freedompeace

How could Facebook do this (technologically)?

According to a redditor,

"

- It's not IP address. Facebook successfully identified a number of specific locations (bars, theaters, etc) even though I had uploaded the photos from my home

- It's not geo-tagging. All of my photos were taken with a camera that does not geo-tag (Nikon d700).

- It's not contextual tagging. There were no people tagged in the photos, no comments in a lot of them, no words or phrases or names in the captions that could have given clues

- It's not image recognition. One set of photos was taken at Cafe du Nord in SF, CA and every single shot was of the performer onstage, with no identifying characteristics or clues to be had.

"

I would really like to know as this is very interesting and none of the reddit comments (as of now, 12 hours after submission) really answer this question. What technology or methods are they using to suggest (accurate?) locations where pictures have been taken from?

Even more strangely, I have never used my mobile phone with Facebook, but when I uploaded a photo just now of a place from my childhood to which I haven't ever been since using Facebook, Facebook correctly suggested the location.

What the heck?!

Yes, but it's much easier for me to click the buy button than to go to the store to get it or to torrent it, so I just click it.

This is especially for me because I have 3 computers which don't have an optical drive, things that are becoming increasingly irrelevant thanks to the internet. I share a single USB DVD drive amongst the three computers; it's a pain in the ass to move the drive and find the disc.

Even worse is when the DRM software tells me to uninstall my virtual disc drive which isn't related to the game at all. I use it to make a copy and store it on my HDD so I can use the image rather than the physical thing.

They aren't tricks. Inviting your a friend to Facebook via. email isn't a trick, and keeping a record of it so that Facebook can notify both parties that the request has been accepted isn't a trick, for example.

It's still, nevertheless, far less than what people put on Facebook themselves. It might be comparable to me asking my friend about this person I saw the other day. Her friends are giving me that information. Though, as the person, I wouldn't appreciate my information shared, it's something that happens often in the real world, not just Facebook.

I'm going to bet that these "attacks" aren't going to do anything to the Facebook network.

Also, Facebook users have opted in to Facebook, and its data storage "tactics". If you aren't happy with it, then don't opt-in. As a 16 year old kid, I'm not missing out on anything important. My relationships, social life and life is still intact, despite not being part of Facebook.

There may be some who argue that people opt-in to Facebook don't know about it (certainly my teachers do). Let me say that complacency isn't an excuse. Only you are to blame if you sign up to some business offering you a $100,000 loan for 0% interest without considering and researching the possible repercussions.

It's your data. Facebook is free for you, but it obviously costs them money (without even considering the cost of technology, there's hiring employees). They have to recoup that somehow, and effectively to keep all your friends, your friends and your friends' friends' friends on it.

Disclaimer: I do have a Facebook account that I use to sign up to services that require that I have a Facebook account, like my school's gaming club, but there's no activity on it.

Except that they're boasting about how good their software and coding are...

Don't worry! It's an industry-wide standard (apparently).

For a well-designed website, I must say, I'm a bit worried.

> The cooperation takes place by our Group Business Platform using current security standards and ciphering methods. A secure data interchange has high priority!

Because that's all there is to security.

> All data is transferred with a 128 Bit SSL coding and are even secured by your log in on our Group Business Platform. This ciphering method is used in all areas of the platform and is added with further certificates.

I didn't realise we could code in SSL.

> The Volkswagen Group is using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 as standard the for displaying web pages. For the daily work with our platform, we recommend you to use the Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, too.

IE6 ftw!

> By using the current version and the updates provided by Microsoft we guarantee you a secure connection.

I must have been living under a rock; I thought that it was because Internet Explorer was so insecure that I get patches every week for it. Oh, but then again, those were security issues with the rendering, not the connection. It must be the connection that is so important!

> For security reasons, the Volkswagen Group does not recommend other browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Netscape etc. as they show security gaps.

Oh. Okay. I understand.

I don't think the Facebook API allows you to find your location (although it is possible to retrieve your Facebook location by scraping the Security page for your current login session (which displays your location)).

Also, the location data that is displayed on that page is kind of inaccurate (it says I'm in another state).

In case anyone doesn't know yet (and for future reference), ILSpy (http://wiki.sharpdevelop.net/ILSpy.ashx) is an open source alternative, and .NET Reflector was the first "popular" .NET decompiler that was used until they decided to force people to pay for it.

Many times when I'm stuck, I seem to draw the conclusion that this is because the documentation is lacking. It might be me scapegoating, but many times I find that it is because there is a lack of documentation that I spend hours on hours trying to figure something out.

Debugging on Windows, is a prime example. If you take someone from the normal Visual Studio give give them a PDB file, the compiled executable, limited / no source code, a crash report and a minidump, they're going to be stumped looking on the internet for some resources and instructions on how to debug the program.

Others include debugging in general, making the switch to and working in a *NIX environment (ie. sans IDE) from Windows, adding functionality to a large enterprise application that doesn't have comments or documentation (so essentially you're stuck for 3 hours trying to find this interface to that will execute a command), and so on.

I agree whole heartedly with the conclusion of the article, that "the things that matter to engineers aren't the things that matter to real human beings."

I also noticed immediately at the end of the keynote that there wasn't an explicit mention of "corrected reception" in the new iPhone (there was mention of a new antennae design, but it wasn't explicit and not emphasised). I would have thought that this was an important reason, and perhaps why they opted for the new antennae design that they did - because of the poor reception issues with the "original" iPhone 4.

It does - my Downloads app is reported as using 10 GB.

Amazon Silk uses the EC2 infrastructure -- they explicitly state this in their video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u7F_56WhHk )

No air bubbles -- it doesn't exist.

I've only one thought: WTF?

Google Chrome offers a version for enterprise, where Chrome is installed into the Program Files directory.

Agreed. This is the very reason my next phone will be an iPhone. I have been loving my Windows Phone for the past year -- it has the most amazing and well thought out user interface I've ever seen, but the advantages and convenience of Siri are undeniable. The convenience of its tiles is great, and the UI is impressive, but nothing beats a Siri that is deeply engrained into the OS itself.

Unless, of course, you are the victim.

B-b-but they have my keys stored in that datacenter !

So they're allowing us to store our data in encrypted form, but they keep the encryption key, and will decrypt requests for the data?

How exactly will this protect my data?

Some of us browse HN at work with prehistoric browsers or micromanaging IT departments that won't even let us run a portable version of Chrome.

Plus, my beautiful phone is IE.

The indentation is fine on IE7 mobile (WP7).