5 ms·

Who is "Rebecca"? I agree with 90% of her statements, and she appears in this conversation to have further ambitions of continuing with the ideas and convincing

Who is "Rebecca"? I agree with 90% of her statements, and she appears in this conversation to have further ambitions of continuing with the ideas and convincing some powerful people, especially Paul Krugman, of their validity. Did she ever succeed? Did she write her thoughts in a more digestible format and make those writings public? Does she have further commentary on her thesis on the capitalist or non-capitalist tendencies of modern software companies, or on other topics? Mostly I'd just love to read more of her writing, if it exists. Edit: I believe she is Rebecca Frankel, according to http://danluu.com/programming-blogs/#rebecca-frankel http://danluu.com/programming-blogs/#rebecca-frankel. Still interested in any pointers to more of her writing if it exists.

jimminy 10y ago
I would assume it is Rebecca Frankel as well. I looked for a connection to Piaw and he had blogged about her during the period this conversation had taken place.
- sirclueless 10y ago
  Yes, she is a truly excellent writer. I went digging into a Buzz post about the Boston startup scene that Piaw referenced, and could only find a crufty unstyled version in the Internet Archive. If you can forgive the formatting, it's still excellent reading: https://web.archive.org/web/20100613173203/http://www.google.com/buzz/piaw/B4wChKfzFka/Theres-no-reason-why-the-Boston-area-shouldnt-be https://web.archive.org/web/20100613173203/http://www.google...
  - laser 10y ago
    Better copy: http://danluu.com/mit-stanford/ http://danluu.com/mit-stanford/
    - shalmanese 10y ago
      Prior HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1416348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1416348
nickpsecurity 10y ago
Many of her comments are very interesting and I'd probably like to read more on other subjects. That said, she almost shills for Google even if she doesn't intend to. This jumped out when she pointed out that Microsoft's strategy was to profit off of "artificial scarcity" while Google's was not. Bullshit haha! It's called PageRank: the patented, artificially-scarce algorithm that made them the multi-billion dollar company worth discussing. That plus them going public told me they'd shift toward evil for the financial, "greater good." Which is evil in surveillance and software empires more often than it is good. We see them pulling stuff with Chrome and Android that wouldn't have gotten them celebration in the early days. Another is the part about people paying ad words for freedom or stuff they couldn't otherwise get. The fact that Google's system can reach more people and more cleverly than before is certainly a benefit. There were alternatives, though, like listing your product in online stores, Buy It Now on eBay with a link to a store, or mass marketing after buying listings of leads. Similarly take less staff than traditional marketing at big firms. The online ecosystem for ads also involves lots of fraud with estimates showing it is a good percentage of ad expenses. So, Google is actually yet another middleman in this sense that tries to lock you into their set of benefits and problems. They also try to shift the benefits toward themselves a bit more over time like any business. So, they're just middlemen with a bent toward lock-in rather than purveyors of freedom. So, aside from the Google comments, other stuff was pretty interesting. Lots of historical and economic tie-ins to her analyses. EDIT to add: I'm only through around half the post. It's pretty huge haha. "When I was at Google I hung out " She also apparently worked at Google. Explains the bias. :)
- sirclueless 10y ago
  I suspect, though I have no way of knowing, that she has been thoroughly disabused of any Google-exceptionalism she may have harbored at one point. Remember this was from 2010. Google Reader was 3 years from being discontinued, Google's motto was still "Don't be evil," Buzz was an experiment that people still took seriously. The rose-colored glasses were firmly affixed to many intelligent faces, and it's hard to fault her for hoping something was intrinsically different about the company and its culture. I'm very curious whether she still thinks and hopes the same things about Google that she did then.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

jimminy 10y ago

I would assume it is Rebecca Frankel as well. I looked for a connection to Piaw and he had blogged about her during the period this conversation had taken place.

sirclueless 10y ago
Yes, she is a truly excellent writer. I went digging into a Buzz post about the Boston startup scene that Piaw referenced, and could only find a crufty unstyled version in the Internet Archive. If you can forgive the formatting, it's still excellent reading: https://web.archive.org/web/20100613173203/http://www.google.com/buzz/piaw/B4wChKfzFka/Theres-no-reason-why-the-Boston-area-shouldnt-be https://web.archive.org/web/20100613173203/http://www.google...
- laser 10y ago
  Better copy: http://danluu.com/mit-stanford/ http://danluu.com/mit-stanford/
  - shalmanese 10y ago
    Prior HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1416348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1416348

nickpsecurity 10y ago

Many of her comments are very interesting and I'd probably like to read more on other subjects. That said, she almost shills for Google even if she doesn't intend to. This jumped out when she pointed out that Microsoft's strategy was to profit off of "artificial scarcity" while Google's was not. Bullshit haha! It's called PageRank: the patented, artificially-scarce algorithm that made them the multi-billion dollar company worth discussing. That plus them going public told me they'd shift toward evil for the financial, "greater good." Which is evil in surveillance and software empires more often than it is good. We see them pulling stuff with Chrome and Android that wouldn't have gotten them celebration in the early days. Another is the part about people paying ad words for freedom or stuff they couldn't otherwise get. The fact that Google's system can reach more people and more cleverly than before is certainly a benefit. There were alternatives, though, like listing your product in online stores, Buy It Now on eBay with a link to a store, or mass marketing after buying listings of leads. Similarly take less staff than traditional marketing at big firms. The online ecosystem for ads also involves lots of fraud with estimates showing it is a good percentage of ad expenses. So, Google is actually yet another middleman in this sense that tries to lock you into their set of benefits and problems. They also try to shift the benefits toward themselves a bit more over time like any business. So, they're just middlemen with a bent toward lock-in rather than purveyors of freedom. So, aside from the Google comments, other stuff was pretty interesting. Lots of historical and economic tie-ins to her analyses. EDIT to add: I'm only through around half the post. It's pretty huge haha. "When I was at Google I hung out " She also apparently worked at Google. Explains the bias. :)

sirclueless 10y ago
I suspect, though I have no way of knowing, that she has been thoroughly disabused of any Google-exceptionalism she may have harbored at one point. Remember this was from 2010. Google Reader was 3 years from being discontinued, Google's motto was still "Don't be evil," Buzz was an experiment that people still took seriously. The rose-colored glasses were firmly affixed to many intelligent faces, and it's hard to fault her for hoping something was intrinsically different about the company and its culture. I'm very curious whether she still thinks and hopes the same things about Google that she did then.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]