Crime Is Crime!

A Must-Read

Earlier today, I watched a webinar on engineering ethics in the tech sector. During this presentation, an attorney from a very powerful law firm gave a presentation about & took questions on a class action case they are doing that should be front page news. Essentially, a number of engineers & scientists are going after "a group of tech companies and its leadership" for an obscene amount in damages, the amount not disclosed.

So, what happened?

Essentially, these folks were all prospective employees of said unnamed companies. As part of their interview selection process, these people, all of whom were post-graduate level or higher, were asked to provide 'fully functional' code, solving 'sample problems' provided to them, under the agreement that the code fully belonged to the applicant only and used solely for interview purposes.

They were interviewed, but never hired. (You see where this is going)

However, it was discovered over time that, for these former applicants, their code ended up being used by these companies, ranging from advanced data analysis scripts all the way to highly specialized software embedded within cars, AI LLM's and flight hardware, all actively being used. And, according to this attorney, indesputable evidence verifying these shameful deeds has been brought forth.

Despite the overall 'shock' of many joined to the webinar, significantly more participants expressed the total lack of surprise, citing widespread accounts of such tactics being actively & shamelessly employed at numerous techbro companies like X, Tesla, SpaceX, Meta, Amazon & Google, even 'startups' such as like Palantir, OpenAI, Joby, Archer & Anduril among several others. It was widely speculated in the concurrent group chat that Elon Musk and his cult of companies are the subject of the lawsuit that was presented.

Using massive pools of applicants to solve current, critical scientific & engineering problems. All, without the added hassle of paying them for it.

It's literally reverse industrial espionage, but the victim isn't the company. It's you. They're stealing from you. And, it's probably how Musk and others compensate for intellectual gaps in their workforces, given their rabid devotion to the use of subhuman jeet slavery. And they're laughing all the way to the bank.

Protect yourselves

Reminds me of the company (shitco) that outsourced the creation of software as a contract. A company (DevX) looking to win the contract made a working demo, a full copy of DevX's software was installed on one of shitco's computers as a demonstration and proof of function. The DevX was told their software was inadequate and another contractor won the work.

About a year later the suspiciously functionally similar software was released by shitco, DevX made the claim the software was stolen. The DevX and shitco heads and software engineers were in a room with the contested shitco software on a computer. The Devx lead developer walk up to the computer and held down l+a+m+o keys for 5 seconds and a popup opened saying john the Devx lead dev sucked ass.

Hiding identifiers or backdoors in your personal/unsold demo code is always good practice.

Dirty. Disgusting. Rotten to the core.

And it's precisely where we are at.

The fucked up part is if I (or anyone else here on the fediverse) did something like this and got called out for it, we'd get sued into oblivion and lose everything.

EVERYTHING!

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos & Mark Zuckerberg et al are all pathetic individuals deserving of our most special contempt, void of any integrity, let alone any possible semblance of honor.

They're nothing more than common thieves & hustle artists whose mark is the world. Albert R. Broccoli could not have imagined such conniving villains who only James Bond could take down.

If this is the best that this country's so-called 'leaders' want us to believe that this place can do; if this is how 'American Innovation' & 'American Exceptionalism' is defined today, then this place deserves to burn to the ground and then some, full fucking stop.

It never had to be this way.

We deserve so much better.

How could they fall for this? Surely, if you are dumb enough to actually submit source code for something that's not a blatant toy problem like an order-preserving quicksort, that's a chump move?

These folks were ride or die Elon fanboys at the time of their interview, so it likely never even dawned on them that they were being played. On the upside, it basically proves Trump's claim that we don't have enough skilled people is utter bullshit.

Oh they get fined, alright, but they simply absorb the cost as part & parcel of doing business. Also helps that they have many lawmakers on their payroll. The fines need to be at least more than the money they made doing it. Better yet, jail time for executives. Of course, that'll never happen because it would damage shareholder value.

"no you cant put away those gangsters, they're our customers!"

A similar problem has existed in the creative/design world for years - resulting in the formation of No!Spec An organisation that seeks to dissuade designers from taking part in 'spec' work.

Spec work is any kind of creative work, either partial or completed, submitted by designers to prospective clients before designers secure both their work and equitable fees. Under these conditions, designers will often be asked to submit work in the guise of a contest or an entry exam on existing jobs as a “test” of their skill. In addition, designers normally lose all rights to their creative work because they failed to protect themselves with a contract or agreement. The clients often use this freely-gained work as they see fit without fear of legal repercussion.

The Amazon Angle

Amazon outright copies other businesses wares and sells it at cut rate prices, undercutting the original producers, hurting them severely if not killing them outright.

CNBC reports on the experience of Peak Design, a supplier of camera bags and accessories that does most of its sales on Amazon’s platform. Peak discovered that its most popular item, the Everyday Sling Bag, had competition in the form of an AmazonBasics bag that used the same name.

They copied the general shape, they copied the access points, they copied the charcoal color, and they copied the trapezoidal logo badge,” Peak CEO Peter Dering told CNBC. “But none of the fine details that make it a Peak Design bag were things that they could port over because those things take a lot more effort and cost.

So yes, Amazon does that. But undercutting other middlemen (who also get their products from China) vs outright stealing code they could easily pay for are two completely different ballgames.

Don't be a fanboy (or girl, Reg!) - be a realist. Protect yourself and apply the smell test.