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DickweedMcGee t1_ja5tg9r wrote

It had trained 100 ,one-armed wheeled robots...

I could think of a a new profession for these guys....

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heatlesssun t1_ja5ur3y wrote

So they'll evolve, Skynet, Terminator, M5, we're done.

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tigerCELL t1_ja6374u wrote

They fired 12,000 people and 100 robots. But this is my favorite part:

>Meanwhile, in a bid to further cut costs, Google has even asked employees who return to work to share their work desks with a "partner" to maximise office space.

Instead of just letting people work from home.

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Kind_Bullfrog_4073 t1_ja63rl6 wrote

They were paying robot workers? No wonder they had to lay off so many non-robots.

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Mr_neha t1_ja66aiz wrote

Someone played atomic heart.

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bdc604 t1_ja6b6i9 wrote

great, now we’re gonna have homeless robots smoking circuits on our streets. wtg google.

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mammaube t1_ja6dt8e wrote

You know letting people work from home will save you money on office space so you don't need to fire anyone. Hell you could even turn that office space into apartments for rent and make money that way

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Watchmaker2112 t1_ja6kh2p wrote

Their internal AI decided it was cheaper to jut build a new facility than it was to pay to clean the old one.

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LilG1984 t1_ja6n5zs wrote

"Curse you Google! We'll be back!!!" Robot workers

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litnu12 t1_ja6nllk wrote

Robots stealing our jobs lay offs.

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enzovrlrd t1_ja6oubj wrote

Imagine what kind of package they got

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DerekB52 t1_ja6qfmx wrote

Replying to tigerCELL (#2,043,955)

Google has employees that are completely remote, and their hybrid model has them in-office 2 days a week on average. I interviewed with them this month and a recruiter told me this around the start of the year.

I am confused by the idea of them needing to maximize office space though. With 12,000 layoffs, and remote/hybrid workers, they have to have less workers in the office than they've had in years.

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stretchpadawan t1_ja6rtf0 wrote

In walks Gladys jones, clutching a bucket and mop...

I told you I'd be back....

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Infallible_Ibex t1_ja6tox4 wrote

Replying to DerekB52 (#2,048,387)

If you are a manager who doesn't give a shit about the employees then saving thousands on utilities a year by closing sections and floors and crowding the workers into the remaining space is a brilliant move.

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caananball t1_ja6w6wv wrote

Replying to tigerCELL (#2,043,955)

They do let people work from home. The desk “partners” are a pair of people who come to the office on different days using the same desk. Not two people sitting at the same desk at the same time.

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caananball t1_ja6xo1q wrote

Replying to OS6aDohpegavod4 (#2,049,556)

This is from a year ago and is talking about the initial return after covid, before which they let workers opt to permanently work from home/remotely. It has nothing to do with bringing people back who work remotely today. From your article:

“Nearly 14,000 of the company’s 156,500 full-time employees around the world have transferred to a new location or moved to fully remote work, and 85% of total applications have been approved.”

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BurntRussianBBQ t1_ja6ypq7 wrote

Replying to caananball (#2,049,473)

Sounds like one the most efficient ways to spread germs I've ever heard. I've also worked with some gross motherfuckers. Used to sani my keyboard if one guy even used it and I'm not a germaphobe, and then to think of sharing a desk with someone like that?

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Winjin t1_ja72ipm wrote

Replying to geekgodzeus (#2,050,113)

Iirc the people use like the heat of the core to survive. And no one really knows how long it's been since the war. I've read somewhere that if the machines wanted it, they probably can disperse the nanite cloud that shrouds the sun and rehabitate the land. Now that they're at peace after third part, they could theoretically do just that.

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Winjin t1_ja741pa wrote

Replying to geekgodzeus (#2,050,623)

My guess yeah, that would kill off anything. A handwave I have is that there's still obviously some light coming through or it would be, well, pitch black, and some algae and lychen are thriving, and these actually give off a lot of oxygen.

But it's no hard science fantasy, it's more of a philosophical anime, so I don't think there's a real explanation.

After all maybe the robots are lying and they have harnessed the nanites a long time ago and keep them in a huge cloud above human's settlement to punish them basically, and the rest of the planet is walled off and there's only server farms between lush forests where robots walk holding hands.

Because the initial idea of humans as batteries was actually "humans brains as the CPUs" but no one knew what a cloud computing is, but everyone used 8 D-sized batteries to power their audio system for 45 minutes, so they knew this metaphor. The idea that Matrix is a human prison ran with processing power of human minds trapped inside is beautifully dark and poetic imo.

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Winjin t1_ja751aq wrote

Replying to geekgodzeus (#2,050,883)

I know right? It's so much better than implying human body is used for its energy production. Cows or goats are way better at it, and there's zero reason to have the whole simulation going if it doesn't have some sort of a twisted purpose.

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geekgodzeus t1_ja75e46 wrote

Replying to Winjin (#2,051,022)

I think that the reason explained in the movie was that the simulation was to keep the people functionally normally on a biological level. The brain needs to experience a life in order for the body to produce energy optimally. If the mind dies so does the body hence the need to keep it engaged.

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Freethecrafts t1_ja75upz wrote

Replying to Winjin (#2,050,602)

By the time of Neo, the Matrix itself functions as an afterlife for adaptive programs whose functions no longer exist. To do away with the matrix is to risk more aberrant programs like Smith when no secondary option exists for program with no purpose.

None of the scientific understanding in the books/movies/cartoons make any sense. Any form of fusion makes batteries, bodies, humans obsolete. EMP devices being localized to massive ships. Robots who already built the greatest city civilization had ever seen, couldn’t build above an arbitrary cloud point, much less catapult themselves into orbit or to other planets. Everything is wrong to the point that the inhabitants of Zion could theoretically be in a different matrix, potentially programs themselves.

There is a point in the Animatrix where after the machines win the great war and humanity signs the end to the war treaty, the ambassador of the machine world encloses an apple and there is a nuclear flash. I took the imagery and the flesh quote to mean humanity wasn’t used as batteries so much as the machines took whatever transformative code base for humanity into a cold storage form then ended the threat forever through nuclear flash. Even before the end of the great war, the machines had generated contagions to the point that humanity was doomed anyways. The matrix being a story, within a story, within a story. Neo being an emergent truth of the creators, that there was value in philosophical concepts beyond just material understanding that might be being tested out by a more advanced form of sentience. Same way we might try to impute deep meaning from some scrap of parchment or wall scratches.

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halborn t1_ja7878v wrote

Replying to geekgodzeus (#2,050,113)

There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept. However, the relevant issue is whether or not you are ready to accept the responsibility for the death of every human being in this world.

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Busman123 t1_ja7curl wrote

Oh great! Now there will be homeless robots camped out down by the river! Spending the day recharging their batteries in public libraries, and getting kicked out of coffee shops! /s

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OldBob10 t1_ja7eo9h wrote

Hopefully Wall Street will love this. 🙄

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bingybunny t1_ja7g5g2 wrote

Replying to Winjin (#2,051,022)

'combined with a form of fusion'

smacked my forehead at that line. if you have fusion why would you use a large mammal to generate electricity

that they dumbed down the film through rewrites makes so much sense

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Winjin t1_ja7gv1v wrote

Replying to bingybunny (#2,053,062)

I think we can also kinda explain it by either Morpheus not exactly understanding what's happening there, or him dumbing the visuals down for Neo. But in reality yeah, I'm 90% sure they were like "People know what batteries are but they have zero understanding what a CPU is, most of them would lose the flow of the moment if they don't know what Morpheus is showing or if he has to explain more, so we need to change it to something everyone will immediately understand"

Also, another important thing I just thought of as I was writing this very comment - CPUs have some values and are not cheap in general. Batteries are practically worthless and easily discarded as soon as they're depleted.

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StarGaurdianBard t1_ja7j322 wrote

Replying to BurntRussianBBQ (#2,049,979)

I love how on reddit things are always taken to the extreme on things like this lol. In the hospital we don't have assigned seats or anything, literally dozens of people could use the same computer over the course of a 24-hour period. It's completely normal for me to share a computer so it's wild to hear redditors act like it's a huge issue.

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ClassicCodes t1_ja7jue1 wrote

Replying to DerekB52 (#2,048,387)

It's probably not about needing to save on costs, it's more likely about artificially inflating profit for the short term. Some higher management probably looking for a good ROI for investors to justify massive bonuses for executives at the end of the quarter. Icing on the cake if they jump ship after the bonus and move on to another company where they do the same shit.

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Sir-Viette t1_ja7kuz9 wrote

One day, we’ll all have robots that can get fired much faster than we can.

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Narethii t1_ja7pz5z wrote

Lays off? You mean put into storage?

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Zeduca t1_ja7q0xf wrote

Replying to DerekB52 (#2,048,387)

May be google is trying to free up office spaces to terminate the leases on them. With a only two days a week schedule, offices will be 60% under utilized. IBM did this in the 80’s.

And there must be a huge number of cleaning robots they no longer need with reduced space.

Google is just harvesting the benefits of WFH.

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KaisarDragon t1_ja7xhlv wrote

Damn, even the robots getting laid off. That is impressive...

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KaisarDragon t1_ja7xs4v wrote

01010100 01101000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101111 01101011 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01101010 01101111 01100010 01110011 00100001

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AnxiouslyTired247 t1_ja8301w wrote

I don't understand the logic behind sharing desks. They own their campus so it's not like they can end a lease early or something to save on rent. If it's energy efficiency I suppose closing down a building or two could save money, but it still needs to be somewhat operational to maintain the systems and structure.

Seems performative for shareholders IMO, I wonder how much these activities actually save real money vs. Just trying to eek out any kind of additional surplus to maybe add .01 to a share price.

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jib_reddit t1_ja8kjqd wrote

Replying to geekgodzeus (#2,050,623)

Life finds a way - opps wrong film, but still it does you only have to look at the conditions that some life survived after the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs.

  • impact also caused environmental changes leading to mass extinctions that played out over time. One such extinction trigger may have been the dense clouds of ash and particles that spewed into the atmosphere and spread over the planet, which would have enveloped parts of Earth in darkness that could have persisted for up to two years. 
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Cysmica t1_ja8s78o wrote

Anyone else worried this article says they also laid off 12,000 people?

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majorjoe23 t1_ja8xj98 wrote

You want a robot uprising? Because this is how you get a robot uprising.

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kinglittlenc t1_ja90741 wrote

Replying to tigerCELL (#2,043,955)

I'm pretty sure this is just speak for doing open concept without having enough seats if everyone shows up. Someone at my company was making fun of Google but I'm positive we wouldn't have enough seating or parking if everyone showed up the same day. We do hybrid 3 days a week so it's never an issue

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StarGaurdianBard t1_ja9j8yg wrote

Replying to BurntRussianBBQ (#2,061,101)

At some point you either accept that hand hygiene and disinfectant wipes work or you deny the science behind it and you have bigger problems.

Only on reddit can you find people activity like it's a war crime that their employers require then to share equipment and need to wipe it down every so often.

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StarGaurdianBard t1_ja9k22b wrote

Replying to SpaceDoctorWOBorders (#2,055,938)

Do you not practice hand hygiene? Do you not wipe down your work station before you use it? You can get yourself sick if you don't use a disinfectant wipe at the start of your shift even if it's your own stuff so that's more telling on you than anything.

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BurntRussianBBQ t1_ja9krop wrote

Replying to StarGaurdianBard (#2,072,591)

Most people can't even use sanitizing wipes correctly. Sharing a desk is a very personal thing and people are fucking gross. Also implies you have to share the chair. I only want to sit on my own history of darts thank you very much.

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StarGaurdianBard t1_ja9lhc4 wrote

Replying to BurntRussianBBQ (#2,073,021)

Then...learn how to use them correctly? It's all on you to use the sanitizing wipe before using the stuff. If you don't know how to clean things then you have much bigger issues in your life than sharing a mouse and keyboard with someone else.

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SpaceDoctorWOBorders t1_ja9nvf5 wrote

Replying to StarGaurdianBard (#2,072,826)

No I've never washed my hands in my life and I wouldn't share a workstation with anyone. I'm not going to get randomly sick from touching the same keyboard I used yesterday compared to if a sick person used it before. Don't pretend like you don't see the increased risk.

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JejuneEsculenta t1_ja9tzhh wrote

Replying to Arronax50 (#2,052,671)

My company had set up hot desks, while working to transition our office around some RIFs and incoming tenants.

Eventually, they just let us all WFH and closed the office (which we had only built, like, 18 years ago).

Hot desks are brilliant for those who are in the office part time. No need to keep 150 desks for 150 employees, and have them each only used a day or two per week.

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StarGaurdianBard t1_ja9zwh6 wrote

Replying to SpaceDoctorWOBorders (#2,073,871)

Literally the whole point of hand hygiene and disinfectant is to kill germs. To deny the effectiveness of having the ability to I'll 99.9% of germs means you should live in a bubble since the chances of you getting sick from a disinfected keyboard is astronomically lower than literally touching a doorknob, being around other people, etc. A disinfected keyboard, mouse, etc will have much less germs on them than literally anything else in your life.

It's literally how germ theory and cleanliness works.

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StarGaurdianBard t1_jaa2tw7 wrote

Replying to SpaceDoctorWOBorders (#2,078,090)

Super germs are being created primarily as a response to overuse of antibiotics, not because of disinfectant wipes.

If you are worried about the whole cube/desk having germs ill once again point out that you shouldn't go out in public then. Where you eat at a restaurant will have more germs than a cubicle. Public transportation will have easily 1000x more. Being In a crowd will have more. Literally any doorknob/doorhandle in public. And if you don't believe in disinfectant I hope you only ever use the bathroom at home.

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SpaceDoctorWOBorders t1_jaa4bbh wrote

Replying to StarGaurdianBard (#2,078,244)

You still do all those things though when traveling to work to share a cube, you're just adding extra risk. Where are you getting your info about shared cubicles not being health risks. Just because it's 10,000x less dangerous then eating out of a toilet bowl doesn't mean there isn't any risk.

I've never seen someone defend having a shared working space so hard.

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deltahalo241 t1_jaabctb wrote

"Do these units have a soul?"

- The robots before they were fired

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Luckcrisis t1_jaabe36 wrote

Are you sure this isn't the Onion? Are they laying off tables next?

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Nopengnogain t1_jaaflfj wrote

Replying to Arronax50 (#2,052,671)

It is common, at least where I work, it’s actually less crowded. I used to share an office with someone else, but now that most of us are teleworking, on the days I do go in, I reserve a desk and get the whole office all by myself.

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StarGaurdianBard t1_jaao7vh wrote

Replying to SpaceDoctorWOBorders (#2,078,678)

Because it may be hard for some people to understand but the vast majority of jobs require shared work spaces and aren't in cubicles lmao. It would apparently shock you to learn that nurses and doctors in hospitals don't have cubicles and that we share the same computers.

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StaMike t1_jabfn5y wrote

Replying to StarGaurdianBard (#2,053,758)

You think these posts are extreme? And you think extremism is a characteristic of Redditors? Are there crumbs and soda cans and sticky keyboards left at your sanitary hospital computer stations? Do you think hospital working environments and requirements represent the typical working environments and requirements? You think Redditors are merely acting like this is an issue ('huge' is extremely ott). Could it be that in some working environments, it actually does present problems? Have you read any of the other posts citing the benefits of sharing work stations, or just this post/thread?

It's funny, in a ridiculous kind of way, how some people 'always' use a relatively little bit of something to determine that the little bit represents the extreme all of something.

To paraphrase, I found your post irksome.

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