mttddd's comments

content but also better ad targetting by better understanding all of the content that users post

the tools but not necessarily the data, presumably they have internally trained versions

Meta seems to be doing fine financially besides the VR money pit. Also in a weird way having TikTok around just bolsters their case against any sort of anti trust enforcement. That said I am sure they would be happy if TikTok did get banned but I also doubt they are sticking their neck out lobbying for that to happen (although I would not be surprised to be wrong)

privacy and security is a pendulum, it swung hard to security post 9/11 and is swinging hard towards privacy currently. Id be surprised if we ever actually reach a happy middle ground but I am sure at some point we will see things swing back towards security

and to clarify when I say security there is of course the national security apparatus angle but also things like spam, fraud, cyber security, crime etc. All of these will happen and as governments grapple with addressing them unfortunately the easy button tends to negatively impact privacy versus things like providing better funding/training for law enforcement and regulatory bodies

anecdotally from a few folks I know who work there it does get completely deleted after a month or two I believe. Like you said between GDPR, the FTC settlement and just general bad press they actually take deleting data pretty seriously

yep, its because of the FCO ruling. The other thing I think everyone spouting money are missing is that FB would much rather be able to use the link between your FB and IG accounts to better serve you up ads based on that combined data.

yep, a lot of this is fallout from the financial crisis and all of the bank mergers that have happened. A number of the big banks i worked with a few years ago had sooo many different systems from all their acquisitions and what they really want is one

I have worked a lot with lobbyists and part of the reason is that the tech companies dont work together. When the banks or oil companies go to capital hill their lobbyists are generally in alignment. The sense iv gotten from folks I talk to is that is not the case with the tech companies and instead they have competing opinions on things.

Another place you can see this illustrated is when the CEOs of these companies testify in front of congress. The bank CEOs all stay more or less on the same message. Comparatively on the tech side there is a lot more variance in message. Some of this is changing, you can clearly tell Zuck is getting much more coaching and Sundar Pichai is well prepped. Then you have Dorsey who is always a complete wild card.

yep I think alternatives have improved but pre covid i traveled all over the world for work and the big thing was Zoom worked the best on iffy connections and also played best with multiple companies IT systems

Gold is certainly more popular in India then the western world but most married people are walking around wearing a wedding ring and id guess the majority of those are gold?

Gold also has very practical industrial applications which give it value, like you say most of the value boils down to scarcity but it is both desirable as a status symbol and for functional applications

I agree with your points and I am generally pro encrypted messaging. However, I am a bit concerned that FB messenger going encrypted means you will get all the same algorithmic boosts/spread for misinfo tightly coupled with a product that lets you trivially move the discussion behind encryption.

Obviously that can still happen now, e.g., finding other like minded people on FB and connecting on Signal. But that added friction is not insignificant

I guess it is not the efficient market in the sense of valued according to the underlying financials. But to me at least it is "efficient" in the sense that the price is now basically tied to supply and demand. You have a stock that has >100% of outstanding shares short and a ton of people buying and holding the stock intentionally to prevent those users from covering the shorts. If nobody wants to sell you a share at 100$ you have to offer more and the more you offer the more in the hole other shorts become. This is the market punishing people who thought they were getting easy money by shorting the hell out of a dying company.

Ya anecdotal for sure but a ton of my friends bought their significant others some new fangled thing they only heard about because they saw it on Instagram. HN loves to bash marketing (and FB/google) but it has never been easier to spin up your own shoe company and easily advertise and get customers (e.g, allbirds).

It is going to be interesting to see how these big tech companies deal with so much localized regulation and enforcement be it anti trust or privacy. Ironically a lot of that will also just further entrench their market position.

I dont feel particularly strongly one way or another on the encryption debate but everyone always points at the fact that crimes like child exploitation have existed for forever or that bad actors will just move to encrypted platforms. That ignores the fact that 1. things like Facebook are still relatively new and greatly enable these bad actors and 2. as the times article presents these platforms report a shit ton of this stuff so while I am sure there are plenty of bad actors moving to say signal there are plenty of others who aren't.

It will be interesting to see how things play out though since section 230 reform seems pretty bi partisan. While that doesnt necessarily mean the reform needs to address encryption I would be surprised if it doesn't

Ignoring for a second the NSA sitting in the middle sucking up everything I think a lot of this is just down to domestic law enforcement wanting the status quo.

Currently you send an email/message and its encrypted between you and Google/FB/etc, they have a decrypted copy, and the encrypted copy is sent on to the recipient. Governments can submit a subpoena (or whatever the local equivalent is) and get copies of that communication. They can also require said companies to monitor those communications for child porn. With E2EE encryption all that goes away and combined with things like iPhone encryption you end up with a situation like Pensacola where the FBI cannot access the attackers messages without brute forcing (or however they cracked) the device itself.

I also suspect when they say Big Tech they really mean Facebook. One Facebook is the company most prominently moving in that direction. Two unlike most existing encrypted communication apps where you need to know the persons phone number or username, FB/IG allow you to search for and identify potential victims (e.g., child predators) or others sympathetic to your cause (e.g., ISIS) and subsequently contact them.

This is my issue with the act, it doesnt spell out who would be subject to this rather leaves it up to the DOJ to spell out the rules later.

I am probably in the minority here on HN but I think bundling together encryption with platforms like Facebook/IG is a bad idea given how easy those platforms make it for bad actors to meet/identify potential victims. Signal/whatsapp etc I am ok with since they dont provide that same ability.

I suspect you are right and most of the top talent is in major cities but even then most faang jobs are in the bay area. Anecdotally (and with all the caveats that go with that) I wanted to work for a faang but turned them down several times until an opportunity came up in DC. I have other friends in cities like NYC and Chicago in the same boat. They dont want to leave their current city and even if there is a faang presence it may be small (chicago) or their area of focus doesnt match with the teams in their local faang office (nyc)

In high school i took a robotics course that took up part of the school day and went later than typical school. Your comment resonated with me because what i found great about it was that we were given the resources and freedom to build/explore what we wanted. You could come and go as you pleased with the only real deadlines being competitions we entered into. Certainly not the right thing for everyone but i think for a lot of kids the free time needed to explore things they are curious about is huge. Even more so these days given the wealth of content available online

I imagine there are some, a lot of factory operation optimization uses heavy operations research which isnt a huge jump to some sort of AI/ML