WTF happened to Google?

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Google exec says Nest owners should probably warn their guests that their conversations are being recorded https://t.co/mAl2hhgSjp

— Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) October 18, 2019

[JoeP]

From the source:

It's an admission that appears to have caught Google's devices chief by surprise.

After being challenged as to whether homeowners should tell guests smart devices - such as a Google Nest speaker or Amazon Echo display - are in use before they enter the building, he concludes that the answer is indeed yes.

"Gosh, I haven't thought about this before in quite this way," Rick Osterloh begins.

[lisarea]

Gosh, no?

Hadn't thought of that before? You suck at your job.

[Kyuss Apollo]

He just assumed we all knew our all-knowing Robot Overlords are all-listening as well...

[chunksmediocrites]

More than 1,000 Googlers signed a letter demanding the search giant cuts ties with climate-change deniers
Here's the highlights:

Google employees published an open letter with more than 1,000 signatories on Monday demanding the company take a stronger line on climate change.
The letter demanded that Google commit to zero emissions by 2030, cut ties with the fossil-fuel industry, stop funding climate-denying lobbyists and politicians, and have no relationship with organizations involved in oppressing "refugees or frontline communities."
While Google likes to tout its green initiatives, it has also donated to think tanks and lobbying groups that push back against climate-change legislation, and Gizmodo reported early this year on its aggressive push into big oil.

Whatever happened to that whole "Don't be evil," thing, I recall from yester-year? The curse of being old.

May, 2018: Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code of Conduct

Oh, well it's cool then

[Crumb]

I blame ES.

[Ensign Steve]

[JoeP]

In defence of those Google employees (not ES obviously, who is indefensible), you don't hear so much about F******k employees demanding that their company act better.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Experienced software engineers can easily be replaced by former coal miners with a code bootcamp tho.

[chunksmediocrites]

I like a title that gets down to it
Fitbit is Doomed: Why Everything Google Buys Turns to Garbage

[JoeP]

That is indeed such a title.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Google Buys Naming Rights To Every Child Born In The Next 25 Years For $83 Billion https://t.co/bMfHZUXkgN pic.twitter.com/HUkFEmZHMx

— The Out And Abouter (@OutAndAbouter) November 3, 2019

[lisarea]

Google's Project Nightingale Gathers Personal Health Data on Millions of Americans - WSJ

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Gmail: Someone has signed into your account!

Me: Yeah that was me

Gmail: No it was on another device!

Me: Yes my tablet

Gmail: Someone stole your tablet?!

Me: what no

Gmail: CALL THE POLICE

— Jon (@ArfMeasures) December 8, 2019

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Gmail

Let me alert you on every device you have connected to your account via a high-priority notification as well as the email notification, not just the recovery email address you told me about.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

It was good, but it was Google, and thus doomed to die.

— Simon Gill (@simonwgill) December 22, 2019

[lisarea]

Oooh! Ooh! For Christmas, I have been invited to join some rando's Google Home system!

According to the email, this allows me to:

• Add new devices (like speakers and home automation devices like lights and cameras) to this home
• Access devices that are added to this home and change their settings
• Automatically link your media services (like YouTube) to all devices in the home

Thank you, Santa! I love it!

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

[lisarea]

Lots of people think my email address is theirs, so I get some weird shit. This might be my favorite, though.

[BrotherMan]

[chunksmediocrites]

Thousands of Google’s cafeteria workers have unionized

Around 2,300 cafeteria workers who work at dozens of Google campuses in the Bay Area, including the search giant’s main headquarters in Mountain View, have unionized.

The workers — who include dishwashers and food preparers who serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner for Google employees — voted last month to form a union after a campaign that’s been two years in the making, according to a source involved in the campaign.

Their organizing has gone largely under the radar even amid other high-profile worker activism at Google in the past year, which has included employee protests about sexual harassment, the company’s work with US immigration agencies, and allegations that the company retaliates against employees for reporting HR issues. But the cafeteria workers’ unionization is some of the most significant union activity tech industry workers have accomplished — particularly for service workers who operate as part of Google’s vast “shadow workforce” of contractors who largely receive lower pay and fewer benefits compared to the company’s full-time employees.

The workers who voted to unionize earn wages that start at around $35,000 a year, according to a source familiar with the matter. And they say they don’t receive all the same benefits such as retirement plans that are standard for full-time Google employees. Their move to organize represents a symbolic pushback against the status quo of growing economic inequality in Silicon Valley, where all but the top 10 percent of income earners have seen their wages decline from 1997 to 2017.

The cafeteria workers are organizing with a local chapter of the union Unite Here, which represents some 300,000 workers in the hotel, food service, laundry, warehouse, and casino gaming industries nationally in North America, according to its website.

An arbitrator officially recognized that a majority of the workers at cafeterias across Silicon Valley voted “yes” to union representation on November 20 of this year, according to a union flyer that Recode reviewed. Since Google contracts these on-site food service workers via a third party, they are technically employed by the multinational food service firm Compass Group, which staffs many of Google’s cafeterias through its subsidiary, Bon Appétit Management Company. Compass Group and the union are now in the process of negotiating a contract, according to sources.

Good news to end out the year!

[fragment]

Things you learn after being out of the loop for a decade. Apparently Google owns the top level domain *.dev nowadays, and everything under it is set to requiring SSL. I can see that it might not have been best practice to use *.dev domains for local development but it was a fairly convenient one.

Thanks for the extended frustrating debugging process!

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

From the WTF is this guy doing to Google dept.

How to Fake a Traffic Jam on Google Maps - VICE

[Kyuss Apollo]

Why does the left menu in Gmail have to be

so fucking annoying

Fucking hell.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

So yeah, I didn’t sign into Google on Safari. I do have the Gmail app though, and somehow Google signed me in on Safari. Cute.