7 ms·

Robber barons would be proud. What's old is new again.

deepstack 6y ago
If only Robber barons know what tech Billionaire are doing now days, it's their wet dream come true. When are we going to stop idolising these people?
- itsoktocry 6y ago
  >When are we going to stop idolising these people? What's even better is most ethical and moral people know these companies do bad things, but in the best case are afraid to speak out because the companies wield so much career and economic influence. In the worst case, people are wilfully helping out for a pay cheque. There are some funny things going on in Silicon Valley. For years tech billionaires have been telling us how there's no place on earth for doing business like the Valley. Now they are packing up and moving to Texas because they never had any intention of sharing their ungodly wealth. This is not a "good" system. Here's hoping the Biden administration (with the help of advocates like AOC) come down hard, finally. But I'm skeptical.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
adventured 6y ago
Will people in the future consider big tech employees to be the equivalent of war criminals? Guilty of vast human rights abuses and well paid for it. It's an interesting question I had never considered until this thread. Societies often change in such ways over time; what's mildly questionable today is considered an egregious human rights violation decades later. If privacy is a human right, then what are the employees of big tech guilty of? Simple question, obvious answer. Will societies in the future hold human rights abuse trials, looking back on what was done during this era? The employees of Google and Facebook are as guilty as the management. Without the employees, none of it happens. And they have been paid like princes for the deeds that they've done. After the robber barons, what should society do with the employees at big tech that make it all possible and knowingly assist criminal enterprises? Nobody that works at big tech can pretend to not know what these companies do at this point. These people are all morally responsible. Should they be social pariahs? Should they be held responsible for the damage they've caused? They all know what the big paychecks are bribes meant to cover. Here's $400k per year, have some moral flexibility, intentionally harm your fellow humans, look the other way. Nobody pretends employees at Blackwater just happened to be working for an evil corporation. If you worked at Blackwater you knew what you were doing, what you were contributing to. You cashed your paycheck regardless. If you've worked for big tech in the past decade plus, you knew what you were doing and what you were assisting, you knew what you were being paid so well to do.
- throwaway3699 6y ago
  I write drivers for phones at Google. Am I evil? Is this worthy of social outcast? Criticise big tech, but please don't let perfectly rational arguments turn into rhetoric.
  - mbrumlow 6y ago
    Side note. Are there any good resources for learning this? I have done driver code in the past, a virtual block device that inteterfaced with the block layer. But I want to go deeper. And understand how the code meets the metal.
    - mondoshawan 6y ago
      Linux kernel source is a good start. Read up on just about everything in thr kernel docs on I2C, SPI, and regsets. Read datasheets, play around with dev boards. There's no manul for it, really -- its close to old school software engineering on old machines. You have to learn the raw memory layouts, interfaces and some level of electronics theory, and wrestle with datasheets in the start. Once you've figured out how a peripheral does its work, then you start looking at kernel drivers. For Android, drivers are a split thing: you have to write the kernel driver, then write a user space component called the HAL backend. There's a bit more documentation on that in thr AOSP tree, but not a whole lot. Basically, you have to learn by doing. Find a chip you want to use in Android, and give it a try on a PandaBoard or some other SBC that can run it.
      - mbrumlow 6y ago
        Thanks for taking the time to reply. Its good to know that there is no quick path to this and simply need to sit down and understand the code, and play around with real hardware.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    If the phone is going to have spyware (Android with the Google proprietary services), then maybe?

If only Robber barons know what tech Billionaire are doing now days, it's their wet dream come true. When are we going to stop idolising these people?

itsoktocry 6y ago
>When are we going to stop idolising these people? What's even better is most ethical and moral people know these companies do bad things, but in the best case are afraid to speak out because the companies wield so much career and economic influence. In the worst case, people are wilfully helping out for a pay cheque. There are some funny things going on in Silicon Valley. For years tech billionaires have been telling us how there's no place on earth for doing business like the Valley. Now they are packing up and moving to Texas because they never had any intention of sharing their ungodly wealth. This is not a "good" system. Here's hoping the Biden administration (with the help of advocates like AOC) come down hard, finally. But I'm skeptical.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

adventured 6y ago

Will people in the future consider big tech employees to be the equivalent of war criminals? Guilty of vast human rights abuses and well paid for it. It's an interesting question I had never considered until this thread. Societies often change in such ways over time; what's mildly questionable today is considered an egregious human rights violation decades later. If privacy is a human right, then what are the employees of big tech guilty of? Simple question, obvious answer. Will societies in the future hold human rights abuse trials, looking back on what was done during this era? The employees of Google and Facebook are as guilty as the management. Without the employees, none of it happens. And they have been paid like princes for the deeds that they've done. After the robber barons, what should society do with the employees at big tech that make it all possible and knowingly assist criminal enterprises? Nobody that works at big tech can pretend to not know what these companies do at this point. These people are all morally responsible. Should they be social pariahs? Should they be held responsible for the damage they've caused? They all know what the big paychecks are bribes meant to cover. Here's $400k per year, have some moral flexibility, intentionally harm your fellow humans, look the other way. Nobody pretends employees at Blackwater just happened to be working for an evil corporation. If you worked at Blackwater you knew what you were doing, what you were contributing to. You cashed your paycheck regardless. If you've worked for big tech in the past decade plus, you knew what you were doing and what you were assisting, you knew what you were being paid so well to do.

throwaway3699 6y ago
I write drivers for phones at Google. Am I evil? Is this worthy of social outcast? Criticise big tech, but please don't let perfectly rational arguments turn into rhetoric.
- mbrumlow 6y ago
  Side note. Are there any good resources for learning this? I have done driver code in the past, a virtual block device that inteterfaced with the block layer. But I want to go deeper. And understand how the code meets the metal.
  - mondoshawan 6y ago
    Linux kernel source is a good start. Read up on just about everything in thr kernel docs on I2C, SPI, and regsets. Read datasheets, play around with dev boards. There's no manul for it, really -- its close to old school software engineering on old machines. You have to learn the raw memory layouts, interfaces and some level of electronics theory, and wrestle with datasheets in the start. Once you've figured out how a peripheral does its work, then you start looking at kernel drivers. For Android, drivers are a split thing: you have to write the kernel driver, then write a user space component called the HAL backend. There's a bit more documentation on that in thr AOSP tree, but not a whole lot. Basically, you have to learn by doing. Find a chip you want to use in Android, and give it a try on a PandaBoard or some other SBC that can run it.
    - mbrumlow 6y ago
      Thanks for taking the time to reply. Its good to know that there is no quick path to this and simply need to sit down and understand the code, and play around with real hardware.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  If the phone is going to have spyware (Android with the Google proprietary services), then maybe?