Decline of the western society #3

PhSt wrote:

kvs wrote:https://youtu.be/AhgKkiuEmnE

Tesla cars are utter shit.   No door handles?  Seriously?  What sort of retard designs essential features assuming that power will always be available?
I preferred roll down windows when they were still available.   Losers feel the need to push a button to roll down a window.  We also have the absurd
auto-locking when driving.  The driver should always have the option to drive with the doors unlocked.   Carjacking has not taken over the roads just yet.

Also, where are all the regulatory agencies that allegedly test cars for safety?   Cars which cannot be opened from the outside violate the first item in the
safety list.   Windows that cannot be rolled down manually and doors that lock electrically ensure that you will drown if your car goes into a body of water
since the electrical system will not work in water.   Bring a hammer with you and keep it by your seat.   But if the cops stop you and see it, they will charge
you for driving with a lethal, unsecured weapon.   The west is a clown show cluster-f*ck.

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:First school started being treated and managed as enterprises, where the number of pupils who "graduated" or passed to the next year was the deciding factors on the amount of money the school would receive. Thus many students who should have repeated an year or at least spent the summer studying to try pass a repair exam were instead promoted to the next class without having learned the basics needed.

kvs wrote:Software technology prime for the idiocracy.   Fake trash reality is what is just so badly needed.   Escape into fart bubbles of delusion instead of dealing with reality.

Here's how Google spent 15 years in creating a culture of concealment

Firm told employees to destroy messages, avoid certain words and copy lawyers as often as possible to avoid antitrust suits

In late 2008, as Google faced antitrust scrutiny over an advertising deal with its rival Yahoo and confronted lawsuits involving patent, trademark and copyright claims, its executives sent out a confidential memo.
 
“We believe that information is good,” the executives told employees in the memo. But, they added, government regulators or competitors might seize on words that Google workers casually, thoughtlessly wrote to one another.
 
To minimise the odds that a lawsuit could flush out comments that might be incriminating, Google said, employees should refrain from speculation and sarcasm and “think twice” before writing one another about “hot topics.” “Don’t comment before you have all the facts,” they were instructed.

The technology was tweaked, too. The setting for the company’s instant messaging tool was changed to “off the record.” An incautious phrase would be wiped the next day.
 
The memo became the first salvo in a 15-year campaign by Google to make deletion the default in its internal communications. Even as the internet giant stored the world’s information, it created an office culture that tried to minimise its own. Among its tools: using legal privilege as an all-purpose shield and imposing restraints on its own technology, all while continually warning that loose lips could sink even the most successful corporation.
 
How Google developed this distrustful culture was pieced together from hundreds of documents and exhibits, as well as witness testimony, in three antitrust trials against the Silicon Valley company over the last year. The plaintiffs — Epic Games in one case, the Department of Justice in the other two — were trying to establish monopoly behavior, which required them to look through emails, memos and instant messages from hundreds of Google engineers and executives.

The exhibits and testimony showed that Google took numerous steps to keep a lid on internal communications. It encouraged employees to put “attorney-client privileged” on documents and to always add a Google lawyer to the list of recipients, even if no legal questions were involved and the lawyer never responded. Companies anticipating litigation are required to preserve documents. But Google exempted instant messaging from automatic legal holds. If workers were involved in a lawsuit, it was up to them to turn their chat history on. From the evidence in the trials, few did. Google is far from the only company trying to keep newer forms of communication out of the courtroom. As instant messages and text messages have become popular office tools, corporations and regulators have increasingly clashed over how the missives can be used in court.
 
In August, the Federal Trade Commission, which is suing to stop a $25 billion supermarket merger between Albertsons and Kroger, said several Albertsons executives had demonstrated “a pervasive practice” of deleting business-related text messages in defiance of legal requirements to keep them. Some of these texts, the FTC argued, suggested that at least one executive thought prices might increase as a result of the merger. The judge said Albertsons “failed to take reasonable steps” to preserve the messages, but did not punish the chain. Albertsons declined to comment.
 
In April, the FTC said in a legal filing as part of its antitrust case against Amazon that company executives had used the disappearing message tool Signal to discuss competition issues, even after they were required to keep all communications in the case.
 
Amazon said the assertions that it had destroyed information were “baseless and irresponsible.” But Google has faced the broadest
criticism for its actions, with the judges in all three antitrust cases chastising the company for its communications practices.
 
In a statement, Google said it took “seriously our obligations to preserve and produce relevant documents. We have for years responded to inquiries and litigation, and we educate our employees about legal privilege.”