My last experience with AirBNB, it's customer support, and eventually an insurance claim, all went quite horrible. Made me realise how stark a difference there is on the spectrum of customer support by businesses. On one side we have companies like Amazon (with their customer obsession) that would go an extra mile to support their customers, and then on the opposite we have AirBnb like companies.
I would be switching to Booking.com for now and not going to use AirBnb anymore. But from what I am reading here, seems like they aren't that good with their customer care as well?
Will there be a time when in the modern world, no territory will be forcefully occupied? Or do homosapiens lack the mental maturity to reach that point in their evolution?
Given the circumstances -- OP being new to the company and the other person being "friend of manager" -- I would say it would be really difficult for OP to pull off a push back. The advice to put your head down and smile can work wonders when used at right occasion (which I feel like this is one).
Sounds like a sweeping statement. Not sure your example of aadhar is relevant. Everyone needs to have some form of ID so they can be represented in "a database".
My reply was in the context of the new mass surveillance equipment referred to in the article.
I don't understand where these sweeping statements are coming from. I grew up in a third-world country too, and transitioned myself from belonging to a lower middle class family, into an upper middle class life. I don't have an iota of acceptance for any form of surveillance being put in place without it being approved through proper channels of well put process in place (i.e. democracy, representatives of people debating and agreeing upon it)
Trust isn't everlasting, specially for a "person". I can put more of my trust in a "process" (e.g. democracy) and its continuous evolution towards betterment, than letting "someone else" make my decisions for me.
I am going through SICP currently, after having it on my reading list for long. Loving it so far. I agree that exercises in the book shouldn't be skipped, not a single one. You might seem to have grasped the material until you take up the exercises and realise there is more to it.
I don't know about others, but I am surrounded by quite a few 'idea enthusiasts'. People who believe that an idea is everything, and they get emotionally attached to each of their ideas. It makes it very difficult to critique any of their idea as they will make every effort to defend their idea no matter how weak their argument is. In such cases, I could either tell them 'Interesting idea, talk about it later', when I don't mean to talk about it ever again, but still not hurt the person. Or tell them the truth, that I think the idea is 'stupid' (may be following it up by why I think so if asked, though increasingly difficult with so many ideas floating around).
Even if we rule out the possibility of human race going extinct (which is quite improbable anyway?), isn't missing on a family life (wife and kids) quite a huge compromise in pursuit of some vague definition of 'productivity'?