Gizmodo: The Hidden Cost of OpenAI’s Genius. “According to a recent report from The Information, OpenAI revealed to investors that its stock-based compensation for employees surged more than fivefold last year to an astonishing $4.4 billion. That figure isn’t just large; it’s more than the company’s entire revenue for the year, accounting for a staggering 119% of its $3.7 billion in […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/07/12/gizmodo-the-hidden-cost-of-openais-genius/

How the Grateful Dead built the internet

the Dead popularised what some call the first real online community. Many fans were technologists and engineers themselves, working in Silicon Valley or at universities around America with access to early internet technology.

#GratefulDead #TheDead #Deadheads #TheWell #BBS #SiliconValley #music #socialmedia #internet #technology #tech #innovation

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250618-how-the-grateful-dead-shaped-social-media

"British police forces have signed contracts with a controversial US tech giant to buy AI-powered software that uses data about an individual’s race, sex life, health and political beliefs, it can be revealed.

An internal police memo obtained by The i Paper and Liberty Investigates confirms an intention to “nationally” apply the “Nectar” intelligence system, currently deployed as a pilot by the Bedfordshire force after being developed with Silicon Valley data analysis group Palantir Technologies.

The document, obtained under freedom of information rules, shows how the Palantir system is designed to bring together dozens of existing law enforcement databases into a single computing platform to draw up detailed profiles of suspects, as well as collate information on victims of crime, witnesses, and vulnerable individuals including children.

The 34-page briefing, which deals with data protection issues related to Nectar and Bedfordshire Police, makes clear the ambition of senior officers for the system to be used across policing, including in the fight against serious organised crime.

It states: “The primary goal is to help Bedfordshire… as well as the Eastern Region Serious Organised Crime Unit… and eventually apply [Nectar] nationally. This will develop tools to better protect vulnerable people by preventing, detecting and investigating crime.”"

https://inews.co.uk/news/police-use-controversial-ai-tool-sex-lives-beliefs-3747154

Google Hires Top A.I. Leaders From Windsurf, Which OpenAI Was Courting - Google recruited the chief executive and a co-founder of Windsurf, which OpenAI had been ... - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/technology/google-windsurf-openai.html #mergersacquisitionsanddivestitures #appointmentsandexecutivechanges #windsurf(exafunctioninc) #computersandtheinternet #deepmindtechnologiesltd #artificialintelligence #siliconvalley(calif) #hiringandpromotion #microsoftcorp #hassabisdemis #start-ups

"Does anyone really believe that would not have happened if there were just some different executives at Google? The structural forces of capitalism, of the public market, of the demand for growth at all costs would have bowled them over too.

Indeed, we’ve already run the experiment on whether a set of companies and executives claiming they’d be better than the old guard will really deliver on that promise. That was exactly the narrative the tech industry sold to the world when it was a bunch of startups and scrappy founders fighting to displace the dominant firms they were going up against. They promised they would “do no evil.”

That narrative was valuable in selling themselves and their products to the public, with ample help from a credulous media that loves to chase money and power. Years later, we can see it was an effective marketing campaign that allowed them to evade regulation and taxation that applied to traditional industries for far longer than they should’ve gotten away with.

The tech oligarchs are just as bad as — if not worse than — the executives and monopolists that preceded them, and a new crop of founders won’t change the way that vast wealth and power tends to corrupt those who wield it.

There are certainly exceptions to these rules. Wikipedia remains a non-profit entity and Signal seems to be resisting the pressure to pursue growth at all costs. But they’re few and far between, and it’s not better founders that will change that. It requires upending the structural forces that push companies and the people who run them to cast all other considerations aside in the pursuit of power and profit."

https://www.disconnect.blog/p/better-founders-wont-fix-silicon

Doge wants to replace our institutions with a tech utopia. It won’t work | Mike Pepi https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/11/doge-silicon-valley-tech-utopia #Artificialintelligence(AI) #Trumpadministration #SiliconValley #Technology #USpolitics #Computing #ElonMusk #USnews

Doge wants to replace our institutions with a tech utopia. It won’t work | Mike Pepi https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/11/doge-silicon-valley-tech-utopia #Artificialintelligence(AI) #Trumpadministration #SiliconValley #Technology #USpolitics #Computing #ElonMusk #USnews

Behold: the sacred relic of Silicon Valley—a dusty old circuit board touched by the hand of Jobs himself! Now watch as collectors fight to throw money at it like it's a tech museum in need of funding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdBKuBhdZwg #SiliconValley #TechCollectibles #CircuitBoard #JobsRelic #TechMuseum #HackerNews #ngated

Tech billionaires are turning the world on its head. We must challenge their power, but we also need to be clear that the individuals aren’t the sole problem.

There are structural forces at play that would pressure anyone in their position to do much the same. They must be dismantled.

https://www.disconnect.blog/p/better-founders-wont-fix-silicon

The chairman of Palantir, #PeterThiel, is the spider at the center of the #TrumpRegime's web. Entwined with #ElonMusk and his network of companies, mentor to #JDVance, #SiliconValley money man; the éminence grise of the administration. The un-elected billionaire who toys with human destiny like a cheap bauble:

"This is the face of our real enemy: not crude authoritarianism, but elegant nihilism. Not obvious evil, but the systematic conversion of human civilization into one man’s thought experiment."
___

Ideas Without Love | Techdirt https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/09/ideas-without-love/

The Register: Folks aren’t buying the PCs that US vendors stockpiled to dodge tariffs . “Total PC shipments in the US will increase by just 2 percent this year, thanks to Trump’s tariffs and little appetite from consumers for spending on ‘big-ticket’ items, despite the looming end of Windows 10 support.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/07/09/the-register-folks-arent-buying-the-pcs-that-us-vendors-stockpiled-to-dodge-tariffs/

Labour is selling the nation out to the Tech Bros without even a vote on the matter.

Quislings and Appeasers to fascists and fascist enablers.

They want our Youth dangerous and isolated, they want Fascism on every phone screen and Labour isn't going to stop them

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/09/uk-governments-deal-with-google-dangerously-naive-say-campaigners

Schöner Abgesang auf #AR als Beispiel für gehypte Techniken innerhalb der #SiliconValley #EchoChamber https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/Warum-Augmented-Reality-auf-der-Stelle-tritt-10474170.html?wt_mc=rss.red.ho.ho.rdf.beitrag.beitrag

The Nazi affiliated Substack duking the stats so users think their audience is steadily increasing and stick around on the platform?

Would Tech Bros be so duplicitous?

Of course they would, we're all rubes to them!

https://www.europesays.com/uk/248099/ VC behind ‘996’ work culture debate defends 7-day work weeks #Business #Entrepreneurs #Entrepreneurship #Founder #SiliconValley #StartUp #StartUps #UK #UnitedKingdom #VentureCapital

https://www.europesays.com/us/48533/ VC behind ‘996’ work culture debate defends 7-day work weeks #Business #Entrepreneurs #Entrepreneurship #Founder #SiliconValley #StartUp #StartUps #UnitedStates #UnitedStates #US #VentureCapital