Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

Not sure what thread this belongs in...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/magazine/the-happiness-code.html?_r=0

I agree with the basic premise of self improvement methods here. But wow these people seem insufferable. All optimization of systems and practices of extreme rationality should be performed in the privacy of ones own home and not shacked up with a bunch of tech bros shoving their hands in your leftover curry.

Is Soylent involved?

Asher is a singing, freestyle rapping, former international Quidditch All-American turned software engineer.

yea nytimes is very obsessed w/ silly lifestyles of tech bros, this is like one of a dozen pieces in the past few years

This is the problem though

Last year, President Obama established a Social and Behavioral Sciences Team at the White House; based on its findings, he recently ordered federal agencies to use behavioral-economics strategies to improve participation in their programs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(Department_of_Defense)

I have some "visions of the future" type book I got at a book sale that is a publication of the RAND corporation from the 70s, I need to dig that out

This administration has been really receptive to basically any techbro idea that isn't total political poison on its face; while that doesn't inevitably lead to SecDef Zuckerberg leading us into a war that his algorithms tell us we can win because science, it does make me increasingly uncomfortable for about a zillion other reasons and the presumptive 45th POTUS doesn't seem to have any interest in changing course

also seriously is there nobody around to point out that this shit is Esalen All Over Again or is that just understood and accepted because it's California, dude?

if it was a little less based in "research" it'd be scientology

that dude who has no formal training but is into the singularity is a good reference point, though

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/may/02/nudge-unit-has-it-worked
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory

:-(

You know what Cass Sunstein did at OIRA? He wrote a memo that said that .gov website feedback forms could get through the Paperwork Reduction Act process in 90 days or less. This was called the Fast Track process. And then delayed the hell out of a bunch of EPA regulations on ozone. Guy's a fuckin' genius.

i was in dc for the first time a couple of weeks ago tombot and i described https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-digital-service to ppl there and they straight up laughed at the idea

actually i laughed at the bit where i said government websites are now responsive by de facto regulation

i mean it's utopian and sinister to apply #product design to government but having dealt with both governments as a resident i know which i prefer

http://giphy.com/gifs/2016-journalism-journalist-3o7rbU8oYEVkUwyMs8

https://media.giphy.com/media/3o7rbU8oYEVkUwyMs8/giphy.gif

seriously who did you tell that to? 'Cause Barack straight up hired Mikey from Google and started this shit last year and it's the new hotness all over the local version of "trade press"

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/08/11/fact-sheet-improving-and-simplifying-digital-services

https://www.whitehouse.gov/digital/united-states-digital-service

I actually threw my resume in the ring on a recommendation from a guy who was leaving for greener pastures, they gave me a phone interview and then told me I wasn't their type about four months later

I mean there was a 2011 executive order on customer service which was straight ripped off y'all's gov.uk initiatives and serious talk about driving down the federal web footprint to the absolute minimum necessary - they even put my team's domain on the chopping block

I am having fun relating these tales in outdated parody blogger voice

anyway there are actual cool kids working under the digital services banner doing neat stuff - like https://pages.18f.gov/guides/ is pretty neat for example
but on most levels it's still all covered in the static-free sheen of technocratic solutionism and of course no seasoned security asshole like me is going to trust any of it

Sign me up for the technocratic socialism

it was someone from the urban institute iirc

think tankers are all basically performative academics
I can't wait until my turn

an uber but for shoveling snow

what is wrong with these people? http://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income

jesus fucking christ

http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/30/10876838/obama-computer-science-education-funding-4-billion

What we need more of is... entry-level coders!

http://jezebel.com/there-s-only-one-nurse-for-5-500-students-in-flint-mic-1756011390

who gives a shit about school nurses they're all in cahoots with those fucking teachers' unions anyway

I mean this administration has bought into the fucking valley koolaid like nobody's business and I should not be surprised but $4 billion for pushing CS in K-12 is really unbelievable

http://i.imgur.com/Mdx79Ma.jpg
"Christ, what an asshole."

what we really need is a ton of assisted living facility caregivers for when all these baby boomers need help getting on and off the toilet in a couple years

tbf computer science skills are pretty useful to anyone who works in an even tangentially technical field. it is like the new computer literacy for analytical/technical jobs

in my field some measure of programming literacy is a required baseline skill, and nothing about the field itself would imply that competency as necessary

*to the outside observer

*fart*

thx

the art/fart pun is the pizza! of all art departments

― Sufjan Grafton, Sunday, 27 December 2015 01:31 (1 month ago) Permalink

what is your field, art, if you don't mind me asking? (sorry if you do)

bananas https://twitter.com/balajis/status/703519076107194368

wow that guy's samrt

"Singapore and Estonia are far along here" would be a good thread title

someone needs to set that guy on fire

i'm sure the cloud will rush to save him

His viewpoint matches that of flea that thinks all it has to do is jump to a new dog.

I love that

otm

(what Aimless said, not the tweets of nutjob)

probably a dumb question but what are these guys doing in the cloud that is so important. my IT friends at my work aren't geniuses but they get the job done. i don't think many of them have a desire to move around to exotic locals either, one just started dating a really awesome secretary (single mom of two) from the other side of our building.

The cloud is kind of over imho
insourcing IT management saves you money more often than not - paying somebody else so they can upcharge you on equipment refresh and electric bills is not, as it turns out, the best business decision.

Not strictly true ime - the cooling and power infrastructure saves money in larger quantities. That's why so many companies who previously ran their own dc's are outsourcing to like Amazon who can run them on a huge cost saving scale

OK, I'm just going to say it now, you watch, Amazon spins off the EC2 side in a few years. People are going to start figuring out that a colo is a colo and having your own guys to run your own cages is safer and easier than the arrangement with a CSP. Governments and similarly lugubrious institutions are going to be the last PaaS customers standing.

The cloud is kind of over imho
insourcing IT management saves you money more often than not

please someone tell upper management this, we just upgraded all our IT infrastructure and finally got a full team of sysadmins but someone seems to be deciding why even use that stuff when The Cloud is a buzzword and we need to be in on all the buzzwords even if the people signing the paperwork don't know what they mean

Governments and similarly lugubrious institutions are going to be the last PaaS customers standing

oh... oh yeah. that's us. ah. "lugubrious nonprofit" TICK there we are.

dammit.

terrible band name btw

running your own shit is horrible, my workplace have two moderately modern data centers and a good contract with the power company and amazon is still cheaper and often easier to set up. fire suppression systems and redundant power and only spooling up compute power when you need it instead of running a bigass virtual machine cluster in house is nice

fuck the people who think putting our mail server in the cloud or having a very limited number of vpn access points is a good idea, though