131–140 of 356 posts
"You have built, bought, or maintained a product which is vital to billions. It's a free service unavailable 0.01% of the year. For this you must be punished."
> "You have built Whatsapp was not built by Facebook, it was purchased.
Why would breaking Facebook down and regulating them solve anything related to the global dependence on WhatsApp? Aren’t the only people who know how to run these services already running them? Like, do we expect the government to take WhatsApp away from Facebook and then create government contracts for companies like Oracle to maintain the infrastructure? So we’re back to square one but with the bureaucratic mess of…
The uptime of Comcast where I live is definitely an order of magnitude lower than any large internet site. I have no other options for high speed internet, which doesn't seem to be a particularly bad deal for Comcast...
ICQ was once the king of the hill, then Msn messenger, for a short time google talk, then WhatsApp. People find alternatives, things change all the time
But every time there are more people than the previous time. This means it's getting harder for everyone to switch. And then there's this: I have no idea about other countries, but over here in Russia, instant messaging got somehow consolidated over time. I used to have to run ICQ (as qip), Mail.Ru agent, Skype, and VKontakte (in a web browser) to be able to talk to everyone. Now Telegram and VKontakte cover 99% of m…
Was talking about this with a friend today, and I think this incident highlights why I sometimes get really depressed about my career and technology. I'm a Gen X-er, and I started my career in the late 90s. Before that I was a ham radio operator in junior high and HS (back when they had Morse code tests!). I remember the heady euphoria around the Internet then, and the vision of "tech utopia" was certainly the domina…
Well as you get older, you are just more likely to be surrounded by the moan and drone crowd. Its just life. Upto you to get out of that space now and then. Go watch the communities where kids are developing games, unity, webgl, godot, twitch streamers, VR/AR etc etc. That same energy and excitement of the blog and website era still exists.
That creativity still exists but now no one makes a site about their favourite things. Now it's pretty much always a play to get fame and fortune. If someone likes a show they have to "review" it to demonstrate their superior opinion that's worth subscribing to. If someone likes a game they start a channel where they play it live to an audience. If someone makes a game it's to try and make money through Steam Greenlight or Kickstarter. Even the creative coding scene seems to have shifted to trying to sell NFTs rather than just being about making cool looking things with math.
The passion to make things is still there but the motivation has changed from the joy of sharing what you like making to trying to make money, and that has changed things quite considerably. I think it's had a chilling effect on what people are willing to share.
This is an accident, and in peacetime. Relying on WhatsApp for anything important (like your business) is madness, and I hope this serves as your wake-up call that giving the US government and a giant US ad network veto power over your basic personal and professional communications is not a good choice.
Entire Latin America relies on whatsapp. From government services and doctor appointments to pretty much any business there is. It is such a vital part of the infrastructure that I don't know what would happen if it went down. I mean I even got vaccinated via whatsapp here in Argentina.
Was talking about this with a friend today, and I think this incident highlights why I sometimes get really depressed about my career and technology. I'm a Gen X-er, and I started my career in the late 90s. Before that I was a ham radio operator in junior high and HS (back when they had Morse code tests!). I remember the heady euphoria around the Internet then, and the vision of "tech utopia" was certainly the domina…
Am also from that generation, but got into an IT career from the early 80s. I understand where you're coming from. I'm increasingly the least-tech focused of my family/social circle, despite being the most heavily involved in the tech industry. In fact, I think my lack of bullishness in tech is due to the fact that I've been in the tech industry for 40 years. I know where the downsides lie. However, don't let the cur…
Why does there have to be a global monopolist though? I wonder if we ever will end up in that decentralised dream.
Why would breaking Facebook down and regulating them solve anything related to the global dependence on WhatsApp? Aren’t the only people who know how to run these services already running them? Like, do we expect the government to take WhatsApp away from Facebook and then create government contracts for companies like Oracle to maintain the infrastructure? So we’re back to square one but with the bureaucratic mess of…
These are also usually the people close to government or in it unfortunately.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Am also from that generation, but got into an IT career from the early 80s. I understand where you're coming from. I'm increasingly the least-tech focused of my family/social circle, despite being the most heavily involved in the tech industry. In fact, I think my lack of bullishness in tech is due to the fact that I've been in the tech industry for 40 years. I know where the downsides lie. However, don't let the cur…
> To wit, the global monopolist who benefited the most from the network-effect lock-in used to be IBM. Then it was Microsoft. Now it's Facebook. In time, this too will change. Why does there have to be a global monopolist though? I wonder if we ever will end up in that decentralised dream.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Down from, like, two at the best of times. It's always either them or us, which is likely part of the problem
I’m by no means an expert in US political history but all books and papers I’ve read indicate that this polarisation between the parties did not always exist. Members were allowed to vote according to their own principals instead of just the party line which is basically always opposing the other party. Senators and other politicians would have bbq on Saturday at each other’s place. It appears that this no longer hap…
We generally consider transparency in politics a good thing, especially because it may reduce corruption. But it comes with significant downsides. Only very resilient personalities are able to ignore the psychopathic monkey cesspool that is the political Twitter. The rest will submit to Moloch.
(Scott Alexander's "Meditations on Moloch" are a good read; I was lucky enough to meet the author two days ago at a meetup in Prague.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "You have built Whatsapp was not built by Facebook, it was purchased.
Does it matter? It is an app built by a dude. Facebook found value in it and invested. They can shut it down completely and no one has any right to stop them from doing it.
> and no one has any right to stop them from doing it.
FB can of course do whatever it wants to do. The powers that be can also do whatever they want to FB.