It is a mental health issue, it is treatable, and it is preventable.
There is a lot of literature on the topic, and awareness is an important aspect to treating this mental health issue. I never got the sense people are shaming the person, or there is a lack of respect. Additionally, where "thoughts and prayers" will hardly provide any actual good (YMMV), a suicide hotline might be the saving element for someone who may also be suffering.
In Canada, the duty of care, or fiduciary responsibility of the directors is to the corporation. This can be shareholders, environment, employees, and anything else that makes up the corp. This is a fairly recent ruling and is vague but I think begins to recognize the complexity of the balancing act a director must take into consideration when making a decision.
I think it’s easy to throw headlines around “Facebook does not care about you…” and maybe this is true, but I would argue that they do care, and they care a lot, as you are there primary source of income and if they loose you, they will cease to be an operating company. They definitely push the boundaries, and I hope society and FB course correct soon as sometimes it’s hard to put their experiments in the search of new revenue back in the their box.
SpaceX is a private venture, with the vast majority of shares being held by one person, who is also the CEO. I would argue SpaceX mission is what ever Elon says it is, as he is the primary shareholder. All that to say, IMO Elon thinks on a different timescale than most, and also with varying priorities over that time horizon, and I would not bet he would do all of this without the eventual long term payoff being part of his plan, even if it is decades away from when he started. Elons formula , build profitable company, take profit from company, repeat
"It's a nice thought experiment, but in my mind I think the world would be a better place without excel. "
I agree with most everything you said, however, proliferation of programming and automation is a net win in my books, no matter the medium, and good spreadsheet software does this incredibly well. It makes programming in its very basic form accessible to a wide amount of users with a relative gradual and easy to grasp learning curve. Sure you can always improve on it, but I think the world would most definitely not be better off without it.
I do agree that the work is hidden, they can be a nightmare to audit, and I think it would scare a lot of people on this board the amount of business critical functions that are completed by excel and other spreadsheets. However, I like to think this a short term problem, and to the authors point, the industry and the sw needs and will improve, and we should all be trying to eventually close the gap.
ownership issues aside, the "magic" under the hood is not a problem assuming it actually works. Its when the magic breaks, or works in unexpected ways, then it becomes a problem. Magic is also progress, and progress is usually good.
The legacy design is called a trompe, here is a video of how it worked from Ragged Chutes Air plant near Cobalt, Ontario Canada.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtYLVLkWyGc
The problem I see with these companies, where HW is the focus and not SW, is that their tech stack is a joke. I have no faith in their security models, or their ability to protect my privacy. These features always feel like they have been just added on with little thought of the surrounding environment. Anyone who has developed a Tizen, LG webOS, Visio app, will understand what I am mean. The platforms have significant variations between model years, and developers are flat out told that features will not be fixed on 2-3 year old TVs. This seems insane considering the level of trust they ask from their customer.
This is super telling and Ballmer understands the impact of this relatively small decision and its ripple effect it will have for other municipalities.
I would love to see the user acquisition model they used to calculate the viability of this business move. If a Wink Product manager is reading this, please make notes and in a couple of years when the Wink Lawyers are long gone, please create one of those "We failed but this is what we learned" posts.
This pretty much seems like the end, they don't seem to have a buyer for the organization, no one to bail them out, and they most likely are running out of whatever cash remains.
Thank you Wink development team for 4 good years, it was not always perfect, but I did enjoy the user experience.
Either way, he should know better to not speak about something that he is not an expert in. His job right now is to keep society calm and rational, and I feel he is doing the exact opposite.
I imagine most of us have been in technical meetings where people who have no idea about the real problem are speaking as if they are the expert. Its incredibly unproductive, and only slows down making real progress and and getting to a real resolution.
Even if he was right, which he is not, he should let his experts speak about these matters and get out of the way.
I was actually thinking Trudeau is telegraphing from his talks with other G7 countries, that other countries are going to close borders soon, and if you want to come home you should move now.
This happens all the time, to famous and non-famous people. US citizens have no rights to enter Canada. Also the right to refuse people actually further legitimizes the Canadian Government.