autoexec (u/autoexec)

autoexec commented on Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/fleahunter

ori_b · a day ago

You're showing the company that shoving advertising and data gathering into products will help them make products that sell.

What you buy is what companies put out into the world.

autoexec · a day ago

Often what you buy is either all you can afford or all that that has been made available to you. There are plenty of companies, industries even, which refuse to give consumers what they'd prefer simply because it's more profitable for them not to. Too often consumers are left with choosing the best of terrible options or just making due with what they can can.

autoexec commented on Security issues with electronic invoices invoice.secvuln.info/... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

clickety_clack · 2 days ago

Have you ever actually dealt with invoices? I have hired many many contractors in construction and tech, and I’ve never thought it to be that bad. Definitely not enough of a mess to justify another rule for how I’m supposed to run a business.

autoexec · a day ago

Did you have to deal with invoices from companies across 27+ different countries? Did you automate any of it at all?

Scale is a much bigger deal than the complexity of any one invoice. When you're dealing with hundreds of thousands if not millions of invoices from all over the place it makes sense to have it standardized so that software can be developed to do most your work with those invoices automatically and consistently.

I've worked on automating high volume document processing from a much smaller number of companies (mainly just from those within the US), just one or two outliers can massively expand your codebase and when those companies are free to change their formats on a whim in whatever why suits them it can break everything in ways that can be immediately catastrophic or very subtle but no less disastrous.

autoexec commented on Rats Play DOOM ratsplaydoom.com/... · Posted by u/ano-ther

escapecharacter · 2 days ago

Is it ethical to turn rats into gamers?

autoexec · 2 days ago

We've been putting rats in skinner boxes for a lot longer than we've been subjecting human gamers to them. I'd be more worried about the health effects of all that sugar water.

autoexec commented on Security issues with electronic invoices invoice.secvuln.info/... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

clickety_clack · 2 days ago

I think there’s a difference between _wanting_ something to work and _needing_ something to work. Enforced standardized invoicing might be a very tidy and neat solution, but tidiness and neatness are not a good enough argument to mandate it in my opinion. There’s no end to the areas of our lives that could be regulated if that’s the standard we’re aiming for, and I don’t particularly want to live in such a uniform, straightjacketed environment.

autoexec · 2 days ago

Would you rather governments insist on everyone using the same format when invoices are passed around or would you rather have massive amounts of taxpayer money wasted on managing countless conflicting standards, any number of which may also include their own security issues. At a certain scale it just makes sense to say "Okay everyone, we have to pick one way to do this".

If tidiness and neatness are not a good enough argument to mandate this taxpayer savings, time efficiency, and better software should be.

Companies who insist on being precious about their favored invoice format can invest their own time and money on conversion tools that let them convert invoices they get into whatever format they like for their own internal records and convert them to meet the standard again when sending invoices out. That leaves them free to use what they want without making everyone else deal with their mess.

autoexec commented on Security issues with electronic invoices invoice.secvuln.info/... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

clickety_clack · 2 days ago

A standard for invoices seems like something that an accounting body should create that is optional for businesses, not something mandatory created by the government. People will generally follow an optional standard to make their own lives easier, but a mandatory one introduces a compliance middleman into the invoicing process.

autoexec · 2 days ago

> People will generally follow an optional standard to make their own lives easier

People invent their own standard to make their own lives easier at the cost of making everyone else's lives miserable which is exactly what the European Committee for Standardization was intended to prevent.

autoexec commented on Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union rockpapershotgun.com/id-s... · Posted by u/simjue

autoexec · 2 days ago

> There are lots of outcomes where having the wages the company can profitably offer are far better than having zero wages.

Like sweatshops for example. The idea that getting anything at all is far better than getting nothing is not new or compelling. It's exactly that kind of race to the bottom mentality where workers are expected to shut up and take whatever scraps their masters give them that causes labor movements to rise up and start demanding better.

autoexec commented on Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union rockpapershotgun.com/id-s... · Posted by u/simjue

jimbokun · 2 days ago

If the union has no power to influence Id Software, what's the point of the union?

autoexec · 2 days ago

Why would they be terrified of a handful of employees just for having the ability to influence the company? The point of a union is to improve working conditions and job security, not to murder your bosses and kill off the company. Funny thing about workers is that they like having jobs, especially ones where they have any influence at all. If a company is fearful that treating workers a little more fairly will sink them, the company deserves to go under.

autoexec commented on Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union rockpapershotgun.com/id-s... · Posted by u/simjue

pie_flavor · 2 days ago

You're trying to minimize the power of the union by quoting dollar amounts, when the whole point of the union is to have power, and the whole point of unionization is to defeat superior dollar amounts by capturing the organizational memory that money cannot buy.

You cannot replace your entire gamedev team at once without destroying what makes your company, your company. You cannot respond to your entire gamedev team refusing to work other than by replacing them or by getting them to stop striking, either by aggressively union-busting or by negotiating with the union. That is the reason unions work at all.

autoexec · 2 days ago

It's not just about dollar amounts, it's about security and consequences. If a developer finds out that he got laid off his life is completely upended. If the CEO of microsoft finds out that the subsidiary of a subsidiary goes under, his life doesn't change. One of those two people is in a position of power so much greater than the other that they have absolutely nothing to fear from having to treat a small number of twice removed employees a little more fairly.

The whole point of the union is to have any power at all and to try to improve their working conditions, not to overpower the giants who rule over them. No one joins a union because they want to put themselves out of a job.

autoexec commented on Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union rockpapershotgun.com/id-s... · Posted by u/simjue

seneca · 2 days ago

>Why is union-related collective ruin anathema, but elite-driven ruin is seen as an acceptable price to pay? Enron, the Great Recession, etc.

What are you talking about? Multiple people were convicted over the Enron scandal, including some serious prison terms.

autoexec · 2 days ago

The longest time an enron CEO spent behind bars was 12 years. Richard DeLisi was sentenced to 90 years for a nonviolent marijuana charge and spent over 30 behind bars before being pardoned. Kind of puts "serious" prison terms in perspective.

autoexec commented on Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union rockpapershotgun.com/id-s... · Posted by u/simjue

prewett · 2 days ago

That assumes that the union never unfairly exploits the company. I think historical evidence shows that unions sometimes do exploit the company (and that union leaders sometimes exploit the members). Humans exploiting other humans is a flaw of all of us, not just corporate management.

autoexec · 2 days ago

Yeah, I'm not sure Id Software, backed by their billion dollar parent company ZeniMax Media, who in turn is backed by their parent company Microsoft, has to live in fear of being exploited by the 165 employees who just signed onto a union.