borgia

>I find it astonishing that what is basically a short message broadcast service can generate billions of dollars of revenue.

Basically a short message service? That's naive. Twitter is a marketing platform with 300m people signed up to receive marketing materials, people who also readily provide the platform with the details of what they like/would likely click on/spend money on, where they are in the world, what age they are, what gender they are and more. Of course it's extremely valuable.

>people want to work, and to feel valuable.

Only because most others work and a person's value, or perceived value, is largely tied to them working, their work, etc.

The perceived value comes from essentially not relying on others to work to support you while you don't.

If machines were doing the work and trying to make additional money was optional I don't think the vast majority of people would be opting in. Indeed, it could even be seen as a negative trait if you're one of the few chasing money.

If you look at the tab title for the page, it's the same as the title of the article here.

I presume the in-article title has been changed since?

Some would call this hipster pretentiousness. I wouldn't though. I think overall we're seeing a growing trend, or growing condition I believe would be more apt, where people are searching for substance at a time where the digital/modern life has removed or cheapened it.

It isn't confined to products either.

Realistically though they merely have to show them a search algorithm.

This is astonishingly stupid. It's also time to retire the word "troll", it has become so bastardized that its use shouldn't be taken at all seriously anymore.

Things appear to have become so weird that letting your kids out to play has now gained its own label - "Free range parenting".

Which is really sad. I grew up outdoors, climbing trees, riding my bike wherever I wanted, going to the local park or woods with other kids, etc. I would really hate to see kids being denied the same opportunities due to unwarranted fear being driven into their parents or their communities.

It's not something I've encountered in Europe, where I spent most of my life, kids seem to be living pretty much the same as ever there, but reading about this stuff happening in the US is very sad.

I've visited the US many times. You've little to fear as a visitor. There are a great many reasons to visit the USA.

With that being said, I haven't been back since the Snowden news broke and everything else that has followed. I'm not American, I can't vote there, I can't effect influence there, so my only way to protest the national and international actions of the USA is to not bring my tourist dollars there anymore.

Which is a shame because I've spent a lot of money on personal trips there, have enjoyed my times there, have met some really great people there, etc. but as it's my only form of protest that I can engage in, it's what I feel I have to do.

>It is never too late to do something new.

Absolutely. Our individual lives aren't even a blip on the radar of life as a whole on our planet, let alone our universe. We get a very short amount of time to live, even shorter to live well (health, mobility, etc.). The idea of going to do something you dislike every day for 30-40 years of that very short time is just about the anti-thesis of what we should be doing with our time here.

I had absolutely no idea that there were previously such restrictions. Registering as an arms dealer to export an algorithm?! Astonishing.

Mastering something and merely learning competence in it are two different things though. I don't think the "Teach yourself X in Y" type books are claiming to be turning people into masters, similarly I'm sure many of the learning piano/sculpting/art type books aren't claiming to be making master artists out of their readers.

I think, with the right resources (people, material), if someone dedicated themselves to learning programming/software development actively for 2 years they could become extremely proficient in it. Not masters across a number of different languages and paradigms, of course, but just very proficient in a few of them to the point where they could churn out good work/projects/ideas with it.

The mindset may not be a millennial thing but its prominence in modern society most certainly is. Where once the hate-fueled rhetoric these kinds spew all day and night would have been written off as the delusions of a bitter lunatic, social media has given them a platform to find those similar to them, to network, to organise, etc. and those people tend to be within the millennial age group.

>I think this movement will let off some steam and people will stop taking it seriously, but I don't think it is unfair to worry that they will take real positions of power in the future.

They're very highly active, and in control of, many student unions throughout say the US and UK. Student union reps often go on to become politicians, so it is indeed something worth worrying about.

Especially since their movement is based on dividing people and making one group the oppressor and the other the victim, even if such perceived oppression has no basis in reality.

Their movement has entirely turned against gay men now and blasts them as being "oppressive". They're almost as bad about FTM transsexuals. There's really no telling where it goes next. Most bizarrely though is the vast majority of the division is being carried out by largely straight, white, middle class or higher women at the helm.

>This can lead to one side dominating the conversation despite being unpersuasive.

There is no conversation. They don't converse with those holding conflicting opinions. In fact, with Twitter, they've built out the BlockBot to automatically censor all and any deemed to have dissented against the narrative.

When you've a movement that is based on very flawed statistics and that places emphasis on hypersensitive feelings over reality, dissent containing reality or fact is a threat. It's far easier to censor the dissent than to engage it.