Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

a funny thing about facebook going meta is that it was to some extent in response to the fact that wall street wants constant rapid growth and facebook was starting to look like a slow mature company so they just threw some techno bullshit at the wall to goose the stock price but then the idea was so bad that no believed it lmao a tech vision has to be genuinely awful for wall street to not get stoked on it at all

they had the requisite media rollout many will this change the world think pieces and just nothing no one wanted it

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FrquSP4aEAE3xIK?format=jpg&name=medium

where do I cop that t-shirt though

a funny thing about facebook going meta is that it was to some extent in response to the fact that wall street wants constant rapid growth and facebook was starting to look like a slow mature company so they just threw some techno bullshit at the wall to goose the stock price but then the idea was so bad that no believed it lmao a tech vision has to be genuinely awful for wall street to not get stoked on it at all

― lag∞n, Monday, March 20, 2023 2:34 PM (two hours ago)

yeah it's like a very, very basic law of finance/economics that growth is not infinite. your product can be growing at 50%, 100%, 200% or w/e but sooner or later you will saturate the market, growth will begin to slow down, will settle down to a steady 3-5% a year like an IBM or proctor and gamble. facebook basically is over the hump, reached peak user growth, they've got what 2 billion users or w/e? that's almost 1/3 of the global population, pretty good, even though all your younger users are fleeing the platform!

apple's facing the same situation with their iphones - they've probably reached peak iphones, sales right now probably represent replacement more than growth, they are needing to target lower, more price sensitive markets like india since the good getting's been got.

i think the other big factor in zuck's decision is apple pulling the rug out from under them with their privacy settings that took away all of fb's ad-tracking abilities, it really hammered fb at the time. zuck realized that his entire empire was subject to tim apple, because zuck didn't control the hardware that his product was being consumed on. meta is a reaction to that - i can certainly see the beautiful, robot logic of throwing $36 billion at meta from zuck's perspective - a hardware/software stack that he controls from top to bottom, once he gets it going, tim apple will never be able to take it away from him. problem is nobody wants a second life that costs $2000 to play. also you don't will a market into existence. if the original iphone had not been a success i am sure steve jobs would have let it go the way of the newton. you don't throw good money after bad. but it's OK, because facebook the website itself is still a money printer even tho tiktok is hoovering its young users, i applaud the effort because it's sort of like corporate communism, full maximum employment for anybody who has "VR" on their resume. it almost resembles us defense department spending in a way, just billions and billions thrown after perverted objects that are utterly useless, meta a modern day fitzcarraldo.

There was an arcade here that had similar VR setups to that + the Mechwarrior game where you sat in a cockpit that moved on hydraulics. So expensive I only got to go once but it really did feel like the Future of Gaming in 1994... then the next summer I got a job watching over a play by hour LAN that had twelve spaces networked for Duke Nukem, Doom and Command & Conquer and $50 a match Mechwarrior did not seem quite so likely.

tech people who claim they are into "atoms not bits" are the absolute worst

Today is the 50th anniversary of one of the most destructive acts of industrial vandalism in history: the ban on supersonic flight over the US.

It's why we're not flying NY-LA in 90 minutes.

Congress can end the ban this year. Make America boom again.https://t.co/BrpbCBCXfT

— Eli Dourado (@elidourado) March 23, 2023

the funny thing is theres just no demand for supersonic commercial flights its too expensive

lmao

I’m struck by the fact that American economic growth went off the rails in 1973, the same year the overland ban on supersonic flight came into force. The speed limit cannot be responsible for the entirety of the Great Stagnation, of course. The cumulative amount of missing growth is comparable to the entire economy, not to the size of the aviation industry. The numbers don’t add up.

Yet, the ban is not unrelated to economic stagnation. To borrow a term from Ross Douthat

I used to hear sonic booms fairly often growing up, because we lived near a Navy base where supersonic jets would sometimes fly.

lol cmon

Mark Zuckerberg is really naming all his kids with Roman imperial names. Respect 🫡 https://t.co/OtkWp9rPV9

— Bryan Cheong (@bryancsk) March 24, 2023

things are certain to end well for the imperial line, as they always do

also the first hapsburg was called RADBOT ffs

Literally the conclusion of PALO ALTO is Silicon Valley tech firms becoming prime military contractors after avoiding doing that for 100 years https://t.co/cvFJSxqaDf

— Malcolm Harris (@BigMeanInternet) March 27, 2023

Well, after they've show real promise as grifters they're invited to play in the big leagues of scamming citizens out of their money: defense contracting.

bout how much i keep in my checking too

Gruenberg: The ten largest deposit accounts at SVB held $13.3 billion in the aggregate.

— Nick Timiraos (@NickTimiraos) March 27, 2023

lol

NEW: An internal model at Silicon Valley Bank warned that higher interest rates could have a crushing impact on its finances. So executives changed it: https://t.co/Ru5ZOn6wxF with @tcfrankel @josephmenn

— Daniel Gilbert (@ByDanielGilbert) April 2, 2023

+ Theoretically, if publicly hanging say, 5 fentanyl dealers led to saving the lives of hundreds, is it morally reasonable?
+ Why would most San Francisco residents view my question above as horrifying and immoral?
+ What do other countries do with their fentanyl dealers?

— Michelle Tandler (@michelletandler) April 9, 2023

Whole thread is nuts obviously but the application of the logic of effective altruism is wild

Timothy @_timothyjm
21m Replying to @michelletandler
Theoretically, if publicly hanging say, 5 venture capitalists led to saving the lives of hundreds, is it morally reasonable?

Timothy gets it.

ha nice

Theoretically, if my granny had two wheels, would she be a bicycle?

xxp hahahahaha yes more of that please

Just drumming up angel investors for her lnchmb startup

someone plz explain ichellemay andlertay’s grift to me… idk how she still has oxygen

People who have always been disappointed the trolley problem is only theoretical.

incredible

Hey Michelle, this you? https://t.co/d6jIJcw6Wa pic.twitter.com/vTXVeKR9Ft

— Czarina (@fishontherun2) April 10, 2023

of course

I wonder if she knew Buttigieg?

this lady is insufferable, like Michael Shellenberg, they start with a statement I agree with: SF is fucked up, shit is NOT working, it is indeed extremely, extremely bad and dire; and then they take that to places where I would never wind up. That thread started with how horrible it is that no one in this tech executive meeting said they would have stopped and responded to Bob Lee's cries for help. That is fucked. How that leads to "let's hang drug dealers" is beyond me. Leave alone the fact that no one knows yet why that guy got killed but I have a feeling it wasn't some rando homeless crazy drug addict attack; I suspect he was murdered by someone for some reason. Which has nothing to do with the situation in SF.

SF America is fucked up, shit is NOT working

FTFY

that too

sorry that was not supposed to be snarky, just a recognition that shit is hard (esp for you, been thinking of yr hospice sitch and wishing well)

wow, I wonder how she would solve Oakland's problems! ... if she thinks SF is fucked up ...

*Update* - For those who are confused, I am not advocating for public hangings.

I've been reading The Barbary Coast (a book about crime in SF after the Gold Rush) so it was top of mind.

With that said, I *do* believe that fentanyl & meth dealers should serve time in jail. pic.twitter.com/2T28BqRi5F

— Michelle Tandler (@michelletandler) April 10, 2023

lol I WAS JUST ASKING QUESTIONS

The lesson I took from reading 19th century American history is that everything was groovy.

SF seems considerably more fucked up than oakland to me.

Start regularly recording your parents, elders and loved ones. With enough transcript data, new voice synthesis and video models, there is a 100% chance that they will live with you forever after leaving physical body. This should be even possible by end of the year.

— Pratik Desai (@chheplo) April 8, 2023

why

like my to do list wasn't long enough already

My kids, into an app, years after I died: Dad...we could really use your advice right now
The app, after loading for 30 seconds: CHILdren..you must resPECT..MY BIG round Ass https://t.co/gFXsFgmWtE

— Mr. Bedtime (@InternetHippo) April 10, 2023

*Hearing my reedy, wheezy 75-year-old voice reading an article about the Sino occupation of Peru*

GREAT-GRANDKIDS: "And he use to work on the 'radio'?"

lol about a year ago I told my mom that she should do something like this and have it integrated into the GPS on my dad's car, so that even if she is no longer there, she can still give my dad driving directions so he doesn't get lost.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdfeXipkBt4

Years ago, an older relative bought one of the kids a teddy bear that when squeezed, played a very loving greeting from the older relative.

The older relative is still with us, but I still have thoughts that I've kept to myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg29TuWo0Yo

this was the premise of the pretty good Battlestar Galactica spinoff Caprica which was unceremoniously cancelled.

Has Michelle Tandler been kicked in the head by a mule or something pic.twitter.com/D9SwXHShEH

— Elai (@elaifresh) April 10, 2023

lmao

Saw the Black Mirror episode everyone is suggesting. I get it now. It’s very personal issue and I sincerely apologize for hurting anyone’s feeling. 😔

— Pratik Desai (@chheplo) April 10, 2023

"I'm not a ghoul"

that guy got a hell of a lot of attention for that tweet when he's just some rando