Antitrust enforcers and Pete Buttigieg step up on the Jetblue-Spirit merger. Plus Silicon Valley Bank falls apart, Google gets spanked, Elon Musk tries to intimidate the FTC, and how to regulate AI.
On the SVB disaster, this may hurt a lot of people. I was CEO of a start-up (sold it a couple of years ago) and here's what's happening to all the start-ups with money there. In most cases, if that's their bank then it's all their money. Every day there's money coming in, money going out, the financial river of the company flows through the bank.
When you're growing a start-up you're focused on your company. Employees, product, marketing & sales. Money is what you have to keep all that running. But you're not looking at where it's kept, you're not focused on investing the reserves, you're focused on your company.
What's happening now? Companies are worried if they can cover payroll. 250K is not enough if you have say 100 employees. And along with payroll there's marketing expenses because if your marketing campaigns get paused, then your inbound leads dry up. And there's the million other things from rent to restocking the kitchen.
If your credit cards are frozen, then when Google charges you for click ads, it fails. When it fails Google pauses your ad campaigns. There are likely numerous companies that are seeing their ad campaigns get paused right now at Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. And every day more.
And payments come in via wire transfers. So customers are sending more money in to SVB where it will be frozen. So not only is there not enough money to cover expenses, but income is getting locked up too.
And all the employees at those companies are now wondering if they'll get paid. And if so, when. For employees that live paycheck to paycheck, saying "don't worry, in a week or two it'll all be straightened out" doesn't help. They have rent due tomorrow and the credit card payment is already past due.
Even if SVB is purchased and is open for business Monday morning with full coverage for all depositors, it'll have had a negative impact. For every additional day that goes on the damage increases. And the repercussions will spread out first through the start-up ecosphere and then with less impact to the economy at large.
If you guarantee uninsured deposits then bankers will go wild gambling with them.
I’m fine with passing a law that allows people to buy special FDIC protection, but people knew what they were doing when they deposited money into SVB. It’s well publicized that the insured amount is $250k, and businesses can even use cash sweeps to go above that.
The liquidation bank will be functional within a few days. People will figure this out.
Please note that nowhere in my comment did I say something along the lines of "...and therefore every depositor needs to be instantly made whole." You're right that we need to have repercussions to stupid decisions.
My point is this is incredibly damaging to the people and start-ups it is directly impacting. And through no fault of their own.
As to spreading your cash around, first off that's a royal PITA, it hits limits as your reserves get into the 5+ million range (that's 20 banks you're spreading among) and it hits some limits like how do you pay Paychex/ADP for payroll if payroll is 500K and you don't have any single account with 500K in it.
The solution I think we need is to treat banks like utilities (electric, gas, phone). They get their guaranteed profit margin, they're very closely watched, and depositors have FDIC security to their full deposit.
When I was CEO we talked at times about spreading our money around, but it would have been a ton of ongoing work, we would be constantly hitting limits, and we needed to focus on building a company. We were also incredibly financially conservative because those reserves were payroll if the economy went south. So we didn't put reserves into anything other than CDs.
If there were banks that were FDIC insured to any amount and their interest rate on savings was 2% lower than uninsured accounts - we would have taken that in a heartbeat. So give us highly regulated fully insured lower interest rate banks. That's a good solution.
And please, give some thoughts and empathy to the employees, leadership, & founders of the companies impacted by this. Even if it plays out very well quickly - it's brutal and they did nothing to cause this.
Speaking of AI, I was recently automatically added to various AI powered chat groups LinkedIn has created, based on my "skills" hashtags or interests. (Of course I unfollowed all of them after seeing they involve AI writing.)
Sorry, they're not written by AI, just using an algorithm to push articles up, but organized by topics in kind of a group. I guess algorithms already exist, but I don't like automatically being added to anything.
Yeah, the term is being used as a marketing gimmick, say the likes of Dr Jeffrey Funk, because intelligence implies creation/innovation, but in fact the bots are basing what they do on things fed to them, which translates to imitating/copying.
Others are also using the term as a substitute for data analysis or things called algorithms in the past, like in this case "AI powered."
I've even seen artists use it :). Besides showing off, I'm guessing for some it's got to do with acquiring funding.
It somehow reminds me of many food trends (maybe because I'm always hungry/thinking about food 😂).
Yes, when a tech firm is caught multiple times mishandling user data they should tell the ftc which third parties had access. It’s standard. To put it another way, if ATT decided to let a journalist listen to your phone calls illegally it would be reasonable to find out which journalist got to listen to your private discussions.
Is there something that I am missing? Did Twitter actually share user data with Taibbi, Weiss, etc?
From what I have seen, they shared files of the government trying to censor stories they didn't like - like obviously very likely things like Hunter Biden's laptop not actually being a Russian disinformation campaign or that the COVID outbreak that happened where the COVID lab was might have been a lab leak.
In any case, I'd think that if it comes to a choice between honoring the First Amendment and just about anything else, I'll take the side of civil liberties.
Do you not think 1st Amendment issues are a concern here?
Trying to think of a time when people needed to be afraid of a journalist, as opposed to when people needed to be afraid of losing their civil liberties.
"... if ATT decided to let a journalist listen to your phone calls illegally ..." That is not what happened, though AT&T has provided access to the NSA to listen to the calls of Americans, and others for many years now. Is that within the confines of the constitution? Maybe James Clapper can help on this point.
Is your assertion that the access provided to the journalists reporting the Twitter Files was illegal? Is that the assertion of the FTC? If so, the point is with Twitter and not journalists and should not include the naming of any journalists, in public or otherwise.
Does the information released as part of the Twitter Files constitute the dissemination of personal identifying information, which may make it illegal?
You don’t know what happened. The point is when someone says ‘here look around in this giant important communications platform’ after that firm has been caught twice for mishandling user data there is a good reason for the ftc to investigate and find out what happened.
Let me add some context and hopefully clarify my comments.
Before that, as someone who used to do a couple hundred plus airline segments a year, I endorse your perspective on the JetBlue Spirit decision. I am happy Mayor Pete (MP) took the stand. However, from your support provided above, it would have been difficult to do otherwise.
Back to the comment at hand. As part of a new position and remit, one of my peers told me "You have 90-days and then its yours". If I didn't make my concerns known by day 91, I owned it. That is how we look at a new administration, the first 100 days are seen as an indication of the direction of the administration. MP could have come into DOT on day one and said he would focus on Safety, Reliability and the Consumer. I don't know what he did, but the JetBlue Spirit decision fits under consumer.
Neither do I know, other than anti-trust, what Lina Khan chose as her priorities for the FTC. Regardless, Lina Khan owns the fact that the FTC has for many years now, allowed the common carriers servicing American consumers, to be used to spy on American citizens. Having taken that stance, by acquiescence at best, it is a little rich, to express concern for the privacy of the American citizens you allow others to abuse.
As for reporters, they are legally allowed to publish virtually anything they want. There may even be some SCOTUS case(s) supporting that right. They can publish stolen information. I remember receiving a funding request from The Intercept. They were in possession of "hacked" (read stolen) information of law enforcement officials throughout the US. The Intercept was planning to publish the information (dox) law enforcement personnel - personal address, phone numbers, email, etc. They made no secret of that intent, because it was perfectly legal. To its ultimate credit, I don't believe The Intercept ever published the information.
My point is, if the FTC has an issue, it is with Twitter. The FTC can (and should) ask Twitter all about the information they have provided to third-parties. However, the public mention of "reporters" and specific reporters by the FTC, a government agency under the constitution, has a chilling effect on the free speech and the First Amendment.
"My point is, if the FTC has an issue, it is with Twitter. The FTC can (and should) ask Twitter all about the information they have provided to third-parties."
They only have an issue with Twitter, and asking about third parties is all they did. If the issue is that the FTC wrote 'journalists' instead of 'third parties,' I agree with you. The word-smithing of the demand letters was silly, but it was probably some FTC staffer reading the news and noting 'oh Twitter is violating our data privacy agreement by giving data access to journalists. We should investigate Twitter about their data sharing practices and ask them about giving access to journalists, because if they are giving access to third parties, their compliance program is a mess.'
There were also dozens of other things Twitter was doing to arouse suspicion, like firing everyone involved in the FTC compliance program, and dealing with whistleblowers saying they were lying about data security. Anyway.
I'm sceptical of central bank digital currencies since it lends too much credence to cryptocurrencies. If we want to make a public bank (like the Postbank in Germany) it would be better to just do that, either by allowing the central bank to accept deposits or find another suitable entity to run the bank (like the postal service as in Germany). The potential for abuse and money laundering are enormous and I think competition between regulated banks works mostly okay.
That said, there's a bunch of financial services we should expect our government to offer us. One of the SVB customers is a payroll company called Rippling and now there's a risk they can't pay their customers payroll. There's a lot of deserved scrutiny of tax preperation companies that do what tax authorities should be doing by themselves (making it easy to report and pay tax) but less scrutiny of payroll companies that do just the same but for payroll. In the Faroe Islands they made a system where all wages are paid directly to the tax authorities who then handle withholding and pays the remainder out to the employee. This is especially helpful for people who have multiple jobs but also for people who have big wage swings over the year.
But alas, it's often too hard to report and pay taxes and so the taxman is a party to a payroll company struggling because their bank struggles, regardless that the taxman could just do the job of the payroll company in the first place (namely withholding taxes and paying the money to the employees bank account).
The obvious kicker is that the Faroese system was created since the country is so small. With 50K people you just can't afford to have a payroll mafia and so calculating and paying taxes must be simple. It's only in much bigger countries we can afford to complicate things.
You watched that clown show of a Twitter Files hearing and all you are concerned about is a misunderstanding by Taibbi? Good grief. I'm glad you were reassured by the accuracy of what the Dems had to say.
It was dumb and repetitive and everyone was annoying. What Taibbi found with the Twitter files matters but that hearing didn’t bring anything new to light.
The Twitter Files, and censorship not only matter, but I think it was very important to see different politicians take public positions on first amendment issues. I think there are a lot of classic liberals concerned with both monopolies and government censorship, and I found it distressing to see politicians try to score points for their side and ignoring the issue. Hunter Biden's laptop is just not the way I would characterize government censorship. I love everything you do here, but choosing that as the one example trivializes an important issue for me.
"Hunter Biden's laptop is just not the way I would characterize government censorship."
I am concerned about censorship and the collusion between government and big tech, which is why I've been focused on the problem for years. (See this from 2018 for example: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mattstoller2/as-democracy-suffers-digital-dictators-are-seizing-power) Without breaking up big tech and policing dominant firms for discrimination, censorship is not only likely, it is inevitable. But Jim Jordan has been a foe of antitrust action against big tech and government action to regulate dominant firms for years. Other conservatives, from Josh Hawley to Tucker Carlson to Ken Buck, take the opposite position. And when I say that Jordan has opposed action against big tech, I mean that Google lawyers are literally writing memos that go out under his name to Republicans on important policy questions.
Jordan's strategy has been to attack the idea of government policing of tech firms, and to argue that all government action is inherently coercive and illegitimate. This syncs up nicely with Matt Taibbi's story that government and Twitter colluded in 2020 to deceive the public about the pandemic and important political information. Taibbi's story is true. But there's a very big difference between assuming some government action is coercive and all government action is coercive, and that's the way Jordan is slipping in his pro-tech perspective.
Without government policing, there is no breaking up big tech. That's just the deal. There is no 'being concerned about big tech' without acknowledging that government must have the power to police big business.
What was frustrating to me about the hearing is precisely the point you unwittingly raise, which is that Jim Jordan trivialized some very serious issues. And nothing illustrates that more than Hunter Biden's laptop. Jordan brought up Hunter Biden's laptop multiple times in his opening statement, so noting that the hearing was about Hunter Biden's laptop, as I did, is accurate. I wish it hadn't been. But that's how *Jordan* framed it, not me.
More to the point, what Twitter did around Hunter Biden's laptop actually was a version of government censorship. But somehow it has become a joke. And the reason is because it's very clear that Jordan is merely angry that Joe Biden won the election, and has no other agenda besides putting the GOP in charge and ensuring that big business keeps giving them money. So when he brings up Hunter Biden's laptop, it is NOT to actually enact some policy agenda to prevent censorship, but to appeal to a voting base angry at big tech without actually doing anything about it.
I love Matt Taibbi, and I find it disgusting that so many people on the left say 'whatever happened to Taibbi,' as if his work wasn't mostly accurate and important. I also found the Democrats obnoxious and preening. But Taibbi got fooled into endorsing a stupid attack on antitrust enforcers who were trying to do their job. He's stretched too thin and didn't see past the distasteful notion that the government was asking about journalists. He hadn't read the consent decree, he didn't realize that Twitter's poor data management practices are an important legal question, nor did he understand that journalists were not under investigation by the FTC. Twitter was.
Fundamentally, these hearings are supposed to be *investigative* inquiries into what happened. And this one just wasn't. It was two journalists telling a subcommittee of members of Congress stuff we already know, along with a preening pie fight. Jordan has a big staff of investigators, and subpoena power. Where are the scoops? Where's the actual meat? Trying to pretend like he is doing work by hitching himself to two journalists isn't serious, and everyone knows it's not serious.
The *only* report these guys put out for this hearing was a dumb attack on Lina Khan. I'm just noting, given that the FTC had literally nothing to do with anything involving censorship scandals in 2020, why that would be. And the reason is because Jordan is simply trying to destroy the people who police big business. That's all that was happening here. So I'm glad you enjoyed the hearing. I didn't. I thought it was immensely annoying, on all sides. No one, not the Rs, not the Ds, and not the journalist witnesses, did particularly well. And if Jordan continues on the path he's on, this subcommittee will amount to nothing. Which is a shame, because as we both agree, there really are bad things the government and big tech could and have done together.
On ML (Machine Learning) a fundamental thing to keep in mind is that no one knows how these programs are making their decisions. It's not that the companies know and are keeping it a secret. It's not that if they opened up the code you could figure it out.
Fundamentally ML is a form of alchemy. You mix the potions together and magic results. In the case of ML they feed in billions of data points and the program from that calculates the parameters that most often deliver the "correct" result. How do you look at the value of 10 million parameters, across multiple iterations to be able to say and individual's gender has this impact on the final result.
You bring up problems it's critical we answer. And having systems that provide answers that sound very persuasive that are total bullshit is a gigantic problem. But the solution is not to look at how a ML algorithm is making a particular decision. That's not possible with where the technology is today.
Because you can't determine how a ML algorithm makes its decision, therefore how can you prove who's prior art is actually used in any given ML output? I think ang given copyright holder may find it impossible to prove they were specifically harmed.
To avoid a rapid monopolization of the banking industry, we need to have FDIC insurance increased to infinity on all accounts. Because I'll tell you what I would be doing tomorrow if I was still CEO of my company - I would be moving all our money into one of the too big to fail banks.
I wouldn't wait to see how it plays out elsewhere. I wouldn't review the financial reviews of the mid size bank I was at. Even if the FDIC announced tomorrow that they're going to work on increasing the limit. Don't care - be safe tomorrow.
Because money is life. I have every employee depending on me. I have every customer depending on us to still be in business tomorrow. And I have zero advantage in staying in a mid sized bank (they're all equally fucked up.)
Anyways, without the FDIC increasing the limit expect the mid sized banks to go the way of state chartered banks as the money all moves to the safer bank.
Good idea on AI; wild idea to have people and companies take responsibility for the messes they make.
Whenever I get to a site that uses the word "Moreover" to begin a paragraph (awkwardly) I assume it was written by a bot :).
When I helped a neighbor write essays for her GEDs, I immediately knew she had copied from one of those sites :). This is my AI detection!
SVB and Spirit/Jet Blue deal. Two stories related to artificially low interest rates, and what happens when the FED changes policy.
On the SVB disaster, this may hurt a lot of people. I was CEO of a start-up (sold it a couple of years ago) and here's what's happening to all the start-ups with money there. In most cases, if that's their bank then it's all their money. Every day there's money coming in, money going out, the financial river of the company flows through the bank.
When you're growing a start-up you're focused on your company. Employees, product, marketing & sales. Money is what you have to keep all that running. But you're not looking at where it's kept, you're not focused on investing the reserves, you're focused on your company.
What's happening now? Companies are worried if they can cover payroll. 250K is not enough if you have say 100 employees. And along with payroll there's marketing expenses because if your marketing campaigns get paused, then your inbound leads dry up. And there's the million other things from rent to restocking the kitchen.
If your credit cards are frozen, then when Google charges you for click ads, it fails. When it fails Google pauses your ad campaigns. There are likely numerous companies that are seeing their ad campaigns get paused right now at Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. And every day more.
And payments come in via wire transfers. So customers are sending more money in to SVB where it will be frozen. So not only is there not enough money to cover expenses, but income is getting locked up too.
And all the employees at those companies are now wondering if they'll get paid. And if so, when. For employees that live paycheck to paycheck, saying "don't worry, in a week or two it'll all be straightened out" doesn't help. They have rent due tomorrow and the credit card payment is already past due.
Even if SVB is purchased and is open for business Monday morning with full coverage for all depositors, it'll have had a negative impact. For every additional day that goes on the damage increases. And the repercussions will spread out first through the start-up ecosphere and then with less impact to the economy at large.
If you guarantee uninsured deposits then bankers will go wild gambling with them.
I’m fine with passing a law that allows people to buy special FDIC protection, but people knew what they were doing when they deposited money into SVB. It’s well publicized that the insured amount is $250k, and businesses can even use cash sweeps to go above that.
The liquidation bank will be functional within a few days. People will figure this out.
Please note that nowhere in my comment did I say something along the lines of "...and therefore every depositor needs to be instantly made whole." You're right that we need to have repercussions to stupid decisions.
My point is this is incredibly damaging to the people and start-ups it is directly impacting. And through no fault of their own.
As to spreading your cash around, first off that's a royal PITA, it hits limits as your reserves get into the 5+ million range (that's 20 banks you're spreading among) and it hits some limits like how do you pay Paychex/ADP for payroll if payroll is 500K and you don't have any single account with 500K in it.
The solution I think we need is to treat banks like utilities (electric, gas, phone). They get their guaranteed profit margin, they're very closely watched, and depositors have FDIC security to their full deposit.
When I was CEO we talked at times about spreading our money around, but it would have been a ton of ongoing work, we would be constantly hitting limits, and we needed to focus on building a company. We were also incredibly financially conservative because those reserves were payroll if the economy went south. So we didn't put reserves into anything other than CDs.
If there were banks that were FDIC insured to any amount and their interest rate on savings was 2% lower than uninsured accounts - we would have taken that in a heartbeat. So give us highly regulated fully insured lower interest rate banks. That's a good solution.
And please, give some thoughts and empathy to the employees, leadership, & founders of the companies impacted by this. Even if it plays out very well quickly - it's brutal and they did nothing to cause this.
Speaking of AI, I was recently automatically added to various AI powered chat groups LinkedIn has created, based on my "skills" hashtags or interests. (Of course I unfollowed all of them after seeing they involve AI writing.)
https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/linkedin-launches-collaborative-articles-powered-by-ai-to-help-boost-memb/644148/
Sorry, they're not written by AI, just using an algorithm to push articles up, but organized by topics in kind of a group. I guess algorithms already exist, but I don't like automatically being added to anything.
Even the definition of what AI isn’t clear.
Yeah, the term is being used as a marketing gimmick, say the likes of Dr Jeffrey Funk, because intelligence implies creation/innovation, but in fact the bots are basing what they do on things fed to them, which translates to imitating/copying.
Others are also using the term as a substitute for data analysis or things called algorithms in the past, like in this case "AI powered."
I've even seen artists use it :). Besides showing off, I'm guessing for some it's got to do with acquiring funding.
It somehow reminds me of many food trends (maybe because I'm always hungry/thinking about food 😂).
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-jeffrey-funk-a979435
So, the FTC asking to know the names of reporters Twitter is talking to, is just a normal practice for government agencies in the land of the free?
Yes, when a tech firm is caught multiple times mishandling user data they should tell the ftc which third parties had access. It’s standard. To put it another way, if ATT decided to let a journalist listen to your phone calls illegally it would be reasonable to find out which journalist got to listen to your private discussions.
Is there something that I am missing? Did Twitter actually share user data with Taibbi, Weiss, etc?
From what I have seen, they shared files of the government trying to censor stories they didn't like - like obviously very likely things like Hunter Biden's laptop not actually being a Russian disinformation campaign or that the COVID outbreak that happened where the COVID lab was might have been a lab leak.
In any case, I'd think that if it comes to a choice between honoring the First Amendment and just about anything else, I'll take the side of civil liberties.
“ Did Twitter actually share user data with Taibbi, Weiss, etc?”
We don’t know. Hence the investigation.
Do you not think 1st Amendment issues are a concern here?
Trying to think of a time when people needed to be afraid of a journalist, as opposed to when people needed to be afraid of losing their civil liberties.
No I don’t. This is an investigation of Twitter’s data handling, nothing more.
"... if ATT decided to let a journalist listen to your phone calls illegally ..." That is not what happened, though AT&T has provided access to the NSA to listen to the calls of Americans, and others for many years now. Is that within the confines of the constitution? Maybe James Clapper can help on this point.
Is your assertion that the access provided to the journalists reporting the Twitter Files was illegal? Is that the assertion of the FTC? If so, the point is with Twitter and not journalists and should not include the naming of any journalists, in public or otherwise.
Does the information released as part of the Twitter Files constitute the dissemination of personal identifying information, which may make it illegal?
“ That is not what happened.”
You don’t know what happened. The point is when someone says ‘here look around in this giant important communications platform’ after that firm has been caught twice for mishandling user data there is a good reason for the ftc to investigate and find out what happened.
Let me add some context and hopefully clarify my comments.
Before that, as someone who used to do a couple hundred plus airline segments a year, I endorse your perspective on the JetBlue Spirit decision. I am happy Mayor Pete (MP) took the stand. However, from your support provided above, it would have been difficult to do otherwise.
Back to the comment at hand. As part of a new position and remit, one of my peers told me "You have 90-days and then its yours". If I didn't make my concerns known by day 91, I owned it. That is how we look at a new administration, the first 100 days are seen as an indication of the direction of the administration. MP could have come into DOT on day one and said he would focus on Safety, Reliability and the Consumer. I don't know what he did, but the JetBlue Spirit decision fits under consumer.
Neither do I know, other than anti-trust, what Lina Khan chose as her priorities for the FTC. Regardless, Lina Khan owns the fact that the FTC has for many years now, allowed the common carriers servicing American consumers, to be used to spy on American citizens. Having taken that stance, by acquiescence at best, it is a little rich, to express concern for the privacy of the American citizens you allow others to abuse.
As for reporters, they are legally allowed to publish virtually anything they want. There may even be some SCOTUS case(s) supporting that right. They can publish stolen information. I remember receiving a funding request from The Intercept. They were in possession of "hacked" (read stolen) information of law enforcement officials throughout the US. The Intercept was planning to publish the information (dox) law enforcement personnel - personal address, phone numbers, email, etc. They made no secret of that intent, because it was perfectly legal. To its ultimate credit, I don't believe The Intercept ever published the information.
My point is, if the FTC has an issue, it is with Twitter. The FTC can (and should) ask Twitter all about the information they have provided to third-parties. However, the public mention of "reporters" and specific reporters by the FTC, a government agency under the constitution, has a chilling effect on the free speech and the First Amendment.
"My point is, if the FTC has an issue, it is with Twitter. The FTC can (and should) ask Twitter all about the information they have provided to third-parties."
They only have an issue with Twitter, and asking about third parties is all they did. If the issue is that the FTC wrote 'journalists' instead of 'third parties,' I agree with you. The word-smithing of the demand letters was silly, but it was probably some FTC staffer reading the news and noting 'oh Twitter is violating our data privacy agreement by giving data access to journalists. We should investigate Twitter about their data sharing practices and ask them about giving access to journalists, because if they are giving access to third parties, their compliance program is a mess.'
There were also dozens of other things Twitter was doing to arouse suspicion, like firing everyone involved in the FTC compliance program, and dealing with whistleblowers saying they were lying about data security. Anyway.
The FTC doesn't have authority over common carriers, for what it's worth. That's explicit. See 15 USC 45 (a)(2). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/45
I'm sceptical of central bank digital currencies since it lends too much credence to cryptocurrencies. If we want to make a public bank (like the Postbank in Germany) it would be better to just do that, either by allowing the central bank to accept deposits or find another suitable entity to run the bank (like the postal service as in Germany). The potential for abuse and money laundering are enormous and I think competition between regulated banks works mostly okay.
That said, there's a bunch of financial services we should expect our government to offer us. One of the SVB customers is a payroll company called Rippling and now there's a risk they can't pay their customers payroll. There's a lot of deserved scrutiny of tax preperation companies that do what tax authorities should be doing by themselves (making it easy to report and pay tax) but less scrutiny of payroll companies that do just the same but for payroll. In the Faroe Islands they made a system where all wages are paid directly to the tax authorities who then handle withholding and pays the remainder out to the employee. This is especially helpful for people who have multiple jobs but also for people who have big wage swings over the year.
But alas, it's often too hard to report and pay taxes and so the taxman is a party to a payroll company struggling because their bank struggles, regardless that the taxman could just do the job of the payroll company in the first place (namely withholding taxes and paying the money to the employees bank account).
The obvious kicker is that the Faroese system was created since the country is so small. With 50K people you just can't afford to have a payroll mafia and so calculating and paying taxes must be simple. It's only in much bigger countries we can afford to complicate things.
A public bank is a fine idea.
You watched that clown show of a Twitter Files hearing and all you are concerned about is a misunderstanding by Taibbi? Good grief. I'm glad you were reassured by the accuracy of what the Dems had to say.
It was dumb and repetitive and everyone was annoying. What Taibbi found with the Twitter files matters but that hearing didn’t bring anything new to light.
The Twitter Files, and censorship not only matter, but I think it was very important to see different politicians take public positions on first amendment issues. I think there are a lot of classic liberals concerned with both monopolies and government censorship, and I found it distressing to see politicians try to score points for their side and ignoring the issue. Hunter Biden's laptop is just not the way I would characterize government censorship. I love everything you do here, but choosing that as the one example trivializes an important issue for me.
"Hunter Biden's laptop is just not the way I would characterize government censorship."
I am concerned about censorship and the collusion between government and big tech, which is why I've been focused on the problem for years. (See this from 2018 for example: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mattstoller2/as-democracy-suffers-digital-dictators-are-seizing-power) Without breaking up big tech and policing dominant firms for discrimination, censorship is not only likely, it is inevitable. But Jim Jordan has been a foe of antitrust action against big tech and government action to regulate dominant firms for years. Other conservatives, from Josh Hawley to Tucker Carlson to Ken Buck, take the opposite position. And when I say that Jordan has opposed action against big tech, I mean that Google lawyers are literally writing memos that go out under his name to Republicans on important policy questions.
Jordan's strategy has been to attack the idea of government policing of tech firms, and to argue that all government action is inherently coercive and illegitimate. This syncs up nicely with Matt Taibbi's story that government and Twitter colluded in 2020 to deceive the public about the pandemic and important political information. Taibbi's story is true. But there's a very big difference between assuming some government action is coercive and all government action is coercive, and that's the way Jordan is slipping in his pro-tech perspective.
Without government policing, there is no breaking up big tech. That's just the deal. There is no 'being concerned about big tech' without acknowledging that government must have the power to police big business.
What was frustrating to me about the hearing is precisely the point you unwittingly raise, which is that Jim Jordan trivialized some very serious issues. And nothing illustrates that more than Hunter Biden's laptop. Jordan brought up Hunter Biden's laptop multiple times in his opening statement, so noting that the hearing was about Hunter Biden's laptop, as I did, is accurate. I wish it hadn't been. But that's how *Jordan* framed it, not me.
More to the point, what Twitter did around Hunter Biden's laptop actually was a version of government censorship. But somehow it has become a joke. And the reason is because it's very clear that Jordan is merely angry that Joe Biden won the election, and has no other agenda besides putting the GOP in charge and ensuring that big business keeps giving them money. So when he brings up Hunter Biden's laptop, it is NOT to actually enact some policy agenda to prevent censorship, but to appeal to a voting base angry at big tech without actually doing anything about it.
I love Matt Taibbi, and I find it disgusting that so many people on the left say 'whatever happened to Taibbi,' as if his work wasn't mostly accurate and important. I also found the Democrats obnoxious and preening. But Taibbi got fooled into endorsing a stupid attack on antitrust enforcers who were trying to do their job. He's stretched too thin and didn't see past the distasteful notion that the government was asking about journalists. He hadn't read the consent decree, he didn't realize that Twitter's poor data management practices are an important legal question, nor did he understand that journalists were not under investigation by the FTC. Twitter was.
Fundamentally, these hearings are supposed to be *investigative* inquiries into what happened. And this one just wasn't. It was two journalists telling a subcommittee of members of Congress stuff we already know, along with a preening pie fight. Jordan has a big staff of investigators, and subpoena power. Where are the scoops? Where's the actual meat? Trying to pretend like he is doing work by hitching himself to two journalists isn't serious, and everyone knows it's not serious.
The *only* report these guys put out for this hearing was a dumb attack on Lina Khan. I'm just noting, given that the FTC had literally nothing to do with anything involving censorship scandals in 2020, why that would be. And the reason is because Jordan is simply trying to destroy the people who police big business. That's all that was happening here. So I'm glad you enjoyed the hearing. I didn't. I thought it was immensely annoying, on all sides. No one, not the Rs, not the Ds, and not the journalist witnesses, did particularly well. And if Jordan continues on the path he's on, this subcommittee will amount to nothing. Which is a shame, because as we both agree, there really are bad things the government and big tech could and have done together.
On ML (Machine Learning) a fundamental thing to keep in mind is that no one knows how these programs are making their decisions. It's not that the companies know and are keeping it a secret. It's not that if they opened up the code you could figure it out.
Fundamentally ML is a form of alchemy. You mix the potions together and magic results. In the case of ML they feed in billions of data points and the program from that calculates the parameters that most often deliver the "correct" result. How do you look at the value of 10 million parameters, across multiple iterations to be able to say and individual's gender has this impact on the final result.
You bring up problems it's critical we answer. And having systems that provide answers that sound very persuasive that are total bullshit is a gigantic problem. But the solution is not to look at how a ML algorithm is making a particular decision. That's not possible with where the technology is today.
Yeah alchemy is a good analogy.
I just think if Google/MSFT were liable for the harm they wouldn’t try to stuff MMLs into every product without serious testing.
Absolutely. My point was don't try to build a solution around understanding the algorithm.
100%
How much of this big data is available for fair use? How many copyrights might have been violated here? I'm surprised there aren't any lawsuits, yet.
Me too
There are copyright lawsuits on AI images already https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/6/23587393/ai-art-copyright-lawsuit-getty-images-stable-diffusion https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/lawsuits-accuse-ai-content-creators-misusing-copyrighted-work-2023-01-17/. Also a lawsuit claiming that software written by LLMs is violating open source license terms https://www.computerworld.com/article/3684734/this-lawsuit-against-microsoft-could-change-the-future-of-ai.html
Because you can't determine how a ML algorithm makes its decision, therefore how can you prove who's prior art is actually used in any given ML output? I think ang given copyright holder may find it impossible to prove they were specifically harmed.
Hard in many cases, but amusingly in the Getty image case, the AI images contain a blurry "Getty Images" logo. Pretty good circumstantial evidence https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/17/23558516/ai-art-copyright-stable-diffusion-getty-images-lawsuit
To avoid a rapid monopolization of the banking industry, we need to have FDIC insurance increased to infinity on all accounts. Because I'll tell you what I would be doing tomorrow if I was still CEO of my company - I would be moving all our money into one of the too big to fail banks.
I wouldn't wait to see how it plays out elsewhere. I wouldn't review the financial reviews of the mid size bank I was at. Even if the FDIC announced tomorrow that they're going to work on increasing the limit. Don't care - be safe tomorrow.
Because money is life. I have every employee depending on me. I have every customer depending on us to still be in business tomorrow. And I have zero advantage in staying in a mid sized bank (they're all equally fucked up.)
Anyways, without the FDIC increasing the limit expect the mid sized banks to go the way of state chartered banks as the money all moves to the safer bank.