Startups are not easy and there is only so much bandwidth. Many startups ideas can be visionary since it's a pain that the founder dealt with either in real life or as a developer. Is it right to call Uber less visionary than a company focused on solving healthcare or to keep Moore's going forward? There can be both technical and business innovation. Uber (and especially it's initial black car service) may have seemed like a SF-only problem in the early days superficially, but now Uber solves real problems such as mobilizing senior citizens that don't have a license or reducing drunk driving. Vision isn't something that is built and realized on day one but rather grows organically over time.
I’m Done Pretending SF Tech Is Visionary
91–100 of 146 posts
Re: I’m Done Pretending SF Tech Is Visionary
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like, what special sauce do you bring to the table that ANSYS or Solidworks or whatever FEA package people use for optimization studies doesn't already do--and probably do well enough? You dismiss twitter, snapchat clones, whatever when they do deliver actual value to people just because they don't meet some arbitrary feelgood measure of "innovative". A measure that coincidentally happens to somehow make your cute li…
It's still very much a research implementation, but I'm making global black box combinatoric methods which can be used where analytic optimization methods are not available, e.g. multi-objective optimization. >Maybe post under your real account. I have no real account. I always make a new one every few posts partly for privacy reasons, and partly because I enjoy reading posts like your own. :^)
> I have no real account. I always make a new one every few posts partly for privacy reasons
This is the logical next step after random site-specific passwords. The login/logout workflow does make this inconvenient though. Browser extension idea?
Chan boards use thread-specific IDs or thread-specific tripcode salts to achieve much the same thing - privacy by default, but identifiers when it helps you follow a conversation.
Re: I’m Done Pretending SF Tech Is Visionary
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's all about people who've seen how absurdly rich you can get, and want a piece of that. That about sums it up. If people suddenly became rich through farming, you'd see people flocking to the mid-west. A lot of people claim a higher calling or passion for tech, but it's mostly just dollar signs in their eyes.
I had a passion for tech. Then it was beaten out of me by large, successful tech companies. Some day, the majority of us who are relegated to inane, shitty work will wake up and acknowledge that. So what do you do when you are a capable programmer who isn't rich enough to work on something challenging/interesting/meaningful like electric cars or rockets? Maximize expected value. That's not immoral. That's the shitty…
> So what do you do when you are a capable programmer who isn't rich enough to work on something challenging/interesting/meaningful like electric cars or rockets?
The list of meaningful things a capable programmer is way longer than that! You dont have to quit yiur dayjob to work on them and get some fulfillment/validation.
I'll add: Rockets and electric cars are just at a certain point in their hype-cycles, and you're just drinking the koolaid. I'm 100% certain you'd have your passion for tech beaten out in those industries too, if you worked for the wrong company.
Re: I’m Done Pretending SF Tech Is Visionary
#94I hear this sentiment a lot, and don't entirely disagree with it... but it oversimplifies our community massively. If you want to work on big, meaningful problems, here are some compelling options. Do you think our government is broken? Join Nava (a new type of government contractor working on helping the VA fix its backlog and helping CMS move our healthcare system toward value-based-care) or 18F (a new agency withi…
Clover (building a Medicare Advantage health insurance company from scratch) I've been at Clover since January. Cannot recommend enough. If you want to learn why, I'm always open and willing to chat about it.
Have wanted to learn more about Clover for a while now--down to chat sometime?
Re: I’m Done Pretending SF Tech Is Visionary
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clover (building a Medicare Advantage health insurance company from scratch) I've been at Clover since January. Cannot recommend enough. If you want to learn why, I'm always open and willing to chat about it.
Have wanted to learn more about Clover for a while now--down to chat sometime?
Sure. Email my HN username @ gmail.
Re: I’m Done Pretending SF Tech Is Visionary
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter, Facebook, Google, and a bunch of other previous startups do have value. Also more, like Electronic Arts, Oracle, Intel, Salesforce, Apple, ... It's just that the 1000:1 ratio between startup and final enterprise is brutal!
Twitter and Facebook may have value in dollar signs (OK maybe not Twitter right now), but I'd really question how much value they have provided to society as a whole. It seems like all Facebook wants to do is built an ecosystem, lock you in it, and milk you for data they can sell to advertisers.
Seriously? A billion+ people use Facebook products, many hundreds of millions very happily.
Re: I’m Done Pretending SF Tech Is Visionary
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter and Facebook may have value in dollar signs (OK maybe not Twitter right now), but I'd really question how much value they have provided to society as a whole. It seems like all Facebook wants to do is built an ecosystem, lock you in it, and milk you for data they can sell to advertisers.
Seriously? A billion+ people use Facebook products, many hundreds of millions very happily.
I am sure I have seen research claiming that excessive facebook use makes people less happy.
Re: I’m Done Pretending SF Tech Is Visionary
#98As someone who is outside of SF looking in, to me the whole startup culture there seems utterly insane. To me, it seems as though there is some kind of reality distortion field that convinces us all that no matter what we is being worked on or created, it is in some way world changing or "disruptive", despite how stupid it is, or how viable a market there is for what is being made. The funny thing is, organizations t…
Entrepreneurs and companies that get started are utterly desparate for solvable problems to solve. The ideas may seem "stupid" to you, but that's only because biggest problems have way too many barriers to entry and are typically guarded by rent seeking government lobbying legislation. Take homelessness. I'm sure there's a technical way to build housing for cheap enough to get people back into houses. But, the govern…
Regulations didn't stop Uber or Airbnb.
Re: I’m Done Pretending SF Tech Is Visionary
#99Startups are not easy and there is only so much bandwidth. Many startups ideas can be visionary since it's a pain that the founder dealt with either in real life or as a developer. Is it right to call Uber less visionary than a company focused on solving healthcare or to keep Moore's going forward? There can be both technical and business innovation. Uber (and especially it's initial black car service) may have seeme…
>but now Uber solves real problems such as mobilizing senior citizens that don't have a license or reducing drunk driving.
Taxis existed before Uber.
Re: I’m Done Pretending SF Tech Is Visionary
#100What about all these corner grocery stores? They could be out saving the world, fighting malaria, going to mars, but what are they doing? Selling groceries. What a bunch of assholes.
Corner grocery stores don't fluff the press with stories about changing the world and grand visions.
They probably pay their taxes as well.