On your points about grad-student vs. law-firm: Yeah, all the 'real' hackers are out now. Just look at Google Maps, that thing was better 10 years ago than it i

On your points about grad-student vs. law-firm: Yeah, all the 'real' hackers are out now. Just look at Google Maps, that thing was better 10 years ago than it is today. Complain all you want about the proliferation in devices, but the fact remains that it was better a decade ago. I say that to mean that the actual hackers and the neck-beards that care about the product are gone and have been replaced by bullshit artists. Reasonable people, people that have mortgages and get other people to change their oil. Let me repeat that: Google is full of BSAs now. Just look at the Burn, it's all cigarettes and blow now, not pot and LSD. It's a networking event! How in the heck did nepotism, sorry, I mean networking, get out to Gerlach? Where have the real hackers gone off to? Somewhere cheap, aka not the Bay Area. Look at Knoxville or Tallahassee, other Southern cities, Albuquerque and Reno, or Albany. Places with some sort of grad school (not just comp-sci, look at all that CRISPR-CAS9 stuff, oh man!) that does not have crazy rents nearby. A place where you can't tell if they are a grad student or a homeless dude. The 'real' hackers are out there being busy building things, thankyouverymuch, and not giving a damn about juices that someone else makes for them. It's not that Tech has changed, those toothy basement dwellers are a part of the human genetic code, it's that SF has changed. It's mature now, there are firms and suits and spouses that need to be kept. SF will continue along this path, it is not what it once was and really, all things evolve.