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'They'll Squash You Like a Bug': How Silicon Valley Keeps a Lid on Leakers (theguardian.com)
The public image of Silicon Valley's tech giants is all colourful bicycles, ping-pong tables, beanbags and free food, but behind the cartoonish facade is a ruthless code of secrecy. From a report: They rely on a combination of Kool-Aid, digital and physical surveillance, legal threats and restricted stock units to prevent and detect intellectual property theft and other criminal activity. However, those same tools are also used to catch employees and contractors who talk publicly, even if it's about their working conditions, misconduct or cultural challenges within the company. While Apple's culture of secrecy, which includes making employees sign project-specific NDAs and covering unlaunched products with black cloths, has been widely reported, companies such as Google and Facebook have long put the emphasis on internal transparency.
Zuckerberg hosts weekly meetings where he shares details of unreleased new products and strategies in front of thousands of employees. Even junior staff members and contractors can see what other teams are working on by looking at one of many of the groups on the company's internal version of Facebook. "When you first get to Facebook you are shocked at the level of transparency. You are trusted with a lot of stuff you don't need access to," said Evans, adding that during his induction he was warned not to look at ex-partners' Facebook accounts.
Zuckerberg hosts weekly meetings where he shares details of unreleased new products and strategies in front of thousands of employees. Even junior staff members and contractors can see what other teams are working on by looking at one of many of the groups on the company's internal version of Facebook. "When you first get to Facebook you are shocked at the level of transparency. You are trusted with a lot of stuff you don't need access to," said Evans, adding that during his induction he was warned not to look at ex-partners' Facebook accounts.
It's a constant throughout History.
Those that bleat the loudest about fairness, equality, and Social Justice are the ones who are actually perpetrating activities Fascists do.
Your employer is paying you for a service. Don't help the competition and screw up their business. Don't blab about your employer on social media or anywhere else.
If you're too stupid to realize that, you'll have a hard time at life
frosty piss
Zuckerberg openly called all of his userbase dumb fucks and doesn't give a fuck about it, so he can be as transparent as he wants because it won't change a thing about the fact that his userbase are indeed all dumb fucks who keep on eating the bird turds dropping from the skies.
Only shows that transparency works and not caring about PR works.
... and shoots her dead first. Sure , he may have shot her anyway but when presented with his own life under threat its a 100% cert. So unless your kid has gunslinger reflexes all that gun will do is sign her death certificate.
Oh, and you're an ass.
Are there companies that treat leakers well? I would think most (successful) companies put a lot of work into keeping their secrets secret.
I am privy to new features, bugs, big initiatives/deliverables, ship dates, financial data, methodologies, long term vision, etc at my company. Management is very clear this kind of stuff is confidential until the official software is released, or should never be released since it is considered proprietary, confidential, or may slip a release if the project doesn't work out for some reason. It happens. We do share certain information with partners, big customers, etc, but all under NDA and with similar disclaimers (e.g. "this is planned for this release but it is never guaranteed").
If I decided to blab this stuff somehow I would 100% expect to be fired if I was found out. I can read and comprehend the "CONFIDENTIAL -- DO NOT RELEASE" thing that's on all documents and presentations like this.
From TFA: "Security teams would leave “mouse traps” – USB keys containing data that were left around the office to test staff loyalty. “If you find a USB or something you’d have to give it in straight away. If you plugged it into a computer it would throw up a flare and you’d be instantly escorted out of the building.” "
I can't imagine the mental state of the people who work under these conditions. Being terrified of the company you work for is not a healthy way to spend 40+ hours a week.
At the end of the day, Facebook is an ad-supported self-publishing platform, nothing more or less in the end. Whether news about a new feature comes out today or in two weeks isn't going to make or break their business model. The witch-hunting smells of inflated senses of self-importance.
Random car and personal searches? Access to personal email and phone calls written into contracts? We're not talking about Los Alamos in the 1940s, where they designed weapons capable of killing millions, yet security is on that level. Why? Inflated egos of management of a company that thinks it's more important to the world than it actually is.
Remember MySpace? AOL? No? Good. That's where FB will be in 15 years.
Maybe in this regard I'm "lucky" but I have never worked anywhere where I even gave two shits about any new products the company might be releasing. I'll do my job to the best of my abilities, because that's the basic agreement in exchange for a paycheck, but beyond that I just don't care.
No, they keep the bugs in and squash the staff.
Table-ized A.I.
When are people going to realize that there's no such thing as individual intellectual property. Innovation is the property of all mankind and all the other intelligences throughout the multiverse.
IP theft is civil, not criminal (unless you refuse to obey a court order regarding the civil penalty). If the writer can't get that basic detail right, how are we supposed to regard any of the rest of the article?
All of it is mostly based on self reporting and anecdote.The problem is that there is no clear definition and evidence for DGU - depending on how you count them (some guy in the street speak to you, you show your concealed firearm, they go away, was it because it was a banger and he wanted to rob you or was it a fine citizen shocked and afraid you showed your weapon so freely ? Some study count this as DGU because they rely on the gun owner chosing option 1. Other do not as it can clearly be option 2). All in all if you limit to what is evidenceable you get around 80K DGU per year. And comapred to gun murder alone this may be a bit bigger, but comapred to gun violence (which include being threatened with a gun to get robbed) this is a DROP in the sea. And while DGU do indeed exists , it is pretty clear they are a side effect of having so much firearm, the same proxy with murder. Lower the firearm reach ability, this lower the DGU and lower the incident and murder. There is a reason dis-arming worked in some countries and it showed to be effective.
Now you may have a Philosophical reason to have gun so readily available, that is fine, but DGU is not a good reason, you are only contributing to the problem. The solution is to lower availability and lower frequency of shooting versus reload for civilian weapon. I have hunted, and even for boar hunting we never had a 15 or even 30 rounds magazine - it was all manually reloaded either 2 sided chevrotine riffle (think shotgun) or bolt loaded. Semi auto and machine gun are for war, not for hunt. IMO basically all civilian weapon should be manual type and have at most 2 or 3 for riffle, and at most 6 for guns, no semi auto allowed. If you need more than that for *normal* usage you are doing it wrong - as a society.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org