tlobes

HN has seen this quote many times; tech workers willfully or naively ignore the harm their contributions cause as long as the life changing paychecks keep coming, letting them pretend that they are too far removed from the damage to be responsible.

Then comes the classic post “I’m leaving FAANG, so brave of me <quiet-part>funded entirely by the same extraction and harm I once insisted I didn’t see.</quiet-part>"

The politically and professionally diverse guests they are able to get, no doubt with the assistance of Joe himself, is absolutely incredible. You rarely see a show where you can have an extreme right wing radio host be a guest, only to have a slew of high profile left wing candidates on months later, with zero fucks given in making sure it's family-friendly.

If I had a similar performing laptop that could replace my desktop in terms of GPU performance and compatibility with the devices I use, my HEDT would start collecting dust.

While I agree that the vast majority (if not all) of private prisons, and those who participated in profiting from them, are ugly spots on the progress of modern humanity, I'm weary about an overall ban on the concept altogether.

Rather than creating rules against an evil business model or incentives to promote a beneficial one, this "unabashedly California" move cuts off any hope of someone with an ounce of morality to disrupt and ideally create a prison system that truly aims to reform inmates.

Similar story in the Weimar Republic from 1918-1933

Another issue that seems to be overlooked is the overly big force touchpad that, in combination with the awful keyboard, will not correctly reject my palms while I type, causing the cursor to move elsewhere, oftentimes causing unintended button clicks, premature email sends, page transitions, etc.

The popular dust complaints aside, a brand new machine has immediate problems for someone whose palms tend to touch the newly enlarged Force Touch trackpad during typing, a hand position I got used to with my Macbook Air 2013. Typing on the new design will cause repeated keystrokes, delayed or missing keystrokes, and instant cursor shifts during typing that make it so I need to approach the keyboard in the same way one would properly play a piano in order to get any meaningful work done. Great if you're a trained pianist, terrible if you want to get actual work done from a coffee shop where you don't have a stand or external keyboard on hand.

Apple knows they messed up with the butterfly mechanism and seem to be fixing that in the next design. In the meantime, there are a few things they could do now through software to alleviate these issues:

1. The ability to remap the Force Touch trackpad tracking area in Settings. Being able to remove 10mm from each side would fix my cursor shift issue. People currently use tape to solve this... on a $4000+ machine.

2. Ability to set a numeric value for Force Touch sensitivity as opposed to 3 constant values with a much higher threshold than is currently being used as "high".

I know Apple is all about limiting options for a customer's own good, however, these software changes would go a long way in helping people debrick an expensive laptop who don't happen to fit whatever hand size their QA team of classically trained pianists have.

This may not happen in the next few decades with the likes of Facebook, but imagine what kind of data that much smaller companies have that will just be sold off to the highest bidder, possibly de-anonymized to increase it's value. Does a user privacy contract hold any weight when a company is about to dissolve?

It was an exciting place to work, for all it's ups and downs. Besides the product itself, the office, albeit ungodly expensive given it's location and size, was the perfect place to be productive and push yourself well into the night. There were spots you could work collaboratively next to others as well as little nooks you could "hide" and get some comfy undisturbed privacy. The ambiance of the place worked beautifully to be both creative and technical, together or individually. In the grand scheme of things, I think it's an expense that easily justified the potential reward.

On the other hand, the social culture that Steve crafted, often reinforced by his example, didn't sit right with me personally, nor did it sit well with many others. "Toxic" was an unfortunate word thrown around quite a bit while I was there. I do hope he takes time off to honestly...subjectively... reflect back on how he chose to treat people he calculated could be useful to him in the moment as opposed to those who were not.

On the flip side, when child-like dreamer Steve came through, speaking about his passions and what inspires him to do what he does, he was, in those moments, a really enjoyable guy and motivational figure to work for. I'll be casting an unpopular opinion here, but I do think the guy has it in him to lead another company to success, as long as he takes a cold, hard, unbiased, and honest look at himself to fully understand why famo.us, not just the product, but more the culture he crafted, failed with him at the helm.

The most important takeaway from my stint there was working with the incredible team and crafting the friendships I did. The level of talent that many of the original engineers had and the amazing personalities behind said talent gives me no worries that those who were let go will move on to something far greater and hopefully, personally rewarding. I already know that quite a few have! :)

http://www.thefamousgroup.com - Dat logo, though.