Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought I addressed your "frivolous" criterion directly. 1) It may be "frivolous" if the routing is only made based on the needs of the commuters, and has no input from the people who live on those routes. In an extreme case, if a bus goes down a narrow street in order to save one able-bodied person one block of walking, then that part is definitely frivolous even with the overall savings. Without that local input,…
None of these are a correct usage of frivolous. You are describing imperious, self-defeating, and short-sighted behaviors respectively, none of which are really the same.
Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem
71–80 of 237 posts
Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I'd love to be doing work on the hardware side of things. I'd love to even intern --despite the fact that I'm graduating-- at a company like Freescale or Intel or Qualcomm or Cisco or AMD. As long as I could continue to pay the bills --and feed the student loan monster-- I'd continue to live as a student. I'd consider it a fair trade-off while I was grinding for XP in a field that, for all intents and purposes,…
I don't think applecore was asking "Does the imbalance exist?", but rather, "Is the imbalance a problem?"
>Is there evidence that this problem actually exists? This seems likely to be a manufactured story.
I don't know. I thought he (edit: or she, I suppose) was pretty clear. His description of what the press does and doesn't report (and why) serves as an explanation for the perception of an imbalance that doesn't "actually" exist. I disagree, of course. And I would also assert that the imbalance is indeed a problem.
Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem
#73The author fails to see that while a large number of apps may be frivolous, we've also ended up with a world that allows collaboration at a global scale. The nature of engineering is changing, and what the last decade of "software innovation" has done is evolve an engineering practice that is superior to any that came before, even if it has only been used to build frivolous apps.
I've worked as a government contractor and have been exposed to the inner workings of many of the companies building what the author would consider serious technology - jet planes, submarines and the like. And I think it is fair to say that the tools they use and the way they use them are clearly from the 70s - this is not a criticism, they create impressive technology, but I believe that once the practices of modern software development begin to take root in those industries, we'll be exposed the innovation we've actually created. facebook may not be considered a serious app, but certainly the technology facebook has built will start being used in other "serious" sectors in a few years, and then people will realize where the innovation lay. Things like proper version control, large-scale data warehousing etc will change serious industries, the frivolous apps are just a testbed in which we create them because the risks of failure are low.
Cliffs: Web technology is serious business, even if what it is used for is currently frivolous
Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're missing the forest for the trees. Yes, there are systemic problems with governments contracting out software. The substance/cool chasm is real (find my other post in this thread) and vicious.
Maybe we're just interested in solving the problems we have. We're mostly young and getting sex or sharing photos is something that is socially rewarding and fun. We're not dying of cancer yet, that's you guys. You guys are the ones running those companies and generally we don't like how you guys run companies. We want very flexible hours, self direction, relaxing lighting, productive work time and a near absence of…
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Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem
#75I've mentioned this in the past, but I was happy to get out of that area. Padova, where I live now, has both young and old people, rich and poor, people who have always been here and immigrants. Most people work in different industries. It feels a lot more varied, and somehow more "real" than the bay area.
I was a sciences undergrad at Stanford and now I've ventured into programming - at a decidedly uncool industry, in a relatively uncool metropolis - but I don't want to go back to Silcon Valley for the life of me. It just seems like such a hotbed of striving and buzzwords. Maybe it's unfair, but that's just how it seems to me.
Here, at my corporate job, people seem to respect that I'm my own person and can work 40 hours a week. Silicon Valley seems rife with conformity that tries to disguise itself as freedom. Think outside of the box, as long as you're wearing the same clothes and using the same buzzwords as everyone else.
Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of these are a correct usage of frivolous. You are describing imperious, self-defeating, and short-sighted behaviors respectively, none of which are really the same.
frivolous - "1a : of little weight or importance; 1b: having no sound basis (as in fact or law) " from Merriam-Webster. #1: an argument based on the overall goal - reduced car traffic and enhanced used of commute time - is of little weight or importance for those who are locally disadvantaged and when there is an equitable alternative which better balances the different factors. These people who were left out of the…
If I drove a car to and from work, and kept it parked in the street at night, would you consider that frivolous?
Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
To point 1 - because private citizens do not generally have a democratic voice in the decisions of private companies unless they’re stockholders. You could make the argument that any decision made by any private company could impact the lives of $GROUP, therefore $GROUP should be able to vote on whether that private company should be able to do $THING or not. That’s not how it works, it never has been, and I don’t se…
The private company is making use of community owned resources so the community should have a say
This is a bad argument. Should the community have a say in how you use those same resources? They are public goods...it is one thing to set rules that everyone has to abide by, and it is another entirely to focus on how one group uses the good.
Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem
#78> The backlash in recent months against the self-involvement and frivolity of the new guard has actually been a long time coming. Instagram photos of opulent tech holiday parties have been lambasted, Google buses blockaded In what universe is a carpooling system that gets dozens of cars off the road and allows each passenger to reclaim ten working hours a week classified as frivolous?
The Google bus issue is more about the self-involvement and less about the frivolity. Backlash against Google buses is about gentrification and the fact that a well paid group of workers comes in from a variety of locations and then dominates local politics.
That's what democracy is all about. What democracy isn't about is harassment.
Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much did Google pay for the SF street infrastructure? I thought they didn't pay anything until this January, and even then it's $1 per each use of a bus stop. Also, why the comparison of an "average person" to a private company? Surely the private citizens of San Francisco, as a whole, have invested far more in the city infrastructure than Google has.
Street infrastructure is paid for by taxes, including payroll taxes, corporate income taxes, and gas taxes, all of which Google pays.
Google is primarily located in Mountain View, in Santa Clara county.
My question was how much of San Francisco's street infrastructure - a different city and county - was supported by Google. Did Google pay "a lot more" than the citizens of the city, as SteveGerencser suggested?
The residents and businesses in SF pay about $1 billion in property taxes. How does that compare to specifically Google's contribution? Who pays more in payroll, corporate income, and gas taxes to San Francisco, Twitter or Google?
If the answer is Twitter, then shouldn't they have a bigger say than Google?
Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're not dying of cancer yet, that's you guys. I'm 30. I'm one of the young guys. I also realize that (a) my odds of winning the VC-funded lottery are low and (b) all of us are going to be old one day. No age is too young to die of cancer. One of my friends died last year at 31. You guys are the ones running those companies and generally we don't like how you guys run companies. I don't like how stodgy, checked-out,…
Sorry about that Michael, I had you confused with someone else on HN. Apologies. Look, if the money were there and the environment was there we'd be there. It really is that simple. I think the odds of winning the startup lottery are actually pretty high, at least for all reasonable definitions of "winning". Although that might be survivorship bias speaking on my end. If more people were like Elon Musk we'd be workin…
So it's all someone else's fault?