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Hard Startups

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Hard Startups

#291

Post by awshepard »

pfdietz wrote: post #286
acidburnNSA wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say that about molten salt fission reactors too. The maintenance robots will need maintenance robots. Just sell the robots. Lots of people still in fission and fusion are assuming trouble with renewables related to intermittency, land use, grid integration, EROI, raw materials, etc. might arise as we approach deep decarb. If that doesn't happen, wonderful! If it does, then it may be nice to have some low-carbo…

> Lots of people still in fission and fusion are assuming trouble with renewables related to intermittency, land use, grid integration, EROI, raw materials That's whistling past the graveyard, I think. Land use is demonstrably not a problem. Grid integration has long history of naysayers drawing a line in the sand and renewables blowing past it. EROI is just fine and getting better. Raw materials are also not a probl…

> Raw materials are also not a problem

Knowing very little about the topic, I recently saw an article talking about how the first wave of wind turbine blades was starting to be decommissioned, and running into difficulties with what to do with them. While they're no longer useful on the tower, since they're designed to withstand incredible forces, it's difficult to destroy, recycle, or otherwise dispose of them, and indicated they're ending up in storage.

Do you happen to know more about this particular phenomenon and what the end game is for that? Granted, this is likely less of a concern than the waste that coal creates, or the long term storage of spent nuclear fuel. I'm just curious about it.

Re: Hard Startups

#292

Post by TeMPOraL »

lastres0rt wrote: post #138
kortilla wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is urban farming a serious problem to solve?

Food deserts ARE a serious problem. Growing [X] amount of produce locally would provide a much-needed source of cheap produce and/or revenue to the local community. There's also general health benefits of the added greenery consuming excess CO2. Even better, captured rain runoff goes back into the soil sooner rather than becoming further concentrated with toxic chemicals before it reenters the ecosystem.

> There's also general health benefits of the added greenery consuming excess CO2.

Added greenery only consumes excess carbon dioxide if you harvest it and bury it in a very, very deep hole, where neither sun nor oxygen can reach it. Otherwise, it only briefly buffers some amount of carbon.

Re: Hard Startups

#293

Post by cambalache »

Paul-ish wrote: post #237
FiatLuxDave wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former fusion startup founder here. This is a very good point. My startup took 6 years to fail and much of our competition at the time is still at it 20 years later. There are a number of things which are also impedance mismatches between the typical SV startup mode and hard startups. One of these is the failure path. When an adtech startup fails, the founders just go get well-paying jobs at a FAANG, or at least that…

Gosh, a lot of what you are talking about sounds like what it is like to finish a PhD that doesn't have a future in academia as well. Sometimes I feel like a failure for choosing software engineering, but I should probably be grateful I have that option.

I would gladly give 10 years of my life to be in your position. We humans are very weird.

Re: Hard Startups

#294

Post by pfdietz »

AstralStorm wrote: post #290
pfdietz wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lots of people still in fission and fusion are assuming trouble with renewables related to intermittency, land use, grid integration, EROI, raw materials That's whistling past the graveyard, I think. Land use is demonstrably not a problem. Grid integration has long history of naysayers drawing a line in the sand and renewables blowing past it. EROI is just fine and getting better. Raw materials are also not a probl…

I wouldn't say 100%, best case economically is somewhere closer to 60% unless you build huge hydropower. With that, 100% is feasible. That said, do you know what's the highest uptake (in percentage power capacity) of renewables not including hydroelectric nor biofuels in your country? Here in Poland it is laughably low. Germany is not doing much better either. So "we theoretically could" does not mean we will.

No, you can get to 100%. A key is hydrogen (or perhaps ammonia) to handle rare long lulls in production. The round trip efficiency on that is lousy, but the capital cost is low (which is more important for that segment). A simple cycle gas turbine plant is only 5% of the cost of a nuclear plant of the same rated power.

Try playing with this online modeling tool:

https://model.energy/

With the plausible numbers there, new nuclear is optimized out of the mix.

This will be more expensive than fossil fuels with free CO2 release, but presumably CO2 taxes get ramped up to the point that's no longer true.

Re: Hard Startups

#295

Post by cambalache »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #229
tikirey wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don’t fall for their “mission” nonsense. It’s a monstrous lie designed to keep funneling tremendous amounts of money to the people at the top. 100% For some reason, it is so easy to believe in it but the fun part will eventually come in a form of VC asking where is the money. "When someone says "I am not doing it for the money" he (she) is doing it only for the money." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb. My opinion is that it…

> "When someone says "I am not doing it for the money" he (she) is doing it only for the money." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb. This is silly. Artists and creatives aren't doing it for the money. Social workers aren't doing it for the money. Teachers aren't doing it for th money ... etc. Passion => irrationality. Or different goals, like sense of purpose vs. money.

I havent seen the first social worker proclaiming to everybody that she is not in for the money.

Re: Hard Startups

#296

Post by Axsuul »

spectramax wrote: post #45

What bothers me about Sam Altman's writing is the following: 1) He talks about X, X being an observation with survivorship bias painted all over it, but Sam Altman asserts as if it is true. Stop writing with authority over unsubstantiated claims - you can only be humble and say "Perhaps X is true because of my observations, take it with a grain salt". 2) Statements like "Easy startups are easy to start but hard to ma…

But "reasonable next step" isn't so obvious! Often one can toil away at their hard startup for years without a product with customers. The "reasonable next step" here would be to first build a related product in the space that doesn't yet solve the hard problem but helps establish your brand and revenue streams.

Re: Hard Startups

#297

Post by acidburnNSA »

awshepard wrote: post #291
pfdietz wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lots of people still in fission and fusion are assuming trouble with renewables related to intermittency, land use, grid integration, EROI, raw materials That's whistling past the graveyard, I think. Land use is demonstrably not a problem. Grid integration has long history of naysayers drawing a line in the sand and renewables blowing past it. EROI is just fine and getting better. Raw materials are also not a probl…

> Raw materials are also not a problem Knowing very little about the topic, I recently saw an article talking about how the first wave of wind turbine blades was starting to be decommissioned, and running into difficulties with what to do with them. While they're no longer useful on the tower, since they're designed to withstand incredible forces, it's difficult to destroy, recycle, or otherwise dispose of them, and…

I asked a person from one of the biggest wind manufacturers on earth that on Monday evening at an energy networking event. At the moment they plan to either put then all in landfills or chop then up and burn them.

We all agreed that the people will likely not worry about this nearly as much as they worry about burying vastly less but vastly more hazardous spent nuclear fuel (even though spent nuclear fuel in actual fact has a sound safe geological story).

Re: Hard Startups

#298

Post by erikpukinskis »

unexaminedlife wrote: post #199

I'm almost thinking hard startups shouldn't exist. If a startup is considered hard, what is making it hard. Probably ecosystem / infrastructure. Maybe a good approach would be to ask the founder why timeline is so long or will cost so much. Once they answer those questions, ask them to build an "easier" startup that will be able to sustain itself and can (eventually) partner with the "hard" startup, which will only b…

This is also how I think software engineering should be organized. But most orgs seem to want hard thing with big priority done now.

Re: Hard Startups

#299

Post by acidburnNSA »

pfdietz wrote: post #286
acidburnNSA wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say that about molten salt fission reactors too. The maintenance robots will need maintenance robots. Just sell the robots. Lots of people still in fission and fusion are assuming trouble with renewables related to intermittency, land use, grid integration, EROI, raw materials, etc. might arise as we approach deep decarb. If that doesn't happen, wonderful! If it does, then it may be nice to have some low-carbo…

> Lots of people still in fission and fusion are assuming trouble with renewables related to intermittency, land use, grid integration, EROI, raw materials That's whistling past the graveyard, I think. Land use is demonstrably not a problem. Grid integration has long history of naysayers drawing a line in the sand and renewables blowing past it. EROI is just fine and getting better. Raw materials are also not a probl…

Of course there are peer reviewed studies that agree and disagree with everything you say here. It's just a question of how how reliable the peer-reviewed studies on each side are at this point. This strengthens my point that it's ok for some investors to look into improving nuclear.

It's also extremely popular to say that 100% renewables are a done deal because it's such a great story and feeling.

Most serious deep-decarb clean-energy publications I've seen suggest energy costs go up by $30-50/MWh at deep decarb levels. At those levels, current nuclear already competes. People looking at LCOE today (where the rock-bottom wind/solar numbers depend completely on the hugely-fossil grid for backup and intermittency but hide the carbon emissions with impunity) tend to completely miss this point, their bias that wind/solar are cheaper already being confirmed.

Yet there goes Japan with the 33 coal plants!

Re: Hard Startups

#300

Post by ssivark »

rl3 wrote: post #280
ssivark wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Get a well-paying engineering job I'll probably hate, because money, quality of life, and sanity all have instrumental value. Hopefully keep the fire alive during this period. Based on what I've observed and heard in discussions (both IRL and on HN), keeping the fire alive over the years is a significant challenge. One key ingredient to that is finding the right community/people for healthy feedback (both positive…

For sure. I'm fortunate to at least have a couple friends I can bounce anything off, even if it's just talking to myself sometimes. As far as keeping the fire alive, I've had little trouble thus far. In fact, the fire's done nothing but increase in intensity for the most part. However when you have a lot of free time, that's perhaps natural. Being too tired to do anything else outside of job and a long-overdue social…

Lol, I feel ya! I’d love to chat more if you’re interested (e-mail on my HN profile)
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