Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV • Hacker News Board

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#191

Post by ptorrone » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 12:19 AM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #189

ptorrone wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks @ZenoArrow ... additionally, it's over $42m and we have a free and paid for service, http://www.adafruit.io and a subscription service, ADABOX, with thousands of customers, http://www.adabox.com ... no loans, no VC, 114+ people, USA manufacturer of open-source hardware in NYC, USA.

You're welcome ptorrone, it's a great success story. As a side note, thank you for founding Hackaday also, it's one of my favourite websites.

oh wow, thank you! 13 years ago! time is zooming by :)

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#192

Post by jiggunjer » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 1:40 AM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #155

jiggunjer wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is how many franchises grow. But most highly educated people aren't interested in starting a restaurant or mini-mart.

> "But most highly educated people aren't interested in starting a restaurant or mini-mart." What a bizarre statement. So highly educated people can't be passionate about food? Also, what I suggested is not limited to expansion through a franchise model. Let's go back to product manufacturing to explore why. Imagine you have just received an initial order of 100,000 units of Product X. You can meet this order with yo…

> "So highly educated people can't be passionate about food?"

What a bizarre deduction. I'm passionate about food, I have no interest in starting my own restaurant.

It was a generalization based on my own observations, most banks lend to safe well-established models, university graduates tend to gravitate towards newer things.

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#193

Post by jimmywanger » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 7:13 AM UTC

untog wrote: post #190

jimmywanger wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The country decides what the country's problems are and are not. Odd, the people who are in charge of creating laws, the House and the Senate, are still in office after getting nothing done. Right now this is not the country's problem because laws on the books should be enforced, as they were passed by the legislature. Why not vote legislators into office who can pass the laws? It would be the legislative branch's…

> Odd, the people who are in charge of creating laws, the House and the Senate, are still in office after getting nothing done. For one, there hasn't been an election since this latest change to DACA status happened. Secondly, very few people decide their vote on a single decision like this, and especially one that doesn't directly affect them. That doesn't mean they don't support it, though.

DACA was created by Obama as an end run around the legislative process. It was recently removed by another executive order. And Trump was not shy about expressing his opinions about immigration, and was voted in.

If people don't care enough to campaign/have their votes influenced for this issue, it means their preference isn't strong enough.

The fewer executive orders the better. Any executive order changing the laws as they are in the books should be immediately reversed, as it subverts all separation of powers in our government.

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#194

Post by jimmywanger » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 7:17 AM UTC

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #175

jimmywanger wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It uses tech as a way to strip mine a particular domain, often bypassing incumbents in the process. The term strip mine is a loaded term. In the classical sense, it devastates the ecosystem while extracting resources that are impossible to replace. In fact, Silicon Valley does not do that. People aren't going to stop needing transportation because Uber used up all the transportation, and it won't stop needing place…

Strip mining is a loaded term, and a touch unfair, perhaps. But I'd argue that tech itself is a resource of sorts, and needs periodic re-investment in order to continue to sustain high growth. I do think SV strip mines tech itself. (I got these thoughts from Alan Kay, they aren't my own, but I keep thinking about them.) Where is the Xerox PARC of 2018? Why isn't there one? We have more computing power and are economi…

> I do think SV strip mines tech itself.

You're talking out of both sides of your mouth now. Strip mining usually means something that destroys a natural resource.

You were originally talking about how Silicon Valley "strip mines a particular domain." That implies that it's strip mining other industries, such as hire for ride, etc etc. You could almost argue that they strip mined animation and movie special effects because they took profits from manual animators and movie prop creators.

I fail to see how Silicon Valley is "strip mining" tech. (Btw, something different from what you previously implied) They're grabbing low hanging fruit, but they're not ruining the resource for everybody else.

Also, to address your last point, the economies of scale are such that at this point, if you don't dominate a market, at least locally, you're dogmeat.

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#195

Post by ithkuil » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 8:19 AM UTC

haeffin wrote: post #164

ithkuil wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC Amazon Germany will soon service Switzerland as well.

It does already and did for a long time, but customs are a hassle.

https://ecommercenews.eu/amazon-launches-switzerland/

    [Amazon] has signed a cooperation agreement with Swiss Post, which means the postal agency will carry out customs clearance for Amazon in the near future.

    Customs clearance is said to take a maximum of three hours, which makes 24-hour delivery from abroad possible. Amazon offers this delivery method as part of its Prime offer in Germany

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#196

Post by ZenoArrow » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 8:58 AM UTC

jiggunjer wrote: post #192

ZenoArrow wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "But most highly educated people aren't interested in starting a restaurant or mini-mart." What a bizarre statement. So highly educated people can't be passionate about food? Also, what I suggested is not limited to expansion through a franchise model. Let's go back to product manufacturing to explore why. Imagine you have just received an initial order of 100,000 units of Product X. You can meet this order with yo…

> "So highly educated people can't be passionate about food?" What a bizarre deduction. I'm passionate about food, I have no interest in starting my own restaurant. It was a generalization based on my own observations, most banks lend to safe well-established models, university graduates tend to gravitate towards newer things.

> "I have no interest in starting my own restaurant."

That's your choice of course, but why do you think that is?

> "university graduates tend to gravitate towards newer things."

I don't think that's an accurate generalisation. For people who have STEM degrees, I'd agree, but there are a large proportion of people who followed other degrees (English majors, History majors, Philosophy majors, etc...) where I'd suggest that bias towards the new is not as prominent.

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#197

Post by samfriedman » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

chrisper wrote: post #139

kgwgk wrote: post #17

> My nationality hampered my ability to obtain medical treatment Why?

Because of this: https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wissen/medizin-und-psychologie/... (Sorry it is in German, but here is a translation https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u... ) TL;DR: They do not do it because they are afraid of getting sued by Americans.

When I worked in Zurich for a few months as an American student, I got pretty sick with mono. I went to an urgent care clinic, had multiple blood tests done, medication prescribed, and about a half hour consultation with a doctor (not to mention nurses). Walked out with about a $100 bill.

Blew my mind.