Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

lol seriously

I just can't get over how this was all in service of developing a product that was indistinguishable from an already massively popular one. I want to read the breathless thread about how people wrecked their lives to put out the Zune

"yeah I worked 90 hours a week, destroyed my marriage, and didn't watch my kids grow up but hey we shipped an important product"

"ah well at least you're rich now"

"oh no, no no no, but i have the satisfaction of having made other people rich"

completely deranged

— Kat Cosgrove (@Dixie3Flatline) August 15, 2021

I just can't get over how this was all in service of developing a product that was indistinguishable from an already massively popular one. I want to read the breathless thread about how people wrecked their lives to put out the Zune

in retrospect, the zune was the first time i really became aware of tech overbloat. it's still funny to think about. and the word 'zune' has to be a nadir of the english language. it still makes me cringe-laugh at how bad it is.

https://play-lh.googleusercontent.com/z0kxIIl4fc0WfO3u7uB9B_TkCeP919kzD8xY5rqR0fiGzvHGGQfMaSsC7CCmQ3GRneB0Gb3Al07Z=s200

I just can't get over how this was all in service of developing a product that was indistinguishable from an already massively popular one.

That sort of product defined the Steve Ballmer era at Microsoft. Microsoft thought they learnt from Internet Explorer that they could crush any hot new tech product or service from another company simply by throwing money at it and melding it into Windows, but what worked for IE didn't work for Zune, Bing, Windows Phone, and several others - all reactions to competitors who got there first and did it better. Even IE itself would later crash and burn. Microsoft has since replaced it with Edge, a web browser most of us use exactly once, to download Chrome...

Now Edge is just Chrome

don’t forget that msft bought the world’s most popular video calling software and rendered it an unusable add-on to Teams right before the pandemic hit. has to be in their top 5 galaxy brane moves

oh yeah Bing! lmao

Tracer, which one? I’m thinking of Skype here, but they bought that in 2011 and have been fucking it up in various ways for a decade

I don't use Chrome anymore, now Firefox is my best friend

Chrome is spyware tbrr, and on the user end I feel like the diffs between browsers are super minimal now. heck I barely see a diff between DuckDuckGo and Google Search now

i agree that chrome is spyware and no one should use it, and ff is equivalent for almost all users, but the new safari is pretty drastically different from either for better or worse (well, it's definitely worse, but it's good to see someone trying something new i guess).

mh - yeah skype - i guess i mean they finally basically buried it completely within the guts of Teams right before the pandemic. on my work computer at least, it had been hanging on as 'Skype for Business' for several years. incredible to me how thoroughly they nuked the brand equity. 'Skype' was a verb that most people knew! it meant video calling!

but the new safari is pretty drastically different from either for better or worse (well, it's definitely worse, but it's good to see someone trying something new i guess)

ha! I'm not sure I've tried this version, now I'm intrigued

I only use Safari. If I had a BSD or Linux desktop I'd probably use either Firefox or this bullshit http://surf.suckless.org

what's different about the new safari?

https://sixcolors.com/post/2021/06/wwdc-2021-safari-15-to-bring-huge-ui-changes/

they've dialed it back a bit since WWDC but it's still pretty weird

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2021/06/17/safari-15/

Gonna stick with Firefox. That looks like make-work for a team that should move on to something else.

Bookmarks and tabs have both always been huge problems - people just don't use them well, or efficiently, or at all - so I can't hate them putting some effort into that

safari changes seem just… whatever, to me, so far.

Tracer, I don’t think “Skype for Business” had anything to do with actual Skype, which afaik was a separate, incompatible program. They literally just rebranded their messaging program that came with Office a third time. (Office Communicator, Lynn, then Skype iirc)

haha oh

whoops, typo there, the second one was “Lync”

calling their shitty messaging app that never worked right “Skype” was one of the stupidest branding ploys they’ve done imo

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/28/tech/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-trial-mental-health/index.html

there’s no reason to doubt that Balwani is what she alleges he is but how much of a defense is it? Lee Boyd Malvo is doing life for murders he did while a teenager under the sway of an older man but he’s a Black man and Holmes is a white woman.

I don't think it is much of a defense.

The story just gives me the willies.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-01/how-diapers-com-founder-marc-lore-plans-to-build-utopian-city-telosa

As billionaire vanity projects go, this beats the hell out of Thiel’s Ephebophilia Island.

no way lmao pic.twitter.com/Rm9Zu1ECYE

— stephanie (@isosteph) September 5, 2021

Hero

you can hear the swelling soundtrack playing in his head it's beautiful

Book excerpt with some interesting anecdotes of a young Peter Thiel:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/peter-thiel-silicon-valley-contrarian-max-chafkin.html

that's a yikes

Text messages between Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani today at the #Theranos trial.

Holmes:
"You are the breeze in desert for me."
"My water."
"And ocean."
"Meant to be only together tiger."

Balwani: "OK"

— scott budman (@scottbudman) September 22, 2021

he's a real casanova

Thumbs up emoji

"you are my eternal 'OK', washing over me with alrightness"

I dunno, your partner starts texting you lyrics from "The Wind Beneath My Wings", I'm not sure "OK" isn't the proper response.

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/032/520/yeahgood.jpg

it's contagious

Sunak says he was inspired by his time working in California.

The years I spent in California left a lasting mark on me ….

…. working with some of the most innovative and exciting people in finance and technology.

Watching ideas becoming a reality.

Seeing entrepreneurs build new teams.

It’s not just about money.

I saw a culture …

…. a mindset …

…. which was unafraid to challenge itself...

…. reward hard work ...

…. and was open to all those with the talent to achieve.

I look across the United Kingdom …

... and that culture is here too ….

it's contagious

_Sunak says he was inspired by his time working in California.

The years I spent in California left a lasting mark on me ….

…. working with some of the most innovative and exciting people in finance and technology.

Watching ideas becoming a reality.

Seeing entrepreneurs build new teams.

It’s not just about money.

I saw a culture …

…. a mindset …

…. which was unafraid to challenge itself...

…. reward hard work ...

…. and was open to all those with the talent to achieve.

I look across the United Kingdom …

... and that culture is here too …._

Was thinking recently about how in the "fintech" and "defi" spaces you always hear these entrepreneur types talking about the "unbanked" and how they are going to give these people "access" to financial services. As though the cause of poverty is not having access to a bank, rather than, you know, not having access to MONEY.

Because the banks are killing us with all their fees! I say as I pay a $90 gas fee to buy a $50 jpg of a llama.

man alive i’m pretty sure giving them money i.e. loans is part of their plan!

people not having access to good, non-usurious banking IS a real problem. solutions like california's recently-signed-into-law public banking act are, of course, opposed by bankers and the silicon valley set, who are more interested in solutions which double as businesses.

As though the cause of poverty is not having access to a bank, rather than, you know, not having access to MONEY.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, October 5, 2021 8:24 AM (two hours ago)

Of course there are profiteers that see the problem as a way to extract their cut, but there are definitely aspects of not having access to a bank / financial institution that can extend credit or loan money that perpetuates poverty. Even when people have money. There's also a lot of structural racism in the U.S. that has created these conditions such that isn't just a rich vs poor issue.

man alive i’m pretty sure giving them money i.e. loans is part of their plan!

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, October 5, 2021 12:31 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

But this is just the "microcredit" myth all over again. That failed. People need more money. If they have more money, they will get access to banks.

I don't think Tracer Hand was implying that giving those loans would be in any way designed to help the recipients, just the lenders.

right, I guess I was conflating Tracer's likely ironical post with sarahell's more earnest one.

there are a handful of post offices trialing what I’d think of as “postal banking-lite” right now that I read about the other day

it’s tricky to understand how onerous some of these things are, especially if you’ve never done banking. if I’d never set up an account before, would I even be able to? what about minimum balance requirements and fees?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/04/usps-banking-paycheck-cashing/

on the other hand, I was able to set up a new checking account a couple weekends ago online because I already had a brokerage account. something like four clicks and it was open, a couple more and money was on its way in, and the debit card arrived within a week. the processes and technology to do this are in place, they’re just locked away from anyone who’s never banked. and it really shouldn’t be a high profit center for SV tech vultures

If they have more money, they will get access to banks.

that worked out really well in the past 100 years for black people that wanted to buy houses in segregated neighborhoods