Inhumane Products

The Ai pin truly is inhumane. Boeing is a paragon of safety. Google fired employees for having a basic conscience. The Vision Pro is not the loveliest thing to use during travel. Stardew Valley gets, somehow, another update.

Endeavorance

Apr 22, 2024 — 5 min read

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It's Earth Day

It's earth day, a day in which we are raising awareness for the Earth. If you didn't know already, we live on a planet. It is a large (relatively) chunk of rock that is hurtling through the void of space thanks to the gravitational pull of a huge ball of fire millions of miles away.

So, be aware of that, because it's Earth Day.

Inhumane Products

Humane—a company who chose the dumbest possible name and decided to stylize it "hu.ma.ne" because satire is dead—released a product they have been hyping up for quite some time: The Humane "Ai Pin" (specifically lower-case "i" cuz reasons.)

Basically anyone who saw promotional video about the product was sus about it at best. But then it was released to reviewers and uh. The first reviews are atrocious.

Like, so atrocious that after MKBHD released his video review in which he called it "The worst new product I've reviewed," a bunch of weird business boys started to get all upset about how "bad reviews kill products" as if "products" have an inherent right to be successful. This rhetoric got so out of hand that MKBHD made a follow-up video to address it.

But as for the pin, long story short: the thing barely works and is unusably slow and clunky. Awful battery life, shitty camera, and half the time you ask it to do something it can do, it messes up anyway. Virtually every review has absolutely torched the device, which also costs $700 up front, then a $25/mo subscription, and cannot connect to your phone, and has its own phone number.

Like.

Bruh.

Boeing, a Beacon of Safety

Airplanes keep not staying in one piece, most of them being Boeing airplanes, specifically.

After an aircraft suddenly had a big hole in the side of it mid-flight, renewed scrutiny on Boeing's safety measures has cropped up. Unfortunately, Boeing doesn't seem to have safety measures, aside from "silence whistleblowers."

Now, Boeing whistleblower Sam Salehpour testified to congress about his experience in trying to raise safety concerns at work. After 17 years at the company, Salehpour brought manufacturing concerns to his boss, who told him to "shut up" and berated him, rather than y'know, doing anything about the danger.

Sam Salehpour, reflecting on being told to shut up

US Congress and the FAA are digging in to Boeing, though Boeing is famously "too big to fail," so I wouldn't get your hopes up too too much about some kind of Boeing reckoning. But hey, maybe we can establish a new policy of "if you make commercial airliners, they should usually make it to their destination in one piece."

Google Fires Protesting Employees

Google has fired 28 employees across two locations for participating in sit-in protests against a $1.2 Billion contract the company has with Israel to provide cloud services.

The protesting employees made it clear they do not support having their work used to support apartheid or genocide, but Google said "get out of that office."

Chris Rackow, Google's head of global security had this to say:

The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing. If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again.

Love the implication that the overwhelming majority of employees "do the right thing" by continuing to not ask questions or push back against contracts with a country actively committing a genocide.

Cops prepare to arrest protesting Google employees

The employees staged sit-in at offices and meeting rooms and refused to leave. Google called in cops to arrest and remove them, later firing them. Because that's what heroes do.

I Literally Forgot About the Vision Pro

Kimmie G, a tech editor for Mashable, attempted to use Apple's Vision Pro AR/VR headset on an airplane. Arguably, this is one of the use cases that makes sense, right? Confined in a small space, put on this headset and be transported to infinite worlds.

Or… you just look like a goober and the thing barely works.

In order to actually use the damn thing, you have to make gestures and look around and… have space. It is a spatial computer, that is how they describe it. So when you strap it to your head on the plane, unless the person in the seat next to you is fine with being stared at through a headset and occasionally getting elbowed as you perform gestures, it probably isn't gonna work.

Point is, maybe this device is neato. But also, nobody wants to wear it in public, and people seem pretty damn confused as to what purpose it actually is trying to serve, aside from "filling a product lineup gap for our investors."