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orijing

1,359 karma · joined January 26, 2011

BS/BS/BA from UC Berkeley for EECS, business administration and economics. Software engineer at Facebook.
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orijing··on Dutch national broadcaster saw ad revenue rise when it stopped tracking users
If this were true, why would anyone choose the option that generates lower revenues?
orijing··on Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?
I don't have the same experience with Apple. My MacBook had to get replaced multiple times due to a bad graphics card. My subsequent one had to get replaced multiple times because of the butterfly keyboards breaking.

So far so good on the latest one but it's annoying to deal with so many replacements

orijing··on Google Maps Hacks
Consider another example. Google suggests an alternate route that will presumably save 15 minutes.

Let's say enough cars take the suggestion to slow down that route by 10 minutes and speed up this one by 10 minutes. Even if you end up saving five minutes relative to the original estimate, you'd have saved ten minutes staying put.

orijing··on Vickrey–Clarke–Groves Auction
You're describing the generalized second price auction (GSP) which is NOT incentive compatible, which means the optimal strategy isn't to bid truthfully. VCG is.
orijing··on Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y.
I'm curious, if the message saying that "FB will also import contacts if you proceed" were still visible, would you still consider it "unauthorized access"? Is it really "unauthorized" if users give informed consent?

I doubt it, so it seems that we're just bickering over whether the accidental removal of the message is considered a "bug" or a malicious act by some engineer to trick users into sharing their data because they (and their company) lack business ethics.

Which is more likely?

orijing··on Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y.
The article claims the practice "was uncovered by Business Insider last week", implying FB was being sneaky about it. But if you look at the Business Insider article (https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-uploaded-1-5-millio...), you'll see this:

> A Facebook spokesperson said before May 2016, it offered an option to verify a user's account using their email password and voluntarily upload their contacts at the same time. However, they said, the company changed the feature, and the text informing users that their contacts would be uploaded was deleted — but the underlying functionality was not.

> "Last month we stopped offering email password verification as an option for people verifying their account when signing up for Facebook for the first time. When we looked into the steps people were going through to verify their accounts we found that in some cases people's email contacts were also unintentionally uploaded to Facebook when they created their account"

so Facebook discovered this bug in an audit of its code, fixed it, and planned to notify everyone who was impacted.

orijing··on Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y.
The Business Insider article has this: https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5ca400acc6cc5023740b5...

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-uploaded-1-5-millio...

orijing··on Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y.
Have you never committed a bug before?

> A Facebook spokesperson said before May 2016, it offered an option to verify a user's account using their email password and voluntarily upload their contacts at the same time. However, they said, the company changed the feature, and the text informing users that their contacts would be uploaded was deleted — but the underlying functionality was not.

I doubt it was an engineer who deliberately removed the text but kept the contact import functionality.

orijing··on Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y.
Is it a coincidence that the stock price would move on the day when FB releases earnings?
orijing··on Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues
It's almost as if the company reported earnings that beat expectations...
orijing··on China will soon have air power rivalling the West’s
Are you sure about that? I live in California, which was previously Mexican territory.

I also have friends from Texas, which was also Mexican territory.

Perhaps your point is that the US became less imperialistic since then, but that's easy to say once it's taken what it wants.

China sees Taiwan as an integral part of the "Greater China", a still unresolved problem from the past century's wars. It sees the South China sea as its own backyard. Can you imagine the US response if China were sailing military vessels provocatively close to the cost of continental US?

I'm not saying either is right. I'm pointing out that the US is not without its hypocrisies either, and that each country has its own flaws.

orijing··on App Links: Link Anywhere on Mobile
For the same reason that you would link to another website on the web.
orijing··on Creator of Facebook Ads is matching P2P microloans at Zidisha (YC W14)
"Creator of Facebook Ads" is quite the title
orijing··on Linode SSD Beta
> Random IO is processed first through the SSDs (the thing that they are really good at) while sequential IO short-cuts to the hard drives - which is pretty slick.

Any idea why the sequential benchmark numbers improved 4-5x when it is still "short-cutting" to the HDs?

orijing··on How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft to go Full-Time on GitHub (2008)
> I was still working full time at Powerset on July 1, 2008

I'm curious how this works normally. He was employed full time at PowerSet nine months after he started working "full time" on Github. What did Powerset think of his devoting his time and energy to Github? What is the industry norm? What about the IP issues that complicate the matter? Couldn't Powerset have claimed ownership over Github since he was a salaried employee?

orijing··on Tesla Repays Department of Energy Loan Nine Years Early
Like a butt-load of positive PR? I think they calculated that the positive PR value (or maybe mitigating negative PR) was worth the incremental cost of capital from the normal markets vs. from the DOE
orijing··on JSON API
Relevant:

http://paulgraham.com/icad.html

orijing··on Redis with an SSD swap – not what you want
This is interesting and expected for evenly distributed request patterns. How about for more typical request patterns that follow power-law distributions? I would guess that it'd lead to much fewer page faults. I could write some math but does the benchmark tool let you choose a distribution of keys, which would help check that type of pattern?

Great analysis BTW.

orijing··on Facebook is impersonating users without their consent
> I am confident, this confusion is intentional on Facebook's part.

How can you be so confident about someone's intent?

I disagree with your assessment but didn't downvote your comment because I want to understand.

orijing··on Buy Nothing Day
I wouldn't consider that growth, though.
orijing··on Facebook “Promoted Posts” have primarily foreign “Likes”: Why?
Yes. I have a page with nearly 140k fans, and this is what I see if I choose US residents only: http://i.imgur.com/khYDf.png
orijing··on Facebook “Promoted Posts” have primarily foreign “Likes”: Why?
That's not true. The target icon lets you target page posts, and the promotion will inherit the targeting of the page post.

Example: http://i.imgur.com/khYDf.png

I'm a page owner (130k+ fans).

orijing··on Airbnb Tech Talk: Evan Priestley of Facebook - Move Fast and Break Things
The "break fast and move things" mantra isn't black and white, nor is it universal. It is a general alignment that, at the high level says, don't be afraid to make calculated mistakes but be prepared to quickly respond to feedback and those mistakes as appropriate.

That means a privacy or a security issue will be tackled with the utmost urgency--we would even shut down the site if we didn't have a quick fix for a security/privacy bug. However, if one of the Timeline aggregations isn't working or if a particular text box is not aligned, then we will fix it with the next release (usually in another day or half).

So it's not true that "move fast and break things" means "it's OK to introduce privacy/security holes" or even "it's OK to release shitty products". It just means we push early and push often.

orijing··on Amazon caves in, will remove ads from Kindle Fire for $15 fee
And TV
orijing··on Browser-Side Amazon S3 Uploads, Using CORS and JavaScript
How is cross-browser support? I hear IE8 and 9 still don't fully support CORS...
orijing··on Germany: Facebook must destroy its facial recognition database
Being able to cluster similar faces together and ask me in a single question "We think this is Jon Smith. [Correct] [Incorrect]" so I can tag my entire album in one click, would be powerful and something I'd want, since my album of 100 photos probably only has 2 or 3 people in it anyway.
orijing··on Groupon down 27%, hits new low of $5.50
The parent asked why you weren't /selling/ call options. So if the premiums were high, then you would be making a larger margin. Perhaps you confused it with buying puts?
orijing··on One Horrifying Account Of Working At Zynga
It appears that the original answer has been deleted
orijing··on In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo
Just curious, how much Google stock does she have, and does that affect what strategies she can pursue with Yahoo? i.e. it may encourage a more cooperative stance with Google than a competitive one, even if the latter is better for Yahoo individually.
orijing··on EFF: Americans may not realize the impacts of face recognition technology
That makes me wonder two things:

1. Is it bad (or unfair) for the IRS to use technology to fight tax fraud? I mean, every dollar not collected from a tax evader is an extra dollar that must be collected from a law-abiding citizen. It sucks for the person with the pool, but if it means lower taxes for everyone else, I think that would be a good thing.

2. Google Maps is public, but what obligations does Facebook have to reveal photos that are posted privately (i.e. to friends), to law enforcement?

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