deprave

I think you're spot on with the observation that 2012 refers to when VCs discovered machine learning. Anyone who has recently interacted with VCs will tell you that they look for anything to do with machine learning (and VR/AR/MR), even when it makes no sense. There are going to be some companies who will be able to leverage machine learning to advance their business, namely, Google/Facebook who will probably claim they can offer better targeted advertising and such. Most other players who merely try to force machine learning on other fields are likely to realize that while the technology is cool, it's still too early for it to be generally applicable to "any" problem.

Especially dangerous is going to be the mix of machine learning with healthcare. I believe Theranos tried it and found out it's not that easy... I'd watch this space with skepticism.

Correct, and top universities do that through investment in research and publication rather than populist fads.

Every once in a while people call into question the value of higher education and ask whether MOOCs mark the end of traditional universities. I find it ironic that when top universities flex their muscles and start asking those people to pay up for classes - the same classes that you otherwise would have had to go through admissions and tuition to get into - they're being called money grabbers.

I'm sorry, who's "we"? You replied to a comment that presented fact. The fact is that Windows use is mostly limited to desktops. As far as you're concerned, I could be entirely illiterate and my argument would still hold because it's based on fact. If you want to claim Windows is superior, please don't point us to design documentation. Show us actual numbers and use cases where Windows outperforms Unix, or is used in critical infrastructure, etc.

(FYI, I've read the "internals" book for a relatively old version of Windows, along with plenty of books about attacking the Windows kernel through its huge attack surface that exists to accommodate various needs of various software vendors...)

Oh, wow, you're right. My brain completely ignored that "Ex-" at the beginning.

Edit: Disregard this comment, my mistake.

Mozilla is such a disappointment. Instead of focusing on their raison d'etre they're busy branching out to one unsuccessful venture after another.

You must mean "theoretically" because "empirically" implies that you're basing your statement on observations. Where are the numbers? :)

I appreciate the name-dropping.

Dave Cutler's skills aside, Unix predates Windows by decades, and to anyone remotely familiar with kernel development it is clear that the sheer quantity and complexity of subsystems stem from the fact that nobody but Microsoft can actually see, modify, and redistribute Windows' source code.

Unless you can actually say "here's why Windows is qualitatively better" and point out specific tasks Windows does better, I'll just point you to the fact that the internet infrastructure and most of the servers on it, along with every Apple desktop and pretty much every mobile device, run Unix.

Since when is kernel complexity a measure of quality...? :)

A lot of Microsoft APIs and subsystems are similarly bloated. There are probably tons of factors at play, but I believe being closed-source and having to support many individual use cases is one fundamental reason. (See for example CreateProcess vs. fork...)

Freedoms, rights, and laws don't exist in a void. At least in the United States, they exist to better the welfare of the people. It's not a "new exemption" - jails do exactly that: limit one person's rights and freedoms to maintain those of others.

Technically speaking, it's a lot easier to do a separate process per tab, and let things crash just like any other running process. If they don't stop there and try to actually manage processes by themselves according to some messed up logic, then yes, I agree with you that there's no point to e10s and probably Mozilla.

They're going to find out that managing processes by themselves is going to be very difficult (similar to M:N threading), and opt for a Chrome-like model where each tab is its own process.

That's false.

IPC, shared memory, and credentials/descriptor passing are common patterns that exist in tons of software today. OpenSSH, Postfix, probably every iOS app.

Multithreading is great, but it's not suitable for a browser that may be fed malicious code and has a huge attack surface.

That's not shifting goalposts, that's the goal from the start.

You seem to be throwing a lot of technical terms. Could you elaborate on where exactly do you see overhead coming from in a multiprocess vs. multithread architecture? And which data structures can be shared between threads but not between processes?

Scheduling overhead is identical and pure OS memory overhead is slightly higher for processes (they need more "accounting" data), but everything else can be optimized at the application level. Furthermore, shared memory lets you share data structures between processes just fine (heck, some data can be shared between processes and the kernel!), and since I assume the content processes will be dynamically linked, you're not even going to load shared libraries multiple times.

Have you ever seen the source base of a browser like Firefox or Chrome? You must do small incremental improvements if you want your software to continue to work. The hardest part is disentangling everything from a single process architecture to multiprocess. That's what they're doing now. Switching from a single content process to multiple content processes is significantly easier.

I don't understand how you conclude that "they do not plan separating each to into a different process" from the link you posted given it opens with "After e10s is enabled for all users, the next step is to introduce multiple content processes." To answer your question, then, the point of introducing e10s is to make it easier to switch from a single process to multiprocess architecture.

That's what they're doing now and it's the problem, not the solution.

Multiple threads run in the same process address space. This creates security and stability issues. One website can affect the complete experience. That's exactly the problem they're trying to solve, the same way Chrome did, by using multiple processes. That way, for example, when one process misbehaves and gobbles up too much memory, the OS won't kill the entire browser but just the offending tab. (The OS won't kill individual threads.)

The goal must be a single controller ("UI") process and multiple content processes for each tab, otherwise they'll be missing out on the advantages of a multiprocess model, namely, stability and isolation.

They're first going to do two processes, probably for debugging without too many moving parts, then multiprocess. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule_and_Status and https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Multiple_content_proce....

That's the point of beta software. They're making it public, but it's still a release whose purpose is to investigate problems with the code before an official release.

I wonder if they're isolating E10S to stock-Firefox as means to avoid too many interactions while debugging or some other reason. I don't even wanna ask why they're still supporting Windows XP...

Alphabet is basically a name to do things with Google money that people would have approved of if they immediately knew Google was associated with. It's a way to fool most people who probably won't bother figuring out where this "new" multibillion dollar corporation came from.

Hopefully the media keeps reminding everyone what Alphabet really is...

I hate ads and sponsored content but, like you, I loved this article. It's an easy read and the product doesn't play a fundamental role in the technical analysis or getting the message across. It's not shoved in my face. I learned something new (ad fraud on Facebook) and became aware of this guy's product without hating the process. Good balance.

One could argue that it's a huge piece to get a one-liner across, but I feel that's true about a lot of news stories, so base rate fallacy applies.

Why isn't Facebook doing domain verification for the display domain? There are plenty of ways (email to well-known account, DNS records, etc.) to verify domain ownership. Google is doing that and I'm sure plenty people at Facebook are familiar with the concept.

From a legal perspective, I wonder if the legitimate sites can sue Facebook over that, or if there's a case for class action on behalf of users.

In any case, I don't buy any arguments that claim this is intentional to help actual advertisers or an oversight. From a security standpoint this is a spoofing tool and without any kind of validation or verification it should be clear what this tool is being used for. Facebook's in the business of collecting and analyzing data, and I'm sure they know very well that it's being misused.

It's unlikely that the business climate has changed much for startups. I doubt the success/failure rates are identical to what they were one, five, or ten years ago.

What has changed is media coverage, skepticism, and average skill level of "users" and maybe the frequency with which things happen.

I wish that were possible for everyone. Unfortunately that creates uncertainty in when people are available, which in many cases makes coordination difficult and working on projects slower.

And, you know, since studies have shown that uncertainty of pain is worse than inevitability of pain (http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160329/ncomms10996/full/nc...), perhaps five-two is the least worst option, after all. ;)

WebKit and Blink: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

Of course this comment was downvoted.

I really want to know what's the opposing view to this statement. Who's going to step forward and say why they think this is wrong?

At the very least, make an argument like "the AI needed to trick a teenager into spending half their awake time on Facebook can also be used to solve actual problems."

It's always good PR to talk about doing things for the users. Then there's business.

Access to my attention, you say?

And now they want to put a speaker and a microphone under their control in my home, you say?

Yeah, let's stop this nonsense.

A company that makes money by collecting and selling access to personal information about people is offering to put a microphone in your home.

If you need a product like this, for the sake of your privacy, buy an Echo.

Sandboxing isn't a magical solution. All it does is limit resources available to an app. Usually, until a user authorizes access to such resources.

"Here's a list of thirty privileges this app needs to run. Do you approve?"

Given you just downloaded it, why wouldn't you?

After all, every other app requires a huge set of privileges to run, too.

Do you see the problem? :)

I agree, and like you, I doubt fake clicks/impressions have an impact on Google's revenue.

Still, one has to wonder how one arm of the company can be so successful at creating artificial intelligence (smart cars, tensor flow, deep dream, just OTOH), while the other - its primary revenue driver, at that - manages to overlook things that are so simple.

Or am I really expecting it to be much more difficult than simple heuristics like "game + SMS privileges = fishy"?