This flyer is just plain nuts. Some choice quotes:
"The self-driven car has been another pet project of the
DARPA for many years. It sponsored a recurring Grand
Challenge for people designing self-driving vehicles,
hoping someone would crack open the new technology.
Anthony Levandowski was one of the wonder kids who
flocked to these competitions, looking for a federal handout
and fame. Now, with Google handing him more money
than he could ever dream of, Levandowski is working long
hours bringing this dream of the military into reality."
"Levandowski
started a company that created computer tablets designed
to display blueprints at construction sites. The reasoning
behind their venture was that updating and then printing
new blueprints took a few days and slowed construction
time. With this new product, construction companies
could create condominiums, malls, and subdivisions with
the least possible delay and the maximum profit. In praise
of his prodigious business acumen, the administration-run
UC Berkeley News decided to run an article on him in 2003,
championing his ability to make money and enable the
housing bubble that was just starting to expand."
"The proposed project is a testament to the arrogance,
disconnection, and luxury of the ruling class. Growing their
own vegetables in a rooftop garden and selling them to
other wealthy people allows them, somehow, to pretend that
the planet is not being ravaged by the same economy they
depend on for their wealth, comfort, and safety."
"Preparing for the action, we watched Levandowski step out of his front door. He had Google Glasses over his eyes, carried his baby in his arm, and held a tablet with his free hand. As he descended the stairs with the baby, his eyes were on the tablet through the prism of his Google Glasses, not on the life against his chest. He appeared in this moment like the robot he admits that he is."
Seriously? That last one is particularly horrifying and almost sounds like an implicit threat.
Unfortunately it looks like the ideas of Ted Kaczynski + Internets + Snowden/NSA feeding into a new Luddite movement of ultra-woo. It could be a full blown cult within the year. Personally I don't think it is possible to avoid this escalating, is just about whether it is just briefly messy or turns into a more long lived affair.
Is this serious or supposed to be satire or something? Cause it reads like something a deranged person would write to me... Making comments about how Google employees automatically bring police, "All of Google's employees should be prevented from getting to work", etc. Yeah they do bring police.. to deal with nutjobs that decide to randomly show up at their houses and stop them from working, stop a bus in the middle of the street and cause a disruption, etc.
Just read the PDF, and it's an interesting and reasonable perspective on tech. Probably sounds blasphemous to an audience excited about investments/acquisitions of $15M, $30M and $1.54 billion (from HN's current front page), but I think techies are due for a reasonable backlash for their usual servility to power, by people concerned about their society.
With respect, you are wrong. It's neither interesting nor reasonable, and indeed is barely coherent.
Gentrification is a real problem, with inequality at it's roots. I think most people would agree with that. And I'd also agree that it's easy for some in the tech community to lose touch with the relative privilege that they often live in. But this is not a "reasonable backlash" – it's a bunch of incoherent knee-jerk harassment by people who should really be doing something better with their time.
The proper channel for dealing with housing issues is local government; for NSA issues, national government; in neither is the correct channel the harassment of individual employees of a company which may (or may not be) the cause of those issues.
A while ago I was talking to an extremely cynical person in line to inherit a british aristocratic title.
He told me something his grandfather taught him: People who are protesting against you will almost certainly disagree with you about what an "acceptable backlash" is. Specifically you will prefer ineffective protests and those that that don't inconvenience you, while they will prefer effective protests and those that are spiteful.
Gentrification is a really complex problem that is superficially bandied about. While it involves changes they are not all negative and the net impact on existing residents is very situation.
This PDF is so far from reasonable. This is a group of people that seem to be angry about anything and everything tech related - from exploitative production labor all the way through to not paying enough attention to your family. The PDF reads like an anti-technology manifesto and anti-government war cry more than anything else to me.
Your perspective on "usual servility" is underrated.
I read the flyer, too. Kind of a PITA to rotate it, but:
It's just their perspective, mostly PR-style publicl-available history of projects for that particular developr. It's worthwhile to read, to remind ourselves to be respectful of the larger scene, rather than just the dollar signs.
Still, it's hyperbolic in places. I think their view would be more persuasive if they talked about "the kind of world we want to live in" rather than leaping to "evil." It would also be more persuasive if they discussed more ways everyday people can avoid giving power to their "opponents." Mom and Pop are much more likely to starve Google by switching to DuckDuckGo than to "take down surveillance cameras."
However, I don't think it's utter crap. Both sides in this issue have some large, philosophical questions to consider.
Political theatre, for its own sake, is a very effective way of attracting press coverage and staying in the news. Has been a go-to in the radical playbook for nearly a century now.
Whoever wrote this is a fucking lunatic. I mean, common, "His house is a pompous, minimally decorated two story palace with stone lions guarding the door."
You lost me right there. And then the parts about Google X developing "war robots" and Google threatening to release a "massive amount of carbon"?
Just... no. I thought the protestors had a reasonable argument about Google hindering the development of better public transportation and displacing San Francisco individuals by running private bus services that isolated Googlers from the community, but this is sheer lunacy.
Though they've said they're only going to fulfill their existing military contracts, not seek out others. I guess we'll see what happens on that front.
Maybe if this was a protest of a Boston Dynamics employee in Massachusetts, but this guy apparently works for Google X. So... self driving cars and diabetes contact lenses?
The way these people see the world: those contact lenses are just one more way for the evil rich to impose their rule on the poor. They get treatment, and the poor don't.
> Are housing prices in San Francisco really so insane that a two-story house is "pompous" and a "palace"?
For the middle class and below? In many neighborhoods of the Bay Area the prices really are that high now. I agree of course that the description is over the top, but I think it does accurately reflect how economically tough the area is for most residents, particularly those who are not developers, lawyers, or doctors.
Yeah a simple house like that is easily 800k here, compare that to other places were you can purchase a similar house for 100k yeah housing prices are crazy here. 2k/mo for a 1BR 3k/mo for a 2BR.
You didn't know that Google has secretly been amassing a huge tank of carbon. There's a big red button that, when pressed, will release that carbon. I thought everybody knew this.
This is shameful behavior - it is tantamount to mob rule & harassment, with the effective statement that "We strongly dislike what you're doing, so we are going to disturb your private residence and prevent you from going to work".
No person who isn't committing a serious crime deserves that whatever his/her beliefs.
Post Dunblane, all handguns are illegal in mainland UK. The only exceptions are for law enforcement/armed forces. [We'll ignore diplomatic missions using immunity/convention exceptions.]
Without getting into all the republican politics, Northern Ireland is distinct in terms of the legal system and status compared to the mainland (of Scotland, England and Wales). You cannot use an example from NI to extend to the rest of the UK.
I'll leave other commentors to discuss how sensible it is to talk about bringing guns into what seems to be a pretty hot debate on the street. One comment I read recently which has stuck with me goes along the lines of "there is no situation which resorting to violence will not make worse".
Good luck. I'd encourage this even if you are not a Google employee. You'll probably want to move out of California if you want the right to defend yourself and family though. Getting a concealed carry license there is next to impossible.
Well you asked so I'll answer but I understand that a lot of people on HackerNews may not share my same views on self defense. Also to be clear, I don't think a non-violent blockade necessitates the use of a firearm. However, I think the topic came up because protests can and do lead to a handful of rogue protestors going too far, getting too angry and attacking people.
So to answer your question in a general statement: I'm a firm believer that is my responsibility to protect my life and my family and no one else's. I also think it is naive to believe that I could never be the victim of a crime or brutal attack by someone equipped with a more effective weapon than my hands. I'd much rather have a firearm in my hand then a cell phone waiting for 911 when someone is clearly trying to inflict severe harm or death.
Fair enough; I respect your desire and right to do so. I don't think it's for everyone, though, so I asked why you wanted to encourage everyone to do it. Thanks for answering my question.
I, personally, believe that I'm statistically likely to make a situation worse or possibly hurt myself if I own a handgun. So I choose not to have one. I might choose differently at a later date, depending on where I live.
I have my CCW (Carrying of Concealed Weapon) license. In Kentucky, you must go through an instructional class before getting your weapon -- and you learn that pulling your weapon out should only happen when you're prepared to use it in a lethal manner -- otherwise the aggressor could fight you for your weapon.
You don't get a handgun as a show of force -- you get one to protect yourself from imminent harm...and some asshat blocking a bus isn't putting you in imminent harm: you're in the bus, and hopefully the bus driver has already called 911 to get the person/people who are blocking the road out of your way.
San Francisco almost never issues such licenses. If memory serves, only two people currently have CCW licenses issued by the City and County of San Francisco. Those two people who have them have serious political connections.
However, CCWs in California are state-wide licenses and many of the more rural counties are pretty liberal with giving them out. Even Sacramento is close to a "shall-issue" county. I've heard San Diego is pretty decent too.
In other words, if you live in a county where you can get a CCW, you can carry it legally in the entire state.
I can come up with lots of reasons for why carrying a concealed weapon is more likely to be harmful than beneficial in these circumstances.
But why is it a bad idea to carry a weapon in SF? Are people stopped and frisked? Are there metal detectors everywhere? Are there pickpockets all over the place that will steal your weapon and use it against you?
It is extremely difficult to legally buy and conceal a handgun that conforms to California law. You also can't pickpocket a gun to anyone carrying it appropriately.
Try to take a gun from a cop and see what happens.
Weapon retention is an extremely stressed training point for most law enforcement agencies (even over effective shooting in many places). That's because many LEO shootings involve their service weapons that have been taken (I've seen estimates in the 8-12% range).
This is in a population that is trained in weapon retention. I've rarely met non-LEO folks who spend adequate time on the skill.
If I am getting threatened by random loonies yes - just as if I had worked for one of my previous employers in NI I would have been very careful about who I talked to and which places I went.
one of my mates is married to a DA in the USA and has had to "cheek his guns just in case some one tried to make the threat good.
Don't assume that all us Brits are fluffy little things who will have a fit of palpitations when fire arms are mentioned
As far as I can tell, it's a necessary consequence of any mention of firearms on HN, in any context. There seems little point in blaming any one participant, in any one instance, for the perennial argument over what is perhaps the most immediately, or at least the most reliably, polarizing issue ever raised on HN.
Others include Isreal / Palestine; sexism; RMS; etc. it is trivially easy to troll HN. HN does not do well at ignoring trolls or not responding to overly-enthusiastic posters. (There are some exceptions to this where a person will carefully talk through differences in opinion to try to understand or communicate a point of view but these are exceptions).
"In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is."
The trouble with the eternal firearms argument is that anti-firearms types tend to be theorists (many of whom, in my experience, have never even laid hands on a firearm, to say nothing of firing one), and pro-firearms types to be practitioners.
It's sort of like expecting a random Haskell programmer and a random PHP programmer to see eye-to-eye on anything, or indeed to be able to have a productive conversation with one another. In theory, this can occur. In practice...
If you are not trained in self defense and how to use a gun to defend your life maybe you shouldn't be carrying one and you also shouldn't be commenting on it like you know what you are talking about.
Why do you assume a gun would be randomly taken out in a tense confrontation?
I can spin this idea as well by saying "What if a few rogue protestors were really pissed off, kicked in your front door and began to beat you with a baseball bat, wouldn't that be a great time to have some leverage to protect your life?"
Or what if you were walking your child to school and just one angry protestor twice your size followed you, became increasingly more agitated and decided to smash your head into the curb.
It's all relative to how you phrase it.
[EDIT] And apparently "hbags" found this comment really insulting for some reason and thinks I'm nuts for demonstrating an alternative way to phrase a situation... and I'm the unstable one...ok.
Don't you imagine it is easier to keep a level head in a confrontation when you are confident of your ability to defend your person, should it become necessary to do so?
Why is it that you think because someone has a gun they are incapable of acting rationally? If I were in the above situation I would not draw my gun with out feeling that there was a real threat to my life or property. And in that case I would rather have a gun than not have a gun.
Of course, and ericcumbee's point is well made; people who've never put any actual thought into what it's like to go armed are generally very quick to assume that those who do go armed see putting holes in things as a handy means of resolving any situation, from an argument in traffic to a panhandler begging change. (Far be it from me, of course, to speculate on any personal qualities, or lack thereof, which might be inadvertently revealed, by those who make this unwarranted assumption, in the process of doing same.)
That said, if I am effectively trapped in my home by a currently non-violent protest which has as its manifesto the sort of manifest lunacy on display in the linked article, I am going to want to be able to defend family and self with force majeure, should matters proceed beyond noisy and foolish hot-headedness into an outright attack.
But I see recommendations for guns all the time. I don't see recommendations for de-escalation techniques.
Perhaps this is something that gun companies could do to promote their responsible gun carry image? They could provide training programmes on conflict managemen and de-escalalation along with safe gun use?
> Why is it that you think because someone has a gun they are incapable of acting rationally?
Because they're a real live human fucking being with anger and emotion and desperation and base needs and selfish wants, not a theoretical hyper-rational philosophical strawperson.
Real live human beings are pretty classically incapable of acting rationally, and if you think otherwise, I would suggest that you have only very recently come out from under a rock.
Are you by chance familiar with the axiom that, given an audience without any other information about the parties or principles involved in a given argument, the side which presents its claims in a calm, level-headed fashion is more likely to be taken seriously than the side that's red-faced and flinging spittle?
I can't imagine what's brought that so strongly to mind just now, but I figured I'd mention it all the same. Make of it what you like.
That's not an axiom, it's just an opinion. Personally, I find passion pretty compelling to read/hear, and I won't present my side with a false posture of academic distance if that's not how I feel. Additionally, I'm not really interested in winning over the people who are more concerned with the tone of an argument than the actual facts presented.
Well, exhorting the choir is very satisfying, of course, and I can see the tactical benefit in so doing to the exclusion of any attempt to increase the size of the congregation. This does, of course, imply an abandonment of any desire to find a modus vivendi, but the impression I have is that such abandonment is more or less implicit.
I'm a former partisan of that sort of thinking, so I'm well aware of it -- from the inside, as it were. The trouble with it is that it only works on people who already substantially agree with you. When you're talking to people who don't, at best it does nothing, and at worst it actively impairs your efforts.
Failure to acknowledge this fact is taken as a sign of commitment, I think, in certain quarters, but I've lately come to hold the opinion that such failure evinces a certain basic lack of empathy which augurs ill for the ability of the person so failing to make an argument capable of convincing someone not already in agreement with him.
> When you're talking to people who don't, at best it does nothing
Citation needed. As I said above, and you apparently did not read, I personally find conviction and fire far more compelling than dispassion. You may differ, but do not mistake the subjective for the objective.
I'd imagine if a bunch of google employees did something similar at the house of the person who organized this protest, it wouldn't be seen as being fair.
Meanwhile in another thread, people are lamenting the idea that the government can require you to get a permit to peacefully protest, and arrest you otherwise...
I don't think there should be harsh penalties for misusing public space, but I don't really trust people to be reasonable either (meaning I'm comfortable with some rules about the uses of public spaces).
I mean, it's kinda like driving by your house with a camera then putting the pictures on the web. Or slurping up your wifi credentials. Good thing Google employees would never get involved in anything like that.
err do I need to "tell" you that being blockaded into my home and having flyers with threatening language abut me handed to my neighbors woudl make me feel threatened - it's perception that matters here.
You have repeated your belief that if you /feel/ threatened then you /are/ threatened. But threatened feelings are not enough to convict. Feelings are not facts.
But, let's suppose you /were/ right for a moment. What conclusions would that lead us to? If you were right and gaius (the poster above) or I felt /threatened/ by google's actions of photographing our houses and slurping our wifi credentials, would that mean that google had indeed threatened us?
After all, he /felt/ threatened. In your words, the perception of being threatened matters, right? So, if you're to be believed, google _has_ threatened /me/, because /I/ feel threatened by their taking pictures in public and slurping my wifi. If this is true, then according to you, what they have done /is/ tantamount to mob rule and harassment, and Google /is/ guilty of same, as it follows all the way back up to Bahamat's post above.
But of course this is not true. Google is not guilty of mob rule and harassment. Or do you believe that Google is guilty of mob rule and harassment?
If there is a threat, there must be evidence of a threat. Above posters and I have requested evidence. Evidence of a crime, not evidence of feelings. To back up the charge of a threat, can you articulate:
1. A statement to inflict pain, injury, damage, etc.
2. The event for which retribution is sought?
If you have those two, you have a threat. Otherwise, I'm very sorry for the feelings you feel, but the protestors have acted no worse than Google. I'm grateful my country allows us to communicate our grievances to one another.
This is getting to be a bit absurd. I understand and can sympathize with the plight of folks who feel that they are becoming economically marginalized in the region, because in many ways it is really happening. But public badgering of mid to low-level folks is not a way to gain a lot of support.
It's like damaging the lobby of a Bank of America or smashing the windows of a McDonalds -- all it does is ruin the day for the poor middle to low income folks who run the branch and does nothing to the folks who you aim to target.
This is the behavior of desperate people who have lost hope that our government functions and are motivated to action.
This seems like the natural conclusion of our government's inattentiveness to it's citizenry. Violence isn't far when folks have achieved this level of frustration.
The last line of the link makes it clear that Google isn't going to be the only target. "All of you other tech companies, all of you other developers and everyone else building the new surveillance state--We're coming for you next." Burn the witch!
I don't think people should be resorting to violence out of principle, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect that "folks" who are economically marginalized should put up with this because "manners."
But targeting developers is exactly backwards! Or at least it would be if development was, net, increasing the number of housing units. SF has some insane zoning laws; why aren't they a target? Or is there an implication that SF should only ever serve the interests of those that live there as-of some unspecified date in the (recent?) past? Will the police enforce the borders of the city to prevent anyone from entering or leaving? How exactly is this worker paradise supposed to work?
I doubt the protesters are going to be logging into HN to answer your reasonable questions.
If I lived in SF- i would be concerned that something major has changed. Your response describes reasonable questions in a level playing field where people have hope that the system works.
I don't think these people have hope in the system anymore. They're trying fundamentally different approaches rather than just giving up.
If they are willing to go after specific employees like this in spite of perception damages that come with the approach, they probably aren't averse to the perception damages that violence cultivates either.
I just wanted to point out, it's _not just the economic marginalization_, it's the cultural mismatch that fuels so much frustration for those in the outside group.
Of course the economic stuff is easy to measure (being numbers!), but stuff like calling yourself a robot (the develop calls himself a robot in his soul), having employees wear different colored badges according to their privileges and so on are cultural differences that people don't like and feel compelled to call out.
What's ridiculous is, they do it to themselves. If they just used their votes to get a zoning board and laws that let people build housing there wouldn't be this problem. 64% of people in SF rent. If you want lower rents, stop trying to make the city look the same in 2014 as it did in 1964.
I've noticed the same people that are crying about the gentrification are the same people crying about the new buildings killing the culture of the city. It seems like they just want to kick all the new people out and just keep the status quo.
If the status quo means having a place to live in what was your and your family's neighborhood (cultural and actual) for a long time, yours is not really an indictment.
It's a pretty damning indictment for anyone who thought, even briefly, about exactly how that would work. How exactly will someone and their family have a place to live, in the same neighborhood? Will someone be responsible for ensuring that population doesn't grow too much? And will someone else be responsible for deciding how long "a long time" is, or what happens after said time passes? I mean, of course it would be fantastic if nice shit just fell out of the sky and could be had merely by bending down to pick it up off the ground – but that's an infantile hope and it's stupid to expect it.
Perhaps, but the view fails to understand what a city is and that cities change, grow and die. Cities are not monolithic static entities. They are not 'living' museums.
Why should it matter what level they are? If its wrong to harass the low level worker its wrong to harass any level of worker at their home. If you wish to protest a business do so at their business.
Lets just hope feel the same the next time they read about some mid level banker or stock broker having people outside their homes. Amazing how even in this community we have groups who think there is a difference just because of who you work for.
> If its wrong to harass the low level worker its wrong to harass any level of worker at their home.
If we stipulate that actual harassment is illegal, I don't think the rest of your statement follows. Protesting at the home of a worker without decision-making authority is unlikely to change anything, protesting at the home of a high level executive (hypothetically--you'd never get past their security) could potentially convince them to change the way their company does business.
The analogy between Google and McDonalds only works in regard to commercial creepiness. It does not sufficiently cover collaboration with the surveillance state's organs.
Only individual persons have moral agency. The NSA is not a proper target for the expression of moral outrage because it is not a moral agent [and neither is Google or any other corporate entity]. If you call up the NSA to express moral outrage it is likely to be handled as a matter of law enforcement one way or the other though handled not in your favor is more likely. Call Google or Microsoft or Apple and your moral outrage is treated with standardized customer service protocols.
The NSA is not a proper target for expressions of moral outrage, the individual elected officials who allow, facilitate, or collaborate with its behaviors are as are those who are just following orders. The people responsible are responsible whether the context is some three letter agency or a publicly traded company. A corporation doesn't shield one from moral liability.
In a country where corporations seem to have more power over the government than its people, it more effective to target the corporations than the government.
>The analogy between Google and McDonalds only works in regard to commercial creepiness. It does not sufficiently cover collaboration with the surveillance state's organs.
What??? Uhh. This guy is the surveillance state's organs. You mean he's from Oregon? No wait...
More so because there are actually people here in this thread defending the crazy person who's trying to destroy somebody's life because they don't like the company he works for.
That article was insane. How dare he try to get actual houses built so people can live there! And those crazy tech people with their law and order, and the jobs they create in the service industry! We cannot tolerate that!
Let's pretend Google isn't causing very real problems for the poor and lower middle class in the Bay area. Let's also pretend that we can blame an inorganic "corporation", but never the individuals who design it, steer it, and totally embody it.
The point of the protest isn't to destroy a person's life, the point of the protest is to (1) make Google's employees reluctant to continue being Google's employees and as a result (2) make Google rethink their official and unofficial policies, in order to (3) make the world a better place.
AFAIK, they haven't really hurt anybody (this time). They are just pressing the points that (they think will) hurt the most.
No one deserves to feel unsafe, especially in their own home. Just because they haven't literally harmed his person doesn't mean that they're acting morally.
That's not a particularly good argument, because one of the main point of people protesting the NSA surveillance (which Google is a part of) is that it makes them feel unsafe. It's all a matter of perspective.
I'm not sure how I feel about the protest in general, but I was reacting to the idea that they "haven't hurt anyone". As far as my system of morals is concerned, making someone feel unsafe is still hurting them.
If one takes "kind of" to mean "not," then yes. Otherwise, no, the point of protest is not to threaten anything or anyone, including revolution.
Seriously, just look up protest in a dictionary. It's an expression, a communication. It's a chance for people to respond. It's a visible, recordable effort, as opposed to an anecdote.
Your argument suggests a certain naïveté, or else a desire to claim there is no subtext whatsoever in organizing a mob to serve as the medium of the "communication" to which you refer.
Whatever the overt message, and especially when the purported message is as confused and vaguely threatening as in this case, in the act of arranging that someone should awaken, to find a crowd surrounding his house and shouting imprecations, there cannot but be a subtextual implication which amounts to "And you'd better listen to us, or else!"
Of course, I'm sure that, finding yourself in the position poor Levandowski did, your first instinct would be to argue semantics with the mob! What more reasonable response, after all, could there possibly be? And what more reasonable creature, than a shouting mob, with which to carry on such a discussion?
My argument parrots the dictionary. Yours smuggles in all kinds of baggage, such using a weak definition of the word "mob" while implying the strongest and saying "surrounding" when they were likely only in front of.
Your suggestion that a subtext exists would be useful if there were a history of protestors at Google employee's houses. However, there is none beyond what you are imagining in your creative (how do you evidence your statement that they were shouting?) mind.
In fact, now that a peaceful demonstration has taken place outside a Google employee's house, a precedent has begun to form in which the subtext is that employees should NOT feel threatened by protestors. I would not have realized this myself had not you not mistakenly claimed its opposite, so thank you and have an up vote.
You talk of parroting the dictionary as though that were desirable. While a dictionary is a good and useful thing, there is much of value which is not to be found in such a book.
In particular, a dictionary concerns itself with what a given word is currently agreed upon to mean, and not with the history of the phenomenon that word might happen to denote; your apparent desire to constrain such historical consideration, to include only incidents in which a protest occurs at a Google employee's house, is quite neat, I suppose, in that it neatly sidesteps any concern over the implicit threat of violence which is part and parcel of any deployment of the tactic. But I don't find such circumscribed historiography particularly compelling.
Of course. The essence of the argument is whether or not threatening to maim and murder as necessary, to produce whatever result the protesters hold dear, is a morally sound tactic.
They haven't really hurt anybody physically this time would be a more accurate way to put it. Its hard to imagine that he and his family aren't going to be up late nights worrying about what comes next. I'm truly stunned to see folks on hn defending this behavior.
I wish I were. They agree with the protesters, don't you see? And, because they feel themselves to be on the "right side of history", whatever that means, they are utterly innocent of fear that they should ever themselves awaken to find a shouting mob on their doorstep.
Of course, they're also utterly ignorant of history, or they'd know what happens, in a revolution, to people who consider themselves on the "right side of history", but are found insufficiently so by those to whom all weapons are friends. Little Dantons, all of them! -- and I'd be perfectly sanguine about the sanguinary fate to which they'd unknowingly consign themselves, did it not take such enormities to slake the thirst of the mob; one of the Terror's distinguishing characteristics, after all, is that it is always so very hard to steer.
They agree with the protesters, don't you see? And, because they feel themselves to be on the "right side of history", whatever that means,
This sounds so familiar, where have I heard it before? Seems to have a lot in common with the anti-abortionists who bomb clinics and kill doctors . . .
I really can't believe people are trying to justify bullying like this. The points they're trying to smear him on are outlandish like saying he's personally responsible for NSA surveillance, or because he made an app for construction blueprints he's personnally kicking people out of their homes?
You'd have to be completely insane to believe #3 is in any way related to #1 and #2. I personally feel the world is a much better place (certainly Oakland is) with highly skilled employees flushing out the trash.
The people taken in by this movement are worse then insane, and they are worse than morons. They are articulate enough to be dangerous.
However, comments like the one you make here just strengthens their movement. "Trash" ? No one is trash! If you refer to criminality, know that good hearted and decent poor people are also adversely affected.
Right. It is important to cast this protestor out rather than try to understand their perspective. Thats the kind of response that has no consequences.
No defense is possible for the truly evil and nonviolent behavior of that sinister protestor.
Wait, what? I'm not sure which levels of sarcasm you are applying to which parts of your post. Do you think there are real negative consequences to casting out this moron?
Morons are going to find things to protest. Some address real issues, others invent issues, or build them out of poor research.
No, there aren't "people"; there is "a person", me. Just one person.
Everyone else is speculating on how the poor little "Googler"'s life is destroyed by a naive peaceful protest, derailing the issue with anti-left wing jokes, suggesting that "Googlers" carry weapons, and so on.
HN at its best: when its ideological toe is stepped on. popcorn
Why shouldn't googlers carry weapons? Everyone has a right to self-defense, and certain recent actions at least hint that googlers may be at an increased risk of being attacked. Choosing to carry a weapon is just being prudent.
That kind of egalitarian viewpoint is alien to these protesters. They are entitled to attack this individual because he is powerful and wrong, and they are powerless and right. You're thinking "no punching" and they're thinking "punch up, not down."
A group posts pictures of your house, your name, and detailed descriptions that attempt to dehumanise you and paint you as some supervillain.
Would I feel threatened and oppressed if I was the target of that? Yes. I'd probably make sure I had weapons in the house.
My lunatic meter went off time and time again while reading their flier. I would not for a second trust that there's not at least one crazy guy that decides to take things one step too far in that group.
They state that they chose to block his personal commute not merely protest at his residence. That means they chose to attempt to prevent him from leaving (since once he left he would be out of their control and may well go to work).
If you were someone that needed to go to work, and needed to drop your child somewhere on the way, and there was a large group of people outside your house with the stated intent of preventing you from doing so, you would not feel threatened? I mean sure they are peaceful while you are inside not attempting to leave, but when you try to oppose their goals by leaving, it raises the question of how dedicated they are to their goal, which I believe would make a rational person feel threatened.
If they had not made the point that the purpose of this was to restrict him from going about life then I would be much more willing to consider the view that he should not feel threatened.
So if I hang out in your front lawn and prevent you from leaving your house (in a non-violent manner) with a bunch of my friends, does that make me non-threatening and non-oppressive?
I'm a marxist - certainly not aligned with any right wing libertarians. But right from the headline that article disgusts me.
Unless they have concrete proof that this specific guy have done something particularly bad (and they've not presented any), calling him out by name and with photos of his home is way over the line to begin with.
Not only is it creepy, it is deeply counterproductive and will only serve to alienate people that might otherwise be sympathetic.
What they describe as a "pompous two story palace with stone lions guarding the door" looks to me like a quite average suburban house. Yes, I get that there are people substantially worse off, but they're not getting any sympathy with crap like that.
Further, trying to dehumanise him with their descriptions of him as a "robot" and contrasting him with his child, and their use of words like "evil" ought to make everyone concerned.
This is not progressive. On the contrary, this is moronic petit bourgeois luddites staging ineffective and creepy demonstrations that will achieve nothing but play straight into the hands of their opponents.
It also shows that they fundamentally fail to understand the mechanisms they are fighting. Everyone on the other side will see what they are doing as perfectly reasonable. They are just "hacking the system" and following consequences. The moment they are described as "evil" and faced with personal demonstrations, these guys start creating enemies, when they could instead have searched for partners.
But these clowns use socialist terms while they clearly don't understand much of its basis. Marx, for example, was very clear in his agitation against the kind of moronic vilification demonstrated in this text: The typical capitalist, and those aiding him, according to Marx, is no more evil than the worker he oppresses - capitalist and worker alike for the most part are trapped in the same machine, and have little choice but to stick to their roles: A capitalist that stops exploiting labour will fail, and end up a labourer by necessity himself. Marx was not against the capitalist. He was not even against the capitalist system per se - on the contrary, he realised that for any chance of socialism to succeed, it would be _essential_ to bring about the economic development and automation required to be able to meet the needs of everyone.
In fact, socialism as an idea is a child of the industrial revolution more than anything: It arose out of the hope that the industrial revolution would bring about such wealth that poverty could finally be beaten, Marx held that the capitalist system would play out its role once production had reached such a height that poverty could be eradicated.
Socialism originated as an ideology deeply intertwined with a positive view of technology and automation as tools of liberation. To see these guys play modern day luddites and drag out socialism in the same breath just shows a staggering degree of lack of awareness of history. To see them target individuals rather than the system equally so.
I appreciate the perspective of a person who identifies as Marxist.
I'm not a Marxist but I've been struggling to articulate why I believe this sort of protesting is counterproductive. For one thing, their complaints are not actionable-- they're co-opting a grab-bag of leftist, luddite terminology and the end result rounds down to a primal scream. I don't live in SF, but it seems to me that the horse is out of the barn: SF has changed irrevocably and it will never go back to what it was. I suspect they know this on some level.
A large subset of tech workers have libertarian leanings, to be sure, but there's a strong leftist/liberal bent, as well. More than a lot of other well-off folks, I'd expect tech workers to be allies. Regardless, though, they're/we're not going to consider ourselves evil just because someone says so. The incentives are simple and compelling: we get paid well for doing work we ostensibly enjoy. They want "techies" to go away because we're ruining everything but the only way to make that work at any scale is highly, highly questionable-- shit like violence and/or intimidation, in other words.
I'm sympathetic to the protesters' feeling of disenfranchisement, but it's increasingly difficult for me to remain sympathetic. The top tier tech companies can't undo the last few decades of Bay Area history. Gentrification is not a solved problem, but density seems to be one way to go. That involves compromise. My sense is that these folks feel entitled enough to claim ownership over SF such that I'd expect a rather cool response to compromise.
My wife is from Cuba, I've witnessed first hand what "applied" marxism creates, misery and strife. Let alone places like North Korea etc.. Honest question, how do you cope with the reality vs the ideal?
> My wife is from Cuba, I've witnessed first hand what "applied" marxism creates, misery and strife. Let alone places like North Korea etc.. Honest question, how do you cope with the reality vs the ideal?
IME, self-identified Marxists outside of countries run by Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist dictatorships tend to view nominally "Marxist" Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist dictatorships as having roughly the same relationship to Marxism as modern self-identified proponents of democracy outside of Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist dictatorships have usually viewed nominally democratic Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist dictatorships like the "German Democratic Republic" or the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" of having to democracy.
Wait, do you actually think DPRK is actually communist? It reads far more like an autocracy to me.
On the other hand, look at the rest of the industrialized world. Almost every industrialized nation has socialized medicine, social insurance/welfare, etc. You're trying to characterize it as a binary when it's a lot more like capitalism in that there's a lot of latitude.
A friend of mine calls this "The Horror". It is in the very application of Marxism that the whole thing falls to pieces. I think Marx was great at analysis, however he didn't understand work or the layers of design and engineering that lies behind the means of production. Also, he was a theorist whose ideas got applied while he was still tinkering with them and pretty much all of his ideas of how to solve the problems he had identified were pretty terrible. The economic questions he posed however, have still not been satisfactorily answered.
> I've heard Marx described as having been great at diagnosis, but terrible at prescription.
Marx and Engels weren't all that bad at prescription -- a substantial portion of the 10 key concrete policies for "advanced countries" in the Communist Manifesto have been widely and successfully adopted in the modern, developed, "capitalist" world.
Lenin's rewriting of Marx's program to a very different one, with notionally the same end state and, in many cases, similar near term policy changes to be applied in very different contexts, that was supposed to work in conditions which had neither the specific problems Marx's program was designed to address nor the foundations from which Marx's program was designed to address them, hasn't worked out very well, but that's a different issue.
I lived in Berkeley for 5 years, and I can totally imagine this happening. While some parts of the condemnation are crazy (2 story palace!?) I nevertheless see the kernel of truth that lies somewhere in the murky rationale of that rant.
Now, it's certainly not fair or reasonable to target a private individual like this, but I used to work in a DoD lab and I've considered many of the same issues raised by the protestors.
I think the bizarre nature of this protest reflects a widespread confusion over the best way to surface the issue of government/commercial collaboration on the topic of surveillance. On the collaboration point, the protestors are right on. Like so many Berkeley events, lucidity comes with a parade attached to it.
when you target corporations, people point out that they are complex structures and that the decisions made by them do not represent every single employee
when you target specific employees with decision-making power, people point out that the corporations are the problem and they are beholden by law and so on and so on
when you discuss that maybe the blame is on capitalism for institutionalizing antisocial behavior, you're called naive and showered with examples of the good things it's produced
there's some cognitive dissonance from detractors/businesspeople not primarily concerned with social welfare in taking one of these positions at a time and not realizing that everyone else sees them take the three in conjunction
When you attack an individual because of the place s/he chooses to work you take the "Let's all protest the activities of Big X" down to a personal level. I'd be horrified if I woke up and found a large group of people protesting in front of my house because of who I work for. Reading this message, I instantly put myself in that employee's shoes and instantly became hostile toward the organization arranging this. I made a second near-instantaneous cognitive jump, and this is the most important part, to completely disregarding whatever legitimate (or otherwise) complaints this group had and to assume that I should give Google the benefit of the doubt. This may be just me, since I avoid politics at nearly all costs, but despite the fact that I'd probably agree with this particular groups gripes, I can't make my mind see them as anything other than a waste of perfectly good oxygen.
Did they change my political opinion? Probably not, but they were more likely to make me against their particular cause than for it by this action.
Can anyone see anything of value that they might have gained in the process? I'm finding it difficult to come up with anything...
Question: people will often protest at the houses of CEOs, who consider themselves just employees doing their jobs. E.g. after the Bhopal disaster, people protested at the home of the Union Carbide CEO as he was trying to evade responsibility and minimize payouts to the victims. Is this inappropriate?
I agree with you that the protestors didn't gain anything from this particular protest and did harm to their cause, if anything.
It's still inappropriate, but considerably less so, both because a C-level officer of such a large company is likely to have security arrangements of some sort, and because a C-level officer has at least some influence over the policies of the company in question -- the CEO, of course, most of all.
That said, there is a qualitative difference between showing up at the guarded front gate of a CEO's mansion, and showing up on the ordinary front doorstep of a rank-and-file employee's two-story house. The former can at least be said to "go with the territory". The latter verges very closely on an imminent threat of bodily harm; the whole point of such action is to demonstrate to its victim that he and his family are not safe anywhere, not even in their home.
Honestly, it was only a matter of time before the dissident left decided that the software community was just another monied enemy for them to hate.
The good news is that nobody really takes them seriously, so if you can tolerate the occasional impotent protest and the (very) occasional WTO-style near riot, you can proceed with your life and ignore them.
For someone completely outside the Bay Area, it can be hard to judge whether this is a big deal or not. The frequency of the news reports makes it seem like all the Google Buses are being blocked / attacked each morning, and now that employees are being targeted individually at their homes. I know it's turned me off accepting jobs in the Bay Area - it isn't the only reason, but it has been part of it. It would be reassuring to know if these are just isolated incidents being magnified by the media lens.
I would like to know what this "privilege" is all about. I'm a tech worker who makes a very good salary. Am I privileged?
I couldn't afford a fancy high end college, so I chose a cheaper one and got a loan from the Government, which I paid back in full.
I studied hard in a public school and those achievements helped me get a grant to offset some cost as well.
I got a job in tech support, worked my way up through the ranks by pushing myself and going above and beyond every day.
I continually educate myself with classes and books that I pay for out of my own pocket, and invest my own time to keep my skills sharp and advance myself.
I am a "tech worker" and I have a job that pays well above average, so am I privileged? I would like to know what was handed to me that couldn't have been given to anyone else who worked hard. I'm not a rarity: tens of thousands of people in the tech industry are exactly like me. They saw a target and they hit it.
That's why I don't support these idiots. It's an idea full of fallacies. They're just trying to ruin the lives of hard working mid level people based on perceived wrongs by their bosses by people with nothing better to do.
Heh, privilege, the way leftist flagellate see it is: If your life is better than someone else's, you are privileged. It is relative apparently. It is usually used to reinforce guilt and self-doubt in an attempt to shame you into caring about the plight of others. It is a devious ploy and attack on the self. You are right to question it.
Strictly speaking, by the definition of privilege, they're right in that you are in a position that not all can attain in practice. Whether it's because you weren't born a crack baby, or because you weren't implicitly discriminated against obviously for some historically known reason (sex, race, handicap).
But life isn't fair, and never will. Others will argue that they will continue to level the playing field, but there will those who are still privileged and those who aren't, for things like being born better looking, or being smarter, or being at the right place or the right time.
Ultimately people chaff against the label of 'privilege' because it has such a negative connotation. And implies that life was easy for you to begin with. You weren't privileged then, but now you are as it were.
For those that call you that, most want you to have the perspective that your life is better than others and that by noblesse oblige you have a duty to the less privileged, by some moral code be it Christian, Bushido, Chivalry what have you.
A few questions: Are you white? Are you male? Were you born in a country that had clean running water? What about public education system, or a country that had education loans easily available for you? Did you grow up around people that had jobs? Were literate? Had gone to college? Did you know your parents? How often did you suffer from hunger growing up?
All of these are forms of privilege. Some of them may apply to you, some of them may not, but if you are posting on this board there is a very good chance that you were privileged. One of the insidious problems of privilege is those with it think it is the norm.
When we talk about privilege we are not trying to take away from the very real benefit of drive/ambition/hard work. I'm sure you deserve the good life you've built for yourself. But a little empathy/understanding that you did have some very clear advantages just as a product of your lucky birth, goes a long way.
I am not trying to discount any of those things but I'm sure the protesters had most, if not all of those privileges as well.
As far as being white and male, that's a fallacy as well. Do you work in tech? Take a look around and you'll see some of the most diversity of any industry. I worked for a fortune 100 for a large part of my career and most teams had more "minorities" on them than whites. Most of them born in India in horrible conditions. Color blindness is one of the reasons I'm proud to be in tech.
Is it so hard to admit that most of these protesters are lazy misguided kids with nothing better to do?
I don't have any characterizations of these kids. I don't live in SF and don't understand the problems at all. They definitely seem misguided from an outsider.
It's not at all a fallacy that being white & male in the US provides privilege. If nothing else the incarceration rate among African-American males in this country means that if you are born African-American there is a significantly higher chance that your father is incarcerated during your childhood than if you are born white. As the child being born white you have the privilege of a higher chance of an non-incarcerated parent. It is just luck of the draw.
Diversity & privilege are not the same things. They are orthogonal issues. A Japanese-American has a certain set of privileges as do European-Americans & African Americans & Africans for that matter. Just because a place hires a lot of Indians does nothing to mitigate the lack of privilege for African American boy children.
Finally, your experience may be completely different than mine, but the Indian colleague's I've had did not come from horrible conditions. Quite the contrary they were among the elite in their country, born with dramatic privileges.
In what way? How is what do confined to an exclusive group of people?
I can understand Americans as a whole being privileged, yes. We have tons of opportunities people in other countries don't. But we're talking about Americans protesting against Americans and that's why it doesn't make much sense.
> How is what do confined to an exclusive group of people?
At a very basic level, not everyone is smart enough to do what you do. At a more practical level, not everyone has access to a good education, or grew up in a community that encourages education.
I know I'll get a bunch of responses like "What access!? Just go on codecademy and teach yourself Javascript!"
But good luck teaching web development to a 21 year old who's never been taught how to read properly.
What about the people who worked just as hard and still can't afford decent housing in the area?
Just one aspect of the privilege you enjoy is the fact that one of your passions in life happened to lead to a high-paying job. I and almost everybody on this forum enjoy this same privilege. This is a particularly insidious one because it's so hard to detect in yourself and admit to. When you're the sort of person who started programming at age 12, with no clue that it would one day lead to a financially prosperous life, it's hard to identify with someone for whom the stars just didn't happen to align in that way.
It's a lot harder to "see a target and hit it" when you have absolutely no interest or passion in the target.
>It's a lot harder to "see a target and hit it" when you have absolutely no interest or passion in the target.
Then those people are not entitled to anything. I have no interest or passion in becoming a surgeon, and since they make so much more than me I should go start a ruckus down at the hospital, using this logic.
Actually this logic doesn't imply that at all. I really don't see how you concluded from my post that I support the actions of the protestors in the original article. If you refuse to admit you might be privileged in any way, that's your prerogative. I won't show up at your doorstep, but I won't agree with you.
My thoughts exactly. As another raised in the Midwest (and a less affluent area than Minneapolis), my mom's house would cost several million in the Bay Area, but is only middle-of-the-line middle class here. 200K max.
mm last year I almost brought a listed building and it's mentioned in pevenser (the definitive guide to uk architecture) - obviously the SF mob would have me guillotined.
I thought exactly the same thing. I just looked it up on Zillow to check out the lot size, and noticed that it still had photos from the last time it was sold (in 2010). They may have done the same thing, and confused the rather overwrought decorating sensibilities of the previous owner with the Google developer.
The article has a deeply discrimatory ring to it. It's essentialist to single out Google as the sole source of whatever problems San Francisco has. It also has the ring of "these immigrants are destroying the character of our community and taking our jobs, and not giving back. Let's send these immigrants a message." Disturbing, terrifying, and misguided.
Well, if this isn't an incentive for Google devs to get together and make a gated community together completely cut off from other people, I don't know what is.
Not only that, it certainly won't endear this group's ideals to Googlers, while in fact they may have value.
I'm of two thoughts on this. Obviously, sucks a lot to be dude, but no one is being violent (though some of the rhetoric veers toward threats, which is absolutely inappropriate), and this strategy puts immense pressure on Google. Additionally he's well-chosen as a target: quite wealthy, working on a product that's closely linked to military applications, and unluckily enough (for him) someone involved in the changing urban landscape of Berkeley, which helps protestors tap into a channel of great resentment. It's a tactic that's typically been used against CEOs in the past (e.g. after the Bhopal disaster): using it against someone lower on the totem poll makes me a bit uncomfortable, but it seems like a natural extension.
The real WTF is this: what the hell are they hoping to accomplish? Everything in their manifesto is scattershot, and comes off as just a spray of resentment. I could maybe imagine a demand for Google to cease all contracts with the US military, but (1) they failed to make that demand the explicit focus and (2) they've not laid the groundwork for that demand. You don't jump into harsh escalations until you've built a community organized around the demand, but few people have heard of the Google car-military connection. The goal seems more just to express inchoate anger at Google and gentrification without having some specific outcome in mind.
So, on strategy I give them an F. Tactics a B, mostly because the execution is flawed because of an absent strategy, leading to their manifesto reading as frothing rage than an intelligent indictment of him and Google. All the neighbors who receive this flier to are going to walk away sympathetic with the guy and respecting him more.
I feel for the plight[1] these people are facing, I really do and I want to help. _BUT_ if you started showing up at my home protesting and making my family uncomfortable, that creates a different problem entirely. Anyways I'm assuming this site is fake because I can't find this being reported anywhere else... and I assume the protesters know better than to pull a stunt like this.
1. Let's be clear though, this is a first-world problem.
What they're doing is trying to make it socially unacceptable to assist the NSA/ DoD, and quite frankly it's overdue. I get the feeling that most of the criticism here against the protesters is because HN identifies with the Google employee(s), not because the protesters are wrong. It's a purely emotional reaction.
These protesters are skirting the real issue which is that they cannot afford prime SF real estate anymore. When these protesters, themselves, were uprooting the original inhabitants they did not really care but now that they are being uprooted, they suddenly are crying foul.
The criticism here against the protesters is because they are asking for free handouts rather than them actually working to earn them. Yes I understand it is not easy to be retrained and I don't have a good solution for people being uprooted.
Yet, most commenters here on HN identify with startups/capitalism and believe that creating something that the market wants is ultimately the only way to earn a living. Certainly not protesting for free handouts.
The strange thing is that the protesters would have found lots of support among Google and other Tech industry employees if they had not targeted them in the first place.
PS: Google does not assist the NSA. Google has made it categorically clear. Guardian too had to backtrack on it's claims about that.
"These protesters are skirting the real issue which is that they cannot afford prime SF real estate anymore. When these protesters, themselves, were uprooting the original inhabitants they did not really care but now that they are being uprooted, they suddenly are crying foul."
I cannot up vote or emphasize this enough. They do not want the Meatpacking District of the early 20th Century. They want the bohemian eclecticism that -they- created in the 80s and 90s when they evicted -those- families.
And now it's happening to them, and it's the most evil thing that needs to be stopped by any means necessary.
I doubt the individual Google engineers are the ones "assisting" the NSA -- remember the angry post[1] when one of them found out the NSA was tapping into their private fiber?
> Fuck these guys. I've spent the last ten years of my life trying to keep Google's users safe and secure from the many diverse threats Google faces.
You are making it seem like these companies had a choice in providing data to the NSA. In reality, the data were either taken without their knowledge or forcefully (i.e., serious legal repercussions if they told anyone or didn't fork it over).
Hey, I completely support the protesters. If this protest is peaceful then I'll probably just call the police. But if you do something that I perceive as an immediate physical threat to my family, the logical part of my brain shuts down and the primal part turns on.
I'm not trying to justify it. I'm just telling it like it is. You won't be able to reason with me anymore than you can reason with a mother-bear whose sees her cubs in trouble. During those exact moments in time any context about the protests and any compassion I had goes out the window. All I'm thinking about is the safety of my family and will proceed to remove the threat; one way or another. I may even regret my actions afterwards but... the actions will still occur.
I'm probably getting all riled up about nothing. For all we know this could be some kind of astroturfing or another fake conflict like the fist GoogleBus incident.... this whole thing has troll written all over it. For now I'll just pretend I never even saw this article.
Supporting the DoD should be unacceptable? Isn't that the same situation? That someone is working for the DoD or NSA needs a job just as much as the next person, he was merely an employee for the DoD, not on top and pushing an agenda.
If this guy and all of his friends would actually get off their lazy butts and get a job, they might understand the need for other people to work. We all need to make money to live, have a roof over our heads, and feed our family. Just because you don't have a job or an income doesn't mean other people shouldn't either.
That's not really a fair comment and it trivializes the issues these guys are trying to raise.
Getting a job isn't the issue; it's a complex mix of the privileged position and hard work that led to them being able to get that job, which these people cant do and the extremely obvious difference in economic status having that job grants, which includes people being evicted from their homes so that higher paying individuals can move in.
You can see how people can get upset about it.
You can't just tell them to go get jobs; that won't solve anything. All it does is make you feel better, for now.
If you want to solve the problems like this you have to actually engage with the community which is feeling disenfranchised. No one wants to, but problems like this don't just 'magically' go away.
(To be clear, I don't like what's happening here at all, but comments like yours are inflammatory and make things worse for the people on both sides)
I wonder what the person did? If it were me, I'd be tempted to just pop out the back way, and take the train to work or something. I'm sure the protesters are hoping for a big confrontation.
OK, actually, if it was me I'd stay home and peek through my windows, take a bunch of pictures, and write up a blog post about it. I kinda want a group of crazies to protest outside my house, it sounds sort of exciting.
Nothing dramatic, I was working at a different company within the compound and not involved at all with the dispute. Just... nerve wracking a bit (confined road in, rows of people abiding by the law but just looking you straight in the eye)
This is a good example of what the liberal democratic movement should be about: policing corporations. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and the rest of them will never end their reprehensible behavior from lawsuits or other slaps on the wrists. Until there is a boot-on-ground movement to obstruct these corporations and their employees they will continue to act without consequence using their hoards of capital.
Agreed. It's time to obstruct these money-making corporations. We can slap their hands with lawsuits brought against them for making money, or we can shut down their greedy, wealth-building schemes. These money-loving fat cats have it coming to them and we need to stand up against them, especially since we have nothing better to do after quitting our mindless jobs at our former corporate greed houses.
Anyone who wants money should be obstructed and shut down!
Anyone who starts a new company should be seen as a money-loving greed-inducing pawn in the corporate cog, renewing their vicious cycles of greed!
Anyone who takes part in a money-making company is no better than taking part in Nazi Germany!
The issue isn't about capitalism. The issue is about the responsibility that these corporations are willfully ignoring once they have acquired copious amounts of capital. There seems to be this tendency with especially big corporations and individuals to suddenly throw their users and customers under the bus in favor of working with the government. Now the government shouldn't be engaging in this kind of solicitation to begin with, but that doesn't mean these corporations should be absolved of all guilt.
Any corporation that would rather derive its value as a government datafarm than from wealth creation has betrayed its user, customers, and capitalism.
Their employees? Certainly in all of my employment history I have never had a vote or serious decision in the direction of the company, that even goes for a non-profit school I worked for. Targeting employees is, at best, a bad idea. Who is to say that this guy didn't support them? Or others support their cause? Now they appear like kids that don't have jobs or that can otherwise afford to picket someone's house during normal work hours. When they try to go to the negotiating table I doubt they will be taken seriously with these kinds of antics. I also wonder if the actually have convinced anyone that might have been in middle or moderate to be their side of this issue?
what negative things do you really think google are doing with their capital? if you're talking about rising house prices in san francisco making it difficult for people to get housing and apartments I understand, but do you specifically blame google and other tech companies for that? is there something else that has made you angry about this? I am genuinely curious as I personally don't see anything wrong with the companies actions and do not agree with a protest that ( I think) constitutes personal harassment. full disclosure I'm from the UK and somewhat removed from the situation so there may be news stories that have passed me by, if you think they're relevant please link them.
I hope that Google is working to protect the people who work for them. It's scary that nutjobs like this are publishing personally identifiable information and all but directly encouraging mob action.
Excellent. If engineers and technologists refuse to take personal political and ethical responsibility for the future they help build, they need to be reminded to do so.
I've never felt the need for a down vote button for a comment on Hacker News until now.
Yes, we should be ethically aware of the tools and products we build, but this is not the way to go about this! Harassing a man at his home like this is unnecessary and aggressive.
Please stop the promotion of individual harassment.
When people block Google busses, and break one window of one bus, it's inappropriate violence on par with barbarism [1].
When people peacefully protest a Google employee and try to raise awareness in his neighborhood of his activities that they disagree with, it's individual harassment.
Isn't that just lovely? Hacker News: privileged technologists setting the standards for techno-skeptical protest. Tell us what the proper way to go about it (outside the established means of the sham that is representative parliamentary democracy, of course) is, then.
"We intend to prevent you and your family from leaving your home" - by what means do these protestors feel acceptable? Verbal? Staring intimidatingly? Pushing his wife back as she crosses the property line? Punching his child? Drawing guns?
When you explicitly state, and act, with the intention to prevent people from leaving their own home, effectively placing them in a state of house arrest, then sorry, your protest is no longer any more peaceful than the force implied by that house arrest.
Hiding behind "raising awareness in the neighborhood" is a disingenuous sham that exposes a duplicity. What relevance has "representative parliamentary democracy" to your argument other than to make you feel martyred?
Remember, you are actively threatening a family that you will not let them leave their home, there is a distinct, and real, fear of how far you will go to do so. For all your "blocking busses, and breaking one window" (carefully emphasized to minimize), there's the Seattle WTO protests and everything in between, and a distinct set of people who -will- resort to violence that constitutes a non-zero threat to this man and his family's well being that you wave away as nothing.
At least have the courage of your convictions and stop pretending it's just some people "raising awareness".
You claim that it's unnecessary and aggressive yet you do not discount its effectiveness. Therefore I'm going to discount your argument. Protest is worth it when its effective. And we're reading about it, so its done its job. Protest need not be cozy, clean, friendly, or Batemanish.
I never claim effectiveness. Reading an article about a protest and a protest causing actual change are two very different things. I don't see what job was done.
Are you seriously suggesting, Citizen, that the same standard applies both to the oppressor and the oppressed? Have a care, Citizen; such regressionist attitudes court accusations of reactionism.
What does left-wing have to do with this?, stupidity doesn't requires a political affiliation. Actually all governements in the world are left-wing by American standards.
In what way - I agree that responding with violence would not be a good first response at some point you do have to take a stand.
Maybe the bus drivers from all the tech company could protest against this threat to their livelihood and stage a drive in and shutdown the city like the french farmers do by driving extremely slowly though the city.
Meanwhile, Kiev is under siege by a REAL threat, and children in Africa are starving.
Every single one of these "demonstrators" seeking to prevent people from working, harassing them, and destroying their personal property needs to seriously rethink their priorities in life.
By your logic, you should be in Africa RIGHT NOW distributing food to children instead of whining on HN. So, why are you waiting to book your tickets? Aren't you thinking about your priorities in life?
That something bad is happening somewhere else in the world doesn't mean you can't spend effort on something close to you.
It's more about perspective, not priorities. For example. I think the citizens of Detroit would probably kill to have the sort of problems that San Francisco currently has. Low unemployment, high rents/real estate prices (yes, these suck, but so does miles of blighted and unmaintained housing and a bankrupt city government) and a youthful and thriving industry would make San Francisco the envy of a lot of cities.
Is this an Onion style web site or is it real? If real its utterly incoherent thinking and illogical behavior on part of the people involved. I still cannot accept its real.
Looking at their other stories/posts, I find it - I dunno what I find it, actually. It does strike me as a fight and struggle with everything. A war on life.
Personally, I'm not into the military at all, never have been. I do find that Google's connection with the military (more than just Boston Dynamics) unfortunate. I'm sure they have a reason why they are doing what they do with them, as do all the companies that work with that part of the government. It would be nice (a pipe dream I suppose) if tech companies shunned the military. Singling out this this guy - I'm not sure what good it will do.
Which ultimately leads me to think about you have to be the change you want to see. Harassing people like this is probably not going to get them to change their mind. At all. Reminds me of some documentary I watched (The Corporation maybe?) where some protestors were at an ex-Shell Oil ceo's house, doing their thing. The guy came out, offered them team and biscuits and engaged in a sit down discussion with them on his lawn. Granted, no one changed anyone's minds, but the fact they could engage in a civil conversation - both sides! - was a good thing.
As someone who's lived in SF since the early 90's and seen it go thru good and bad and ho hum times, I think all this tech worker/bus hype is misplaced. I've also lived in NYC and dated someone who completed their masters at Columbia in urban planning. While I'm not claiming to be an expert, I know a thing or two about the real reasons for skyrocketing rents and 'gentrification'. For anyone looking for a great history of NYC, check out Ken Burns 'New York'. Awesome in it's scope and presentation. It get's really interesting and relevant to today when it hits the 20th century and Robert Moses appears. (SF's version of Moses is Justin Herman)
So would I prefer the manhattanization of SF over the detroitization of SF? Absolutely. Is it that simple? Probably not. But for anyone that's been around for more than few years, you remember what the corner of 10th & Market was like before it went thru it's Twitter and redevelopment phase? This is one example and I do feel like it was a dick move on Twitter's part to cry about the tax break. But, if it means the area is cleaning up, then I figure that's better than the way it was.
Anyway, I don't feel like any of these tech protests are worth much or will amount to anything. I feel like the protesters are targeting the wrong thing and need to refocus their efforts on their local government.
Where were these uber-concerned citizens while George Bush was raping the US and Iraq? Why are they not protesting at the White House or stopping NSA employees from getting to work? But yeah, trample the rights of individual people, that will help. It's easy (and a lot less dangerous) to hate and pester a guy who makes more money than you. Forget about who's ruining the country and focus on the guy you think is responsible for you losing your rent controlled apartment. A few disingenuous trouble makers (organizers) stirring up the poor and the stupid for a cause that isn't a cause, just the distracting, headline grabbing, crusade du jour.
In all honesty, I found TFA extremely hard to read. It is almost as if the text would be random generated. Something about that style made my brain pick up parts, maybe because parts make sense while whole paragraphs make much less sense.
So, I missed the anti-surveillance state aspect. My bad.
It's a very first world "not in my backyard" movement. Righteous indignation about someone with more money encroaching on "their place" in the universe. Get used to it little hipsters, you're not the first it's ever happened to and you won't be the last.
The more reasonable direct action would be to simply not use a smartphone, not use the internet (or Google Maps), and not host a website. Opt out of the whole thing. I'm not clear on how these people can justify blocking the buses and showing up at people's houses, but then organize using Google's products.
No way. The benefits of technology (and the natural resources it consumes such as airwaves and exotic materials) should not be reserved for those who kowtow to commercial interests.
A more reasonable direct action is to develop and socialize technological practices which uphold community values: DuckDuckGo, Open Street Maps, Firefox, Cyanogen, encryption, CB radio, amateur radio, GNU/Linux.
I'm saying it is MORE reasonable than showing up at someones house, not necessarily the best course of action. I agree there are other reasonable courses of action as well, as you outlined.
I thought protesting the buses was reasonable and justified. Picking on a single employee of a company, especially someone who probably doesn't have any control of the company (i.e. not the CEO, President etc.) and distributing leaflets about him is despicable.
However is there any link between this protest and the bus protests? The bus protests were for economic reasons mainly. This is about surveillance so I'd guess this protest didn't include many people from the bus protests.
The real problems in San Francisco and elsewhere, the problems that are hurting and displacing people, aren't caused by self-driving cars or software to make construction more efficient, and the people experiencing pain will not be made better by casting out all of the professionals, many of whom politically side with progressive causes. (And isn't doing home composting and growing your own garden what Berkeley protesters would demand people do?) The local governments need to figure out ways to encourage affordable housing.
Yes, DARPA funds long range research which can be used for military purposes. That includes the Internet, which was DARPA funded. But all technological research has dual use. The Internet could have been used as a command-and-control network for the military during war, but it is also used to distribute political dissent.
The same research into chemicals and biology that allow life saving medicines to be created to save children around the world can also be used to make chemical and biological weapons. Fertilizer grows food, it also makes bombs.
Google X's Car project doesn't seem to have anything to do with making weapons for the DoD. This is pure guilt-by-tenuous-association. Many college campuses also enter these DARPA challenges, where's the protests?
The purpose of the car is to solve a very real social problem: hundreds of thousands of people are killed in auto accidents around the world every year and millions more are seriously injured needing to go to the emergency room. This is an enormous social cost which could be used to fund better housing, or education, but instead is going to treat injuries and repair and replace damaged vehicles. There is no evidence of a Google contract with DoD for Google Car technology for weapons.
What I find really disturbing is the level dehumanization. The protest is peaceful now, but the first step to encouraging violence against someone is to describe them in dehumanizing terms (a robot). When gun-advocates like Sarah Palin start using rhetorical devices that dehumanizes opponents and paints literal gun targets on them, we are not surprised turning up the rhetorical temperature leads to violent confrontation, the behavior shouldn't be tolerated or defended on the other side.
> to describe them in dehumanizing terms (a robot).
Anthony Levandrowski has self-described himself as a robot:
"Although Levandowski spent most of his childhood in Brussels, his English has no accent aside from a certain absence of inflection—the bright, electric chatter of a processor in overdrive. “My fiancée is a dancer in her soul,” he told me. “I’m a robot.” "[1]
I think that's purposefully way too literal an interpretation. It's clear to me that that's not to be taken as a literal statement but rather figurative contrasting himself with his fiancee who is more lithe, in spirit, if not physically.
It's so upsetting that they're protesting the single most life-saving technology that's likely to be developed in our lifetime (self-driving cars). Life-saving for everyone, too - poor and rich.
I don't know how I would respond to this. If I had a family, I would be completely terrified for the safety of my kids. I guess when it comes to family its hard to not be irrational. Anyway, I guess I would stay calm and call the cops, and unfortunately think about moving.
Can someone help me understand what effect would be had if Google did exactly what these people wanted and uprooted to elsewhere? I feel like that would cause a way bigger problem than it would solve, but my intuition doesn't have a solid basis.
"Can someone help me understand what effect would be had if Google did exactly what these people wanted and uprooted to elsewhere?"
Together with the rest of Bay Area tech? Perhaps like the collapse of the auto monopoly in Detroit, but with an even larger industry and a worse-run city (SF).
Like it or not these Silicon Valley types are coming in and pillaging the local economy with capital that isn't even theirs. It's a very unsustainable and disruptive environment that displaces workers, creates instability, and increases civil unrest.
Innovation and economic progress, while essential to the advancement of society, needs to be amortized to decrease these negative side effects.
There are actual defense research establishments in the Bay Area. If these people were actually concerned with "collaboration with the military" perhaps they should be protesting in front of Lawrence Livermore Labs.
I read the article and the flier; I felt like I was approaching it open-minded. I conclude it's propaganda because it paints common circumstances with unfairly pejorative language, and by that undermines the few valid points it brings up. The brochure closes with: "Steal from the techies you babysit for." If that's your message, you and I are not on the same side.
Ironically, these anti-Google bay area protesters are starting to sound a lot like conservative anti-immigration talking points.
* We don't want your kind in our neighborhood.
* We don't want our culture changed.
* Your mere presence is ruining our life.
* You are different than us, therefor unwelcome here.
I thought Berkeley was the peaceful co-existence crowd?
The political spectrum wraps around and converges at the extremes. I'm reminded of the controversy in Portland around water fluoridation. Many of the ostensibly left-wing opponents of fluoridation, when presented with the argument that poor people without access to dental services would suffer without water fluoridation, rebutted this by essentially saying that poor people don't deserve to have healthy teeth anyway.
Why all the rage directed at Google and not, say, the government that institutes these policies? Something just feels 100% misguided about these attacks.
This is coming awfully close to bullying, if not terrorizing an individual because of a difference of opinion on what they do or whom they work for.
This is awful. I might not agree with some things Google does or any corporation does; however, this approach will only serve to alienate dissidence since most people will not want to be associated with this kind of awful tactic. Just because people (public) is not taking your side should not signal you the protester to go gonzo, off the reservation, as it were.
This is not the way to dissent. It's a desperate and counterproductive approach which _might_ get sympathy form the choir. In that sense, it's a very selfish (self-pleasing) act.
Man, everytime I read more about this, I lose a little more of my sympathy for these protesters. They sound more and more like a bunch of whack nut-jobs in every article.
I don't disagree that they have some valid concerns, but they aren't doing themselves any favors with this over-the-top stuff. In fact, I suspect they are unintentionally setting themselves up as "the bad guys" in this story.
I can't help but think the protesters should take a long, hard look at who their leadership is, and find somebody new.
I think Google's threats of releasing "massive amounts of carbon" refers to the emissions of their employees commuting individually instead of by busses.
I agree with everyone that's calling this mob behavior and harassment. In no way is this "OK". But...
I'm actually glad this discussion is happening. I think it's a really interesting problem that faces a lot of cities, ones even less prosperous than SF. Hopefully the opposition can follow up this overwrought and misguided protest with an actual dialog with companies like Google and the city.
Google employees will now organize to lobby to bring a "stand your ground" law in California. When that happens we'll see how many hipsters feel like threatening someone who can afford a semi-automatic weapon and has the skills to rig it up to a quad-copter, or their home security system.
Why aren't they at the doors of the government officials in charge of the surveillance state? It seems like a demonstration about inequality and gentrification wrapped in the hot topic of the day. (surveillance)
If the headline were Demonstration at the Home of Developer and this was only over luxury condominiums, would the response of HN be more neutral or favorable?
I suspect it would be, and that raises an interesting question in regard to why I am conditioned to give more weight to etiquette when the issues are more weighty -. this event touches on corporatism, militarism, economic disparities, and the illegal use of public infrastructure for private profit all in addition to basic neighborhood activism.
When did citizenship come to be considered poor form?
How is protesting in a residential neighborhood allowed? Did this group have a permit? Is the SF Bay area different in this regard - no permit allowed?
If you tell someone and their family that you are going to stop them from leaving their home, and there is a not unreasonable expectation of assault and or battery in that, you are going beyond the right of peaceable assembly and into the realm of false imprisonment, or kidnap.
"peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances". Is Levandowski in any meaningful sense the government, and if so what grievances is he in a position to redress?
I'm seeing a strong parallel with occupy wall street. Clearly there are differences - these people seem more militant for one - but this is clearly a movement born out of an emotional response, if not shear jealousy. These protesters are uninformed at best, and their tactics will not yield any results.
By their messed-up logic (I can't tell whether this is parody or not), their use of jQuery on their website would put them among the military-industrial-surveillance supporters since they are lending their implicit backing to a project/library that the NSA uses on their website.
I think the dependency irony starts hitting much further up the stack than the jquery library on the website, given the nature of a website on the public internet.
That's just as bad as the protesters who show on the doorstep of a Google engineer. Attack the action and not the person. In this case you don't even know if that person is the one involved in this action.
"The self-driven car has been another pet project of the DARPA for many years. It sponsored a recurring Grand Challenge for people designing self-driving vehicles, hoping someone would crack open the new technology. Anthony Levandowski was one of the wonder kids who flocked to these competitions, looking for a federal handout and fame. Now, with Google handing him more money than he could ever dream of, Levandowski is working long hours bringing this dream of the military into reality."
"Levandowski started a company that created computer tablets designed to display blueprints at construction sites. The reasoning behind their venture was that updating and then printing new blueprints took a few days and slowed construction time. With this new product, construction companies could create condominiums, malls, and subdivisions with the least possible delay and the maximum profit. In praise of his prodigious business acumen, the administration-run UC Berkeley News decided to run an article on him in 2003, championing his ability to make money and enable the housing bubble that was just starting to expand."
"The proposed project is a testament to the arrogance, disconnection, and luxury of the ruling class. Growing their own vegetables in a rooftop garden and selling them to other wealthy people allows them, somehow, to pretend that the planet is not being ravaged by the same economy they depend on for their wealth, comfort, and safety."
"Preparing for the action, we watched Levandowski step out of his front door. He had Google Glasses over his eyes, carried his baby in his arm, and held a tablet with his free hand. As he descended the stairs with the baby, his eyes were on the tablet through the prism of his Google Glasses, not on the life against his chest. He appeared in this moment like the robot he admits that he is."
Seriously? That last one is particularly horrifying and almost sounds like an implicit threat.