njoro

"Inequality of outcomes" is essentially what we don't have. These days, as capital has become even more important, your likely outcome is relatively easy to calculate. In many major cities today it is almost better to be wealthy and unemployed, than successful and wealthless. This state of things is somewhat expected of Europe, but lesser so of the US, or at least not of Americans.

Sure, but those aren't the people struggling. People with successful careers and property in the Bay Area have probably seen both their salary and property value double in the last ten years. Which is pretty hard to beat anywhere else.

I think he is mostly correct though. "If you have a good resume and live 30 minutes outside even a small town, but you also have to drive everywhere" isn't really comparable to the "standard deal" in a city.

I think it is hard to not say that part of Silicon Valleys success is because of diversity and that part of the diversity is as simple as "gender, race and sexual orientation". I isn't a political correct things to say but Japanese, Korean and to some extent Chinese people are generally better organized, harder working and smarter than Americans. But they are also to a large extent also culturally isolated. Which makes their societies full of social rules. We can certainly question how much of a meritocracy the US is, but it certainly is to a large extent compared to the mentioned countries.

It isn't even that diversity itself being new perspectives, it is that non-diversity excludes people. And in highly uncertain activities it is all about how many people you can bring to the starting line. Success is its own filter, if you put a largely arbitrary filter in front you end up with a corresponding decrease in success. Which create a situation similar to the social rules in Asian countries.

If there will be any regret in Silicon Valley in 50 years I don't think it is going to be whatever the current political issue is, but that it didn't acquire a larger share of the global tech market. And that is certainly a factor of competition, equality, diversity and other things that give more people the chance to do just that.

That is what I am considering when I say that it is already close to free. Those city, at least for those people, essentially already have self-driving cars because it is so relatively cheap to be driven.

Sure, I just don't think that is as much of a paradigm shift as gradual improvement over time. It is not self-driving so much as the deployment of self-driving that will make that change if that makes sense. If everyone drove XC90s on barrier separated roads with automatic traffic cameras that enforced things like speed and distance between cars, we would also be much safer. But it would still be largely the same thing as today.

Not having to own a car to travel by car will of course increase driving, or being driven really. A situation where there is only self-driving cars is probably decades away at he minimum. And that doesn't really solve inherent throughput or speed issues.

While I hope the technology succeeds I don't think it is going to be as big of a change as people think. If you are upper middle class in a large city where labour is cheap, like in some Asian countries, driving is already close to free. And while that is somewhat nice from a quality of life perspective, it also means that rush hour traffic is horrible and sitting in a car isn't much more fun just because it is cheap. Basically a car is still a car.

Australia is probably the best second passport for EU citizens, since that makes you eligible for E-3 visa to the US as well as the APEC card to China and Russia.

I must say that the whole situation is very disappointing. While western companies have been folding, China has a very active smartphone ecosystem with multiple manufacturers of phones and many different providers of services, including app stores. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?

I think you are twisting the definitions pretty hard. Android isn't open for anyone who also wants access to the dominant app store. If you want that and sign that agreement you can no longer effectively enjoy the right you have under e.g. the GPL and distribute devices with modified versions of the code. As I understand this is legal under the GPL, but certainly very shady towards the developers who made the code available with the intention for it be used openly, rather than being leveraged by Google for their anti-competitive means. Also those practices is preventing other developers, who has as much right to the code under the license, from using those manufacturers. This is a clear attempt of trying to use their dominant position to control the market and shut out the competition from those manufacturers, not just controlling the manufacturers themselves which would be bad enough in the first place. And that is exactly why they are being and should be fined.

That is essentially what Android One is.

Your question is if something will happen to him? Well, it apparently already did. That was it. He got forced out of his job, probably lost his social standing and is now leaving the country. After spending nine(?) years in China he is, in the eyes of the Chinese, trash talking China and glorifying the US to get back with his countrymen. It is all pretty much in line with how Chinese nationalist rhetoric says that "arrogant foreigners" behave. So it isn't really something that challenges China's narrative.

It isn't particularly reasonable, one might even say dismissive, to suggest that someone explains themselves, off site no less, when you aren't adding much to the discussion yourself. Plenty of people have already written about these comments. Most widely after Mike Mortiz made similar ones in the Financial Times.

https://venturebeat.com/2018/02/11/what-sequoias-mike-moritz... https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/19/moritz-sabotages-sequoia-a... https://twitter.com/dhh/status/954319522151976960 https://gizmodo.com/sam-altman-is-an-idiot-1821327260 https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-15/appraisal...

> Why are the above statements a problem?

Going to a repressive country saying that you feel free in thought is pretty controversial. If you are doing that as someone who is rich and has influence it is a lot worse.

> You can reasonably disagree with them but Sam seems to have made them in good faith based on his observations.

Everyone does, or can at least be said to do, that. That doesn't mean anything. What means something is whether your thoughts and conclusions have merit. That you communicate the things you are saying clearly and that those things hold up to scrutiny.

His opinions doesn't do that. Being interviewed by people you know and being discussed on forums that are friendly to you isn't much of a discussion at all. And a lack of you hearing something isn't an indication of that whoever has your ear is right.

Matt Levine is one of the few people who even cares to comment on such things. He is fairly well respected even on HN. This is what he has to say:

> Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are bold iconoclastic innovators who move fast and break things and question established paradigms to change the world, unless someone makes fun of them. In which case they crumple instantly? There's no suggestion of actual censorship in Altman's post, no chance of the government suppressing controversial opinion (as it does in China!). It is just a sort of cringing terror that someone might disagree with you, say that you're wrong, criticize your priorities, make jokes at your expense. "How can I change the world if someone might mock me on Twitter?"

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-15/appraisal...

Maybe it was a bad example. What I mean is that GNU and BSD are implementation of similar things in different ecosystems. The same is often true of tooling and libraries for different programming languages.

I don't think it is really possible describe the difference in a few paragraphs. In open source, as was said, "forking is not a bug". But what is forked is only the source code, not the project. You are still dependent on whoever has the most mind share in that project. Things like Shanzhai is about forking the project and making it on your own terms.

You can argue that open source encourages mindless copying. If you fork a large project you are using their chosen language, build system, code design, project structure, maintenance schedule etc. Yes, you can have your own project, but it is hard to compete in the sense of actually having control. Especially if the project is being run by people who get paid by companies to work and you can't really make money on the activity yourself.

That is my point on the hacker spirit vs. open source. If the homebrew computer club would have been happy with getting schematics to some mainframe and making plug-in cards, history would probably look a lot different. And yes, I think the hacker spirit and open source overlaps. It just isn't necessarily the same thing.

The truth is that it is hard as a foreigner. It is sort of like if you wanted to leverage Silicon Valley without speaking English or having a degree. Things are "leaking" out of Shenzhen from time to time, but it is still a pretty isolated from the west.

In addition to the Wired documentary I would also recommend bunnie's blog and Strange Parts.

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4266 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO8DQrSp5yEP937qNqTooOw

Open source isn't necessarily a big thing in DIY cultures. They might be cloning something, but they are cloning it for their own process. Even if you could get the design files chances are you couldn't produce it especially not in low numbers. It is more like, say, GNU vs. BSD.

I like maker culture, but it can also be disappointing. A lot of it is just selling breakout boards and components at huge markups.

I think Shanzhai in many ways is a better representation of the hacker spirit than open source these days. Many successful open source projects are essentially copies of other software, including things like Linux and Git. It is only these days, when people get paid to work on open source and abandoning things on Github is more the rule than the exception, that copying has become a bad thing.

> For the land of the free, some US rules are a shock to me.

The emphasis on freedom in the US, like many things around the world (like religion), is mostly a result of the conditions then the other way around. What would you do if you find yourself in a disorganized country of inequality and insecurity? You build the most available home construction of the most available material on the most available land. So if the economy crashes, you get sick with poor coverage or the government goes haywire you can still, in theory, live a decent life. It doesn't have that much to do with "everyone do whatever they want".

I think it is mostly that competition is insane. Not that competition is low in Silicon Valley, but you are still able to carve out some niche for yourself. In China not so much, or at least it is a lot harder. People will come in and do what you do, what your supplier does and get the same deals as you, on every level of your business.

The situation in the Bay Area is the default for cities with high inequality. You can go to Hong Kong, Bangkok or Cape Town and find a variation of the same. Even Zurich at one point.

Obama doesn't just show up to honor people around the world. It was suggested by prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt [0]. Yes, that is the same prime minister who was traveling to the Bilderberg meeting in Wallenberg's private jet [1], whose government caved in the weapons deal [2], wife ended up working for their health care company [3] and son has been working at Svenskt Näringslivs think-tank Timbro [4].

Apparently the person who was pushing for the arms deal to be reinstated was foreign minster, party colleague and former prime minister Carl Bildt. Another frequent visitor to the Bilderberg meetings and infamously chairman of the board at Lundin Petroleum. The Lundin brothers are cousins of Marcus Wallenberg [5]. Carl Bildt is also senior advisor to Wallenberg Foundations [6].

Wallenbergs dominance in Sweden isn't really a secret [9]. So between "it a coincidence" and "they all know each other", I am going with the second one. Sweden has a number of other people to honor whose family's jet the prime minster hasn't borrowed like Folk Bernadotte [7] (who was related to the king) or Birgitta Karlström Dorph [8].

[0] In Swedish; https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/hemliga-brevet-fran-reinfel... [1] In Swedish; https://www.svd.se/hit-fick-reinfeldt-lift-av-wallenberg [2] https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&ar... [3] In Swedish; https://www.aleris.se/om/om-aleris/nyheter/filippa-reinfeldt... [4] https://www.thelocal.se/20120901/42954 [5] In Swedish; https://www.di.se/di/artiklar/2014/11/14/pa-djupet-med-lukas... [6] In Swedish; http://www.wfab.se/stiftelsernas-investeringskommitte/stifte... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birgitta_Karlstr%C3%B6m_Dorph [9] https://www.economist.com/business/2016/03/10/a-nordic-pyram... [9] https://www.economist.com/special-report/2006/10/12/swedens-... [9] https://www.economist.com/business/2009/01/22/the-ties-that-... [9] https://www.ft.com/content/4f407796-0a35-11e5-a6a8-00144feab... [9] https://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/15/obituaries/marcus-wallenb...

(A small correction to my previous comment. It was Jacob, not Marcus, Wallenberg who brought Reinfeldt to the meeting).

Essentially every rich family in Sweden, including the king, keeps a low profile. Doesn't mean they don't have more power than anyone ever should.

When the Swedish government wants to cancel an illegal weapons deal with Saudi Arabia, which was initiated by a delegation headed by the crown princess, they reconsider after pressure from Marcus Wallenberg (which later blows up in everyone's faces). When Obama visits Sweden, the first order of business is to honor Raoul Wallenberg. When the prime ministers wife, responsible for health care in Stockholm, quits politics she joins the Wallenberg health care business her own party have been essentially selling hospitals to. It is Marcus Wallenberg who invites Swedish politicians and lobbyists to the Bilderberg meetings. Fredrik Reinfeldt went on their private jet before he was prime minister. Jacob Wallenberg is on the board of Svenskt Näringsliv, the main lobby for privatization, which was until recently headed by Leif Östling who of course is also on the board of EQT.

It is not a conspiracy, at least not a very exciting one. They are just very influential and they use that influence to enrich themselves. Hence the allegation of being crony capitalists.

I am guessing they are counting cable as fiber. The Swedish competition authority is saying 1 300 000 fiber, 670 000 cable and 960 000 dsl [0].

The things is that the telephone network itself is still essentially owned by the government and multiple companies compete to provide service. And fiber is to large extent operated under a similar model. (950 000 of the 1 300 000 are municipal broadband).

The cable monopoly, including exclusivity contracts, was instead sold to EQT (which later sold to someone else) and of course instead of opening up to competition they kept the monopoly in place.

It isn't that EQT was doing something awful (their schools with inflated grades are probably worse in that regard). Internet connectivity in Sweden is still rather good. It is just that PE firms generally do whatever makes them money, not necessarily what is good for consumers or anyone else.

[0] In Swedish, page 106: http://www.konkurrensverket.se/globalassets/publikationer/ra...

Wallenberg is behind EQT and they aren't so much industrialists as crony capitalists and oligarchs. They are the driving force behind, as well as one of the main profiteers of, privatization in Sweden in recent years. Thomas von Koch, the head of EQT, has said on national TV that he thinks Sweden should be more like Singapore. Leif Östling most recently had to resign as head of the main employers organization after revelations of tax planning and the Rausing family isn't really a role model for anyone. So they are all pretty much crooks.

I guess EQT mostly does what it says on the tin, restructure and sell companies. If you ever wondered why so many people only have relatively expensive cable internet in Sweden instead of being connected directly to widely available fiber networks that is to a large extent because of EQT.

> Says who?

I just did.

> China's great firewall will disagree with that statement

Not really. The firewall isn't really stopping anyone. The reason Chinese people are unconvinced about the west isn't because they don't know about it. It isn't North Korea. It is because China is providing their own narrative. They have their own culture, services, infrastructure and increasingly opportunities. Sure, part of that dampening other narratives. But they are ultimately succeeding because they are making progress themselves.

> Not if you safeguard your secrets

How are you going to safeguard your secrets when, not only is it increasingly hard, but the utility of information is often also only as great as the amount of people knowing about it? A significant part of the industry (in the west) is foreigners to begin with.

> plus their own crashing economy will stop the catching up part

People have been saying that for years. Maybe it will happen. But there is also nothing saying half of the western technology industry won't go down with a recession and subsequent housing market crash in San Francisco, Stockholm, London etc.

There is no stopping China in the information age. Someone said "information wants to be free". That was 35 years ago. China will catch up to the west whether it is by stealing, acquiring or of their own accord. As long as the west think it is a better idea to focus on real estate, finance and service jobs we won't even keep up. South Korea, Taiwan and Japan almost completely missed the Internet. And frankly so did most of Europe and the US. European manufacturers have been moving their factories, if not to China, to Eastern Europe for years. While Midea, a large Chinese appliance manufacturer, just bought Kuka last year. They are now apparently adapting all their products to be made by robots. It is just completely different trajectories.

Is this the "Entrepreneur Work Visa"? Because reading online suggests that you would qualify. Of course when it comes to visas it is often hard to know how things actually work without talking to an immigration lawyer or similar.

Those might certainly be factors, but they aren't really relevant for my argument that someone with a recognizable degree has a higher probability of capturing more of their earning potential. Someone without a degree even with the same ambition and focus will face the burden of other things.

Say you join a large tech company, gets a fair amount of stock, enjoy the stock increase and as a result make an additional $100k. That is not an unlikely scenario even in the early stages of a career for someone with a recognizable degree.

If you don't have a degree it is certainly possible to do the same thing, it just isn't probable. For every step where you have to be aware of something, understand it and make a decision the probability of getting it right decreases. And the same is true for housing, career, startups and even relationships.

It doesn't make sense to say that you can succeed if certain things happen. Because it is the if that is the challenge.