Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 173 posts

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#71

Post by mickronome »

to_bpr wrote: post #9
dnomad wrote: post #5

Yet another New York Times hit piece against Facebook. It makes you wonder what a private corporation is supposed to do. In just this year: 1) The New York Times has published an endless stream editorials calling for Facebook to be destroyed [1], insisting Facebook is a thread to national security [2] and declaring Facebook a threat to the republic [3]. 2) These editorials are joined by "reporting" insinuating that F…

NYT's business model seems to have turned to latching on to whatever sentiment is currently popular and beating the metaphorical horse for clicks until it's a bloody pulp, before moving on to the latest "outrage" of the week. In fact, in catering to simply the loudest popular sentiment, they put themselves in the position of having to apologize for their recent election coverage due to how utterly biased it ended up…

It could be the case that the click driving articles themselves is an effect of Facebook, but also Google and many others, serving as implicit or explicit filters favouring the style, because their click hungry ad selling algoritms feeds itself through ads on the article pages.

It's quite likely that they believe they have to write that way today, or shutter the doors.

They could still care more about good journalism, while mostly having to write in a style that looks like if they don't.

Only way to know for sure is to look at their economy, and how much is driven by per click ads, and how much is subscriptions/other sales.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#73

Post by 1787 »

janoc wrote: post #64
Someone wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patents on mp3 and RSA didn’t prevent them from being used everywhere. I guess a patent on FFT (which, by the way, was considered at the time, according to Wikipedia) wouldn’t have stopped its adoption either. Also, IMO, a formula , which tells you what to compute, is essentially different from an algorithm , which tells you how . FFT would be patentable because it is non-obvious, even when given the formula for doin…

Sorry, a formula and an algorithm are not at all different. A mathematical formula is just a symbolic expression of an abstract concept, with the procedure (algorithm) how to use it being implicit (= obvious to the person skilled in the art). A computer algorithm can be trivially converted into purely mathematical/logic representation ("formulas" if you want), e.g. using things like lambda calculus. And vice-versa -…

It is true that an algorithm can be converted to a formula, and a formula to an algorithm, but it is unlikely a given useful algorithm could be generated mechanically from a (human-written, useful) formula.

For example, you could write a formula to express the property of order in lists, and maybe with some mechanical procedure (falling under "obvious to the person skilled in the art") you could then generate an algorithm that sorted lists. However, what's the time/space complexity of that algorithm? What are the practical runtime characteristics? For industry applications the practical runtime characteristics matter as much as anything else. That you technically could compute something doesn't matter at all, if that computation might not finish until relevant celestial bodies have phase changes.

I'm not saying Quicksort should be patentable, but I do think it's at least a step and a half removed from pure math.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#74

Post by bogomipz »

dnomad wrote: post #5

Yet another New York Times hit piece against Facebook. It makes you wonder what a private corporation is supposed to do. In just this year: 1) The New York Times has published an endless stream editorials calling for Facebook to be destroyed [1], insisting Facebook is a thread to national security [2] and declaring Facebook a threat to the republic [3]. 2) These editorials are joined by "reporting" insinuating that F…

>"Yet another New York Times hit piece against Facebook."

The very first word on this page is "Opinion", making it very clear that this piece is in no way reflects the editorial polices of The New York Times.

Opinion pieces by their very nature make no claims of objectivity. The "Ed-Op" section has long been a mainstay of daily news organizations in the US.

In your list of citations you've mixed both objective journalism pieces and editorials. Based on this and your comments I suspect that you might not know the difference.

If you are going to be critical of a news outlet you might want to learn to identify the different article types first.

Facebook has been a regular part of the news cycle precisely because it is so central to an ongoing dialog regarding privacy, regulatory regimes and the power of a single corporate entity.

I find your insistence of a conspiracy while using phrases like "propaganda campaign" and "hit piece" very disturbing.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#75

Post by TaylorAlexander »

citilife wrote: post #51
hellllllllooo wrote: post #4

It's crazy how the large companies file so many patents for any idea their employees can think of. We used to have a lawyer come to our desks once a month and they would try patent any idea you could come up with even off the top of your head. Not sure how small companies can compete when larger companies can buy up all the IP in a space without having to do any work. The smaller companies I've worked for have to be…

As someone who has multiple issued patents from large companies.. It's a pretty complex issue. I personally think software patents should be outlawed, as I don't know a better solution. On the one hand, I have several patents for project(s) that took years to develop. The processes are unique, very difficult to replicate, and should be offered some protection (if we agree that motor designs should be protected). The…

I’m becoming more of the opinion that all intellectual property law is immoral on the grounds that it creates artificial barriers to prosperity for individuals who don’t receive the benefits of the patents. I work hard on personal projects (robots) that I think would be useful to others and I share them all CC0 or BSD licensed. I think it would be useful for economists to consider the way patents exacerbate inequality.

That said, my employer has filed a patent for some work I did for them, and it’s a tough issue for me. In this case, I don’t think the innovation is so world changing that I need to fight for it to be open, nor do I think they would honor my desire to leave it unpatented as I’m not really in a position to ask for that.

But it’s an issue I feel uncomfortable with, and I kind of dream of moving to a different place where my employer doesn’t try to patent my work.

It is tough when they offer you a few thousand for these ideas you come up with. That money could help me build a family, but in closing off these ideas I’m making it harder for everyone else to prosper.

FWIW, if anyone says “patents encourage innovation” I would ask you for citations. I understand this is the story we’re told, but it’s typically presented with simple anecdotal evidence and hunches. I’ve never seen a thorough study of the issue.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#77

Post by Bud »

to_bpr wrote: post #9
dnomad wrote: post #5

Yet another New York Times hit piece against Facebook. It makes you wonder what a private corporation is supposed to do. In just this year: 1) The New York Times has published an endless stream editorials calling for Facebook to be destroyed [1], insisting Facebook is a thread to national security [2] and declaring Facebook a threat to the republic [3]. 2) These editorials are joined by "reporting" insinuating that F…

NYT's business model seems to have turned to latching on to whatever sentiment is currently popular and beating the metaphorical horse for clicks until it's a bloody pulp, before moving on to the latest "outrage" of the week. In fact, in catering to simply the loudest popular sentiment, they put themselves in the position of having to apologize for their recent election coverage due to how utterly biased it ended up…

The NY Times did not apologize in general for their election coverage, nor admit that it was biased, nor are you able to show in any way that it was biased.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#78

Post by windows_tips »

math wrote: post #2

It upsets me more to be reminded that governments grant monopolies on not-very-difficult-to-come-up-with ideas such as any of those mentioned in the article.

Does Zuckerberg defend their supposed right to prevent others from doing the things in their patent for commercial purposes?

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#79

Post by windows_tips »

QML wrote: post #15
amelius wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are algorithms that, in my opinion, would deserve a patent, though. Software can, in some cases, be more clever than e.g. mechanical inventions. It would be unfair if one inventor could apply for a patent, while the other could not.

Should we allow for algorithms to be patented though? To reserve something so abstract would be near equal to claiming a mathematical formula for oneself. If IBM had patented the fast Fourier transform, where would signal processing be?

A patent on fast Fourier transform would essentially do nothing, as no one appears to be selling the algorithm outright.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#80

Post by lightsighter »

gsnedders wrote: post #58
QML wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we allow for algorithms to be patented though? To reserve something so abstract would be near equal to claiming a mathematical formula for oneself. If IBM had patented the fast Fourier transform, where would signal processing be?

I used to be absolutely against software patents on those grounds, but I nowadays actually think it's a weak argument. We don't see people arguing we shouldn't patent physical machines because ultimately each operation is a simple physical movement, so the sum of everything is just a sequence of physical movements. Yet we see people arguing we shouldn't patent software "machines" because ultimately each operation is…

All programs are proofs and their results are theorems[1]. If "math is naturally inherent and merely discovered by humans" then so are all programs; programmers are just discoverers and not inventors. Given the proof of Curry-Howard Isomorphism rests on existing maths we can have another discussion about whether mathematical patents should be issued if we don't believe that maths are inherent and are actually invented, but as long as we hold that we can't patent maths then it must also hold that we can't patent programs due to their equivalence. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%E2%80%93Howard_correspon...
Post reply on HN