skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Mark Zukerberg has a foundation with his wife, and they have vowed to donate 99% of their net worth to it [1]. This is Bill and Melinda Gates level; they also pledged to donate the vast majority of their wealth (95%).

Sergey cheated on his wife with a Google employee (who was like 20 years younger and dating another executive) and got a widely publicized divorce [2]. We don't have transcripts for Sergey and Page, but how do we know they didn't also think their users were "dumb fucks", or weren't nice people in college?

I am of the opinion that to become a billionaire you have to step on a lot of people; I am not one to think that Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are moral guides for anyone, and this very much applies to Page and Brin too.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priscilla_Chan_(philanthropist...

[2]: http://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/entertainment/life-aft...

EDIT:

> I honestly couldn't even pin down what his ethical foundations are, given that they seem to swing with the tides of public opinion and what PR message is currently convenient

Two points on this:

1. Google's mission is to "organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful". What's the "ethical foundation" behind that? Do we know this will make the world a better place? "Useful" for whom?

2. Both Google and Facebook are advertising companies. They optimize to sell ads.
So Trump is saying we don't want to buy any of your tech products but please continue to be our garbage dump. Nice.
> For students google log in is essential. Having to create an account, then click a link in an email, then use a site is too hard.

Where the hell do you teach comp-sci?!
Doesn't Zuckerberg control FB? Didn't he also control it in all of it's past?

All of the teams of people you mentioned work for him. They take direction from him, and ultimately the buck stops there.
I see, I gored your sacred cow.
It is well know that all the trades and professions had their private languages so they could discuss things and their customers did not know what they discussed.
Latin for the church and medical trades. Lawyers still have their arcane tongue.
Most of the others, butchers, tinkers, bakers etc had their trade language. I am from England and had a butcher and a baker in my family, and they told me bits of their language. True, it was not as comprehensive as English.
I also grew up in a Yiddish speaking family, as my father was a major on the Burma Road and we housed a family of displaced persons from Poland. Mother, Father, Bubba, and two young boys - all Jewish, and me and my Mom - I soaked up yiddish and by the time the war was over I could speak it as well as most kids of 9.
I used to startle the Jewish shop keepers, after WW2, when we emigrated to Canada, when this little Brit kid could know whatever they said. They were in the habit of carrying on conversations, secure in their privacy - Hah.

It stood me in good stead because I made many Jewish friends in Toronto in high school and college, because in those days there was a major barrier to many Jewish people in business circles. No brokers etc. This all changed in the mid 60's after a few prosecutions, and now it is wide open to all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craft
> But the pro-gun lobby in the US are bringing all of this on themselves.

I wrote a much longer reply but decided that arguing this topic here is probably not appropriate. Suffice it to say that the notion that the "pro-gun lobby" is in any way opposed to safe ownership of guns or supports mass shootings or other criminal gun violence is absurd.
My archive was ready faster than I could log into my webmail and the massive 12kb archive downloaded in less than a second on the hotel internet.
>I can't remember them all

I can't remember most of my passwords, if I could that would be a serious security issue. Password managers are a must in this day and age.
Do you see them in this format when you sign up for Google Drive, or do you simply see one of those checkboxes that say "I have read and agree to Terms and Conditions," with a link to a huge wall of text of legalese?

I have been using Google Drive for many years and I was never aware of these restrictions. I wonder how many Drive users were aware before seeing this article. If it is less than 50% (and I would be surprised if it isn't) it is Google's fault not individual users.
In the US and most Western countries, it takes a lot of work to do what you’re describing, and there would be pushback. Going after a few people is no problem, but a whole population? No. China can do it because it’s an autocracy, with a long history of autocratic rule, strong central government and weak institutions. In the US politicians have to get re-elected.
At the March, Blame Placed on the NRA – Not the Shooter or Authorities' Failures
I remember building very innocent Facebook Apps for Marketing purposes back in 2011-14 and being very annoyed at the privacy changes as they made our "cute" usecases basically impossible. At the time I always imagined Facebook would monitor their API usage to prevent aggressive mining as this would surely be against their own interests, but as it seems they didn't care.

If only someone would have used this hole to seed something like Diaspora to help break the critical mass problem for those kinds of projects.
The biggest problem with C is not the language but the fact that the C standard library is so anemic. Where's the "Boost" for C?
That's because the melody and the lyrics are recognized independently, each of them are still subject to the limits.
She could use MEGA, that has encryption.

Or just to piss off Google, she could encrypt the file before sharing it. But that might be too technical for sender, and receiver.

I once tried to send a zip file of a webapp I coded (HTML and JS) through GMail, and it wouldn't let me, because those 2 files are considered harmful, even if inside a zip. So I renamed the file's extension to "itsazip" and it worked...

Maybe she should just change the video file's extension to ".notporn"
I write software for a living, you'd probably be better off asking a patent attorney.

But as a software developer, I have developed a sense of exploring the arguments people use, to inspect their underlying mechanisms of convincing other people with those arguments.

Pleas to emotion, followed by extreme forecasts of the slippery slope, are usually the province of concern trolls and people who would generally just stop the conversation. People who truly experience those emotions, and accurately predict such a slippery slope don't resort to conflating all dissent with ignorance. They provide context that differentiates their arguments from concern trolling.
> Isn't it?

Not strictly.. food security is a valid concern.

> How many billions of totally-not-subsidy are you not subsidizing?

Roughly: 2 Billion on an export crop that's worth 35 Billion at market. Is that noncompetitive support to spurn dumping in a foreign market? Obviously not, and it's why China didn't go to the WTO already.
Well, it's a reason as good as any other to start paying good salaries AND good raises, instead of just the former. And don't skim on the benefits.

As a general rule, treat your employees fairly (which includes updating their salaries up to market value, as often as needed) and, lo and behold, they will stay. There is a lot of talk about changing jobs because of a lack of challenge, wanting to try new technologies, etc., but 99% of the time, it's about money (and benefits).

Admittedly, this idea might not be very well received by most companies.
Wonder how close this is to the techniques apps like Office Lens use. I am always amazed to the extreme angles I can take a photo and the app still makes it end up as perfect pdf.
I agree. Now what about engineers at Google, especially with their drone program partnership with the DOD? How about engineers at Uber making cars that are unfit for the road?Engineers in general need to either grow a spine and a conscience fast, or they need enforced ethical standards. It’s. It just Facebook, although Facebook is particularly nasty, and there is no sign of people giving upon their cushy jobs to do the right thing.

Mostly they seem happy to go public while babbling about how they’re “changing the world” as in that pitiful letter from DropBox.
It's worth noting the linking exception for the GNAT runtime:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception
It's partly how we view the cultures. Popular 'chinese' food is also supposed to be cheap, but we have a similar view of their manufactured goods. Japanese food is expensive, we consider their manufactured goods as high quality.

Meanwhile, Chinese food is some of the most highly regarded food in the world.

Mexican food... probably gonna expect it to be cheap.
Plus however long it takes to ramp them up, could be 6 months on a reasonably complex codebase. And the time of other engineers both in the hiring process and bringing the new engineer up to speed. I’d say the cost of replacing an engineer could be as much as their entire first year’s comp.
This is likely connected the FOSTA and SESTA recently being passed by the senate. Many sex worker rights groups have spoken out against these bills as having a chilling effect on sex workers.
> Almost everyone tech savvy that I know runs an ad blocker and I've installed one for all my family members who aren't.

How do you provide support to them for websites that malfunction due to the adblockers? IME, they often don't recognize that the problem is the adblocker much less have the patience to call me for help - and if they did, I don't always have time to help them when they need it.
If you use FB, you have to be logged in and actively engaged by you providing your identity to use it.

Google can be used without logging in or tracking.

That is the critical difference for me - to use Facebook you have to actively be part of the social graph and share your identity. Google wants you to sign in, but you don't have to (apart from Gmail etc)

To block tracking from most people you can:

* Block third party cookies in your browser.

* Use DuckDuckGo.

* Block ads.

* Use a VPN (to get differing IP addresses).

This will neuter 99% of tracking approaches that rely on cookies, IP matching, purchase history, or being logged in. For Google and others too. Some will use more exotic approaches to tracking (e.g. canvas fingerprints) but there is a browser extension arms race to handle that.

The first 3 of those things take 90 seconds to do once then forget about and never deal with again. It's not hard. VPNs are more commitment and come with their own problems, but add some extra obfuscation. If you don't want to use android then obviously you can get another phone. Firefox is viable again these days.

There are fewer and fewer excuses for this attitude - Google is not inescapable IMO, but you cannot escape Facebook if you want to use it.

It just comes down to how much you care and how much you value their services - you might need to ask yourself some hard questions about what you really value and what you are prepared to go without before complaining about how these companies are run in order to offer you free services.

(views are my own opinion)

edit: perhaps I wasn't clear: ad blockers and/or disallowing third party cookies will prevent Facebook like buttons (or tracking pixels from other parties) from tracking you as effectively, especially if you cycle your IP addresses with a VPN. You just look like a totally different user each time.
That, and the 10 other facebook-related posts currently on the front page. I understand it's a huge revelation that facebook tracks people and shares the data in ways and for purposes which we weren't aware of, but the news has been nothing but facebook for a week now. For something that was mostly known already (we knew they had it, just not that it was applied in this way), it's getting a little tedious.
One time $0.99 won't justify this. Companies can make far more money per user from ads. It has to be a subscription model for it to be tenable.
It's easy to look up the history of Barry McCaffrey if you don't already know him. The list of four star generals is small, as there are only 7 active four-star army generals at one time.

Preemptive wars are defensive, they confront an imminent threat, and as such are ethical and legal. Preventative war is what Bolton has advocated his entire career, and are not about confronting imminent threats but manufacturing a fiction confronted with aggressive illegal and unethical war. Any country at any time could become a target for any reason, given his worldview. And it is exactly this that makes him ill suited to head the National Security Council. That role is meant to be an honest broker in negotiating and balancing among all the incoming policy, military, and intelligence positions of the government. If that person is ideological, he cannot be trusted to be an honest broker. He isn't and he won't be.

It will be interesting to see him butt heads with Mattis. And he will. Hopefully Mattis wins, and for sure hope he doesn't quit or get canned.
They will have to provide it to you upon request. If they’ve got some self-service system then great, but if not they’ll legally have to do it manually.
2 of 3 shipping cars -- while dual-motor Model 3's have been spotted in the wild, you can't order one yet.
Yet the argument could be made that without Facebook, the duopoly on online advertising could become a monopoly by Google.

They'd definitely hop in and try at a social network again too. They have your voice, your live location, your email, your texts, your photos including a model of your face, your search history, your youtube viewing preferences, and they wouldn't miss the chance to hop in for your social graph and "likes" too.
So long as you trust your server’s admin, your data should be safe from them and non-federated servers. However once your server is linked to another, the whole map of connected servers can see your outward-facing info. If you are DMing users outside your network, you can also consider those messages non-private, as your server, the destination server, and possibly intermediatry servers will have seen it.

Services like this would do well to integrate the Signal protocol, although I don’t know how well it scales with federated servers, I can’t recall any actual tests of that functionality yet.
We need more legal protections for corporate whistleblowers.
The 4th Amendment to the US Constitution basically says there is no justification for such powers. The entire foundation of the the US Government is a warning against the centralization of power.

China operates like you describe and people that think like that should just move there. Perhaps we could create a program to swap citizens between countries so people can live with their ideological peers.
One of the most vocal pro-gun owners on HN would repeatedly make posts supporting mass murder whenever the topic of laws to reduce murder by gun were discussed. He'd say that gun owners would kill many people if guns were made illegal.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11604135

> And let's be clear, in this putative Civil War 2.0, we're threatening to kill gun-grabbers wholesale and retail, with guns being one of the least effective means when compared to tactics like killing Blue cities. People kill other people, guns are inanimate objects.

There are like 15 posts very similar to this, although some are flagged.
Ce bauturi strica dintii?
> set the default profile startup to be the one you copied (I think this was in the profile.ini file)

The command I posted would copy the parent folder, including profile.ini, but yeah it's pretty much the same thing.

> I this this between mac, linux, and windows machines and it functioned perfectly every time including add-ons, settings, filters, and themes.

Cool, that's good to know for sure!
> Your ISP is a near-monopoly with vast wealth and political connections

That's not true for many parts of the world, especially Central/Eastern Europe.

$ whois AS204880
>The United States does not have a consumer privacy law like the General Data Protection Regulation. But after years of pushing for similar legislation, privacy groups said that recent events were giving them new momentum — and they were looking to Europe for inspiration.

>“With the new European law, regulators for the first time have real enforcement tools,” said Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a nonprofit group in Washington. “We now have a way to hold these companies accountable.”

I'm super excited about the prospect of GDPR in America.
The point wasn't that the buck shouldn't stop, it was that the fact that the buck passes someone isn't a defense. Lots of folks were involved in building this disaster, and they all share blame too.

To Godwinize for clarity: Hitler wasn't the only war criminal in Nazi Germany.
I refused to even interview for Palantir when their recruiter called and have quit jobs in the past when I was asked to do something unethical. It’s not as if google or fb engineers can’t find jobs elsewhere.
I find this article to be about seeking breadth of experience in order to build empathy and problem solving skills. These can make one more effective in more areas than engineering.
Misreading Trump: Ally Japan Is Spurned on Tariff Exemptions
If you think Zuck has knowledge of even 1% of what his 25,000+ employees do and the code they're writing, you're dreaming. He is still ultimately accountable, but it is unreasonable to assume that he is personally directing the efforts of the teams here.
Google has a profile of my voice solid enough that they're comfortable making it an authentication option in Android. They have microphones in millions of homes and millions more on people's pockets, which are by the way also tracking live location and a myriad of other data.

Yikes.
I believe FB makes something like $6.50 per user. Obviously Google makes money from users too, and given overlap it seems likely that one user is worth quite a bit annually. Average that out over lifetime value, and we’re talking thousands of dollars.

Imagine if the likes of Equifax treated silos of data as a liability instead of an asset to be milked. Properly valued, a breach of hundreds of millions of people’s data would end a business, even as large as Equifax.
There is also just 'put' it just doesn't tack a \n onto the end so helloworld in a terminal is ugly
This is something I've been thinking about. While I don't think that e.g. React poses a threat itself (it's open source and very unlikely to contain malicious code) I do wonder if we should stop using it, out of principle of what else Facebook has been up to.
The myth of the male bumbler
In which email client? I regularly get email that is almost impossible to read, unless I load remote images.
Check out Google BigQuery. Not sure if you can do exactly what you need, but we use it as glue between some dbs and Google sheets.
Oh man this page brings back some golden memories! I remember working with ImageMagick for the first time in 2010 or 2011 when I wrote a bash script to programmatically scale and center thousands of images for creating image gallery thumbnails on an internal social platform for winners of a design award. I somehow landed on this page and used the massive amounts of knowledge to learn how the ImageMagick scripting interface worked. Then it was a fairly simple task to build the script, but - like all bash scripts for me - I've forgotten every single parameter now :)

Somehow that feels much longer ago than just 7 years, maybe its just the website or the feeling of nostalgia looking at it.
Because people prefer simple heuristics that allow them to make whatever claims of causation they want.

This concept has literally infected our general political discourse in the United States. Everything has been boiled down to SAT style analogies that essentially accumulate to the point where large groups of people have moved the goal posts of political discourse from "finding common ground" to "burning and salting each others ground as somewhere only an obvious fool would choose to stand"
I didn’t ask you your income. I asked your location and when you bought your house.

To each his own though.
Facebook is ethically bankrupt, but their power is much more limited. Google is nothing less than the greatest threat to humanity. Trump, North Korea, militant Islam and Putin all pale in comparison to what Google is capable of. Only Xi's increasingly nationalist and modernized China is capable of remotely the same kind of threat, but Google has a huge lead in military robotics and will probably reach the AI tipping point first.

They have been a beautifully gilded trojan horse, beloved in the beginning, but in the end most of humanity will likely regret having given away so much to Google.
With a lot of people absusing unlimited drive accounts to host their Plex collections I’m surprise it’s lasted this long. Those people are going to ruin it for the rest of us.
>They offer a service and people understand that.

No they don't. Maybe in a superficial sense, but the vast majority of the public doesn't have any clue how data can be combined and mined to reveal far more than they thought they were bargaining for.

Otherwise there would be no sudden Facebook scandal.
> a lot of pop is made by knowingly and deliberately copying elements from various source songs

One of the defining characteristics of "pop" music is the reuse of major structural elements like the primary harmonic progression (e.g. the infamous "4 chords"[1]). Listeners that do not have a lot of music theory knowledge and experience can still follow along with the "plot" of the song because it reuses simple structures they already know.

Appreciation of more complex harmonic structure and other unique features requires a lot more experience with complex types of music theory. As with all art/writing, knowing your intended audience is important. If the audience includes people without music experience/training, limiting the "vocabulary" top what they know is absolutely necessary.

For a very good explanation of this that includes examples, see this[2] video essay.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M33cRNx3ohI
Google isn't limiting the data flowing through your router. They are limiting content they are willing to store on their servers. Those two are worlds apart and Google can do whatever they choose within the boundaries defined by their terms of service.
This I heard a few times when I was small (30-odd years ago). I always thought it was great advice, the users will find their own way anyway so just figure out what it is and then you help them. Good advice for programmers too :-)
I wish Google would donate those logs to archive.org and maybe even some servers. Idk why some of these tech giants never donate to projects that care about the internet the very thing which drives their profits.
More like Windows and UNIX, not only Linux, but yeah that's the spirit.
That's actually the same point the parent comment by thriftwy was making. The two of you are not in disagreement.

But as for your argument, didn't you just list notable alternatives for most Google products? To the extent that the competitors may be less attractive (though plenty of people say they prefer iOS, Bing, DDG, etc.), that just emphasizes how useful Google's products are. Most of them can even be used without a Google account, too.

It's strange to talk about the value Google services contribute as a bad thing. If you want to argue that value is still not worth the data they collect, that's a separate matter (and one that is logically at odds with arguing how great Google's utility is).
How to Build a Simple Crypto Trading Simulator, Part 1
I use pydrive. If you're doing something reasonable once a week it'll easily be fine. I had problems trying to push a few hundred thousand things in a short time, but otherwise I highly recommend this as a first step for sharing data.