It is a mental health issue, it is treatable, and it is preventable.
There is a lot of literature on the topic, and awareness is an important aspect to treating this mental health issue. I never got the sense people are shaming the person, or there is a lack of respect. Additionally, where "thoughts and prayers" will hardly provide any actual good (YMMV), a suicide hotline might be the saving element for someone who may also be suffering.
In Canada, the duty of care, or fiduciary responsibility of the directors is to the corporation. This can be shareholders, environment, employees, and anything else that makes up the corp. This is a fairly recent ruling and is vague but I think begins to recognize the complexity of the balancing act a director must take into consideration when making a decision.
I think it’s easy to throw headlines around “Facebook does not care about you…” and maybe this is true, but I would argue that they do care, and they care a lot, as you are there primary source of income and if they loose you, they will cease to be an operating company. They definitely push the boundaries, and I hope society and FB course correct soon as sometimes it’s hard to put their experiments in the search of new revenue back in the their box.
SpaceX is a private venture, with the vast majority of shares being held by one person, who is also the CEO. I would argue SpaceX mission is what ever Elon says it is, as he is the primary shareholder. All that to say, IMO Elon thinks on a different timescale than most, and also with varying priorities over that time horizon, and I would not bet he would do all of this without the eventual long term payoff being part of his plan, even if it is decades away from when he started. Elons formula , build profitable company, take profit from company, repeat
"It's a nice thought experiment, but in my mind I think the world would be a better place without excel. "
I agree with most everything you said, however, proliferation of programming and automation is a net win in my books, no matter the medium, and good spreadsheet software does this incredibly well. It makes programming in its very basic form accessible to a wide amount of users with a relative gradual and easy to grasp learning curve. Sure you can always improve on it, but I think the world would most definitely not be better off without it.
I do agree that the work is hidden, they can be a nightmare to audit, and I think it would scare a lot of people on this board the amount of business critical functions that are completed by excel and other spreadsheets. However, I like to think this a short term problem, and to the authors point, the industry and the sw needs and will improve, and we should all be trying to eventually close the gap.
ownership issues aside, the "magic" under the hood is not a problem assuming it actually works. Its when the magic breaks, or works in unexpected ways, then it becomes a problem. Magic is also progress, and progress is usually good.
I think you could look at it in terms of sustainability: "magic" progress has the potential of "magically" vanishing if it's inner workings are not sound, reliant on an unreliable other, etc.
The legacy design is called a trompe, here is a video of how it worked from Ragged Chutes Air plant near Cobalt, Ontario Canada.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtYLVLkWyGc
The problem I see with these companies, where HW is the focus and not SW, is that their tech stack is a joke. I have no faith in their security models, or their ability to protect my privacy. These features always feel like they have been just added on with little thought of the surrounding environment. Anyone who has developed a Tizen, LG webOS, Visio app, will understand what I am mean. The platforms have significant variations between model years, and developers are flat out told that features will not be fixed on 2-3 year old TVs. This seems insane considering the level of trust they ask from their customer.
Someone should really change the marketing CTA.
"A decentralized social network with a chance of working"
I can see why people would think this.