Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#71

Post by austenallred » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 3:19 PM UTC

aaron-lebo wrote: post #66

austenallred wrote: post #24

People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Ask the average person what brands and products they like and use the most (or just look at the data on where and how they spend their time and money) and you’ll see that Silicon Valley is doing just fine in the eyes of the populace. In fact, Silicon Valley has never been more influential. Ask people to go to a world without iPh…

It's false loyalty. People put up with Facebook, Apple, Google, etc with their fake "we care about you" marketing (could apps stop literally telling me this? it's weird), overpriced, and walled garden megalomania because they are addicted and their other options are mediocre walled gardens (look around). People aren't stupid, they can sense when they are being used and those companies have treated their customers lik…

It’s not loyalty at all, it’s just people using the best product available to them. If someone creates something better than Facebook people will use that thing and won’t feel any remorse in switching. Until that happens, people will continue to use Facebook, because despite what Hacker News thinks, Facebook adds a huge amount of value to peoples’ lives.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#72

Post by sidlls » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 3:19 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #24

People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Ask the average person what brands and products they like and use the most (or just look at the data on where and how they spend their time and money) and you’ll see that Silicon Valley is doing just fine in the eyes of the populace. In fact, Silicon Valley has never been more influential. Ask people to go to a world without iPh…

> People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates.

It's more like they tolerate the 500 pound gorilla in the room because there isn't an alternative.

Non-techies I associate with constantly complain about the poor quality of software, hardware (even Apple's devices, which regularly freeze and fail in all the ways any others might) and support. It's the best we have. It doesn't mean it's good, or that people are "in love" with it.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#73

Post by kelukelugames » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 3:19 PM UTC

gotthemwmds wrote: post #17

carbocation wrote: post #8

As someone outside of SV (Nevadan living in Boston and practicing medicine), I think this article largely misses the mark. I think it is true that there is a diversity problem in SV, just like there is a diversity problem in medicine. It’s a problem, because there is no a priori reason for women and ethnic minorities to be less prevalent in our high-paying fields. But that’s probably the only point that resonates. Th…

" there is no a priori reason for women and ethnic minorities to be less prevalent in our high-paying fields." Sure there is: racist and sexist white males making decisions and developing a workplace culture that prevents them from attaining those positions. And the sooner people accept this, the better for everyone.

You can't say "white males" on HN without getting slaughtered. I think a fairer way to phrase this is people with power discriminate. Consciously and unconsciously. Doesn't matter if they are white, non white, male, or female. We just happen to live in a society where most positions of power have been historically held by one group.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#74

Post by Clubber » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 3:20 PM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #33

carbocation wrote: post #8

As someone outside of SV (Nevadan living in Boston and practicing medicine), I think this article largely misses the mark. I think it is true that there is a diversity problem in SV, just like there is a diversity problem in medicine. It’s a problem, because there is no a priori reason for women and ethnic minorities to be less prevalent in our high-paying fields. But that’s probably the only point that resonates. Th…

> The criticism of Juicero and Theranos being emblematic of focusing on the wrong problems is not sensible. Companies fail, sometimes spectacularly, sometimes due to dishonest behavior, etc. If Theranos had the tech they claimed to have, it would have been richly rewarded (outshined only by the consumer surplus it would have created). The problem with Juciero and Theranos isn't that they failed. The problem with them…

>The problem with them is that Juciero was an immensely dumb idea that was never checked or questioned and thereby wasted tons of money

Like bottled water. The idea of people paying 1600x markup for something they got essentially free while creating massive amounts of waste when sports bottles already existed. When bottled water came out, I remember thinking, "that's a friggin' joke."

It sure worked out though.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#75

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 3:20 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #71

aaron-lebo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's false loyalty. People put up with Facebook, Apple, Google, etc with their fake "we care about you" marketing (could apps stop literally telling me this? it's weird), overpriced, and walled garden megalomania because they are addicted and their other options are mediocre walled gardens (look around). People aren't stupid, they can sense when they are being used and those companies have treated their customers lik…

It’s not loyalty at all, it’s just people using the best product available to them. If someone creates something better than Facebook people will use that thing and won’t feel any remorse in switching. Until that happens, people will continue to use Facebook, because despite what Hacker News thinks, Facebook adds a huge amount of value to peoples’ lives.

> If someone creates something better than Facebook people will use that thing and won’t feel any remorse in switching.

"If you don't want someone doing cocaine, make a better cocaine!"

> Facebook adds a huge amount of value to peoples’ lives.

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/3/203/2915143/Assoc...

"Face-to-face social interactions enhance well-being. With the ubiquity of social media, important questions have arisen about the impact of online social interactions. In the present study, we assessed the associations of both online and offline social networks with several subjective measures of well-being. We used 3 waves (2013, 2014, and 2015) of data from 5,208 subjects in the nationally representative Gallup Panel Social Network Study survey, including social network measures, in combination with objective measures of Facebook use. We investigated the associations of Facebook activity and real-world social network activity with self-reported physical health, self-reported mental health, self-reported life satisfaction, and body mass index. Our results showed that overall, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with well-being. For example, a 1-standard-deviation increase in “likes clicked” (clicking “like” on someone else's content), “links clicked” (clicking a link to another site or article), or “status updates” (updating one's own Facebook status) was associated with a decrease of 5%–8% of a standard deviation in self-reported mental health. These associations were robust to multivariate cross-sectional analyses, as well as to 2-wave prospective analyses. The negative associations of Facebook use were comparable to or greater in magnitude than the positive impact of offline interactions, which suggests a possible tradeoff between offline and online relationships."

Facebook is toxic.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#76

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 3:21 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #24

People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Ask the average person what brands and products they like and use the most (or just look at the data on where and how they spend their time and money) and you’ll see that Silicon Valley is doing just fine in the eyes of the populace. In fact, Silicon Valley has never been more influential. Ask people to go to a world without iPh…

[deleted]

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#77

Post by ivraatiems » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 3:21 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #74

ivraatiems wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The criticism of Juicero and Theranos being emblematic of focusing on the wrong problems is not sensible. Companies fail, sometimes spectacularly, sometimes due to dishonest behavior, etc. If Theranos had the tech they claimed to have, it would have been richly rewarded (outshined only by the consumer surplus it would have created). The problem with Juciero and Theranos isn't that they failed. The problem with them…

>The problem with them is that Juciero was an immensely dumb idea that was never checked or questioned and thereby wasted tons of money Like bottled water. The idea of people paying 1600x markup for something they got essentially free while creating massive amounts of waste when sports bottles already existed. When bottled water came out, I remember thinking, "that's a friggin' joke." It sure worked out though.

There's a difference between ideas that seem dumb and ideas that are dumb. The problem is that Juciero was in the latter category. We didn't have to pour millions of dollars into it to figure that out; do you think the creators of bottled water spent anywhere near that much, or over-engineered their product half as crazily?

Put another way, do you imagine that nobody at Nestle or wherever stood up and said "this is a dumb idea" when bottled water was being devised? And how would you imagine the creators of the idea answered that challenge?

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#78

Post by shoefly » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 3:21 PM UTC

The small midwestern town from which I hail is rotting. The residents could never afford the luxuries flowing here in the valley. They are angry. They are huge Trump supporters. They don't want handouts. They want jobs. They want to contribute. They don't want to leave their homes. They are stuck.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#79

Post by ben_w » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 3:22 PM UTC

arkh wrote: post #69

gotthemwmds wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" there is no a priori reason for women and ethnic minorities to be less prevalent in our high-paying fields." Sure there is: racist and sexist white males making decisions and developing a workplace culture that prevents them from attaining those positions. And the sooner people accept this, the better for everyone.

For the rank and file of tech the problem can't be eliminated until more than 20% of the STEM pipeline is comprised of women. This means fighting sexism at the startup level is useless, you better encourage young people to get into science by making it sexy and not for social outcasts. If there is sexism to fight against it is in education with how maths and physics are painted as "for dorks" instead of showing how y…

Disagree. Fight the problem at every level you encounter it. If startups are begging for more women, universities won’t be able to tolerate students or staff who discourage women from applying and/or finish their degrees.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#80

Post by pathseeker » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 3:22 PM UTC

jedrek wrote: post #49

What this piece misses the obvious financial privilege that many startups have. Uber is slaying yellow/black cabs around the world, but only by massively subsidizing its rides through investment capital. Amazon is the world's largest store, by working on margins that don't let people who actually expect a return on the investment compete. It's gotten to the point that if a company actually does things the old fashion…

>but only by massively subsidizing its rides through investment capital

This is not true for many cities. Most of the subsidizing only happens in new markets to get people interested. Uber/Lyft are still better than cabs when unsubsidized.