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redux13

21 karma · joined June 5, 2013

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redux13··on Betrayed by an app she had never heard of
Cue the beginning of a spam robo-call (or more accurately, robo-receive) industry purely for the purpose of collecting this $10 for every call received.
redux13··on Amazon's electricity rate discounts have pushed up utility costs
> Still, there are more choices than Amazon.

There is always a cost associated with trying to change a job, one that may be difficult for a poor person to pay. You need to do research to find these other job choices (and you really may not have many choices depending on where you live), apply to multiple places, show up for interviews, etc. Doing all these activities takes time and energy, which a person, who is possibly already struggling to make ends meet, may not have. Imagine coming home from your grueling warehouse job where you had to pee in bottles, putting together a dinner for yourself and your kids, doing some basic chores around the house so that your place doesn't turn into a shithole, and then finding the energy to do all the things you need to do for finding a job.

It's easy to pontificate while sitting in our cushy tech job chairs, where if we don't like the current job, there'll be 10 recruiters blowing up your email with job opportunities, about what a person who may be less fortunate should do.

> I think it's just easier to blame Amazon than for people to make different choices. It is possible that some blame lies with both parties, but Amazon definitely shares a clear (and rather heavier) burden of blame here, and there is nothing wrong in calling that out.

redux13··on Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself
The company that I work for employs a system of peer review - where at the end of the year your teammates write reviews for you and your appraisal is based on that. It seems to work pretty well our case and definitely aligns the incentives of the employees with having an impact on the people around them.
redux13··on The FBI, CIA and NSA say American citizens shouldn't use Huawei phones
> Are you really suggesting that someone spending $100k could decide the outcome of an election as big as the U.S. one?

You are very conveniently omitting recent disclosures from facebook that over 126 million Americans may have seen Russia based political posts over a two-year period leading to the election. Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-socialme...

This isn't about a particular candidate winning or losing the election. The case would be equally horrifying if Hillary had won the election with the help of a foreign-state-sponsored social media campaign.

And I would implore you to check out the Ted talk I have posted above. It is not about supporting any particular candidate - it simply talks about how powerful these micro-targeted campaigns can be, and we ignore their potential and their effects on democracy at our own peril.

redux13··on The FBI, CIA and NSA say American citizens shouldn't use Huawei phones
This comment is highly understating the power of social media micro-targeting by dubbing it as buying a few ads on FB and running twitterbots. I would request you to check out the Ted talk by Zeynep Tufekci (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTWM7HV2UI) to get a sense of how effective social media campaigns can be.
redux13··on I’m Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
Is there any possibility that the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2017 (https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/392/...) would see the light of day anytime soon? This act would eliminate the per-country numerical limitation for employment-based green card petitions.

Also, what would be the implications if this bill does become law?

redux13··on “Why Chess Will Destroy Your Mind”: Outlook of the Game in 1859
I wonder if any parallels can be drawn between this and the inordinate amount of time children today spend starting at smartphones. While my personal opinion is that it is probably harmful to have so much of our attention focussed on phones at such a young age, we don't know how future societies will view this activity in retrospect.
redux13··on Taco Bell is now one of America's healthiest fast-food chains
>Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic.

Well, it was good while it lasted

redux13··on India state polls: Common Man's party wins Delhi seats
Also - having great support and contributions from the community - like an open source project