It’s Not Just Google — All of Silicon Valley Has a Trust Problem Now

That's for sure.

At Instapundit, "MY USA TODAY COLUMN: It’s not just Google — all of Silicon Valley has a trust problem now. “When a gigantic corporation that controls our data and knows us intimately takes a controversial political stance, it ought to make us worry”."

Google Fires James Damore, Engineer Who Wrote 'Anti-Diversity' Memo

Well, you can't have a different opinion about such things. The guy should've known that, of course.

At Bloomberg, "Google Fires Author of Divisive Memo on Gender Differences" (at Memeorandum).

Also at Breitbart, "Google Fires Viewpoint Diversity Manifesto Author James Damore."

PREVIOUSLY: "Google Manifesto."

ADDED: Oh, the drama, at LAT, "Google employee's sexist manifesto is the latest crisis for a tech industry struggling to diversify."

'As I’m writing this, Etiene Dalcol has protected her Twitter account...'

She sure did.

From Stephen Green, at Instapundit, "SHUT UP, SHE EXPLAINED."

She's a magenta-haired feminist web-programmer, or something, lol.

Google Manifesto

I wondered what this was when tweeps were tweeting "Google manifesto." I'm like, "huh?"

At Gizmodo, "Exclusive: Here's The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google."

And at the Verge, "Not all Google employees disagree with anti-diversity polemic."

Silicon Valley Women Open-Up About Sexual Harassment

Leftist tech progressives are the biggest hypocrites.

At NYT, "Silicon Valley Women, in Cultural Shift, Frankly Describe Sexual Harassment":

Their stories came out slowly, even hesitantly, at first. Then in a rush.

One female entrepreneur recounted how she had been propositioned by a Silicon Valley venture capitalist while seeking a job with him, which she did not land after rebuffing him. Another showed the increasingly suggestive messages she had received from a start-up investor. And one chief executive described how she had faced numerous sexist comments from an investor while raising money for her online community website.

What happened afterward was often just as disturbing, the women told The New York Times. Many times, the investors’ firms and colleagues ignored or played down what had happened when the situations were brought to their attention. Saying anything, the women were warned, might lead to ostracism.

Now some of these female entrepreneurs have decided to take that risk. More than two dozen women in the technology start-up industry spoke to The Times in recent days about being sexually harassed. Ten of them named the investors involved, often providing corroborating messages and emails, and pointed to high-profile venture capitalists such as Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital and Dave McClure of 500 Startups.

The disclosures came after the tech news site The Information reported that female entrepreneurs had been preyed upon by a venture capitalist, Justin Caldbeck of Binary Capital. The new accounts underscore how sexual harassment in the tech start-up ecosystem goes beyond one firm and is pervasive and ingrained. Now their speaking out suggests a cultural shift in Silicon Valley, where such predatory behavior had often been murmured about but rarely exposed.

The tech industry has long suffered a gender imbalance, with companies such as Google and Facebook acknowledging how few women were in their ranks. Some female engineers have started to speak out on the issue, including a former Uber engineer who detailed a pattern of sexual harassment at the company, setting off internal investigations that spurred the resignation in June of Uber’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick.

Most recently, the revelations about Mr. Caldbeck of Binary Capital have triggered an outcry. The investor has been accused of sexually harassing entrepreneurs while he worked at three different venture firms in the past seven years, often in meetings in which the women were presenting their companies to him.

Several of Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalists and technologists, including Reid Hoffman, a founder of LinkedIn, condemned Mr. Caldbeck’s behavior last week and called for investors to sign a “decency pledge.” Binary has since collapsed, with Mr. Caldbeck leaving the firm and investors pulling money out of its funds.

The chain of events has emboldened more women to talk publicly about the treatment they said they had endured from tech investors...

Keep reading.

Idiot Leftist Trying to Save the Internet

It's Evan "Ev" Williams, one of the founders of both Blogger and Twitter, and the founder of Medium. He apologized for giving Donald Trump a platform (on Twitter), and contributing to the real estate mogul's election. He wishes only views he shares could be posted on his platforms, like the idiot loser leftist he is.

At Memeorandum and NYT:

‘The Internet Is Broken’: Idiot Leftist Is Trying to Salvage It. https://t.co/hZe7lWYsxu

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) May 21, 2017

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants

At Amazon, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads.

In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of advertising enticements, branding efforts, sponsored social media, commercials and other efforts to harvest our attention. Over the last century, few times or spaces have remained uncultivated by the "attention merchants," contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times. Tim Wu argues that this is not simply the byproduct of recent inventions but the end result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention. From the pre-Madison Avenue birth of advertising to TV's golden age to our present age of radically individualized choices, the business model of "attention merchants" has always been the same. He describes the revolts that have risen against these relentless attempts to influence our consumption, from the remote control to FDA regulations to Apple's ad-blocking OS. But he makes clear that attention merchants grow ever-new heads, and their means of harvesting our attention have given rise to the defining industries of our time, changing our nature--cognitive, social, and otherwise--in ways unimaginable even a generation ago.

Hat Tip: The New York Review, "They’ve Got You, Wherever You Are."

Low-income Families Face Eviction to Make Way for Facebook Employees in Silicon Valley

You can see why I hate Mark Zuckerberg, him and the entire culture he represents.

Entitled spoiled leftists kicking hard-working Latinos out of their homes.

Hey, that's progressive values for you! Democrat values!

At Truth Revolt, "Liberal Leftist Hypocrites: Low-Income, Hispanic Residents of Silicon Valley Apartment Evicted to Make Room for Facebook Staff."

Astronomical Housing Market, High Taxes Prompt Exodus of California Residents

It's not like this is new or anything, although this time they're reporting from the heart of the progressive Silicon Valley la la land.

At the San Jose Mercury News, "California's skyrocketing housing costs, taxes prompt exodus of residents":

Living in San Jose, Kathleen Eaton seemingly had it all: a well-paying job, a home in a gated community, even the Bay Area's temperate weather.

But enduring a daily grind that made her feel like a "gerbil on a wheel," Eaton reached her limit.

Skyrocketing costs for housing, food and gasoline, along with the area's insufferable gridlock, prompted the four-decade Bay Area resident to seek greener pastures -- 2,000 miles away in Ohio.

"It was a struggle in California," Eaton said. "It was a very difficult place to live. ... It's a vicious circle."

Eaton is far from alone.

A growing number of Bay Area residents -- besieged by home prices, worsening traffic, high taxes and a generally more expensive cost of living -- believe life would be better just about anywhere else but here.

During the 12 months ending June 30, the number of people leaving California for another state exceeded by 61,100 the number who moved here from elsewhere in the U.S., according to state Finance Department statistics. The so-called "net outward migration" was the largest since 2011, when 63,300 more people fled California than entered.

"The main factors are housing costs in many parts of the state, including coastal regions of California such as the Bay Area," said Dan Hamilton, director of economics with the Economic Forecasting Center at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

"California has seen negative outward migration to other states for 22 of the last 25 years."

A recent poll revealed that an unsettling sense of yearning has descended on people in the Bay Area: About one-third of those surveyed by the Bay Area Council say they would like to exit the nine-county region sometime soon.

Keep reading.

Remember, as I always say, this is the "once Golden State."

Super Bowl Security Theater

Following-up from the other day, "U.S. Air Force Fighter Jets to Patrol Skies Over Super Bowl 50 in Santa Clara, California (VIDEO)."

Watch this clip from Alex Jones' InfoWars channel, heh. They're making too much sense!

Amber Lee's Super Bowl Sunday Forecast

You've got a high pressure system and some mild Santa Ana conditions.

It's in the low 80s tomorrow and even warmer temperatures expected Monday.

Wow.

U.S. Air Force Fighter Jets to Patrol Skies Over Super Bowl 50 in Santa Clara, California (VIDEO)

You'll see some of the most aggressive counter-terror security measures ever implemented for a big-ticket event.

Via CNN:

Temperatures Near 90 Degrees in Southern California

It's ridiculously hot out.

I stepped out to get the newspaper and I thought I was going to boil over.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Winter gone? Temperatures nearing 90 degrees in Southern California with gusty winds."

And Kristen Keogh's got the weekend forecast. Again, who can complain with the Super Bowl tomorrow?

Four of Twitter's Top Executives Are Leaving (VIDEO)

I saw something on this the other day, but I've been too busy blogging the Malheur siege to think about it.

Interesting though.

In any case, at CBS News 13 Sacramento:


More, at Re/code, "Twitter's Nathan Hubbard Will Take Over Interim Media Job Amid Executive Changes."

The Real Teens of Silicon Valley

Fascinating.

At the California Sunday Magazine, "Inside the almost-adult, insular lives of ambitious teenagers flooding into Silicon Valley to join tech startups":

As the demand for tech labor grows, ambitious teenagers are flooding into San Francisco. There’s no official tally of the number of teens who work in tech, but Fontenot estimates that there are as many as a hundred recent high school dropouts working on startups in the city. Some were too distracted by programming projects and weekend hackathons to go to class. Others couldn’t pay for college and questioned why they should go into debt when there is easy money to be made. Still others had already launched successful apps or businesses and didn’t see why they should wait at home for their lives to start. In Facebook groups for young technologists, they saw an alternative: teens lounging in sunny Dolores Park (dolo, as they call it), teens leasing expansive South of Market office space, teens throwing parties whenever they want. And so they moved to San Francisco, many of them landing in houses like Mission Control.

Their parents watch from afar, some more supportive than others. “We just miss him. We miss him a lot,” Tanya Latta, Zach’s mom, told me. “But the ultimate goal for us as parents is to have our kids be able to be self-sufficient and happy. So when we saw that he’s reached out a little early, we were really happy that he’s in his element. But it happened so fast.”

RTWT.

Tech Expansion Overruns Silicon Valley

Those poor babies.

Silicon Valley's getting maxed out, with a burst of NIMBYism. Ain't it a shame. I'm sure the rest of California feels just terrible. Terrible!

At WSJ, "Tech Expansion Overruns Cities in California’s Silicon Valley":

Water isn’t California’s only scarce resource.

Room to grow is evaporating in Silicon Valley as technology giants’ appetites for expansion are running up against residents weary of clogged streets and cramped classrooms brought about by the boom of recent years.

Some communities are already saying they have reached their limits of development, while others signal that day is near, raising questions about the ability of the tech sector to keep expanding in what has long been its home base.

“The economy has outgrown the place,” said Gabriel Metcalf, chief executive of the Bay Area regional-planning-focused nonprofit SPUR. “The speed of economic change is much faster than the speed of community change.”

Front and center is Mountain View, Calif., a onetime bastion of flower farms and apricot orchards now home to Google Inc. The city in late February received proposals from tech companies Google and LinkedIn Corp., as well as private developers, to add 5.7 million square feet of office space—more than the size of two Empire State Buildings—for an area where the city has planned to allow just 2.2 million square feet of additional growth in the next two decades.

While some city officials say they could be flexible about the 2.2 million-square-feet cap, much more would be a nonstarter without changes to the city’s infrastructure.

There are commuters “backing up on to our city streets that are causing tremendous inconveniences for our residents,” said Randy Tsuda, Mountain View’s director of community development. “It’s now compromising general livability.”

“Silicon Valley is really straining to deal with traffic and transportation,” he said.

Just to the northwest in Palo Alto, long an epicenter of venture capital and top startups, tensions are running higher. The City Council in late March approved a plan that would cap annual office development at just 50,000 square feet in three main commercial areas of the city.

The move was opposed by multiple tech companies, which said it was overly restrictive. Hewlett-Packard Co. wrote in a letter to the council that under such a policy, it “would have been impossible for a company like H-P to grow to our current size.”

But residents and city officials say the rapid increase in office workers has overloaded the small city, filling its streets with traffic and making parking a chore.

The growth “puts special burdens on the infrastructure for cities with populations that are not that big,” said Greg Schmid, Palo Alto’s vice mayor.

Similar issues are being faced in cities like Cupertino, home of Apple Inc., and San Francisco, which is fast approaching its 875,000 square foot annual cap of office development. Until recently, the city had been using up unused development rights from years past, but with millions of square feet in the pipeline, a crunch is looming.

Real-estate developers and tech companies, fearful such resistance could hinder growth around their headquarters, have been offering numerous benefits with proposed developments in an attempt to offset the added strains they bring. To help clear the way for development in Mountain View, for instance, the firms have offered a variety of givebacks ranging from added parks to transportation improvements, some of which were requested by the city.

The region has a long history of allowing growth, developers and tech firms say. And if the employers find enough ways to mitigate the effects of growth, they believe the communities will benefit from the economic expansion.

“It’s not impossible, it’s not going to ruin their lives—it’s going to require some change,” said Timothy Tosta, a San Francisco-based land-use attorney who represents numerous large tech companies and developers. “There is all kinds of room—you just have to adapt your thinking.”

 Keep reading.

Ellen Pao Loses Historic Gender Discrimination Lawsuit Against Kleiner Perkins

I've been seeing articles about this case for weeks.

For example, at LAT last week, "Win or lose, discrimination suit is having an effect on Silicon Valley."

Well, she lost.

At the San Francisco Chronicle, "Kleiner Perkins prevails in Ellen Pao sex-bias case":

Venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers did not discriminate against former junior partner Ellen Pao for her gender, nor fire her because she filed a high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit against the firm, a jury found on Friday.

A six-man, six-woman San Francisco Superior Court jury sided in favor of Kleiner Perkins on all claims after more than two days of deliberation and more than four weeks of testimony that was closely watched by Silicon Valley and around the country as tensions over the lack of diversity in the technology industry have swelled.

The verdict was a major victory for Kleiner Perkins, for which the trial had revealed an at times unflattering portrait of a firm that had fallen from its glory days as an early investor in companies such as Google and Amazon.

Pao filed suit against Kleiner Perkins in 2012 for $16 million in damages for gender discrimination and retaliation, plus unspecified punitive damages. She alleged that Kleiner Perkins had promoted male partners over equally qualified women at the firm, including herself, and then retaliated against her for raising concerns about the firm’s gender dynamics by failing to promote her and finally firing her. Pao, now interim CEO of the message board site Reddit, was fired after seven years at the firm following her 2012 lawsuit...

Keep reading.