5 ms·

I once deleted like, maybe a few petabytes of data valuable enough to store on FusionIO cards with a bad config change. I think it destroyed $50-100MM once the

I once deleted like, maybe a few petabytes of data valuable enough to store on FusionIO cards with a bad config change. I think it destroyed $50-100MM once the dust settled in all the various ways that it cost money were added up. I’m quite sure the hacker who pressed the button feels plenty bad enough already, and I hope the people around them were as kind as the people around me were.

tinco 4y ago
Was it Cambridge Analytica that was going to pay 50MM for that data? ;)
- benreesman 4y ago
  No, it was features for a P(click|impression) model, which are surprisingly mundane: it is basically impossible to care much either way, let alone be outraged, if you look at the actual features used in these kinds of things and it’s not explicitly your field. It’s not a microphone listening on your smartphone! You can even read about it in this paper which publicly described the system contemporary to that event: http://www.quinonero.net/Publications/predicting-clicks-facebook.pdf http://www.quinonero.net/Publications/predicting-clicks-face... If you read it and are still steamed up, well, then you hold that opinion honestly, but I suspect most would be like, “cool story bro”.
  - tinco 4y ago
    Thanks that's interesting! Definitely not outraged, was just poking a bit for fun. 50MM is an insane amount of money/value that would bankrupt most companies and have a noticable impact on many industries. Funny that for Facebook it was probably just a small hiccup on the ad revenue gravy train.
    - eru 4y ago
      > 50MM is an insane amount of money/value that would bankrupt most companies [...] Well, it would probably bankrupt most companies, but it wouldn't bankrupt most people's employer. The average employee works at a larger than average company. Similar for the average customer or average investor. That's just because big companies have more employees / customers / investors to contribute to that kind of average.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    I'll just file it under "best minds of our generation are working on making people click 3% more often on ads".
    - benreesman 4y ago
      Bernoulli distributions are everywhere, and as a result binary classifiers are everywhere. COVID tests (any binary medical diagnostic), fraud/no-fraud credit-card processing decisions, loan decisions, spam filtering, “toxic” tweet management and other sentiment analysis, it just goes on forever. All of these things benefit from advances in binary classifiers, and have therefore been massively subsidized by click prediction R&D. Maybe those benefits outweighs the costs, maybe they don’t. We have GPUs because shoot-em-up games were “the big thing” in the 90s. Net win? Personal preference. But entertainment if one form or another often pushes advances in computing. The BOPR stuff from the linked paper originated on XBox Live matchmaking. It’s perfectly fair to be like: I don’t like the ad-funded internet. There are tons of plausible reasons why someone wouldn’t like the ad-funded Internet, but most reasonable objections to it are of the form: “my internet experience is worse than it would be without ad funding”, past that you rapidly wander into “other people’s preferences are inferior to mine”.
      - eru 4y ago
        Another example: we are finally getting rid of internal combustion in cars, because the phone industry paid for the battery research.
googlryas 4y ago
As someone who just heard about FusionIO cards...how did the config change eat all the data in a manner that wasn't recoverable?
- eru 4y ago
  Perhaps they only discovered it after a while? In the comment benreesman only said that enough data was deleted to cause 50-100M$ in damages. They might very well have managed to save half the data, but the lost half was already quite expensive?
programmer_dude 4y ago
If MM is million-million then that is a lot of money. Edit: thanks for replies! :)
- heeton 4y ago
  If MM were million-million, that would mean OP destroyed $50-100 trillion dollars. About the GDP of the entire world. So it probably doesn't mean million-million ;)
- delaaxe 4y ago
  MM is million
- sokoloff 4y ago
  It’s a common abbreviation for million in finance. (It’s closer to the M is 1000 in Roman numerals than to the stacked SI prefix usage.)
  - LtdJorge 4y ago
    However, for Romans, MM would mean 2000 :D
- Hinrik 4y ago
  In finance, MM is a shorthand for millions: https://www.orsurety.com/blog/is-it-m-for-thousand-and-mm-for-million-or-k-for-thousand-and-m-for-million-im-asking-for-a-friend https://www.orsurety.com/blog/is-it-m-for-thousand-and-mm-fo...
  - adastra22 4y ago
    Weird to call it a shorthand when M means the same thing ;)
    - ItsTooMuch 4y ago
      English wasn't always the lingua franca

tinco 4y ago

Was it Cambridge Analytica that was going to pay 50MM for that data? ;)

benreesman 4y ago
No, it was features for a P(click|impression) model, which are surprisingly mundane: it is basically impossible to care much either way, let alone be outraged, if you look at the actual features used in these kinds of things and it’s not explicitly your field. It’s not a microphone listening on your smartphone! You can even read about it in this paper which publicly described the system contemporary to that event: http://www.quinonero.net/Publications/predicting-clicks-facebook.pdf http://www.quinonero.net/Publications/predicting-clicks-face... If you read it and are still steamed up, well, then you hold that opinion honestly, but I suspect most would be like, “cool story bro”.
- tinco 4y ago
  Thanks that's interesting! Definitely not outraged, was just poking a bit for fun. 50MM is an insane amount of money/value that would bankrupt most companies and have a noticable impact on many industries. Funny that for Facebook it was probably just a small hiccup on the ad revenue gravy train.
  - eru 4y ago
    > 50MM is an insane amount of money/value that would bankrupt most companies [...] Well, it would probably bankrupt most companies, but it wouldn't bankrupt most people's employer. The average employee works at a larger than average company. Similar for the average customer or average investor. That's just because big companies have more employees / customers / investors to contribute to that kind of average.
- pjc50 4y ago
  I'll just file it under "best minds of our generation are working on making people click 3% more often on ads".
  - benreesman 4y ago
    Bernoulli distributions are everywhere, and as a result binary classifiers are everywhere. COVID tests (any binary medical diagnostic), fraud/no-fraud credit-card processing decisions, loan decisions, spam filtering, “toxic” tweet management and other sentiment analysis, it just goes on forever. All of these things benefit from advances in binary classifiers, and have therefore been massively subsidized by click prediction R&D. Maybe those benefits outweighs the costs, maybe they don’t. We have GPUs because shoot-em-up games were “the big thing” in the 90s. Net win? Personal preference. But entertainment if one form or another often pushes advances in computing. The BOPR stuff from the linked paper originated on XBox Live matchmaking. It’s perfectly fair to be like: I don’t like the ad-funded internet. There are tons of plausible reasons why someone wouldn’t like the ad-funded Internet, but most reasonable objections to it are of the form: “my internet experience is worse than it would be without ad funding”, past that you rapidly wander into “other people’s preferences are inferior to mine”.
    - eru 4y ago
      Another example: we are finally getting rid of internal combustion in cars, because the phone industry paid for the battery research.

googlryas 4y ago

As someone who just heard about FusionIO cards...how did the config change eat all the data in a manner that wasn't recoverable?

eru 4y ago
Perhaps they only discovered it after a while? In the comment benreesman only said that enough data was deleted to cause 50-100M$ in damages. They might very well have managed to save half the data, but the lost half was already quite expensive?

programmer_dude 4y ago

If MM is million-million then that is a lot of money. Edit: thanks for replies! :)

heeton 4y ago
If MM were million-million, that would mean OP destroyed $50-100 trillion dollars. About the GDP of the entire world. So it probably doesn't mean million-million ;)
delaaxe 4y ago
MM is million
sokoloff 4y ago
It’s a common abbreviation for million in finance. (It’s closer to the M is 1000 in Roman numerals than to the stacked SI prefix usage.)
- LtdJorge 4y ago
  However, for Romans, MM would mean 2000 :D
Hinrik 4y ago
In finance, MM is a shorthand for millions: https://www.orsurety.com/blog/is-it-m-for-thousand-and-mm-for-million-or-k-for-thousand-and-m-for-million-im-asking-for-a-friend https://www.orsurety.com/blog/is-it-m-for-thousand-and-mm-fo...
- adastra22 4y ago
  Weird to call it a shorthand when M means the same thing ;)
  - ItsTooMuch 4y ago
    English wasn't always the lingua franca