Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 221 posts

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend

#191

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

cromwellian wrote: post #101
cromwellian wrote: post #68

The reporter asks a rhetorical question of whether self driving cars should be stopped. Did he ask the car companies whether they should have been stopped selling a machine that helps kill tens of thousands a year and pollute the global environment? I mean, lets get a damn perspective here: traditional non-silicon valley companies continue to make and sell things which poison and kill people and because of that, ther…

I responded to someone who deleted their comment, it was a valuable and good comment, so I don't know why he deleted it, but here's my response: I think it's the wrong question he's asking. We're trying to restrain technology and productivity increases from reducing the need for human labor, rather than asking if we can create a society where human labor is not needed to survive or thrive in the first place. Is it be…

> What needs to be questioned is the entire model of the protestant work ethic style industrial society, and how a transition to a post-industrial, maybe post-capitalist society, could occur.

Good luck with that. I apologize for my pessimism, but try as I might, I can't envision a society where the extreme concentration of production capacity results in anything but a few oligarchs and billions of near-starving peasants.

The reason for this is that's not that far from today's world. I mean, the majority of the world's population lives in poverty, or fairly close to it. About one in nine people live in such abject poverty they don't have enough to eat (while many rich countries deal with an obesity epidemic).

Given the state of the world, you think we would able to devise a society where at least everyone has enough to eat - after all, the richest people in society would probably barely feel the impact of at least sharing enough so everyone can eat. Given that, I find it difficult to believe that the extreme concentration of wealth and power that technology allows will result in some sort of nirvana where we all get to take pottery classes and write poetry. The very richest will hoard their wealth and power like humans have throughout history.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend

#192

Post by mythrwy »

bogomipz wrote: post #188
mythrwy wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When can we get some of this "free press" then? Mostly what I see is promoting one agenda or another and not much "free" about it.

>"Mostly what I see is promoting one agenda or another and not much "free" about it." This is exactly what press freedom is. Anyone is allowed to own and publish a newspaper and have their own editorial policies, without government interference. That's exactly what makes it free: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press_in_the_Un... The word "free" in the context press freedom has zero do do with being free…

So "free" as in "paid for by some interest". (Because after all, publishing isn't free).

The Internet on the other hand is actually much more "free" as far as that goes. The necessary role, and indeed the actual freedom, of the "free press" (in the traditional sense) in this democracy is in my opinion much overstated.

We need rights, methods and opportunity to distribute information in a free society, very true (which Silicon Valley has given us on a level paper never could). But what is really of very little use are media conglomerates shoveling unified propaganda.

I don't sympathize much with NYT's hand-wringing.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend

#193

Post by lovich »

frenchman_in_ny wrote: post #171
SilasX wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PE firms do pretty villainous things. "Oh, burdened by unfunded pension obligations? Those are pretty much unranked next to debt, so sell off all the good assets to a carbon copy firm, default on everything, and pass the pensioners onto the government." IIRC that was pretty much Bain's MO.

"PE firms do pretty villainous things" -- in whose name? Investors in many PE funds are often .... you guessed it: pension plans chasing returns for their retirees.

And pension plans can't be evil? All it takes is the guy running it to be immoral, and they have an incentive to be as it increases the numbers they are rated by

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend

#194

Post by NotSammyHagar »

wallace_f wrote: post #150
SilasX wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PE firms do pretty villainous things. "Oh, burdened by unfunded pension obligations? Those are pretty much unranked next to debt, so sell off all the good assets to a carbon copy firm, default on everything, and pass the pensioners onto the government." IIRC that was pretty much Bain's MO.

They do. They're just not on the robber barron level of the commercial banks, which steal truly unholy amounts of money from American citizens. Reasonable people have put the cost of the financial crisis at 6-30 trillion, or more (6 being the lower bound of the Fed's very own estimate). The higher figure is $93,000/per citizen, and it very will could be more than that.(1) That is only the start of the story. Ever won…

There are tons of nutballs who are convinced the fed is behind every bad thing. Where's the evidence that they are bad? I believe they are like wall street, insulated from normal life via controlling the money supply, and their goals might not help most people, just 'keep the economy going and growing' helps wallstreet more than main street.

If they were truly bad, I'd hear about it from respectable liberal and conservative speakers.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend

#195

Post by uoaei »

_seemethere wrote: post #149
m3rc wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How?

By decentralizing you have to expose more things for interaction with different services leaving you more entry-points for a potential attack.

Bake it into the protocol that each connection is regularly confirming the other party's active and passive security measures, and that if one of these tests fails the connection is severed.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend

#196

Post by uoaei »

nostrademons wrote: post #159
bradyo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I think companies who build a product where the end user isn't the customer unsurprisingly tend to be worse.

I dunno. I personally love having all the world's information at my fingertips for free. I recognize that doing so means that they have another set of constituents they need to please whose interests are not necessarily aligned with mine, but I'll willingly take that bargain.

It sounds like you "have nothing to lose/hide" now but consider the cases where others will be or already are in a position to lose big from the actions of malevolent actors.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend

#197

Post by uoaei »

r00fus wrote: post #117
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this article says nothing of previous history of other such revolutionary shifts like with industrial revolution, petroleum economy Each of those shifts resulted in their industries being massively regulated, in respect of their effects on labor and the environment, respectively. The article calls, if somewhat indirectly, for the similar regulation of tech.

That regulation didn't happen for years or decades after the colossal impacts those revolutions had on society/world. Not bringing up historical context only weakens the article's argument, IMHO.

You've made its argument yourself.

It's high time to regulate this industry before said colossal impacts.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend

#198

Post by uoaei »

stevenwoo wrote: post #180
free_everybody wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, that's interesting. I wonder what is the common thread among those three. Could it be benevolent founders who don't hand the reins over to investment partners?

Yes on the first two, until Ben and Jerry retired and sold to some multiconglomerate, and since Paul Newman died, some question the direction of the company. Costco is public, but they currently get away with there being a relatively small spread between the CEO and the lowest paid fulltime employee (less than 10x?). Bob's Red Mill might be considered somewhat in the same vein, the owner/CEO recently retired and gave…

Just want to point out that Bob's Red Mill is an example of literal socialism, i.e., the workers own the means of production. And it's working.

http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2010/02/...

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend

#199

Post by edanm »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #191
cromwellian wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I responded to someone who deleted their comment, it was a valuable and good comment, so I don't know why he deleted it, but here's my response: I think it's the wrong question he's asking. We're trying to restrain technology and productivity increases from reducing the need for human labor, rather than asking if we can create a society where human labor is not needed to survive or thrive in the first place. Is it be…

> What needs to be questioned is the entire model of the protestant work ethic style industrial society, and how a transition to a post-industrial, maybe post-capitalist society, could occur. Good luck with that. I apologize for my pessimism, but try as I might, I can't envision a society where the extreme concentration of production capacity results in anything but a few oligarchs and billions of near-starving peasa…

Yes, but you're forgetting that the situation is getting better, not worse. In fact, way, way better.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend

#200

Post by flour_power »

wallace_f wrote: post #150
SilasX wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PE firms do pretty villainous things. "Oh, burdened by unfunded pension obligations? Those are pretty much unranked next to debt, so sell off all the good assets to a carbon copy firm, default on everything, and pass the pensioners onto the government." IIRC that was pretty much Bain's MO.

They do. They're just not on the robber barron level of the commercial banks, which steal truly unholy amounts of money from American citizens. Reasonable people have put the cost of the financial crisis at 6-30 trillion, or more (6 being the lower bound of the Fed's very own estimate). The higher figure is $93,000/per citizen, and it very will could be more than that.(1) That is only the start of the story. Ever won…

> Thanks to High Priest of the Harvard-Wall Street Order, Gregory Mankiw, the Fed even has an influential academic paper that craftily provides a logical dogma to minimize theft through seignorage, and how muxh the public really is being taken for.

source?

Post reply on HN