YouSaid · the spoken record

Paul Carr

lines on the record: 72
first: 2018-05-23
most recent: 2018-05-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And there's no way to audit that. This is why we need government involved. So the main, oh, that's the other lesson. I want to get people off of this idea that there's a tech solution for everything, especially technological problems. Some problems only have political solutions. And I think we've reached the point where we need a political solution”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And, yeah, sucks. And he's like, whatever, you're crazy. It's going to be fine. Just do it. Who cares? And I was like, okay, fine. I basically succumbed to peer pressure. And I still think back sometimes.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Excuse me. Yeah I mean, I didn't want to, I remember very clearly when Facebook came to my campus and everybody was signing up and I didn't want to because. I was reading blogs like, you know, Google is evil.com or whatever it was. Remember those old days.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it is, but they have, I don't know, I find my kids have a lot more control than I thought. You know what I mean? I thought they were addicted to it, but it's an interesting thing. Like my third 10 year old, I was taking a picture and I was going to put on Twitter. Somebody's like, yeah, I didn't give you permission to do that. And I was like, okay. You're right. I didn't. And I was sort of like, good for you. Yeah.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They got it. And if anybody would be expected to not understand. You'd think it would be people that grew up with this swimming in this water, but they understand exactly what's wrong with the current state of affairs when it comes to social media especially”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Far as my career goes. Do you think people will become aware of it? Because part of me feels like there is people's awareness. I was in an elevator the other day and after the Facebook hearings and I kept saying, oh, nothing's going to happen with this. He did fine. Like he managed to snow them in some fashion. And two guys, elevator operators, fixing something, said, oh, all my public information on Facebook that's really disturbing. And I was like, not because they were elevator guys, but it's not people I expected. You didn't expect”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I want to take this industry down a couple notches. I don't think as a reporter, I'm a little bit disappointed because I read my book and I'm like, I didn't break a whole lot of news. I mean, in the sense of there's a lot of scoops in here, but I think it's written in a way that will make people that haven't thought about this stuff or maybe haven't caught every story, like the kinds we've been talking about. We'll see the tech industry and the services they use in a new way. And that's my main goal. In addition to being funny, and how police link some books so I can do another one because I don't have a plan B as far as my career goes.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no. And the only reason it's been allowed to persist is because our society values profit over everything else and some people are making really good profits with this current infrastructure. But it's not in the public interest to keep it how it is.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fizzled out is that there's a fundamental infrastructure problem. I remember hearing a guy from Ekamai talk about how there's not a bandwidth limitation, but there's a ping problem with the current architecture. So you really can't have A network chip and everything that's talking because it'll jam up the.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, they've been pressing, I guess. I mean, that's what Curtis Yarvin's startup does. Essentially, it's that kind of effort. And the European Commission is funding efforts to do the same thing. So, I mean, maybe it is the next big thing, the new internet. I also know that I think part of the reason Internet of Things.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The HBO show Silicon Valley this whole season creating a new internet because the old internet isn't privacy protected, doesn't have a way to. Oh. It's funny. And then just the other day I was talking to someone Pretty big on Silicon Valley, and I said, What are you working on, blockchain, of course, because you all are, because you think it's where to make even more money obscene amounts of money. And he was like, no, the new internet. And I was like, that's the plot of Silicon Valley. He's like, no, there's going to be a new internet.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we need to go back to the drawing board and come up with something that's more secure, you know, the guarantees privacy that perhaps has a built-in way for creators to get compensated for their work”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are a lot of heartening things. I think if the dodo can organize, then Facebook can organize. Let me just say. And also, and I think that would be to the good. I also think that we need a fundamental rewrite of the networking protocols that create what we call the internet.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It took a while You were like, stay down. No, stay down. No, stop getting up. Stop getting up. And it's the same thing with Trump. It's like, stay down, no, okay. You're going to get up again. And ultimately, you get wary versus the subject. But they get up a lot more than they used to. You know what I mean? Like, they don't stay down.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have an expansive definition of literacy, I think, that to be truly literate, you need to have a background of knowledge and context. and you need to be able to maintain your attention span for more than five seconds. And so I'm worried about a degradation of just”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think it's hard to sustain any story. I've noticed that just in the short time, we would have lots of impact, sometimes years ago, much more impact than that. But now we have impact and then it goes quickly.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People don't maintain their indignance, I think. It's hard to maintain in this environment, which is made amplified, the quick twitchy environment made amplified by social media, indignance is too fast burn. It burns burn.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't see how an invention like that, unless we get a handle on tech from a regulatory point of view, would not quickly become mandatory. And that would be a nightmare. Given how much every major tech company has screwed up on security, privacy, just basic decency. How come it took so long to get rid of the Nazis on Twitter? I mean, they're still there. And same on YouTube. I mean, I thought the YouTube kid scam. I thought some Republicans were going to jump on that YouTube kid scandal last year.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, the data has like they can enumerate elections. That's what they can do. I mean, it has a different kind of damage. It's not necessarily a house damage. It's not a physical damage. It's a psychic.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, that's like the same thing that happened in 2008 when everybody was bedazzled by all these Wall Street jargon terms like collateralized debt obligations and nobody was brave enough to be like what the hell are you talking about?”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But yeah, well, not only that, we had to take what they had and piece it together to useful product. So if you're listening carefully, what does that send? What kind of message does that send to advertisers? It's crap. Garbage in, garbage out.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we're to dig into the metrics that companies are using to justify their growth figures. I suspect we'd find a lot more stories, maybe not as shocking as Theranos, but I thought it was significant before Cambridge Analytica shut down, but when Facebook was essentially saying they were a rogue actor, they're... You know, they're big shot brainy engineer was on CNBC or some network like that saying, well, you know, the interesting thing is that the data that Facebook was supplying to us was not at all that accurate or useful, which I thought was quite a counterpunch, right? I mean, considering the audience.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A very precarious point. I think they need another major breakthrough along the lines of the smartphone or the touchscreen computers to bail them out of what is What looks to me like kind of an inflated numbers game like we saw in the first dot-com bubble. Because when you look at what's really underpinning the growth rates of the big platforms, I think if a reporter like John Caru with the resources that a major news organization has worked to do.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not sure where it's going. You know, two years ago, or even last November, when I was finishing up the last draft of the book and getting it ready for publication, I thought maybe this bubble won't end. You know, maybe they've actually succeeded in reordering the economy in such a way that it doesn't matter if they screw up and they're too big to fail in a sense. And now I'm not sure. My idea about...”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What can we do to make things better now? You just saw Jeff Bezos talking about the best thing I can think to do with my 130 billion dollars is to build rockets. People are starving the world's on fire. Rockets are great, but there's not room for everybody on them. Yeah. Well, that's the idea, isn't it? I mean, I talk about that at the end. We're going to”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think the optimism was misplaced because Know, I remember from one of Cursewell's books, it was like, oh, well, we don't really need to change anything right now. The important thing is that we keep funneling resources to the tech sector so that we can accelerate the singularity. And then the nanobots will clean up all the pollution that we've made. And I just, you know, I don't think that's a safe bet that we're talking about.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I was years ago, when it was very small, every now and then someone would pop out of a It would be like Doug Engelbard, or suddenly there was Vince Surf. Oh, hi, Vin, you correct, you created the internet, right? But he was working there, just working. And he said, I think he still is.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, because he got hired at Google and I just thought it was crazy that the company of that size and power was interested in the singularity. So they're trying to accelerate this vision? And I think, yeah, actually they are.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know what I mean? There were big goals of expanding people's intelligence, expanding people's, you know, I do think they were there at the start. And it certainly wasn't let's make some pesticides and sell them, you know.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what should happen? I want to get in the next section about where tech is going, because I think it really is in a crisis that they did. And when it initially started, there are, compared to, I don't know, a chemical company, there were bigger goals.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I got a question. It was like, so, what's a good thing that the tech industry's doing? That's just unambiguous. I said, no, nothing. Nothing. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, I was happier before I had a smartphone. I've downgraded to a dumb phone. Most of the stuff I don't need. I liked my 2008 MacBook Pro a bit a lot better than my new one. I could change the battery. I mean, every new release and innovation is just designed to extract more money out of us and degrade the product. I'm not sure How my life has been improved”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It may not be that desirable anyway. I mean, I don't see a lot of startups that are even pretending to do good anymore like they did a few years ago. Now it's like, you know, whose throat can we slit to pick their pocket? I mean, it's really ruthless and mercenary now about extracting value from users and laborer and all the usual suspects and privatizing public assets and on and on and on. I mean, it's really, I mean, they're given Wall Street a run for their money here.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think as Americans, we're raised to believe that hard work and a good idea will lead to success and riches, and that's simply not true. The main factor is probably... Who you know, and then on top of that luck. Who you know is a byproduct of luck, so you can really just boil it down to that. And, you know, I think people create a lot of unnecessary stress and misery for themselves trying to achieve something that one may not be possible for them. Because of who they are or just their luck.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm talking to him, and after a few drinks, he says, you know, I was happier when I was working as a manager at a restaurant. And I'm losing friends. I mean, my friends are in the startup and it's too stressful. Like it's become tense. I never see anyone anymore. My apartment sucks. I should have stayed at the restaurant. He said, you know, I would have been happier if I'd gotten just gone to work for the government at a study like nine to five. And I think there's probably a lot of people. And so why do you think that is that?”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, I talked to one guy who was, I took him as an inspiration. I mean, I met him at a conference and he was Just kind of a chubby, goofy young guy, and he was glad handing everyone and schmoozing and pitching a startup, and he'd already raised $4 million in the seed round or something. And I was like, and just for a group on clone, right?”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For the largest and successful companies. Now, I don't know. But yeah, I was actually surprised. I was maybe not cynical enough about that side of the process, how much of it was sales. I was surprised how unhappy a lot of people that work at tech companies are.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, right. I thought it was all Internet of Things. And it is hard. And also that it's essentially random. I mean, what the next big thing becomes. It's all marketing. I learned that I was surprised how little tech and innovation actually mattered when it came to which companies blow up and which wither away. Actually, it's the stupidest thing to do to invest a lot in research and to invent something new. I mean, you want to sell the product first and then have somebody underwrite all that stuff. Usually it's the government, right?”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I still, when I came to do my reporting, most of which took place in 2015, I thought that the easy money was still flowing freely and I was mistaken. I mean, I think it had pretty much the latter had been pulled up by that point. And”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But here's the thing this is another way that they're already more powerful than governments, these companies. I mean, you would think that there would be a government. Agency or entity or regulator or somebody who would be able to hold a company accountable for a breach like this, but I'm not aware of what that is.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Google. And exactly. I think a lot of companies are going to make that calculus. And frankly, consumers already are. In many ways, we already treat these platforms as the suppliers of bread and security. I mean, we just had this news about Twitter today. And it's like, oh, it's like national security crisis. Yeah, sorry, Twitter just announced before we recorded that there”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, there's a point in the conclusion. Apparently, last year, I think it was Denmark hired the first ambassador who's not an ambassador to a country, but is an ambassador to Google, Apple, and the American tech companies. I think we'll see more of that because especially with Trump in charge, I mean, if you're a foreign government, would you want to deal with the Trump administration?”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I suppose you could have one where all the hippie anarchists would go and do their own thing, but it's hard for me to imagine how democratic states would survive. In that kind of environment, considering that corporations have all the money and power. Right, right.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How is it feudal? I think it looks like ways that you would hear it described by some people in the valley like, I suppose Balaji Srinivasan would be the most carefully worded advocate of something like this, but he's advocated what he calls a cloud kind of governance structure for the world where people choose their Their countries or how they want to be governed in a very consumer fashion. So you don't like your government, you pick up and leave. And I think that's. Actually, a really popular idea in Silicon Valley. Another way I've heard it expressed is from Peter Teal's friend Curtis Yarvin, aka mentioned Boldbug, who talks about having patchwork, a global patchwork of small city-states. Which would be essentially corporate shareholder dictatorships.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've made a lot of money. Right, right. We'll get to that in a second. But I want to talk more about the concept of what when you talk about the uses of data and you as the product essentially, where does that lead from your perspective?”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Misadventure story, although that's part of it. I tried to make it fun. I do go through the unicorns and what made them all work. And one pattern I discerned, successful startups, large and small, was just a willingness to flout the law and regulations and then patch it up later once you've made a lot of money.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, they're very unfriendly. Not all of them. Interesting. I had an interesting interview with Chuck Schumer where he was way too positive about Facebook. And then I had one with Cory Booker and others who were not.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you know what I think it is? Well, first of all, I mean, the Democratic Party has been very close to Silicon Valley all through the Obama years since Clinton's. So I was just, you know, I did a reading in DC and I was just there and the word around. The hill was, I mean, I'm putting this, I'm paraphrasing, I'm putting this in the simplest and most cynical terms that I can. We don't care if you disrupt newspapers or schools or the trucking industry and put all these people out of work. But you messed with the elections. And that's where we eat. So that's why they're mad. And that's why I think that you'll see more mainstream media coverage be more critical of the tech platforms because the Democratic Party is. Maybe just not as friendly. Well, oh, they're very unfriendly.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And yeah, and what we do, what it's showing us, what it's not showing us, how it tracks our usage and perhaps sends messages or notifications to manipulate our responses, which are totally, I mean, we're animals. It's not a big mystery that we have predictable behavioral responses. I think it's troubling that a few tech corporations seem to know more about that than most governments or certainly the public at large. And I don't think that frankly, I mean, I don't think it should be legal to make money the way that Facebook does. I heard Ron Wyden on stage at the conference in Portland. He said, you know, people should own their data. That should be the new legal principle. I think I couldn't have said it better myself. I mean, why should we allow companies to profit from things about us that we don't even know?”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, look at this so-called Cambridge Analytica scandal. As far as I can tell, They were using Facebook for the purpose that Facebook exists. I mean, Facebook's business model is to package, compile and collect and sell our information. You know, to whoever pays. Along the way, there's a lot of perhaps under degrees of ammo and damage that it's doing to us is human beings. I mean, in terms of the reward, the dopamine cycle in our brains. I mean, I would really like to know what they've learned in their own internal research as far as how the algorithm works, what we see when we log on.”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, how do you Yeah, so talk about that idea because it's one of the things that Facebook and others push back on that I just didn't agree with Tim Cook and he said you're the product you are he was declaring what I think everybody thinks which is the user is the product not in most of these businesses which caused Facebook to be very angry at him for pointing out what I think was the obvious”
2018-05-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How to succeed in tech: Be lucky and ruthless · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT