Good content, but seriously who signed off on actually presenting this content the way it is presented? Seems like a high school multimedia class project.
My guess is that the author, who is a journalist, wanted to distance himself or herself from the content and not be associated with it; making it multimedia puts him or her among the technocrats while allowing them to write whatever they want. It also has the (actual) effect of being more engaging for decision makers. (So much so that it leads with a note saying it's only the author's opinion, not cnn's.)
probably many people here would not have read through a straight article with the same information. It's also more engaging and real - e.g. the video stories.
Edit: also the whole article is about the contrast with silicon valley. so having a new app-y interface to play with every second of the reading puts that contrast especially starkly. it certainly worked on me. (if I had read the same article in sfgate in the usual article format I dont think it would have had the same effect.)
The fact that this is getting upvoted at all is ridiculous. I saw this thread on Reddit and chalked it up to mob mentality on Reddit, but I'm pretty surprised to find that it is also getting upvoted here.
Let's think critically for a moment: Is it more likely that a 14 year old girl liked the AT&T page in all her days of using Facebook and forgot or that this is normal for Facebook ads that would potentially open them up for a huge lawsuit, after all this is basically libel.
Also check out this author's about section. He's a Google+ fanboy (Google+ is pretty nice, nothing wrong with liking it) and hardly a biased source.
Articles like this and its spread of misinformation highlight the inherent dangers of how easy the Internet has made it for random, misinformed people to get massive reach and it seems that even our "enlightened" community has fallen for it.
It only applies to older users and probably wouldn't explain this case, but Facebook has silently imputed a "like" before, in cases where the user never explicitly liked the page. There used to be a section on your profile where you listed favorite music, books, and films, and at some point a few years ago, they phased that out and did some heuristic processing on what used to be a free-form text field, to convert its contents to the corresponding "likes". That was somewhat annoying, since I hadn't interpreted the act of listing something on my profile as equivalent to a subscription request for that thing's feed.
This is a valid complaint, although probably has more to do with the fact that someone in product believed this does translate into a like (before the like system existed).
Also I believe Facebook does not show these ads for minors, so most likely she lied about her age... but I remember just vaguely reading about this at some point in the past.
When this took place, they also herded everyone through a "convert your interests to likes" flow so that you had to actually confirm the new likes, rather than just convert it for you.
I've definitely seen some weird looking likes (similar to "why would that person like that...?") and Facebook have a strong incentive to do this so I upvoted in the hopes more investigation is done.
I've always thought there was a subtle genius to Facebook's approach of showing ads in this manner. On the positive side, it _should_ filter the in-stream ads down to the companies that your friends are generally happy with.
However, one interesting side effect is your implied endorsement of whatever message the company has in their current ad. It's set up to feel like you are sharing the ad in the same way you might share a news article. And it gives you the maintenance of making sure the values of a company you liked years ago still are still in alignment with your own.
In the end, I just stopped liking any businesses on Facebook because I didn't want to become a pitchman. Wasn't worth the hassle.
EXACTLY. A better experiment would be to create a fake Facebook profile, never like a single page, and THEN see if that name ever comes up with any ads. What Mike (guy who made this Google+ post) is saying is just nonsense and so bias, with no true fact.
Yes! If he goes through her likes, I can almost guarantee that AT&T will be in there.
Most of the complaints around the "Facebook says my friends liked X and they didn't" in the news feed are because they didn't like it at that particular point in time - they liked it at some stage in the past.
This would make sense to call it out if the newsfeed was sorted chronologically, i.e. it was a real time stream... but it's not, and hasn't been for at least two years.
The newsfeed algorithm surfaces the stories it thinks you will find most relevant from the friends you interact with the most, rather than presenting the stream real-time.
Yes, this is a useless post. And even if it did happen, who cares?! I am sure that SOMEHOW the Like would show up on her page during the investigation. She shouldn't even be on FB in the first place, so again, who cares.
On-site interviews are a necessary for the most part, but phone screens have always been the bane of my existence. About 50% of the time I can barely understand what the other person is saying, mostly because the person conducting the interviewer is not a native English speaker. I almost never have an issue in person with non-native English speakers because you're able to pick up so much more context from subtle physical clues. I wonder if anyone else has this problem.
Disclaimer: My parents are non-native English speakers and I can't understand a thing they say over the phone, but in person I have no trouble.
I should do the same. I am not native speaker and everytime I start a phone interview I feel like I'm already 10 points behind in the game we are playing.
Tangential, but you hit on a really fascinating field in psychology with your post.
We have these differences--linguistic, cultural, even physical characteristics--that are huge. The differences that highlight a lack of shared background/experiences/origin/etc. can be found not only to be at play between, say, native and non-native speakers of a language but even separate groups within the same culture. You see that in how we handle subjective feelings of personal space, for instance --we Americans, for instance, tend to prefer greater personal space over say Scandinavian or certain East Asian cultures. But the fascinating thing is how those expectations can shift based on region, and on an even more micro level, affluence etc.
Even when the differences are minor, such as say race and skin color, the effects can be profound. If you look into what's called the cross-race effect, you'll find a tendency to have difficulty processing faces of members of other groups. If you've ever heard anyone say "all Asians look alike" or the similar "all Westerners look alike", this effect is what's behind that sentiment. And it's universal: this processing difficulty isn't limited to any particular ethnic group. Cross-racial identification statistics for eyewitnesses prove all too well just how troubling this can be even amongst ethnic groups that are otherwise readily familiar (i.e. whites identifying blacks and vice versa). But what a lot of the current literature shows is that the rate of difficulty can decrease with familiarity that shapes how we code faces and integrate them into
Anyhow, as far as communication is concerned, it's not just verbal. On the contrary, most of our cues are distinctly non-verbal: body language, gestures, expressions, prosody, paralanguage, and a lot more. People toss around Albert Mehrabian's "93%" number a lot without considering its context (namely, his work was limited to the communication of feelings and attitudes), but the broader point is that these cues serve as a means of helping to imply meaning to the words they accompany.
Now, where the really fun stuff begins is when you start to consider the universality of some of these nonverbal cues. Particularly with the face with microexpressions: involuntary expressions lasting only a tiny fraction of a second that correspond to six basic emotions. Contrary to the idea that expressions and meaning were culturally determinate, the research is fairly overwhelming that despite differences in culture, language, and even physical face characteristics, microexpressions and the emotions represented are consistent. Rules governing those emotions are be culturally specific, but how they're expressed and the emotions themselves aren't. Back in '71, Ekman went to the Papua New Guinea to show this with the Fore people even though they had almost no direct contact with the outside world up until the fifties, and at the time Ekman went, had no access to Western media or entertainment that might have given the Fore the experience with outsiders and their facial expressions.
Related to your post, however, are the findings that show we're able to recognize these expressions by people outside our own ethnic groups. In a sense, not only are the emotions and expressions universal but so too are our ability to recognize them. Biologically determined, hardwired. So talking in person, rather than on the phone, can make all the difference in the world.
If you're curious, I'd recommend taking a look at a reprint of Ekman's Unmasking the Face and Darwin and Facial Expression: A Century of Research in Review if you're curious about some of the historical origins of the work. The latter, in particular, is truly fascinating.
"According to South Korean experts, Pyongyang’s electronic warfare capabilities are second only to Russia and the United States."
Not sure how accurate THAT statement is, but North Korea has waged electronic warfare multiple times in the past including jamming SK's GPS systems at one point. They probably have a fully capable electronics warfare unit.
Its also quite possible that China supplies the technology/know how to conduct such attacks and uses NK as a proxy to test systems as SK military procedures are somewhat related to the United States.
Also, South Korea has REALLY bad security. For example, if you want to use some form of online banking you must use an ActiveX control with IE.
"Also, South Korea has REALLY bad security. For example, if you want to use some form of online banking you must use an ActiveX control with IE."
I've heard about that, and that it's a major impediment to the adoption of new browsers, but I'm wondering how that gels with the (uncomfortable/awkward?) zeitgeist of Samsung.
I was under the impression that Japan went 'mobile first' years ago and their phones have been their touchpoint (no pun intended) to the internet from before the iPhone launched and that desktop PCs weren't a big thing.
Are SK residents using their Life Companions* tethered to a PC to do their day-to-day banking on a PC? Akin to iTunes?
Are you suggesting that Russia or the US are supplying North Korea with the know-how? :P
1. He/she was only quoting the Korea Herald.
2. We don't have credentials on these "South Korean experts." I would expect that if they are not part of the military then they might have even less knowledge of what they are talking about.
3. North Korea is a bigger threat to South Korea than China is. That may skew opinions.
I just went through the process of whether I would purchase a diamond engagement ring for my fiancee or not. Rationally, it made absolutely no sense to me for the following reasons:
1) The idea of "blood" diamonds as well as the fat that the industry marks up diamonds to a ridiculous notion without translating any of those benefits to the societies it exploits.
2) There is no tangible benefit to a diamond ring that CZ or similar gem would not provide.
That being said, my fiancee very strongly wanted a genuine diamond ring. When I explained my viewpoints and she understood and said that she did not want to force me to purchase a ring that I felt very conflicted about. At no point was our relationship in jeopardy over the issue. Even so, I knew that she really wanted a rock and it took me a while to figure out what to do.
In the end I decide to get her a ring because it was what she really wanted, even though she was wiling to suppress her desires to respect mine. I wanted to respect her wishes as well. If she had threatened or had gotten upset over the matter, I might have not reached this conclusion. Maybe she's just a super shrewd negotiator.
For me, the biggest blocking point is the human hardship that goes behind the diamond industry, and I was able to somewhat subdue this by seeking out a conflict free diamond provider. There are a couple around and if this is your biggest blocking point as well you should look into it. Artificial diamonds were not an option for me, because at the moment they are not able to provide colorless diamonds afaik.
Don't refrain from buying because diamonds are hard to extract, and people have to work hard for it. But, because the whole trade is dirty, and you don't want to take part in it. All diamonds are dirty because of the conflict diamonds, there can be no non-conflict diamonds. By purchasing diamonds, you are helping to keep the prices up and funding the blood diamonds as well.
I don't agree with your statement. Its equivalent to saying that I shouldn't consider buying ethically raised meat because its the same industry that factory farms are part of. One can identify the ethical quandaries and support producers that choose to eliminate them.
If ethically raised meat did not have a strict shelf life, could cross many borders, and fundamentally different regulatory areas, could be displayed as a status symbol to reinforce the perceived value of all meat, I would say the same thing about it too.
Having been to a number of "geeky" conferences, I was surprised at how large the number of women there were at the conference.
We should also keep in mind that this community has always been aligned more with the engineering side of entrepreneurship and less on the all the other equally important functions, which tends to make the community somewhat insular and under-represented.
An exhibit of his work is scheduled to start (if it hasn't already) at the SF MOMA.
A friend of mine worked as a curator for its stop in Korea and it was pretty cool. You can tell how much the original iPod and iMac were inspired by his work.
One of Microsoft's biggest problems that contributes to their insular view is that they are located in Redmond. They're insulated from the rest of the highly competitive technology field (except for Amazon). This works out great for them when it comes to retaining talent in Redmond as employees are usually not willing to uproot their lifestyle to head to 'greener pastures'.
Contrast this to how Google handles compensation and employee retention. Granted, Google is a much smaller organization and can afford to be more nimble, but part of it has to do with with the fact that being in the valley means that its incredibly easy for talented, motivated engineers to move to the next hot startup once they're dissatisfied with their current job.
In Redmond, however, these options don't really exist and creates a culture of stagnation. People goto their jobs because they have and leave as soon as it is culturally acceptable.
I fear a lot of Microsoft's future as I just don't believe that they are able to recruit top young talent anymore. Not only is Microsoft not a "hip" place to work anymore, but their compensation is generally below market. Its pretty standard for funded startups to give more BASE salary than Microsoft. Google's base is roughly 50% more than what Microsoft pays. New hires at Google make more money than level 64 Microsoft engineers (5 levels from starting).
Microsoft will continue to execute and create good products, but until their internal culture drastically changes they will slowly slide into irrelevance.
I'm not going to claim that Microsoft isn't too insular (it is) and I live and work in Seattle on purpose, so I'm a little biased about this, but I don't think it's just about the location. Besides Amazon being a huge presence, more and more established tech companies are opening development offices here (Google, Facebook, Zynga) just to take advantage of the talent that's here. Not to mention the fairly healthy startup culture that feeds from and back into the beast in Redmond.
Leadership, culture, and politics are all much bigger problems than geography.
I agree leadership, culture, and politics are bigger problems than geography, but it's still an issue.
Sniping younger people from MSFT is sometimes trivially easy because of its remote location in Redmond - surrounded almost exclusively by nice, quiet suburbs. I know a lot of MSFTies braving the commute across the lake daily (1-1.5h each way!), but people get tired of it fast, and by and large the young want to live on the west side, in the city proper, not out in the 'burbs.
There's a reason why Google is now in Fremont, Facebook is downtown by the Market... I know personally (and some others who feel the same way) that there's not a chance I'll take a commute over the lake every day, and likewise no chance I'll live on the east side.
I totally agree with the East-side West-side thing. I commuted across Lake Washington once and I'm never going to do it again. In fact, I turned down what seemed like a promising position at a cool startup because they were threatening a move from Fremont(!) to Bellevue(!?).
Of course, two years later, they're still in Fremont.
Microsoft has done some good work with their connector shuttles. I could actually take a little shuttle van from my neighborhood straight to Redmond if I worked out there, and spend the commute time playing Tiny Wings on my iPad instead of driving.
I guess what I meant was that the geography factors heavily into the culture, which feeds heavily into the leadership.
Even though large technology companies are opening offices, like you mentioned, the difference are that these are satellite offices. Your career potential will be limited, its just an unavoidable fact of the current corporate world. Its a very different scenario to move from the center of the solar system to Pluto.
A self feeding startup culture is not a healthy startup culture, at least imo.
Can someone explain why this was down-voted? Opening with the somewhat inflammatory remark about Redmond might not have been the best choice; however, I thought it was well argued none the less.
