If you were qualified to be an editor you would check your sig for a possessive usage and manage the sig character limit more effectively. ;-)

It appears I have to quote it against the censor sock puppets with mod points, but I mostly wonder what part of it annoyed them so much. The philosophic flavor? Or is Social Security some kind of third rail, even in the indirect reference via "pension"? Can't really claim I was disappointed because I no longer expect any helpful references or even thoughtful replies from Slashdot... (There are individual exceptions, but in general the tl;dr appears to be mostly automatic after a paragraph or two.)

My memory of the "discussion" has already faded. Quite sure there was no memorable Funny post or I would remember the joke now. Not that long ago. Also think I managed to dig up some mention of social security after I had posted, but can't recall if it was substantive or not. Is it worth looking around to see if I thought there was some part of the discussion that was worth a reply? Or perhaps the joke is that I was "called back" to the post by a belated positive mod point?

I'm quoting your FP because that moderation appears to be intended as censorship. For what extremely little it is worth on today's Slashdot, I think you are raising an interesting point, probably even an important point, but not doing it well. Positive spin would be to say you felt constrained by the FP problem and wrote in haste. Negative spin would question how well you write. Today I feel positive, except that I believe the FP thing is on the LONG list of problems Slashdot cannot address because of the defective business model. (Long time since Slashdot felt like a friendly place with many substantive discussions... But I still like the "feel" of the input window for the editor. Why?)

However I'm mostly branching back to a higher perspective and I hope my Subject is less vacuous than "Really?" I think this story is about one aspect of a much larger problem with what the google has become. Is there any among you (assuming anyone still has the attention span to read a second paragraph) who still believes "Don't be evil" has relevance in today's google?

Mostly I try to limit my google exposures these years, but I still have contact with a number of google apps. The overwhelming theme is that the quality is getting worse, often in ways that suggest short-sighted or even evil motivations. (In order of decreasing time, I think it's close between Maps and YouTube at the top with Gmail and Gemini and Calendar on a lower tier. Should the weather summary count as a google app? Now I feel like the google is pervading and invading my life...)

However I think there is a simple reason why things are getting worse. The "good" people are leaving or being driving out of the google. Many of the people who leave seem to be hoping to do better things. Apparently they think they have more chances to make the world better from outside of the google? (Also anecdotes of former friends who seem to have changed since become part of the the google. And not for the better...)

The people who are left behind inside the google seem to be more and more focused on money. The FP focused too narrowly on military money. The big money these days is in crypto and AI scams, and that's where lots of evil people are concentrating their efforts. Dare I say naturally?

SIX paragraphs? How dare I? I wait with bated breath for the tl;dr responses.

Thanks for the joke, though I think the story had much more potential for humor.

There was one period in my motley career when I actually ran the customer service department. Main reason I was able to provide any actual customer service was because no such department existed. No trace in the business plan that the VCs had funded. But it had to be done, so I did it (while mostly doing the job I had been hired for at night from home).

I actually learned quite a lot from helping the customers and from training other employees in how to help customers. I also learned that some people will never believe that they've been helped, but they still helped me understand what customers wanted and there were even times when the ingrates helped me find new ways to solve customer problems or ways to offer new services.

It would be interesting if someone wrote a "business history" book about how customer service was destroyed. At least I haven't found that book yet. I think Microsoft will be prominently featured for innovations in new ways to treat support as a cost to be minimized. Silly me to think support was about making customers happy and finding new ways to serve the customers. The google is just following the established "new tradition" on this one. Any leads to books or authors? My leading candidate would be Michael Lewis, but I think I've read all of his books and he never went there. Perhaps Michael Cusumano could write it? If he's still alive, which I doubt... But what does the AI chatbot say?

Okay, sort of a form of a plan for the joke I was looking for... "Synergy" was inevitable, but I was looking for a "Where's the value?" version, perhaps patterned after the ancient "Where's the beef?" commercial.

I don't think there is any real value left in today's stock market, though it has innovated in new forms of Ponzi schemes. Rather than going outwards looking for fresh suckers to bring in more cash, the way traditional Ponzi schemes worked, the stock market is now going inwards with fresh imaginary valuations of various shares that mean nothing, but which can be used to borrow actual cash for super-living expenses and private jets and all that fine stuff. The old metrics of inventory and past sales and price-to-earnings and all that junk ("beef"?) mean nothing now (against imaginary "synergies").

Me? Thanks, but no beef of the edible sort. I prefer chicken. Even though my cup of metaphorical beefs runneth over.

But it was in Delaware before that and my next guess is that it will go back as soon as it becomes less politically convenient. Perhaps RSN? Just a matter of expertise in writing favorable laws for corporations and the reality that Texas has never been long on expertise. There should be a joke about it...

Pretty sure I tried it at least one time in the past, but didn't get any satisfaction or money back. At various times via various mechanisms the shares have come out of escrow status, and then they go back... Another funny story about how my Japanese brokerage firm went from #3 to bankrupt a long time ago. But I think the fundamental problem is that the stock market game is rigged in favor of big investors and small investors are just treated as collateral damage.

I have some funny stories about single shares, but since I can't write jokes, I'll just summarize the results. Really hard to sell single shares, so they eventually wind up in escrow in Delaware. At this point it seems pretty clear they are just waiting for me to die and then the state gets to keep them. Just a few shares here and there. Not a big deal in my case, though I'm sure many cases are larger, but multiplied by large numbers and I conclude the state must be making out like a bandit.

Anyone around here actually live in Delaware? Are you getting any benefit related to the profits from escrowed shares? Or even better if you know the magic person working for Delaware who can sell my shares and send me the money. At this late point I should settle for any significant fraction of the face values?

I think they would have needed a different economic model to align the interests of employers and employees, but there is a fundamental problem because the time scales are not aligned. The employers should be paying in relation to their longer-term results while most of the employees who are eager to work have shorter time horizons... Until they start thinking at a career level?

I feel like recycling the same joke about aging...

But as regards the story, the LinkedIn joke I was looking for was something like "Too late. That war has already been lost."

Only mention of social security in the largish discussion. I should have looked for that rather than retirement before I posted my comment or wannabe joke...

(But I never got a nickel from social security, even though I heard I was qualified some years ago... Don't need it and never expected to see any money from it. Self-fulfilling prophecy strikes again? Or it should have been marketed to me as a kind of insurance against living too long?)

At least for the people who live long enough. That was my reaction to the story, but there is no mention of retired people in the large discussion, but I have a pension now and spend all of my time reading, walking, and visiting libraries to find new stuff to read.

However going for funny, I do have a related (for extremely tangential values of "related") thought of the day:

Youth = Average of changes is better.
Maturity = Changes average out to zero.
Old age = Average of changes is worse.
So have a good day until you die and get off the ride.

I feel like I must have gotten that from someone somewhere, but I cant recall the source. Did I read it or hear something? Does it ring any bells in your head? Maybe a philosopher sometime in some book?

It's a special word for "Slashdot will always be broken so it can't check the spelling in the Subject." I did manage to catch one of those yesterday, but...

Just joking. There's actually a way to tweak my browser to prevent the Subject field from being excluded in the local spelling check, but then I run into another broken financial model where my browser may get broken at any time in some new way so they can add some new feature I'll never use...

However in relation to this story, if either setting creates a security vulnerability, we can now count on AI helping the bad guys find it. Wherever the victims are.

NAK

(The way AC should be.)

Local news has been filled with repeated incidents involving AI-empowered PII theft. It's especially nefarious in the situation where the exfiltrated data is not English. The people managing the data are not fluent in English, but the systems protecting the data are fundamentally English. The attackers have a major advantage when their English-based comprehension of the security systems is higher than the defenders' comprehension. After they have stolen the data they have plenty of time to figure out what it means and which parts are most valuable for resale or blackmail.

However this story is more about an obvious target created by policies that favor computerized testing. Side effect of the convenience is that the target became so large and ripe for theft. I'm only surprised it wasn't stolen long ago.