Vicki Boykis writes about data engineering, Python, machine learning, Java and the culture of working in technology.
HN links her posts on Java 8 and Python as concise summaries; commenters also cite her Facebook privacy and HN title generator posts.
Finally a story I can say something to. Granted, the article isn't very informative, but to me it is a nicely written depiction of what happens when you drop WhatsApp. I can imagine the decision is not a dramatic one when living in a region in which WhatsApp is less used. Where I live however (central Europe), presenting the thought of not using WhatsApp purposely gives you weird stares.
As the author states, there are no real alternatives. In theory, WhatsApp can be replaced by lots of other applications. I settled for Wire, as I would choose an application that makes use of the Signal protocol while also having an open source client + server over WhatsApp any time of the day. In practice, few want to even consider using something that is not WhatsApp. I managed to convince some close friends to install Wire alongside WhatsApp (can't have unencrypted SMS as my only communications channel), but it took some convincing and privacy aware ethics rambling (if that makes sense) to achieve that. I can't imagine any somewhat sane person wanting to bother with so much trouble when branching out to alternative solutions. This particular sentiment from the article especially couldn't ring any more true:
"At the beginning, I often felt isolated and as if I had abandoned friends. Some contacts ebbed away, while I had to withstand the odd awkward look of disbelief and discontent from others when I explained that I did not use WhatsApp."
I can understand the convenience gain by using…
I quit using Facebook years ago. If you value your privacy, I would recommend you do the same. Facebook's data gathering is pervasive and perverse. And it doesn't stop with facebook.com. All those social media buttons you see for Facebook on websites also gather data for Facebook and Facebook works with several 3rd party companies to gather data such as Acxiom and Atlas Solutions, which is owned by Facebook. Government organizations, such as the NSA, can and do legally purchase and acquire this data without a warrant.
https://labs.rs/en/category/facebook-research
http://veekaybee.github.io/facebook-is-collecting-this
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/08/19/98-personal-data-points-that-facebook-uses-to-target-ads-to-you
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win
"The only winning move is not to play."
Is it possible to bring about a similar complaint against Facebook with the FTC? Or, if the FTC is the wrong agency, what would be the right one?
Of particular concern are "shadow profiles" - dossiers on people who have never even used or consented to using Facebook[1]. I'm no lawyer, but there could be precedent per this Vizio case.
In my opinion Facebook is hugely overstepping people's privacy bounds, even if they do bury what they do with some of the data in their terms of service. I never even knew about DeepFace, or mouse cursor movements, or any of the multitudes of violations of privacy outlined in the article below, and frankly it scares me and makes me angry.
[1]http://veekaybee.github.io/facebook-is-collecting-this/
I live in NY, but am not part of the NY "tech scene," because I find they are not particularly welcoming to me. I won’t go where I’m not wanted.
Not really a big deal. I'm pretty cutting edge, on the frontend (native apps for Apple systems, in Swift), but a bit stodgier on the backend (I use PHP). I’m not surprised at all by the survey results.
PHP works great for me. If I need something different (not an issue, so far), I'll hire it in. I'm actually fairly good at big projects in PHP. My code is maintainable and high-quality. It may not be “leet” PHP, but it works well.
Here’s an article about this kind of thing, that is a bit “meta”: https://veekaybee.github.io/2019/05/10/java8/
It is "different now". The DS bubble popping was covered well by Vicki Boykis:
> Since academia is typically a lagging indicator in adoption to new trends in the work place, it’s been long enough that it’s truly worrying for junior data scientists, all of who are hoping to find data science positions. It can be very hard for someone with a new degree in data science to find a data science position, given how many new people they’re competing with in the market.
http://veekaybee.github.io/2019/02/13/data-science-is-different/
http://veekaybee.github.io/2017/03/20/hadoop-or-laptop/
Maybe we've also gotten over the "big data" hype wave, and there's more understanding that in more cases it might be cheaper & more performant to spend the budget on a single node with lots of ram rather than standing up and maintaining a distributed system.