641–650 of 888 posts
If you think that denying information to Chinese people because their Orwellian government demands it is the same as the stone you use to grind your obviously conservative axe on, you may need to pause and think a bit more on it.
Only on HN...
I find the Google/Chinese search engine troubling, but I do think people are playing this up to be a lot more than it should be. I think one fact is that Google is in an area and recruits people that are hyper liberal individuals. For example: not wanting to work with the U.S. military on projects, having AI use gender neutral writing, random PC things, little diversity in political thought etc. I don't think Google…
Only from the very narrow perspective of current US politics - just normal in the mainstream West.
I printed this paper out to look at the names more and to keep for the record. If you signed it and are reading this comment, I find what you did incredibly brave (US hasn’t had almost any labor activism like this in decades), and worthy of much more merit than any CEO or billionaire co-founder. Thank you.
> MRAP's are for combat, not police work While they were designed for combat, they are effectively the same thing that Brinks uses to transport money. They are meant to stop bad things from killing the people inside. They have 0 offensive weapons. They are entirely defensive vehicles that have been used to rescue downed officers, civilians in harms way (gunfire), and multiple times in natural disasters where other ve…
They are not the same thing as a standard armored truck. The name itself gives that away (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected). Police do not need mine-resistant vehicles. MRAPs have high maintenance and running costs. The simple fact that they are former military vehicles contributes to the military mindset of many police depts, something that should be avoided. Militarization of police forces is bad for citizens.
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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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You can solve this "if against Z, then what about X"? Think of the user. Does a user benefit from being able to clear a permanent record, long after punishment has been served? Does a user benefit if Google facilitates government spying? You can be for the right to be forgotten (and admit to its abuses by politicians and rich hucksters), and against government censorship. This distinction is powerful and therefor oft…
> Does a user benefit if Google facilitates government spying? Yes. Chinese users will most definitely greatly benefit from having a censored Google in China instead of having just a censored Baido. The only people who won't benefit from it are self entitled 20-year-old Google employees across the ocean who in reality don't give a shit about Chinese people, what they want, or how the average Chinese person feels like…
I do find the lack of objections there to be rather hypocritical at best. Doing the right thing isn't always easy. Especially if the wrong thing was helping your POV. The ends to emphatically not justify the means.
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Yeah, and then the CEO decides he'd rather make $124M that year and feel good about himself in not kowtowing to totalitarian governments vs doing so and making $125M that year. The entire point of this comment thread is that individual people are not motivated solely by money. They care about many other things too, like their values. Hell, this entire post exists because some Google employees care more about their va…
The only people not motivated solely by money are those who used the very tactics that are in question to amass enough not to care... Or simply have no stake in it, Or have a stake in a competing company. I can assure you if google employees revolt on a number of projects and that drops the stock price in half over the course of 3 weeks PEOPLE WILL CARE... Even the ones that today you say don't care.
What an absurdly preposterous thing to say. Money is a motivator and a large one for many, many people, but it's ridiculous to call it the sole motivator for everyone.
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> That's more than enough reason not to deploy them. No it's not. These vehicles can, and have saved lives. I have yet to hear of an MRAP killing someone in the US. > "we will crush you if you step out of line" Better wording would be "if you throw rocks or shoot at us we are still going to arrest you".
> These vehicles can, and have saved lives. Citation needed. Police all over the world do their jobs without these tanks. Is there any data proving crime goes down in cities where they are deployed? Is there any data proving that less lives are lost when these tanks are deployed in US cities? > Better wording would be "if you throw rocks or shoot at us we are still going to arrest you". People have been throwing rock…
I considered working at Google last year after a recruiter reached out to me, but their decision to backtrack on their promise in China changed my mind. I do not morally condemn anyone who works at Google. I have many good friends that are both bright engineers and undeniably good people that work there. I just feel that as someone who's family is Taiwanese, I cannot in good consciousness support the company. I let t…
Do you in good consciousness support the U.S. government? I'm asking because the government doesn't recognize Taiwan as an independent country and kicked Taiwan out of the United Nations in 1971.
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> Pretty bold It's interesting you would label this as such. In what is ostensibly the best country in the world, and a massive proponent of free speech and human rights, you think it's bold to write a letter on the internet to your extraordinarily famous employer? If it's considered bold in the USA involving Google, I shudder to think about anyone else doing this anywhere else. In the year 2018 I would hope it's ver…
> In what is ostensibly the best country in the world, and a massive proponent of free speech and human rights, you think it's bold to write a letter on the internet to your extraordinarily famous employer? Free speech only applies to the government though? Your employer is still free to fire you. Sure you won't be put in jail but for most people losing their job still certainly affects their livelihood.