Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

re the extended metaphor talk, these comments are from voxday.blogspot.com/2017/08/suppressing-dissent-at-google.html (a gamergate white supremacist site)

I despise SJWs too, but just wanted to provide a quick fact check: The author does not have a PhD; he "left" his PhD program in part due to fallout from a department-wide presentation where he discussed masturbating to his female colleagues.

and

@Weatherlea: The event occurred at a retreat and the conflict stemmed from the fact that the department wanted an apology while the author felt he did nothing wrong. Though SJW excesses in Silicon Valley need to be exposed, this guy isn't the right guy to stand behind.

also

Later, in what appears to be a group for libertarian-leaning Google employees, Damore asked for feedback, noting that his own libertarianism "influenced a lot of the document."

no fucking kidding

The whole thing he kept citing about people not feeling safe in certain positions is some real concern troll-style garbage, right? The libertarian/meritocracy line would be to let people work in positions they are qualified for and let them use their own judgment about their lives, with management having a sink-or-swim attitude. It’s this disingenuous “they’re not really qualified” opinion he has that he’s trying to temper with the idea he feels concerned

i haven't seen ppl commenting on the framing of his manifesto - v. rationalwiki/lesswrong but also afaik not that far away from the standard collective-self-optimization rhetoric that google promotes among its employees, embracing sober confrontation of biases and inefficiencies in thinking with the data that can be used to correct them

it seems like maybe that's one of the issues? that there is an older google culture colliding with a newer one?

you mean the data scientists vs the redditors?

as it were?

vs the gamergaters

.. I failed to make the connection that the graph in the manifestbro is in GamerGate colors pic.twitter.com/0fQfOhAeXw

— Geoffrey Thomas 🍥 (@geofft) August 8, 2017

this seems like a stretch, but i keep being disappointed so anything's possible

they have colors??!?

solid white iirc

https://www.fastcodesign.com/3037941/the-secret-meaning-behind-gamergates-branding

if I click on that am I going to have to see their astroturf female mascot

http://gizmodo.com/fired-google-memo-writer-took-part-in-controversial-s-1797658885/amp

Stop clickbaiting and say the idea

controversial s

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/the-most-common-error-in-coverage-of-the-google-memo/536181/

lol is there a creep conor friedersdorf won't defend to the death their right to etc etc

Three sources allege that Damore told what they characterized as a masturbation-related joke during the course of the performance, which fell flat and offended some in the audience. However, two sources attributed the backlash to the performance not to any malice on the part of Damore, but instead to his awkward delivery.

Multiple sources also allege that the skit was viewed as problematic among many individuals in the department and that a number of people were offended by the specific masturbation joke. The administration later issued the formal apology to the group for the skit overall.

this is like my worst nightmare, telling a joke in front of an audience that falls flat and then years later it's being dissected my multiple witnesses in a magazine article (not to say that he didn't bring it on himself etc etc)

graduate school comedy is already a nightmare

so it turns out this guy is probably not a total moron and just a sleaze looking for a payout from google?

those aren't mutually exclusive characteristics tbf

be nice if there was a way to fight this garbage w/o creating more RW culture heroes

https://twitter.com/Fired4Truth

chuck johnson, stefan molynaux, quillette mag, jordan peterson, mike cernovich, dana rohrabacher, one of the milo clones

lmao https://twitter.com/Fired4Truth/following

*fart noise*

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-a-google-manufacturing-robot-and-i-believe-humans-are-biologically-unfit-to-have-jobs-in-tech

That was actually funny

A little

my employer, a large corp, bought a startup this week. their website indicates they have had a bunch of venture capital partners and the ceo guy is going to be leading our group that develops software tools for customers

kind of intriguing, I want to meet this dude and see what that's all about

it'll also be interesting to see how this plays out for the incoming people, company culture-wise

It's common for such acquisitions to have contract terms called 'earn-ups' where the employees from the acquired company get a bonus if certain targets are met. Problem is, these terms are secret (to you) so they end up with the newly acquired employees having a contract-based secret agenda.

But some of my favorite professional experiences have been at startups (but not recently...)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-i-was-fired-by-google-1502481290

WSJ are the enemy

like they couldn't find a qualified woman to pay to explain why he was fired

This Damore guy is really dumb!

He does a bunch of videos with alt-righters and mens activist types and then they do all the talking - he doesn't even have anything to say, he just agrees with whatever they say. I skipped through his video with milo and everytime i moved forward it was milo talking, damore was barely on screen! if he was hoping for some kind of media career he's off to a bad start, he's too boring

feel bad for him that trump walked all over his news cycle

http://splinternews.com/an-amusing-little-anecdote-about-the-housing-crisis-tha-1798398003

Completely insane.

Meanwhile, Apple is burning money on building self-driving shuttle buses for its new campus (the one that has no daycare center). because paying shuttle bus drivers would be a crazy waste of money!

is anyone else in a part of the country where these huge-ass data centers are being built?

google skipped over the center part of the state and is a couple hours west, but there's microsoft (one done, one in process), facebook (one hugeass one that's already nearly doubled in size) and now apple's building one, all within a fifteen minute drive of where I'm sitting

highly recommend anything ingrid burrington writes about data centers (and tech infra generally) http://lifewinning.com/tag/writes/

xp Not data centers but Cleveland is getting at least one and maybe two Amazon fulfillment centers on the site of emptied-out shopping malls.

Amazon fulfillment centers on the site of emptied-out shopping malls.

circle of life

amazon making the debartolos seem relatable, damn

mh, here in Oregon the hugeass data centers are mostly in Prineville in central Oregon, east of Bend, but Google put theirs up by the Columbia River in The Dalles. They look for cheap land and electricity, small towns that will give them favorable taxes, and from the look of it, they also like them in attractive areas with recreational opportunities, so any employees they transfer in will feel less like they've been transferred to Siberia.

i cannot get over juicero

They have bowed to the inevitable.

https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2017/9/1/16243356/juicero-shut-down-lay-off-refund

lol i'd already forgotten about juicero

pouring one out over here

squeezing one out over here

genuinely still don't understand juicero. how is pressing juice out a bag a good thing? why does it need to be net-connected? i know asking these questions is pointless.

if it makes you feel better, investors said the same thing which is what led us here

Juicero was an actual scam beyond the obvious stupidity - in the reporting it seems to get lost that they were trying to portray themselves as a home 'cold press' juice bar. (Those are the fancy ones that grind up vegetables and then press them between two plates at high pressure.) Someone who did manage to make a home cold-press unit would have a pretty innovative and successful new product (at least as much as juicers can be innovative).

At least it seems to me that coverage leans toward "why would you need something to squeeze a juice pouch?!" rather than "this thing promised to squeeze juice from ground up plant matter and couldn't so they substituted juice pouches."

how did it do on squeezing dog shit? I could see this having second legs as a "biological prank machine"