The modern software world turns more on the people doing the work out of love than the people organizing the work into things that appropriate cash flows. SV in recent years has become adept at the latter. The former is a side effect it sometimes happens to finance.
Um, people like me, writing open source code? The Chinese quickly wrote HarmonyOS when they were excluded by sanction from Android? Have you seen the quality of commercial code, Salesforce enterprise apps? MSFT is a national security catastrophe with an effective govt sales force.
Everything you love is built on stuff like linux, the postgres database, open source crypto libraries. Yeah, Google and Open AI did important research, pioneering the latest next big thing. They make their contributions. Usually during periods when they are insulated from commercial concerns.
the world’s biggest, yugest, highest IQ AI! Sample output: covf covfefe vfe covf efecovf!
Silicon Valley wasn’t always thus. The last 15 years have curdled it. They used to make stuff from silicon there! The Chinese actually make the God machines now. We owe contemporary Silicon Valley nothing. In its 2007 incarnation, yeah, it was great. God machines without fascism then.
“No, I do not want AI to ‘polish’ me.” @thebloggess.bsky.social thebloggess.com/2025/01/28/n...
No, I do not want AI to “polish” me.
Link Preview: No, I do not want AI to “polish” me.: I was sending an email when a little magic wand popped up that said “Polish” and I thought that was weird because why would I want to translate my email into Polish? I tried to click on…
Text: If the state can't build, then it can cut taxes, substituting private consumption for public infrastructure. This is fine; Americans have large cars (often to protect from other large cars) and large houses. But it's not a substitute for infrastructure and other social goods; it's a conscious decision to lose years of life expectancy and have a less efficient transport system to avoid building up the state.
Replicating Silicon Valley is replicating monopolistic extraction, endless surveillance, plutocratic distortion of politics, a cradle for eugenicist cults, elevation of overt fascists. Maybe, um, don’t do that?
Loading quoted Bluesky post...
Guys, really. Our apparently brisk GDP growth is down largely to rentierism, attaching ever more, ever larger tolls to everything. It’s not meaningful prosperity. We are miserable. Don’t emulate us. Stick with Universal Scandinavia. cf @crookedfootball.bsky.social crookedtimber.org/2025/01/29/t...
The death of the hope of progress and the fear of being left behind
Link Preview: The death of the hope of progress and the fear of being left behind: At some indeterminate point in the fairly recent past, citizens and leaders of most liberal democracies probably looked forward to a condition to be realized in the imaginable future that we can, f…
“governments of the ostensible ‘centre-left’…are incapable of reviving neoliberalism in its progressive, internationalist guise, but are also unwilling to properly embrace the legacy of postwar social democratic nationalism.” @fromarsetoelbow.bsky.social fromarsetoelbow.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-...
[tech notebook] Adolescent DeepSeek on a Mac laptop https://tech.interfluidity.com/2025/01/28/adolescent-deepseek-on-a-mac-laptop/index.html
(i’m morbidly curious how Apple will handle the Gulf of Mexico thing.)
Yes. It’s extraordinary. They imposed profound material risks on much of the population, and with a few protestations of states rights, some tenuous promises not to do more at the national level, they were rewarded with full control of the federal government. I still have a hard time believing it.
Norms only exist when there is a community of agents to enforce them. When there are only two agents, there’s no such thing as a norm, only cooperation or conflict. 1/
There can be Nash equilibria supporting cooperation with only two players, sure. But they’re fragile in practice. If defection yields a strong negative payout to the sole other player, its capacity to punish ex post and so deter ex ante will be weak. 2/
Norms can be thought of as Nash equilibria in very multiplayer games. They are strong if (and only if) defection can’t kneecap the whole community’s capability to punish. In practice that’s often the case. 3/
When there are broad communities, norms really can support cooperation! But much less so when the game collapses effectively to only two players. /fin
the colombia fracas, the omb fracas, only over the last few days. i think we’ll see the same with some of the tariff threats against e.g. Canada and Mexico. will their really be an abrupt 25%? (we already did see a Mex tariff walkback and declaration of victory once, after a Sheinbaum call.) 1/
oddly, a template might be abortion, where the GOP really did catch the car and face some consequences. but Trump had such success neutralizing the issue by walking it back, yet still gets credit from his own side for killing roe. others faced consequences, but Trump enjoyed having it both ways./fin
i think the plan is to pull this kind if shit so much, with rollbacks each time less complete, so the net effect is a kind of incrementalism camouflaged by chaos and an opposition cowed for fear of seeming to overreact again.
proclaim policy so extreme and destructive it’d be the dog catching the car if actually implemented. then walk it back declaring some misunderstanding or bullshit victory. 1/
you never have to face or be held accountable for the consequences of your proposals. you thrill your partisans. you leave your opponents bewildered and preoccupied. they come off as overwrought, nervous nellies. /fin
i often wonder about the gentleman.
so many contenders!
not the point, but in what world is the Manhattan Institute — Chris Rufo’s employer — “a center-right think tank”? i’m sorry, you don’t get to hire and fund arsonists and claim to be the sober center.
Loading quoted Bluesky post...
from @jamellebouie.net www.nytimes.com/2024/12/18/o... democrats are always trying to be “generic democrat”. no one is mad at generic democrat, no donor is alienated. generic democrat polls pretty well! but generic democrat is an empty suit. we need people to lead, or, right now, to brawl.
Text: At the heart of all of this - whether it comes from congressional leaders, ordinary lawmakers or top pollsters - is the idea that Democrats can float above the fray and reap the political rewards of any chaos and dysfunction. Besides, voters say they want compromise - and what else can Democrats do but follow the polls?