Randy Pausch’s Lecture on Time Management
Randy just gave another talk.
Time to study for finals.
Updates from November, 2007 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kevin Chiu
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Kevin Chiu
OpenSocial
Google’s OpenSocial promised a revolution in the online social fabric. However, it hasn’t quite lived up to Google’s extraordinary track record and end user expectations.
Where are the killer apps? What are the use cases for a normal netizen? Why isn’t Facebook, the biggest and fastest growing online social network in the US, part of the OpenSocial alliance? And, most importantly, why can some guy hack the platform 45 minutes after it’s released?
Sometimes Google frustrates me. (OTOH, I understand the difficulties of doing something this huge.)
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Kevin Chiu
Privacy, Google, and Facebook
Google has long made it known to the public that it keeps data collected from its web operations in the highest confidentiality, and from first hand experience, I can confirm that this is true.
What does this have to do with Facebook? Recently, it was revealed that certain Facebook employees have full access to all of the information stored on Facebook. This includes, but is not limited to profile visit tracking, activity monitoring, and universal profile access. What’s worse is that close examination of Facebook’s privacy policy shows that the policy does not promise the sanctity of user data.
Some of these rumors were easily debunked. For example, Jones and Soltram of MIT stated in their 2005 paper “Facebook: Threats to Privacy,” that Facebook login information is transmitted unencrypted over the Internet. To see if this still held true in 2007, I booted up Ethereal and started capturing packets as I logged into Facebook. Sifting through the packets revealed zero instances of my password. I hope the rest of the aforementioned rumors are similarly obsolete.
As a respectable company built on privacy and trust, Facebook’s success hinges on fulfilling the privacy expectations of its millions of members. If these expectations are not met, and a viable alternative is available, the great Facebook exodus will begin.
As a company, I think Facebook represents a new hope for corporate culture. I’ve spoken with Facebook employees and they left a great impression on me. Compared to the upbeat workaholic culture at Google, Facebook definitely seemed more “fast and loose.” However, if being fast and loose means not putting clients’ interests first, the end to this revolutionary online social networking company may come to an end.
My advice to Facebook: Don’t be Evil. Show that employees do not have privileged access to the vast amounts of personal data stored on Facebook, and that Facebook does not track user behavior or profile visits in secret.
References:
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Kevin Chiu
iPhone toolchain 0.30 install script
Here’s a script to make your Tiger 10.4.10-based toolchain setup easier. You must copy your iPhone directory to /usr/local/share/iphone-filesystem before using the script.
The script needs to be run with sudo.
sudo bash ./script1.sh
Alternatively, try
curl http://kevinchiu.org/script1.sh|sudo bash
Post comments if you have success/horror stories.
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Kevin Chiu
Google Android
Last summer I was fortunate enough to contribute some of my time to the delightful little internet startup in Mountain View. One of the projects I was lucky enough to code for in my “20% time” was Android.
Today, Android was announced to the world.
To sum it up, Android is an open development platform for phones. It’s going to kick butt.
wolf 3:08 pm on December 30, 2007 Permalink
Hey Kevin,
this is very useful. Do you think you can create a similar script for Leopard development too?
Would be much appreciated.
- Wolf