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SolarUpNote

157 karma · joined April 29, 2010

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SolarUpNote··on macOS unable to open any non-Apple application
[deleted]
SolarUpNote··on Armageddon Looms over World Chess Champs after Carlsen’s Shocking Decision
ChessNetwork has my favorite analysis of the world championship games. His AlphaZero vs Stockfish series is also very good. https://www.youtube.com/user/ChessNetwork
SolarUpNote··on Problems coming for online publishing
Compare ad tech that news websites use to what Cambridge Analytica did.

1. Ad tech:

As I browse, my interests are accumulated into basic interest groups, demographic data, and maybe recently visited websites that use tracking.

The result: when I visit a news website, I might see an ad for tennis racquets (because of interest), or a local bank (because of location), or DigitalOcean hosting, because I recently visited that site.

2. Facebook's platform, used by Cambridge Analytica:

I install a Facebook psychological quiz app (supposedly from the prestigious Cambridge university), and give it permission to access my data.

Through that, Republican campaigns also access my grandmother's account, with all of her photos, likes, and comments. They use that data to learn her deepest fears.

They hire designers and writers to create fake news websites, and get their propaganda stories to appear in her Facebook news feed, where they appear to be legitimate right next to the news about the local sports team.

The result: when I visit for Christmas, I have to try to calm her down, that Hillary Clinton isn't actually running a late term abortion clinic out of a pizza parlor. And she won't believe me.

SolarUpNote··on Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica
The whistleblower said they had access to private messages. Are those ever publicly available? I don't see any privacy settings for messages in my FB profile.
SolarUpNote··on The Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t a scandal: this is how Facebook works
I'd like to see which country the ad / news post / video is coming from. Stick a little flag icon on it.
SolarUpNote··on 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach
... and all of their ‘friends’, totaling over 50 million
SolarUpNote··on MacOS High Sierra
You won't be able to connect to a shared drive using AFP anymore, if you get the new file system APFS when you upgrade. Apparently you only get APFS if you have a pure SSD drive (not Fusion).

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208018

  APFS and file sharing
  - Volumes formatted as APFS can't offer share points over the network using AFP. 
  - APFS supports SMB and NFS, with the option to enforce only SMB-encrypted share points.
SolarUpNote··on Apple does right by users and advertisers are displeased
> Apple has traditionally been very user hostile

Here's an interview with Steve Jobs on privacy regarding location data:

https://youtu.be/39iKLwlUqBo?t=23s

Apple takes care of their users.

SolarUpNote··on Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation
I've always been surprised that Reddit hasn't had many trackers - basically just Google Analytics and Doubleclick. Especially since their parent company is so heavily into tracking on news sites.

It will be a real shame if they start gunking it up with trackers - many news sites are basically unusable without ad blocking.

SolarUpNote··on Ask HN: Resources for learning advanced JavaScript and React
https://egghead.io has excellent ES6 React, Redux tutorial videos, and step by step code examples.
SolarUpNote··on Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]
Replace health insurance with health savings accounts?
SolarUpNote··on Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.
What's an issue that Trump talks about?
SolarUpNote··on Taking PHP Seriously
Doesn't Opcache take care of that? Using a large framework isn't really a problem because all of the classes, configuration, etc is all kept in ram.
SolarUpNote··on Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
What good is your personal information if it's not to show you personalized ads?
SolarUpNote··on Facebook's News Feed
That's what I don't understand either. It's already the case that news isn't shown to a lot of people unless it gets a lot of engagement.

What's different? Is Facebook now saying that it won't show the posts of publishers, even if people are liking/sharing/commenting?

SolarUpNote··on As Tech Evaporates Jobs, “The Tipping Point Will Be Driverless Trucks”
In the movie "Her" the main character's job is to help people write thoughtful letters to their loved ones. I'm sure the film meant that to be ironic, but that seems like a realistic 21st century job.

When all the industrial jobs have been automated, couldn't they be replaced by jobs that help us fulfill our emotional needs? Or is there some set of core jobs that fundamentally produce value for the economy?

SolarUpNote··on 402: Payment Required
Couldn't ad networks move from javascript to server-side?
SolarUpNote··on 402: Payment Required
Which phone company?
SolarUpNote··on The Decline of ‘Big Soda’
I'd be amazed if warning labels had any affect at all. The real factor is the price.

The last time I smoked, a pack of cigarettes cost about $2.50. Now it's over $7.

SolarUpNote··on What if states earned their Electoral College votes based on turnout?
It seems crazy that election day isn't on a Saturday.
SolarUpNote··on The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
Why is Ghostery ad-network friendly?
SolarUpNote··on Who's doing this to my internet?
On second thought, after doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations, the per-pageview fee would have to be a lot more than that. Even if you charged $.01 per pageview, that still couldn't compete with ad revenue.

So nevermind.

SolarUpNote··on Who's doing this to my internet?
If paywalls don't work, and ads don't work, some kind of metered-browsing would be a solution. It's so far away from happening, it's hardly worth discussing, but imagine this:

* let's say soundcloud could charge $.0001 (or something) for every pageview (or play, or some other interaction that the website chooses)

* this fee is mostly transparent to the user, they've signed up once, and have access to all metered sites

* the user would deposit money in an account ahead of time to use for the metered sites

* the metering could be built-in to web browsers to display when you're on a metered site using a standard graphic (like how the lock is a standard symbol for a secure connection)

SolarUpNote··on “Just the Beginning of What We Can Do on Super Nintendo”
I'll love Mitch Murder forever for recreating the totally rad music from the classic Mr. T self-help video "Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWRbf-mUsyU

SolarUpNote··on P5.js: Processing for today’s web
Thanks for the link. His work is inspiring.
SolarUpNote··on Sprint Will Sell a $12 Wireless Plan that Only Connects to Facebook or Twitter
What's to stop them from having "Sprint Business Network". Set up your business website with Sprint hosting to allow the $12/mo members to access your site ... for free!
SolarUpNote··on Things I Learned Designing at Disqus
I don't think he was talking about using Git for graphics files. I assume he meant html/css/javascript files.

As a designer who codes (or a coder who designs, not sure at this point), I can see what he means about learning Git. It was tough for me to grasp until I saw this:

http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/

SolarUpNote··on Virtual Reality is going to change the world
> I definitely want to be a part of VR, but I will not work with Facebook. Their motives are too unclear and shifting, and they haven’t historically been a stable platform. There’s nothing about their history that makes me trust them, and that makes them seem creepy to me.

Interesting how it all boils down to trust. You could think of all kinds of amazing possibilities, but if you don't trust them, it's 100% off.

SolarUpNote··on RapGenius Growth Hack Exposed
That's whack!
SolarUpNote··on CMS Trap
I think the key question is: At what point is building a user interface more expensive than hiring a full time developer?
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