Depends on how the sites are structured. It's not uncommon for some sites to make users click around a lot to artificially inflate # of ad impressions. If your "favorite" website isn't doing this, and the other ones you are using do, sadly, this encourages the wrong behavior [even further].

And you seriously expect agents to be able to thoroughly understand all this enough to be able to use it?

>They don't just know the library, they recognize the functions they are traversing from the debugger output

do you think there is even a way to evaluate programmers on this level? I agree this matters, but there is no way to know until you have actually worked with that person, which takes us back to square one. And even if you do obtain this evaluation somehow, not only it's going to be hard to comprehend for someone who is not a professional themselves (doesn't look like there are a lot of programmer professionals among agents) - it also requires a non-trivial amount of knowledge about the position that needs to be filled.

This is not how we use Facebook today, and not how we use social networks in general. The difference between "most video" and "text-based news feed with pics" is very roughly the same as the difference between television and books - there're just different mediums (media?), and they do not replace but complement each other. And he says "we'll replace your book with a TV programme".

Which means that:
- either he expects Facebook users (really, most of us) to change our "information consumption" habits with time so that people will actually prefer video to text
- or he wants to change more text-oriented Facebook to a more video-oriented FaceTV, in effect creating a different kind of resource

Either seems like a significant change from what we have today. Yet Facebook succeeded as a text-with-pics-based platform, and while everyone understands we have to move on as times change and markets evolve, a change from a news-feed-from-friends-and-ads to some sort of an entertainment provider looks really risky from a business PoV.

Personally I don't come to Facebook to watch videos, and I in general watch videos rarely, because I like to focus on the message and not the carrier, and I like the music in my last.fm more anyways. If one day I come to Facebook and it's most videos, I, for one, would likely relegate Facebook to a feature-poor LinkedIn clone. I don't know how many people there are like myself, but who knows how much money people like myself add to their bottom line %-wise.

I suspect all browsers will have video autoplay blockers, just like every browser has popup blockers now.

I am saying the same thing that the Erica Joy says - that merely being a black female means she is at a disadvantage when trying to fit in a company of white males compared to a white male. (She may or may not possess other traits that also make it more difficult for her, but that's beside my point.)

I'm not defending her attitude; I made the same observations you did, and I agree with what you're saying. What I perceive as a systemic flaw is that the white-male-centric culture self-perpetuates simply by virtue of being already dominant, so that non-white-males start at a disadvantage.

Being a snob is a choice; being a black female, not so much. Having to be outstanding to make up for failing to "gel with the rest of the team" by virtue of being black or female does not fit many people's understanding of "equal opportunity". That some manage to hit that threshold (and I do know some of these personally) kind of exacerbates the unfairness.

I agree with you on most of your points - the author's unreasonable expectations are clearly the root of her dissatisfaction, even though there are some real problems sometimes. However there is one thing which in my observation works out differently, and that is how our "work" selves are separated form our "life" selves.

"I do not have to like you. I do not have to be your friend. I do not have to embrace your values, or way of life, or anything about you in a non professional manner. I am in my full rights to keep a strictly professional relationship with you, regardless of your race and gender."

You don't have to. But what happens if someone is being kept a "strictly professional relationship with" by everyone - they are severely impeded in their career. HR evaluates everyone's ability to get along with the rest of the team, and that universally includes your capability to find informal ties with the team. If you're the odd guy/gal on the project, that means you WILL be passed over for worse performers because of their perceived "soft skills". Put it simply, people that easily make friends with everyone on the job will get much further (well, duh). So, if you are different from the rest, you WILL have problems getting along, and you are at a disadvantage. And race/gender obviously is a huge factor factor here.

There is a self-perpetuating problem: there is a white (and to a degree asian) male majority in the field, and others have a hard time blending in, so the latter will be passed over. I don't have any good ideas how to change this, as long as "soft skills" is a larger factor with HR than actual merit.

Rather than the first law of robotics thing I think he's talking about things like below.

Scenario 1: there are self-driving cars, and someone manages to take over hardware update, and inserts a malicious piece of code which, once activated, starts to drive cars off cliffs, or into pedestrians, or something. There is no easy way to turn it off, or even figure out which cars are susceptible, and chaos ensues.

Scenario 2: someone figures out how to mislead self-driving cars into thinking they are not where they actually are, or about their whereabouts, using software bugs, hacks, sensory input manipulation, doesn't matter. See above.

Scenario 3, more benign: there are automatic traffic controls that form a system which can be gamed by auto manufacturers. Which they start doing, which creates the need for supervision, regulation, etc. that could have been avoided if the system in question had been designed with these considerations in mind rather than "what just happened to be there at the time".

Whatever his true motivation is, it makes sense from a business standpoint. Microsoft would love to become for Windows what Apple is for OS X / iOS, and Valve doesn't want that - it's understandable. From a certain angle, Steam machines are not unlike Google+: there are some diehard fans that would kill for it, many go like "why do we need another [social network / console platform]?" and the company behind it is big enough and has enough mindshare that the product is guaranteed to have some visibility even if it is not quite on par with what the rest of the market has to offer, and eventually gain enough of a market share to make sense, even with all backwards / forwards support issues you pointed out. And for consumers more competition is always good, so sure why not.

that will automate creating a bunch of fake profiles on facebook, twitter, linkedin and whatnot given some photos. this way facial recognition software will drown in the data noise - which of them is real you? something tells me there will be a demand for this service pretty soon.

just kidding, but only half so.