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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 23rd, 2023

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  • First off, this wasn’t supposed to be an argument, just a question. My native language has a specific word for them (and some other languages have too) and I got curious if english itself had such a thing.

    Latin America people got pissed off

    Maybe it’s because people say “America” and everybody instantly thinks of the USA, even though you’re just another country in the whole continent? For these people you are stealing the word “american” and changing its meaning. People from Asia have the word “asian”, people in Europe got “european”, people in Africa got “african”, but we? We don’t have a meaningful word anymore. And I’m not saying it’s your fault or even it’s a fault of your founding fathers. I’m just trying to tell you why these people get mad.




  • First off, thank you for your great response.

    And yeah, I kinda get that “United States” is just a title, but in my native language (portuguese) we have a specific word for americans: “estadunidense”, which basically means “person born in the USA”

    I was just wondering if there was a similar word in english that could be used specifically to these people, just like we have in portuguese. But again, thanks for your answer.

    Also, fun fact: Brazil was actually called “United States of Brazil” for a short period, and our flag looked like a copy of yours, but in yellow and green. But then our king (thankfully) decided to go just by “Brazil”



  • I disagree in parts. Yes, I agree this “back to office” movement has something to do with CEOs power rush, but what about the investors? They don’t care about power hierarchies, only about profits and dividends. If they have enough shares and decide to make people work from home, company’s costs with office rent could be turned into investments (like better equipment or help develop new products), or turned into dividends to the investors (more likely IMO). Either way, the investors will make more money from it.

    Honestly, I think office renting is a real problem, and could get catastrophic if not handled appropriately. This massive propaganda we see about “get back to office” is more likely to be a landlord’s move than anything else IMO, and CEOs decisions are just “aftershocks”



  • None of these corporations can be trusted at all IMO, simply because they’re corporations in the first place, and WILL always choose what’s better for them rather than what’s better for the community. That’s why I advocate for open source every time I can.

    And OK, everything you said is true and valid, but go ahead and try to convice the non-tech people to delete their accounts, while explaining all the little comforts they have will be taken away with it. They’ll simply laugh at you and carry on. That’s how Google and other corporations that follow this “free services” model got so big and influential, and now they’re using their size to do what corporations do: increase profits.

    Another problem with this model is you can’t really tell what Google is doing with the data they collect. Can you/anybody tell Google didn’t feed their Bard AI data they collected from you? Can you/anybody tell Google ain’t using your/their data for anything except showing targeted ads? AFAIK, you can’t. Even if they update their ToS regularly, communicate you they’ve changed it and “if you continue using the service it means you agreed with the new Terms of Service”, do you really think people will actually take the time to read the same 20 page ToS every time it changes? Most people I know don’t even read it the first time!

    In the end, you may say they’re being as ethical as possible, and the users are simply too lazy and everything bad that happens to them is entirely their own fault. You wouldn’t be wrong at all, but that’s not how the world works.

    Also, sorry for the wall of text.