I don't disagree with your points about connected cars, but at least for CarPlay (I don't know about Android Auto), it's entirely an orthogonal concern. CarPlay is a standard for, basically, connecting an external display to your iPhone - it doesn't need to connect to anything other than the iPhone itself, and doesn't grant the car any access to the internet or anything, and IIRC the phone can't read anything meaningful from the car either.
EXACTLY. This lazy, backwards approach to tooling and workflow is why I jumped ship from logic design to software despite having an EE degree. VHDL/Verilog tooling is heinously terrible and everyone in the industry seems to be actively opposed to doing anything about it.
Oh yeah, that paragraph really nailed it. Every place I've worked that's started to go downhill, it always started with executives, who never acknowledged their role in the problem or did anything to fix it.
I'm increasingly convinced that a large portion of our problems as a society is our absolute refusal to hold anyone in power accountable for anything.
Innovation no longer happens at these places. I can't think of the last thing Google did that was all that impressive. The only google products I still use are search, gmail and google maps. That's it. The same as in 2005.
These companies no longer need to innovate to stay relevant. They focus instead on stifling competition, lobbying politicians, marketing, advertising, dark patterns, etc. The good people eventually get shut out and shut down and leave or stop trying to influence change. The bureaucracy wins and eventually the music stops.
> I'm increasingly convinced that a large portion of our problems as a society is our absolute refusal to hold anyone in power accountable for anything.
The problem is power is too concentrated. Companies no longer need to innovate. This isn't just in tech. Everyone wants their assets to grow at others expense society be damned.
> Everyone wants their assets to grow at others expense society be damned.
Which is sad and short sighted, because the best way to increase the absolute value of your assets is to encourage large scale societal innovation. Grow the pie, not your relative share of the pie.
Sadly, I think there are too many people who would rather be king of the wastelands than relatively equal to all others in a post scarcity world.
We need to become collectively better about extracting these dark personalities from power if we want a good future.
> best way to increase the absolute value of your assets is to encourage large scale societal innovation
but from a company & shareholder perspective, this sort of societal innovation and improvement is not privately capturable. Back in the 70-80's, Bell labs did this sort of innovation, but they were funded directly via a gov't subsidy (because they are given a monopoly on telecommunications), and so management didn't have to care that the expenditure on R&D returned profit, as long as it is innovative.
I wish we could return to those days, but i dont believe it is possible today.
You might only use Maps, Gmail, and Search, but you've probably also:
- Used a ton of services hosted in Google Cloud (which Google built outright),
- interacted with data that was filtered through BigQuery or Cloud Spanner (which Google built)
- Edited something in Sheets, Docs, Slides, or Forms (all acquisitions, I think)
- Viewed a photo on Google Photos,
- Used Chrome,
- etc.
And that's before all of the stuff Google has produced that's open-source (Golang, Kubernetes, Flutter/Dart, V8, etc), or their AI stuff (DeepMind, AlphaGo, Brain), or their autonomous driving stuff (Waymo, which is probably a patent factory on its own accord)
Also, let's not discount that Maps has gotten a LOT of innovations over time. Is there another mapping service that can give you historical street view of almost any road in the US within seconds?
I worked there in 2015 and also disliked my experience, but Google definitely definitely moves the needle on stuff.
I don't think anything in your list is all that impressive or innovative, other companies do most of those things, or do them better. In any case, none of them changed the way I interacted with the world like Search did. If any of them disappeared, I wouldn't really notice.
Google's "innovations" are minor evolutions now. They have some moonshots, sure, if Waymo is succesful, but nothing impacted the world like search did. Historical street view? Really?
The whole GSuite (Google Docs, Google Drive, Etc.) have been very productive tools in my experience. (Although Google Drive was launched in like 2012, and Docs in 2006)
The Dart language and Flutter framework have been a rather innovative attempt at making cross platform apps.
But yeah, the amount of innovation at Google has certainly decreased over time.
> The only google products I still use are search, gmail and google maps. That's it. The same as in 2005.
Its even worse than that for me in that not only am I not using any new products Google is producing, but they killed off a number of the ones I did use (some which they produced, some which they acquired and killed).
So not only are they not producing products I care about to begin with, even if they managed to change this I'd be super hesitant to adopt the product because of the reasonable expectation they will kill it off after I start to depend on it.
Fundamentally, the C-level/senior executives are rarely connected with what's actually going at the ground level. And IME a lot of them simply don't care. They make decisions without understanding the impacts to the rest of the organization, and when objections or concerns are raised, they're filtered or attenuated at the middle management layer (due, usually, to a culture of fear) or dismissed at the top levels.
Put another way: When the decision makers don't feel the consequences of their decisions, those consequences will be ignored. It's a kind of corporate negative externality.
The issue, IMO, is the only accountability C levels face is from either a board or stock prices. Otherwise, nothing they do has any real impact on them personally.
Another major problem is the effects of their decisions are long delayed. Do something that slows development to a crawl and you still have a functional product for years (even if you can't add new features to it). Tying the original decision to the impact on the org is hard, and even harder since whoever made that decision isn't likely to want to take responsibility for it.
From my management experience the leaders are actually doing their job when they do this. Leaders at that level are expected to make strong decisions and to stick with them. It is thought better to have a leader make the wrong decisions firmly and adjust later with a well planned change than the business wobling down the road. So the senior executives are actually doing what the board expects/tasked them to do, keep the direction stable until the next planned/controlled correction. That is why it feels like you are talking to a wall. You are. What you see as a 'bug' the board sees as a 'feature' and the expected output of a C-level.
Bad analogy (I'm old) the light at the intersection is going to stay red until it is time to turn green, even though it would make more sense right now for it to turn green for you because you are the only one at the intersection. Bigger picture, having the lights on timers works better than everyone having a stop sign, even though it looks/feels stupid waiting at a red light with no one else there. The lights seem stupid sometimes, but it scales better than a bunch of stop and go stop signs. (Yes, I know that now lights have sensors, bad analogy now like I said).
TLDR; What if it's not a bug, but it's actually the output the board wants.
What should be kept stable are the goals the company wants to reach, not the details in execution.
When you notice your navigation app is sending you down a cliff, do you still follow that route? Of course not.
It's the same with organizations, except a lot of organizations are not intelligent and agile enough to course-correct. Just imagine what they could accomplish with better leadership.
I think there's also an element of overestimating how much power "people in power" actually have. Unless you're at the point in the org chart where you can actually move money and people you're stuck trying to keep your little zen garden clean inside a massive constantly shifting system you have no control over.
Power in an organization should probably be measured by "resources they have unilateral control over" instead of "authority." Because if all you have is authority you're a glorified manager.
There's an incredible amount of soft power in simple leadership, which is extraordinarily rare in both politics and business. Simply setting out an agenda in clear terms and getting people on board.
If you can do that, you don't need to micromanage all the levers yourself, because people will eagerly working with you towards your shared goal.
OMG yes. Leadership and vision are essential for success. There is an absolute shit-ton of asshat, visionless leadership in the world, and in my experience they act so entitled and worldly while they crush the business that feeds them. Not that I’m bitter or anything.
I highlighted this in TFA,
> Any team needs expert leadership to thrive, and expert leaders need support from the people they report to so they can do what’s necessary.
But isn't vision just holding firmly to a plan and sticking with it? The same thing people here are complaining about C-Levels doing? Rigidly plunging ahead (driving towards the vision) and not sidetracking from the vision instead taking everyone's input?
Not the same, no. Plans are tactical; vision is strategic, or maybe even above strategy. And in my experience, people really struggle to understand that some plans just aren’t compatible with the vision, and should be abandoned.
A good definition of power is from Hannah Arendt, it's "the ability to coordinate voluntary collective action". If you can do this you have power because you can't coerce everyone at once all the time.
>I'm increasingly convinced that a large portion of our problems as a society is our absolute refusal to hold anyone in power accountable for anything.
Well the problem is you try and then you disappear either because you self-select out of that environment or you get managed out because that's an easier problem for the manager to solve because it doesn't involve admitting they're the problem.
I wonder if presenting concerns to them in the form of problem-consequences would compel them to action.
If an employee is just complaining to them they are likely to just be annoyed, but if they are told about future negative impact then they would need to take some form of action (presumably).
> it always started with executives, who never acknowledged their role in the problem or did anything to fix it
Wow I see a lot of executive hate on HN. Sure some is probably deserved, but I have seen a lot projects and companies (after being brought in as a consultant to fix) where the technologists had a pretty clear business vision given to them and were left to their own devices with good budgets, platform, and process freedom fail miserably due to team dysfunction and all too often—incompetence.
My concerns about toxicity on Twitter are less about what I want to see (I don’t use Twitter anymore myself, even), and more about the incitement to violence we’ve clearly seen is possible on the platform. Twitter should not be a platform for organizing a mob to invade the capitol and attempt to execute the Vice President, for example.
That’s a disgustingly prejudiced statement. While I don’t like Mr. Musk very much myself, I’ve known plenty of autistic folks who do a great job managing communities.
yes, I'm sure there are many who do a stellar job. absolutely!
But 'managing' communities is one thing, managing the MOTHER of all communities globally across cultural differences is another.
IMH(biased)O the person filling that role should have DEEP social super powers, instead of deep neurological inabilities to effectively socialize and communicate. The chances for success is way higher, but hey he could be an outlier too, I just wouldn't bet on it.
If being forced to compete fairly requires them to drop their prices by 60%, I think that’s a pretty good argument that they’re not competing fairly at the moment.
When you are competing against stores that require you to use their ad-tech framework to make up the difference it is a different equation.
The idea of billions of devices out there with constantly running background ad-tech frameworks horrifying to me. It would make the AirTags stalking seem like a joke if every phone secretly tracked every Bluetooth. Right now Apple is in the stream to say no to that.
The argument seems to be Apple should just lock down things even further to prevent it from happening…
Bunch of FUD. OS features and permissions aren't going anywhere. Even if coercing users into providing permissions became a real problem, Apple could have the OS provide fake data to apps not whitelisted by the user.
If you don't want to be tracked, don't use Google, Facebook, and other ad techs. Doesn't matter whether you installed their apps or not. Even today Apple can't meaningfully shield you from their tracking if you choose to use their free ad-supported services. (And if you don't, there's not much value in tracking you since they can't sell your attention to the highest bidder)
I'm not defending ad tech, but it will take complex legislation to reign it in. You can't just hide from it in Apple's walled garden, it does not work.
That complex legislation is not going to happen because ad-tech has the money to stop it.
Facebook is right now taking a huge loss due to the fact the walled garden is working.
People compromise their privacy because they didn’t have a choice. Apple is providing that choice until you let Chrome only be installed from the Google store and web sites suddenly say “best with chrome”.
> Facebook is right now taking a huge loss due to the fact the walled garden is working.
Facebook is hitting a huge loss right now because they saturated the world, ran out of markets to expand to. Not because of Apple's minor restrictions on cross-app tracking, jeez. Their growth in US stalled long ago.
> That complex legislation is not going to happen because ad-tech has the money to stop it.
And tobacco companies had the money to prevent anti-smoking regulations, and the oil industry had the money to deny climate change, and big tech had the money to keep their app store monopolies. Well some of those are WIP but it's clear that things do improve despite the money, albeit slowly.
> People compromise their privacy because they didn’t have a choice.
Nobody's stopping you from using DuckDuckGo and Mobile Safari, not today, not if this legislation goes through. Nothing that Apple does will change that, and nobody will code websites for mobile without supporting the default browser on their target platform, unless that browser is IE-level terrible, which Mobile Safari is not, despite its many deliberate shortcomings.
If you're all about choice you should stop telling other people that they should pay for services with money rather than with ad impressions, and that they should pay Apple's 30% tax for your privilege to see one monopolist shove it to another in a superficial way.
And if you think "don't use Apple" is valid advice for these people, then it's also valid advice for you for when this legislation passes, if you really can't live on a platform that isn't completely locked down.
What's not obvious from the discussion here and elsewhere is that this was not the only change coming from ASDF to this same maintainer. The maintainer in question is also an SBCL developer, who is responsible for upgrading and shipping copies of ASDF with that implementation of Lisp. So it wasn't his first rodeo dealing with ASDF changing behavior (and, sometimes, breaking his users' code downstream). Finally, this wasn't one change to one project; this was one flavor of change that was being sent to the whole "edicl" collection of projects.
The author of that article is overly focused on the Linux (or similar) deployment model, which most definitely does not cover all uses of SQLite. The argument against 2) also depends on a feature available in specific versions of specific compilers, which again, a piece of software that supports as many use cases as SQLite can’t depend on.
Even in that model, I’ve long found that the arguments against 1) are weak in practice (especially with a well-designed and maintained lib like SQLite) versus the additional complexity added by depending on dynamically linked libraries.
By people who would get angry if they could definitively prove their stuff was in OpenAI's training set.