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Crazy New Ideas
181–190 of 808 posts
Re: Crazy New Ideas
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was this product[1] to browse internet offline by downloading something called “Web Packs”. This was back in 2005 just when I was graduating when I spoke to the founding team. They were naturally quite confident about the product taking off. Something seemed off to me I couldn’t point out what so I didn’t take the job offer. After all these years I realized the source my discomfort. They were actually betting a…
The Mighty model is timesharing CPUs. At least 80% of the time my computer isn't even used. And when I use it, I doubt average load is over 25%. So the Mighty model has a 20x utilization advantage by those numbers. That should easily support twice the peak CPU power for me when I need it. Another thing is that the Mighty CPUs will (presumably) be upgraded continuously, while my laptop CPU gets no faster after purchas…
>The Mighty model is timesharing CPUs.
It's not. It's literally spinning up a VM in the cloud to run Chrome and stream a video to you
> At least 80% of the time my computer isn't even used.
Yes, but Mighty isn't running (and will never run) on your computer.
Re: Crazy New Ideas
#183I don't like how Paul's writing always gets hundreds of likes just because it's by him. Not everything he writes is amazing. I wish there wasn't such a cult around him.
I don't think he gets hundreds of likes because he's amazing (though some of what he's written has been). It's because his writing is an insight into silicon valley and VC culture. Even when I completely disagree with his opinions they're interesting to read because they give an insight into how him and many of his peers think. And as someone interested in this industry that's fundamentally interesting even when it's not great. Arguably more so.
Re: Crazy New Ideas
#184If this is about Mighty, the bad parts of it aren't technical.
- Even with today's concentration of information, there are several independent information sources left... and they want us to access them from a single point of failure?
- Who pays for this and how? How do I install my own ad blockers and anti tracking extensions on Mighty? Am I supposed to just trust them that they won't sell my advertising profile?
- What happens to the sites Mighty management disagrees with? Do they become inaccessible? Or they render badly? Especially since they're an American company and society is getting ultra polarized over there...
Re: Crazy New Ideas
#185Does Thiel count as reasonable?
Re: Crazy New Ideas
#186New Ideas aren't crazy. Crazy Ideas are crazy. That's why people say it won't work, because it sounds crazy. It sounds crazy because the person proposing it hasn't made a good enough case for it.
Getting people to agree with a new idea is about salesmanship. If people think your idea is crazy, you suck at sales. Coffee's for closers.
Re: Crazy New Ideas
#187I really wish PG would actually talk to some historians. History of Science is an extremely deep field with tons of professionals who have spent their lives studying this material. His overview is shallow. The only history book he cites is from fifty years ago ! It is so frustrating. There is this huge wealth of content available and a large group of people who'd want nothing more to be able to share what they know a…
I see little evidence he would want to talk to them, indeed his way of life is an insult to their discipline and their discipline is a threat to his way of life
Consciousness of history is inoculation against the sort of "thought leadership" PG sells
Re: Crazy New Ideas
#188I think a lot of people - dare I say it, even PaulG - are missing the point of Mighty (or not putting it into words properly).
Mighty isn’t betting on the internet continually getting more bloated, or being better than a thick client. Even for a poor person working mostly in Figma, buying a decent laptop will be much more cost-effective.
What they are really selling is the equivalent of upgrading your laptop to a new model while it’s still running. Hardware shopping is time-consuming, stressful, and never done proactively - so you suffer in silence till the new one arrives. Then you have to replicate your old workflow and warm the caches.
The two biggest threats to Mighty are Apple/MSFT building “snapshot” recoveries in new hardware (almost AMI-like), and real adoption of saving bookmarks, history and passwords to the cloud by signing in to Chrome (most I know are hesitant). As has always been the case in this industry, the hardware is irrelevant.
This isn’t game-streaming, where you unlock hardware economies of scale because most users play a tiny amount a day on average. Your browser is always on.
Re: Crazy New Ideas
#189I really wish PG would actually talk to some historians. History of Science is an extremely deep field with tons of professionals who have spent their lives studying this material. His overview is shallow. The only history book he cites is from fifty years ago ! It is so frustrating. There is this huge wealth of content available and a large group of people who'd want nothing more to be able to share what they know a…
You should use this opportunity to recommend an especially high-quality introduction/overview of modern history of science, approachable by a curious outsider.
Diving straight into books can be hard, since academics write for other academics.
But I recommend works by Paula Findlen and Tom Mullaney highly! Mullaney's work pushes back against a whole bunch of myths about the chinese language and its effect on technological innovation. Findlen's work covers both the history of technologies but also the technology of communication and the nature of information in the Renaissance period. Mullaney is weirdly involved on social media so that can be more approachable and Findlen's work is on the readable side for academic history.
The world is so much more complex than "a new idea is created from the ether, people criticize it, and then a paradigm shift happens and it takes over the world".
Re: Crazy New Ideas
#190In case someone missed the story, Paul Graham is indirectly talking about the feedback received by Mighty App. And in this particular case, I don't think this is a valid defense. First, he clearly has too much skin in the game to be credibly neutral about it. Second, he avoids addressing the main critique about this "new tech". People are not claiming that it is a bad idea because it is infeasible or not valuable, bu…
> First, he clearly has too much skin in the game to be credibly neutral about it.
I think this is a general and important point (and sadly not at all discussed in his post). When an expert publicly says something that seems wrong, my default explanation is that they have a vested interest that consciously or unconsciously forces them to consider the implications of what they say and alter the message accordingly. Recent case in point: public health authorities telling the public that masks are useless and even harmful during the pandemic (presumably to avoid shortages) and then reversing their stance when masks became abundant.
This is especially true for public statements. If I were a friend of pg and we would go to a pub and he would not stop talking about how awesome one of the startups he invested in are, that would be a strong signal for me. But if he shills for one of his investments on twitter and on his blog just like some influencer-investor would do, I don't find this especially strong evidence that said startup is revolutionary even though he is an undisputed expert on startups.