skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So most developers would say "But my FB backend is just a simple proxy / transformation layer that parses the data and sends that to the front end".

Most would be correct - some flows like inviting friends to an app, or showing friends who also happen to use this app (for games, etc.) are so common that they're integrated into the Facebook SDK.

For performance reasons (both on Facebook's end and for the sake of user's experience, just in case his phone moved into a zone with inferior coverage) a fat network request was preferred to multitude of thin small ones - you couldn't really predict when the user would fancy inviting their friends, saving their score, looking at their achievements, or checking out friends who are in same town as them - so a 24-hour cache policy was instituted.
So, that's it? A third-party app that users explicitly granted access to their data misused that data and Facebook banned them? How is that a scandal?

If we discovered today that 6 years ago there was some malware on the Google Play Store that stole a bunch of user data and sold it (but the malware itself is long gone, having been removed from the Play Store 4 years ago), would there be a similar level of rage directed at Google?
That's easy to do, when the US pays for your defense.
Numerically, I'm worried about ~50% power loss. If you are converting your solar from DC to AC there's another loss.

There still might not be enough power loss to matter, but even with 70-80% efficiency you're still talking an extra 25-50% batteries over the ideal.
They're national socialists. They don't like aliens, want to be in control of everything they deem important and are perfectly willing to break the rule of law for the good of society. They gave everyone with more than one child free money. They also call everything 'national' instead of 'public'. They think that the EU is a hindrance and an enemy, as if Putin didn't exist (that the part I can't understand the most.)
That still doesn't really sound like the same thing. Highly specific targeting based on PII you already have is a very different prospect than harvesting PII for tens of millions of strangers.
Usually a replacement comes along to make it easier.

Slack vs irc

Facebook vs myspace vs geocities
It is because of Trump, this company somehow related to the Trump campaign and since he won people try to somehow make it as if he won illegally by fake news or Russia or whatever. All those things existed before the election and everybody knows about it but nobody cared, now suddenly they care.

I once developed an app for a new startup which required every permission including access to text messages, everything. Not because we needed this info, just because we were too lazy to figure out what permissions we actually need so we asked for everything. We had 3 million users within a year and we could see people bank accounts and passwords and whatnot. We actually started to remove those permissions just because we felt bad for our users and we didn't really need all this info. So my point is, this is not new or interesting, if Hillary would have won you would not hear a pip about the subject.
One of the sources Morawiecki draws from is Catholic social teaching, which, as can be expected, is not particularly friendly toward morally bankrupt, exploitative, and unrestrained incarnations of capitalism. So, really, opposition to that variety of destructive capitalism is not a left/right wing issue as it is erroneously often thought of in the United States. (The Church is also opposed to socialism as an inherently perverse model, but it is not categorically opposed to some government social programs, though I would suspect they are viewed as less than idea, preferring saner business practices and charity).
I concede you might be able to target a single person, but how exactly is that stealing data? It would sure take me a really long time to (one at a time with ads) get all that juicy-juicy data.
Cheers. I love these replies on hn. Me: bitch, bitch, complain. You: here I fixed that. :)
I've said it before and I'll say it again.

The focus should be on reproducing studies, not on peer-review.

Of course peer review can be of assistance in selecting studies worth putting the effort and funding into reproducing, but peer-review itself is extremely corrupted as a process, but since so many peoples careers depend on it , many of them will not talk about those issues.

I used to hold the peer-review and journal process on a pedestal. Then when working at a genetics lab I ended up having to read a lot of papers to get my sysadmin work done, and started realizing just how bad so many papers are, even though published in "reputable" journals.

For example, since publishing is seen as so vital to some people, I noticed many of them would "consult" on another groups paper just to get their name on the paper, even though they did almost no work, and then those same people would turn around and say stuff like "I've been published X times!" as a sort of reinforcement of authoritativeness (and as advertisement).

People are gaming the system because hardly anyone is actually checking them. Beyond that, the actual peer-review process itself seems to be very lackluster in rigor on it own.

I think there should be a certain amount of public research funding that should be earmarked to go directly to independent reproducability labs.

On top of it all, all this research that the public is funding is often behind a fucking paywall... and that's not just bullshit, it's theft and misuse of public funds. It should be required that publicly funded research should be publicly published, and therefore available for more eyes to see and review.
Most people don't know that WhatsApp and Instagram are a part of Facebook. Think it's as simple as that.
I'm curious about how the viewbotting is actually carried out and whether this impacts inline video ads on Youtube. I experimented with these video ads and did some very narrow targeting for our audience (searches related to dyslexia or ADHD). I know that a sizable percentage of people with dyslexia or ADHD love our tools (and our video ad contained a demo), but the click-through rate was next to nothing.

I wondered at the time if this was an issue with how Youtube does their targeting, or if it was something else. Seeing how popular viewbotting is, I now wonder if the bots end up getting categorized as relevant to different types of ads and are subsequently shown them. Of course, this would depress the click-through rate and the overall efficacy of Youtube video advertising.

Would be interested in others' thoughts.
This right here. My applications are typically used 8-10 hours a day by a small team of 5-10 users. Everything is done with Ember because Rails could not provide the User experience of a desktop app with the constant server rendering. Everyone loves the SPA when it rolled out and it’s still going strong 3 years later.
Do you use a credit card? Amazon most likely has your transaction history, even for B&M purchases, if you have your credit card on your account.
Retaining control is a positive because it allows you to change your mind and change what's being done with the data--or for that matter for legislation to limit wat you may do with the data.

Once the data is out of your control, there is no longer any way to control what is done with it. Don't think that Cambridge Analytics are the only ones who did this and who have this data. Shutting down CA won't stop the exported FB data from being put to all sorts of uses.
Not really but probably should have been
> No authorization was required - they gave them free, full access to the entire social graph

Source? All I can find is a scheme where they prompted people to sign in to a campaign site and grabbed the friend data that way. Icky as hell, but it's not obvious why that's "even worse" than CA.
From an earlier blog post https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/directx/2018/03/19/announci...

DXR will initially be used to supplement current rendering techniques such as screen space reflections, for example, to fill in data from geometry that’s either occluded or off-screen. This will lead to a material increase in visual quality for these effects in the near future. Over the next several years, however, we expect an increase in utilization of DXR for techniques that are simply impractical for rasterization, such as true global illumination.
I don't see how that works, retractions hurt quantity too, don't they?
It's fairly normal for east asian adults to still live with their parents. What's not so normal is not working, studying, or leaving the house.
This statement doesn't go far enough. Its clear that Cambridge Analytica mislead those of the purpose of the app that it asked to download it. It then used this data to improve advertising target ting during the election.

Facebook needs to come clean with whose data has been abused, and by whom.

This scandal is bigger than Cambridge Analytica. It also covers what the Obama team did in 2012 and 2008, and probably a whole host of others that we don't yet know about.

We have a right to know.

It appears to be that facebook may be in breach of many legal obligations that are present throughout the world (i.e. Australian Privacy Act, GDPR, etc).
Yeah, I just took this to mean they were mad they weren't, from their perspective, properly compensated for such valuable data.
Given their CEO's bragging about extortion, blackmail and prostitution/pandering I'd give their assurances almost no value at all.
Lytro captures true depth information. Sure, you can blur things in Photoshop, but it simply doesn't look like the real, depth-of-field based blur on real lenses, or the calculated one of light-field cameras. Re-focusing on photoshop is just a gimmic to fake the real thing (and if you're experienced in photography you can always tell)
I am. This morning qanon said FBI opened an investigation on him and his site opens a virus only on chrome, as of this morning.
What happens on YouTube? People can look at the "home" page and see recommended articles. Also, sites like HN and reddit can link back to articles.
lol touche
>He should call his bud Billy Gates and see how not playing 5 moves ahead with the government worked out.

It seems that it worker out for Bill Gates pretty well.
don't use centralized services like these... using facebook is like watching free-tv with adds.
Uber self-driving car crash raises questions about infrastructure’s readiness
This is difficult to read. I'm sure you have some good points in there.
Clean power is shaking up the global geopolitics of energy
There's a difference between "not fully understanding the functioning principles" of something and "not understanding what is potentially lethal about the functioning principles" of something. I messed around with plenty of things I barely understood as a kid but I knew where to draw the line when it came to messing around with things I didn't fully understand. I knew to hold off and do my research (basically, ask a competent adult) before messing around with anything to do with flammable and/or "powerful" chemicals (think heavy duty, old school brake dust cleaner from my grandfathers garage), electricity (this saved me from electrocuting myself with the capacitors in a CRT TV), and high temperatures.

There are certain things that will make sense to someone with a pretty extensive knowledge of the subject at hand but are still in the category where the factors at play should make one pause and consult a professional. One example would be people who hook up generators to their 220V dryer connection in order to power their house in an emergency (it's called backfeeding). Technically, that should work but if you don't think to throw the main you'll wind up injuring or killing the lineman expecting a deenergized line when they come to restore power to your neighborhood.
Unless you use one of the free options to block them, like uMatrix. It’s easy, it requires little or no effort. My bigger concern with FB is what they learn about me from people other than myself; I can’t control thst at all.
Be the Friction – Our Response to the New Lords of the Ring (Zuboff 2013)
>He used to be a well respected tech journalist.

I can't stop laughing at this remark. Robert Scoble is a shilling, sexist excuse for a "journalist."
Dropbox also provides a desktop application :
https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/desktop-application...

I've never used it but I know that it gets updated quite regularly without giving much information :
https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Desktop-client-builds/Stable...

And as you can see I'm not the only to ask for a changelog about this product :
> thomas l.14 : CHANGE LOOOOOOOOGS !

edit :
It is a shame if this announce only concerns the website and not the full environment :(
As well as services, a couple of other folders you might want in app are for decorators and form objects.

Form objects aren’t very common, but I’ve found it to be a really great patten for simplifying code. Strong params and ActiveRecord methods are fine for simple updates, but as soon as you get to something more complicated (e.g. what if you want validations to apply only for certain users?) it just becomes a mess - and you need to decide whether to have fat controllers or models.

The idea is you put all the logic for parsing params and updating records into a form object. It keeps controllers and models skinny, and can easily be tested without having to go through a controller. The reform gem provides a few helpers that make them easy:

https://github.com/trailblazer/reform/blob/master/README.md
Thanks for your feedback. I could see your point about the course being broad. With 6.0.0 the whole focus is on Python and CS. Congrats on "Getting the Google job", at which many a might folk have failed;
https://medium.com/@googleyasheck/i-didnt-get-hired-here-s-w...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9695102

Are you able to share the role that you got hired in to? Was it a SRE?

thanks
> I never understood that. I keep hearing about landlords ultimately sucking all the earnings of the society that lives on the land they own

When you buy a house, you're essentially becoming your own landlord.

Taxes aside, it doesn't make a difference if you rent, buy a house and live in it, or buy a house, rent it out, and rent another house for yourself.

The issue isn't being a landlord, but blocking the building of new housing when demand is going up so you can extract economic rents from society.
Google Is Working on Its Own Blockchain-Related Technology
Explaining the Rise of Donald Trump
Not at all true.

1. Zapier is very flexible if you're willing to write a bit of Python code.

2. Zapier integrates with really any API that supports webhooks, and even those that don't via a CLI and custom language support.

I don't work for Zapier (sadly). But I do use the product every day and have customized it to some pretty unique needs.
The author, Shoshana Zuboff, is one of the pioneers of the information age. Her book 1988 book "In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power" is a classic.

Zuboff's Laws:

1. Everything that can be automated will be automated.

2. Everything that can be informated will be informated.

3. In the absence of countervailing restrictions and sanctions, every digital application that can be used for surveillance and control will be used for surveillance and control, irrespective of its originating intention.

The Surveillance Paradigm : Be the friction - Our Response to the New Lords of the Ring, Von Shoshana Zuboff 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16642643

http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/the-surveillance-parad...
It seems like all of these issues are tied to identity. Is there not some anony0mouse security reporting site ala securedrop?
No, "we may monitor your communication for any business purpose" would not be consistent with that ruling. There's no chance "any business purpose" would qualify as a legitimate reason for monitoring communications.

From the PDF press release linked on the COE site:

"The national courts [have not] carried out a sufficient assessment of whether there had been legitimate reasons to justify monitoring Mr Bărbulescu’s ommunications."

"Neither of the national courts had sufficiently examined whether the aim pursued by the employer could have been achieved by less intrusive methods than accessing the contents of Mr Bărbulescu’s communications."

In other words: You need a legitimate reason for accessing your employees' communication and you need to consider less intrusive ways of achieving your aim first.

So your boss is not allowed to just read your mail whenever he likes. Or maybe he is, if you're working in the US. But European courts, especially the international ones, are very strict about privacy and protecting personal rights.
The SQL I Love. Efficient pagination of a table with 100M records
people who cook their own food are at least aware of the amounts of oil/butter/whatever culprit you want to claim (salt? sugar?). when you eat fast food, you have no idea how much of these ingredients you're consuming (usually more than you would have used if you had made a similar meal yourself) and they're often labmade replacements with unclear side effects (for example, during the fat-free craze of the early 00s, a commonly used additive (olestra) ended up causing anal leakage and ended up being illegal in several countries). butter won't do that.
I'm in my mid-thirties who has graduated years ago but still struggling with motivation and maintaining updates with technological advancements.

Your points were really motivating to me.

Will you announce it here when you have that book ready? I'm looking forward to buy it!
Exactly! And inflation is just another form of taxes.
> I say masks, because unlike many people I seem to meet, I do not have any enthusiasm for consumption, decadence and self-gratification.

You sound insufferable. It's fine not to have in common with people, but pretending you can't get along with others because of their "consumption, decadence, and self-gratification" sounds like nothing more than an excuse for poor social skills.

Every day I break bread with people I have almost nothing in common with, and still manage to have interesting and pleasant conversations. I don't feel the need to collapse into a ball of self-righteous contempt.
It's very interesting to see how little Gmail accounts fetch for, considering what other access can be chained from that. Is this low figure driven by Gmail's additional security, or is this just due to the high rate of fake/inactive accounts?
You make it sound like it's just a little check box that either means data everywhere or not. There's a lot more to it than that.
In the same way that correcting a headline seems to hurt media.
> The focus should be on reproducing studies, not on peer-review

The two aren't separable, since a key part of peer review is assuring that a published study is, in principle, reproducible. You can't focus on reproduction withoit focussing on peer review.
> Yup, and that's highly illegal

Which part? Powering your house w/out transfer switch (when disconnected to the utility), or actually back-feeding power to the utility? I would be surprised if the former was uniformly illegal across the US, but the latter certainly is.
Calgary man believes he's cracked the mysterious Voynich Manuscript
https://wigle.net/
A few miles of shallow water does not another continent make.
> They didn't tell Facebook what they were doing

Source?
Fear can be a very useful thing to avoid something as catastrophic as nuclear war.
> Are you being serious?

Yes. Check out the DNC chairman's book on it.
Skimming the article, I stumbled upon its excellent conclusion:

"‘Nuff said"

(p. xliv)

Alex Kozinski truly is not a typical judge.
YouTube Will ‘Frustrate’ Some Users with Ads So They Pay for Music
This piece aged fairly well.

Confession: despite being a rabid Beatles fan for 20 years, I only really listened to John Lennon’s first solo album this week. I think I dismissed it partly because it has a silly name (Plastic Ono Band). It is fantastic.

The thing about The Beatles is that their catalogue underwrites our cultural obsession with ‘albums’, which is a ridiculous standard to impose on everything else. Much fairer to judge songwriters on their accumulation of worthy tracks spread over many years and projects, even if they never come together in one perfect album. Beatles solo careers are prime victims of this unfortunate standard.
Perl is not an acronym, Larry wanted to call it Pearl, but there was already a language by that name.

Also we tend to prefer Perl 6 to be spelled with a non-breaking space before the 6. [U+A0]

Perl 6 has features from many sources, so it is indeed a departure from Lisp.
What's even worse is that they don't work together. If all all ROMs are based on AOSP, why can't they work together to get device compatibility? For example, why can't Lineage use Omni's code to support 'potter', and Omni use Lineage to support 'gemini'?

And then you have all the single developers working on their own devices. Why can't Lineage pull their work, do basic code review, and publish them as "beta" (and you get free beta testers)?
I feel this is just an opportunity for the conventional media to bring down social media, because the latter has certainly hurt the former's powers to control narratives and agenda, affecting and this affecting the ad revenues. (any surprise why $TWTR and $SNAP took a hit along with $FB?)

Facebook has eaten into Mainstream Media ad revenues, and literally is controlling how news is published, because its platform is so powerful.

When Cambridge Analytica stories first broke out, even I had the same reaction. I hope people stop overreacting as if this never happened earlier.
Was it that you needed any degree or did you specifically need a CS degree for your visa? Which country was the visa for?
In addition, out of sauces ketchup is really the odd one out, most normal sauces and dressings are not supposed to contain sugar at all.
Belt and suspenders. There should be an assignment clause -- if not, the agreement is totally defective! The assignment clause is of course the key part. But there are also further assurances, that make it easier for the company to "protect its rights" as it were. It's about risk shifting. If there's a dispute, how hard does the company vs the employee have to work to make out a claim and prove damages. The rationale for company-favorable clauses is that the company has more to protect, and has the same relationship with every employee -- thus an accumulation of risks. I personally have decided I no longer view proprietary software as an ethical business model, and I would never agree to assign my rights to such a company under most circumstances. But that is a personal decision that also makes me unemployable, ahah.
A Premium Enterprise support Platinum Plan for $500/mo can be a big seller and allegedly the minimum expense report you can file in some large orgs [1].

1. https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/08/13/doubling-saas-revenue/
> First the evidence has to be established and legitimized without being attached to Trump at all

It already has been. The bread crumbs have been laid out for years now, and all it takes is looking back at all the legitimate outlets that were at the time slightly mystified by the occurrences.

We have outlets like Tech Crunch, The New York Times, Wall St. Journal, etc. all reporting on these things as they happened (as early as in 2009), and we are now able to piece them together thanks in part to the Paradise Papers.

> I think we need to look into them for their data practices in general. Way beyond this case.

Absolutely agreed.