Tom Cruise is a leading member in the fascist cult Church of Scientology, who is on record saying they can bring back people from the dead and levitate.
And? People also listen to Buddhists about depression, and Buddhists believe that enlightened people can fly!
EDIT: I'm rate limited so I can't reply to the child comments:
I think a majority of Buddhists believe that Buddhas and bodhisattvas have special powers. It is in a majority of the traditional scriptures, from both Mahayana and before. I don't think the authoritarian nature of scientology changes the situation. Scientologists were being mocked for believing in such things, but that is not far from the beliefs of most Buddhists which people will happily listen to.
I mean, you will likely even listen to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who is literally a prophesied reincarnation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (Guanyin in Chinese, Kannon in Japanese)
My point isn't that people can be right about some things and wrong about others, it's that people mock their disliked religious figures on one basis, but their mocking also applies just as much to their favourite religious figures, however they don't realise it because they are usually ignorant to many aspects of it. Everyone loves Buddhism, but go and criticise other religions for reasons that apply just as much to Buddhism, they are just ignorant that it also applies to Buddhism.
I am a devout Buddhist, and believe in these traditional things, such as Buddhas flying or having their own Buddha lands or faith in my rebirth in a western Pure Land. I emphasise it because you probably don't know of these things
"Buddhists" represents many sects, and many more individuals who aren't beholden to anyone. The majority of these assuredly don't believe anyone can fly, enlightened or not.
Scientology is a rigidly hierarchical, authoritarian cult that speaks with a single voice: that of a handful of leaders.
There is a slight difference between these two things.
It isn't whataboutism. I'm simply pointing out that the same argument people use to disparage Tom Cruise also applies to religious figures that they respect far more. I'm pointing out ignorance about other religions, it isn't whataboutism at all.
I am in the opposite camp. I want to work for the author of the article because he gets it and he has humility, a trait that top level commenter (who informs us unironically in his profile that he likes grapes and other plants) needs some work on.
Indeed. The author just wrote yelling. Given the Russian culture I suspect he was yelling in chats about the situation, not blaming a particular person or team. Something like “Why the hell have we stuck?” perhaps even with f-words. Boss expressing himself in such way is rather common in Russia. If such yelling is followed by reasonable suggestions, it is not even perceived as offensive, but as the way to emphasize the gravity of the situation.
Sure, re-reading it I do pick up that the author was perhaps attempting humour and self-criticism throughout. But there's still boatloads of red flags starting with the interview process (toss them in a room and get them to write some code as the measurer of the value of the candidate) and ending with the whole concept of "re-interviewing" people.
It doesn't matter how humorous or humble the author might be, these alone worry me. Y'know, me, that arrogant guy who likes grapes.
In any case it's clear the original author does not live in a tech job market anything like North America, where a request to "re-interview" someone would be met with a confused stare followed by a middle finger.
> we, the users, are compliant with such abuse of monopoly.
But Bolt is not a monopoly. There are many taxi services in Riga.
> I invite you to boycott any company that forces (or coerces) you to install an app...
I do not think I will boycott Bolt just because you hacked their product and somehow become outraged. Bolt rides are cheaper than the alternative and .. the app works. The alternative mainstream taxi app needs an ios upgrade, and the ios upgrade fails on my shitty old phone.
Edit: There is no uber in riga looks like. Nice work, but running a company that generates cash at scale is hard. So i am sympathetic to the app developer.
> But Bolt is not a monopoly. There are many taxi services in Riga.
My experience is that if you don't speak Latvian, Bolt is basically the only choice to order a ride in Riga. Oh trust me, how I've tried. I never use those ride hailing services unless there's no other option left.
> No thanks I will not boycott Bolt because you chose to violate some ToS and hack their product and somehow become outraged.
Well, I'm not inviting people to boycott Bolt because I "hacked their product". I'm inviting to boycott Bolt because they are using dark patterns to take control away from users.
I guess one thing could be to force businesses of certain scale (or ideally, of any scale) to not offer services exclusive to a particular digital ecosystem, unless that's the only way to provide that service.
My local restaurant uses an app to do loyalty stamps... I really wish tey would come back to the traditional paper-based ones
Why should the government mandate something like that? Why don't you just give feedback to the businesses that they should make these changes and if you and enough other people feel the same way, they probably will. I understand government intervention in cases of dark patterns that harm consumers (e.g. the recent Intuit settlement in the U.S.) and to protect certain groups that are likely to be harmed or neglected (e.g. the handicapped, blind, etc.) but I'm not sure I understand the need for government to intervene in a case like this where it is a business choice and the consumer while annoyed is not really harmed and there is no monopoly (as far as I remember in Estonia when I lived there a few years ago it was quite easy to hail a normal cab anywhere and was the same when I travelled the Baltics), and personally I get very nervous when the government starts regulating very specific things.
outside of the imperial centers, "big tech" have already reached into governments.
for example, latin america governments make it very difficult to schedule a dmv visit without a cellphone number AND a meta/facebook's whatsApp account. While all public universities accepted a free google meet account for covid time remote classes, and now got a surprise multimillion bill to access material uploaded to the system after the original offer period.
things are already way past the point of no return.
while rich engineers are busy fiddling with websites to solver their own problems (could your immediate family have hailed that ride when in a similar situation?) companies have already encroached themselves in the very foundation of the institutions that could solve this via public policy.
Which control are they taking away from you? You choose to use their service and yet you complaint because they don't allow you to use it as you see fit. As far as you know, the web client is not as well developed and maintained. I can't fathom where this sense of entitlement comes from.
For what it's worth Uber is still in the neighboring Estonia, which is also the headquarters of Bolt.
Uber entered Estonia quite early and did its classic market share grab where it completely dominated. However they quickly lost that market share to Bolt (in a period of a few years, and even before it was called Bolt - it was Taxify back then) because of local market understanding and more concentrated marketing/advertising. Nowadays Uber still "works", but you have to wait 20 minutes for a car, compared to 2 minutes with Bolt. I get a sense that a good chunk of Uber drivers are banned from Bolt, but this is just a hunch based on the Uber drivers accepting low fee rides during surge pricing on Bolt.
Okay, yeah I'd used Uber once or twice when I moved to Estonia but Bolt just so completely dominated that I switched over to using that whenever I was in Estonia and then if you wanted to go really low priced you could use Yandex Taxi (although I mainly used that in Armenia because that was the best local option at the time).
Wlroots does a lot of the heavy lifting here, and that is by design. It’s now much easier to write Wayland compositors than it used to be. So yeah, we can have these enlightenment style things that get used once again.
Not sure why corporate drones like you visit hacker news. Why not go start middle-management-cop out news and take your office-worker-class opinions with you?
Tom Cruise was right then.