This play to earn title is a particularly annoying dig at the recently blown up phrase where users can play to earn Blockchain tokens in nft based games which has actually enabled young men in the Philippines to quit their jobs as taxi drivers and involved them in an ecosystem which otherwise has exacerbated inequalities and trampled on the rights of humans in their country as historically corrupt government has minimsed the earning potential of the working class not and left the upper class eternally skeptical of their own government.
To make a dig like this and then not even acknowledge it in the content is exactly what I would expect from a white American who has no concept of how certain trends impact anyone other than themselves.
It appears some people are still so uneducated about life in north Korea they believe they believe the people can fire up a browser extension and overthrow the government or something.
Alot of people don't WANT to leave either and have been so brainwashed they are terrified of the outside world and believe it is a lawless land filled with gang warfare and burning trashcans, according to one of my friends who got to tour there which is a very rare privilege and outsiders are supervised every moment on a state sponsored tour after being forced to leave flowers at the dictators picture upon landing in North Korea and anyone who refuses to do so before following their sanctioned state sponsored tour (no unsupervised interactions with any citizens is allowed the entire time) is sent back on the plane immediately. The tour guide asked him how he had survived the outside world so long and if he was so relieved to finally be in a safe place when he got on....
I'm not sure the dictator is suddenly going to allow them to download Google chrome and install metamask and pretend he doesn't know what's going on and watch his country be overthrown he would more likely nuke his own people first.
People who "need access" doesn't everyone brainwashed by an authoritarian dictator need access to the internet to help themselves escape?
Not everyone who needs access has access. A select few who are at the mercy of the dictator do to do his work.
Some people have been known to try to sneak across the border and meet Chinese people in the woods to exchange goods.
Some people send balloons with notes from the outside world over the border to reach people inside.
Perhaps a select few have some garnered enough information about how to use the internet without getting caught they are willing to risk being murdered to do so if they find something dire enough using the internet for but to say people who "need" the internet fire up wiregaurd and call it a day before watching their daily stream of YouTube influencers is an understatement to say the least...
Yup. Only a few businessmen who work for the North Korean dictator, and they are up to no good.
Anyone else using the internet not doing work for the North Korean government would be murdered if caught.
In North Korea they have the "intranet" which is an internal network of learning resources you can use at the local North Korean libraries and schools! It is all propoganda.
How do I tell you this? People in North Korea don't have access to YouTube and the internet.
Are you aware of what life is like for the people of North Korea?
Only a few select businessmen working for leaders of North Korea are ever allowed to leave and they usually travel to china for unknown business.
Giving a talk like this in North Korea is like teaching businessmen how to engage in moving criminal/ terrorism money without getting caught.
No normal citizen can run the internet/has access to the internet and if they were caught doing so they would be murdered so there's no way any of them could engage in this anyways.
I'm so sorry noone told you what North Korea is like.
Clearly have not been abused by a company wanting you to do 5x as much work as one developer should. We need many more software engineers and many more innovations in the industry so software engineers don't suffer from chronic burnout and being underpaid.
Easy to say "properly" winterized without going into the details on how one would insulate natural gas lines across thousands of miles which requires digging up gas lines to replace them or investing more in on going research on liquids that can be injected into the peiplines that are antifreeze that don't contaminate the gas also flowing in them. Alot of innovation is going on in that direction but it's still heavily regulated.
It's good the power grid is heavily regulated.
The tldr is texas isn't often covered with sleet and snow and has made great strides in renewable energy. Now that one ice storm has hit everyone is acting like every moment of the past ten years should have been spent preventing it when in reality it requires heavy regulation and taxes. Texans don't like taxes.
FERC was almost completely cleaned out when Trump came to power so the entire set of regulations is backed up by a few years.
In reality "winterizing" gas pipelines is an unsolved problem in technology and the more manual way required digging up thousands of miles of people's land and property to use tax money to put in new pipes.
Try going to a texans property and telling them the state wants to increase your taxes to dig up a gas line and replace it with a new one....
Texas has wanted to retain the ability to secede from the union and having their own power grid enables them with that independence but it is hard to tell without looking at a layout of the power grid if being connected to other states who were also freezing would have helped, which is a good time to add that having a layout of the power grid requires special levels of as needed access upon which bypassing is a felony atleast.
As someone who stared at the east coast power grid everyday for 5yrs doing power analysis and reliability studies on it, I never had access to the Texas power grid, but I'm amazed how many people on the internet act like they do.
As a full disclosure I'm an Electrical Power Engineer who specializes in wind and solar, electrical power grid and substation design and worked in electrical energy markets and power flow for four years after working for a renewable energy startup. I went into this field because I care about renewable energy, but I have also learned the system is heavily gained and renewable energy sources have their flaws like for example you know ice can kind of freeze solar and turbines over, as well as pipelines.
It's been very hard to have objective and we'll informed takes in this field with people who aren't working in power grid stuff because they assume if I have constructive criticism on how renewable energy policy could be better or has previously incentivized corruption then I am an evil republican who wants gas and oil to rule the world and we all die due to global warming.
Now is also a good time to mention the concept of global cooling. Due to this and not global warming Texas is probably in for a lot more cold weather and it makes sense to assess what "winterizing" power sources actually means, instead of just demanding it without any understanding of what that would entail what it would cost and whether Texans are willing to put their money where their mouth is given they are typically hands off when it comes to massively coordinating with state and local regulation more than they need to.
The most interesting pardons are the no name ones. Pardoned restaurant chain fraud for an italian not even charged in NY. Sounds like mafia related crime to me.
The other no name money laundering criminals are all related to either his gambling businesses or his place of living in Florida.
He's basically pardoning people he's been doing crimes with for a long time and then if course some big names.
I'm happy to see some rappers pardoned though tbh. Their music has influenced my life, they've done great deal of good outside of music and none of them were in the can for things like harming women or animals etc.
I'm glad to see kodack black pardoned. He's a super genuine artist. His music changed my life. His crime was lying how many white boys have lied in court and served less than 46months in prison. He truly turned his life around for many years now and it reflects in his music.
I think it's better than the current state of things which is: if the company is wrong and covering it up requires some disadvantage to you vs doing the right thing. 100% of these times you are screwed as an employee.
It also wouldn't be a witch hunt anymore than current HR investigations. Just performed by an objective third party.
Oh yeh for sure. I've had an HR women on the phone with me crying because she's so disturbed ny what happened but she had to pretend like she wasn't infront of my boss. She even told me 1:1 the man who refused to let me speak also refused to speak to her it was beneath him and he had another male deliver the message to her to fire me.
In the end she was useless to me and powerless and had as much power ad a caged parrot.
If they are not evil they are simply in control of determining nothing and just a euphemistic liaison for corporate abuse.
I have many war stories from companies like these. Never sign the paperwork right away. I was once given 23minutes to sign a severence agreement and found out later they violated state law: 21 days plus a 7 day walk back, and broke federal law by saying I couldn't have cobra health insurance if I didn't promise to shut up.
Typically a shut up you little bitch document also known as a separation agreement holds severence pay hostage, not healthcare. They also fired me days before I vested my equity and didn't tell me why. In my state you can fire anyone for any reason. They don't have to tell you why. Yeh it's really messed up.
Corporations are like small abusive dictatorships. Just try to find a decent one with good work who is successful enough to be focused on good engineering or whatever it is you do they don't need to bully and tear people down to protect themselves and get by in life.
Yeh bit arbitration is something that has to be escalated to, and something one employee is not well versed or capable of paying the fees for in relation to the company. I wouldn't say arbitration is the equivalent of my idea which is access to external legal help by default with a fair assessment.
There are definitely metrics by which these parties could be ranked but sure there would be issues with gaming these metrics. For example if there as a legal requirement to accurately report across many companies how many times during an internal issue the person not in the superior position was fired vs the superior despite reporting something like sexual assault or racism or something like this, and the company says 100% of the time we agreed the superior did nothing wrong and 75% of the time the complainant magically failed their performance review and is no longer with the company within 6months of this.
Well that is a pretty bad metric.
There are definitely ways to report metrics anonymously and the results and legally can inquire if they reported the outcome accurately.
Carts is stating to do this with money. They are reporting how much money women and minorities have in equity vs white males, and eventually will break it down by position which means yeh if most women work in HR and I'm a senior engineer yeh probs women will have less equity, but next yr they will expand and show things like all staff level software developers, this is the breakdown of men vs women equity in tech companies....
That's a number I would love to see. And it would say alot.
So there are ways to make this better even if it's not an easy fix. Requiring companies to provide healthcare and 401k plans did not happen overnight Im sure, but noone would take a company seriously without these benefits for long.
Do you think companies want to waste money on 401k matching or healthcare benefits? They don't. They do it because it's either required by law in some capacity and for when it isn't it's because it's such a uniform standard for any nonfledling startup company who wants to hire someone full-time they would look like idiots for not only providing these benefits but providing them from respectable third parties. Over time these things became standardized and highly regulated and that's a good thing.
You're right, if we had to rely on the goodwill of a company this most certainly would not happen. I don't think it would happen overnight but I do believe the best and brightest will go for places who offer competitive advantages and others will follow suit.
If it garners high quality employees then make the company profitable in the same way every startup wants to pretend they are like google with video games and playrooms and brightly colored walls and provided lunches, actually not treating your employees like crap if they have an issue with another employee is also a competitive benefit that could become a trend for any company who wants to be competitive.
Good point but if this went mainstream it could be considered a requirement the same way a good growing company behind a fledgling startup will never get away with hiring people full-time unless they supply a healthcare plan and other standard benefits most employees at respectable companies receive, to the point there is no chance they could not be competitive with out them.
And that's the thing really. They could be required to have them, so then it's just a matter of which ones are competitive to the employees.
I would love to apply to a company, ask who their third party HR is and say oh man that one SUCKS and everyone knows it. Sorry, gonna take a job at this other company who had external HR with much better rankings, the same way I might for more competitive healthcare plans or benefits between to equally competitive jobs.
Of course companies do not want to spend money on things like 401k matching healthcare and the otherwise but they will if enough companies do it to the point they look sketchy if they do not only provide these benefits but provide these benefits through respectable third parties.
My friend and I (both females) one the CEO of a tech company and me a Staff Engineer, have talked about how to do HR right and we came up with an idea but havnt done anything with it.
Since HR is clearly biased towards the companies and this has proven to cause a lot of problems, they will never side with you over the company if the company is indeed wrong.
HR should ideally be an independent third party and all issues treated the same way a legal audit would. An org comes in promises to keep things confidential. Objectively assesses the situation, inquires for more info (emails, convos etc) and determines the outcome. If someone needs to be fired and it's a male superior, then so be it.
HR is never going to tell their boss that they should be fired for mistreating another employee for example, if they do not also want to lose their jobs.
In reality it makes sense to have an internal HR for all things like hiring recruiting etc etc etc but when it comes to managing deteriorated relationships between employees it will never be done right unless an independent third party comes into asses.
I agree with you the lawyer is leaving out anecdotes and trying to generalize from them, but all you have to do is google for a second to find some incredibly embarrassing messups from HR see microsoft amazon google for examples.
I will challenge you on the part though about the unspoken expectations of what HR is. To be clear, HR always says come to them if I need anything. If I have any problems they are there to help me.
Like you said, this is a lie. They are there to follow the law, and if they see you as a liability and your complaint doesn't have enough evidence and they can get away with finding a way to get rid of you and claim it's not retaliation they will. This happens often.
So perhaps HR should take on some responsibility for actively misadvertising the purpose of their existence. They should say exactly that:
We are not here for you we are here to make sure the company doesn't get in trouble so if on the books we can be in the right and reduce liability we will, so keep your mouth shut and do not give us any reason to think you are a liability to us.
Alot of problems I agree could be solved if HR was honest about their role. And did not advertise themselves as therapists as a way to asses early on if you are a liability and come up with a way to get rid of you and get away with it.
I'm a senior SRE now software developer building infrastructure with a decade of experience and an engineering degree.
I'm also a woman.
When I mentor serious younger women coming into these challenging but rewarding jobs I always tell them:
HR is not your friend.
They are not there to protect you. They are there to protect the organization. If they see you as a liability, and they often do over the man being complained about, they will find a way to get rid of you.
If I told you the experiences I've been through, I would get bombarded by a bunch of white conservative males on this site telling me I'm making it up, so I don't even bother.
In reality, the whole diversity in tech thing is a marketing scheme for these big companies. But once they hire you don't speak...don't have opinions. Put your head down and do your job. They don't actually care about you beyond their ability to print a picture of you on their website but if you dare cause trouble you are out. They could not care the least about your long term career development beyond their ability to market you externally. Behind closed doors, HR will gaslight you and kick you out if things are actually bad. The only bigger slap in the face this could possibly be beyond that is the people sitting across the table from you justifying why what you're telling them isn't a big deal or trying to gaslight you or trying to turn the tables on you are mostly women. Women who are rewarded for shutting up and doing what men want them to do at the expense of everyone else, and they have no clue nor do they want to of what it's really like to be a women on the other side of the fence in a male dominated environment.
HR is not your friend. If you are a woman and having issues with males at your company the answer is to get the hell out as quickly as possible without them knowing beforehand. Especially if other people observe the negative experiences you do and don't say anything it means You cannot change the culture and trying to at the expense of your career should not be the hill you die on. Some men also just don't believe women should speak in meetings at all period. It's an unspoken rule and I've unfortunately only ever had this problem with managers who are makes from countries where womens rights aren't respected.
We in tech cumulatively cannot even begin to comprehend the permanent damage we've set in place and invisible barriers for decades to come we've set up by allowing men who don't respect women as equals to participate in the workforce. It should be a requirement but I can tell you as the least of my woes I have worked for two men who do not believe women should speak, ever, and I have been severely punished in my career for challenging this. You cannot begin to imagine....
If you find yourself unhappy. Whatever you do do not go to HR. They are sick. They are mostly evil. They are the kind of woman who work at Microsoft and tell women behind closed doors it's ok to sit in a man's lap at work when he asks you to especially if he's your superior and after it gets leaked publicly they stand on stage pretend to be sorry and pretend to fix it (they never do). This is what HR is. I have been bullied by HR. I have sat across the desk from a woman in HR who made a fraction of what I did at the time decked out in designer bought by the man she was dating, my superior at work and ignored me. I cannot even begin to describe the level of ice cold HR is. They are the bitches incarnate of this world.
Your goal if you are a female in tech is to make sure HR forgets you exist after they hire you.
If you find yourself unhappy. Do not go to HR. Do not try to make things better at your expense if the other party isn't trying. Apply elsewhere agressively and gtfo.
Take yourself out to a nice bar. Buy yourself some drinks. Rest all weekend. Wake up on Monday and turn in your two weeks notice after negociating up a better salary elsewhere because if you are a women in tech and work hard and actually have skills there are many companies who also have shitty HR because it is the standard but atleast have cultures so much better the likliehood you need to go to HR is pretty nonexistent.
Never...never go to HR. They are not there for you. They are not your friend.
Cool. So basically you left your wife with an incredibly intense emotional burden alone to struggle with your daughter by herself.
I hear this story all too often. This is not an anecdote about work life balance, this is an anecdote about how men take it for granted that women will inherit and take care of all the chaos in life and men can take a relative vacation at the office.
Patriots historically refer to citizens who have taken to arms to defend their country.
When has he ever used this term before to refer to his supporters?
It's not a good time to begin to refer to your supporters in the context of using weapons to defend the country on the heels of the capitol building being stormed and four people dying during a final election recount.
The thing about manipulation is it always claims plausible deniability. We all know this.
"It's heavily taking advantage of the moment." Umm yes. Regardless of whether you are a republican or a democrat, storming capitol hill during an election recount diminishes the validity of either party and the country as a whole. This country is the center for innovation and generally the most sought after democracy in the world. The entire world is watching. Taking advantage of the moment is exactly what he is doing. If you read about coups in the past there was never an explicit sentence that drew the line between now I am and evil dictator and now I am not. It was building an army of radicalized supporters, patriots, if you will while government officials around the person in power dropped like flies as things escalated much like what is happening now. We do not need to repeat history to say we proved he did it because by that time it will be too late.
It is clear for months trump has been warned of how this kind of inflammatory behavior will impact the people at large and potentially radicalize either side and he has been nothing but inflammatory.
If he really cared about securing democracy at large as opposed to his own power in office he would be taking extra precautions at this point.
He is doing the opposite.
I get what you mean though. Unfortunately both sides have significant radicalized sides now. And looting storming buildings and murdering law enforcement and lighting fire to buildings has been normalized now by both sides in 2020.
My parents are trumpers in the deep south and these are the things they have said to me in the past couple of days:
Mark Zuckerberg is an abusive dictator not Trump.
My mother condescendingly whispered to me poor thing noone told me all the protestors were antifa who knew if they didn't storm the building and steal the ballots that trump would win. So they were all actually secret democrats.
They both believe trump is the rightful president for the next term.
To make a dig like this and then not even acknowledge it in the content is exactly what I would expect from a white American who has no concept of how certain trends impact anyone other than themselves.