BE group read: CH 2

Mon Nov 8 21:39:40 UTC 2021

There's also a drug connotation for the Burning Man crowd, which
overlaps with the startup scene quite a bit.

Worth adding, according to legend, Google's original cluster was bunch
of thrown together leftover PCs, returns from Frye's acquired on the
cheap, not high end servers that would cost 10x. A different kind of
hash.

I think the dot-com crash benefited Google tremendously as it wiped
out a lot of competition, while Google was propped up by a contract
with Yahoo (which was Too Big To Fail at the time) -
https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2000/06/yahoo-selects-google-as-its-default.html
- so Google could ride out the recession and cash out in the Web 2.0
era.

"Modern" Google doesn't really begin until a few years later with the
acquisition of DoubleClick, the ad network, and they really started
making money. YouTube also.

Many of those early competitors actually still have web sites up, but
beneath the hood, they are "powered by Google" now. Sometimes Bing. :(

---

I think the closest real-world inspiration could be Palantir, which
explicitly developed and sold Google-style search software to various
agencies and drank deeply from the post-9/11 security funding well.

Its CEO, Peter Thiel, is even further out-there than Gabriel Ice. Note
that Thiel is coming from the same Stanford milieu as Y! and G
founders; he also founded PayPal and invested early in FB (along with
the Napster guy).

On Mon, Nov 8, 2021 at 12:52 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A hash slinger is a short order cook. Someone who “slings” crap food across
> a grill and onto a plate, to be served in a cheap diner.  “Crap thrower”
> might be its equivalent.  Or crap “server”:  somebody who serves crap.
>
> On Mon, Nov 8, 2021 at 3:39 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
> > > "kleptos of monstrous proportions, but all of these people are wined and
> > dined and enabled  by bankers, insurers, lawyers ad inifintium in New York,
> > London (especially), Zurich--those are the centers of modern corruption not
> > Moscow or Beijing (though they have many players in the game). stateless
> > banking is the adversary here.”    rich
> > and credit card rates that start where people used to be indicted for
> > loansharking.
> >
> > And hashslingerz is not just one of the private kleptos, but is founded on
> > software to protect and insulate both the kleptos and perhaps government
> > secrets too..My first suspect as real world parallel is Google whose
> > founders were from  earliest research at Stanford funded by military and
> > intelligence money(
> > https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e
> > <
> > https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e>
> > ). If you design super fast efficient code to find everything on the web,
> > you probably know more than anyone about how and where to hide stuff from
> > searches, hackers etc. You also have a big say in what information searches
> > turn up.
> >
> >  One thing I wonder about is the name hashslingerz. is the hash potatoes?
> > Doesn’t sound right or connect to anything obvious in the book.
> > Hash tags,  secure hash algorithms, hash functions etc seem a better bet
> > as basic to digital processes, encryption etc.
> > And is it slingerz with the once clever z people use, or  is it lingers?
> > the dangers of leaving a digital trail? Both? So I get the image of a
> > digital short order cook at a resturaunt near you serving a universal need,
> > like say free email accounts, becoming a virtual monopoly and leader of
> > surveillance capitalism, but with a second  less obvious agenda as it
> > enters the world of intelligence contracts . Again Google fits the bill.
> >
> > On the other hand the timing seems iffy. All the core  search engine
> > software was there before 2001 plus a lot of funding toward the IPO, but
> > the actual IPO happened in 2004. They went super-big fast and its hard to
> > say if 9-11 helped them but it certainly created an everybody is suspicious
> > and no one should expect anonymity atmosphere… except? well we may need to
> > make some exceptions for the managers of this new digital panopticon.
> >
> > I’m probably drifting too paranoid, maybe too much garlic here; just tryin
> > to keep the vampires at bay. Rein me in with some different takes. This is
> > supposed to be fun , right.
> >
> >
> > > On Nov 8, 2021, at 2:16 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Howdy
> > >
> > > I'll leave others to answer the deep web question, but one presumes
> > hashlingerz and others are private companies, for which, there is a ,
> > dearth of information. Public companies whose shares are traded on public
> > exchanges are required to file reports with the SEC on the company and its
> > top execs (and even those are questionable), but there is no such
> > requirement for private companies, so you can find little more than state
> > registration info (and good luck if they are registered in Delaware or
> > South Dakota, the latter is the new Caymans--countries so designated tax
> > havens can now add the US to that list). So, no surprise one can find
> > anything on Lexis Nexis.
> > > One can see how corrupting the system can be when information is the
> > baseline, and only those with resources can take full advantage. I'm
> > surprised Maxine can nail anyone of substance. Yes, there are oligarchs and
> > corrupt heads of state and kleptos of monstrous proportions, but all of
> > these people are winded and dined and enabled  by bankers, insurers,
> > lawyers ad inifintium in New York, London (especially), Zurich--those are
> > the centers of modern corruption not Moscow or Beijing (though they have
> > many players in the game). stateless banking is the adversary here.
> > >
> > > rich
> > >
> > >
> > > On Mon, Nov 8, 2021 at 12:43 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net <mailto:
> > brook7 at sover.net>> wrote:
> > > Maxine suggests that the information Reg needs about hashslingerz would
> > normally be easy to get to with Nexis Lexis, HotBot….
> > >
> > > R “What I’m really looking for,” solemn more than impatient, “probably
> > won’t be anyplace any search engine can get to.”
> > > M “Because . . . what you’re looking for . . .”
> > >  R  “Just normal company records—daybooks, ledgers, logs, tax sheets.
> > But try to have a look, and that’s when it gets weird, everything stashed
> > away far far beyond the reach of LexisNexis.”
> > >
> > > Here we get our first indication that there is a web that is not
> > avilable to the public, except with special procedures and passwords , the
> > deep web . This deep web operates in the novel in 2 ways, as the reality of
> > a secret communication and infomation storage system and IMO as  a kind of
> > digital subconscious where new forms  and arenas of consciousness are
> > emerging, a telling reflection of our desires and hidden doings.
> > >
> > > Practically  It brings up questions out of my depth. I have a general
> > idea of the the deepweb but plenty that I don’t understand at all. I assume
> > it means code stored on servers as opposed to computers. So I will try to
> > ask some questions and hope there are p-listers who understand this stuff
> > better than I do and might be wiling to offer or direct us to good info.
> > >
> > > Are there servers that are just private storage or are all servers
> > required to register
> > > or have some trackable identity? What exactly does it mean to be
> > indexed? How hidden can information be.
> > > There are drug and contraband dealers who use the deep web. This and any
> > other illicit use of the deep web is often called the dark web. Is access
> > by word of mouth? what keeps them from being busted? are transactons
> > possible here without known addresses? suggested articles?
> > > on stored in the Deep Web be?  Are there search engines like deep archer
> > that can find and make acessible the deep web. Has getting this access
> > always been the essence of hacking?
> > > It seems that P is suggesting digital tech opens new ways to hide money
> > transactions etc. Has anyone tried to estimate the tax losses etc? Any
> > thoughts on how much of this is going on?
> > > Does anyone have more intelligent questions about this. I read the
> > wikipedia article on this topic  last time we read BE and not much stuck.
> > I Will re-read more on the topic  but it’s definitely not my natural
> > terrain. Pretty ok at photo editing and paint programs but that only as it
> > relates to my own art processes and website.
> > >
> > >  Some expertise in this area of the functioning of the Deep web/Dark Web
> > would definitely add to understading BE.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l <
> > https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l>
> >
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
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