HN user
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/spoon-river-anthology/28-fr...
...Yet at the start there was a clear vision,
A high and urgent purpose in my soul
Which drove me on trying to memorize
The Encyclopedia Britannica!
Also average response time is a bad metrics. For one, the average is a bad measure if the variance is high. So I'll probably use 95% time instead of average.
But as a PM I have a different question. Which is the impact of the response time of Github on the user experience? 25% reduction on an average of 2 sec improves greatly the user experience, on a 200ms for a service that has basically no competition is just a marginal improvement, on a 50 ms average is not noticeable.
How is it distributed across multiple operations? Improving the latency of loading a diff is probably more important than the latency of approving a PR. In one case I'm trying to work, in the second I'm done with the work.
Now, my experience with GitHub is that it is already reasonably fast unless I'm doing something stupid. So the CPU utilization is a good metrics because 10% less CPU means 10% less server I need to pay and that goes to their bottom line (I don't know their economics to decide if it is substantial or not). The 25% reduction in latency is just icing on the cake...
Interesting point of view. I would challenge this article by asking you what you are using the roadmap for. For me, a roadmap is mostly a communication tool. Off course, if I say I'll do something there's a commitment to that. But I always try to create an understanding that my roadmap is more a vision open to refinement and improvement than a set of solutions.
In this context, I find a feature roadmap easier to share most of the time. Discussing which problem I'm solving is always difficult for many reasons: 1) unless I'm really unfocused, the big problem I'm solving should be the same. I could tackle different parts of the problem, but it is more difficult to communicate 2) when you present a priority between problems you are solving, people develop a "negative" mood. Every problem is a priority. If you focus more on general features, there's more the issue of creating "pet projects".
That said, I always use a problem point of view when working on prioritization and approaching a product.
I agree with your comment. Amazon has a problem of 1) how to police all this long-tail product, 2) how to onboard the number of sellers that needs to fulfill the demand for long-tail products.
I'm pretty sure that if someone were to sell a counterfeited copy of a best seller, his store would be shut down in a matter of hours and his account closed forever. But a small store selling stuff difficult to find? They are doing them a service, almost.
Like everything else, there are rules against counterfeiting, but the enforcement should strike a balance for the overall wellbeing of the marketplace...
What is Nokia?
Just joking, Totally agree with you...
Mmm... 2.2B MAU. When you think about how they counted them, probably they used HyperLogLog. In usual configuration, it has a 0.7 - 1% error. Basically a medium-sized country...
Or the number of users that any startup founder will die for...
It is impressive what Facebook managed to build, but, although the number is staggering, the relative amount of people that switched from horses to cars or to electricity for illumination from candles and burning oil is even bigger... People do not voluntarily stop using something, but the force of innovation is huge. Very few Fortune 500 companies even existed 100 years ago, and the pace of disruption is accelerating...
Wow! You are saying no one in the US expects, or at least consider that could be an obstacle on the street in front of you? It doesn't mean necessarily a pedestrian. An animal? Cargo lost by a truck in front of you?
It is the responsibility of the driver to be alert and try to minimize the impact. Just because a cyclist shouldn't cross a four-lane road in the middle of the night, doesn't mean you shouldn't look for obstacles.
I find it remarkable that people don't understand there's a non-subtle difference between signing up voluntarily on the Obama website using Facebook and consenting to the information collection vs. signing up for a quiz from an unrelated company and having that data used by the Trump campaign.
If you don't understand the difference, it is the same difference between having consensual sex with your girlfriend and raping your neighbor girlfriend because she consented to have sex with him...
Now, this metaphor is imperfect, but from what we could see the Obama campaign was within the boundary allowed by Facebook TOS and what disclosed to the user. Did they push this to the limit? Yes. To the point that FB didn't think it was feasible. But legit according to the rule. Maybe having consensual extreme BSDM sex with your girlfriend vs. raping your neighbor's GF? Quiz, which one is legal and which one is not?
Our experiences are different I suspect, Check this out https://www.sec.gov/fast-answers/answers-regfdhtm.html.
What this has to do with the parent comment? I'm asking these because I'm not sure I follow the reasoning. Your concern is that the SEC has very strict reporting standards and regulations. These are intended to provide a fair field between all investors (accredited and non-accredited) in order for the market to function in a more efficient way. In exchange for this increased cost of regulation upfront, the transaction between investors on the company's shares have a much lower friction (and transaction costs).
Private companies have lower regulation because the assumption is that the investors willing to buy shares are open to assume higher transaction costs in terms of due diligence. Obviously, reporting the false could open the company to lawsuits, but that's also part of the potential cost for the investors.
The choice between being a public company and a private one, in the end, is a function also of this trade-off. If I understand your reasoning, you fear that the SEC forcing himself into the private market could increase the regulatory cost of all startup. Am I right?
If that is correct, my answer would be that the SEC is not imposing the full regulation but just a minimum level of accurate reporting on behalf of the investors. This is because there's an assumption that a well behaved private market is essential to make the economy more active (imagine if this level of lying was accepted, how many investors would be willing to invest?). On the other side, I see the risk of a slippery slope and having the SEC power to grow to large and kill the startup ecosystems. I don't have a clear answer for that.
Question: have you read the article? Loyalty rate is defined as the number of users who switched from one platform to the other in the last year over the number of user on the departing platform. They even say that the absolute number looks different because of the bigger market share of Android.
Now, your argument is that someone who chose to stay with a device with smaller CB is more loyal, but what the article is saying is that out of 100 Android user, around 90 bought a new Android when replacing the phone, while only 86 Apple user bought a new iPhone.
I don't see how you dispute this fact as an evidence that Android users are more loyal. Even an argument on network advantage doesn't work because Android phones are very compatible with Apple ones (not the other way around) and the Apple ecosystem is still pretty big...
I read your comment. And I stand my point.
Even being very very friendly and interpreting your comment in the way you clarified it, there is an assumption in your comment. The assumption is that Tesla will be able to bring their car to Level 5, full autonomy, while GM will not be able to that. And let me ask you why you say so? Just because Tesla, in a marketing move, tells you they will be able to do that, and GM is not doing that? Maybe GM has a legal department that warned them not to do that?
To paraphrase your point, no there's no difference between a car that, according to their marketing "will maybe be able to go to mars" and a car that "has the hardware that could be maybe able to go to mars, but we prefer to tell you now because we could be liable if we fail". I understand the value of aspirational statements, but still...
Nope, GM has already self-driving cars on the street here in San Francisco. Remember they own Cruise.
So, GM has decided to go to Mars as Tesla did. It has acquired the tech to go to Mars and started testing it. In the meanwhile realized it could copy a page from Tesla's book and put some semi-autonomous vehicle on the road. And, according to this article, did an excellent job.
I'm no way a GM fanboy (do they even exists), but could we be fair?
Having overseen the update of an app to support the new layout I disagree with you. The main issues we found is the virtual home button that could fall in the locations where you have buttons (allegedly is not a problem with built-ins like navbars, but still an issue on some screens).
Another issue we found is support for the overflow when hiding the top bar on scroll and other minor issues that I have no time to tell.
But the real problem is that you need to test and test all screens, something difficult in a complex app. Especially since the X was released in late November and difficult to find for some time.
That does not mean that having a compatible app by April, 6 months later is a hard requirement. But updating the support requires a good amount of work, it is not trivial and could consume a good chunk of time to do that.
I think they have a problem with the location database. For instance, the location of my home, according to GMaps, is not on my street but on the parallel one. They have probably tried to do some smart optimization and f*d up. The only issue is that there's no clear way to tell them they have made a mistake...
Even if you are a nobody, are you sure? Maybe you know someone that is not a nobody (works at the Pentagon, or at a defense contractor, or a diplomat, or government official ...). Or you know someone that has access to a non-nobody. And even that. Probably having access to an allegedly nobody with no connection could be interesting. Which access level has, I don't know, the DevOps of Credit Karma? Or a Data Scientist for Acxiom, or... They are totally mister nobody, but they have access, directly or indirectly to important peoples. So, the risk is actually higher than expected...
Going public by taking over a publicly traded company is a legit way to avoid the costs and complexity of an IPO. There are examples in the past, the most famous is probably Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's company.
That said, a proper IPO allows for more scrutiny and it is probably better to read the SEC filings before investing in a company you don't know (and also in one you know). Everyone pretending Crypto is not a bubble should justify this kind of behavior where people are investing based on keyword instead of knowledge...
The argument is interesting but flawed. He points to a problem he sees, an increasingly high focus on being politically correct. And I agree it is a problem.
But he doesn't ask himself why. He doesn't try to understand why PC is so important right now, to the point to risk missing out on important and revolutionary ideas. And that made me think: where the best idea come from? Not from being free to be jerks but from questioning the status quo in constructive ways.
Why there's so much focus on Political Correctness right now? One possible answer is because the status quo has provided a windfall for White Educated Middle-Class Males with good connections at the expense of people further away from this description. Example? Are you a woman? You have to cope with molestation from entitled men. etc etc...
I'm crazy thinking that if we solve these problems we could then start again being open to crazy shit ideas, criticize each other ideas and keep things moving.
Or yes, we could be expats in China, where for now this problem hasn't emerged yet. But it sounds to me like just swiping the dirt under the rug. Is it innovative? Just asking...
They were allegedly against Net Neutrality according to the journalist investigation done [1].
Also, an analysis done by the Knight Foundation for the 2014 proceeding showed that the highest number of unique comment where pro Net Neutrality while the only comments against NN where from templated answers [2]
[1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/a-bot-is-flooding-the-fccs-webs...
They are also retaining a law firm that specializes in eminent domain cases. Eminent domain doesn't mean the government could do whatever he wants. You are still entitled to due process. They explain it in a very clear way:
So we’ve purchased a plot of vacant land on the border and retained a law firm specializing in eminent domain to make it as time-consuming and expensive as possible for the wall to get built.
Also, CAH founder has said in interviews in the past that:
What I see getting results are back-to-basics material engagement with politics, like showing up at a Congress member’s office, calling, going to a protest. I think that’s more valuable than all of our clever liberal comedy right now. [0]
This is their way to give Americans a way to do an action with political weight and to funnel their marketing/comedic abilities into political action.
Will it stop the wall? No. Will it slow it down and make it a pain for the Trump administration? Yes. This is the equivalent of filibustering for normal citizens. Is it a way to do a political action? Yes
[0] https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/2/9/14532050/cards-against-...
Your comment hit the nail on the head
We use obscurity every day and its a completely valid layer of security.
Not sure I agree with that, most of the time when we do that is because we don't want to spend the time to have better security. And then we get burned. To your example of the 100$ bill: at my parents home with the car parked in the garage? No problem to do that at all. Out on the street in SF? No. I don't trust my glass enough as a security measure. But I don't leave money at all, is not security through obscurity.
But we are going OT. The problem that is raised is that they need necessarily security through obscurity. And we have two problems:
- How really robust are these algorithms? How long before we will see people abusing them?
- Have you thought hard enough about how this system could work? E.g: have a partial hashing made client-side and the final one on the server? Or a situation where the server code is open-sourced without the model to calculate the hash? That would allow for external review without disclosing the hash. Yes, you still need warranties that Facebook is using that code, but you could have a trusted third party certifying the program.
My point is, the person who designed this program didn't really understand the problem. The problem is not revenge porn. The problem is Facebook reputation. And this solution is totally deaf.
From when security through obscurity is a good idea?
Agree, that's a problem but there are options to solve it. Look at PhotoDNA by Microsoft [0]. But it is a second step. First, you need the reporting properly done.
As other has pointed out, this is extremely creepy. The easiest solution would have been this one:
- The user uses a JS solution to hash the images on the client, without the image being uploaded
- She compiles a form with additional information (e.g: capture her account, reasons for uploading, suspect person sharing the picture)
- The picture is saved in the DB as un-verified revenge porn.
- The first time someone uploads a picture that matches the hash, the pic is quarantined and the specially trained individual manually check them
- A scoring system could be used to check the reliability of the submission. If multiple photos marked revenge porn get rejected, the control becomes ex-post. For even more violations, the user get banned from using the tool and should directly contact Facebook. Submitting the same hash that has been rejected, will count as a "red mark"
Now, I understand this system is very complex, what Facebook has done is an MVP and as a product manager, this is what I prefer. But considering the issue (revenge porn, not something I necessarily want to test the impact on retention :-) ). Also, yes, it requires resources, but Facebook has a problem with trust lately, better to do the best...
[edited for formatting]
Hold on a second. Your reasoning has some issues:
1) The peering happens in Internet exchanges, there's no way a peering connection in an Internet Exchange costs 1000$, your range is simply ridiculous. Usually, it is fixed cost 1K or less depending on the locations of the router
2) Yes, you have to pay for bandwidth between the Exchange and your users. But guess what? That's what your users are paying for.
3) Not everyone stream movie in 4K at the same time. So you could optimize your bandwidth usage out of the exchanges. It is called "multiplexing".
Yes, the rest of the chain could be expensive, but that's what your clients are paying for. Net neutrality is about transparency. I have no problem in understanding that my 40$ connection will perform differently than an 80$ one. But you should compete in giving me the best service (where best is best for me, not universally) at the lowest price point in a way I could easily compare prices.
The problem, with my statement, is that implies Broadband Internet is a commoditized service. And that is all the battle about Net Neutrality, ISP doesn't want to act like commodities, they don't want to be your P&G or your ConEd. They don't have the structure to compete and instead of changing for the new market structure, they are fighting back. What they are doing is rent seeking. Good for them, bad for the economy...
There's one interesting point. Until they said they didn't know that Lewandowski had Waymo's material they could basically claim plausible deniability (don't know how that work in a civil lawsuit). But now they admitted they knew Lewandowski had that data. To me, that's kind of an admission that Otto's tech was tainted. Yes, probably Google still needs to demonstrate it has been used by Uber, but it is a huge move forward...
Ummm... Pasteurization used to kill deadly bacteria in our food is done heating the substance to sanitize at 73-75 degree Celsius for around 15 seconds. For brewing a good coffee or tea you need a much higher temperature and I guess they don't immediately cool it down.
So, go ahead, drink your coffee or tea on the plane. Yes, it is disgusting, but it is a matter of taste, not of bacterial infection.
I used it in the past with the Freebase dump and was amazingly stable (also two years ago). I was using LevelDB on a pretty beefy machine. The big issue was the time for loading the data. At the time the MongoDB backend wasn't good enough. I posted my experience in a response in the thread.
Tried to use it in production a couple of years ago hosting a mirror copy of Freebase with mixed results:
- There were a couple of issue loading the data that we fixed and contributed back the patch
- Loading the data was really slow, and it got slower every time a new entry was added (Loading the full freebase dump required 1 week on a very beefy machine with SSD. Used LevelDB)
- Then the queries were relatively slow. Without going too much into details, we were using the data to analyze texts and extract entities, and the relationship between them, and even parallelizing the queries, they were relatively slow (depending on complexity between 0.1 and 1 sec on average). We solved the issue implementing a robust caching layer in front of it and carefully planning the queries.
- In general, it was stable and performant enough for a backend service. But we were pushing really the envelope of what it could do.
All in all, I would say that I was happy with it. In comparison, I tried a year earlier to use Neo4J in a similar role and I give up after 2 weeks because I wasn't even able to get it loading part of the dataset without crashing on a similar hardware.
That's a recipe for disaster!
It works well for delivering your MVP and maybe the first version of your product. But then you want your employee to be empowered, to feel relevant and be able to take matters into their hands. Otherwise it doesn't scale. But happy and satisfied worker could step up to this level. Unsatisfied and soldier like employees cannot do that, they will be just soldiers that fear for their position. And not having even patriotism (that is what bond soldiers) work for them, the best will leave your company, the worst will stay.
That's one of the differences between being a manager and being a leader. A leader takes the hard questions into his hands.
But don't trust me, there are years of research in company organization saying that. Go out and read any article on HBS on the topic of leadership, workplace organization or CSR and you'll see that.
So, your mentor was wrong, sorry about that.