It's sometimes seen as a security issue, especially if you are not provided with a company-issued laptop. Or your work may require specialized equipment like beefy machines for 3D rendering or local access to a server.
I wouldn't say that working efficiently with people directly counts as "meta". Productive cooperation with others sounds like a straightforward skill to improve, with no new rules being introduced.
Maybe new company/team organizational approaches or methodologies (Waterfall, Kanban, etc.) can count as playing the meta and give you an edge over the competition.
Both can be classified as 'anecdotes', I agree, but talking about your work conditions when asked, is a completely different anecdote as opposed to someone not actively complaining when they are with friends/acquaintances.
The difference between having a coding team manager that expects everyone should work 60+ hours and a non-coder who is against it, can be huge. I prefer the latter.
I vaguely remember all of those things as separate phases.
- Moving away from IE, I fell in love with Opera (lots of built-in features), most others with Firefox
- Chrome comes in, it's Google, it's lightweight, people try it and like it
- Chrome gets really fast, it appeals to even more people
- Meanwhile, Firefox has enough extension power to replace Opera for me (who can live with the tabs BELOW address bar or without mouse gestures?)
- Chrome implements the aforementioned technical stuff (separate processes, etc.), appealing to power users (this may have happened before speed improvements or at the same time)
- Chrome finally gets extensions and I start using it personally, but it's impossible to be a web dev without Firefox+Firebug. (IE6 still sucks, but combined with Visual Studio, feels superb for JS debugging)
- Chrome's dev tools gradually get better at everything. I start living in Chrome.
... years later ...
- A year ago I often used Firefox for its great Canvas debugger. They broke it. I've since forgotten about Firefox.
... 2019 ...
- Microsoft is trying to drive people away from IE, hoping for Edge adoption. I don't care for Firefox. Opera is almost Chrome with extensions. Edge sounds like it wants to be Chrome. Chrome won on most battlefronts. I don't like that fact, because of the "free from corporate greed" reasons mentioned, but it's going to be hard to change the status quo.
> If the guy examines Samsung Galaxy phones, it would almost be the same.
This is just guessing. If I have to bet, I'd as well bet that Google/Samsung/ISPs/Everyone is spying on you, but just guessing and shrugging it off is not helping.
We should be inspired to check even more devices and inform users about backdoor traffic.
Comparing is not judging or blaming. The GP suggests that both TPB and Google are in a gray area, which I partially agree with, but I think they are in different gray areas.
TPB, as described, is in a moral gray area - "We know some of the uploaded stuff is immoral" - so they delete what's immoral (their judgement - child porn/copyright stuff/anything between), they arbitrarily decide what you see
Google is in an algorithmic gray area - "The algorithm decides what's best for you, we want the best for you, but we won't judge what's best for you" - so they do nothing and hope for the best (and least damage), the algorithm arbitrarily decides what you see