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Why Toys?

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Why Toys?

#201

Post by dredmorbius »

Blackthorn wrote: post #60
turingcompeteme wrote: post #27

Standard Oil actually did start out as a toy. They provided oil to burn in lamps. At the time most people thought that was a somewhat silly gimmick and a fad that would quickly pass. Oil in general was seen as something neat but not essential for years. But just like facebook, many people soon came around to the idea and it took over the world. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. covers this all in incredible…

This is a bit skimpy on the details. I highly recommend every American adult to read The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. It will change the way you think about the world. It also shows how Rockefeller was able to pivot his business from kerosene lamps, which were on the way to obsolescence, to fuel.

Excellent book. And recommended for the fine denizens of Altair IV (both of us) as well.

I'd also very strongly recommend Vaclav Smil's Energy and World History (1994) or the updated Energy and Civilization (2017). These describe history through the lens of energy sources, and the role of energy in that history.

Manfred Weisenbacher takes on much the same story in Sources of Power, which is a more comprehensive, if uneven, book. Excellently researched (and drawing heavily on Smil as well as many, many other sources), but could use some trimming and occasionally verges strongly to the polemical.

Re: Why Toys?

#202

Post by dredmorbius »

reaperducer wrote: post #134
turingcompeteme wrote: post #27

Standard Oil actually did start out as a toy. They provided oil to burn in lamps. At the time most people thought that was a somewhat silly gimmick and a fad that would quickly pass. Oil in general was seen as something neat but not essential for years. But just like facebook, many people soon came around to the idea and it took over the world. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. covers this all in incredible…

As a point of interest, I seem to recall from a documentary I once saw that Rockefeller was the person who invented the pipeline, because he was sick of paying railroads to move his oil around.

Pretty much. There were no long-haul pipelines as we know them prior to the 1860s. Part of that arose from the fact that there was no material particularly suited to pipelines.

Water tended to be transported in viaducts (or occasionally tunnels). Longer runs might be made of clay. Even firing that required tremendous amounts of fuel in a fuel-starved world.

The advent of Bessemer steel, machine tools, railroads (and steel rather than wrought-iron rails, far stronger and less prone to splitting), and mechanical pumps, allowed pipelines to be built.

The first that I'm aware of were deployed along Oil Creek in Titusville, Pennsylvania, home of the U.S. petroleum industry. Contemporaneous accounts discuss the development of those pipelines.

Long, interstate pipelines came out of World War II. The U.S. had been shipping oil from Texas to New Jersey via tankers, but German U-boats were sinking these by the hundreds. The U.S. government financed the construction of the Big Inch and Little Inch pipelines, which remain in use.

Re: Why Toys?

#203

Post by marvy »

lmm wrote: post #188
marvy wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this specific to SAAS? Suppose Word 2003 has A,B,D and WordPerfect has A,B,C, can you ever have C and D at the same time?

You have a single filesystem, so maybe you can open the same document in both one after another to work on the parts that need D and the parts that need C. Of course this relies on having a common format, but in the local-apps world we mostly have those, whereas in the SaaS world we don't even have a filesystem to share.

Ooh, good point. Import/export kind of does the same thing, but much worse I guess.

Re: Why Toys?

#204

Post by afarrell »

hnzix wrote: post #139
afarrell wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't, but the lack of other good sources of indoor lighting refutes the claim that the lamp oil market is a toy.

> refutes the claim that the lamp oil market is a toy. GP never made that claim. The point is that lamp oil was perceived as a toy before people realized the (blindingly obvious in hindsight) utility for indoor lighting.

What did they use lamp oil for then? I thought lamp oil was always for indoor lighting...

Re: Why Toys?

#205

Post by jaravis »

ujeezy wrote: post #5

One of my favorite pg ideas: "When something is described as a toy, that means it has everything an idea needs except being important. It's cool; users love it; it just doesn't matter. But if you're living in the future and you build something cool that users love, it may matter more than outsiders think." http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

Toys are relative -- the iPhone was not a toy compared to other phones but definitely a toy compared to a personal computer.

We built a stationary bike called Revvo (http://revvo.co) -- which does a lab quality VO2Max test but makes it a whole lot more fun. Not a toy compared to other exercise bikes but definitely a toy compared to a $45k metabolic cart used for lab tests.

Re: Why Toys?

#206

Post by tim333 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #184
langitbiru wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin gives us a way to transfer value which is censorship-resistant. That is BIG.

Which isn't really "an immediate problem" right now for anyone. Also, the "solution" isn't particularly good.

Or it's more an "an immediate problem" for people doing illegal stuff that it should be a problem for.

Re: Why Toys?

#207

Post by a_creative_life »

adrian_mrd wrote: post #165
inimino wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lego's "Serious Play" is a good example of this kind of marketing done really well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Serious_Play

Agree, Lego’s Serious Play is a great set of ‘starter toolkits’ for prototyping and design thinking sessions. Somewhat pricey (as all Lego is), but worth it for many scenarios IMHO.

Yes, those starter kits are great, but the real value in LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is the methodology.

As a trained facilitator in LSP methods and materials, I’ve seen the power of this methodology at work. It taps into emotion and gets people thinking with their hands, using more parts of their brains than they would just sitting around talking and writing.

The LSP kits are great because of the “curated” mix of LEGO® bricks they contain, specially chosen to help people build metaphors.

(And actually, if you were to assemble your own set of the same bricks “a la carte” it would be much more expensive, so though they cost a pretty penny, they’re actually a good deal.)

Re: Why Toys?

#208

Post by ramblerman »

adrian_mrd wrote: post #167

Nintendo is often derided for being a ‘toy’ company - as opposed to, say, Apple which is a ‘real’ hardware company. Yet look at the big N’s track record of innovative hardware and software integration: Wii motion controls, Switch’s Joy-Cons and (soon) the cardboard Toy-Cons , N64 rumble pack for haptic feedback, battery backup in NES and SNES cartridges, etc. (And yeah, lots of misfires along the way like the Wii U,…

> Nintendo is often derided for being a ‘toy’ company - as opposed to, say, Apple which is a ‘real’ hardware company. (...Nintendo, Lego, Minecraft)

I think you are stuck on 'literal' toys, which was not what was meant in the article.

Re: Why Toys?

#209

Post by aeorgnoieang »

ksenzee wrote: post #126
aeorgnoieang wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual lemonade stands (run by children)? They're usually shutdown by the police, at least in the U.S. [Tho my sources severely skew my sample so as to entirely neglect counterexamples.] Metaphorical lemonade stands are almost always abandoned too. But that seems obviously fine anyways.

I think "usually" is an exaggeration. I've seen plenty of lemonade stands and I've never seen one shut down by police. I've seen news stories about it happening, but the fact that it makes national headlines says something about how rare it is: https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/11/politics/lemonade-stand-shut-...

Yes, I think you're very likely correct.

Re: Why Toys?

#210

Post by aeorgnoieang »

morgante wrote: post #142
aeorgnoieang wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual lemonade stands (run by children)? They're usually shutdown by the police, at least in the U.S. [Tho my sources severely skew my sample so as to entirely neglect counterexamples.] Metaphorical lemonade stands are almost always abandoned too. But that seems obviously fine anyways.

> Actual lemonade stands (run by children)? They're usually shutdown by the police, at least in the U.S. I can't tell if you're joking or just completely distorted by media coverage. I ran lemonade stands throughout my childhood and consistently see them run by children today.

It was both mostly joking and because of distorted media coverage. I can't remember seeing one tho anytime recently.
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