"Two years ago we appeared to have discovered an exciting and enigmatic new predictor of success in a first programming course. We now report that after six experiments, involving more than 500 students at six institutions in three countries, the predictive effect of our test has failed to live up to that early promise."
It's important to remember that the ads you're shown on Youtube videos are controlled by the channel owner, not by Google. Youtube itself doesn't have much control over how many ads you see.
Between them, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt hold a majority of Google shareholders' voting power (about 2/3 is what I usually hear). I won't link anything because I don't really know the authoritative source for this sort of information, but Googling [Google stock structure] turns up plenty of secondary sources.
Do you have multiple Google accounts? If you're signed in to one you don't use for things, that will cripple Now, because it won't have all the data it needs to do things. Same problem if you do all your searching and Youtube watching and whatnot while signed out.
Sure, but recognizing a picture of one of your friends is a matter of searching O(100) people. Recognizing a picture of any Facebook user is a matter of searching O(100 million) people. It's a totally different problem, and there's no reason to think Facebook, which hasn't solved the smaller problem perfectly, could solve the larger problem at all.
Objectively? That's a dangerous word; I hope you've got a better argument than this one. Hard drives are being rapidly replaced by SSDs, so their speed just jumped _way_ up (especially start-up and random access times, which affect sleeping and waking performance). 2 or 3 orders of magnitude, not 20%.
> We would never vote up a article where "father writes bedtime story for daughter, Sleeping Prince rescued by Princess". Because it is commonplace because literacy is commonplace, as are pens and paper commonplace and as are the legal frameworks to be allowed to alter the published version.
> With a standard combination lock all I have to tell someone is the combination
I don't think that's fair. The standard combination lock interface is well-known, not intuitive. "6-38-16" is brief, but it assumes the listener already knows to translate that to "turn right 360 degrees, then right 6, left 38, right 16". This lock doesn't seem any worse in that regard.
> I don't buy the taller buildings = more wealth, creativity and energy argument.
If you haven't read The New Geography of Jobs, I highly recommend it. It gives an excellent explanation of why having a higher density of knowledge workers increases their per-capita productivity and creativity.
I knew about Google's Ads Preferences page (http://google.com/ads/preferences), which lists the interests Google has inferred for me. This article taught me about the BlueKai Registry (http://bluekai.com/registry/), which lists the same thing (and a little more) for BlueKai. Does anyone know of similar sources of information for other advertising networks?
I think the fact that it's a positive review from MG Siegler means it's objective - since he's known to dislike Android devices. A negative review wouldn't necessarily be not objective, but a positive review must be objective.
> If the scalpers didn't exist, the eventual ticket-holders would still be able to purchase from the original vendor.
A lot of them wouldn't, though. If the scalpers sell the tickets for, say, $500, then the people willing to pay $500 get tickets pretty reliably. If the scalpers didn't exist, those people would have to take a roll of the dice along with the many, many more people who are willing to pay $45. A lot of them wouldn't be able to see the show.
"Two years ago we appeared to have discovered an exciting and enigmatic new predictor of success in a first programming course. We now report that after six experiments, involving more than 500 students at six institutions in three countries, the predictive effect of our test has failed to live up to that early promise."