jasaloo

Sounds like you were motivated, hard-working, and played the game as best you could.

Though it sounds like you might've overlooked two of the most important ingredients entrepreneurs need when getting something off the ground:

- vast web of influential family connections - inherited wealth

Maybe go back and try it with these two?

Sure. Some people can pull that off. Doesn’t sound like OPs problem.

Also there’s a difference between over-preparing and coming in with a desperate attitude. You’re right that if you have the latter, you’re fucked. Going in with confidence, curiosity, and detachment are important too.

I find my interview anxiety is directly connected to how much sheer preparation I do. There is no substitute for this.

Spend several hours: scouring the internet for common AND uncommon interview questions. Draft strong responses to all of them. Map out your values and reasons why they are what they are. Specific professional qualities you exhibit PLUS multiple anecdotes explaining those qualities.

Then- research the damn company. Hard. Train yourself in their tone and the story they tell about themselves. WHY DO YOU WANT TO WORK FOR THEM?

Mostly importantly: Draft up thoughtful interview questions to ASK. Both general role questions and questions about the industry etc.

This takes time, and practice. But man, when you do it, you feel like a fucking boss going into an interview. And that unlocks the most important part. Mindset.

(For developers and other highly specialized roles, this isn’t exhaustive because you have steps to test your technical skills, but hopefully that helps. I gotten several jobs I’m under-qualified for by using this method)

What a delightfully garbage take!

Also:

“The defining quality of an ideologue, whether on the left or the right, is to acquire one's opinions in bulk. You don't get to pick and choose.”

PG has clearly never encountered two leftists in the same room together. We argue on critical issues more than a thanksgiving dinner table.

"It seems that most people who care already understand the high-level principals of US media propaganda manufacturing..."

Well, how do principals emerge in the first place? Often by intense research, data gathering, and sound argumentation.

I can't think of another work out there that lays this foundation like MC. If you do read it (or watch the documentary which I've heard is pretty good), you might be surprised at some of the filters that exist in the modern propaganda model. I sure was.

Anecdotally, I have plenty of well-educated friends who "care" and also consider themselves very media-literate. A lot of them also readily parrot talking points from the NY Times.

Having this body of work (which is an academic goliath, even by Chomsky and Herman's standards) is essential to critical media studies.

"Meanwhile, Amazon’s Echo and voice-assisted personal assistant, Alexa, was in an estimated 24% of US households as of the fourth quarter of 2018..."

Well that's unnerving.

did the same a while back. Though it likely doesn't change much, never hurts to tell them that this is the specific reason you're leaving.

shout out to the guy who put down two Chomsky books.

Manufacturing Consent is one of the most important works of the 20th century. You'll never read the news the same way again.

I think the ire is necessary.

The article gives a fair range of the different baseline operations and their carbon footprint. Sure the title is provocative, but it’s accurate.

And even the operation that’s still “435x less” is just under the CO2 footprint of a passenger on a transatlantic flight. That’s not insignificant at all.

The fact is that more industries are trying to get their hands on this tech, and they won’t go about self-regulating the types of energy-intensive operations they use if they think there’s profit at the end of it.

“In a new paper, researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, performed a life cycle assessment for training several common large AI models. They found that the process can emit more than 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent—nearly five times the lifetime emissions of the average American car (and that includes manufacture of the car itself).“

Can someone help me out here... this is not a charter school, correct?

"Indeed, half of Pathfinder’s inaugural class was previously homeschooled, Wilder says.

Legally, they still are. Despite its name, Pathfinder isn’t actually a school. It’s not accredited and doesn’t have a state license, which means it doesn’t have to abide by state laws on mandatory attendance and testing. It doesn’t award grades, nor will it give out diplomas should it take on high-school-age students. (It will help them create portfolios as part of their college-application process.) Instead, it’s a “homeschooling resource center,” a place that offers homeschoolers opportunities to socialize and learn in a small-scale, customizable environment. "

yes precisely my thought

I hear you. Liu's outlook is deeply pessimistic. His obvious scientific background knowledge seems to be infused with a dash of western, neoliberal ideology-- that it's just dog-eat-dog out there, and we're all in it for our own self-interest.

It's a bit ironic considering Liu is Chinese- wasn't China's Ming Dynasty the first to land on America in the early 1400s and historically demonstrate that exploration and discovery weren't necessarily accompanied by colonization/enslavement/destruction?

That example gets held up a lot when mainstream historians spin the narrative that Colombus et al enslaved/raped/pillaged because that's just what societies do (while ignoring that it was the debt that the explorers owed to their financiers that drove most of that bad behavior).

yes- I hate to nitpick with these sort of things since I really enjoyed the essay, but as a lover of Liu's series I took issue with the dark forest analogy.

I think the author was rather describing Liu's concept of a "black domain," namely "a region of spacetime in which the speed of light is lowered artificially to completely seal it off (and protect it) from the rest of the Universe." (Wikipedia)

Apart from that, really appreciated the author's ideas and using the phrase "...depressurized conversation is possible because of their non-indexed, non-optimized, and non-gamified environments." Spot on.

Re/ oura rings... anyone else paranoid of a private company having access to intensely personal data?

If I were an insurance company I'd be lobbying the shit out of these guys to see how much they'd charge me to get my hands on it.

(and yeah, I read Oura's privacy agreement already... was less than impressed)

"In general, Facebook candidates are asking much tougher questions about the company’s approach to privacy, according to multiple former recruiters."

That made me smile <3

"To be fair, wouldn't that suggest strong oversight might work then?"

Fair point, that might work if: 1. a public safety/citizens oversight committee does its job consistently, 2. isn't loaded with police-friendly stooges 3. and isn't gradually de-fanged over time in terms of its power.

All three things, with time, can be manipulated by any given city hall, which is often lock-step with the police force.

"...but theories need to be tested one way or another and it would provide some evidence"

Agreed. And I say let's look at how they've deployed facial recognition in China to put those theories to bed.

yeah, maybe... but the question is always 'at what cost?'

There are ways of cutting down on racial profiling that don't require turning our city into a panopticon.

"Perhaps a better argument for an early and complete local ban might be that it allows other regions to be the test subjects."

It's a valid thought, honestly. Though seeing how tightly the police hold onto this tech once they have it makes it extremely difficult to just test the waters (and also requires vigilant public oversight, which the sheriffs' associations will fight tooth and nail).

Also having cops test this tech out, knowing they're going to be deliberately monitored to how often they use it for good reasons (e.g. child abductions) vs abuse it, would probably produce incredibly biased results. Think about it-- the experiment would be entirely self-serving: cops get to trumpet that it helped them for the legit crime here and there (and sitting through public safety committees, believe me, they will TRUMPET it), while showing that zero cases of misuse happened.

Ultimately, we have to think in systems: sure, ubiquitous surveillance would undoubtedly solve the horrific crime here and there, but at what cost to who we are as people? At what cost to how we protect minorities and the undocumented? At what cost to our already eroding public trust?

Fully agree, also having multiple municipalities push through legislation like this can indicate to the state, which can take years to legislate to these issues, that there is a growing appetite.

Also- many activist coalitions will simultaneously advocate for legislation through several local and state levels. It’s actually sometimes ineffective to take the ‘one or the other’ approach.

You sound pretty cynical on the issue. Maybe you should come advocate with us and see for yourself the opportunities we still have to create meaningful change in this space.

reposting my comment below:

"please remember that there are coalitions of activists advocating multiple issues for civil rights simultaneously, and that a victory in one area (e.g. fighting the surveillance state) is neither mutually exclusive nor to the detriment of another equal or greater social ill (e.g. homelessness)."

oh and "Instead they are choosing to be pro-active legislating against tech..."

While the legislation is pre-emptive (being rolled out before an invasive technology becomes widespread, which, duh), it is in no way pro-active.

This legislation passing is a reaction to years-long, tireless efforts of coalitions of privacy activists, religious/ethnic minority activists, and activists advocating for the undocumented.

would if we could. that genie's been long out of the bottle, but facial recognition hasn't been adopted to the same extent, yet, because the technology is so nascent.

I can understand that viewpoint. But if we look at the track record of how authorities actually use surveillance technology, it is aggressively used to squash dissent, rather than prevent/investigate crimes.

Yes, facial recognition could help cops identify a robber more quickly and yes surveillance has been used to expedite investigations, but what we've seen is that cops across the board will disproportionately abuse this sort of technology to track and monitor (and sometimes later harass) protesters, activists, ethnic/religious minorities and the undocumented.

Here's one instance at the federal level, but abuse happens at the state and local level constantly.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/10/standing-roc...

"That's again why I'm in favor of regulating the problematic uses of information and technology..."

We agree on this in principle. But again, once authorities have any of this data in their possession, abuse always happens. Literally always.

IMO the root problem is not "oh, the cops are just using all my PII and biometric data inappropriately" the root problem is that "the cops have possession of all my PII and biometric data to begin with."

You have the symptom and disease reversed here, IMO.

seeing plenty of comments along the lines of "don't they have better things to do?"

please remember that there are coalitions of activists advocating multiple issues for civil rights simultaneously, and that a victory in one area (e.g. fighting the surveillance state) is neither mutually exclusive nor to the detriment of another equal or greater social ill (e.g. homelessness).

In the meantime, enjoy these videos of what they're doing with facial recognition in China:

(Social credit system) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkw15LkZ_Kw

(broad piece on facial recognition): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH2gMNrUuEY

the point is to prevent the capture of such data to begin with. As a privacy activist, we've seen that simply developing a 'use-policy,' while effective, can only go so far. Once local/state/fed authorities possess this data, it's a matter of when, not if, it will be abused (or sold off to private interests).

Your second question: there's a massive difference between being observed by an individual officer and being perpetually tracked by an apparatus of ubiquitous cameras that cross-reference your face with your background information, possible criminal record, citizenship status, etc. It also opens the flood gates for horrific scenarios like the 'social credit system' that they've implemented in China. Go look that one up and tell me you're still ok with facial recognition.

Anyone who found this story intriguing should immediately go buy "Climate: A New Story" by Charles Eisenstein. He explores how we use "war language" when talking about environmental issues and how that undercuts our efforts... then he proposes how we get out of that conversational rut, with allies, people on the fence, and even climate change deniers.

Bingo:

"'We submit that these data reinforce the notion that [Little Free Libraries] are examples of performative community enhancement, driven more so by the desire to showcase one’s passion for books and education than a genuine desire to help the community in a meaningful way.

[ . . . ]

[Little Free Libraries] are a highly visible form of self-gratification cleverly disguised as book aid, and the effects of this visibility can be better understood through a consideration of their role in a landscape . . .'"

I'm encouraged by the full-scope approach this report takes, though I get very worried about technological fundamentalism, the idea that we might possibly engineer our way out of the worst effects of climate change. Don't get me wrong, we might, but do we really want the reality it gives us on the other side?

Charles Eisenstein, a prescient thinker on this topic (and others), has advocated for our reconnection and renewed stewardship to/of the earth. That might sound a bit new-agey to some, but after reading his recent book, he made some compelling points:

- mainstream environmentalism has taken a reductionist approach by almost solely dedicating itself to emissions reduction (it has also made the movement vulnerable to climate-change deniers, who are (at least partially) correct in that emissions cannot account for ALL of our environmental issues... e.g. bees dying off has likely nothing to do with carbon emissions, yet the culprit is often vaguely referred to by many activists as "climate change" which has become synonymous with "carbon emissions")

- while reducing our emissions is unquestionably critical, we need to widen our focus to include the following, which are equally if not more important: restoring water cycles, considerate reforestation/halting deforestation, ending pesticide use (which is likely a primary driver of insect die-off, causing catastrophic disruptions in global food chains and biodiversity, both of which are critical to nature's ability to heal itself), and last but not least:

- regenerative, no-till agriculture (versus till-intensive, soil-eroding industrialized agriculture) is an effective tool for restoring these systems, and it also acts a stunningly powerful carbon-sink (by some estimates, if my memory serves me correctly, we could reduce current emissions enormously by converting only 10% of our global industrialized, mono-crop farmland to regenerative, no-till farmland, which IMO is a small endeavor when compared to the tech-intensive and potentially world-altering prospects of massive carbon-sucking machines or injecting aerosols into the atmosphere to induce artificial cooling)

For anyone interested, his recent book is "Climate: A new story." It was the most meditative and thought-provoking collection of ideas that I've read on the state of the environment and climate. It's also incredibly hopeful without being blindly optimistic. In fact, it's rooted in a deep sense of awareness, not just of the many existential ecological crises we face, but of the new mindset we must adopt if we are to truly heal our planet.