enri posted:

I don't know what the gently caress you're all talking about because I just skipped reading 300+ posts about cars and poo poo posting but I'd just like to say I'm borderline ecstatic that Malaysia is back at a sensible local time so I get to watch it early Sunday morning live! yay.

Now let's wait for crushing disappointment to kick in to ruin the rest of my Sunday.

Norns posted:

You just have to question why these fucks don't want people to afford to live.

1500quidporsche posted:

I was going to type up this big thing about how the future wouldn't suck if we put more value into corporate social responsibility and consumer rights over being able to easily order Chinese food through some stupid app but instead I'll just say there is a fairly large correlation between the issues we as a society face and the fact that Wicka is absolutely hated in the apple thread.

Norns posted:

Not like anything else is going on

https://twitter.com/ScuderiaFerrari/status/913599494746443777

1500quidporsche posted:

I was going to type up this big thing about how the future wouldn't suck if we put more value into corporate social responsibility and consumer rights over being able to easily order Chinese food through some stupid app but instead I'll just say there is a fairly large correlation between the issues we as a society face and the fact that Wicka is absolutely hated in the apple thread.

gret posted:

Yeah I tried DuckDuckGo but it's just... terrible. Bing is slightly better but nowhere near as good as Google search. Since I'm on a Mac I'm using Safari, Apple Maps, and iCloud. Those work fairly well.

GramCracker posted:

To sound like a total goombah, type that poo poo out. Not pulling your leg but I’d genuinely like to read your thoughts about that.

Norns posted:

Yeah 1500 I actually read your effort posts

1500quidporsche posted:

Okay well I tried to warn you I just got some dumb title promotion today, went karting and had a few brewskis so its gonna be a little Tony Montana-esque Most of this is gonna be unintelligable.

I feel like the rise of the "Silicon Valley"-VC complex is attributable to a major shift in consumer attitude towards how they interact with products and services, specifically in regards to the concept of ownership and the idea of corporate social responsibility.

On the first point: The modern stock market system, investors and economy in general have really tended to favor large firms in a fairly established industry with relatively few players that work towards moderate incremental growth over the long term since the mid 90s. I think the "consistent growth at all costs" approach coupled with the use of stock options in executive compensation and pressure from investors for stable returns has meant that these corporations become overwhelmingly conservative in how they operate, looking for efficiencies through cutting expenses or small pricing increases rather than testing completely new concepts. The problem is that most these companies have on the long term faced relatively little competition because they have operated with few other competitors that have built themselves up to a size that makes it impossible for anybody else to break into the industry.

The refusal to break these firms up coupled with their entrenchment with regulations hurting newcomers is what has given rise to the VC model. Operating with unlimited funds and outside the traditional scrutiny of a publicly traded company "the start up" can enter the marketplace against a bunch of entrenched players and undercut their price-point significantly. The incumbents, still constrained by their investors, are unable to adapt and basically bleed market-share to this new player until enough of them die off and the new player, now with a significant share of the market, can offer an IPO to cash out the VC partners.

Its this disturbing cycle where a select view group of people have identified that you can exploit the way the modern financial system has evolved with enough cash, but instead of changing it to be a meritocracy fair for everyone government end up cutting just enough red tape to let the rich new player in before shutting the gate again.

To the second point its basically this: We as a society simply don't give a gently caress if we own something or not anymore and as much as my generation (millennials) will hate to here it we really don't give a gently caress about the fairness and social responsibility behind our products. The smart phone is a good example. nobody seems to think its a big deal anymore that you buy this $500-1,000 piece of electronics that is completely sealed off from you, was made by slave labour in china, and demands that you only interact with it in the ways that it wants you to because its convenient.

We've created this entire system where so long as something is convenient for us we are totally fine. We're willing to use Uber even though the drivers are treated like complete poo poo and aren't even employees of the company because its convenient. We use google because its convenient, even though it sucks up every marketable piece of data available into this black hole to spew more ads at you about the last five things you look at. We buy the iPhone because even though you have to buy expensive cordless headphones and can't change the battery or chose what you can put on the phone its convenient.

All this has done is create this race to the bottom where the company that can make a service the most convenient for us wins even though they've completely hosed over their employees/suppliers/general health of the industry in the process.

Society as a whole needs to make more informed decisions and letting the big picture influence their purchases. I shop at Costco, the lines at checkout suck rear end, it looks like poo poo in there and I hate how loving crowded it is, but they pay their employees decently and give them benefits so I think its worth it. Its a small stupid thing but I think if we all started thinking like that it would make it very difficult for these stupid loving firms to burst into industries by virtue of ignoring all the rules and offering some sleek looking product that is marginally more convenient. The sooner we start looking at how a company treats everyone in society as a whole, the sooner we stop racing towards the bottom and instead start trying to elevate everyone in society.

Carth Dookie posted:

That's cool and all but it feels like excessive aggro is being directed at the consumer who has an ever decreasing number of choices (Google or gently caress all, apple or Android, etc) rather than the fuckers dumping their colossal profits into their own wallets and that of their lobbyists to keep the cycle of bullshit continuing. Not to say consumer is devoid of responsibility, but yeah.

1500quidporsche posted:

If we learned our lesson with Apple/Google and applied that to Uber instead of collectively saying "lol it's so convenient though" I would almost certainly agree with you.

1500quidporsche posted:

Okay well I tried to warn you I just got some dumb title promotion today, went karting and had a few brewskis so its gonna be a little Tony Montana-esque Most of this is gonna be unintelligable.

I feel like the rise of the "Silicon Valley"-VC complex is attributable to a major shift in consumer attitude towards how they interact with products and services, specifically in regards to the concept of ownership and the idea of corporate social responsibility.

On the first point: The modern stock market system, investors and economy in general have really tended to favor large firms in a fairly established industry with relatively few players that work towards moderate incremental growth over the long term since the mid 90s. I think the "consistent growth at all costs" approach coupled with the use of stock options in executive compensation and pressure from investors for stable returns has meant that these corporations become overwhelmingly conservative in how they operate, looking for efficiencies through cutting expenses or small pricing increases rather than testing completely new concepts. The problem is that most these companies have on the long term faced relatively little competition because they have operated with few other competitors that have built themselves up to a size that makes it impossible for anybody else to break into the industry.

The refusal to break these firms up coupled with their entrenchment with regulations hurting newcomers is what has given rise to the VC model. Operating with unlimited funds and outside the traditional scrutiny of a publicly traded company "the start up" can enter the marketplace against a bunch of entrenched players and undercut their price-point significantly. The incumbents, still constrained by their investors, are unable to adapt and basically bleed market-share to this new player until enough of them die off and the new player, now with a significant share of the market, can offer an IPO to cash out the VC partners.

Its this disturbing cycle where a select view group of people have identified that you can exploit the way the modern financial system has evolved with enough cash, but instead of changing it to be a meritocracy fair for everyone government end up cutting just enough red tape to let the rich new player in before shutting the gate again.

To the second point its basically this: We as a society simply don't give a gently caress if we own something or not anymore and as much as my generation (millennials) will hate to here it we really don't give a gently caress about the fairness and social responsibility behind our products. The smart phone is a good example. nobody seems to think its a big deal anymore that you buy this $500-1,000 piece of electronics that is completely sealed off from you, was made by slave labour in china, and demands that you only interact with it in the ways that it wants you to because its convenient.

We've created this entire system where so long as something is convenient for us we are totally fine. We're willing to use Uber even though the drivers are treated like complete poo poo and aren't even employees of the company because its convenient. We use google because its convenient, even though it sucks up every marketable piece of data available into this black hole to spew more ads at you about the last five things you look at. We buy the iPhone because even though you have to buy expensive cordless headphones and can't change the battery or chose what you can put on the phone its convenient.

All this has done is create this race to the bottom where the company that can make a service the most convenient for us wins even though they've completely hosed over their employees/suppliers/general health of the industry in the process.

Society as a whole needs to make more informed decisions and letting the big picture influence their purchases. I shop at Costco, the lines at checkout suck rear end, it looks like poo poo in there and I hate how loving crowded it is, but they pay their employees decently and give them benefits so I think its worth it. Its a small stupid thing but I think if we all started thinking like that it would make it very difficult for these stupid loving firms to burst into industries by virtue of ignoring all the rules and offering some sleek looking product that is marginally more convenient. The sooner we start looking at how a company treats everyone in society as a whole, the sooner we stop racing towards the bottom and instead start trying to elevate everyone in society.

ImplicitAssembler posted:

Looks far more like a 50-80mm, which is what I would bring to an indoor press conference.
And again..he would have to have been two blocks away for a press conference to use a 400mm.

sticksy posted:

(I work(ed) for a global HR/technology company until last month, AMA)

learnincurve posted:

I legit used to be able to automatically identify a lens and sometimes the camera it was taken with from a single photograph because of dull reasons, but I’m rusty.

ImplicitAssembler posted:

Yeah, I can do that too, when I have access to the EXIF data.

learnincurve posted:

Because being able to tell the difference between lenses and knowing photoshop are the same thing?

I did try to tl:dr if but if you are going to use pedantry as a tool to make a stranger feel small. I have a photographic memory. My reading speed (including comprehension) is off the charts, and I can store poo poo in my head like photo albums. sometimes the shelves get too full so stuff has to be thrown out, or I forget where I have put them though. I used to deal in second hand lenses to feed my own lens habit so I’ve seen and can remember a lot of pictures taken with a lot of different lenses and use those as a reference point.

Schlesische posted:

This isn't the thread to make E/N posts in.

learnincurve posted:

Because being able to tell the difference between lenses and knowing photoshop are the same thing?

I did try to tl:dr if but if you are going to use pedantry as a tool to make a stranger feel small. I have a photographic memory. My reading speed (including comprehension) is off the charts, and I can store poo poo in my head like photo albums. sometimes the shelves get too full so stuff has to be thrown out, or I forget where I have put them though. I used to deal in second hand lenses to feed my own lens habit so I’ve seen and can remember a lot of pictures taken with a lot of different lenses and use those as a reference point.

SulphagneSocialist posted: