[1/4] Ok this is really funny, check this out.
I was in the process of booking a flight via @OneTravel. Trying to make me book ASAP, they claimed: "38 people are looking at this flight".
Whoa, 38 is a lot, I have to hurry up. But first I have to check how they came up with 38 >>

1/ Thread: "A Silicon Valley Ponzi Scheme"

Thanks to @chamath for laying this out in Social Capital's 2018 annual letter.

I've always appreciated his outspokenness.

2/ The hardest thing for most startups today is the path to market: first finding product-market fit & a way to reach customers, then building a ruthless machine to acquire, monetize & retain them.

3/ Because of this, when the VC industry invests capital into fast growing startups today, the plurality (if not majority) of invested capital will go into user acquisition and ad spending, for better or worse— usually worse.

4/ Todays massive venture-backed advertising, sales, and user acquisition playbook has morphed into one that champions growth at any cost.

This is creating a big bill that will soon come due...

5/ Ad impressions and click-throughs are bid up to outrageous prices by startups flush with venture money, and prospective users demand more and more subsidized products to gain their initial attention.

Just published 15,000+ words on security keys. 🔐📱💻

With SIM attacks at their highest, now is a great time to take a closer look at your online security.

Removing SMS from your two-factor auth is a start, but authenticator apps have downsides too...

https://t.co/Dk0MPJHL2V

Just look at these headlines from recent SIM swap and port attacks.

It's all too established for attackers to find ways to socially engineer control of your phone number and start gaining control of your accounts.

I first talk about some general security tips.

Unfortunately not all websites let you remove your phone number from accounts.

You may consider migrating your phone carrier to @googlefi , which requires email account access to do anything (and can be locked down with security keys and even Advanced Protection)

Beyond SMS, I talk about issues that TOTP authenticator apps (the code generators) have as a form of two-factor auth. They're so, so much better than relying on SMS for your second factor but they still have issues like utilizing shared secrets and lacking phishing prevention.

Enter security keys!

Utilizing public key cryptography they don't have any shared secret between the client and the server. They prevent phishing by taking the website domain into account.

Even if you get tricked by a clone phishing website, your key won't.

The New York Times article about SlateStarCodex is finally out and it is...bad. There's a lot I could parse, but let me just walk you through one paragraph that is so misleading as to be

Take the first sentence of this paragraph. Now, technically the clause--"who proposed a link between race and IQ"--could simply modify "Murray" and have nothing to do w/ SSC.

But 99% of readers are going to assume that the clause actually defines SSC's alignment with Murray. In other words, the author is strongly implying that SSC shares Murray's racist beliefs.

And that would be big(!)...if it were at all true. It is not. Indeed, if you go to the hyperlink, you'll find that SSC's purported "alignment" has nothing to do with Murray's "Bell Curve."

What SSC & Murray agree about is that poverty is partly hereditable and thus very sticky, so much so that the proposition job retraining programs will meaningfully address mass economic disruption is a pie-in-the-sky fantasy.

Following up last year’s surprisingly popular "10 things you likely didn’t know about Darkroom" and your many requests for more tips, we put together a second edition that focuses on workflows in Darkroom. Click through to read it all right here in this thread.

1/10 Copy & Paste your Edits in Batch. Skip the hassles of re-applying each edit over and over again by copying your edits from the tap-and-hold library menu, History tool, or the Actions (•••) menu. Go to your other photos, and paste your edits onto them.

2/10 The joy of seeing your wonderful shot in motion is why we love Live Photos so much, and why we fully support editing and exporting them! While editing, Tap the “LIVE” button at the left top when viewing a Live Photo for playback.

3/10 Turn your iPhone to landscape for an iPad like editing experience, bringing some iPad exclusive functionality to iPhone. In the library grid we show the Library Sidebar, when viewing or editing we show the Photo Strip, and in the color tool we show our Color Histogram.

4/10 Manage while editing with the Photostrip. With the photo strip available on all devices in landscape orientation, you can skip & hop through your library while editing, or quickly compare multiple photos to find the one with the perfect expression or the perfect light.