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Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech

ianbetteridge.com

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Re: Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech

#111

Post by virtualritz »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #84
wg0 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reads like 99% cities are like San Francisco. The world unfortunately is lot more diverse than that.

> The world unfortunately is lot more diverse than that. It is, but only at the surface level. 99% of the actual problem of driving in urban areas is the same everywhere on the planet, because all human cities are pretty much the same, because all humans are pretty much the same - once you start comparing with the rest of the universe , and not just with other people. San Francisco, Moscow, Cape Town and Prague are a…

Sorry, but have you driven in a city in India or Indonesia? Just for example?

My favorite example is a major intersection with no traffic lights. Everyone just drives onto it and then you get a sticky sauce of cars that move at a fraction of the allowed max speed until they leave the intersection again.

Horns and eye contact are used to negotiate progress by all paricipants. I would love to see a "self driving" car on such an intersection.

My guess is a video of this car's encounter would go absultely viral. But not for the reasons proponents of this tech hope for. ;)

Re: Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech

#112

Post by piva00 »

kredd wrote: post #65
wg0 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Self driving works. No it doesn't. Only in San Francisco maybe.

But it works? We only have functional public transit in small amount of cities in NA as well. If we can scale it up, it might be a game changer. I’m as pro-transit as it gets, but unfortunately we don’t have political appetite for it.

> But it works? We only have functional public transit in small amount of cities in NA as well. If we can scale it up, it might be a game changer. I’m as pro-transit as it gets, but unfortunately we don’t have political appetite for it.

Rather sad though that instead of implementing what empirically is already known to work in so many cities there's a quest for a solution to a problem that's completely self-inflicted.

Self-driving might help a bit with transportation in NA cities but it definitely won't be the solution, there's just not enough physical space on the roads to be a game changer, at worst it will create even more issues with road usage. And my fear is that instead of realising it was the wrong bet (just like the car-centric approach) it will be doubled down into some ever-more-complex maze of solutions to make cars transporting 1-2 passengers to get to their destinations quicker by interconnecting them, and doing traffic management on a network of cars.

Those are fun problems to think about and try to solve but completely missing the mark about what actually works for a city and why. Someone will call that "innovation" and sell it to some suckers, just like car-centric urbanism.

Re: Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech

#113

Post by ForHackernews »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #84
wg0 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reads like 99% cities are like San Francisco. The world unfortunately is lot more diverse than that.

> The world unfortunately is lot more diverse than that. It is, but only at the surface level. 99% of the actual problem of driving in urban areas is the same everywhere on the planet, because all human cities are pretty much the same, because all humans are pretty much the same - once you start comparing with the rest of the universe , and not just with other people. San Francisco, Moscow, Cape Town and Prague are a…

Driving in New Delhi is an entirely different universe than driving in San Francisco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnPiP9PkLAs

Contrary to your assertions, operating a vehicle in an environment with humans is a social problem.

Re: Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech

#114

Post by Earw0rm »

DidYaWipe wrote: post #77
dannyobrien wrote: post #4

I think another way to explain "being bored" (and a bunch of other features that this post describes). These people are getting old: Andreessen is 53, Graham is 59, the author is in his fifties; I am too. Nothing too surprising about having older people be the supposed "blowhard" voices of an industry -- except during the golden age that these posts harken back too, all of these pundits were twenty or so years younge…

There are just as many young blowhards. A lot of "tech" is mature now. People whine "where's the innovation" in phones, for example. At this point, WTF do you want them to do? Where's the "innovation" in spreadsheets or word processors? It IS kinda boring. And it's not going to get better when it's a bunch of recycled pablum shat out by "AI."

I'd say the same about microprocessors. They haven't changed _that_ much now in about 15 years. You could put a Core2 Quad on the same playfield as the latest and greatest Zen or Intel "14th Gen" - they're recognisably the same in ways that, say, a 1996 Pentium Pro and a 1981 8088 just aren't.

At the same time, I wouldn't write off machine learning models so quickly. Applied in tight focus, they're unlocking a bunch of capabilities, even if consumer-grade Dall-E, ChatGPT etc are mostly automated bullshit generators.

Re: Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech

#115

Post by grecy »

virtualritz wrote: post #111
TeMPOraL wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The world unfortunately is lot more diverse than that. It is, but only at the surface level. 99% of the actual problem of driving in urban areas is the same everywhere on the planet, because all human cities are pretty much the same, because all humans are pretty much the same - once you start comparing with the rest of the universe , and not just with other people. San Francisco, Moscow, Cape Town and Prague are a…

Sorry, but have you driven in a city in India or Indonesia? Just for example? My favorite example is a major intersection with no traffic lights. Everyone just drives onto it and then you get a sticky sauce of cars that move at a fraction of the allowed max speed until they leave the intersection again. Horns and eye contact are used to negotiate progress by all paricipants. I would love to see a "self driving" car o…

Of course, a self driving car not trained for that situation would do as badly as a brand new 16 year old driver.

Just like the newbie it will learn, and get as good or better than everyone else.

Re: Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech

#116

Post by raister »

privacymatters4 wrote: post #29

From a post I saw in another thread, I don't know how to link to the direct comment: > "Same year for me. My college experience was a mix of PCU, Animal House, Hackers and Real Genius (ok not quite). I first saw email in a Pine terminal client. Netscape had been freshly ripped off from NCSA Mosaic at my alma mater UIUC the year before. Hacks, warez, mods, music and even Photoshop were being shared in public folders o…

It's so disheartening that a lot of effort is put towards presenting ads to people in all spectrum of tech.

Re: Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech

#117

Post by Earw0rm »

Gooblebrai wrote: post #106
Animats wrote: post #24

The part of "tech" which is ad-driven has become both boring and seriously annoying. Unfortunately, that's where the money is. There are interesting things going on: * Self-driving cars finally work. San Francisco is full of them. Next step is to get the cost down and replace those rotating scanners with something cheaper. At least the ones that aren't on top. * Robotic manipulation in unstructured situations is just…

What's the effective difference of a flying car with a helicopter?

Noise, energy profile, safety profile, level of automation.

If they solve those well enough, it means a lot of the operational restrictions that make helicopters very limited in scope (few landing sites, insanely high operating costs due to needing very specialised, highly trained pilots and maintenance crew etc.) could be somewhat lifted.

Fairly big "if" though. Rotary wings are inherently high energy, and heavier-than-air flight has much, much tighter safety and reliability requirements than cars for a good reason.

Re: Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech

#118

Post by ozozozd »

bjornsing wrote: post #39
gipp wrote: post #3

> Tech has become all Jobs and no Woz. Distills the post to a sentence, and boy does this nail it.

That’s a really good line and I’d love to read a blog post that distills to it. But this ain’t it. I bet a young Woz today would be a hell of a lot better off in Graham’s world than in this guy’s “big companies are great” world.

I read the post till the end. It never mentioned big companies being good or great.

Can you quote the part?

Re: Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech

#120

Post by aniviacat »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #69
iamacyborg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed that too, but all Ozempic is (as I understand) is an appetite suppressant.

Which is the exact thing that addresses your objection. People, in general, are unable to downregulate their appetite on their own in order to "just eat less". Ozempic does it for them. Honestly, I question the whole idea that failing to "eat less" is a personal problem. Historically, we jumped into obesity epidemic straight from the time when food was scarce and not very nutrient-rich. Ability to manage caloric inta…

> Ability to manage caloric intake in times of abundance may not be something humans have in general

Even in the USA, a country that is not just wealthy but also culturally obesity-friendly, the majority of people are not obese. In less obesity-friendly regions, such as Europe, only a small part of the population is obese.

Most people do manage their caloric intake. And of those who don't, many may still be able to, but simply choose not to.

It seems that humans in general do have the ability to manage caloric intake, but many don't use it.

I do think it's a personal problem. (But we should still work together as a society to help those who fail to help themselves.)

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