54 replies to this topic

[stocks]

The push by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to expand the number of visas for high-tech foreign workers is an attempt to dilute a lucrative job market with cheap, indentured labor.

H1-B Visas: Clever Trick for Cheap Tech Talent

The Chamber of Commerce, Silicon Valley, and the WSJ crowd do not claim America is experiencing labor shortages, given that we are suffering with the largest number of non-working adults in recent history.

Business people most certainly do not want illegal aliens joining unions and organizing for higher wages once they become legal residents.

And they do not want their own children in “diverse” schools where large numbers of impoverished, non-English-speaking immigrants might “enrich” the educational landscape.

Go to Palo Alto or Mountain View and then contrast it with Redwood City: Metrosexuals and Pajama Boy techies make a great deal of money in the former, while their low-paid gardeners and nannies crowd into the latter. And never the twain seems to meet, if at all possible.

They want illegal aliens working in their factories, hotels, restaurants, and fields, but not living next door.



http://www.nationalr...hanson/page/0/1

Edited by stocks, 17 June 2014 - 07:31 AM.

[stocks]

Facebook Fraud - "Facebook's revenue is based on fake likes. Most of the likes on my page are fake.'

I know first-hand that Facebook's advertising model is deeply flawed. When I paid to promote my page I gained 80,000 followers in developing countries who didn't care about the product.

A click farm is a form of click fraud, where a large group of low-paid workers is hired to click on paid advertising links for the click fraudster. The workers click the links, surf the target website for a period of time, and possibly sign up
for newsletters prior to clicking another link.

Facebook ranking of universities -- Facebook "likes"

3,300,000 Harvard likes came from Dhaka, Bangladesh;

1,500,000 likes for Yale came from Dhaka, Bangladesh;

877,000 likes for Yale came from Addis Abeba, Ethopia.



Read more at http://globaleconomi...fTwTcS3DHjsE.99

[uburack]

Facebook Fraud - "Facebook's revenue is based on fake likes. Most of the likes on my page are fake.'

I know first-hand that Facebook's advertising model is deeply flawed. When I paid to promote my page I gained 80,000 followers in developing countries who didn't care about the product.

A click farm is a form of click fraud, where a large group of low-paid workers is hired to click on paid advertising links for the click fraudster. The workers click the links, surf the target website for a period of time, and possibly sign up
for newsletters prior to clicking another link.

Facebook ranking of universities -- Facebook "likes"

3,300,000 Harvard likes came from Dhaka, Bangladesh;

1,500,000 likes for Yale came from Dhaka, Bangladesh;

877,000 likes for Yale came from Addis Abeba, Ethopia.



Read more at http://globaleconomi...fTwTcS3DHjsE.99

Just another anecdotal example here. I have a product with a Facebook page and I have paid to have my page promoted. I use heavily filtered ad targeting. From what I can see it has been very successful in targeting and identifying the people I want. More so than I imagined. None of my likes have come from those countries so that could be the difference, vs. an ad campaign running without using filters or targets. ?

edit: I will say that some of the profiles are extremely bogus looking with funny names etc but hey some people are just like that.

Edited by uburack, 18 June 2014 - 08:57 AM.

[stocks]

Everything We Know About Facebook's Secret Mood Manipulation Experiment

For one week in January 2012, data scientists skewed what almost 700,000 Facebook users saw when they logged into its service. Some people were shown content with a preponderance of happy and positive words; some were shown content analyzed as sadder than average. And when the week was over, these manipulated users were more likely to post either especially positive or negative words themselves.

This tinkering was just revealed as part of a new study, published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Many previous studies have used Facebook data to examine “emotional contagion,” as this one did. This study is different because, while other studies have observed Facebook user data, this one set out to manipulate it.


http://www.theatlant...eriment/373648/

[stocks]

Hole in Apple fanboy’s heart can only be filled by new shiny object

The Apple Watch, sufficiently costly and dorky to make it a status symbol for the hardest-core Apple fanboys and ignorable by everyone else.


http://hotair.com/ar...w-shiny-object/

[stocks]

The Mirage of the 'New Economy'

Youth addiction to online gaming has seriously damaged the physical fitness and academic achievement of a whole generation. It is amazing that government is not regulating it like other harmful and addictive yet entertaining products like cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, etc. This is really due to the aura that anything online has in today's world. One day, governments and consumers will realize that the Internet world is just like the physical world, where some products are useful, some frivolous and some so harmful they need to regulated.

High Tech CEO's strictly limit their children’s screen time, often banning all gadgets on school nights, and allocating ascetic time limits on weekends.

Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired and now chief executive of 3D Robotics, a drone maker, has instituted time limits and parental controls on every device in his home. “My kids accuse me and my wife of being fascists and overly concerned about tech, and they say that none of their friends have the same rules,” he said of his five children, 6 to 17. “That’s because we have seen the dangers of technology firsthand. I’ve seen it in myself, I don’t want to see that happen to my kids.”

The dangers he is referring to include exposure to harmful content like pornography, bullying from other kids, and perhaps worse of all, becoming addicted to their devices, just like their parents.



http://www.nytimes.c...ech-parent.html

[stocks]

The push by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to expand the number of visas for high-tech foreign workers is an attempt to dilute a lucrative job market with cheap, indentured labor.

H1-B Visas: Clever Trick for Cheap Tech Talent

The Chamber of Commerce, Silicon Valley, and the WSJ crowd do not claim America is experiencing labor shortages, given that we are suffering with the largest number of non-working adults in recent history.

Business people most certainly do not want illegal aliens joining unions and organizing for higher wages once they become legal residents.

And they do not want their own children in “diverse” schools where large numbers of impoverished, non-English-speaking immigrants might “enrich” the educational landscape.

They want illegal aliens working in their factories, hotels, restaurants, and fields, but not living next door.

Senator Sessions blasts Mark Zuckerberg on the senate floor.

Today, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) blasted pro-amnesty billionaires whose fondness for open borders ends at the doors of their "gated compounds and fenced-off communities," noting how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg bought other four houses surrounding his own just because he wanted "a little privacy."

Sessions began by rebuking Zuckerberg - one of the billionaire elites he has dubbed "Masters of the Universe" - for going to Mexico City and giving a speech claiming that America's immigration policy is "strange" and "unfit for today's world."

"Well, the 'masters of the universe' are very fond of open borders as long as these open borders don't extend to their gated compounds and fenced-off estates," Sessions said.


http://nation.foxnew...gated-compounds

[stocks]

Leading tech investors warn of bubble risk 'unprecedented since 1999'.

Burn rates – the amount of money a startup is spending – are “sky high all over the US startup sector right now”.

“We have multiple portfolio companies burning multiple millions of dollars a month."

The comments come after a new generation of tech companies have attracted record levels of investments at levels that give the profitless businesses eye-watering valuations.

In August Snapchat, the social messaging service, was valued at $10bn after a new round of funding. The free service’s fans send 500m self-deleting messages a day, but Snapchat has yet to declare how it intends to make money. Among the other big tech valuations in recent months are Uber, the taxi app service, which was valued at $18bn after its last round of funding in June, and Airbnb, the short term rentals service, which was valued at $10bn in April.

Read more at http://globaleconomi...dDv4qCU5LzDs.99

[stocks]

IT Industry at War with the Middle Class

Increasing the number of foreign Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workers crowds out American STEM workers in addition to “discouraging US students from going into these fields, and these fields are really important stepping stones to the middle class.” In reality, most of the foreign workers they’re bringing in, have no more than ordinary skills and are paid cheaper wages, so this is really about bringing in cheaper labor.

Class warfare is being practiced in this country, and not just by the president and Democrats. The first front in that war is Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is warring “against the middle class and against those who are aspiring upward mobility into the middle class from the working class.”


http://www.breitbart...th-Middle-Class

[stocks]

Google uses climate change as a pretext for corporate welfare

If Google was “real” about this issue, it should forego ALL subsidies, and also pay ALL fines due to bird incineration and mincing.

… nearly all of Google’s solar and wind farms are located in states with renewable-energy mandates, which create opportunities for politically mediated profit-making

Most of Google’s renewable investments qualify for a federal investment tax credit that covers 30% of the cost. Its $450 million investment in rooftop solar-systems also benefits from state incentives such as “net-metering” laws. This hidden subsidy compensates ratepayers for power they remit to the grid at the retail rate, which can be three times as much as the wholesale price of electricity. Net-metering allows solar companies to charge higher rates to homeowners who lease their panels, and thus for investors like Google to reap larger profits.


http://joannenova.co...n-rent-seekers/