If it's any comfort, most people have push notifications turned off for the main Facebook app (understandably since we send quite a few of notifications). However anecdotally some of the survivors of the attacks mentioned that they got phone calls from concerned friends / families while hiding in the Bataclan, which was understandably stressful.
Maybe for this kind of events (when people need to hide) you should postpone the push until the situation become calmer?
On the other side, the push notification can alert people yet unaware of the situation, and save their life.
I guess we will have to wait until Facebook brilliant AI team can automagically figure when it's pertinent to push that crucial notification!
What kind of context hints could be used? heartbeat rate? analyzing ambient sounds like screams, detonations, explosions, or silence? analyzing surrounding voices to detect emotions like anger, distress, pain or fear in smartphone owner voice or other people? extracting dangerous location from media streams, and correlate with geolocalized users' positions? using other geolocalized users' answers (safe/not safe)?
I'm aware some proposition are not really realistic (yet) or somehow really creepy.
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Also, back to earthquakes, using context hints of lot of smartphones going from 'still' state to 'tilting' state, in a relatively localized region, could you detect earthquakes occurring quasi real-time? and push a warning notifications to your friends faster than the quake waves? « possible incoming quake in 5 seconds, brace yourself » ( à la https://xkcd.com/723/ )
In my opinion, "other things are just as bad" is as good an argument as "if you turn it off, it's not dangerous".
I still think it's not smart to send push notifications in an active shooter situation for a feature that is made to give people who are not involved peace of mind. If you consider such risks, and not get defensive right away, you will find that solutions can be pretty simple, e.g. a banner inside the app, instead of a notification.
I think shooting was aready over before people over at Facebook even knew something is going on. I imagine they wouldn't even turn it on before the information hit mainstream news.
Most of the trainings that I've gotten for active shooter-type events (gov't employee; they're frequent these days) advises you to silence your phone since the first thing that's gonna happen when the news shows up is everyone is gonna call you anyways.
On a meta level, I find it worth noting that you, as somebody who talks about women as "women" gets quite different, and seemingly more honest, answers from them than the other poster who calls them "girls". It's almost as if treating people with respect mattered.
I agree that the general advice is disturbing. However, looking at grandparent's post, I highly doubt that he asked the question in a way that indicated a judgement free response to the answer. This will not get him honest answers.
> Should the germans and the french follow suit with a referendum whether they should bail out greece again?
Yes, and they should have done so much earlier. If the other Eurozone governments would have listened to popular demand, Greece would not have been bailed out, and the default would not affect their taxpayers as much as it does now. The whole bailout programme was hubris, and it is time to call the bluff.
Well, it's politics. A lot of the big lenders were german banks. So it made sense for the german government to support more loans to Greece, because those were used to keep paying back german Banks. Grossly simplified, but that's what has been happening in the last years.
They were elected based on their promise not to accept more austerity. I would agree with parent that they don't have a democratic mandate to do the opposite now, even if they could legally do it.
Many engineers often seem to forget that their work has impact on the lives of people. I think that, in the part of the email that you are not quoting, Roy Fielding makes a very good point that TLS everywhere is not just a technical issue, but has significant social implication.
Thus, incentives and motives are very valid concerns. If the IETF's idea of professionalism precludes the discussion of ethical concerns, it needs to change.
Discussion of ethical concerns is important, but vague accusations that fail to identify any specific party or the nature of their interest are not a discussion, nor are they conducive to such a discussion being productive.
I am apalled that your rational argument is being downvoted, instead of disagreed with in the comments. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense, and fits the topic: It's easier to downvote or loot than to discuss or take political action.
I guess that's great during an earthquake but can be terrible when you're hiding during a terrorist act.