Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

let's needlessly increase energy usage in homes with a bunch of hydraulics that can only be operated with your chronically faulty internet-of-things devices! imagine coming home drunk and wanting to pass out and yelling at Siri for 20 minutes to get your bed to come out of the ceiling

But with Bumblebee it’s like Marie Kondo lives in my ceiling.

ceiling cat, only Marie Kondo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_FUt5S7j0s

oh, what a feeling / when you’re yelling at the ceiling

overvalued and unprofitable startups desperately latching onto half-baked ideas for generating revenue: a thread

— sir this is a wendy 🌹 (@dellsystem) February 25, 2020

people are ruining the pivot moment, which was supposed to be realizing that you had developed a component that is useful on its own in the quest to create your original product

now it’s just “we can slap ads or loans in”

idk maybe the latter was the real thing and the former kismet

Or, you know, all this shit has just been a fucking obvious bubble to people who know how to read and do math

all these companies following ilx's lead. hook about 100 people. Then turn on that ad revenue, baby.

I feel so old about this stuff. My life is so lo-fi, i just would never be interested in most of these things.

The Homepolish story linked in that thread is a good one, if you enjoy reading about clueless entitled assholes ruining other people's lives.

I am seriously wondering what type of permitting / code compliance issues those things would require ... like, are they gonna fall down in an earthquake? What is the minimum ceiling height they require? What about fire safety ... what is the fire rating of these things? Normally, code stipulates that you can't have storage closer than 18" from the ceiling ... because it's a mechanical device, would it require mechanical permits? ...

"who cares just build it and then worry about that shit later!" = every tech company ever

It just seems like something that would be hard to integrate with a bunch of different pre-existing construction types -- like, apartments with 8' or lower ceilings.

disrupting the building code "industry"

a ceiling waterbed is actually safer than normal beds in the case of fire

there are so many small businesses that are the opposite of tech companies with the attitude of "who cares just build it and then worry about that shit later!" but maybe tech companies tend to grow more quickly, exposing the attitude in more dramatic fashion.

small businesses would run into the same problems if they were always trying to "scale up" and/or waste other people's money

One of the guys from Mad Men had his bungalow featured in Dwell and he had a bed that raised and lowered manually and I thought that was actually pretty cool in a tight space.

coming out of the floor is very different from coming out of the fucking ceiling

This one raised up to the ceiling but it was done with a chain so it had a cool industrial feel

lol was this Pete Campbell's place

vince kartheiser def the weirdest person on that show

Yeah, that guy. Mr. Alexis Bledel

wasn’t that house pretty small for a named actor guy? seemed respectable

I'm unwilling to put in effort to find a link that's not the Daily Mail
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2712131/Mad-Men-star-sells-cleverly-designed-tiny-bungalow-800-000-including-bed-pulled-ceiling-fire-pit-hidden-inside-coffee-table.html

Super nice, IMO.

The bed pulling into the ceiling isn't a dumb idea at all, if you can make it happen, beats a Murphy bed taking up an entire wall. Hydraulics or whatever are unnecessary (though let's be real about the energy cost of a 10 second raise/lower cycle - if you're living in few square feet you're more than making up for that energy).

fewer square feet

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERvx3A1UUAAPQfP?format=jpg&name=small

i like that bungalow (except for the red curtain). I like that the bed is on a pulley system.

Although this is all reminding me of that earthquake proof bed (coffin).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slQwB0uCZkc

A panic bed.

I give myself three nights before I have permanent brain damage from hitting my head on the beam.

Because I have these thoughts that seem really interesting, but they're not really good for real life.'

very relatable, Vince

Limited Series Based on Downfall of WeWork Coming to Apple TV+

we're just playing mad libs with these concepts now, right?

👏 👏 👏 pic.twitter.com/SSob76cCN4

— VCs Congratulating Themselves 👏👏👏 (@VCBrags) April 4, 2020

is that sincere? jesus.

lololol she went and edited it

quora is both the best and worst site
best when idiots completely show their ass imo

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYez1BSWkAceMAh?format=png&name=large

kinda chill but mostly lol

I think that's really an app for personal injury lawyers

oof

I keep seeing ads for this service called Block Renovation, which claims it is the "Amazon Prime of renovation" but seems more like, idk, the grubhub of renovation or something? I.e. it sort of pointlessly inserts itself between you and contractors to take advantage of the growing tendency of people to arbitrarily trust things more if there is some kind of tech intermediary.

Like they claim to also provide "design services" but AFICT all that means is you get a more generic bathroom by limiting your options to theirs, yet still pay a premium over what you would just pay a contractor. And then they work with contractor "partners" to do the renovation.

The audio chat had spiraled wildly out of control from a broader conversation earlier in the call about the state of journalism and what VCs should do to receive better coverage. Srinivasan, formerly a general partner at Andreesen Horowitz, claimed that "the entire tech press was complicit in covering up the threat of COVID-19," and claimed that relying on the press is "outsourcing your information supply chain to folks who are disaligned with you," comparable to the United States having outsourced its medical supply chain. He proposed that the approaches to truth and accountability offered by GitHub, venture capital funding, and cryptocurrency all offer better models for journalism than "the East Coast model of 'Respect my authori-tay.'"

according to a friend of mine, his creepy behavior toward women online extends to offline as well

i wonder if he would refer to white supremacy as "racial disalignment"?

The app was valued at $100 million after a reported $12 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz, and requires an invite to join.

That's a lot of money for "Zoom with no video"

$12M at $100M valuation is like a Friday afternoon scratch ticket for AH, barely merits an all-staff email probably.

Ba1aji S. 5rinivasan attended Stanford where he was awarded a BS, MS, and PhD in Electrical Engineering, Chemical Engin33ring, and Bioinformatics. He has taught statistics, data mining, and computational biology at Stanford University.

...

He proposed that the approaches to truth and accountability offered by GitHub, venture capital funding, and cryptocurrency all offer better models for journalism

apparently he's seen South Park, tho

wah wah I’m a big baby who can’t take it when people cover my company critically

this all reminds me of the villainizing of john carreyrou at theranos because he dared to write about how their company was a sham, when their company was, in fact, a sham