TheKarateKid

It works! Until you install a bad update that bricks critical functionality of your OS. Just rollback the update! Ok, found a copy of an older package from some repo. Oh no!! This older version requires 5 older dependencies which were updated with 32 others during the update.

5 hours later: Ugh. I'll just have to do a fresh OS install again.

While I have many reasons that Google made the Internet worse (AMP, censoring search, forcing localized search results, privacy, etc.) I don't think the hidden content is their fault but rather that of publishers.

Publishers blamed Google for declining revenue since they had to make their content openly accessible and therefore free in order to be visible to users on search. The EU tried to make Facebook and Google pay publishers to account for this. I think allowing paywalled content was a compromise to prevent this legislation from passing.

That being said, I agree with the publishers especially since hypocritically Google and Facebook strictly don't allow scraping of their services and litigate those who do.

Google could easily fix this by putting a symbol or label on paywall-related content so you know not to click it.

The equation he made isn't wrong, but it contradicts the fact that OP is criticizing people who agree with what they said themselves.

Data clearly shows a correlation between crime levels and average income in an area. Are we not mostly engineers used to working with data here? In fact, needing to "survive" is a common excuse used to justify the crimes committed in impoverished areas. Note that I said correlation, not causation. If someone has data that says otherwise, please provide it because I would be genuinely intrigued.

I think it's more that Apple implements power saving behavior into the JS engine on desktop much like they do on mobile. For example, pausing background scripts on inactive tabs and disallowing autoplay on videos even on desktop.

It's because of the quality of Chrome. Google's focus is on features and security, with efficiency secondary. Safari's primary focus is efficiency.

Google's only incentive to make Chrome more efficient is when they start receiving heat (no pun intended) about bad performance.

In my experience, it only connects to carrier Wifi if one of your known networks isn't nearby. So while at home, you will always be connected to your own Wifi so everything local (printers, TVs, etc.) will continue to work.

The problem especially is when you are driving and stop at a red light, and it connects to carrier Wifi which will no longer work in 30 seconds, causing streaming music or anything else on your phone to have a momentary loss of connection.

This was clearly requested by carriers. The whole point is to ease demand on cellular towers by utilizing mass Wifi networks that ATT, T-Mobile, etc. have set up all over the place.

I can't believe Apple allows this, as every time my phone has tried connecting to my carrier's Wifi it either has no connection at all and kills whatever I'm doing until I turn Wifi off OR it's extremely slow. Horrible user experience.

I'm on a prepaid MVNO carrier that does this and iOS has been allowing this for years now. The only difference is that now iOS lets you VIEW what's going on.

What's so frustrating this time around is that almost all of the layoffs by Big Tech are being done on what appears to be entirely speculation with no concrete financial data to support their business decisions.

Google, Amazon, Salesforce, etc. all have reported very healthy quarterly earnings and year-end results. Yet their actions are those of failing companies operating in the red for multiple quarters.

Every company is giving the same excuses --ahem, I mean reasons-- ("overhiring", "economic downturn"), laying off the same amount of people, and making their announcements within days of each other.

Have we ever seen such an industry-coordinated event like this? Especially with no public data supporting their actions?

The real reasons many believe for these layoffs amount to taking back the power & control that employees gained in 2020 until early 2022:

1. Salary correction: Compensation boomed, with major tech companies offering new grads and junior engineers job offers high than employees 2 levels higher. Has there ever been a time that employee pay raised so quickly?

2. Corporate control: Leadership wanted everyone back in the office but employees collectively refused. Can you think of another time where companies had lost this much control over their own workforce?

3. Pay Wall St: The only public financial data to support layoffs of this kind are from the stock prices, which mostly plummeted. However, they did not plummet due to poor performance but rather due to the macroeconomic events out of their control. Even at their present day levels, they are still mostly above their pre-pandemic highs. And guess what? Almost every other company's stock price in most industries fell significantly as well. With the profits erased from the surged stock prices, layoffs are the quickest and easiest way to push up a company's value.

I can only hope that employees continue to band together to know their worth and not settle for less.

Exactly. Public schools are finally starting to re-evaluate having high school students start the earliest, especially when younger kids are the ones naturally up earlier.

Sadly, a lot of the reason for this scheduling is because no one wants sports practice to start at 4pm and we all know how that's always prioritized in our society.

Of course. But my point is that the old days where visiting a very reputable website and being infected with a drive-by exploit delivered via an ad seem to finally be over.

I wouldn't say it's the advertising and bundling as much as other factors I didn't mention as well. For example, Chromebooks in schools drew a lot of people to use Chrome and its ecosystem. Google Apps for Workplace/Education as well.

We've seen Microsoft throw money and bundling with IE and Edge, and it still hasn't done much. Even with being able to bundle Edge as the OS default - the biggest advantage anyone could ask for.

> If you want to build another Chromium you need billions, since that's how Chromium was built.

Chromium isn't successful because of the billions thrown at it. It's successful because it was significantly better than anything else during its rise:

It was significantly faster than IE and FF. Much better memory management and crash handling via separate processes. Strict adherence to web standards. Seamless auto-updates that required no user intervention - ever. No admin privileges needed for updates. Clean UI that stays out of your way. Top-tier developer tools built-in. Very secure. Has there ever been a widespread instance where users were infected with malware from a Chrome exploit? I haven't heard of one yet.

Any competitor to Chromium needs to be significantly better than it for genuine reasons. Unfortunately, "not Google" and "privacy" aren't going to cut it for most average users to switch over. Unlike Meta, Google's reputation isn't in the trash so people still trust them.

LastPass pricing model is what turned me off. I am happy to pay for services I use regularly, but I remember the pricing model didn't seem appropriate for what they were offering. The short cutoff period added insult to injury.

I checked out Bitwarden and it seemed like a better version of LastPass that just happened to be free. Their paid model doesn't appeal to me so I don't subscribe, but I would enjoy paying if they offered something that did.

(Off-topic: Bitwarden seems like an exact LastPass clone all the way down to the UI. Do they share a similar codebase or something? Like was one forked from an OSS version of the other?)

Unfortunately they also have the problem that the very innovative higher level Googlers leave from boredom and/or glass ceilings at the company.

MMS wasn't a failed concept. It was successful at what it was designed for at the time - to share a photo or short video on 2G/3G phones. Not bidirectional conversational messaging.

MMS was never designed to be used for group chats. It was a clever implementation by Apple which made it become the standard for cellular group chats once every other platform copied it.

This. Their interview process selects people who have hundreds of hours to blow to practice on stupid competitive coding, aka LeetCode. These aren't people who are innovative, they're ones that know how to grind.

Same process used by Amazon, Meta, etc. And then they wonder why there's no more innovation at any of these places.

This.

I don't feel like being subjected to hours of manipulation and predatory behavior. I surely know how to push back and deal with it, but it doesn't mean I want to.

Local taxis are often cheaper than Uber/Lyft now since they don't have surge pricing. But the downsides are much worse that people will still pay a premium to not deal with it.

In reality, just like you no longer get a discount for buying online (remember "it's cheaper since the company doesn't have to pay for a brick & mortar store!"?) I wouldn't expect Ford & others to pass the savings along for long. But I'm okay with that given the upsides of saving me time and some mental abuse.

> I wish that I had more control over my iPhone. I would love to be able to tell it to report a general location (somewhere random within a 10km of my actual location) to some apps, and a precise location to others.

The iPhone (actually iOS) allows you to do exactly this. You can choose precise or general location on a per-app basis.

It was a combination of both the lawsuit and Facebook. Had the lawsuit happened without Facebook bidding for top talent, it would've taken decades for compensation to rise to the rate they are now because there was no other company able or willing to attract top talent away from Google, Apple, etc.

Right now, the same thing is happening thanks to Amazon. They're having a hard time hiring SWE's due to the terrible reputation, so they've increased their compensation sharply to attract talent. Facebook followed suit since they are also finding it difficult due to its horrible public perception right now.

The result is that other major tech players are upping their compensation to continue to compete for top talent. It's wonderful.

> It's a total cop-out to not "accept 100% liability" for a self-driving system they built

And what exactly is the liability for anyone produces cars that go well above and beyond every legal speed limit? By your logic, any car made that can go above the highest legal limit in a country should be held 100% liable for any accident occurring in that condition.

A certain level of data should be collected and available upon every crash like with airplanes. If the manufacturer is found at fault due to a flaw in their design, then they should be liable.

Do you have an attorney? You mention a settlement but nothing about any legal representation. You should NOT be communicating with the company AT ALL EXCEPT THROUGH A LAWYER. Anything you say to the company will be noted and used against you. And as you already realized, they don't care about your situation.

I'm not a lawyer, but from what I'm reading it sounds like you have a case with a death of a minor, evidence of negligence, and potentially a company history of similar lawsuits. This is ALL in your favor.

Please get yourself a lawyer if you haven't. Find out your legal deadlines, etc. Once you know your timeframe, get a therapist and possibly a psychiatrist. The former works through your grief through discussion, the second can prescribe medication if the first deems that discussion and cognitive techniques aren't enough. (I don't recommend medication until you have tried regular therapy for a while and not been successful with it at all.)

> What amazes me is that the leadership repeatedly puts these sorts of incriminating things in email after being repeatedly told not to.

It's probably intentional in many cases to cover themselves when things hit the fan.

> The problem is that Windows with all its warts now is still far ahead of the competition in that department (desktop GUI)

Same with Windows Explorer. Finder in macOS is still terribly crippled compared to it:

-It can't even perform folder merges in many cases, only allowing you to "Replace" the entire folder.

-You can't pause/resume file transfers.

-Cancelling large transfers is like canceling a print job in the 00's - it might cancel, but if it does it will be when 95% of the job is done anyway and you're screwed.

-You aren't shown metadata of any files you are prompted about.

-Batch management of file conflicts/actions not possible.

Most of these features were added to Explorer all the way back in Vista 15 years ago.

I don't think so. I think it stemmed from Apple's desire to make their SoC fully in-house for their iPhones. They realized they were onto something, and took it to a whole new level by focusing on desktop-class performance.

This was probably further fueled by their soured relationship with Intel which was responsible for thermal issues on MBP's for years, poor performance increases across their entire Mac lineup, and poor cellular radio performance on some iPhone models -- forcing them to settle with Qualcomm and ditch Intel for mobile radios.

What we're seeing right now with Apple's M1 chips for desktop computing is on the same level of revolutionary as what the original iPhone did for mobile phones.

The advancements in such a short period of time in the amount of computing power, low power usage, size, and heat usage of these chips is unbelievable and game-changing.

Then this is a problem with your team. On the other hand, my team has been more productive. I enter work with more energy that would be wasted during a commute. I often work later knowing I don't need to account for an evening commute. We can multi-task during portions of meetings which don't require our attention.

You sound like a micromanager. If you have notable metrics that show decreased output, then raise the issue and correct it. But don't say that everyone should be subject to losing privileges due to your team's poor performance.

> My problem is guys literally working 9-5, expect "lunch break" takes 2-3 hours since they are playing a video game.

You missed the entire point of my comment. If they take 2-3 hour lunch breaks and meet/exceed their company and performance goals, then it shouldn't matter how long they are working. Results matter, not time.

> Some team members output has severely dropped. I've seen people playing video games during work hours for example. Also work and free time has mixed to a point where people just randomly take hour or two to go skiing or for a walk and routinely just quit at the normal time.

We as humans are not designed to be productive selves 5 days in a row, for 8 hours a day. If I'm not feeling well or having a bad day, I might finish working an hour or two early but make up for it by working overtime another day that week. It doesn't matter that I cut that day short - I wasn't going to be very productive if I wasn't feeling well anyway.

The 9-5, 8 hour work day was designed for PHYSICAL labor during the industrial revolution where output was directly correlated to time. This is not the case anymore. If someone can meet/exceed their responsibilities in 5 hours, why do they need to spend 8 hours just because slower workers need that time? This just punishes efficient workers.

I don't believe this argument for a second. Google almost single-handedly solved the problem of email spam a decade ago. And yet, robot accounts are a problem?

For the company that loves encouraging obnoxious Captcha's to self-fund their AI/ML research and data harvest the web, they surely don't seem to like using it on their own platforms.