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Trump has emphatically denied ties to Russia - a claim refuted by his Twitter feed and a cursory Google search. Putin says his government had nothing to do with the hack of the DNC computers, even though it carelessly left a trail of crumbs tracing back to his intelligence services. The cunning liar is exploiting the blundering one.
Franklin Foer
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Brazil is strewn with ruins of projects - refineries, power plants - begun but never finished. Most of this investment never landed in places or industries that really meshed with the trajectory of the global economy. This wasn't state-of-the art industrial policy. The projects seemed curiously nostalgic.
Franklin Foer
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Google's ability to pick winners and losers in the information world is a menace. These companies have the ability to determine which media companies are successful and which ones are failures. If I adopt a business plan that doesn't line up with Google's, then they're not going to reward me.
Franklin Foer
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The first book advance I got was paid out in thirds. And over time, as I've had different deals, the advances get chopped up into ever-smaller parcels.
Franklin Foer
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I grew up using maps and having a sense of direction, and now I have a phone. I used to try to remember numbers, and now I... can just call them up instantly. And that's great. But what's happening right now is that we're in a phase of human evolution where we're merging with machines.
Franklin Foer
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Who can complain about the price that Google is charging you? Or who can complain about Amazon's prices; they are simply lower than the competition's. And that's why I think we need to shift back to a more Brandeisian conception of antitrust, where we consider values other than simply efficiency and low prices.
Franklin Foer
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Trump considers himself such a virile example of masculinity that he's qualified to serve as the ultimate arbiter of femininity. He relishes judging women on the basis of their looks, which he seems to believe amounts to the sum of their character.
Franklin Foer
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Google helps us sort the Internet by providing a sense of hierarchy to information. Facebook uses its algorithms and its intricate understanding of our social circles to filter the news we encounter. Amazon bestrides book publishing with its overwhelming hold on that market.
Franklin Foer
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An article in the 'Moscow Times' described Trump as the city's first grand builder since Stalin.
Franklin Foer
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Michael Bradley has the stuff of leadership; he works hard and can break up the opponent's play. However, that's not enough to justify his philanthropic attitude towards possession, the generous portion of balls that he contributes to his foes. His sloppiness constantly culminates in unnecessary goals.
Franklin Foer
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When the mayor of Sao Paulo wanted to increase bus fare by 21 centavos in 2013, the country erupted in the largest mass protests in its history. It wasn't a dramatic hike - just nine cents - but a perfect symbol of the increasing burdens on the working poor, forced to fend with an inadequate system, insensitive to their plight.
Franklin Foer
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I have really no desire to go back into management ever again.
Franklin Foer
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We think of Netflix as a great personalization machine. It understands how you love French midcentury cinema and British murder mysteries, so examples of those pop up in your personalization engine. But you're also getting fed a lot of Netflix content.
Franklin Foer
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There are, in fact, apps you can use to measure how many times you check your phone, and I shudder to think how many times I check my phone. I'm sure it would be probably in the hundreds of times that I check over the course of the day.
Franklin Foer
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There's no reason why there needs to be one search engine or one social network or one store that we buy all of our crap from. It's possible to imagine a world in which there's actually competition.
Franklin Foer
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The Internet was invented in an age when our entire approach to regulation has been extremely lax, and so you'd think, 'OK, there might be a law on the books that governs how these corporations can handle our data.'
Franklin Foer
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Not even Trump's father's wealth, nor his father's faith in his son's destiny, could save Trump from incessant discipline. At the age of 13, he was shipped off to the New York Military Academy, which employed brutal tactics for the remaking of delinquent character, even resorting to violence to assert control over the boys.
Franklin Foer
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If you game Facebook and Google in the right way, then you can achieve a mass audience.
Franklin Foer
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Having a friend in the Kremlin would help Trump fulfill his longtime dream of planting his name in the Moscow skyline - a dream that he pursued even as he organized his presidential campaign.
Franklin Foer
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Hunting for malware requires highly specialized knowledge of the intricacies of the domain name system - the protocol that allows us to type email addresses and website names to initiate communication. DNS enables our words to set in motion a chain of connections between servers, which in turn delivers the results we desire.
Franklin Foer
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Our faith in technology is no longer fully consistent with our belief in liberty.
Franklin Foer
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The biggest problem is that Facebook and Google are these giant feedback loops that give people what they want to hear. And when you use them in a world where your biases are being constantly confirmed, you become susceptible to fake news, propaganda, demagoguery.
Franklin Foer
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Putin has made a habit of supporting far-right candidates who undermine his foes in Europe; perhaps he never could have imagined such a character taking root on American soil. Trump's reasons for aligning with Putin have been more innocent, if no less dangerous.
Franklin Foer
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I'd actually argue that the best thing to happen to the 'Washington Post' was hiring Marty Baron, maybe the greatest newspaper editor of his generation.
Franklin Foer
