Category: NewsFeed

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Longtime Google Engineer Quits; Says Company Can No Longer Innovate, Is Mired in Politics, and Has Become Absolutely Competitor-Focused – Slashdot

The main reason I left Google is that they can no longer innovate. They’ve pretty much lost that ability. I believe there are several contributing factors, of which I’ll list four here. First, they’re conservative: They are so focused on protecting what they’ve got, that they fear risk-taking and real innovation. Gatekeeping and risk aversion at Google are the norm rather the exception. Second, they are mired in politics, which is sort of inevitable with a large enough organization; the only real alternative is a dictatorship, which has its own downsides. Third, Google is arrogant. It has taken me years to understand that a company full of humble individuals can still be an arrogant company. Google has the arrogance of the “we”, not the “I”. Fourth, last, and probably worst of all, Google has become 100% competitor-focused rather than customer focused.

— Longtime Google Engineer Quits; Says Company Can No Longer Innovate, Is Mired in Politics, and Has Become Absolutely Competitor-Focused – Slashdot https://m.slashdot.org/story/336505

As usual the comments here are all over the board, but there’s some good stuff there.

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Drexel Law Prof. Michael Poulshock is using Gituhub to manage materials for Spring 2018 Legal Decision Technology course

This popped up on my Github feed recently. Looks like Prof. Michael Poulshock is taking a shot at using Github to manage materials for his Legal Decision Technology course being taught in the Spring 2018 semester at Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law. The course itself looks pretty interesting, according to the syllabus:

This course explores how legal decision technology can be used to expand public access to legal information. Students will learn about cutting edge legal decision technologies, hone their statutory interpretation skills, and build interactive apps that answer specific legal questions.  This is a hands-on, lab-style class, but no prior programming experience is required.

The course is going to make use of tool called Oracle Policy Modeling which I had not heard of before but seems interesting. Heck, I’m even going to download a copy and take it for a spin.

Always great to see law professors taking advantage of interesting tool in the courses they teach. Maybe Prof. Poulshock will head to CALIcon18 in June to talk about the course and how it went.

The Github repo is at https://github.com/mpoulshock/Drexel-Legal-Decision-Technology-Spring-2018

 

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Free Books, Why Not?

At the risk of spoiling it, here is the two-bullet version of what it took me eight years to figure out:

  • A free license is not just a different way to distribute the same product; a book with a free license is a fundamentally different product.
  • Free books beget more free books in a way that conventional books don’t. Free books turn readers into writers.

Free Books, Why Not? http://greenteapress.com/free_books.html

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Retailers using leasing power to stymie Amazon Whole Foods expansion

Across the United States, large retailers including Target, Bed Bath & Beyond Inc and Best Buy Co Inc have legal rights in many lease agreements that allow them to limit what Amazon can do with nearby Whole Foods stores, and where it can open new ones.

Documents reviewed by Reuters show bans on Amazon lockers and delivery operations near a Target store in Illinois and also in Florida, where a new Whole Foods is set to open. Lockers for retrieving online orders are a way for Amazon to spur sales through the grocery chain.

— Reuters Technology News http://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-realestate/amazon-rivals-turn-to-legal-fine-print-to-stem-whole-foods-strategy-idUSKBN1CT0ES

This is an interesting development. I wonder if there’s some sort of AI blockchain solution to this? Ha! Of course not, this is actually how a real market works, with competitors and everything.