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#siliconvalley

16 posts16 participants0 posts today

This is the biggest sign that capitalism is very much beyond its peak. Nowadays, the largest tech companies mostly rely on State/public monies by way of military contracts to ensure that their profitability rate continues growing: Palantir, SpaceX, StarLink, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. - they are all chasing public monies

"Now Silicon Valley is coming around. Desperate not to be seen as losers, they’ve replaced virtue signaling with vice signaling. Among the Detachment 201: Executive Innovation Corps enlistees is the chief technology officer of Meta, a company that, under Mark Zuckerberg’s direction, once aimed to appear cuddly and nonthreatening but has now pivoted to wanting to appear imposing, brash, and, as Zuckerberg himself suggested, aggressively masculine.

This is the Palantir effect, and its implications extend far beyond Zuckerberg’s MAGA makeover. A new common sense is taking hold in Silicon Valley: the companies that once flamboyantly postured as social justice allies are now currying favor with Donald Trump’s administration — and welcoming criticisms along the way, taking them as a badge of honor, proof positive they’re not effete liberal pushovers. To heed public criticism is to bend the knee to the “woke,” which Karp calls “the central risk to Palantir, America and the world.”

Armed with this new anti-moral sensibility, tech is dissolving into the pulsating nexus of MAGA, crypto, combat sports, and the US military. The merger is exemplified by the list of corporate sponsors of Trump’s military parade last weekend, which included Palantir, the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin, the global data-mining conglomerate Oracle, the crypto platform Coinbase, and Phorm Energy, a new energy drink company created by Dana White, who is both the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship and a member of the Meta board."

jacobin.com/2025/06/silicon-va

jacobin.comSilicon Valley Was Woke. Now They Want Blood.The Big Data firm Palantir spent years developing lethal military tech. Now it’s leading a transformation in Silicon Valley, with tech giants abandoning their progressive posturing to join the battle for American military supremacy.
#USA#Trump#Palantir

Zuckerberg’s political shift didn’t shock Meta staff*: ‘The whole time this was all one inch underneath’

independent.co.uk/news/world/a

* or anyone else with more than one brain cell who hasn’t been living under a rock for the past couple of decades

The Independent · Zuckerberg’s political shift didn’t shock Meta staff: ‘The whole time this was all one inch underneath’By Ariana Baio

Oh my $DEITY, the "AI" #slop problem...

I do #hobby #electronics. I ran into a problem that I was having difficulty figuring out from the IC manufacturer's datasheet (which is terse, but does contain several example uses / circuits). It felt like I was missing something fundamental about the way it worked, so I searched the web for 3rd-party documentation, tips, tricks, examples of use, etc.

And I got pages and pages and pages of results that were nothing but slop.

Language clearly stolen from the official datasheet and reworded by #AI into not making sense.

Articles that repeat the same point in multiple sentences in multiple sequential paragraphs.

Descriptions that refer to numbered components that do not appear on the shown schematic.

Descriptions of the working of the component that are incredibly obviously incorrect, to the point that anyone who's ever measured the voltage drop across a resistor would say "That can't be right".

Confident declarations of the function of many of the device's (numerous) control pins, which are not only wrong, but sometimes completely the opposite of reality. To the point that if you followed the given instructions, you would very quickly release the #magic #smoke and become sad.

Out of the first ~60 #search results, I saw 2 that were actual humans communicating. And neither of them had a solution, they were only semi-related.

The #web is #broken. Thanks, #SiliconValley #techbros.

…”when the #MeToo movement began, in the twenty-tens, something changed. Powerful #men like #HarveyWeinstein were accused of serially assaulting #women & then actually faced punishment. Women came forward w/stories of #harassment by prominent #journalists & #SiliconValley founders, & the internet took up their cause. Men lost their jobs; some went to #prison.

[Then came the backlash]

#MaleSupremacy #RapeCulture #BelieveSurvivors
newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06

The New Yorker · What Happened to the Women of #MeToo?By Alexis Okeowo
Replied in thread

"Draw a circle around all the assets in America now devoted to #AI

Draw a 2nd circle around all the assets devoted to the #US military.

A 3rd around all assets being devoted to helping the #Trump regime collect & compile personal information...

And a 4th circle around the parts of #SiliconValley dedicated to... a libertarian dictatorship led by #tech bros.

Where do the four circles intersect?

At a corporation called #Palantir Technologies & a man named #PeterThiel."
robertreich.substack.com/p/pal

🚨 Breaking News: The US #Army, in a bold move straight out of a Silicon Valley fever dream, has decided that tech execs are the new warlords. 🤖 Because, clearly, the best way to outthink adversaries is to hire the folks who brought us targeted ads and AI chatbots. 🎖️
thegrayzone.com/2025/06/18/pal #BreakingNews #TechExecs #Innovation #SiliconValley #AIChatbots #HackerNews #ngated

The Grayzone - News and investigative journalism on empire · US Army appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI execs as Lt. Colonels - The GrayzoneNews and investigative journalism on empire

I ranted about the apple design, but f*ck it. The bigger picture is more relevant, it doesn't matter that much how much liquid glass an apple UI has, when its controlled by palantir and grounded in techno-fascism for concentrating more power in few and observing the rest.

A great and lengthy Essay by "the stories we tell".
youtube.com/watch?v=Jopmic-McK0
Thank you for pointing me to it via your newsletter @mspro

#military #technology #politics #SiliconValley

'In a June 13, 2025, news release, the Army announced the swearing-in of four tech executives as lieutenant colonels, a rank that typically takes nearly two decades to achieve. The executives will serve part-time in the Army Reserve as senior advisers. As of this writing, all of the executives either currently hold or once held senior positions at Meta, Palantir or OpenAI. '

snopes.com/fact-check/us-army-

Snopes · US Army swore in tech executives as lieutenant colonelsThe Silicon Valley executives will serve as senior advisers as part of the U.S. Army Reserve, according to a news release.
Continued thread

…The biggest hurdle for the industry has always been legislative: securing #regulations that confer legitimacy without adding onerous requirements. And for that, executives & lobbyists had to turn their full attention to #Congress.

Ahead of the 2024 election cycle, a network of #SiliconValley #crypto executives & political strategists set their sights on DC. They formed a number of crypto-focused super PACs which spent a total of >$130M to #influence tight congressional races nationally.