101–110 of 410 posts
> The world needs a strong Twitter Really? Does it? I think Twitter needs a strong Twitter, shareholders need a strong Twitter even Twitter employees need it. However the world is, at best, ambivalent about Twitter, if it disappeared tomorrow a replacement would spring up within a few weeks if the world really needed a way to shotgun their messages into the ether.
/s
The number, 336, is roughly 10% of their employees - which is pretty much exactly the number that Jack Welch recommended turning over each year to improve the work force. I often wonder whether these "layoffs" aren't actually layoffs, but simply performance based assessments. It's not like Twitter is shutting down an entire office, or abandoning some technology, and letting everyone associated with that office/techno…
> The world needs a strong Twitter Really? Does it? I think Twitter needs a strong Twitter, shareholders need a strong Twitter even Twitter employees need it. However the world is, at best, ambivalent about Twitter, if it disappeared tomorrow a replacement would spring up within a few weeks if the world really needed a way to shotgun their messages into the ether.
When you're the CEO of twitter, yes. You're not going to say anything else.
> The world needs a strong Twitter Really? Does it? I think Twitter needs a strong Twitter, shareholders need a strong Twitter even Twitter employees need it. However the world is, at best, ambivalent about Twitter, if it disappeared tomorrow a replacement would spring up within a few weeks if the world really needed a way to shotgun their messages into the ether.
> We launched the first of these experiences last week with Moments, a great beginning, and a bold peek into the future of how people will see what's going on in the world.
Wonder what's next, because with Moments it feels like they still have no idea what to do with this platform. It would be such a pity to turn Twitter into TV-like manually curated breaking news channels.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It seems unsuitable for coordinating mass protests to me, because it's a single point of failure. In many countries, the government controls all Internet access, so blocking Twitter would be relatively easy. Sure, people can use Tor, but will enough people have it when Twitter gets blocked? No, you can set up endless blogs (using Wordpress or Joomla or any other CMS with Twitter plugins), and include a twitter stre…
Sure, you can set up what are effectively Twitter proxies, and sure, the censors won't be able to keep up playing whack-a-mole. But then the users have to do the same thing, preemptively finding such proxies and jumping between them. I'd guess that that would be a good enough result from the government's perspective. And that's just read-only stuff. Post by email? DPI could drop packets containing emails addressed to…
This is why it is so important to create protocols for communication instead of single-point-of-failure services. While it is still possible for bad actors to interfere with traffic, it is much harder to shutdown an entire network of federated servers. In contrast, a service can be disabled by simply throwing legal papers at the person running the service (or otherwise threaten them, bribe them, etc).
> DPI could drop packets containing emails addressed
Which is why that email should have been encrypted. Even non-authenticated opportunistic encryption would make that kind of DPI much harder and more expensive.
We've had encryption for a long time, and there is absolutely no excuse for to not have encryption in all network software. Unfortunately, a lot of software has been badly negligent in their duty to keep their users safe.
> cuts off the country's Internet access entirely
...they should be left with a split network, still able to communicate internally. It is pure hubris to believe that a single service will always be available in any situation; when international links are involved, some amount of loss-of-service should be assumed. This is why email allows multiple MX records - servers fail, so build in backups, some of which can be local.
> peer-to-peer stuff
Yes, though the model to copy is federated services like email.
The power of the internet is that it IS peer-to-peer. No 3rd party has to grant authorization to listen(2) for connections or connect(2) to a remove host. This has been forgotten because of the damage that NAT does to the network (you aren't a full citizen ("peer") on the internet when you have to ask the NAT device to forward your packets.)
Now, after about a decade of failing to heed the warnings about NAT, the digital imprimatur[1] is being constructed and running proper peer to peer (no 23rd party) is harder than ever. Hopefully IPv6 can reverse this trend.
fewer
[1]: Yes, it's pointless. Why is there no such distinction for "more"?
The number, 336, is roughly 10% of their employees - which is pretty much exactly the number that Jack Welch recommended turning over each year to improve the work force. I often wonder whether these "layoffs" aren't actually layoffs, but simply performance based assessments. It's not like Twitter is shutting down an entire office, or abandoning some technology, and letting everyone associated with that office/techno…
It should be aligned to whatever functions they are stopping doing. I think the message indicated they were focusing on high impact areas (whatever that might mean). The opposite of that is low impact areas would likely lose staff, right?
A good indication will be if any developers/marketing/sales, etc.. working on core Twitter/Vine/Periscope/Moments teams are let go.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He said he would give it to you straight, not ELI5. They are focusing on fewer things that they believe are the most valuable, and stopping stuff that isn't core to their purpose. What about this is confusing to you?
What you said is as near the definition of "giving it straight" as one might expect to follow his preface. What he actually said is as near the definition of corporate speak as possible. There is no confusion on my part. Perhaps Jack is the one confused about what people mean by "corporate speak".