I can understand the sentiment a little bit. The one thing missing from the article's analysis is that when people "size up" a neighborhood, they look for certain visual cues. One of them is the type of retail present. When you drive through a neighborhood and see a dollar store, you classify that neighborhood as "poor". You dismiss it. And while that is most likely a realistic indicator, it harms the neighborhood's chance of becoming less poor, because it's like a scarlet letter on its chest.

However, I would also point out that many of the people opposing dollar stores are the same people who reminisce about going to the "five and dime" when they were younger.

Don't we already have a similar situation in the USA - people who win a lottery? That would be an interesting group to study, to see what people do when they get a pot of money that isn't transformative (i.e. hundreds of millions), but sustaining (i.e. gives them what amounts to an annuity of something resembling a UBI, or is enough to basically replace their pre-winnings salary).

This should illustrate the need for a strong, independent media.

I know that it is currently en vogue to say "we don't need the media, we can just do their jobs ourselves using the internet", but it should be obvious that if you take that approach, you wind up trusting the "truth" being peddled by propaganda websites such as Zerohedge and Alex Jones.

It is literally the job of a strong independent media to figure out what is truth and what is fiction. They are trained to do this and therefore can figure things out much better than you or I can. Sure, they get things wrong from time to time - but they then state their errors, correct it, and move on.

A state-run media is no better than a collection of blogger-run media. Bloggers will get things right, but they almost always have an angle (I would posit that the less someone is paid to blog, the more they have a stake in putting out a specific message).

> If the publisher can approve or veto creative before it appears on the site, the publisher can veto creative incorporating flashing. If the publisher cannot approve or veto creative before it appears on the site, the publisher can switch to a different ad network or exchange, switch to publisher-hosted ad delivery without any network or exchange, or not use video as a format.

Online advertising no longer works like that. It is all programmatic. No publisher personally approves programmatic creatives, there are too many of them and advertisers can change them too rapidly. The best you can do is choose categories which Ad Exchanges (primarily Google, with some other players) give you. And even then, advertisers will cheat - they will put through inappropriate creatives when they can. I couldn't find anything in Google's DFP (most popular ad serving tool) that says "don't show flashing animation".

No one sells ads directly on their sites to advertisers, that is not a viable model because advertisers want to get their message out to a variety of sites instead of "sponsoring" one or more pages on a single site. If you're not using programmatic advertising these days, you are leaving most advertising dollars on the table. In fact, most advertisers don't care about the sites they advertise on (there are, of course, exceptions) - they are ultimately trying to reach the users, so if they know a user is potentially interested in going to St. Kitt's (because they searched for that island), they want to show that person St. Kitt's ads whether they are on a travel site or on a cooking site.

Believe me when I tell you that I have things set to block autoplay audio ads, but I find them on my site from time-to-time. The ad serving is so complex that it becomes very hard to trace their origin. There will always be sleazy advertisers out there, looking to game the system. This is the same industry that spawns robo-calls.

Thanks for the tip on the "main" HTML element, I wasn't aware of that one. It's troublesome that this relatively obscure and non-functional HTML element is used to make decisions though. It reminds me of when Google introduced the "nofollow" tag, and then penalized sites which didn't use it.

> Any webmaster who successfully claims control of a site in Google Search Console can clean up ads on that site and submit a request to have that site reevaluated.

I can speak with direct experience of being on the wrong end of a Google algorithm bug. It's nowhere near as easy as you state. My site was penalized in Google for about 6 months. It was a clear "-10" penalty - my content was being put onto page 2 where it was behind irrelevant results. Then, all of a sudden, the penalty was lifted. I never got an explanation why.

Google does not have "customer service", there is no one who can say "here's the problem, you have to fix these things". At best you can post a question in one of their forums, and then weather the abuse you are sure to receive.

I did manage to attract the attention of a Google employee on the forums. Do you know what his advice was? "Make your site the best it can possibly be, don't worry about its rankings". I couldn't call my congressman, I couldn't appeal to the courts. I had to deal with it, because, as dozens of wannabe trolls pointed out, "Google doesn't have to include you in their results if they don't want to".

Google and other large tech companies have more power than governments, with almost zero ability for individuals to influence them. Increasingly, decisions are made by algorithms with no ability for exceptions.

Let me give you one more example. My employer uses filtering software, and blocks several obvious categories - porn, gambling, etc. The classification of websites is done by a vendor, and the vendor classification is used by a lot of companies. What happens when that vendor misclassifies your website? The only thing you can hope for is to get in contact with that vendor and beg them to change the classification. There are no formal processes to do this. You're basically on your own.

This means that a single private company can effectively block access to your site from others.

Misclassifications are common because they are classifying using algorithms. Currently, the site ebaypartnernetwork.com is classified as "Professional Networking". It is not - that is an advertising affiliate program site. This vendor hasn't figured this out in over 3 years. I don't know who the vendor is, and I have no way of contacting them. I don't want to waste any capital asking my company to whitelist that site because it's not job-related. So in effect, due to the error of a private company, that particular website is unavailable to anyone who uses that same nameless faceless vendor.

Not everything it bans are "formats". I would call these "formats" (which means a publisher can avoid them by not placing their code on the site):

- pop-ups (other than exit intent pop-ups)
- prestitials (with countdown on desktop or at all on mobile)
- postitials with countdown
- screen-height ads that appear as a float rather than inline, thereby pausing scrolling of the article behind it (a format that I haven't personally seen in the wild)

These two are ad characteristics that cannot be directly controlled by the publisher via the placement of code:

- autoplaying audio (other than preroll before relevant video)
- animated ads that include flashing elements

As a publisher myself, I don't want to show such ads, but first, there is no option in a network that says "don't show animated ads with flashing elements", and second, although I can (and do) say no to autoplaying audio, such ads still slip into the ad stream by advertisers who, for lack of a better word, cheat.

These next two are a lot more nebulous. I don't know how "30%" is computed, or what it even means, though I did find something on their site that suggest these are for mobile browsers:

- sticky ad taller than 30 percent of the scrolling area. Their picture of this one makes sense, it's basically when the top or bottom of the mobile screen is taken over by a fixed ad.

This one is less clear:

- vertical ad density over 30 percent of article space. This says "Ads that take up more than 30% of the vertical height of a page. Ad density is determined by summing the heights of all ads within the main content portion of a mobile page, then dividing by the total height of the main content portion of the page.". That's a little scary, as a publisher, because not only is that confusing to understand, it seems easy to break that rule inadvertently, for example, with a page that has less content than normal. Plus "Main content portion" is subjective, and some algorithm could whack you on that.

What is scary here is that there is no appeal process, and the ban appears to be absolute. From the OP:

Chrome will stop showing *all ads* on sites in any country that *repeatedly* display "disruptive ads."

How is "repeatedly" determined?

To me, this is just another case of a tech company being "governmental", in an autocratic way. They don't use people to make the determinations, it's all algorithm-based. Don't like the laws? Your only option is exile.

How is this not an anti-trust violation?

Google, a behemoth company, is using their dominance by blocking ads on third-party sites using the browser that they control, a browser that has 65% market share. The demand for advertising won't go away - it will just shift to Google Text Ads, meaning that publishers will have even fewer scraps to feed on.

Given how shoddy that "Coalition for Better Ads" site is (404s on what should be their main content pages), I wonder if they are just a front organization for Google itself?

I'm genuinely interested - when you say you want your children to grow up in the city, are you talking about them growing up in a 750 s.f. 3-bedroom apartment on the 14th floor of a high rise in Manhattan, or are you thinking more like a 2-story brownstone in Brooklyn?

The reason I ask is that the 2-story brownstone in Brooklyn is not compatible with an economy where all the jobs are located in the 10 or so Superstar US cities. The housing needs to become as dense as Hong Kong or Tokyo. That's the conundrum - people want to live in a low-density house in a high-density city, and that can only happen if you have a few million dollars to spend, and if you have a bunch of people who earn low wages and who are content to live in squalor, or to commute 3 hours per day to their low-wage job.

I can agree with you that some people like living that way, but I don't think it is across the board.

If you're young and single, I'm sure it's an absolute blast. If you're married without kids, it's probably very good too.

I think if you're trying to raise a family, it becomes a lot less desirable.

If you're post-family, you may desire this more, but I could see how it wouldn't make as much sense, especially since you're either probably settled in your career and current place, and are now seeing fewer expenses (due to kids leaving). Or you are not living in a city to begin with, aren't doing that well, but can't afford to move to one because the price of housing is through the roof.

I don't think you can point to the demand for housing in Superstar cities as an indicator that people want to live in high-rise apartments, taking public transportation everywhere. In my opinion, that is more a function of "that is where the jobs are now".

Also, if you look at cities like San Francisco, Boston, and pretty much any Superstar US city outside of NYC, you'll see that the people who are living in the less-dense housing are fighting the construction of more housing, primarily via zoning laws. I think someone here said that they live in the Bronx with their family - but while the Bronx is denser than the 'burbs, when I plopped my Google Street View person down on a random street, I saw two-story single-family buildings, some of which were detached, others which were attached to their neighbor. When I look at Zillow, I can see that 1329 Findlay Ave in the Bronx is worth $600k. Wouldn't it make sense for someone to knock down those rowhouses and build a more dense apartment block, with a lot more units at $300k each?

That is simply the unstoppable path of the new economy. We are now told that all the jobs have to be in one of the 10 "Superstar" cities in the USA, because good jobs can't exist in a metro area unless there are millions of people there, because they can only find good workers in those 10 cities. But that high pay only goes to the Rock Star employees. Empty the trash? Why should you deserve any more money than someone emptying trash in Kansas? The result is that housing is bought by the people making $150k and up, and no one really wants to live like they do in Tokyo or Hong Kong, in small apartments in high-rise buildings, so they block that from happening without realizing that this puts $12/hour workers on the streets, or makes them commute 3 hours a day.

It's a common reply to say "college teaches you how to learn", and that is true to some extent, but college goes way beyond that.

College teaches you basic ideas, both practical and theoretical, and those ideas help you in your life.

I went to a technical school; My major was mathematics, and I took other courses concentrating in business, computer science, and history. I have a Master's in Operations Research and Statistics.

I likely do not use any of what I learned directly in my job, however I still have a basic understanding of those things 25 years out, so that when people talk about "AI" and "machine learning", I can appreciate that it is basically statistical sampling and cluster analysis. I take that appreciation into the things I do.

"Surplus populations"? What an insane way to frame the problem - that thinking implies that if society does not need any more labor, a person is expendable. In reality, that person should be thought of as "free from servitude" and our goal should be to move everyone into that category.

If all of humankind's needs can be met via technology and no human labor, then we just need to figure out a different way to allocate resources, because if everything is free, then a hell of a lot of people will want a giant mansion on Hawaii. Plus, most humans do seem to like to compete for their spoils instead of to just have spoils handed to them.

We allocate resources based on a combination of "work" and "capital gains" (meaning the amount someone can coerce others to sell their labor to you for a loss). Maybe we should be thinking of another way to do it.

Tablets fill a really important niche. They are far better than a phone for casual web browsing. They offer a lot more space for various applications. They are obviously mobile. I have a great Netflix experience with them while sitting in a room without a TV.

I was on the iPad path, but got totally fed up once my iPad-2 became completely unusable about 2 years after I bought it, which was about 2 years after my iPad-1 became completely unusable. I bought a Surface 3 a little over two years ago, and it still works perfectly, my only complaint is that the battery life is getting short. I don't want a laptop - I already have a powerful desktop to run various apps, and I also don't want to squint and look at my phone all the time while I'm not sitting at my desk.

Plus, the keyboard-cover of the surface makes it really stand out from an iPad, and I was able to pick up a low-cost dock so that I can bring my surface to work for segregated usage.

> Luckily we do not live in the EUSSR. If I want to work 80 hours a week, that's my problem. If I don't, I can work somewhere else (H1-Bs can do that too).

Are you suggesting that an 80 hour week is optional because you are free to get another job?

How is that any different from those who suggest that sexual harassment at work shouldn't be illegal because the woman is free to get another job to escape it?

If it makes our goods cheaper, who cares what they do? Most people seem to agree that cheap goods should be the #1 concern. If slaves can make thing cheaper, the pain they feel isn't as bad as the savings everyone else gets. On average, we are all better off. /s

The major problem with student loans is that there is no longer any escape from them. Bankruptcy does not discharge them. You're stuck with them for life.

That is a major departure from traditional debt laws, and this is just wrong. People should be able to escape their mistakes after appropriate penalties.

A student, 18 years in age, cannot comprehend the gravity of the loans they are taking out. The whole situation is rotten: you are told that you MUST get a college degree, otherwise you will be a lifelong failure. You are told that IF you get a college degree, your future WILL be rosy and bright. You are told that ONCE you get a college degree, you WILL get a good job and then paying the loan off will be no problem.

That is the extent of your knowledge when you are 18. You have no idea how much your salary will be in four years, in fact, when you are 18, it is very likely you don't even know how much your parents make, or how much anyone makes beyond your knowledge of minimum wage. All you know is that you have to go to college and get that degree so you can get a good job. At least that is what my parents told me, and when I was in college, that is the same set of assumptions that everyone was operating under.

And once you get that degree and you can't get a job in your chosen field of study, or maybe you don't even get that degree (because a lot of people don't make it through college - many college programs, particularly engineering, are actually DESIGNED to weed people out), then you are sitting there with a stack of loans and no way to reasonably pay them off.

Prior to 2001, you could try to pay them for a while, but after finding that you were getting deeper and deeper in debt, you could take a deep breath, assess your situation, and then take your lumps in the form of bankruptcy - knowing that you would have a finite period of time in which you would be penalized by a bad credit rating. But at some point it would be over.

In 2001, congress changed the law to eliminate the discharge of student loans from bankruptcy. Any other financial failure is redeemable, but a decision that you made when you are 18 years old, a failure that is not easily foreseeable (because people don't know their capacity, people don't know their future earning potential, people don't know what the job market is going to do), is not forgivable. Never, until the day you die, and even then, your estate will be on the hook for them.

And the loan companies are given extraordinary power, backed by the government, to collect their debts. Hey, if someone owes me money, I can't attach someone's tax returns - but student loan companies can do this. It is also very hard for me to garnish someone's wages to collect a debt because there is always the threat that the person will file bankruptcy. The lack of that threat here gives student loans extraordinary power.

That is the problem here, and it will take people like Lee Siegel, doing what he did, to bring this to the forefront of discussion. Certainly any abuse of the student loan process should be curbed, but an iron shackle on everyone is not the right response to any potential abuse.