> I hope we don't hear later that he went to work for FAANG. One the saddest things about Big Tech is how they take young talent away from innovative, potentially competing enterprises and into busy work internal projects just because they can.
yes i hope Zeloof (or someone else young, enthusiastic and social media adept like him) turns into the Marcin Jakubowski [1] or Dave Hakkens [2] of semi-conductors.
in this exciting still-early open source digital paradigm, a new type of leadership is required with a massive focus on horizontal knowledge production and transmission, a focus on a multitude of pedagogical styles, as well as a deep foundational belief in the abilities of our fellow humans (since it's easy and common to either believe we are 1) over-special or 2) dumb, as our schools are stuck in this reward/punishment paradigm which both 1) over-estimates a small number of students' skills because of advantages they gained outside of school (were you born with wealthy parents/community who had time and money to encourage/support you), or 2) which forces you into straightjacketed, (pedagogically) un-diverse, un-tailored learning journeys that make you take steps too quickly (a way to filter out as many working class people as possible except for a select few, by design)).
absolutely believe this 100%. and even if isn't publicly funded, under capitalism wage laborers are shorted when they get paid a wage and their code becomes the private property of a capitalist. so yeah, i agree with your framing 100%.
my question was more: what is the short laundry list of the exact developments/research that allowed Zeloof's garage-size/at-home chip-making?
> I think looking at devs contracting as "gigifying" is abusing that word and cheapening it for actual gig jobs which is an actual issue.
author is not a dev.
> Upwork provides a platform to get contracts but it's not quite the same as the auto priced marketplaces like Uber, Lyft, Doordash etc.
yes this is a great point that makes me reflect on the term 'gig', thanks for sharing it.
if the author was a dev contractor who was contracting through UpWork, i would agree completely with your statement about 'gigifying'. since he's not, i'd argue that this non-dev work is still part of the gigification because 1.) it's part of the shift where more and more administrative and creative labor, which was formerly structured as full-time (and in Europe, unionized) jobs, is being atomized and increasingly mediated through faceless unaccountable corporate platforms (where labor rights are shit on, exactly like in author's story), and 2.) one's reputation is stuck/held hostage on a third party platform (where things like author's story happen often [1]) who can essentially ban you and erase you (and your reputation/testimonials/positive feedback) anytime.
> I do wonder why the author is still on Upwork, their rating & exposure on there must be worth more to them than working several weeks for free
why should they have to walk away? why even suggest such a strategy?
UpWork already has a 10% market share. so if there were 1000 employers, 100 of them would be the same company.
i'm not sure if you're aware of all the gigification and precaritization of digital labor going on? it's emerging as a frontal assault; a full-force attack on labor rights.
"For all of its forward-looking ‘innovation’, there’s something suspiciously feudal about Silicon Valley. Tech royalty compete for dominance in platform wars [...] They hoard resources while showering key personnel with lavish gifts to ensure loyalty and peddling a compelling story about their right to rule. Meanwhile, the remaining workers, dependent on ‘gigs’ for their livelihood, are made to battle with each other for scraps."
> I've already alienated my partner enough that I have to move out. My whole life has become devoured by this puzzle
I'm so sorry to hear this. When I was facing similar circumstances the most absurd part of it was that I thought these things were my fault. It isn't. Mental health has been depoliticized and it's roots obscured. Mark Fisher writes:
> The UK's National Health Service (NHS), like the education system and other public services, has been forced to try to deal with the social and psychic damage caused by the deliberate destruction of solidarity and security. Where once workers would have turned to trade unions when they were put under increasing stress, now they are encouraged to go to their GP or, if they are lucky enough to be able to be get one on the NHS, a therapist.
> It would be facile to argue that every single case of depression can be attributed to economic or political causes; but it is equally facile to maintain – as the dominant approaches to depression do – that the roots of all depression must always lie either in individual brain chemistry or in early childhood experiences. Most psychiatrists assume that mental illnesses such as depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, which can be treated by drugs. But most psychotherapy doesn't address the social causation of mental illness either.
> The radical therapist David Smail argues that Margaret Thatcher's view that there's no such thing as society, only individuals and their families, finds "an unacknowledged echo in almost all approaches to therapy". Therapies such as cognitive behaviour therapy combine a focus on early life with the self-help doctrine that individuals can become masters of their own destiny. The idea is "with the expert help of your therapist or counsellor, you can change the world you are in the last analysis responsible for, so that it no longer cause you distress" – Smail calls this view "magical voluntarism".
> Depression is the shadow side of entrepreneurial culture, what happens when magical voluntarism confronts limited opportunities. As psychologist Oliver James put it in his book The Selfish Capitalist, "in the entrepreneurial fantasy society," we are taught "that only the affluent are winners and that access to the top is open to anyone willing to work hard enough, regardless of their familial, ethnic or social background – if you do not succeed, there is only one person to blame." It's high time that the blame was placed elsewhere. We need to reverse the privatisation of stress and recognise that mental health is a political issue.
> So if we could find a way to bake that decentralization into the protocols even more strongly while making them accessible to non-technical people, that's the change I would make.
Have you heard of Holochain?
"Holochain is an open source framework for building fully distributed, peer-to-peer applications.
Holochain apps are versatile, resilient, scalable, and thousands of times more efficient than blockchain (no token or mining required). The purpose of Holochain is to enable humans to interact with each other by mutual-consent to a shared set of rules, without relying on any authority to dictate or unilaterally change those rules. Peer-to-peer interaction means you own and control your data, with no intermediary (e.g., Google, Facebook, Uber) collecting, selling, or losing it."
yes i hope Zeloof (or someone else young, enthusiastic and social media adept like him) turns into the Marcin Jakubowski [1] or Dave Hakkens [2] of semi-conductors.
in this exciting still-early open source digital paradigm, a new type of leadership is required with a massive focus on horizontal knowledge production and transmission, a focus on a multitude of pedagogical styles, as well as a deep foundational belief in the abilities of our fellow humans (since it's easy and common to either believe we are 1) over-special or 2) dumb, as our schools are stuck in this reward/punishment paradigm which both 1) over-estimates a small number of students' skills because of advantages they gained outside of school (were you born with wealthy parents/community who had time and money to encourage/support you), or 2) which forces you into straightjacketed, (pedagogically) un-diverse, un-tailored learning journeys that make you take steps too quickly (a way to filter out as many working class people as possible except for a select few, by design)).
[1] Marcin Jakubowski: Open-sourced blueprints for civilization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GEMkvT0DEk
[2] Precious Plastic Universe: a big bang for plastic recycling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os7dREQ00l4