keepper

Facebook’s privacy faux pas will be nothing compared to a company who’s government can request any of users data (Chinese or not) with zero oversight.

We are in for a wild ride as major Chinese companies start building successful global companies.

"as someone stated"...

Google has never released Youtube numbers, so I can't say that. I will tell you that youtube is the dominant video platform on the internet. You do realize Youtube shows ads? and those ads are part of google's ad revenue? But the numbers have been inferred "YouTube probably generates $16 billion to $25 billion in annual revenue"[1]

Waze drives all of their google maps traffic data. Again, industry's best.

Doubleclick is the basis for ALL non text advertising at google.

I'm starting to get the picture you really just want to argue your point, without any actual facts. Google has a verifiable history of successful acquisitions. Just apparently non that you "like"

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/technology/youtube-financ...

Urrmm, Youtube, Doubleclick, Waze?

Those have all been industry defining.

It took amazon over over 6 years to do so though.

EC2 was released in 2006. Amazon.com last non ec2 server was 2012. But a lot of features of amazon.com still don't run on the main AWS offerings.

GCP has not been out for that long. Also, quite easier to run an e-commerce site than to run the web's largest search engine as well as the largest email provider, as well as the largest maps provider. Each of these has an order of magnitude more traffic than amazon.com

I'm sure they'll get there though, just not the same scale. Not even close.

“Immigrants contributing greatly is not an established fact”

Funny thing to say about a country made up of immigrants...

Let me guess, you’re not from nyc. You should visit Ellis island sometime.

It IS the US immigration that has made it what it is now. I always love this part of a speech by Lincoln.

“But when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are.“

So I'll preface this by saying, I agree with the "It cost [me] nothing to respect someone's self-identification". I'm fully ok, and actively use gender pronouns as people wish. I respect self identification.

But, as a hispanic, there was already a gender neutral term for this in english. ( hint, i already used it, there's also Latin ). LatinX unfortunately is a bastardization of grammar for a language that has pretty strongly enforced grammar ( hey, we have a "royal academy of language"). It's the introduction of a foreign language construct into Spanish, which is going to have a pretty strong negative reaction by, well, those who speak it. ( and they also have a right to self identify ) Others make better points than I ever will[0][1]

The term "Latino" was a borrowing of a Spanish word into english, that already had a similar enough meaning in Spanish ( aside from gendering )

[0]https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-hernandez-the-ca... [1]https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/latinx-elitist-some-push...

No, being clear, since it seems you aren't separating concepts.

You're not happy that these companies have SINGLE large shareholders. That the founders kept so much company equity. I FULLY AGREE no one should have that much wealth. But, no one here is complaining about families or others having similar wealth. They are complaining that founders kept that much ownership.

The real wage suppression is happening in other industries and companies. How about the lack of a livable wage in industrial and service industries? How about that fact that the average wage has not kept up with cost of living?

Why are you advocating for engineers like myself making many times the average income and living way above average lives? That's insane!

How about oil companies with similar profits paying engineers 80-100k? at an actual risk of loss of life?

We should focus on the actual problems. The lack of ability to tax generational and asset wealth. The reason they accumulate so much is that we can't tax their share of ownership.

Have you actually look at wages in other industries?

Why are we focusing on the companies that actually do PAY ABOVE. how about we focus on the industries that UNDER pay. Someone getting compensated many times the average income is not the person we should trying to advocate for. The market can decide that.

That industrial or service worker not getting paid a living wage. THATs who we should be fighting for.

I love how i'm getting downvoted for my parent comment, but no one has taken the time to compare to other industries and companies with similar profits, who pay their engineering talent SUBSTANTIALLY less. Oil industry has similar profits, yet pays engineers 80-100k.

How about we compare to engineering wages in other companies with similar profits? Pretty much any other large engineering company. Or how about the oil industry? where profits are higher, the risk to life way higher, yet engineers make 80-100k?

What you have in these companies are single large shareholders vs institutional or family shareholders. That's what you're ultimately uncomfortable with. One person having so much net work.

you're right. But there's MANY other companies making similar profits.. yet not of them pay anything similar?

I think you guys can't separate your dislike for these companies, with an actual, thoughtful analysis.

Most oil companies make similar profits.. yet the average oil engineer makes 80-100k. With a lot more risk, and in similar high demand as a software engineer.

So while this is bad... I don't know how to feel about this. The other side of the coin is that these companies pay WAY ABOVE average salaries. I'm intimately familiar with this having

FAANG companies average of 50% more compensation than average. Especially outside of the bay area.

Typical range TC Sr. SDE in nyc: 150-250k + Bonus. Typical range TC for Sr. SDE in nyc: for Google/Facebook/Amazon 300-400k ( and goes higher ).

Only the most well paid Quants working in horrible environments made 500k+ There's a good portion >E5 engineers at these companies making well over that.

Anti-competition is bad.. but they are at the top of the industry on compensation. :( So again, don't know how to feel about this.

The even sadder part about this article... Buzzfeed does this worse. So it's not only the "pot calling the kettle black", it's someone calling someone out on things they do better than themselves.

Reality is, that both Google and Facebook have cleaned up the AD industry ( but not enough, of course ).

Data brokers continue to be the worst actors in the Ad industry.

It's official, mosquitos rather face extinction than listen to "Brostep"[1]... I heard ya little guys..

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubstep#Brostep_and_American_d...

I think my point is that the "bombardment" of ads is partly in due to the lack of monetization. There's a bit of a difference between print ads, and intrusive online ads. For example, you could turn the page... there was not redirect to "wow iphone user, you've won this prize!!!"

I'm actually ok with facebook/ig/google adwords ads. I'm not ok with intrusive, redirecting, in your face, ads. I could be alone in this opinion.

I'm probably as leftist as you can be (and agnostic)... but this trend is a bit ridiculous. Some in the left are becoming as intellectually dishonest as some in the right/conservative side.

You may dislike religious doctrine, but this is the type of argument that keeps "adult content" and similar "for the good of the children" apps away from the apple store.

You can be both PRO LGBT rights, and also PRO people can hold differing opinions. Policing morality is bad for both the religious AND the marginalized.

Would you put your money where your opinion is?

You can demand your attention back, but are you willing to pay for the content you consume? I say this in earnest. We had great content in newspapers and magazines... and the world decide that cheap ( with instance access ) was better. Same has happened to many industries.

You shouldn't demand, without a willingness to, well, compensate.

I could not agree more with this.

The reality is that Cloud Computing is the biggest threat to OSS at the moment. ( as my comments on this show lol ). I'm a big proponent of the idea of elastic computing. My fear is that the current "cloud"/elastic computing providers are more akin to off-shore outsourcing than to real technological advance. A short term solution, that will have serious and major repercussions down the line.

And yes, I do get all the benefits. I've been long enough in the industry ( and on most sides ), to have built both small and massive datacenters, and have built both public and private elastic infra. But this is way too much consolidation, and way too many possible harmful long term effects. We should have made running infra easier... not go the "lease" model 100%. :-/

This is SUCH a niche system, that I don't understand why carrying adapter is a bad thing. There are already laptops that kinda fit his keyboard/pointer/size requirements.

- His "video subsystem" idea already has a solution for many years. KVM2USB. https://www.epiphan.com/products/kvm2usb-3-0/

- His "let me turn this into a boot device" also has a solution. Many virtual cd rom devices exist, for example https://www.amazon.com/Iodd-Iodd2531-Black-Virtual-Enclosure...

If you're in such a niche requirements.. either you pay a ton ( military laptops), or you're ok with adapters :)

Agreed. I got so much downvote in the last story about Apple banning Facebook enterprise certs, because I thought it was an unevenly applied rule.

But in reality, to yield this kinda of power, you MUST apply it equally and fairly. Apple has been far from a fair arbiter in its app platform.

But they don't, and they certainly play favorites.

- So far, they have taken no action to Google's similar behavior ( and yes, the removed the app, but after Facebook was punished )

- They had a huge privacy bug with Facetime that they have brushed it under the rug, which may expose underlying privacy issues ( how is this possible if the connection isn't established before you consented? )

Apple has done some good, but it's no saint, and should not be a vigilante.

(replying to the reply of my comment, since threading doesn't go further)

Do you think apple does not have reports of the number of users that have apps installed via an enterprise cert?

That's pretty much the basic type of stats you would gather when having an enterprise licensing/authority system. Fact is, they knew about this, this was not hidden by google OR Facebook.

Apple decided to release this the DAY after they had a huge privacy flaw in Facetime.

And funny enough.. my point was JUST proven [0]

Google does the SAME DAMN THING! and yet apple did not go heavy handed, because, well, money???

But its great to see how an informed crowd like HackerNews behaves just like any other inflamed mob.

[0]https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/30/googles-also-peddling-a-da...

I mean, sure. Try managing thousands of devices that way though. lol

Lignumified metal? :)

( lignum is wood/timber in Latin )

With due respect, I think you misunderstand what a straw-man argument is. This is not a different point. This IS post purchase control of hardware.

Would you be ok with Tesla disabling cars because you were using illegal drugs in them? Now do you get it? I'm not defending facebook. I'm telling you this behavior from Apple is truly scary. Apple is not law/moral/societal enforcement "police".

This is the ONLY way to run internal apps. and it wasn't one cert btw. Google has a similar "research app", their certs have not been revoked. Maybe because apple relies on google more? Maybe because they generate revenue from their search and app placement deals? Hrrm?

My point is simple, arbitrary revokes, without process, are a scary thing. Specially when they are done POST purchase, and have real tangible effects.

This scares me. Not so much the action by apple ( they are flexing their muscle), but the reactions here. "Great!", is the jist.

It you think an unilateral revoke, and shutdown of a company internal tools, because of an external issue, without recourse is a good thing... I'm guessing you have no issues with Crazy EULA's, Monopolies, Corporate abuse, Corporations doing as they please. ( I can keep going down this slope.. )

Facebook had a program, with willing participants, that broke a third parties rules. We can argue infinitum about this.

But this is a company, STOPPING your usage of YOUR hardware, AFTER you purchased it (I'm talking about apple stopping Facebook from distributing internal tools as well, this is the side effect of this ). Think deep and clear about this. Are you ok with this?

Secondly, from the company (apple ) that literally turned everyones devices into wiretaps, globally, and ignored the issue for who knows how long... This is just.. wow. ( and they continue not to issue a formal reason for this ).

Just.. wow.

RMS is totally NOT okay with this, and has written a extensively on the issue that he sees SaaS similarly to proprietary software[0]

[0]https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

Your first line is quasi legal, and everyone agrees is bad. But no one calls it out. ( because even mighty new york times uses data brokers.. )

The other is literally how all advertising has ever worked! ( yes, cable TV was targeting you ). Yes, placing an ad in a certain location is also targeting. It's not inherently bad, it can be abused though.

The implied "please oh save us facebook", is well, WTH. Should we stop all political advertisement? should we prevent outside money in local elections? should we prevent foreigners from advertising in a different country? These are all great questions. But no one has ever had the right answers.

We're crucifying a company because they amplified society. We are asking them to solve societies evils. We are not focusing on the actual evil itself. ( sorry for the rant, but you went on one too :-P )

Define data brokering. Only Targeting isn’t brokering. Being naive and opening an app platform that allows users to give some information isn’t brokering. Selling bundles of PII without the users knowledge from quasi legal sources to companies and government agencies in digestible form is.

There are actual data brokers in the advertising industry. Seedy companies who with a tracking pixel ( or just outright data dumps ) can give you actual PII data. Facebook ( and to and extend google, althought an insane amount of malware goes thru google ads,I’m sure you’ve gotten the “you’ve won redirects”), have been putting those companies out of business.

Both Facebook and google have a ton of flaws. Facebook has been super naive on some areas. But Most of the reporting on their “data issues”, have not remotely offered a real view of the industry, or what actually happened.