Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

Cloud's great when you need less than one or a great many of something. And when you can budget for opex.

tbf the "cloud" I fear mgmt throwing money at is not so much EC2 etc but "why do we even need to have a shell prompt and access to our own data anyway, we can give lots of money to a 3rd-party Cloud Solutions provider to run everything for us, not let us build on it in any way except maybe writing some horrible kludge which maxes out our allowed no. of API calls by 4am every day, and when we stop giving them money and ask how we export our data to the next next big thing they say 'you don't'"

another thing which sounds appealing to lugubrious nonprofits

actually this might be fine for a lot of places but my particular lugubrious nonprofit is also clinging to a lot of arcane practices not really catered for by off-the-shelf packages. perhaps in the long run it's no bad thing if this year's management would rather push an assortment of irregular polygons down a single round hole

idk if tom is right. maybe he knows things i don't (my speciality is power + cooling infrastructure) but i'll say this - if you're a financial institute, or a healthcare institute, or any other kind of proprietary information - you better handle that shit yourself no matter how much you might save w/ a colo.

i don't think that's generally true. you could make the case that the more sensitive the information, the worse an idea it is to try to handle it yourself. that's the way credit card billing has gone. no one does that themselves any more. everyone farms it out to square or whoever.

the point is "it depends"

Should be a cloud c/d.

http://wiki.biohack.me/

Grinders are passionate individuals who believe the tools and knowledge of science belong to everyone.

Grinders practice functional (sometimes extreme) body modification in an effort to improve the human condition. We hack ourselves with electronic hardware to extend and improve human capacities.

Grinders believe in action, our bodies the experiment.

http://i.imgur.com/PK1gPCu.gif

if you're a financial institute, or a healthcare institute, or any other kind of proprietary information - you better handle that shit yourself no matter how much you might save w/ a colo.

That's interesting -- my company handles a lot of confidential and proprietary information that can affect market activity (and sells ourselves partly on security), and last year we went from an in-house server array to a colo.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CchcB-aW0AAx5Oi?format=pjpg&name=large

1) 10 dads
2) there are 10 of them
3) if u count the dads, u will count from 1 to 10
4) they are 10 times as big as regular dads

Before you decide to have a child, it's not a bad idea to do a SWOT analysis. Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. It's a Marketing 101 keywords that I've learned.

Before you decide to have a child, it's not a bad idea to do a AYTD analysis. Are You Ten Dads.

https://38.media.tumblr.com/a0d94b74bb43ba83eb6728e95665dec2/tumblr_inline_neg5qxMhrF1rzosu7.png

lol at pluggers/grinders connection

http://fredrikdeboer.com/2016/03/07/what-thomas-hardy-taught-me/

On education reform by SV tech-obsessives

bay-area effective altruist i know is going to one of these

of course

http://www.circlinginstitute.com/

the transformation of your way of being through authentic relating

sounds legit

xp i'm not crazy about freddie de boer but that's a good article

Not sure if this is the thread for "gig economy" startups, but I've been seeing a lot of analysis like this lately, and it sounds about right:

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/27/good_riddance_gig_economy_uber_ayn_rand_and_the_awesome_collapse_of_silicon_valleys_dream_of_destroying_your_job/

haha, this is very encouraging. love the litany of failed business i've never heard of but all of which i hate on principle: "Companies like Cherry (car washes), Prim (laundry), SnapGoods (gear rental), Rewinery (wine), HomeJoy (home cleaning)" ---- fuuuuuuck you all

Totally would have used SnapGoods.

http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html

What would it take to make Pittsburgh into a startup hub, like Silicon Valley? I feel like I understand Pittsburgh pretty well, because I grew up here, in Monroeville. And I understand Silicon Valley pretty well because that's where I live now. Could you get that kind of startup ecosystem going here?

When I agreed to speak here, I didn't think I'd be able to give a very optimistic talk. I thought I'd be talking about what Pittsburgh could do to become a startup hub, very much in the subjunctive. Instead I'm going to talk about what Pittsburgh can do.

What changed my mind was an article I read in of all places the New York Times food section. The title was "Pittsburgh's Youth-Driven Food Boom." To most people that might not even sound interesting, let alone something related to startups. But it was electrifying to me to read that title. I don't think I could pick a more promising one if I tried. And when I read the article I got even more excited. It said "people ages 25 to 29 now make up 7.6 percent of all residents, up from 7 percent about a decade ago." Wow, I thought, Pittsburgh could be the next Portland. It could become the cool place all the people in their twenties want to go live.

It's true that people aged 25 to 29 tend to be open to trying new things and to accepting risks, which is generally necessary for prompting rapid change. They are also drawn to living in places where they can meet other people aged 25 to 29.

"youth-driven food boom" is very corny and this dude basing his talk & his excitement on a nytimes food article is especially corny but i do think the range of "cool places all the people in their twenties want to go live" could change overtime as places like austin, portland, bay area, nyc increasingly become completely unaffordable. idk though. people in their twenties are okay w/ living in shitty conditions if the location is cool. i think maybe more "cool places all the young people in their 30s with families want to settle down" is more what i am thinking of

It's p ridiculous to think that "cool place where people in their 20s want to move" = enough to fuel becoming the "next silicon valley."

Also I assume every ex-industrial city in America is trying to do the same thing right now, and I don't see what most of them have to offer other than competing with each other to lowball tax incentives or w/e.

you don't think cost of living + stable cultural institutions is an incentive?

low cost of living that is

idk i am very much speaking from my own personal experience especially since i grew up in an ex-industrial city trying to revitalize itself and i am considering moving back there. but i currently live in an expensive city w/ a thriving tech industry and i have a decent job at a major research university but we are effectively priced out of this city. i love it here but we really have no sustainable future here, it is not even that expensive here compared w/ bay area or nyc. being able to buy a sweet house in a smaller city that may be suffering but has stable cultural + higher ed institutions is a huge draw. i mean we can't even really afford a 1br condo here.

pittsburgh rules

I visited 4-5 years ago and it was a fuckin' blast. weird to get around tho, coming from LA.

fwiw i too have heard that pittsburgh rules

must be that extra 0.6% of people age 25-29 over the last decade

i've never really been to pittsburgh! drove near it a million times since i grew up in cleveland but i've never really spent time there. fwiw i have also heard great things about it. from what i understand they have been much more successful in seeking a post-industrialization cultural renaissance

*than cleveland that is

I went to a gastro pub type place that was in a renovated cathedral. p legit even if I dont even remember if the food was good.

its also kind of like sf in that it's very hill-ey

surely all the new youngs have bernified it a little

i know this is kind of sudden but should we all form a startup there? it all seems so...undisrupted

disrupt pittsburgh by making a sandwich without french fries on it

omg that is such bullshit, cleveland has the same thing, there is a sandwich chain called "PANINI'S" but their sandwiches are ...not actual paninis? they are filled w/ fries and served on thick cut untoasted white bread, fuck that

saw that PG piece linked as "very clever satire" which makes it great

lots of cheap bars in 'tsburgh, too. played a crusthole basement show there 2 winters ago and then one of the bands brought us to several bars that had like, 2$ drinks

When I lived in Baltimore there was a restaurant that served what they called "Pittsburgh-style sandwiches" with french fries on them and it always made me feel Pittsburgh must be a glorious place

http://www.clickhole.com/article/pittsburgh-new-austin-austin-we-hoped-and-dreamed--1227

“What of Portland,” indeed. For years, tales of old claimed the Pacific Northwest city was the promised land—a new Eden upon this earth, where men and women would be free to think, and live, and love. A blossoming Eden teeming with hope and food trucks.

But the old tales are clear reminders that the devil himself could not craft a trap so beautiful in its deceitfulness.

quality lol, was reminded of robert caro

looooooooooool

20 years ago my mom worked for a pittsburgh-area local-government consortium, and their foremost long-term concern was 'how do we keep young adults from leaving?'

it seems like a worthwhile endeavor -- whether you want to create a silicon valley or not -- having decent jobs in a place where people might want and could afford to live. it's a virtuous circle, and making the place seem 'cool' is a low-cost input.

(my real father, who lives in houston, periodically wonders aloud why so many companies have headquarters in nyc where it's so expensive -- why not just put everyone in a cheap office park in topeka or albany? whatever dude.)

tbh i had much the same reaction to that nyt foodie article that the silicon valley guy did -- that would *never* have happened when i grew up. and yeah, gentrification kind of sucks, but being the kind of place where ppl reminisce about how kraft american slices used to be so much better is both worse and a dead end.

btw the fries-on-sandwich thing is just good marketing; no one ate that when i was a kid, because it's stupid

Pittsburgh's probably going to "happen" if it isn't already, hope they're ready to upzone.

I'm sure it can be the next Portland or a regional sort of Portland, I just think the jump from there to being an international tech capital is a long one.

Probably a lot of these cities can become like local portlands if the trend continues toward young people wanting to be in cities into their 30s and even beyond.