themolecularman

> I feel strongly about this, mostly because it happened to myself: After being sold, the first company that employed me introduced a "completely fair and transparent" compensation scheme. After I saw the scheme projected to the wall in the big All-Hands, I realized that without any degree I'd have to wait 10 years for stock options while the PhDs would be in almost immediately.

I also am a tech worker with no tech degree (no math, CS, eng, etc).

Pay transparency would be run by administrators inside businesses that would likely implement something as you describe: "So-and-so just graduated cum laude from X with a degree in Y therefore they're at pay band Z."

It will be horrible for people who had to self-educate.

I like crypto, but damn it's inefficient and costly.

Even the crypto that's newer than Bitcoin (all of it?) and therefore more efficient (not proof-of-work/stake?) is still not efficient in cost/time/other-resources/etc.

Agreed.

But I think big tech didn't use their power years ago when advertisers started demanding their ads don't appear next to X, where X is the offensive thing/position/etc.

Big tech has power but it folded and immediately started policing when this happened. Instead of a united front each of them caved to advertisers and now the content on each platform must be kosher according to the ethics that the platforms' rulers have.

Sounds like he believed in The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis:

> The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis /səˌpɪər ˈwɔːrf/, the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus people's perceptions are relative to their spoken language.

> Linguistic determinism is the concept that language and its structures limit and determine human knowledge or thought, as well as thought processes such as categorization, memory, and perception.

> A good first step would be to stand aside and let ICC prosecute, which even actual pardons would not block.

Who would they prosecute? Obama or Bush?

It seems like the implication people have when talking about this is that the CIA agents or CIA directors should be charged.

From my perspective, would they have done any of these illegal activities if they hadn't been given the green-light from the top?

If Bush/Obama said we will let the ICC prosecute, would any CIA agent/director have done it? Probably not.

I'm not disagreeing about prosecution, I'm just wondering where the buck stops and where the true responsibility lies.

> I wouldn't recommend either if you haven't read Dune, book 1, though. Read it.

Why is that? I read Dune when I was a kid but don't remember the particulars -- do I need them for some reason?

To be honest I don't pay attention to my paychecks. I work in Silicon Valley and have things direct deposited into my bank account, which I never check.

Theoretically, my current (and past) employers could have left out a dozen paychecks and I may not have noticed.

I don't think it's that unusual. If he doesn't have any money in his bank account it may be more noticeable.

> Picture tech people walking on their treadmills for compensation and then picture gerbils running on wheels for food. Picture tech people drinking Soylent and then picture gerbils eating pellets. The world is whack.

A bit much? I'm not sure where you get soylent from.

Nobody is substituting here, I didn't get that from the OP at all.

Another commenter mentioned that working from home allows for asynchronous tasks, the OP merely stated that means he can work and work-out on a treadmill. He is neither being compensated for or replacing going out into nature.

Haha I just finally splurged on that $0.99/mo iCloud storage, after just not backing up my phone forever :/

Yes, definitely.

The tech company I work for was all SF based for it's engineering. Now they're open to hiring from anywhere.

They haven't entirely committed to hybrid/remote. They have however expanded beyond the Bay Area based on their experiences during covid. And that's meant new offices in the Philippines and Mexico City.

This is a great project. I recently read the books "Your brain on Porn" and "Quit Porn and get Rich".

Porn induced erectile dysfunction is now incredibly common. Younger and younger men are taking viagra and cialis and finding it doesn't help them. Those drugs are for older men that need help getting blood to their penis.

For these younger men who have been viewing hardcore internet pornography (not Playboys like I did as a kid) often see these videos before even having their first kiss. The drugs don't work because the problem isn't physical but instead is complete desensitization to real life intimacy of any kind.

To be fair America has the Veterans Affairs administration, which is socialized medicine, albeit for a small subset of the population, veterans.

If you recall from Donald Trump's presidency, one of the things he campaigned on for veterans, is the ability to choose your own healthcare, such that they wouldn't be locked into the veterans affairs medical system, which was found to be far insufficient.

This isn't an apples to apples but it's worth considering that there are examples of the alternative model not working in America either.

Would you recommend people skip Blockly if they want to teach people to code?

I dislike this story in journalism and podcasts too. I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts:

> Before Y was murdered, they lived in X. X is a quiet town, the type of place where you don't need to lock your doors. Y has a happy upbringing collecting flowers along the river at...

Like we get it, this is the first half of every 1-hour long true-crime podcast. Also quite often the first half of every long-form article.

Right. I'm wondering what the hell this donation means. Van Jones isn't an activist and is a partisan commentator. This country has been divided by people like him in the news media constantly turning out better ratings by instigating and propagandizing.

It's not a bribe. Van Jones will likely quit his job as a CNN commentator. Why would he stay?

It's a strange donation tbh. Also CNN is a very partisan news source and Van Jones isn't a "middle of the aisle" type. I personally find the Jose donation fine but am kind of put off by this donation to a CNN "journalist".

What do you think the long term impact will be?

The company I work for may have adapted to remote work by noticing they didn't need the Bay Area talent pool. In the past few weeks offices opened in Mexico City and elsewhere for engineering.

> If you stand in solidarity with those who flagrantly abuse their power, you're not doing your best.

I've been thinking of this. And everyone on HN is not doing their best then.

Every tech employer that we all work for qualifies.

I think it's more the fact that there aren't alternative options.

Other comments have already explored how America has a "union monopoly" system for lack of a better term: where unions exist, the labor pool that is non-union is often extinguished.

> what's wrong with saying that?

If the alleged screw is flooding your home and you're on the phone with a contractor who says "it'll be Monday morning", it's safe to assume that the contractor feels safe because there's no competition out there that will come out to finish the job due to the union monopoly or other rules/regulations that the unions have established to make them the only turn screwers.

Unions in the United States gained a bad rap from things like this, and I think that's what the OP's intent was with their comment.

> My practice has been to automatically restart my phone whenever I am approached by a police officer. This has happened maybe once in the last year or 2.

In the United States (where I live) this seems risky. I think most here would prefer their phone to be on and readily available for filming in case they need to film the police encounter. We have a lot of cops spazzing out on people.

The people who draw the distinction generally don't like the pilgrims settlers because of what they did when they got here. In contrast to immigrants, who did not "settle" anyone or any land. You can see a lot of this in today's politics as well.

> My elderly parents are unable to make the switch from Yahoo to Google. I’ve walked them through it multiple times. It’s just not possible for them. They don’t have the knowledge and skills.

How old are your parents?

Is it search you're referring to or the email platforms of each?

Overly negative take: hopefully one of these days the people who try to turn their pets into "social media influencers" will be seen as animal abusers :)

Yea I considered looking into Coinbase when they announced a similar policy - but I've got some equity keeping me at my current job. If that weren't the case I may jump ship.

I agree, the Verge article mentions this explicitly that DHH and JF are routinely outspoken on progressive issues:

> Both founders are also active — and occasionally hyperactive — on Twitter, where they regularly advocate for mainstream liberal and progressive views on social issues.

What did they expect?

I'm hoping the company I work for will follow suit and ban discussions about this stuff in the workplace.

Two years ago we had Ibrahim X Kendi speak at our company, he's now considered by many to be a "neo racist". Within months our open Slack channel for Q&A was shut-down.

However we still have a lot of the internal activists.

> If there's a good alternative never use Google anything.

Brave instead of Chrome. Duck Duck Go instead of Google. Proton Mail instead of Gmail.

The only thing I haven't been able to replace is YouTube. That's a tricky one because it's the content creators that keep me locked into it.

Wasn't Project Dragonfly shut down by internal Google "activists" rather than by outside forces?

Indeed - in fact Microsoft recently tried to buy Pinterest just to get a large company that they can move from AWS to Azure:

> The deal, which would have been Microsoft’s largest acquisition to date, confirms that the tech giant is continuing to pursue an acquisition strategy aimed at amassing a portfolio of active online communities that could run on top of its Azure cloud computing platform. Pinterest - which boasts more than 320 million active users - currently relies on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its infrastructure provider.

source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlypage/2021/02/11/microsoft-...

I know that bit, but other commenters have implied that this is a direct signal that the police don't care about what the judge says.

I'm just wondering whether that is the case and it's a conscious decision made by the officers on the ground, or if they just don't know an order has been issued.