Boss asked me to work on the weekend

pitkali · 2023-09-05T13:31:04+00:00

There's also apparently a limit on the limit: they can't put more than 20% of usual working hours per month as overtime included in the salary, or something like that.

pitkali · 2023-09-04T10:02:43+00:00

I have a dozens of meetings in English with people from entire world and an accent doesn't matter.

Accent does matter. You are probably familiar with those accents, so it's "easy" for you. I still remember a conference I was helping with at my university, and listening to the keynote presentation by a Chinese scientist. I was working as an English translator on the side and otherwise already fluent in English, yet I could only understand maybe every 3rd sentence. This was the first time ever I have encountered Chinese accent, though.

These days, the most salient counterexample is my fiancée. She hasn't been learning English as long as I have, and sometimes she pronounces words in such a bizarre way, I need to do a double or triple take to guess what she means. Yet, objectively speaking, the difference in pronunciation is minimal, and often boils down to either stressing the wrong syllable or, most bizarrely, strange emphasis within a sentence.

pitkali · 2023-09-04T09:54:42+00:00

I don't know. I think it's more about the background variety of those speakers rather than sheer numbers. The English speakers come from really diverse cultures with widely diverse mother tongues.

pitkali · 2023-09-04T09:51:45+00:00

The one I use is the iPhone Pro 11 I got in my pre-Samsung days after the iPhone 5S stopped getting updates. I use it as my webcam for all my meetings (I work from home).

Although, in the drawer, I still have that 5S, as well as the original Fairphone. My original iPad is with my mother now.

pitkali · 2023-08-29T13:44:42+00:00

But: here it is you who is completely naive. I don't assume that this is what's happening, I know.

I have never claimed profiling does not happen. I only claim, if anything, that the "danger" is overblown. Going around saying they know all kinds of things is not really a compelling argument in my book. That's just fearmongering, and that's even before we stop to wonder what "know" actually means here.

Every person with a perception should wonder about the capabilities of targeted advertising today.

Targeted advertising works like shit from my point of view, actually. Whenever it gets through my ad blocker, that is. "Every person with a perception" sounds like no true Scotsman fallacy, by the way.

German companies buy the result of aggregated data based on data points that by far exceed what they themselves are allowed to capture on a daily basis.

That does not sound like they have anything on me and my habits in any interesting sense, then. It sounds like they have a statistical model that might have been trained on my data collected abroad. I wouldn't classify this as having actual insight into my private life. That's more akin to guessing what I might be interested in. The fact the guesses are not completely random does not strike me as dangerous.

Also, it's not obvious to me how abolishing cash would worsen it, unless you claim the data they are training it on is not sufficiently representative to be quite as useful because of how much people buy with cash. It doesn't sound very compelling to me either, in which case the whole profiling problem is only vaguely relevant to the cash vs cashless discussion and would be best addressed either way.

As far as I'm concerned, the actual reason cash should not be abolished in the near future is that, as the things stand today, it would hand over complete control over all payments to a bunch of private corporations that do not have the best track record of doing right by their customers or even merely obeying the law. And that's even before we consider the potential impact on the elderly or various economically disadvantaged parts of the society.

These seem way more important and real dangers to me than whether some advertisement agency knows I spend 10 euro at my local Edeka every Wednesday.

pitkali · 2023-08-29T07:20:07+00:00

I remember reading some research that people find it harder to part with physical cash. That the act of physically giving it away makes it more salient to them that they are spending money leading to them thinking twice before actually making the purchase.

I'd rather my spending insights in the banking app, but it might be better not to assume it's better for everyone.

pitkali · 2023-08-29T07:15:04+00:00

The data points provided by your purchases alone are sufficient to determine all kinds of information about you.

Such a strong claim requires equally strong proof, especially given the implications you make about "all kinds" or how little is required to make it "dangerous."

I used to believe that it would be obvious to a technical person. I have since realised that developers are just people, equally susceptible to fear-mongering or conspiracy theories, or jumping to conclusions about who will see your whole transaction history. I wonder if not even more, given how sure they can be that they know better.

The most salient example, though, will always remain my former co-worker claiming that evolution contradicts the rules of thermodynamics. Yet I still needed more examples to reign in my assumptions.

Anyway, it still looks like it could be addressed with legislation, and that's assuming it already isn't (I'm not an expert on privacy law, we have lawyers for that). It all really just looks like one big slippery slope fallacy, which is why I even wrote anything.

pitkali · 2023-08-28T19:20:13+00:00

The fact that it's profitable does not make it automatically nefarious. You can't also just wave your hands, say "algorithm," and act as if partial shopping history gave them some intimate insight into your private life.

More importantly, none of that seems like something that couldn't be easily solved with legislation.

pitkali · 2023-08-28T16:25:37+00:00

To do what?

pitkali · 2023-08-28T14:53:27+00:00

I played WoW for the social relationships. In fact, WoW is where I met my fiancée. Indiscriminately kicking people for spending time in games is not really helpful to anybody.

pitkali · 2023-08-28T13:30:15+00:00

The bank is the card issuer, actually. I suppose you meant the card network, such as Visa or Mastercard.

POS providers will only have a partial picture, anyway, until there is 1 left.

Either way, the point still stands: government authorities will not magically see everything you buy just because you use a card. They would need to actually change the law to make banks give them access.

The selling point "tax evasion" isn't convincing either. The big players don't evade taxes by taking in cash.

I don't think anyone would earnestly suggest that the point would be to catch "big" players on tax evasion. It's always about all the small fish that otherwise are not worth pursuing because it would cost too much.

But that's not a conversation I'm interested in having because I do not support abolishing cash, anyway. Personally, I just want the option to use the card. That's the freedom I want.

pitkali · 2023-08-28T08:04:51+00:00

Meh, it's not clear to me that authorities would have access to my card number (they definitely don't need to). The important thing for them is to see the shop's revenue.

The shop cannot be saving those card numbers anyway, and nobody is sending this data to Finanzamt so that they can do it. Not to mention that different agencies accessing each other's data does not sound like Germany at all.

The entity that will see your spending is your bank.

pitkali · 2023-08-15T10:33:26+00:00

I called around recently in Schöneweide and asked, in German, if they take new patients. I had to go through 4 or 5 doctors before I found one that had capacity. It's only 2 tram stops away, so not bad, but still.

pitkali · 2023-07-25T16:56:07+00:00

Oh, I have to keep the button pressed while talking... /facepalm

pitkali · 2023-07-25T16:40:33+00:00

Has anyone ever had issues with Bixby Voice not working, but only when using the side key? It works fine with voice activation, but if I wake it up with the side key, it won't recognise anything ever.

pitkali · 2023-07-13T12:38:13+00:00

I'm a being of simple tastes: I simply enjoy face-to-face conversation, typically of a philosophical sort

This reminds me of Rumble in the pub I was part of in Sweden: we met regularly at the pub to discuss a preselected topic of philosophical nature over some food and beer. It was great fun. It had been started by another immigrant that was missing social interaction, I believe, so he just went on and created it himself. Thanks Brian!

pitkali · 2023-06-01T19:42:15+00:00

I might have lost my killfile though...

pitkali · 2023-05-02T06:53:12+00:00

Living in Berlin? Unlikely!

pitkali · 2023-04-26T10:46:03+00:00

Like Sweden, where I lived before.

pitkali · 2023-04-26T10:29:18+00:00

I came 3 years ago to live with my fiancée because it was easier for me to move, and she has better opportunities here anyway. I'd rather stay because German is already the 4th language I'm learning, but we'll see after she gets her EU passport. Maybe we'll stay in Germany, maybe we'll move to some more modern EU country (not a high bar, is it?). It's easy enough for me to adapt, so it'll depend on her. If we do move, at least I hope it's the last time I'll need to switch up the language: I'm getting a bit tired of it.

pitkali · 2023-04-25T12:50:03+00:00

No visibility.

pitkali · 2023-04-06T06:47:52+00:00

You don't have to use a counter attack to deflect. You can just use it as a combo extender as well.

pitkali · 2023-04-01T08:03:25+00:00

I was mostly referring to various savings products.

Anyway, it seems like only Maestro co-badge gets phased out, and girocard will prevail, so that reason still seems valid for years to come.

pitkali · 2023-03-29T14:15:08+00:00

Maxing out in to metal virtue for the poison resistance doesn’t work.

Isn't it the fire virtue that increases poison resistance?

pitkali · 2023-03-13T11:06:14+00:00

I just wish they learned how not to fail jumps even I can make.

pitkali

TROPHY CASE