The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread

Facebook appears to be on an interesting journey to destroy what made them popular in the first place. Well, they kind of already had but has anyone else been inundated with friend requests lately? I’ve gone from 500 to 1K friends in a week and. several times now when I’ve gone to confirm some of the new requests it says I can’t because the person who requested it has maxed out at 5K friends. If Facebook is behind the change, it seems they are trying to make the whole “friend” thing even more meaningless than it was. Maybe as a prelude to turning it off and making everything public? Dunno.

tigger

@Hog said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

@Kilemall said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

That’s tantamount to fraud.

I guess we can’t tell from that one email if his request went anywhere. Given the tension between attracting/retaining users with a useful product and wanting to squeeze every last dollar out of them, I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that some people within google would be pushing for what he’s asking for.

I also don’t know who he is in terms of seniority but the guy he’s replying to “Anil Sabharwal” seems to be a big deal from my brief search.

What is the request though? As far as I can tell it’s something to do with rolling back a launch which redirected some queries from chrome away from search, e.g. if you type “Facebook” going directly to Facebook instead of Google. I’m unsure I see how that is “fraud”.

Kilemall

@tigger said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

@Hog said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

@Kilemall said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

That’s tantamount to fraud.

I guess we can’t tell from that one email if his request went anywhere. Given the tension between attracting/retaining users with a useful product and wanting to squeeze every last dollar out of them, I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that some people within google would be pushing for what he’s asking for.

I also don’t know who he is in terms of seniority but the guy he’s replying to “Anil Sabharwal” seems to be a big deal from my brief search.

What is the request though? As far as I can tell it’s something to do with rolling back a launch which redirected some queries from chrome away from search, e.g. if you type “Facebook” going directly to Facebook instead of Google. I’m unsure I see how that is “fraud”.

It’s fraud because the people paying for the ad clicks are getting falsely inflated results by a manipulation of the search results from a particular browser rather than actively interested quality clicks. Conversion rate to paying customer is going to be lower, so value paid is not value bought.

tigger

@Kilemall said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

@tigger said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

@Hog said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

@Kilemall said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

That’s tantamount to fraud.

I guess we can’t tell from that one email if his request went anywhere. Given the tension between attracting/retaining users with a useful product and wanting to squeeze every last dollar out of them, I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that some people within google would be pushing for what he’s asking for.

I also don’t know who he is in terms of seniority but the guy he’s replying to “Anil Sabharwal” seems to be a big deal from my brief search.

What is the request though? As far as I can tell it’s something to do with rolling back a launch which redirected some queries from chrome away from search, e.g. if you type “Facebook” going directly to Facebook instead of Google. I’m unsure I see how that is “fraud”.

It’s fraud because the people paying for the ad clicks are getting falsely inflated results by a manipulation of the search results from a particular browser rather than actively interested quality clicks. Conversion rate to paying customer is going to be lower, so value paid is not value bought.

Maybe explain what you believe is happening and what evidence the email provides? Because I am not following you at all. Everyone in the thread is, as far as I can tell, suggesting the exact opposite.

Jam

I Googled SQV related to sales (try just “SQV” without sales and see what you get) and I got, in the “headline”"

Sales Quantity Variance (SQV) Difference between the actual contribution margin and the standard contribution with sales mix and sales volume held constant. Difference between the actual product mix and the standard product mix with sales volume and contribution margin held constant.

And then I searched under “query rollback”, a new term for me and got:

The query executes a ROLLBACK TRANSACTION statement. This statement abandons all changes made inside the transaction. The query ends before reaching either of these two statements. In that case, BigQuery automatically rolls back the transaction.

If I had a very cynical mind (a condition not contrary to fact) I’d be thinking that, a query rollback on a Google search related to a product search, would end in a shorter or shallower response and allow selected ads to pop up quicker in the responses?

Would this amount to ‘putting one’s finger on the scales’ a bit or some form of query/response results manipulation?

I don’t pretend to understand all the jargon and don’t want to dig much deeper, but it seems like the search/query team and the sales of advertising team may be considering working together to be sure that the peeps buying ads get more eyeball time at the expense of more “honest” responses to queries?

As I’ve said, I do not care enough to try and dig more deeply and I can be misinterpreting what I read due to a not so deep understanding of the terms.

Stu

This reminds me of a theory I came up with last week. It’s either profound and insightful, or facile and stupid…

So we had 15+ years of tech growth based largely on the promise of data amalgamation, and mostly its use in marketing. We could target ads and even try to sell something to someone before they even knew they wanted it. Facebook, Google, Apple, Twitter, and all the others raked in hundreds of billions towards this future. And then everyone found out there’s still not really much money in online advertising.

As marketing was falling flat, we got more and more talk about the AI revolution. And who is best positioned to move forward into this brave new future? Big tech companies with lots of data of course, like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Twitter.

While I don’t doubt AI will be important moving forward, I can’t help but think that most of this talk is from companies who want to keep the firehose of investment capital flowing.

Jam

Far be it for me to appear as if I am not woke . . .

So I won’t suggest that if I were Stu, I’d rather be seen as a typing cisgender frog (who dearly loves Miss Piggy) rather than a gay dude in a yellow shirt.

Gators1

@Stu said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

This reminds me of a theory I came up with last week. It’s either profound and insightful, or facile and stupid…

So we had 15+ years of tech growth based largely on the promise of data amalgamation, and mostly its use in marketing. We could target ads and even try to sell something to someone before they even knew they wanted it. Facebook, Google, Apple, Twitter, and all the others raked in hundreds of billions towards this future. And then everyone found out there’s still not really much money in online advertising.

As marketing was falling flat, we got more and more talk about the AI revolution. And who is best positioned to move forward into this brave new future? Big tech companies with lots of data of course, like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Twitter.

While I don’t doubt AI will be important moving forward, I can’t help but think that most of this talk is from companies who want to keep the firehose of investment capital flowing.

Seems more like gold rush mentality to be first to the next big thing. Google and Microsoft don’t need investment cash, but they know AI potentially will reset the search market and even reinvent social media, so a few years lead could drastically change some company’s market share and stock prices would go to the moon. Investors want to be in on the ground floor of course, but the major efforts are backed by big tech already.

tigger

@Jam said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

I Googled SQV related to sales (try just “SQV” without sales and see what you get) and I got, in the “headline”"

Sales Quantity Variance (SQV) Difference between the actual contribution margin and the standard contribution with sales mix and sales volume held constant. Difference between the actual product mix and the standard product mix with sales volume and contribution margin held constant.

And then I searched under “query rollback”, a new term for me and got:

The query executes a ROLLBACK TRANSACTION statement. This statement abandons all changes made inside the transaction. The query ends before reaching either of these two statements. In that case, BigQuery automatically rolls back the transaction.

If I had a very cynical mind (a condition not contrary to fact) I’d be thinking that, a query rollback on a Google search related to a product search, would end in a shorter or shallower response and allow selected ads to pop up quicker in the responses?

Would this amount to ‘putting one’s finger on the scales’ a bit or some form of query/response results manipulation?

I don’t pretend to understand all the jargon and don’t want to dig much deeper, but it seems like the search/query team and the sales of advertising team may be considering working together to be sure that the peeps buying ads get more eyeball time at the expense of more “honest” responses to queries?

As I’ve said, I do not care enough to try and dig more deeply and I can be misinterpreting what I read due to a not so deep understanding of the terms.

Lol. Stop googling :D
A rollback simply means to revert a change. A query is when a user asks something. BigQuery is something completely unrelated. Seach platforms need a lot of queries, because then they can show ads and users click on ads. Google launched something on Chrome that reduces the number of times users are sent to the search page, and the dude is asking that change to be turned off.

Search is a very tricky thing to get right. For instance there are people in that twitter thread, stating that Google has knowledge graph (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Knowledge_Graph) and can thus answer some queries directly, but doesn’t, because that would mean fewer ads served as so they are assholes. I happen to know (through my parents) that some people within the EU are pushing for yet another lawsuit against Google for showing results from that knowledge graph altogether in search. Because they run various encyclopedias, and they say that users aren’t coming to them anymore, instead they go to Google and Google shows them the results from Wikipedia.

Ads run the internet. Before we turn of adds (for instance, by making google drop search or using ChatGPT everywhere), we need to make sure that the internet can survive that.

@Stu said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

This reminds me of a theory I came up with last week. It’s either profound and insightful, or facile and stupid…

So we had 15+ years of tech growth based largely on the promise of data amalgamation, and mostly its use in marketing. We could target ads and even try to sell something to someone before they even knew they wanted it. Facebook, Google, Apple, Twitter, and all the others raked in hundreds of billions towards this future. And then everyone found out there’s still not really much money in online advertising.

As marketing was falling flat, we got more and more talk about the AI revolution. And who is best positioned to move forward into this brave new future? Big tech companies with lots of data of course, like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Twitter.

While I don’t doubt AI will be important moving forward, I can’t help but think that most of this talk is from companies who want to keep the firehose of investment capital flowing.

I’m ignorant to potential improvements they could make at any time but I don’t think LLMs are going to be (all of) the revolution that they might have been promising. Made up shit interspersed with useful information is next to useless.

I think the next level though (even possibly short of a general AI) will be the most profound advancement in all of human history. It’s true that the market chases and promotes hype but the (as yet unmet) promise that AI holds really isn’t just another blockchain or even another internet in terms of the change it’s going to induce.

tigger

@Hog said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

@Stu said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

This reminds me of a theory I came up with last week. It’s either profound and insightful, or facile and stupid…

So we had 15+ years of tech growth based largely on the promise of data amalgamation, and mostly its use in marketing. We could target ads and even try to sell something to someone before they even knew they wanted it. Facebook, Google, Apple, Twitter, and all the others raked in hundreds of billions towards this future. And then everyone found out there’s still not really much money in online advertising.

As marketing was falling flat, we got more and more talk about the AI revolution. And who is best positioned to move forward into this brave new future? Big tech companies with lots of data of course, like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Twitter.

While I don’t doubt AI will be important moving forward, I can’t help but think that most of this talk is from companies who want to keep the firehose of investment capital flowing.

I’m ignorant to potential improvements they could make at any time but I don’t think LLMs are going to be (all of) the revolution that they might have been promising. Made up shit interspersed with useful information is next to useless.

I think the next level though (even possibly short of a general AI) will be the most profound advancement in all of human history. It’s true that the market chases and promotes hype but the (as yet unmet) promise that AI holds really isn’t just another blockchain or even another internet in terms of the change it’s going to induce.

As I pointed out before, I think LLMs basically give Google type infrastructure to everyone for free. But I am also unsure there will be a big impact because the landscape is completely oversaturated with stuff and apps that do whatever you want. The real goal is coming up with what will be the next big thing for these people, and that really seems to be a dice roll right now.

Tazz

Kilemall

@tigger said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

@Kilemall said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

@tigger said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

@Hog said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

@Kilemall said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

That’s tantamount to fraud.

I guess we can’t tell from that one email if his request went anywhere. Given the tension between attracting/retaining users with a useful product and wanting to squeeze every last dollar out of them, I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that some people within google would be pushing for what he’s asking for.

I also don’t know who he is in terms of seniority but the guy he’s replying to “Anil Sabharwal” seems to be a big deal from my brief search.

What is the request though? As far as I can tell it’s something to do with rolling back a launch which redirected some queries from chrome away from search, e.g. if you type “Facebook” going directly to Facebook instead of Google. I’m unsure I see how that is “fraud”.

It’s fraud because the people paying for the ad clicks are getting falsely inflated results by a manipulation of the search results from a particular browser rather than actively interested quality clicks. Conversion rate to paying customer is going to be lower, so value paid is not value bought.

Maybe explain what you believe is happening and what evidence the email provides? Because I am not following you at all. Everyone in the thread is, as far as I can tell, suggesting the exact opposite.

Im not really that interested in doing a thesis with annotated references on my reaction to yet another tortured google soul about to do evil for the bottom line. Maybe if I win the lottery and tire of endless hookers and blow.

Kilemall

@Jam said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

I Googled SQV related to sales (try just “SQV” without sales and see what you get) and I got, in the “headline”"

Sales Quantity Variance (SQV) Difference between the actual contribution margin and the standard contribution with sales mix and sales volume held constant. Difference between the actual product mix and the standard product mix with sales volume and contribution margin held constant.

And then I searched under “query rollback”, a new term for me and got:

The query executes a ROLLBACK TRANSACTION statement. This statement abandons all changes made inside the transaction. The query ends before reaching either of these two statements. In that case, BigQuery automatically rolls back the transaction.

If I had a very cynical mind (a condition not contrary to fact) I’d be thinking that, a query rollback on a Google search related to a product search, would end in a shorter or shallower response and allow selected ads to pop up quicker in the responses?

Would this amount to ‘putting one’s finger on the scales’ a bit or some form of query/response results manipulation?

I don’t pretend to understand all the jargon and don’t want to dig much deeper, but it seems like the search/query team and the sales of advertising team may be considering working together to be sure that the peeps buying ads get more eyeball time at the expense of more “honest” responses to queries?

As I’ve said, I do not care enough to try and dig more deeply and I can be misinterpreting what I read due to a not so deep understanding of the terms.

Query rollback to me looks like a simple database term. You have a fail or error state in the middle of a transaction- program is set to make things like they were as though the transaction never ran. Program rolls back through the changes already done, typically through whatever log/audit trail the database is using.

Query should usually be more of a report function and not something you are concerned with tracking that much, except for a search engine monetizing tracking and reporting on such.

One example of a query I could think of where rollback is desirable is say an ATM account balance request. If the account cannot be reported on because it’s midnight bank process time, the query should back out the moment it’s going to send you the unavailable message, as an incomplete transaction and therefore rollback any trace of the transaction so you do not get charged.

Tazz

OK, this is pretty cool.
watch in full screen mode

World News Tonight on Twitter

Gators1

That’s pretty sick. They could have saved a shitton of money though just doing that in CGI since all those dumbasses at the show were watching the show on their fucking phones. Why do people do that rather than experiencing reality?

Lob12

@Gators1 said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

That’s pretty sick. They could have saved a shitton of money though just doing that in CGI since all those dumbasses at the show were watching the show on their fucking phones. Why do people do that rather than experiencing reality?

Ever seen people film fireworks?

LTE cell phone messages, data and voice from Starlink without any special hardware coming soon they claim:

https://direct.starlink.com/

Gators1

If it works. Our CEO did seem to think it was imminent. The original Iridium network was supposed to replace cellphones in the minds of the dumbass marketing people, but one of the big issues was the phone only worked outside. Buildings would block the signals since they were too weak so you would have to go outside to make a satellite call. Might not be a big deal if you have dual mode with traditional cellular while you are in coverage zones, but that’s also potentially two bills.

Stu

But on the plus side, now Google can track you even when you aren’t near a tower.