I enjoy this author's podcasts and newsletters, and an interesting angle they've covered recently is that Facebook, ostensibly trying to "clean up their act" with regard to being seen as a platform for disinformation and radicalization, has been tweaking their algorithm to not promote so much alt-right and similar content.
But the problem is, once they exclude all that stuff, there's just not a lot left. So you end up with inane garbage like this account being the most popular content on the platform. Like the whole platform is just Ben Shapiro and drop-shipping scammers. Really paints an "emperor has no clothes" picture of what's going on on Facebook these days.
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The typical way to build and distribute Mapbox vector tiles has been by packing them into a sqlite database with individual rows for each Z/X/Y quad tree coordinate. This is what tools like tippecanoe typically produce.
The problem with this is it still requires a running server process colocated with that sqlite db in order to service requests for individual tiles, like what you'll receive from a client-side mapping library.
This project has a lot of different parts, but one of them is a spec for serving this type of data at low latency without a server by combining a custom packing format with S3 range-get requests to read individual tiles direct from blob storage. So that is certainly interesting for this kind of use-case.
> You need to open a JIRA ticket to get a namespace, create GPG keys, register keys in a keyserver, and add SBT plugins just to get a manual publishing process working. It’s a lot more work than publishing to PyPI or RubyGems.
It's a little annoying to have to go through that, but you only have to do it once per domain, and the turnaround from the people who manage the sonatype jira is usually pretty quick. In return the ecosystem gets a lot of protection from the kind of exploits you mentioned.
Metals is such an awesome tool. Definitely one of the most polished LSP implementations I have used, and a great demonstration of what the protocol is capable of.
I know it's all old hat to the IntelliJ crowd, but I just don't like using an industrial IDE if I can help it. Metals lets me stick with a lightweight editor like Emacs or VSCode while keeping the great tooling that a powerful type system like Scala's enables.
I still fire up IntelliJ from time to time for certain types of mechanical refactoring, but as Metals has improved I find those cases come up less and less.
Big props to the Metals team, and thanks for all the hard work.
What advantages would switching from IntelliJ to Metals backed editor bring?
I've been using Scala for a few years and IntelliJ with Scala plugin has been pretty amazing for Scala use. 90% of time the suggestions it makes to fix everyday blunders (like missing imports, basic typos) are right on the mark.
Have not hit any realy pain points with sbt either. I do not want to spend time messing with configuration.
Compared to say using VS Code with Python plugin Scala development feels so much nicer that I am considering switching to PyCharm.
Well if you're already happy using IntelliJ, I'm not sure there's much reason to switch. It's more that you're not forced to switch in the other direction.
I'm happy with my Emacs setup, and in particular I spend a lot of time editing code in other languages as well as text docs like markdown or org. In the past, while this workflow was great for most things, I'd usually have to switch over to IntelliJ for serious scala editing. But now I don't have to any more!
What about wall-mounted out of the box bitcoin miners? Get around the physical access/security difficulties by making the homeowner own the machine and capture the benefit from its computation (rather than relying on network-based resource sharing). The economics might not really work out in the case of bitcoin but maybe there are other applications where the value of (computation + heat output) would make it worthwhile.
That doesn't really get around the problem; I could install a tap upstream of the miner, and interdict any blocks that get mined. It might even be worse than the current model, since the value of the work being done is completely exfiltratable (i.e. if I steal the mined block I get all the reward, whereas I might have to work to extract value from stolen computation results).
The value is in the proof of work; just a very hard-to-compute number. All you need to do to steal the work is to prevent the server from sending the hash to the owner, and independently submit that proof of work elsewhere.
Adding to the confusion, the NYT has an article up right now which seems to report the opposite.
To quote from the NYT article lede:
"WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 on Thursday to invite public comment on a set of proposed rules aimed at guaranteeing an open Internet, prohibiting high-speed Internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against legal content flowing through their pipes.
"
Am I reading this wrong or does that seem to say the opposite of what WaPo is saying?
You are reading it correctly. And the NYT seems to be reporting it correctly. While the text is not published yet anywhere I can see, the FCC fact sheet states that the proposal (direct quotes with only formatting/presentation changes) [1]:
- Proposes to retain the definitions and scope of the 2010 rules, which governed broadband Internet
access service providers, but not services like enterprise services, Internet traffic exchange and
specialized services.
- Proposes to enhance the existing transparency rule, which was upheld by the D.C. Circuit. The
proposed enhancements would provide consumers, edge providers, and the Commission with
tailored disclosures, including information on the nature of congestion that impacts consumers’
use of online services and timely notice of new practices.
- As part of the revived "no-blocking" rule, proposes ensuring that all who use the Internet can
enjoy robust, fast and dynamic Internet access.
- Tentatively concludes that priority service offered exclusively by a broadband provider to an
affiliate should be considered illegal until proven otherwise.
- Asks how to devise a rigorous, multi-factor "screen" to analyze whether any conduct hurts
consumers, competition, free expression and civic engagement, and other criteria under a legal
standard termed "commercial reasonableness."
- Asks a series of detailed questions about what legal authority provides the most effective means
of keeping the Internet open: Section 706 or Title II.
- Proposes a multi-faceted process to promptly resolve and head off disputes, including an
ombudsperson to act as a watchdog on behalf of consumers and start-ups and small businesses.
It's important to note that the FCC is avoiding dealing with the peering issue (so, for example, Netflix's issue) with their current proposal. Wheeler specifically said that they want to delay that part of the net neutrality debate until later. In my view that's a mistake.
I think that the concerns that the stated goals of this effort cannot be met without addressing peering is a concern that should certainly be raised in the comment period (I'm not sure I agree with it, but I'm sure that some of the people raising it have thought about it more than I have and can present an argument that lays out why that is the case so it can be evaluated.)
Can someone please clarify this line:
"- Tentatively concludes that priority service offered exclusively by a broadband provider to an affiliate should be considered illegal until proven otherwise."
the offered exclusively line is what gets me, if they offer a "fast lane" at a higher price to everyone it isn't an "exclusive" offer and therefore would be allowed?
> if they offer a "fast lane" at a higher price to everyone it isn't an "exclusive" offer and therefore would be allowed?
No, if it isn't an exclusive offer, then it would be tested under the test for which they seek input from the public under the next bullet point (which directly addresses the limits on the FCC's authority established in the D.C. Circuit opinion striking down the last Open Internet order.) The clear intent is to find a way to limit paid prioritization to the extent that is consistent with the limits on the FCC's authority established by the courts (because, if they exceed that authority, then the whole thing gets thrown out, which is why we are back at rulemaking on this issue again right now.)
>Tentatively concludes that priority service offered exclusively by a broadband provider to an affiliate should be considered illegal until proven otherwise.
This is still not a good proposition though. They're saying you can't offer improved service to "exclusively" your affiliates, but you can allow anyone with enough money to pay for "improved" (aka normal) service.
Things are very confusing right now but we have not made progress on Net Neutrality yet. Keep contacting the FCC and let them know that this is not good enough.
> They're saying you can't offer improved service to "exclusively" your affiliates, but you can allow anyone with enough money to pay for "improved" (aka normal) service.
No, they aren't. They are saying that you presumptively cannot offer enhanced service exclusively to affiliates, and whether you can or cannot do so under other terms is governed by the screening factors for which they seek input from the public in the next bullet point, where the FCC "asks how to devise a rigorous, multi-factor 'screen' to analyze whether any conduct hurts consumers, competition, free expression and civic engagement, and other criteria under a legal standard termed 'commercial reasonableness.'"
Note that this directly addresses the language of the limitation on the FCCs authority to regulate dictated by the DC Circuit.
This is a bit concerning as a number of non tech people but people that just use facebook, instagram, gmail ect that i have spoken to are confused. It would be nice to see a simplification so that the avg guy in the street can understand the effects of this.
This reminds me of a funny behavior I noticed when I visited Iceland - parents would simply leave their kids outside in a pram when they went into a cafe or a restaurant. Struck me as something you would never see in the States but I guess other places just have higher levels of trust.
Basically the same principle except in this case the transport system was the river and the land usage is optimized to give as many people access to it as possible. Interesting to see the idea cropping up again in reference to modern public transit.
But the problem is, once they exclude all that stuff, there's just not a lot left. So you end up with inane garbage like this account being the most popular content on the platform. Like the whole platform is just Ben Shapiro and drop-shipping scammers. Really paints an "emperor has no clothes" picture of what's going on on Facebook these days.