I didn't mean to imply Best Buy employees get commission. I only called them salespeople to distinguish the people who roam the tech aisles rather than work the register, Geek Squad, etc.
Anecdotally, I've definitely more than one employee try to steer me to the overpriced cables when I was just looking for a quick HDMI cable. I typically just ask them if the decently-priced cable fits into the HDMI spec. By that time they usually figure out it's not worth the time to try and upsell and move on.
I wonder how much of Best Buy's success can be attributed to using 'emotional intelligence' to 'build relationships' with gullible people and sell $1,000+ HDMI cables to them. Does it happen a lot? Probably not. But selling one of those a week will likely pay for at least one salesperson's wage for that week.
I haven't shopped for myself at a Best Buy and years (and the last time I did, it was for CD/DVDs). And the salespeople trying to 'build relationships' with me are just awful. But that's likely because I'm a misanthrope.
I know what I'm getting into when I go to Best Buy. I'm going to go help a friend buy an overpriced laptop because they want my help since I'm an 'IT guy' and they want to shop at Best Buy for some reason.
Must depend on the org and how you do it. My personal experience is that if you are open and up-front with going to a competitor, they'll cut your access and pay you for the remaining time left on your resignation letter/month.
If you go to a competitor and aren't open about it? You might find yourself terminated with no additional pay.
And it makes sense. At Amazon, most people have varying levels of customer data and/or confidential company data. Amazon has to protect itself from data exfiltration/data theft.
"The biggest roofing company in my state, Salazar roofing, is American owned and operated." <--- This is a big part of what's happening.
Most people screaming about how 'Americans' won't do jobs like farming or construction will look at a company named Salazar and assume that Salazar uses undocumented labor. These people will also drive by construct sites, count the number of white workers, and use that as a proxy for how many Americans are working on that job.
I can only speak from my layman's understanding of US law. In the US, there's a doctrine prosecutorial discretion. Basically the police and prosecutors can choose whether to arrest and charge someone for a crime.
> "Maybe in places where code law is mostly binding, there’s a lot more pressure on the legislature to keep the law books up to date with the current norms of society."
In the US, where everything is so entwined with politics, there's a lot unenforceable laws still on the books.
For example, the US Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws in 2003. Last I checked, Texas still has a law on the books criminalizing sodomy. Sure Texas can't enforce it, but the conservative majority in the legislature won't actually repeal the law because politics. Similarly, when the US Supreme Court ruled that banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, Texas had to recognize same-sex marriage. But there was no law allowing same-sex couples to divorce. So there was this weird limbo wherein you couldn't get divorced if you were in a same-sex marriage.
The fact they have money is what gives them the power to say no.
- Someone asking for a meeting/to connect? If you have money, people come to you; so it's easy to say no to networking opportunities. No money? You have to take networking opportunities as they come.
- Someone offering you a job/investment opportunity? If you already have money, you're not worried overmuch about a wasted opportunity. Because at the end of the day you're still secure. If you're unemployed and worried about where your next meal comes from? You have to jump for it.
(Pst. This is also why 'essential workers' are underpaid. Because they have no negotiating ability when their only other option is financial ruin.)
I could keep going on, but if you're not getting the idea you're either: 1.) Being willfully obtuse; or 2.) Someone who has read the Fountainhead too many times (i.e. you're being willfully obtuse).
When talking about screw-ups on AWS, public incident reports try to obfuscate and spin the Hell out of issues that boil down to "really, really stupid configuration issue".
They owned it. That is more than can be said about other large incident reports that I've seen regarding AWS.
Thanks for posting this. I'm really impressed with the transparency Twilio showed in actually admitting to having such a silly, silly bucket policy. Not impressed that it was there in the first place; but that should go without saying.
This incident report should really put to bed all of the "It's AWS's fault for making things so complex" complaints. (To be clear, it won't... but it should.)
Even a cursory look at that bucket policy should tell you something named "Allow Public Read" should NOT be associated with anything named 'Put'. This takes 0 AWS knowledge to figure out.
AWS's shared responsibility model is clear. AWS is responsible for security of the cloud. The customer is responsible for the security in the cloud (i.e. the customer's resources). By the way, enterprise support customers do get access to well-architected reviews by AWS.
If you ask for help from AWS, AWS will provide it. It may not be free, but it's available.
Even if AWS were to start proactively auditing customer setups, how in the world is AWS supposed to know what a customer's usecase is? Nevermind the fact it's a breach of the customer's privacy to just go rooting around in the customer's account without permission.
But let's assume AWS is going to take responsibility for customers' configuration decisions and violate customers' privacy by proactively auditing their accounts. Would AWS auditing Twilio's configuration here work?
The default is for S3 buckets to be private. The customer has to take specific, affirmative steps to give s3 buckets public access. You really have to jump through hoops to make a bucket public accessible.
Since the Twilio chose to make their bucket public, AWS auditing Twilio's setup wouldn't be helpful. AWS would just assume the Twilio knows what they're doing. How is AWS supposed to know there is a misconfiguration? Because Twilio clearly decided to make their S3 bucket publicly available.
It is trading platform that combines 1.) user engagement/gamification with 2.) targeting a core userbase of young adults that are both financially unstable and inexperienced. It's disgusting and immoral.
This is the epitome of late-stage capitalism. Extract as much money as possible from gullible users. Except we're not maximizing screentime anymore to leverage ad revenue and micro transactions. We're maximizing screen time to drive trade volume while letting people make financial decisions that can literally ruin the rest of their lives.
Well, at least Robinhood's platform hasn't directly led to young adults committing suicide. Oh, it has? Nevermind...
>"There is some truth to the metaphor, but I wonder if it’s doing more harm than good."
In my experience, whether the metaphor does more harm than good really depends on the individual patient.
When faced with the chemical imbalance metaphor, some people will bristle and say they're not "broken." Or they'll feel disempowered because they feel like they can't do anything but take a pill (or three).
---
For others, it lifts a weight off their shoulders. Most people battling with mental illness have struggled and tried various coping mechanisms to feel "normal." The understanding that the issue chemical, not behavioral, lets some people forgive themselves.
Instead of "not being normal enough", the cause is external; it's something they can't just brute force their way out of. Externalizing the issue lets the person stop feeling guilty that they weren't able to solve their own issue. This clears the slate for the person and leads them to a path toward recovery from mental illness.
NOTE: I'm not a doctor. But everyone in my immediate (and most of my extended family has been diagnosed with a chronic mental health issue. So has my wife, our girlfriend, and many others in my life. So it's well-founded anecdotal evidence. And, for what it's worth, I'm in the second cohort I described above.
I'm not a lawyer, but it strikes me as weird that police can use illegally obtained information as evidence in investigations. Isn't that fruit from a poisoned tree?
One of the more genius (and nefarious) moves American industry has made is to switch the narrative on environmentalism from large organizations (corporations, the government, etc.) as polluters to individuals.[1]
Can individuals impact the environmental crisis? Sure, in aggregate. But the biggest gains come from focusing on the largest groups. They have the biggest proportional impact on the environment.
Did the steak I ate last night contribute to global warming? Sure did.
Did that steak contribute more pollution than the entire fleets of naval ships we keep deployed across the globe to 'project power'? Hardly.
Did my steak contribute more pollution than the tanks and next generation fighters the US keeps ordering and building (and which have little place in today's environment of asymmetric warfare)? Nope.
We can talk about personal responsibility and organizational responsibility for pollution at the same time. And solving the issue of organizational pollution will have a much quicker and longer-lasting effect on the environment than pushing people to stop eating so much meat.
That seems like a lot of effort to address the symptoms, not the disease. The root issue is the user. Get rid of the user and you don't have to worry about all these half-measures.
> "That's an argument for banning swastikas, not banning anyone who displays a swastika."
If you don't ban the person displaying the swastika, how can you possibly enforce banning swastikas? There must be a consequence for displaying the offending symbol, otherwise the rule is toothless.
You remove the swastika, and the person just replaces it. What then? Just keep removing it and hoping the Nazi/edgelord/'troll' will get tired of replacing the swastika? Trying to win a battle of attrition with a bad-faith actor is not an effective way to enforce rules.
> "remember the moral panic we just went through when 4chan trolls convinced people that the OK hand sign was a "one-sided version ofna White Power" sign and got people fired from their jobs for making the sign."
"Remember when 4chan 'trolls' said the OK hand sign was a white power sign and then white supremacists started using the OK hand sign as a white power sign?" --- There, I fixed it for you.
> Is this true for civil cases? I presume no one is being charged with a crime here...
Yes. The publishers are saying 'the Internet Archive violated my rights and has caused monetary damages. They owe us for those damages.' It's up to the publishers to provide that the Internet Archive violated those rights.
Now civil trials and criminal trials have different standards for evidence and determining guilt. In criminal trials, the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone committed a criminal offense.
In civil cases, the complainant (plaintiff) just has to prove via a 'preponderance of the evidence' that their rights were violated. Meaning, it's more likely than not their rights were violated.
> "No, the criminal in the above is absolutely on the wrong side of the law. That's the assumption after all."
In America at least, the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. So the assumption should be that the defendant is on the right side of the law. It's the prosecutor or complainant's job to prove the defendant is in fact on the wrong side of the law.
To call a defendant 'the criminal' (and saying the defendant is in the wrong) is putting the cart before the horse.
Definitely get what you're saying, but knowing things unfortunately doesn't mean putting that knowledge into use.
I don't know if the guy whose dog ate his homework actually did the homework.
But I know that as a system administrator/security analyst I've had to push back HARD against some really stupid the things the development team wanted to do. And I'm sure the development team thought I was stupid for requiring things like auditable artifacts, limited permissions for developers, and daily backups. They wanted to push out code as quickly and easily as possible.
Knowing tech doesn't necessarily mean adhering to the platonic ideal of 'computer best practices.' This is actually the root cause of most security breaches.
...plus, the family pictures you had on your personal laptop are probably worth a lot more than a lot of the code out there that isn't being backed up. ;)
Anecdotally, I've definitely more than one employee try to steer me to the overpriced cables when I was just looking for a quick HDMI cable. I typically just ask them if the decently-priced cable fits into the HDMI spec. By that time they usually figure out it's not worth the time to try and upsell and move on.