thirduncle

That's what life in a Big Corp is quite often like, actually.

No, it wasn't "the mountain" that brought out the worst in these people. It was quite simply the obsessive pursuit of money, acclaim, and ideology.

My understanding is that (other than the brand and parent ownership) as services they're quite different.

An incredibly callous attitude to take at what must have been a truly profound sense of anguish and despair experienced by a person known to others as their "beloved father, husband, brother, friend." (Yes, I know you're saying that mostly about the medallion system. But to the extent that that's all that comes to mind when you hear about what happened -- yes, you pretty much are saying that the driver who took his life in this case, as well).

But I'll confess at this point to be at a loss to understand this "smartphone addiction" thing people keep talking about.

Being as I've tried using them, and never understood their appeal in the first place.

Do they now?

We'll see about that. I'd say legal bans are worth a try at least.

Privacy is dead, and nobody can save it.

If you keep repeating that to yourself as you go to sleep each night - by gosh, eventually it will become true.

That's the whole point -- in order to find evidence that it isn't working, you have to start looking at the false negatives --

or that is to say, where the "light is not".

Don't use them in the first place.

But do they... agree with that "mission" -- or more specifically, what has become of it in 2018?

That's the question you should be asking them.

Let's just assume that it is.

But you'd have to agree also that's hard to have much sympathy for Turkey as the victimized party in the region. Or to repurpose a quote from Apocalypse Now:

"What do you call it when the bully accuses the bully?"

But this language that sees Turkey as the one being "massively screwed over" in the region - that I think we dispense with.

Turnabout is fair play, you know.

Unless one wishes to pretend that certain events in 1974 have no role to play in the equation.

In theory, I guess.

But -- getting back to the original subject -- for some reason during interviews the odds that you'll get an inadequately stocked and clean whiteboard seems to be almost laughably high.

Consistent with the observation that in many places, the seem to almost make a point of the importance of positive candidate experience in so many other ways (from poorly prepared interviewers to inappropriate / irrelevant questions to stalling and ghosting, and on and on).

At first, yes. But when one has had enough experience looking for scarce commodities (of whatever kind: genuinely attractive apartments, interesting music / restaurants, romantic partners, etc) one learns that the "where the light is" search technique only gets you so far.

Or without actually needing to problems that even remotely resemble the kinds of problems that Google (sometimes) solves.

What's not to hate?

* unless both the board and markers are of very high quality, the boards tend to stain over time

* as do your fingers

* and the markers dry up, and the erasers get less useful as well (if they're available at all)

* you have to erase other people's crap (or wonder / ask if it's worth saving) first

* the dizziness that results having to turn back and forth between the board and your audience (that is if you don't end up simply talking into the whiteboard most of the time)

* and from stooping to pick up the pens / erasers / pen caps all the time

* and all of this, mixed with all those indelible memories of crappy interview experiences

I'll take pen and paper any day

which are a cross-industry cross-profession standard

Along with horrible interview experiences unfortunately.

Hey if they work for you, that's great.

But the simple fact is that they don't fit everyone's brain. And that there are other tools available to accomplish precisely the same ends -- some of which have many advantages over whiteboards, in fact. Like these things known as "pen" and "paper", for example.

So this idea that they're part of "every engineer's" day-to-day work is, quite simply, disconnected from reality.

I do agree with you, however, that the problem lies not in the whiteboards themselves but in the way they've used. Which has truly been an epic fail.

Either way, I certainly don't trust a rightwing think tank like the Koch and Scaife family-funded Reason Foundation to produce anything like credible research on the topic. Or even to provide an intellectually honest interpretation of an external academic paper (as the article in question purports to do).

Granted there are few places in the world that are exactly the same as they were 20 or 30 years ago. But then again, certain places -- like San Francisco New York, London, and many, many other cities -- have arguably "tipped" to an extent such that, while the postcard views are pretty much the same -- the overall vibe and intensity is but a glimmer of what it once was.

And sadly, Berlin seems to be one of those places.

Historically speaking, the "if I didn't build X - someone else would have" argument -- well, we all know what that has led to.

That's the thing, as the other commenter pointed out: for all practical purpose, there was no "debate" or "conversation" (outside the tech community, and a few wonky policy discussion forums). It has been basically presented as a fait accompli.

The "powers that be" chose public safety over personal privacy.

That may be the rational for (some of) the customers.

But I'm sure you know all too well that the vendors of this technology are (overwhelmingly) motivated by the pursuit of one thing, and one thing only. And it certainly isn't your safety or mine.