The slacker/stoner/trustafarian/occupy/anarchist left in San Francisco are being marginalized by the wealthy young Obama leftists who work in Silicon Valley, and who are driving up the price of housing in San Francisco and Oakland. The anarchists are protesting at the homes of the wealthy, tipping over Smart cars, and vomiting on the private shuttle busses that take Silicon Valley tech firm employees to work. They demand compensation for the wrongs they believe are being done to them.
We demand that Google give three billion dollars to an anarchist organization of our choosing. This money will then be used to create autonomous, anti-capitalist, and anti-racist communities throughout the Bay Area and Northern California. In these communities, whether in San Francisco or in the woods, no one will ever have to pay rent and housing will be free. With this three billion from Google, we will solve the housing crisis in the Bay Area and prove to the world that an anarchist world is not only possible but in fact irrepressible. If given the chance, most humans will pursue a course towards increased freedom and greater liberty. As it stands, only people like Kevin Rose [a Google Venture Partner] are given the opportunity to reshape their world, and look at what they do with those opportunities.*Side note to parents of high school students planning to enroll in college: Most anarchists were liberal arts majors in college. Most wealthy Silicon Valley workers weren't.*
It's the Luddite left versus the high tech left in northern California, and neither side trusts the other. Beyond that, it has also become the corporate left versus the high tech left in the post-Snowden NSA era of tech companies spying on everyone and everything.
The Wall Street Journal quotes Stephen Cobb of information security company ESET: “In the technology industry, companies are finding that the sales cycle is getting longer, as customers ask questions such as whether an Internet router is NSA proof. ‘People are asking questions they didn’t ask before. To be in this place now, given the history of this industry, is just amazing. There is a level of suspicion and confusion we haven’t had before.’”Side note: Suspicion is well founded. Everything you type is tracked by someone. I did an experiment. I sent my wife and email in which I used the phrase "truck driver training school", a phrase I had never used before. In less than twelve hours, ads for truck driver training schools began to appear on pages I was reading online. And those were followed by ads for trucking companies seeking drivers, and later by ads from truck manufacturers.
Silicon Valley has a trust problem, and it’s growing. Some of this is the result of National Security Agency spying — and the tech community’s cooperation with same — and some of it is based on other things tech leaders are doing. But the worst of it is based on who our tech overlords have become.
The NSA spying has already done harm enough. As Glenn Derene warned in Popular Mechanics when the story first broke, fear of NSA spying is giving a boost to offshore competitors, as companies and users seek hardware and software without back doors and compromised security standards. Some foreign customers feel betrayed by Google, Facebook, and other tech giants.As I mentioned elsewhere, I have installed a browser called Epic. It works very well. One if Epic's features is privacy. All tracking is blocked, cookies are blocked, and internet searches are private. User information is not sold. An Epic feature is a counter on the screen that counts the number of trackers and cookies Epic has blocked in each session. I was stunned by the number of trackers that want access to my computer as I check blogs, read the news, shop for things.
Left or not, aren't we all becoming anti-tech? We should be, given the amount of intrusion by tech industries into our privacy.
I'm not part of the slacker/stoner/trustafarian/occupy/anarchist left in San Francisco, and I don't want to tip over Smart cars or extort money, but I am sympathetic to people who want privacy from the all-intrusive Silicon Valley tech companies and their offshoots.
48 comments:
Wow, thanks for the tip.
I tried using Epic at work, but our firewall acts as if using it is a security threat(!).
Will install at home.
That rant from San Francisco is not new, although the addition of the tech part to the rant might be considered new.
When I lived in SF, way back in the early 70s, the city was always being ruined by the wealthy who wouldn't just spend their days smoking dope and partying, too.
The outcasts called themselves "hippies" and "freaks" back then, but the message was the same. The hard working capitalists were driving the rent up and making it difficult for us to live off the fat of the land.
Thanks for the tip on Epic. I'll give it a try.
They thought they were equal. They were wrong.
That nagging suspicion that the others thought they were better.
It is the left's M.O. to assign fault and place blame and proceed to shame. With a dearth of conservatives/Republicans, the left turns on its own.
"Now I know why tigers eat their young." -Al Czervik
It does not matter what you label them based on politics or ideology. They are simply parasites - people who want something for nothing. Always had them - always will. When they become a voting block it's like an termite infestation.
The hipster pie is quite deceiving,
All peace and love on top;
Under the crust, bubbling and steaming,
Darker than darkest Aesop.
I hear a lot of losers and malcontents are moving to Frisco lately.
Let those commies deal with them.
Come on, Haz, you can't tell me you never thought of rolling a Smart Car over. Those things are just begging to get rolled. Not because of any political statement, but purely on aesthetic grounds.
I once posted a comment about my relocation plans on a blog. It did not include my email address. I have been receiving emails from moving companies ever since.
As a power lifter I am convinced that I could tip a Smart (as if!) Car on its back by myself.
I doubt it would take four of us to chunk one into the swamp, for that matter.
"... and prove to the world that an anarchist world is not only possible but in fact irrepressible."
If anarchy is what they're after, they need to go and take it.
San Francisco has always been a beacon to the goofy, adrift loons of the world.
Back when I lived there, at least it was predominantly hetero.
Where do you find a Smartcar that has been tipped on its back?
Right where you left it.
I'm just glad that the Occupy types have managed to address the huge disconnect between vilifying the 1% while they're stuck on their ipad air...
These are the cousins of the enviro-nuts who want us to go back 200 years when the life expectancy was 40.
If they want to do it themselves, I will help them on the Way-Back machine myself.
"you can't tell me you never thought of rolling a Smart Car over."
Sheesh, I've thought about rolling a Smart Car over.
When a state only has one functional party, fissures develop in that party, creating new divisions.
The best thing that could possibly happen to California.
"Everything that anyone would ever look for is usually where they find it," purred Pussy Willow
-Margaret Wise Brown, Pussy Willow
Time was, Sixty and ST would tip cows
I have too great a respect for cows to ever harm or startle one. That is so unlike me that I cannot allow such bullshit to stand.
I have tipped a cow.
And, I'm trying out the Epic browser.
I'm sorry, Sixty, I was just teasing. Have you bashed mailboxes while driving down the road :)
I've installed the Epic browser on both OS X and Windows 7. It works great. It's fast. It imports bookmarks seamlessly, and the security features are well thought-out. I haven't done anything too complex, but it downloads external files very quickly, and doesn't seem to be upset by YouTube and other video. Overall, it looks like an excellent alternative to Firefox, which I was getting sick of in any event, because it is slow and increasingly annoying. Thank you, Michael.
I point out as one who lives in America's Dairyland that 18% is the standard tip amount for cow tipping.
No gratuity is required for Smart car tipping, as it is considered a public service.
Tim - I tried, based on Haz' recommendation, to download Epic, but all I got was a mess of malware. Which site did you download from - I need Epic if only to clean up the mess my previous attempt created.
lol Haz, there's nothing like fresh cream.
And no, vandalism was not big with me - I have spent my life making things, not destroying them. That is the way of my people.
I leave destruction to those incapable of creativity and being productive.
I think this could be cool, since as Tim says, it (Epic) seems to really cut down on whatever bloatware all the tracking software adds to your experience. 'Might as well call it out for what it is: Bloatware.
I was skeptical at first, as you have to wonder what they'd want to get out of it. But maybe the two dudes just are idealists. In any event, one would have to think that at some point a tipping point is reached between how much software is devoted to tracking and how well all that stuff prevents things from actually working. There simply has to be a limit from a practical, working standpoint.
So, thanks some more.
I see serious Sixty is out and about tonight. I'll leave you to it :)
Sixty, I downloaded Epic here.
Sixty, I did the same as Michael. I seems clean on both Mac and Windows. I have McAfee on Windows, supplemented with Malwarebytes (highly recommended), and I use Intego on OS X. None of them flinched at Epic.
I haven't tried YouTube yet, other than for the Irish priest singing embedded video on Michael's latest post. But yeah, I think after a while people just started taking it for granted that they'd be ok with their videos loading more and more slowly because, well, it happened gradually. Like the frog in the pot and the water being raised to boiling eventually, rather than throwing him into boiling water from the get-go.
It's amazing how people forget. I remember now how instant things used to be. Back when the web was young and fresh.
One question though: What do you think will happen if you open GMail? I know that most of us are probably already accessing Blogger through Google accounts already. But still? Does it all just come down to the browser alone and Google can't even do a damn thing about even when you're on their very own site? That would be very cool indeed.
Gmail works on Epic. Whether it migrates tracking and cookies into Epic. I can't say. I do know that there are email services (small annual fee) that do not sell your data.
If the Bay area hippies are dragging you down, I suggest washing that over with an episode of Silicon Valley. Sure, it's exaggerated to the max, but that's what parodic satire is. Many, many nerds and only whiff of true hippie you get is with a few douchey billionaires here or there. It's kind of funny that your blind spot prevented you from realizing that sometimes the're as much idealistic utopian leftists as the rabble. But then, it was created by Mike Judge and yes, exaggerated.
Still, I can't help being reminded of LSD's primary role in opening Steve Jobs' mind and expanding it to allow for the things that others were too uncreative to think of creating. There probably is a reason for the proximity of Silicon Valley to Haight-Ashbury.
I'll actually be out nearby there soon. Perhaps not near enough to Chickie or Baggie, but I hear Bunny's out in the rural area, and I always had the impression it was a more northerly CA rural area at that.
The so-called computer tune-up that people get is little more than erasing accumulated bloatware and malware from your computer because your computer is slow.
Thanks for the tip. I'll watch an episode of Silicon Valley, maybe more.
I love the way Epic shows all the tracking and cookies. That's cool.
Yeah, I got a quiet clip of one, then three, then 17 infiltration attempts blocked, and now it's been all quiet since then. Lol. Maybe they gave up. ;-)
Haz - enjoy if you do. I actually tried streaming it on Amazon (a great service BTW, and one that thankfully adds one more nail in the coffin of the cable company's obsolescence), but I couldn't find it. THen I found HBO had it for free viewing on YouTube. I've got a pretty decent resolution TV and it broadcast great, very clearly. (Some videos already do but not many).
And then, the next big thing will come along: 4K/UHD. That stuff will be way cool.
Done and done - thanks for your help gents. Now I will figure out where everything is (I found this place!) and go on about my business and laugh at those liberal fascist commie nazis. I shall laugh at them, then laugh again!
Yeah, I'm thinking about killing the cable service, too.
I wish LSD had opened up Jobs' mind to the degree that he didn't conspire with Google and most other tech companies to refuse to hire one another's employees.
They're a huge waste in my market (can you guess which one? The one where they built one, now two skyscrapers). Ninety bucks for the same basic + HBO that cost me $30/month in Chicago. Lame. I killed them after the Sopranos finale. A dying monopoly of diminishing returns... you should be able to get all you need through Hulu, an internet-ready TV, Amazon, or the like. The sheer number of internet-generation providers (many with their own studios and their own increasingly worthwhile productions - like Netflix) tells you that the cable monopoly's the dinosaur's game. Pay for what you watch (and there's already a lot free, already - esp w/Amazon Prime), and leave the rest alone. They will simply have to find an honorable way to make money in a market that's out-evolved them.
Jobs was definitely an asshole of sorts but that Silicon Valley premiere is only cementing in my head the impression that competition for the most talented labor there is INTENSE!
There are some stories from back in the day of Steve Ballmer throwing chairs around when an employee graciously hinted at a preferable opportunity at GOOGLE. I had thought that was just crazy Steve Ballmer but it appears they really can be that cut-throat.
I mostly watch my alma mater's football and basketball games and Cubs' games, and that's about it, besides Netflix.
So, I think I can save a lot of money by just buying what I want on a subscription basis.
I say go for it, Thomas.
I haven't gone full-fledged Hulu yet but the programming should be pretty extensive and at $7.99/month it's not that risky a gamble.
For now I just get almost all I want through Amazon, though. Plus, you can stream them immediately. Even Crapple/Apple can't get me my own library without taking an hour to download from wherever they're hiding it. But that's because my ISP is very slow, < the 1 Mbps that Apple wants you to have. THe ISP is upgrading to Fios in select neighborhoods, just not yet mine.
So in the meantime, I fire up the Amazon and they get me great res. programming whenever I want it, as soon as I hit the button. It's great.
Fuck Apple.
;-)
Larry Ellison and I worked at the same mainframe manufacturer back in '74. He got laid off. I stayed.
I wonder what ever became of him...
Danke schön, Darling. Darling, danke schön, thank you for, for the Epic you've shown. Shown to me A-a-a-a-a new way to be. Shown a better way, a better place, a finer space, with reifined grace, Darlin' danke schön. *snaps fingers rhythmically*
Mr. Newton, it's an honor to have you stop by our humble board!
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