2k18 what's the worst enormous tech company?

posts # ONE HUNDRED FORTY-EIGHT and ONE HUNDRED FORTY-NINE on that thread:

On my way out, Greg tried to chit-chat and shake my hand. It took everything in me not to tell him to go fuck himself.

I walked past his extended hand, and said “Nah, man.”

— Morgan (@morganknutson) October 15, 2018

He said, “Pfftt, really!?”

I turned around and looked him the eye as I backed out of the door.

“Yeah, really.”

The end -

— Morgan (@morganknutson) October 15, 2018

meanwhile, a bystander who witnessed this interaction cough-whispered "FUCK BOTH OF YOUUUUUUU"

it's strange that he thinks that thread makes google look bad and him look good

there isn't even much about google+ being a misguided product in it, it's mostly just complaining about your boss publicly

it's the replies that get me. almost universally they praise him for being a wonderful storyteller

i haven't been to california since i was 16 but i am going to try to stay at least 1000 miles away from san francisco for the rest of my life

that thread reads exactly like something I’d expect a guy with this avi to write tbh

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1035062189353185282/GFHibt_J_400x400.jpg

Greg: https://i.imgur.com/gqmHkMj.jpg
Morgan: “Nah, man"https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1035062189353185282/GFHibt_J_400x400.jpg
Greg: “Pfftt, really!?”https://i.imgur.com/gqmHkMj.jpg
Morgan: “Yeah, really."https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1035062189353185282/GFHibt_J_400x400.jpg

The end -

Facebook's argument to Washington is that they should be allowed to continue to influence elections without disclosing anything at all about their actions and the money they take for them, because this regulation gives them immunity from any state law anywhere ever.

That argument only serves their interests as long as elected officials feel like Section 230 works in their favor. What a stupid fucking mess.

Trends in my FB circle is that people are posting (24hour?) goodbye posts before permanently deleting their account (3 friends in the past 36 hours).

At least with Friendster and MySpace the buzz just faded away, this is more of a toxic amputation. This combined with an nearly 90 day swoon seems pretty real to me. I spent last weekend with my senior-aged folks and even they aren't as attached to the site as much as they were in the past few years.

ban facebook

I had a friend who quit facebook for good about 6 years ago and never looked back

we actually write handwritten letters back and forth now, lol

Usu use pigeon post now tbh

REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft said Friday that it would sell the military and intelligence agencies whatever advanced technologies they needed “to build a strong defense,” just months after Google told the Pentagon it would refuse to provide artificial intelligence products that could build more accurate drones or compete with China for next-generation weapons.

The announcement, made quietly in a small, town-hall-style meeting with the software giant’s leadership on Thursday, then planned to be published on a blog Friday afternoon, underscores the radically different paths these leading American technology firms are taking as they struggle with their role in creating a new generation of cyberweapons to help, and perhaps someday replace, American warriors.

But the divergent paths taken by Google and Microsoft also underscore concerns inside the American defense and intelligence establishments about how the United States will take on a rising China.

The Chinese government has, in just the past two years, set goals for dominance in the next decade in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other technologies that it believes will allow its military and intelligence agencies to surpass those of the United States. Pentagon officials have questioned how committed domestic technology companies are to keeping the United States on the leading edge, the way Raytheon, Boeing, IBM and McDonnell Douglas did in the Cold War.

Google encountered fierce opposition from young engineers to the company’s participation in “Project Maven,” a program to improve how drones recognize and select their targets. Google declared a few weeks ago it would not bid on a multibillion dollar contract to provide the Pentagon with “cloud services” to store and process vast amounts of data. Amazon, for its part, appears willing to supply its services to the military and intelligence agencies, and it runs the information cloud services that power the Central Intelligence Agency.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/us/politics/ai-microsoft-pentagon.html

https://www.thecut.com/2018/11/google-walkout-organizers-explain-demands.html

Whenever there's a big Google story in the news, I always think of this, the funniest thing ever written about Google, from the New Yorker profile of the writers of "Silicon Valley" https://t.co/RAfCJITMOg pic.twitter.com/y48bNI1NeK

— Tom Gara (@tomgara) October 25, 2018

I've been thinking about it, and here's my ranking of tech companies by how evil they are:

1. Amazon
2. Google
3. Facebook
3. Uber (tied)

— Adrian Chen (@AdrianChen) November 13, 2018

BTW, after watching this my vote for most evil is FB.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/facebook-dilemma/

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-asked-police-in-spain-to-intervene-warehouse-strike-2018-11

Amazon asked police in Spain to intervene in a mass strike at a warehouse on the outskirts of Madrid, according to local reports.

Amazon wanted a police presence at the warehouse to ensure that productivity remained high within the fulfilment center, while workers staged their protest outside, according to Spanish newspaper El Confidencial.

A source at Spanish union CCOO, which helped coordinate the strikes, told Business Insider that Amazon "wanted to send the police inside the warehouse to push people to work."

Amazon strongly denied the claims and called it "the worst kind of misinformation."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/24/mps-seize-cache-facebook-internal-papers

Parliament has used its legal powers to seize internal Facebook documents in an extraordinary attempt to hold the US social media giant to account after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly refused to answer MPs’ questions.

The cache of documents is alleged to contain significant revelations about Facebook decisions on data and privacy controls that led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. It is claimed they include confidential emails between senior executives, and correspondence with Zuckerberg.

bring iiit

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dt836zdXQAA-30N.jpg:large

An open letter to @Facebook, @Twitter, @Instagram and @Experian regarding algorithms and my son's birth: pic.twitter.com/o8SuLMuLNv

— Gillian Brockell (@gbrockell) December 11, 2018

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/12/what-sund4r-pichai-couldnt-explain-to-congress/577903/

Google’s admittedly liberal employees, Republicans said, must, somehow, be tinkering with search rankings. “You’re so surrounded by liberality that hates conservatism, hates people who really love our constitution and the freedoms it has afforded to people like you,” Texas Representative Louie Gohmert told Pichai. “You don’t even recognize it. You’re like a blind man who doesn’t even know what light looks like.”

i don't exactly feel sorry pichai, but getting lectured about the truth by Louie Gohmert when you can't really respond must be the most agonizing thing on earth

Where would Alice Walker even find antisemitic conspiracy theories? Well... https://t.co/lMU8h9ftWN pic.twitter.com/JdzpdWAa3Z

— Malcolm Harris (@BigMeanInternet) December 17, 2018

I read that whole thing thinking it was Alice Waters

that's really weird and depressing

uh

did she get like hacked or whatever like that one twitter lady

if she was hacked, it was by people who've mastered google SEO

https://www.splcenter.org/20170118/google-and-miseducation-dylann-roof

google deemphasized specific sites named in this 2017 article after it made the rounds. but their engine still operates under the same principles.

She said in the NYTimes that she’s reading a David Icke book, it’s not a hack. YouTube and social media claim another Baby Boomer.

Is there a thread on Theranos anywhere? I've been totally oblivious to the story up until now (not seen it/her on TV or anything) but have just finished the Carreyrou book and have loads of questions! I know there's a podcast starting today and a film in the pipeline...

discussed in detail on this thread: Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

although you have to go back a couple years

cheers

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/30/mark-zuckerberg-calls-for-stronger-regulation-of-internet

Fuck this clown. Disavowing all responsibility for the monster he has created whilst practically declaring it an institution worthy of protection.

Qualcomm has been in the running for this prize for many years.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/how-qualcomm-shook-down-the-cell-phone-industry-for-almost-20-years/

A couple of crazy bits (and I've experienced these in my job):

Qualcomm's patent licensing fees were calculated based on the value of the entire phone, not just the value of chips that embodied Qualcomm's patented technology.

The other one that was nuts?

patent licensing terms requiring customers to pay a royalty on every phone sold—not just phones that contained Qualcomm's wireless chips.