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Instagram Has Become SkyMall

clivethompson.medium.com

311–320 of 341 posts

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t compiling the code into an executable inherently obfuscate it?

Good question, but no. Obfuscation is an additional step you can take to make it harder to turn that executable back into code.

So with obfuscation you can still decompile the binary into source code, but that version of the source code is much less human-readable and it would take more effort for a human to go through and understand it?

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mafia was also famous for its community outreach and charity, that didn't make it a net positive.

Yes, but the key difference is that the mafia is, by definition, a criminal organization and the upside is not linked in any way with being a mafia. Ads, on the other hand, do inherently have the positive quality of showing you products and could exist without their current downsides.

Regardless of their current downsides (which are indeed considerable!), ads by definition are there to make me want to buy things I wouldn’t otherwise want to buy. That’s not exactly noble, even if we pretend that they’re just showing me stuff I wasn’t aware of.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#314
post #291

What's tragic here is that the author is complaining about one ad-infested, tracker-infested piece of trash of a product, on another ad-infested, tracker-infested piece of trash that is Medium. Why the the fuck people still write on Medium even though it prevents people from reading content after a few times without either paying or logging in is beyond me.

I feel you. I hate Medium, too. But I hate even more that this is the top most comment on hn, even though you admit to not even having read the article and clearly don’t know what it’s about. Sorry, I know this comment is OT as well…

> clearly don’t know what it’s about.

How is it clear to you? I got the context from other comments... My point was not about the content of the article specifically, but more about the obliviousness of this (and many other) authors. It's like criticizing running an Alexa because it's like bugging your house while, at the same time, using Google's or Apple's thing. Total whoosh!

What's silly here is that you felt the need to reply on my comment as well, knowing that yours is not related to the original topic. Do you not see this as mildly duplicitous?

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#315
post #241

I don't use Instagram much, but I am on Facebook too often. The limitations of the advertising algorithms are very interesting to me. For example: I participate in ex-evangelical groups because of my childhood experiences. Also follow pages which discuss American Christianity from a secular or journalistic perspective, and in Christian groups which interpret their beliefs from a left-ish ideology. "Liking" any post f…

"And thus not flood people who dislike a thing with ads promoting the thing." But isn't that what these ads are about. They want to show the people who dislike a thing with ads promoting the thing so that hopefully one day they will like it. Sure it could make you hate it more, but unconsciously or whatever, you will be affected. I see ads for shoe brands I don't like or care about, but for sure, the next time I need…

I'd think Facebook has an interest in showing ads people will like. Or at least will tolerate. Not just for getting the click through rates as high as possible, but also because ads for things you dislike will negatively affect your experience with the site. Something FB doesn't want since they're trying to make the experience as addictive as they can. That's part of what makes this inaccuracy interesting.

And I don't think the ads are aimed at changing my mind. Most of these ads aren't coordinated branding campaigns. They're largely small-time $20 ads placed by individuals and normal-sized churches. That indicates a failure by either FB in targeting, or a failure in choosing audiences by the ad buyer. I suspect it's both.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question, but no. Obfuscation is an additional step you can take to make it harder to turn that executable back into code.

So with obfuscation you can still decompile the binary into source code, but that version of the source code is much less human-readable and it would take more effort for a human to go through and understand it?

Yes. Imagine that a class like "me.grishka.app.something.SomeDescriptiveClassName" gets renamed to "zzq" in the default (root) package. You end up with thousands of classes in there, none have sensible names, and nothing inside them has sensible names either. So you do have to spend extra effort to rename them back to something that makes sense. A good starting point for figuring out what an obfuscated class does is to look for log messages.

Java classes must still have names, and methods and fields must also retain type information for the JVM to work. Inside a JVM, classes and fields are accessed using names, and methods are accessed using name+signature, the signature being of the form "(Ljava/lang/String;II)V", that's a method that takes a string and two ints and returns void.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#317
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t mind me asking, can you please share a product name or link? Sounds cool

As the other poster said, it’s Carv ( https://getcarv.com/ ) . It has helped me a lot to improve technique, I actually learned how to carv in skis, and I’m much more comfortable when going fast (my speed record is now 105 km/hr) . It’s beautiful having objective data to tell if you have improved and what did you improve, as well as what needs more work. For me it was a cheap buy as a private lesson one whole day woul…

Thanks!

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#319

What's tragic here is that the author is complaining about one ad-infested, tracker-infested piece of trash of a product, on another ad-infested, tracker-infested piece of trash that is Medium. Why the the fuck people still write on Medium even though it prevents people from reading content after a few times without either paying or logging in is beyond me.

> prevents people from reading content after a few times without either paying or logging in is beyond me. I don't think this is fair or accurate. Authors are choosing to put their articles behind Medium's paywall because they want to get paid. So when you see a paywall that's the author's choice. It's not any different than a Substack newsletter other than scale. So to say Medium is preventing people from reading...…

> I helped port the full back catalog of books from The Pragmatic Programmers over to Medium

People feed the beast and then wonder why it's come back for more.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#320

My biggest problem with both Facebook and Instagram is that I feel completely out of control over what I see. There is neither a way to avoid what I don't want, nor a way to ensure I see my friends' posts. The timeline shows me the same handful of people in mystery sort order mixed with ads, and then I later find out I haven't seen months' worth of someone's content when I happen to visit their profile. The only half…

It seems like they really do mangle the main timeline, no matter what you try to do. But a small workaround, if you are a member of any useful Facebook groups: there is a real, permanent sorting option. https://www.facebook.com/groups/[groupid-goes-here]?sorting_... Bookmark that with a group for a proper chronological view.

Seems they disabled that since you posted it?

> Your request couldn't be processed

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