The reason I posted this link is because the announcement really irked me. I am not a fan of Facebook in any way, but it really bothers me that Microsoft is reusing the product name that Facebook announced a few days ago - Metaverse. It's as if Samsung launched a phone tomorrow called the Galaxy iPhone. What happened to trying to be unique and releasing your own products?
As someone who does a lot of work with Intellectual Property, I am amazed that this product name is not protected, and even if it's not (because of the broad applications of the concept), I am disappointed by a company like Microsoft for essentially "stealing" another company's product name and releasing it a few days later. It feel very unclassy and I lost a lot of respect from Microsoft from this announcement.
I'd like to hear everyone else's viewpoint on this. Is Microsoft breaking IP laws here, or is this just something unethical?
"Microsoft for essentially "stealing" another company's product name"
Yeah...no. You should know better. If Facebook has trademarked "metaverse", then there would be a problem because consumers could potentially have a problem distinguishing competing virtual realities. Since "metaverse" is from Neal Stephenson's 1992 science fiction novel "Snow Crash" in the first place, I doubt Facebook or Microsoft has a real "intellectual property" claim on the word in the first place.
My viewpoint is that Microsoft using "metaverse" is a lot like both Kroger and Safeway using "meat". And that you can have physical property, or intellectual property, but not both.
> What happened to trying to be unique and releasing your own products?
They do have their own products. FB doesn't have an Xbox Cloud, Teams, or Power Platform or Power Apps. Who cares what name it eventually falls under? Let their highly compensated legal teams fight it out.
Well, Google recently also purchased Kaggle, another major open-source repository for code. It hasn't really changed anything for now, but Microsoft's purchase will be in the same vein. I think that Microsoft's contribution to the open-source community in the last few years kind of makes sense for why they are purchasing it, just like Google purchased Kaggle because of their contribution to ML.
This is a good thing to enable, but I think that smartphones contribute exponentially more data to Facebook services than laptops and browsers do. Smartphones give easy access to location, background running services, microphone. Even if you block these permissions to the app, Facebook gets the data from their data providers that use Facebook ads.
Looks like a good alternative if you can't get root. It uses VPN to blackhole requests.
If you have root, I'd use AdAway[0] which changes the hosts file directly.
Another great alternative is Blockada[1], it does the same as DNS66 and Adaway but in my experience does it felt much more reliable. It is available on f-droid[2]
Well, he could be referring to the relative changes over time of what is contributed by a desktop computer and what is contributed by a smart phone. Antiprivacy features on phones seem to get better at a much faster rate than antiprivacy features on a computer.
I'd say better than 50% chance that the delay increases. But the phrase would be unambiguous if it were called an "exponentially increasing back off algorithm".
This is unnecessarily pedantic. An exponential back off algorithm has a 100% chance of increasing the delay, that's the whole point. Nowhere other than pure mathematics would I see the phrase "exponentially" and even consider a <1 exponent.
My probability was for hearing the phrase "exponential back off algorithm" without knowing anything about the algorithm. I don't work in that field and had never heard of the term before the earlier post.
Experience suggests that most of the time when people say exponentially they mean an exponent greater than 1, but I have been surprised by what people have meant before so I personally wouldn't say that probability is greater than 90%. That's what I meant in more detail.
Can you explain this a little more? Can this be done on a personal phone? I was under the impression that the hosts file was essentially untouchable on an iPhone.
Google around - 'iphone mobile device management'. There's a service that's free for a couple devices[1]. Apple also makes a (terrible) app called Configurator. There are a bunch of others, but most of them are designed for (and priced for) corporate use.
You need to learn a little about what you're doing if you want to go this route, and there is some setup. But basically, you're taking on the role of a corporate IT department, pre-configuring and possibly locking down the phone.
I set up a profile in Configurator a few years ago and am a little afraid of touching it - that application makes iTunes look thoughtfully designed and stable.
Heard a segment on this on Pardon the Interruption on ESPN yesterday. I agree with their argument that it's not a bad thing because we are in a time of sports where games need to be more exciting. We want more home runs, and more scorings, and if lighter baseballs means that we get them, then it's just a normal progression.
in a time of sports where games need to be more exciting
There's a problem with this, though. Home runs are only exciting when they're relatively uncommon. If the home run trend continues, we will effectively see the disappearance of everything else that makes up the game of baseball. Players will either hit a home run, a flyout, or a strikeout. Risky plays (small ball) such as hit-and-runs, sacrifice bunts, and stolen bases will see a continued decline. This will sap all of the strategy and nuance out of the game, turning it into pure spectacle.
Not what I want. Not what a lot of baseball fans want.
>Risky plays (small ball) such as hit-and-runs, sacrifice bunts, and stolen bases will see a continued decline. This will sap all of the strategy and nuance out of the game, turning it into pure spectacle.
I thought it was pretty well established that bunts, stealing, hit and run are all bad strategy. Entertaining but not anywhere near optimal play.
right, which is bad because it results in an extremely dull game. it’s not inherent to the rules of baseball, though. the easier it is to hit for power the more this is true.
imagine if we averaged 0.5 home runs per game instead of the current 1.8. suddenly you’d need a lot more small ball type strategy to have any hope of scoring runs.
> we are in a time of sports where games need to be more exciting
Not just games, but everything from the US (I live in Europe) seems to need to create spectacles where there are none with as much flashbang as possible. Just look at the difference in BBC documentaries vs ones coming from the US.
This trend kicked into high gear around 2000 and I had to stop watching channels like Discovery as they no longer aired documentaries but entertainment shows.
In the end, I stopped watching TV altogether as a result of this and we haven't had a TV subscription of any kind since around 2005. My wife uses Netflix once or twice a month though when my sister visits.
If we accept lighter baseballs as a way to get more home runs, what's wrong with corked bats or any other mechanical mechanisms that could be used to juice home runs? Sammy Sosa was suspended 8 games for using a corked bat, which was claimed was supposed to only be for practice and was used accidentally.
I once read an article about the 'sport' of speedwalking that drove this point home to me. This is a sport, where pretty much the only rule is that one foot must always be touching the ground at all times. But in the age of video, it's pretty clear that this one rule is violated by every speedwalker every race. But the ruling body of the sport didn't care about any of the video evidence, and doubled down on using judges with a set of criterium to determine if walkers had both feet in the air.
My other takeaway was that if your sport can't enforce it's only major rule, because physics, they'll find ways to lie to themselves to maintain the status quo. It's probably a profound lesson in politics if I really think about it.
Google is the first big company that I actually rejected after receiving an offer from them. I had a really bad experience, and just felt like the company was looking for things I am much more qualified from.
I was interviewed by engineers who were all just recent college grads, no managers, tech leads, or anyone I felt were probably more qualified to interview me. The environment felt toxic. Most people I talked to looked unclean, like they just got out of bed to work. Had red eyes like they were tired. And the workplace was just not as clean as I was hoping. There were a set of dirty plates in the conference room I was interviewed in, and no one bothered to remove them the entire time.
From people I have talked to, my experience was pretty unique, and most people have had good interviews there. But even as an outlier, I don't like the chance of it being exactly like my experience. Things like this really put stuff in perspective for me though. I still went through the entire process, but in the end, rejected the offer. I wouldn't want to work in an environment like Google's, it feels toxic, and engineers feel like they are overworking themselves to death.
Actually your experience is not unique; you could see on Googlers in Mountain View or Zurich that many of them are one step from a burn-out, they are also often crammed next to each other in larger noisy rooms; most of them seemed pretty stressed out, not joyful, starting from receptionists. Such a huge contrast in attitude comparing to Microsoft (content/happy) or Facebook (high-energy).
I too rejected a job at Google after feeling like they just wanted to pigeon-hole me, so to speak. But, as a former Microsoft employee as well, it's not all sunshine there either. While experiences tend to vary, there I was crammed in a small, loud room with too many other people who I'd argue were more complacent than content. Similarly, I've had colleagues at Facebook describe it more as "exhausting" than high energy.
I've come to the opinion that, unless you're a "famous" engineer, or very senior one, that can command a lot of respect and autonomy, most of these "dream job" companies are going to feel a lot more like a well paying sweatshop. At least, that's been my experience as someone with only several years in the field.
I do feel like Google and co are riding on their reputation a lot - one they built up some years ago with promises of e.g. three meals a day and high pay and only hiring the best and such. I got one recruitment mail which basically said something to the degree of "hi I'm from Google, please apply here". Not convincing.
Yeah, it depends on the project usually. It's like what you are hearing from people at XYZ (a higher rated company on Glassdoor than FB/GOOG I don't want to mention by name) who left to Google and 50% of them returning back after ~1 year telling everyone how much it sucked there :D
I really think you should stay in such a company for 1-3 years, build your cash cushion (i.e. stage 1 booster) and then lift-off (make your own startup using connections you made).
> people at XYZ who left to Google and 50% of them returning back after ~1 year
If only it were possible to access the data Linkedin has on employee flows. You could get an idea on which companies are actually enjoyable places to work at versus ones that people are fleeing.
I've just completed an onsite at Google MV and this stood out to me, too. This is Google's famed incredibly tough bar to pass? Out of six companies that I interviewed with in the area, Google's interview was the easiest.
I was also shocked at the lack of social skills from the interviewers. Most seemed to be 40-year-old college grads who had never left the Google campus. One interviewer arrived 20 minutes late, badmouthed the company and apologized in advance because I would probably get rejected.
It really lowered my opinion from "wow this is famous Google I'll be with superstars" to "oh maybe I'll tolerate it for childcare benefits and comp but with an expectation to shift offices in a few years".
Having read about (but not been through) the Google process, the idea is that you get interviewed by people who would be working for and with you, not (just?) people above you. Is that possible here?
I really like it, but it would be good to have an editable version beyond just the text, either with a Microsoft Word or HTML/CSS. It would be good to be able to tinker around with the template to personalize it more, such as adding different sections.
Thats the next thing I plan on doing. I made the site ineedaresu.me a few years ago, and I'm going to build something similar, but much better, based off what I have here.
That is basically what happened with Hulu. The service is owned by the major content providers, such as Fox and CBS, and all of the televised content is almost completely exclusive on Hulu now, as opposed to being on Netflix. As more and more shows started to get pulled from Netflix, Netflix had to rely on original shows to make sure that they have a full catalog of streaming content. They paid over $6 billion dollars in creating new shows for 2017.
Unfortunately for music, the exclusivity has started to show up in some cases. Artists that own the Tidal service don't allow any of their music on competing services, and Apple has been signing contracts with musicians to have new content show up on their service several months in advance before it does on other services (like Jay Z and Kanye).
It's been kinda the reverse in video, if my recollection of the timelines is right. Netflix's big push into originals and dropping of licensed content started to happen 4+ years ago, well before Hulu seemed to have the budget to get big shows into their back catalog.
From Netflix subscriber numbers, it's also not clear that the lost content has dented their subscriber retention at all. The talk among my friends centers much more around new Netflix originals (or even Amazon/Hulu originals) than around back catalog stuff on Amazon or Hulu. I don't understand why -- I'm utterly uncompelled by 95%+ of what they're putting out, since I don't have the motivation to deeply investigate new Netflix shows/movies every week, and however they're advertising, it doesn't really reach me -- but it's what I see happening, much to my annoyance.
I just started my first job in CS this year, at 25. And after a few months of working on products, which are themselves actually quite fascinating, I don't see myself working in Software Development for more than 5-6 years.
The thing that stands out to me is how much more successful product and project managers are at my company, and they are doing much less work and have less hectic jobs. Software dev is interesting, but I plan to transition into management because I think a software development background can actually help me propel much further in the career than just sticking to programming will. And the other thing is that as a developer, I have to continue to keep up with newer technologies and make sure that I know what's new, or be at the risk of being replaced eventually.
CS is a great field, but I think that the pace at which most big companies hire and lay off employees is too significant to ensure a stable job for too long.
Doubt it. Busses are most often used by local governments than by businesses, and most cities are less likely to spend that much money on a more expensive form of transportation.
As someone who does a lot of work with Intellectual Property, I am amazed that this product name is not protected, and even if it's not (because of the broad applications of the concept), I am disappointed by a company like Microsoft for essentially "stealing" another company's product name and releasing it a few days later. It feel very unclassy and I lost a lot of respect from Microsoft from this announcement.
I'd like to hear everyone else's viewpoint on this. Is Microsoft breaking IP laws here, or is this just something unethical?