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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

#71

Post by imiric »

mplewis wrote: post #55
devmunchies wrote: post #44

My main criticism of this article and the article it references is that it refers to Marc Andreessen as a “not-so-bright billionaire” who “doesn’t build shit”. Do people forgot that he built the first popular web browser (mosaic) and then built Netscape? He is much more part of “hacker” culture than other names mentioned.

Maybe thirty years ago. Today, his money is the most relevant thing about him.

I'm very much on the side of the hackers in this argument, but honestly, why is a hacker turned businessman seen as a bad thing? Most people on this forum and in this community are trying to do the same thing.

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

#72

Post by TeMPOraL »

wg0 wrote: post #54
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…

> Self driving works. No it doesn't. Only in San Francisco maybe.

San Francisco isn't a purpose-built lab, it's a real city that grew organically over centuries, like every other city. So if it works only in San Francisco now, it means it's 99% to working everywhere else on the planet.

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

#73

Post by WA »

tarsinge wrote: post #46
gipp wrote: post #3

> Tech has become all Jobs and no Woz. Distills the post to a sentence, and boy does this nail it.

No, tech has become no Woz and no Jobs either. You don’t get enshittification with Jobs, but the opposite. Also he would abhorre modern day process driven product management: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l4dCJJFuMsE

How many years need to pass until HN stops with the "what would Steve Jobs do"-mentality, where it's entirely unclear how he would operate in the current environment and where Apple would've been with him still being in charge (if he still were in charge - he would've turned 70 next year). It's been 13 years. I think most assessments are merely projection by now.

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

#74

Post by alextingle »

KaiserPro wrote: post #63
iamacyborg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even obesity can be cured. Eating less isn’t all that much of a breakthrough, but it certainly highlights how hard it is to get people to do something they don’t want to do.

Amphetamines solved obesity in the 60s (this is from the 70s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obetrol )

I don't see anything in there about efficacy. Did it actually work to combat obesity?

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

#75

Post by TeMPOraL »

DidYaWipe wrote: post #70
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…

Those aren't flying cars. Flying cars can drive on the ground. On wheels. Hence the name.

That's a nitpick on the order of "LLMs are a dead end because they can't reconsider their output before writing it". Duh, run it in a loop. Duh, attach wheels to the "scaled up drone flying cars". If that's the standard, then every plane in existence meets it.

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

#76

Post by openrisk »

devilsdata wrote: post #49
privacymatters4 wrote: post #29

From a post I saw in another thread, I don't know how to link to the direct comment: > "Same year for me. My college experience was a mix of PCU, Animal House, Hackers and Real Genius (ok not quite). I first saw email in a Pine terminal client. Netscape had been freshly ripped off from NCSA Mosaic at my alma mater UIUC the year before. Hacks, warez, mods, music and even Photoshop were being shared in public folders o…

You're onto it. Basically the wealthy freeze technological growth until they can understand how to make profit from it. Results are science and tech slowed to a glacial pace. We may not even be able to outengineer our problems due to this one thing.

I am not sure previous epochs and generations ever had to face this kind of active throttling of creativity and problem solving capacity. Maybe they did and its just that the context and feeling of despair is lost to us due to distance.

But in any case due to the cumulative nature of both knowledge and our own aggravating problems with sustainability, the impact of this socioeconomic malfunction is probably the gravest its ever been.

There are very few hints we can escape the stranglehold (as in, effective organizational forms or governance that are immune to this regressive cancer).

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

#77

Post by DidYaWipe »

dannyobrien wrote: post #4

I think another way to explain "being bored" (and a bunch of other features that this post describes). These people are getting old: Andreessen is 53, Graham is 59, the author is in his fifties; I am too. Nothing too surprising about having older people be the supposed "blowhard" voices of an industry -- except during the golden age that these posts harken back too, all of these pundits were twenty or so years younge…

There are just as many young blowhards.

A lot of "tech" is mature now. People whine "where's the innovation" in phones, for example. At this point, WTF do you want them to do? Where's the "innovation" in spreadsheets or word processors?

It IS kinda boring. And it's not going to get better when it's a bunch of recycled pablum shat out by "AI."

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

#78

Post by KaiserPro »

Quothling wrote: post #42
gipp wrote: post #3

> Tech has become all Jobs and no Woz. Distills the post to a sentence, and boy does this nail it.

I would completely agree with this if it said "All Cook and no Woz". I say this because I think it is unfair to label Jobs along the line of all the other MBA spreadsheet CEO's. Jobs actually had a talent for products. Woz and other brilliant engineers may have build these things, but Jobs had a talent for picking the right products, the right packages and the right timing that I don't think anyone else in Tech has e…

> unfair to label Jobs along the line of all the other MBA spreadsheet CEO's

I suggest you read the post again. It's not against MBAs as such, its against blowhard "heroes" that go around trying to proxy what Jobs did by copying him being an utter prick, rather than a domain expert.

Jobs was successful despite him being a prick. He was fired for not doing what he was supposed to do, and over stepping his mark.

NeXT Inc. burnt a boat load of cash, and were destined for obscurity had they not been bought by apple.

I personally don't like Zuckerberg, but hes not an altman. Altman has virtually no redeeming qualities apart from being able to make PG think he's jesus.

Zuckerberg has many fucking faults, but he is much much closer to Woz than Jobs. Thats probably part of the reason why he's so hated. Because he's either incapable or unwilling to worry about the public persona.

Altman is in the same class as Adam Neumann, ie a mystery cult with great funding, that happens to be a tech CEO.

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

#79

Post by starluz »

kredd wrote: post #65
wg0 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Self driving works. No it doesn't. Only in San Francisco maybe.

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.

Just wait till you see these in action. Driverless is here

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

#80

Post by wg0 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #72
wg0 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Self driving works. No it doesn't. Only in San Francisco maybe.

San Francisco isn't a purpose-built lab, it's a real city that grew organically over centuries, like every other city. So if it works only in San Francisco now, it means it's 99% to working everywhere else on the planet.

That reads like 99% cities are like San Francisco.

The world unfortunately is lot more diverse than that.

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