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I’m taking some time away from Comma

geohot.github.io

291–300 of 437 posts

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#291

Hotz has always come across as very arrogant to me. Claims everyone else is doing things the wrong way, claims he can do it himself in 24h, then never delivers on his words.

Hotz's story is our story. He is the embodiment of the top comment of every HN thread in existence. "Of course the author doesn't know a damn about what their writing about. They're wrong. And no I won't deliver a better solution," is Hotz in a nutshell. To be critical of him is to be critical of us. It's great if we can do that, but I'm not sure we can. There's a certain essence of digital rhetoric that runs through…

Nah. But I do recognize his story. I've worked with many people who have the same story, not all of them software engineers. They trade on the fact that it only takes 20 percent of the time to get the first 80 percent. So they do the 80 percent, and people are impressed. Then they bail. It is pure genious, because you leave on a high note - knowing that the last 20% is going to be difficult to impossible to deliver on. It is where all the problems built up while building the easy 80% get solved. That is the boat.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree he does come off as arrogant at times. There are plenty of times when he's right, though. Those times are pretty fun to read about: https://twitter.com/jinglejamop/status/1310718738417811459

I want every last thing on this website related to cryptocurrency to be annotated as such. everything about it is just a supreme waste of time and energy. including my own. everyone is a genius at something and the easiest way to negate any positives that you could possibly provide is to be an arrogant prick, and geohot is exactly that.

An interesting anecdote about a deeply technical problem, with a clever solution, is instantly critiqued, because of an aversion to the topic, and the perceived arrogance of one of the persons involved.

This level of cynicism and irony, especially on hackernews, is hard to top.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#293
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"recent years"? This guy has always been like this, going all the way back to ios hacking days or even wii hacking days.

A certain amount of arrogance is cheeky and endearing. Then there's the kind where the talented musician in the band announces their departure and solo album. And starts talking about finding God and becoming a modern day Prometheus. I can't put my finger on when the transition happened but it was somewhere just before the Lex interview for me.

He doesn't come off as particularly arrogant to me, more like a straightforward and direct type. I've yet to meet someone who's good at what they do who isn't convinced of themselves, so that's a given. A philosopher might argue you need this sort of mindset to be successful in the first place. However knowing that you're better at something than most other people doesn't equal arrogance when it's true. There are also a lot of arrogant people who know how to put on an act in public.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#294
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As it stands, most of this as of the posting time stamp amounts to nothing more than “I don’t like Geohotz.” (This is a running theme with Hotz that’s at least a decade old). Well… duh? This is sort of a defining part of his personality. Of course it’s going to be brought up every time he comes up. It’s just like nobody is going to discuss Terry A. Davis and only speak of his work on TempleOS. > someone who is, by…

> This is sort of a defining part of his personality. No it isn’t. Your perception of him is warped because you read the Hotz Haters Digest on HN and elsewhere. Go read his blog posts and you might learn a thing or two about what he’s really like. Go watch his interviews on YouTube. He may not be the most impressionable individual (nerds rarely are, even Carmack is criticized for being robotic sometimes). He’s opinio…

Why would I go read his blog posts? I’ve spent ~years talking to the guy on irc.

Why would reading HN takes influence my views on him over my personal experiences?

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situation you're describing is no different to 5 years ago: autonomous vehicles exist but can only operate in a limited environment. That's where Waymo was 5 years ago, it was just an even more limited environment. Read the "Road Testing" section on Wikipedia, specifically, 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waymo

>it was just an even more limited environment Huh, so are you saying maybe we're a little close to autonomous cars than we were 5 years ago?

If one believes that autonomous cars with no limitations on environment will never exist, then no progress will get us any closer to infinity.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#297
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what other options do we have? Well, most of modern society has decided that once you've satisfied your basic needs, hedonism is the answer. Travel, good food, good times with friends, etc. That's what most people are living like and what the culture creates. No need to find hidden portals.

There’s only one outcome for hedonists. Wireheading. I suspect many people will go this way, I won’t.

Most people cannot ever get to that, hence the whole "enjoy the journey not the destination". When I read your post the main takeaway I got is you made too much money.

Tell me if you started from scratch right now you'd be worrying about this 2deep4u shenanigans instead of doing cool shit again?

By the way, I really respect your work and think you've done great things and enjoy reading your rambles a lot.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#298
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hotz's story is our story. He is the embodiment of the top comment of every HN thread in existence. "Of course the author doesn't know a damn about what their writing about. They're wrong. And no I won't deliver a better solution," is Hotz in a nutshell. To be critical of him is to be critical of us. It's great if we can do that, but I'm not sure we can. There's a certain essence of digital rhetoric that runs through…

> There's a certain essence of digital rhetoric that runs through our veins and we wouldn't be the same without it. Both in the case of HN and with Hotz, I'm 50/50 on whether this is even a bug. It's hard to do anything interesting if you're not both highly opinionated and highly critical about the current way of doing things. That said, I think some of us are more self-aware of this mentality than others. In my case…

I think one can be opinionated and critical without being arrogant. I do not know who the author is, but reading the post, I'm getting huge Main Character Syndrome[1] vibes. I mean, calling it "The Hero's Journey"? Seriously? Sure, buddy. The world is a story and you're the protagonist hero, venturing forth among a world of NPCs. I don't care how much of a literal genius someone is: that kind of life attitude is pretty off-putting.

1: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/digital-world-real-w...

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#299

I used to like watching his streams but he seems to have become somewhat unhinged in recent years. Perhaps he is believing too much about what people have said about him. The arrogance and aggrandizement was the turn-off for me. Well that and his belief, while at comma, that how fast you can code is the most important metric when assessing software engineers. Competition programming is fun to watch but a poor indicat…

Where does he say that how fast you can code is the most important metric?

He doesnt. There are a ton of videos which says what he specifically looks for. from their hiring page

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNWTculMsTY "motivation and intelligence"

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone wants to own a car either, and everyone owning a car is not exactly environmentally sustainable. Replacing Uber & Lyft with robots would add a ton of value and be practical for a very large percentage of the population. > And I personally don't think the industry is mature enough to accept the realities and limitations of the technology we work with to just say, "Hey, actually, we can let attentive drive…

> Not everyone wants to own a car either, and everyone owning a car is not exactly environmentally sustainable. Replacing Uber & Lyft with robots would add a ton of value and be practical for a very large percentage of the population. Yeah, no one wants this.

You speak for yourself. Uber and Lyft demand in large cities tell another story.

I'm also mystified: do you really think personal car ownership for every person is at all sustainable?

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