If this were true, why would anyone choose the option that generates lower revenues?
Readit Newsorijing commented on Dutch national broadcaster saw ad revenue rise when it stopped tracking users theregister.com/2020/07/0... · Posted by u/paol
orijing commented on Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real? thewirecutter.com/blog/i-... · Posted by u/zdw
Now I find that I rely more and more on brands to decide which things I buy
I do the same. I wish I didn't, but I don't know what the practical alternative is. I guess it's the whole reason that brands were created in the first place.
I do source some of my stuff from smaller brands and shops, whenever I can. But that's not always an option.
When it comes to software, I'm not entirely satisfied with Apple's "walled garden." But for hardware, I know that if I get something at the Apple Store, or from apple.com, I generally don't have to worry.
It's because of this that I wish Apple† would go back into some of the product lines it has abandoned. Wifi routers. Servers. Printers and scanners. Even AA batteries and blank DVD's (I still have some of both). I'm at the point where I'll pay extra for confidence in the product.
† Or some other tech company that cares about its brand.
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
Presumably, this alternate route won't save you 25 minutes by the time you and others reroute. However if it saves you 10 minutes and reduces the delay on the original route by 10 minutes since there are now fewer cars idling, then everyone is better off.
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 commented on Vickrey–Clarke–Groves Auction en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic... · Posted by u/dedalus
The highest bidder pays the second highest bid. Generalized, the k-th highest bidder pays the (k-1)-th bid for some k-th item.
It enforces truthful bidding and is revenue optimal. How is it needlessly complex?
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 commented on Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y. bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/kerng
Can we please stop calling these privacy violations bugs? It sounds like a benign thing. These are not bugs anymore. It's unauthorized access to records of millions, and Facebook is the one who performed the violation.
I can give a dog walker or cleaning personel the keys to my apartment, still if they steal stuff and I have evidence they will be prosecuted. It's not a bug that they don't have business ethics.
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 commented on Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y. bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/kerng
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 commented on Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y. bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/kerng
Are there screenshots or something of this "asking for email password" thing the article talks about? I feel like anyone who sees a facebook page asking for their email password should already feel a bit warned and skeptical. I had personally never seen such a thing until 3 years ago when I deactivated my account. Is this a new thing?
The Business Insider article has this: https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5ca400acc6cc5023740b5...
https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-uploaded-1-5-millio...
orijing commented on Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y. bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/kerng
Not just execs, I hope. The engineers who wrote the code and managers who told them to do it should also face justice.
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 commented on Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y. bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/kerng
I'm glad the attorney general is getting involved. We need to start charging Facebook execs for these flagrant privacy violations. They're being fined 3 billion dollars for legal expenses relating to an FTC inquiry… and their stock price went up by 8% [1].
The market just does not care; it's time regulators and law enforcement started to.
[1] https://www.barrons.com/articles/facebook-stock-is-up-becaus...
Is it a coincidence that the stock price would move on the day when FB releases earnings?
Yet the stock is up almost 10% in after hours trading... the fine is not nearly enough to discourage criminal wrongdoing.
It's almost as if the company reported earnings that beat expectations...