Maybe he should have thought about that before he posted it. The author of the medium article is right that the manifesto implies that a lot of coworkers are less capable.
There are lots to say/critique on that manifest, but Yonatan's commentary piece is pure dishonest bile. Ironically it also strengthens the claim of an authoritarian regime at Google and its "our way or the highway" policy when facing discussions.
The piece is simply garbage. It was an ad hominem that attacks viewpoints the original author never presented, such as
"... how women and men are intrinsically different and we should stop trying to make it possible for women to be engineers". Quite the opposite.
It's the obvious implication from stating that women are biologically prone to being inferior engineers, and that they should end diversity hiring programs.
> If you don't see any other way to deal with OP's views than described in this belittling rant
If that's how you read it then I feel like you missed the entire point.
> This is a non-statement. Replace 'engineering' with science, medicine, finance, customer service, politics, retail, programming etc., and it will sound as correct.
In the US if you don't like your internet provider you can shut up and keep paying because the government helped them get a localized monopoly. Google can swing regulators from "anti-trust" to "it's all good they said they would fix it". Lobbyists write legislation.
The level of corporate control in the US is disturbingly high. Ultimately they are weaker than the federal government.
> Would we still use the "private companies" can do whatever they want argument?
At some point I would think you would run into anti-discrimination laws, but short of that sure do what you want.
I'm free to say to those users "hey, come post here my lgbt brothers/sisters/anything in between. Come post here liberals who are pissed off about the actions of facebook/google".
Whereas if I said something against the government of china they would just toss me in prison or have me killed.
Except that people can just leave facebook and go use something else if they don't like it.
Don't get me wrong, I am deeply disturbed by the level on control facebook (and google) exhibit over news, information, the internet. But it's a fundamentally different thing then the government doing it.
I remember one of the wiki leaks releases from last year implied that google/Facebook had the capability to shift political opinion by selecting what people are exposed to.
When the government does this I think it's actually less harmful because people are aware the government wants to manipulate opinion.
The capability to individually tailor propaganda like is already done with advertising is much worse I think.
Their money source is as protected from the government as it reasonably can be.
Really, the alternative is you have them beholden to billionaire owners and advertisers. This is why I like the idea of a (properly funded) public news source, just not as the only source of news.
> Their money source is as protected from the government as it reasonably can be.
Obviously false.
> Really, the alternative is you have them beholden to billionaire owners and advertisers.
Or have them run as a non-profit which doesn't accept advertising and instead takes donations from a huge variety of sources, including the people who watch it.
Don't pretend there are no other funding models.
Don't pretend the fact the government has a strong hand in their funding doesn't impact what they consider to be newsworthy.
Justify this. The funding is legislated into place in such a way that they are not subject to the whims of a new budget. Removing it would require actually changing the law, which ensures that a government trying to do so is subject to scrutiny.
That seems about as good as you can reasonably expect.
> Don't pretend there are no other funding models.
That's absolutely true, but if the DoJ is acting in good faith (they believe they have sufficient evidence of guilt by this person) then is this really a problem?
There are good reasons to be cautious, but this particular case is far from decided either way.
Dan Cowhig, prosecuting, also told the court that Mr Hutchins had made a confession during a police interview.
"He admitted he was the author of the code of Kronos malware and indicated he sold it," said Mr Cowhig.
The lawyer claimed there was evidence of chat logs between Mr Hutchins and an unnamed co-defendant - who has yet to be arrested - where the security researcher complained of not receiving a fair share of the money.
It's a grey area though.