I don't cook. Truth be told thats really in the best interests of everyone around me. Its not that I havent tried. I can work a grill pretty well, and if given enough time I can usually come up with something "interesting" in your more traditional kitchen. But "interesting" usually yields items like "Stub's chocolate chip cookie apocalypse". What does that mean? 3 part chocolate cookie 1 part dynamite. Serve with blindfold, jaws of life, and milk. Most people strive to improve on their weaknesses. But, were that the case with me and cooking, I would have starved to death a long time ago.
Given my ... dubious culinary history, I'm probably the last person you'd expect to find on a site like Epicurious. So imagine my surprise when my Facebook home page pops open a few days ago to show me, and anyone else who was looking, that I had book-marked some sort of crazy pie in my epicurious recipe box.
I did what? I have a recipe box? Where is my pie?
As it turns out, there were two culprits in this little mystery. Culprit 1 is my girlfriend, who ninjaed my laptop. But the much bigger culprit is the much maligned Beacon - the cornerstone of Facebook's next generation social advertising agenda. My girlfriend bookmarks pie recipes. My Facebook page is open. Independent systems communicate and all of a sudden I've got an email from a friend who is wondering what makes me think I can bake a pie. Its not so much the beginning of the Skynet and a real life Terminator series that has me upset. Its more that despite all the insanity, I still don't have a pie.
If you havent been following the drama of Beacon or Overlord's Zuckerberg's subsequent apology for it, then feel free to hit the jumps for the scoop. In a word, its been a PR disaster, and for quite a few reasons. But the point of this post isnt to pass judgment on the Beacon debacle, as thats pretty much been done to death.
Putting all the issues of Beacon's privacy aside, I'd like to ask a more philosophical privacy question. Do you care if your social network knows what you buy on the internet?
We've always established that I'm not a real person, but for my part, it just seems like the logical next step to me. Of course, I use the internet to buy military history books and video games - it wouldn't exactly be a major security leak if all of you found out about it ;-)
But what about you? Are the movies you rent, the things you buy, or the recipes you bookmark something you'd prefer to keep out of the eyes of your social network? And if not, would you mind if I stop over for pie? =)
Given my ... dubious culinary history, I'm probably the last person you'd expect to find on a site like Epicurious. So imagine my surprise when my Facebook home page pops open a few days ago to show me, and anyone else who was looking, that I had book-marked some sort of crazy pie in my epicurious recipe box.
I did what? I have a recipe box? Where is my pie?
As it turns out, there were two culprits in this little mystery. Culprit 1 is my girlfriend, who ninjaed my laptop. But the much bigger culprit is the much maligned Beacon - the cornerstone of Facebook's next generation social advertising agenda. My girlfriend bookmarks pie recipes. My Facebook page is open. Independent systems communicate and all of a sudden I've got an email from a friend who is wondering what makes me think I can bake a pie. Its not so much the beginning of the Skynet and a real life Terminator series that has me upset. Its more that despite all the insanity, I still don't have a pie.
If you havent been following the drama of Beacon or Overlord's Zuckerberg's subsequent apology for it, then feel free to hit the jumps for the scoop. In a word, its been a PR disaster, and for quite a few reasons. But the point of this post isnt to pass judgment on the Beacon debacle, as thats pretty much been done to death.
Putting all the issues of Beacon's privacy aside, I'd like to ask a more philosophical privacy question. Do you care if your social network knows what you buy on the internet?
We've always established that I'm not a real person, but for my part, it just seems like the logical next step to me. Of course, I use the internet to buy military history books and video games - it wouldn't exactly be a major security leak if all of you found out about it ;-)
But what about you? Are the movies you rent, the things you buy, or the recipes you bookmark something you'd prefer to keep out of the eyes of your social network? And if not, would you mind if I stop over for pie? =)
Yikes!! Is nothing sacred? I want my pie bookmarks kept on the downlow.
After reading a post from Ellysa on the subject, I realized that I had neglected to mention that I had removed the Beacon Pie notification from my Facebook profile. I didnt remove it because I'm philosophically opposed to having it there - I removed it because seeing it reminded me of how I am an utterly incompetent pie maker. ;-)