Crazy New Ideas • Hacker News Board

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#511

Post by aniforprez » Thu, May 06, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

breck wrote: post #483

aniforprez wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want to visualize 1TB of single cell RNA seq data in a browser tab, then open a new tab, change some params, and share the link to a colleague. I want it to be instant. But why? Wouldn't you be better suited writing a native application that would do this better? This seems like you're building a problem for this solution. Most people use a browser for Gmail and to read news. Your example already works really wel…

> But why? Because cancer is incredibly complicated and requires incredible amounts of data, analysis, and *collaboration*.

The "but why" question was not pointed at visualizing 1TB of single cell RNA sequence data or collaboration. It was pointed at why you'd want to do it in a browser? Why wouldn't you be able to make links and share them from a native application that they can then open in their application?

Maybe I'm missing something in your problem statement but are you downloading all that 1TB in your browser window and changing parameters? If yes Mighty has to download that data too and considering that each user is sequestered, someone you're sharing this with will have to download all that too. If you're not and the visualization is running somewhere else and the result streamed to your system how does Mighty solve that problem?

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#512

Post by NoGravitas » Thu, May 06, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

breck wrote: post #260

stephc_int13 wrote: post #89

In 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…

Mighty is such an obviously good idea, and if you've spent decades on the cutting edge of the web you'd understand why. People's demands for more powerful web apps are for all intents and purposes infinite , and it is much more pleasant as a developer to develop once, run anywhere, than to develop an app for low powered clients and a different one for high powered ones.

I'm certainly looking forward to seeing how much cryptocurrency I can mine on Mighty, especially if they lower prices later.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#513

Post by villasv » Thu, May 06, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

dvt wrote: post #440

geebee wrote: post #388

Lots of comments already, but I'll chime on in. I realized this very late in life, but I have a test for when it's time to pay attention to a new technology. It's when technical people look at what seems like a groundbreaking idea, seem unimpressed, and say "couldn't you just _____", were the blank is filled with something a nontechnical person doesn't understand or considers very cumbersome. The web: couldn't you ju…

> It's when technical people look at what seems like a groundbreaking idea, seem unimpressed, and say "couldn't you just _____", were the blank is filled with something a nontechnical person doesn't understand or considers very cumbersome. This is basically putting the cart before the horse and pretty much the definition of hindsight bias. We all know the BrandonM/Dropbox quip, but that's just a fun anecdote, not som…

> pretty much the definition of hindsight bias

This. The antidote is to revisit examples of "couldn't you just X" where X indeed prevailed. There are even instances where superseding technology was actually better, but it was too late to replace X.

My favorite example is Iridium (and the whole satellite internet industry so far, let's see what will happen with Starlink). It's one thing to remove friction, but only if the new cost structure is still favorable.

Disruption doesn't happen because new tech is better/cooler, it happens when it introduces competitive advantage.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#514

Post by gist » Thu, May 06, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

dunkelheit wrote: post #367

merwanedr wrote: post #225

HN comment section pessimism is a new metric for evaluating your odds of success. "It's too expensive" or "Nobody needs it because we have X" on a project lead by a domain expert is not constructive criticism or conservatism, it's pure envy. PG isn't defending Mighty, Dropbox or Coinbase because he has skin in the game, but because he knows what the teams have achieved and what they could potentially achieve. I don't…

People always bring Dropbox to these discussions as an example of a startup that was dismissed by HN but turned out to be huge, but turns out there are examples of the opposite thing happening too! Does anyone remember Color Labs? Go read this thread and marvel at the similarities: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2364463 . A stellar team backed by top VCs who invested (extraordinary at the time) $41M sets out to…

The essay is really just self serving to keep stoking the YC starmaking machinery (see lyrics to 'Free Man in Paris' by Joni Mitchell). Keep people dreaming and some of the crazy ideas will hit.

People often forget that even Apple (or might not know if young) was not wildly successful and almost went bankrupt (or close to that) and had to be bailed out by Microsoft.

Also forgotten is that the quality of the execution matters a great deal. Dropbox or Coinbase w/o good execution and attention to details would not be where they are today. Ditto Color Labs with great execution would not work necessarily.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#515

Post by easton » Thu, May 06, 2021, 6:47 PM UTC

suhail wrote: post #277

easton wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mighty's problem is different than the others though, in that it is a thin client for a thin client. If web apps are too big to the point people need to stream Chrome in a container to get them to run well, why wouldn't you just stream them a full operating system where developers didn't have to target the web with all of its oddities and instead could just target Windows (or Linux)? The entire point of web applicati…

Linux has low market share, Apple won't let you on non-Apple hardware, and Windows has high fees to license in that way. The only path is the browser and most desktop apps are web apps. Feel free to read my post that goes deeper about our thinking: https://blog.mightyapp.com/mightys-secret-plan-to-invent-the...

Microsoft keeps cutting the cost of licensing Windows for VDI though. Microsoft 365 E3 costs $32 a month (when you're already probably paying them $15-20 per month, not a bad increase) and includes Windows 10 Enterprise licensing for VDI. $12 + compute (which we could presume is $30-ish per month for a VM similar to the one Mighty ships? depending on if you buy the servers vs go to a cloud provider, etc), and it seems like you could get there for the cost Mighty is charging for Chrome. You'd need a sysadmin to set it all up, so a service like Mighty where you could just show it you have the correct licenses and get a beefy VM turned up would be really nice (Microsoft is working on something, but who knows when it'll be out).

I read your article, and the technology sounds interesting. I also understand you pivoted from offering a simple VDI service, presumably because of licensing (and of course, everything I just said goes out the window if Microsoft decides to alter the deal). But for the worker who doesn't 100% live in web apps (I'm thinking of the legions of accountants who have 8GB of RAM tied up in Excel all day long) and needs more than their garbage corporate machine can handle, I don't see this being enough.

Maybe I'm wrong, and they'll hold me up as the next "Dropbox is just FTP with extra steps!" person. I would be fine with that. But maybe, just maybe, once the streaming tech is proven (it looks like it is, honestly), reconsider?

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#516

Post by lostcolony » Thu, May 06, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

lbacaj wrote: post #476

lostcolony wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 'at whatever market rate they/the market set' Really? I would have expected something a bit higher than $20-$25 a dose, given the limited supply (it was pure research at the time), and COVID was decimating the country (so extremely high demand). I mean, a single dose of insulin, requiring no research, and no protective IP, and costing cents to produce, will run you or an insurance company hundreds of dollars. Give…

Appreciate your comment, it’s good learning for me to hear a different opinion. I might have extrapolated the benefits of a capitalist system too far. But the main point still stands I think, the response to the above comment and the fact that it is very much those strong incentives that drive much of the innovation in our society today. It is not someone forcing someone to do something or pure good will that lead to…

That I can agree with. Ensuring people can reap some benefit to their efforts is important. The problems with capitalism that I personally have tend to be around places that people are able to reap benefit from other people's efforts unduly (i.e., billionaires), or from other people's needs unduly (i.e., shareholders making bank from healthcare).

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#517

Post by Rapzid » Thu, May 06, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

gman83 wrote: post #80

I guess because I think that Hyperloop is a really dumb idea I must be extremely envious. This smells like a way to justify ignoring difficult criticism. The critics are envious, they're trying to look sophisticated, they're not real domain experts, etc.

Your just not a domain expert on ideas though. Just look at all the words he wrote on ideas. You should be more open to his absurd belief in the idea of Mighty App being a game changer.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#518

Post by MsMowz » Thu, May 06, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

bmmayer1 wrote: post #493

dvt wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's when technical people look at what seems like a groundbreaking idea, seem unimpressed, and say "couldn't you just _____", were the blank is filled with something a nontechnical person doesn't understand or considers very cumbersome. This is basically putting the cart before the horse and pretty much the definition of hindsight bias. We all know the BrandonM/Dropbox quip, but that's just a fun anecdote, not som…

What is the BrandonM/Dropbox quip?

When Drew Houston first posted Dropbox on HN, BrandonM had the top comment that doubted its viability/usefulness as a product. It's been the topic of a lot of discussion since then, including between the two themselves.

>I have a few qualms with this app:

>1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account...

From: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#519

Post by dataviz1000 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

gustavo-fring wrote: post #470

dataviz1000 wrote: post #460

Isn't this the issue Joseph Campbell addressed? The journey a person with a crazy new idea endures? And, how in all different cultures the redeemer, a person solving an issue that their society needs to address, have the same symbolic characteristics. You and your children experience this not in a philosophy or mythology class but at every moment someone mentions a Star Wars or Marvel reference[0]. Disney keeps telli…

I feel like Godwin saying this, but the other side of that coin is that's the same process that Joachim Feist's biography describes Hitler as going through. You might be a Skywalker, but you don't know which one.

Also, Erich Fromm's, a German psychoanalyst, 'Escape from Freedom' which is a social psychology treatise on the rise of Nazism published in 1941 about how people innately shirk responsibility and the relationship between a person's freedom to make decisions and how much social and personal responsibility they assume.

The book is about how Hitler came to power but what I saw was a manual on how to become a very evil person. I remember thinking halfway through the book, 'Oh, this is why negging is a very effective seduction technique.'

(I looked up the word assume to make sure I'm using it correctly here and even in its definition power and responsibility are interchangeable which makes sense because there is a relationship in our reality between power and responsibility. Strangely, Fromm didn't use the word shirk in this context, I think I get that word from Dr. Seuss' 'Horton Hears a Who'. Probably a good thing that Dr. Seuss got to me first. That is the wisdom of the Disney folks.)

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#520

Post by gustavo-fring » Thu, May 06, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #488

gustavo-fring wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not think there is a balance between unalloyed boosterism and lying (the YC way) and not giving you any good feedback? There are just way more people that I know and trust personally that I think could give positive, but constructive advice. I would believe absolutely nothing coming out of Paul's mouth because he hasn't shown that he's an honest person. He's not disinterested about any of this, but feigns like…

You can't post personal attacks like this to HN, regardless of who you're attacking. Perhaps you don't feel that you owe $person better, but you owe this community much better if you want to participate here. You crossed badly into bannable territory in this thread. I've responded in more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27066921 .

How exactly would we deal with this issue then? I'm sure you've seen where people have accused you of editing Austin Allred's username on his account. Nobody else can do that.If I believe that lambda school or coinbase has been involved in shady business practices, is HN not the place to discuss that? Do you not have a conflict of interest here?