Can confirm they started our as an intern, I had to fix the internal tools that broke.
The main issue was that at this point in time, we were relying on people’s Unix names to directly to setup the person’s dev box. Obviously, <unixname>.dev.facebook.com with the unixname of www was going to lead to issues. It just broke things internally and was fixed pretty quickly.
No, uber tracks via the drivers GPS (at least in the US and UK). I have ordered Ubers for my family and friends; my phone wasn't heading towards the destination, but I could track where the car was on my phone. I find this a useful safety feature to make sure my family gets home.
Medium to large companies, they need some sort of calendaring and meeting room booking system. This is where outlook (more importantly exchange) comes into the picture. I don't think it's the best solution out there, but it's a solution that works reasonably well.
I also don't really like that email and calendaring are tied together, I'd love to see a robust solution that works across Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS. Yishan Wong wrote about this a few years ago.[1]
So, this would work great for personal email and small companies, but I don't see it replacing the email client of the larger ones. I'd love to see gmail and microsoft give some of these search/indexing features.
For those who showed interest in learning more about our infrastructure/automated testing process, if you could drop me an email? gp at our corp domain fb.com.
I don't work on the team anymore, but I can probably start off a thread with the right people involved from Facebook's side.
I work for facebook and I worked on the deployment of these large hiphop binaries of our code base. We considered multiple options - binary diffs, multicast, etc. The problem with multicast is that it's hard to configure and maintain in our complex cross region datacenter setup that has to travel through other peering networks.
We ended up with a torrent deployment system that scales beautifully.
My point was that most pages hopefully will have two levels (like spotify). One to log in and do basic things, and the second level a social one.
So, if you don't do the second part, you should be fine?
Also, I personally would be careful in installing apps. This goes for any application (not just facebook). If you trust an app, go ahead, if not, just avoid it. This is going to be different for different people.
Edit: Ok, I think I see your point. You don't want an app to ask for too many permissions right off the bat and then you having to go back and remove them.
Again, I think this is going to be developer and users driven. The more people ask for apps to start off with minimal permissions the developers will have to comply. Does that make sense?
First of all, when I go to spotify and "log in with facebook". The site sends me to a facebook page asking me to "log in to spotify" with my facebook. On this page, it specifically says "This app will not add activity to your Timeline." In other words, the basic spotify login with facebook isn't social. If you "Connect" your spotify account to facebook, it pops up a permission dialog asking you for various types of access. This is the social portion. Don't do this if you are concerned.
The second part of the application is the social part. Again, if you don't trust an application you can always go to your app settings page on facebook (https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=applications), select the application you are worried about and deny specific items that you don't want the app to have access to.
If you "x" out too many things, you might cripple the application, but that's the way it works.
I'm an engineer at facebook. I want to clear up a few things that you guys are talking about.
For starters, it's true that a visit to a news story or watching a video will trigger a feed story. The point that most people seem to be missing is that this requires you to knowingly allow a social application. For example, in my case, I installed the social plugin for rdio (rdio.com). When I listen to a song on rdio, it publishes it to my friends ticker feeds. (Ticker is the bar on the side where likes, listens, reads, etc go). There are a couple websites that are doing read social browsing, for example the Washington Post's social reader (https://apps.facebook.com/wpsocialreader/). Again, just by visiting this page you will not trigger anything unless you have already allowed the application access.
In the past I've setup my music player on the laptop to publish the songs I'd been listening to, to my IM client (as away messages) - Adium let's me do this out of the box. It's kind of the same idea, instead this is just built in to the website you visit or music you listen to.
You can also disable any application you previously installed by going to Privacy Settings and clicking on Apps and Websites. It should all be there. You don't have to log out of facebook or close your account. Just delete all your social apps. (https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy)
Facebook also has this feature. It'll send a SMS with the security code and you'll type in the web UI. Since it's SMS and not an app, it also works on non-smart phones. You need to link a mobile to your Facebook account.
https://www.facebook.com/help/?page=132501803490562
I think the main problem with the google charts API is just that, it's not a library that is self contained. You need access to google's servers. Second, if you have sensitive data, you rather not send it to google.
The main issue was that at this point in time, we were relying on people’s Unix names to directly to setup the person’s dev box. Obviously, <unixname>.dev.facebook.com with the unixname of www was going to lead to issues. It just broke things internally and was fixed pretty quickly.