throwawaay

While it's true that increased competition among market makers have driven spreads down, decimalization was also a factor. For example:

  http://www.sec.gov/news/testimony/052401tslu.htm

"For example, OEA estimates that, from December 2000 to March 2001, quotation spreads in securities listed on the New York Stock Exchange ("NYSE") narrowed an average of 37%, and effective spreads narrowed 15%. An even more dramatic reduction in quotation spreads was observed in Nasdaq securities, with spreads narrowing an average of 50% following decimalization, and effective spreads narrowing almost as much."

Technically, that's an example of a rule that was passed to eliminate the middlemen's profits.

Put up or shut up:

Please provide evidence that Chrome sends private URLs to Google.

You're so absolutely and completely wrong that you're probably trolling, but:

Google implemented vector maps on Android long before Apple introduced their own maps (i.e. ~years). Likewise, 3D buildings have been available through Earth for years, and rendering them in Maps was an obvious next step. Ultimately, both Apple and Google launched 3D at right around the same time.

Last, as a sibling poster pointed out, if you think all of this was started in reaction to MapBox's work (earliest public mention I found was April 1st) and completed less than 3 months later, then that's just fucking admirable execution right there. But alas, that probably wasn't copied either.

When someone spouts big talk like "start doing things right. Since you don't know how, you have to hire someone like me and give that person lots of autonomy, but it can be done" and all they're known for (please correct me if I'm wrong here) is writing a lot of text on HN, I don't think a little snark is out of line.

I get that railing against unsympathetic targets like big corporations makes for entertaining reading, but I don't think that actually qualifies anyone for the job he was describing.

Excuse me, but given your history of writing overly verbose, self-important Grand Proclamations: I imagine the only reason someone would have to hire you is if they wanted tomes written about how they could Do Things Right while probably not getting much actual work product done in return.

First, you imply that underlying intention behind the Fiber deployment in Provo is to make surveillance a piece of cake by practically serving up data on a platter. You admit no other possibility, since this "only helps support" your thesis.

Then someone calls you on it, and you back off and say you weren't implying anything, just that [the NSA] has an interest in building up infrastructure there.

Did you even consider the possibility that both parties might be coincidentally interested in Provo for entirely different reasons?

Batshit insane.

What kind of implications could this tool possibly have for witness protection? It returns data that was explicitly entered in connection with a specific disaster, and you can only search by name. Someone who's in hiding isn't going to give out their original identity, so how exactly do you propose to use this to track them?

Did you even click through to see what this thing really does, or did you actually just assume that "Person Finder" must be some kind of magical privacy-violating anal probe and rush to type out the first paranoid, nonsensical and idiotic thing to run through your head and click post as a knee-jerk reaction?

The guy with a username that references an utterly failed Apple operating system project might have an agenda?

Well color me surprised!

> Without looking I can safely say [...]

Without looking, you and your misplaced confidence just ended up spouting the exact opposite of the truth:

"Further, the use of the service does not require a Google account"

Whoops. Try reading the article next time before claiming as fact something that you just made up?

Pure bullshit. If you seriously believe that Glass doesn't have a CPU or has under 20 minutes of battery life, your raging Apple partisanship is showing through even more than normal.

I'm willing to bet that you haven't used Glass, but don't let that stop you from desperately trying to portray it as vaporware, a PR stunt, or some kind of scheme masterminded by Satan himself on EVERY HN thread you can plausibly cram that nonsense into.

Between your recent posts about Glass and taligent's constant downplaying of Google's maps and autonomous cars, I have to wonder what makes you two work so hard at spewing blind hate for them here.