One of the most uncomfortable truths about our profession is that there is literally no floor to how shitty software can be and yet still make people billions of dollars.
Reminds me of an incident where I had to go pick up a missed delivery (an expensive photo printer) from the dispatch warehouse because the shipping company couldn’t get a signature after three attempts.
Whatever, I drove down to this set of huge industrial warehouses with trucks coming and going by the dozen and found the customer service office.
“That’ll be half an hour, I recommend waiting at the cafe.”
“Half an hour for what? Aren’t all the packages right here?”
“They are, but looking up the package ID in the system takes at least 30 minutes, maybe 33.”
“33!? Wait… don’t tell me, let me guess: it has been getting slowly and steadily worse over years? Predictably taking longer and longer, right?”
“Yeah, six months ago it was 27 minutes! How did you know?”
“Umm… isn’t this a bit of drag on your operations?”
“Absolutely! Everything takes forever, every shipment is delayed, … …”
“I… bet. Why hasn’t anyone fixed it!? It’s a one line fix!”
“No budget!”
This was one of the biggest logistics companies in the country about to undergo a multi-billion-dollar merger.
Their core business software was missing database indexes even on primary key columns!
Usability of internal tools is just never considered. Priorities are driven by management. They invariably just don’t care about feedback from the peons that actually have to use them in their day-to-day jobs, even when it results in tremendous inefficiency.
This also allows companies like Workforce to make billions selling the most godawful software imaginable.
Are those the iridium satellites? They are doing something completely different from starlink. For one thing, they are in much higher orbit, increasing both latency and coverage. They also have much less available bandwidth.
I'm not sure they are competitors. They could be, but these networks are serving different purposes.
> I would also add that you can't make any more money selling drugs to people you have killed.
That assumes that people are playing a long game. If you're looking for your payday and exit, and there are many people out there who are only looking for the next payday, this argument falls apart.
> Moreover, a relatively small number of dangerous flops will tank your reputation with consumers.
One success the anti-vax people have achieved is to muddy the waters around this. Your public reputation is no longer correlated to actual performance.
> Liability means that you are incentivized to be quite cautious in pushing a potentially dangerous product
There's a long list of people throughout history who do not have this caution at all.
You seem to be taking a theoretical economics approach. Reality is different. People are not perfectly rational actors, and consequences are not consistent.
The antivax people are still fringe and by and large people trust that the drugs they take are safe and effective.
Payday and exit is pretty hard in biotech as you need to conjure up billions of dollars in capital, which doesn't often flow to people who payday-and-exit.
What happens in reality is that people try really hard to make safe and effective drugs, they mostly fail, and the ones that are approved are generally safe and effective.
What are you talking about? Shareholders are looking for sustainable projections of growth. Killing a bunch of people will tank your stock which is how executives get paid. You really need to think beyond their first thought o nstuff like this.
> There's a long list of people throughout history who do not have this caution at all.
None of them run pharmaceutical companies.
>You seem to be taking a theoretical economics approach. Reality is different
No I'm describing reality and you're arguing from populism.
PE is short for PRIVATE equity, there are no public shareholders in PE, no share price. When I critique that people here often don't understand basic things about the economy this is what I mean.
When it comes to PE there are myriad examples of shareholders taking a short term view. So are you suggesting then that shareholders of publicly traded companies are somehow different? I think that would be on you to justify but you've instead chosen to attempt to mock me for wrongfully assumed ignorance.
That's normal to say "immigrant" if you're neither right-wing nor aiming to use it pejoratively. The blue-tribe pejorative for immigrant is "transplant".
It's really not that different in use. A right-wing commentator might say "Immigrants need to assimilate and put down roots here, not just bring their own culture here" whereas a left-wing commentator might say (as you see in the above clip, paraphrased): "Transplants need to put down roots here and volunteer to join the community"
This does not ring true for me at all. I'm very left wing and one of the things that pulls me left is a love for all humans, regardless of borders. I have never heard any of the left wing people I follow or who are in my life use pejoratives for immigrants. I've only ever heard it from conservatives. it's one of the most off putting thing about them to me.
A "popular content creator" is not a useful datapoint. They are doing things for attention, not actual work for building an inclusive civilization.
I have a set of links here with summaries so you can take a look and see[0]. One example is in describing Democratic Party mayor Eric Adams’ statement who has used it elsewhere.
To be clear, I said and meant blue-tribe so that we can avoid discussions about whether the Dems are left or not.
If there is something the president has truly shown me is that just because consequences look inevitable, does not make them so. He exemplifies the ability to avoid consequences and responsibility.
I only trust that consequences will arrive when they actually arrive.
Wish I could have that hope. I don't believe he will ever experience consequences for the vast majority of things he's done. Even if he does finally receive some justice for one thing, it's a practical impossibility that he will experience justice for everything he's done.
And I honestly see no reason to believe he's simply delaying consequences. He was out of the presidency for four years during which time he was convicted of multiple felonies. Is that a consequence? Was that justice? It didn't end up meaning anything.
No, he is avoiding them. He was found guilty of 34 felonies related to election interference in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. Judge Juan Merchan declined to sentence him to any punishment whatsoever. He was then re-elected president. He will never face any consequences for those crimes.
The Supreme Court has ruled that (Republican) presidents are above the law. Official actions can't be prosecuted, but you have to ask the court what official means on a case-by-case basis, making the ruling implicitly partisan. Trump will thus never face consequences for his crimes in office.
Trump is an admitted (Access Hollywood) and convicted (E Jean Carroll) sexual predator. He has paid several million dollars to E Jean Carroll for raping her but that is the extent of any consequence he has suffered. He continues to be president.
It is more contextual than a simple binary, especially the emotional context. If the event triggers their shame more than their identity, you get the larger than required apologies. If their identity is the primary thing that is triggered, they will get defensive and double down. It's not just a rural thing.
reply