If two executives talk across a table during lunch, is it required to record it? What if they sit across the table from each other and send text messages over Signal instead of talking... is that somehow different where it would be required to record the conversation for all to see?
I made this same argument last time the story was posted but I don't think it's really possible to answer. Even the best lawyer could only tell you something like "it's only technically legal if a judge says it is", and even then it does not automatically apply to all future instances.
Like it or not, law is all about subjective interpretation and "well ackshually" arguments.
>By the 1960s, the systematic selection for competence came into direct conflict with the political imperatives of the civil rights movement. During the period from 1961 to 1972, a series of Supreme Court rulings, executive orders, and laws—most critically, the Civil Rights Act of 1964—put meritocracy and the new political imperative of protected-group diversity on a collision course.
Lot of this kind of stuff. Thesis summarized is that America is going to hell in a handbasket because the Feds are demanding that black people get hired once in a blue moon, a practice which dilutes meritocracy, according to the author.
Heh.
>When this was not enough, MIT increased its gender diversity by simply offering jobs to previously rejected female candidates. While no university will admit to letting standards slip for the sake of diversity, no one has offered a serious argument why the new processes produce higher or even equivalent quality faculty as opposed to simply more diverse faculty.
Ah, MIT now pumping out dumb blondes, are they? Having encountered such people as the author of this piece several times before,I have to wonder about the "meritocracy" process in place prior. So "merit" correlates positively with sunscreen purchases, and inversely to tampon expenditure, does it?
>This effect was likely seen in a recent paper by McDonald, Keeves, and Westphal. The paper points out that white male senior leaders reduce their engagement following the appointment of a minority CEO. While it is possible that author Ijeoma Oluo is correct, and that white men have so much unconscious bias raging inside of them that the appointment of a diverse CEO sends them into a tailspin of resentment, there is another more plausible explanation. When boards choose diverse CEOs to make a political statement, high performers who see an organization shifting away from valuing honest performance respond by disengaging.
I mean... is there an actual difference here? First, I'm not convinced it's unconscious bias. Second, this "disengagement" certainly seems like the kind of "meritocracy" we have sadly grown quite familiar with.
>The problem is that complex systems have not made us more knowledgeable and capable, but instead they have become a crutch.
This article kind of sounds like some people want the old crutch back. There is a non trivial question of your fitness for this, however. In the 50's the rise of psychotherapy made it quite clear that people were cracking under the strain of delivering "merit."
I'm quite delighted that this is such a concern to you people. Excellent.
>>no one has offered a serious argument why the new processes produce higher or even equivalent quality faculty as opposed to simply more diverse faculty.
This is worth debunking more directly: hiring is not and has never been meritocratic, it's heavily affected by networking and cliques (something like 70% of job hires aren't publicly listed, they just ask around if anyone has recommendations). The entire point of diversity hiring is to hire from outside of the existing cliques.
I think that's pretty normal for companies to spend money in an attempt to protect themselves from government overreach. I have never used TikTok and probably never will, but I take exception with the attempt to ban them, because the whole thing doesn't pass the smell test.
>Why are us officials trying to ban TikTok? US officials warn TikTok's management is beholden to the Chinese government and fear Beijing could use the social media app to influence the 2024 US elections, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a House of Representatives intelligence committee hearing in March.
I guess we need to ban all search engines and social media too.
> “In the three years that we have been organizing against Project Nimbus, we have yet to hear from a single executive about our concerns,” the group wrote in a post on Medium.
While it would have been decent of Google to formulate a reply, in the end it's a business decision. This is not about workers rights such as pay, etc. If you don't like the direction of a company and they don't want to change (or don't care), join a company whose values align with your own.
Well the company is not a monolithic entity, it is after all a group of people. Is it unreasonable to expect them to change a particular policy, in this case supporting genocide , could be changed from within? After all it was decided to pursue by some execs, and it is jot that hard to withdrawfrom it. It is not the core business of Google. We are not talking about Googlers protesting about the Google Ads.
> Well the company is not a monolithic entity, it is after all a group of people.
A group of people...in a clearly defined structure. In Google's case that structure is a hierarchy. The issue passed through this structure and a decision was made. Now even hierarchical companies often have some mechanism to make appeals based on ethics, safety, etc. but either this wasn't done or their appeals were rejected.
> After all it was decided to pursue by some execs, and it is jot that hard to withdrawfrom it
Mr Pichai was probably at the very least aware of a billion dollar contract I would guess. If they wanted to withdraw from it, they would have done so.
> It is not the core business of Google.
I think Google would like very much to succeed in the cloud. A billion dollar cloud contract will certainly help with that.
SanDisk is still SanDisk and I don't consider them to be Western Digital. Their products have always been dodgy and I still have heartburn over some of their thumb drives where it was impossible to remove the shovel-ware installed on them. It will continue to be nothing other than Samsung products for me in the foreseeable future.
When I was researching what SD card to use for a camera product a few years ago, Samsung's high-endurance cards were by far the best bang for the buck endurance-wise. The choice ultimately came down to Samsung "PRO Endurance" / 820 TBW / $20, versus SanDisk "MAX ENDURANCE" / 719 TBW / $31. In short, the SanDisk cards were a lot more expensive for a worse product.
It looks like the price of the SanDisk cards have come down a bit since then, but are still more expensive for worse specs than the Samsung cards.
