santacluster (u/santacluster)

santacluster commented on Facebook begins censoring images of prophet Muhammad washingtonpost.com/news/t... · Posted by u/xkarga00

DanBC · 11 years ago

> Here's a question: what are the conditions under which Facebook will censor the content in the US/European market?

Breast-feeding mothers in Europe and US have had their images removed.

EDIT: Not sure if that still happens, but it's easy enough to find articles on WWW about it.

santacluster · 11 years ago

Articles like this appear pretty much every month. Anything from gay activists to artists to mainstream political parties have been subjected to Facebook's puritan censorship.

It's become a bit of a running joke.

santacluster commented on Facebook begins censoring images of prophet Muhammad washingtonpost.com/news/t... · Posted by u/xkarga00

quaunaut · 11 years ago

I still find the supposition that Facebook was supposed to defy a court order hilarious. Yes, I understand it's a court order from Turkey, not America, but you can't just flagrantly break the law in other countries simply because yours believes differently.

Or put another way: As much as Americans like to act like it, we can't enforce our ideals around the world without significant investment that I don't think anyone wants us making after the last couple of times.

santacluster · 11 years ago

I find this argument hilarious, especially in this context.

> you can't just flagrantly break the law in other countries simply because yours believes differently

Facebook, and many American tech companies like it, have no problem breaking the law in other countries when it suits their bottom line. Primary battlefield: privacy rights.

> As much as Americans like to act like it, we can't enforce our ideals around the world

Facebook, and many American tech companies like it, enforce their puritan values around the world by fanatically censoring all kinds of harmless content (mostly, "boobies") on their services.

These companies are clearly willing and able to make both commercial and ideological choices with complete disregard for local laws and values.

santacluster commented on The Way We Hire Is All Wrong medium.com/backchannel/th... · Posted by u/mhr_online

whiddershins · 11 years ago

What a bizarre and compelling story. Glad to have read it.

Meanwhile I think the hiring problem/solution is staring us right in the face.

What would the world be like if contract/freelance/part time/short term work were the default?

Isn't it perhaps weird that there is an assumption companies and employees should bind their fates together, and, if it doesn't work out, one or both parties is pretty screwed because of an investment of time and money which will likely result in a person being unemployed and/or a company paying a person far beyond when they are providing value.

This is like getting married after one date. Every time.

If employees were assumed to be exploring many things simultaneously, both sides would have plenty of chances to gather meaningful data about the employer/employee relationship, and if it is really a great fit, a long term employment arrangement could be worked out, with a contract that reflects mutual responsibilities revolving around this shift to an all-eggs-in-one-basket situation for the employee - and likely a corresponding move to much more critical functions being performed for the company.

I cynically suspect the current concept of full-time work evolved to suit employers, it allows them to manipulate and scare employees, especially when (for example) health insurance is at stake. Employers naturally have more data about salaries and so forth, in general most employers have many employees, while most employees only have one employer. That is inherently asymmetrical. Now that certain skill sets are harder to hire for, it is hurting everyone.

But the situation was never that great from the beginning, let's figure out a way to make it better for everyone.

santacluster · 11 years ago

> What would the world be like if contract/freelance/part time/short term work were the default?

It appears to be what we are moving towards, and so far it ain't looking pretty. Sure, "our kind of people" profit from it, but mostly workers are being ruthlessly exploited on a massive scale without the protection offered to employees in most civilized countries outside the US.

santacluster commented on Everyone’s stealing jokes online. Why doesn’t anyone care? washingtonpost.com/postev... · Posted by u/zbravo

santacluster · 11 years ago

Repeating jokes without attribution has been the cultural norm for centuries. The whole notion of plagiarism and copyright and such are the recent inventions.

Thank good nobody cares, that just means that the intellectual property mafia hasn't indoctrinated us so much yet as to destroy any notion of a common culture.

santacluster commented on Google Directly Embedding Stack Overflow Responses in SERPs ma.ttias.be/google-direct... · Posted by u/Mojah

SwellJoe · 11 years ago

Stack Overflow utterly destroyed the other answer sites for just this reason: they make choices based on what is best for the user, not Stack Overflow. Check the traffic of Expert Sexchange, or Quora, vs. the entire SO network. If all you care about is short term gains, you lose to the company that wants to build a trusted brand.

At least that's the way I think it should work out, and in this case I think it has. There is such a clear delineation between good and evil in this market, and such a clear leadership position held by the "good", that it's interesting that folks are wringing their hands worrying about whether SO gets enough impressions out of this. They don't need/want merely impressions. They want your trust and your participation. I know where I go when I have a question...how about you?

santacluster · 11 years ago

Extremely ironic that you post this in response to Google search results, which have become a prime example of choosing what's best for Google over what's best for the user after first decimating the opposition.

And so far still pays off nicely for Google, even though the results are getting shittier and more biased year after year.

The only lesson here seems to be "destroy your opposition first, before you start focusing on ruthless exploitation". Let's just hold off on drawing conclusions about SO until another decade.

santacluster commented on Startup Lesson Learned: Technology Doesn’t Matter thomasbandt.com/startup-l... · Posted by u/asp_net

santacluster · 11 years ago

People who've made bad technological choices and then claiming "technology doesn't matter" just because they fucked up are about as annoying as people who always want to use the latest new shiny toys.

You just made the wrong choices at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. Period.

That doesn't say fuck all about the next guy who may have perfectly good reasons to either choose the next new bleeding edge shiny or go with tried and proven old tech.

The final sentence is the worst advice possible. Never, ever stop experimenting. Just properly separate experimenting from building.

And please stop lecturing other people because you can't keep that shit apart.

santacluster commented on All the Technology but None of the Love jacquesmattheij.com/all-o... · Posted by u/jacquesm

santacluster · 11 years ago

Especially in recent years I've encountered a growing number of entrepreneurs who proudly called their companies tech start-ups, but who had no affection for technology whatsoever.

But worse, they actively seemed to dislike the kind of people that do love tech, i.e. nerds, hackers, engineers and such. These were young kids, the stereotypical "cool" start-up founders, but the way they talked about engineers and engineering made you think you were talking to 50 year old pointy haired bosses with not an ounce of respect for technology.

And they keep saying completely the opposite, they keep saying "we love tech", and they actually seem to mean it. Except everything else they do or say indicates the opposite. They just like to use tech, but are completely uninterested in the process of developing tech.

These people aren't just greedy cunts who are in it for the money. These are people who have grown up in a world where consuming technology has become so normal and easy that they simply don't get that creating technology is a totally different process.

And I'm not yet sure whether these people should be avoided or educated.

santacluster commented on Facebook Said to Block Pages Critical of Muhammad to Avoid Shutdown in Turkey nytimes.com/2015/01/27/wo... · Posted by u/panarky

prawn · 11 years ago

In the post you linked, he specifically says:

"We follow the laws in each country, but we never let one country or group of people dictate what people can share across the world."

And in the submitted link:

"The company acted to comply with an order from a Turkish court..."

They're blocking access to the material from users in Turkey.

santacluster · 11 years ago

> we never let one country or group of people dictate what people can share across the world

That's even more hypocritical, given that Facebook itself enforces its own prudish values on the rest of the world by systematically censoring harmless and completely legal content because "omg, boobies!".

Zuckerberg saying "Je suis Charlie" makes me want to throw up. If there is one other force besides reactionary muslims that has a chilling effect on the freedom of expression and liberal values in progressive Western countries, it's the dominance of reactionary American tech companies like Facebook.

santacluster commented on I Was Arrested for Learning a Foreign Language. Today, I Have Some Closure aclu.org/blog/free-speech... · Posted by u/tellarin

zaroth · 11 years ago

Well, at least I think it's relevant to understand the full context of what happened. Remember, TSA's job is to spot outliers, oddities, and flag them for review. I have zero love for TSA, but I think they did their job here.

There were 80 cards total. At least 10 were bizarre words that would get you arrested if you handed to a bank teller.

Guilty of not censoring? No you missed my point entirely. I am suggesting that handing these cards directly to a TSA agent will get you red flagged. Does that really surprise you? Basically Nick did everything possible to be the absolutely weirdest guy TSA saw that month. If they don't flag this, what do they flag?

Even the alleged line of questioning by the TSA officer isn't even necessarily that bad depending on how you imagine it;

  Agent: "You know who did 9/11?"
  Nick:  "Osama bin Laden."
  Agent: "Do you know what language he spoke?"
  Nick:  "Arabic."
  [Agent: rifling through flash cards saying "Bomb", "Terrorist", "To Kidnap",
          incredulous look on her face... Shrugs looking a Nick]
  Agent: "Do you see why these cards are suspicious?!"

Note the last sentence in the court documents does not start with "So". Anyway, no one in the entire case was arguing that TSA did anything wrong, just the police detention that followed.

Edit: Look, it's a really great headline, and just reading the ACLU post initially got my blood boiling. Then I read the first few pages of court documents and my opinion moderated quite a bit. So I thought the discussion would benefit from a more complete airing of the facts. Sorry if it doesn't fit the narrative!

santacluster · 11 years ago

> Remember, TSA's job is to spot outliers, oddities, and flag them for review.

I seriously hope that is a carelessly worded interpretation on your part.

Because that is one scary concept.

santacluster commented on Holy Shit, I Interviewed the President medium.com/@hankgreen/hol... · Posted by u/fizl

santacluster · 11 years ago

The reason why they don't care about whatever you think about the state of journalism is because it allows them to play you directly like a cheap fiddle, without the risk of any pesky journalists getting in the way.

QED.

The state of journalism may suck, but this airheaded attitude suggests it's merely trying to follow it's intended audience and failing.

People this shallow are not going to be reached with quality journalism, so please stop blaming others for your own shallowness and disinterest.

The "political process" isn't the media or the current crop of political parties, it's you. You switch off, it's 100% your problem.

Don't blame others for your own contribution to turning it into shallow entertainment.