Tootfinder

Caltrain: Silicon Valley hat jetzt eine echte elektrische Eisenbahn
Eine Zukunftsbranche bekommt ein zukunftsfähiges Nahverkehrssystem. Die Oberleitung ist aktiv und der für das Silicon Valley und San Francisco wichtige Caltrain damit für die Zukunft gerüstet. Das pendelnde IT-Personal wird deutliche Verbesserungen erfahren. Zudem sind Akkuzüge geplant.

Caltrain: Silicon Valley hat jetzt eine echte elektrische Eisenbahn
Eine Zukunftsbranche bekommt ein zukunftsfähiges Nahverkehrssystem. Die Oberleitung ist aktiv und der für das Silicon Valley und San Francisco wichtige Caltrain damit für die Zukunft gerüstet. Das pendelnde IT-Personal wird deutliche Verbesserungen erfahren. Zudem sind Akkuzüge geplant.

Reddit's down round IPO is a signal that rationality is slowly returning to VC and could encourage other tech companies looking to go public do the same (Tabby Kinder/Financial Times)
https://t.co/YWCaOGWfI9

"Will A.I. Ever Live Up to Its Hype?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/opinion/artificial-intelligence-ai-openai-chatgpt-overrated-hype.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sE0.2pJC.01Wt4_Q…

Opinion | A.I. and the Silicon Valley Hype Machine
It’s looking less like an all-powerful being and more like an unreliable intern.

In a rare show of bipartisanship after the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, the Senate Banking Committee -- by an overwhelming margin -- passed the
"Recovering Executive Compensation Obtained from Unaccountable Practices" ( #RECOUP ) Act,
which would allow regulators to recoup bank executives’ compensation from the two years preceding a bank failure

Tell the Senate: Hold Bank Executives Accountable for Their Recklessness and Pass the RECOUP Act!
In a rare show of bipartisanship and by an overwhelming margin, the Senate Banking Committee recently passed the Recovering Executive Compensation Obtained from Unaccountable Practices (RECOUP) Act, which would allow regulators to recoup bank executives’ compensation from the two years preceding a bank failure. It’s a great sign that some Republicans are finally joining forces with Democrats to advance an important aspect of financial reform. Now, we have to make sure the bill moves …

(🎁) Will A.I. Ever Live Up to Its #Hype?
It’s looking less like an all-powerful being and more like an unreliable intern.
"Given these constraints, it seems just as likely to me that generative #AI could end up like the Roomba, the mediocre vacuum robot that does a passable job when you are…

We really need a different term than ‘AI’ to describe private, on-device machine learning that benefits individuals but (a) doesn’t violate anyone’s privacy, (b) doesn’t destroy the environment and, (c) doesn’t enrich smug Silicon Valley tech douchebros like Sam Altman.
#ai #ml

A look at chip design companies like Oppstar that aim to push Malaysia, the world's sixth-largest semiconductor exporter, to the higher end of the value chain (Tsubasa Suruga/Nikkei Asia)
https://t.co/BeC8F0GmZU

Malaysian 'Silicon Valley' seeds homegrown chip startups
Former Intel engineers attempt to push Penang to higher end of value chain

San Francisco: Stadtbahnen fahren nur dank 5,25-Zoll-Disketten noch jahrelang
Auch direkt am Silicon Valley sind Disketten nicht komplett verdrängt, teilweise bilden sie die Grundlage von Infrastruktur. Das zeigt sich in San Francisco.

Just remembered another minor tech hype from a few years ago when Silicon Valley douchebros wanted to sell everyone on wireless charging at a distance (like plug something into outlet and it uses magical waves to beam power to your phone and laptop)

AI chip developer Rivos, which recently settled with Apple over trade secret theft, raised $250M led by Matrix to compete with Nvidia using its RISC-V chips (Jane Lanhee Lee/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Chip Startup Rivos Raises More Than $250 Million to Tap AI Boom
Silicon Valley chip developer Rivos Inc. raised more than $250 million as it works toward bringing out its first product, underscoring the push for new hardware to meet the needs of artificial intelligence.

Woot!
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/05/13/billionaire-khosla-loses-bid-to-end-california-beach-access-suit/
I mean, for fuck's sake, just make it a foot path. Feel free to fence it off if you want.

This article is old, but I think about it often.
“Five hundred years ago, this swath of California was populated by the Ohlone, who survived without farming or animal domestication”
#NativeAmericans #Nature #technology

The Competition Commission of India orders an antitrust probe into Google for charging Play Store app developers an "excessive and unfair" fee of 10% to 30% (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/15/india-…

India orders antitrust probe into Google's app store billing practices | TechCrunch
India's antitrust regulator has ordered an investigation into Alphabet's Google amid a dispute with some Indian developers over its in-app billing system, India's antitrust regulator has ordered an investigation into Google's app store billing practices, in the latest headache for the Silicon Valley giant.

👏👏👏 https://abc7news.com/congressional-forum-silicon-valley-high-school-students-california-16th-district/14459551/

When Silicon Valley venture capitalists look at ChatGPT and generative AI, they see their bank accounts becoming flush with returns from startup investments that one day will become unicorns.
When a wage-earner, including in the cognitive class, looks at AI, they fear a disappearing paycheck.
Therein lies the driving dynamic of accelerating inequality in the age of digital capitalism.
When intelligent machines displace gainful occupations and depress wages by divorcing pro…

Wages Vs. Wealth In The Coming AI Boom | NOEMA
From bargaining over income to sharing capital gains.

Das Verhältnis Medianeinkommen in US-Haushalten liegt zum Medianeinkommen im Silicon Valley bei 1:2.
74.000 $ zu 149.000 $
Das Verhältnis der US-Armutsschwelle zur Armutsschwelle im Silicon Valley liegt allerdings bei 1:7, mit 14.000 $ US-weit und 104.000 im Silicon Valley ...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oh look, the Chinese have unlocked the capacity to execute a Torment Nexus rhetorical fault at nearly Silicon Valley levels of efficiency
#Cyberpunk #WarningNotAManual

Today I learned (@todayilearned@noc.social)
Attached: 1 image TIL China's rival to Starlink is called SkyNet, the same name of the Terminator's franchise AI system that conquered the world. https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/skynet-china-starlink-rival-launched #til #todayilearned https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1cpkcp7/til_chinas_rival_to_starlink_is_called_skynet_the/

#Texas is losing Californian transplants again. No surprise to me, as Texas politicans use Californians as rhetoric bait—at the same time boasting about how Californians are moving into the state to create the next Silicon Valley in Austin, while simultaneously scapegoating Californians as disgusting commie liberals invading their state, lumping them together with “illegal immigrants” in their xenopho…

Texas Attracted California Techies. Now It’s Losing Thousands of Them.
The “Texas Miracle” loses some of its magic as Oracle announces it’s moving its new HQ out of Austin and Tesla lays off nearly 2,700 workers.

New RISC-V microprocessor can run CPU, GPU, and NPU workloads simultaneously
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/former-silicon-valley-vets-create-risc-v-micro…

Note to self: Wenn ich mal in San Francisco bin darf ich meinen starken Elektromagneten nicht vergessen.
From: @…
https://social.heise.de/@heiseonline/1<…

Silicon Valley isn’t just full of psychopathic swindlers. It’s full of ecocidal psychopathic swindlers hell-bent on destroying not only democracy but our habitat along with it. It is your moral duty as a human being to oppose the planet-destroying hype bubbles they keep coming up with, whether it’s proof-of-work, AI, or whatever foul bit of bullshit comes next from that libertarian den of coke-addled billionaires and their fawning enablers.

Ma quale AI! Ogni mattina un Floppy Disk ricorda ai treni di San Francisco come funzionare
https://poliverso.org/display/0477a01e-62dcd0fc-809c06f974678bd6
Ma quale AI! Ogni mattina un Floppy Disk ricorda ai treni di San Francisco come funzionare Ne…

Status: "broadband" connection is smoking.
I put "broadband" in quotes because in the middle of this technology desert called Silicon Valley, I have a choice of exactly two broadband providers, and the one that has the less-horrible privacy policy has date rates that were last acceptable maybe last century.

Gotta love how right wingers pivot faster on climate change than a Silicon Valley company on video
“Climate change is a hoax”
“Well climate change isn’t caused by humans”
“Fine, it’s caused by humans but it won’t do much”
“Ok, it’s very serious but you know what, warmer is better actually!”

👏👏👏 https://abc7news.com/congressional-forum-silicon-valley-high-school-students-california-16th-district/14459551/

How a new generation of tech founders and VCs are quietly pilgrimaging to the Gulf states' sovereign wealth funds, after some shunned Middle Eastern funding (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/05…

Silicon Valley once chafed at dictatorships. Then came a Middle East gold rush.
Virtually overnight, the Middle East has emerged as the most powerful geopolitical force in the tech industry, due in part to the Biden administration’s fears about China.

#Texas is losing Californian transplants again. No surprise to me, as Texas politicans use Californians as rhetoric bait—at the same time boasting about how Californians are moving into the state to create the next Silicon Valley in Austin, while simultaneously scapegoating Californians as disgusting commie liberals invading their state, lumping them together with “illegal immigrants” in their xenopho…

Texas Attracted California Techies. Now It’s Losing Thousands of Them.
The “Texas Miracle” loses some of its magic as Oracle announces it’s moving its new HQ out of Austin and Tesla lays off nearly 2,700 workers.

Let's say it out loud. There is an anti-worker, anti-social, downright fascist and pseudo-nationalist vein running through Silicon Valley. Whether it's Musk, Google, Ellison in the backroom, or this CoinBro, it runs deep and wide.
I remember when Steve Jobs and Larry Ellision were, famously, best friends. I wonder what Steve would say today. On BitCoin and AI and all this neo-fascist BS…
At risk of sounding like I am calling upon a saviour... I wish he was here.
<…

A profile of Bolt founder Ryan Breslow, who raised a $355M Series E in 2022, setting off 18 months of acrimonious lawsuits and a showdown with an early backer (Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahemerson/2024/03/11/the-bill…

The Billion-Dollar Unraveling Of The 'King' Of Silicon Valley
The Silicon Valley wunderkind rode his fintech unicorn Bolt to the bank. Then came the lawsuits and money squabbles — and a brutal valuation crash that wiped out much of his fortune.

#OpenAI
Good read: https://aftermath.site/openai-sora-scam-sillicon-valley

AI Video Is A Scam - Aftermath
On Thursday, OpenAI revealed their text to video AI generation model. This is the same scam I have seen in Silicon Valley one thousand times.

Falls mir jemand über die Schulter schauen will. Ich taumele jetzt aber erst mal ins Bett. Yawn.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/l6jynxnyg7auqnxvei9dp/Silicon-Valley-Geographie-und-R…

Me watching online communities huddling up in exclusive Discord servers.

Jag är väl en sur gubbe men jag tänker inte kolla upp mig mot någon "brygga". Jag är här på flykt från silicon valley. Jag vill inte ha att göra med någon techmiljardär med ett mänskligt ansikte #brännallabryggor

Wie man Daten ohne Metadaten findet
Daten produzieren Daten. Wird ein Datum abgelegt, dann werden für die Wiederfindbarkeit Indizes, Metadaten, Pointer etc. erstellt. Spezielle Accelerator- oder Auslagerungskarten sollen den Storage effizienter machen, ist aber selbst eher ineffizient. Abgesehen von der Materialschlacht erhöht es Komplexität und Kosten. Ein Startup aus dem Silicon Valley verspricht Heilung. –

London-based Griffin Bank, which offers an API-driven "banking as a service" platform, raised a $24M Series A extension, after a $13.5M Series A in June 2023 (Mike Butcher/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/10/bank

‘Banking as a Service’ startup Griffin riases $24M and attains full banking licence | TechCrunch
Founded by former Silicon Valley engineers, UK-based Griffin Bank bills itself as an API-driven ‘Banking as a Service’ platform. After raising $28.1 Founded by former Silicon Valley engineers, UK-based Griffin Bank bills itself as an API-driven ‘Banking as a Service’ platform. After raising $28.1 million, it has now raised another $24 million (£19 million) in a fresh, extended Series A, funding round led by MassMutual Ventures, NordicNinja and Breega, with participation from existing i…

Tech Leaders Fled San Francisco During the Pandemic. Now, They’re Coming Back. - WSJ https://www.wsj.com/tech/san-francisco-ai-boom-silicon-valley-307816b2

Balaji Srinivasan is the spearhead of the new fascist movement establishing itself in Silicon Valley.
It's easy to dismiss him as a clown given how bad, inconsistent and dumb his ideas are but he's a clown with a lot of followers in tech who listen to his visions of "ethnic cleansing".
https://

The Tech Baron Seeking to “Ethnically Cleanse” San Francisco
If Balaji Srinivasan is any guide, then the Silicon Valley plutocrats are definitely not okay.

About that time Steve Jobs came out to visit @BrownCSDept to help launch the Macintosh, and Andy van Dam went head-to-head with him…
https://blog.cs.brown.edu/2024/02/27/the-computer-hi…

The Computer History Museum’s 40th Anniversary Celebration Of The Macintosh Includes A Shoutout To Brown CS
On January 24 of 2024, I attended the Computer History Museum (CHM)’s huge celebration in Silicon Valley for the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Apple Macintosh, where Brown CS got a shout-out during the two-hour program. Why would that be? I thought it would be interesting to those who weren’t around to learn about how universities – Brown in particular – were instrumental to the success of the computer that many now take for granted.

Mela erzählt beim Abendessen von ihrem Tag im Seminar über das Silicon Valley ...
Bernd: *scheinheilig* "Die werden gar nicht merken, dass sie einen totalen Nerd in ihrer Mitte haben ..."
Mela: *deadpan* "Kein bisschen."
Bernd: *scheinheilig* "... und du kannst Dich ja zurückhalten."
Mela: *deadpan* "Ja, absolut."
#SzenenEinerEhe

“The problem isn’t tech. It’s people.”
Kara Swisher on the toxic giants of Big Tech https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/04/musk-needs-to-be-ado…

Daily Inspiration: "You'll never find your opportunity in the depths of your despair!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
I'm down in Silicon Valley in California today, where I've got a last-minute film project with Intel and HP on what else - artificial intelligence! More to come on that project in the days to come.
But while walking around yesterday after our flight in, I was reminded of the 80s song that features the phrase "Always something there to remind me&…

Daily Inspiration: Volatility & Trends – “You’ll never find your opportunity in the depths of your despair!”

Memo: John Collison says Stripe is in "no rush" to go public and payments volume rose 25% YoY to $1T in 2023; source: Stripe hit $1B in net revenue in Q3 2023 (George Hammond/Financial Times)
https://t.co/f9yFN6nzxG

Wondering if Tim Cook survives the Apple Car story
Otoh Silicon Valley atm is literally succumbing to magical thinking about AI so who knows

"Software engineers are not always aware that our cherished Silicon Valley was a side effect (with apologies to our readers fond of functional programming) of the San Francisco counterculture of the late 60s. Such a movement and its devotion to LSD gave us Scott McKenzie singing at the Monterey Festival (where a certain Ravi Shankar made his debut in front of an American audience), and it also sparked influential software companies with names like Lotus, Sun, and Apple."

Geoffrey James
Western culture has long been fascinated with what the French call "Extrême-Orient"; since the times of Marco Polo, most probably since biblical times. We (the editors of a magazine that is, after all, a pure product of Western civilization) assign certain qualities to the thinking patterns of those regions: wisdom, calmness, thoughtfulness, and reflection. Eastern philosophy is often analyzed in counterpoint, in a tangential or even orthogonal fashion from its western counterpart: Confucius v…

#OpenAI
Good read: https://aftermath.site/openai-sora-scam-sillicon-valley

AI Video Is A Scam - Aftermath
On Thursday, OpenAI revealed their text to video AI generation model. This is the same scam I have seen in Silicon Valley one thousand times.

A large contingent of webdevs seem to think that fast means “best-case fast.”
“Our web sites are fast on expensive hardware and from reliable fiber networks.”
Worst-case fast is a much more meaningful, impressive, and inclusive claim to make! Fast on low-end hardware. Fast on slow networks.
Fast on the World Wide Web—not just from a WeWork in Silicon Valley.

Kara Swisher’s “reputation as a fearless but fair-minded, straight-talking reporter” might be well earned but she’s also remarkably thin-skinned.
I respectfully challenged her on Twitter about an inaccurate story she wrote (one I was involved in and knew the details of) and not only did she double down on the inaccuracies, she blocked me. 🤷‍♂️
(Gift link)

Book Review: ‘Burn Book,’ by Kara Swisher
In “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story,” the pioneering journalist recounts a life in, and of, Silicon Valley.

The Tech Baron Seeking to “Ethnically Cleanse” San Francisco | The New Republic
https://newrepublic.com/article/180487/balaji-srinivasan-network-state-plutocrat

The Tech Baron Seeking to “Ethnically Cleanse” San Francisco
If Balaji Srinivasan is any guide, then the Silicon Valley plutocrats are definitely not okay.

BCG Announces Collaborations with NASA and USRA to Launch a Generative Artificial Intelligence Lab for Science and Engineering
https://www.bcg.com/press/18april2024-generative-artificial-intelligence-lab-for-science-and-engin…

Interviews with Garry Tan, Paul Graham, YC partners, and others about Tan reshaping YC in a "return to roots", as some founders complain about politicization (Alex Konrad/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/20

Inside Y Combinator’s ‘Boom Loop’: The Startup Factory Goes Brasher, Leaner And Meaner
Former venture capitalist Garry Tan has slashed programs and turned up the mics in a bid to restore the famed accelerator behind Airbnb and Stripe to its full glory.

"‘Eugenics on steroids’: the toxic and contested legacy of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute"
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/28/n…

RFK Jr. Is Expected to Name Nicole Shanahan as His Vice-Presidential Pick - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/26/us/politics/rfk-jr-vice-president-nicole-shanahan.html

RFK Jr. Is Expected to Name Nicole Shanahan as His Vice-Presidential Pick
Mr. Kennedy, the independent presidential candidate, is expected to announce Ms. Shanahan, a wealthy Silicon Valley lawyer, as his vice-presidential pick on Tuesday in Oakland, Calif.

this is unironically brilliant. it's like a parody show of silicon valley, but played entirely for straight. the "whales" are the butt of the joke and one almost thinks they don't realise
<https://youtu.be/Xml2Aas-hSk>

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.14765 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@a…

Proposed real-time charge noise measurement via valley state reflectometry
We theoretically propose a method to perform \textit{in situ} measurements of charge noise during logical operations in silicon quantum dot spin qubits. Our method does not require ancillary spectator qubits but makes use of the valley degree of freedom in silicon. Sharp interface steps or alloy disorder in the well provide a valley transition dipole element that couples to the field of an on-chip microwave resonator, allowing rapid reflectometry of valley splitting fluctuations caused by charg…

I like this line "...is a plan that could only be hatched by the lanyard class—those who do not live near or among poor people and are perpetually rehearsing a TED talk in their head."
It summarizes so much of silicon valley, you might be a middle-class fresh college grad, but you still live in the lanyard class.

As VC firms pivot to investing in startups developing defense tech for the US and its allies, some of their business ties with China still linger (Heather Somerville/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.

#PirateCatRadio ❝I want people not to just hear a lot of miscreants on the air, something raw and straightforward. Here in Silicon Valley we hear about big tech names, yet equally impactful are the folks who do not get the light of day.❞ https://

A Pirate Cat Radio story... | Los Gatan | Los Gatos, California
Pirate Cat Radio, at the 92.9 FM frequency, is the “work in progress” of Los Gatos resident Daniel Roberts. KPCR was switched on in 2020 and relocated here this past December, as first reported by the Los Gatan. For Pirate Cat Radio founder Roberts, that move was a homecoming—the culmination of a journey that began […]

I’m waiting for Silicon Valley companies to make AI versions of their dead founders and the AI founders then quit on the spot because of how bad the tech industry grift has gotten.

My latest piece is out. A 5,000 word essay on tech, Midjourney, urban planning, eschatology, and Thomas Kinkade.
https://varnelis.net/california-forever-or-the-aesthetics-of-ai-images/

California Forever or, the Aesthetics of AI images
This past August (2023), a new urban project called “California Forever” was announced, promising a walkable city for 400,000 in Solano County, not far from the Bay area. Critics soon pointed out several flaws in the renderings the company distributed. First, even though the venture was backed by billionaire Silicon Valley investors such as Laurene ... Read more

Wie man Daten ohne Metadaten findet
Daten produzieren Daten. Wird ein Datum abgelegt, dann werden für die Wiederfindbarkeit Indizes, Metadaten, Pointer etc. erstellt. Spezielle Accelerator- oder Auslagerungskarten sollen den Storage effizienter machen, ist aber selbst eher ineffizient. Abgesehen von der Materialschlacht erhöht es Komplexität und Kosten. Ein Startup aus dem Silicon Valley verspricht Heilung. –

A profile of Mistral AI CEO Arthur Mensch, who says, as an atheist, he is uncomfortable with Silicon Valley's "AGI rhetoric" and "religious" fascination with AI (New York Times)
…

Europe’s A.I. ‘Champion’ Sets Sights on Tech Giants in U.S.
Mistral, a French start-up considered a promising challenger to OpenAI and Google, is getting support from European leaders who want to protect the region’s culture and politics.

Displaying these juvenile traits into adulthood is known as 'cultural neoteny', I believe.
Kara Swisher on the toxic giants of Big Tech https://www.theguardian.com/technology/20…

Had knives in my throat (not Covid, probably… at least tests were/are negative) so went to see my new GP and we ended up chatting about the OneWheel I rode in on (he took up skating later on in life and tried one in France apparently), the shit factory that is Silicon Valley (he used to be a software dev there before he became a doctor), the Small Web (he digs the idea), and, yes even my sore throat (I’m on antibiotics now). Needless to say, I like my new GP :)

A profile of Mistral AI CEO Arthur Mensch, who says, as an atheist, he is uncomfortable with Silicon Valley's "AGI rhetoric" and "religious" fascination with AI (New York Times)
…

Europe’s A.I. ‘Champion’ Sets Sights on Tech Giants in U.S.
Mistral, a French start-up considered a promising challenger to OpenAI and Google, is getting support from European leaders who want to protect the region’s culture and politics.

Maybe needless to say, but reminder that literally everything you store online with Google, Microsoft, Dropbox and so on will be sold to AI companies run by the absolute worst silicon valley douchebros.
Enjoy your children’s faces show up on generated porn.

Kara Swisher’s “reputation as a fearless but fair-minded, straight-talking reporter” might be well earned but she’s also remarkably thin-skinned.
I respectfully challenged her on Twitter about an inaccurate story she wrote (one I was involved in and knew the details of) and not only did she double down on the inaccuracies, she blocked me. 🤷‍♂️
(Gift link)

Book Review: ‘Burn Book,’ by Kara Swisher
In “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story,” the pioneering journalist recounts a life in, and of, Silicon Valley.

A look at the challenges of academic AI research, as costs to develop generative AI models grow rapidly and tech companies' salaries drain academia of talent (Washington Post)
https://wapo.st/3Ix9deO

Silicon Valley is pricing academics out of AI research
A growing chorus of academics say the sky-high cost of working with AI models is boxing researchers out of the field, compromising independent study of the technology.

My latest piece is out. A 5,000 word essay on tech, Midjourney, urban planning, eschatology, and Thomas Kinkade.
https://varnelis.net/california-forever-or-the-aesthetics-of-ai-images/

California Forever or, the Aesthetics of AI images
This past August (2023), a new urban project called “California Forever” was announced, promising a walkable city for 400,000 in Solano County, not far from the Bay area. Critics soon pointed out several flaws in the renderings the company distributed. First, even though the venture was backed by billionaire Silicon Valley investors such as Laurene ... Read more

I have a feeling it starts with Silicon and ends with Valley. Or maybe it starts with Venture and ends with Capital? Or perhaps simply starts with capital and ends with ism.
https://draw-together.small-web.org

To fully grasp the current situation in San Francisco, where venture capitalists are trying to take control of City Hall, you must listen to #Balaji #Srinivasan.
Before you do, steel yourself for what’s to come:
A normal person could easily mistake his rambling train wrecks of thought for a crackpot’s ravi…

The Tech Baron Seeking to “Ethnically Cleanse” San Francisco
If Balaji Srinivasan is any guide, then the Silicon Valley plutocrats are definitely not okay.

A look at the US venture debt landscape a year after SVB collapsed, as none of the new options have become as appealing as the "one-stop shop" SVB offered (Financial Times)
https://t.co/7qp4zEJ36U

Deeply disappointed by the “go along to get along” mindset of most of the tech “leaders” over the past 8 years. It’s a continuation of a long and shameful history of bending to and profiting from fascism.
https://wapo.st/49BZfo7

How Trump pushed Silicon Valley off the rails
Did tech titans have an option? I thought so.

A look at MatX, which was founded by ex-Google engineers, has raised $25M, and hopes to design chips that are 10x faster than Nvidia's GPUs at training LLMs (Ashlee Vance/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024…

AI Chip Startups Like MatX Storm Silicon Valley
A new startup called MatX from former Google engineers reflects a renewed enthusiasm for chipmakers.

“Tech isn’t political”
The Nazis in tech are, very vocally. That’s why if you have any sort of following in tech on social media you should vocally call them out and use your voice to denounce these absolute garbage people.
Because if you don’t, you’re quietly let them take away what you love.
ht…

The Tech Baron Seeking to “Ethnically Cleanse” San Francisco
If Balaji Srinivasan is any guide, then the Silicon Valley plutocrats are definitely not okay.

Sources: Applied Materials may scale back or cancel plans to open a $4B R&D facility in Silicon Valley due to a lack of government funding (Shira Stein/San Francisco Chronicle)
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/applied-mate…

Followerpower:
Is there someone from the Bay Area who could say if this result is more or less correct or if there is data missing? Is there virtually no public transport in the Southern Silicon Valley?

Here is a sneak preview of my latest—on "California Forever" (the Solano County tech city), AI images, Thomas Kinkade, Christian Eschatology, the Singularity, and more—written only for you and me, not for some scurrilous, paywalled academic publication.
https://varnelis.net/cal…

California Forever or, the Aesthetics of AI images
This past August (2023), a new urban project called “California Forever” was announced, promising a walkable city for 400,000 in Solano County, not far from the Bay area. Critics soon pointed out several flaws in the renderings the company distributed. First, even though the venture was backed by billionaire Silicon Valley investors such as Laurene ... Read more

“Tech isn’t political”
The Nazis in tech are, very vocally. That’s why if you have any sort of following in tech on social media you should vocally call them out and use your voice to denounce these absolute garbage people.
Because if you don’t, you’re quietly let them take away what you love.
ht…

The Tech Baron Seeking to “Ethnically Cleanse” San Francisco
If Balaji Srinivasan is any guide, then the Silicon Valley plutocrats are definitely not okay.

Sources: French AI startup Mistral AI is nearing a deal to raise ~$600M at a $6B valuation, after raising $500M at a $2B valuation in December 2023 (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/te…

Oxford shuts down institute run by Elon Musk-backed philosopher
Oxford University this week shut down an academic institute run by one of Elon Musk’s favorite philosophers.
The 🔸Future of Humanity Institute, 🔸dedicated to the long-termism movement
and other Silicon Valley-endorsed ideas such as effective altruism,
closed this week after 19 years of operation.
Musk had donated £1m to the FIH in 2015 through a sister organization to research the threat of artifi…

The increase of stock sales in privately held companies leads to tensions with startups like Stripe; the market is estimated to rise 40% YoY to $64B in 2024 (Erin Griffith/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/06/technology/startup-stock-fu…

Tensions Rise in Silicon Valley Over Sales of Start-Up Stocks
The market for shares of hot start-ups like SpaceX and Stripe is projected to reach a record $64 billion this year.

Sources say Sundar Pichai is now making day-to-day decisions about adding generative AI to Google products even as some worry about his low-key leadership style (Financial Times)
https://t.co/MMxjNEdqaS

How tech workers, spurred by geopolitical threats, are embracing battlefield tech; PitchBook: VCs invested $108B in defense tech companies between 2021 and 2023 (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/…

How Silicon Valley learned to love America, drones, and glory
After a decade of building the future, tech’s new guard is going back to the American past, spurring a funding frenzy in defense technology

Oxford shuts down institute run by Elon Musk-backed philosopher
Oxford University this week shut down an academic institute run by one of Elon Musk’s favorite philosophers.
The 🔸Future of Humanity Institute, 🔸dedicated to the long-termism movement
and other Silicon Valley-endorsed ideas such as effective altruism,
closed this week after 19 years of operation.
Musk had donated £1m to the FIH in 2015 through a sister organization to research the threat of artifi…

How tech workers, spurred by geopolitical threats, are embracing battlefield tech; PitchBook: VCs invested $108B in defense tech companies between 2021 and 2023 (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/…

How Silicon Valley learned to love America, drones, and glory
After a decade of building the future, tech’s new guard is going back to the American past, spurring a funding frenzy in defense technology

SVB agrees to sell its VC arm SVB Capital, which manages ~$9.8B in assets, to a new entity backed by Brookfield and Sequoia Heritage for $340M in cash (Dan Primack/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2024/05/03/svb-venture-capital-arm

SVB agrees to sell venture capital arm for $340 million
The fire sale of Silicon Valley Bank is nearly complete.

AI chip startup SiMa.ai raised $70M led by Maverick Capital to develop chips for cameras, cars, and other consumer devices, taking its total funding to $270M (Jane Lanhee Lee/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Chip Startup Raises $70 Million to Quicken AI on Cars and Robots
Silicon Valley chip startup SiMa.ai raised $70 million in a funding round led by Maverick Capital to develop chips designed to speed up AI applications within everyday consumer devices from cameras to cars.

Modal, which offers employees personalized technical and AI skills training, raised a $25M Series A co-led by Left Lane Capital and Ensemble VC (Andrew Mendez/Silicon Valley Business Journal)
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2024/04/02/…

Modal, which offers employees personalized technical and AI skills training, raised a $25M Series A co-led by Left Lane Capital and Ensemble VC (Andrew Mendez/Silicon Valley Business Journal)
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2024/04/02/…

An excerpt from the book Behind the Startup details how an unnamed Silicon Valley-based unicorn's push for rapid growth left little time for actual engineering (Benjamin Shestakofsky/IEEE Spectrum)
https://spectrum.ieee.org/unicorn-startup

The Messy Reality Behind a Silicon Valley Unicorn

A VC-backed startup’s push for growth left little time for actual engineering

At a DC event on May 1, over 100 tech CEOs and investors plan to lobby against AI regulation, ask to relax immigration rules, and drum up hawkishness on China (Cecilia Kang/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/…

A.I. Leaders Press Advantage With Congress as China Tensions Rise
Silicon Valley chiefs are swarming the Capitol to try to sway lawmakers on the dangers of falling behind in the artificial intelligence race.

Tech investors and founders are flocking back to San Francisco, currently undergoing an AI boom, after leaving during the pandemic for Miami and other US cities (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/san-francisco-ai-boom-silicon-v…

How Anthropic raised $7.3B in the past year, including using unusual deal structures; sources say its valuation tripled to $15B and its monthly revenue hit $8M (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/technology/anthropic-funding-ai.html…

Inside the Funding Frenzy at Anthropic, One of A.I.’s Hottest Start-Ups
The company raised $7.3 billion over the last year, as the lure of artificial intelligence changes Silicon Valley deal-making.

Sensor Tower: Naval Ravikant and Brian Norgard's audio-focused invitation-only social app Airchat has been downloaded 30K times since it relaunched this month (Priya Anand/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Invitation-Only Airchat Becomes Hot Social App in Tech Circles
Invitation links have been flying around Silicon Valley the past few days to an exclusive app that’s a combination of voice notes and Twitter, called Airchat.