bepotts
The way people think Microsoft's embrace of open source, GitHub, and now NPM is genuine is completely ridiculous. Microsoft had to change because much of where the action was is on *nix systems. Microsoft will start to use these companies to make developers embrace Microsoft services. It's only a matter of time.
I personally have lower taxes, high quality healthcare, and live in an awesome location, and I got all of that through an education and training. That is available to almost every American if they just put in the work.
That, to me, is not just a great thing but the morally right thing. Apply yourself and make a better future for you and your family.
To the people responding to me with the most predictable lines: poverty exists in Europe; so does homelessness; as does food insecurity. Please don't tell me that Europe is some great place where poverty doesn't exist and everyone is living great lives.
It is also possible to be sympathetic toward the most needy while not supporting collectivism. You know what the poor need most? A marketable skill. A good job. Support programs that give people the skills they need in order to compete in a globalized market. It's funny how collectivists never push that though, and instead push for more collectivism.
To say "privacy advocates" are disingenuous is a huge understatement.
Yellowpages told the public. That is the point.
At least Google and Facebook only take what you give them.
Maybe AR will never be like Minority Report, but I think if AR could get to a point where no goggles are needed, or if the equipment is light enough to not be a burden to the user (unlike VR headsets), then I think AR will be much bigger than VR. The average user just don't want that crap on their face and they don't want to live in a simulation like so many in the Bay Area would like to believe.
When people talk about the Bay Area/Silicon Valley monoculture/hivemind, I immediately think of VR enthusiasts. I'd also throw cryptocurrencies and blockchain enthusiasts into this category as well. Both of those technologies solved "problems" that the general population wouldn't agree to being problems in the first place.
This was always one of the core worries about GitHub and Microsoft. Microsoft will not leave GitHub alone. It's too important to developers, and no matter how much they say "we won't touch GitHub", nobody (rightfully) will believe them.
This move doesn't worry me, as I'm sure Microsoft would look to do something easy to calm the nerves of people who worried about Microsoft's acquisition. The cynic in me sees this as sweetener for Microsoft's later moves to integrate GitHub with Microsoft's developer tools, which will infuriate me along with millions of other developers.
You could swap out Apple with pretty much anything and you'll be accurate. The person commenting on the internet all day isn't representative of the average person.
You have tech people who hate Facebook because Facebook is a social network and many tech people aren't social, so Facebook represents this experience that they either shun or think they're too "above it". Lots of tech people also hate how much data collection they do, even though users give it up voluntarily.
There's also journalists, who hate how much their business model relies on Facebook.
You have politically left-leaning individuals all over the world, who hate that people on the right use Facebook to organize political movements against the establishment. You see this in Trump, Brexit, and anti-immigrant movements all over Europe.
Almost all the people screaming about Facebook before these allegations came out are the exact same people screaming now. It's just hard to take these people seriously.
Facebook needs reform; Facebook will probably get regulated; but Facebook isn't going to get regulated into oblivion and Facebook is going to be here for the foreseeable future.
Facebook goes to the best schools in the country and hires the best of the best.
I mean I suspect the same thing, but I wish everyone would be upfront with their motives instead of acting like they're just concerned citizens. Facebook's biggest critics are the same people that hated Facebook before they did any of this.
They're under no obligation to. Firms don't (and shouldn't) make personal decisions based on the whims of the mob.
> They still refuse to fully cooperate on various investigations involving foreign interference, and have shown practically no remorse for their negligence in these cases.
How many times does a company need to say sorry? I mean honestly, who would have thought a foreign government would do such a thing?
Plus the foreign interference is overblown. The amount of ads and groups Russia was pushing was miniscule compared to amount of content pushed everyday and political advertising that political parties does.
Nobody is pulling a fast one on me when I buy my iPhone and Mac. I know full well what Google and Facebook are doing with my data when I use their sites.
I. Don't. Care.
They have products and services that I want and I'm happy to fork over cash or data to get them. Please take your conspiracies elsewhere.
EU is gonna EU.
But the bias doesn't matter because everyone on the internet hates them (and Google) so they just rush to pile on. Anything negative about Facebook gets to the front page very quickly. The thing is, Facebook has billions of users and you don't get billions of users by being evil. People may not love Facebook, but there really isn't a better way to keep up with friends, family, and to organize get togethers. I don't use Facebook that much, but I'll never delete it. It's just too valuable in my life.
As an aside: we're all engineers here, and if Facebook offered you guys a job, almost everyone here would take it. Their engineering team, quality of life, and compensation is extremely hard to beat. The NY Times found a couple college kids who don't want to work for Facebook. Okay. As a recent college graduate I can assure you that almost everyone in my graduating class would have taken a job at Facebook if given the chance. Facebook came and hired the smartest of my graduating class and the "hackathon" crowd puts Facebook at close to the top of their list of companies to work for. Facebook isn't hurting for talent and they have the compensation packages to compete for the best of the best.
The US is in a very weird spot right now with Democratic norms sliding. Once we exit this weird period and US Government returns to normal, lets see how the NYT's stock price fares then.
Look, Facebook needs to get its act together. They are in need for serious reform. However, mainstream media knows that Facebook is under a ton of pressure and these types of stories generate a ton of clicks. I know people want Facebook to die, but Facebook's usage has remained pretty much the same during all these negative stories. The public is not hating Facebook as much as people want to believe.
But the media has its narrative and it'll continue this "Facebook is evil" beat. The same with Clinton's email server, and more recently, the same with that immigrant caravan coming up from Central America.
My point is that there are cities in the United States that attracting talent, creatives, and business investment and instead of crying foul, we should learn about what they're doing and seek to replicate it.
If Amazon had chosen Austin or Pittsburgh, plenty of people would still be complaining, although Maybe not as much as NYC and Washington.
If Amazon had chosen Detroit or some city in America's heartland, the national press would have been praising Amazon for "spreading the wealth". Instead of getting mad at Amazon, policy makers should look at why Amazon chose these locations and seek to replicate these conditions elsewhere.
Amazon would be foolish to choose a location in Canada due to a their healthcare system and immigration situation. Healthcare isn't that big a deal to a company like Amazon and regardless of the current administration, Americans have never been more supportive of immigration.
Canadians were naive to think they were competitive for an Amazon, and they're wrong if they think Amazon would have chosen them if they weren't so concerned about blowback.
Sometimes, America being welcoming to big businesses has its advantages.
The real "losers" in this situation are heartland states without major metro areas, like most of the plain states and rural America.
Too many pundits are trying to shame Amazon into moving to a city like Detroit or a city in the American heartland. But these areas are unattractive places for obvious reasons and it seems like Americans want to deny it. Want to attract an Amazon? Invest in colleges, reduce business regulations, attract an international and diverse populace which would in turn create an interesting culture, invest in local secondary schools, and (I hate to say this) drop the social conservative politics. One of the reasons why London, Paris, New York, Washington DC, San Francisco, etc. are attractive internationally is the liberal populace and progressive culture - nobody wants to move to a socially conservative place.
I feel like the partisanship that America is experiencing is only going to accelerate. As of now, America's future is in the cities and for whatever reason, cities tend to generate a certain culture that many people in America's heartland don't want. They're going to have to be more welcoming of it if they want to attract these sort of businesses.