Well of course Facebook promotes this pseudo-science and discredited stuff. Facebook thrives when people argue and engage, and it suits FB to have quackery that people have to rally against or for, vocally. Put false or misleading things online, and watch the clicks roll in.

Not much business or money to be made in supporting the quiet truth of science or accepted facts where no one thinks they're finding out something new, is there? Maybe we need to change the incentives for these companies.

If the US government were capable of asserting intelligent policy, we would move to create a payments system where these middlemen aren't de facto taking over the payments infrastructure in the country. And, to be specific, scraping 3% margin on every transaction while they do it, enriching banks, costing merchants, while doling out some measly awards to customers who know how to take advantage.

For example, China is in real danger (maybe already happened) of a private company taking over their national payments infrastructure and going out of control.

There are legitimate exercises of public authority -- trust and control of the monetary and payments system is one such thing I would argue. Lots of countries have figured out how to roll out a very low cost, secure, instant bank transfers system -- shouldn't we consider it?

As much as the anti-gentrification politicians would claim a small victory, this is a loss for NYC and the future development / resilience of its economic base.

Cities will keep on losing this kind of battle until some form of government or policy arises to counter the power of corporations (which are de facto increasingly taking the role of governments). Under our current regulations and incentives, I'm actually glad to see Amazon flex its political capability and teach NYC a lesson in what happens when you let vocal minority dictate public policy. Let examples like this teach us how broken our laws are.

Note I am equally glad to see some day that government (federal, state) come up with policies that stop cities and states from undercutting each other to get a temporary revenue / population / popularity boost at the expense of giving away the farm just to get it (until you find out it wasn't worth it, and get to try and remember that at the next election). Or god forbid, actually create policies that in the long-term stimulate as many jobs as a corporation might in a single swoop.

Is there anything about India that "just works" or "makes sense"? Is it just me or does this country seem held together by duct tape and people doing everything by the seat of their pants? Everything about Indian national and local government seems inept, and culture (outside of corporations) seems so captured to the norms that you cannot change things because people have grown used to the chaos.

How do you distinguish collusion from algorithms simply figuring out the market price given buyer/seller volume, and realizing there's no benefit in deviating from that?

As much of a fan of high speed rail as I am, this project from the beginning was plagued by many issues:

- Distance of SF-LA being just beyond the edge of air/rail travel decision break point
- Lots of intractable property rights issues along the route (and lack of political willingness to exert eminent domain for a more reasonable route)
- High required labor and engineering cost (union requirements)
- Backwards approach to do the easiest part / least useful segment first
- Management team that kept moving the target (or was deceived) on cost, geotechnical feasibility, political backing

As a result, I concluded that despite how good it would be as a showcase project, this was not anywhere near the top of the list of cost-effective things you would invest in to improve CA transportation issues. And now they've had to embrace reality.

I would even say, the whole thing should be canned rather than continuing to dump money into a stupid central valley rail that no one will use. Bakersfield to Modesto? Tell me who's going to take that train...

The worst thing is that this will set a bad example / leave people burned and resistant to trying it again. Sometimes, we really do need authoritarian-style government to clear out resistance when a good project is identified but individual interests bog it down.

Wasn't the most recent news that there were suspicious circumstances about how much $ was in the coin purse, and whether the guy actually died or was had his death faked?

I think it's time that government in general consolidate and bulk up its capabilities to match the power of corporations (and by the way, also stop allowing people to derail it with ridiculous symbolic / meaningless debates on tiny unimportant issues).

Whether this takes some restructuring of government at the state + federal levels and maybe some amendments to lower our expectation of individual rights compared to overall societal good, whatever. Government is being outmatched by the power of corporations, and it will lose. We should fix it before it becomes unsolvable.

Sometimes I turn pessimistic and think that we need a good war (or maybe measles) to clear out the country of morons and people who are half stumbling through life on autopilot, making a mockery of the struggles we went through as a country to give people the prosperity we enjoy today.

Law enforcement want tools that share data and discover people doing all manner of things in public. People want tools that share data and discover law enforcement doing all manner of things in public.

Do you think one can be enabled, and the other is not?

Well, you're missing a technological aspect of the problem.

Apple does not / cannot decrypt data on your phone because once it's encrypted with the strong keys + your passcode, Apple has no ability to disable or circumvent the hardware to get it off the phone and let it be brute force cracked. And the hardware prevents brute force cracking while on the phone.

On the other hand, with servers and cloud data, Apple does have the ability to turn that over the encrypted data to someone to be decrypted, even if not by themselves.

Why?

How is this different from a person volunteering for a 1-week medical study where you're put in a room and everything about you is recorded?

As the article said, Google is relatively more upfront that this is monitoring everything you do on your phone.

If a company tells you explicitly what it's going to do with you + your info, and you agree and affirmatively opt in, why should government step in?

Are you saying the people are not aware of their full involvement? Should govt lay down the ground rules for what these studies can record / collect like a medical study? What do you propose?

As an employee and investor, I'm all for Google growing up a little bit and toning down some policies that aren't suitable for a large company:
.

• -- Not inviting employees to discuss everything under the sun on company time/resources, including politics, religion, personal "justice" agendas
• -- Not oversharing corporate strategy and operational detail (including HR decisions) with employees who aren't mature enough handle it
• -- Not letting people who simply shout loudly (and lacking merit in what they shout about) become the opinion-poll method of determining what the company should or should not do

Time to stop having an important company from being run by a college student-thinking mob.

This is talking about the company's internal mail and forums. I don't know what random tangent you're off on.

I support a company's right to be able to regulate the internal use of their software and tools that they provide and pay for. Just because a certain message might be (at the moment) a popular one doesn't mean it gets more privileges or gets to assume the use of someone's resources without question.

Freedom of speech, and US regulations about labor organization communications, don't imply the right to disseminate messages in any way without regard to the rights of others or in any channel you may encounter. People are free to speak to each other, and they're free to publish documents, papers, blog posts, news articles using their resources.

Google is right to do this, and they should learn to act even more like a professional business. They already brewed themselves a shitstorm by inviting their employees to discuss and debate controversial political topics on internal forums as if it's some kind of college campus. It's coming back to bite them in the ass.