FailForward @FailForward@qoto.org

@leah I well understand CW, but here I think you are implicitly proposing to use it as a “Subject” line, or a heading for the rest of the post so that you can decide whether to read it at all. But that’s not what CWs were supposed to achieve originally. I rather suggest to start using headings, or something like that. Not sure your client will swallow this, but something like:

Subject (decide whether you want to read the rest)

…the rest…

outdoor weather sensor (request for advice)

I would like to get an outdoor weather sensor. Requirements:

• temperature, pressure, humidity, no wind sensor is needed (this is for a balcony in an apartment building, so wind sensor would measure only some irrelevant turbulence anyway)
• no need for graphic display
• wireless connected
• ideally “readable” by some smartphone app, possibly integrated with home assistant, or some such
• cheap - this is a hobby interest, not something to waste money on
• reasonably accurate, but again, this is not a pro app
• HW-wise ideally should work out of the box, no HW tinkering - some minor SW tinkering would be OK-ish

Any advice what devices I should look for?

@piggo ?

@Zjayres Good topic there. Not that I read your book, but the topic of emotional health vs. academic career (especially at its start) deserves serious analyses and work. Much more than a usual PhD candidate encounters in their (ab)normal life. Though, even if your book would help many people (as I hope), this type of literature probably won’t be read by the target audience without even more effort. These people typically have no clue that they have all these relevant issues in their life until it’s too late already. So if this should become useful, it needs to be pushed down the throats of people entering the hamster wheel during their first year(s). But that would require their PhD. supervisor to be more enlightened than they typically are today and/or their university HR depts. to overrule the said supervisors and hand these kind of books earlier, etc. etc.

Either way, great topic and a difficult task . 👍 🤞

@wolf480pl But our conversation right now is not about necessity, rather you asked whether me deciding not to engage with customers in some country is equal to my country “harming” their country. Which I find absurd.

@piggo

@wolf480pl

If a group of companies refuse to to do business with a certain country, does that mean they harm the country?

No, not necessarily. Unless they are driven by some malevolent collusion scheme - which would be a case of cartel, in which case for most jurisdictions the touched country could probably start an arbitrage case.

Excluding such a collusion and not assuming their respective governments forbidding them to do business with the said country, you can bet one of the competitors would jump in and start selling. Because that’s how markets work. Companies are (for better or worse) not driven by morale, but by profit (or the lure of it). So if for whatever reason your competitors do not engage with an attractive market X while you legally can, you’d be stupid not to. And that is what indeed happens and how this conversation was started: because US and West-EU companies had qualms about delivering dual-purpose technology to Russia, Czech and some German companies (and possibly Slovak intermediaries) happily jumped in and now they pay reputation price for doing so. Business as usual.

@piggo

@wolf480pl Yes, such a hypothetical company would be certainly harming Poland in this story. But what is wrong about it?

Just as a side-note to show that this situation is not very realistic even if hypothetical, suppose such a Gazprom would exist. That would most likely mean that either 1) natural gas is abundant, or 2) totally unimportant matter - in both cases to a point where commercial companies have a sovereign powers over it - in which case the hypothetical Poland would just switch the provider, because if one Gazprom could exist, then so can 2, 3 or more.

In reality, in Gazprom case we are dealing with a state owning its own resources and using them as a strategic weapon against others - and all that just covered up in a structure of a commercial company. But that is a rather normal state of affairs, isn’t it?

I think your example would be more fitting if instead of Gazprom you’d say Apple (also big and important) refusing to open a subsidiary and thus do business in say, Burundi (nothing against Burundi, it just crossed my mind). And that is a totally usual configuration, isn’t it?

@piggo

@freemo yes, that may be another way out of this: he'll try a, b, c, ...up to n or so, along the way (on his own failures) he'll painfully discover that the company is as it was a week ago not because of sheer incompetence, but for a good reason, he'll learn what he bought himself into and finally will get to senses and navigate out of the pit. We'll see.

But for now, him throwing tantrums about advertisers and them showing him a middle finger is not too dissimilar to when a month ago the British prime minister tried to steer hardly in a direction and then the harsh reality of the markets caught up with her.

Anyway, a lot to learn while observing this.

@mathlover @unamanic

@mathlover Nah, I don't think it's going to die. The guy will just mess up badly, harm will be done left and right, then the reins will be given to an adult, they'll steady the ship and somehow get out of the pit. Same as happened with Uber couple of years back when their CEO threw himself into a tantrum. Either way, 🍿 .

@freemo @unamanic

@freemo But it's fun to watch, isn't it? 🍿

@unamanic

@wolf480pl But of course there are many subtleties to all this (which are however irrelevant to our original discussion). Such as behaviour called “stonewalling” in romantic partnerships. That type of non-engagement is harmful indeed. But that’s a different story than simply refusing to do business with a company my company for whatever reason dislikes.
@piggo

@wolf480pl While I see where you are probably coming from (philosophically), I rather believe that in terms of social interactions people are free to do whatever they want as far as (at least) 1) it’s legal in their jurisdiction; 2) they are not harming other people, and 3) are ready to bear consequences of their decision.

While 1 is clear, to add to 2, I do not see personal refusal to engage with somebody else as harm. At the same time, when a group of people does the same, that is different up to a point of becoming discrimination which is harmful indeed. And somewhere in between lies a thin boundary when a freedom of group of people negatively affects safety of others and that is to be tackled. As for 3, anybody is free to dislike me back, no problem with that. Yes, it hurts sometimes, yet, it is people’s right and also their personal responsibility.

@piggo

@wolf480pl That seems to me a bit overreaching. Why would you draw equivalence between A) my personal decision not to engage with somebody and B) my “country” harming their country? No, we certainly don’t agree that A equals B here. Nor am I able to understand why would anybody actually take that stance. Those are 2 different things to me.

@piggo

@pony Maybe yt knows something about you what is so deeply buried within your subconscious mind that even you have no clue about it 😄 .

@amytabb Welcome and enjoy!

@girls_can Welcome!

@skrimp24 welcome

@wolf480pl

We don’t just go out and lynch people.

Sure. And that’s a good thing, I hope we agree on that. I also don’t observe e.g., Czech companies doing it - which was start of this interaction. So where do we disagree?

@piggo