6 ms·

So you are saying.. A developer went to their tech lead and said 'hey we can make the app much better by leaving the camera on all the time saves 200ms on came

by rbg246 6y ago

So you are saying.. A developer went to their tech lead and said 'hey we can make the app much better by leaving the camera on all the time saves 200ms on camera startup time' Tech lead: this is brilliant no potential problems here Tech lead to management team: got this great new feature, we leave the camera on all the time makes the app 200ms faster. Management: wow that's great can't see any problem with that, no chance of reputational damage there. And it's all innocent and noone has any idea why anyone would get the wrong idea?

koonsolo 6y ago
I see you don't have much experience in development. It probably went more like this: business: "Opening the camera seems slow", dev: "it takes 200ms for the system to start it", "Can you make it faster?", "Not really, unless we keep the camera on", "Do that!", "Won't it have privacy issues?", "Don't worry about that". EDIT: And in the end business is correct, because nobody really cares about this. Every happy instagrammer keeps happily instagramming.
- slantaclaus 6y ago
  +1 for realistic dialogue
- NewOrderNow 6y ago
  As realistic as this is, it seems like contempt for mediocrity
- thrav 6y ago
  This is so true that at other companies it often takes a lawyer (in-house counsel) reminding product that something is legally precarious to stop it, and they still push. For something that has no real legal ramifications, there’s no way you’re stopping it.
- diffsensitivity 6y ago
  That’s how the explicit narrative goes. The implicit one we can never admit to is something like: Instagrammer has a different sensitivity for 200ms than the dev and never cared. Dev has to justify his egregious salary by manufacturing statistics to “experiment with engagement” nevermind the literal reality of having such a gadget is titillating as is, manufacturing belief that specific dev making a camera respond 200ms faster is what really made the app is where that paper is.
  - mopierotti 6y ago
    Camera start up time actually is quite important in my opinion. For example, I stopped using snapchat primarily because it felt laggy to get the camera open. That really grates on you when an app is mostly used for spontaneous image/video capture.
- SilasX 6y ago
  People will care a lot when news gets out that they were spying on a 13-year-old (or whatever) girl.
- ethanbond 6y ago
  This is why Facebook's culture is the real problem, and it won't be fixed no matter how many "independent" oversight boards they produce.
AndrewThrowaway 6y ago
Developer: Damn camera takes almost half a second to start! Tech lead: Can we just leave it on or pre-start it somehow? Developer: But... Tech lead: I will think of something. Tech lead to management: We made camera start 150% faster! Management: Wow wow wow. It is so great to have such an experienced tech lead we pay so much for. Tech lead drives into the sunset with his brand new Tesla.
- wil421 6y ago
  You forgot the part where Tech Lead creates a YouTube channel. His Tesla is featured prominently.
  - Alex3917 6y ago
    "How I made the camera 200ms faster (as a millionaire)"
    - AndrewThrowaway 6y ago
      How I quit (was fired from) Facebook after making camera 150% faster which made me a millionaire (in 200ms).
      - what_ever 6y ago
        When did HN get to this?
        corobo 6y ago
        Flag and move on
  - troughway 6y ago
    Hey guys it's Ex-Google, Ex-Facebook, Ex-Tesla Tech Lead
    - 6y ago
srtjstjsj 6y ago
Is it Facebook's fault that the OS had a bug that triggers the camera notification when the camera is in standby mode? There's no reputational damage because the world is already split between people who think FB is the devil and people who don't care.
- adpirz 6y ago
  Worth noting this split is like 3 / 97.
- boringg 6y ago
  I like how it’s people who think Facebook and people who don’t care. Where are the pro Facebook evangelists these days?
  - baq 6y ago
    same place were pro-reality people are. there isn't anything to be for. it just is.
  - ufmace 6y ago
    Considering how many $Billions Facebook has, they can pay me if they want me to speak up for them.
- fdeage 6y ago
  You forgot a third kind: FB employees.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    No, I would put them squarely in the Don't Care group because they cannot possibly be in a Don't Know group.
dathinab 6y ago
The problem is I can see exactly that happening.
jariel 6y ago
No, he's saying that API usage is not obvious, things are complicated and not obvious and that mistakes happen. I don't believe for one second that FB is going to be purposefully taking 'illegal videos' of people. Nor do I believe Facebook is even evil. It's just a social network, end of story.
- zentiggr 6y ago
  Amoral does no less harm overall than evil, it's just done to 'the masses', not particular targets. No one at Facebook gets to claim they were just following orders if they have _any_ understanding of the possible consequences of their work. (If you believe the authors/operators that specifically maximize profits over responsibility are not responsible for their outcomes, you should read back into the posting about PG&E in CA: deliberately ignoring the wear & tear on 100 year old support hooks on high-tension power lines, thus sparking the fire that burned down Paradise, CA.)
maxsilver 6y ago
> Management: wow that's great can't see any problem with that, no chance of reputational damage there. Absolutely agree, but it also wouldn't surprise me if they didn't think about it or didn't care. If 2020 has taught me anything, it's that a surprisingly high number of people / companies / groups managers and/or leaders, do not think about or care about long-term repercussions of the vast majority of their decisions.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  If 2020 has taught me anything, it's that a surprisingly high number of people / companies / groups managers and/or leaders, do not think about or care about long-term repercussions of the vast majority of their decisions. 2020? I was thinking 1980. To my memory, it seems to have started with the Savings and Loan scandals, and gotten worse. Companies went from optimizing for 100-year growth to optimizing for the next three months.
fatnoah 6y ago
>So you are saying.. If I had to bet my own money on what really happened, I'd guess that it's something along these lines: DEVELOPER: Camera initialization is adding 200ms to app startup TECH LEAD: Holy crap! We need total startup to be less than 500ms or users start to think things are slow DEVELOPER: What if we initialize the camera early? TECH LEAD: Can you do that without recording? It would be very bad if we were recording things. DEVELOPER: Yes. TECH LEAD: Do it. Conspiracy ensues.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Taylor_OD 6y ago
Since net zero people are going to stop using Instagram from this coming out... Yes.
krisgenre 6y ago
Long back there was similar bug in iOS camera itself https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2413926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2413926
switch11 6y ago
This is very well put Not sure why someone is assuming Facebook did this for an honest reason when Facebook is the best example of an extremely dishonest large tech company * The founder Zucker berg literally wrote - They trust me, the dumb fucks He wrote this in college He has shown a pattern of treating his users as 'dumb fucks' Again and again more and more data comes up that Facebook is a dishonest company. not a 'by mistake' dishonest, but a fundamentally dishonest company And always White Knights like this guy show up claiming 'it is to optimize loading speed) * Now Facebook is finally getting into trouble with even the left, because instead of helping Obama get elected it seems now they are helping Trump get elected So their own dishonesty is so extreme that they are trying to help both Democrats and Republicans thinking both sides are dumb fucks that will forget what Facebook did to screw them over in past elections

by rbg246 6y ago

koonsolo 6y ago

I see you don't have much experience in development. It probably went more like this: business: "Opening the camera seems slow", dev: "it takes 200ms for the system to start it", "Can you make it faster?", "Not really, unless we keep the camera on", "Do that!", "Won't it have privacy issues?", "Don't worry about that". EDIT: And in the end business is correct, because nobody really cares about this. Every happy instagrammer keeps happily instagramming.

slantaclaus 6y ago
+1 for realistic dialogue
NewOrderNow 6y ago
As realistic as this is, it seems like contempt for mediocrity
thrav 6y ago
This is so true that at other companies it often takes a lawyer (in-house counsel) reminding product that something is legally precarious to stop it, and they still push. For something that has no real legal ramifications, there’s no way you’re stopping it.
diffsensitivity 6y ago
That’s how the explicit narrative goes. The implicit one we can never admit to is something like: Instagrammer has a different sensitivity for 200ms than the dev and never cared. Dev has to justify his egregious salary by manufacturing statistics to “experiment with engagement” nevermind the literal reality of having such a gadget is titillating as is, manufacturing belief that specific dev making a camera respond 200ms faster is what really made the app is where that paper is.
- mopierotti 6y ago
  Camera start up time actually is quite important in my opinion. For example, I stopped using snapchat primarily because it felt laggy to get the camera open. That really grates on you when an app is mostly used for spontaneous image/video capture.
SilasX 6y ago
People will care a lot when news gets out that they were spying on a 13-year-old (or whatever) girl.
ethanbond 6y ago
This is why Facebook's culture is the real problem, and it won't be fixed no matter how many "independent" oversight boards they produce.

AndrewThrowaway 6y ago

Developer: Damn camera takes almost half a second to start! Tech lead: Can we just leave it on or pre-start it somehow? Developer: But... Tech lead: I will think of something. Tech lead to management: We made camera start 150% faster! Management: Wow wow wow. It is so great to have such an experienced tech lead we pay so much for. Tech lead drives into the sunset with his brand new Tesla.

wil421 6y ago
You forgot the part where Tech Lead creates a YouTube channel. His Tesla is featured prominently.
- Alex3917 6y ago
  "How I made the camera 200ms faster (as a millionaire)"
  - AndrewThrowaway 6y ago
    How I quit (was fired from) Facebook after making camera 150% faster which made me a millionaire (in 200ms).
    - what_ever 6y ago
      When did HN get to this?
      - corobo 6y ago
        Flag and move on
- troughway 6y ago
  Hey guys it's Ex-Google, Ex-Facebook, Ex-Tesla Tech Lead
  - 6y ago

srtjstjsj 6y ago

Is it Facebook's fault that the OS had a bug that triggers the camera notification when the camera is in standby mode? There's no reputational damage because the world is already split between people who think FB is the devil and people who don't care.

adpirz 6y ago
Worth noting this split is like 3 / 97.
boringg 6y ago
I like how it’s people who think Facebook and people who don’t care. Where are the pro Facebook evangelists these days?
- baq 6y ago
  same place were pro-reality people are. there isn't anything to be for. it just is.
- ufmace 6y ago
  Considering how many $Billions Facebook has, they can pay me if they want me to speak up for them.
fdeage 6y ago
You forgot a third kind: FB employees.
- dylan604 6y ago
  No, I would put them squarely in the Don't Care group because they cannot possibly be in a Don't Know group.

dathinab 6y ago

The problem is I can see exactly that happening.

jariel 6y ago

No, he's saying that API usage is not obvious, things are complicated and not obvious and that mistakes happen. I don't believe for one second that FB is going to be purposefully taking 'illegal videos' of people. Nor do I believe Facebook is even evil. It's just a social network, end of story.

zentiggr 6y ago
Amoral does no less harm overall than evil, it's just done to 'the masses', not particular targets. No one at Facebook gets to claim they were just following orders if they have _any_ understanding of the possible consequences of their work. (If you believe the authors/operators that specifically maximize profits over responsibility are not responsible for their outcomes, you should read back into the posting about PG&E in CA: deliberately ignoring the wear & tear on 100 year old support hooks on high-tension power lines, thus sparking the fire that burned down Paradise, CA.)

maxsilver 6y ago

> Management: wow that's great can't see any problem with that, no chance of reputational damage there. Absolutely agree, but it also wouldn't surprise me if they didn't think about it or didn't care. If 2020 has taught me anything, it's that a surprisingly high number of people / companies / groups managers and/or leaders, do not think about or care about long-term repercussions of the vast majority of their decisions.

reaperducer 6y ago
If 2020 has taught me anything, it's that a surprisingly high number of people / companies / groups managers and/or leaders, do not think about or care about long-term repercussions of the vast majority of their decisions. 2020? I was thinking 1980. To my memory, it seems to have started with the Savings and Loan scandals, and gotten worse. Companies went from optimizing for 100-year growth to optimizing for the next three months.

fatnoah 6y ago

>So you are saying.. If I had to bet my own money on what really happened, I'd guess that it's something along these lines: DEVELOPER: Camera initialization is adding 200ms to app startup TECH LEAD: Holy crap! We need total startup to be less than 500ms or users start to think things are slow DEVELOPER: What if we initialize the camera early? TECH LEAD: Can you do that without recording? It would be very bad if we were recording things. DEVELOPER: Yes. TECH LEAD: Do it. Conspiracy ensues.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Taylor_OD 6y ago

Since net zero people are going to stop using Instagram from this coming out... Yes.

krisgenre 6y ago

Long back there was similar bug in iOS camera itself https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2413926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2413926

switch11 6y ago

This is very well put Not sure why someone is assuming Facebook did this for an honest reason when Facebook is the best example of an extremely dishonest large tech company * The founder Zucker berg literally wrote - They trust me, the dumb fucks He wrote this in college He has shown a pattern of treating his users as 'dumb fucks' Again and again more and more data comes up that Facebook is a dishonest company. not a 'by mistake' dishonest, but a fundamentally dishonest company And always White Knights like this guy show up claiming 'it is to optimize loading speed) * Now Facebook is finally getting into trouble with even the left, because instead of helping Obama get elected it seems now they are helping Trump get elected So their own dishonesty is so extreme that they are trying to help both Democrats and Republicans thinking both sides are dumb fucks that will forget what Facebook did to screw them over in past elections