thomaswmeyer's comments

On: Engineering and the Meta "Hateful Conduct" Changes

[thomaswmeyer]

I helped build Hate Speech detectors at Meta when I was there. Here are my thoughts on the roll-out of last week's changes, and where they might be difficult.

On: World’s largest multirotor makes successful maiden flight

[thomaswmeyer]

Just outfit it with a bed, kitchen, and a bathroom, and you have a pretty stylin' motor home that can get you almost anywhere on this planet.

On: How Old Is The Shepherd?

[thomaswmeyer]

Well, they could google "How old is the shepherd" and find a link to articles discussing that there's no answer...

On: How Dropbox sacrifices user privacy for cost savings

[thomaswmeyer]

SHA256, which Dropbox uses, has around 10^77 possible hashes. That's 100 trillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion possible values. So I wouldn't worry about hash collisions if I were you. If a hash collision happened easily in SHA256, that would be very big news for the security community, and much more serious services than Dropbox would be affected.

On: Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn’t

[thomaswmeyer]

This is only for content that's explicitly placed in your "Public" folder, not for anywhere else in your Dropbox.

[jacquesm → thomaswmeyer]

Yes, hence the 'that are not shielded'

[sfphotoarts → jacquesm]

I think it seemed that you were trying to imply the dropbox's content (not just the public portion) would be visible to anyone.

I am glad this was clarified.

[jacquesm → sfphotoarts]

No, definitely not, it's only the public folders and not the rest.

[z92 → jacquesm]

'not shielded': implies that one has to do extra work to shield those. Default is not secure scenario.

'public folder': implies one has to do extra work to make those files public. Default is not public.

I was wondering which one describes Dropbox situation correctly.

[brown9-2 → jacquesm]

Then no one should think it's such a "secret stash", should they? I think using this term is what confused people.

On: How to raise money with no lead

[thomaswmeyer]

well, if you have no lead, you certainly can't turn it into gold, so that option's right out.

On: Pixel Qi releases sunlight-readable netbook screen - Upgrade kit available

[thomaswmeyer]

I've seen the screen on a netbook prototype and thought the color was pretty good. The truly great thing about the screen is how well it works in sunlight, though. I can't wait until I have a mobile screen I can use in the sun.