CharlesColeman (u/CharlesColeman)

CharlesColeman commented on The McDonnell Douglas-Boeing merger led to the 737 Max crisis qz.com/1776080/how-the-mc... · Posted by u/lxm

vlovich123 · 6 years ago

Is this a genie that can be bottled back up? Lets say you enact these magical regulations. Will the corporations stick around or will they focus on other countries where they have more clout? Similarly, will they use international levers of pressure to "fix" the issues any one country poses?

CharlesColeman · 6 years ago

> Is this a genie that can be bottled back up? Lets say you enact these magical regulations. Will the corporations stick around or will they focus on other countries where they have more clout? Similarly, will they use international levers of pressure to "fix" the issues any one country poses?

If you try to bottle the genie back up, you'll have to work all those levers simultaneously or you'll have the problems you describe. The new set of regulations would also need to curtail the ability of corporations to move to avoid regulations and limit the kinds of political pressure they can apply, for instance. Otherwise it'll be like closing one barn door while leaving the other wide open.

We've gone so far down the road in one direction that we may have to turn around with a shock. It it's probably too late for some kinds of small, incrementalist course corrections to be effective.

CharlesColeman commented on The McDonnell Douglas-Boeing merger led to the 737 Max crisis qz.com/1776080/how-the-mc... · Posted by u/lxm

gnulinux · 6 years ago

I agree with this analysis, and find it overall reasonable, but it seems to need a little more evidence, e.g. do we have any data that shows companies who put "generic managers" on top on regular fail more than those who put engineers on top.

I'm disappointed that you're being downvoted, I wish someone who downvoted you wrote a reply.

CharlesColeman · 6 years ago

> I agree with this analysis, and find it overall reasonable, but it seems to need a little more evidence, e.g. do we have any data that shows companies who put "generic managers" on top on regular fail more than those who put engineers on top.

That could be hard data to gather systematically. It's not like businesses fail immediately when you put a "generic manager" in change. A company can coast for decades before problems become obvious, and generic management confusing things even further by focusing on manipulating the most visible metrics (e.g. stock price) while taking actions that damage long term prospects.

CharlesColeman commented on For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity startribune.com/for-tech-... · Posted by u/sbuccini

AnimalMuppet · 6 years ago

> The way the system actually works is that the wants/needs of the capital-holders take priority over the wants/needs of other stakeholders (e.g. customers and workers).

The capital-holders did not (in most cases) get a "you are now free to hose your customers" card. The cases where they are free to do so are cases where there is a lack of competition. So "modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs in the absence of competition". But if there is actual competition, and the wants of the capital-holders take priority over the wants of the customers, that's not going to work out well for the capital-holders.

CharlesColeman · 6 years ago

> So "modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs in the absence of competition".

But modern capitalism, at least in the American context, is a system being drained of competition. Competitors conspire to destroy it by merging and acquiring each other, and the deregulatory economic zeitgeist that's been in force for 40 years means the government has done little to foster it.

Markets tend towards equilibrium, and bitter competition is a kind of disequilibrium.

CharlesColeman commented on For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity startribune.com/for-tech-... · Posted by u/sbuccini

sneak · 6 years ago

If customers don’t want this stuff, why isn’t there a competing company offering non-DRM tractors?

CharlesColeman · 6 years ago

> If customers don’t want this stuff, why isn’t there a competing company offering non-DRM tractors?

Because modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs, despite propaganda to the contrary. The way the system actually works is that the wants/needs of the capital-holders take priority over the wants/needs of other stakeholders (e.g. customers and workers). The other stakeholders are often forced to accept minimally acceptable deals, as long as the capital-holders are able to maintain barriers to entry (like large investments in capital).

A new market entrant will likely be tempted (eventually, if not immediately) to implement DRM just like Deere has. And Deere can always drop DRM temporarily if it will let them fend off a competitive threat.

CharlesColeman commented on US Pressed Dutch Gov over ASML Sale reuters.com/article/us-as... · Posted by u/HaGoijer

cies · 6 years ago

Or create a new NATO that does not repeatedly exclude the Russians[1]. And could also hold a rule not to invade other countries (yes looking at you US).

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/fact-russia-pitch...

CharlesColeman · 6 years ago

> Or create a new NATO that does not repeatedly exclude the Russians[1].

It seems like accepting Soviet/Russian proposal would have had the effect of 1) limiting the criticism of Soviet human rights abuses and 2) weakening the ability of democratic western countries to resist aggression by the authoritarian Soviets.

I think it was the right call for NATO to reject this proposal. If it had been accepted, maybe we'd still have the Soviet Union around in 2020.

From your link:

> Molotov wrote. “The USSR joining the North Atlantic Pact simultaneously with the conclusion of a General European Agreement on Collective Security in Europe would also undermine plans for the creation of the European Defense Community and the remilitarization of West Germany.”

> But Molotov did foresee problems in the event the Soviet Union became a NATO member. NATO would likely insist on democratic institutions while the Soviet Union considered the Westphalian concept of sovereignty sacrosanct. “If the question of the USSR joining it became a practical proposition, it would be necessary to raise the issue of all participants in the agreement undertaking a commitment (in the form of a joint declaration, for example) on the inadmissibility of interference in the internal affairs of states and respect for the principles of state independence and sovereignty,” Molotov wrote.

CharlesColeman commented on US Pressed Dutch Gov over ASML Sale reuters.com/article/us-as... · Posted by u/HaGoijer

the-dude · 6 years ago

Why would we fight the Russians?

CharlesColeman · 6 years ago

> Why would we fight the Russians?

Ask the Ukrainians.

CharlesColeman commented on Dell updates popular XPS 13 laptop with 16:10 screen, IR camera arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/alphadevx

CharlesColeman · 6 years ago

That's awesome. 16:9 monitors only make sense for watching video, and are an abomination for pretty much any kind of work involving text.

I will be very happy when 4k 16:10 or 3:2 desktop monitors become widely available at an affordable price.

CharlesColeman commented on curl receives $10K USD donation daniel.haxx.se/blog/2020/... · Posted by u/danso

caseysoftware · 6 years ago

The LF hasn't been about tools and software for quite a while. It's disappointing. I wish they'd change the name at this point. At least it would be honest.

> 100% of donations received go towards funding diversity programs.

Ref: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/donate/

CharlesColeman · 6 years ago

> The LF hasn't been about tools and software for quite a while. It's disappointing. I wish they'd change the name at this point. At least it would be honest.

>> 100% of donations received go towards funding diversity programs.

Are there any organizations that use their donations to focus on supporting developers of actual open-source projects?

Diversity is great an all, but it makes more sense to focus on the people who are actually doing the work rather than the ones you hope might do the work.

CharlesColeman commented on Google veterans: The company has become ‘unrecognizable’ cnbc.com/2019/12/31/googl... · Posted by u/walterclifford

nostrademons · 6 years ago

It's interesting. Many large companies routinely fire the bottom 10% of their employees every year. I wonder if they would perform better if they routinely fired the top 10% of their employees (by org chart, not by performance ratings) and let talented new blood bubble upward. The Peter Principle says that people rise to the level of their incompetence, and in general new employees enter at the bottom of the organization, so logically you would have more incompetent people at the top than at the bottom.

There're a bunch of organizational anti-patterns that could be avoided with this scheme, too. Empire building would be disincentivized because it'd always become someone else's empire after a short period of time, and organizational politics is reduced as the players keep leaving, and you'd have to think in terms of building institutional knowledge from the beginning of your tenure unless you want everything you've accomplished to be undone by the next guy.

CharlesColeman · 6 years ago

> I wonder if they would perform better if they routinely fired the top 10% of their employees (by org chart, not by performance ratings) and let talented new blood bubble upward.

IIRC, the US military follows something like that practice. It's called "up or out":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_or_out#Military:

> ...the 1980 Defense Officer Personnel Management Act mandates that officers passed over twice for promotion are required to be discharged from the military.

IIRC, the idea is to prevent people who lack greater potential from hogging the intermediate positions that others need to advance.

CharlesColeman commented on Is China Beating America to AI Supremacy? nationalinterest.org/feat... · Posted by u/notlukesky

TheFiend7 · 6 years ago

I'm unsure of if the American government is just extremely discreet in their development of cyber warfare technology or America just isn't investing in technology as much as other countries. But it seems like even Russia is beating us...

Just look at our voting count machines. You think something like that would be treated with extreme priority and would have a lot more security around it than it does.

CharlesColeman · 6 years ago

> Just look at our voting count machines. You think something like that would be treated with extreme priority and would have a lot more security around it than it does.

If the priority was to build a good system. However, powerful government factions think that all government development must be farmed wholesale to private business, because of a twisted ideological belief in the market. Those private businesses are ruled by the ideology that shareholder value is the ultimate and only good, so they slap their products together as cheaply as possible.

The result of that toxic stew is that we can't have nice things.