My employer is famous for hiring folks at executive levels from GE and I can tell you without doubt that most of them had been some of the the worse execs I have came across. I can easily see GE as frothing with some of the worst senior level clueless "talent" out there.
I think GE used to be great under Jack Welch because he ruthlessly demanded results. When you operate in that mode virtually anything works because everything other than success gets brutally weeded out. You can start any number of new businesses and the evolution system implemented by ruthless pruning eventually will yield successful species. After Welch left, GE decided to use most of his principles as blueprint except one: demand top notch results and ruthlessly weed out everything else. One company that operates like GE under Welsh these days is Amazon. It would be very hard for any exec to spend 5 years at Amazon without showing amazing results. On the other hand I know plenty of execs at big 5 tech who have sailed through for as much as decade by simply "managing up".
It's not technology problem but execution problem. The 5 lbs/20 mi drones are quite feasible in wide urban areas to pre-selected customers. FAA is no longer a problem. It's all about deploy to small group, iterate and expand. But team there seems to be taking extra-ordinarily cautious approach until everything gets perfect - which it probably never will. Typically you don't see media to follow up on 5 year old promises of a CEO so this could very well might be hit piece generated by some insider. Anyway, I suppose Paul Viola's days there are numbered now. It's surprised they survived this long under Bezos without delivering anything at all.
While I don’t agree with @comesee, I don’t see his comments are offensive/vulgar language. Even the parent comment states very short and simple fact:
> dang called me a troll after I simply asked him exactly what it was about my comment that warranted it being removed.
Why do you think this tiny little comment worthy of immediate massive downvotes so that no one even can upvote it any more?
Is it your expectation that people commenting here must submit themselves to popular opinion? Is diverging from group think or disagreeing with mods punishable by immediate shadow banning?
1. Because the comment didn't stop there. Why leave off the bit on the end? Because it would ruin your case? 2. Because, with what I've learnt of dang, the comment you quoted is certain to be not the whole story, to the point of being false. I'd wager a lot of money on that.
It was 'important' for me because you quoted only part of the comment, then made a point of how tiny and short the comment was, how there was no reason to downvote. The part you left off was why I downvoted. Now somehow that proves your conspiracy theory right.
It's unpleasant reading people taking out their axes to grind, especially on this page. "Boo hoo, they treat me so badly, it's a horrible place" etc.. That's why people downvote. The mods seem admirable here to me, very much so. And of course on this page you will find people who appreciate them, that's the theme of the page. No conspiracy theory needed. And most people here really like HN, don't think it's awful, or we wouldn't be here. So why are you here? If what you say is right, then life's too short to waste at a place like this, isn't it. Maybe look at what you've 'turned into'.
Yes, you're right about the moral police part, I'm trying hard to stop doing this. I try to help like this and usually just get downvoted. Plus it just adds more at-best-useless comments to the site. But it is hard not to want to refute what seem unjust, unfair accusations, of the site or people on here, when I see them. But the best answer is just to downvote and/or flag, as recommended in the guidelines, I guess. Ok bye.
> Maybe look at what you've 'turned into'. [..] Ok bye.
Notice how that's apparently perfectly fine to say, but someone critical of something on HN would have to get lucky to be able to speak like that, as demonstrated in this thread.
Yeah, the whole country is an echo chamber right now. Everybody saying "Thanks for this", "Thanks for that", "Thank you", "Thank you too", "Why, you're welcome", "Here, have something to eat", "Pass the turkey please", "Here, have some more turkey!", "This is excellent turkey, thank you!", "You're welcome!"
While I know how hard these people work, I really cannot support your enthusiasm. The users are often banned at slightest opportunities and they are not even informed what they did wrong or the fact that they just got banned. They would just get dreaded “your are posting too fast” error and all their future posts and comments are automatically de-ranked forever with no recourse or appeal to these higher powers. I felt this was very similar to being placed on no-fly list which we as hacker community deride so much as infallible authoritarianism.
As HN community is more and more becoming group think (watch how this post will be downvoted) and laying these extra layers of super powers punishing anyone ad hock doesn’t help. In few posts when I wrote non-popular opinion very respectfully these folks expressed their displeasure. Mods should NEVER do that.
The sign of such required moderators is indicator of how broken the algorithms driving HN. Instead of fixing these fundamental tech issues, the powers behind HN have doubled down on exercising heavy handed dictatorships. The least they could have done but never have bothered is to at least tell people they punish what they did wrong, how do they fix it and get back in community. The best they could have done would b ego open source HN and have honest discussions about various issues we have as community so more brain power is available to solve these issues. That’s the hacker way.
Update:
Great! Group thinkers are already getting busy at casting downvotes.
>They would just get dreaded “your are posting too fast” error and all their future posts and comments are automatically de-ranked forever with no recourse or appeal to these higher powers.
Hear hear. This is by far the worst part of HN. It makes me very annoyed, more than any discussion on this site has, to see that I'm posting too fast... By having a discussion or responding to multiple people. What a horrible restriction.
HN is open source and you can see how they put a flag on your account if they think you argue too much.
AAPL will survive, not because they are doing great but the fact that Android just can't pick up the slack. I was completely mind boggled when top Android phones decided to get rid of headphone jack in order to copy iPhone's mistake. When Apple introduced notch, most Android phones followed up to also have that ugly thing. Funny thing is that none had FaceID to justify it! As long as Android is determined to chase tail lights, Apple is safe and will keep leading the segment. Wall street will come around back in few days.
With current state of things YouTube will be toast virtually with any copyright regulation. Huge amount of popular content on YouTube is stolen and retrofitted for your viewing pleasure. This is a raving cottage industry on YouTube and unthinkable just couple of decades ago when studios were going crazy over copyright infringement. You can find several old TV series, movies etc posted by others and comfortably ripping of ad revenue.
That is a wrong analogy. FB does recommendations prominently luring in you to things that you didn't knew existed. It also filters and sorts to decide for you what information you get to see.
The correct analogy is having a secretory that reads all your emails and only selectively lets you know what you got as well as inserting recommendations based on her belief system. So if this secretory tells you that your brother only sends you bad emails and here's the great model of gun you should buy if you are going to meet him - then your secretory is not merely a tool to manage your emails.
