921–930 of 1001 posts
There's an old Bob Seger song I quote about work: "I used her, she used me and neither one cared. We were getting our share." - Night Moves / Seger. In a sense, that's how I view work. I'm there to get a check, they are there to use my labor and make money. As long as we're both happy. It is all good. But... never forget we are using each other. "Ain't it funny how the night moves When you just don't seem to have as…
Google makes me kind of sad. They used to be so cool, pushing technology forward, making it accessible to the masses, doing things that seemed almost impossible and making it mainstream. Ads were the money stream but they did it tastefully. Now the main page is all ads, dark patterns are everywhere in everything Google does. They've basically become one of the ethically worst technology companies around. Is it inevit…
Patagonia is an example of a company that is trying to be "decent" even after its founder is no longer involved. So far, it seems to be working. In tech, I am not aware of any good examples. I feel like Apple is one of the less bad compared to others. They are at least making efforts to be good about privacy, even if their motivation may be less than pure.
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It's corporate behaviour modification and social engineering. Perhaps not a surprise to anyone familiar with Bernays and his Propaganda. I don't see it as information asymmetry, so much as mostly mediocre products and services designed to a budget trying to look more exciting and life-changing than they could ever hope to be. The weird thing is we take it for granted instead of being repelled by it.
>The weird thing is we take it for granted instead of being repelled by it. Yes, exactly this right here. It was straight up bizarre to grow up with near 0 advertising in commie Eastern Europe and get hit with a shockwave of fairly disgusting ad bullshit when we moved to the US. I was shocked at people putting up with it as if it is something to be tolerated instead of burned to ashes. I continue to be shocked.
Even though the Berlin wall came down 30 years ago, the End of History ethos remains.
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what's the ethical alternative? everybody must produce everything they want/need without any sort of trading, and without owning any land? or does the government just force people to work and distribute everything anybody needs?
The ethical alternative is one that balances innovation and entrepreneurship with ecological and social responsibility. You can use resources, invent stuff, and organise people to work on it, but you only get to do it if Reality-Based Accounting rates the project as a net positive for the planet, and you have to share some of the benefits. And if you can't make it happen without being consistently cruel and exploitat…
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Pixel is not officially sold and supported in a substantial number of countries. It results in many issues, such as 5G not working when traveling from country to country. Or in case of Chromecast dongle, 5GHz Wi-Fi not working. Which makes my head explode, considering that they employ only "top talent" and has considerable resources to properly catalogue and implement all radio frequencies of the world. Google cannot…
top down coordination doesn’t scale to $2T companies, at some point you’re basically a government
I work in Core Eng at google. Woke up this morning and saw my director - who we all loved and had been at Google for 20 years - is gone. One concerning thing that I haven't seen reported is that my leadership chain is almost entirely Indian, all the way up. And they've announced that they are starting to offshore entire core products to India, primarily in bangalore IIUC.
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I work remotely for a big US company and I have heard talk of similar plans within the company, offshoring entire products' engineering work to India. Luckily my work is very niche (vuln research). I can only imagine the subpar and vulnerability ridden code we'll be seeing over the next few years from all the offshoring + irresponsible overusage of AI tools.
Why would the code be subpar? Is a google employee in US somehow more competent than the one in India? What you are thinking about was outsourcing which is very different than Google hiring in India. Just because you are paid more you are not a ‘better’ programmer
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Thats a bit of a pessimistic if realistic take. Advertising in its ideal form is meant to inform you of something that could improve your life (happiness, productivity, health, etc...). It could conceivably be "let the consumer know that our product solves their problems that competitors can't solve or for a cheaper cost." Of course, cutting corners leads to more profits for less effort, so that's what often happens.…
Although, the sharing of useful information is different than an advertisement, entirely, so such a thing wouldn't be called an ad. Wikipedia exists to share information and inform us of something we might find useful. It doesn't need to be pushed on anyone. It just needs to exist in the open. Anytime something is brought to you that you didn't ask for, demanding your attention, there is motive behind why it's being…
Ideally speaking of course, there is room to advertise stuff. Like advertising a vaccine so you don't get sick or die; sure the vaccine maker is also going to make money on giving you that vaccine, but it is still an ad that might be "ehtical."
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It’s still macro. The media has been peddling the idea that things are rosy economically but that’s not people are seeing and experiencing. December’s CPI is through the roof. The economy has been soft and with ZIRP gone, things are adjusting accordingly. We’re now paying the piper —a little.
The media is peddling the opposite, that “things are still tough.” The numbers are clear: December CPI was hardly “through the roof”, wages ant anll levels are still growing faster than inflation and consumer behavior (spending) is robust. Most people are acting as if the economy is strong. This is the USA: poor people continue to suffer and governments at the state and federal level are increasing their suffering, e…
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Inflation ticked up to 3.4%, it's not through the roof. Real wages are up. The economy is absolutely doing very well for some people.
Are you guys and gals checking your grocery receipts? Eggs have doubled over the last two years. Milk, meats, fruits and veggies... I can't think of much that hasn't gone up at a higher rate than before the pandemic. I applaud the Fed for hiking interest rates, free money can't go on forever if you want to avoid the fate of Argentina, but c'mon, the economy is not good. It's not bad, but it's not good. Laid off peopl…