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Tech bro and billionaire worship

Started by Twed, July 15, 2018, 08:36:31 PM

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Twed

Terrible, isn't it?

People creaming themselves over Elon Musk, a manbaby with means who just called a first responder in the Thailand cave rescue a pedo for not liking his cave submarine that didn't work.

The cult of Steve Jobs.

The way that American society in particular has been trained to find inherent value in billionaires, attributing the works of their company to them as individuals. I can't think of a coworker who doesn't admire Elon Musk, talking about him as if he designed and hand-assembled every Tesla and should be made King President for the rights.

Tech bros in general are terrible. "Disrupting", slowly eroding quality of life for solutions to problems that didn't need a solution. They will define our futures through their lens, which hasn't developed since they were Ayn Rand-reading teenagers. Our lives will be worse.

The worst thing, IMO, is that they distract from the fact that we could achieve post-scarcity right now with a little focus. Instead? Blockchain fruit tracking.

José

they're just mesmerized by musk's heady aroma.

Fry

Musk just accused the diver who saved the Thai kids of being a paedo because the diver criticised his tiny submarine and sorry that is objectively the funniest thing to happen during an online breakdown and retroactively makes him deserve his billions of dollars.

Twed

To be fair I am enjoying the fuck out of it.

biggytitbo

Yes, the hero worship of creepy billionaires and their creepy billionaire agendas is bad, they are fake role models who should be shot into space in one of their stupid rockets.


imitationleather

See also: Mark Zuckerburg putting the feelers out for a potential Presidential campaign before the Cambridge Analytica thing blew up.

Twed


bgmnts

Has anything really changed in 2000 years?

Cloud

Really not a fan of Musk. If I could afford a Tesla it's hard to say if I'd drive the damn things anyway (I drive an EV so have a certain interest in the subject) but as we see with those who hate Apple products for existing, it's easy to bias yourself against something you don't have the money for (or at least can't justify; most people have at least the means to own an iPhone).  Steve Jobs was a dick, but I like what Apple creates regardless so it follows that it'd possibly be the same with Tesla. As it stands though I have zero chance of ever having the money for them and they seem overly flashy for little substance and a lot of problems, so fuck Elon Musk and funding his Trump-level manbaby ego.

Sebastian Cobb

I'd say it's pretty fashionable within tech and leftist circles to hate on Musk. I don't think he's necessarily a good man, and definitely a bit of an egomaniac but for all his flair and vanity projects he's not really the one you should be concerned about.

If anything he provides a good distraction to some far more worrying and powerful individuals. Jeff Bezos for one. Amazon working practices are terrible to their lower-tier employees, the business itself is remarkably good at avoiding tax; crucial parts of the internet run on AWS now, to the point that if it goes down the internet itself starts to stop working properly. Microsoft or Google suffering a global outage would be an inconvenience, aws going down could tumble entire economies. He's got far too much power. In the 90's the powerful people were the ones who controlled satellites and newspapers, now it's core infrastructure.

Oddly one of the people I know who is most angry about 'tech bro's' works in finance and grew up in a family that got wealthy about it. 'I just don't think a technocratic society will be good' as opposed to letting the bankers run everything I'd argue it's probably less bad.

newbridge

The funny thing about a lot of these guys, like Elon Musk or Mark Cuban, is that they made their money by selling high on garbage failure ventures during the Dot Com bubble.

Twed

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on July 15, 2018, 09:54:32 PM
I'd say it's pretty fashionable within tech and leftist circles to hate on Musk. I don't think he's necessarily a good man, and definitely a bit of an egomaniac but for all his flair and vanity projects he's not really the one you should be concerned about.

https://boingboing.net/2018/07/15/class-interests-trump-all.html

I agree that Bezos is terrible though.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Twed on July 15, 2018, 09:57:08 PM
https://boingboing.net/2018/07/15/class-interests-trump-all.html


Not all that unusual, lots of big companies donate to the republicans.

And that's the thing. The only real difference between 'tech bro's' and your old-school evil corporate overlords is that they wear jeans and go to work on a skateboard.

Sebastian Cobb

Although as someone who used to work in a place that used to love using Oracle for everything this picture really does make me happy.


Z

Quote from: Twed on July 15, 2018, 08:36:31 PMI can't think of a coworker who doesn't admire Elon Musk, talking about him as if he designed and hand-assembled every Tesla and should be made King President for the rights.
You're  a software developer too, right? A sizeable chunk of them have fucking terrible taste in everything, to be fair.... basically the exact same tastes as Elon Musk.

Quote from: Cloud on July 15, 2018, 09:41:24 PM
Really not a fan of Musk. If I could afford a Tesla it's hard to say if I'd drive the damn things anyway (I drive an EV so have a certain interest in the subject) but as we see with those who hate Apple products for existing, it's easy to bias yourself against something you don't have the money for (or at least can't justify; most people have at least the means to own an iPhone).  Steve Jobs was a dick, but I like what Apple creates regardless so it follows that it'd possibly be the same with Tesla. As it stands though I have zero chance of ever having the money for them and they seem overly flashy for little substance and a lot of problems, so fuck Elon Musk and funding his Trump-level manbaby ego.
I do think one big difference here is that Jobs had a few failures under his belt and a solid 20+ years experience on those kind of products at the point where apple really started knocking it out of the park. Musk is working with a machine that's got far more failure points and costs far more, with none of that prior experience. There isn't really a whole lot to suggest he has some extremely inspiring usability ideas and he seems to get off far too much on himself being a Steve Jobs type figure.


Also, another one for Bezos being the most terrifying. Musk probably won't be capable of assuming anything like the power Bezos has, his ego will get in the way.

Larry Ellison currently gets a bit of an out from me because his daughter has pissed away chunks of his money on things like PTA films and What Remains of Edith Finch.

Sebastian Cobb

Irrespective of Ellison's views (I think he's one of the one's from the 80's who read a bit of Ayn Rand and turned into a mad libertarian) Oracle are horrible to deal with, it costs shitloads, has awful licensing terms and is just generally a horrible to use product. They must only be cashing in on relic managers who still believe the mantra 'it costs loads so it must be good!'.

Is Elon worshipped in the US more do you think? I'm also a developer and most people I work with think Musk is a bit of a weird knob but some of the Space X, Tesla and Solar stuff are interesting projects. Which seems a fairly reasonable stance I think.

biggytitbo

I imagine he's lost a few more fans now he's outed as a republican donor.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: biggytitbo on July 15, 2018, 10:39:13 PM
I imagine he's lost a few more fans now he's outed as a republican donor.

In my mind there was a fair overlap between tesla fans and the alt-right libertarian sections of reddit.

Twed

Quote from: Z on July 15, 2018, 10:19:57 PM
You're  a software developer too, right? A sizeable chunk of them have fucking terrible taste in everything, to be fair.... basically the exact same tastes as Elon Musk.
Yeah. It's a shitty career for somebody who doesn't really like standard nerds and their personalities and opinions.

Sebastian Cobb

State of this - Bezos is already trying to ruin space by getting rid of the treaties that say it's for everyone before Musk has even managed to put people in it.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/59qmva/jeff-bezos-space-capitalism-outer-space-treaty

newbridge

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on July 15, 2018, 10:28:32 PM
Is Elon worshipped in the US more do you think? I'm also a developer and most people I work with think Musk is a bit of a weird knob but some of the Space X, Tesla and Solar stuff are interesting projects. Which seems a fairly reasonable stance I think.

I haven't met anybody who liked him but I'm not in the tech industry. I'm convinced that either he or his company uses bots to manipulate the voting system on Reddit.

Large Noise

Quote from: newbridge on July 15, 2018, 11:34:30 PM
I haven't met anybody who liked him but I'm not in the tech industry. I'm convinced that either he or his company uses bots to manipulate the voting system on Reddit.
Apparently that sort of thing is common on reddit. I don't really visit the types of subs where it happens, but the likes of r/news or r/politics etc. are supposedly riddled with it.

Urinal Cake

Musk was popular with the STEMlords and the left because of his focus on renewable energy and taking up the mantle of NASA. I think a lot of frustrated IT and Engineers identified with him since he was making the stuff they wanted to.

But then it came out he treats his workers slightly better than Bezos, unapologetically copied somebody's farting unicorn IP and called a hero* a pedo.
It's also amazing how pro gun control advocates in the US start salivating over a flame thrower.

He's basically the antagonist in a Philip K Dick novel.

Bhazor

Should be mentioned Tesla is still doing shit. Three major recalls in as many years and still not turning a profit.

https://money.cnn.com/2018/03/29/technology/business/tesla-model-s-recall/index.html

Of course a big portion of the blame for him belongs to the Obama administration and the massive loan they gave him. An example of government's chasing of the big sexy company as opposed to the practical pragmatic company. Same reason politicians care so much about car companies and their big flashy exciting names and don't care about industries that directly employ more people but are more boring like making cardboard boxes or biscuits.

buzby

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on July 15, 2018, 10:28:32 PM
Irrespective of Ellison's views (I think he's one of the one's from the 80's who read a bit of Ayn Rand and turned into a mad libertarian) Oracle are horrible to deal with, it costs shitloads, has awful licensing terms and is just generally a horrible to use product. They must only be cashing in on relic managers who still believe the mantra 'it costs loads so it must be good!'.
He ruined Sun when Oracle took them over too. Most of their  online documentation went behind a paywall and he sent the lawyers aggressively after the unofficial mirrors like Sunshack with C&Ds.

There's a couple of people in the IT department in work who wank on about Teslas, but in the engineering side Musk is generally regarded as part Bond villain, part snake-oil salesman (implementing Autopilot on a simplex, non-redundant system would be funny if it hadn't already killed people). I can't stand any of these Randian egomaniacs the dot-com bubble has blessed us with.
Quote from: Bhazor on July 16, 2018, 12:37:04 AM
Of course a big portion of the blame for him belongs to the Obama administration and the massive loan they gave him.
for someone who doesn't believe in government subsidies he's sure quick to take them.

Sebastian Cobb

Yeah I always liked Sun as a company and their 'different' hardware. Even if I found Solaris a pig and the Java Desktop System a bit clunky.

Someone I know worked for them when they got enveloped by Oracle, he described working for the latter as 'like being aboard a great big pirate ship'.

Bhazor

Musk seems to have deleted the pedo guy tweet. A rare example of him backing down rather than the usual doubling down (as he did when he accused New York Times of falsifying a disastrous test drive). A sign of mellowing?

Sebastian Cobb

Nah he seems to have been going more mental on twitter of late; this is just damage limitation.

BlodwynPig


ASFTSN

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on July 15, 2018, 09:54:32 PM
In the 90's the powerful people were the ones who controlled satellites and newspapers, now it's core infrastructure.

Maybe it's the acid reflux or the poor night's sleep making me feel fragile, but this has terrified me this morning.