Showing posts with label Mark Zuckerberg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mark Zuckerberg. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 04, 2023

Threads



Threads: Instagram owner to launch Twitter rival on Thursday . Screengrabs show a dashboard that looks similar to Twitter. Meta describes Threads as a "text based conversation app"........ Meanwhile, Twitter has said that the popular user dashboard, TweetDeck will go behind a paywall in 30 days time........ It appears from Meta's Threads app that it will be a free service - and there will be no restrictions on how many posts a user can see. ........ It being a Meta app, Threads will also hoover up data on your phone, including location data, purchases and browsing history. ........ Several apps that bear a striking resemblance to Twitter have sprung up in recent years - such as Donald Trump's Truth Social and Mastodon. Another similar app, Bluesky claimed to have seen "record" traffic after Mr Musk's move to restrict usage at the weekend. ......... Threads could be the biggest threat faced by Twitter to date. Mark Zuckerberg has a history of borrowing other company's ideas - and making them work. ...... Meta's Reels is widely seen as a TikTok copy, while Stories looks similar to Snapchat. .

Meta’s ‘Twitter Killer’ App Is Coming Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, teased a new app called Threads that is set to take on Twitter for real-time digital conversations........ Mark Zuckerberg has long wanted to dislodge Twitter and provide the central place for public conversation online. Yet Twitter has remained stubbornly irreplaceable. ............ On Monday, his company, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, teased a new app aimed squarely at Twitter’s territory. .......... The app appears to function much like Twitter, emphasizing public conversations, with users able to follow people they already do on Instagram. Some techies have referred to the coming app as a “Twitter killer.” .......... Then over the weekend, Mr. Musk imposed limits on how many tweets its users would be able to read when using the app. He said the move was in response to other companies taking Twitter’s data in a process called “scraping.” Twitter’s users were soon met with messages that they had exceeded their “rate limit,” effectively making the app unusable after a short amount of time viewing posts. Many Twitter users became frustrated............ “If there’s ever been a more self-destructive owner of a multibillion-dollar enterprise who resents the very customers who determine the success of that enterprise, I am unaware of it,” Lou Paskalis, founder and chief executive of AJL Advisory, a marketing and advertising technology strategy firm, said of Mr. Musk and Twitter............ The latest turbulence at Twitter appears to have given Mr. Zuckerberg an opening for Threads. .......... Meta’s executives have discussed how to capitalize on the chaos at Twitter since last year, including by building a rival service. “Twitter is in crisis and Meta needs its mojo back,” one Meta employee wrote in an internal post last year, according to a report in December by The New York Times. “LET’S GO FOR THEIR BREAD AND BUTTER.”............. Meta remains the most credible competitor to Twitter, with deep pockets and an audience of more than three billion people who use Facebook, Instagram or its other apps. Other platforms trying to capitalize on Twitter’s weakness — such as Tumblr, Nostr, Spill, Mastodon and Bluesky — are all much smaller than Meta.......... In Twitter’s earliest days, Mr. Zuckerberg offered to purchase the company, but was rebuffed .

SCO summit: Putin says sanctions making Russia stronger The 2023 SCO summit is taking place virtually under India's leadership. ...... "Russia counters all these external sanctions, pressures and continues to develop as never before".......... He added that more than 80% of trade between Chinese and Russian people was in roubles and yuan, and urged other SCO members to follow the same process. .......... China, Russia and four Central Asian countries formed the SCO in 2001 as a countermeasure to limit the influence of the West in the region. India and Pakistan joined the group in 2017.



America’s Foes Are Joining Forces Iran is helping to manufacture drones for Russia. China operates a spy base in Cuba. ......... until the late 1940s, Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese nationalist leader, believed the United States “could be the champion of his cause” of independence from France. During World War II, Mr. Minh’s rebel army, the Viet Minh, worked alongside the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the C.I.A., in America’s fight against Japan. ......... But as Cold War tensions rose, the Truman administration disregarded its Asia experts — many of whom considered the Viet Minh a primarily nationalist rather than Communist movement — and backed French efforts to preserve its empire. By 1950, the Viet Minh were receiving arms from Communist China. ...... U.S. animosity, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev observed, pushed Cuba toward the U.S.S.R. “like an iron filing to a magnet.”

Monday, July 03, 2023

Dear Mark, Just Say No



A ‘Cage Match’ Between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg May Be No Joke Talks over a matchup between the two tech billionaires have progressed and the parameters of an event are taking shape......... In response, Mr. Zuckerberg posted on Instagram: “Send Me Location,” a reference to the catchphrase of Khabib Nurmagomedov, one of the U.F.C.’s most decorated athletes. ........... On Tuesday, he said, he was “on the phone with those two until 12:45 in the morning.” He added, “They both want to do it.” .......... The fight would be an exhibition match, Mr. White said, and outside official U.F.C. jurisdiction and rights deals, though he would help produce the event. The tech leaders have agreed there should be a charity component ........... One person close to Mr. Musk said that while he hated sports and didn’t appear to have the discipline to train regularly, no one could rule anything out with him. ........ If the matchup between Mr. Musk, 52, and Mr. Zuckerberg, 39, goes ahead, it would be a rare spectacle, even in the braggadocio-filled universe of the tech industry. While Steve Jobs and Bill Gates used to snipe at each other, the closest the tech world had before this to real sporting feuds was among billionaire yachtsmen like Larry Ellison of Oracle and Hasso Plattner of SAP. ........ But two wildly wealthy tech titans grappling, punching and kicking in a Las Vegas or Roman arena? No one would have dreamed it. ......... recently, Mr. Zuckerberg dispatched a team at Meta to build a competitor to Mr. Musk’s Twitter, code-named Project 92 ....... Apart from their 13-year age difference, Mr. Musk is said to be at least 70 pounds heavier than Mr. Zuckerberg. In official mixed martial arts bouts, athletes are generally matched up by weight. .........

“it will be the biggest fight in the history of combat sports.”

.......... Mr. Zuckerberg is especially familiar with the U.F.C. world. Over the past 18 months, he has embarked on a personal journey to bulk up and dove deep into Brazilian jujitsu, a grappling martial art in which competitors try to submit their opponent and which is used in U.F.C. fighting. ............. Mr. Zuckerberg started training on a lark mostly in his garage in 2021, where he built what he called a “mini academy” with a circle of friends who spar with him. He has said he appreciated that Brazilian jujitsu required “100 percent focus” and strategic thinking to defeat an opponent, rather than brute strength. .......... Mr. Zuckerberg has sought out martial arts experts, including Dave Camarillo, James Terry and Khai Wu. In May, he competed in his first public martial arts tournament in Redwood City, Calif., which he attended undercover — up until the moment he took off his hat and sunglasses to fight. He won gold and silver medals in the challenge. ......... Mr. Zuckerberg is likely in fighting shape. He has been on a strict workout regimen, going for runs and challenging friends and colleagues to beat his times ......... Last month, he posted a personal record for completing the “Murph” challenge, which requires completing a series of pull-ups, push-ups, running multiple miles and doing hundreds of squats, all while wearing weighted, military-grade body armor. ........ “Doing sports that basically require your full attention, I think, is really important to my mental health and the way to stay focused on everything I’m doing,” he said in a recent podcast episode. ......... Mr. Musk, on the other hand, has tweeted that he “almost never” works out and once suffered a back injury that required surgery after participating in an exhibition with a sumo wrestler. Last month, he said he had trained in “judo, Kyokushin (full contact)” — two Japanese martial arts — and “no rules streetfighting.” ......... “He made that very clear: ‘I’m not going to lose any weight,’” Mr. White said of Mr. Musk’s approach to the potential matchup. “‘Are we going to fight or are we not going to fight?’” Mr. White said Mr. Musk told him. ........ This week, Lex Fridman, a podcaster, posted photos of himself training judo with Mr. Musk. Mr. Fridman, who has also trained jujitsu with Mr. Zuckerberg


Last month, he posted a personal record for completing the “Murph” challenge, which requires completing a series of pull-ups, push-ups, running multiple miles and doing hundreds of squats, all while wearing weighted, military-grade body armor.

‘I Don’t Really Have a Business Plan’: How Elon Musk Wings It To a degree unseen in any other mogul, the world’s richest man acts on impulse and the belief that he is absolutely right......... He had no plan for how to finance or manage Twitter, Mr. Musk told a close associate. To push the $44 billion deal through, he turned to a small inner circle, including Jared Birchall, the head of his family office, and Alex Spiro, his personal lawyer. And when Twitter resisted his overtures, Mr. Musk pressured the company with a string of tweets — some mischievous, some barbed and all impulsive. ...... Tech billionaires such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Larry Page often make long-term plans and manage their affairs through a corporate machinery of lawyers, communications professionals and different advisers. Mr. Musk, 50, operates unlike any of them........... While Mr. Musk has successfully bet on electric cars, space travel and artificial intelligence, he often wings it in the biggest moments, eschews experts and relies almost solely on his own counsel ......... To operate this way, Mr. Musk has constructed an insular world of about 10 confidants who mostly agree with him and carry out his bidding. They include his younger brother, Kimbal Musk; Mr. Birchall; Mr. Spiro; and various chiefs of staff. To manage his many ideas, Mr. Musk continuously creates new companies, most of which are structured so that he remains in charge. His trusted lieutenants often work across his far-flung empire of businesses. .......... Relying on his small crew and hewing to his own thinking have enabled Mr. Musk to call the shots and conduct himself with few restraints, turning him into a Howard Hughes-like figure of the modern age — even as his seat-of-the-pants methods often create bedlam. ........... Mr. Musk works in a way that only the “most confident leaders do,” said Tim Draper, a venture capitalist who backed Mr. Musk’s electric automaker, Tesla, and his rocket company, SpaceX. “Think J.F.K., George Washington and Ronald Reagan.” ............ “I don’t really have a business plan,” he said. “I had a business plan way back in the Zip2 days. But these things are always wrong, so I just didn’t bother with business plans after that.” ........ In a live television appearance that year, Mr. Musk said the company would guarantee transactions on all auctions on eBay, the e-commerce site. It was the first time his engineers had heard about the feature, said a person who worked with him at the time. They had to race to make the feature a reality .......... In 2000, X.com’s board and the executive Peter Thiel ousted Mr. Musk over disagreements about the company’s direction. It was a painful exit for Mr. Musk, who soon embraced the idea that he — and he alone — should be in charge of future ventures. .......... “It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket,” he told Inc. Magazine in 2007. ......... As Mr. Musk established more companies, he collected associates he could deploy across many of the endeavors. .......... “When Elon says something, you have to pause and not immediately blurt out, ‘Well, that’s impossible,’ or, ‘There’s no way we’re going to do that. I don’t know how,’” she said. “So you zip it, and you think about it. And you find ways to get that done.” .............. Mr. Musk also began treating his portfolio of companies as a single organization. .......... In 2015, he and Sam Altman, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and a group of researchers founded OpenAI, a lab developing artificial intelligence to benefit humanity. Within months, Mr. Musk enlisted several OpenAI researchers to help with Tesla’s assisted driving system, Autopilot, two people with knowledge of the work said. He later appointed an OpenAI researcher, Andrej Karpathy, as Tesla’s senior director of artificial intelligence. ............. By 2016, Mr. Musk’s business empire was sprawling. In pressure-filled situations, the billionaire sometimes showed an ugly side of his management style........ Mr. Musk erupted, four people with knowledge of the incident said. Screaming into the phone, he threatened to sue the regulator if the investigation went forward, they said. (Mr. Musk backed down the next day, and the agency proceeded with the investigation.) ........... At Tesla, Mr. Musk pushed to ramp up manufacturing of the company’s Model 3 sedan. Believing only he could get the task done, he fired the executive in charge of manufacturing and decided to revamp the entire assembly line of the company’s factory in Fremont, Calif., himself. Often, he slept in a conference room at the factory. .......... On Aug. 2, 2018, he drafted an email to the company’s board with the subject line: “Offer to Take Tesla Private at $420.” It contained few details about how the offer would be funded. .......... Despite the cheerleading from insiders, Mr. Musk’s effort failed. The funding he had counted on to take Tesla private didn’t materialize. Tesla shareholders sued him for securities fraud in August 2018. A month later, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Mr. Musk with securities fraud. ............. “Elon’s approach of doing business is minimum level of documentation,” Deepak Ahuja, Tesla’s then-chief financial officer, said in a 2018 deposition. “He really does do business based on a verbal commitment and a handshake.” ............

Throughout many ups and downs, Mr. Musk had one constant: Twitter.

........... He typically tweets a dozen times or more in a day .......... In 2020, he eliminated Tesla’s communications department, partly because he felt he could go directly to fans and customers through Twitter
.



Mark Zuckerberg Would Like You to Know About His Workouts It’s been a tough run for Meta, and the boss seems to be getting out some aggression with military-style endurance routines and Brazilian jujitsu. ........... He looks — to use a scientific term — completely shredded. He also looks completely focused, like a guy in a Michael Bay movie who just finished a dangerous mission, or at least the Raya profile picture of the actor who plays that guy. .............. The challenge consists of a mile run, followed by 100 pull-ups, followed by 200 push-ups, followed by 300 squats, capped off with another mile run, all while wearing a 20-pound vest. ........... Just as eye popping as Mr. Zuckerberg’s arms was the time he said the brutal routine took him: under 40 minutes. That’s an elite time .......... That would be Brazilian jujitsu, the grueling grappling-based combat sport that is a fundamental part of mixed martial arts. In an August 2022 appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Mr. Zuckerberg said that he had taken up martial arts during the pandemic, training with Dave Camarillo, a well-known coach in the Bay Area........... “The crazy thing is it really is the best sport,” Mr. Zuckerberg told Mr. Rogan at the time. “There’s something that’s just so primal about it.” (Mr. Rogan is a martial arts enthusiast and Ultimate Fighting Championship commentator.) ............ sports like Brazilian jujitsu appeal to a desire among Silicon Valley types to reconnect with a primitive fighting spirit ........... “It’s like being on a playground with a bully but in this new framework,” she said. “It’s not quite choreographed but the stakes and the rules are unambiguous.” ......... On May 6, Mr. Zuckerberg competed in his first Brazilian jujitsu event, in Woodside, Calif., where he defeated an Uber engineer and won two medals, and lost consciousness. ............

a veteran Brazilian jujitsu fighter who refereed one of Mr. Zuckerberg’s matches, said that he halted the bout after he heard Mr. Zuckerberg start to snore, a sign of someone who has passed out in a choke hold.

........ For Mr. Zuckerberg, who has absorbed a number of metaphorical body blows over the past several years — including an election meddling scandal, a ghost town metaverse and widespread layoffs — it is perhaps a revealing time to start fighting back. ........... Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and chairman, has, in his 50s, developed remarkable biceps, linebacker shoulders and impressive vascularity.
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Sunday, August 11, 2019

My Blog Posts About Facebook




The Unfacebook (on August 28, 2007)
Microsoft, Google, Facebook: NY Tech MeetUp Has Arrived (on November 07, 2007)
What Should Facebook Do (on March 05, 2009)
Twitter And The Time Dimension (on March 06, 2009)
I Talked To Google Through Twitter And It Worked Like Magic (on March 26, 2009)
The Search Results, The Links, The Inbox, The Stream (on March 30, 2009)
Peter Thiel: Primitive Mind In The Tech Sector (on April 28, 2009)
Define Social Media (on April 29, 2009)
Stand Up Comedy: Thinking On Your Feet: 2.0 (on May 03, 2009)
Facebook Faceoff Firefox (on May 10, 2009)
Facebook's Ad Space Is Different (on May 23, 2009)
Is Google Wave Social Enough To Challenge Facebook, Twitter? (on June 02, 2009)
Facebook And Mashable: Social Media And Social Media Blog (on June 09, 2009)
Facebook Landgrab: A Friday Midnight Call (on June 13, 2009)
Twitter Should Hand Over Search To Google (on August 22, 2009)
The FriendFeed, Facebook Merger (on August 26, 2009)
The Next Big Thing In Social Networking (on October 14, 2009)
Google, Bing And Social Media (on October 22, 2009)
Time, Facebook Connect, And Comments (on December 18, 2009)

Why Will Facebook Itself Not Do Facebook Enterprise? (on April 15, 2010)
Graphic Reality (on April 23, 2010)
Zuckerberg Has Stature (on June 06, 2010)
Facebook Doing Location Is Like Google Doing Social, Almost (on August 17, 2010)
The Web Lifestyle And Company Cultures (on August 17, 2010)
Dennis Crowley, Facebook, And The Location Ecosystem (on August 22, 2010)
I Was In Chicago? Facebook Places Messing Up (on August 22, 2010)
Apple Trying To "Get" Social Now? (on September 02, 2010)
The Facebook Search Engine (on September 06, 2010)
Links And Likes (on September 06, 2010)
StartUp Anxiety For FourSquare? (on September 08, 2010)
Zuck In New Yorker (on September 16, 2010)
Google's Social Efforts (on September 17, 2010)
Adoption And Missed Opportunities (on September 30, 2010)
The Social Network: Before Seeing The Movie (on October 01, 2010)
I Gave In: Facebook: The Movie (on October 01, 2010)
Paradise City (on October 02, 2010)
To Make Sense Of The Facebook Movie (on October 04, 2010)
Facebook Needs To Revamp Email Next (on October 06, 2010)
Facebook's Location Patent (on October 07, 2010)
A Sophisticated Like Button (on October 13, 2010)
David Kirkpatrick: "Zuck Is Not An Asshole" (on October 13, 2010)
Google Under Attack? (on October 15, 2010)
Eduardo Saverin: Roommate Does Not Mean Best Friend (on October 15, 2010)
A Facebook Browser? A Facebook Operating System? (on October 21, 2010)
Social Graph, Social Concentric Circles (on October 28, 2010)
Unique URL For Facebook Updates (on October 30, 2010)
Dropio Acquired (on November 01, 2010)
Facebook Alternative? Dave McClure Is Full Of It (on November 01, 2010)
Facebook's Aggression (on November 03, 2010)
Facebook And Twitter: The Only Two That Count (on November 05, 2010)
Brazil On Orkut (on November 09, 2010)
The Idea Of A Social Browser (on November 09, 2010)
If You Could Take Your Data Center With You (on November 11, 2010)
Facebook's Gmail Killer? Wow (on November 12, 2010)
Should FourSquare Be Scared Of Facebook? (on November 14, 2010)
Facebook's Gmail Killer Email: The Expectation Is In The Air (on November 15, 2010)
Does Path Stand A Chance? (on November 15, 2010)
Facebook Messaging: Awesome (on November 15, 2010)
Facebook Messaging Event: My Favorite Question (on November 15, 2010)
Google, GroupOn: Facebook Needs To Go Public (on November 30, 2010)
Zuckerberg On CBS (on December 06, 2010)
Congrats Zuck (on December 16, 2010)
Mark Suster: The Social Network: Facebook To Fragmentation (on December 05, 2010)

The Twins Were Rowing Boats (on January 01, 2011)
FoodSpotting's Social Graph: FoodSpotting Day: January 15 (on January 04, 2011)
Facebook Could Do Well In Search (on January 04, 2011)
I Am On Facebook Messages Now (on January 07, 2011)
Facebook Going After Disqus Now? (on February 01, 2011)
Facebook Going Into Blog Comments Is Huge (on February 02, 2011)
When Zuck's Facebook Account Got Hacked (on February 14, 2011)
The Google/Facebook Of Microfinance (on February 14, 2011)
Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, FoodSpotting: Sharks (on February 18, 2011)
Facebook Comments To Go: Facebook Nailed It (on March 01, 2011)
Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn (on March 02, 2011)
Facebook Comments: First Impressions (on March 07, 2011)
Farmville's Got Competition (on March 07, 2011)
Facebook Location (on April 07, 2011)
9400 Workers In Six Years? Facebook Is Not Seeing Right (on April 27, 2011)
Facebook Getting Smarter With Social Ads (on April 27, 2011)
Facebook Valuation: Up And Up (on May 03, 2011)
Google's Social Search (on May 19, 2011)
Social Concentric Circles (on May 19, 2011)
Apple Going After Google's Cloud? Facebook Going After Apple With HTML5 (on June 16, 2011)
Path + Instagram + Color (on June 16, 2011)
Facebook's Next Major Breakthrough (on July 01, 2011)
Sheryl Sandberg: New Yorker Profile (on July 04, 2011)
The Facebook Skype Integration Is Huge (on July 06, 2011)
Facebook Videocalling: I Am On Now (on July 06, 2011)
Facebook Beats Google Plus On Design (on July 07, 2011)
Plus, Face (on July 15, 2011)
Finally Facebook Lets Me Reach Out To Non Friends (on September 14, 2011)
HTML5 And F8 (on September 19, 2011)
The Facebook Revamp Is Heartwarming (on September 24, 2011)
Sean Parker: Mystery Man (on September 30, 2011)
Sean Parker's 2009 Email To Spotify (on October 08, 2011)
Google Plus: What Went Wrong? (on October 18, 2011)
How To Recommit Facebook To The Power Users (on October 25, 2011)

Facebook And Big Data (on January 15, 2012)
So Facebook Went IPO (on February 02, 2012)
A Facebook Supported Online Parliament (on February 11, 2012)
Google Plus Is Google's Bing (on April 08, 2012)
Instagram: A Billion In Two Years (on April 09, 2012)
Now That Instagram Has Been Bought By Facebook (on April 10, 2012)
The Facebook IPO Fiasco (on June 27, 2012)
Facebook And Money (on July 11, 2012)
The Facebook Like Button: Not Working Right Now (on July 11, 2012)
Fred Wilson, Mark Zuckerberg And Mobile (on July 15, 2012)
Asana Just Like Facebook (on July 23, 2012)
The Facebook Phone (on July 25, 2012)
Facebook's Money Problem (on July 26, 2012)
No Facebook Phone (on July 27, 2012)
Facebook At $25: This Is Not A Glitch (on July 27, 2012)
The Commandos Behind Facebook's Growth (on July 30, 2012)
Facebook Eating Into Its Ecosystem (on July 31, 2012)
Facebook Doldrums (on August 02, 2012)
Facebook In 2022 (on August 05, 2012)
Facebook's Financial Woes Are Unnecessary (on August 13, 2012)
Facebook's Proposed Campus: Lots Of Open Space (on August 25, 2012)
Facebook's Search Option (on September 17, 2012)
Yahoo Facebook Search Alliance Would Be Interesting (on November 18, 2012)
Off Season April Fool Joke On Yahoo Facebook Search Deal (on November 19, 2012)
Facebook Search Can't Be Bing (on December 29, 2012)

Snapchat, Poke And Facebook (on January 01, 2013)
A Social Graph Can't Last 10 Years (on January 01, 2013)
Facebook's Graph Search: A Long Time Coming (on January 16, 2013)
Facebook Graph Search: The Alternative View (on January 23, 2013)
The Facebook Phone (on April 01, 2013)
A Case For A Facebook Phone (on April 04, 2013)
Snapchat (on December 14, 2013)
Facebook Drones: Super Exciting (on March 28, 2014)
Pinterest Dwarfing Facebook? (on October 18, 2014)

Facebook's Out On Free Internet Could Be A Mobile Browser (on January 08, 2016)
In Defence Of Facebook (on November 22, 2018)
Facebook's Blockchain Push: Libra (on June 19, 2019)


For more: http://technbiz.blogspot.com/search?q=facebook


Bits And Pieces (Of Me)

Being Called Sean Parker
http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2011/06/white-male-conspiracy-to-drive-me.html
http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2010/06/paul-graham-brad-feld-me-bbc.html
http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2010/09/netizen-has-arrived-link-from-avc.html (This blog post by Fred Wilson where he hyperlinked to my blog post was his most popular for the year)
http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2012/02/top-influencer-during-social-media-week.html
http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2011/06/robin-hood-my-german-nickname.html



CNN: Inside the partnership of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg


Friday, April 26, 2019

Kara Swisher: Journalista





What Should Facebook Do (2009)
Facebook's Ad Space Is Different (2009)
Discovering LinkedIn In 2019
In Defence Of Facebook (November 2018)


Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Facebook Is Facing A Backlash

And that is putting it mildly. Facebook sure is facing a major backlash. The global darling app is seen using nefarious means. This is kind of like when Microsoft came under the gun in the late 1990s with monopoly accusations. The beating created space for other tech companies that became big. Facebook might have hit its high point. It is hard for one company to ride multiple technology waves. Although I have thought Facebook might also have some interesting VR applications in mind.

Here is Zuck's latest missive. He is on the defensive.

Employees have begun to worry that the company won’t be able to achieve its biggest goals if users decide that Facebook isn’t trustworthy enough to hold their data. At the meeting on Tuesday, the mood was especially grim. One employee told a Bloomberg Businessweek reporter that the only time he’d felt as uncomfortable at work, or as responsible for the world’s problems, was the day Donald Trump won the presidency.


Friday, January 08, 2016

Facebook's Out On Free Internet Could Be A Mobile Browser

The second logo for AOL, used from 2006–2009
The second logo for AOL, used from 2006–2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Facebook’s First Effort at Free Internet Is Just Another Walled Garden
With its Aquila unmanned aircraft and laser technologies, Facebook has demonstrated the ability to deliver data at a rate of tens of gigabytes per second to a target the size of a coin — from 10 miles away. This is 10 times faster than existing land-based technologies. With interconnected drones, it will, within two or three years, most likely be able to provide Internet access to the most remote regions of the world....... And then there are low-orbit microsatellites, which Oneweb, SpaceX, and now Samsung are building. These beam Internet signals by laser to ground stations. In June, Oneweb announced that it had raised $500 million to develop and launch several hundred satellites that will provide global broadband coverage. ...... Google is launching Loons in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. It was also supposed to launch them in India, but India’s defense, aviation, and telecommunications ministries raised technical and security concerns and stopped the project. When the telecom providers figure out that with unlimited, inexpensive, Internet access, their cell and data businesses will be decimated, they too will place obstacles in the way of these technologies.
Free Basics protects net neutrality
To connect a billion people, India must choose facts over fiction ..... We have collections of free basic books. They’re called libraries. They don’t contain every book, but they still provide a world of good. ..... We have free basic healthcare. Public hospitals don’t offer every treatment, but they still save lives. ..... That’s why everyone also deserves access to free basic internet services. ..... We know that for every 10 people connected to the internet, roughly one is lifted out of poverty. We know that for India to make progress, more than 1 billion people need to be connected to the internet. ...... in India and more than 30 other countries. We launched Free Basics, a set of basic internet services for things like education, healthcare, jobs and communication that people can use without paying for data. ...... More than 35 operators have launched Free Basics and 15 million people have come online. And half the people who use Free Basics to go online for the first time pay to access the full internet within 30 days. ....... Free Basics is a bridge to the full internet and digital equality. .....

more than 30 countries have recognized Free Basics as a program consistent with net neutrality

and good for consumers. ........

Instead of recognizing the fact that Free Basics is opening up the whole internet, they continue to claim – falsely – that this will make the internet more like a walled garden.

..... Instead of recognizing that Free Basics fully respects net neutrality, they claim – falsely – the exact opposite. ...... This isn’t about Facebook’s commercial interests – there aren’t even any ads in the version of Facebook in Free Basics.

I am confused. What's free basics? What does it do? How? Is it restricted? Is it like AOL? AOL was not restricted. You could go all over the Internet through AOL. Most people didn't. They spent most of their time in AOL Messenger, but that's another story. Is Zuck's Free Basics like AOL? I don't get the impression he is using drones for the purpose.

I think the solution is two-fold. One, beam high speed internet from the sky straight to the smartphone. And have a Facebook browser on that phone that has code that communicates to the Facebook Internet beam from the Gods, and lets you go online, but the browser is customized for a Facebook experience. You still can go everywhere, but it looks and feels like Facebook. And Facebook serves ads.

That way Google could be competing to provide free internet from the high and above to the same smartphone. Next thing you know they are competing on speed. My broadband is faster than yours. The next logical step after that would be free smartphones. Sundar Pichai is so smart I think he could build $20 phones. Google could earn 20 bucks from ads in, like, 20 weeks flat.

Facebook should build a mobile browser.









Thursday, December 03, 2015

Some Strange Reactions To Zuck's Good Move

A lot of people seem to struggle with the fact that this really is Mark's money, and he may do as he pleases, and he is choosing to serve the needy. The fact that this LLC might invest and grow the money only means it will have more money to give away. Also, I hope he makes smart investments in some of the next big things. The companies getting the investments will also flourish. How is that bad news?

Also, if he is smart enough to create Facebook, he is perhaps smart enough to do good, maybe smarter than most. I read his manifesto, if it can be called that, and I found it mind blowing in its breadth and directness. Senators don't talk like that. And they seldom even talk about global problems.

1% of 50 billion is still a neat 500 million. It is not like Zuck will be starving.

I was never a big fan of Gates until he put forth his foundation. I am also really liking Zuck's move. I hope he starts giving at least 20% of his time to his foundation. There is much to do. Think of it this way. He created this 200 billion dollar company working full time. If he puts 20% of his time now into charity work, is that like him giving a few tens of billions just in time, not money? I think so. I mean, not literally. But his time is still worth billions. Time is money, as the adage goes. In this case it is worth billions.

I like Zuck. He is a good guy. His heart is in the right place. Maybe people should gripe about billionaires who DON'T give money! There are too many of those. Most we don't even hear about because, well, they don't show up in the news because they gave money to a good cause. Tell them it is a way to avoid taxes, and they might line up and down the street. That would be Mark's THIRD way of gifting!

I am personally appreciating 100% what Mark has done. Zuck is the talk. Zuck walks the walk. May his billions grow further so he can do even more. Has anyone ever given his newborn daughter a better gift? I doubt.

Zuck's Giveaway





How Mark Zuckerberg’s Altruism Helps Himself
Zuckerberg created an investment vehicle. ..... Zuckerberg and Ms. Chan did not set up a charitable foundation, which has nonprofit status. He created a limited liability company, one that has already reaped enormous benefits as public relations coup for himself. His P.R. return-on-investment dwarfs that of his Facebook stock. Mr. Zuckerberg was depicted in breathless, glowing terms for having,

in essence, moved money from one pocket to the other

. ........ The savvier move, Professor Fleischer explained, would be to have the L.L.C. donate the appreciated shares to charity, which would generate a deduction at fair market value of the stock without triggering any tax. ...... he amassed one of the greatest fortunes in the world — and is likely never to pay any taxes on it. ...... The superwealthy buy great public relations and adulation for donations that minimize their taxes. ..... What would $40 billion mean for job creation or infrastructure spending? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a budget of about $7 billion. ....... Of course, nobody thinks our government representatives do a good job of allocating resources. ..... They are tacit acknowledgments that no one could ever possibly spend $45 billion on himself or his family, and that the money isn’t really “his,” in a fundamental sense.
Mark Zuckerberg and the Rise of Philanthrocapitalism
Last year, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was founded in 2000, dispensed almost four billion dollars in grants. A big slug of this money went toward fighting diseases like H.I.V., malaria, polio, and tuberculosis, which kill millions of people in poor countries. Zuckerberg and Chan have also already donated hundreds of millions of dollars to various causes, including eradicating the Ebola virus. ....... Charitable giving on this scale makes modern capitalism, with all of its inequalities and injustices, seem somewhat more defensible. Having created hugely successful companies that have generated almost unimaginable wealth, Zuckerberg, Gates, and Buffett are sending a powerful message to Wall Street hedge-fund managers, Russian oligarchs, European industrialists, Arab oil sheiks, and anybody else who has accumulated a vast fortune: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.” ....... In 2010, Gates and Buffett challenged fellow members of the ultra-rich club to give away at least half of their wealth. Since then, more than a hundred billionaires have signed the “Giving Pledge.” ...... all of this charitable giving comes at a cost to the taxpayer and, arguably, to the broader democratic process ...... If Zuckerberg and Chan were to cash in their Facebook stock, rather than setting it aside for charity, they would have to pay capital-gains tax on the proceeds, money that could be used to fund government programs. If they willed their wealth to their descendants, then sizable estate taxes would become due on their deaths. By making charitable donations in the form of stock, they, and their heirs, will escape both of these levies. ......

the richest 0.01 per cent of American households—there are only about sixteen thousand of them—owned 11.2 per cent of all the wealth in the country, which is the highest share since 1916

..... (The richest 0.1 per cent of households owned twenty-two per cent of the total, which is more than the bottom ninety per cent of households combined.) ..... By transferring almost all of their fortunes to philanthropic organizations, billionaires like Zuckerberg and Gates are placing some very large chunks of wealth permanently outside the reaches of the Internal Revenue Service. As tax-exempt entities, these charitable enterprises won’t face any liabilities when they eventually sell the stock they receive. That means the country’s tax base shrinks. ....... The Gates Foundation, for example, has been a big financial supporter of charter schools, standardized testing, and the Common Core. ...... The more money billionaires give to their charitable foundations, which in most cases remain under their personal control, the more influence they will accumulate. And relatively speaking, anyway, the less influence everybody else will have.
Facebook CEO's donation is a game-changer
Philanthropy surged by 5.4 percent in 2014 to a record $358 billion ..... eight-figure donations are now so routine, they barely generate publicity ...... leading private banks now offer philanthropy support along with investments. ..... The amount of the Zuckerberg-Chan pledge is truly spectacular, but the way they're planning to use the money is just as important. .... Just as the printing press made it possible for an enormous portion of society to get access to information without all the cost and time of hand-written manuscripts, online learning could bring billions of people into the information age without our needing to put up lots and lots of buildings. ......

This could be the Ice Bucket Challenge of 2015 — and it could unleash not millions but billions.











Wednesday, December 02, 2015

Zuck's Giveaway

A letter to our daughter
While headlines often focus on what's wrong, in many ways the world is getting better. Health is improving. Poverty is shrinking. Knowledge is growing. People are connecting. Technological progress in every field means your life should be dramatically better than ours today. ..... Medicine has only been a real science for less than 100 years, and we've already seen complete cures for some diseases and good progress for others. As technology accelerates, we have a real shot at preventing, curing or managing all or most of the rest in the next 100 years. .... Today, most people die from five things -- heart disease, cancer, stroke, neurodegenerative and infectious diseases -- and we can make faster progress on these and other problems...... Once we recognize that your generation and your children's generation may not have to suffer from disease, we collectively have a responsibility to tilt our investments a bit more towards the future to make this reality. ...... one day, you or your children will see what we can only imagine: a world without suffering from disease....... Can we connect the world so you have access to every idea, person and opportunity? ..... We must build technology to make change. Many institutions invest money in these challenges, but

most progress comes from productivity gains through innovation

. ...... Our generation grew up in classrooms where we all learned the same things at the same pace regardless of our interests or needs. ..... Your generation will set goals for what you want to become -- like an engineer, health worker, writer or community leader. You'll have technology that understands how you learn best and where you need to focus. You'll advance quickly in subjects that interest you most, and get as much help as you need in your most challenging areas. You'll explore topics that aren't even offered in schools today. Your teachers will also have better tools and data to help you achieve your goals. .......

students around the world will be able to use personalized learning tools over the internet, even if they don't live near good schools.

..... personalized learning will not only help students in good schools, it will help provide more equal opportunity to anyone with an internet connection. ...... Many of the greatest opportunities for your generation will come from giving everyone access to the internet. ...... for the majority of people in the world, the internet can be a lifeline...... personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities ..... We will give 99% of our Facebook shares -- currently about $45 billion -- during our lives to advance this mission.







How to look at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
American tax code so aggressively encourages the formation of these kinds of foundations by the ultra-rich, but some such foundations have been effective. ..... the default dispensation of the money will be to waste it. For example, Zuckerberg donated $100 million to Newark schools to almost no effect, in a gift that was revealed to have been explicitly managed by Sheryl Sandberg to be timed to offset the negative publicity surrounding the release of the movie The Social Network. ...... the greatest threat to those intentions: The culture of Silicon Valley. Many of the loudest, most prominent voices within the tech industry, people who have Zuckerberg’s ear, are already thoughtlessly describing smart critique of the Initiative as “hating”, absurdly dismissing legitimate concerns as jealousy. ...... No matter how good their intentions, the net result of most such efforts has typically been neutral at best, and can sometimes be deeply destructive. The most valuable path may well be to simply invest this enormous pool of resources in the people and institutions that are already doing this work (including, yes, public institutions funded by tax dollars) and trust that they know their domains better than someone who’s already got a pretty demanding day job.
People are inexplicably upset about Mark Zuckerberg's decision to give away 99% of his fortune
setting up the organization as an LLC allows it to spend money on lobbying, earn money to reinvest in the organization, do joint ventures with fewer restrictions, and lets them give away money at a pace they determine rather than the mandatory 5% per year for non-profits. ...... billionaires in the U.S. who give their money away are implicitly saying that they know better how to help society than government does ..... What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow? ....... the white savior industrial complex has never been more pervasive in global culture.











Sheryl Sandberg




No, Mark Zuckerberg is not donating 99% of his Facebook stock to charity
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which has a mission of "advancing human potential and promoting equality," will indeed be able to donate to nonprofit organizations. But it will also be able to make investments in private companies. ....... profits it makes from any investments it makes "will be used to fund additional work to advance the mission."
'Dear Daddy...' Max Zuckerberg’s Letter back to her Father
there’s also 1.6 billion people on the planet who don’t have access to electricity, while 2.8 billion people rely on smelly and noxious biomass for cooking and fuel. How about we get them modern electricity grids and cheap reliable energy first?
Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad
In 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates announced that they would commit 95 percent of their wealth to charitable work. Together with Warren Buffett, they also created the Giving Pledge, which asks the richest people in the world to devote half or more of their fortunes to philanthropy. ...... Taking a page from the Gates family, they will use the money to pump up their nonprofit ...... The private foundation is an especially American style of charitable giving. Nonprofit groups in the United States play a disproportionately large role in public life, in part because American tax laws make it attractive for the rich to donate. Much of their wealth could otherwise be captured by capital gains and estate taxes. ...... Private spending on social welfare in the United States is four times the average in advanced economies ...... German shipping magnate Peter Krämer is one of the most vocal detractors of the pledge, and the American tradition of government-sponsored charity. ...... I find the US initiative highly problematic. You can write donations off in your taxes to a large degree in the USA. So the rich make a choice: Would I rather donate or pay taxes? The donors are taking the place of the state. That's unacceptable. ...... It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it's not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That's a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow? ....... On average in well-off countries, private social spending accounts for 2.6 percent of the gross domestic product. In the United States, private social spending is 11 percent. ..... Americans are some of the most charitable people in the world in part because there is a centuries-old tradition of private nonprofit groups helping people in lieu of the government. ........ Even Alexis de Tocqueville observed the trend in the 1830s, writing: “In every case, at the head of any new undertaking where in France you would find the government, or in England some great lord, in the United States you are sure to find an association." ...... He wrote that when the government taxes and gives to the poor, people feel slighted. When people voluntarily give to the poor, they feel better about themselves. ...... "One of the most significant consequences of this tax treatment of charitable giving is to give to the wealthiest taxpayers a disproportionate role in allocating public resources and influencing the direction that institutions will take." ....... In his book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," economist Thomas Piketty proposed a wealth tax as one way to address rising inequality — and transfer wealth from individuals to the state. In the United States, estate and gift taxes achieve some of that function by prodding people to donate their wealth instead of bequeathing it to their children. (Economists like Piketty tend to regard those measures as too modest.)
Mark Zuckerberg Will Donate Massive Fortune to Own Blinkered Worldview
It sounds angelic, but it will probably end up being, mostly, a big waste. ..... In other words, this multi-billion dollar estate will go to Zuck’s own organization, rather than, say, OxFam International or something. .... What does advancing human potential mean? What does promoting equality mean, exactly? Your guess is as good as mine, because Zuckerberg doesn’t really say, despite providing many bullet points ..... Some of this is just patently hellish—does anyone really want to experience “100 times more than we do today,” whatever that entails? Do you want to be “connected” to literally every “idea” and “person” in the world? This is a technocrat’s dream and an actual normal human being’s nightmare. But what do you expect from the man who made his fortune creating humankind’s greatest repository for racist memes and life-commodification? ...... Bill Gates, at least, has devoted his post-Microsoft life to the more tangible goal of eradicating Malaria. But Mark Zuckerberg, who struggles to grasp the basics of humanity and has become unfathomably rich by commodifying his deeply weird theories of social interaction, has a different idea of charity. ..... “Micro-schools”? Putting Facebook software in public schools? Software, software, more software. If you have a headache, take a software. Jimmy can’t read? Give him software. The conceit that code can solve all social ills and free the species from the chains of aging, illness, and flatulence is the height of Silicon Valley bullshit, and Zuckerberg’s massive giveaway will clearly be predicated on that conceit. ...... And perhaps we should also wonder whether instead of letting the mega-rich put their estates into “charities” of their own design, and thanking them profusely for it, we wouldn’t be better served by just taking it from their corpses...... With a 99% estate tax, would our public schools need saving from the likes of Mark Zuckerberg? ...... Update: BuzzFeed’s Alex Kantrowitz confirmed with Facebook PR that The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is not even an actual charitable organization, but rather structured as an LLC. Unlike a charitable trust, which is compelled to spend its money on charity, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, LLC will be able to spend its money on whatever it wants, including private, profit-generating investment.