Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company • Hacker News Board

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#31

Post by srhngpr » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #29

thesausageking wrote: post #24

> "when I was just starting Moonfruit, the world’s first SAAS website builder" Moonfruit, launched in 2000, was definitely not the first SaaS website builder. Geocities launched 6 years before it and there were dozens of them by the time Moonfruit came around. While not a big lie, it's an odd way to start a post like this.

Geocities was free and didn't really provide any "software" in the service. It was a static web host.

Geocities had a WYSIWYG website builder, so yes there was some software involved. It's how I learned how to build my first website when I was 12.

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#32

Post by 3pt14159 » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

rexreed wrote: post #13

Vivtek wrote: post #3

Weird. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27861201

The list of Robot company failures and the robotic industry dead pool runs very deep. Just in the past few years: * Rethink Robotics https://www.zdnet.com/article/sudden-unexpected-demise-of-re... * Anki https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/con... * Jibo https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/jib... * Blue Workforce https://www.therobotreport.com/blue-workforce-robot-files-ba...…

The issue with most pure-robotics-that-make-things[0] companies is that they end up finding out that they need to iterate on the robot while the actual product gets better. It's not like software where essentially everyone can use the same spreadsheet. It's "oh, I need this panel here to have a 3mm smaller gap" which works when you're Tesla, because the product is the company, but it doesn't really work when you're just trying to make a series of robots that solve generalizable problems. Reality isn't as standardized as a Turing tape. Too many dimensions, figurative or literal.

[0] As opposed to robots that, say, fight wars. But we call those things "missiles" and "fighter jets" and "drones" not robots.

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#33

Post by soheil » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #30

soheil wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starsky value prop was teleop, but that was the same thing that cooled investors. Adding an extra 20-100ms latency to driving is akin to driving after two drinks. Operating a vehicle 10x larger than the ones on the road does not make this problem smaller. Operating large trucks is not a game VCs wanted to play.

I don't think it was ever meant to be live driving at highway speeds: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stefanseltz-axmacher/2020/06/16... The point was that it was an autonomous system that could ask for help, and the "help" scenarios would mostly be cases where the truck was already stopped or at very low speeds: navigating a construction zone, a transfer yard, etc. Possibly in some of these situations it wasn't even wh…

I just don't think you can call that a real value prop if it's only for when the truck is stuck or a few minor edge cases. There are many scenarios where self-driving may not work or behave erratically so if their version of teleop doesn't solve those then not sure how Starsky argued they were ahead of competition.

Additionally I think investors backed out primarily because of risks associated with operating an autonomous fleet, not the shortcomings of the tech itself.

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#34

Post by stevenhuang » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

soheil wrote: post #23

rexreed wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The list of Robot company failures and the robotic industry dead pool runs very deep. Just in the past few years: * Rethink Robotics https://www.zdnet.com/article/sudden-unexpected-demise-of-re... * Anki https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/con... * Jibo https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/jib... * Blue Workforce https://www.therobotreport.com/blue-workforce-robot-files-ba...…

Market is not that big? What is the size of transportation industry alone? What about ride hailing? Investors are skittish? Cruise raised $10B most of it not that long ago, EmbarkTrucks is merging with a SPAC to go IPO soon, I could list others. Robotics is hard but that’s kind of the point.

Saying the market isn't big is indeed questionable, as the total addressable market for advanced robotics is easily that of the global labour force.

Likely what is meant is the market for current state of the art robotics, which have limitations and are cost prohibitive (capital wise).

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#35

Post by eurasiantiger » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

But how can robots be used to harvest personal data?

Maybe this is an end-use case.

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#36

Post by warkdarrior » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 6:23 PM UTC

eurasiantiger wrote: post #35

But how can robots be used to harvest personal data? Maybe this is an end-use case.

At this point personal data is irrelevant, the new goal is for robots to harvest persons directly.

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#37

Post by galdosdi » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

thesausageking wrote: post #24

> "when I was just starting Moonfruit, the world’s first SAAS website builder" Moonfruit, launched in 2000, was definitely not the first SaaS website builder. Geocities launched 6 years before it and there were dozens of them by the time Moonfruit came around. While not a big lie, it's an odd way to start a post like this.

Funnily enough, one of those dozens of examples hits close to home here:

A main source of the original fortune that funded the creation of YC and thus Hacker News was the $49m sale to Yahoo! of Viaweb, a SaaS website builder (focused on ecommerce) founded by Paul Graham, Trevor Blackwell, and Robert Morris in 1995.

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#38

Post by nostromo » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

soheil wrote: post #19

This is a Google company.

This was a helpful comment when it was made. Downvoters should know that the original title didn’t mention Alphabet or Google; that was added later.

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#39

Post by nieksand » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

Google owned Boston Dynamics at one point. I'm curious what made them flip flop back to robotics again.

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#40

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #32

rexreed wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The list of Robot company failures and the robotic industry dead pool runs very deep. Just in the past few years: * Rethink Robotics https://www.zdnet.com/article/sudden-unexpected-demise-of-re... * Anki https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/con... * Jibo https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/jib... * Blue Workforce https://www.therobotreport.com/blue-workforce-robot-files-ba...…

The issue with most pure-robotics-that-make-things[0] companies is that they end up finding out that they need to iterate on the robot while the actual product gets better . It's not like software where essentially everyone can use the same spreadsheet. It's "oh, I need this panel here to have a 3mm smaller gap" which works when you're Tesla, because the product is the company, but it doesn't really work when you're…

Missile robots are the best: you don't really need to worry much about supporting legacy products years after selling them to customers, and they are not expected to be functioning after just one use.