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The Machine Fired Me

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Re: The Machine Fired Me

#361

Post by wolfi1 »

Rjevski wrote: post #292
zby wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have noticed that people following machine orders is also used by corporations to force customers to give up on their rights. I have a minor dispute with one of our communication providers and it is a real nightmare - according to the law I have the right, but the system does not include it and people don't know what to do in this case. Some other people higher up just wait until I give up.

Don’t pay the invoice until they either fix it or let it go (they can’t go to court as you’re in the right from a legal point of view). That’s what I always do with shitty utility providers - it’s funny how the “computer says no” excuse suddenly disappears when they start to be out of pocket.

that could pose a problem in some European countries as it is very easy to get a court order (no humans involved, it`s an automated process) to collect the money from you. it would be your duty to prove you don`t have to pay.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#362

Post by pluma »

molf wrote: post #345
garmaine wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? There was no premature termination here. He was “fired” exactly because his contract expired. It’s a shit situation and the company should have made him whole, but on ethical not legal grounds.

In many EU countries a contract does not actually end if you continue to show up to do work in mutual (implicit) agreement with the managers at the company you work for. It would constitute an implicit extension of the contract, effectively renewing it under the same terms for the same duration (with a maximum of 1 year IIRC).

I can vouch for this. As a freelancer I actually had exactly this happen: I was working for a client with a time-limited contract. The contract expired on New Year's Eve and they failed to renew it so I expected to have been terminated.

One week later they send me an e-mail asking when I'll be back from vacation. They refused to renew the contract (which explicitly said it required a formal written agreement to be renewed) but wanted me to keep working for them. So I went back to them and they kept paying me.

Several months later we had a disagreement and they claimed the terms of the original contract no longer applied because they hadn't renewed them. But my lawyer confirmed that in fact the contract was still valid because they implicitly extended it and the requirement for a formal renewal was invalidated (they failed to provide a new contract so the extension was still subject to the terms of the initial contract even though it had expired).

We didn't go all the way in court so I can't say whether this would have held up, but they ended up reaching an agreement with me where they pretty much gave up on everything except my legal fees, so I guess their lawyer wasn't too hopeful.

EDIT: For context, this happened in Germany.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#363

Post by teekert »

acomjean wrote: post #347
ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in effect he's right to suggest the pharmacist should just be replaced by a robot because you would have them follow the rules no matter what with all humanity stripped out. If there was more than one pharmacist available it wouldn't have killed him/her to go and take a look at the wife in the car.

You are right and make an interesting point. Part of the advantage of dealing with a human is that one hopes they can deal with whatever strange problem it thrown at them. If you can’t deal with corner cases, or have none than leveraging rules/software is the way to go. I think of vending machines and parking meters as automation of simple tasks, but what to do when they break? I think google tries this by trying to…

When they (the machines) break, a human should be able to override, i.e., I was once stuck in a malfunctioning parking garage (no ability to pay, barrier stayed shut), so I lifted the barrier and let everyone out without paying. This could be illegal, but keeping me in a parking garage without telling me how long it will take is also a crime. Please don't make human un-openable parking garages, ever (meaning: don't let a robot decide whether a human is allowed to leave).

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#364

Post by krapp »

pc86 wrote: post #351
DanBC wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The racism comes from saying "We recognise human faces" and then not recognising a significant proportion of humans.

That's not racism, that's laziness. Or perhaps just being a bad engineer, if you want to be more cynical about it. It's not that hard to find both conscious and subconscious examples of systemic or individual racism. Engineers taking the easy path with webcam facial recognition is probably not a good one and serves only to give more fuel to those who claim people jump to the racism cry too quickly.

> That's not racism, that's laziness. Or perhaps just being a bad engineer, if you want to be more cynical about it.

It can be both. An attitude that considers facial recognition software acceptable if it only recognizes light-skinned people is both lazy and racist. Only choosing to test on light-skinned people is racist because doing so assumes dark skinned people are an exception or an outlier, rather than an equally valid part of the set of "human faces."

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#365

Post by eythian »

pbh101 wrote: post #179
lostlogin wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mag strips are often used by ATMs and machines that you stuff cards into for tickets (train, museum etc).m I don’t know why but I’ve never encountered an ATM that uses the chip. I’m an MRI radiographer with expertise in the area of mag strip erasure. Chips are fine though and work after repeated exposure to 3T magnets.

I’ve inferred that the newer ATMs I’ve encountered use chips: the card stays in the machine for the entire transaction and is released to you right before the cash is dispensed.

I don't think I've ever used an ATM that doesn't do this since I started using them some time in the late 90's, even when the cards had magstripe and the chip was a twinkle in a beach's eye.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#366

Post by eythian »

zaarn wrote: post #245
vkou wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> swipe is rejected often if chip is available. It's the other way around. If you try the chip 3+ times, and it doesn't work, you can swipe the card, and the swipe transaction will work. When the more secure method fails, it falls back to the less secure one. It's lunacy.

Luckily EC cards in Europe don't do that. If you fail 3 times the chip stops working and the magnet stripe tells you to use the chip.

Most I see these days in NL say to use the magnetic strip after a few failures. They don't, however, have a magnetic strip reader any more.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#367

Post by eythian »

girvo wrote: post #109
joering2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put your chip card quickly in and out three times, next the machine will tell you to “swipe your card”.

This even works in chip-and-pin systems, at least here in Australia. Makes me sad, I don't really understand why falling back to what we're trying to replace is considered a good idea :(

It's temporary. Typical readers where I am in Europe don't even have the magstripe hardware any more.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#368

Post by krzat »

sametmax wrote: post #334
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you could tell them to stop and they would say "yes" and then carry on anyway... // This was discussed/commented on at length a couple of weeks ago. In Indian culture, apparently, the "yes" is like a verbal tick - kinda - and just acknowledges you've spoken without giving any commitment to doing anything (nor indeed indicating any level of understanding).

Not exactly. If you ask "do you understand ?" and "will you do it?" they will tell you yes as well. It's not a verbal tick. It's just not socially acceptable to say no.

I wonder if western culture has similiar quirks that we don't even realise.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#369

Post by theandrewbailey »

rectang wrote: post #314
hueving wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of what you says really applies in this case. According to the article the thing that triggered this was the failure to renew his contract. If it had renewal intervals, that means he wasn't legally entitled to 3 years. This is likely why he wasn't paid for the interim either. The best the company could do would likely be to bump up the future rate or offer a "signing bonus". Being a contractor is not at all like…

While I agree with the letter of your legal analysis, it should not be "the best the company could do" to make the worker whole. It ought to be expected that both parties behave ethically. The worker should not abandon the company during their time of need because of an unfortunate legal SNAFU. The company, in turn, should take it upon themselves to ensure that the worker doesn't suffer economically for having done t…

Why wouldn't a contractor leave the company when the company has done everything in its power to show the contractor the door? Aside from doing the job properly, the contractor has zero obligation to the company whose property he's working on.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#370

Post by PurpleBoxDragon »

jexah wrote: post #304
teekert wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a human and you can see in the computer that the prescription is regularly updated and you can even call the doctor if you doubted it. You can even check the prescription afterwards and if my story doesn't check out, do something about it. The migraine was pretty bad, imo it was like not treating a broken leg because of a missing insurance card or something.

You're really blaming the wrong people. Blame the doctor for screwing it up, your wife for not checking the prescription, or the government for creating/enforcing the relevant laws that would have put not only the chemist but their entire franchise underground for "doing the right thing". Laws are laws, broskie, don't expect everybody to break them for you. If the migraine was really bad (bad enough to cause tangible…

In which case you blame the programmer who wrote the code, not the employee following the software. Your idea of deferring to the rules over all common sense is the core of the problem. It doesn't matter if we are talking about government rules over which they'll enslave you if you break them or corporate rules over which they'll fire and blacklist you if you break them.
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