#TechConferences#SiliconValley#TechBros#SocialMedia#Instagram: "The “most popular coding account on Instagram” features more than a thousand photos of a woman named Julia Kirsina who is “posting no-BS coding, career, productivity tips.” But a recent scandal related to the software developer conference Devternity has led many developers to point out that the account seems to be run by Devternity’s Eduards Sizovs, who is under fire for “auto-generating” a fake woman on a list of the conference’s speakers.
Now IP logs from a forum for programmers obtained by 404 Media showed an account the forum administrator said belonged to Sizovs inviting and then logging into an account belonging to Coding Unicorn, Kirsina’s social media handle. A YouTube video posted last year by Sizovs that had five views when 404 Media accessed it showed Sizovs logged into his own email accounts as well as one for “Coding Unicorn.”
The news presents an unusual, and bizarre, wrinkle on an ongoing crisis where multiple high profile speakers have dropped out of Devternity over Sizovs’ use of at least one fake woman on the conference’s website."
Apple HQ from my airplane flight — uncropped photo from my Google Pixel 8 Pro because unlike iPhones it has a 10x zoom (shooting the central portion of its 48MP 5x camera). (Though I prefer my iPhone's 50MP main camera, in part because of much faster shooting performance.) #Apple#GooglePixel#Photography#SIliconValley
Hey, all of my fellow NorCal folks in the South Bay (Campbell area), are you free this coming Saturday from 3:30pm to 7pm? Would you like to help me do something fun for the kids in the community?
I need some volunteers to help my organization run popcorn booths, cotton candy stands, and keep lines for kiddie rides organized.
If you can, please reply or fill out my volunteer registration form here (and make sure you mention this post in the comments):
#EA#EffectiveAltruism#SiliconValley#LongTermism: "The problem with removing the messy, squishy, human part of decisionmaking is you can end up with an ideology like effective altruism: one that allows a person to justify almost any course of action in the supposed pursuit of maximizing their effectiveness.
Take, for example, the widely held belief among EAs that it is more effective for a person to take an extremely high-paying job than to work for a non-profit, because the impact of donating lots of money is far higher than the impact of one individual’s work. (The hypothetical person described in this belief, I will note, tends to be a student at an elite university rather than an average person on the street — a detail I think is illuminating about effective altruism’s demographic makeup.) This is a useful way to justify working for a company that many others might view as ethically dubious: say, a defense contractor developing weapons, a technology firm building surveillance tools, or a company known to use child labor. It’s also an easy way to justify life’s luxuries: if every hour of my time is so precious that I must maximize the amount of it spent earning so I may later give, then it’s only logical to hire help to do my housework, or order takeout every night, or hire a car service instead of using public transit.
The philosophy has also justified other not-so-altruistic things: one of effective altruism’s ideological originators, William MacAskill, has urged people not to boycott sweatshops (“there is no question that sweatshops benefit those in poor countries“, he says). Taken to the extreme, someone could feasibly justify committing massive fraud or other types of wrongdoing in order to obtain billions of dollars that they could, maybe someday, donate to worthy causes. You know, hypothetically."
Feynman once said the most important thing to know is "everything is made of atoms".
Right now maybe the most important thing to know is "many incredibly wealthy people, particularly in Silicon Valley, are in an insane science fiction cult".
#Bremen auf Tuchfühlung mit #KI-Unternehmen im #SiliconValley -
Delegationsreise des Northern Germany Innovation Office (#NGIO) lädt Unternehmen zur Teilnahme ein:
I got my first call from someone on the Be My Eyes app that lets the sighted step up for blind & low-vision people today.
I’m a late adopter, having only heard about it this week. You register, & when time permits, you can answer video calls placed by blind app users asking for help seeing, reading, selecting things.
Thanks to the founder, a Danish visually impaired guy himself, for having the idea and going with it; & the people working there now.
It’s not often that a crowdsourcing app lives up to every hope the internet allowed us to cling to. Silicon Valley social media owners talk a lot about ‘bringing people closer together’.
Ein Interview mit dem Medienwissenschaftler Douglas Rushkoff ("Survival of the Richest") über das Menschenbild und Denken der Tech-Milliardäre im Silicon Valley.
Verstörend, ernüchternd, vielleicht ein bisschen zu plakativ, aber aufschlussreich, um unsere Gegenwart und Zukunft zu verstehen.
I've curated everything you need to know about what's happened with OpenAI and Sam Altman in the past 24 hours. Hopefully this @Flipboard Storyboard helps make sense of it all.
#SamAltman ousted as #OpenAI CEO from company's board for "not being consistently candid" with the board, resulting in them not being able to fulfill their duties.
Mike Rothenberg, a former venture capitalist, was convicted on 21 counts of defrauding investors on Thursday. Tech Crunch calls Rothenberg a “former Silicon Valley darling” who was known for throwing lavish parties that inspired an episode of the popular HBO comedy “Silicon Valley.” Read more about the verdict and the stiff sentencing Rothenberg may face: https://flip.it/e5uU10 #Tech#SiliconValley#Fraud#VC
#AVs#DriverlessCars#SelfdrivingCars#SiliconValley#AI: "AllOver’s new rideshare service boasts driverless cars (called “CRs”), but the reality is more sinister—instead, contractors like Teresa operate the vehicles while hiding inside a secret compartment. Clinging to the job for financial security, Teresa drives around the clock, witnesses disturbing incidents inside her vehicle, and loses herself in the ouroboros of AllOver’s bureaucracy. Wrong Way is a chilling portrait of economic precarity, and a disturbing reminder of how attempts to optimize life and work only leave us all more alienated than ever before.
McNeil Zoomed with Esquire from her home in Los Angeles to discuss the rise of AI, the uphill battle of life under capitalism, and the gap between Silicon Valley's words and actions. This interview has been edited for length and clarity."
Cory Doctorow @pluralistic is posting excerpts this morning from Maria Farrell's @mariafarrell remarkable take down of Silicon Valley and it's sociopathic "boy kings." The entire piece will leave you breathless.
"#SiliconValley ideology is using #PrivateEquity to buy a new marketplace, flood it with capital to flush out competitors, and use economic dominance to eviscerate working conditions and the cost of labour before jacking up the prices again, this time with the surplus all going to investors"
If your best effort at regulating surveillance capitalists results in “give us €9.99/month not to see ads or use for ‘free’ with ads¹”, you should all probably resign and go hide your heads in shame.
And maybe watch my EU Parliament talk before you do:
#SocialMedia#BigTech#SiliconValley#USA#ContentModeration#Censorship: "It should be no surprise that federal politicians favor Big Tech. Silicon Valley is where the money is. Just as important, voters have not penalized politicians for failing in their duty to protect the public interest. There has been no outcry about politicians whose family members work in Big Tech and staff members whose salaries are paid by owners of Big Tech. Politicians at the state level have passed some tech reform legislation, with California leading the way, but industry lobbying has taken the teeth out of most of the laws.
In court, internet platforms have avoided unfavorable judgments by asserting rights to free speech, as well as the protection of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. While there have historically been limits on 1st Amendment protection for harmful speech, courts have not applied any limit to the speech of internet platforms. Section 230, which was created to enable internet platforms to moderate harmful speech online, has been interpreted by courts as blanket immunity, even in cases of negligence.
I just thought of a term for Silicon Valley VC and techbro culture's insistence on "move fast and break things" even at scale even when it puts millions of people or even society at risk because that's all worth it if they can be the next unicorn company and/or Jobs/Musk/etc billionaire demigod: Silicon Valley Sociopathy #VultureCapitalism#SiliconValley#Techbro#SiliconValleySociopathy
Tails –is a portable operating system that protects against #surveillance and #censorship
(EN/ ES/ ES/ FR/ IT/ PT/ RU)
"The amnesic incognito live system"
Anleitung zur Nutzung des Tails-Live-Betriebssystems für sichere Kommunikation, Recherche, Bearbeitung und Veröffentlichung sensibler Dokumente.
Welches Welt- und Menschenbild beherrscht das Denken der Tech-Milliardäre in Silicon Valley, die zunehmend auch unser Denken bestimmen? Wie können wir uns den Auswüchsen dieses Tech-Mindsets entgegenstellen?....