Maybe it’s a silly question, but how much of those “EU Region” makeups that were seeing are enforceable in reality?
In extreme cases the US DoJ can reach, let’s say the CEO/CTO arrest them or pick up family members in case of some sort of non-compliance in some criminal investigation.
I can imagine something like
> US DoJ has some PoI with some account in Fastmail “EU region”
> Fastmail says “sorry we’re GDPR”
> US DoJ says “now” or…
> Fastmail refuses
then it becomes a political issue between the EU and the US?
mind you, prior to this administration the EU was more then happy to help the US DOJ in such cases.
considering the stuff that happened in the past year or so, i doubt that would happen again.
Actually calling bluff on the US is the only way to play this properly, because it gives the EU a mandate to strike back geopolitically if the US wants to retaliate for non-compliance by fastmail.
That's one of the reasons why I opted for multiple citizenships. I was fortunate to have the option to rehash parts of my name, and I am using my birthplace country's passport as a throwaway for everything, and my other citizenships docs only the governments and legal system know about.
Plus, like others mentioned, I am preparing my future self to be in a total offline/unplugged world and be a semi-ghost digitally, and even now in 2026 I found a bunch opportunities already doing it in a semi-agorist way (e.g. second hand, cash on hand, offline remote physical work, hunting/fishing, farming/a little farm, etc).
What does it matter whether the author can be "taken seriously"? How does his (mistaken?) 2022 assessment of the progress of deep learning have any bearing on his comments on possibly unethical and corrupt business actions of OpenAI's leadership?
Maybe marginally related, I used to listen to a lot of podcasts, especially when I had a severe issue in my eye and I couldn't read. I used to listen to nonfiction, lifestyle, health, tech and history (I do not follow politics in podcasting).
At least after the pandemic (ca. 2023) one thing that I noticed is that a lot of podcasts now has some rotation of the same guests, they are more tied with the world events (e.g., a "stoic" podcast talking about the POTUS that has 0% influence in my life and interest) and prominent figures that are specialized in... podcasting, or podcasts that, without any pushback, bringing outlandish guests for clicks (e.g. any of the Weinstein brothers, moon landing, etc).
I used to listen 20+ hours of podcasting per day and my feed was great, but now I cannot even listen 1 hour or even 99% of the guests are the same figures or super polarizing.
Yeah, many podcasts are either: (1) an advertising platform for a guest's new book, (2) a platform for the guest to play their "greatest hits" without engaging critically or exploring new ideas, or (3) a platform for the host to tell you their half-baked opinion about $CURRENT_EVENT in order to keep the slop machine running.
As a Brazilian, the whole improbable (and beautiful) history of Portugal raised by the "Navegações" and how badly they bottled the whole imperium (especially after the Brazilian independence, but one can argue that João VI opened the ports) and the sheer amount of lack of vision in not investing in production is something that will always amaze me.
One can say that it was one of the longest imperiums in history (ending in 1999 with Macau???), but every time that I spend some time in Portuguese cities, I feel just bad. The good thing is that Brazil will carry its tradition for posterity nevertheless.
Poor corporate planning and execution is a long time Portuguese tradition. It seems our history is written by a few people that somehow emerge from that chaos and manage to put everyone else moving on some direction. Much of the lands overseas were left on their own, abandoned. There was an effort from their side to remain Portuguese because of family ties.
Brazil was different from the start. It was the chance to build a kingdom on a paradise without poverty and the problematic european neighbors. It shocks me to see the old brazilian cities with the same traditional architecture as seen on european portugal but placed in gorgeous locations. When I see those pictures, I understand why so many preferred to stay in Brazil.
Also, Brazil always had a strenght of its own that surpassed anything else seen before. Ships were larger and stronger when built there, population had a level of energy and optimism that surpassed the european counterparts. It was not a surprise when it became the heart and capital of the empire itself.
Just as curious note: Up to this day the spanish have much more respect for the portuguese than vice-versa. I was curious about why it happened that way, one day a old spanish told me something I didn't know: "it's because if we upset they portuguese they'll invade our land and burn Madrid again".
I never knew the portuguese had done such a thing, it isn't mentioned in school nor in popular culture but it did happened. Turns out this was during the wars against Spain, an army group from Brazil arrived to defend Portugal but more than just defending they went straight to the capital and subjugated it completely. This left such an impact on the self-esteem of the spanish that they haven't forgotten to this day. Brazil is indeed something else.
> But everyone is out shopping, partying, drinking, eating out all the time. Onsens, arcades, karaokes, izakayas. Yes getting those services means someone has to work.
Spot on.
I really like Substack as media and I think has been a great complementary in terms of depth; but this article does not have any difference of any slop from mainstream media.
Pick one topic, place some term (like late-stage capitalism, social-democracy, democracy), pick-up 2 or 3 bad poins, and build a narrative, and sprinkle some ~hyperlinks~ references that sustain and voilà: now you have some in-depth analysis with a audience craving for it even when everyone knows that is super simplistic and reductionist, does not converge on what books and history says, and with a politically charged piece.
All those articles you will never see any kind point of positivity being conceived; it sounds always written by some hypercritical, rational, politically charged, and hyper-contemporaneous in a sense that is not space for nuance and understanding that no simple thing per se can explain a very complex phenomena.
For God sake, those guys received 2 nukes 80 years ago and they managed to raise again, and in the meanwhile my country during this time only have 55% of people with sewage.
People were out drinking and dancing during WWII, no? I don't feel like "oh well I see people out drinking and dancing" doesn't rule out that potentially millions nationwide are unable to do that but would like to
> For example, I can tell you that if you are an immigrant in the USA from one of the (now many) targeted countries, even one with legal residency, news about ICE's actions is very relevant and very important to you.
Exactly. There's a post from last week on how media/journalism became more entertainment than information, and I think the complete opposite of the first reply: If you have bandwidth and time to consume most of those "world news", then you're the privileged.
One example: In Germany if you watch/read the state regional public broadcast from Berlin[1] for 2 days you will learn more about the whereabouts of Donald Trump, the President of Ukraine, sports news, or some broad reporting about "cultural" aspect of the city (e.g. about Hildegard Knef, something about Karl Lagerfeld and so on), or general gossip.
The city itself has fewer private investments than 5 years, the schools lack basic infrastructure, educational ratings are dropping, delays in public transportation, the hospitals are lacking personnel, 10% unemployment, and an awful housing situation, squeezing the working people.
[1] - I'm totally in favor of public broadcasting that comes from the principle called "broadcast what you want to become or aspire to be" that is more focused on factual journalism (i.e., no commentary), educational programs (especially with Public Universities STEM lectures being broadcasted), educational cartoons, classic music and orchestras, and space/nature/technology documentaries.
I used to related with what the OP says and if he’s under 35 makes sense to jump to another adventure.
Anyways, a friend of mine told me the complete opposite than the OP after not being selected to a promotion 2x: He stayed competitive enough to the market in case of any issue, but at the same time he slightly moving to the “Dead Sea” existence where the tenure created a small co-dependence between himself and its employer.
His employer knows that he’s working at a discount in comparison to offshoring his job, but at the same time even being a L4 like can enjoy a lot of free time and agency to know when and where to throttle his productivity.
The only potential aspect that might be bad at least for me is that, even with Udemy having a bigger variance in terms of general quality Coursera will impose it course aesthetics, rigidness in the syllabus, and bring a lot of people not in the market to give the courses.
I like the idea of having some professor of high credential US university given lectures about the things in some accessble way and I think this has a huge value, but at least for me, since Udemy is more about tactical courses in 10 out of 10 times I will go with the person in the market that pulled a course que a great and non-exhastive content bringing all the tips and tricks of the market, even if he/she does not make the bad in the background.
I do not see those 2 things co-existing if Coursera impose it.
> My take away from this is that you can't change the culture
I've seen the culture changing in some special circumstances a couple times in previous companies, and honestly all of them were ugly:
1) Demographic replacement (having more people saying yes and out-vote the legacy employees)
2) Hired guns from the top to the bottom to shake the system (we called in a company those managers "007" because they used to have licence to fire).
3) Non-compliance stable as a discipline method for the "legacy employees" (very adopted in Central Europe)
4) "Train-your-replacement" as a coercion method for collaboration
5) Some modified version of the "madogiwa-zoku" but instead of looking to the window, they push people to go for the "metawork," like organizing events, being a developer advocate in conferences, assuming roles as "community managers," or being used as a "donkey token" to be used in conferences or panels of "_______________ in tech."
The last one made me chuckle. Worked in Japan, didn't see many madogiwa zoku (probably because I only worked at startups) although it was talked about a lot. But I guess community manager-esque position did exist, and now it makes sense why so many big company blokes that went to tech meetup came off as very incompetent
It's some low-risk/consequence project/initiative that is designed to receive people that will be fired due to lack of compliance and/or collaboration with the new management.
Once we had a German colleague that was not so collaborative in sharing the knowledge about some specific parts of the application, and the Tech lead replaced her MacBook with a Windows 10, and she only can write PRs related with DocStrings.
Because firing people in Germany is a multi-year process that requires (among many other things) paying for a complete training course in all job-relevant skills under the assumption that any incompetence is caused by insufficient training.
As has been stated above, I’m guessing in this specific example it would’ve been due to the rather strict labor laws, which I’m not going to comment my opinion on, just to clarify/explain: Here (Germany), you can basically not fire someone if your company has >10 full-time employees, and they’re not actively misbehaving (or under trainee/probationary status). Yep, this statement means exactly what it reads.
So I’m guessing that’s the reason for this “passive firing” method.
I mean I'd guess it was because it's somewhere with a higher bar to firing. Redundancy or dismissal are both much more complicated (expensive) than simply making it very clear you'd like someone to leave.
What you say and what they think are not the same, usually your meaning and intention is drowned out by their pre-existing assumptions and incentives/motivations. You have to resonate with their assumptions and incentives for them to "hear" your meaning and intention.
In extreme cases the US DoJ can reach, let’s say the CEO/CTO arrest them or pick up family members in case of some sort of non-compliance in some criminal investigation.
I can imagine something like > US DoJ has some PoI with some account in Fastmail “EU region” > Fastmail says “sorry we’re GDPR” > US DoJ says “now” or… > Fastmail refuses
Then what?