Well, I would argue they are safe when used correctly. The same way a table saw is safe when used correctly, doesn't mean plenty of people aren't hurt by them. I would say it's more political than that. Gun owners don't seem to be the type of people that would be excited to strap a microcomputer onto their firearm to decide when it can be used.
Relay is a way for merchants to route products to channels. We certainly don't want to replace Shopify (with whom we're pretty close) but just give merchants an easy way to expose product information to apps and accepts orders directly from there. In particular, Relay will not provide you with store front, or complex shipping and taxes calculations and integrations.
Ideally Relay should work seamlessly with Shopify, and Shopify users should be able to start selling on Twitter and other apps directly from Shopify through Relay without even necessarily hearing the name Relay (as it is ~the case with their payments currently processed by us)
We've actually just finished a Shopify to Stripe integrator - check it out: https://www.shoptorelay.com - we're listening to feedback to at support@shoptorelay.com
Your assumption here is that the reporter did not press Systrom for "real" answers. Did you consider that perhaps these were the answers he gave when pressed for more?
Innovation is a really scary thing for public agencies. Democracies and public bureaucracies are set up specifically to mitigate risk. Yet risk is an essential factor in the success of innovative companies, many of which are now all dealing with gov't regulations and bureaucracies (think Uber or Airbnb). Here's how New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg put it in the Aug. 2011 issue of Fast Company:
"The public," Bloomberg says, "insists, and arguably has a right to insist, that it knows where its money's going. [They] have a very high expectation of results." He is talking about how the government spends its funds. "That is not the way innovation works. Innovation--the essence of innovation--is you don't know what you're going to build, what it's going to be called, how much it's going to cost. You cannot use public monies unless you can answer virtually every one of those questions, which is why government tends not to innovate. The public wants that accountability in advance, that justification in advance. But that's not going to work for certain things."
It is noteworthy that Newark delayed releasing these records for two years, and then finally did so on Christmas Eve. If they had nothing to hide, why not just hand them over a long time ago?
And I'm confused about why you think this article is making the story look like a scandal. The headline says it's about how $100 million gets donated, and goes on to say it's a glimpse at what happens behind the scenes of such a large donation. At the very end it does say: "If there is a smoking gun" - that's pretty far from editorializing or sensationalism.
> It is noteworthy that Newark delayed releasing these records for two years, and then finally did so on Christmas Eve. If they had nothing to hide, why not just hand them over a long time ago?
Precedent? Fear that you can hang an honest man? Intrenched bureaucratic inertia and desire for control over info? The belief (justified or not) that Zuckerberg et al prefer privacy on these internal communications?
Zuckerberg didn't give this money to another corporation or a private charity, he gave it to public schools. The money belongs to the people of Newark after that. For parents and teachers who work in the schools there, isn't it expected that they should be concerned about what this amount of money is going to be used for, and whether there are strings attached? If Zuckerberg had something else in mind he could have set up a foundation to create separate, private programs that support public schools (this is what the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation often does).
There was an excellent issue of Frontline about Michelle Rhee, it wasn't presenting the teachers unions as the last bulwark against privatization at all. That is a deeply misleading characterization of what the program examined, and how.
You're right, I should have been clearer that the episode was about Michelle Rhee and her philosophy that schools should be run more like private companies. And new allegations that her system may have led to test results being manipulated to improve scores and achieve the goals she set out for teachers and principals. Is that fair?
No, that's not fair either. Her philosophy is that schools must maximize student achievement, and I agree with her about this. The point of education is not to provide jobs for educators.
In this article he is reverse-engineering official Twitter apps. So there is an inconsistency even within Twitter's use of its own APIs. That, to me, is the mystery.
Also, I don't see how that statement implies the existence of something that no one has ever said existed. If the government says there are no aliens at Area 51 does that imply aliens do in fact exist at some other secret location? Uh-oh, maybe that was a bad example!
The statement was that there is no API for promoted tweets for third-party apps. If Twitter has promoted tweets, they have to get them from somewhere. That implies that there is an internal API where they get promoted tweets. I think I may be missing the point of the article, because it really didn't make much sense to me.
