All Archives

All posts across the whole website belong to this category. They might also belong to some other categories as well, but this one holds all of them. Hence the descriptive name – All.

  1. On Google’s Transparency Report

    By Leonid Mamchenkov

    While catching up with my RSS feeds, I saw the latest Google Transparency Report from the end of last month.  The summary of the report basically says that the number of governmental requests to remove content from Google is raising quite rapidly.

    transparency report 2013

    There are also some clarifications of why that might be:

    • There was a sharp increase in requests from Brazil, where we received 697 requests to remove content from our platforms (of which 640 were court orders—meaning we received an average of 3.5 court orders per day during this time period), up from 191 during the first half of the year. The big reason for the spike was the municipal elections, which took place last fall. Nearly half of the total requests—316 to be exact—called for the removal of 756 pieces of content related to alleged violations of the Brazilian Electoral Code, which forbids defamation and commentary that offends candidates. We’re appealing many of these cases, on the basis that the content is protected by freedom of expression under the Brazilian Constitution.
    • Another place where we saw an increase was from Russia, where a new law took effect last fall. In the first half of 2012, we received six requests, the most we had ever received in any given six-month period from Russia. But in the second half of the year, we received 114 requests to remove content—107 of them citing this new law.
    • During this period, we received inquiries from 20 countries regarding YouTube videos containing clips of the movie “Innocence of Muslims.” While the videos were within our Community Guidelines, we restricted videos from view in several countries in accordance with local law after receiving formal legal complaints. We also temporarily restricted videos from view in Egypt and Libya due to the particularly difficult circumstances there.

    One thing that I am missing is a correlation to the actual size of the Google index.  I mean, I of course understand that it is incomparably larger than all these requests combined, but I keep thinking that the more content you’ll index, the more removal requests you’ll get.  So, I think, it would be interesting to see the correlation in growth of removal requests to the growth of the Google’s global index.

  2. The F5 key is not a build process. It’s a quick and dirty substitute. If that’s how you build your software, I regret that I have to be the one to tell you this, but your project is not based on solid software engineering practices.

    — Jeff Atwood

  3. Gittip – inspiring generosity →

    WHAT IS GITTIP?

    Gittip is a way to give small weekly cash gifts to people you love and are inspired by.

    Gifts are weekly. The intention is for people to depend on money received through Gittip in order to pay their bills, and bills are recurring.

    Gifts come with no strings attached. You don’t know exactly where your gifts come from, and the maximum gift from one person to another is $24.

    Gifts are public. The total amount you give and the total amount you receive is public. Participants on both sides of the equation are rewarded publicly for their participation. (You can opt out of publicly displaying your total giving.)

  4. JIF, not GIF

    By Leonid Mamchenkov

    Mashable reports that Steve Wilhite, the inventor of GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), during the lifetime achievement ceremony insisted that it’s pronounced “JIF”, not “GIF”.

    JIF, not GIF

     

    [rant mode on]What?!  ”GIF” is not “GIF, but “JIF”?  Non-sense!  It’s give, not jive.  Girls, not jirls.  Gift, not jift.  And even if he believes that that’s the correct way to pronounce it, how irresponsible is that to attract attention to this issue now?  It’s just like throwing a barrel of petrol into the pronunciation holy war flames of GNU, Gnome, Gimp, and other pillars of Open Source Software.[rant mode off]

  5. Read the Docs – create, host, and browse documentation →

    Read the Docs hosts documentation, making it fully searchable and easy to find. You can import your docs using any major version control system, including Mercurial, Git, Subversion, and Bazaar. We support webhooks so your docs get built when you commit code. There’s also support for versioning so you can build docs from tags and branches of your code in your repository.

  6. Slim PHP framework →

    FEATURES

    • Powerful router
      • Standard and custom HTTP methods
      • Route parameters with wildcards and conditions
      • Route redirect, halt, and pass
      • Route middleware
    • Template rendering with custom views
    • Flash messages
    • Secure cookies with AES-256 encryption
    • HTTP caching
    • Logging with custom log writers
    • Error handling and debugging
    • Middleware and hook architecture
    • Simple configuration

  7. Product Management vs. Program Management at Microsoft →

    Product Management tends to be about answering questions such as why a product should be built and what features should be added to existing products. Program Management is more about answering questions such as when features should be delivered and how they should be exposed to customers. Depending on the division at Microsoft program managers may have more or less influence than product managers on answering the questions about what features are built.

  8. The absolute worst testers you can possibly have are developers. They’re better than nothing. But barely. Even a mediocre tester will make your application better, and by proxy, encourage you to become a better developer. The very best testers will drag you, kicking and screaming if necessary, across the bug-bar threshold. Professional testers force you to become a better developer. Sometimes it’s painful. But in a good way, like a heavy workout.

    — Jeff Atwood

  9. Happy 8th birthday, YouTube!

    By Leonid Mamchenkov

    YouTube is one of those services that feels like it was here forever.  In digital years it might have been.  But in human years, it’s a few month younger than my son.  YouTube blog reminds us that it was launched in May of 2005.

    Today, more than 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. That’s more than four days of video uploaded each minute! Every month, more than 1 billion people come to YouTube to access news, answer questions and have a little fun. That’s almost one out of every two people on the Internet.

    Millions of partners are creating content for YouTube and more than 1,000 companies worldwide have mandated a one-hour mid-day break to watch nothing but funny YouTube videos. Well, we made that last stat up, but that would be cool (the other stats are true).

    Happy birthday, YouTube!  You are awesome.  Keep it up.