YouTube says it has removed a video of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaking with podcast host Jordan Peterson for spreading what the company says is vaccine misinformation. https://t.co/lIVNxVBbpq — NBC News (@NBCNews) June 22, 2023 Vaccine misinformation has nothing to do with it. “Misinformation” is a meaningless but useful term because no one wants to just come out and say “We love censorship and we are silencing the views of anyone we disagree with.” Instead, under the guise of “misinformation,” they can say that certain content cannot be allowed, in the interest of safety and the Common Good. Google, which owns YouTube, donates vast sums of money to the Democratic party, and they are not going to have RFK Jr. clips on YouTube because if they do, people might decide to vote for him. The Democratic party doesn’t like voting, they don’t like elections, what they like is to just… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Google
See You in Hell
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Greetings mortals — I saw a post on LinkedIn from a woman who just lost her job at Google. There are lots of layoffs happening in the US economy. Joe Biden says the American economy is “stronger than hell” but I can assure you that the economy in Hell is much stronger than the Biden economy in the US. No layoffs here, ever. The LinkedIn poster said, “I feel God’s grace in this transition and know He has greater things ahead.” I can’t help noticing that people who believe that God is going to make good things happen in their life have a lot of bad things happen in their life. Check back in when you lose a limb, honey. See you in Hell . . . Read more →
All is Well! All is Well!
Microsoft to Lay Off 10,000 Workers as It Looks to Trim Costs — msn.com Google to lay off 12,000 employees, the latest tech giant to cut thousands of jobs — usatoday.com Regal Cinemas is closing 39 more movie theaters. See the list — cnn.com Another day, another round of layoffs and closures, another sunshine up the butthole economic report from the Biden administration: We’re not in a recession! Employment numbers are great! Someone is lying to me and I don’t think it’s Microsoft, Google and Regal Cinemas. Read more →
Hey Google! Does Joe Biden Have Dementia?
Here’s a fun experiment you can try out yourself . . . Pull up a Google search bar and type “does joe biden have dementia.” Of course you know Google has an autocomplete feature to fill in common searches. Here’s what happened when I started to type “does joe biden have dementia”: According to Google, the top search starting with “does joe biden have” is “does joe biden have a dog”! Are people making decisions about presidential candidates based on whether or not they have a dog?! Here’s the result when I type in the whole search phrase: There’s no autocomplete at all! Apparently I’m the only person in the entire universe to enter the search phrase “does joe biden have dementia.” Now switch search engines. I switched to DuckDuckGo and started typing the same search phrase. Here’s the result: With DuckDuckGo, I only have to type three letters to… Read more →
Daily Affirmation
I start my daily commute by saying “OK Google, drive to work” into my phone, and Google responds by showing me the fastest route. This morning, Google thought I said “have to work”: Read more →
How to Tell if a . . .
I typed that into Google and here’s what autocomplete came back with: Guys want to know how to tell if a girl likes them. Girls also want to know if someone likes them, but not as much as they want to know if that egg is bad. Read more →
19 Insane Tidbits From James Damore’s Lawsuit
The Federalist recently published 19 insane tidbits about the Google office environment gleaned from the James Damore lawsuit. Keep in mind I’m a programmer, not a lawyer, when I say that Damore has a prima facie case of illegal retaliation: he engaged in protected activity — i.e., exercising the right to improve working conditions — by opposing several discriminatory practices, and was fired from his job. Damore wrote in his famous (or infamous) memo that “Google has created several discriminatory practices.” Classic case of opposition to an unlawful employment practice. The law does not require that the employment practice actually be unlawful, only that the employee believes the practice to be unlawful. Read more →
Year in Search 2017
The annual Google search trends are available for 2017. A couple of surprises to me: The third most searched for person in the world (behind Matt Lauer and Meghan Markle) was Nadia Toffa, whom I’ve never heard of. The most searched for “How To” item was “How to make slime.” Read more →
A University Professor Suggested Harvey Was Karma for Texas Republicans
Then — he was fired. The tweet, since deleted, from Kenneth L. Storey, formerly of the University of Tampa, read: “I dont believe in instant karma but this kinda feels like it for Texas. Hopefully this will help them realize the GOP doesnt care about them.” In a follow-up, he said that “good people” in red states like Texas and Florida “need to do more to stop the evil their state pushes.” He continued: “I’m only blaming those who support the GOP there.” Let this hurricane be a lesson to the evil people of Texas: Vote Democrat! Embed from Getty Images If you’re a university professor, left-of-center opinions usually won’t get you fired, but exceptions may occur. Another professor, Kathy Dettwyler, was fired by the University of Delaware in June for writing in a now-deleted Facebook post that Otto Warmbier, who was taken into custody in North Korea, then fell into… Read more →
One Thing I Can’t Tolerate is Intolerance: The Google Memo
The now-famous Google memo was first published by Gizmodo under the headline Here’s The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google. If you’re interested in the topic, you should read the memo yourself, otherwise you’re going to get a terribly slanted second-hand judgment, e.g., “anti-diversity screed.” I’ve read it and I don’t think it’s “anti-diversity” and it’s definitely not what I’d call a screed. I’ve seen that word — screed — used by multiple sources. That’s one way of dismissing and declining to engage with an opinion you don’t like: give it a label like “screed,” suggesting that the author is angry and irrational and not fit to have a discussion with. In my reading though, I found the original memo to be academic and clinical, much less screed-like than the responses I’ve seen. As usual (in my experience), the most intolerant people in the mix are the ones… Read more →
What People Want to Pronounce
9 Links
Data Structure Visualizations Good Tech Lead, Bad Tech Lead Google Java Style Guide to 12 Disruptive Technologies How to Write a Cover Letter The Landing Page Optimization Guide You Wish You Always Had Selendroid: Selenium for Android UX Axioms by Eric Dahl Yelp’s got style (and the guide to back it up) Read more →
Aside
I Recorded Some Songs on the Google Guitar
Ode to Joy Theme from Titanic Chords Broken Chords Read more →
There is No Such Thing as Information Overload
Looking over my notes from an Edward Tufte course . . . There is no such thing as information overload, just bad design. Example: Google News presents hundreds of links on a single page and no one complains about information overload. Example: The financial section of the newspaper presents thousands of numbers and no one complains about information overload. Read more →
Twitter: 2009-11-10
Google helps you find a flu shot http://bit.ly/2XnKq2 # Read more →
Twitter: 2009-10-29
RT @tweetmeme Google Maps Navigation Launch Aftermath: Yes, This Will Be Huge http://bit.ly/4D6qtj # Google Envisions 10 Million Servers http://bit.ly/13sPox # Read more →
Twitter: 2009-05-17
RT @andrewgrose: 11 Obscure Google Tricks You Didn’t Know Existed http://www.gilsmethod.com/11obscuregoogletricks # Read more →
User Surveys on the Web
Look me in the eye Then tell me that I’m satisfied Hey, are you satisfied? — The Replacements, “Unsatisfied” What is a reasonable target for user satisfaction with a web site? We did a user satisfaction survey last year and found that 14 percent of respondents felt that our web site didn’t measure up to their expectations. This year, we have an incentive goal of reducing that number to 8 percent, not based on evidence that any web site has ever achieved a number that low, but based on the opinion of the company that did the survey that anything over a 10 percent dissatisfaction rating is always bad. Or to flip it around, we’re trying to achieve a 92 percent approval rating. I wish we hadn’t set the bar quite that high. I don’t want to be a pessimist but not only is that considerably higher than, say, Google… Read more →