[ctoth]

Hint: It's much easier to have good PR by being actually good. Though it does make people like this do the whole implication thing.

[davidw]

I saw this the other day:

> Costco is a really popular subject for business-success case studies but I feel like business guys kinda lose interest when the upshot of the study is like "just operate with scrupulous integrity in all facets and levels of your business for four decades" and not some easy-to-fix gimmick

https://bsky.app/profile/mtsw.bsky.social/post/3lnbrfrvmss26

[cube00]

I don't know, staff at my two Costcos feel much more disinterested and rude then I remember a decade ago. It used to feel fun but now it's miserable.

At peak times they run out of carts and tell the customers to go hunting in the lot for them, door greeters shouting at members across the floor, checkout queues stretch the length of the warehouse, they start half blocking the gas station entrance 30mins before close so trucks can't get in, so maybe they're turning those profit screws.

[kouteiheika]

Ah, right, by being actually good, as in - being okay with mass surveillance as long as it isn't being done in the US, being okay with Claude assisting in killing people as long as it isn't fully autonomous, and being actively hostile to open-weight LLMs and open research on LLMs? This kind of "good"?

No, OP is right, their PR department is doing a great job.

[unethical_ban]

Correct. Protect our citizens' rights, as we are the ones under the jurisdiction of our government. Yes, design competitive weapons systems that can stand up to the threats that adversary powers are creating, but do so while maintaining human control.

That kind of good.

[ternwer]

How have they been hostile to open weight models and research? Just because they don't release models themselves?

Note that they are still releasing interesting research