6 ms·

Despite the "change the world.. break the rules, etc." rhetoric, Silicon Valley couldn't be more different today. I find it hard to imagine a Google employee r

by nikcub 10y ago

Despite the "change the world.. break the rules, etc." rhetoric, Silicon Valley couldn't be more different today. I find it hard to imagine a Google employee releasing an ad blocker[0], or Popcorn Time raising a Series A round, or startups shipping crypto that breaks the law, or a startup selling offensive security software (there's a reason that business has been pushed overseas) Today, startups that push the boundaries on bad laws and regulations are more likely to be roundly criticized than praised. DMCA notices are automatically complied with without question via automated systems. The tech companies have become the media companies. Founders in file sharing or media make a point in investment pitches that they'll be conformist. YouTube's ContentID system means thousands of legal satire and parody videos are removed every day. Not to mention whatever is/was happening between SV and the intelligence agencies. It's pretty hard today to find projects or communities that have similar levels of energy and disregard for rules. When you do find them it's no coincidence that they're usually on the periphery of what SV touches. [0] Brian Kennish quit Google and released Disconnect, a privacy plugin for browsers.

kabouseng 10y ago
Well you might be forgetting about Uber and AirBnB disregarding laws in their operations.
- nikcub 10y ago
  that's who I was referring to - they get criticized it's pretty hard to be innovative and not be illegal somewhere. Difference is many today see being illegal in China, Turkey, Iran, or wherever as a good thing while being illegal or borderline illegal in the USA is a bad thing The USA has regulatory capture that is just as bad as ideological or dogmatic religious capture is in those other nations. It just happens that the largest markets with monopolies or cartels that are super profitable and ripe for tech disruption also usually/sometimes also markets that have built a moat via government regulation.
  - csydas 10y ago
    I think the criticism lobbied against AirBnB and Uber is for a reason, and the reason isn't the same "up-yours" attitude of past maverick tech companies. It's a little easier to buy the maverick attitude of something like gnutella when the author isn't getting close to billion dollar revenue yearly. It may seem a little strange, but the ethos is a bit easier to believe when you stay outside the system and benefit everyone instead of just looking out for yourself alone. The reason Uber and AirBnB are the subject of scrutiny is simply because the difference between them and any other business is non-discernable except that they have the money to stall out legal issues. Just from a "feel" perspective, they don't really feel like they're fighting the fight for everyone, they're just trying to line their pockets. There's a world of difference between what they do (offer a service at cost) to something like bit torrent or gnutella. I can't really say where or what the limit is on something like this, when a software maverick stops being a maverick and starts playing the game, but admittedly I haven't really carefully analyzed it beyond just "here's why I see a difference". Uber and AirBnB (and quite frankly, many other SV start ups) don't really have that hacker feel to them like we'd see with older projects - instead it feels much more like they're rooted in business and business alone.
    - mdpopescu 10y ago
      Making a billion dollars a year revenue is pretty much the definition of "benefiting everyone", except when you're a part of regulatory capture (which AirBnB and Uber are not... yet).
      - csydas 10y ago
        I'm not sure I follow. I didn't explain my point well now that I've re-read it but the idea is more than the early maverick hacker projects felt more like just a project, something that was made to make sure everyone's lives got better. Uber, AirBnB, et. al., were business from the beginning. Their interests look to be making money, not providing a service or making it better. The focus isn't on making transportation or hospitality better, it's about controlling a market with their system and earning a profit. Motive matters, and it just doesn't strike that they are really benefitting anyone but themselves. This isn't saying their services can't be useful - heck, I have an AirBnB reservation for my holiday the next 3 weeks. But I also don't doubt that if AirBnB would change their service in an instant if it suited them. They're only doing hospitality because there's money in it. That's not really the same spirit and it's not really with our benefit in mind, it's with our wallets in mind.
sametmax 10y ago
I often read stuff like that. "Now you couldn't do it like they did it before". "You wouldn't be able to get away with the same jokes today." Or "You wouldn't be able to publish the same story today." I agree that time changes, but this is discarding the merits of those who did it then. Believe it or not, at that time it was not easy either. The people that did it had huge balls. Geeks were considered less that nothing by society. The working world didn't trust them, believe in them or value them. They were basically rejected, as something annoying you had to have somewhere in your closet. My father actually told me in 2003 that he was disappointed I choose to work in such a boring field. Technology didn't exist. You couldn't google your way out of anything like today (now if you google, SO answer everything!). Networks and computer where slow and expensive (we now got unmetered VPS for 3€/month, come on!). Less libraries, less frameworks, no crazy powerful API (can you believe making uber before google map ?) and no proof whatsoever that what you wanted to do was achievable. The market was unproven (the 2000 bubble killed so much). We had no experience in it. Not tools to recruit, sell, build... It's was not easier to do anything. The constraints were just different. The constraints of tomorrow will be also different. Let's not use the change as an excuse. Doing something that matters is ALWAYS HARD.
- marvin 10y ago
  I don't think that you and nikcub necessarily disagree. I read his comment more as "technologists today tend to/are forced to conform more to the expectations of society/powerful instutitions" than a comment about everything being easier before.
- watwut 10y ago
  "Geeks were considered less that nothing by society. The working world didn't trust them, believe in them or value them. They were basically rejected, as something annoying you had to have somewhere in your closet. My father actually told me in 2003 that he was disappointed I choose to work in such a boring field." Exaggerating a bit? By a bit I mean a lot? I know that some geeks had hard childhood and were bullied, but way more others were not. Plenty of fathers were disappointed over children choosing various professions. The way you people talk about it makes it sound as if all people who ever went into tech were bullied outcasts and that is simply not true.
arjie 10y ago
Well, the sort of irreverent crackpottery that made up life in the first dot com boom doesn't really fly right now. If you've read the "Life in the Boy's Dorm" series by Nancy Hauge, the power dynamic was very different then. Sun's engineers refused to stop smoking pot for the visit of the President (or Vice President, I don't remember which) of the United States. They promptly put on a protest against The Man when asked to cut out the potheadery. Completely unreasonable, and downright hilarious in their adherence to their principles, as illegal as that may be. That's not an engineering thing but it's emblematic of the wild seat-of-your-pants approach that characterized the Gold Rush years. It was inevitable it wouldn't last, though. The market learned to harness this unbridled power and direct it along the appropriate channels. And that combined with a greater spread of information means that non-standard actions will meet the weight of the community. Sun's cannabis-powered engineers unwilling to give up their fuel source weren't a well known thing and that may have helped. The thing with "break the rules" mode is that everyone wants you to follow the rules. If everyone knows you're willfully breaking the rules (often just for the sake of it) you will be hammered down. The justifications come afterward, and they're always easily accessible. After all, you _are_ breaking the rules. The broader the reach of news, the more conformist the reported must be if they are to get away with their actions. Cormack and Romero ghost shifted on computers at their daytime employer. Philippe Kahn started Borland while illegally in the United States. How much of this would you tolerate? Probably little. Probably neither of those actions.
- tluyben2 10y ago
  >Cormack and Romero ghost shifted on computers at their daytime employer. Philippe Kahn started Borland while illegally in the United States. How much of this would you tolerate? Probably little. Probably neither of those actions. Definitely fine with both those. And had that happen at a less exciting circumstances but they were comparible. I like to cultivate people that take stands and believe in something instead of berate them. As I know the latter will only end up in those people doing it anyway but then in secret.
  - arjie 10y ago
    Yes, yes, of course there are individuals who would support that. But not everyone will, and given the breadth of exposure, those who don't will find out and they'll expend significant effort to drag violators down.
watwut 10y ago
There is pushing the boundary on regulation as a political act and there is pushing the boundary so that you gain competitive advantage over companies that follow the law. There is element of idealism in pushing for open crypto which is simply missing from what (for example) Uber is doing. Uber behavior is closer to what Microsoft used to be doing (not in power, just in ethical considerations) then to what crypto pushing projects were doing. "Not to mention whatever is/was happening between SV and the intelligence agencies. It's pretty hard today to find projects or communities that have similar levels of energy and disregard for rules." What is happening between SV and the intelligence agencies is oftentimes disregard of the rules. The only difference is that their disregard for rules does not benefit you - but lawbreaking being done for benefit of random strangers is rather exceptional thing.
Keyframe 10y ago
Was it ever like thag though? Considering the origins of SV are with military and intelligence requirements, you'd expect a bit of an 'oversight'.
xenithorb 10y ago
Thankfully we now have a vibrant open source community to take the burden of pioneering, no startups necessary
amelius 10y ago
> Today, startups that push the boundaries on bad laws and regulations are more likely to be roundly criticized than praised. Perhaps those companies should move to countries with less strict rules then, perhaps in Asia. For example, I know that many biotech companies are looking for Singapore because of less strict ethical rules. In the field of stem-cell research, see e.g. [1]. Another option is Mexico. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2744936/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2744936/
unexpected 10y ago
your statement is very powerful, but I think the sentiment that you describe - "projects that disregard the rules" and "push the boundaries on bad laws" could apply to Uber and AirBnB? Also, projects like Plex, Kodi, Radarr, CouchPotato, - these projects still exist. They're not companies, like Nullsoft was, but they are definitely projects! The late 90's was a wild time in MP3-land. Does anyone else remember: 1) Sonique vs. Winamp vs NAD debates? 2) The vqf audio format? 3) One of the big "hubs" was DimensionMusic (DMusic). Whatever happened to them? It's easy to identify the successful companies 20 years hence, but the graveyard is littered with bodies.
- cabasse_ 10y ago
  holy shit i remember NAD. i didn't remember that it was something other than a hifi audio electronics manufacturer until you just mentioned it in the same breath as winamp/sonique. talk about memories...
- sengork 10y ago
  Glad to see Sonique being remembered by someone other than myself!
whack 10y ago
To be fair, there are plenty of companies that are still irreverent of rules and laws. Zenefits and Theranos are the obvious bad boys. Arguably AirBNB and Uber in their early days were just as bad too. It does seem like society, and the law, comes down much harder on startups these days, ever since the tech industry went from being the underdog to the 800 pound gorilla.

by nikcub 10y ago

kabouseng 10y ago

Well you might be forgetting about Uber and AirBnB disregarding laws in their operations.

nikcub 10y ago
that's who I was referring to - they get criticized it's pretty hard to be innovative and not be illegal somewhere. Difference is many today see being illegal in China, Turkey, Iran, or wherever as a good thing while being illegal or borderline illegal in the USA is a bad thing The USA has regulatory capture that is just as bad as ideological or dogmatic religious capture is in those other nations. It just happens that the largest markets with monopolies or cartels that are super profitable and ripe for tech disruption also usually/sometimes also markets that have built a moat via government regulation.
- csydas 10y ago
  I think the criticism lobbied against AirBnB and Uber is for a reason, and the reason isn't the same "up-yours" attitude of past maverick tech companies. It's a little easier to buy the maverick attitude of something like gnutella when the author isn't getting close to billion dollar revenue yearly. It may seem a little strange, but the ethos is a bit easier to believe when you stay outside the system and benefit everyone instead of just looking out for yourself alone. The reason Uber and AirBnB are the subject of scrutiny is simply because the difference between them and any other business is non-discernable except that they have the money to stall out legal issues. Just from a "feel" perspective, they don't really feel like they're fighting the fight for everyone, they're just trying to line their pockets. There's a world of difference between what they do (offer a service at cost) to something like bit torrent or gnutella. I can't really say where or what the limit is on something like this, when a software maverick stops being a maverick and starts playing the game, but admittedly I haven't really carefully analyzed it beyond just "here's why I see a difference". Uber and AirBnB (and quite frankly, many other SV start ups) don't really have that hacker feel to them like we'd see with older projects - instead it feels much more like they're rooted in business and business alone.
  - mdpopescu 10y ago
    Making a billion dollars a year revenue is pretty much the definition of "benefiting everyone", except when you're a part of regulatory capture (which AirBnB and Uber are not... yet).
    - csydas 10y ago
      I'm not sure I follow. I didn't explain my point well now that I've re-read it but the idea is more than the early maverick hacker projects felt more like just a project, something that was made to make sure everyone's lives got better. Uber, AirBnB, et. al., were business from the beginning. Their interests look to be making money, not providing a service or making it better. The focus isn't on making transportation or hospitality better, it's about controlling a market with their system and earning a profit. Motive matters, and it just doesn't strike that they are really benefitting anyone but themselves. This isn't saying their services can't be useful - heck, I have an AirBnB reservation for my holiday the next 3 weeks. But I also don't doubt that if AirBnB would change their service in an instant if it suited them. They're only doing hospitality because there's money in it. That's not really the same spirit and it's not really with our benefit in mind, it's with our wallets in mind.

sametmax 10y ago

I often read stuff like that. "Now you couldn't do it like they did it before". "You wouldn't be able to get away with the same jokes today." Or "You wouldn't be able to publish the same story today." I agree that time changes, but this is discarding the merits of those who did it then. Believe it or not, at that time it was not easy either. The people that did it had huge balls. Geeks were considered less that nothing by society. The working world didn't trust them, believe in them or value them. They were basically rejected, as something annoying you had to have somewhere in your closet. My father actually told me in 2003 that he was disappointed I choose to work in such a boring field. Technology didn't exist. You couldn't google your way out of anything like today (now if you google, SO answer everything!). Networks and computer where slow and expensive (we now got unmetered VPS for 3€/month, come on!). Less libraries, less frameworks, no crazy powerful API (can you believe making uber before google map ?) and no proof whatsoever that what you wanted to do was achievable. The market was unproven (the 2000 bubble killed so much). We had no experience in it. Not tools to recruit, sell, build... It's was not easier to do anything. The constraints were just different. The constraints of tomorrow will be also different. Let's not use the change as an excuse. Doing something that matters is ALWAYS HARD.

marvin 10y ago
I don't think that you and nikcub necessarily disagree. I read his comment more as "technologists today tend to/are forced to conform more to the expectations of society/powerful instutitions" than a comment about everything being easier before.
watwut 10y ago
"Geeks were considered less that nothing by society. The working world didn't trust them, believe in them or value them. They were basically rejected, as something annoying you had to have somewhere in your closet. My father actually told me in 2003 that he was disappointed I choose to work in such a boring field." Exaggerating a bit? By a bit I mean a lot? I know that some geeks had hard childhood and were bullied, but way more others were not. Plenty of fathers were disappointed over children choosing various professions. The way you people talk about it makes it sound as if all people who ever went into tech were bullied outcasts and that is simply not true.

arjie 10y ago

Well, the sort of irreverent crackpottery that made up life in the first dot com boom doesn't really fly right now. If you've read the "Life in the Boy's Dorm" series by Nancy Hauge, the power dynamic was very different then. Sun's engineers refused to stop smoking pot for the visit of the President (or Vice President, I don't remember which) of the United States. They promptly put on a protest against The Man when asked to cut out the potheadery. Completely unreasonable, and downright hilarious in their adherence to their principles, as illegal as that may be. That's not an engineering thing but it's emblematic of the wild seat-of-your-pants approach that characterized the Gold Rush years. It was inevitable it wouldn't last, though. The market learned to harness this unbridled power and direct it along the appropriate channels. And that combined with a greater spread of information means that non-standard actions will meet the weight of the community. Sun's cannabis-powered engineers unwilling to give up their fuel source weren't a well known thing and that may have helped. The thing with "break the rules" mode is that everyone wants you to follow the rules. If everyone knows you're willfully breaking the rules (often just for the sake of it) you will be hammered down. The justifications come afterward, and they're always easily accessible. After all, you _are_ breaking the rules. The broader the reach of news, the more conformist the reported must be if they are to get away with their actions. Cormack and Romero ghost shifted on computers at their daytime employer. Philippe Kahn started Borland while illegally in the United States. How much of this would you tolerate? Probably little. Probably neither of those actions.

tluyben2 10y ago
>Cormack and Romero ghost shifted on computers at their daytime employer. Philippe Kahn started Borland while illegally in the United States. How much of this would you tolerate? Probably little. Probably neither of those actions. Definitely fine with both those. And had that happen at a less exciting circumstances but they were comparible. I like to cultivate people that take stands and believe in something instead of berate them. As I know the latter will only end up in those people doing it anyway but then in secret.
- arjie 10y ago
  Yes, yes, of course there are individuals who would support that. But not everyone will, and given the breadth of exposure, those who don't will find out and they'll expend significant effort to drag violators down.

watwut 10y ago

There is pushing the boundary on regulation as a political act and there is pushing the boundary so that you gain competitive advantage over companies that follow the law. There is element of idealism in pushing for open crypto which is simply missing from what (for example) Uber is doing. Uber behavior is closer to what Microsoft used to be doing (not in power, just in ethical considerations) then to what crypto pushing projects were doing. "Not to mention whatever is/was happening between SV and the intelligence agencies. It's pretty hard today to find projects or communities that have similar levels of energy and disregard for rules." What is happening between SV and the intelligence agencies is oftentimes disregard of the rules. The only difference is that their disregard for rules does not benefit you - but lawbreaking being done for benefit of random strangers is rather exceptional thing.

Keyframe 10y ago

Was it ever like thag though? Considering the origins of SV are with military and intelligence requirements, you'd expect a bit of an 'oversight'.

xenithorb 10y ago

Thankfully we now have a vibrant open source community to take the burden of pioneering, no startups necessary

amelius 10y ago

> Today, startups that push the boundaries on bad laws and regulations are more likely to be roundly criticized than praised. Perhaps those companies should move to countries with less strict rules then, perhaps in Asia. For example, I know that many biotech companies are looking for Singapore because of less strict ethical rules. In the field of stem-cell research, see e.g. [1]. Another option is Mexico. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2744936/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2744936/

unexpected 10y ago

your statement is very powerful, but I think the sentiment that you describe - "projects that disregard the rules" and "push the boundaries on bad laws" could apply to Uber and AirBnB? Also, projects like Plex, Kodi, Radarr, CouchPotato, - these projects still exist. They're not companies, like Nullsoft was, but they are definitely projects! The late 90's was a wild time in MP3-land. Does anyone else remember: 1) Sonique vs. Winamp vs NAD debates? 2) The vqf audio format? 3) One of the big "hubs" was DimensionMusic (DMusic). Whatever happened to them? It's easy to identify the successful companies 20 years hence, but the graveyard is littered with bodies.

cabasse_ 10y ago
holy shit i remember NAD. i didn't remember that it was something other than a hifi audio electronics manufacturer until you just mentioned it in the same breath as winamp/sonique. talk about memories...
sengork 10y ago
Glad to see Sonique being remembered by someone other than myself!

whack 10y ago

To be fair, there are plenty of companies that are still irreverent of rules and laws. Zenefits and Theranos are the obvious bad boys. Arguably AirBNB and Uber in their early days were just as bad too. It does seem like society, and the law, comes down much harder on startups these days, ever since the tech industry went from being the underdog to the 800 pound gorilla.