Daily Archives: February 26, 2022

A Philosophy of Games That Is Really a Philosophy of Life

When we play Monopoly or basketball, we know we are playing a game. The stakes are low. The rules are silly. The point system is arbitrary. But what if life is full of games ones with much higher stakes that we dont even realize were playing?According to the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, games and gamified systems are everywhere in modern life. Social media applies the lure of a points-based scoring system to the complex act of communication. Fitness apps convert the joy and beauty of physical motion into a set of statistics you can monitor. The grades you received in school flatten the qualitative richness of education into a numerical competition. If youve ever consulted the U.S. News & World Report college rankings database, youve witnessed the leaderboard approach to university admissions.In Nguyens book, Games: Agency as Art, a core insight is that were not simply playing these games they are playing us, too. Our desires, motivations and behaviors are constantly being shaped and reshaped by incentives and systems that we arent even aware of. Whether on the internet or in the vast bureaucracies that structure our lives, we find ourselves stuck playing games over and over again that we may not even want to win and that we arent able to easily walk away from.This is one of those conversations that offers a new and surprising lens for understanding the world. We discuss the unique magic of activities like rock climbing and playing board games, how Twitters system of likes and retweets is polluting modern politics, why governments and bureaucracies love tidy packets of information, how echo chambers like QAnon bring comfort to their players, how to make sure we dont get stuck in a game without realizing it, why we should be a little suspicious of things that give us pleasure and how to safeguard our own values in a world that wants us to care about winning the most points.Mentioned:How Twitter Gamifies Communication by C. Thi NguyenTrust in Numbers by Theodore M. PorterSeeing Like a State by James C. ScottAgainst Rotten Tomatoes by Matt StrohlA Game Designers Analysis Of QAnon by Reed BerkowitzThe Great Endarkenment by Elijah MillgramGame recommendations:Modern ArtRootThe Quiet YearThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of The Ezra Klein Show at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.The Ezra Klein Show is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rog Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

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Google Podcasts

An Android statue is displayed in front of a building on the Google campus on January 31, 2022 in Mountain View, California. Google parent company Alphabet will report fourth quarter earnings on Tuesday after the closing bell.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Google is dropping some Covid-related mandates for employees and restoring perks back to its headquarters as it prepares to bring workers back to the office.

Google Real Estate and Workplace Services VP David Radcliffe wrote an email to San Francisco Bay Area employees this week explaining that the company is relaxing some rules around vaccines, testing, social distancing and masks. Separately, a Google spokesperson told CNBC that the company has reversed course and will not require vaccinations as a condition of employment for U.S. workers, but declined to offer further details.

Radcliffe's note also said that perks such as massages and access to informal spaces in the office will be returning. In the past, Google has been able to attract talent with fun office amenities, but many of those were suspended during the pandemic.

The moves come as the company prepares to require most employees to come into physical offices at least three days a week for a "hybrid" work model, while some other Bay Area tech companies are offering fully remote work options. Google has had to delay its office return several times amid various Covid-19 variant surges, and another surge could change these latest plans once again.

It has almost been two years since Google and other tech companies first sent their employees home at the start of the pandemic. Since then, the labor market has tightened, employees have grumbled about missing perks, and workers have voiced their desire to remain working remotely.

Radcliffe's note says Bay Area offices are lifting the testing requirement imposed in January, which applied even to vaccinated employees.

In addition, Google is dropping its social distancing requirement and masks for vaccinated employees in most areas, noting that the few cities still requiring masks are likely to drop them soon.

Google is also reversing course on requiring vaccination for employment for U.S. employees, according to Google spokesperson Lora Lee Erickson. In November, CNBC reported the company told employees that they must comply with vaccine policies or they'd face loss of pay and eventually loss of employment.

Erickson told CNBC the company dropped the requirement for employment last month after removing the Jan. 18 deadline it had set for employees to either get vaccinated or get exemption approval. She declined to provide further details on the policy or the reasons for the reversal, but noted that employees would still need to be vaccinated or have an exemption in order to come into the office.

"We're continuing to implement our vaccination policy requiring COVID-19 vaccinations or approved accommodations for any individuals accessing our sites, because it's one of the most important ways we can keep our workforce safe and keep our services running," Erickson noted.

Unvaccinated employees who are approved to enter offices will still need to follow additional protocols, including testing and wearing a mask, Radcliffe's note stated.

Radcliffe also wrote that the company is reopening amenities such as fitness centers without appointment and massages; restoring full shuttle service; adding more places to eat free breakfast and lunch; and opening "all informal spaces" such as lounges, game rooms, music rooms and massage chairs.

"We're at the beginning of a journey, so the office experience will feel pretty similar to what it was like pre-Covid," Radcliffe said. "We're designing and piloting options to support new ways of working together and we'll gather insights, data and feedback to help us learn as we go."

Radcliffe added that in-person business meetings and events are also "ramping back up."

"We're giving employees who welcome the chance to come into the office the option to do that wherever we safely can, while allowing those who aren't ready to keep working from home," Erickson told CNBC. "Based on current conditions in the Bay Area, we're pleased that our employees who choose to come in now have the ability to access more onsite spaces and services to work and connect with colleagues."

The San Francisco Bay Area has the highest concentration of Google offices, with dozens of buildings across several cities in the region, including its Mountain View headquarters.Radcliffe said 30% of Google employees in the area came into the office over the past week, but the return remains voluntary.

The company has still not determined a new date for the mandated return since it last pushed off its Jan. 10 expectation amid the omicron surge. But under a line titled "What Happens Next?" Radcliffe notes that it is preparing to begin its 30-day transition period to the hybrid work week if conditions continue to improve. He said his team is planning "celebrations" to welcome back employees.

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Google relaxes mandates, opens amenities as it prepares for workers to return - CNBC

Popular Google software engineer Anthony D. Mays leaves the search giant to pursue diversity and inclusion full-time.

Anthony D. Mays

The year after Anthony D. Mays joined Google as a software engineer in 2013, the company publicly released its diversity numbers for the first time. He knew the numbers were likely low, but he didn't realize just how low.

When he found out only 1% of technology roles included Black people, Mays made it his personal mission to help grow that number while working at Google. Now, after several years of seeing slow-moving progress within Google and the tech industry at large, Mays is branching out on his own, starting a consulting firm that aims to help both companies and employees reach more representation.

When Mays joined Google in 2013, he received a personal welcome call from the company's human resources chief at the time, Lazlo Bock. "That was pretty special," Mays told CNBC in an interview.

The following year, the company became the first of many to release their diversity numbers, which showed a dismal 2% of full-time Google employees were Black and only 1% of technical roles were filled by Black employees. Shocked by the statistics, Mays felt a personal obligation to help those numbers grow.

To do that, began sharing his story of coming from an abusive home in Compton, California.

"Having come from the world of Compton to the world of Google and Silicon Valley for several years, it allows me the unique opportunity to build bridges in the way that others may not be able to."

He first shared his story in a company email that ended up going viral. Then, in 2018, he shared his experiences in a Buzzfeed video called "My Unlikely Path To Becoming The 1% At Google," which has racked up 5.3 million views. He also wrote an article, with Google's public relations team, he said, for Huffington Post called "Google Would Never Hire a Person Like Me," explaining how his environment and self-doubt almost kept him from applying for a job at Google.

"I was getting emails from people in and outside of the company that I'd never met," Mays said, adding that he was humbled by the response.

Mays, a full-time engineer at Google, was a key voice for company diversity in tech. Now, he wants to use what he's learned to increase representation.

Anthony Mays

Many told Mays he inspired them and made them feel seen and heard, he said. Google recruiters told him his coaching work helped get diverse applicants in the door and succeed during interviews, he said.

But becoming a key voice for DEI also came with setbacks: He had to juggle DEI work with being a full-time software engineer and says he sacrificed promotions due to the time spent on those initiatives.

Mays said he also experienced imposter syndrome.

"People were telling me I'm doing well, but I'm also keenly aware that in some people's minds, I'm the diversity hire," he said of is feelings early on. "So, early on, there was this sneaking suspicion that I have that I'm being treated differently because I'm a Black man working in tech. "

Part of the motivation for continuing his work, he explained, was "survivors' guilt," Mays said.

"I had a number of friends who were shot and killed when they were 18 and 19 years old," he said. "When you see that kind of tragedy and be so close to it, you start asking what made me so different that I deserved to escape and they didn't?"

But most of the motivation, he said, came from his faith and hope for equity among underrepresented workers. He said he feels a responsibility and passion for giving people a chance at more opportunities.

Mays, whose authentic communication and candor draw people, says he tries to be honest when asked what it's like to be a Black man at Google.

"I talk about how I had a good experience, but there are no guarantees, and I want us to be honest about that," he said. "There are people who've had horrible experiences, and I want to remind people that as much as I've enjoyed being at Google, things might go differently for you."

He also acknowledges the challenges he sees companies face when trying to implement new programs dedicated to diversity and inclusion. At Google, he said, he saw impactful diversity and inclusion programs that were either put on hold or changed in different direction.

"I don't know many companies who are working harder than Google to effect change; however, one of the problems I've seen is the sustained commitment in any given direction," Mays said. "What tends to happen is you have a program that works well for a year or two and then inexplicably goes into another direction or there's a shuffle or a reorg and it can be hard to see things through for the sustained long term."

As the years went on, Mays found his personal brand deviating from Google's, he said.

"Google's an advertising company that organizes information of the world, and my focus during my time there was helping with that as a software engineer that's what I was hired to do," he said. "But, I began to find my interest more in organizing information for the underrepresented in tech who struggled to find resources and information on how to navigate tech as an industry."

In late 2021, Mays says he saw a window of opportunity to do DEI work full-time after watching the labor market tighten, record resignations and tech job-seekers looking for better financial security and work-life flexibility amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Seeing the need and the response to my own story over these past few years, it became well 'ok, now I want to do this more than just on my off-time," Mays said. "I came to the realization that now really is the time and as the pandemic begins to loosen its hold."

Mays' last day was in mid-February, and in less than a week, he used his savings to launch Morgan Latimer Consulting, which is named after African American inventors Garrett A. Morgan and Lewis H. Latimer.

Mays has two main goals: to help underrepresented people get jobs in tech if they want them and to help companies understand how to get and keep those workers.

An influential software engineer within Google, Anthony Mays left the company after eight years to pursue his own diversity and inclusion consulting firm.

Anthony Mays

Working with companies, Mays has had to explain the business importance of DEI, which studies have for years shown improves business outcomes and product development.

"There are people who see this as just a PR problem that these aren't real issues," Mays says.

Silicon Valley has been slow to progress in keeping employees of color, placing most of the focus on recruiting.

"They can attract people all day long, but they're still not supporting them enough to stay, as you can see in the numbers and in people's experiences," Mays said.

Mays says part of his conversations involves getting real with companies about how minority talent views them. In particular, there's a sizable lack of trust.

"Most companies either don't know or don't understand why there is a lack of trust, they usually just see the side effects like lack of participation," he said. "We have this expectation that if we throw money at this, we'll have progress, but it's more complicated than that."

He says firms sometimes overlook existing mechanisms that could help the problem, such as organization, support systems, and mentorship.

"It's important for me to help these companies understand why those things are happening and to provide some guidance on how to resolve them," he says. "The FAANG companies in particular oftentimes often feel like they want to reinvent the wheel but oftentimes, they shouldn't."

Mays gave an example of Inroads,a nonprofit organization that creates pathways to careers for underrepresented students. It helped him secure his job in tech, but still doesn't get support or recognition.

He also plans to help companies think about how their performance reviews are inclusive, he said. Expectations and action items need to be clear for workers, he added.

"It's not enough for a company leader to have an initiative with DEI focus," said Jason King, senior associate director of corporate relations at the University of California, Irvine. "It takes solid structure and game plan because once you take foot off gas, it's up to you to implement it and that's just one thing Mays is great at."

For those just getting in the door, Mays says he's dedicating part of Morgan Latimer Consulting to entryways like interviews, which candidates have found difficult.

Before being hired by Google, Mays failed his first Google interview in 2011 despite getting pointers from a company recruiter, he said. Historically black college students training on Google's own campus program told CNBC about challenges and failures during their own processes. Failing interviews left them feeling discouraged and unlikely to try again.

Portia Kibble-Smith, a diversity and inclusion lead at technical interviewing platform start-up Karat, said Mays' services fit in well because of his ability to relate to students and share tips a break from tech companies' often standard practice of refusing to share interview feedback.

An influential software engineer within Google, Anthony Mays left the company after eight years to pursue his own diversity and inclusion consulting firm.

Antony Mays

"One of our biggest challenges we found is that most engineers have less information about the hiring process and interviews, specifically, and that's exacerbated if they're coming from outside the industry" Kibble-Smith said. "It's even harder to get information from peers if you don't have a network."

Mays offers three different packages. The "basic" package, listed at $199, helps candidates "Find out whether you're ready with a realistic coding interview," while the "Pro" package, listed at $549, tracks progress and growth while helping with algorithms and data structures. Last, a $899 package offers all of those benefits plus "advanced topics and behavioral interviews."

The two higher-priced ones can be broken up in monthly payments, and most come with one-on-one time with Mays.

Mays says he hopes to give "high-quality" learning courses to people at an affordable price and regularly shares free tips and advice across his social networks including Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.

"There are so many predatory services just repackaging information freely available and charging a fee," Mays said. "I get that this is a capitalistic society, but I have a heart to put together information in the hands of folks who often don't have the access or the funds to pay for those."

An influential software engineer within Google, Anthony Mays left the company after eight years to pursue his own diversity and inclusion consulting firm.

Anthony Mays

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Anthony Mays is using his experience as a Black tech employee to help others through the door - CNBC

I owe you an update on the number of people whose lives we have changed for the better through a radical upscaling of our Right to be Forgotten initiative that was funded by Google.

Thousands.

Thats thousands of people who no longer feel the humiliation of having the worst mistakes they ever made leaping to the top of the page when people search for their names on Google and other search engines. Thats thousands of people who will no longer see the worst photo ever taken of them their mug shots flash on their computer screens.

Getting here took a lot of work by a lot of people, but as we come in for a landing on the project that Google gave us $200,000 to undertake, were calling it an unqualified success.

For background, you need to know that because our website is so large and popular, our stories often rise to the top of the list when people do internet searches. That means our stories about minor crimes or other mistakes people have made over the years show up high when people search for them, interfering with their efforts to find jobs or partners.

We heard from many people about the pain this caused for them, especially those who had turned their lives around and were striving to be better people. In 2018, we started our Right to be Forgotten project, accepting applications from people to remove their names from dated stories about them. We received 10 to 15 a month on average, and a committee of editors considered them.

We rejected requests involving violence, felony sex crimes, child abuse and corruption. But I estimate we granted 80 percent of the requests.

We knew, though, that for the most part, the only people who knew we offered this service of were members of our audience. That meant large swaths of the population were unaware. We suspected that lack of knowledge created racial disparities in the people taking advantage of our initiative.

We wondered whether we could proactively go through our archives to clear outdated stories about minor crimes, ensuring we provided equal access to Right to be Forgotten. We came up with some ideas involving computer programming, and we entered the competitive process to get funding from the Google News Initiative, which supports digital innovation in newsrooms.

We were awarded $200,000, with us matching a healthy percentage.

The bulk of that money went to creating tools to sift through all of the stories and photos weve published, to identify pieces that we would want to edit or unpublish under Right to be Forgotten. This was a massive programming challenge. We have 1.4 million pieces of content on cleveland.com. Finding stories about minor crimes requires the ability to conduct searches in myriad ways that had not been available with existing tools. Our in-house technical wizards and a brilliant consultant get all the credit.

As with any new technical tool, once the beta model arrives, many hours of testing and tweaking follow. We enlisted four retired cleveland.com/Plain Dealer editors help us, and they came back repeatedly with ideas for making the tool more efficient and effective

And then they set about using it, searching the content and marking stories that we should alter or unpublish while the programmers continued their work to making editing and unpublishing those stories easier.

Separately, the programmers built a photo tool to help us identify mug shots. Theres no key word in our system to say a photo is a mug shot. A variety of parameters had to be designed to bubble up photos that could be mug shots, and then our freelance team of retired editors could plow through them to designate which photos are mug shots. We are working with more than 5,000 photos at this point, and the effort continues. Before we are finished, I suspect we will have removed thousands of mug shots from our site.

The work financed by Google ends in March, but we will use this powerful tool to continue sifting through our content long after. And we already are talking to our sister websites about using it with their content. Ultimately, a lot of people in Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, Alabama, Oregon and elsewhere could benefit from this work.

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Weve helped thousands of people get past their mistakes, with Googles support: Letter from the Editor - cleveland.com

Google has announced it will soon remove a feature of Chrome for Android that for years helped people cut down on their mobile data usage. Per 9to5Google, Chromes Lite mode will go away with the release of Chrome version M100 in late March. Lite mode was originally known as Data Saver when Google first introduced it on Android back in 2014.

In those days, many smartphone owners were on tiered data plans and risked extra charges if they went over their monthly allotment. And in some regions, mobile speeds were limited so Lite mode helped pages load faster by compressing them. In 2015, Google added the option to block images entirely to use even less data.

But Google no longer sees much reason to keep the option around. Unlimited data plans are once again the norm, and the company claims that Chrome has continued to cut back on data usage with default settings.

In recent years weve seen a decrease in cost for mobile data in many countries, and weve shipped many improvements to Chrome to further minimize data usage and improve web page loading, the company wrote on a help page this week. Although Lite mode is going away, we remain committed to ensuring Chrome can deliver a fast webpage loading experience on mobile.

Chrome for Android version M100 will be released to the stable channel on March 29th, so Lite mode will remain available until then.

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Google is ditching Chromes data saver mode on Android - The Verge

Google addresses whether the changing your website hosting provider to one in a new location can impact SEO and search rankings.

This topic is addressed in the latest installment of the Ask Googlebot video series on YouTube.

The following question is submitted to Googles Search Advocate John Mueller:

Does migrating a website hosting location affect SEO? E.g. an Australian website (and target audience) migrating its hosting location from Australia to US.

In response, Mueller says there will initially be some changes to how Google treats a site following a hosting change.

Does that involve anything that affects search rankings? See his full response in the next section.

Mueller says the biggest change youre likely to notice after changing website hosts is a slow down in crawling.

Thats done to make sure Google wont cause any problems by crawling the site too frequently.

Regulating crawling will resume once Google learns there wont be any issues with doing so

Mueller adds this will happen regardless of the hosting change you make. Whether youre moving to a hosting provider in the same location, or a new location, Google will be cautious with how much it crawls the site.

When it comes to moving hosting, you might see our systems initially slowing down crawling a bit. Any time we recognize a hosting change, we want to be sure that we dont cause any problems. And so we tend to automatically slow down crawling as a precaution.

Over time, once our systems can tell that going faster doesnt cause any issues, well speed up again. This is independent of the kind of hosting change you make. It doesnt matter if youre moving to a different provider down the road, or moving to another country.

Moving website hosting to a new location may impact how fast the site loads for users.

If a majority of visitors live further away from where the website is hosted, that could lead to a noticeably slower user experience.

In turn, that could affect the speed and page experience ranking factors.

Mueller continues:

One practical effect you might notice is that larger geographic moves can affect how quickly a website loads for users. Due to physics and computer networking, out can take longer to reach a server thats far away. Depending on how strongly this is visible, that can play a role in speed and the page experience ranking factor for a website.

To avoid the possibility of your website loading time being adversely impacted, you could consider hosting your website on servers in multiple locations.

Content delivery networks (CDNs) often do this, and depending on the hosting platform youre using your site may be on multiple servers already.

Mueller explains:

To be as close as possible to users, some websites even use servers in many different locations. A content delivery network often does this. If youre using a hosting platform they may already be doing this for you too. This configuration is fine for Google.

The location of your website host is not used for geotargeting.

So your search results in a particular geographic area will not be impacted as a result of changing website hosts.

Mueller concludes his response:

With regards to SEO, the servers location is not used for geotargeting. If you want your website to target users in a specific location, you would need to use either the country-code top level domain, or the appropriate setting in Google Search Console.

In summary, changing the location of your website host will have a temporary impact on crawling, and has the potential to adversely impact loading time.

This type of change will not impact SEO when it comes to geotargeting.

Source:

Featured Image: Screenshot from YouTube.com/GoogleSearchCentral

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Google On The SEO Impact Of Changing Website Hosting Location - Search Engine Journal

A staff member works during preparations for the reopening of a Fnac store in Paris as part of an easing of the country's lockdown restrictions amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in France, May 18, 2021. REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier

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Feb 23 (Reuters) - French retailer Fnac Darty said on Wednesday it entered into a new partnership with tech giant Google (GOOGL.O), as it seeks to improve its online services.

Under the new partnership, Fnac Darty's websites will use Google's Cloud Retail Search, a solution designed to help customers find products more easily.

"Fnac Darty is the first retailer in France to implement this new Google Cloud solution, a move which aims to set new standards in terms of online and mobile shopping experiences," the group said in a joint statement.

The retailer will also rely on Google's data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence solutions to help it manage operations, the group said.

Register

Reporting by Dagmarah Mackos;Editing by Alison Williams

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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France's Fnac Darty teams up with Google to improve online retail services - Reuters

If youre a Google Workspace user, the classic Hangouts messaging service will start to disappear next month as part of the transition to Google Chat. Google has announced that itll make Google Chat its default chat application beginning March 22nd, meaning users will be redirected to Chat when they try to visit Hangouts in Gmail on the web, or try to use the old Hangouts mobile apps.

The shift from Google Hangouts to Google Chat is the latest step in Googles constantly evolving messaging strategy, which generally gets more confusing the more you read about it. This particular migration kicked into gear in June 2020, and focusses on the messaging service integrated with Gmail. Google Chat should not be confused with GChat, the unofficial name for Google Talk, which was officially killed off in 2017 and replaced with you guessed it Hangouts.

Existing Hangouts conversation histories will carry over into Chat except in a few special cases, Google says. Although its not possible to opt out of this transition, Google adds that the hangouts.google.com domain will continue to work.

For now, this change is only affecting Workspace users, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers. In other words, its impacting people who use Googles services as part of a business or organization. But 9to5Google notes that Google has previously indicated free Google Account users will go through the same transition after Workspace.

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Google Chat to fully replace classic Hangouts for Workspace users from March - The Verge