The problem extends outside IT field, as you mentioned factory workers. I think the main problem is that there's no coordinated effort to control inevitable shifts. Workers unions tried protecting workers rights but capitalism clearly won and if there's no profit, you have no securities. IMHO pieces of advice in this article are very good: do not put all eggs in one basket. Don't be afraid to let go of outdated knowledge. And prepare for the change that is going to happen. I'll just add that this is as much a political issue since unemployment is and will be a huge problem, I can only hope our public sector will become productive instead of reactive.
Seriously? With all the security breaches they had this year, Instagram too, do they really expect people to trust them with cryptocurrency? I have no idea how they thought this is a good idea.
It's sad to read how the workers respond "they are talking to us like we are robots". Commodified labor is what they are, ever since the Fordist model of capitalism people have been gradually reduced to salary numbers and I for one am happy to see people standing for their rights. Or to remind they have rights, to begin with. Just I think there's not much left of the Left, a lot of people make it less about the economy and more about their hurt ego, at least that's what I think about postmodern leftists which I happen to know quite a lot.
There's a good, though not well-known author Espen J. Aarseth. he analyses non-ergodic literature within the scope of computer technology, and how the latter enables the creation of texts that are not linear. An easy example would be an old-school RPG game where you can replay the game and choose different paths, which builds up to a different narrative. There's no one story and you can't define an author, because the ending depends upon the user's choices, so the "reader" participates in the "writing" process. Here's his one article that can be found online
Sorry if that sounded promotional, but VPNs do in fact protect against MITM attacks. And the service I mentioned I found reliable so I felt like the information was relevant, but point taken for future notice :)
I find that very frustrating. When a person is looking for a job he or she is stressed out already, and when reading all those huge qualification criteria you sometimes really feel like a total loser, not knowing anything at all. It's really important to still try and send a CV and go to an interview with a positive attitude, willing to learn that is. But I'd really like to see some reasonable hiring criteria, so you can know for sure that you have what they're looking for.
I've been reading more and more about business data protection, it looks like the VPN market might expand from B2C to B2B too. Hope some of you might find this helpful.
Definitely, there are problems with online data gathering, security, and exploitation. Cambridge Analytica is just the tip of an iceberg, but a major example nevertheless. It revealed how the democratic process can be manipulated. By gathering big data one of the cornerstones of the modern state has been moved. GDPR is no solution IMHO, instead of securing private information it forces ISPs to store it, and if it is stored somewhere, there will be ways to access it for whatever reasons. I'm not surprised that VPN market is on the rise, VPNs like NordVPN, VPN unlimited, PIA, Zenmate, and many others offer encryption services, hide your IP (location security), some claim to keep absolutely no logs. You can never be 100% certain that all your online information will be inaccessible, but taking additional steps to secure it is better than putting blind trust in governmental agencies.
At some point, the purchasing power of consumers was important in order to produce more surplus value for the capitalists, but it looks like the tendency is not that strong these days. Apart from third world countries people, in fact, can buy a lot of stuff, but the shift to financial market from products widened the gap and functions like an "isolated" market. I think an interesting point is to compare this to the digital technology that allowed for the product to be virtualized, where the classical Marxist rules of exploitation don't apply directly. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their collaborative works emphasize this.
I have watched Zuckerberg's testimony on the Capitol Hill and the distance between him and the senators was significant. He looked kind of calm, but I think I sensed some intrinsic distance. Facebook, being as huge as it is, I think it might be hard for Zuckerberg to even think in terms of smaller-scale problems, not that Cambridge Analytica is a small scandal, but his capabilities of understanding the frustrations that leaked users might have had seemed pretty limited.
Is there any information what have they been contaminated with? I remember last year some green-anarchists in Greece threatened to contaminate coca-cola 1l bottles, they have been removed from production in several marketplaces.
The demographic crisis has a lot to do with economics, Europeans choosing to have (if have at all) children later in life. And we need to acknowledge the fact that Merkel did accept a lot of immigrants fleeing from war in middle-east, no thanks to western policies there. I really don't think that religion is the issue here.
But isn't it a problem of integration? Globalization did happen and open borders were celebrated both culturally and economically. I understand that people care about their neighborhood, but I think it has a lot to do about safety. If the immigrants do get lower waged jobs or don't get jobs at all, or if it's harder for them to get equal opportunities then, even if it's definitely wrong, crime becomes the solution. And that's what needs to be addressed.
Addressing the far-right/far left for the mobilization of unheard voices is kind of like treating the symptom. What we have here is a failing economy based on the enormous banking sector, debt and trickle down economics. Most of it is based on ideological premises, the belief that big profits will be reinvested to create more jobs, the idea of "responsible business", whatever that is. I mean, I can imagine small responsibilities that successful businesses take upon themselves, but can't imagine them solving global or national-scale scale problems.
Anyway, the public political discourse is usually addressing the symptoms, like far-right blaming the immigrants or far-left bringing back some welfare-state memories. Looks like ever since the iron curtain was lifted global economies have been rocked by constant crisis and the voters want an answer, so they choose either left or right or whoever is speaking "the truth". And of course it's hard to address economic problems, requires a well-educated know-how.
It's a bit terrifying how "alive" the crisis of 2008 still is. 10 years have passed and it doesn't look like the economy has recovered, not by a long shot. There are strong points in this article, I can't recall exactly, but I think it was the idea of Slavoj Zizek, that the strongest point of ideology is to define something as "non-ideological". Exactly how the crisis was communicated, like something natural, a hurricane or something. Not the ideological mechanisms that allowed for the bankers to take huge risks in their loans, for sure not Henry Paulson with his bank bailout. The link to the far-right seams scary too, thanks for sharing.