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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

#201

Post by rglullis »

SirYandi wrote: post #195
rglullis wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except of AIDS, none of the items on your list are things we really need but just a naive attempt of masking the problems of modern society life. Worse still: most of these problems were caused by the psychopaths who wanted nothing but money and power and found in the "techno-optimism" the perfect excuse to justify their actions.

You're conflating type 1 and 2 (and more?) diabetes. A cure for type 1 diabetes is very much a thing millions of people really need

AFAIK, insulin therapy is already relatively cheap and does not incur risky side-effects.

So, I'd say that a cure falls more in the "nice to have" than "absolutely need".

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

#202

Post by fancyfredbot »

It's a good post but for some reason he decided to end it with a random attack on Paul Graham, which seems weird. It's not really necessary to say this and actually the accusation is slightly ridiculous (how does he know how bright Paul Graham thinks Paul Graham is?). Not good judgment to include this in the post, and undermines the rest of it for me a bit.

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

#203

Post by Animats »

BigJono wrote: post #43
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…

> * Robotic manipulation in unstructured situations is just, maybe, starting to work. Maybe. We're getting close to Amazon warehouses, at least, going fully automatic. We might get more general purpose automated factories. This has been expected since the 1950s, but this time it might happen. Neural nets are better and cheaper now. How has this space not seen more action on the consumer side? Roombas came out 20 year…

Cost vs. utilization is a big issue. About ten years ago, there were Foldmate and Laundroid, robotic laundry folding machines. They worked, but cost too much for home use. Industrial-strength machines which do such jobs exist.[1] They work fine, but you need a hotel or hospital sized laundry operation to keep that machinery busy.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36491732

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

#204

Post by TeMPOraL »

iamacyborg wrote: post #108
TeMPOraL wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Honestly, I question the whole idea that failing to "eat less" is a personal problem. I guess it depends on what we’re eating less of. Overeating calorie dense junk food isn’t the same thing as overeating carrot sticks and you rarely hear about problems coming from the latter.

> Overeating calorie dense junk food isn’t the same thing as overeating carrot sticks and you rarely hear about problems coming from the latter.

Perhaps that's because "overeating carrot sticks" is a strong indicator of being in danger of starvation? People just don't overeat this kind of food if they have tastier, more calorie-dense food available.

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

#205

Post by mezzie2 »

dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #129
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…

>Medical. AIDS drugs are in good shape. Diabetes may be next. There's been real progress on some kinds of cancer. Even obesity can be cured. Would disagree, we have possibly regressed. We have more gizmos (like diabetes monitors) and diagnostics, but no real cures and a significantly more sick people.

I have MS and an MS diagnosis in 1994, 2004, 2014, and 2024 are all wildly different experiences. A lot of progress has been made in this area very quickly, to the point where you can see the stratification/differences in progression based on diagnosis year very clearly in support groups and neurology practices.

I'm about 10 years post diagnosis and in those 10 years a ton of progress has been made. It's to the point where I've moved from considering MS a probably lifelong incurable disease to 'if I can hold on for ~20 more years without significant relapses, it can probably be cured or controlled.'

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

#206

Post by dsubburam »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #202

It's a good post but for some reason he decided to end it with a random attack on Paul Graham, which seems weird. It's not really necessary to say this and actually the accusation is slightly ridiculous (how does he know how bright Paul Graham thinks Paul Graham is?). Not good judgment to include this in the post, and undermines the rest of it for me a bit.

Agreed. Also citing Graham's "lack of experience in this area".

Even in the steelman case of the Hollywood celebrity promoting a cause they are clearly not qualified to evaluate, I think we ought not belittle the speech act itself. Better to just present your counter-arguments if you disagree.

If everyone felt free to share their opinions, the better the quantity and quality of ideas that surface after due examination.

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

#207

Post by iknowstuff »

piva00 wrote: post #112
kredd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vehicles will have to morph into small autonomous buses. They should be able to run on a much higher cadence, and way cheaper, than buses driven by humans.

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

#208

Post by benreesman »

tptacek wrote: post #26

When the post came out, for the first time in a long time I found myself nodding my head with Graham, because I feel like basically everyone who has worked in a company that has found some form of product/market fit and started staffing and and delegating has had the experience of watching pasteurized process cheese food faceplant trying to understand and further a sane goal a founding team got some traction with whe…

“everyone overindexing on everything” is the kind of glib linguistic failure mode that gives powerful nerds a bad name: people who read it got dumber thereby because it’s got a hip sound and some pseudo-technical vibe and means nothing. And deploying that to hand-wave over the difference between Aaron Swartz and Sam Altman is pretty offensive to anything like the better angels of hacker culture.

One of those people actually died directly downstream of an act of civil disobedience with the issue being the commons of scientific knowledge. One of those people is on the shortest of lists around blurring the line between train and validation sets for personal financial gain so callously and so effectively that we’ll be years if not decades recovering.

People listen to you. I listen to you.

Aaron Swartz is nothing to do with this perverse contemporary thing. Far more recently than intuitive, our role models would sacrifice everything they have to take a stand. Today influential people take a stand on their own narrow self-interest even if it requires the sacrifice of what everyone has.

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

#209

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

mezzie2 wrote: post #205
dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Medical. AIDS drugs are in good shape. Diabetes may be next. There's been real progress on some kinds of cancer. Even obesity can be cured. Would disagree, we have possibly regressed. We have more gizmos (like diabetes monitors) and diagnostics, but no real cures and a significantly more sick people.

I have MS and an MS diagnosis in 1994, 2004, 2014, and 2024 are all wildly different experiences. A lot of progress has been made in this area very quickly, to the point where you can see the stratification/differences in progression based on diagnosis year very clearly in support groups and neurology practices. I'm about 10 years post diagnosis and in those 10 years a ton of progress has been made. It's to the point…

Videos for you to look at closely:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJRu8rZxufg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuFgAjy4gjs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCNMBCu8y9I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpbvX1wsfUM

Contact me if you have success some months/years down the line. Will also take a negative feedback from you. Caveat: you may have to wean off medications.

Source for above links: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CXPH44VC

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

#210

Post by tptacek »

benreesman wrote: post #208
tptacek wrote: post #26

When the post came out, for the first time in a long time I found myself nodding my head with Graham, because I feel like basically everyone who has worked in a company that has found some form of product/market fit and started staffing and and delegating has had the experience of watching pasteurized process cheese food faceplant trying to understand and further a sane goal a founding team got some traction with whe…

“everyone overindexing on everything” is the kind of glib linguistic failure mode that gives powerful nerds a bad name: people who read it got dumber thereby because it’s got a hip sound and some pseudo-technical vibe and means nothing. And deploying that to hand-wave over the difference between Aaron Swartz and Sam Altman is pretty offensive to anything like the better angels of hacker culture. One of those people a…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41548382
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