ers! They are not better than me. Who said they are better than me? Why should they have all this money. I need to feed my kids! And for booze.
The Soviet Union collapsed because they distributed everything to everyone, the problem was it was all terrible and the supply was insufficient due to any one of many things such as problems in distribution, corruption in the suppliers, etc. People who were stealing were by and large doing so out of desperation, which is already happening now in multiple areas around the US and elsewhere.
The vast majority of people when given access to a basic amount of money (not benefits, not stamps, just money) will spend it in such a way as to NOT cause them additional misery via drugs, alcohol or by starving their children. Yes, some will but the "welfare queen" is a myth perpetuated by people who stand to benefit from the social systems being cut back. They exist but it's such a vanishingly small percentage that they might as well not exist, in comparison to the total welfare budget it's a rounding error.
I've never heard of one person protesting against the rich saying that we should all be equal. I used to think that's what they were saying, but in actuality people who want equality want equality of opportunity, not equality of result, and to say that a kid growing up in rural Kentucky with the best of circumstances available there has the same opportunity as a kid in the suburbs of San Fransisco is laughable on it's face.
The simple fact is that a tiny fraction of our population can create a lot more wealth than the rest of them doing all the busywork they could possibly do, and this is only going to get worse as automation continues to increase. We need to rethink the idea that you need to contribute to eat because it simply isn't true anymore. Now, we can either start giving people what they need to live because they're humans and shouldn't be left to freeze to death, or we can roll tanks on the neighborhoods with the most have nots and keep up the crime, keep the property values low, and generally treat people like crap. I give it 50/50 either way at this point because so many people are so married to this idea that the only way you should be kept alive is if you're a benefit to someone else and I'm sorry, but in the wealthiest nations on the planet with celebrities and CEO's raking in billions, you'd think we could manage to find some cash somewhere to keep people alive if for no other reason than we CAN do it.
Does the pace really matter? The coal miners of the Kentucky and related areas have had decades and way too many are still dying of drug overdoses while waiting for their 'next big break.'
How is GA abusive? The webmaster has to explicitly permit data sharing with google. That is, the webmaster is asked if s/he wants to share data with google and the options are unchecked by default.
GA prohibits the use of personally identifiable information.
Additionally the webmaster can tell google to not store IP info, which the webmaster has chosen to this in this case.
This has gone full circle and honestly is quite irritating at this point.
People say that Google uses GA data for advertising, I say that this is not the case and then you just chose to ignore that. So I'm just gonna ask directly - can you show some evidence suggesting Google uses GA data for building advertising profiles or did you pull this opinion out of your ass?
Because as someone who analyses marketing and advertising data, I can tell you that I strongly believe they do not use GA data in this way. 1) They have no need to, they have better data; 2) This data is unreliable; 3) GA prohibits the use of personally identifiable information; and most important of all:
THE WEBMASTER CAN CHOSE TO NOT SHARE IT WITH THEM. If this webmaster went out of his way to tell google not to store IP information, I think it is pretty safe to assume that they did not opt-in to share the data with google AT ALL.
Apart from these technical reasons, using GA data in the way you think they do opens a regulatory risk of EPIC proportions.
But if you have some evidence to suggest that they do use it for "advertising profiles", please do share it. But if you can't and you formed this opinion because you are prejudiced, I would like to see you admitting it.
> Except that my opinion is formed based on logic and my expertise and your opinion is based on... what exactly?
The exact words from Google own privacy policy, and the fundamentals of how IP networking works?
> It should be noted this does not directly contradict what GP claims
I disagree with that interpretation. They specifically say that they use data collected:
"We also use this information to offer you tailored content – like giving you more relevant search results and ads."
When IP masking is enabled, Analytics removes the last octet of the user's IP address prior to its use and storage.
SO... yeah.
So that broadens the data to at-most, a 1 in 254 match based on IP address, taking User Agent strings and other browser information (plugins installed, window size, etc) I'd bet $100 they can still pinpoint a single device based on a 'masked' entry from GA data.
> It is not shameful to be wrong. It is shameful when you can't admit that you are wrong. And especially when you can't admit it even to yourself.
An opinion cannot be wrong. It's logically impossible. An opinion can be based on incorrect assumptions or incorrect knowledge, but an opinion in and of itself cannot be wrong.
You are so desperate to justify your thinking (not to me, mind you, to yourself) that you grasp for every straw possible, forgetting what the question was about along the way.
This particular question was about how you formed your opinion about Google using GA data to build advertising profiles. My opinion is formed based on my expertise in mining many terabytes of data and my experience in sourcing this data. Based on that experience I can say that GA data is not of interest to google because it is unreliable and they have better data already. Even if it was, they would have to stop themselves because it is just too damn risky (bankruptcy level risk) to use it.
So my opinion stems from my experience in this very business. And your opinion stems from where exactly? This is what I'm trying to show you. You have 0 idea what you are talking about but insist that you are right. Even further, you outright accuse google of lying when they say GA data is not used unless the webmaster explicitly opts in to share it. Why do they have that control in first place then?
Oh and btw, that quote about relevant search results and ads... you might want to check where it comes from before basing arguments off it. You know, if you want to have a coherent argument and not some tin foil conspiracy theory grasping desperately for whatever it can catch. Checking facts is a good thing, don't you agree?
Anyway, you will either admit it to yourself tomorrow, or you won't. I don't particularly care. I just wanted to see how far you will go in your justification attempt. Remember that just because you are allowed to have an opinion does not mean you must have one.
> So my opinion stems from my experience in this very business. And your opinion stems from where exactly?
For someone who claims to be experienced in the matter, you don't seem to know much about what Google does, even when they state explicitly what they do in their own privacy policy.
> You have 0 idea what you are talking about but insist that you are right. Even further, you outright accuse google of lying when they say GA data is not used unless the webmaster explicitly opts in to share it.
I never mentioned opt-in or opt-out. I said in general they re-use the data. The functionality is available, so common sense says you should assume its "enabled" (or Opt-In, in their language) for any site you visit, because you have no way to know that it isn't. I also never accused anyone of lying. I explicitly referenced Google's own privacy policy which says they use GA data for targeted ads.
> Oh and btw, that quote about relevant search results and ads... you might want to check where it comes from before basing arguments off it.
> We and our partners use various technologies to collect and store information when you visit a Google service, and this may include using cookies or similar technologies to identify your browser or device. We also use these technologies to collect and store information when you interact with services we offer to our partners, such as advertising services or Google features that may appear on other sites. Our Google Analytics product helps businesses and site owners analyze the traffic to their websites and apps. When used in conjunction with our advertising services, such as those using the DoubleClick cookie, Google Analytics information is linked, by the Google Analytics customer or by Google, using Google technology, with information about visits to multiple sites.
> Checking facts is a good thing, don't you agree?
Yup, maybe you should try it some time.
> I just wanted to see how far you will go in your justification attempt.
I admit following a clearly referenced URL, using the browser's page search and reading a couple of paragraphs was a long way to go, but I'm all about going the distance.
Your comments are breaking the HN guidelines. If you continue to do that, we will ban your account. Please (re-)read the rules and post civilly and substantively or not at all.
It does not compromise the user's privacy in any way. GA prohibits PII. Also, the webmaster has to opt-in to share the data with Google in the first place.
People just LOOVE to be outraged. For example in this thread people rage about google getting hands on their data. When I point out that the webmaster has to explicitly chose to share the data with google, I get downvoted. When I say that GA prohibits the use of PII, I get downvoted. It doesn't matter that I'm right. People WANT to be outraged. Reason, no reason, doesn't matter.
> this is a decision that should be up to the user, not the webmaster.
This may be a dumb example, but if I get someone (I don't know very well) a glass of water from the kitchen, I won't take a little sip from it on the way. Yes, they might not care, and it's super unlikely that I would infect them with anything. But it's still not my call, and you only need to see someone not get something so basic once to lose a lot of trust in them, certainly if they actually start arguing about it. It's more than optional courtesy, it's a respect for boundaries and personal choices.
And it doesn't matter at all how much they are doing otherwise for you, that is orthogonal. By that I mean: nobody asked anyone to make something for free, we're just asking people to not unwittingly have them feed GA if they don't want to. If there are too many things to fix and too few developers, fix fewer things. It's just homebrew, not cancercure. If enough users disagree with that, let them all opt-in and/or volunteer their own time, problem solved either way.
"We use the information we collect from all of our services to provide, maintain, protect and improve them, to develop new ones, and to protect Google and our users. We also use this information to offer you tailored content – like giving you more relevant search results and ads."
"When you visit a website that uses our advertising products (like AdSense), social products (like the +1 button) or analytics tools (Google Analytics), your web browser automatically sends certain information to Google... When you visit websites or use apps that use Google technologies, we may use the information we receive from those websites and apps..."
Google Analytics protects the confidentiality of Google Analytics data in several ways:
Google Analytics data may not be shared without customer consent, except under certain limited circumstances, such as when required by law.
Security-dedicated engineering teams at Google guard against external threats to data. Internal access to data (e.g., by employees) is regulated and subject to the Employee Access Controls and Procedures.
For their definition of "confidential", which they can change at any time.
> certain limited circumstances
If they only intended the "required by law" example, they wouldn't use such a broad - and completely undefined - set of circumstances.
> guard against external threats
Google may have good security practices now, but an continually growing collection of highly-revealing tracking data is a very tempting target for many businesses, governments, etc. If Google (or anybody else) wants to claim that they are protecting your data, they should indemnify the subjects of their spying against any damages those caused by those "external threats".
>they should indemnify the subjects of their spying against any damages those caused by those "external threats"
I despise GA as much as the next guy, but you'd have to be pretty crazy to expect any business to provide such a guarantee. Google isn't your insurance company.
I don't really expect that anyone would make that kind of guarantee; I'm arguing in the style of a proof by contradiction. These businesses shouldn't be making this kind of claim, and they shouldn't be holding onto data beyond what is necessary. Data should be expunged as soon as possible, because then there isn't anything to protect.
Businesses are acting like there is no risk in holding personal information. When people complain, they respond with claims that the data is safe. When businesses act like they are secured and that we should trust them, we should be asking them to stand behind those claims. I agree, this is crazy, but businesses really want to make strong claims but not be bound by those claims. An honest business that actually believed in their own promises shouldn't have problem putting those promises into a formal guarantee.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. BofJ does not hold 90% of Japanese stocks, just 90% of stocks in the Nikkei 225 index. Still interesting but very misleading title.
it's not even that they hold 90% of stocks in the Nikkei 225.
It's that among 90% of the stocks in the Nikkei 225 (about 203 stocks), the BoJ is one of the top-10 stockholders. Typically with large US stocks, the top 10 stockholders hold about 1-6% [0] -- so that implies, if the countries are substantially similar, that the BofJ holds 1-6% of 90% of Nikkei 225 stocks, or about 0.9-5% of total stocks in the Nikkei 225.
[0] http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=CSCO&ql=1 -- type in any large stock you can think of; you'll probably see Vanguard, T.Rowe Price, State Street, and a couple of other investment firms in the 1-6% range.
You think there is no confusion possible? It's a very obvious knockoff of Microsoft's product. And unlike office, which is kind of generic, the use of 365 for a productivity suite is certainly specific to Microsoft.
365 is a descriptive term used widely to mean 'always available', it's too generic for a registered trademark by itself - Microsoft shouldn't have a hope in a sensible IP court.
