8 ms·

Meanwhile, here in South Bay, an activist board member (who is a senior lead at Tesla by day) just fired our longtime hacker space director with zero days notic

Meanwhile, here in South Bay, an activist board member (who is a senior lead at Tesla by day) just fired our longtime hacker space director with zero days notice because membership wasn't growing fast enough. Now our events are struggling and members are leaving because of this cavalier display of leadership. It is almost impossible to find tech-adjacent countercultural spaces in the Bay that aren't fully co-opted by a self-devouring corporate mindset.

rolph 4y ago
these may help https://hackaday.io/hackerspaces/ https://hackaday.io/hackerspaces/ https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Bay_Area_Consortium_of_Hackerspaces https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Bay_Area_Consortium_of_Hackers...
- legerdemain 4y ago
  The closest one to me on the map is something called "the fifth space," but I can't find any online presence at all for it (it shares a name with an interfaith org in India, which is what most results are for). The consortium lists spaces in SF, Oakland, and father out. This could be a major motivator to move to SF.
  - rolph 4y ago
    not all of these are considered active, some may have gone gray in presence, but still exist in some form.
    - legerdemain 4y ago
      I appreciate your well-intentioned effort to help. Thank you.
- sacnoradhq 4y ago
  Old and outdated lists. The best thing to do is find some cool rich peeps, go in on a small commercial/industrial space to make it sort of like a college dorm, and keep the membership invite-only and tiny.
  - rolph 4y ago
    yes old and outdated, but breadcrumbs... finding the trail and the desired endpoint is often an effective filter for prestige accounts [hey, im on 31l337h4X0r space] that dont have the properties of "adept hacker" 900913 maps is probably anathema to some thus they dont show up. its best to look thru a span of search engines with different DNS providers, you can dive deeper past the search bubbles
  - weld 4y ago
    My space in Cambridge is not on the list. It’s hastypastry.net. Been there for 20 years. It’s private so no need to advertise. I think it’s good to be on these lists so people know hacker spaces exist
throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
Leave the bay area, or go find some artists with a warehouse and give them some cash to let you keep some machines there
- legerdemain 4y ago
  We used to have that. It was called the Ghost Ship. It caught fire. A bunch of people died.
kurthr 4y ago
Come on you're just holding it wrong, Zero to One is the most important thing! One to zero is next. Really, how did he become a board member? Donated money or self-important resume? The rest of the board let him do it so it's a bigger problem than just him. Get the email list of membership and start a real space... there's lots of empty office space now so you might be able to get a donation since they get to write it off at old pricing, but it's a huge amount of work for very little return (unless you like running these sorts of things). Sorry for your situation.
- legerdemain 4y ago
  Yeah, I'm not incorporating and ponying up $30k to get an office lease. There's commitment, and then there's commitment. Our hacker space has had tons of leadership drama over the years, from misuse of funds to a co-founder trying to get a trademark on our name to do a hostile takeover. Basically, if your hacker space exists because some tech people made big money in company stocks and decided to buy a personal playground, you're constantly subject to their whims and caprices.
thrown123098 4y ago
So start one that's completely toxic to the current mainstream culture. People forget just how unpopular tech was in the 90s/00s. Or that counter cultures are always reviled by the majority.
- myself248 4y ago
  This was something that blew my mind when I visited out there. Visited every space I could, and the startup/commercial culture was just incredibly pervasive. Couldn't talk about a cool idea for more than a minute or two without some tech bro trying to monetize it. Maybe that's someone's jam, but I just wanted to hang out with some nerds that reminded me of back home. Everywhere else I've traveled, I could visit the local hackerspace and get my fix, but the bay area was..... different.
  - thrown123098 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - gtirloni 4y ago
      That's a false dichotomy. You don't need be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad to be interesting.
      - Jensson 4y ago
        Depends on how strict your definitions for those things are. The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad is often very boring. A person who cares less about those things will have more interesting things to say and opinions, and about the smell thing a person who doesn't dare to smell differently will constraint their hobbies and activities. For example, you have probably heard people say they don't want to do X since it would make them sweat. That makes them more boring than a person who would just do it without caring that they might smell a bit afterwards.
        4y ago
goodpoint 4y ago
> It is almost impossible to find tech-adjacent countercultural spaces in the Bay that aren't fully co-opted by a self-devouring corporate mindset. HN being a prime example outside of SF.
- legerdemain 4y ago
  A news website run by a VC firm that is also a startup accelerator? "Countercultural"?
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    Yeah, but the website community is decidedly anti-startup so that does make it countercultural in the local culture.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      I've heard a lot of strange things on HN but this one absolutely ends up in top-ten. How in the world is HN anti-startup? Sure, there is some anti-startup sentiments in the comments usually, but there is also comments anti-anything in the comments. HN is very much a startup-centric place if anything.
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    Not at all, I'm saying that HN is coopting the word "hacker".
    - legerdemain 4y ago
      Ah, got it.
dannyobrien 4y ago
you may wish to visit Noisebridge someday
- legerdemain 4y ago
  I'd need to move from South Bay to SF first to make repeated visits worthwhile. Over an hour each way is... yeah.
  - dannyobrien 4y ago
    well, not loading this on you, but many Bay Area hackerspaces started after people spent time at noisebridge or another related space, and then realised they could work with others to build one somewhere nearer to them physically or ideologically: Ace Monster Toys (now Ace Hackerspace), Queerious Labs, Double Union, Sudo Room, Mothership Hackermoms. It's not hard if you find likeminded people, and the best place to look is just dropping by casually to a hackerspace not-so-near you..
    - legerdemain 4y ago
      Not a criticism of your response, but you'll notice that every space you mentioned is either in SF or in Oakland. I have been looking for and trying to build community in South Bay for almost a decade now. The conclusion I've come to is that the people who might populate a healthy hacker space don't live here in sufficient numbers, and the people who do live here have very different interests, goals, and community needs. I've obviously been to Noisebridge. It didn't become a part of my life because it is at least an hour drive away, and often much longer during the times of day when I can reasonably go there.
      - dannyobrien 4y ago
        fair enough: I've lived in the South Bay too, and it's certainly hard to pull such community projects together. I meant to add Biocurious, which is in Santa Clara, but I don't know what it's like these days (I assumed from your description that the space you were initially describing was HackerDojo, but I'm a bit out of the hackerspace drama grapevine these days, so maybe it's Biocurious?) Are you far from San Jose? I can see a way to get there from there, as it were. Redwood City has some of the right dynamics; I can also imagine something adjacent to the Computer History Museum. Again, not belittling your efforts over a decade (and I realise this sounds a bit like those drive-by health comments that say something like "have you tried taking vitamins?"), but I have some experience in this myself, and you've got me vaguely problem-solving around it now.
sacnoradhq 4y ago
Hahah. Yep. Is that Hacker Dojo or some shitty place like that? Corporate, BMW SUV-driving assholes who think of themselves as "liberals" but are ready to turn on anyone for any reason and excommunicate them without the possibility of fair treatment.
- electrondood 4y ago
  You clearly never spent any time at Hacker Dojo.
medion 4y ago
Counterculture in general seems scarce, everything and everyone feels so hyper normal these days.
- icelancer 4y ago
  There is a pretty strong reason for this; deviancy from the norm is punished heavily on social media. No one wants to be the main character when they have 300 followers and they're just posting their opinions.
  - anthk 4y ago
    Mastodon, Gemini and the 2007-reborn Gopher. But yes, you are right. Back in late 90's/early 00's Linux and Unix desktop were trully different and unique. Fluxbox had zillions of different themes. 3D, black, retro, flat-ish, metal-ish, Java styled, Gnome styled, KDE-alike, Gaudi, childish, Bohemian, alien looking... every style was fine for anyone. Ditto witht the icons. One day I felt technical and I switched into the Slick theme being "workstation/highend" themed with a gray color scheme, and the next day I felt nice and cheerful and switched into Noia with a blue Keramik theme. Now everything looks bland, flat and everyone looks afraid on having an style.
    - dilznoofus 4y ago
      It's pretty annoying that Gnome themeing tools, rather than developing and becoming better/more cohesive, were made totally irrelevant I can't quite understand how "Linux GUI, make it look how you want! Personalized OS!" became "Linux - this one unchangably bland tablet UI on your desktop!" I know that other WM/DM exist, but Gnome is incredibly popular, often the default, and was so close to being what people saw as the ideal Desktop.
      - anthk 4y ago
        Not just tablets. Every single theme now in /r/unixporn at Rddit looks the same. Either i3, i3-gaps, some catpucchino/nord theme and Gnome/KDE cloning Mac. And, yes, we even tried to clone OSX even from Fluxbox and FVWM, but we had a bunch of several other themes.
recuter 4y ago
You remind me of a guy called Brian. He is a very naughty boy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4
weld 4y ago
The L0pht had no leadership. Only partners that paid rent and utilities. You had to pay to cover your share of expenses but also contribute with sweat equity. We ended up kicking out a couple of people that ceased to contribute to the common good even if they paid.
- ValentineC 4y ago
  > We ended up kicking out a couple of people that ceased to contribute to the common good even if they paid. As a member of a hackerspace myself who's always wondering how to get rid of bad eggs: how does this "kicking out" process happen for the L0pht? Who gets to quantify their sweat equity and decide?
  - ta988 4y ago
    Kicking people out can be tricky depending on the structure and bylaws of a given place. I've seen different kinds and you'll always have a part of your members that wilm think it is too much and others not enough. In the end what caused 99.9% of the issues I saw in the hackerspaces I've been part of wasn't the people kicked out arbitrarly or too lightly, it was that abusing people were allowed to stay for too long. The reasons were multiple. But in the end if you want to keep the culture alive you have to remove the elements that work against that culture. Or start/find a new place if the whole culture shifts with the majority of the members.
  - weld 4y ago
    It was unanimous except for the person getting kicked out. The violations of rules or lack of effort was given ample warning to be corrected.
ornornor 4y ago
Who is sick enough to put KPIs on a for fun hobby?

rolph 4y ago

these may help https://hackaday.io/hackerspaces/ https://hackaday.io/hackerspaces/ https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Bay_Area_Consortium_of_Hackerspaces https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Bay_Area_Consortium_of_Hackers...

legerdemain 4y ago
The closest one to me on the map is something called "the fifth space," but I can't find any online presence at all for it (it shares a name with an interfaith org in India, which is what most results are for). The consortium lists spaces in SF, Oakland, and father out. This could be a major motivator to move to SF.
- rolph 4y ago
  not all of these are considered active, some may have gone gray in presence, but still exist in some form.
  - legerdemain 4y ago
    I appreciate your well-intentioned effort to help. Thank you.
sacnoradhq 4y ago
Old and outdated lists. The best thing to do is find some cool rich peeps, go in on a small commercial/industrial space to make it sort of like a college dorm, and keep the membership invite-only and tiny.
- rolph 4y ago
  yes old and outdated, but breadcrumbs... finding the trail and the desired endpoint is often an effective filter for prestige accounts [hey, im on 31l337h4X0r space] that dont have the properties of "adept hacker" 900913 maps is probably anathema to some thus they dont show up. its best to look thru a span of search engines with different DNS providers, you can dive deeper past the search bubbles
- weld 4y ago
  My space in Cambridge is not on the list. It’s hastypastry.net. Been there for 20 years. It’s private so no need to advertise. I think it’s good to be on these lists so people know hacker spaces exist

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago

Leave the bay area, or go find some artists with a warehouse and give them some cash to let you keep some machines there

legerdemain 4y ago
We used to have that. It was called the Ghost Ship. It caught fire. A bunch of people died.

kurthr 4y ago

Come on you're just holding it wrong, Zero to One is the most important thing! One to zero is next. Really, how did he become a board member? Donated money or self-important resume? The rest of the board let him do it so it's a bigger problem than just him. Get the email list of membership and start a real space... there's lots of empty office space now so you might be able to get a donation since they get to write it off at old pricing, but it's a huge amount of work for very little return (unless you like running these sorts of things). Sorry for your situation.

legerdemain 4y ago
Yeah, I'm not incorporating and ponying up $30k to get an office lease. There's commitment, and then there's commitment. Our hacker space has had tons of leadership drama over the years, from misuse of funds to a co-founder trying to get a trademark on our name to do a hostile takeover. Basically, if your hacker space exists because some tech people made big money in company stocks and decided to buy a personal playground, you're constantly subject to their whims and caprices.

thrown123098 4y ago

So start one that's completely toxic to the current mainstream culture. People forget just how unpopular tech was in the 90s/00s. Or that counter cultures are always reviled by the majority.

myself248 4y ago
This was something that blew my mind when I visited out there. Visited every space I could, and the startup/commercial culture was just incredibly pervasive. Couldn't talk about a cool idea for more than a minute or two without some tech bro trying to monetize it. Maybe that's someone's jam, but I just wanted to hang out with some nerds that reminded me of back home. Everywhere else I've traveled, I could visit the local hackerspace and get my fix, but the bay area was..... different.
- thrown123098 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - gtirloni 4y ago
    That's a false dichotomy. You don't need be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad to be interesting.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      Depends on how strict your definitions for those things are. The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, racist, transphobic or smell bad is often very boring. A person who cares less about those things will have more interesting things to say and opinions, and about the smell thing a person who doesn't dare to smell differently will constraint their hobbies and activities. For example, you have probably heard people say they don't want to do X since it would make them sweat. That makes them more boring than a person who would just do it without caring that they might smell a bit afterwards.
      - 4y ago

goodpoint 4y ago

> It is almost impossible to find tech-adjacent countercultural spaces in the Bay that aren't fully co-opted by a self-devouring corporate mindset. HN being a prime example outside of SF.

legerdemain 4y ago
A news website run by a VC firm that is also a startup accelerator? "Countercultural"?
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Yeah, but the website community is decidedly anti-startup so that does make it countercultural in the local culture.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    I've heard a lot of strange things on HN but this one absolutely ends up in top-ten. How in the world is HN anti-startup? Sure, there is some anti-startup sentiments in the comments usually, but there is also comments anti-anything in the comments. HN is very much a startup-centric place if anything.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  Not at all, I'm saying that HN is coopting the word "hacker".
  - legerdemain 4y ago
    Ah, got it.

dannyobrien 4y ago

you may wish to visit Noisebridge someday

legerdemain 4y ago
I'd need to move from South Bay to SF first to make repeated visits worthwhile. Over an hour each way is... yeah.
- dannyobrien 4y ago
  well, not loading this on you, but many Bay Area hackerspaces started after people spent time at noisebridge or another related space, and then realised they could work with others to build one somewhere nearer to them physically or ideologically: Ace Monster Toys (now Ace Hackerspace), Queerious Labs, Double Union, Sudo Room, Mothership Hackermoms. It's not hard if you find likeminded people, and the best place to look is just dropping by casually to a hackerspace not-so-near you..
  - legerdemain 4y ago
    Not a criticism of your response, but you'll notice that every space you mentioned is either in SF or in Oakland. I have been looking for and trying to build community in South Bay for almost a decade now. The conclusion I've come to is that the people who might populate a healthy hacker space don't live here in sufficient numbers, and the people who do live here have very different interests, goals, and community needs. I've obviously been to Noisebridge. It didn't become a part of my life because it is at least an hour drive away, and often much longer during the times of day when I can reasonably go there.
    - dannyobrien 4y ago
      fair enough: I've lived in the South Bay too, and it's certainly hard to pull such community projects together. I meant to add Biocurious, which is in Santa Clara, but I don't know what it's like these days (I assumed from your description that the space you were initially describing was HackerDojo, but I'm a bit out of the hackerspace drama grapevine these days, so maybe it's Biocurious?) Are you far from San Jose? I can see a way to get there from there, as it were. Redwood City has some of the right dynamics; I can also imagine something adjacent to the Computer History Museum. Again, not belittling your efforts over a decade (and I realise this sounds a bit like those drive-by health comments that say something like "have you tried taking vitamins?"), but I have some experience in this myself, and you've got me vaguely problem-solving around it now.

sacnoradhq 4y ago

Hahah. Yep. Is that Hacker Dojo or some shitty place like that? Corporate, BMW SUV-driving assholes who think of themselves as "liberals" but are ready to turn on anyone for any reason and excommunicate them without the possibility of fair treatment.

electrondood 4y ago
You clearly never spent any time at Hacker Dojo.

medion 4y ago

Counterculture in general seems scarce, everything and everyone feels so hyper normal these days.

icelancer 4y ago
There is a pretty strong reason for this; deviancy from the norm is punished heavily on social media. No one wants to be the main character when they have 300 followers and they're just posting their opinions.
- anthk 4y ago
  Mastodon, Gemini and the 2007-reborn Gopher. But yes, you are right. Back in late 90's/early 00's Linux and Unix desktop were trully different and unique. Fluxbox had zillions of different themes. 3D, black, retro, flat-ish, metal-ish, Java styled, Gnome styled, KDE-alike, Gaudi, childish, Bohemian, alien looking... every style was fine for anyone. Ditto witht the icons. One day I felt technical and I switched into the Slick theme being "workstation/highend" themed with a gray color scheme, and the next day I felt nice and cheerful and switched into Noia with a blue Keramik theme. Now everything looks bland, flat and everyone looks afraid on having an style.
  - dilznoofus 4y ago
    It's pretty annoying that Gnome themeing tools, rather than developing and becoming better/more cohesive, were made totally irrelevant I can't quite understand how "Linux GUI, make it look how you want! Personalized OS!" became "Linux - this one unchangably bland tablet UI on your desktop!" I know that other WM/DM exist, but Gnome is incredibly popular, often the default, and was so close to being what people saw as the ideal Desktop.
    - anthk 4y ago
      Not just tablets. Every single theme now in /r/unixporn at Rddit looks the same. Either i3, i3-gaps, some catpucchino/nord theme and Gnome/KDE cloning Mac. And, yes, we even tried to clone OSX even from Fluxbox and FVWM, but we had a bunch of several other themes.

recuter 4y ago

You remind me of a guy called Brian. He is a very naughty boy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4

weld 4y ago

The L0pht had no leadership. Only partners that paid rent and utilities. You had to pay to cover your share of expenses but also contribute with sweat equity. We ended up kicking out a couple of people that ceased to contribute to the common good even if they paid.

ValentineC 4y ago
> We ended up kicking out a couple of people that ceased to contribute to the common good even if they paid. As a member of a hackerspace myself who's always wondering how to get rid of bad eggs: how does this "kicking out" process happen for the L0pht? Who gets to quantify their sweat equity and decide?
- ta988 4y ago
  Kicking people out can be tricky depending on the structure and bylaws of a given place. I've seen different kinds and you'll always have a part of your members that wilm think it is too much and others not enough. In the end what caused 99.9% of the issues I saw in the hackerspaces I've been part of wasn't the people kicked out arbitrarly or too lightly, it was that abusing people were allowed to stay for too long. The reasons were multiple. But in the end if you want to keep the culture alive you have to remove the elements that work against that culture. Or start/find a new place if the whole culture shifts with the majority of the members.
- weld 4y ago
  It was unanimous except for the person getting kicked out. The violations of rules or lack of effort was given ample warning to be corrected.

ornornor 4y ago

Who is sick enough to put KPIs on a for fun hobby?