Heads up, Zitron's gonna drop

Fuck it, off-the-cuff prediction: I expect resistance to Silicon Valley is gonna turn violent during Trump's term.

Recently read Brian Merchant's latest piece on the upcoming election, and I felt like making a quick-and-dirty prediction:

If Harris wins, I expect there will be some pretty harsh regulation against Silicon Valley. Putting aside everything but simple political pragmatism:

1. Elon Musk's election antics and Trump's support from tech billoinaires have shown SV holds a significant amount of power over politics - power which will almost certainly prove a constant thorn in Harris' side. As such, it'd be in her self interest to kneecap the Valley ASAP.

2. Public opinion of Silicon Valley has taken a pounding over the years for a variety of reasons, with the AI slop-nami just the latest and most serious grievance the public has against them. Any tech regulation a Harris presidency makes (especially against AI) is gonna enjoy significant public support from day one.

You did a damn good job spreading the Word of Ed.

I mean, it’s the same company that didn’t realize that half its traffic was porn, so it’s on brand

Granted, Apple's banhammer forced Tumblr's hand on that front (though Tumblr's complete failure on moderation did give Apple that golden opportunity).

(The whole debacle did lead to Newgrounds getting hit by two separate waves of new users - a minor wave in November after the NSFW purges kicked in, then a major wave in December after the porn ban was officially announced. I have nothing more to add, I think it was pretty funny Tumblr shat the bed that hard)

Rare Airbnb W

I'm sure such blatant and unrepentant price gouging won't end in any violent altercations from infuriated customers!

(Ah, who am I kidding, somebody's gonna blow their lid over Kroger jacking up water prices on a hot day. They'll be lucky if nobody gets shot before they ditch the idea.)

Not a sneer, but an interesting article from WaPo (archive link) about the rise/return of "dumb tech", and its link to the backlash against smart tech

Behold

Motion capture, but worse - brought to you by AI

(seriously, I saw random Youtubers do better shit than this eight years ago and that is not hyperbole)

This is gonna be comedy godl

This is just the Glucoboy but worse

Granted, this was back when Musk's public perception was at its most positive - it would take until the Thai cave diver incident in July 2018 before we saw the first hole being blown in Musk's "IRL Tony Stark" image.

Somewhat fittingly, that incident played out on Twitter, whose acquisition by Musk has done plenty to showcase his true colours.