They started the process of shuttering it ~6 months ago. My partner worked there for ~3 years. Despite meeting all their metrics for user growth and activity it was a decision that came out of the blue. Guess we know why though? Can't have it conflicting with the brand.
I remember that two weeks before the decision came down, and she and her team got blindsided, she told me how a bioeng researcher emailed her telling her that without their tool they never would've found the connections and research needed to solve the problem they were working on. Not sure why they didn't just rebrand the tool and team, but it's probably just a blip to the facebook execs.
11:45ish they will put a banner up saying it's going to be shutdown end of May next year
Unfortunately archive.org is capturing the SVG logo from the site not the actual site so I can't prove the current state of the website but you can look at the last valid capture from 10/22:
https://web.archive.org/web/20211022094334/https://www.meta....
Right on cue: "Meta.org will sunset March 31, 2022: Meta will be supported through March 31, 2022. In the lead up, we will work with you in transitioning to alternative open services. Read more."
The title and lede state they are "Russian-Owned" and a Czech company. Perhaps NYT edited title after publishing or original poster misread the title.
Russian-Owned Software Company May Be Entry Point for Huge U.S. Hacking
Russian hackers may have piggybacked on a tool developed by JetBrains, which is based in the Czech Republic, to gain access to federal government and private sector systems in the United States.
"Russian-owned" is still largely misleading. The company is owned by Russian speakers that lived and studied in Russia before starting JetBrains. Most (if not all) of them have two citizenships by now, one is Russian. The company is not owned by the Russian state and has never been.
In Europe, words like Russian or Czech typically mean ethnicity. Even if you live there for 20 years, learn the language and get citizenship, people likely won't call you Czech. Maybe you can be called Czechian (if it's a real word) or Praguer since those don't imply ethnicity. I don't live in Czechia though, so take this with a grain of salt.
> The company is not owned by the Russian state and has never been.
This is true however, and NYT did (predictably) poor job here. Unless there is any indication that JetBrains were involved in the hack, mentioning "Russian-owned" in the title is misleading.
>In Europe, words like Russian or Czech typically mean ethnicity.
Well, then, suddenly all those fines on some obscure Russian (alright, alright, half-Russian) company called Google all make sense now! Just another part of the sanctions!
> The problem is that this agreement is expressly unconstitutional
I would disagree with that phrasing, and your final paragraph contradicts that statement. There is nothing unconstitutional about states entering into compacts. They merely require congressional consent to do so as the language of Article 1 Section 10 makes clear.
Additionally, even without congressional consent the supreme court has ruled multiple times since the late 1800s that as long as an a compact is not:
> "directed to the formation of any combination tending to the increase of political power in the States, which may encroach upon. . . . the just supremacy of the United States"
Then congressional consent is not required. [1][2][3]
The argument then is whether the NPVIC violates that rule and encroaches on federal supremacy or grants additional power to the states. However, the power in question here relates to how states appoint electors. This is a power explicitly granted to the states under article 2 section 1 clause 2 [4]:
> Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors
Therefore, in my opinion, any compact regarding the power to select electors does not pass the tests laid out by previous case law, and the compact does not require congressional approval. Of course our opinions don't count, only the supreme courts opinion matters, but there is no indication from any case law that this compact is "explicitly unconstitutional" or "in a certain way illegal". If anything it is borderline, but supported by current caselaw. The supreme court will most likely take up any suit involving the compact for clarification, but they would need a novel justification for deciding that states exercising a power explicitly granted to the states somehow increases the power of states.
Additionally, all of this is entirely moot if congress grants approval.
For further reading I would look at the NPVIC's own FAQ which has detailed citations and caselaw supporting their argument as well as detailing counter arguments [5]. For an independent review of interstate compact caselaw see [1], [6], or [7].
I would urge you to reconsider your stance on this as "a PR issue". Having readily available realtime aerial imaging data involves numerous ethical and safety concerns. Stating that people who have these ethical concerns are "few" and that you would "like to brush them off" shows a lack of consideration for how your technology could negatively impact others. Based on a recent paper [1] , "the results show that Europe is 83.28 percent covered with an average of one aerial photography every half an hour and a ground sampling distance of 0.96 meters per pixel".
Assuming 30m intervals and a 1m GSD I can know when someone is or isn't home based on whether or not a car is in their driveway. For people living in the vicinity of an airport where the GSD and intervals would presumably be much higher I could track individuals to and from their home or office from the comfort of a coffee shop.
Either of the above capabilities has ramifications for things like:
- stalking and harassment (no need to follow someone physically)
- home invasion and theft (can determine when someone is out of the house)
- targeting of dissidents (can track who showed up at a meeting)
- kidnapping and rendition (can know when someone is isolated without committing physical surveillance resources)
Those are just a few of the things I can come up with off the top of my head.
Even if you limit your tools to governments and businesses what prevents illegitimate organizations from using shell companies [2] or other means for establishing legitimate accounts to your services, and what prevents individuals within legitimate organizations from accessing the tools for personal means? [3]
Calling this a "PR issue" grossly understates the potential damage a technology like this can cause in the wrong hands.
I really appreciate this response; banally labeling this a "PR issue" was a bit callous and does nothing to address the underlying concerns or the consequences of leaving them unaddressed.
I'm more or less a team of one at the moment and the original instinct when I had the idea was along the lines of "If I'm having to address privacy concerns, I must be doing something right", implying some degree of public interest in the product. There's now quantifiable interest and the waitlist hasn't stopped growing. Comments like yours make me realize I need a rock-solid set of first principles before enlisting outside help. The eternal optimist sees infinite use cases and it's easy to discard the bad and the ugly ones for the good, but the ramifications you've listed will kill the product before it even truly starts.
I'd love to chat more about this side of product development and throw some questions your way if you've got some time to spare (chris@notasatellite.com), but thank you again for the thoughtful response and reading material.
So when one of Badyaev’s undergraduate students, Clayton Addison, noticed that the male finches on campus in central Tucson were not singing a rapid trill that’s essential for attracting females in the nearby desert, the lab was able to dig into the data for answers. Comparing the beak sizes, bite forces, and diets of the two populations, the researchers showed that the urban finches rely so heavily on feeders that their beaks have adapted: they’ve become longer and deeper to accommodate the sunflower seeds typically on offer, which are much larger and harder than the small cactus and grass seeds that rural finches eat. This adaptation has altered not only how urban males sing, but also what urban females prefer in a mate. It’s a pattern that Badyaev has since found in other places where finches live in the shadow of humans, the same large beaks arising from a surprisingly diverse array of developmental pathways. Such varied routes to an identical end—a beak strong enough to crack sunflower seeds—may be one way that nature hides variability from the swinging axe of natural selection.
Evolutionary theory aside, however, I was stuck on one point: There’s such a thing as a finch Brooklyn accent—thanks to feeders like mine.
The current headline, "Stanford adopts JavaScript, drops Java for its intro to CS curriculum" is incorrect. Stanford is piloting two new classes one in JavaScript and the other in Python to determine the effort, benefits, and downsides of moving the introductory class away from Java[1]. The main introductory class, CS106A, is still being taught in Java[2].
[1] From a Facebook comment posted by one of the CS106* instructors: "We are running some experimental CS1 offerings. One of them is "106J" in JavaScript. Another, likely in Python, will be tried next winter. None of these replaces 106A; they're offered concurrently as smaller experimental classes because instructors wanted to try out other approaches. If one of these approaches proves to be really awesome, maybe someday we'd consider switching A to it. But we have no plans to do such right now. There are some rumors about this based on one misquoted news article, but they are false."
While I disagree with the author, I believe his intent was to claim that bird watchers, Paleo dieters and minimalists are similar in that talking about their respective activities is just as important as participating in it.
"And, as with watching birds or going Paleo, talking about [minimalism] is just as important as actually doing it."
I think the original commentor's skepticism, while possibly too concerned with sample size, is still valid. This study is trying to draw connections between two large and hard to understand systems, marriage and cardiovascular health. While the sample size may have captured enough variance in a certain population to generalize the results I doubt they can be generalized world wide, nation wide, state wide or possibly even city wide.
For example, how did they find these participants? Did the researchers just pull married couples from the BYU campus or from across the city? Given BYU and Utah's population are they mostly LDS couples? What about their race given that the LDS is significantly more caucasian than the US overall? What about diet given that LDS members generally don't consume alcohol or caffeinated beverages? What about geography? Perhaps temperature or altitude affected the cardiovascular markers or measurements were taken under different conditions for different groups?
All of the above things I've mentioned may or may not affect cardiovascular health, and I doubt they captured or had the time and resources to control for all these factors and any additional ones I didn't bring up. So I think being skeptical is okay. Until this study has been reproduced multiple times or we understand the entire pathway connecting marriage and heart health (a highly unlikely occurrence) I will remain skeptical because that's how good science works.
Ah yeah, it definitely cannot be generalized to US marriages at large due to the sample only being from a limited area. Confounding factors may definitely be an issue as well.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments