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YC's Biggest Scandals

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Re: YC's Biggest Scandals

#41

Post by delbronski »

ianm218 wrote: post #24
jnovek wrote: post #16

As an alum from the ancient days I take issue with many of the companies that YC funds these days. Flock? 9 Mothers? This shit is dystopian and I hate that I’m somehow even tangentially associated with it.

9 mothers appears to do defense from drones which seems completely ethical. What is dystopian about that?

A company named 9 mothers, which sells a service to stop artificially intelligent machines from falling from sky and blowing up everything… funded by another company that lures smart young men and women with billionaire dreams that wreak havoc on society.

Not dystopian at all.

Re: YC's Biggest Scandals

#42

Post by tptacek »

theobeers wrote: post #36
tptacek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not impossible. All you have to do is make a case. Here, by the numbers, the case being made is a 3.9% failure rate, less than half of which is scandalous, all of which appear to boil down to "YC should have known better than to invest in these particular founders". Make a better case! If they're "rotten to the core", that should be easy. I don't think the number of investments they make is your real hurdle…

Mr. Ptacek, a) I have no affiliation with OP, and b) do you know what my actual position is (not presupposing that you care)? It's that I don't know anyone who has been inspired by anything that YC has funded in a very long time. The supermajority of these startups that don't make headlines for being scams is, in a way, even sadder. I also think it's pointless to howl at the sky about how depressing this is. It's jus…

I genuinely don't understand what you find depressing about it. That's what I'm saying. It's not hard to make a case for why it is; you just have to actually do it, unlike what this page is trying to do.

(And, side note, a16z is definitely not the status quo ante of YC.)

Re: YC's Biggest Scandals

#43

Post by tptacek »

levocardia wrote: post #34
ianm218 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9 mothers appears to do defense from drones which seems completely ethical. What is dystopian about that?

Probably the worry that the jump from "we defend against slaughterbots" to "we built a better slaughterbot" is just around the corner

... so don't defend against the slaughterbots?

(I don't know anything about the company we're discussing here, but this is a weird premise.)

Re: YC's Biggest Scandals

#45

Post by The_Blade »

varenc wrote: post #38
ianm218 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9 mothers appears to do defense from drones which seems completely ethical. What is dystopian about that?

They make a very fast "AI powered" turret shotgun. It automatically selects, aims, and shoots down targets. I imagine this is great for shooting down swarms of small fiber optic or autonomous drones impervious to electronic attacks. But automated weapons like this can easily pivot into uses besides anti-drone. Taking humans out of the loop on deadly kinetic weapons is concerning. But personally, I don't really see an…

is it in a rimworld mod

Re: YC's Biggest Scandals

#46

Post by mediaman »

delbronski wrote: post #41
ianm218 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9 mothers appears to do defense from drones which seems completely ethical. What is dystopian about that?

A company named 9 mothers, which sells a service to stop artificially intelligent machines from falling from sky and blowing up everything… funded by another company that lures smart young men and women with billionaire dreams that wreak havoc on society. Not dystopian at all.

It sounds like you feel that autonomous killer drones are a dystopia, and that anything related to the drones -- including mitigating their effect -- is therefore dystopian in itself, even if it is combating that dystopia? Sort of a tarring by contextual environment? I suppose by that reasoning a socialist is a capitalist because even though they fight capitalism they live in a capitalist society.

I'm not really following.

Re: YC's Biggest Scandals

#47

Post by The_Blade »

danabramov wrote: post #5
williamtrask wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fwiw - i think the design looks good.

I mean mostly the writing. The visual design is fine but the grandiose tone is clearly LLM, as well as attempt to be “data-driven” to an absurd degree. The screaming “DAMAGE” blocks, “body count”, “(EXHIBIT)”, “7.8X MORE SCANDALS PER YEAR”, all of this looks extremely stupid, screams LLM, and undermines the points the authors want to make.

it will be fine if we all take ivermectin

Re: YC's Biggest Scandals

#48

Post by dangoodmanUT »

Seems like AI slop. They list Rippling, and the description starts with Parker Conrad, but the rest of it is about Deel:

> Rippling

> Parker Conrad's redemption arc after Zenefits hit a plot twist when Rippling sued competitor Deel for planting an undercover spy inside Rippling who was paid €5,000/month by Deel's CEO to steal trade secrets. The DOJ opened a criminal investigation. Deel allegedly ran the same playbook at crypto HR startup Toku. YC uses Rippling for their own HR — awkward.

Per this description Rippling did nothing wrong here, all about Deel...

Re: YC's Biggest Scandals

#49

Post by ianm218 »

delbronski wrote: post #41
ianm218 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9 mothers appears to do defense from drones which seems completely ethical. What is dystopian about that?

A company named 9 mothers, which sells a service to stop artificially intelligent machines from falling from sky and blowing up everything… funded by another company that lures smart young men and women with billionaire dreams that wreak havoc on society. Not dystopian at all.

I mean killer drones are absolutely dystopian but they already exist. This critique is like the common Bay Area tactic of pretending homeless don't exist because they are inconvenient.

There is tons of offensive capability companies YC has invested in they seem like a more appropriate target. I feel like most people want there to be protection from drone swarms.

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