danijelb

> What a pain in the ass it would be if you had 4 different twitter equivalents that you were trying to use.. or try to remember "oh friend A is on twitter1, Friend B is on twitter3" etc.

It can be solved with interoperability. If it is not a problem for mobile networks - phone calls and text messages, why would it be problem for social networks?

I would like for a more decentralized scenario to win, but it seems to me that people tend to gravitate towards centralization. It happened so many times already that it would be surprising if it doesn't happen again.

I'm pretty sure that eventually, one "winner" app will appear and grab almost all market share, similar to how Facebook has it for social media.

Before CSS layouts, HTML tables were (ab)used for layout and were functionally very similar to what CSS grid is now, except responsive of course. In hindsight, maybe tables for layout weren't wrong.

The only difference between turning off the audio and ad blocking is at which point the data gets blocked. Turning off the audio means that it gets filtered by your phone's audio processing system. Ad blocking means it gets blocked on the network level.

I'm one of those that are complaining, but at the same time I pay for Spotify, Netflix and HBO GO, and I didn't pirate almost anything for years. It's not about the cost, it's about their obsession with control. If they can't provide free service without privacy intrusion (monitoring what you do with the data they send to your network) they shouldn't provide a free service at all.

Absolutely, they have right not to serve any customer they don't want to serve. But do they have a right of tracking your actions? How would you react if there was an employee of any broadcast TV station peeking through your window to see if you're avoiding ads on their channel, and if they determine you avoid the ads, install a broadcast signal jammer near your house?

I don't like the increasingly intrusive behaviors from big tech companies, and this case with free Spotify is a good example. If they can't provide a free service without privacy intrusions, they shouldn't offer it. Radios and broadcast TV survive on ad-based model without privacy intrusions.

Not necessarily. There are free TV channels and free newspapers as well. Spotify is trying to prevent people from choosing which data packets will their devices process or not. Which is exactly the same as a publisher trying to prevent you from not looking at a page with ads, or cutting it out. In my opinion, users have a right of modifying anything they get - whether free or paid, which includes processing and filtering data that comes to their devices.

Should TV networks try to block you if you don't look at the TV while ads are running? Or if you turn it off/switch channel/mute it? Same goes for newspapers and magazines - do you have a right to skip pages filled with ads and not look at them?

I wonder what this will mean for Whatsapp's privacy

I agree

Would you react the same if the set came only with pale skin and you had to do the customization for darker skin?

In a weird way, this might be EU's strategy to finally deal significant damage to Google and Facebook, as this law will encourage development of alternatives on decentralized peer-to-peer technologies. However, I'm not sure if EU politicians are that smart...

So at this point it seems we are going back to how software was developed before web. Clients interact directly with database through a query language. In this case GraphQL is an equivalent of SQL and "custom GraphQL resolvers" are an equivalent of stored procedures, triggers and other business logic.

I wonder if we will see databases expose GraphQL access layers directly.

>For me the line is clear - illegal content must be removed, legal content must be left undisturbed, and if Facebook considers law of some country to run counter to their conscience, do not operate in that market.

The only problem is, since the internet is free and open, whether Facebook operates as a legal entity in a particular country or not, doesn't prevent internet users from that country to access the services. And Facebook doesn't have any obligations to ban IP ranges from that country. So, it's the country's responsibility to ban traffic to Facebook.

You are absolutely right. Hungary is a sovereign country. If they don't like their citizens having access to a particular private platform/medium, they can block access to it. It's very simple. The same way it's done with everything else. If a country doesn't like a particular book, they ban imports into their territory. If they don't like their citizens having ability to catch a TV/radio transmission from a neighboring "enemy" country, they can jam the signal. They don't ask the publisher from that other country to modify the contents. So, if they don't like Facebook operating in their territory, they can copy what China does and get rid of it. But once a country decides to do such things, they can no longer be considered a democracy.

Facebook should not accept instructions from Hungarian government. Now it's "Please don't remove videos from our minister", tomorrow it will be "Please immediately delete any bad comments about our government. Oh, and that opposition candidate's page? Delete that too"

Facebook's community standards should not be universally accepted. Does anyone force Hungarian people to use Facebook and accept their community standards? No. But if they freely choose to use it, of course they are expected to accept the rules of the community they willingly chose to participate in.

I am not a Hungarian, and I don't care what the Hungarian government is doing within their own country. If they want they can censor newspapers, ban TV shows on local media, close the borders, not have foreigners in their country, whatever. But they shouldn't influence foreign media the same way that they cannot ban a TV show airing on some Croatian television because Hungarians near the border can catch it...

But Facebook is not a worldwide communication channel. It's a social network/community owned by a single company and its shareholders. Internet is the worldwide communication channel. You can "filter" it and make sure it aligns with your own standards by simply choosing to visit and use websites, communities and services which do align with your standards, and by avoiding those which don't align.

Why would Facebook have any content moderation obligations towards any government? It is their private platform, their rules. A community they built = their community standards. They can decide what content they allow on the platform. Governments imposing content rules upon private companies is a form of censorship. China is not a democracy. If a country doesn't like their citizens having free and unlimited access to the internet, they can come up with their own versions of "Great Firewall"

I've been using HN Special Chrome extension since it was released. Can't go back to the standard look. http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-special/

Well, the beauty of presentations... Touch ID also fails sometimes. The important thing is that your finger can't unlock my phone.

Of course I don't. But the presentation gives enough information to be able to assume it is secure. Some other manufacturers' solutions can be tricked with photos. Since Apple mentioned dot projector, you can assume they are tracking the 3D model of your face which by itself should be much more secure. And it works with Apple Pay, the banks wouldn't allow it if it wasn't equivalent to Touch ID.

FaceID shows the difference between Apple and other smartphone manufacturers. Apple doesn't release features until they are absolutely sure they can engineer them to work perfectly.

The page you’re looking for can’t be found.

Interesting to notice, syskey.exe is also going to be removed. Wonder how it will affect fake tech support scammers.

http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-ban... This is one of the rare stories about game development I managed to find and read. It is not about 80s, but 1994 was much closer to 80s than it is to today.

When Instagram launched Stories, I noticed that most of my friends moved there. I rarely open Snapchat because it is almost empty, nothing is happening there. But apparently it stayed popular among high school students, so I guess it is different among different demographics - I'm 23 and most of my friends who switched are similar age.

Facebook is probably hoping that similar will happen with the main app.

The only thing that's bothering me is that it is done through e-mail. I would prefer the token to arrive as a text message to my phone number. I feel like it is safer and faster. However, I understand that it is more expensive option, especially for services where you need to log in multiple times, compared to mobile apps where you log in only once.

This is similar to what Whatsapp (and some other apps) are doing. The only difference is that they are using phone numbers.

Yes. I've noticed that trend too. A lot of today's teenagers spend most of the time on their phones to consume content and to communicate. Most of them use PC only for homework. I feel like the amount of time spent in front of the screen is the same, but not for the same purpose, and not the same screen. I was a teenager during the transition, the iPhone was released just on my generation's transition between primary and secondary education. Still, we all prefer laptops.

Naturally, since we spent bunch of time on PCs, we tried and explored many different things. I started learning HTML when I was 11 or 12, I don't remember precisely, but I discovered it accidentally. I found out about View source and how to save a web page (HTML), then I started playing with the code. This was enough to get me interested and I started learning HTML and later, programming. Today I am 23 and I work as a mobile developer. I heard a lot of similar stories, not just in programming, but for graphic design and other fields that use a computer as a tool.

The smartphone is simply not a creative tool, and it's not an open platform. You can't "peek" inside of a mobile app like I was able to peek into HTML. If I didn't, I would never discover it and it would never lead me to other platforms and programming languages. You can't see and play with raw files. You can't just open a photo in an editor, which leads you later into some creative fields like graphic design. Sure, you can "get creative" in Snapchat with your photos, but Snapchat is not a professional tool. When we wanted to edit our photos, we had to first get Photoshop, and learn the basics of working with it. Since it is a professional tool, it is an invaluable skill. I feel like this doesn't happen anymore. Applications like Snapchat are enough to fill their need for creativity and those kids are less likely to discover useful tools.

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