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The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

simonandschuster.com

131–140 of 298 posts

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-driving cars without LIDAR was a pure cynical business decision and hasn't worked well technically.

Disagree. The current limitations of Tesla self driving are not around difficulties in judging distances that lidar solves. They're around inference deficiencies with accurate geometry.

It must be a bit embarrassing having Waymo and Baidu cracking ahead with the driverless taxis while the Tesla ones still don't work well though.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#133
post #65
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk must be one. Seems enough techy to me: Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink - software being used for the hardware in innovative ways. Edit: Oh, wow, mentioning this guy is surely controversial, sorry. However discussing whether he is a nerd, understands engineering on very deep level/gets his hands dirty OR he only manages people - there must be some psychological aspect related, a form of disagreement to discredit or…

I think Elon Musk just wants to be Tony Stark and cultivates the appropriate image for that. And possibly a genuine obsession with (rightwing-ish) meme/youth culture, which I think got him a lot of his initial followers on twitter/reddit/4chan/etc.

Musk is a complicated character. He's had nerdy times programing, fascist turns including the famous salute, emperor delusions - he was named after The Elon, a fictional ruler of Mars.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#134
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Elon Musk must be one Spoiler: He is not. But he is very good at faking it. Anytime he tries to give a serious opinion on anything related to computers: It is laughably bad and out of touch (SQL, compilers, languages, performance, etc... ). He definitively has a scientific background but definitively not "Tech" as far as computer are concerned.

I don’t see how “tech” is limited to software. While your case might be made for software, according to many accounts Musk is a strong driver on the hardware side. For instance, I’ve read the Tesla and SpaceX books by Eric Berger, which are much more focused on technical things compared to the more mainstream books. And while Musk is not in the trenches with a screwdriver, he’s not faking it either. To be honest, I’m…

> some of his companies have made substantial contributions to pushing the frontier of technology (reusable landing, high launch cadence, electric cars, energy).

People he hired for these companies made contributions.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#135
post #49
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cute but are there any actual nerds left in big tech leadership? Of the magnificent seven we basically only have Jensen Huang left as a technical leader and maybe you can count Zuckerberg.

Elon Musk must be one. Seems enough techy to me: Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink - software being used for the hardware in innovative ways. Edit: Oh, wow, mentioning this guy is surely controversial, sorry. However discussing whether he is a nerd, understands engineering on very deep level/gets his hands dirty OR he only manages people - there must be some psychological aspect related, a form of disagreement to discredit or…

Except that he didn't invent any of it.

Just a savvy investor, and as far as I understand, hasn't really worked on any of it. His contributions were rants until he just took ketamine.

His work was making a yelp clone.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-driving cars without LIDAR was a pure cynical business decision and hasn't worked well technically.

Disagree. The current limitations of Tesla self driving are not around difficulties in judging distances that lidar solves. They're around inference deficiencies with accurate geometry.

LIDAR provides dense point clouds from which you can derive geometry that Tesla's vision methods struggle to perceive.

(Subtle things, like huge firetrucks parked straight across the road.)

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#137
post #12
post #2

I'm not a big sucker for this kind of un-nuanced "us vs them" rhetoric, but I gotta admit, the title is a stroke of genius.

It's cute but are there any actual nerds left in big tech leadership? Of the magnificent seven we basically only have Jensen Huang left as a technical leader and maybe you can count Zuckerberg.

Google has some tendencies - Sundar Pichai was a materials engineer, Brin is back working there who considers himself a computer scientist. Maybe Hassabis - depends how you define it I guess.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#138
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk must be one. Seems enough techy to me: Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink - software being used for the hardware in innovative ways. Edit: Oh, wow, mentioning this guy is surely controversial, sorry. However discussing whether he is a nerd, understands engineering on very deep level/gets his hands dirty OR he only manages people - there must be some psychological aspect related, a form of disagreement to discredit or…

Except that he didn't invent any of it. Just a savvy investor, and as far as I understand, hasn't really worked on any of it. His contributions were rants until he just took ketamine. His work was making a yelp clone.

He invented the very successful hyperloop.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#139
post #98
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can argue the same for the capital that goes in. It’s used for what it’s used. By itself it’s neutral.

Yes, but I think that questions like 1. How come people are able to accumulate so much capital? 2. How come people are able to use the capital to influence life of other people in all ways possible to their liking? are more interesting and worth asking. Yes code and capital are both "tools". But you can't just write some code and install cameras at every corner. You need some political influence to do so. And capital…

It’s a power distribution law. You can try to influence it artificially and suppress it to varying results.

It’s kind of like asking why are there so many small quakes and why do there have to be great big quakes once in a while? Why don’t we just get millions more small quakes instead?

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#140
post #19
post #4

[flagged]

Thiel is probably the most obvious example, being explicitly anti-democracy and pro-authoritarian. Musk is also known for endorsing fringe far-right views and activists. I wouldn't be surprised if there are many more such attitudes in the SV elite, but the rest of them are better at self-regulating.

Musk was literally campaigning for the German right wing nationalist party.
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