It was fascinating to watch the rideshare companies convince their San Francisco drivers to actively support and evangelize the bill in California that ruined their ability to get benefits and employment protections, then turn around and extract so much value away from those drivers in the period since that most of those drivers, who tended to be American-born and have relatively nice cars, have been replaced by recent immigrants driving fleet-owned older cars. I would also not be shocked to learn that the latter are being cheated by whoever signs them up and helps them navigate Lyft and Uber’s processes.

I like your take. Altman is a Valley hustler, albeit a talented one who ran YC. But, he’s not technologist or a theorist, and I suspect he’s not that interested in attempting to de-risk AGI anymore, particularly now that he’s experienced the market hype. The staff who want to be billionaires clotted to him; the staff who are committed to the original ethical vision stuck with Ilya.

What are we looking at here?

I was an on an SF Critical Mass about 15 years ago that got commandeered by some pranksters who took us on the craziest route up and down massive hills.

But, the wildest thing was the middle-aged guy on a unicycle who breezed the entire thing without putting a foot down.

About 12 years ago, I had what I half-believe was a mystical experience at a Lowe’s outside San Francisco, CA. I was doing an electronics project, and my wire strippers were ragged and not handling small gauge wires well; it was causing me a lot of frustration.

So, I was staring at the kinda shit Chinese options on the shelf at Lowe’s, when an impish older employee in a Lowe’s uniform rocked up and asked if I needed help. We talked about what kinds of stuff I was making, mostly microelectronics with the occasional home repair, and I explained the typical range of gauges I was working with. He was extremely knowledgeable and mentioned he had just retired out of 40 years at PG&E, then said, “I think we carry exactly what you need,” and wandered off.

Ten minutes later, he rematerializes carrying some new German wire strippers that are obviously way better made than the stuff on the shelf and wishes me well. They have been god-tier precision strippers; I’ve stripped thousands of tips without any issue.

Here’s the thing: I’ve shopped there many, many times since. There’s no other section for electronics tools, and there isn’t a professional-trade Lowe’s next door. And, this guy must have quit pretty much immediately, because he was never there again and other employees had no idea who I was talking about when I asked if he was around.

Hope the victims' families find a way to secure some form of justice here.

IANAL, but Ineffective Assistance of Counsel is well known to be extremely difficult to pull off, and even more so in civil cases. And, as I understand it, Trump’s sole basis for asserting it would be that the paperwork to receive a jury trial wasn’t filed properly, which resulted in a bench trial. Given that the judge otherwise provided acceptable due process to Mr. Trump, and the case appears to have been decided on clearly established facts and relevant law, I find it hard to believe that an appeal would work here.

Flipping to a different angle: Lawyers constantly fuck up paperwork; if the system allowed paperwork goofs to trigger new trials, it would bog courts down and provide an attack vector for attorneys to take advantage of.

I live in San Francisco. The dream of the ‘90s is alive here now.

We should be so lucky to have someone on the left in Congress with a political project they believed in so much that they would do something like this.

I went ‘01, ‘03, ‘04.

The last year I went was the first time it seemed like LA people and startup CEOs were starting to show up in numbers, which was changing the vibe.

Also, there started to be a lot more photos and videos posted online. I wasn’t trying to have my employees find video of me four days into smoking crystal and candy-flipping, dancing at a rave camp.

Never again. Twice I’ve been at fast-growing startups that went with Oracle, and both times it was the worst mistake the business made.

No way old.reddit.com makes it to Q4.