Hacker News Reader

Comment by superkuh | Hacker News Reader

You're absolutely right about the software and absolutely wrong about the profile photo. What aspect of it makes it not seem like Google is a serious company? Non-compliance to 1950-1980s appearance norms? Finally getting rid of the universal suit/tie/shaved/etc dress code was the best thing my generation has done.

View on HN

Google is currently within the last month suffering from an appearance of being juvenile; and I would not be surprised if it’s causing concern that something is wrong with their mindset.

The last example of this was the Marc Rebillet performance at Google I/O. The mother of all cringe.

If it was just one employee having fun - whatever! Who cares! My point should be taken in context with the rest of Google’s juvenile image problems, even as they play with fire.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wwk1QIDswcQ&pp=ygUVTWFyYyBSZWJ...

Edit: Also, for those still not following me on the profile image, it’s because it’s kink: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40791195

boomer moment

I cringe more about the terrible "serious" design decisions Goog and friends are shoving through the IETF like HTTP/3 based on their QUIC. Their new HTTP protocol basically is designed only for corporate use cases to the deteriment of "juvenile" human person use cases. Their actions are super serious even if their words and appearance are not. And it's a problem.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something but quic has been really great to work with and solved a lot of problems in places other than http for me personally

I'm not saying HTTP/3 is bad for the type of things people get paid to do. I'm saying it's bad for the type of things people chose to do without being paid. For example, it's impossible to connect to a website with HTTP/3 that does not have a CA TLS cert (and all HTTP/3 libs in major browsers are compiled with self-signing disabled). That means it's impossible to host a visitable website (by random people) without getting the continued permission from a third party corporation (there are no CAs included in browsers that are run by human persons, there are only corporate and government CAs).

This is extremely sensible for for-profit corporation and institutional practices. But it makes hosting a website from home far, far more complex, fragile and gives all websites a very short lifetime (just months) without continued active mantainence. Normal HTTP+HTTPS websites are visitable forever without doing anything. And that's ignoring the problems of CA centralization and censorship. Having to ask permission from a corporation to host a website is absurd. It is not required in HTTP/1.1 or HTTP/2.

HTTP+HTTPS is the most robust and accepted solution to CA TLS problems but HTTP/3 doesn't allow it.

That's got to be one of the worst presentations I've seen in the last year.

Who green lights garbage like that?

At least there weren’t any ducks, unlike last year:

https://youtu.be/-cl0AXv2J4Y?t=963

It's a performance, not a presentation.

It's serving as both a demo of their generative AI and is an entertainment pre-show. It's not meant to be a presentation or deeply informative.

Crowd clapping on the 1 and 3 is a nice confirmation that the crew has zero fucking rhythm.

I work in games, so this doesn't even phase me. I don't particularly care what people think of my maturity as long as the money keeps flowing in.

>"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

― C.S. Lewis

“An atheist can’t find God for the same reason a thief can’t find a policeman.” — C.S. Lewis

But seriously, Lewis was not a fan of immaturity. “Childish” endeavors is one thing like fairy tales - but do you think even children would like the Google IO performance?

Juvenility is not on the top ten list of problems with Google that are worth worrying about.

If this is my vendor that my business is relying on, and they approved nonsense like the above or like this, why the heck would I trust their judgement?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40791158

I wouldn’t trust the person who made the above to drive me to the gas station.

You're free to your values and decisions, but Google is the progenitor and linchpin of surveillance capitalism and comparatively I can't find it in me to be bothered that they put on silly shows.

There's a point to be made that these silly little shows are what let Google promote a self-image that they are some ineffectual, twee organization like a local art collective, and it's this mild image that let's Google manufacture spyware without more intense scrutiny. It's subterfuge, and two sides of the same coin.

> The last example of this was the Marc Rebillet performance at Google I/O. The mother of all cringe

You're complaining about the warmup entertainment at a tech conference???

In case you didn't know, HN stands for Hater News and as the old saying goes, "haters gonna hate"

They are wearing an eternity collar, which means they are in a BDSM relationship. Wearing something highly visible like that is basically performing your kink in public. There is much more discrete jewelry they could wear. I don’t think it’s appropriate for a work place even in 2024.

That looks like a regular necklace to me, of a fairly generic choker variety that is popular today and was popular 20 years ago.

I see nothing explicit in that necklace.

Maybe to you it does have some additional meanings, hell maybe it does to her as well, but so do wedding rings, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say you aren’t critiquing people for having profile pics with those.

Their jewellery appears discrete to me. What would continuous jewellery look like?

You may not think it's appropriate for a workplace, but their employer clearly does or they wouldn't be employed.

That photo is absolutely fine. You're telling on yourself more than anything else.

99% of the population wouldn't know what that jewelry is anyway, including some of those who wear it.

And wearing a collar is not performkng anything kinky.

If you know, you know, otherwise it's just jewelry.

And how is that any different than any other piece of jewelry? It in no way impedes or impacts your life, just like hair color or cut, earrings, other necklaces, even wedding rings.

Why does it matter that it has a significance beyond "it's pretty"? As long as it's not obviously discriminatory in nature (like a necklace full of swastikas), then why does it have to pass your "decency" tests?

> in a BDSM relationship

I guess people with this knowledge are probably part of that subculture, not sure why would they be pothered by that fact. For others, like me it looks like random necklet.

Ok, boomer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com