Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Crazy New Ideas

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 808 posts

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#731

Post by yellowbanana »

tomhoward wrote: post #710
vishnugupta wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> developers will always push things to the limit Agree, it's an arms race at this point between end consumers and app developers. However, it also means once Mighty becomes popular they have to contend with developers overwhelming their computing resources as well.

As long as Mighty keeps providing a better experience than the local browser on the average user's own device, they'll have utility for a significant number of people. Developers still need to provide satisfactory-enough performance to the bulk of their audience. Mighty is for the users in the right tail who are willing to pay for better-than-satisfactory. There's no reason to believe that right tail will ever disapp…

Yes and mighty will keep increasing prices as the developers can now ship any horribly optimized thing.

Mighty can succeed yes, but it's success would be bad for the ecosystem.

Centralized processing of all computing, would just make current issues like censorship, security issues worse.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#732

Post by rorykoehler »

vishnugupta wrote: post #27
bestinterest wrote: post #4

Very interesting. This sounds like a response to the Mighty [0] launch which Paul Graham has been defending on twitter recently after an outcry from some of the 'hardcore' developers such as Jonathan Blow [1] and Casey [2]. [0] https://www.mightyapp.com/ [1] https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/1387101172230672389 [2] https://twitter.com/cmuratori/status/1387645578067124224

There was this product[1] to browse internet offline by downloading something called “Web Packs”. This was back in 2005 just when I was graduating when I spoke to the founding team. They were naturally quite confident about the product taking off. Something seemed off to me I couldn’t point out what so I didn’t take the job offer. After all these years I realized the source my discomfort. They were actually betting a…

Not only that but you can just use a different browser.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#733

Post by marcus_holmes »

regextegrity wrote: post #597
marcus_holmes wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think of this as my "Kardashian problem". I don't understand why the Kardashians are famous or wealthy. I mean I get the mechanics of it - famous legal case -> sex tape -> reality TV show. But I don't understand how this works, or why it works. This isn't their problem. They are very wealthy, famous, and they obviously totally grok how their market works. This is my problem. I should not attempt to produce a mass-m…

I think your problem is treating the success of the Kardashians as deterministic

If it's non deterministic, if these people are just extraordinarily lucky, then OK. But that means it's all just luck, just being in the right place and knowing the right people at the right time. And I don't have that kind of luck so I should stay away from mass-market ideas. Or probably, any ideas at all because there's nothing special about the mass-market, and it's all "just luck".

There are millions of beautiful people out there trying to get rich and famous. The Kardashians have managed to do that very successfully, and consistently, for years. I don't think that's luck. That doesn't look like luck. I think they knew exactly what they were doing, had a good plan, and executed it perfectly. And a major component of that was understanding their market perfectly.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#734

Post by marcus_holmes »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #686
paulryanrogers wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luck seems to play a big role in the celebrity market

I agree. I would like to add luck to the theatrical world too. I look at movie stars, and it seems like a very exclusive club. If you can read lines, have a bit of charisma, and get that ever so lucky break--it almost seems like you have to work at getting kicked out, and even if you gain a bunch of weight, and fry your liver, and kidneys with drugs; in many cases the actor just gets more opportunities. It seems like…

> I'm still baffled by the younger one's financial success in makeup, and what not. She is worth over a billion dollars. MBA programs should be studying her business moves.

This is not what luck looks like. This is what a good plan being executed perfectly looks like.

Your sister sounds like someone who understood her market well, worked out a plan to tackle it, and executed it perfectly.

I wish I understood a market well enough to create that kind of plan. I don't feel like I understand myself well enough to market to me, let alone anyone else.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#735

Post by runeks »

CJefferson wrote: post #6

This is an interesting idea, but I feel it's not calibrated right -- I'm an academic, so I'd imagine I work with many "domain experts" (if you don't think so, that's of course another valid discussion). I don't think "if you bet on the entire set of implausible-sounding ideas proposed by reasonable domain experts, you'd end up net ahead.". I hear a implausible sounding ideas all the time. I think one of the main poin…

As you point out, it depends on how we define "domain expert". I may be a "blockchain domain expert" but I also need to understand what consumers need from a blockchain in order for it to be a profitable venture. My idea may be very innovative, but if it doesn't solve people's problems it's not going to make much of a difference.

In other words, a successful business requires not only producing an innovative product, it also requires knowing if people actually demand this innovative product. One half is the core idea, the other half is how this idea interfaces with the world.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#736

Post by marcus_holmes »

adventured wrote: post #702
Noumenon72 wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on the idea that the Kardashians produce pornography for women? Sounds like it could explain why I don't get it!

The parent is actually talking about a far larger category that existed commercially in a studied way long before the Kardashians, it's simply: sex sells. Madonna knew it in the 1980s. Britney or Jessica Simpson knew it in the 1990s. Paris Hilton knew it in the 2000s. The Kardashians have known it the past 15 years. Hugh Hefner knew it 70 years ago. Every model of consequence knows it. The Kardashians are extraordina…

There are literally millions of beautiful people trying to make a living out of being beautiful. I don't believe that "being beautiful" or "sex sells" adequately explains the success of any of the people you mention.

And the target market for the Kardashians (I think, as far as I understand it) is not the people who find them sexually attractive. This is different from Marilyn Monroe, who mostly appealed to straight men, and for whom "sex sells" would be a perfect description. The Kardashian's market don't want to have sex with the Kardashians. They want to be the Kardashians (I think).

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#737

Post by kreeben »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #587
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…

I think of this as my "Kardashian problem". I don't understand why the Kardashians are famous or wealthy. I mean I get the mechanics of it - famous legal case -> sex tape -> reality TV show. But I don't understand how this works, or why it works. This isn't their problem. They are very wealthy, famous, and they obviously totally grok how their market works. This is my problem. I should not attempt to produce a mass-m…

>> my "Kardashian problem"

You need lots of empathy for sociopaths if your aim is to understand the why and the how of their successes. The fact you don't understand them makes me think you're a good person. The world would be a much better place if people weren't trying to copy them.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#738

Post by mgh2 »

Although true, there is a general anti-religious tone here that helps feed into HN culture. Thank you Paul.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#739

Post by hangsi »

allenu wrote: post #539
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…

I really don't remember tech people poo-pooing some of the examples you gave as "couldn't you..." I think you're looking at these examples with too fine a lens of implementation, especially in retrospect. the web: I was a teen when people started using local "freenets" to connect to a text-only web and I think most people who tried it were amazed that you could instantly view content somebody on the other side of the…

A somewhat HN-famous example of the "couldn't you..." sentiment would be this from the debut of Dropbox ("couldn't you just use ftp"):

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

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#740

Post by fighterpilot »

Misdicorl wrote: post #701
fighterpilot wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's saying implausible sounding ideas should be dismissed because they are implausible, not because of the credibility of the person behind it. Then he makes one exception which is when the person is credible. That's different to saying that the idea should be dismissed merely due to lack of credibility of the person, which is what the second statement is talking about. The primary reason for dismissal in his first…

Wouldn't a criticism of the form "you have no idea what you're talking about here. You don't have credential x or experience y" satisfy both constraints? You've demonstrated the person does not have the necessary domain experience. And yet you've not addressed the idea at all and only the person who proposed it.

It wouldn't because the way that is worded suggests that the reason for dismissal is the credibility of the person and not if the implausibility of the idea.

What would follow from his first statement: "Your idea sounds really implausible, and so I'm going to dismiss it on that basis. And since you're not a domain expert I'm not going to put special effort into suspending judgement, I'm just going to go with my initial implausibility determination."

What would follow from his second statement: "I'm going to dismiss your idea because you're not a domain expert. The idea's plausibility didn't really factor into my decision."

I would agree though that his use of very simple language has left some ambiguity here.

Post reply on HN