Turns out the Great Resignation goes both ways (Ep. 445)
The home team covers the hiring freezes and layoffs hitting the tech sector, burnout among freelancers and applicants for tech jobs, the dubious ethics of unpaid internships, and how to make Twitter safer by preemptively blocking people.
Episode notes:
Companies like Meta, Twitter, and Netflix are enacting hiring freezes and layoffs, a situation that’s not great for anybody but is likely to have outsize effects on people of color in tech.
Gen Z may not understand file structures, but they sure understand Twitter toxicity. MegaBlock from Gen Z Mafia allows users to block bad tweets, their authors, and every single account that liked the offending tweet. There, doesn’t that feel better?
Apple’s WWDC 2022 is just around the corner. What are you most excited about?
Machine-learning start-up Inflection AI raises $225 million in equity financing to use AI to improve human-computer communication. Another reminder that building sophisticated AI systems isn’t cheap: who could forget that Open AI paid its top researcher just shy of $2 million in 2016?
Today’s Lifeboat badge goes to user Patricia Shanahan for their answer to Difference between int and double.
Tags: ai, hiring, the stack overflow podcast
9 Comments
Twitter isn’t toxic or unsafe to me, because I don’t participate in it. As Dave Chappelle once said, “Twitter is not a real place.”
the way to learn is to challenge your thinking. To do that you have to think outside (your) box and hear other opinions and perspectives. There’s a chance they could be fully wrong, partially right, or fully right. There’s a chance you could be fully wrong, partially right, or fully right. If you block everyone you disagree with, you’re left with an echo chamber of yes men, so you only hear what you want to hear, and you go deeper and become more staunched in your way of thinking. This, generally, is not a good thing. You disagree with some people? Maybe antivaxxers, people who seem racist, etc? Well, you would want them to change, wouldn’t you? How can they unless they change the source of the info, news, and ideas they are hearing?
Point being, blocking everyone out who disagrees with you is a terrible idea. It discourages reflection and feedback. No man is an island. You isolate yourself or your mindset at great peril to your future.
The ideal is to learn how to peacefully discuss things and to challenge your own ideas. That leads you closer to the truth, and helps you understand WHY you believe what you do, which makes your belief stronger. Opposing viewpoints should be accepted, not shunned.
Well said!
edit: Opposing viewpoints should be thoughtly considered, weighed against the facts and circumstances of the given situation where possible. Based on that, course correct and change your thinking/understanding as needed. But just telling others to change or consider your side, when you aren’t willing to consider theirs, is unfair and a bit hypocritical, don’t you think?
I agree. For example, I was a registered Democrat until 2017. I was listening to my favorite youtuber, when a recommended video containing an opposing viewpoint came on. Instead of skipping it, I let it play. Now, I’m a republican.
I don’t have a Twitter account and I never used it, although I might have followed some Twitter links.
Should government legislate that if a member is blocked because of a set of offensive / inappropriate tweets, then any account which liked those tweets also is blocked?
This would rapidly take down the robot accounts which are programmed to amplify specific messaging which is later shown to be deliberately misleading or offensive.
Thanks for the pod cast – very enjoyable listening.
The problem with “blocking offensive/inappropriate tweets” offensive content is subjective. For example, I consider the use of profanity as offensive. While those who don’t think profanity is offensive may consider certain passages of the Bible as offensive that I don’t. Instead of Twitter being the judge of offensive tweets, individuals should classify what they consider as offensive and Twitter blocks what the individual considers as offensive. There have been enough advances in ML and sentiment analysis to make this possible. I think Twitter should block tweets which the law considers as illegal.
Considering our right to free speech, only Twitter accounts for minors should have any content automatically “censored”. The rest of us should need to read or not read whatever we want. Blocking people is fine. Setting personal interests for recommendations for people to follow is fine. If you are an adult and you want to participate in social media you should be able to take criticism, participate in an adult discussion and be able to read and consider alternate viewpoints. If not, then social media may not be for you. Account banning should rarely occurr. Posting someoneelse’s personal or private information, posting phishing attacks or scams should be bannable offenses. Name calling, “offensive” language, etc. is just part of the social media experience and should not be bannable offenses. Those things may get your temperature up, but really do no actual harm. If you can’t take the crap, stay out of the sewer.
My privacy has been violated and there are in my account subscriptions why i can see it and there is a false and incorrect user agreement and several activities were opened in my own account I have no knowledge of it and has been informed about this matter the person was not prevented from entering my account Since I am a resident of Saudi Arabia.