alanlamm

I am surprised that of the pages and pages of comments that I have read (about 500+ comments), few discuss the potential implications of (a) having virtually all of a business's communication (not just the emails and such, but now also the meetings) potentially tracked and monitored, and (b) whether a remote workforce would be even less well equipped to identify/call-out improper corporate behaviour. Would the Google employees that called-out some of the surveillance projects, or the Uber employees that called out harassment exist remotely? And if they did, isn't it just so much easier to get rid of them? "Susan will not be joining the call today. She no longer works here". A scenario in which HQ gets to know everything while every individual is forced into need-to-know seems dystopian to me.

The financial times has a covid tracker with log vs linear, daily vs cumulative and absolute vs per capita toggles. I understand log scales and even so, changing these settings really makes me look at the data differently. For example - look at absolute daily data on a log scale and Brazil seems headed for destruction, overtaking the UK amd US. Look at cumulative per capita data on a linear scale and things don't seem so bad for Brazil, but Belgium looks like a disaster.

one pet peeve of mine is if in the candidate's portfolio they place login screens or introductory carrousel screens prominently.

why was this flagged? I'm no fan of communism, but it appears to be a valid response to the parent.

the objective of the tax would not be to eliminate the unemployed, but rather to put them to work

Yes, or even better, for all that surplus lard on your body!

While we are at it, lets tax the vacant hours of the unemployed - those evil speculators who are consipiring to restrict the supply of labor. That will encourage them to work and thereby be able to afford all that brand new housing!

some of the things we have had censored by fb (even after appealing) 1. illustrations of cupid on valentines day, genitals covered, for nudity. 2. illustrations of a (non sexually provocative) mouth when the logo of our product was a mouth. 3. illustrations (not photos) of people of various body types and ethnicities, not sexually provocative, showing skin but no genitals, nipples or buttocks, with flowers and boxes of chocolates, as a 'love comes in all shapes and sizes' valentines campaign. 4. essentially any image that might insinuate that a woman is capable of feeling pleasure. 5. a friend's ig project intended to promote education & wellness about women's bodies, in a non-sexual way (e.g. did you know that a clitoris has x thousand nerve endings?), with no images. 6. pixelated images on red backgrounds with a 'censored' stamp on them (put up after others were censored) ... the list goes on and on, to the point where we have considered launching a website just to showcase the stuff fb (and other faangs) censor. ... meanwhile ig is filled with essentially soft porn (not to mention images of guns together with bags of money, which in my value system is much worse). ... so I, for one, am laughing my head off at all this. they more than had it coming.

note- strategic adversaries is a more appropriate term than competitors, and it is interesting how language used by nation states now fits the relation between companies so well.

Facebook doesn't want these companies sending users' personal data to them without their knowledge.

Rubbish. If they didn't want the data, they wouldn't build & offer developers a first class analytics package for free, including analytics that don't require explicitly setting events (though not going as far as showing screen recording, which was the moral outrage of last week).

Having said that, When the screen recording thing broke, I wondered how long it would take for it to shift to analytics in general, especially those offered by Apple competitors. I'm no fan of FB, but given the consistent rhythm of the fb-scandal newscycle, and that all these scandals somehow end up with Apple wearing a white hat, I'm really starting to wonder what kind of offensive PR dark arts may be behind it.

I hve never been to China but in my experience american airport security and immigration is nasty as compared to other perfectly free and democratic countries.

I am surprised at how few of the comments here say - if parents and/or kids want to make non-sexual videos public, fine. If paedophiles are aroused by them nometheless, fine too (as long as they do so privately and don't harrass the kids). I don't know why one would presume to have a 'right not to incite arousal' in another. Personally, I'd choose paedophiles enjoying videos of my children over censorship by large american corporations any day.

Thank you for the answer. I have to admit it doesn't quite sway me, for reasons such as those below, but thank you.

e.g. yes I realise they are different search problems, but I'd presume that Google is nonetheless well-equipped to handle the document db one. the only apps I can imagine that couldn't benefit from a search box are games - anything content-focused or ecommerce focused needs one, and the majority of utilities benefit too (yes I can do chat without search, but it certainly benefits from being able to search through chats) - any examples? yes I realize having to do Backend/iOS/Android/Web is hard (as it is for everybody else), but with on device cases at least the db is smaller. Im sure you do have big users, I didn't mean to imply otherwise, but with my admittedly very limited knowledge I'd still wager that a majority do not see uptime and scalability as the most urgent improvements, but rather those we are discussing. In our case, give us just 2 9s of uptime, and give us the above queries and searches even if 2x as slow and expensive as you'd like them to be, and limited to a db the size of an average relational db, and that would beat the extra 3 9s of uptime and the super scalability any day. Not least because, I don't mean to be rude here, just candid, but if we were ever to reach a point where we needed that massive scale and uptime, I'm not sure I'd be keen to trust Google with user data.

To be clear - I like several things about Firebase/Firestore, which is why we use it and why I'm insisting on badgering you here. I just wish I could be completely comfortable with my choice rather than wondering every day if I shouldn't just use something else.

To be a bit contrarian here, I'm not sure that any question you ask after an offer (over and above what you knew/have learned before) will actually improve the quality of your decision that much. as an exageration, how do you answer "ask hn: top three questions before accepting a marriage proposal?" (though I'd be very curious to read that thread)

curious: how big is the Firestore team? what about the team for the Firebase products as a whole?

Curious - what do you use? any suggestions of good serverless NoSQL? with the built in auth and extras Google/Firebase offer? What about relational? I've used Back4App, but with it being small and FB having killed Parse, it wasn't right.

Paying Firestore user here.

1. Disappointing that it has gone to GA without providing proper search (after a long beta). Can anybody explain why a service run by the worlds #1 search company continues to point users to third party services if you want to implement a basic text search in a database? I genuinely don't understand that.

2. Feature requests (or complaints) re backup, queries and documentation are not new. Nor are the answers (or excuses) we see here, which revolve around scalability and (until now) being in beta. BUT all users I have ever heard say they use the product for speed & ease of setup & convenience - for MVPs, not for massive googlesque data. It almost feels like the product market fit is not quite right. So, forgive my technical ignorance here, but worst case scenario, why not provide the features with the caveat that they are slow or expensive or won't work above a certain size of db? Isn't half a solution better than no solution?

The database and whole Google/Firebase app suite thing has some strong points. But to be frank, and I'm sorry if I'm being dismissive of hard work and technical wonders here, from the perspective of a customer and outside observer, a number of things smell quite off.

not necessarily - the data could be used to understand overall usage patterns and preferences in the target population as a whole - much in the same way as traditional surveys and focus groups. If indeed it is put into ML which then tries to match the data with the actual participants, then I agree that that is misrepresentation and probably criminal.

Sorry to disappoint, but I think this is just one of many ways. example - as an iOS dev u want to advertise on fb. for that to be effective u want to track conversions. easiest way to do that, esp. for a small dev - add the facebook sdk to the app. and you're done - facebook can potentially hoover a lot of data from an app that has no obvious relation to it.

Based on direct involvement in the process of writing one such policy for one such big internet co., my view is that the confusion and vagueness is largely deliberate. A small part of it is the result of too many people involved pulling in different directions.

yes, but 'inside the company' and 'testing' are vague. On one hand u have Larry Page testing the latest version of Gmail app - clearly eithin bounds - but what if its a contractor using an app filled with analytics that won't be released to the public, then what if its a focus group with 5 people, then what if its a large study like this, etc.

I think they mean the research data won't be used directly to target ads or try to make sales to you (standard guideline for market research), rather than the second order effect of allowing them to improve their overall ad targeting which then affects you.

1. Based on personal experience, I don't really buy the many comments here that say the web is boring bc most people are boring vs some fun geeky outlier elite. I remember IT class 20 years ago and everybody - including the most mainstream jocks if one were to stereotype - had great fun making colorful html, watching sheep walk around the windows desktop, chatting on icq, etc. Even orkut several years later was zany. 2. It is ironic that in the age of google, many responses here are lists of cool urls - almost like mini directories. reminds me of the physical Guide To The Internet (or some similar name) book we had (and which was great). 3. It is a little ironic that the OP is a rant about an uncool internet that proceeds to plug a product, which is typical of the uncool internet. I dont mean to criticize, though, bc refering to a problem and proposing a solution is legitimate. But u have to smile. 4. FWIW strongly share the feeling that the web is less fun. 5. No data, but I have a gut feel that as powerful as the big cos may be, it is not an inevitable process - just a matter of going out there and building alternatives (not that they'd necessarily be as profitable or big as the googles and facebooks) - [in my country] we've switched from icq to msn to orkut to fb to ig+whatsapp. Who is to say there won't be another 5 switches over the next 20 years?

but conversely you might have the contrarian town geniuses also interacting where they would not previously. so I guess it depends on the relative size of the 2 groups and their respective probability of being ostracised in their home environment

fun fact - I changed my hometown to Timbuktu on facebook. yet when I click on Why Am i seeing This Ad, I am told it is because the advertiser wants to reach people who live in (not are in or have been in) my actual home town. huh.

a smartphone equivalent of a nokia 1110.

The estimates in the study are for liberal arts college students (likely relatively Wwealthy vs US users as a whole), and if I’m not mistaken, US Facebook users have ARPU of as much as 10x other regions. If the WTP is also distributed like that, you could take your estima-te down by an order of magnitude even before network effects

Or, concretely, if I’m sitting in my midwestern liberal arts college...

Hmm cigarettes with analytics...

The article does not provide evidence that the users are fake (may well be true, but presumption of innocence applies). If they are not fake, and reports of copyright violation to the platform are duly considered, then it would appear to comply with DMCA in much the same way as Youtube or Facebook do - am I wrong?