- The making of the Atomic bomb
- The Eighth Day of creation
Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
411–420 of 454 posts
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#412Reading some of these books recommended here, perhaps the most shocking thing is that so much is due to randomness: an arbitrary person does something small that turns out to be on the critical path, and without it the big thing would not get completed. I like the kind of books recommended here, but please be aware of survivor's bias (there not many books about failures! Any great recommendations? "How we could NOT g…
A fun read on failures was "In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters"
It taught me the lesson of "people will stop buying v1 of your product as soon as you announce v2... so don't announce it until it actually ships!"
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#413Maybe controversial but Elon Musk’s biography is basically just a 600+ page book about how one man got an unbelievable amount of things done against fairly insane odds. It’s been one of the books that surprised me the most. It totally changed my opinion of the man.
What hard proof is there of him doing something hard that you have expertise on?
If he lies, so badly, so hilariously, about being good at video games -- apropos nobody caring whether he is -- what else is he lying about?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N-WW0UDrVQ
As a YT comment on another video put it:
> For anyone unfamiliar with Path of Exile 2, this is like someone pretending to be a grandmaster chess player not knowing how a rook moves.
There are no ifs or buts about that. Either you know this is true, or you also don't know the game Elon pretended to be one of the best players of.
Or take him just talking nonsense about Twitter, then firing the person who corrects him: https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/14/musk_twitter_rpc_spat...
None of that squares with being intellectually curious. Never mind him claiming Hitler was a communist. It's like saying someone build 20 hospitals in [country] because they "are so compassionate". But I, with my own eyes, see him kick a homeless person and bark an ugly laugh, and more than once, so I know for a fact that even if his signature is on some papers related to those hospitals, even if he was involved with the planning and whatnot, it is not because he is "so compassionate". So in the same way I know none of this is because he is so very intelligent and pragmatic. At least if I think of intelligence as something general, simply the ability to think and memorize and connect facts. That's just not in the cards anymore.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But even folks who built their wealth in questionable ways (the Kennedys) tend to make America a better place. I dispute that strongly. How has the Walton family made America a better place? I'd say they've made it a much worse place. Similarly, Zuck hasn't "made America a better place". I'm not sure you can argue that Gates and Microsoft have. This sounds like the same trickle down economics BS that we've been fed…
Walmart has arguable built the most efficient grocery logistic in existence giving the whole country access to cheap fresh food with minimal spoilage
so what? it came at the expense of thousands of small businesses, destroyed hundreds of towns, and is one of the largest transfers of wealth in US history
all to serve us up cheap garbage
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#415Reading some of these books recommended here, perhaps the most shocking thing is that so much is due to randomness: an arbitrary person does something small that turns out to be on the critical path, and without it the big thing would not get completed. I like the kind of books recommended here, but please be aware of survivor's bias (there not many books about failures! Any great recommendations? "How we could NOT g…
> an arbitrary person does something small that turns out to be on the critical path, and without it the big thing would not get completed.
A great example is the discovery of the Thermus aquaticus bacteria in hot springs, seemingly pretty insignificant. That lead to PCR which allows DNA reading and analysis.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
Productions of things in any format, whether text, audio, or video, don't tend to preserve the cutting floor stuff--especially for public consumption. It's unedited. It's unvetted. It's not the material you're putting out for the public.
One of the things I'd add is that, while Edson de Castro was clearly remarkable in a lot of ways, he really wasn't that open to a lot a new things. Reluctance to cede control to retailers was one of the the nails in the DG/One's coffin although it was probably also before it's time. But there was a general secretiveness as well. I was once in an executive briefing center presentation to a customer maybe a day or two…
My understanding from reading the Soul of new machines and Showstoppers is that earlier innovative firms in the 70s and 80s have "characters" that were defined by their leaders (unlike nowadays it's mostly an army of professional managers assigned by the board). But it's probably still true nowadays, but we don't see many of these low level system companies popping up anymore.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But even folks who built their wealth in questionable ways (the Kennedys) tend to make America a better place. I dispute that strongly. How has the Walton family made America a better place? I'd say they've made it a much worse place. Similarly, Zuck hasn't "made America a better place". I'm not sure you can argue that Gates and Microsoft have. This sounds like the same trickle down economics BS that we've been fed…
Walmart has arguable built the most efficient grocery logistic in existence giving the whole country access to cheap fresh food with minimal spoilage
The only real benefit is to the owners of Walmart though. Their food is not healthier, and their business impact is not better for local economies than what came before.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you held the nations that stayed aristocratic and the havoc they caused next to france? Getting rid of parasitic waterhead bodies of government is always a pro birthong pains included. PS : Those wars started because the assembled aristocracy of f europe jumped the reforming nation.
Can’t replay the counter factual, but for those that lived it, there were regrets… and most reasoned there was a better way about the changing of power. Also, it’s not like it was all happy republicanism after the terror, there was a new elite replacing the old (Napoleons) and he was a petty noble anyway, plenty of the aristocracy stuck around, and said emperor did his best to marry into Europe’s aristocracy. Seems a…
The problem with the French revolution was that the radicals moved too far, too fast, in the social reform. Their economics werent the issue, it was the total disregard for any religious or traditional culture and the factionalism that doomed the revolutionaries.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aaron Greenspan created the early version of what Facebook became, and has loudly criticized the zero-sum tactics used by Zuckerberg, Gates, and other billionaires: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-legend-of-mark-zucker_b_7... Some interesting books in this category: * Masters of Doom. It’s about John Carmack and the team that built Id Software * Einstein. By Walter Isaacson, author of the Jobs biography. Einstein’…
I read the Einstein biography. Highly recommended. But to the parents point, I came way think Einstein was a huge asshole, especially given his pop culture representation as a kindly old grandfather type.
Most people are very selfish when it suits them, and most people would completely deny that selfishness as being not part of their "morality."
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the things I'd add is that, while Edson de Castro was clearly remarkable in a lot of ways, he really wasn't that open to a lot a new things. Reluctance to cede control to retailers was one of the the nails in the DG/One's coffin although it was probably also before it's time. But there was a general secretiveness as well. I was once in an executive briefing center presentation to a customer maybe a day or two…
My understanding from reading the Soul of new machines and Showstoppers is that earlier innovative firms in the 70s and 80s have "characters" that were defined by their leaders (unlike nowadays it's mostly an army of professional managers assigned by the board). But it's probably still true nowadays, but we don't see many of these low level system companies popping up anymore.
I'm not sure it was all that different. De Castro also got ejected by Data General's board in the early 90s or so. And there were certainly plenty of professional managers at the minicomputer companies.