I specialize in Linux DevOps and functional programming. With over 10 years of experience, I have deployed various stacks on every continent except Antartica. I have worked in regulated, high pressure, and multi-stakeholder environments, delivering projects for the Formula One and Formula E championships, the British National Health Service, and the City of Montréal. My SSHRC-funded graduate research focused on digital technology and its effects on surveillance, radicalization, and community building.
Once I bought a Casper mattress, king size, something like $800. Got in touch a few weeks later to return it, it was too big for me. They said here's your RMA, print it and send it back no question asked & you get a refund.
Well, the mattress comes rolled up in a box, but obviously cannot be put back in the box. It was impossible for the FedEx guy to fit it anywhere in his truck.
No problem they said, find a local charity and donate it, we'll issue a refund. In the end, I didn't even have to give them a proof of anything, and they sent back the money, no question asked.
I'm not one to worry about other's businesses, but at that moment I felt like I was part of a very big scam that I didn't fully understand. This was 3 years ago.
That's not a scam. They can't do anything with the used mattress anyways, so it's just as easy for you to dispose it for them.
Basically mattresses are highly inconvenient to ship back once opened so it's cheaper for them to just say keep it and have a likely happy customer than make them go through the hassle of getting it back to the company only to have it burned or donated anyways
Not buying into this sort of conspiracy theory myself, but since I'm reading some Cixin Liu I'll indulge in some creative thinking.
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This is pure fiction:
Seeing this as an offensive weapon, if it were indeed man-made, is a mistake imo.
Right now the market is cratering, China is pretty much in economic lock down (which would have been impossible to enact otherwise), while being self sustained. Population of elders (i.e. non-working population) are being purged. Aren't we in the middle of an economic war between USA and China? China and the world, even? Who is gaining from this situation right now? Or rather, who is suffering less, from a medium/long perspective? If it does get to the States, with no healthcare safety net in place, the country will go through a lot of pain, economic and other.
I think that by the end of whatever _that_ is, China comes out on top from a game theory perspective. It's a bit like the Schwabb vs Ameritrade commission cutting playbook: if we both suffer but you suffer more, I still win in the end.
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Again, pure fiction. I do not subscribe to any of those views. I am not that cynical! Just a fun writing exercise.
>I think that by the end of whatever _that_ is, China comes out on top from a game theory perspective.
The trade war has already been causing manufacturers to consider the wisdom of their supply chain strategies. China is currently an export driven economy trying to transition to a domestic consumption led economy but hasn't done so yet. Anything that leads manufacturers to put more of their capacity near their large markets in Europe and the US is very bad strategically for China right now.
This is a disaster for China if it causes a manufacturing shift out of China before they have made a consumer transition.
Interesting. Maybe it's a demographic blind spot? I do all of my UK banking on Transferwise, and so have heard of or researched Revolut, N26, Monzo... In fact, I think that both Monzo and Transferwise are UK based, and I've definitely seen their ads in the tubel, know people who work there, etc.
They also offered a solid metal card and lounge-access perks, so I suspect that their core demographic are young-ish "digital nomads". Maybe that's where most of their marketing went to?
Not on a personal note (and maybe there are details missing) but this comment makes me sad: it's like we've internalized the codes of capitalism to the point where we, as individuals, feel obligated to fulfill our marketplace commitments while we accept that corporations such as Amazon will not fulfill theirs. Did you invoice AMZ for your time? Will AMZ do you a "favor" as well? Personally, I see no moral obligation in my transactions with corporations, as they see no obligations towards me, my patronage or my data.
Again, not addressing this personally to you but just responding here.
In addition to that, the constant defending of corporations worth multiple billions of dollars by regular people ("consumers", to use said businesses parlance) always boggles my mind. These companies are not our friends.
Shouldn't they be our friends, since "we" are their workers as well as their customers? Doesn't it seem strange we become our own adversaries when we go to work?
I asked a rhetorical question which targets the issue of wasteful exploitation being the default where cooperation would have a lot of upsides.
In the best interest of a whole society, sometimes you have to cooperate to end wasteful competition (e.g. form utilities), and sometimes you have to compete to end wasteful cooperation (e.g. break up monopolies or cartels)
While I approve with the general direction of your comment, I think that characterizing Google merely as "a company" is disingenuous. Obviously it was not "just a job" for those who resigned.
There is nothing that I do at my job that could potentially disrupt the live of many; hence I don't feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility.
Now if I would be part of an enterprise whose name is said, typed or thought by billions every day, yeah maybe my sense of responsibility would be heighten and yes, maybe I would think it warrant a greater tribune or more sensational language.
Overall, that the essay was quite constructive, no?
When I saw that it required more than a 5m fix on my Lenovo I just accepted this as my new setup and committed to only using the trackpoint instead. Ironically, as a programmer the trackpoint has now become crucial to my setup (easier on the wrists/thumbs; faster), and made it a lot easier to go "all the way" with tiled windows managers. So the lack of decent trackpad support made me really consider other setups that now I realise work better for me. Obv, your mileage may vary
Programming wise I'm all onboard with window managers and spend most of my time in vim + tmux but reading articles and browsing documentation or pull requests I really like the trackpad. But maybe you're right and it's a matter of better exploring and accepting other workflows.
I have one with rutorrent that acts our house seedbox / file server. I also added droppy as a simple, user friendly file browser for my flatmates. Obviously, this all runs on docker-compose, because I'm a very weak man (but also, it makes managing the whole thing trivial once setup)
Big tobacco had "benefits to society" w/r/t the number of jobs it created, and the aggregated money that it re-invested in other businesses.
Rationalizing around individual experience buries the fact that the consumer well being is absolutely not necessary in a quarterly report: you individually gain something with FB or big tobacco; I individually loose something with FB or big tobacco. And vice-versa. In the end, the forces that matter are not tied to us as individual but to the company (or even, the industry) as a whole. Which is to say it is tied to performance, stake holders, legislation, and so on.
The only self-regulation that a company like FB (or Philip Morris) is willing to apply, is one that improve it's financial performance. Why would it do otherwise? Morality, good or bad, is a not a product of capitalism. The fact that you gain and I loose from these decisions is a happy accident, not an intentional result.
