I think it's screwing over their work to require them to work towards/purchase/lease a medallion, especially when they cost $500K-1M.
What's the big deal with saying that we require regulation, licensing requirements, insurance, vehicle inspections, background check and all that, and that every person that meets those (maybe stringent) requirements shall be entitled to operate a taxi?
We do the same for Doctors, they have to pass med school, do a residency, pass exams, have insurance and all the other (strict!) requirements. But there's no law that says "New York can only have 45 rectal surgeons and anyone that wants to practice has to replace an existing one". That's just bonkers. Same for lawyers and real estate agents and dentists and . . .
Even more to the point, the two should use the same exactly library for validation so that there is never a disagreement about what constitutes valid input. Failing that, one of the two should be designated as a 'reference implementation' and have the source & unit test suite shared so it can be reimplemented exactly.
You'd be surprised how often mobile/server teams don't even have read-only access to each other's actual source repository. It's like someone imagined that keeping them in dark would somehow be beneficial.
I don't wish to be driven anywhere by someone too stupid to realize they're not being paid for their time and depreciation, and instead are funding the profits of a large corporation out of pocket
And I don't wish to be driven anywhere in a cab that requires a limited-quantity medallion which is owned by an investor and leased out to the driver. Which means the driver's labor is funding the profits of some millionaire investor.
By all means, force everyone to get a license, but make the terms of the license objective (training, insurance, vehicle) and impartial. The idea of "there can only be 4325 taxis in Chicago and not a single one more" ended up abusing the drivers and the public.
Amazon completed the sale, collected payment, and made a profit. They ARE the seller.
Sure. But is that how it works in other cases? If I buy a light bulb at Home Depot, and it turns out[1] to be defective, don't I have to take it up with the manufacturer?
That is, Home Depot completed the sale, collected payment, and make a profit. And they are the seller. But I don't see in the analogy they would be responsible.
[1] After their return policy expires, let's. say.
If you define "the military objectives of my side are good, and those of their side are evil", then you can justify almost anything that helps you win.
I don't even remotely believe that. I believe that the US has had positive military objectives (Kosovo) and very negative ones (Vietnam). And beyond the objectives, sometimes the means were better and sometimes worse, especially in places like Vietnam.
But one thing I very strongly believe is that the choices about those military objectives and means needs to be made by the civil government of our society, with the advice but not control of the military, and through a real political process. Without a doubt that political process makes epic mistakes (Vietnam), but I fear even more the idea that individuals or corporations making those decisions without access to the full scope of intelligence the government has and without a democratic mandate to make those choices.
That's not that individuals don't have a right to demand to be reassigned and/or resign in (public) protest from an activity they find morally unacceptable. And to the extent that some tech employees personally believe they cannot contribute to a project with military goals, more power to them. But the over-arching decision about AI and war belongs to the political branches, not to silicon valley.
Depends. When you ask your friends for recommendations do you say "no one that can remember the 70s?" If so, then quite possibly yes, you have violated the law.
My friends are all in their 30s and most their acquaintances are in their 30s. So without saying or intending that, this procedure is a) not visible to the majority of job seekers of any age and b) mostly excludes those that can remember the 70s just by virtue of the social circle to which the question went.
That's the point -- I've cast a net out for prospective employees but done so in a way that targets a particular demographic.
What's more, in this hypothetical, I haven't posted the job anywhere else. So if you are not an acquaintance of one of mine, you literally cannot find out about this job.
If the law makes this is illegal, I'd be quite surprised.
If I advertise in Ebony, yes more you'll get more African readers to see your ad - there isn't any issue here because white people can still buy ebony if they want to.
So long as white people can also visit mycompany.com/careers and see the same advertisements, is there an issue?
When you buy an ad in Teen Vogue, Reddit, AARP, Ebony, or Cosmo, you are buying an ad that is served to every reader of those magazines. The advertiser, the publisher, and the reader take the magazines demographics as it is.
Well no, you don't just take it "as-is", you have a choice of Teen Vogue or Ebony or Elle or.... Which is to say you can chose the magazine whose demographic most closely matches.
You know there are magazines that cater exclusively to members of protected classes. To riff on your examples, Ebony and Jet are magazines targeted towards African Americans. Cosmopolitan targets females.
Advertisers that specifically buy space in those magazines are surely "filtering based on a protected class". I would hope that they are consciously aware as well, rather than buying ads in Jet thinking they are targeting all demographics equally.
But does one have the right to be informed of the existence of all open job positions?
If I wanted to hire for my business and just asked around my friends for recommendations/referrals without doing a "public" job offering, have I violated either the law or your sense of ethics?
For a big company, I would imagine that posting it at company.com/careers constitutes a fair public announcement for anyone that wishes to inquire.
The original filing named defendants are Amazon.com Inc., Cox Media Group, Cox Communications Inc. and T-Mobile, as well as what the union estimates to be hundreds of employers and employment agencies who used Facebook's tools to filter out older job hunters when seeking to fill positions.
This is disingenuous, they didn't use it to filter out older applicants, they used it to proactively go out and advertise for prospective applicants.
The law is pretty clear that the company has to treat all applicants fairly and without regard for age (or race, religion, gender,...) and if they don't, they should absolutely be held accountable. But it's a huge stretch to say that, when advertising for potential employees that have not yet applied, they have to do so in a way that the advertisement is seen by everyone equally. I don't know that anyone has claimed that being shown a job ad is a right in this fashion.
When Facebook's own algorithm disproportionately directs ads to younger workers at the exclusion of older workers, Facebook and the advertisers who are using Facebook as an agent to send their advertisements are engaging in disparate treatment
Disparate treatment of whom? Not of applicants, because they are folks that haven't even applied.
Moreover, how is this different than buying an ad in Teen Vogue? Or on Reddit? AARP magazine? Ebony? Cosmo? Any of those magazines has a massively skewed age/race/gender balance. A natural reading of the claim would mean that advertising in any of those would (quoting the pleading, section 21): "unlawfully exclude [some protected class] of workers from receiving job ads and other recruitment information". Heck, by this logic, even posting a (paper) job offer on the (physical) bulletin board at a university is discriminatory, since it's overwhelmingly likely to be seen by 18-22 year olds and hence "excludes older workers".
And by the way, I don't see that any of the employers are accused of otherwise-hiding the job listing such that the Facebook ads were the only entry point. If that were shown (e.g. that they advertised but company.com/careers didn't actually have the same information) I would have a much different opinion. That would actually be excluding workers from applying for the job.
None of this is at all to say that there is no unlawful age (or race or gender or...) discrimination. But targeted advertisements in conjunction with an open application process is not it.
One interesting fact, in the climate change suit, the cities estimated that they would face astronomical costs, potentially running into the tens of billions of dollars
Conversely, in their bond prospectus, they didn't mention those liabilities despite being pretty material facts that could impair their ability to repay the bonds.
So while I surely believe in climate change as a scientific fact, the projection of the cost to a city based on the best (albeit imperfect) current science ought to be the same value for both purposes. Otherwise you're lying to at least one of the two.
Indeed. And so perhaps the union should negotiate that the decreasing staff count allowed by automation should be accomplished through attrition rather than by layoffs.
That seems like a legitimate interest of the union, as opposed to mandating that automation not happen at all.
2018 folks, the year casual fascism was no longer met with instant derision.
[ Note: Not the emigration bit, that's something for each country to legitimately decide for themselves who and how many people immigrate. I was referring to the praise for a clearly fascist intrusion on a core element of personal freedom by an obviously fascist government. A "great success"! ]
True, but the union is not charged with increasing utility of non-employees. It's simply not their mission.
The union is ethically (and legally) bound to act in the best interests of the members. Just like a realtor, lawyer or an accountant or any other agent, they have to advance their clients' interests to the full extent permitted by the law and their professional obligations.
Your realtor cannot advocate giving you a worse deal even if they believe it increases total utility.
So you are saying that the union should prefer to have 1000 employees making $100K/yr rather than 500 employees making $150k/yr, because the larger union will be able to protect those workers and that protection is worth more than a 50% raise?
Well, it was briefly alluded to in Ep VII in the speech on Starkiller. Hux refers to the (New) Republic and to their support of The Resistance, making it clear they are distinct entities. He then clearly destroys the Republic.
I'll grant that's quite brief, but that's what you asked for, right?
I tend to think of it as a goal collision between multiple different interests of the union:
-- Ensuring that existing employees get better wages, benefits & working conditions -- Increasing the number of employees represented, thus increasing dues collected and clout
The union is supposed to advocate for the former. Indeed they should be happy if automation kills 1/3rd of the jobs but leaves the remaining workers better off in terms of pay & conditions -- that's surely in the interest of the workers to get more money after all.
Unfortunately, their incentives are aligned towards the latter because 1/3rd fewer jobs means 1/3rd fewer dues to the union and correspondingly less clout. That's why you hear about construction unions mandating ridiculous minimum staffing levels -- sometimes 2-4 times as much as super-socialist European countries!
This isn't really about poor morals per-se (although it's at least amoral), it's just a quirk in the incentive structure. And I don't really have a solution for it -- certainly weaker unions is not in the worker's (or country's) interest either.
On the contrary, if 5 hours of movies tries to fully give a historical narrative for an entire universe the film become stilted and expository. It's not a documentary on the rise and fall of the New Republic narrated by Ken Burns.
Anyway, this completely misses the point. Data that I create is mine to license irrespective of what the topic is. If I write a book on Obama's presidency (or Bush's) that book belongs to me the author, not Obama the subject.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's screwing over their work to require them to work towards/purchase/lease a medallion, especially when they cost $500K-1M.
What's the big deal with saying that we require regulation, licensing requirements, insurance, vehicle inspections, background check and all that, and that every person that meets those (maybe stringent) requirements shall be entitled to operate a taxi?
We do the same for Doctors, they have to pass med school, do a residency, pass exams, have insurance and all the other (strict!) requirements. But there's no law that says "New York can only have 45 rectal surgeons and anyone that wants to practice has to replace an existing one". That's just bonkers. Same for lawyers and real estate agents and dentists and . . .
Even more to the point, the two should use the same exactly library for validation so that there is never a disagreement about what constitutes valid input. Failing that, one of the two should be designated as a 'reference implementation' and have the source & unit test suite shared so it can be reimplemented exactly.
You'd be surprised how often mobile/server teams don't even have read-only access to each other's actual source repository. It's like someone imagined that keeping them in dark would somehow be beneficial.
And I don't wish to be driven anywhere in a cab that requires a limited-quantity medallion which is owned by an investor and leased out to the driver. Which means the driver's labor is funding the profits of some millionaire investor.
By all means, force everyone to get a license, but make the terms of the license objective (training, insurance, vehicle) and impartial. The idea of "there can only be 4325 taxis in Chicago and not a single one more" ended up abusing the drivers and the public.
Sure. But is that how it works in other cases? If I buy a light bulb at Home Depot, and it turns out[1] to be defective, don't I have to take it up with the manufacturer?
That is, Home Depot completed the sale, collected payment, and make a profit. And they are the seller. But I don't see in the analogy they would be responsible.
[1] After their return policy expires, let's. say.
I don't even remotely believe that. I believe that the US has had positive military objectives (Kosovo) and very negative ones (Vietnam). And beyond the objectives, sometimes the means were better and sometimes worse, especially in places like Vietnam.
But one thing I very strongly believe is that the choices about those military objectives and means needs to be made by the civil government of our society, with the advice but not control of the military, and through a real political process. Without a doubt that political process makes epic mistakes (Vietnam), but I fear even more the idea that individuals or corporations making those decisions without access to the full scope of intelligence the government has and without a democratic mandate to make those choices.
That's not that individuals don't have a right to demand to be reassigned and/or resign in (public) protest from an activity they find morally unacceptable. And to the extent that some tech employees personally believe they cannot contribute to a project with military goals, more power to them. But the over-arching decision about AI and war belongs to the political branches, not to silicon valley.
If I've posted the job on company.com/careers, anyone can casually "flip through" the open positions there.
You will be either happy or disappointed to know that your theory has a name and has been discussed for decades:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
My friends are all in their 30s and most their acquaintances are in their 30s. So without saying or intending that, this procedure is a) not visible to the majority of job seekers of any age and b) mostly excludes those that can remember the 70s just by virtue of the social circle to which the question went.
That's the point -- I've cast a net out for prospective employees but done so in a way that targets a particular demographic.
What's more, in this hypothetical, I haven't posted the job anywhere else. So if you are not an acquaintance of one of mine, you literally cannot find out about this job.
If the law makes this is illegal, I'd be quite surprised.
So long as white people can also visit mycompany.com/careers and see the same advertisements, is there an issue?
Well no, you don't just take it "as-is", you have a choice of Teen Vogue or Ebony or Elle or .... Which is to say you can chose the magazine whose demographic most closely matches.
You know there are magazines that cater exclusively to members of protected classes. To riff on your examples, Ebony and Jet are magazines targeted towards African Americans. Cosmopolitan targets females.
Advertisers that specifically buy space in those magazines are surely "filtering based on a protected class". I would hope that they are consciously aware as well, rather than buying ads in Jet thinking they are targeting all demographics equally.
But does one have the right to be informed of the existence of all open job positions?
If I wanted to hire for my business and just asked around my friends for recommendations/referrals without doing a "public" job offering, have I violated either the law or your sense of ethics?
For a big company, I would imagine that posting it at company.com/careers constitutes a fair public announcement for anyone that wishes to inquire.
This is disingenuous, they didn't use it to filter out older applicants, they used it to proactively go out and advertise for prospective applicants.
The law is pretty clear that the company has to treat all applicants fairly and without regard for age (or race, religion, gender, ...) and if they don't, they should absolutely be held accountable. But it's a huge stretch to say that, when advertising for potential employees that have not yet applied, they have to do so in a way that the advertisement is seen by everyone equally. I don't know that anyone has claimed that being shown a job ad is a right in this fashion.
Disparate treatment of whom? Not of applicants, because they are folks that haven't even applied.
Moreover, how is this different than buying an ad in Teen Vogue? Or on Reddit? AARP magazine? Ebony? Cosmo? Any of those magazines has a massively skewed age/race/gender balance. A natural reading of the claim would mean that advertising in any of those would (quoting the pleading, section 21): "unlawfully exclude [some protected class] of workers from receiving job ads and other recruitment information". Heck, by this logic, even posting a (paper) job offer on the (physical) bulletin board at a university is discriminatory, since it's overwhelmingly likely to be seen by 18-22 year olds and hence "excludes older workers".
And by the way, I don't see that any of the employers are accused of otherwise-hiding the job listing such that the Facebook ads were the only entry point. If that were shown (e.g. that they advertised but company.com/careers didn't actually have the same information) I would have a much different opinion. That would actually be excluding workers from applying for the job.
None of this is at all to say that there is no unlawful age (or race or gender or ...) discrimination. But targeted advertisements in conjunction with an open application process is not it.
One interesting fact, in the climate change suit, the cities estimated that they would face astronomical costs, potentially running into the tens of billions of dollars
Conversely, in their bond prospectus, they didn't mention those liabilities despite being pretty material facts that could impair their ability to repay the bonds.
So while I surely believe in climate change as a scientific fact, the projection of the cost to a city based on the best (albeit imperfect) current science ought to be the same value for both purposes. Otherwise you're lying to at least one of the two.
Indeed. And so perhaps the union should negotiate that the decreasing staff count allowed by automation should be accomplished through attrition rather than by layoffs.
That seems like a legitimate interest of the union, as opposed to mandating that automation not happen at all.
2018 folks, the year casual fascism was no longer met with instant derision.
[ Note: Not the emigration bit, that's something for each country to legitimately decide for themselves who and how many people immigrate. I was referring to the praise for a clearly fascist intrusion on a core element of personal freedom by an obviously fascist government. A "great success"! ]
True, but the union is not charged with increasing utility of non-employees. It's simply not their mission.
The union is ethically (and legally) bound to act in the best interests of the members. Just like a realtor, lawyer or an accountant or any other agent, they have to advance their clients' interests to the full extent permitted by the law and their professional obligations.
Your realtor cannot advocate giving you a worse deal even if they believe it increases total utility.
Why is that more likely? If automation starts by replacing trivial jobs, that should actually raise the skill level of the average job.
So you are saying that the union should prefer to have 1000 employees making $100K/yr rather than 500 employees making $150k/yr, because the larger union will be able to protect those workers and that protection is worth more than a 50% raise?
I don't think it's a dichotomy, only that it's possible for a system of government to err in multiple ways some of which are contradictory.
Well, it was briefly alluded to in Ep VII in the speech on Starkiller. Hux refers to the (New) Republic and to their support of The Resistance, making it clear they are distinct entities. He then clearly destroys the Republic.
I'll grant that's quite brief, but that's what you asked for, right?
I tend to think of it as a goal collision between multiple different interests of the union:
-- Ensuring that existing employees get better wages, benefits & working conditions
-- Increasing the number of employees represented, thus increasing dues collected and clout
The union is supposed to advocate for the former. Indeed they should be happy if automation kills 1/3rd of the jobs but leaves the remaining workers better off in terms of pay & conditions -- that's surely in the interest of the workers to get more money after all.
Unfortunately, their incentives are aligned towards the latter because 1/3rd fewer jobs means 1/3rd fewer dues to the union and correspondingly less clout. That's why you hear about construction unions mandating ridiculous minimum staffing levels -- sometimes 2-4 times as much as super-socialist European countries!
This isn't really about poor morals per-se (although it's at least amoral), it's just a quirk in the incentive structure. And I don't really have a solution for it -- certainly weaker unions is not in the worker's (or country's) interest either.
On the contrary, if 5 hours of movies tries to fully give a historical narrative for an entire universe the film become stilted and expository. It's not a documentary on the rise and fall of the New Republic narrated by Ken Burns.
Without more, no, that's not stalking.
Anyway, this completely misses the point. Data that I create is mine to license irrespective of what the topic is. If I write a book on Obama's presidency (or Bush's) that book belongs to me the author, not Obama the subject.
I don't know, at the start of Episode IV, you have no idea why Leia is being chased by a weirdo in a black suit.
There's something a bit stultifying when a universe feels the need to explain and give backstory to every little fact. It leads to boring exposition.