"In "Can't Get You Out of My Head," Curtis plays a long montage of talking heads on U.S. cable news repeating the phrase "the walls are closing in," during the final days of the Mueller investigation. He accuses media organizations, including the Times and magazines like this one, of profiting from the frenzy and uncertainty of the past four years, obsessing over Trump's personal corruption and mendacity rather than the alienation and anger that brought about his Presidency in the first place."
The question I have of Curtis is whether he starts with a premise and then finds video to support it, or whether he derives his ideas from watching random archive video, or both. It would be fascinating to watch a "making of" documentary that shows how he finds the right archival footage.
Ideas like the above about MSM are the easy, obvious ones. It may reinforce what we already feel we know.
But his films are also filled with deeper reflections that are less obvious, which he can illustrate with obscure, memorable visuals.
If his films did not touch on the obvious ideas they might be too alienating, more like avant-garde art film.
If they only addressed obvious ideas the films might be too boring, more like documentaries on Netflix.
He somehow finds the right balance.
But I think these overarching general theories tying all these disparate clips together that he presents via voiceover... the "leaps" as this article describes them... these are what make his films worth the watch.
He has a true talent for that. He stretches but is careful not to go too far. That is what make his films unique, IMO.
His "general theories" are similar in effect to conspiracy theories perhaps. They can be very appealing to certain receptive audiences.
The big difference is the former seem to be designed to make you think while the latter (along with political correctness) seem to be designed to relieve you of thinking and appeal straight to emotion. His films always seem to suggest we cannot remove ourselves as factors in any outcome. We have to take some amount of responsibility. We cannot view ourselves as pure victims nor others as sole culprits.
As for this article, he reveals no overt objection to populism.
The title of this film is an homage to the author of "Bullshit Jobs", a self-described anarchist.
>The question I have of Curtis is whether he starts with a premise and then finds video to support it, or whether he derives his ideas from watching random archive video, or both. It would be fascinating to watch a "making of" documentary that shows how he finds the right archival footage.
You should read the article then, as it is discussed in there. He has access to the complete BBC archives and just scrolls through material on fast forwards until he stumbles onto interesting threads that he saves and then later finds patterns in.
At this point, I would not even bother using Google to find news from Australia, whether Google pays or not. Just go to the Australian media websites. How hard is that.
"I don't get why Google should pay news sites for promoting them and helping them make money."
Because Google pays massive fees to be the "default search" on millions of computers. Why would they pay so much for that. They insert themselves between then computer user and the path to finding the media sources. Nerds may know how to get past middlemen if they need to, but most people using computers do not know how.
Oil companies pay a living wage. At least they used to, before "Big Tech".
People used to care about environmmental degradation. It used to be a headline issue in the 1970s.
It is depressing to think of how much energy is required to keep Google alive. That is no small amount of oil.
Google's mission is to keep online advertising alive. Without it, they cannot sustain the high life they are living. They serve only advertisers. To do this, they need massive amouts of data, more than any single media publication could collect. People using Google search and Android are just ad targets. At least the media employs journalists, and they have a purpose to inform. Google's purpose is just to collect personal data and serve advertisers, including political campaigns.
Even media can be described in a similar fashion, a lot of them promote content that generates the most clicks - which is often biased and polarising. There are sides to every discussion. I am no fan of google's data collection policies, but at the same time cannot refute the value they have created as a company.
I was refering to Google's reliance on online advertising. The media unlike Google does have something to sell: journalism. The media relies in part on advertising, but not greater than 90%, as Google does. I never mentioned the concept of value or the media's dirty tactics. I am refering to operating as a middleman and having a nearly 100% dependence on advertising. As far as I know, those are facts.
I don't disagree with your last paragraph. I don't like the Google business model either. But it works, and in capitalism that's all that matters. And they've climbed to the top so why should it be easy to unseat them?
Google and Facebook did what any capitalist organization should do. Grow unapologetically, pivot into new areas, absorb competition, and take over the world.
In one sense I wish it weren't Google or Facebook that this happened to but on the other hand I'm glad it was progressive companies who treat their employees right instead of the status quo McDonald's and Wal Mart and holding firms.
You know they are the ones complaining that tech is taking over. Isn't it ironic that last years world leaders are upset about being booted from the table by executives who don't even believe in capitalism. If that's not an enormous "we're better at this than you" then I don't know what is.
I don't like FB or Google's revenue streams... but that doesn't matter in capitalism. They have a stable business model and they deserve to see where it goes.
You say you disagree with the last paragrah but you did not offer any argument against any of the assertions in the last paragraph. The asserions were factual, having to do with the need for advertisers. Unless you can claim Google does not need advertisers and offer arguments in support, then you have not disagreed with the last paragraph. Instead you changed the subject. Something about capitalism and Wal Mart. Has nothing to do with whether or not Google relies on advertising to survive.
For a lot of folks reading HN, who are trying to excise Google from their lives, if they were in Australia, this would be a dream come true. How do you make Google go away? Force them to pay.
Yes, and that's part of my point. A brainwashed, irrational Apple fanatic should be convinced that Beats are magically amazing and worth whatever price Apple decides to charge.
"The US government is concerned that an attempt, through legislation, to regulate the competitive positions of specific players in a fast-evolving digital market, to the clear detriment of two US firms, may result in harmful outcomes." - US trade representatives Daniel Bahar and Karl Ehlers
Competitive. Competition. In Australia. Who "competes" with these "specific players". No other websites even come close.
This is a sad display of US financial leverage in favour of two companies that need no such help. If anything they need to be reigned in as they decimate foreign media.
Trump must have some grudge against Australia to allow this pressure.
It's decimating but they don't want it to stop? What?!?
Basically, they just tipped their hand. This shows that what we really have here is a sad display of an attempted and targeted shakedown of foreign entities by Australian government. Media impact is the best justification they could derive -- or were somehow influenced to derive.
By the way, I am no fan of either Scroogle or Facecrook. But the idea that they are collecting $ billions at the expense of Australian media content (aka Rupert Murdock) is absurd. If content theft was really the issue, existing laws could/would be applied to address it.
Australia is probably not a great example to use. The political landscape there is a problem in and of itself. Plus Murdoch, etc. They have their own problems to deal with. Google PR wants you to focus on Australia's insane politics. It distracts from the larger issue.
But. If you look at this in principle, without focusing on the specific country, then it is difficult to argue in Google's favour. Countries may want to preserve their media institutions, unlike the US. They may not want to watch journalism die at the hands of Facebook and Google.
The way Facebook and Google "decimate" is by being middlemen and extracting the lion's share of online advertiser revenue. They are positioned to collect larger amounts of data by being middlemen for all online content and thus can offer more value to advertisers than any single media publication.
These two companies have plenty of cash. If a country asks them to pay, they can. After all, neither produces any content.
That is the issue as I see it. Not Australia in particular but whether a country's media institutions can ask Facebook and Google to pay.
... whether a country's media institutions can ask Facebook and Google to pay.
They can ask --- and Google/Facebook can refuse --- by de-listing these "media institutions" from search results.
Sound fair?
But this is not what is happening here. Australia is making Google and Facebook a mafia style offer that they can't refuse.
The only way to avoid paying is by leaving the country altogether. This is where it becomes a "free trade" issue.
What they are proposing is essentially a tariff --- a unique, special, unavoidable and highly targeted tax on these particular US companies just to legally operate in the country.
All this aside, what is really happening is Murdoch wants a cut of their profits without having to compete for it.
The product, i.e., the Australian media, is already in the country. There is nothing to import. As for "legally operate in the country" that makes little sense either. If those companies want to open offices in Australia, they can. They can sell whatever they want. Of course, they do not sell anything. They are leeches.
The telecom infrastructure that Google and Facebook must utilise to conduct surveillance and collect data on the Australian readership, does not belong to Google or Facebook. What are these companies bringing to the country. Nothing. They are leaches. They want data on Australians.
Any country can create their own localised social network and search engine. If Google and Facebook want to charge fees to Australians to use their websites, then can. They will never do that. Why is that.
Again, "what is really happening" in Australia is not how I am looking at this dispute. I am looking at this as a general question of whether a country, any country, can protect its media industry from Google and Facebook. Other countries want to do this, too. This could be a test case.
Given that Australia now has a FTA with the US, the leverage is too great. So don't worry, Australia will back down.
But not every country is like Australia with its political grandstanding and Murdoch media. Not every country has a FTA with the US. Making Facebook and Google pay is not a crazy idea.
"In 2010, DNA sequencing company Complete Genomics said that "an interruption of services by Amazon Web Services, on whom we rely to deliver finished genomic data to our customers, would result in our customers not receiving their data on time."
Gaming company Zynga warned about how its AWS foundation could quickly vanish when it filed the prospectus for its initial public offering in 2011.
"AWS may terminate the agreement without cause by providing 180 days prior written notice, and may terminate the agreement with 30 days prior written notice for cause, including any material default or breach of the agreement by us that we do not cure within the 30-day period," Zynga said.
AWS can even terminate or suspend its agreement with a customer immediately under certain circumstances as it did in 2010 with Wikileaks, pointing to violations of AWS' terms of service."
Wonder if they can cancel their government contracts so easily.
When people debate the merits of "on-prem" versus AWS on HN they rarely focus on the contract terms.
FWIW, I agree with your opinion. That includes not letting politicians onto these websites to do campaigning. This was a big mistake. The number of former public servants who have gone to work for Facebook is alarming, IMO. The number of possible future public servants who have worked there is perhaps even more worrisome.
The question is how do you fix that? We should want domain experts in a lot of these government roles, but the primary way you become an expert in an industry is working in that industry.
Let's image we put a ban in place to prevent this revolving door. Why would someone working in the industry be willing to forfeit their post-government career, especially if they are a political appointee and might only have the role for a few years until the next election?
That is a huge disincentive to participate in governing and will likely lead to more career politicians and bureaucrats which isn't exactly an ideal situation.
I think for starters it's important to recognise that the expectation of a "post-government" career is itself a part of this problem. If we instead built long term competence within public institutions, including competitive remuneration and career development like training programmes, there wouldn't be a need to have a door between the private and public sector quite as much in the first place. The reward should be delivered in situ for continued constructive service, not be an upgrade to a private sector gig after holding your nose and/or making decisions you feel will be looked upon favourably by future employers.
Private and public sector employees could collaborate where it makes sense, just like companies sometimes collaborate on shared initiatives like working groups or open source projects.
Government can actually work better than it does in the US -- as it does in other countries -- but one must first accept the ideological premise, which seems to be what holds the country back.
And working conditions. The state often can offer better working conditions. Things like high pay and fixed hours - does not have to be a fantasy salary before it is very attractive to people with families.
> If we instead built long term competence within public institutions, including competitive remuneration and career development like training programmes, there wouldn't be a need to have a door between the private and public sector quite as much in the first place...
That sounds great in theory, but the problem is that many of these leadership roles if not elected directly are nominated by the president and therefore they are political in nature and those politics can flow down through the organization.
For example the FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, is resigning this week. Would he have resigned if Trump was reelected or would he have been re-upped for another term? Is Biden obligated to find this Republican a job somewhere else in his administration? Is Pai just supposed to retire at 48 years old? Can he go back to working for Verizon like he did for a period earlier in career? How many other people at the FCC have or soon will leave the agency due to the change in leadership?
> That sounds great in theory, but the problem is that many of these leadership roles if not elected directly are nominated by the president and therefore they are political in nature and those politics can flow down through the organization.
That could be changed though. It's not how it works here in the UK. The ministers in charge of departments are political appointments, but we also have a substantial politically neutral civil service with lots of headroom for career advancement. (politically neutral to the point that you are not allowed to publically express your political opinions - posting them on social media could be a firing offence)
The US also has an apolitical civil service infrastructure, just not at the top of these agencies. And it is the leadership that people refer to when they worry about the revolving door. No one cares when some low or midlevel USPS worker goes to work for FedEx, they care when the former FCC chair Kevin Martin is tapped to head up Facebook's US Public Policy.
Working for a third party that provides govt infra, we/my org see it as a license to print money and an opportunity to lock govt in. Really perverse incentives.
They pat themselves on the back for falling into it. Congratulations and drinks all round after you've signed millions over to big blue for a glorified application level firewall.
It's already in the trap. Very hard to justify the $$$$ to be platform neutral when sales reps are so good at pushing the savings of jumping in fully with one SaaS.
Your idea is honorable, but do governments have the know-how to do it? It's not only about costs and responsibility, I don't think this could be feasible in most countries, maybe only in China and US.
Lol this is kind of funny given my other post but in addition to having worked in government I’ve also worked in healthcare.
I made about 50% of what I do now at that vendor and was glad to leave. I truly think if people had an incentive to make things better in government and healthcare then things would get better. It was a terrible job but a good starting point. I wonder if health care vendors paid as much as google or Facebook how good things could be.
In fact there are a few people that do try to make things better, but they value their progress over money. Same with teachers. We know they make a fraction of what a tech worker does but the value they provide is immense.
I don’t know if you’ve lived on the west coast and worked in tech but if you have surely you know someone who makes an absurd amount of money at Facebook, or google or whatever and also hates what they do. Imagine if you could pay people faybu bux but to make government work. They would do it. There would be an impassioned soul who is want to make government better and would do so. Instead the government pays half rate and gets half rate old dudes who want to retire in place.
A former Googler got called in by the Obama administration to try and put healthcare.gov back on its rails after the disastrous launch, and the things he learned about it were fascinating. He talks about some of them here
It's not only the pay rate attracting employees who prefer stability to income... It's an entire decisionmaking ecosystem centered around minimizing blame coupled badly with compartmentalization. The end result is employees are heavily incentivized to do things that minimize risk not for the entire project but for their individual department. couple that to the percentage of the work that is done by third-party vendors under strict contracts written before the full scope of the project is understood, and it's a bad recipe.
One of the first problems the embedded team identified with the whole design of healthcare.gov was that every team had responsibility for its individual component, but nobody was empowered to have responsibility for integration. It was possible for every subcontractor to satisfy every bullet point of their contract and the result to not actually be a functioning healthcare exchange website.
> I don’t know if you’ve lived on the west coast and worked in tech
No. I don’t live in the US and don’t work in tech. I work in healthcare and have done so in the private sector and public sector. I don’t think you have pay a an amazing amount to get good people. Decent conditions go a very long way. My public sector pay isn’t worse than my private pay, and depending on how you measure it, the public pay may be better.
Would I be right in thinking that your healthcare experience was all private sector?
Not especially. Government has largely predictable load, and hosting on third parties is eyewateringly expensive (only approved suppliers, who overcharge).
In jurisdictions I’m familiar with it would require (nearly impossible) reform of the bureaucracy to make it possible.
> Your idea is honorable, but do governments have the know-how to do it?
Yes. Governments hosting their own servers is still the norm if anything, the same is true in plenty of large companies. It's not exactly black magic, especially with modern technology. Outside the HN bubble the cloud hasn't really taken over.
> I don't think this could be feasible in most countries, maybe only in China and US.
Smaller countries are easier, there is far less scale to worry about and computers are powerful enough that most government services could just about be run on a single server (in practice you probably wouldn't).
Can you expand on why you believe that (and why you don't find the counterarguments convincing)?
In particular, why isn't this concern addressed by the government negotiating a more favorable contract than the standard terms of service?
(Alternatively, why can the government not address the problem with legal means? In the US, the Defense Production Act can compel private companies to accept and perform government contracts.)
For a valid reason. The government isn't a tech company or an infrastructure provider. You wouldn't ask the government to build their own roads or bridges, so like everything else software and services need to be contracted out as well. Of course that doesn't mean they should use AWS by default, but asking every single government agency to build their own data centers and CDNs is foolish.
> You wouldn't ask the government to build their own roads or bridges
Bad analogy, because we're not talking about the building of bridges (software), we're talking about where they are built.
In your example, the government surely wouldn't pay to have a bridge built on private property where access could be rescinded immediately if the land owner was so inclined.
Why is the assumption that three letter government agencies are signing the same contract with Amazon as a random startup? Amazon built an entire new instance of AWS just for government use. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be able to deny access on a whim.
In the states most roads and infrastructure projects are built by private companies that are contracted to do so by the government. There's offeten a public bid process between multiple companies to decide who gets the contract.
That seems like the wrong type of job to outsource. You outsource for expert help. This can be done in house with more control over when work occurs to sync with low traffic volume times.
I led cloud transformations at a Fortune 500 and we did make sure to look over contracts and have business agreements in place. YMMV though as we had some weight behind our needs as a government contract would. If you just sign up with a credit card I’m sure it’s different as mentioned however, a lot has changed since 2010.
Did you have any "disaster recovery" plans in place, what you would do if the cloud failed.
I think looking at this issue with the example of "Parler" may be missing the point. The issue worth debating is surely not whether Amazon made the right decision. Of course they did. The issue worth discussing is who gets to make this decision in light of what the decision implies. Due to how much businesses are choosing[1] to rely on companies like Google and Amazon as service providers, these "tech" companies can easily kill other businesses by denying service, without violating any laws in the process.
These "tech" company middlemen are generally not treated like utilities under existing laws but the question is whether they are being treated as such by customers, the public.
1. Perhaps not so much consciously choosing as being persuaded by tech company salespeople and, IMHO, biased "media coverage" (=hype).
Disaster recovery was a hot topic. Most transformations kept DR within the cloud. A few architectures wanted to fail over to another public cloud (AWS->Azure). The issue of “de-platforming” still exists. Most wanted to get rid of the on-prem costs without keeping a rack around for DR.
You’re absolutely right that the real meat of discussion needs to be how a cloud company like AWS makes these decisions? What criteria? What protections does a consumer have? What about data?
There’s a lot of unknowns there. AWS’ Business Agreement you can get their legal and your legal to agree upon, doesn’t really touch on all those points. Further, AWS’ has a canned agreement they use and don’t make concessions even if you’re a Fortune 500.
They all include a NDA about the agreement itself. So yes, the terms are confidential. Even the fact that a particular that you may or may not have an agreement at all is confidential.
With respect to the fact of the existence of an agreement being confidential information, usually an NDA will only apply to information that has not already become public through no fault of either party.
Every Master Service Agreement (MSA) I’ve seen has had a ton of legal back and forth. To say that they all include NDAs is a generalization which isn’t even mostly true in my experience.
Gov is pretty sure has a far stronger leverage than AWS. For example, if AWS cancels unilaterally Gov contracts, Gov will show that as Exhibit A of the need of Anti Trust.
Anyway, if Gov can procure cloud services, they should procure multiple providers and design their service as a cloud agnostic system.
Are there enterprise contracts that do not have provisions under which the supplier can end the relationship for cause?
I have a hard time believing the lawyers for a supplier would let them sign a contract that requires them to provide service to a customer under any and all circumstances with no way out.
Edit to add: if you stick servers in a colo data center instead of signing with AWS, doesn’t the data center contract give them the right to evict you under certain circumstances? If you lease office space, doesn’t the lease usually have terms under which the property owner can evict you for cause?
Analogies (such as leasing data center and commercial real estate) should probably account for the availability/lack of viable alternatives. For example, how much choice, what options does the consumer have in selecting its "service providers".
Building off-prem is one of the biggest boondoggles in the history of our industry.
Unless you stick to S3, EC2, or EKS, you wind up designing your infra for freaky weirdware architectures like Lambda that won't run anywhere else.
Your costs are double what they would be if you just had a platform team imaging and updating servers. Costs can grow unexpectedly, too.
Why anyone is using this trap is beyond me. I guess since folks spend their two year tours of duty at companies before rotating off to some other position elsewhere, they just don't care.
> When people debate the merits of "on-prem" versus AWS on HN they rarely focus on the contract terms.
if this had been electricity or water, instead of AWS compute resources, the tune would've been different.
I think the gov't just need to catch up with regulation - that infrastructure/utility providers cannot terminate without cause in the same way that an electrical utility cannot terminate a premise of electricity abruptly and without cause.
The question I have of Curtis is whether he starts with a premise and then finds video to support it, or whether he derives his ideas from watching random archive video, or both. It would be fascinating to watch a "making of" documentary that shows how he finds the right archival footage.
Ideas like the above about MSM are the easy, obvious ones. It may reinforce what we already feel we know.
But his films are also filled with deeper reflections that are less obvious, which he can illustrate with obscure, memorable visuals.
If his films did not touch on the obvious ideas they might be too alienating, more like avant-garde art film.
If they only addressed obvious ideas the films might be too boring, more like documentaries on Netflix.
He somehow finds the right balance.
But I think these overarching general theories tying all these disparate clips together that he presents via voiceover... the "leaps" as this article describes them... these are what make his films worth the watch.
He has a true talent for that. He stretches but is careful not to go too far. That is what make his films unique, IMO.
His "general theories" are similar in effect to conspiracy theories perhaps. They can be very appealing to certain receptive audiences.
The big difference is the former seem to be designed to make you think while the latter (along with political correctness) seem to be designed to relieve you of thinking and appeal straight to emotion. His films always seem to suggest we cannot remove ourselves as factors in any outcome. We have to take some amount of responsibility. We cannot view ourselves as pure victims nor others as sole culprits.
As for this article, he reveals no overt objection to populism.
The title of this film is an homage to the author of "Bullshit Jobs", a self-described anarchist.