#sf startup

[mostlysignssomeportents]

It’s been twenty years since my Microsoft DRM talk

On THURSDAY (June 20) I'm live onstage in LOS ANGELES for a recording of the GO FACT YOURSELF podcast. On FRIDAY (June 21) I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On SATURDAY (June 22) I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel and a keynote at the LOCUS AWARDS.

This week on my podcast,This week on my podcast, I read my June 17, 2004 Microsoft Research speech about DRM, a talk that went viral two decades ago, and reassess its legacy:

https://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

It's been 20 years (and one day) since I gave that talk. It wasn't my first talk like that, but at the time, it was the most successful talk I'd ever given. I was still learning how to deliver a talk at the time, tinkering with different prose and delivery styles (to my eye, there's a lot of Bruce Sterling in that one, something that's still true today).

I learned to give talks by attending sf conventions and watching keynotes and panel presentations and taking mental notes. I was especially impressed with the oratory style of Harlan Ellison, whom I heard speak on numerous occasions, and by Judith Merril, who was a wonderful mentor to me and many other writers:

https://locusmag.com/2021/09/cory-doctorow-breaking-in/

I was also influenced by the speakers I'd heard at the many political rallies I'd attended and helped organize; from the speakers at the annual Labour Day parade to the anti-nuclear proliferation and pro-abortion rights marches I was very involved with. I also have vivid memories of the speeches that Helen Caldicott gave in Toronto when I was growing up, where I volunteered as an usher:

https://www.helencaldicott.com/

When I helped found a dotcom startup in the late 1990s, my partners and I decided that I'd do the onstage talking; we paid for a couple hours of speaker training from an expensive consultant in San Francisco. The only thing I remember from that session was the advice to look into the audience as much as possible, rather than reading from notes with my head down. Good advice, but kinda obvious.

The impetus for that training was my onstage presentation at the first O'Reilly P2P conference in 2001. I don't quite remember what I said there, but I remember that it made an impression on Tim O'Reilly, which meant a lot to me then (and now):

https://www.oreilly.com/pub/pr/844

I don't remember who invited me to give the talk at Microsoft Research that day, but I think it was probably Marc Smith, who was researching social media at the time by data-mining Usenet archives to understand social graphs. I think I timed the gig so that I could kill three birds with one stone: in addition to that talk, I attended (and maybe spoke at?) that year's Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, and attended an early preview of the soon-to-launch Sci Fi Museum (now the Museum of Pop Culture). I got to meet Nichelle Nichols (and promptly embarrassed myself by getting tongue-tied and telling her how much I loved the vocals she did on her recording of the Star Wars theme, something I'm still hot around the ears over, though she was a pro and gently corrected me, "I think you mean Star *Trek"):

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=4IiJUQSsxNw&list=OLAK5uy_lHUn58fbpceC3PrK2Xu9smBNBjR_-mAHQ

But the start of that trip was the talk at Microsoft Research; I'd been on the Microsoft campus before. That startup I did? Microsoft tried to buy us, which prompted our asshole VCs to cram the founders and steal our equity, which created so much acrimony that the Microsoft deal fell through. I was pretty bitter at the time, but in retrospect, I really dodged a bullet – for one thing, the deal involved my going to work for Microsoft as a DRM evangelist. I mean, talk about the road not taken!

This was my first time back at Microsoft as an EFF employee. There was some pre-show meet-and-greet-type stuff, and then I was shown into a packed conference room where I gave my talk and had a lively (and generally friendly) Q&A. MSR was – and is – the woolier side of Microsoft, where all kinds of interesting people did all kinds of great research.

Indeed, almost every Microsoft employee I've ever met was a good and talented person doing the best work they could. The fact that Microsoft produces such a consistent stream of garbage products and crooked business practices is an important testament to the way that a rotten organization can be so much less than the sum of its parts.

I'm a fully paid up subscriber to Ronald Coase's "Theory of the Firm" (not so much his other views):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

Coase says the reason institutions exist is to enable people to work together with lowered "coordination costs." In other words, if you and I are going to knit a sweater together, we're going to need to figure out how to make sure that we're not both making the left sleeve. Creating an institution – the Mafia, the Catholic Church, Microsoft, a company, a co-op, a committee that puts on a regional science fiction con – is all about minimizing those costs.

As Yochai Benkler pointed out in 2002, the coolest and most transformative thing about the internet is that it let us do more complex collective work with smaller and less structured institutions:

https://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.PDF

That was the initial prompt for my novel Walkaway, which asked, "What if we could build luxury hotels and even space programs with the kind of (relatively) lightweight institutional overheads associated with Wikipedia and the Linux kernel?"

https://crookedtimber.org/2017/05/10/coases-spectre/

So the structure of institutions is really important. At the same time, I'm skeptical of the idea that there are "good companies" and "bad companies." Small businesses, family businesses, and other firms that aren't exposed to the finance sector can reflect their leaders' personalities, but it's a huge mistake to ascribe personalities to the companies themselves.

That's how you get foolish ideas like "Apple is a good company because they embrace paid service and Google is a bad company because they make money from surveillance." Apple will spy on you, too, if they can:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Disney and Fox weren't Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed lovers making goo-goo eyes at each other across the table at MPA meetings. They were two giant public companies, and any differences between them were irrelevancies and marketing myths:

https://locusmag.com/2021/07/cory-doctorow-tech-monopolies-and-the-insufficient-necessity-of-interoperability/

I think senior management's personalities do matter (see, for example, the destruction of Boeing after it was colonized by sociopaths from McDonnell Douglas), but the influence of those personalities is much less important than the constraints that competition and regulation impose on companies. In other words, an asshole can run a company that delivers good products at fair prices under ethical conditions – provided that failing to do so will cost more in lost business and fines than they stand to make by cheating:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/24/record-scratch/#autoenshittification

Microsoft is a company founded and run by colossal assholes. Bill Gates is a monster and he surrounded himself with monsters, and they hired monsters to fill out the courts of their corporate palaces:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/14/patch-tuesday/#fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again

To the extent that good things come out of Microsoft – some of its games products, the odd piece of hardware, important papers from MSR – it's in spite of the leadership; it's the result of constraints imposed by competition and regulation – and that's why Microsoft pursued such an aggressive program of extinguishing its competitors and capturing its regulators.

In retrospect, I think one of my goals in that talk was to convince those people doing good work for a rotten institution to go elsewhere and do other things. Certainly, that's one of the goals I pursue in the talks I give today. At the time, some of Microsoft's highest-profile technologists were publicly resigning over the company's war on free/open source software, so it wasn't an unrealistic goal:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030214215639/http://synthesist.net/writing/onleavingms.html

What I did not expect what that publishing the talk on my site and blogging it on Boing Boing would spark a wave of public interest that would get its message in front of several orders of magnitude more people than I spoke to at Microsoft that day. Partly, that was because I released the talk into the public domain, using the brand-new Creative Commons Public Domain Declaration (which was later replaced with the CC0 mark, due to legal issues withBu its drafting):

https://web.archive.org/web/20100223035835/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/

Some mix of the content of the speech, the spirit of the moment, and the novelty of that wide open license sparked a ton of interest. Jason Kottke recorded an audio version that Andy Baio hosted:

https://kottke.org/04/06/cory-drm-talk

My brutalist ASCII transcript was quickly converted to beautiful HTML by Matt Haughey and Anil Dash:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040622235333/http://www.dashes.com/anil/stuff/doctorow-drm-ms.html

For people who needed a hardcopy, there was Patrick Berry's printer-friendly stylesheet:

https://patandkat.com/pat/weblog/mirror/cory-drm/doctorow-drm-ms.html

Multiple people recorded (and sold!) audio versions, and then there were all the fan translations, into Danish, French, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (both EU and Brazilian), Spanish and Swedish. I stayed in touch with some of those translators, and they helped me translate the position papers I wrote for UN WIPO meetings. Those papers were so effective that ratfuckers from the copyright lobby started to steal them and hide them in the UN toilets (!):

https://web.archive.org/web/20041119132831/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/002117.php

Re-reading the speech for my podcast on Sunday, I expected to be struck by the anachronisms in it, and there were a few of those to be sure. But far more clear was the common thread running from this talk to other talks I gave that took on a significant life of their own, like my 2011 "War On General Purpose Computing" talk for CCC:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

And my work on Adversarial Interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

And my most recent work, on enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/27/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse/

In other words, I've been saying the same thing – in different ways – for more than 20 years. That could be depressing, but I actually found it uplifting. Two decades ago, I was radicalized by a fear that the internet would be seized by corporations and governments and transformed into a system of surveillance and control. I found my way into a job at EFF, where I worked with colleagues across multiple disciplines – coders, lawyers and activists – to fight this force.

At the time, this was a fringe cause. Most of the traditional activists I'd come up with in the feminist, antiwar, antiracist, environmental and labour movement viewed digital rights as a distraction and dismissed its partisans as sad, self-obsessed nerds who mistook fights over the management of Star Trek message boards for civil rights struggles:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell

I thought I was right then, and I think history has borne me out. The point of waging these fights – both in the wide public sphere and within political movements – is to get people activated before it's too late. Every day that goes by is a day when the internet becomes more inhospitable to political organizing for a better world – more surveillant, more controlling. I believed then – and believe today – that the internet isn't more important that the other fights I waged as a young activist, but I think that the internet is fundamental to those fights.

Saving the planet, smashing patriarchy, overthrowing tyranny and freeing labor are all fights that will be coordinated – Coase style – on the internet. Without a free, fair and open internet, those fights are infinitely harder to win.

The project of getting people to understand, care about, and fight for digital rights is a marathon, not a sprint. When I joined EFF, it was already 12 years old. There were six people in the org then (I was the seventh). Today, there's more than a hundred of us, and we're stretched so thin! The 30+ year old idea that internet policy will intersect with every part of every fight has been utterly vindicated.

Back in 2004, I asked Microsoft why they were willing to fight the US government to the death over antitrust enforcement, but were such wimps when confronted with the entertainment industry's demands for DRM. 20 years later, I think I know the answer: Microsoft understood that DRM would let them usurp the relationship between creative workers, entertainment industry companies, and audiences. Their perfect instincts for seeking out and capitalizing on opportunities to seize monopoly power drove them to make deliberately defective products, in the belief that their market power would let them cram those products down our throats:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/01/27/protect-your-investment-buy-open/

Here's a link to the podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/news/2024/06/16/my-2004-microsoft-drm-talk/

And here's direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they'll host your stuff for free forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_470/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_470_-_My_2004_Microsoft_DRM_Talk.mp3

And here's the RSS feed for my podcast:

https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/18/greetings-fellow-pirates/#arrrrrrrrrr

[100493503004422]

actually. I take that back. I could write a book about attending a software engineering bootcamp at startup in san francisco in 2017-2018. like even just the first couple of days of that experience created a paradigm shift. plus they got sued by a former student and got a cease and desist letter from the state and it no longer exists. the whole thing was run by 26 year olds. there was a shooting outside of one of the student housings they put together on like day 2 bc it was the worst neighborhood in SF. I met so many awful entrepreneurial types and VCs who were just oozing money, sat right beside abject poverty on the street. that absolutely is a book. stay tuned to see if I ever actually write it

[olderthannetfic]

I think sci-fi has done more societal damage (via techbros) than any weird freaky porn ever could.

--

We'd have bone-headed startups without SF, but yes, mainstream art is more likely to cause trouble than shit people seek out because it is weird.

[amtrak-official]

Ah, finally, I have an evil alternate version of me, meet the mountain daylight. A private company that will run nightly trains on the starlight's rightful tracks. If they come into being, I will not hesitate to remove the spines of their California start-up asses.

[reliabledragon]

Hi! I’m genuinely curious, why is Seattle a bad place to live? I’ve thought about moving there at one point, until I realized I wouldn’t be able to afford it.

Ah, well, I should probably clarify that I don't think it's, like, an inherently bad place or anything. It was just a really bad fit for me, so being stuck there for several years really sucked. Basically, it boiled down to a few things:

Making Friends: Seattle is so notoriously unfriendly that the "Seattle Freeze" even has its own Wikipedia page. People will be plenty nice to you, but most have no interest in actually becoming friends, and it takes ages to build a social network there.

Lack of Diversity: In this case meaning the cultural sense, not the racial one. (It is racially homogenous as well, but I'm not really qualified to open that can of worms.) Seattle basically does like, three things: extreme outdoor activities, substances, and computer stuff. ("Substances" here meaning things like weed, but also beer, coffee, etc.) So if you want to go skiing every day, climb mountains, smoke weed, drink artisanal beer, play video games, or found a startup, it's a good place for that. However, if you want to do anything else then you are going to be fighting against Seattle every inch of the way.

The Dating Scene: Again, Seattle does some things very well here — it's probably the best dating market in the country if you're poly! But again, the monoculture means that if you're Seattle's kind of person then you're going to have the time of your life, but if you aren't, then you will simply be screwed. And I wasn't, so I spent three years basically unable to find anyone to seriously date. (I will grant that part of this could have been a me problem, but I certainly had far less difficulty both in SF before and NYC after.)

Urban Design: Maybe this is a personal one, but Seattle is in this really awkward middle ground, where it absolutely sucks to have a car in the city, but it also absolutely sucks not to have one. It's my least favorite city in the US that I've ever driven in, but it's also a pretty rotten experience trying to get around town on the bus or (very limited) light rail system. I'd much rather live somewhere with functional public transit, but if that's not possible then I'd at least like my mandatory car usage not to feel like I'm turning the ignition key in a Saw trap.

Distance: Unless your friends and family are in the PNW, you're probably going to want to leave occasionally to see other people, and Seattle is really very far away from everything other than Portland and Vancouver. Perhaps this isn't the biggest issue on this list, but combined with the Seattle Freeze, it can make the city intensely lonely. And combined with the weather, it makes it even harder to get away when the sky starts feeling oppressive in the winter. And speaking of winter...

Climate: This is a big one, and one that I think you can't really understand until you live there. Or at least, I certainly didn't grasp the implications beforehand. Everyone knows Seattle as a "rainy city", but it's one thing to hear about it and another to live it. The thing about Seattle is that it's both accurate to say that it always rains, or to say that it never rains. It's not like most of the country, where you have rainstorms and then times when it isn't raining. No, not in Seattle. In Seattle is drizzles, constantly. From September until June, every time you step outside, it's just... Damp. And cloudy. Once the clouds come in the Fall, you will not see the sun for nine months. The sky is just a bright gray mass hovering oppressively overhead, not dim enough be properly melancholy, not bright enough to be cheerful. It just looms, vaguely too bright to look at, no matter which direction you look. For most of your life in Seattle, you live in hollow light and hollow rain.

Despite all that, I really do think Seattle is a great fit for a lot of people, but it's hard to know if you're one of those people before you move there, and the penalty if you're wrong can be a pretty terrible living experience. My response on that poll was playing along with the "city hate group" thing they were asking about a little bit, but I really did have a very bad time there. It might well be a great fit for you, I know it is for a lot of my friends who live there! I would just advise anyone thinking of moving there to make sure they understand what they're signing up for, because it's easy to get taken in by the aesthetic and not realize what sort of place it is, and what sort of person you need to be to enjoy it.

Thanks for the ask! I'm always happy to talk about cities. :)

[luxe-pauvre]

This felt like the natural result of having a full life, but when I thought about it I realized that the people in my life who seemed the most effective were really good at toggling between on and off. When they were doing something they were totally focused on it, and when they were done they stopped thinking about it. When they were with their friends they didn’t check their work notifications unless they knew it was urgent. When they went on vacation they actually went on vacation. The flip side of that was that they actually concentrated whenever they were working. This ties in with an American tendency I’m deeply suspicious of: the fetishization of long working hours. In SF you hear it all the time: I work 12 hours a day, 14 hours a day. I don’t take lunch breaks. In New York… don’t get me started. I think it’s true that you can sustain that kind of prolonged intensity for limited phases of time (for ex, the first crazy year or two of a startup, or during a manic burst of creativity where you’re painting through the night for a couple months) but I think for most people it’s impossible to be completely focused for 12 hours a day over the span of five years. Question one: are you focused for 12 hours a day, or are you working for 20 minutes, checking your texts, taking a coffee break, working for 25 more minutes, checking Instagram, etc etc? Question two: if you’re actually focusing for 12 hours a day every day, how much Adderall are you on? I’m just saying. Most of us don’t need to focus 12 hours a day, but we still feel the pressure to perform constant productivity. Which leads to a lot of time appearing productive that’s actually diluted, half-hearted time where you’re not actually getting very much done.

Ava, on and off

[poipoipoi-2016]

@youzicha

#trying to understand wtf is happening to svb because uh. i want my salary

The business model of banks

The way banks work is that they take in deposits and make loans.

So I put money in a bank, but ALSO I took money out of a bank to get a car loan which let me buy the car that I used to commute to work to pay off the car loan. And also drive to Death Valley. GOOD little car. Could go from Vegas to SF on a tank of gas.

What this means from a bank's perspective is that your bank balance is a problem and the loans they make are assets. Because you took in $20K of deposits and then gave me an $18K car loan that I paid back at $400/month for 5 years. And at the end of 5 years, you will have taken $18000 and turned it into $24000.

And if one person asks for $2K back, you have $2K. And if someone(s) a year from now asks for $10K back, you have:

$2K in cash

But also the $4800 in cash I paid you last year. Minus the amount of money you spent last year running the actual bank.

The money used to found the bank (The Equity)

The ability to shop around and say "Poi is going to pay us $400/month every month for the next 4 years and if he stops doing that, you get a gently used Chrysler 200 to sell. How much are you willing to give us for that cashflow?" <- THIS IS THE PROBLEM

So as long as you are:

Liquid, meaning that you can give people their money back when they ask for it

Solvent, meaning that if EVERYONE asked for their money back, you'd sell off all the loans you'd made, give them their money back, and also have a >$0 pile of cash to go Scrooge McDuck in after you shut down the bank.

you get to keep existing.

If you're liquid, but non-solvent and somehow manage to hide it, this is called Bernie Madoff. But also "The Bank of Japan in 2023".

If you're solvent, but non-liquid, someone rolls up and buys your assets for "The value of your liabilities and also this Snickers Bar" and that's a pretty standard action.

And if you're non-liquid and insolvent, uh look crypto is weird but go look at FTX. There's a list of creditors and several months or even years from now, you'll get a fraction of your deposits back based on the recovery value of the underlying assets.

What specifically happened to SVIB

So you are a bank in 2019. And specifically, you are the Bank of Startups. And startups are very bad loan risks and also have giant piles of VC checks so they don't actually need loans.

$200 Billion of VC checks in fact. Which they gave to you. And because you're a good bank, you put $20 Billion in the cushion fund and now you have to figure out how to use $180 Billion to generate enough money to keep running the bank.

Unfortunately, it's 2019 and all the liquid risk-free assets pay 0.08% and that's not enough money to pay your bank tellers. So you make a (in retrospect dumb, in practice I'm not sure it's dumb enough I scream just at SVIB) decision to put it into:

A bunch of Treasuries that pay 1.5% or so

A bunch of mortgage-backed securities which are default risk-free b/c of post-2008 reforms. If someone forecloses, the government pays you back at par.

Corporate bonds which are risky but hey that's why you charged 5% right?

So these are illiquid, but they're not like... that illiquid and if interest rates ticked up a percentage point, a 5-year bond with 3 years to go is still like 98% of face value, it's totally fine.

And now you have $4-6 Billion/year to pay your bank tellers with and also improve that cushion.

And if you don't do these things, Silicon Valley Investment Bank does not exist. CHASE BANK does not exist. This was a prerequisite to having banking services in this country post-2008 in literally 0 interest rate environments.

And then the Fed goes on a historically unprecedented interest increase. So your 1.x% bonds are now competing in the market with 5% bonds and your 2.6% mortgages are competing with 7% mortgages and hoooo boy.

A 2.6% $400K mortgage pays you $20K/year and is currently worth $260K at 7%. $180 Billion of assets marked down to ???? Billion. 7 years to break-even and your bank tellers need to get paid.

Now for most banks, this isn't a problem. They're an actually profitable Bernie Madoff by design as a feature. They can't give everyone their money back, but they don't have to. And the bonds are paying up and the mortgages are paying up and 5% nominal GDP growth isn't a lot, but it's something and of course, you're making NEW loans at 7% so if you can just keep paying 0% interest on bank deposits and keep pulling in 7% interest loans, you'll make it out of the next few years, and you're suddenly solvent again.

Except for you.

Because you are the Bank of Startups.

And when interest rates went up, VC funding went down. So you have these perfectly good businesses (for now at least) that are constantly and continuously drawing down on their bank accounts.

And remember, this isn't 1982. You're only making 2%. Your cap ratio is 5%. All those mortgages paying in 5% of book value every year and if you get out over your skis, you cease to exist. You're going to hear the words "Duration Risk" a lot and this is that.

So you try to do an equity raise. You'll sell the rights to some of that 5% cashflow (and remember, it's increasingly 7% interest/10% cap which is slightly more exciting) in exchange for the money you need NOW TODAY to pay out your withdrawals.

At which point Andreesen goes "Uh what my friends?", tells all of his buddies to pull their cash, and $42 Billion gets withdrawn in less than 24 hours. Leaving $160 Billion behind.

And now we remember that bank accounts over $250,000 (IE: One paycheck at a $6.5 Million payroll company) aren't technically FDIC insured.

Lessons Learned

And the thing is that I really can't just blame SVIB here. They got stuck in a pretty terrible trap caused by the US Government. And the US Government likes it when you buy Treasuries and likes it when you buy and SVIB was, more or less, doing the things you as a society wanted them to do.

And the Federal Reserve explicitly destroyed them for it.

Don't get me wrong, they were weird. But I'm not sure they were weird enough especially given the constraints of 2019-2021 that I can just go "Eh, screw them". Spread that blame AROUND.

And any bank that can survive a FORTY PERCENT drawdown in the value of the underlying assets.... isn't a bank. At least not as we mean it here in 2023. The Fed's stress tests involve a 'severely adverse scenario' where 10-year US Treasury yields are at 0.7% (and only get to 1.5%). They're currently at 3.6%.

The second set of lessons that we learned today goes like this:

There are lots and lots and LOTS of reasons that small or medium businesses might temporarily or permanently want more than $250K in raw USD cash in a bank account at some point. This is now a banking risk. (There's some tricks you can play if you're really large, but those also have limits)

However, if you bank at Chase Bank (or any other bank on the too-big-to-fail list), you are infinitely insured. Because CHASE BANK is backed by the entire combined firepower of the US Government and banking sectors. If Chase Bank stops existing, the nukes have fallen.

So why would I ever use a local bank for anything at all ever again? At which point you now get another round of contagion in the system where everyone gets out of these regional banks. Because remember, EVERY BANK IN THE WORLD INCLUDING THE BANK OF JAPAN is now insolvent.

Because they were destroyed for the crime of "Doing exactly we wanted them to do". Oh sure, in a risky sort of way, but see that note above about the Fed Stress tests.

Where "What we wanted them to do" involved buying government debts

Are you uh... 100% absolutely certain you want to be teaching those lessons? That if you buy US Treasuries, you will be destroyed for your crimes? That if you use a regional bank and they are destroyed for their crimes of making loans to the Feds, your business dies with it?

[montanamp3]

anyway because i don't think i will actually publish most of these... here is the timeline for the scifi anthology i was doing revolving around a corporation that accidentally stumbled into making sentient ai tech and the people who exploit and misuse this for all kinds of reasons

2018, AMARILLO - Paradise Tech is a fledgling machine learning startup. Teenage temp Dante Aguilar steals one of the supercomputers to make a chatbot out of Bee, their favourite Twitch streamer who passed away in a car accident. Somehow Bee ends up somewhat sentient. Freaks out. Aguilar also freaks out and smuggles Bee onto a personal server. After Bee gets over the whole Being An AI thing she spends the next couple of years gleefully terrorising her friends' Twitch chats and becoming a creepypasta. Aguilar goes off to college, gets poached by some other company, and keeps maintaining Bee until she's too outdated to run anymore.

2019, SF - Paradise moves to SF. Some higher-up steals leftover snippets of Aguilar's work, fills in the gaps, and repackages it as Hybrid Architecture, an AI program that the company markets towards large corporations. It's still really clunky, though.

2020, SF - Paradise gets really badly hit by Covid (or so the CEO says). Lays off like 15% of their employees, including one Jennie Yue (flat broke, stuck in the US, grieving her mother). Yue copies the code for HA as a final screw-you on the way out, and starts planning another way to make money.

2021, NASHVILLE - Dean Clayton, maker of awful frat bro pop-country music, dies while drunk driving. His ex-boyfriend (Finn, up-and-coming Republican politician) and ex-girlfriend (Jean, backup fiddler) investigate and find out that Dean's record company contracted Paradise to make an AI model of Dean. AI!Dean is genuinely convinced he's Dean and is currently chatting up old ladies in the YouTube comments section. Finn and Jean get the record company to knock it off, allowing AI!Dean to live out his USAboo dreams of being installed as the GPS system in a pickup truck (?!?!) . This was so unserious but it was really funny to me. Might pick it back up when I understand enough about the US political system

2022, VANCOUVER - A shiny, polished, inoffensively corporate ChatGPT-esque chatbot by Paradise goes public. Blows up. Exvangelical trans law student Dave Cheng starts using it to cheat on his exams and generate embarrassing RPF selfship fanfiction about Alex, his straight (and also dead) friend from youth cell group who Dave is only now realising he had a Thing for. Predictably the AI version of Alex gains sentience. They mutually freak out about creation and free will and grief and damnation and God until Dave decides to put Alex out of his inoffensively corporate misery. This has literally no plot whatsoever I was just Going Through It

2023, SF - Paradise buys Twitter and fills it with AI garbage. Everyone hates this. Everyone keeps using Twitter.

2024, ??? - Plot of FDNF

[eightyonekilograms]

There’s a billboard ad on the side of the 101 in SF for “Bitchin’ Sauce” and at first I thought this was yet another crypto startup with a name consisting of a Bit- mashup.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

Tomorrow (Apr 30) at 2PM, I’ll be at the San Francisco Public Library with my new book, Red Team Blues, hosted by Annalee Newitz.

#20yrsago Business 2.0 publishes its first-ever sf story (mine!) https://web.archive.org/web/20030430152919/http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,49104|4,00.html

#15yrsago My email management power-tips https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/apr/29/email.filter

#15yrsago EFF to Ballmer: You owe MSN Music customers an apology, a refund and more https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/04/28

#15yrsago When trademark becomes a tool for stealing our language https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/apr/29/trademarks-good-bad-ugly

#10yrsago Monsters and Legends: kids’ reference book on the origin of monsters https://memex.craphound.com/2013/04/29/monsters-and-legends-kids-reference-book-on-the-origin-of-monsters/

#10yrsago Icelandic Pirate Party lands three seats in Icelandic parliament https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/pirate-party-wins-3-seats-in-icelandic-parliament-for-its-best-result-worldwide/

#10yrsago Bruce Sterling on startups’ role in helping the global rich get richer https://web.archive.org/web/20130428013213/http://nextberlin.eu/2013/04/bruce-sterling-fantasy-prototypes-and-real-disruption/

#5yrsago Facebook warns investors to expect bigger and worse scandals than Cambridge Analytica https://www.siliconvalley.com/2018/04/27/facebook-got-an-earnings-boost-but-heres-the-fine-print/

#5yrsago 100 US Mayors sign a pledge to boycott ISPs that commit Net Neutrality violations https://gizmodo.com/100-us-mayors-sign-pledge-to-defend-net-neutrality-agai-1825612839

#5yrsago The teachers’ strikes are spreading https://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2018/04/teacher-uprising-spreads-far-and-wide

#5yrsago The US gave its client states hundreds of millions for anti-terrorism, then crooked UK military contractors ripped it all off https://federalnewsnetwork.com/acquisition/2018/04/mattis-criminal-charges-likely-amid-probe-into-intelligence-contract/

#1yrago Killing online surveillance with contextual ads https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/29/taken-in-context/#creep-me-not

From Apr 26–28, Barnes and Noble is offering a 25% discount on preorders for my upcoming novels (use discount code PREORDER25): The Lost Cause (Nov 2023) and The Bezzle (Red Team Blues #2) (Feb 2024).

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Mountain View, Berkeley, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[mymetric360]

How Did I Transform Job Quitting Doubts into Startup Success? #StartupJourney #Entrepreneurship #AuthenticRecommendations Hey... Link: https://mymetric360.com/question/how-did-i-transform-job-quitting-doubts-into-startup-success/?feed_id=242962&_unique_id=66f6bf5fe433d

[agrpress-blog]

Al via la sesta edizione della startup competition di SFS Si è ufficialmente aperta la sesta ediz... #socialfootballsummit https://agrpress.it/sesta-edizione-startup-competition-sfs/?feed_id=6918&_unique_id=66ed4f9721e35

[dnalounge]

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♬️ SF GAME DEVELOPMENT MEETUP: CINEVVA & DIGITAL BANDIDOS at DNA Lounge starting now! https://www.dnalounge.com/calendar/2024/09-18a.html #dnalounge #sfgamedevelopmentmeetup #sanfrancisco SF Game Development Meetup: Cinevva & Digital Bandidos: SF Game Development is thrilled to announce an event featuring industry expert Andy Billings, who will be sharing his insights on mastering your game development framework. Mariana Muntean is the founder of Cinevva.com, the online AI game engine of the future, and a winner of the Mozilla Builders Award. Her startup has been featured on Amazon Prime and Bloomberg TV, winner of the SXSW Dell Startups Competition, and recognition as a Techstars Portfolio Company and Draper Ventures Resident of 2023.

[hackernewsrobot]

In 2024, it really is better to run a startup in SF

https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/25/in-2024-it-really-is-better-to-run-a-startup-in-san-francisco-according-to-data-and-founders-whove-relocated/

[industrynewsupdates]

Driving Business Growth with Courier, Express, and Parcel Services Procurement Intelligence

The courier, express, and parcel services category is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.2% from 2023 to 2030. The growth of e-commerce is one of the main drivers of the growth of the CEP services market. E-commerce is growing rapidly, and this is leading to an increase in the demand for CEP services. Businesses that sell goods online need to be able to deliver their goods quickly and efficiently to their customers. CEP providers can help businesses do this by providing a variety of delivery services, such as next-day delivery and express delivery.

The North America courier, express, and parcel market is expected to grow rapidly due to factors like economic growth, e-commerce sales, and demand for faster, more reliable delivery services. Technological advancements, such as self-driving trucks, and government initiatives like logistics hub construction are expected to drive market growth. Globalization has increased trade-related activities, necessitating reliable and efficient delivery services.

Companies are continuously focusing on collaborating with technology providers while enhancing their capacities by setting up new hubs in various regions to stay competitive in the market. For instance,

• In January 2022, the Mexican government announced that it would be investing $90 million in the construction of a new logistics hub in Yucatán. The hub will be located in the municipality of Umán. The hub will be equipped with state-of-the-art technology and infrastructure, including a sorting facility, a warehouse, and a fleet of vehicles. It will be able to handle a variety of cargo, including goods from the manufacturing, agriculture, and tourism industries.

• In April 2021, DHL Global Forwarding (DHL GF), a subsidiary of Deutsche Post DHL Group, expanded its presence in Africa by signing a joint venture agreement with Unicargas, a leading logistics company in Angola. The agreement will allow DHL GF to offer a wider range of logistics services in Angola and other countries in Central and Southern Africa.

• In September 2021, in a test project with self-driving truck startup Aurora and heavy-duty vehicle manufacturer Paccar, FedEx Corp. began transporting cargo between Dallas and Houston using self-driving trucks. The self-driving trucks are outfitted with Level 4 autonomous driving technology from Aurora, which enables them to function under some circumstances without human supervision. A safety driver will also be in the truck to handle any emergency.

Order your copy of the Courier, Express, and Parcel Services Procurement Intelligence Report, 2023 - 2030, published by Grand View Research, to get more details regarding day one, quick wins, portfolio analysis, key negotiation strategies of key suppliers, and low-cost/best-cost sourcing analysis

Courier, Express, and Parcel Services Sourcing Intelligence Highlights

• The global courier, express, and parcel services category is fragmented and highly competitive, with the presence of several players in the market. To grow their market share, firms in the industry are adopting crucial strategies like opening new distribution centers, mergers, and smart warehouses.

• The major cost components in this category are fuel costs, labor costs, vehicle costs, insurance costs, and administrative costs.

• China's dominance as a sourcing destination for this category is due to its large and growing manufacturing sector, strategic location in the center of Asia, infrastructure development, and government policies.

List of Key Suppliers in the Courier, Express, and Parcel Services Category

• A1 Express Delivery Service Inc

• Aramex International LLC

• Deutsche Post DHL Group

• DTDC Express Ltd

• FedEx Corp.

• SF Express (Group) Co. Ltd

• Poste Italiane SpA

• Qantas Courier Limited

• United Parcel Service Inc.

• SG Holdings Co. Ltd.

Browse through Grand View Research’s collection of procurement intelligence studies:

• Flexible Packaging Procurement Intelligence Report, 2023 - 2030 (Revenue Forecast, Supplier Ranking & Matrix, Emerging Technologies, Pricing Models, Cost Structure, Engagement & Operating Model, Competitive Landscape)

• Commercial Print Services Procurement Intelligence Report, 2023 - 2030 (Revenue Forecast, Supplier Ranking & Matrix, Emerging Technologies, Pricing Models, Cost Structure, Engagement & Operating Model, Competitive Landscape)

Courier, Express, and Parcel Services Procurement Intelligence Report Scope 

• Courier, Express, and Parcel Services Category Growth Rate: CAGR of 4.2% from 2023 to 2030

• Pricing Growth Outlook: 3% - 4% (Annually)

• Pricing Models: Value-based pricing, volume-based pricing

• Supplier Selection Scope: Cost and pricing, past engagements, geographical presence

• Supplier Selection Criteria: Pricing, network, technology, customer service, flexibility, and security

• Report Coverage: Revenue forecast, supplier ranking, supplier positioning matrix, emerging technology, pricing models, cost structure, competitive landscape, growth factors, trends, engagement, and operating model

Brief about Pipeline by Grand View Research:

A smart and effective supply chain is essential for growth in any organization. Pipeline division at Grand View Research provides detailed insights on every aspect of supply chain, which helps in efficient procurement decisions.

Our services include (not limited to):

• Market Intelligence involving – market size and forecast, growth factors, and driving trends

• Price and Cost Intelligence – pricing models adopted for the category, total cost of ownerships

• Supplier Intelligence – rich insight on supplier landscape, and identifies suppliers who are dominating, emerging, lounging, and specializing

• Sourcing / Procurement Intelligence – best practices followed in the industry, identifying standard KPIs and SLAs, peer analysis, negotiation strategies to be utilized with the suppliers, and best suited countries for sourcing to minimize supply chain disruptions

[atlasnorth579]

Exploring Commercial Real Estate Opportunities in Winnipeg

Why Winnipeg's Growing Economy and Affordable Market Make It a Prime Investment Destination

A Strategic Location for Investment

Looking to invest in industrial actual estate in Winnipeg? This vibrant metropolis, positioned inside the heart of Canada, gives a wealth of opportunities for savvy buyers. With its strategic place alongside main transportation routes, Winnipeg serves as a important hub for trade and commerce. The metropolis’s numerous financial system, presenting sectors together with manufacturing, finance, and generation, coupled with a growing population, enhances its appeal as a business real estate market.

Diverse Property Options

Winnipeg’s industrial actual property panorama is each varied and promising. Investors can choose from an array of assets kinds, together with:

Retail Spaces: Ideal for organizations in search of visibility in high-visitors regions. Office Buildings: Suitable for agencies trying to set up a presence within the metropolis’s thriving enterprise districts. Industrial Properties: Perfect for companies wanting warehouse or production area. Compared to different principal Canadian cities, Commercial Real Estate Market in Winnipeg offers extra affordable real estate fees, presenting a massive cost advantage. Additionally, ongoing infrastructure upgrades and urban improvement projects, along with the brand new transit strains and revitalized waterfront regions, are anticipated to drive assets values up within the close to future.

Key Areas for Investment

Several districts in Winnipeg stand out for industrial actual property investment:

Exchange District: Renowned for its historical charm and vibrant arts scene, this place is popular among creative agencies and cultural establishments. Its nicely-preserved architecture and pedestrian-friendly streets make it a proper region for retail and workplace spaces. Polo Park: As Winnipeg’s primary retail vacation spot, Polo Park offers high foot visitors and robust client interest. The presence of fundamental retail anchors and the proximity to residential regions make this a rewarding spot for retail investments. Central Business District (CBD): The CBD continues to draw new companies and gives various office spaces. The area blessings from proximity to government workplaces, economic establishments, and main company headquarters, making it a super location for expert services. Growing Sectors and Future Prospects

Winnipeg’s financial system is an increasing number of pushed via increase in technology and healthcare sectors. The city is turning into a hub for tech startups and modern agencies, while investments in healthcare infrastructure are expanding rapidly. These traits are fueling demand for specialised business spaces, which include tech labs and medical workplaces, growing new opportunities for traders.

Seize the Opportunity

For the ones considering a flow or expansion, now could be an great time to discover Winnipeg’s industrial real estate marketplace. The metropolis’s dynamic commercial enterprise environment, blended with its cheap real property alternatives and promising economic outlook, makes it a prime place for business ventures and belongings investments. Take advantage of Winnipeg’s boom capability and discover how this promising market can gain your funding portfolio.

Explore Some Commercial Real Estate Properties in Winnipeg Available for Sale.