Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

oh god I used to listen to this week in tech too, way back in the digg.com days! one day they covered something in the news that I actually knew something about and they were clueless about it, but making all these sweeping statements that sounded like they knew something. which made me think that if they were this ignorant about something I knew about, what about all the stuff I didn't know about? so I stopped listening.

― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Tuesday, May 9, 2023 1:15 PM (five minutes ago)

haha yeah it kinda sucked. they had a magician guy on there who was also a rabid libertarian, which kinda makes sense. and this old guy john dvorak who would always complain about government regulation. SV brainworms to the core

most people that are over 30 have been in their 20s at some point?

― sarahell, Tuesday, May 9, 2023 1:28 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

idk im not like a age scientist really

age science vs. hipster studies

which way western man

Most magicians are libertarians though.

John Dvorak! I haven't seen that name since I used to read my father's copies of PC Magazine in the 90s.

remember when there were two magician movies

john dvorak, robert scoble

oh robert x cringely

A lot of what's wrong with everything in this thread can be chalked up to the fact that silicon valley is disproportionately dominated by 20-somethings

there might be startups mostly staffed with people in their 20s but very few are started by people in their 20s these days, if they ever were

I think this quote from one of the AirBnb founders kind of sums it up

You know, when we were in Y Combinator, Paul Graham said, “Make something that people want. Make something for yourself.” And the problem is once you get really successful, you stop becoming the customer. And I mean, I can’t make products just for 41-year-old tech founders. That’s not a really big market. So I’ve gotta make sure I remember the 26-year-old me that didn’t have a lot of money when I started the company.

I think a lot of the people pitching who are younger are doing so in a way that attracts the attention of 50-something VCs and 40-something tech founders who now live very different lives than they did in their 20s.

And I mean, I can’t make products just for 41-year-old tech founders. That’s not a really big market.

at one point i was somehow on a list for a company that offered "private plane sharing" ... speaking of products for 41-year-old tech founders.

"founder" is such a shitty word - way too grandiose

John Dvorak! I haven't seen that name since I used to read my father's copies of PC Magazine in the 90s.

― blatherskite

remember when penn gillette wrote a column for pc magazine and mostly used it to be creepily obsessed with uma thurman

eww

"founder" is such a shitty word - way too grandiose

― Andy the Grasshopper

i think it's more that we accord founders more respect than they're due. anybody can have an idea - it takes the exploited working classes to make that idea work

I got an ad for classes on “building your founder brand.”

They managed to make the word worse.

"Founder" works when your company has been built up, retrospectively - no one can deny that Colonel Harlan Sanders was the founder of KFC

But he didn't use that term when he opened his first roadside chicken shack

anybody can have an idea - it takes the exploited working classes to make that idea work

uh, sometimes the person with the idea is the one that makes the idea work ... like it is not impossible for someone to have ideas and actually do work ... even though much organizational theory (and practice) doesn't find that efficient.

most founders work alone, they aren't reliant on anyone else's work at all

speaking of exploitation etc., I only just learned about Alexander Wang (noted above as coiner of "botsexual," and who is, btw, in his 20s) and Scale AI, which it seems operates a glorified human clickbot farm to "train" AI on data.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-alexandr-wang-turned-army-clickworkers-ai-unicorn/

"“We’re the picks and shovels in the generative AI gold rush,” says Wang, who briefly became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire after Scale was awarded a $7.3 billion valuation in 2021. His clients now include the U.S. Department of Defense and OpenAI.
But that success was not built entirely on silicon. It also took a human army: some 240,000 people in Kenya, the Philippines and Venezuela work for Remotasks, a subsidiary Scale doesn’t mention in its marketing materials. This vast, outsourced workforce performs a rudimentary task crucial to AI, labeling the data used to train it.

https://scontent.fewr1-6.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/344875914_780645436716335_7579604316754725664_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_p180x540&_nc_cat=103&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=VtVhMpSEpWEAX_H4yJ4&_nc_ht=scontent.fewr1-6.fna&oh=00_AfBPhWG857GX36mIOaoO2dfU6YfpbvmdMXsmX3rtcL4LUA&oe=645F2EBF
(amazing layout/juxtaposition choice)

this was a storyline in the tv show Silicon Valley iirc?

I think it was a storyline in Capital too

Marx was a dope ass showrunner

seize the means of production: lights, camera, and direct action baby

"founder" is such a shitty word - way too grandiose

victory is life

New frontiers in the ignorance grindset. If you’re already one of the dimmest guys alive are you just going to rest on your laurels? No, you’re going to get out there and innovate the paid to be a dipshit space in ways that are frankly startling. Work harder to not get smarter. pic.twitter.com/anIXiWHRUF

— Huge Mantis (@HugeMantis) May 12, 2023

extremely gratifying

rip Doyle Brunson - here is when he totally destroyed Jason Calacanis for $100k https://t.co/JPyqZPRRso

— John Ganz (@lionel_trolling) May 16, 2023

so funny that @jason is a long time high stake tv fish

like once or twice just to play with the big boys is fine, tho personally i would rather not do it on tv, but he was on those shows for years

lol

and some of the truest words ever spoken about poker pic.twitter.com/Q5jq5xh0JO

— John Ganz (@lionel_trolling) May 16, 2023

lol yeah I hadn't put 2 and 2 together that Jason Calacanis was THAT guy

as much as I despise some of this shit I will give crypto some credit in that it's kind of kept poker alive and well these last 7-8 years. one site I'm on lets you do NFT profile pictures which I think is a great feature because not only are these players always awful they tilt extremely frequently. so it's nice to be album to identify them so easily

he didn't use that term when he opened his first roadside chicken shack

He did, however, use the appellation "Colonel" unironically.

(Yes, I know, he was actually a "Kentucky Colonel," but come on now, he sold shitty fried chicken.)

I remember hearing that Harlan Sanders had some policy that no one would ever be turned away for lack of money, but of course the company quietly dropped that philanthropic gesture when he sold it

He then went on to talk shit about their newly formulated gravy in public, quite forcefully

lol - in the 19th century "a Kentucky Colonel" meant an unofficial self-awarded military title.

And that's that:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/17/tech/elizabeth-holmes-bid-denied/index.html

I can't imagine listening to her make that extremely self-serving statement to the court just before her sentencing and anyone believing a single word of it.

all timer pic.twitter.com/1Ub2cbqvqF

— sclv (@sclv) May 29, 2023

Presented without comment:

The founder of a fledgling app says that San Francisco’s tech scene is afraid of sex, or at least the word “sex.”

Elizabeth Dell, the founder and CEO of the romance and sex app Amorus — an app that gamifies sexting for long-term couples — is accusing Andreessen Horowitz (also known as a16z) — the wildly influential tech venture capital firm based in Menlo Park — of hiding her successful sex tech mixer during San Francisco Tech Week.

hiding her successful sex tech mixer during San Francisco Tech Week

these words arent in the bible

Oh it gets rich:

“Part of this is to build community among the sex tech community, but part of this is also to bring this community to the wider tech community,” Dell said. “… Just like prop tech [real estate and property technology] or space tech or fintech [financial technology] or whatever, I want sex tech on the list.”

IDK, pretty sure porn is pretty well established in the wider tech community

It's not cheating if you fuck a robot.

https://i0.wp.com/relationshipchief.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/2023-05-17-09.30.08.jpg

EMERGENCY EYEWASH STATION

Must be AI, Musk would never kiss a black robot.

I hope that’s Michael Dell’s fail daughter.

lol if it's successful it would be something that would be used mostly by non long-term couples tbh

Are those midjourney or real? Either answer is kind of terrifying.

Execs at OneTaste, SF ‘orgasmic meditation’ startup, indicted by feds

Leaders at OneTaste, the once-celebrated and celebrity-endorsed “orgasmic meditation” startup founded in San Francisco, now face conspiracy charges connected to treatment that officials allege was sexual and psychological abuse and intimidation against OneTaste's clients, many of whom had come to the startup to heal from sexual trauma.

Nicole Daedone, OneTaste’s founder and former CEO, and Rachel Cherwitz, the company’s former head of sales, face charges of forced labor conspiracy in connection to their leadership of the company. Cherwitz, a Mendocino County resident, was arrested in San Francisco Tuesday, according to the Justice Department; Daedone is still at large.

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/onetaste-leaders-charged-with-conspiracy-18141101.php