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Mourning Google

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Re: Mourning Google

#441

Post by ericyd »

scythmic_waves wrote: post #249
ericyd wrote: post #220

I really don't understand people who throw their arms up in exasperation and wonder what alternatives exist to Google (or other big tech) products. It's takes a little dedication because it's not as easy as using a conglomerate, but there are a bunch of easy and stable alternatives to core Google products just a... ahem ... internet search away.

My personal exasperation is less about being unable to find alternatives (e.g. [1]). It's more that those alternatives aren't 1) as good, 2) free, or 3) part of the same platform. And even if I use an alternative, my friends, family, and workplace do not. So I'm still fighting the use of Google products after I stop using them. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/wiki/de-google

I don't really disagree, I just feel like that choice is pretty well known at this point. Big tech provides a high degree of polish, an economical cost, and probably mind-blowing amounts of data collection. Alternatives are slightly less polished, perhaps more expensive, and probably more favorable from a privacy perspective. Sure it would be nice to have it all, but I see this as just another tradeoff we have to make to live in the modern world. I sympathize with the viewpoint, I guess I just react differently to the options.

Re: Mourning Google

#442

Post by herval »

amiantos wrote: post #414
herval wrote: post #37

> "Larry and Sergey were smart guys who recognized they didn’t know shit about corporateness and quickly got into a pattern of hiring and empowering psychotic pricks who were presumably “good at business”. Not gonna talk about some of the things I saw because these people are wealthy and litigious." Big Tech in a nutshell

Any company in a nutshell. I've worked retail, warehousing, IT, and engineering, and every company I've worked for has had a big problem with owners hiring charismatic psychopaths who end up causing some degree of harm to the employees around them. I worked with a guy who was very favored by the bosses at one company, and he instructed employees to break company policy and then went to me in IT and told me to install…

Maybe I lucked out, but I found perhaps one or two psychopaths in two decades working tech, before big tech, and both were VP-level and non technical. But yes, I guess corporate ladders tend to reward psychopaths and narcissists by design

Re: Mourning Google

#443

Post by herval »

coldpie wrote: post #169
moritzwarhier wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychosis and psychopathic (or antisocial) traits are very different psychiatric phenomena. They are not even similar, also psychosis is often temporary. So maybe people should look for a different "smart" way of describing craziness. Or, if you want to use psychiatric terms, subclinic antisocial persobality disorder is most closely related to business success, as far as I know.

Sorry, I was (trying to) use the same term as the person I was replying to.

That was quoted from the article. I think they mistook the words

Re: Mourning Google

#444

Post by herval »

rezonant wrote: post #52
herval wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Working there carried this huge cachet that few tech companies can compare to today It also was allegedly a "special" place, where you had autonomy as an engineer, yada yada. From what I hear about openai, that doesn't really apply there. Are there any small-but-large-ish companies (100-1k employees) out there today that have a culture similar to the early google?

We should all endeavor to emulate it if we can.

Rule number one: never emulate anything google does

Re: Mourning Google

#445

Post by herval »

pjlegato wrote: post #411
coldpie wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, sorta. Plenty of psychotic smart guys around in big tech, too, which is a potent combo. Bezos; Zuckerberg; Musk, if his loose spending habits qualify him as a big tech leader. Capitalism rewards psychopaths the most, without guardrails they're gonna win every time, everywhere.

Socialism rewards psychopaths even more than capitalism does. In that system, the psychopaths quickly become the ones who define what those "guardrails" are, for their own personal benefit; and then use the full weight of state enforcement power to prevent any dissent. At least under capitalism, the decentralized free market eventually erodes the ability of a corporation run by psychopaths to continue to operate, if…

Erhn… you’re saying the government of Vietnam has more psychopaths than a big corporation? I sincerely doubt it. No upside for them.

Re: Mourning Google

#446

Post by Eisenstein »

naasking wrote: post #239
Eisenstein wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, we only have that ability because the dinosaurs all died millions of years ago and we got to use their energy.

I wouldn't go that far. Fossil fuels helped for sure, but we still had wood as a renewable resource that would have served until we discovered nuclear power.

I am pretty sure it would not be possible to launch an industrial revolution with just wood. It isn't dense enough energy wise and there isn't nearly enough of it.

Re: Mourning Google

#447

Post by CatWChainsaw »

geodel wrote: post #241
twisteriffic wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those public institutions are being _made_ to fail right now. Purposefully. Not by unthinking forces of nature but by conscious effort.

Right, it is always that vast right wing conspiracy .

So the right wing isn't trying to gut public education and healthcare? I just hallucinated charter school vouchers and all their attempts to repeal the ACA?

Re: Mourning Google

#448

Post by BobaFloutist »

serjester wrote: post #381
rchaud wrote: post #255

These blog posts eulogizing Google's culture death sidestep the elephant in the room; Google sells ads. Nothing else they produce makes money. Google Search didn't magically get dumber, they simply made a business decision to favor SEO-optimized junk sites, many of which run Google Ads. There's an outdated saying that goes, "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" If Google was hiring only the best and brightest, s…

Who said YouTube is unprofitable? They brought in 30B last year - if they’re unprofitable it’s because of accounting magic to offset other parts of the business.

Unprofitable without ads.

Re: Mourning Google

#449

Post by skirmish »

naasking wrote: post #314
lolinder wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's very little point in talking about ability to survive "extinction level events" in the abstract—the question is which extinction level events a given species is poised to survive, and was it unlucky enough to encounter one that it wasn't. The dinosaurs as a whole survived hundreds of millions of years, through many extinctions, until they eventually met their match. Humans can deflect asteroids, so we've (pro…

> Humans can deflect asteroids, so we've (probably) dodged that extinction, but that doesn't mean we're immune to others. At this point, there is no conceivable extinction level event humanity couldn't avoid or avert, in principle, given sufficient time/warning, except the heat death of the universe. So I disagree that there's no point in talking about survivability in the abstract. You can roughly project the growth…

> At this point, there is no conceivable extinction level event humanity couldn't avoid or avert

Um, how would humanity deal with a supernova going off within a few light years? I am still not convinced it will deal with climate change until billions die.

Re: Mourning Google

#450

Post by naasking »

skirmish wrote: post #449
naasking wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans can deflect asteroids, so we've (probably) dodged that extinction, but that doesn't mean we're immune to others. At this point, there is no conceivable extinction level event humanity couldn't avoid or avert, in principle, given sufficient time/warning, except the heat death of the universe. So I disagree that there's no point in talking about survivability in the abstract. You can roughly project the growth…

> At this point, there is no conceivable extinction level event humanity couldn't avoid or avert Um, how would humanity deal with a supernova going off within a few light years? I am still not convinced it will deal with climate change until billions die.

> Um, how would humanity deal with a supernova going off within a few light years?

Enclosed surface habitats, subterranean habitats, generation ships to spread humanity across numerous solar systems, and so on. All of this tech seems achievable within the next 2 generations.

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