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iribe

69 karma · joined November 3, 2013

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iribe··on Uber shakes up real estate market with massive lease in Oakland
Because that would decrease housing prices. What will happen is homeowners will talk about the need to keep Oakland's character, which is codeword for stopping development of housing to increase home values.
iribe··on Microsoft battles US over warrant for drugs case emails
Also, you can argue that Google has been punished for daring to stand up to the US government (for example wanting to warn wikileaks about surveillance of its employees). Perhaps it's coincidence, but the Obama administration recently sided with Oracle in its litigation against Google. That is the sort of thing you can expect when going against the US government. Also, you give up help when it comes to things like antitrust lawsuits.
iribe··on Google OnHub Review
You think you care, but you have no idea who gives you privacy. Maybe you trust Apple, but have you seen their code? What if snarfing your data leads to better data for siri? Then let's not talk about the millions of small sites snarfing your data as you browse through the web, none of them beholden to sarbanes-oxley, your cell phone conversations which are snarfed by your carrier and aggregated with geo data and sold to the highest bidder, providing billboard locations that maximize demographics. You say you care about privacy, but you have no idea that you have no privacy. You may hate google / think you're maintaining your privacy by warning people about google, but it's just the beaten horse that you beat to make you feel better. It's the bright colorful logo in your face that you see, but that's the tip of the ice berg. In short you are ignorant and lashing out and making no difference whatsoever. Google's just easy to attack because it's more up front regarding how it uses your data, you can login to your dashboard and see everything. Your cell phone carrier and friends, Apple, not so much. Don't remember seeing their dashboards with the data they collect on you. So, continue on pretending like you are making a difference.
iribe··on Companies That May Be the Next $1B Startups
Out of all of these, only one stands out as a sure fire success: sonos.
iribe··on Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter
it shows the article if the refer(r)er is google
iribe··on Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU
This reminds me of the EU imposing browser choice on Microsoft's European customers. The result was a larger market share for google in the EU. In the USA, where no choice was mandated, Microsoft push forth bing and as a result, it has ~9% market share and growing. Given the choice, everyone chooses Google. I think Google would be fine with giving users a choice of default maps when searching a location, default reviews, etc. But the EU would not like the outcome and they would come back for more regulation when their intent, to harm google aka knock em down a peg aka "bring diversity" is not met.

The fallacy with the EU's position is the notion of 'diversity'. Code word for "let our companies compete better". If the free market doesn't want that, any 'remedy' will in fact harm users. What the EU must do is simply focus on the question, "are consumers harmed". Anything else is begging for problems. EU bureaucrats are not smarter than the market. If EU companies are able to attract the capital and users to them, wonderful. But the fundamental problem is 'attracting capital' to a rigid (and apparently protectionist) market.

iribe··on I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10
Microsoft was caught with their pants down returning google search results to microsoft via internet explorer. They call it "a signal" for bing. The difference between google and microsoft is microsoft isn't as forthcoming regarding what information they retrieve. No dashboard to browse everything microsoft tracks... You just have to trust microsoft. Good luck with that.
iribe··on Microsoft Shakes Up Its Leadership and Internal Structure
This coincides with my theory explaining why bing is bigger in the US and not Europe. European regulators forced microsoft to make it easy to switch search engines/browsers, and users when given the choice tend to choose google. That means bing is successful due to being a microsoft product forced upon its users.
iribe··on The Google Stack [pdf]
Presto is a copy of dremel. Putting it all together:

gfs -> hdfs

bigtable -> hbase

google mapreduce -> hadoop

dremel -> presto

protocol buffers -> swift

iribe··on Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech on Encryption, Privacy
Yes, this speech is more marketing than anything. At the end of the day, just like with google, apple is sending your data to the cloud. Location data, they even have their own street view now...
iribe··on Why France is building a mega-university at Paris-Saclay to rival Silicon Valley
French culture is very much reliant upon the centralized government to do/provide everything. You can see it in their attempts at a government-sanctioned google competitor, now a government-sanctioned silicon valley. And it will fail over and over until they change the basic French outlook on jobs. In France it's impossible to fire. Every job requires a ton of red tape. Anything like a 1099 (hire/fire easily) employee is completely foreign to french thinking. To them, companies can only exploit, and employees must be protected by the government. They exhibit deep cynicism of capitalism, which is mutually exclusive with silicon valley. France is an old money country, new opportunities are almost impossible to find. France will never create a silicon valley under these conditions.
iribe··on How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime
This is no different than paying bribes to third world police.
iribe··on Gmail blocked in China
To be fair, those products should be blocked in every country. I realize what the PRC is doing: blocking successful foreign corporations, then when they have sufficiently copied / provided for the local market, they expand. Quite duplicitous and I hope it fails miserably, no offense. I feel that the US government might be hesitant to allow Chinese companies, protected by the PRC, access to sensitive information on its citizens.
iribe··on A New Way to Reach Mars Safely, Anytime and on the Cheap
You still have to carry twice the fuel. What about a refuel station orbiting mars? Replenish the mars fuel station with fuel before the manned mission departs, they can just use that fuel stored at Mars when they return from the manned mission.
iribe··on At Spain’s Door, a Welcome Mat for Entrepreneurs
The high COL in the SF bay area has become a significant liability because people like you realize it's way too expensive here. It's affecting everyone from startups to really large companies who prefer to hire in the SF bay area, but cannot do so.
iribe··on Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability
I wonder if this lack of being able to set / keep goals correlates to math which often involves goal setting then working backwards to find the right steps to reach a solution. Are procrastinators worse at math?
iribe··on Are we at Peak Google?
There are multiple fronts. There are the microsoft/apple fronts where they use every opportunity to not provide google search results. Then there's European antitrust investigations which microsoft is funding via 'grassroots' organizations. Basically every large player not named google is determined to see google fail. Which is ironic given the push for antitrust, but I digress.
iribe··on Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking
Caffeine pills.
iribe··on Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking
I bet Deepak Chopra knows, and it has something to do with quantum energy.
iribe··on Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking
> So a poster, that later admits he didn't read the article, not only discounts the research that a half dozen PhDs in public health performed, but then provides his own summary of their research that is completely at odds with their results and experience.

Welcome to the internet!

iribe··on Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop
If I had a nickel for every apple fanboi claiming google steals from apple I'd be rich. Please, get over it, let's not act like apple doesn't copy.
iribe··on Notes on the Celebrity Data Theft
This is the future we all need, and if the timelines are correct, it will be released this year, so very soon. Note that Apple should be releasing NFC soon, so it would probably work with this. Everyone wants to stop phishing, as Apple knows very well, and this is the solution. Apple will hopefully jump on board after what just happened. Nudge, nudge.
iribe··on Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue
They're arming patent trolls and aiming them at google. This isn't the first one (rockstar).
iribe··on Microsoft Reports Record Revenue of $24.52 Billion in Second Quarter
When the patent they used to collect money was invalidated(FAT patent), yet they continue in their ways, the "extortion" word seems to stick :)
iribe··on Chrome Is The New C Runtime
The key is "small and well chosen set of base classes" for your exceptions. This is where you got the most benefit, and you probably know it. Without exceptions, you can have a class that represents well defined state such as either success or an error code, with the error code being well defined, returning an object of this class for all methods that need to return success/failure codes, and requiring that it be handled, so compilation fails if callers ignore the return value.

What's great about this is I might call a method that simply concatenates two strings, that is all it does, and I know this won't fail(OOM can always happen, but good luck recovering from that), so I don't return a status. I can call this method assuming no failure and no boiler plate is needed. With exceptions, there's always that possibility that an exception can be thrown. What if I call this method from code that needs to close resources? Great, now I absolutely must have RAII for cleanup, which is more complicated than just doing close(x). Also, what are you going to do when using 3rd party code with its own base exception class? Now, at the upper layers of your code, you have to have a handler for each base class. Without exceptions, someone might have their own status object they return, and I'll need to translate that, else my code won't compile. Your code will compile even though you might not handle that 3 party base exception class.

Of course, most times code just propagates the error up so that adds to boiler plate without exceptions.

I think the talk of using exceptions vs returning a status is a red herring. They have their positives and negatives, and we can argue this until the cows come home. The most important thing is to use a set of well defined success/error codes, whether this comes from exceptions or a returned status isn't really important. I've seen codebase with C++ exceptions working just fine, and I've seen c++ code with no exceptions, and it worked well. The commonality between these two cases is .... well defined error codes.

iribe··on Google sues to protect Android device makers from Apple-backed patent hell
The laws in the US are pretty clear on this subject. In general, as soon as you start colluding between companies, pooling resources, shaking hands and ganging up against one company, antitrust comes into play. Just look at what happened to Apple and publishers, standard oil, etc.

Having said that, one of the parties involved in collusion was Microsoft. They covered their tracks well, as they have had more than a few run ins with the government here. You can see that in the, "Look, we asked them to join us, they chose not to do so" line.. Which was a laughable point by the way, as joining their group wouldn't have allowed for protecting android manufacturers. But it provides an alibi for regulators. IMO, it's not a very good alibi.

Microsoft and Apple took a huge risk in their collusion. I imagine discovery might bring up some juicy tidbits. I figure they knew the risks, but reasoned that sticking it to their biggest 'problem' was worth the risk of getting caught up with regulators. So that tells you about how scared they are.

iribe··on China Mobile and Apple Bring iPhone to China Mobile’s 4G & 3G Networks
...and any apps that government doesn't like will be cens^h^h^h^hbanned.
iribe··on Protesters vandalize Google bus, block Apple shuttle
Note that these hipsters moved to Oakland/SF thanks to paying higher rent compared to the black people they kicked out.
iribe··on The Day Google Had to 'Start Over' on Android
Any decent company reacts to competitors to survive: witness iOS notifications in response to android notifications. Consumers benefit when companies are busy one-upping each other.
iribe··on Google is the new Bell Labs
dremel(where facebook's presto comes from) bigtable(where amazon's dyanamoDB comes from)

Most tech companies have google to thank for large scale data processing. Google could have not published anything, but they chose to publish these papers. There are other papers published that other companies haven't even started copying yet, as google is 5 years ahead of the industry in terms of large scale data processing. When these companies get there, they can check out the published papers, saving years of time.

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