Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

These completely baffled me until I realized that you put money into it rather than withdrawing

― Andy the Grasshopper, Wednesday, October 6, 2021 2:19 PM (three minutes ago)

I had no idea until now. But yeah, the two convenience stores I go to on the reg both have these machines - one downtown and one in Temescal

the only one i ever saw in Brooklyn was at a bodega with intensely bad service that was repeatedly shutdown as a hotbed of K2 deals, and which is no longer in business.

I saw some of those in Canada, but I’m pretty sure they may have been linked to Quadriga, which was outed as a completely pyramid scheme after the founder died. OR DID HE? there’s a good cbc podcast on it

in any case, bitcoin has absolutely no use for anyone living hand to mouth and even the one davey is mentioning does nothing if you don’t transfer money in — at which point they apparently give people who have bought magic beans a percentage of additional magic beans

the entire thing with an asset that can be used for speculation, or illicit means, is that the market means nothing to people who 1. can’t afford to gamble 2. can’t afford to buy in

if you were buying/selling picassos or whatever, maybe you can get a legit buyer down the road after you overpay to someone who doesn’t care where your money came from. with cryptocurrency, you’re willing to take the risk your money goes up in smoke because you don’t want to be seen with suspicious money or assets

along that line, it makes me now wonder about the “guy found a legit picasso in his grandpa’s closet” stories that come out in the news. more like “guy mysteriously misplaced a large amount of illicit assets and a private collector mysteriously misplaced a picasso at that guy’s house”

About the “oh wow I found a Rembrandt at a garage sale!”:

https://www.npr.org/2014/03/27/294919256/a-tiny-renoir-stolen-in-the-50s-finally-comes-home-to-baltimore-museum

I thought these were pretty much known to be covers for recovering art off of the black market.

Respect to the lady who stole it (or got someone to steal it) and stayed quiet for 50 years.

this is a decent piece on what a better banking/transfer system looks like

https://tigerfeathers.substack.com/p/the-internet-country

i can't remember where i found this so maybe it has already been linked upthread

Aw too bad

!!!

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Jury finds Elizabeth Holmes guilty of conspiracy at her former blood-testing startup Theranos.

— Mahen Gunaratna (@GunaRockYa) January 4, 2022

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

lol

We're about to get into a golden era of dramatic adaptations here of this kind of stuff -- Super Pumped started last night, The Dropout starts later this week, the WeWork one in a couple of weeks...

I think I'm going to watch some of them before I deem the era golden

https://www.theringer.com/tv/2022/2/25/22949799/super-pumped-showtime-dropout-hulu-wecrashed-apple-tv

xpost Well, gold-plated.

reminds me of the weekend when my friend's son was insisting part of an action figure was real gold because the packaging said that. it actually meant shiny gold paint

This is an amazing/terrifying concept: https://www.cana.com/

What do you think? I like the idea that you don't ship a bunch of water around the world. But I'm not loving the pay-per-drink business model. Maybe that's better than the standard printer model where you pay for all the colors when you run out of one of them.

No hot drinks at launch, which means no "tea, earl grey, hot" action.

wait... 3D printing wine?

I'm not buying it, Captain Picard

lol, it's like Juicero meets Theranos

Juiceranos

Also.. I mean, doesn't good wine have to go with the gravelly soil in the vineyard? Whisky that's been aged in a barrel for many years?

This sounds like a fucking scam

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

recycles its cartridges for you. it gets up and walks to the curb and barfs out its trash? now i'm intrigued.

xps the materials say "a range of wines", nowhere do they claim to be "good"

(probably grape drink with vodka)

probably be handy on the ISS

I mean IN THEORY the barrel aging, the soil, the peat, is all just molecules, so IN THEORY it could replicate all that if it could be measured accurately in the first place. But I doubt it has been or that this is sophisticated enough to do that.

Looks completely worthless, thanks for sharing.

lol I thought this was the star trek thread at first because the season premiere of the Picard show does have him harvesting grapes and making wine

too bad that's not a Kickstarter, I'd like to see how many dummies are setting $300-700 on fire

automatic espresso machines aren't even good and all they have to do is grind beans, tamp them and push hot water through, they're not synthesizing Colombian crops

It’s not 3d printing anything afaict. It’s a sodastream.

That is connected to the internet and charges per drink.

https://i.imgur.com/8v8GTM8.mp4

what i am gleaning from this is that cock is welcome, and i think that’s nice

if this was actually real it would be fuckin cool as hell

They must be doing a marketing push today, saw a post from Simone Giertz (a usually awesome builder/maker Youtube person) about her role as a seed investor in the company. At least she didn't go down the NFT route.

I drink only NFTs now

I find it very hard to believe that isn't an outright scam.

"Yeah, it uses, um, molecules"

Like what the fuck is in that cartridge than can make merlot, coffee, lemonade & gin?

"molecules!" gimme a fucking break

kinda wanna poll the staff photos but maybe every snake oil startup has a gallery like this, i don’t browse enough of them to know

it's a sodastream. there are multiple cartridges.

each bursting with molecules

It's borderline Ali G. "Everyfing is made o moleules. So wha if me had all the kinds of molecules in one machine, me could make anyfing"

I mean, it's not wrong in a sense so broad it's being catcalled by a legion of dudes from Guys and Dolls

xp but I am proud of this terrible joke so I am posting it

i got yr drink right here
it's called the musk-ateer
and here's a guy that says ...

she is GETTING that emmy pic.twitter.com/wXo0aL1pte

— lucy (@heylucymay) April 8, 2022

that felt too uncomfortably real