Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas • Hacker News Board

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#231

Post by tomp » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 2:20 PM UTC

lars wrote: post #191

samstave wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The breakthrough in your comm analogy will come with the translation of thought to word. We will wear a device which will be able to read our brainwaves and determine which word we are thinking ala dictation, then send that to the recipient. This will be wired-telepathy - the recipient will get a message which they can receive any way they choose; visually (email - they read it) audio playback, or thought-injection.…

> We will wear a device which will be able to read our brainwaves and determine which word we are thinking ala dictation Since this thread is presumably being read by entrepreneurs making bets on the future of technology, it needs to be said that this will never happen with the current imaging technology. Brainwaves implies EEG, and the research in this field strongly suggests that it is information theoretically imp…

Your judgment that present technology is inadequate is based on the assumption that computers need to learn to read the human thoughts.

What about the inverse, that the humans learn how to think in a way that a computer understands? That will be much easier, as humans learn much better than computers, and also much safer - I will have complete control over which of my thoughts the computer can detect and interpret.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#232

Post by mmcconnell1618 » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 2:23 PM UTC

jakejake wrote: post #141

run4yourlives wrote: post #104

Does it bother anyone that "frightenly ambitious" begins with search and email? Seriously? This is the pinnacle of our contribution to mankind - building search engines and to-do lists? Where's the lunar base? The flying car? The personal robot? The cyborg? Meh, maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy. (To be fair I did like the other ones).

The frightening part is the idea that you would be trying to disrupt seemingly invincible tech companies like google, which would be an insane business plan for a startup looking for a $50k kickstart investment. But, I remember when google was first released. I thought the search engine market was already full with yahoo and alta vista dominating at the time. Who knew?!

Google offered to sell to Alta Vista (for somewhere in the 1-2 million range) if I recall correctly and they were turned down. Sometimes the giants don't see change coming.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#233

Post by ktizo » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 2:23 PM UTC

Is all about primary dependencies when it comes to large disruptions, so any ideas that target the primary technologies, hierarchies or costs associated with the agriculture, energy, manufacturing, telecoms, trading and transport sectors.

And the really ambitious ideas are the ones that simultaneously target as many of them as possible.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#234

Post by jonnathanson » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 2:24 PM UTC

In re #4, I'd suggest that your biggest hurdle isn't movie studios (as we often like to suggest here). It's Comcast. It's Time Warner Cable. It's AT&T. These companies exercise an oligopoly on most people's internet connectivity, TV UI and UX, DVR experience, etc. They also set the terms, with the networks and studios, for what you actually get to watch on demand. They pushed their crappy DVR onto the masses, effectively killing off the far more innovative and superior TiVo, because they offered their boxes at point-of-cable-hookup to consumers. They control so many strategic channels in the TV business, on both the B2B and B2C ends, that they're basically running the industry. (They were also the prime movers in the PIPA/SOPA legislation, and they'll be back with another attempt as surely as the sun rises in the East.)

Netflix, Apple, and Amazon look like compelling alternatives to the cable oligopoly. Unfortunately, studios are deathly afraid of handing over monopolistic control of their distribution to a single player like Netflix, so they're fighting with Netflix and trying to push their own alternative onto consumers (Ultraviolet). Meanwhile, they remain relatively oblivious to the real snakes in the grass (Comcast, et al.) -- an obliviousness that's going to get even worse, now that Comcast owns a major player in the production system.

To beat Hollywood isn't to beat the studios. To beat Hollywood is to beat cable. This isn't a war over content; this is a war over distribution. Technology vs. technology. Content producers will go wherever there's distribution to be found, and money to be made.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#235

Post by revorad » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 2:28 PM UTC

I wonder if PG would create more value by doing one of these ambitious startups than he is by running Ycombinator.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#236

Post by jonnathanson » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 2:31 PM UTC

revorad wrote: post #235

I wonder if PG would create more value by doing one of these ambitious startups than he is by running Ycombinator.

Probably not. Y Combinator is an entire startup ecosystem. It is a convening source, and inspiring source, for a multitude of startups. Any single company -- no matter how grand its ambition or its achievements -- offers less scale and less total value than an entire ecosystem of potentially big companies.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#237

Post by mcartyem » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 2:32 PM UTC

run4yourlives wrote: post #104

Does it bother anyone that "frightenly ambitious" begins with search and email? Seriously? This is the pinnacle of our contribution to mankind - building search engines and to-do lists? Where's the lunar base? The flying car? The personal robot? The cyborg? Meh, maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy. (To be fair I did like the other ones).

Maybe it's not as bothersome as it sounds. Donald Knuth said the two biggest problems in Computer Science are searching and sorting.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#238

Post by jodrellblank » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 2:37 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #143

6ren wrote: post #112

6. Bring Back Moore's Law hmmm, maybe developer cycles are more valuable than machine cycles really is getting out of sync with current conditions? I didn't connect stalled clock-speeds to the web being slow til reading this. One reason is that web-serving is usually embarrassingly parallel, as each client is independent. Some other causes are increased client-side JS; assembling many services (eg. amazon); increased…

Bloated frameworks, and software with many layers (some quite unnecessary) were facilitated by increasing clock-speeds - but at least it's possible to get rid of them. Also, work has been done on JS JIT compilation. Server languages are getting faster too. It's instructive to note how much more compact alternative operating systems have been made compared to the mainstream ones. Full fledged BeOS systems used to weig…

RPi is the antitheses of bloat removal, it is desired because it brings enough horsepower to shift "what you want"+"the everyday bloat that needs", in a small package.

Things like ddwrt on a netgear router are anti-bloat. Usable networked Linux in a 4MB image with 8MB RAM.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#239

Post by tomp » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 2:38 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #155

nl wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? Search is another word for artificial intelligence. Email means a universal way for people to communicate. Lunar bases & flying cars aren't ambitious, they are just expensive. Personal robots are here now in vertical spaces[1] and there are at least 200,000 cyborgs walking around now[2]. I think both these areas are worth working in, but I think you underestimate the ambition of a word like search . [1] ht…

OK, but "cleaning" is yet another word for artificial intelligence. I think you underestimate the power of economics. Can you imagine how many people are busy cleaning things? I find it amazing that the difference between tasks like washing cloths and cleaning toilets is so small for humans and so huge for machines. We've had washing machines forever, but we're still cleaning our toilets manually. And cleaning is jus…

Eventually, far out into the future, the trends might actually reverse.

Fundamentally, robots are made out of expensive stuff, metal, earth minerals. It can be recycled, but it's expensive, and not 100%. Humans, on the other hand, a pretty cheap, we run on carbon, oxygen and water.

In the future, it might make sense for robots to do stuff they're best suited for (e.g. very hard, dangerous work in human-unfriendly conditions (e.g. spaceship repairs in outer space)). However, unless we discover a way of making robots dirt-cheap and 100% recyclable, it will probably be humans cleaning the ship from the inside, no robots.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#240

Post by telent » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 2:41 PM UTC

TheCowboy wrote: post #122

nl wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? Search is another word for artificial intelligence. Email means a universal way for people to communicate. Lunar bases & flying cars aren't ambitious, they are just expensive. Personal robots are here now in vertical spaces[1] and there are at least 200,000 cyborgs walking around now[2]. I think both these areas are worth working in, but I think you underestimate the ambition of a word like search . [1] ht…

They're expensive because they're inefficient. To accomplish them efficiently is ambitious and elegant without a doubt. A startup that can chip away at what makes these things so inefficient is going in the right direction. Looking for inefficiencies, such as with present day email, is a good way to find a direction. Economics is still at its heart the study of the problem of scarcity. Economies, and all economic act…

This is a nit pick, but much economic activity these days is nothing to do with alleviating scarcity and everything to do with introducing artificial scarcity where it didn't previously exist. See e.g. Intellectual property.