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Accountability sinks

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Re: Accountability sinks

#161

Post by RandomLensman »

atoav wrote: post #138
nh2 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is somewhat rubbish. I arrived at the train station in the night after 6 hours train journey. German Railways app shows there will be my final leg train in 45 minutes. I wait in the cold at night, sitting in the station building because it's warmer there. 5 minutes before departure I go on the platform. The local display shows no train, even though the all still shows it. I waited for nothing. Syncing the app…

And the root of all that? Privatization.

The German mail rail and track operator (Deutsche Bahn) isn't private but 100% state owned (and control sits with the federal government). They wanted to privatize it a couple of decades ago but abandoned it. There is still some hybridization between supposedly it being a business and also a public service left in the law, though.

Re: Accountability sinks

#162

Post by dale_glass »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #156
larsrc wrote: post #133

I've long thought that that is one of the main functions of corporations. There's a reason they're called limited liability. The fact that you can conjure up new companies at a whim makes it easy to shuffle responsibility into an obscure corner. This is a strong reason that corporations should not be considered people. People are long-lived entities with accountability and you can't just create or destroy them at wil…

Yeah, this dysfunction is not a bug, it's the feature. In some ways, it's useful, because it allows positive risk-taking that could not be taken if anyone was actually held (or even just felt) accountable. But at this point, as a society, we've shifted too far towards enabling accountability-free behavior from corporations. I think a good example of the dichotomy here is Starlink. On one hand, it's an incredibly usef…

> I think a good example of the dichotomy here is Starlink. On one hand, it's an incredibly useful service that often has a positive impact. On the other hand, a private corporation is just polluting our low earth orbit with thousands of satellites.

Seems like a terrible example to me. I'm no fan of Musk, but I don't see how that is "polluting".

They provide an excellent service. They're a minor hindrance for astronomy, true, but I think it would be hard to make a good case for that a few people having a good view of the sky is more important than millions having good communications.

Then there's that there's nothing really special about Starlink. It's merely one of the first users of cheap rocket launches. It could be somebody else, or 1000 different entities launching smaller numbers, in the end the effect on astronomy would be the same.

Re: Accountability sinks

#163

Post by heisenbit »

nh2 wrote: post #132
rougka wrote: post #64

I remember experiencing this in one of the German airports/airlines and having that exact thought. It was this fully automated airport, where the checkin is self serviced and you only interact with computers. Eventually, when I inserted my boarding pass I had a printed piece of paper back that said that they had to change my seat from aisle to midseat I then tried to find someone to talk to the entire way, but comput…

Germany is somewhat rubbish. I arrived at the train station in the night after 6 hours train journey. German Railways app shows there will be my final leg train in 45 minutes. I wait in the cold at night, sitting in the station building because it's warmer there. 5 minutes before departure I go on the platform. The local display shows no train, even though the all still shows it. I waited for nothing. Syncing the app…

There is some degree of accountability for DB: Other organizations like Swiss and Austrian railways stopped taking schedules of DB seriously and stopped waiting or booking through.

Re: Accountability sinks

#164

Post by presentation »

atoav wrote: post #138
nh2 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is somewhat rubbish. I arrived at the train station in the night after 6 hours train journey. German Railways app shows there will be my final leg train in 45 minutes. I wait in the cold at night, sitting in the station building because it's warmer there. 5 minutes before departure I go on the platform. The local display shows no train, even though the all still shows it. I waited for nothing. Syncing the app…

And the root of all that? Privatization.

Given how good the rail systems are in several Asian cities despite/thanks to being private, you might want to reconsider that opinion.

Re: Accountability sinks

#165

Post by maccard »

atoav wrote: post #138
nh2 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is somewhat rubbish. I arrived at the train station in the night after 6 hours train journey. German Railways app shows there will be my final leg train in 45 minutes. I wait in the cold at night, sitting in the station building because it's warmer there. 5 minutes before departure I go on the platform. The local display shows no train, even though the all still shows it. I waited for nothing. Syncing the app…

And the root of all that? Privatization.

No, it's not. It's bureacracy, and it exists in every big organisation, private or public. I'd actually suggest that public sector bodies are often worse for this.

Re: Accountability sinks

#166

Post by maccard »

switch007 wrote: post #131
lmm wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point everyone needs to get in the habit of using small claims court. You can often do it online in a few minutes these days. Make a good faith effort to get your problem addressed, and record the fact that you've done so to use in your hearing if it gets that far. Then just file the claim. Generally they fold immediately, and this way you incentivize actual customer service in the only language they understa…

I do agree but also feel if people did this en masse, that system would get a rate limiter. After 2 claims per year you would be barred for being "vexatious"

Being realistic, if you have these sorts of issues more than twice a year there's probably something wrong and you should fix that. Everyone has a few of those stories, but the only people who consistently have them are likely looking for trouble and picking fights.

Re: Accountability sinks

#167

Post by RandomLensman »

larsrc wrote: post #133

I've long thought that that is one of the main functions of corporations. There's a reason they're called limited liability. The fact that you can conjure up new companies at a whim makes it easy to shuffle responsibility into an obscure corner. This is a strong reason that corporations should not be considered people. People are long-lived entities with accountability and you can't just create or destroy them at wil…

Limited liability corporations are a relatively new concept and there is certainly scope to change how/when/where they could be created and run, for example.

Re: Accountability sinks

#168

Post by InsideOutSanta »

dale_glass wrote: post #162
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this dysfunction is not a bug, it's the feature. In some ways, it's useful, because it allows positive risk-taking that could not be taken if anyone was actually held (or even just felt) accountable. But at this point, as a society, we've shifted too far towards enabling accountability-free behavior from corporations. I think a good example of the dichotomy here is Starlink. On one hand, it's an incredibly usef…

> I think a good example of the dichotomy here is Starlink. On one hand, it's an incredibly useful service that often has a positive impact. On the other hand, a private corporation is just polluting our low earth orbit with thousands of satellites. Seems like a terrible example to me. I'm no fan of Musk, but I don't see how that is "polluting". They provide an excellent service. They're a minor hindrance for astrono…

"Then there's that there's nothing really special about Starlink"

I didn't say there was, and this isn't about Musk. I'm just using Starlink as an example, my point is not about Starlink.

"I don't see how that is polluting"

Starlink satellites create light pollution and disrupt radio frequencies. Astronomers are already running into issues with research due to the light from Starlink satellites. There's also the issue of reentry. We now have a Starlink reentry almost every single day, which is at least damaging to the ozone layer, and very likely causing other issues.

But like I said, this is not about Starlink. It's just an example to illustrate accountability sinks having both positive and negative effects.

Re: Accountability sinks

#169

Post by maccard »

gregmac wrote: post #86
m463 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many businesses build walls around themselves like this. Hiding the customer service number. Making an FAQ that is missing the common but time-consuming questions. Chatbots instead of people. I remember when amazon sent me a package once, said it was delivered, but it was nowhere to be found. There was no way to get help. They did have an FAQ at the time that said to check in the bushes. What was annoying was the sea…

I just switched ISPs, and the new one has one of the most obnoxious phone processes I've ever interacted with. I go through the usual hoops: press 1 for English, "we detected an account linked to the number you're calling from, is that that you're calling about?" ... Press 1 for support, press 1 for Internet, "no outages detected in your area. Most problems can be solved by rebooting your modem. Press 1 if you want t…

> Also, rebooting is offensive to me as a programmer. Kernel updates and memory leaks are the only reason you need to reboot.

This surprises me - as a programmer you should realise that reboots can often help. Cache invalidation is one of the notoriously hard CS problems and an awful lot of systems will start fresh on reboot.

> (Never mind that I personally don't feel like I've ever had a modem/isp actually problem solved by rebooting)

My current ISP is better, but my previous ISP cycled IP addresses at 2am (and lost connectivity for about 30 seconds at the same time) on a Friday night. I would semi-frequently be up playing games at that hour, and it was about 50/50 as to whether devices on my network would survive the blip. Rebooting the router had a 100% success rate.

I currently (unfortunately) have a google wifi mesh system. It works great, except about once a month it reports that absolutely everything is fine, all tests pass from my mobile device, but my laptop has no internet connectivity. Rebooting fixes it just fine.

> How absolutely shitty is modem firmware that the ISP actually spent the time to build this reboot system out?

Firmware is still software, like it or lump it. Modem firmware has been shitty for a long time. A major ISP [0] in the UK had an issue with their firmware that caused massive latency spikes under load. Alsom Power loss happens sometimes. The modem/router has to be able to turn on in the first place, so a "reboot" is just going through that process again. It's attempting to return to a "last known good".

[0] https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/Hub-3-Com...

Re: Accountability sinks

#170

Post by dale_glass »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #168
dale_glass wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think a good example of the dichotomy here is Starlink. On one hand, it's an incredibly useful service that often has a positive impact. On the other hand, a private corporation is just polluting our low earth orbit with thousands of satellites. Seems like a terrible example to me. I'm no fan of Musk, but I don't see how that is "polluting". They provide an excellent service. They're a minor hindrance for astrono…

"Then there's that there's nothing really special about Starlink" I didn't say there was, and this isn't about Musk. I'm just using Starlink as an example, my point is not about Starlink. "I don't see how that is polluting" Starlink satellites create light pollution and disrupt radio frequencies. Astronomers are already running into issues with research due to the light from Starlink satellites. There's also the issu…

I don't think it works at all, no.

There's no accountability sink to speak of here. "Accountability sink" in the article's meaning means that accountability got obscured, something bad happened (eg, lies on TV, terrible customer service), yet nobody can be clearly blamed for giving the order.

Here, it's Musk's invention, and he's clearly to blame for it. In fact Musk has a propensity to take more credit than he deserves, so it's almost the opposite from a sink really.

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