But news it is not, this has been the case ever since smartphones became a thing and probably before that too.
Surveillance & convenience have been packaged together right from the start. It's the best way to get people to agree. Whoever designs these things created a false correlation between the two: you cannot have convenience without also having your data mined. Every schmuck who claims "I don't care, I have nothing to hide" has swallowed this. Because if there was no advantage to being mined, they'd say "Why should I agree to that, I'm not stupid" instead.
Off topic, but in Portugal was the first time me, a Central European, ever ate a ripe Papaya. Yum! Thanks to the Azores. The shit you get in the supermarkets round here is useless. Same for mangoes, usually.
I remember 2007, when I got a gmail account and thought it was a much better alternative to whatever I had before.
Google used to nurture an image of being the “good one” among megacorps; they championed open standards (except when they didn’t), supported open source projects (until they backstabbed them), and used language that corporate wasn’t supposed to use, like “don’t be evil” (until they, infamously and in a true dark comedy move, retracted that motto).
my main job was to fix boring bugs on the Ruby on Rails internal user accounting system that someone else had developed. When I complained that this was a far cry from the academia-like, exciting research environment I had been promised, and asked to be assigned to a more challenging project, I was told the following rationale against it: “no”. Moreover the deadlines and expectations were such that even if I worked (unpaid) overtime every day, I was still was at risk of a performance review. Making actual use of the “20% time” felt like a pipe dream.
And all that with wages well below even the local market in our crumbling Third World economy.
Like most employees I blamed myself for not working hard enough to get good compensation—or to have time to exercise my right of 20% free time… Until I saw in the “Googlegeist” statistics that some 95% of employees never use their “20% time” at all, being trapped under the same pressures as I was.
When she dared bring it up, this was the reaction - and I know this scenario all too well though I never worked at Google:
The result of this was my boss having a fit over me “backstabbing” him. See, me complaining about the unfulfilled recruiter promises marked me as an Unhappy Googler. And Google, if you remember, was the Best Place To Work.
I said, “But the issue is real and not my fault, don’t you agree? I just used the data to bring it to attention. Didn't you say we operate under 'radical transparency'?” (I was young and believed in this kind of slogan. Yes, I was a sitting duck and didn’t stand a chance.)
Boss replied, "Radical transparency doesn't mean you get to say negative things."
edit: the article is barely getting started at this point and I'm still reading with great interest. Please give this blog a click even if they say they don't care about it.
I have seen this before. Complete with USA-built truck. I cannot fathom how people in Europe do this. Sure, we* happily lap up every bit of American culture we can get our hands on, but this makes me question that person's sanity.
Not US judges though. Probably too chickenshit to do that.
WASHINGTON/THE HAGUE (...) Trump's administration (...) imposed sanctions on four judges at the International Criminal Court, an unprecedented retaliation over the war tribunal's issuance of an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a past decision to open a case into alleged war crimes by U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Washington designated Solomy Balungi Bossa of Uganda, Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza of Peru, Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini Gansou of Benin and Beti Hohler of Slovenia..
What the actual petty fuck.
What are they trying to achieve this time, choosing judges from those four countries?
A_norny_mousse @ A_norny_mousse @feddit.org Posts 8Comments 1,073Joined 5 mo. ago
Important.
But news it is not, this has been the case ever since smartphones became a thing and probably before that too.
Surveillance & convenience have been packaged together right from the start. It's the best way to get people to agree. Whoever designs these things created a false correlation between the two: you cannot have convenience without also having your data mined. Every schmuck who claims "I don't care, I have nothing to hide" has swallowed this. Because if there was no advantage to being mined, they'd say "Why should I agree to that, I'm not stupid" instead.