Anyone have suggestions for what's worth watching on this?
I've only watched Severance on a free month offered by a tie-in a year or so ago.
Pachinko
Readit Newslandedgentry commented on Apple TV+ free first weekend of 2025 apple.com/tv-pr/news/2024... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
landedgentry commented on The tech utopia fantasy is over blog.avas.space/tech-utop... · Posted by u/mooreds
I don’t fully disagree with what you say. I think social media also has some positives. The amount of transparency over government and exchange of knowledge and ability to learn is greater now than ever before. Hopefully we will swing back to a balanced lifestyle where phones and social media are just tools that people use in a limited way instead of being addicted to it.
My bigger fear of tech is how it’ll marginalize people economically and centralize power. We see it already with companies like Amazon. But the coming wave of automation over everything - manufacturing, entertainment, etc - may be far more damaging than even social media. Unfortunately right now it seems our political and economic systems are completely inadequate in preparing for this.
> The amount of transparency over government
Can you describe how transparency over government has increased (by social media)?
landedgentry commented on Americans see their savings vanish in Synapse fintech crisis cnbc.com/2024/11/22/synap... · Posted by u/hunter2_
It's worth noting that cash held in a Fidelity brokerage account is handled the same way, by being "swept" into a bank account held by Fidelity at an actual bank so Fidelity can claim it's FDIC insured. I guess if Fidelity folds there would be bigger problems than where the cash balance is, though...
Correct, Fidelity has a list of 25 Program Banks[1] of varying quality, so I prefer sweeps into a money market fund instead of a bank.
I also use Schwab _Bank_'s checking account instead of Fidelity's Cash Management Account for similar reasons. The latter's debit card is issued by PNC Bank and administered by BNY Mellon[2]. They are large institutions, but I have no wish to deal with the finger-pointing when something goes wrong. Whereas at Schwab, I know who to blame: Schwab.
This type of specialization or "deintegration" seen with neobanks in the name of innovation seems to be a common pattern used to skirt accountability, and it is weaponized against the average consumer's already inadequate rights and ability to recover damages.
[1] https://accountopening.fidelity.com/ftgw/aong/aongapp/fdicBa... [2] https://www.fidelity.com/cash-management/help-center/debit-c...
landedgentry commented on Unfortunate things about performance reviews (2021) rachelbythebay.com/w/2021... · Posted by u/zargon
With all due respect, outside of staff+ levels, if your reports are off in the weeds being productive building the wrong things, isn't that more of a management problem? Even very persuasive reports should require sign-off on how they spend large chunks of time. It's a hallmark of good management to push back and regularly ensure goals are aligned. Empowering employees is important, but that should be for the 'how', not the 'what'.
Your visibility is above theirs. You are regularly in meetings they are not. There is a distinct information asymmetry. It's your responsibility to convey what is important. Same with your manager to you, your skip to them, and all the way up the chain. No matter what the company's overarching goals are, at the IC level they may only have enough visibility to understand how valuable the business segment/team they're on is and read between the lines and move to another team.
Yes, really good employees can learn and bubble things up from cross-functional work or skip meetings to cover their supervisor's blindspots, but that's not a good look and could be potentially harmful, ie. could damage relationships if not handled carefully.
Being resource constrained is not an excuse. Hire or slow down. Business can't support it? Well, it's not a great business. Inmates running the asylum and all that jazz. Scapegoating reports for operational failings is toxic.
Agreed.
> I have given poor reviews to people who invested lots of time and energy in projects and probably even did good work on them, because they were _completely_ off strategy and completed before anyone who knew better could tell them they were a waste of time and energy.
Alignment is really hard to do when management claims they're there to "support" engineers and their decisions, and not dictate from above. I see this as a great CYA move, couched in empowering language.
It is even harder when they visibly reward shiny new features while trumpeting a pivot to reliable infrastructure, only to change their mind and behavior on a whim. Mixed signals.
It's as if you need insurance for the insurance.
Does anyone know if this service exists? E.g. if they deny, you don't even talk to them, you forward it straight to your insurance insurance and their lawyer instantly threatens to sue them?
Some employers will have healthcare concierges that help with resolving such issues. An example is HealthAdvocate[1] (no relation). I believe some of these services will take a cut (e.g. 25%) of the money they save for you.
I cannot speak to how effective these services are. My general experience with "proxy" services have not been great, due to inadequate care or training.
[1] https://www.healthadvocate.com/site/product-index/engagement...
landedgentry commented on Don't squander public trust on bullshit livboeree.substack.com/p/... · Posted by u/NavinF
These alert systems could definitely be abused.
In January 2024, the Taiwan government issued an erroneous "presidential alert" to the entire country of 23 million people, warning of a "missile" from China. Occurring just days before a presidential election, some allege that sending the alert was politically motivated.
Reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/09/world/asia/taiwan-alert-c...
landedgentry commented on Bento: Jupyter Notebooks at Meta engineering.fb.com/2024/0... · Posted by u/Maro
Yeah 100%. I found it immensely frustrating to be using tools with no community (except internally), so-so documentation, and features that were clearly broken in a way that would be unacceptable for a regular consumer product. If you have a question or error not covered by an internal search or documentation, good luck, you'll need it. Literally part of the reason I left the company.
Well, you're supposed to read the code and figure it out. And if you can't, you're not good enough an engineer. According to people at Meta.
I mail products every day through USPS just like a million other businesses. We resend about 1/25 packages every single day due to it being indefinitely delayed beyond some reasonable time line. We just eat the loss and move on, USPS is absolute disaster right now. I didn't even think about voting mail in ballots. That is going to be a major problem if the vote is close.
I have had enough problems with USPS, both sending and receiving, that I no longer rely on them, and I'm just an average person who doesn't use USPS much. Whether it's first-class, certified mail, or priority mail with tracking–they all get lost at higher than acceptable rates. (Maybe domestic registered mail is the last reliable option.)
When a mail piece gets stuck or lost, there's no way to get help. USPS staff is generally unhelpful. It's a disaster.
landedgentry commented on VCs don't care if you're nice, they want founders who take risks businessinsider.com/start... · Posted by u/robg
In my experience with many VCs, they are pretty risk averse people (if they were risk taking, they'd be either in hedge funds or starting companies themselves).
So the best way to raise VC funding is to leverage FOMO or sell traction.
Agree. Bandwagon behavior seems to indicate aversion to (perceived) risk.
I get that they want to charge people who ride the trains for... fun?... and then get off at the same station, but it felt really silly.