We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly • Hacker News Board

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#711

Post by mirimir » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 1:13 AM UTC

But then there's Outline, from Alphabet's Jigsaw.[0] It utterly simplifies the creation of private VPN servers on Digital Ocean droplets.[1] They use Shadowsocks obfuscation. It's apparently effective against China's Great Firewall, and seems popular among Chinese dissidents. So the main intended application is pretty obvious, no?

So are they playing both sides? Or trying to con the Chinese government? Or just a large and loosely coordinated organizarion?

0) https://jigsaw.google.com/

1) https://blog.digitalocean.com/digitalocean-outline-jigsaw-vp...

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#712

Post by jameslin » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 1:21 AM UTC

I know I am going to get a lot of criticism, but hey freedom of speech:

First of all, I live outside of China and I am not against freedom of speech and human rights.

Let’s take a look at it at another angle: if Google drops dragonfly, the Chinese netizens will end up using “Baidu”, is it better or worse for the netizens of China? For the very least, dragonfly improves the situation from monopoly and gives much better/accurate/scam-free/spam-free search results. That is one way to improve their online experience.

I could be very wrong, but what I understand is these people oppose dragonfly because the government can restrict results, okay that’s not very ideal, but at least the government cannot force it to give false search results, right?

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#713

Post by rahimnathwani » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 1:21 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #590

rahimnathwani wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"or have more growth potential" Right, but this is different from having higher expected value, or higher likely-case value. Most people don't value compensation offers based on 'growth potential' (aka 'best case'). (I'm assuming you mean growth in the sense of 'growth in value of equity', based on your reply to another commenter)

I was actually thinking of growth as in "professional growth" - getting promoted faster, having a chance to learn more skills, doing things you wouldn't be able to do. I was thinking of the equity growth in terms of "pay more".

OK, so I'm curious: do many companies in the bay area pay more for engineers (on either an expected value or a worst case basis) than Google does? Sure, some of those startups will make their early employees very very rich, but most will fizzle or fail.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#714

Post by crispinb » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 1:23 AM UTC

qaq wrote: post #661

crispinb wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> recruits people that are hyper liberal individuals Only from the very narrow perspective of current US politics - just normal in the mainstream West.

??? Define mainstream West

Western Europe, NZ, Australia, Canada. The US has always been an outlier amongst the rich nations: more religious, more violent, etc. None of the attitudes referred to by the parent would be 'hyper-' anything in most of these nations.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#715

Post by bduerst » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 1:26 AM UTC

diminoten wrote: post #700

bduerst wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A moral inconsistency is not a nitpick when it's the entire industry. Their logic makes Google a better employer than Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and any other tech company currently operating in China. Saying they spurned Google because the company was considering going to China is disengenious, since the majority of the substitute employers are already in China.

You're saying his moral position is invalid because he doesn't apply it consistently, and that is not true, and also possibly harmful.

I said the moral position is disingenuous because it is both inconsistent and opposite to what he is describing, when considering all things related.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#716

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 1:31 AM UTC

kiliantics wrote: post #600

shareometry wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A great example of how working people have more power than they think if they're willing to risk dollars and cents for matters of right and wrong. I believe this is key. If more folks at more organizations were brave like this and willing to take the risk, a good chunk of the problems our civilization is facing might be greatly improved.

Worker's unions helped win the majority of our rights in modern democracies. I wish this fact was more widely appreciated.

> Worker's unions helped win the majority of our rights in modern democracies. I wish this fact was more widely appreciated.

The problem with modern unions, particularly in tech, is that the legacy structure is inapt for current problems. Tech workers don't need a union to negotiate compensation, they're compensated fine already. They don't need a huge bureaucratic structure for engaging in long-term detailed negotiations. They don't need a contract at all.

What they need is a no-dues no-fulltime-union-reps union that operates through direct democracy. It does nothing unless the employer is doing something bad wrong. Then if the majority of the union members vote to refuse, either the employer concedes or they strike.

Because it's not about a thousand little things here, it's about a small number of big things. It needs to be able to address those and then go back to being invisible instead of succumbing to feature creep and destroying the host with overhead and principal-agent problems as we've seen with the auto makers.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#717

Post by RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 1:31 AM UTC

nothrabannosir wrote: post #585

jkaplowitz wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a long time since my statistics and econometrics courses, but one conclusion that's definitely unwarranted would be to assume that the rest disagree with the signatories. People who speak up on an issue will always be a small fraction of the larger population of people who share the same opinion.

People downthread have remarked on the lack of Chinese signatories, commenting on how the Chinese government tracks their citizens abroad. With ramifications for their family and friends as actual, real possibilities, according to some commenters. If that were true, then their silence can definitely not be construed as any kind of tacit agreement, or even disinterest. How many Chinese citizens (or people otherwise su…

While threats from the Chinese government may be valid, it's more likely that they don't want to / cannot risk their H-1B status or green card priority date. So their immediate threat is more likely (indirectly) coming from USG.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#718

Post by atomical » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 1:33 AM UTC

vasilipupkin wrote: post #116

atomical wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between choice A and choice B? It seems there is no difference. Let's move onto the next logical argument. If the argument is that someone else will do it if we don't then do morals and values ever come into play? This is one reason why export controls on technology are important. The corporations don't mind helping oppressive governments lock up dissidents.

choice A is for google not to build a Chinese engine and for Chinese to use censored versions of locally built search engines. Choice B is for them to have a choice of local search engines and a google search engine ( all censored ). Seems to me from moral point of view, Chinese are better off under B and so I don't see why it's wrong for google to go with B

How are they better off again?

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#719

Post by maxhedrome » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 1:35 AM UTC

I deleted Youtube, maps, chrome, hangouts, sheets, docs, drive, Authenticator and nearly every other G app from my phone, fuck this shit.... working on migrating gmail. That’s a hassle tbh, but I’ve only raised my Google alert status from “Don’t be evil”

To “Experimenting with Evil”, so we’re not full blown Orwell yet.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#720

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 1:37 AM UTC

yholio wrote: post #620

bduerst wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you still work for Amazon? Microsoft? Apple? Facebook? Because they are actually in China and give concessions to the government.

The idea that a foreign corporation has a duty to break Chinese law with regards to web filtering is very problematic, if that's what you mean by "give concessions to the government". How far should such a corporation go with breaking the law, is tax evasion against the Chinese state morally acceptable, since those taxes might be used for oppression? We should recognize here a very thin line between respecting the Ch…

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