Idk in the US but in France you are allowed to have personal data on your work computer.
Though you have to label it as personal (like creating a « Personal » folder or label and your employer can still access it in case of suspicion but he must do it in your physical presence and accompanied with a witness, generally a representative of the employees.
So you theoretically don’t have full privacy on this computer but you can’t be sanctioned for this usage.
I don't think we have sweeping regulations about it, at least in California.
Most companies I've worked at have a policy of some "reasonable personal use" being permitted. The concern is usually focused on the other way around: Companies do not want their IP on your personal machines.
They can certainly look at whatever is on their own machines, however, regardless if it is your personal data or not.
One large caveat: If you do any work on your company's equipment, they may possibly own it, no matter how relevant it is to the company. It's one of the legal tests used to judge the ownership of your work.
Can depend on the field too. I work in drug discovery and if the FDA was to request data that requires my computer they would have access to everything I had on it...Including my texts if I happened to log in to my personal apple account since it's a Mac.
It is even worse in France: if you code open source "on the side" of you work, at home, the company which employs you may claim the copyrights of it. I had to add explicit exclusion of this claim of copyrights in my job contracts to protect my personal work.
That was a few years back, dunno if that was fixed.
This is common in North America too. In Canada, people really should be going through their personal projects and getting a moonlighting clause added before they sign any employment agreements. Employment has gotten tough so a lot of juniors aren’t doing this with their first jobs and we’ll start to see the ramifications of that in about five or ten years.
AFAIK it's the same in the USA, that's why one of the first questions when interviewing with a company is to ask them about their moonlighting policy if you do want to work on a side project.
It varies by state in the USA. Some states have strong protections for work you do "on your own time, on your own equipment, that isn't connected to your work." Others, not so much...
That is not correct; assuming you are not using an employer’s equipment on employer’s time, and/or working on what the employer pays you to do for them or are working on something that is competing and a few other reasonable caveats.
Same in Germany, although the employer can forbid this but needs to do this explicitly. Most employers don't forbid personal data on work machines or using your work email for personal things.
Stuff like this is why France has a ceiling on the market cap of GenAI companies it produces. Imagine if Huggingface/Mistral could fully operate in a low-regulation environment.
Enjoy your red tape frogs. "Live to work" anglo protestant work ethic followers will complete the necessary economic destruction of rude "work to live" cheese eating surrender monkeys.
This is our payback for Charles de Gaulle, Foucault, and Jacques Lacan (it's hard to rank these three based on damage done to western society)
Not having AI companies is reasonable trade off for not having all of my data including full DNA sequence being recorded 24/7 with absolutely zero care of privacy or protection and shared with everyone who has some marginal amount of money to buy it.
Thats... a poorly crafted mumble jumble without any underlying sense, even ignoring insults. Can't handle existence of society where quality of life is higher priority (and you see it on the ground very well) than some sum on account or meaningless titles and rat race achievements or office zero sum games?
It's obviously an unwitting parody account. Calling yourself "Der Einzige" while reciting an incoherent script of internet clichés is indistinguishable from satire -- hilariously unintentional parody.
Another huge exemple : in most big cities in Europe you have special parking lots around big public transit hubs outside of the city where you can park for free as long as you continue your journey by public transit.
In a lot of cities, that’s either the fastest or the most comfortable way to go somewhere in the city when you come from the outside.
Not any single navigation app support this (tbf, the few European ones don’t support it either)
There was a Not Just Bikes video about how Google Maps is optimised for driving where it pretty much actively hides the biggest walking routes and promotes roads for driving by making them bigger. Useful in the USA for sure but actively harmful in Europe, given that you're more likely to plan a route by which roads you can see, and unless you know what to look for you're not going to find them easily.
Yes. Unfortunately transit between public transit is always walking. No options to take a first part by bike or car, or folding bikes for intermediate hops.
The long tail of user desires is loooong. For example "I want to take transit, but please exclude transit options where I cannot take my non-folding bicycle". Or "I don't have a raincoat, suggest only bus stops with a roof, oh and by the way I don't like the uncomfortable seats on the purple line but will take it if there is no other way".
I think LLM's with access to lots of personal data and the ability to scout the web might solve all these use cases in one fell swoop, rather than trying to design a user interface with buttons, algorithms and data sources for every obscure use case.
Is it that long tail? Biking and riding are supported in most planners already. Park and ride, or kiss and ride, are well known concepts around the world. It seems like a straightforward extension of what already exists.
In Germany it's often not IN cities, but around. Example for Frankfurt:
The's a metro ("S-Bahn") going north up to Friedberg/Hessen. Friedberg is the capital of the country. But there's no free "Park & Ride" there. Two stations towards Frankfurt you are in village called Wöllstadt. And there you have a free Park & Ride. More south some other village, no P&R. But then again in Bad Vilbel you have one.
Is however P&R + public tansport the fastest way to Frankfurt? That depends.
First, the Wöllstadt P&R isn't easily accessible from the Autobahn, or not even from the B3, which goes around Wöllstadt. And even when it went through it some years ago, it was several turn-left turn-rights through small streets.
And then the S6 only drives every 30 minutes to Frankfurt. It's supposed to change once they double the train tracks, but that will change. On top of it: metro lines don't have precedence, the quick trains like ICE have. So the S-Bahn more often than not waits until a faster train passes.
If it isn't between 7-9 in the morning, you're actually faster by car in Frankfurt than by public transport ... So the P&R is quite helpful for people living in the neighboring villages: they go by car to Wöllstadt, park there for free, commute to Frankfurt by metro. And that traffic jam free ... but not necessarily fast. And since parking in Frankfurt usually comes with a price tag, it's also a bit cheaper.
Well at least on NRW, I can say that there are enough P&R around here.
However compared with European countries like Portugal, this is a complete different reality.
This was my main point, because there are these "in Europe public transport is so great" remarks, yes it is, provided one is lucky to be on the right parts of Europe, as you also kind of refer to by your no all roses scenario.
I’m not sure about all of this. I’ve been sedentary for 34 years, and I somehow still am.
But I discovered rollerblading at 34 and now I’m part of a rollerblading course in a skatepark at a fixed time in the week, just after my biggest day of work. And going to the skatepark is boring, I need to take a bus to nowhere land and then walk in nowhere land for 10 minutes.
I’ve always been happy to go to it. And even the days I didn’t felt it, I never regretted going for it anyway.
Because it’s FUN. I don’t feel like I’m exercising, I’m just having FUN.
To me that was a revelation that felt more important than what this article says. Exercising shouldn’t be boring.
Well I’m still sedentary because rollerblading is not the most practical sport to do everyday, especially on the countryside. But even then I’m loving it.
I also like biking. Not as an exercise but just to evade. I think I will insist on going for some calm rides.
Yeah, the way we talk about exercising and fitness in general often pre-supposes that it's an unpleasant chore.
The "secret" to long-term fitness is finding activities you enjoy doing for their own sake that happen to involve moving your body and then incorporating them into your lifestyle such that you're doing them frequently and consistently.
This is like "find work you enjoy". If it works for you great, but for many it doesn't really and at some point you have to accept exercise is non-optional and just pick something you can tolerate if you don't find anything
This is definitely a good approach but I don't think it's the only one!
I absolutely agree that the idea that exercise has to be unpleasant is wrong and harmful. But there's a middle ground where the things you actively enjoy aren't sufficient to keep you fit, and so you develop a habit of doing regular exercise even when you don't feel like it and even if it's a bit boring and effortful.
Everyone's different but IME this works well provided you build up the effort level gradually, and never feel the need to push yourself to a really unpleasant degree. Eventually habit, the knowledge that it's good for you in the long run, and the fact that it usually makes you feel better in the short run make it pretty easy to stick with.
> Because it’s FUN. I don’t feel like I’m exercising, I’m just having FUN.
This is hands down the most important advice and what I tell everyone around me. Find something active that you ENJOY. Even better if the thing you enjoy requires your body to progressively improve to unlock more enjoyment from your new active hobby.
Beyond that it can be anything: dancing, martial arts, swimming, cycling, football, handstands, skateboarding
Exercise for exercise's sake is really awful and abstract for most people. Like why carry a bunch of weights if you never feel like you need that strength.
The best thing I find (where possible) is a bit of competition to necessitate progress but that's only one possible solution..
A wise grinder once told me a powerful secret, the key to perfect running form: the sides of the mouth curling up in a giant smile.
Phoebe running, rejecting social norms, gettin’ dirty, futzing with trail plans… there’s no rules, have fun. Whatever that means exactly on your own terms.
Unfortunately this sort of advice also leads to people not exercising. I don't enjoy lifting, and I don't see an easy way to make it fun, but I feel better and I'm healthier for it.
… “Smile while you train”, ie make training fun, results in not training? That is nonsensical.
You can’t figure out how to make lifting fun? Bruv, google Eric Bugenhagen. Shirtless, 70s rock, singing out loud, a tye-die hairband, strong coffee and fun exercises. Lifting is awesome, it happens in a gym, and there are 9,000 colours of fun. Homegyms rule, hip thrusts in between air-guitar with the toddler, air kicks and slam balls… and it is as easy as a patch of alley and a kettlebell or tire, if you let it be.
The entire point of my post is the opposite of your takeaway. Learn what you find fun, what makes you smile hard when lifting and by definition you will be having fun lifting.
Lifting is easy mode for fun. Speakers, smoothies, cuties, technique variants, bar variants, ego-stuff, posture-stuff, program stuff, dips, pull ups, and bouncy crap too. Ultra running, where that quote is from, involves eating a slight bit more shit for more than an hour (in AC).
Plus, you do NOT have to “lift” to “pick up something heavy, move it around, and hold something above your head”. Feeling better and healthier, hypertrophy, and targeted resistance exercise are available from a near infinite variety of activities. Some are very enjoyable, the rest can be made so with effort, creativity, and will.
That's true, there is also bodyweight and machines and just hard labor.
And of course there's cardio but that's not terribly difficult to fit into any lifestyle—lots of fun options. That's just not going to hit all your needs by itself.
Exactly. I've always loved racquet sports- how it makes me feel, the improvement of hand-eye coordination, the competition, sure, all of that- but most of all, because hitting a ball with a stick with a bouncy strings around in a court is a damn good time. So it's never felt like an effort to me.
> Because it’s FUN. I don’t feel like I’m exercising, I’m just having FUN.
First step is throwing away the idea it has to always be fun. You even said right before this:
> And even the days I didn’t felt it, I never regretted going for it anyway.
So it's not always fun and you always don't feel like it, but you connected it to other side of not regretting. That's discipline. The next step IMO, is to embrace when it sucks. Look at the upside that you're not only exercising your body, but also exercising your discipline when you don't feel like it - good for you!
A small example of embracing when it might suck is to not avoid rain. Instead of running, embrace the rain. Relax, smile, and be ok with getting wet. It's temporary. Same thing when you don't feel like doing something you know you need to do, like exercising.
It's ok if you can physically remove the battery. I'm pretty sure to have read multiple times that laptops thermals and battery engineering are optimized for daily use in open areas, not to safely run workloads 24/7 in a closet.
> I think if you have a healthy busy growing well, you shouldnt raise unless you have ambition and urge to go faster.
My previous employer was like this. A 20yo company with a nice always increasing ytoy growth. The CEO told for 20 years that he would never raise any money. It was an incredible place to work : nice compensation, product and consumer centered, we had time and means to do the right things.
Until the CEO changed his mind and raised money anyway. But we didn't have to fear anything because those investors were very different and not like the other greedy ones.
Well I'm not working there anymore for a hella lot of reasons that are just the same as everywhere else.
But at least the CEO who was already rich is now incredibly rich.
> VC by default are founder friendly in my experience.
Founders are only one stakeholder. There are employees ( I think they fall into that category ), customers, suppliers, and the wider society.
It all comes back to why does the company exist - and for which stakeholders. I think that's the point the original author is making.
I don't buy the argument that making money in the end is a perfect surrogate for overall good - it's not - it's an imperfect surrogate - and to pretend it is a perfect surrogate is just an excuse to behave like an arsehole.
To make that concrete, let's say you are a chemical company making paints - really important job, paints are needed the cheaper you can make them, the more people can have them etc, but if you knowingly pollute a local river just because you can get away with it and increase your profits - saying that increased profits justifies polluting the river based on the assumption that river pollution is correctly priced ( free ) is an obvious convenient excuse to be a selfish arsehole.
I dont this wisdom can be applied generically. Lets consider your example, if leader or founder comes across the fact that a river is getting polluted whether it makes profit or not, they will not take that decision as it would impact longer term.
What you are mixing is founder led business vs ceo led business. CEO often takes a short term view, when stakeholders are PE Firm, wall street, short term gains are prioritized. But for, a long term investor, would not incentivize you to take calls that would harm in long run.
What could be wrong is that, you wouldnt know all the consequences and causality of your decisions and thats very human thing in my opinion.
Not sure why you went the founder versus CEO route - wasn't particularly picking on founders.
The general point is that leaders are people and many CEO/founders are decent, hardworking, brave people, and some people are arseholes - and I just wanted to highlight one of the excuses arseholes make for their behaviour.
Also note I have no special insight into the specific situation the original poster talked about - I do know working out how to hand on a company you've grown and led to the next generation is one of the hardest challenges.
That's not to say there isn't a lot to say about the positive power of markets - it's just that simplifying that to 'if I'm making money therefore it must be a societal optimal outcome' kind of justification is BS.
Clearly LLMs are tools which can be used for good or ill. The supplier of raw chemicals to the paint factory isn't really responsible for the river pollution.
However you are right to point out there is a problem. Typically societies ( via governments ) try and fix by appropriately pricing the behaviours via regulation/laws ( fines or prison for the people doing it ).
However making regulation/laws is hard. What's your proposal to fix the problem you've identified?
> As long as there are consumers paying for hardware ownership there will be businesses willing to sell it to them.
That's not true at all.
There are a lot of people willing to buy smartphones with small screen or smartphones with Linux or any other OS than iOS or Android.
But those people are not enough to justify the gigantic initial investment that is necessary to provide viable products in this market. And the existing actors aren't interested in those niche.
Though you have to label it as personal (like creating a « Personal » folder or label and your employer can still access it in case of suspicion but he must do it in your physical presence and accompanied with a witness, generally a representative of the employees.
So you theoretically don’t have full privacy on this computer but you can’t be sanctioned for this usage.
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