Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/researchers-scared-by-their-own-work-hold-back-deepfakes-for-text-ai/

well, as long as this technology is only in the hands of trustworthy people like, er, peter thiel and elon musk

At the end, Theranos was overrun by a dog defecating in the boardroom, nearly a dozen law firms on retainer, and a C.E.O. grinning through her teeth about an implausible turnaround.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/inside-elizabeth-holmess-final-months-at-theranos

update to my last post here:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/twenty-minutes-into-the-future-with-openais-deep-fake-text-ai/

well i can see why the researchers were so terrified! GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT-GOAT

https://twitter.com/juliacarriew/status/1104944041400004608

hadn't thought of this. VCs are so unbelievably weird.

that is a definite angle! people who think you need constant blood tests because you could, and it’d be useful

that’s the high-end money pitch, though. the mass market pitch that they were making was quick blood testing at walgreens or the battlefield and it was a value pitch. no time paying someone to take a blood sample large enough to test that would take a real phlebotomist, no analyst time that took lab shipping. the ability to sit someone in front of a machine and have a teledoc do instant prescription. instant flow from machine to prescription is the profit, nobody having to do the work of touching and talking to a patient

I mean, for people with low insurance coverage it’s a quick up sell — pay for a blood scan and we’ll give you drugs to fix what may ail you, or optimistically, send you to the right doctor immediately so you’re not stumbling through appointments, and all from a quick scan

the scale factor is that the afflictions treatable from a quick blood scan would be at a larger initial audience and it’d make the weekly scanners who are going to be told to eat one more salad the subsidizers of the system but it was still insanely dumb because blood tests don’t work like that

Thousands of New Millionaires Are About to Eat San Francisco Alive

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/style/uber-ipo-san-francisco-rich.html

One recent night, in a packed room with a view of the Bay Bridge and an open bar, real estate investors gathered. Standing at the front presenting was Deniz Kahramaner, a real estate agent specializing in data analytics at Compass.

“Are we going to see a one-bedroom condo that’s worth less than $1 million in five years?” he asked the crowd. “Are we going to see single family homes selling for one to three million?”

No, he said, not anymore. The energy rose as he revealed more data about new millionaires and about just how few new units have been built for them. San Francisco single-family home sale prices could climb to an average of $5 million, he said, to gasps.

Theranos-wise, I don't think that "this used to be some hassle and now it's no hassle" is a bad pitch, ever - there was a dedicated Weights & Measures building down the street from my house, where people would bring in things to weigh, and now there's kitchen scales.

crucial difference there is that kitchen scales actually do what they're supposed to

Sure, but that never matters to the pitch, right?

As a hypochondriac I do like the idea of running a Star Trek style tricorder over myself at regular intervals instead of worrying about mystery bodily symptoms and then not daring to go to the doctor because it usually sounds silly (plus I am fat so the answer to all mystery symptoms is "you should lose weight, eat better, exercise more" which tbf is certainly true anyway)

however, jabbing myself with anything ever or having anything to do with Theranos-level messianic quacks, not so much

(NB why yes, I would still worry in a different unhealthy way if I had this magical device, but hey, it would bleep and have flashy lights and offer the brief illusion of control)

lmao otm

Men hate vocal fry so much that they gave Elizabeth Holmes 400 million dollars

— Emma (@Merman_Melville) March 19, 2019

lol

see also

elizabeth holmes on a rollercoaster carefully screaming in a baritone

— Sarah Lazarus (@sarahclazarus) March 19, 2019

i_remember_nothing.mp3

do I have to resubscribe to HBO to see this? dark internet is striking out

i just bought a ticket from burbank to oakland on https://www.jetsuitex.com/. afaict it's uberx for private jets. you pull up to a private hangar at a regular airport. my ticket was $20 more than the flight at the same time on southwest. VC-subsidized transit. boy, i don't know.

Wagering that you will spend more money on VC-subsidized ground transport than on your air transport for this trip.

Also wagering that you will spend more time on the ground getting from Oakland to your destination than you will from BUR-OAK.

gonna get a car to the bart station and it's a back street hangar so hoping for no traffic but yeah, it's not really great if you aren't the kind of person who likes driving to airports.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/24/technology/venture-capitalists-ipo-pinterest.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/03/20/business/00strut1/merlin_151953237_6cd2da47-4b11-4d9f-8d48-b8e7b4a54e0b-jumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp
Rick Heitzmann, a partner at FirstMark Capital, which has invested in Pinterest and Airbnb, said it was time to “tell our story.”

absolute hero imo

Man stole https://boingboing.net/2019/03/24/evaldas-rimasauskas.html?fbclid=IwAR0zPBGWxFPt3EWa9chp9eQdVhsjJJ8KNpshFUe2n2qPwj9EOeRa3m_hwDQ22m from Facebook and Google by sending them random bills, which the companies dutifully paid

jeezus

https://boingboing.net/2019/03/24/evaldas-rimasauskas.html?fbclid=IwAR0zPBGWxFPt3EWa9chp9eQdVhsjJJ8KNpshFUe2n2qPwj9EOeRa3m_hwDQ

as much a hero as anybody who commits corporate fraud, i guess

that's fucking balllllller

ok finally found the theranos doc. was good but well over long and a bit unsatisfying since the story itself isn't over.

it had enough content not in the book to be interesting on its own

the emotional reaction of the fortune magazine (lol) reporter pausing and eventually choking out the word “horseshit” was great

holy shit at that boingboing link. ?!????

Dude I would settle for defrauding Facebook for like 100 grand

fake invoices. that's all. that is GOOD MONEY. ffs. that's like... think of the number of people that money has touched, the lives wrapped up in it. you know tons of it is still squirrelled away. either transformed into other enterprises, or property registered through interlocking shell companies, not to mention all the more personally grubby behaviour it's probably enabled

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/04/googles-constant-product-shutdowns-are-damaging-its-brand/

amadeo makes some good points here

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/04/now-its-microsofts-turn-for-an-anti-diversity-internal-revolt/

Don't know why I went into the comments on that article but I did and even though I generally expect the worst I never expected this kind of thing:

Or maybe women aren't the ideological monolith that you seem to think they are? My wife is going into STEM (she's majoring in web design) but she's opposed to women's suffrage (meanwhile I'm not).

I'm going to charitably assume that this person doesn't know what "women's suffrage" means.

women's sufferation

found the followup post after much wtf-like reactions to that post:

Correct, I don't see why that's so baffling though? Back when suffrage was gained it's likely that the majority of women didn't even want it at the time: https://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/05/did ... -the-vote/

That's certainly changed since, but there are still plenty of women (my wife being one) who believe that women as a whole vote in ways detrimental to society.

I have no doubt that women can be better at misogyny than men

for whatever "better" means in this context

also, cool, web design gets to be STEM now

imagine paying $200 million for a company that thinks cheddar is the cheese has holes in it pic.twitter.com/DUsIc60TQE

— bobby finger (@bobbyfinger) April 30, 2019

It was a strategic logo decision, bobby.

— Melissa Rosenthal (@MelisOnCheddar) April 30, 2019

Good point.

A piece of Cheddar would have been a flat, orange block.

— Melissa Rosenthal (@MelisOnCheddar) April 30, 2019

not just any old logo decision, a STRATEGIC logo decision, checkmate haterz

maybe the holes are mouse nibbles

or perhaps you are rich and at one of those restaurants where a clever chef tries to trick you into thinking you are eating a different type of cheese. maybe they also place the hole filled cheddar cheese onto a bag of air that blows pepper jack smell on your face.

the holes are where the money goes

only if u want a UTI

Fetch me my brown shirt! pic.twitter.com/LjovKlwU0G

— Pinboard (@Pinboard) May 7, 2019

to be fair it would be a brown hoodie

Read this ending and died dead. https://t.co/WjTMbBtRm9 pic.twitter.com/6VoNFjgOY4

— Mark Bergen (@mhbergen) May 15, 2019

holy shit that whole piece

I still don't completely get the entire coworking space model and I'm not sure my confusion is wrong