Category: Big Picture
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What’s wrong with the economy — a techie’s perspective on Bitvasion and Lazy Leechie
Look at these graphs: Ever-decreasing labor participation Food stamps participants are going through the roof Shift from middle-income to low-income jobs In spite of zero interest rate for many years, and trillions of newly printed money Something’s rather wrong with the economy, and it’s not getting better. The political left says: “offer more government assistance,…
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If I were 19 again; thoughts on college
The cost of college has been going through the roof. But the last time I saw a job candidate who stood out because of something related to college was a long time ago. And in my field, I cannot think of a single piece of academic research in the last 10 years that impressed me.…
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Global war in your pocket
Imagine you are the Chinese government, and you read the various Snowden stories this summer. What are you going to do? For argument’s sake, let’s pretend that the Chinese government was perfectly innocent and totally oblivious to any of this before. I cannot imagine that they would do anything other than immediately start a crash…
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The IndieWeb community has it nailed: #selfdogfood
Endless meetings. Disagreements over gory details that may never even get implemented in the real world. Philosophical grandstanding. Paper standards. etc. etc. We’ve all been there, and it can be terminally annoying. Which is why the Indie Web community is so refreshing. Other than that they are doing extremely useful work on re-decentralizing the internet…
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Doc on Freedom vs. Tracking
As usual, he nails it: I am a customer. I am not data. I do not wish to yield personal data, even if anonymized, to anybody other than those with whom I have a fully consenting, non-coercive and respectful relationship. I do not wish to receive offers as a matter of course, even if machines…