To summarize the blog post- The solution to free email is paid email. And solution to email clients is to read privacy policy.
It would be a cool post in 2007 when Google described their ad policy for gmail, and we gladly accepted that. As of 2014, in post-Snowden era, the simplest solution to security and privacy is- end to end encryption. Or, if you have something better in your bag...
It is not only the imbalanced lust of few men that this horrible ecosystem is built around, the whole social structure is equally responsible for its existence and growth. Lack of strong social bond, lack of respect to the existence of other humans, lack of proper education on ethics and humanity, hypocrisy in the name of freedom, idea of living in the moments, greed etc are the reasons behind the existence of prostitution, pornography, and other sex related abuses. No government in the world can end this until the society acts as a whole to reject it. Perhaps the effective starting point to minimize it is to avoid double standards.
"O faithful! Why do you say one thing and do another? It is most hateful to God that you do not practise what you preach" (61: 2-3) -- the holy Quran
“Don't do unto others what you don't want others to do unto you.” -- Confucius
(Couldn't Quote from the Bible for the lack of knowledge in it.)
Nor is the reason behind prostitution's existence the lack of a strong social bond. In fact, prostitution was relatively out in the open and brothels widespread during the medieval period, though views on it ranged variably from reluctant acceptance in the name of compromise (by the Catholic Church) to a more complete one, like in East Asia. Brothels often served as an attraction for travelers, too. Some were even run by women, and ironically enough most European countries didn't ban brothels until the 20th century. U.S. states also mostly had them legal in the 19th century.
Prostitution is weaker now than ever, in a time when social bonds are supposedly at an all time low according to most demagogues. Furthermore, nothing about ethics that is intrinsically opposed to it.
Islam has always been against it, though. So it's no surprise you don't think of it highly.
The origin of girls allured to both industries (prostitution and pornography) is probably the same. The recent documentary of Rashida Jones, "Hot girls wanted", sheds modest light on this issue. On the other hand, prostitution is not weaker than before, it has been outsourced far away, so the victims' voices cannot be heard. An example- prostitution business in the East and South East Asia are stronger than ever. There are several documentaries on how children and teenagers in those countries are taken by the prostitution rings to sell to pedophiles, sex abusers and addicts from all over the world. Western European addicts go to the East in groups for orgy and sex trips. And this article uses few cases in the middle East to clearly show the extremity of hypocrisy. These are few documented stories I am talking about. There maybe hundreds of different sort of incidents yet to be documented.
Sex industries have been evolving. And none of these industries treat girls as human beings, rather as sex tools. None of these industries produce respect to any human kind. Prostitution at least has physical boundaries, porn doesn't. And that makes us and our future generation more vulnerable to sex related abuses, not only the people involved in those businesses, but also sometimes out close ones as well. And I don't see why we should not stand against both.
My two cents... Open your startup in the third world, developing countries. Or, at least lead some people in those regions to grow their own problem solving skills with IT and engineering. Or, travel to those regions with your targeted donation savings and see the suffering of humans.
If charity means donating the money we think we no longer need, then we should go for any of the charity foundations mentioned in other comments. But the real charity would be to take our butts off our comfort zones, travel to the targeted countries, experience the real suffering of humans, and to find out how we can contribute with our top notch expertise in IT and engineering. Even discovering hidden prospects in those regions and nurturing them for local socio-economic development would be cool charitable work. Even, opening our startups and employing local people would contribute more significantly in those regions than millions of dollars in donations to those named charity foundations. It will not only improve our skill in practical problem solving, it will also enhance our spirituality.
I think that startups where the users are principally people in poor countries is a very promising area for socially minded people to work in.
Startups usually (but not always) generate value for their users in the form of consumer surplus. Because of diminishing marginal utility of money, $1 of consumer surplus in poor countries is worth 10x or more than $1 of consumer surplus in rich countries.
Some examples: Wave (YC alum) is making sending remittances cheaper (taking only 3% rather than 10% like Western Union). $0.4 trillion in remittances are sent every year. Segovia is making benefit payments in India more efficient, so that only 10% in lost in transactions rather than 50% as is currently the case. Both of these in my view have massive social value (and are run by people in the effective altruism community).
* Technical experts won't necessarily be good at teaching people to use technology, or helping to set up infrastructure in third world countries.
* Other people (eg. teachers) will be better-placed to teach technical expertise to people in the third world.
* Technology isn't necessarily the most valuable thing to people in the third world - often they need simple things like corrugated steel roofs, anti-parasitics drugs and malaria nets.
* Technical experts are the best people at creating technology (tautologically) and they'll be more productive at that than they would be at any other task (and more productive any anyone else would be at creating technology).
So the elegant, effective solution is to have technical experts apply their technical expertise where it's most needed, get paid as much as possible (while doing useful work) and donate a significant portion of their earnings to fund education and development experts (who would otherwise be doing something less valuable) to go to where they're needed and help poor people in whatever way they need help.
Sending technologists to the third world will do about as much good as sending academics to the farms. May it would be spiritually enriching for the technologists, but a lot of technology will go unbuilt and a lot of poor people will miss out on deworming pills because that money went to fund plane tickets.
Nice hack! It felt like using the old Yahoo! chat rooms implemented on a world map. Chaotic environment, everybody writes, barely anyone replies to any message that makes sense. It's fun!
The phrase "unexpected reward" sounds sarcastic and the move of Blackberry seems the final nail in its coffin. Why does the world need yet another digital touch slab maker? Wouldn't they dedicate their full potential of hardware design and real-time OS making (QNX) in something more future proof and innovative, like IoT?
I am fascinated by their construction technique, which is nothing but perfection of management. I was eagerly waiting to see the proposed 220 story, 850 m tall building construction in seven months since 2012, but that plan was halted due to continuous rejection by the authorities and the engineering communities.
I am not a civil engineer, so I can't criticize their construction method. But I wonder if it is traditional civil engineering community's prejudice, or fear of being swept away by any revolutionary technology that keeps them opposing this sort of construction technique?
A 220 story building would be an engineering marvel, and at the same time not a threat to civil engineers. The bread and butter for engineers are much smaller buildings, which are less technically challenging and acceptable for new construction techniques to be tested out on. You would expect to see a lot more civil engineering resistance on the smaller targets, not the biggest ones. The biggest issue facing such a monster building is the safety of even going that high, considering wind shear, earthquake risks, etc.
Development projects stall for many reasons among them are modifications of the developer's pro forma that reduce the viability of a project - interest rates go up, the cost of construction goes up, rents go down, local occupancy rates dip, etc. etc. The technology has the potential for some small incremental change to the real-estate development process, but it doesn't alter the underlying market forces where a housing shortage of 3000 dwellings is identified and twelve developers each throw up a "coming in 2017" signboard on some piece of land for an 1800 dwelling project. It's not enough to be out front of the pack with construction, what really matters is business intelligence.
Which is a round about way of suggesting that despite bureaucracy and resistance from entrenched traditions, that real-estate development ideas are much like startups: most run out of money and are worth zero. Unlike startups, the upper bound on profit is low, but their potential persists owing to the real nature of real property - land doesn't go anywhere.
Can't these kinds of buildings change the dynamic in real-estate ?
For example , in israel, where the land is usually bought from the state, sometimes groups of private people gather together to build an apartment complex and save a bit of money.But that's a long(and maybe risky) project, so people rarely do so.
But let's say it was a short process - a group gathers, gives the funds , and in month they enter their apartments. I could see this becoming more common, because you can have decent savings .
And assuming that happens - now it's people buying their own land(and build higher structures on it), won't that change the pricing dynamic on land, and the political pressures on the state which sells such land ?
Real-estate markets are markets. They seek equilibrium. When a building is delivered, supply increases, demand goes down and a new equilibrium is established. Groups of people who would build apartments have the option of moving in to existing apartments without the impedance of land entitlement, large project financing, or construction timelines. Speed to market presents less risk to developers except when everyone else can get to market just as fast. Then the risk that someone else delivers and the market becomes over-supplied comes back.
This is by far the most impressive news in this WWDC to me. Wouldn't it be great if swift can break into the complexity of android development and bring simplicity and elegance in it!?
I don't know how you get those traits out of those quotes. "We don't value money, we value security, stability, happiness, health, connections, influence, power... you know -- all the things that money buys for us."
But if you believe those quotes exhibit selflessness, you can just call me Charley 'Adolf' Manson: Paragon of Virtue. I've got a nice cult you can join. We've given up money, greed, and materialism.
I guess ethics and virtues are valued rather negatively in the business world (where money and power rule), and Google's back and forth in China proves the point.
It would be a cool post in 2007 when Google described their ad policy for gmail, and we gladly accepted that. As of 2014, in post-Snowden era, the simplest solution to security and privacy is- end to end encryption. Or, if you have something better in your bag...