CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace • Hacker News Board

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#111

Post by gumby » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

filmgirlcw wrote: post #21

They only had 150 active users (despite 1000 signups), so choosing not to pay for the offering makes sense. I have the utmost respect for CERN as an institution — I want to make that clear. What I don’t love, however, is this trend that seems to be using a PR offensive of “price shaming” whenever contract or license terms change. I understand CERN is publicly funded and that it doesn’t have an unlimited budget. But I…

> What I don’t love, however, is this trend that seems to be using a PR offensive of “price shaming” whenever contract or license terms change.

I didn't read it this way at all. I read it as "CERN was offered, and adopted, a free product with features A, B, and C. Later we were told that terms were changing and we could not longer get all of A, B, and C for free and in addition the free tier would include factors that were the cause of concern to some parties, as already described above." In other words, "no longer meets our needs so we will change." As it happened one of those "needs" wasn't really that well satisfied (only 150 people used it) but they didn't say that here so weren't shaming the product at all.

In general I consider it uncool when license changes don't grandparent in existing users as much as possible.

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#112

Post by mstade » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

pbalau wrote: post #58

mstade wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use workplace too and this mirrors my experience precisely, especially the bit about notifications. It seems you can't control it either, you can turn off individual workspaces or whatever they call them, but new ones are added by default it seems so it's a cat and mouse game. Given it's so noisy, and full of the same dark patterns as regular Facebook, it's all but useless in sending out comms across the wider org…

> We use workplace too and this mirrors my experience precisely, especially the bit about notifications. I have a solution for you: https://imgur.com/a/QnIsBUw Even better, if you go to https://my.workplace.com/groups/ you will see a list with all groups you are part of with options, for each group, to control the notifications, follow settings and leave the group. On the same page there is a button to bulk manage gr…

> Yours is noisy because you let it be noisy.

I never "let" it be noisy, it's noisy by default since I have to opt-out to groups rather than opt-in. I've intentionally subscribed to exactly zero groups in workplace, but auto-subscribed to all. This makes notifications entirely useless to me, since it's all just noise and I don't have the time or energy to go through and change settings every time someone adds a group.

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#113

Post by krapp » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #109

ryanmercer wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, remember when those articles [1] came out claiming Musk and some other billionaires were trying to hack the simulation. cough if that was real I'm happy to work as a janitor or more cough [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-billionaires-want-to-br...

This is straightforward third century gnosticism. Granted, the Matrix was inspired by that religion, but it's funny to see these old beliefs come back and be taken so literally.

The funny thing is, even if the universe was a "simulation" of some sort, there's no reason to assume that simulation is literally code running as software inside a computer as we understand those terms - yet people who believe in simulation theory seem to assume exactly that. It's understandable that the God of the gaps would be replaced by belief in ghosts in the shell in the modern day, but it's also sadly mundane and reductive as philosophies go.

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#114

Post by riffic » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

Perhaps CERN can spin up its own Mastodon instance? https://toot.thoughtworks.com is an example of an organizational adoption of a Fediverse node.

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#115

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

mstade wrote: post #112

pbalau wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We use workplace too and this mirrors my experience precisely, especially the bit about notifications. I have a solution for you: https://imgur.com/a/QnIsBUw Even better, if you go to https://my.workplace.com/groups/ you will see a list with all groups you are part of with options, for each group, to control the notifications, follow settings and leave the group. On the same page there is a button to bulk manage gr…

> Yours is noisy because you let it be noisy. I never "let" it be noisy, it's noisy by default since I have to opt-out to groups rather than opt-in. I've intentionally subscribed to exactly zero groups in workplace, but auto-subscribed to all. This makes notifications entirely useless to me, since it's all just noise and I don't have the time or energy to go through and change settings every time someone adds a group…

[deleted]

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#116

Post by mattlutze » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

filmgirlcw wrote: post #21

They only had 150 active users (despite 1000 signups), so choosing not to pay for the offering makes sense. I have the utmost respect for CERN as an institution — I want to make that clear. What I don’t love, however, is this trend that seems to be using a PR offensive of “price shaming” whenever contract or license terms change. I understand CERN is publicly funded and that it doesn’t have an unlimited budget. But I…

> Losing control of our data was unacceptable, as was paying for a tool that was not part of our core offering for the CERN community; therefore, we will end the trial of this platform.

It seems that they were pretty open about the reasons they dropped Workplace and suggested Mattermost and Discourse as replacements.

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#117

Post by pbalau » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

mstade wrote: post #112

pbalau wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We use workplace too and this mirrors my experience precisely, especially the bit about notifications. I have a solution for you: https://imgur.com/a/QnIsBUw Even better, if you go to https://my.workplace.com/groups/ you will see a list with all groups you are part of with options, for each group, to control the notifications, follow settings and leave the group. On the same page there is a button to bulk manage gr…

> Yours is noisy because you let it be noisy. I never "let" it be noisy, it's noisy by default since I have to opt-out to groups rather than opt-in. I've intentionally subscribed to exactly zero groups in workplace, but auto-subscribed to all. This makes notifications entirely useless to me, since it's all just noise and I don't have the time or energy to go through and change settings every time someone adds a group…

You don't get automatically added to all groups (or any), some other human, that works with you, does that.

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#118

Post by welly » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

martin_a wrote: post #85

texasbigdata wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geez. I guess I'll leave your safe space and we'll both the better off. Semantically, any discussion point that is arbitrarily elevated to outrage is now disallowed? Obviously off topic here, and ignoring certain perhaps universally accepted things that are disallowed, this stance seems stifling. The whole concept of "micro aggressions" or whatever that means.....just seems like virtue signaling. But YRMV.

I think welly was making a joke.

I thought I was too.

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#119

Post by mstade » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

pbalau wrote: post #117

mstade wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yours is noisy because you let it be noisy. I never "let" it be noisy, it's noisy by default since I have to opt-out to groups rather than opt-in. I've intentionally subscribed to exactly zero groups in workplace, but auto-subscribed to all. This makes notifications entirely useless to me, since it's all just noise and I don't have the time or energy to go through and change settings every time someone adds a group…

You don't get automatically added to all groups (or any), some other human, that works with you, does that.

Oh, I didn't know that. Still, since everyone seems to add everyone to all of the things in our workplace then, the effect is the same – just a bunch of noise and an endless turning off of notifications. I just logged in and again had 100+ notifications from groups I've never heard of before, nor subscribed to. My feed is full of stuff that's of no meaning to me, and so the whole thing becomes useless. Maybe it's useful elsewhere in other organizations, but I wouldn't know.

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#120

Post by JorgeGT » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

pushpop wrote: post #108

JorgeGT wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but if you patent certain processes, concepts, etc. early on, you can get filthy rich as everyone has to license your technology.

In theory, yes. But there are a few caveats to that: 1. CERN wouldn’t have been able to patent anything too generalised because there was prior art (Gopher) 2. Thus if the patent was too expensive developers would have just used a similar technology (bare in mind it took quite a few years before the web to evolve from a toy, then something that companies “needed” but it wasn’t contributing massively to their bottom l…

Yep, I agree that any or all of those would apply (note that regarding F/RAND, a holder can refuse, and then the standard must exclude their IP) but at the same time we have seen over and over that corporations (and the nation-states that back them up) can get in really aggressive patent wars if they see fit, even over the concept of black, glossy rectangular cuboids...