ivojp

I don't think it's wise to impugn an app or service because we find their investors unsavory along political lines.

If that's the case let's not forget Facebook is also funded by a Trump supporter and people live stream their mass shootings on there. It seems like many are feigning outrage over a subset of parler's users' actions when in reality what they don't like is that their political opponents have found an app or service that was seemingly immune from the whims of big tech.

It doesn't take any spin to get that message from the graffiti all around Portland; it's pretty explicit about what to do to cops.

Ok now do Twitter. And Facebook. And Gmail. And the US Postal Service.

No rational person could possibly see where you might be going with this.

The relevance of the assumption is that I made the statement "the education in this country has failed us" - us being you and I. So the relevance is that we both live in the same country regardless of our race, gender identity, or sexuality. I am not how you managed to pull all of those things in.

Holy hell, calm down, bro.

I never assumed everyone, I am replying to pmiller2. And yes, I am assuming pmiller2 and I both live in the United States. There is a pretty good chance I am correct about that.

How fun are you at parties?

The fact that you think "surveillance communism" would be for society's benefit and that the idea of communist countries mass spying on their subjects is hypothetical shows how much education in this country has failed us.

Is imperialism unique to capitalism? What about capitalism necessitates imperialism? Was Soviet Russia not imperialist when it conquered much of eastern Europe? Is China's expansion and One-China policy not imperialist?

Is quality healthcare tied to the economic engine of its country? How is universal health care in North Korea? Pretty good?

You're conflating separate issues and presenting them as indictments of capitalism. That is either deliberately disingenuous or horribly ignorant. Either way, I suggest you pick up a book other than A People's History of the United States.

UPDATE: Small addendum since you are confused as to what capitalism is. Your 14 year old nephew does own capital: their labor. Their ability, depending on labor laws in their state, allow them to offer that labor in whichever market or not. An option that would be deprived of them in a system that follows the prescriptions of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs."

I believe it is a bad expression to use because what should be a critique of the data economy now is impugning aspects of capitalism. If the end you wish to effect is better privacy rights on the internet, you've lost more than half of the US by blaming the economic system to which they owe their prosperity.

What might be more productive is if this article equated what is going on to deceptive or fraudulent business practice. This is a concept most people can agree is bad and would want to do something about regardless of whether its from private businesses under capitalism or by the state under either capitalism or communism.

Let me be clear here that I am in no way arguing for some sort of libertarian dream of unfettered capitalism - some of my policy prescriptions included forcing companies to offer a paid tier. But the author casts the collection and selling of data as something that is inevitably going to lead to harm in society. Does the author or anyone here believe that something like Google Search would be a quality product if run by the government? Or that it would be more trustworthy? Take the 2 American political poles' bugaboos - voter suppression and voter fraud - what would a state run search engine that supposedly didn't collect data on its users have to return for those queries?

I think I largely agree with your sentiment although there is another aspect I disagree with: that Google is too big to remain a positive force in society. Unless I am reading that wrong, it implies that there is some level that once something reaches it, it has to be bad for us. You could make this same argument about governments. The US government is larger than Google with more power, if it can no longer be a positive force in our lives, must it be scaled back? If at it's current size, it cannot come together and regulate Google from engaging in "surveillance capitalism" and we must make it smaller, what are we to do?

Well, counting up all the times in human history that governments had to violently force their subjects to accept private property rights or their ability to alienate their labor...

let's see 0 + 0...carry the 1....um I've arrived at 0.

I hope this isn't the beginnings of a "true communism" type of argument. If it is, let's save some time and acknowledge the same can be said for "true capitalism" where the latter lacks the body count of the former.

And whether or not you think China is not an implementation of communism, both their government and its subjects would largely disagree.

I'll start with that I am all for the idea of intellectual privacy and the need for safe guards, but even I could only make it part way through this article (and if these are the people who are supposed to be leading the charge for ethics in AI, we are, surely, screwed).

This perspective (and there are many like it), firstly, tries to tie the problem to capitalism as if it's the engine that corrupts, and, secondly, tries to equate whats going on to surveillance since we presumably can all agree that surveillance is bad.

If you are to make an ass out of yourself or expose something private about yourself in public, its not surveillance if people form opinions about you or gather that information (the lifelock guy and his SSN come to mind - no one would argue his personal information was hacked). I think part of this stems from a bad mental model of what being on the internet is: if Facebook/Twitter/other social media are the new town halls or pubic fora, it's difficult to consider you can be in public from the privacy of your own home.

It is also not some unavoidable aspect of capitalism for your data to be used for potentially nefarious purposes. Consumers are just poorly informed of the transaction that is taking place. To label it "surveillance capitalism" implies that removing the profit motive would mean no one would ever "spy" on you or collect your data. Even a cursory overview of the 20th century or modern China shows how dishonest that implication is.

For a quick perspective on the economics of your data, Google reported $160B in revenue on 1B active monthly users in 2019. If google charged each user $13/month for access to all it's services, it would make the same amount of money. This is on par with a Netflix or Spotify subscription.

Should companies be forced to offer some sort of paid tier where your data is not collected? Perhaps. Should consumers be made aware of what they are giving up when they use a certain "free" service? Sure. There are many problems with our current system and our current understanding of things, but one problem that we do not have is being subjugating to the predations of a "late-stage" "surveillance" capitalist machine.

This is pretty narrow thinking; it assumes communism was some failed 1950's Soviet experiment and has no modern implementation.

I doubt China limits it's surveillance to wiretaps and human agents.

Don't forget the part where you translated all 7 Harry Potter novels into flawless Latin because you've been both leaning Latin and brushing up on wizardry on the side.

I'm going to pose this question more in the context of their analysis and without consideration to anything else.

There have been a myriad of studies which try to link minimum wage to worker productivity and the default assumption is always that the worker should bear the fruit of all productivity gains. Why is this the case? Often, it is not the worker who was responsible for the capital investments that increased his/her productivity.

A couple crude examples to illustrate my opposition to this notion: - My employer pays me to create web applications. We agreed on a rate (could be 10 money units per hour OR 100 money units per application). My performance is assessed throughout my employment to see if my productivity is satisfactory for my rate. Maybe my employer refuses to invest in any tooling for me and I have to use vim to write all my code. If they then invest in an IntelliJ license for me (thanks employer!) and I am more productive, should I be paid more? Debatably, my job didn't get easier/harder. Now if I invest in the tooling myself, and am paid per application, I should get paid more; this often isn't the case.

- In 1956 if my laundromat employer paid me to wash clothes, I was probably doing it by hand and maybe getting 3-5 pounds of clothes done per hour. My wage (likely minimum) would be $1/hr. In 2020, we have laundry machines that can do 20 pounds of clothes every 30 minutes. $1/hr (of 1956 money) would be roughly $10/hr in 2020. No one would suggest that we pay someone upwards of $100/hr to run a laundry machine (unless the worker was paid per pound of laundry done and personally made the investment in the machine). It likely wouldn't even be a job if the minimum wage was $24/hr today.

It seems like these analysis of what the minimum wage should be should take into account that technology and capital investments have made a lot of jobs either lower skilled or less valuable. I'm not sure how to quantify the lack of job creation in sectors that would warrant $24/hr. Another option would be to pay workers directly for their output but this would have other consequences. Starbucks invests in making baristas efficient so they can handle the morning rush but pays them just the same for the afternoon lull.

Caveat that I am pretty ignorant to this so I may be wrong but I do not believe a low floor is what is driving wages down.

I've been informed the term is "denylist" now.

I won't contest that history is not replete with examples of management failing to listen to warnings from their employees, but the leadership model most places employ is effective because history is also replete with management staying the course even when under doubt and achieving some measure of success.

Also, if the consequences to decisions were always attainable a priori, I doubt management would make bad decisions. It's easy to look at Microsoft and say Ballmer dropped the ball on mobile, but then again they still don't have a competitive product to iOS or Android and are doing well. Was Ballmer wrong/right? Is Nadella wrong/right? It was hard to say in 2007 and it's still difficult to say in 2020.

The Audi example is only a good example in that management is listening to a group of employees who are advocating for a position in which the market is already trending (which also happens to have substantial environmental benefits). We wouldn't applaud BP if they opted to do more drilling at the request of their oil rig workers.

For whatever reason, who ever was responsible for putting your manager in place trusts that person; you can appeal to your manager if you think they are making a bad decision or you can appeal to their manager that you think they are ill suited to their position. After that, you've exhausted your options at that company and aren't owed anything further. I would strongly suggest to any job seekers that if having a seat at the table is important to you, assess that when you are interviewing. Find or start a company in which that is the culture.

Now I do have to caveat all this with that I am 30, no kids, and live in decently sized market for tech. I may be more cavalier with my "if you don't like it, then leave" attitude. I find the ombudsman position interesting and was unaware of the history around it and HR. I will have to look into that more, thank you for the knowledge.

Because most companies are private enterprises started by some entrepreneur that had some vision for the good/service that is being produced.

Presumably, you and your employer entered into some contract in which you are compensated for your labor. If you find the terms unconscionable, perhaps you should petition your legislators to change the labor laws (this is where democracy is appropriate).

As an aside, I do not understand where the notion that <something> + democracy is always going to be better than <something>. I never would have thought back in college that banding together with my fellow physics majors and demanding what we're taught and how we're graded would produce better outcomes; I choose my school/department because of the reputation resulting from the faculty's decisions. I imagine the same goes with most employees at most companies - a lot of engineers want to work at FAANG because of what <ceo> is doing. Democracy works well for things you can't opt out of, like society. I doubt Apple products would be as good if Steve Jobs let every engineer into the boardroom.

If not for the racial context, what other motivation would there be to change the terms? In what other context would someone object to arbitrarily assigning one color as good and one color as bad? Had they historically been called bluelist and purplelist, I do not think anyone would honestly argue that there would be such demand for changing the names.

It's also unproductive on your part to say that we can't make safe assumptions. The post that I replied to mentioned that people don't like the terminology because it relates white to good and black to bad. That is obviously a response to the racially charged times. To claim otherwise is to lie. I find it doubtful any major tech companies (or anyone for that matter) were discussing changes these terms because they are more "semantically explicit" before 2020 and were not doing so in response to some ill-assigned racial undertones that do not actually exist.

As far as jumping the gun, it is not as absurd an argument as you are characterizing it to be. People do seek control the context in which white and black can be used. The terms whitelist and blacklist are generally accepted and people have little trouble deducing their meaning. Colors do have cultural meaning outside of race - brides generally wear white dresses, people wear black to a funeral, black ties are considered formal, etc.

I think it's a misrepresentation of my argument to say that because I mentioned that they appear in the dictionary that I am conceding that they are not good terms (although by your exclamation point at the end I am reading that part as well-intended banter).

I'll say this to clarify since I do not believe you are making this argument but having to look up a word should not be the barrier to whether or not a word is used.

They are better because they are well understood and agreed upon terms. I'll also reiterate that the terms are not engineering specific; wikipedia has sources cited so hopefully this will suffice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting

This is patently false. Anecdotally, I've never heard of CS students having trouble over figuring out what the terms mean, and furthermore, these are not strictly CS/software engineering terms. These terms appear in the dictionary (at least on Merriam Webster). If your students are having issue figuring them out, I'd encourage them to use a dictionary before arbitrarily and unnecessarily relating them to race.

This cuts both ways; your ability to demand higher pay is contingent on that you can get that pay elsewhere. If other companies at your new LocalRate are paying substantially less, then your remote employer only has to beat those offers to remain competitive (from your point of view).