Alphabet didn’t turn enough profit this quarter, so they had to make some difficult choices and cut their less used options

The way I look at it, things have to get better. Because if they don’t then we will destroy ourselves. Barbarism until socialism.

The meme doesn’t make sense to me either, but I can tell you that the person in the second panel is Michael Parenti, a highly regarded communist historian known for analyzing history through class struggle. The quote in the 3rd panel is a famous one from his lecture about the US War against Yugoslavia:

• Cited quote
• Full lecture

Africa is rich! Only it’s people are poor. There are still problems in Africa today, there are still outrageous things happening today. ‘“Building your own pharmaceutical factories in Sudan” where do you think you can get off where you think you can do that, when you should be buying from the multinational pharmaceutical.’

Take the case of India. India was a rich, advanced, developed country. Until the British went in 1800. Between 1800 and 1830 the Indian textile industry, which was outperforming the British textile industry, was dismantled and the great industrial centers were de-industrialized. The people were sent back out onto the land to grow cotton for the factories in Manchester and London. Between 1850 and 1900, the per capita income fell by 65%. So that poverty in the third world, that so called ‘underdevelopment’ … These countries are not underdeveloped, they were overexploited- they’re maldeveloped.

I became a socialist because I was an “essential employee” during the height of the pandemic. I was treated like shit by my company, the customers, and the government while they sung my praise. I watched my grandpa get good cancer treatment with the VA (shocker, I know, but it happens) while my sister and grandma had to fight insurance for cancer treatment.

We can’t make a perfect world, but we can make a better one. And it starts with a socialist economy.

Both the democratic party and the republican party are liberal parties. One of them got scratched.

It would violate my NDA to say anything more than: yes, all of the software I’ve helped develop use the name of mythical creatures during development

The US has the WARN Act, which requires 60 days’ notice or 60 days’ pay if at least 500 employees or 33% of the workplace are getting laid off (whichever is smaller). It’s a threadbare legal minimum on severance, but there is a minimum.

Don’t wait for a layoff, start organizing a union for that juicy ‘represented’ employment status (as opposed to at-will). Unions can’t stop layoffs, but they can minimize the impact, negotiate a higher severance, and provide advanced notice. I highly recommend the good folks at CODE-CWA, they specialize in organizing tech workers

I’m not talking about what could be. I’m talking about the political reality that surrounds us.

Maybe not the government or citizens, but war helps the congress members, the CEOs of the military industrial complex, and their families get fabulously wealthy.

Because I don’t have the capital, and jumping into forming a large worker cooperative is incredibly risky. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to, but I’ve found my niche and it’s organizing unions within the tech industry.

I’m trying to reframe the point of the discussion, which is about IP. Nitpicking the example is counterproductive, because it’s absurd to assume that no one would ever pay for a piece of software.

If game companies stood to make no money, why would they bother with such a large production?

I’m a games industry professional. I would continue to do this work as an unpaid job if my basic needs were met on a societal level.

You think you’re asking a neutral question, but you’re not. Companies operating within capitalism will behave in the interests of capitalists. IP laws aren’t required for the AAA studios other than to domineer control over an idea. A game like Call of Duty is a titan made by 1000s of professionals. One of those games gets launched every year. By shear force of momentum, there are very few companies that could ever replicate it in any fashion.

Now imagine if COD was made by a company in which IP didn’t exist, all the profits went to the workers rather than shareholders, and that the workers have a say in the launch schedule. Would you be willing to pay for a game in that instance?

It’s illegal in the US too. That doesn’t stop them from calling me and everyone I know.

There’s an extremely common cold call scam where a VOIP calls you to notify you about your car warranty expiring, and for the low, low price of 100s of dollars they’ll give you an extended car warranty.

Das Kapital described crypto before digital computers were even an idea. His work is still relevant.

I use the app opentask. Based on your criteria, it’s exactly what you’re looking for. It’s all stored locally on your phone, it has the ability to set recurring tasks, and you can create categories of preset and custom tasks. Deadlines can be set as far into the future as you need, down to the minute. It’s available on F-Droid.

Content moderators are superexploited. These employees primarily work from African countries like Kenya, so there’s a whole second layer of neo-imperialism that I won’t get into right now. They’re given poverty wages, sometimes as low as $1.30/hr. Because they’re content moderators, they have to look at images and read descriptions of traumatic events without respect for mental health. OpenAI, Amazon, and Facebook have engaged in aggressive union busting tactics for these workers as well, though workers were still successful in organizing one of the largest labor unions in Africa.

• https://www.medianama.com/2023/07/223-kenyan-workers-call-for-investigation-into-exploitation-by-openai-3/
• https://time.com/6296196/ai-data-gig-workers/
• https://futurism.com/the-byte/african-workers-openai-training

You’re probably out of luck trying to convince this person of your opinion. However if it comes up again and you want this person to walk away, I’d recommend mentioning the horrible working conditions that content moderators have to go through. Contrarians don’t like unassailable facts.

CVE-2022-2601 was discovered in 2022, but for unclear reasons, Microsoft patched it only last Tuesday.

I respect their journalistic integrity for not speculating, but it was definitely because the NSA was exploiting it.