I worked there (Watson Health) a few years back. All that happened is IBM. That's right. They bought us (a small start-up) and this is what they did in a year to us:
1. replaced managers with their own who didn't get anything, kind of old date executives taken away from mainframe
2. banned remote work (this costed them a few brilliant engineers)
3. opened one huge open space full of noise and chatter, I mean sales team next to the development team, etc (this cost them even more headcount among experienced developers)
4. For months we did nothing! There were whole teams doing nothing for months on an end. I wrote zero lines of code in over 6 month period. Why? Because management didn't know which direction should be taken... and they kept hiring too! They kept hiring new developers when the ones already at place had absolutely nothing to do!
This is from my (simple developer) perspective. Not sure how it looked in sales, among executives, etc. But that was very weird environment.
I had great Manager who asked me to learn react and take courses in react (mind you it was two years back!) As we "might want to do something in react in the future". So I basically spent my last six months there learning React, aka preparing to the job interviews... they even got us paid courses and all. I mean... IBM.
And once they fired me (these were lay-offs, thousands affected, many of them just hired in past year, like myself) I was paid severance pay too. I went there worked a year, last 6 months was learning for job interviews... fantastic pay too. IBM is crazy.
No, for the same reason I wouldn't go there and say priests are wrong in the middle-ages. I would be be killed by the mob. Burnt like a witch.
You can't create social environment, like in middle-ages, where discussing certain topis, like racial differences at universities, results in loosing employment, getting "killed by the mob", and then demand I come out. This is crazy! You mr. inquisition are not going to set me up into this trap.
And, yes, I know you would love to see me burnt at the stake because of my love of science and my scientific believe that there are differences between sexes and there are differences between races. But I will not give you the pleasure mr. grand inquisitor.
Human genome has been decoded since 2003. This is science. If your ideology destroys it, then you are inquisition. And we are living in new middle-ages. Not to believe in sex differences? Not to believe in race differences? 16 years after the genome has been decoded? Why? Because you have your ideology like some 600 years ago had their religion? And what do I care?
Freedom of speech wasn't granted to us to talk about weather while drinking coffee. Freedom of speech was granted to us to talk about difficult topics quite often when we don't like discussing it in the first place.
This paraphrase of a quote is often attributed to both Churchill and Jefferson.
The whole idea is that people who you are uncomfortable listening to have the right to speech right in your face even when it makes you extremely uncomfortable. The whole current political system is morally bankrupt when some of us are granted this freedom (radical immams) while others aren't (i.e. racists). Because then regular people on the street stop believing and voting for liberal democrats. Liberal democrats criticizing freedom of speech (not granted to racists would seem to make you happy) and democratic process (i.e. electoral college, brexit) -- they start looking like they don't care about their own values (like freedom of speech and democracy). You can't call yourself liberal and then be anti-free speech to this or another group or perceived group. This makes you look as if you don't understand the words you use to describe ideas you believe in it. You are not liberal if you ban freedom of speech to racist. Period, and of story. Look up liberal in dictionary.
This is one of the reasons why people vote Trump or AfD or Social Democrats in Sweden. They recognize mainstream political parties as anti-democratic (ignoring EU referendums) and anti-liberal (opposition to freedom of speech). So if all the political spectrum in anti-liberal and anti-democratic why not to vote for a party that at least isn't hypocritical about it?
/cynical/ So sad that nowadays Swedes can't have a say about radical immams. /cynical/ How cool it is to have fun of Jesus but to have fun of Mahommed? How "far" we have "progressed" ;-) In 40 years from having fun about religious leaders to burning heretics like witches.
Wouldn't it be fun to watch movie having fun about Mohammed in Sweden? Or we became some kind of cultural caliphat in the mean time? Joking about Jesus respecting Mohammed? There is a reason for which our era is referred to as "new middle-ages" by some philosophers.
Sad.
By the way there is much more comedy material in Mohammed case too.
As we know since Freud hypocrisy is this what makes the best jokes. I.e. saint God messiah who is a war lord and peadophile in the meantime. Try making movie about that.
Please, could someone more knowledgeable explain to me. I have used computers since mid 1980s. Started with Atari 800XL. I have used Internet since mid or late 1990s. So first thing: please forget what the name of the Act is. Forget it. Not Net Neutrality. Let's call it "Act ABC". I know, ridicilous, but I want you to look at the issue... hmmm... in neutral manner. I remember the Internet that the ABC Act is supposed to protect us from. Internet in which you pay for the data used. I used a modem and was paying for my time online. So websites that took forever to load or didn't employ caching (looking at you youtube without cashing just streaming, but wth). This was muchmuch more diverse internet. That was the internet that forced p2p sharing and p2p platforms. Non-existent now because the current system where you don't pay for the data privilleges big oligopolies, big corporations that have the most data. Google (with its subsidaries), Facebook, Twitter are like what 70% of the internet now? Why? How is that good? I want my crazy websites back. I want diversity. I want copyrighted streaming to be kicked in the stomach. I want competition. I don't want Google, Facebook and Twitter monopolizing the internet. Look, ISPs have never censored the content. Google, Facebook, Twitter do it all the time. On the one hand they say, oh we're platform. On the other they edit content. So which one is it? Obviously you can't have both at the same time.
Paying for data would disrupt Google, i.e. it would kill youtube (owned by google) overnight or at least far reaching changes in it. Facebook also, spending 3-4 hours a day on it, and paying ? Noow, wouldn't it be better to spend 20 minutes there and then browse for other locations? Just to spend your expensive online time more wisely. With free cost of bytes send developers, and I'm sorry to say it, I'm a developer too though, can be lazy. No optimization what-so-ever. Building websites to make sure they are small, load fast, put important content up-front, don't waste users time... now how this could be bad?
Net Neutrality is the step in the future. Future of Googles, Twitters and Facebooks, Amazons, 3-4 oligopolies taking all traffic, killing all the innovation and competition in the process. This isn't the future I hoped for. I hoped for neevr ending 1990s internet. With dozens of websites I visited regularly. And these dozens changing every year too. Future of the internet looks so regulated now. The last step will be the Government taking over, or rather regulating, FANG. This is death of the innovation for this Industry.
And make no mistake: if Republicans won't pass Net Neutrality then Democrats will surely do it. But still they seem to recognize the same problem, Ms. Elizabeth Warren wants to break-down Google, Twitter, Facebook into smaller competing companies -- employing anti-trust laws against them via Department of Justice action. So I think we see the problem on both sides of the aisle. The thing is that solving the problem of big corporations governing the Internet like their own turf might be better done via making time on the internet or data sent paid again. Just seems more natural than taking Judical action against the offenders.
She isn't that good at all and never have been. WSJ and Barron's complained about her for the longest time possible now.. There are very critical articles of her in serious business press and magazines. Sexism is bad. But granting free pass to every bad CEO when she is a woman just because of her sex isn't smart. These people are CEOs, getting paid millions, destroying businesses and sometimes lives. It is important to keep them to the same scrutiny regardless of their sex.
Firing bottom performers every quarter. Banning remote work. Spending $7m on fashion show she attended with friends.
If this was a man he would have basically no right to criticize any other business especially successful one like Google. She looks absolutely ridicilous in this position. It's like F-grade student giving lectures to straight A's student. Do these people have shame at all?
And examples like this, or even worse like infamous Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, should remind us that we shouldn't give free pass to CEOs just because they are women. CEOs have the highest rate of sociopaths, no matter the gender.
not really. This fits. Germany has much less power than it did during the Greek Crisis. It is in no position of throwing EU countries on its knees and destroying them economically anymore. It is in no position of forcing UK to stay in the EU. It is paralyzed by migrants, nice job CIA.
No worries in 20-30 years you will see it at the movies. Just remember where you read it first.
Germany is losing that control. It seems peak German influence was during Greek crisis a few years back. Even though IMF and World Bank (sorry, but basically US based and influenced organizations) and the Obama Administration insisted on the Germany taking easier course on Greece crisis -- cutting the debt owned by Greeks -- Germany did it its own way, in opposition to the US demands -- and made a deal where Greece is and will be responsible for repaying all of the 100% debt it owes. Basically they did with the Greece as they pleased in sharp contrast to US open demands and criticism. There was US Secretary of Tresury Mr. Lew travelling to Berlin to speak to their senses, but was ignored. Soo...
Now, of course, we can argue if it makes economical sense or not. The point though is that -- and forgive me, but I like playing in my mind, and this is my private little conspiracy theory I have never shared -- Germany seemed to be getting too much power in the EU. By the US standards that is. The US long term policy for EU and Europe is to make sure there is no single one power governing or having influence over the whole continent. So Germany seemed to be braking that rule.
And, what happened next? Again, conspiracy theorist here, but good food for thought, just think about it:
* Lufthansa airplane is suddenly dropping from the sky
* German automanufacturer (VW) turns out to be braking federal laws, with its bosses in the US in prison because of the diesel-gate (VW was picked as one just to make an example. The same issues are with BMWs and Mercedes, but hey we just want to teach a lesson here, not destroy them completely, right?)
* Migration crisis. German Chancellor is in no position now, even domestically speaking, to talk about issues with this or that -- fix that big mess with migrants first! That's what Ms Merkel hears from her voters. What EU power? Gone!
Just a conspiracy theory. But it kind of fits. Ans looks very American too, i.e. soft power. You know if we want, your cars won't be sold here. If we want you will need to pay up too 2% GDP on military (and your voters hate it), if we want your airlines my look not that safe anymore. If we want we might even destabilize you a bit with huge influx of migrants.
So, want to show Greece or some other European countries where they place in the hierarchy is? Well, make sure you discuss is with your overlord first.
Again, conspiracy theory. My own private crazy thing.
But to answer the question seriously -- German politics is blocked from entering EU stage with serious decisions regarding other countries by the migrant crisis. They are still the biggest and strongest player. But nothing compared to peak power during Greek Debt crisis. They started to feel to powerful and independent, seems all back to "normal".
To me as someone who is in no way expert on automation or an economist but someone who knows how profit oriented big business is, especially banks, I have a question: this looks to me like they expect so much automation happening in the future that they can afford the move? Isn't that case with McDonald's too, where they can have self-serving locations in near future, so no problem with raising minimum hourly rates?
The ATMs nowadays do so much on their own. I was taken by surprise when last time I had 5 of my checks scanned and deposited cash into my checkings by a <big bank name here> ATM recently. No human interaction what-so-ever. So I can withdraw money using ATM, I can add money using ATM, and I can cash/deposit checks using ATM. Isn't that like 99% of what their 90% customers do? Isn't that the case that in 5-10 years they will need one person on premises to handle the remaining cases? So then that person can be making 20usd/hr, why not? If they're replacing 4-5 other workers, this is savings anyway.
Of course this won't touch things like mortgages or auto-loans. For now that is...
Here is the thing: the US will be net energy exporter by 2021. As of now it is self-sufficient. At the time when we put such a emphasis on using less fossil fuels, we also have more and more countries producing the stuff.
All it did (Norwegians not drilling) is raised prices for the oil exported by the US. Thank you! Recently it has been very cheap. Hopefully this will help a bit.
So that's global perspective.
The local perspective I'm happy that Norwegians are so wealthy they don't need to drill as much anymore or can focus on other issues then providing to the Sovereign Fund. Good for them!
housing, healthcare, food, clothing. How the CPI works is that necessities are mixed with nice to haves. Like large TVs and smartphones. LCD TVs price is down, smartphones price is down (and they will include things like size of the TV or speed of the smartphone to proof it's cheaper even when it isn't). Healthcare prices are tremendously up, food prices are up, yes housing prices are up, they have been going up for 10 years. And the salaries are the same. CPI is an useless metric. If my health insurance was 500 bucks and is 1300 bucks, childcare was 1,100 usd and is 1,500 usd -- what do I care about LCD TV being down? Or being able to get 5 times faster smartphone for the same price compared to 3 years ago?
In the USA the middle class and white collar (middle upper class) now too -- are getting poorer by the year.
People like sex. They don't accept public obscenity usually due to common sense objective realities, i.e. children being present.
So there is this.
And there is some more: as a dominant bdsm heterosexual person for some reason I don't feel an urge to present my sexual preference to the whole world all the time and demanding the public to accept it. Or even having it recognized as part of my "identity". Sex is sex, happens in bed with my wife and is between us. Why in the world I would have a need to demand my friends, family, co-workers to have them accept the reality that I like to see blood on my wife's butt before I slide between them --- this is silly. Isn't that this piece where homosexuals are just so oblivious that they simply don't recognize that the whole world doesn't neccessarily care about them putting the thing in another guys anus? Why do we need to have parades about that? Why do we need special laws for the condition? Am I going to get treated differently during employment process next time because I'm into bdsm? I mean that are idiots who say yes, bdsm is just another sexual preference. So I would be sexual minority. And would be need it so much more at places like Google or Apple to fullfil some idiotic quota. Good job America you guys are beyond hilarious! Anthropologist in the future will have bunch of a good time looking at you! And please don't downvote that would be pure nazism. I mean where are we going with this?
Serious question: does anyone know how are homosexual monkeys treated by their peers? Basically, I was wondering if there is a proof of them being discriminated/treated badly by their peers.
Both wolves and humans are social creatures. They key ingredient is highly hierarchical structures. Where individuals compete among themselves for the position in the group. And capitalism is just reflection of that in human societies.
First social creatures that "discovered" hierarchies were lobsters about 300 milion years ago. This is before even trees existed. Very long time from the evolutionary perspective, i.e. they do provide advantage to species that employ it.
This is from my (simple developer) perspective. Not sure how it looked in sales, among executives, etc. But that was very weird environment.
I had great Manager who asked me to learn react and take courses in react (mind you it was two years back!) As we "might want to do something in react in the future". So I basically spent my last six months there learning React, aka preparing to the job interviews... they even got us paid courses and all. I mean... IBM.
And once they fired me (these were lay-offs, thousands affected, many of them just hired in past year, like myself) I was paid severance pay too. I went there worked a year, last 6 months was learning for job interviews... fantastic pay too. IBM is crazy.