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michael_storm

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email: mstorm7 <at> gee-mail.com

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I've seen this point before, but it's not an argument for keeping rates low. "If we raise rates, the rich will just find ways to avoid them!" People find new ways to try to murder and steal all the time; that doesn't mean we throw up our hands and make it legal to do so.

The solution is to raise rates and fix loopholes, difficult a political lift as that may be.

Facebook itself won't be meaningfully "deleted" for at least five years. It simply has too much money: even if its main product went kaput tomorrow (which it won't), it would find some other way to stay alive. That would almost certainly be via an acquisition spree, in which it would go to great lengths to tie its targets' platforms into facebook.com, which is based on React (AFAIK). So the answer is: nothing.

That said, what if, as a thought experiment, Facebook imploded tomorrow? It reminds me of the "what if the Sun disappeared" scenario -- it's not that it's _unlikely_; it's that it would require new physics to even get you there. So speculation is somewhat idle. That said, here's what I think would happen:

1) The core contributors would be snapped up by some open source-adjacent organization, like Mozilla, and given free reign to work on React in the majority of their time.

2) Some sort of new, independent governance would be formed. IME, new web projects seem to be more ad-hoc in this respect than, say, GNU brethren.

3) Development velocity would undoubtedly slow down. This happens naturally as projects mature, though, so let's not mourn the inevitable process of nature.

4) Some idealistic fork will pick up a bit of steam, and the sister projects will steal from each other liberally. Like bacteria, politicians (zing), or anything else that competes.

5) Something else will rise to take React's place.

But again, it doesn't matter, because Facebook won't disappear on a time scale that matters relative to the velocity of JS development.

[dead] 8 years ago

People, I think we’re missing some of the other buried gold here. Some highlights:

We do a daily standup where we don't discuss why something is late. Instead we each spend 10 seconds on what we actually shipped today.

So if I’m blocked on Jim, and Jim is shipping his own features and ignoring me, Jim looks good and I look bad. Cool, cool.

A track record of success. We believe winners have always won. All candidates will be asked to submit a 'brag sheet' as part of our interview process. This is a listing of every accomplishment you've ever had. If you won the spelling bee in the 2nd grade we want to know about it, etc.

Trying something hard and failing is apparently not something Health IQ can get behind. Better hope you’ve had a lot of good things happen to you since the second grade! Or have played it pretty safe since then; they don’t want the stench of your failures interrupting treadmill standup.

We don't have sugar, candy bars, soda (diet or otherwise) in our office. If you bring some it will get thrown away.

My personal dietary choices are now my employer’s business. Awesome. I would like to work there, just so I could throw out other people’s property that has even one gram of sugars in it. Fuck your milk.

Although, hey, at least they’re honest about being creepy counterproductive weirdos. It’ll make the eventual lawsuit easier.

I’m disagreeing with that nuance. I’m saying that blind people should be able to enjoy the same things that sighted people can, rather than developers deciding for them whether or not blind people are in the target market.

People with disabilities don’t need random developers determining a priori whether or not they’ll be able to use the same software as everyone else. People with disabilities aren’t an afterthought; they’re not a bonus; it’s a requirement to produce software that everyone can use — not just people like you. If it were more work to produce software for people of another race than yourself, would you be making the same argument?

We will also be sending our cooks off with a transition packet, which will include their business data, customer contact info (for those who opt-in), alternative business proposals and recommendations, tool/service recommendations for replacing our platform functionality, and other general resources. We hope that these personalized packets, along with community-run versions of our cook community forums and groups, will be a stepping stone for folks who would like to continue making income through their cooking skills.

That is actually really impressive. I hope other companies have the forethought and compassion to remember that their responsibilities lie with everyone who comes to depend on them -- not just those to whom they have a legal duty.

but it demonstrates one reason why one can avoid doctors for seemingly non-serious ailments and conditions, particularly with all the times they've shrugged.

You didn't have breathing problems when you asked for an appointment; you had a cough. Then when you had breathing problems, you sought out emergency care and had that taken care of. But you blame your original doctor for... not predicting your breathing problems? Or not giving you lung x-rays the moment you diagnosed yourself with pneumonia? I'm confused what you would rather they have done.

The missed allergy sounds like a legit failure, though, but I'm not a doctor.

Why must the CEO of Google be the most highly-paid position for Google to run well? The point is that the pay for participating in self-interested capitalist endeavors leads to outsize rewards compared to those dedicated to serving society. (Including thousands of career civil servants, since leadership positions have their own trappings.) If we value those who serve society, perhaps we should pay them commensurate with how much we value them -- and get better results in the bargain.

Mastodon 2.0 9 years ago

Because Twitter is a for-profit business, whereas Mastodon is not.

Mastodon 2.0 9 years ago

I don’t follow. Twitter is big because of all the things I just listed.

Mastodon 2.0 9 years ago

Sales, support, marketing, accounting, business ops, software ops, management, HR. Pare those off and you might get something like Mastodon's contributor size after adjusting for scale of user base. Although I doubt many of Mastodon's contributors are full time, so a comparison is difficult.