171–180 of 233 posts
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That’s a misreading of OP’s point: it’s not the employer that they have a problem with, it’s the morality of their employment.
Except that is literally what he said. As soon as they work for defense contractors they are no longer considered friends. Presumably no matter what they do, as long as they are associated they are guilty. Be it cleaning floors, writing software, testing hardware, or what have you.
So it isn't that friends suddenly became ex's overnight. It is after coming to the realization that over time they either had sold out their ethics in order to make good money working on cool technology regardless of what it is used for, or that they really bought the indoctrination that what they were doing was important patriotic work. As for the latter, I heard that stuff a lot, and I always thought it was a bad sign that the boss had to kept telling you that you are doing important work. You weren't privy to much beyond your own compartmented subsystem but over time you could eventually piece together the bigger story. As for the former, that's similar to the non-defense world where a lot of smart engineers are developing shady stuff, except that it isn't resuling in thousands of people in far away lands being killed week in and week out as a result.
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He's also 100% correct, Twitter should be de-listed and treated as a utility. It's too much of a public good to get gobbled up by Google or whoever.
What makes Twitter "too much of a public good" in your opinion?
trying to turn it into anything else has kinda failed
Data Science is evil :) There are a couple of big "tech-is-evil" forces that I think are responsible for a good chunk of this sentiment. The first is advertising. Ads are slightly evil anyway. You're going to make us watch an ad during intermission, and that'll make us buy your brand of washing powder? Sounds kind of evil. It never sat right with people, but it funded free news and entertainment so... we're used to t…
Nah. Banning collecting, storing, and exploiting data on people for any but a small set of very narrow purposes would do the trick.
I'm really struggling to put into words how much this recent "moral" crusade against Facebook/Google/Amazon has begun to irritate me. My gut feeling is that unable to do anything about Trumps election victory all those enraged by his win are now turning their ire against companies that tangentially might have helped to get him elected.
I don't think those two things are related. This issue actually touches both sides. Steve Bannon was looking at anti-trust issues in the administration and Trump has raised similar issues about Amazon [1][2]. [1] https://theintercept.com/2017/07/27/steve-bannon-wants-faceb... [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/steve...
Data Science is evil :) There are a couple of big "tech-is-evil" forces that I think are responsible for a good chunk of this sentiment. The first is advertising. Ads are slightly evil anyway. You're going to make us watch an ad during intermission, and that'll make us buy your brand of washing powder? Sounds kind of evil. It never sat right with people, but it funded free news and entertainment so... we're used to t…
It's far more efficient I'm not sure we know this yet. They sell it like it is, and it seems like a good idea that makes sense, but at this point online ads perform in the same way as TV ads: They give us brand exposure. Most of the time I do an internet search I am not trying to purchase something, and I've never seen an ad that made me say as a result of that search "I need that" and make a purchase. When I'm doing…
Curious how “There is growing concern … about bigness and size, and power because power corrupts absolutely” among the growing fan club of a representative of the ultimate accumulation of bigness, size, and power: the government.
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Well, as a citizen of the UK who’s currently living in Sweden, I’ll provide the counterpoint that I refuse to work with any of our morally corrupt ‘defence’ industries and always bring it up as a red line with any company I interview at.
Which industry is not morally corupt then? I can see maybe single companies in given industries not behaving like total assholes, but on the whole I think all industries are rotten.
Buy hey, that’s just my opinion :) You do what you think’s best and I’ll do the same. My point was just that it’s not just the US who has people who are ‘out of touch’ (apparently).
Most in the tech professions are progressive and liberal, is that so... Just because people might work in Silicon Valley doesn't mean they automatically align with that "way of thinking".
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I tend to be conservative, and I work in tech. It feels to me like a repressive atmosphere. Conservatives are muzzled or eliminated. It's not a healthy environment for anyone.
Calling yourself a conservative is meaningless. The US has shifted away from being a republic to being more of an oligarchy over the last 30 years. So if you are a supporter of oligarchs stand up and be counted. If you are a fiscal conservative you should be pissed that the republicans put the country farther in debt than the democrats do. If you are a social conservative, what the fuck is wrong with you? If you want…