To all the parents: read Careless People. Realize everyone, including the author, is flaming hot trash. And never let your kids near social media ever again.
The Myanmar story was definitely the worst (Mark Z + callow execs being willfully ignorant as Facebook clearly inflamed ethnic cleansing there and caused many deaths).
Later in the book, the China story was a close second. In order to get into China (to "grow") - exec team agreed to host Facebook's servers in China where the government could get access to customer private data, so they could stifle dissent.
Tons of other weird/bad/embarrassing stuff too. The author, a member of the core executive team, was seriously complicit but redeemed herself in my view with this no-holds-barred account of the complete lack of ethics up top.
In general a damning portrait of the executive team as just not giving a shit about anything except for growth and willing to actively participate in dictatorship in order to make it happen.
I want to point out a few things here because people are going to split hairs about definitions and other irrelevancies
I don't know exactly how they do this in non-english languages, but english speakers have complained that all the posts they see from friends are the most abrasive and inflammatory. Specifically those. So it's not just "a neutral platform". If this was happening in Myanmar then of course it inflamed ethnic tensions
Second, Facebook's barging into emerging markets - with Free Basics, they sent letters on behalf of Indians to the telecom regulatory body (including net neutrality advocates who were very much against it). Facebook in Myanmar would not even be a thing in the first place were it not for their larger internet.org initiative. (I don't dislike "social media". It's fine to connect with people, but not the way FB does it) Whether we ought to have these services wholly decentralized or some sort of KYC system - dunno. But FB (and specifically Zuckerberg) are just bad faith actors
But you're not addressing my fact it was artificial ranked ordering. Also, Facebook (per Sarah Wynn Williams) was told about this and they did nothing about it
> In order to get into China (to "grow") - exec team agreed to host Facebook's servers in China where the government could get access to customer private data, so they could stifle dissent.
That's exactly what Apple does with iCloud in China.
It wasn't just Chinese data, though. It was access to all customer data. They also built tools specifically for searching and filtering that data that they told congress were impossible to build...
My biggest takeaway from the book is Zuck is such a brat who got so grumpy and pouted so much when other facebook employees on the private jet beat him at board games that they set up an internal plan to always let him win.
Sheryl Sandberg comes off poorly too, calling her assistant "Little Doll," beckoning her to sleep in her lap during private jet trips and buying her lingerie on business trips. Then on another trip she tried to get a different employee to come cuddle and sleep in the jet bed with her and pouted when this person declined, saying the first assistant always would so why does this person have a problem with it. She also has racist comments, talking about how she likes to always hire Filipino nannies because they are "service oriented."
As a parent who doesn't let their kids on social media (and seems to be one of a handful of parent who use parental controls on phones), the FOMO is very real with the kids. They don't understand why I'm such a terrible person that won't let them have access to things their friends do. Friends will come over for sleepovers, and our kids will sit on YouTube for hours with their friends because we never let them on it and that's all their friends want to do.
I don't know how to educate other parents to encourage more controls. Most are too busy to care it seems, the kids are content with their brain rot etc. I hate that these companies turn me into a villain with my kids because they produce hyper addictive crap without any constraints.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. At parents' evening one teacher told me I was literally the only parent of that school year that uses parental controls.
Thankfully I don't have the FOMO part with my kids - they all seem to understand the reasoning and seem pretty fine with it - none of them have ever asked for TikTok for instance. We recently went to a family gathering though and I was genuinely shocked to see one toddler, barely able to speak, left alone with TikTok on a phone, just swiping away for hours.
I go to friends' houses and the kids are watching the dumbest, most egregious things imagined on Youtube, constantly. When I ask if they go outside to play, they claim it's too hot, too cold, or too dangerous. They are attracted to these overdramatic influencers doing Jackass style stunts. And I find the entire experience grating.
Have you read the book? It would likely give you some good talking/discussion points...such as "FB intentionally let genocide happen. Do you think we should support them with our time?"
There's a lot of indignant people who seem to expect or insist that meta should act according to their own incoherent set of ethical frameworks or half-baked "morality", imagining that their poorly conceived, narrowly defined and inconsistently applied morals are universal constants that must be operant for all. But somehow none of them has considered that fb is not a public good and they can just opt out. fb has always been a garbage heap for rubes, not sure why people need it to conform to their downmarket ethical delusions.
> When one would finish her exam, she would come back to the room and tell all the remaining students what questions she had and how she solved them. We never considered that "cheating" and, as a professor, I always design my exams hoping that the good one (who usually choose to pass the exam early) will help the remaining crowd.
You are an outlier. When I was in school any outside assistance was tantamount to cheating and, unlike an actual crime, it was on the student to prove they were not cheating. Just the suspicion was enough to get you put in front of an honor board.
It was also pervasive. I would say 40% of international students were cheaters. When some were caught they fell back on cultural norms as their defense. The university never balked because those students, or their institutions, paid tuition in cash.
International students in graduate programs at US institions are basically buying a degree from what I've seen. The professors know they cheat and they don't really care. The students are paying a lot of money and they will get what they paid for.
> The professors know they cheat and they don't really care.
To throw another anecdote in the bucket, I know at least one professor who does not tolerate cheating from any of his students, regardless of cultural or national background, or how they're paying for their education
I've seen, on multiple occasions, the professor's recommendations get overruled by the dean or university administration. If the school wants them there, they stay.
Andés Hess (RIP) gave an examination, 2006, in his Organic Chemistry course... which ended up with 35% of the class being reported to Vanderbilt's Honor Council.
He brilliantly tested students using open-ended, single-sentence questions (with half of the page blank to show your work)... which tested foundational topics and oozed with partial-credit opportunities. You then had an option to submit "test corrections" to explain why you should gain more points for your efforts (typically considered, when reasonable).
----
His first exam of the semester, there was a multi-step question which resulted in a single 1cm x 1cm box — worth 20% of the entire exam's scoring — for you to indicate whether that particular Grignard reaction resulted in a single-, double-, or triple- bond.
The majority of the class answered (incorrectly) that it would be a double-bond, by writing a `=` into the blank box. In fact, that reaction resulted in a triple-bond `≡`
35% of the class ended up just adding the third parallel line (i.e. changing what they had originally answered) when handing in their test corrections. Dr. Hess had made photocopies of all the penciled exams... and reported all the cheaters.
----
I answered it correctly, originally, so was never tempted to fib a similar mistake — but this definitely opened my eyes in reinforcement of not cheating. I eventually got into medical school, and most of that 35% of branded "cheaters" did not. Ultimately I never became a physician, but remember the temptations to cheat like everybody else did. I am happier/poorer because...
A truth of human behavior: most employees will steal if they think they can get away with it. Most students will cheat if they think they can get away with it.
Religion, the concept of sin as evil, codes of behavior, moral principles of right and wrong are the systems we developed to combat these tendencies.
Nobody wants to judge people's behavior anymore, for fear of hurting feelings or anxiety about confrontation.
>40% of international students were cheaters. When some were caught they fell back on cultural norms as their defense. The university never balked because those students, or their institutions, paid tuition in cash.
Twenty years ago, at Vanderbilt, this would have been an understatement — particularly among non-citizen asians.
I remember in organic chemistry an instructor attempted to re-give the same examination ("because ya'll did so terrible") and it was struck down by a dean as not allowable simply because the Honor Code was to be invoked that nobody/groups would share answers (yeah sure okay).
The minority following the Honor Code ended up getting into lesser graduate schools (e.g. myself) — because most courses didn't curve and VU didn't give out A+ as a grade. I have specifically not mentioned the specific country which cheated most-blatantly... but everybody from back then knew/knows.
I'm glad she got her flowers in the end. As a fellow Hokie who was in school around then I wish I knew of her and her accomplishments while I was a student. She was a distance learning PhD student so would have only been in Blacksburg occasionally.
The EU is moving in the opposite direction and trying to become more cohesive. The politicians and technocrats see the Euro as hamstrung with weak fiscal policies.
I finally had to give mine up. Needed to reset the password which required a trip to 4HELP office and I live halfway around the globe now. But the kiddo will be starting college soon so I can mooch off their edu email address.
Ah, I've been mooching off an old library card for years to rent books for my Kindle. Finally got an email saying "Just pop into your local branch to renew this year." Ah...
YES! I was a happy Kanopy movie viewer until last year I got a message that my library card no longer worked on Kanopy and I had to physically go in to the library to get a new one. Maybe someday....
You have to renew them? I've been using the same card since '03. I went in a 2 years ago to pay my fine for a book lost in the couch cushion for a few months. Librarian thought it was quaint that I still have my old tattered library card.
This was Chicago. I believe a lot of people had managed to get online cards without physically being in the city and they decided to call it in and get everyone to renew in person to see who was still legit.
Didn't take long for the US conspiracy theorists to get involved. It's not the 50s anymore. People have access to far more information and start and stop a revolution of their own. Given everything we've seen over the last 20 years the CIA hasn't even been very good at the fomenting revolution specialty.
Tesla Model 3 Standard is 280HP/210kW. And it's only really limited by the C of the battery pack. Under optimal conditions I've measured 310HP, according to the Canbus app.
EVs are incredibly powerful. Even the humble Nissan Leaf would blow the doors off an 00s performance car.
I have a Leaf. It makes me laugh when people with "muscle cars" try to race me. One time I humored one of them, and completely smoked them off the line. And my car was still in Eco mode.
We have a VW e-Up, with a very meagre 80hp electric motor - I can guarantee that off the lights that car is faster than pretty much any muscle or sports car, because it just instantly accelerates from standstil. I used to own an AMG few years ago, and to match what the e-Up can do I'd have to put it into Sports+ mode then enable launch control, then sit there with revs at 4000rpm just waiting for the light to change so the car would actually launch quickly. But off the standing start from idle? No chance.
The peak torque at 0rpm is a nice feature for city traffic low-key drag racing. I think if you really wanted to have a chance to troll an EV owner you'd have to incite them to race you on a highway with conditions that cause frequent speed changes in the 50-100mph range. But tbh even they you'd have a hard time. Maybe if you kept that up until they ran down the battery?
Never or arrested on a public road basically vs my daily driver is fun even when driving in the real world. It’s not loud is the last real complaint I see.
The new model Y AWD non-performance does 0-60 in 4.6 seconds! The performance version is ~3.3; Ioniq 5 AWD is 4.6 and the N is 2.9 (!!!). For comparison the latest Corvette does 0-60 in 2.9 and the Z06 in 2.6.
These cars are insanely, incredibly fast. My G70 (gasoline, ~370 HP) does the jaunt in 4.5. That used to be considered a fast car, now it's just average (though the warranty is almost over, and I'll be modifying it to ~450HP).
TBH, electric cars 100% broke auto enthusiast circles. When a highly modified, very fast car just gets stomped by an electric car hauling a family of 4 it smashed that world to pieces. Especially in the early days, when EV enthusiasts were mostly Tesla techbro fanboys - who didn't really mix well with the oil, grease, gasoline, and DIY culture that was there before.
These are very simple utilities. I expect AI to be able to build them easily. Maybe in a few years it will be able to write a complete photo editor or CAD application from first principles.
> the idea of the government telling people how to use private property doesn't sit well
Between zoning, easements, nuisance laws, government has a lot of say in how you use your private property. Owners even stepped it up a notch and invited HOAs, a quasi-government that has even more say about your property.
Unfortunately, people love telling their neighbors how they should live.
The Spanish financial crisis in 2009 was an overabundance of private debt. Developers used that debt to build lots of flats, too many in all the wrong places. Those developers then went out of business and construction has been moribund since then.
A lot of other European governments took on too much public debt and had to enforce austerity measures. This proved very unpopular.
Unlike the US, the Spanish government did not bail out private industry debt. And so 15 years later here we are. Not enough housing stock and not enough private builders to carryon building more.
reply