#Roger McNamee

[krispyweiss]

It’s a Beautiful Day Co-founder David LaFlamme Dies at 82

David LaFlamme, who brought violin to rock ’n’ roll music as co-founder of It’s a Beautiful Day, has died at 82, his daughter said.

The musician died Aug. 6 of Parkinson’s disease. His daughter Kira LaFlamme announced her father’s death publicly Aug. 10.

“There are so many beautiful tributes from friends and fans; so beautiful and healing,” Kira LaFlamme said. “ … He was amazing performer and songwriter, playing gigs up until COVID shut everything down. Watching him play was electrifying.”

Pete Sears remembered LaFlamme as “a wonderful musician and a very special person,” while Roger McNamee called his friend a “lovely man” whom he will miss.

Coming out of the San Francisco that launched the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish and tons of other bands, It’s a Beautiful Day were best known for “White Bird.” LaFlamme and the modern version of IABD were frequent fliers at Jorma Kaukonen’s Fur Peace Ranch.

“Fair winds, David LaFlamme,” Vanessa Kaukonen said. “You changed lives and we are all better people for your presence on this planet.

Though they didn’t find the success of their West Coast brethren, It’s a Beautiful Day and LaFlamme, who was to the violin as Ian Anderson is to the flute, were loved and respected by their peers, including the surviving Airplane members, who recalled LaFlamme’s “remarkable violin skills and vocal talent.”

“Master musician and raconteur extraordinaire David LaFlamme is on his journey to the promised land,” Barry “Fish” Melton said.

“Travel safely, my friend, and say hello to all our friends who’ve gone on before.”

8/11/23

[gnatswatting]

• The problem with Big Tech is that the leaders are convinced that they are entitled to experiment on the entire population at will, without safety nets or guardrails, and that the mission each one is on justifies staggering levels of harm in the interest of what they would call science. —Roger McNamee

Alta Alta (at Internet Archive)

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

Okay things are going a little too fast right now with a response is about project 2025,

First about Biden I saw this post that was saying that project 2025 is already here and Biden is already moving those goals and you did criticized Biden for being an enemy to LGBT+ by radicalizing him and I kind of got the impression that he shouldn't explicitly support the movement.

https://www.tumblr.com/decolonize-the-left/745588100726734848/i-saw-your-post-about-the-leopards-eating-faces

Secondly I kind of felt the same way with it not being talked about anywhere. Not even like popular people that like covers politics at times don't even bring it up like not even as like an offhanded comment.

3rd verify this a little bit more there are people that kind of sounds like they support it and is that that people from Trump's administration like Jonathan Berry; Ben Carson; Ken Cuccinelli; Rick Dearborn; Thomas Gilman; Mandy Gunasekara; Gene Hamilton; Christopher Miller; Bernard McNamee; Stephen Moore; Mora Namdar; Peter Navarro; William Perry Pendley; Diana Furchtgott-Roth; Kiron Skinner; Roger Severino; Hans von Spakovsky; Brooks Tucker; Russell Vought; and Paul Winfree support it.

Yeaaaaah a racist they/them with a cashapp link in their bio is exactly the kind of outrage hustler I'd expect to be propping up something like Project 2025. That's exactly why it's bullshit. Nobody but these people are talking about it. They're the QAnon of the left.

So I'm going to roll your previous question about Biden (now that I know what you meant) in with your question about Trump, since my answer is the same in both cases. So here we go. Project 2025 is a very detailed proposal that touches on literally every single aspect of politics. Just by the law of averages, you're going to find politicians in every party doing something outlined on the Project 2025 website solely because there's so much there. And similarly, you're going to find a lot of good ideas and a lot of bad ideas solely because there are so many ideas and proposals presented. There are hundreds of pages of PDFs on that site. I have not read them all, not even close. But I did randomly skim to get an idea of what they're putting out there, and there's a lot of common sense stuff in there. Like shrinking the bureaucracy and dismantling Homeland Security entirely. There's stuff about eliminating security flaws in certain government offices and ending the department of education and putting the states back in charge of their own schools. Most of these things I'm reading with my random skim are pretty mainstream modern conservative/libertarian positions. Again, I'm not reading the whole thing, and I won't because I'm not insane, but I'm not seeing anything in what I'm reading, or in the headlines of each different chapter, that warrants the kind of pearl clutching panic the fringe left seems to have for this thing.

As for the endorsements, the site has a list of 100 organizations that they claim support the Project, but they link to no statements or even to the organizations themselves, so I have no idea how legit the endorsements are or where you're getting your info about the people you listed above. I'm going to guess it's from a left wing website unless you personally went out and found statements from these people supporting the Project, and I'm gonna tell you right now, if you did get it from a far left website I'm just going to assume they're lying, just like I'm going to assume they're lying about everything they're saying about Project 2025 since that's what sites like that tend to do. Lie to keep people scared, keep the clicks coming, and keep those cashapp transfers going strong.

[liberaleffects]

Roger McNamee the author of 'Zucked' about the Facebook Catastrophe talks about why journalists and politicians should stop playing Musk’s game.

[lboogie1906]

Project 2025 is a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the federal government and consolidate executive power should the Republican candidate win the 2024 presidential election. It proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers as political appointees to replace them with those who are willing to enact the wishes of the next Republican president. The president will have absolute power over the executive branch. Critics have characterized it as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan to transform the US into an autocracy. It would undermine the rule of law, the separation of powers, the separation of church and state, and civil liberties.

Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Paul Dans, the director, said the project is “systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state.” It proposes deploying the military for domestic law enforcement.

its partners employ over 200 former officials from the Trump administration. Notable authors of the project’s Mandate for Leadership include many officials and advisors from the Trump administration, including Jonathan Berry, Ben Carson, Ken Cuccinelli, Rick Dearborn, Thomas Gilman, Mandy Gunasekara, Gene Hamilton, Christopher Miller, Bernard McNamee, Stephen Moore, Mora Namdar, Peter Navarro, William Perry Pendley, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Kiron Skinner, Roger Severino, Hans von Spakovsky, Brooks Tucker, Russell Vought, and Paul Winfree.

Former president Trump has never publicly endorsed it, and his campaign downplayed it in November 2023 as mere “policy recommendations from external allies.” He disavowed it in July 2024, days after Kevin Roberts’s remarks. Several critics expressed skepticism of his denial.

The leaders began recruiting people for future government posts in the event of a Republican victory. #knowledgeispower #votelikeyourlifedependsonit #trumpsproject2025

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

By Ryan MacErin Griffith and Mike Isaac

Less than an hour after a gunman in Butler, Pa., tried to assassinate Donald J. Trump this month, David Sacks, a venture capitalist based in San Francisco, directed his anger about the incident toward a former colleague.

“The Left normalized this,” Mr. Sacks wrote on X, linking to a post about Reid Hoffman, a technology investor and major Democratic donor. Mr. Sacks implied that Mr. Hoffman, a critic of Mr. Trump who had funded a lawsuit accusing the former president of rape and defamation, had helped cause the shooting.

Elon Musk, who leads SpaceX and Tesla and previously worked with Mr. Sacks and Mr. Hoffman, then weighed in on X, name-checking Mr. Hoffman and saying people like him “got their dearest wish.”

In Silicon Valley, the spectacle of tech billionaire attacking tech billionaire has suddenly exploded, as pro-Trump executives and their Democratic counterparts have openly turned on each other. The brawling has spilled into public view online, at conferences and on podcasts, as debates about the country’s future have turned into personal broadsides.

The animus has pit those who once worked side-by-side and attended each other’s weddings against one another, fraying friendships and alliances that could shift Silicon Valley’s power centers. The fighting has been particularly acute among the “PayPal Mafia,” a wealthy group of tech executives — including Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Musk, Mr. Sacks and the investor Peter Thiel — who worked together at the online payments company in the 1990s and later founded their own companies or turned into high-profile investors.

Other tech leaders have also been pulled into the political spats, including Vinod Khosla, a prominent investor, and Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz of the Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Their unabashed vitriol is stark. While tech leaders often criticize one another in private, they rarely do so publicly for fear of upsetting a potential deal partner or future job prospect.

“Until a year or two ago, there was something like an omertà in Silicon Valley,” said Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, using a word popularized by the Italian mafia for a code of silence. “People had fights all the time and leaders would disagree, but you wouldn’t disagree in public.”

Mr. McNamee jumped into the rumpus on Wednesday by calling out Mr. Andreessen and Mr. Horowitz, who both recently endorsed Mr. Trump, for their “antidemocratic” values on X. Mr. McNamee had previously invested in a company that Mr. Horowitz led.

Mr. Horowitz shot back on Thursday, invoking his 25-year business relationship with Mr. McNamee. “Really Roger?” Mr. Horowitz wrote. “Your very first idea when we disagree is to attack me in a tweet?”

The altercations show how Silicon Valley’s identity is fragmenting. For years, the nation’s tech capital was seen as a liberal bastion. But Mr. Sacks, Mr. Musk, Mr. Andreessen and Mr. Horowitz all broke from that view by endorsing Mr. Trump in recent weeks.

Many of them were unhappy with President Biden’s tech policies and regulatory appointees, who have pursued more rules and lawsuits against tech companies. They prefer Mr. Trump for his push to lower taxes and his support for the cryptocurrencyindustry, which some of the tech billionaires have invested in.

“There’s been shaming and canceling on the left for some time,” said Trevor Traina, a Republican in San Francisco who served as ambassador to Austria during Mr. Trump’s presidency and is close to Mr. Sacks and Mr. Hoffman. “And now you’re starting to hear strong voices on the right in Silicon Valley.”

Democratic tech executives and investors have countered that Mr. Trump is not good for tech. They say Mr. Trump and his allies have talked about throwing Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, in prison; suggested breaking up big tech companies; and proposed strict immigration policies, which could hinder the industry’s hiring of skilled workers.

Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Thiel and an Andreessen Horowitz representative declined to comment. Mr. Sacks and Mr. Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

Political tensions began escalating into personal attacks last month after Mr. Sacks held an ornate fund-raiser for Mr. Trump in San Francisco. Days later, Mr. Hoffman, who gave at least $10 million to bolster President Biden’s campaign, chided Mr. Sacks in a blog postfor following “pro-Trump groupthink” and backing “a convicted felon.”

At a conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, this month, Mr. Hoffman got into a heated exchange with Mr. Thiel, who has funded Republicans, according to a person briefed on the conversation. The longtime friends bickered over Mr. Hoffman’s stance against Mr. Trump, leading Mr. Hoffman to sarcastically say that he wished he had made the former president “an actual martyr,” the person said. The exchange was reported earlier by Puck.

After the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump, Mr. Sacks and Mr. Musk used Mr. Hoffman’s words to criticize their former colleague. Mr. Hoffman responded last week by pointing out that some current supporters of Mr. Trump, including Mr. Sacks, had disavowed Mr. Trump in 2021 after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“If you have integrity and you’re supporting Trump in this election, you should address that,” Mr. Hoffman said in a podcast appearance on Wednesday.

This month, Mr. Sacks shared a list of pro-Trump techies on X and spoke at the Republican National Convention, which grated on Democratic tech investors and entrepreneurs, said Siri Srinivas, an investor at Gradient Ventures. After President Biden withdrew from the race and Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, many of those investors and entrepreneurs were energized and felt more emboldened to speak out, she said.

“Weeks of private hand-wringing likely helped many to urgently and emphatically show their support for Harris and opposition to Trump,” Ms. Srinivas said. On Tuesday, she mimicked Mr. Sacks’s list by posting a roster of the industry’s Harris supporters on X.

Mr. Sacks has since continued his verbal attacks, taking aim last week at Reed Hastings, a Netflix founder who is a major Democratic donor. On X, Mr. Sacks called Mr. Hastings a “useful idiot” for supporting the Democratic Party.

Mr. Hastings did not respond to a request for comment.

Some tech luminaries have stayed out of the fray, including Mr. Zuckerberg. In 2016 when Mr. Trump was elected, Mr. Zuckerberg posted on his Facebook page that “progress does not move in a straight line,” alluding to Mr. Trump without naming him. But this time, the Meta chief has not talked about politics.

The exception was an interview with Bloomberg this month, in which Mr. Zuckerberg complimented Mr. Trump’s “fist-pump” moment after the assassination attempt. Mr. Zuckerberg’s decision to take a less vocal approach to politics could improve strained relationships in Washington and potentially with Mr. Trump if he is elected, two people familiar with the discussions said.

A Meta spokesman declined to comment.

Some tech entrepreneurs are reacting to the politicking. Merci Grace, a start-up founder in San Francisco, said she felt “betrayed” by Mr. Andreessen’s and Mr. Horowitz’s endorsement of Mr. Trump and would not work with their venture firm. Ms. Grace, who supports abortion rights and once had surgery after a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, said she opposed the stance against abortion from JD Vance, Mr. Trump’s running mate.

“The way in which Ben and Marc are claiming they’re single-issue voters for Trump is so galling to me, because men have been throwing that line in my face for years as a way to dismiss the life-or-death stakes of abortion access,” Ms. Grace said, referring to the investors’ support of Mr. Trump because of what they said were his pro-tech policies. “Yes, I’m a single issue voter too. Being alive is my issue.”

But Mr. Khosla, who supports Ms. Harris, said the fights over politics would not leave lasting fractures in the tech industry, where innovation ultimately reigns supreme.

“I’ll work with almost anyone if what I’m working on can change the world,” he said.

[toprealestatebuzz]

Apple sales fell by the most in 4 years

At the end of 2022, Apple sales went down because people had less money to spend because the cost of living was going up.

In the three months before December, sales at the company that makes the iPhone were 5% lower than they were at the same time in 2021.

It was the biggest drop since 2019 and worse than anyone had expected.

Many businesses are warning of a sharp slowdown in the economy, especially in the tech sector, which grew quickly during the pandemic.

Tim Cook, who is in charge of running Apple, said that the company is in a “challenging environment.”

He said that the drop in sales was caused by a lack of supplies because of Covid-19 in China, where its phones are made, and a strong dollar, as well as a weaker economy in general because of rising prices, the war in Ukraine, and the effects of the pandemic that are still being felt.

Apple said that its sales dropped everywhere and that most of its products were affected.

Sales of Apple’s popular iPhones dropped by more than 8%, and sales of Apple’s Mac computers dropped by 29%.

The company’s profits fell 13% to $30 billion (£24 billion).

Roger McNamee, who started Elevation Partners, said on the BBC show “Today” that Apple’s biggest problem was its supply chain in China.

Paolo Pescatore, an analyst at PP Foresight, said that Apple and many other electronics companies were having trouble getting people to upgrade because of “what is seen as incremental improvements on previous models.”

He said, “Even more so now that everyone is trying to save money.”

According to the market research firm Canalys, the number of smartphones shipped worldwide fell by 12% in 2016.

Executives at Apple said that their services business, which includes Apple Pay and Apple News, would continue to be a growth driver. In addition, they said that more than 2 billion Apple devices are now in use worldwide.

Other big tech companies also told their investors they were under great pressure.

Amazon needs help to get its online business up and running again. In the last three months of 2022, sales at Amazon’s online stores were down 2% compared to the same time last year.

Overall, Amazon’s sales for the three months were up 9% to $149.2 billion. This was helped by the fact that its business in cloud computing grew faster than expected.

But its profits went from $14.3 billion a year ago to almost nothing. Brian Olsavsky, the company’s chief financial officer, told investors that this change was likely to continue in the coming months.

Google and YouTube are both owned by Alphabet, which is a company. But in the three months before December, sales were only up 1% from the same time in 2021. Because the economy is unstable, companies have cut back on advertising, which is their main source of income.

The CEO of Apple will take a massive 40% pay cut

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, will make more than 40% less this year than he did last year.

The technology giant says that Mr. Cook asked for the pay cut after shareholders were critical of him.

The compensation committee at Apple set his “target compensation” for the year 2023 at $49 million (£45.1 million).

Last year, the shares of the company that makes the iPhone dropped sharply because of problems in the supply chain and a slowdown in the world economy.

With this change, Mr. Cook’s base salary will stay at $3 million a year and get a bonus of up to $6 million.

The most important difference in his pay is how he will get company shares.

In 2022, the company gave him $75 million worth of shares, of which half were tied to how well Apple did on the stock market.

This year, his stock award goal has been lowered to $40 million. Three-quarters of that amount will depend on how well his shares do.

Mr. Cook was supposed to make $84 million by 2022, but he made $99.4 million last year. This number includes the $630,600 he paid for security and the $712,500 he paid to use a private jet.

Last year, a top group that advises investors told Apple shareholders to vote against Mr. Cook’s pay package.

In a letter to investors, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) said there are “significant concerns” about the “design and size” of the package.

The ISS said Mr. Cook made 1,447 times as much as the average Apple employee.

Mr. Cook became CEO of Apple in August 2011, just a few weeks before co-founder Steve Jobs died.

Apple was the first company to have a market value of $3tn under Mr. Cook’s leadership. During a tough year for the tech industry, the company’s value fell to about $2.1tn...Read More

Read Also: Apple investors will audit its labor practices

Source: Real Estate Today

[truck-fump]

The Media Is Making the Same Mistakes with Musk That It Did with <b>Trump</b> - TIME

New Post has been published on https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://time.com/6242268/twitter-elon-musk-media-coverage/&ct=ga&cd=CAIyGjUzM2UwMTY5ZmFhZTIwMGQ6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AOvVaw0wHJzFv2CDL_AIYZcpcjnr

The Media Is Making the Same Mistakes with Musk That It Did with Trump - TIME

Twitter is a soap opera where Musk is the star, the only actor in the spotlight. The world should look away, says Roger McNamee.

[franklinsense]

Big Tech’s Big Defector

Roger McNamee started his career in 1982, as a twenty-six-year-old analyst at the investment firm T. Rowe Price. The personal-computer revolution was just beginning. from Pocket https://ift.tt/XD1NiuB via IFTTT

[freshmoviequotes]

The Social Dilemma (2020)

[krispyweiss]

Funk Brother Joe Messina Dies at 93

Funk Brother Joe Messina, one of the virtually anonymous musicians who were essential to creating the Motown Sound, died April 4, the Motown Museum announced.

“It is with a heavy heart that Motown Museum announces the passing of one of Motown’s original Funk Brothers, Joe Messina,” the museum said in a statement.

He was 93 and died from kidney disease, the Detroit Free Press reported.

“Another great one joins the heavenly choir” Moonalice’s Roger McNamee tweeted.

Messina was hand-picked by Berry Gordy to record for Motown. From 1959 to 1972, the guitarist played on recordings by, among many others, the Supremes, the Four Tops, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye.

In the studio, Messina, who was white, was often flanked by fellow axemen Robert White and Eddie Willis, who were black, and sometimes referred to himself as “the cream in the Oreo cookie,” the Free Press reported. He was one of 13 Funk Brothers recognized with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement award in 2004 and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2013.

“We send our sincere condolences to the Messina family, and to Joe’s friends and fans around the world,” the Motown Museum said.

4/5/22

[maaarine]

Kara Swisher:

“I did a big long interview with Mark Zuckerberg that he probably shouldn’t have done. I couldn’t get him to understand consequences.

A famous Facebook motto is “move fast and break things.” This was plastered on the walls of Facebook.

They had all kinds of sayings and stupid stuff like that. Most of these companies do.

But I remember saying, “break?” and they were like, “Yeah, break.” I’m like, “Break is bad.” It was like a debate.”

Roger McNamee:

“That was something that I think came in with the PayPal mafia. This is Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and Elon Musk as well.

They came in and brought this philosophy. It was so spectacularly successful so quickly. The issues took a long time to show up.

Silicon Valley has to remember that it’s spent 50 years in the business of empowering the people who use technology.

Now, it’s in the business of treating the people who use it as a source of fuel. We’re not the customer, we’re not even the product.

We’re a source of data that isn’t used to improve something for us. It’s used to manipulate whole populations.

In my mind, that is morally bankrupt, and I do not believe it can be fixed.

I think the way you get out of this is the way you always get out of tech problems,

which is you create an alternative universe with a different value system and you give people choices. (…)

Silicon Valley exists in an ecosystem globally, which sits there and says the only constituency that matters is the shareholder, and the only thing that management should care about are metrics.

Well, the reality is, ethics doesn’t stand a prayer in that environment. Because ethics, by definition, is the willingness to subordinate a metric to a higher value.”

Source: Recode Decode: Democracy is for sale, says “The Great Hack” director Karim Amer

[completely-zucked]

The time has come to accept that in its current mode of operation, Facebook’s flaws outweigh its considerable benefits. Belgium and Sri Lanka had the right idea when the former imposed daily fines for privacy violations relative to non-users and the latter suspended Facebook over hate speech. Such aggressive tactics appear to be the only way to get Facebook to take action. Unfortunately, Facebook continues to prioritize its business model over its civic responsibilities. Zuck and the team at Facebook know that people are criticizing them, and while they do not like it, they are convinced the critics do not understand. They believe connecting 2.2 billion people in a single network is so obviously a good thing that we should allow them to get back to work without further discussion. They cannot see that connecting so many people on a single network drives tribalism and, in the absence of effective circuit breakers and containment strategies, has provided dangerous power to bad actors. The corners Facebook has cut have enabled great harm and will continue to do so. The business model pushes responsibility for identifying harm to users, which means Facebook’s response is almost always too little, too late.

"Chaper 13: The Future of Society"; Zucked: Waking up to the Facebook Catastrophe; 2009; Roger McNamee; PP. pgs 185–186

[lboogie1906]

Project 2025 is a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the federal government and consolidate executive power should the Republican candidate win the 2024 presidential election. It proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers as political appointees to replace them with those who are willing to enact the wishes of the next Republican president. The president will have absolute power over the executive branch. Critics have characterized it as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan to transform the US into an autocracy. It would undermine the rule of law, the separation of powers, the separation of church and state, and civil liberties.

Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Paul Dans, the director, said the project is “systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state.” It proposes deploying the military for domestic law enforcement.

its partners employ over 200 former officials from the Trump administration. Notable authors of the project’s Mandate for Leadership include many officials and advisors from the Trump administration, including Jonathan Berry, Ben Carson, Ken Cuccinelli, Rick Dearborn, Thomas Gilman, Mandy Gunasekara, Gene Hamilton, Christopher Miller, Bernard McNamee, Stephen Moore, Mora Namdar, Peter Navarro, William Perry Pendley, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Kiron Skinner, Roger Severino, Hans von Spakovsky, Brooks Tucker, Russell Vought, and Paul Winfree.

Former president Trump has never publicly endorsed it, and his campaign downplayed it in November 2023 as mere “policy recommendations from external allies.” He disavowed it in July 2024, days after Kevin Roberts's remarks. Several critics expressed skepticism of his denial.

The leaders began recruiting people for future government posts in the event of a Republican victory. #knowledgeispower #votelikeyourlifedependsonit #trumpsproject2025