The Insanity of Driving - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@duncanr/the-insanity-of-driving-5289f9bb8bba?source=friends_link&sk=0414cd0419d8df009f594268c0286cf1 <comment><USER2> A couple things to point out that the good Doctor seems to have left out of his musings.

Corporations don't REALLY care about people. They aren't going to invest large amounts of money to acquire and develop nearby property to be lived in by transient workers. Doing so would represent a huge assumption of liability on the company's part, the cost thereof most likely would be passed on to the employee. Work is soul sucking enough as is. Living in a company town with all the strings attached that would entail would likely make matters even more depressing.

Self-driving vehicles are nowhere NEAR "basic-AI". It takes a well-developed teenager of a ripe 16+ years to even get to the point we as a society are even comfortable TRAINING them to drive, and God help the one's with a Y chromosome come time to pay the insurance.

And finally, think of the freedom gained by one who learns to operate a vehicle. You unlock a form of mobility unmatched by any mode of locomotion naturally evolved. You have opened to you the collective infrastructure built by man to enable you to travel and transact. If there is any question that should be asked with regards to automotive travel and work, it should be, why don't we travel more for our own edification, rather than for someone else's?

For the current generation at least, the answer seems to be wage stagnation/stratification. A phenomena uniquely addressable from the very same corporations whose altruism is being appealed to in this article.

<comment><USER3> _God help the one 's with a Y chromosome come time to pay the insurance_

In the UK gender discrimination of this kind is illegal. Are you in the US? I am surprised your very vocal activists have not tackled this.

 _think of the freedom gained by one who learns to operate a vehicle. You unlock a form of mobility unmatched_

A car is a powerfully democratising technology. Any regular person can have at his or her disposal a machine that can take them and their friends/family and stuff anywhere they want to go at any time and act as a base while they are there. It's people who socialise entirely online, get their entertainment via streaming etc who have the unhealthy lifestyle, not the ones who drive to the coast at weekends...

<comment><AUTHOR> and ... one can waste time and money for a few hours every day in it driving to and from work, so that one can then complain about having a shitty life.

<comment><USER3> Or do the same journey by other means? In a car you have a seat, your choice of temperature and ambient sound, your stuff secured, etc. Infinitely more pleasant that being crammed in like a sardine on the train.

<comment> timellis-smith I commute daily to work. By car it would take about an hour. Taking the train takes 1:15 (of which 40 minutes is train). However, I can use this time productively (in my case studying). Because of this I'm most of the way in getting the AWS certifications.

Taking the car just makes me really grumpy at other cars and people, such that I've often found I'm arriving home in a bad mood.

Each to their own, but I wouldn't rule out public transport (even with terrible rail operators).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes rush hour driving (and many other modern behaviors) is a form of collective insanity, however this behavior is individually completely rational. So each individual is doing a great job maximizing their own utility, yet the result tends to be totally unoptimal.

Western countries appear more and more dysfunctional as an emerging result of their citizens inability to collectively take action. The illness is not in the mind, its between the minds. It is a social illness.

<comment><USER5> > Western countries appear more and more dysfunctional as an emerging result > of their citizens inability to collectively take action

Well said. I feel like people have slowly been taught to fear standing up for themselves.

<comment><USER6> I think people stand up for themselves just fine, they just have a hard time standing up for others.

<comment><USER7> The thing is it isn't that we need to stand up for others, but by standing together that we can alleviate society's ills, including our own on a personal scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> temp-dude-87844 The author paints a few overwrought scenes and meanders around a point, but never quite makes one that truly stands out, and doesn't deliver meaningful insight.

Countless people have wondered, amateurs and professionals alike, why so many people commute even when jobs and housing are available in proximity, and not just concentrated in the employment centers like SV, but it always boils down to the same basic setup: supply and demand feeding into pricing, disposable incomes feeding into pricing, zoning and regulations feeding into issues with the demand-matching supply, and a bunch of individuals trying to optimize their circumstances given several constraints.

<comment><USER8> > Countless people have wondered, amateurs and professionals alike, why so > many people commute even when jobs and housing are available in proximity,

Can be explained by this.

> Moreover, the use of motorized transport is no longer optional. Since the > introduction of motorized transport the arrangement of our cities has > changed in such a way that the majority of people no longer live within > walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas and > recreational opportunities, so that they HAVE TO depend on the automobile > for transportation. Or else they must use public transportation, in which > case they have even less control over their own movement than when driving a > car.

Source: [1995] Prof. Teddy in [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/national/longterm/unab...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm?noredirect=on)

<comment><AUTHOR> Getting rides with Lyft or Uber give me even more control over my own movement than driving a car. I get a built-in chauffeur and valet (no time or money spent parking), plus I don't need to pay for maintenance costs or spend time refuelling. Why would waste time and money driving?

<comment><USER9> Well, you're paying for someone else's maintenance and fuel costs, their time, and the company's profit. Plus, spending your time waiting for the ride to show up every time you need it.

Maybe that makes sense for your situation. It doesn't for mine, even beyond the social awkwardness I feel in using services like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If people spend a great deal of resources on something that's obviously stupid, you probably don't understand their reward function as well as you think you do.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great point. I think that most people and organizations are identified with victimhood and poor performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In the cities, there are buildings with shops and restaurants on the ground level and apartments above. Sometimes even in towns you see buildings like that, where the people who run the business live above it. It's possible, even if a physical presence is needed, to have housing and commerce/industry within walking distance.

My first jobs were all within walking distance of where I lived. After that I got jobs on the bus route. But that didn't always work out great - miss a bus by a couple of minutes, or if they miss each other at the transfer station, and you're an hour or two late from waiting for the next bus.

Eventually I ended up in a place and career where commuting was pretty much necessary - jobs were spread over a wide area across multiple towns/cities. And intercity transit is far far worse than local buses. Carpooling to the rescue. The commute sucked, but we had each other's conversation and the audiobooks.

Now I work from home, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I've gained 2 hours a day. The company gets the best of me, instead of me tired and frazzled from transit. It's cheaper and safer. It's a win-win.

Being on a remote-oriented team, it's been said multiple times by people in the office that we talk more than they do to each other. And that matches my experience from having worked in an office.

Driving is insane, especially for commuting, and doubly-so if the job can be done remotely. Cars are extremely expensive not just to buy but to maintain and operate, and yet they spend almost all of their time just sitting in a parking space doing nothing but wasting space. It's a total waste. We can do better.

Someday we'll be explaining to our descendants how we used to spend half our income for a giant box that you had to drag around everywhere you went and constantly pour money into, and then you would just sit in it for hours wishing that you weren't, because that was the fad back then.

</comment><comment><USER12> On the surface car culture exists because public transport isn't affordable or entirely absent. A few train routes can relieve thousands of cars off the road. A bus carries the equivalent of dozens of cars. In almost all situations public transport is safer and more environmentally friendly.

The situation in US is that public transport doesn't reach suburbs/exurbs, because the routes are generally low in passengers due lower population density - thus not profitable. There are of course more reasons why people choose living without public transport.

The psychology of suburbs/exurbs is against public or shared utility like public transport, because it forces social cohesion and interaction will all of society layers(while private transport is segregated by location and limited to those who have vehicles). Its ingrained in US culture that personal homes, cars and guns are symbols of independent life - a certain brand of lifestyle that diametrically opposite to city life.

People should understand this lifestyle has costs and inefficiencies that exist solely due spreading the population too thin to support services such as public transport. Any business or organization will naturally form to service large concentrations of users, focusing on cities-first, because this simplifies logistics and transport.

People complain often that their area is only serviced by one company(e.g. internet) or even none. They don't really understand why there isn't competition or diversity of service providers for their needs. Their lifestyle teaches them its normal and everything else must accommodate it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think that for these big corporations the value of individual "knowledge workers" isn't that great, so they can afford to keep them in rush hour traffic and not have them operating at their peak (see also open office plans). I mean they don't need so many highly skilled and innovative individuals. That's why I don't get the relatively high salaries at eg. facebook. They need maybe a handfull (10-100) of extraordinary people, the rest can be mediocre at best and get the job done. I mean it's a website and selling ads for christs sake :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't agree. You pay someone a few hundred K and you can get x or 10x or 100x out of them if you know how people work. It's much better to get 10x or 100x out of all of your employees if you want to maximize profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This was a rambling, uninteresting read without any new insight or humor.

Summary: Author doesn't like commuting, wonders why companies expect people to do it, then hopes for a self driving car future as though this somehow solves the problem.

<comment><USER15> Agree. Upvotes are probably being gamed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm also amazed that this article is doing so well. I didn't think it was anywhere near one of my best. If upvotes are being gamed, and I'm not gaming them (which I'm not), then I wonder who is doing it, and for what reason.

I'm also wondering if people are seeing, or appreciating, something about this article that I'm not.

<comment><USER16> HN comments are often not relevant to the specific article posted, people just want to discuss the topic in the headline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _" Recently, I was driving back to the South Bay from San Francisco when I got caught in some stop-and-go traffic, which is a common experience in the Bay Area..."_

Understatement of the century.</comment>


Yo-ga of duality - <AUTHOR> aum.... I am a yogi, syncing with the existence, through pitch frequencies of the body. Any question on duality, time, nothingness, mind/AI, wave-particle, intellect thought patterns.. happy to help and share my insights :) <comment><USER2> What exactly do you mean by syncing with the existence, through pitch frequencies of the body?

<comment><AUTHOR> non-identification with anything outside of sense perception. Identifying is a mind process creating the physical dimension of light and matter. After becoming aware of the vibrancy you can dilute time itself as a black hole body. There is consciousness in love.</comment></comment>


Educating the Planet with Pearson - <AUTHOR> http://thinkaurelius.com/blog/

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're interested in using Titan from Clojure, then you'll probably want to take a look at Titanium[0] and Ogre[1]. We've been working hard to make these libraries as useful as possible. If you have any questions about how to get started, then please get in touch! My contact information is in my profile. I've been immersed pretty deep in this stack lately and it's been pretty rewarding so far.

[0] <http://titanium.clojurewerkz.org/> [1] <http://ogre.clojurewerkz.org/></comment>


Want an Easy Life? Try Canberra, Australia - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/upshot/want-an-easy-life-try-canberra-australia.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this just because I wanted to have a rant about the claim in the article that Australia has compulsory voting. Australia does not have compulsory voting - it has compulsory visiting of the polling station (well a $100 fine if you don't) on election day. You don't have to vote, you just need to get you name crossed off the list and you can then walk straight out if you don't want to vote.

I do think that Australia has one of the best electoral systems in the western world. The combination of "compulsory" voting and instant run off polling is a really good combination. The only problem (as in many countries) is most of the candidates on offer are pretty poor, but you can always find a candidate to support without throwing away your vote (in the last national election voted for Julian Assange and gave my second preference to my least hated mainstream candidate).

<comment><USER2> Australia's version of compulsory voting may as well be considered well.... compulsory.

In other countries you can't even get people to the poles. How many Australians do you think get to the poles and just don't vote. You said so yourself, you were there, and you voted because you were there.

Doesn't mean the decisions made are any better, or that the candidates are any good, but just forcing people to show up means they are somewhat more engaged than in other countries.

Since moving to Australia, I've noticed that Australians seem more interested in politics than people in my home country of Canada.

<comment><AUTHOR> >How many Australians do you think get to the poles and just don't vote.

Actually a pretty high percentage. The number of spoiled ballots or "donkey" votes is high (over 10%).

>You said so yourself, you were there, and you voted because you were there.

I actually didn't say that. I would have voted even without the threat of a fine. For me the most important thing is the preferential voting (instant run- off) that allowed me to vote for a candidate that had no chance of winning without wasting it.</comment></comment></comment>


Google's Don Dodge: Q&A site StackOverflow's valuation "gave me a heart attack"  - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/23/google-dodge-stackoverflow-overvalued

<comment><USER2> This is taken completely out of context. He was referring to a fake stock market for conference attendees at <http://secondmarket.com> where Stack Overflow "closed" at something ridiculous like $365/share

<comment><USER3> It's not fake, people actually trade privately held shares on there. Significant amounts of privately held facebook shares have been bought and sold there and hence it's one of the sources of valuation.

He is right to say so though. I don't know about SO being worth 8 or 9 figures, that's very comical. If you don't think so, then I have a one way first class ticket to reality that i'd like to sell you for $4,200.

<comment><USER4> No, df07 is talking about the fake stock market game Secondmarket built for the launch conference. <http://simx.secondmarket.com>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Questions: What's Stack Overflow's valuation, who valued it, and what are the terms?

<comment><AUTHOR> As far as I know, only one of those questions has been answered publicly-- the middle one, and the answer is: "a group of investors lead by Union Square Ventures and including Ron Conway, Chris Dixon, Caterina Fake, Naval Ravikant, Nirav Tolia, Joshua Schachter, Micah Siegel, and Bob Pasker."

(Cf [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/05/announcing-our- series-...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/05/announcing-our-series-a/))

As you can see from the linked article, SO raised $6MM, but the terms and valuation have not been made public (as far as I know.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> who cares what a professional shill thinks anyway.</comment>


Werner Vogels shares some recommended readings of 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2012/12/paper-readings-2012.html <comment><USER2> Ok, wow. Clearly I'm looking for my reading material in all the wrong locations...</comment>


Facial Recognition API with an Extreme Matching Algorithm - <AUTHOR> https://biometricvision.com/ <comment><USER2> How do you compare to Amazon, Google, Chooch etc...</comment>


Ask HN: Why IBM's OS/2 Warp Has Failed? - <AUTHOR> Does anyone have an good article about its demise? I remember installing OS/2 many years ago. It was like a more powerful version of Windows 95, but since I had to work with W95 all day, I lost track of the progress and crash of this operating system. <comment><USER2> For consumers, it was more like NT and didn't support the devices or software you would want.

For business, it was too IBM to succeed. The company was going through rough times, and the sales executives would always push high margin mainframe.

<comment><USER3> I recall debugging a "why wont this CDROM drive work on OS/2" problem. Not only did they check the ID numbers returned by the BIOS, they went so far as to query the device name string. Which in this case was the fault, as it had "8x" instead of the "2x" and "4x" versions OS/2 would accept.

They went they extra mile to step on themselves. Entertaining to watch but an expensive ticket for the ride. Linux was free, growing, far more fun, and worked better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _but since I had to work with W95 all day_

There's the answer. W95 had the momentum. The "barrier to entry" for OS/2 was just too great.

Also OS/2 was very, very expensive, while W95 came 'free' with your new PC.

<comment><USER5> It's a shame it was so expensive in the beginning. I was given a copy of OS/2 Extended Edition from a local IBM guy. I saved up enough money to buy a used C complier and spent a few years working on a project. I really enjoyed programming on OS/2.</comment></comment>


Second Coronavirus Strain May Be More Infectious, Some Scientists Are Skeptical - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/second-coronavirus-strain-may-be-more-infectious-but-some-scientists-are-skeptical/ <comment><USER2> The virus is clearly evolving. In recent cases in Australia people began showing symptoms within a day of infection [0] [0] [https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/fears-of-further- spread-...](https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/fears-of-further-spread-as- sydney-s-crossroads-coronavirus-cases-become-infectious-within-a- day-20200715-p55cds.html)

<comment><USER3> That would be an interesting evolutionary response to track and trace.</comment></comment>


Is the Tipping Point Toast?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/is-the-tipping-point-toast.html

<comment><USER2> Here's my takeaway from this piece:

"Why didn't the Influentials wield more power? With 40 times the reach of a normal person, why couldn't they kick-start a trend every time? Watts believes this is because a trend's success depends not on the person who starts it, but on how susceptible the society is overall to the trend--not how persuasive the early adopter is, but whether everyone else is easily persuaded. And in fact, when Watts tweaked his model to increase everyone's odds of being infected, the number of trends skyrocketed."

This sure seems to back up Adreessen's argument that market opportunity is the single most important factor in considering an opportunity.

<comment><USER3> This whole article rests on the idea that reach (number of followers) equals influence.

Twitter pretty much proves that wrong right out of the gate, so why is anyone debating it?

This says absolutely nothing about whether people with real influence (which isn't the same thing at all as number of connections) affect things.

<comment><USER4> Does Twitter disprove that? A lot of people with many followers on Twitter have mostly fake followers. I think people with a lot of real followers do have influence on Twitter.

For example a friend of mine bought a band's new album just because @veronica mentioned that she liked them. @veronica has 1500000 followers on Twitter. I think for a band it can make a real difference if she mentions them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I tend to agree with the straw man accusation leveled against Watts. His research seems to be an extension of theories of influence, not so much contradictory. But if he didn't pitch it as a war, he wouldn't get media coverage such as this article itself.

Watts' main problem is that the Influence lobby sees _one_ type of influential people when there are _degrees_ of influential people. Complete farce: the Influence lobby itself is not one big bubble; it has lots of different theories, many of which talk about _degrees_ and _levels_ of social influence.

</comment><comment><USER6> So, whether a trend _starts_ depends more on the environment ("tinder-dry forest") than on the starter ("careless smoker"); but you get a much _bigger_ trend if you start with an Influencer.

So you get more bang-per-buck from Influencers, right?

Seems like a conflict of intentions: science (wanting to understand the big picture) vs. engineering (wanting to make something happen, efficiently).

</comment><comment><USER7> Watts isn't just some random researcher. His papers are required reading in networks courses. Of course, he's an academic, and academics are boring so fastcompany had to bulldoze some of the hemming and hawing. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_and_Strogatz_model>

</comment><comment><USER8> The problem I have with all of Gladwell's works (Blink, Tipping Point, etc.) is that his theories are overly simplistic. They are formulated at the cocktail party level, they make interesting stories but they are not sufficiently well thought out or detailed to actually make testable predictions or be useful in any practical sense. This is a shame because some of the things he studies (especially in Blink) is potentially very important and well done research could have wide ranging positive influence.

Ultimately though Gladwell proves himself as not a scientist, and seemingly content to just write interesting stories rather than to do the less glamorous work of fleshing out his ideas into something of practical value.

<comment><USER9> Gladwell clearly has a gift for writing interesting stories. Maybe he is also capable of being a great scientist, but I don't think he needs to be. The practical usefulness is twofold:

1\. His works serve as food for thought. There are far too many topics for one man to research them all. Providing inspiration for further research is a worthwhile endeavor as well.

2\. He provides thought frameworks. He reminds me of an old wise man. His writing contains key ideas, while not based on scientific fact, which are useful as rules of thumb. Sometimes decisiveness and confidence is more important than correctness or optimality. Tribal knowledge has its place.

<comment><USER10> Agreed, I wish the world had more like him. Even when wrong, he's wrong in interesting ways and we end up learning something new.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> print <http://www.fastcompany.com/node/641124/print></comment>


Oil Sands Mining Uses Up Almost as Much Energy as It Produces - <AUTHOR> http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130219/oil-sands-mining-tar-sands-alberta-canada-energy-return-on-investment-eroi-natural-gas-in-situ-dilbit-bitumen

<comment><USER2> That article is not good. Biased reporting based on a biased study. Yes, all writing is biased, but sometimes evidence suggests it's worse than usual, and this is one of those cases. From the cradle of the study to the grave of your mind, everything in the chain producing this article has a clear bias.

Study: Published by the "Post Carbon Institute". They're not even trying.

Article: Written by an author whose only credentials are a pretty face and a B.Sc. in biology. Can she spot bad stats? Probably not. Is she likely to take any damning claim about the oil sands the study makes at face value without a second thought? Yes.

Publisher: insideclimatenews.org. They're a little more cagey about revealing their biases than the Post Carbon Institute, which is to say they're still about as subtle as a club to the head.

Now, don't get me wrong. I live close to the oil sands and will pay a greater price than most reading this for that oil. I am not in the O&G industry, but I have deep concerns about how the oilsands are being extracted. Specifically, groundwater seepage from tailings ponds is probably one of the nastiest local consequences. Perhaps even more concerning is that accountability is going down as foreign ownership climbs. Just as no Hollywood blockbuster makes money on paper these days, my concern is that once the oilsands are no longer commercially viable, parent companies will quietly abscond with the profits while the oilsands companies go bankrupt and fail to follow through on the long-term cleanup that will be necessary.

However, all this is no excuse for giving a pass to blatantly biased articles. When we give attention to articles such as this it detracts attention from well-researched independent studies reported on by people who actually have the chops to spot bad stats and tease apart biased studies. It makes those who are against oilsands development look like a bunch of clueless tree-hugging hippies!

<comment><AUTHOR> Always good to be skeptical. what caught my eye is the EROI ratios which are in the ballpark. As pointed out below living with 3:1 ratio as compared to 15-20 : 1 is something people will feel. And this could be a trend since OPEC net exports are dropping due to more internal use of their own oil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Hall, who wasn't involved in Hughes' study, thinks the EROI for oil sands would fall closer to 1:1 if the tar sands' full life cycle—including transportation, refinement into higher quality products, end use efficiency and environmental costs—was taken into account."

If his statement is true and it costs the same amount of fuel it produces, the overall cost would exceed the revenue on a variable basis and it would not be profitable to mine oil at any price.

The exception to this would be if NG is so abundant that we are burning it since it can't be sold (happens in ND), then using it to refine oil makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER4> One does not have to resort to theoretical environmental cost calculations to conclude that ethanol uses up more energy than it produces. Yet I do not see insideclimatenews.org complaining about the sheer bulk of fossil fuels it takes to produce ethanol.

</comment><comment><USER5> A ratio of 3:1 doesn't strike me as "almost as much energy as it produces." Would you say that if I gave you $3 for every $1 you gave me?

<comment><USER6> Well, the almost figure comes from a secondary analysis that includes additional energy costs,

"Hall, who wasn't involved in Hughes' study, thinks the EROI for oil sands would fall closer to 1:1 if the tar sands' full life cycle—including transportation, refinement into higher quality products, end use efficiency and environmental costs—was taken into account."

Furthermore, if you structured your whole life around a 15:1 ratio, then a 3:1 ratio could very well be effectively 1:1.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. Just the fact that tar sands is ramping up is a bad sign. We will feel pain because we're used to cheap energy.</comment></comment></comment>


Launch Wars: Twitcam Beats CamTweet To Live Video Tweets  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/20/launch-wars-twitcam-beats-camtweet-to-live-video-tweets/ <comment><USER2> Try out Camtweet, leave your feedback:

[http://www.camtweet.com/account/login_with_invite_code?invit...](http://www.camtweet.com/account/login_with_invite_code?invite_code=HACKERNEWS)

Invite code just for you, Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER3> As the article points out "live tv is hard". I have a difficult time seeing this work in it's current form because of that. It's just not very interesting to watch other people on cam unless they're doing something trly extraordinary. Porn is the exception of course.

A startup that somehow crowd-sources videomixing of the best stuff and airs that might work.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is cool for breaking news, but everyone and their mom has to have video streaming capabilities on their mobile device for this catch on.

I mean look what happened to Seesmic and others. How is this any different?

In five to ten years it makes sense, but now text messaging makes more sense because how many consumers with cell phones can text message?

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't think of a single good thing to say about a service that produces low- quality, boring video and spams automated tweets into the ether, but Twitcam's design is kinda nice to look at!

If Twitcam "wins" doesn't that mean JTV _really_ wins, since they'll lose the least amount of money on bandwidth in the long run?

</comment><comment><USER6> The twitcam's site looks like more thought was put into the design, and site design is important.</comment>


Interview with Matt Might - <AUTHOR> http://www.pl-enthusiast.net/2016/03/24/interview-matt-might/ <comment><USER2> Matt is an incredible human being. I reached out to Matt (as a stranger) on behalf of a relative with a rare genetic disorder and was humbled by his support and generosity.

Matt is a true mensch and a hero in rare disease diagnosis. What words I have are insufficient to express my deep admiration and appreciation. Well worth your time to read a bit about Matt's work.

<comment><USER3> I wish his endeavor with government support will yield interesting pragmatic advances.

<comment><USER4> There's _a lot_ of really basic modelling of genes that can be done for rare Mendelian diseases using formal language theory which is surprisingly not there yet.

I am working closely with some Genomics England people (100k genomes, many from rare disease patients), and as someone with a pure CS background but also some years of biology the rather primitive state of the art never ceases to amaze me.

Matt mentions pi-calculus, but much more basic things are not there yet!

<comment><USER3> I'd love to read more about that, is there any public document about your work ?

ps: it seems like another point for polymathy.

<comment><USER4> Nope, but we will have a Nature paper out quite soon.

If you want some info, ping me. Contact email is on my profile.

I think we desperately need some startups in this arena that lean towards open knowledge. I know some very well funded ones in stealth mode which are producing pretty awful and closed prediction models. I don't want a future where my doctor uses information coming from a blackbox.

The point about polymaths is good indeed. But they are hard to find. I have some funding, but found it incredibly hard to hire / team up with someone good enough. Most get lured into finance, which pays well but might not be the most useful thing for humankind.

<comment><USER3> Polymath at the individual or company level (cross domain would be more appropriate ? DNA Crystallography comes to mind)

I couldn't agree more with you about openness of advances in medicine, it saddens me that too few people care about this. I wish I was in a position to help in any way.

I'll keep your mail in mind too.

<comment><USER4> Both. Well, I think focussed individuals with 1 area of expertise are fine. But you need someone who is at least a a very good computer scientist, has some formal background in probability theory and ideally grasps genetics quite well (which is far from trivial as it's a moving target).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I went to high school with Matt, and followed his son's blog - [https://overcomingmovementdisorder.blogspot.com/](https://overcomingmovementdisorder.blogspot.com/) \- regularly about six years ago, while they were trying to figure out what was wrong.

One of the problems with the precision medicine initiative is that medicine only loosely incorporates the actual findings of physiology. For example, old people routinely get their steroid hormone systems kneecapped with statin drugs. Various media reports in the last few years have revealed that there is very little benefit to suppressing cholesterol levels (women receive no benefit at all), but the drugging of old people continues.

<comment><USER5> This comment was posted from my phone, and I think I should clarify two things:

1\. Matt is one of two classmates that I remember from that high school. I switched schools for the last two years, didn't integrate well, and was recovering from an injury for half of my senior year. But Matt was friendly, and loaned me a book about C++, which I eventually mailed back to him.

The other person was a neighbor. His name was Chris, and he had a nicely- restored orange truck.

2\. The problem is not with "precision medicine", but with medicine itself. The name of this project implies that they're going to turn medicine's hunting rifle into a sniper rifle. But conventional medical practice has inherited a bunch of assumptions that are basically wrong. Standard medicine's "rifle" is just a crummy old shotgun that's lucky to hit anything.

If you get shot in the head, go to the trauma center - they do good work, and can possibly save your life. If you have a chronic disease, get a dozen second opinions, including from non-medical doctors. If you have a psychiatric problem, avoid psychiatrists as if your life depends on it: conventional psychiatry is a disaster-in-progress.

The precision medicine effort is an opportunity to clean Medicine's house. The drug companies won't be happy when their businesses wither away, but maybe the lawyers will help them go quietly into the night.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A little disappointing to see the links to his favourite paper going to paywalls. Here are arxiv/free links:

39 page JFP version:

[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1107.3539v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1107.3539v1.pdf)

12 pager from ICFP:

[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1007.4446.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1007.4446.pdf)

8 page CACM highlight:

[http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/dvanhorn/pubs/vanhorn-might- cacm...](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/dvanhorn/pubs/vanhorn-might-cacm11.pdf)

</comment><comment> jmcdonald-ut I got to take Matt's compilers course. He was a really exceptional professor who had a way of presenting pretty mundane and rigorous material in an interesting way. His lectures were always engaging. If your interested in understanding programming languages at a lower level I can't recommend enough perusing his blog.

</comment><comment><USER3> This has been posted twice already but only reached FP now. The laws of timezone I guess. Anyway I'm happy it's visible.</comment>


Nokia CEO: Our Microsoft Phones Just Aren't Selling That Well - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/elop-windows-phone-7-is-a-big-fat-retail-flop-2012-6

<comment><USER2> When you're stuck between Apple, the thing a lot of people really, _really_ want, and Android, the thing people get when they don't really care but want a good phone that's not too expensive, there's not much room for the sort-of- good, sort-of-indexpensive.

Maybe Elop can do a stint at RIM when his work at Nokia is done.</comment>


Remote Collaboration and the Future of Work - <AUTHOR> http://jammm.app <comment><USER2> Server is not found</comment>


Beastie Boys countersue over 'Girls' parody ad, rekindling legal battle - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/11/5199504/beastie-boys-countersue-over-girls-parody-ad-rekindling-legal-battle

<comment><USER2> "The trademark question, meanwhile, will hinge on whether the mention of the Beastie Boys' name in the YouTube video description misled viewers into thinking the band was officially affiliated with an unauthorized parody."

I think that's the decisive factor. I think this wouldn't have been a problem if they hadn't used the Beastie Boys' name in the video description, and that's what makes me sympathize with Goldieblox (who I love!) a little less than I'd like to. Your thoughts?</comment>


Whither the Software Artist? - <AUTHOR> https://www.filfre.net/2018/10/whither-the-software-artist-or-how-trip-hawkins-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-consoles/ <comment><USER2> The most emotionally intense moment I've ever experienced in a video game (and I've played a lot of video games) was crossing the border into Mexico in Red Dead Revolver. The hairs on my arms stood on end. The YouTube clip [0] doesn't do it justice because it misses the context and buildup. Just magic.

That and docking with a spacestation in Elite to the Blue Danube waltz.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUXGW6sWYDY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUXGW6sWYDY)

<comment><USER3> I never played Red Dead, but my most memorable video game moment I think was the end of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. I can't say more w/o spoiling it but the way it mixed game and narrative was inspiring.

<comment><USER4> That game is amazing and was developed by Starbreeze Studios (the demogroup formerly known as Triton). The legendary Gustaf Grefberg did the music!</comment></comment></comment>


Tornado - the best Python web framework - robert-zaremba http://rz.scale-it.pl/2013/01/25/tornado___the_best_web_framework.html this post explains authors opinion why WSGI is not sufficient and present Tornado, which handles <i>ideal web frameworks</i> problems greatly. <comment><AUTHOR> Nagare is my favorite - <http://www.Nagare.org>

<comment> robert-zaremba I don't see the revolutionary in Nagare. It doesn't have active community (check the list of nagare based projects: [http://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3Aaction=search&term=nagare](http://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3Aaction=search&term=nagare) and Nagares blog: <http://www.nagare.org/trac/blog>). The composition concept is also included in Pyramid / Flask / Tornado. There are also a lot of html builder (so there is no point to develop other one which is bind to Nagare). Besides this it is interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Flask has manual routing. Nagare creates URLs and binds then to Python actions automatically. It also has a global session object as opposed to indepedent sessions per Python object.

All three of those are trapped into the paradigm of receiving URLs and routing them to python methods.

Read this: <http://www.nagare.org/trac/wiki/NagareDescription>

and see how those 3 frameworks fit exactly what Nagare frees you from.</comment></comment></comment>


PitchBoom: An email lottery for entrepreneurs! Share with 700 entrepreneurs!  - <AUTHOR> http://pitchboom.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> reach me at hello(at)pitchboom(dot)com if you want to discuss anything!</comment>


Rubber Duck Debugging - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging <comment><AUTHOR> I just wrote and then rewrote a huge Trello comment to someone and then ding the light went on for a super simple solution to a problem I've been debugging for a few days. For a long time I didn't know this phenomenon had a name and so I try and share this with as many hackers as possible.</comment>


Show HN: Get 20 Free Rides for Interviewing and $1,000 when hired in SF - <AUTHOR> http://www.flashhires.org <comment><USER2> Very odd incentives.</comment>


Easter Island's ancient inhabitants weren't so lonely after all - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/23/us-science-easterisland-idUSKCN0IC28C20141023

<comment><AUTHOR> See also this recent article in _Current Biology,_ cited by Reuters: [http://www.cell.com/current- biology/abstract/S0960-9822(14)0...](http://www.cell.com/current- biology/abstract/S0960-9822\(14\)01220-2)</comment>


Can-Do vs. Can't-Do Culture - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/01/01/can-do-vs-cant-do-culture/ <comment><USER2> The economist who helped Walt Disney's theme park dream become what it is today[1] said that the most important thing he learned through it all was the profound difference between a "no, because" person and a "yes, if" person.

If you ask many people an audacious "Can we do X?" their response is usually along the lines of "No, because [valid reasons]". They're not wrong, but the basic attitude is to shoot down what doesn't seem to fit with one's own view of the world. These are "no, because" people, and big companies are often full of them.

Much rarer and infinitely more valuable, especially for an entrepreneur, is the person who hears "Can we do X?" and responds, "Yes, if... [possible solutions]". Their response is one of problem-solving instead of confrontation, seeking to find a synthesis of the new perspective and their own. It seems like a small thing, but it is a very significant shift in mindset. Thinking like a "yes, if" person can unlock so much potential.

A friend of mine, one of the most talented and knowledgeable game programmers around, could easily have shot down many of the ambitious ideas that came his way. Instead, he greeted them with enthusiasm, often saying, "It's software! We can do _anything_!" Wouldn't you like to set out to do amazing things with that person on your team?

[1] - [https://d23.com/harrison-price/](https://d23.com/harrison-price/)

<comment><USER3> The risk with saying "Yes, if.." is that a lot of managers (or clients or whatever) stop listening after the word "Yes".

With "No, unless ...", it's a different story. Then success is dependant on the conditions mentioned and they're much more likely to do their part in making sure those conditions are met. If you said "Yes, if" they'll often just remember you promised you could do it and leave it at that.

<comment><USER4> I love this comment; it so beautifully and unintentionally proves the OPs point. It's like the perfect comment to represent Hacker News.

In an article about Can Do vs Can't Do culture, it piggybacks on an insightful top comment that takes an optimistic approach and provides the kind of cynical pessimism and tries to shoot down the Can Do nature of the OP's comment. But the best part of it, the most beautiful part, is that it places the blame on the cause of all problems for hackers: the manager. Literally, managers are the only reason the world isn't amazing, they're the ones that shoot down all my brilliant ideas.

<comment><USER5> It seems somewhat unfortunate to distil this down to where there are only two possible interpretations of someones idea, right and wrong. I don't think you could have straw manned his point any more either.

The entire idea of "can do vs can't do" is such a platitude anyways, it's not even remotely interesting. It takes all nuance away from communication. As if just because someone has to make their position clearer than a statement like "yes, if" in order to manage the expectations of others that they just don't have a "can do" attitude and by implication are destined to fail.

<comment><USER6> How is "no, unless" clearer than a statement like "yes, if?"

I think the entire point is that they say the same thing while projecting a completely different attitude.

The _way_ that someone responds to the question of "can we do this" is very important.

<comment><USER7> Because there's plenty of people that don't listen past the first word.

<comment><USER8> So start with "If..." and finish with "...then yes!"

<comment><USER9> This is my favorite comment in the thread :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love the comment from Robert Scoble:

"My friend Andy Grignon worked for Steve Jobs and was on a very small team building the original iPhone. Steve told him "sorry, you can not hire anyone who has worked on a phone before."

Why not? For exactly the reasons laid out here. He didn't want his team to find out what they were attempting to do was "impossible." Andy learned that when he went to AT&T to pitch them on what became visual voice mail. Andy and his team thought it was possible. The AT&T folks thought they were nuts. It took lots of work by Steve Jobs to convince AT&T to try."

<comment><USER11> Not all telecom people are sticks in the mud, that said modern at&t (SBC) is not known for being progressive, forward looking or flexible.

<comment><USER12> They are too big and mature to be reinventing the future. For better or worse, the modern AT&T came about by Southwestern Bell being the most disciplined of the baby bells. While other telecoms invested in pie in the sky projects that didn't work, SBC invested in operations and financial discipline. Their increased market cap relative to size allowed them to buy their less efficient competitors. They won on efficiency, not product development.

<comment><USER11> Disciplined, is not the words I would use - SBC was the most corrupt (IMO) of the former baby bells too. They have been slimy for a long long time. In the 70's several executives were fired for what amounted to having a political slushfund [1] to buy off state officials when needed.

While they may be successful they miss the concept of "Spirit of Service" in whole.

[1] [http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1356&dat=19760728&id=p...](http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1356&dat=19760728&id=pgYkAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jwUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2555,5732593)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That Alexander Bell quote sounded way too good to be real, looks like I wasn't the only person to think that, some interesting sleuthing:

[http://blog.historyofphonephreaking.org/2011/01/the- greatest...](http://blog.historyofphonephreaking.org/2011/01/the-greatest-bad- business-decision-quotation-that-never-was.html)

<comment><USER14> The interesting thing is that apparently the kernel is true, but the actual quote is invented. It's a shame that people in the real world rarely give us quotes ready to be made into a movie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't buy this division into can - the good and cannot - the bad. It's just two strategies with different outcome distributions. The critic will be right more often, invest in boring tried ideas, earn less on average but with less variance. The enthusiast will often fail but when he's right against the common knowledge, he hits the jackpot.

And picking those jackpots and their critics ignores the majority of crazy ideas that indeed fail - _" They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."_

Here's some criticism of a crazy idea that actually failed (CueCat): [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000037.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000037.html)

Obviously there is a lot of criticism for the sake of proving oneself smug. Unfortunately sounding smug does not automatically make one wrong.

</comment><comment><USER16> A few years ago the iPad mania just started. I worked for harware company on admin software. It was written in Java, 15 years old (1998) and never had major rewrite.

All managers were like 'be like apple' and 'we must release iPad app' and 'PC is over'. Programmers on other side wanted to rewrite some critical parts, introduce automated tests and fix some very old bugs.

I was speaker for programmers, soon I became 'tablet hater' (kind of funny since I had Android tablet). Latter we even bough some iPads for developers to learn, those were locked in managers office :-). I left company shortly after that.

So for me 'Can-Do vs. Can't-Do Culture' is just sort of bullshit to mask real problems. Sure Jobs made iThinks, but he pulled massive resources towards the problem. Apple actually bought factories for touch screens before iPhone was made.

</comment><comment><USER17> I see this all the time in the consumer 3D printing space. Sometimes high tech people act like laggards. "I can't make a metal part on my desk, so it's useless!" "okay, we're almost there, but how about you look at the progress in this industry and all the other applications that we CAN do right now!"

<comment><USER18> I'm probably somewhat the person you are complaining about here. The current desktop 3D printers are pretty useless for anything functional (but fine for initial aesthetic models). All these people have grand ideas of being able to print functional products at their desk and there are some significant technical challenges that need to be solved yet. I don't believe that any of the current printing methods are ever going to get to the point where typical consumers will truly be happy with them, especially when compared to injection molded parts. I think the technology that may eventually accomplish what I consider to be fully functional will not look at all like we have today and it at least 15-20 years away.

<comment><USER14> On the contrary, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a continuous path from the current 3D printing technology to the eventual mass market technology.

I see strong parallels to the early history of inkjet printers. From the 1976 IBM 4640 "ink jet" to the Thinkjet took 8 years, but the technology shows a clear lineage. Inkjet printers struggled with many of the same teething issues. See this 1985 article explaining the challenges: [http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1985-05.pdf](http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1985-05.pdf)

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the link! The last page was great: "Managing the development of a new technology"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Of course, too much of a 'can do' attitude can lead to completely unrealistic expectations, spread your resources too thin, and bankrupt a business or lead you to waste years or even decades of your life.

The smart choice is obviously a happy medium. Too much of a "can do" attitude is just as harmful as too much of a "can't do" attitude. We all need reality checks.

And this is why diverse teams and groups are so important -- one person says "of course we can't do", another says "of course we can do", and everyone hashes it out until they've come up with a realistic assessment that is neither clouded by overly optimistic nor overly pessimistic thinking.

</comment><comment><USER20> I kind of wish the startup community looked like the picture painted in this post. :)

More audacity and innovation, less audacity-lacking "innovation" of the form, _how to get users to click ads more often and exit this company for a multiple ASAP_.

</comment><comment><USER21> Here's my problem with the implied attack on skeptics: sure you can point to the cases when the skeptics are wrong, but for every poo-pooing of what turns out to be a tremendous invention, there are 99 cases where skepticism averts disastrously misconceived projects. There is tremendous economic value that is preserved by people who say no. People like to use the example of Jobs launching a tablet in the face of skeptics, but this doesn't give Jobs enough credit. Apple is tremendously skeptical. A huge part of their success is the products they _don 't_ launch.

</comment><comment><USER22> Any one else notice the self-justification of the comments?

> Cherrypicking. A great majority of startups fail and their ideas are proven > as unworkable or impractical, so it is not unreasonable to summarily dismiss > most of them.

Clearly read the article but is trying to justify his own negativity in the past and undoubtedly.

>Would love to see a post on how you define "great" in this context, Ben.

Who the fck, address someone they don't know by their first name like that?? Ending the statement with his name also seems a bit passive aggressive.

Enlightening check out the comments and see how many people actually respond to the article. All too often when reading articles or listening to other people, instead of listening or understanding, the goal is: 'let me read until I think think of something I can say'. This really hurts that person and just isolates people in their own point of view

(note this post could be ironic. Its not though, the article was freakin awesome! I will try to change my mindset towards a more positive one after reading and rethink what it means to innovate)

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't believe that quote that purports to be a Western Union memo on the telephone. I don't think that 19th Century businessmen put words like "idiotic" into business communication, and I don't think that they used phrases like "the technical and economic facts of the situation," as the word "economy" at that point was much more strongly meaning "being thrifty at home" and much less about economic systems.

This blog post claims that the quote is fake: [http://blog.historyofphonephreaking.org/2011/01/the- greatest...](http://blog.historyofphonephreaking.org/2011/01/the-greatest-bad- business-decision-quotation-that-never-was.html)

Slate says it "may" be fake and is awaiting verification: [http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/01/02/why_p...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/01/02/why_people_thought_telephones_would_fail.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder how much of this is just a visibility issue.

We notice this same thing here on this site, where every new idea seems to get immediately piled on with negativity. The feeling is that it didn't used to be this way, and many of us old timers will remember a time when new ideas were mostly met with encouragement and constructive criticism.

But I bet if you look at the threads today and then, you might find that the absolute number of constructive, encouraging comments hasn't changed much at all. Rather, they are simply lost in a sea of negativity spouted out by the peanut gallery that seems to have washed in from other places where people dump all over tech news. We used to be conspicuously entrepreneurial here. Now we're a lot more representative of the tech world at large.

So yeah, I think that there are still plenty of people with the right entrepreneurial mindset out there. It's just getting harder to find them.

<comment><USER25> The visibility / selection bias issue works both ways. Only successful entrepreneurs are visible, not the many more that have failed despite their "can-do" attitude.

Maybe we're just slowly reaching a more realistic equilibrium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Let's also remember that there is valid criticism of startups and how they operate their business.

If a startup founder is an asshole, let's not excuse the behavior because they are building something worthwhile.

If a startup makes a mistake due to lack of concern about its users (i.e. Snapchat and their security hole), they should be criticized.

All told, I'm all about "can do" culture, but let's not use it as an excuse for boorish behavior or bad business practices.

<comment><USER27> Let's also make sure the person criticizing said "assholes" is not paid to be a professional asshole themselves, like Sam Biddle or Nitasha Tiku at Valleywag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> When I'm overworked or simply lazy, and my co-founders want to add some feature, it becomes a "can't do" culture pretty fast. Yes, I'm the only technical co-founder.

<comment><USER29> Not being snarky, but what domain knowledge do they have that you can't get?

<comment><USER28> My two co-founders handle the business aspects of company, though there is some overlap between our roles. Is that an answer to your question?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> He's making a good point in the abstract, but I think Horowitz is too close to the matter to understand that a lot of the negativity he cites is a natural reaction to the totally overblown rhetoric of the start-up scene. He inadvertently proves this by referencing such epoch-defining inventions as the telephone and the internet. Many tech start-ups are creating interesting, useful, and sometimes even novel products, but it's nonetheless annoying to anyone with a sense of perspective to hear from every angle that Start-up X is going to change the world by revolutionizing, you know, shoe-resoling.

</comment><comment><USER31> A fine editorial. Stirring. It has inspired me to not write off recode simply because 90% of what's on their front page today is crap.

<comment><USER32> The article was written by Ben Horowitz.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> _Ultimately, in 1842 English mathematician and astronomer George Biddel Airy advised the British Treasury that the Analytical Engine was "useless," and that Babbage's project should be abandoned. The government axed the project shortly after. It took the world until 1941 to catch up with Babbage's original idea, after it was killed by skeptics and forgotten by all._

Is it not reasonable to suppose that it was an idea before its time, and useless in the particular historical context and implementational form in which it appeared?

There has always been utility for mechanical computation, but it's entirely possible that the world simply did not have an application for The Analytical Engine in the 1830s-1840s because other sectors of technology and the economy simply hadn't evolved to a level where they could effectively utilise it, especially given its physical properties--its size, scale, and energy consumption.

I don't know that for a fact, and can't effectively gauge the merits of my own suggestion, as I am neither a mathematician nor a competent historian of the intellectual, scientific and commercial zeitgeist of that period. But, for the sake of argument, is it not possible that this invention fell into the "interesting, novel, but useless" category?

Now, as for the telephone:

1) From the point of view of the telegraph establishment, it was a competitor;

2) Unintelligible voice really _is_ useless. They just weren't far-sighted enough to see that the voice quality could improve, and indeed, it was a quite a long time before it did. Local loop quality improved first. Long-distance toll voice really didn't begin to sound good until digital trunking came along. Ask your grandparents or great-grandparents what coast-to-coast long distance phone calls sounded like in the era of analog lines and waveguide- type multiplexing technology;

3) In the heyday of the telegraph era, deploying lines was an extremely expensive and capital-intensive process, and it wasn't until other technological advancements that made possible various multiplexing and aggregation schemes (frequency-division, and later digital TDM) came along that the idea of running a copper line into _every_ home really got to be realistic[1]. I agree that Western Union was a bit shortsighted in turning down this patent, but one could hardly blame them for thinking that universal telephone service wasn't economically possible. That's like selling a business idea today that relies on everyone having a 10 terabit fiber cable run to their home. Yeah, it's possible, and I have no doubt someone will make fun of me in a decade or two for naysaying it in any way, but would you invest $2bn in a related patent _today_?

 _What mistake did all these very smart men make in common? They focused on what the technology could not do at the time rather than what it could do and might be able to do in the future._

I don't disagree, but that needs to be fleshed out. No viable entrepreneurial venture can succeed solely on the basis of what it is logically _possible_ for the technology to _someday_ do, or what it could, in principle, in theory, one day. There is a need to realise a return in a usefully short period of time that is also unanimously acceptable to a coterie of investors with varying needs in terms of payoff time frame and patience.

Thus, you need a practical plan for getting to point B, making the technology do X. Even the most far-fetched, high-risk, R&D-driven ventures entail a proposal to concretely deploy and commercialise technology in a period that is usefully short and politically palatable, and that means everyone involved is somewhat constrained to what can be practically envisaged in terms of _today 's_ possibilities. One can make some leaps of faith, some intelligent extrapolations and some prescient forecasts, but ultimately, it's something expressed largely in the observational language and ontology of _today_.

Thus, I can't bring myself to fault someone for doubting, in 1995, that the consumer web is going to be what it is today, or even be what it was six or seven years later, in the early 2000s. It was possible--perhaps even reasonable--to suppose so, but would you have bet the farm on it? Your retirement savings? I'm not sure I would have (not that I have a farm or retirement savings, _pero bueno_ ).

[1] [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=451163...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4511639&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F35%2F4511634%2F04511639.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4511639)

<comment><USER34> _> No viable entrepreneurial venture can succeed solely on the basis of what it is logically possible for the technology to someday do, or what it could, in principle, in theory, one day._

I think the real trick here is to learn how to distinguish between objections that are just examples of people not getting it, and objections that really do point up a fundamental problem you will have to overcome or find a way around in order to succeed. This can be trickier than it sounds.

A common mistake advocates for new technologies make is to fall in love with their new toy and dismiss _any_ skepticism of its prospects as examples of cluelessness -- often with glib responses like the one in the OP, "don't hate, create" (ugh). Not everyone who comes to you with a critique is a "hater." Some of them are coming to you because they have learned something through hard experience that they think will be helpful to you. Ignoring those people can lead you to walk right into the same well-hidden minefields that have blown up countless other bold explorers over the years. So there's value in learning how to spot the one guy in the crowd of people telling you to watch where you step who's sporting a peg leg.

<comment><USER33> Indeed. Also, about "haters":

It'd be nice if the tech startup community looked like the OP imagines it, with innovative companies boldly challenging ingrained assumptions and disrupting conventional wisdom with forward-thinking solutions to hard problems worth solving.

I think a lot of the "hating" is directed at the latest pump-and-dump social plugin or other VC-funded sausage party. The lack of mood emoticons on Twitter is not a problem worth solving, and failure to see its utility is not for a paucity of vision or ambition.

<comment><USER35> It seems to me (an outsider looking at the Bay Area culture) that people create what the VC's will invest in. In a way the VC companies are the first customers they focus on. If VC's stop funding 90% of their portfolio useless social websites and instead focus on robotics, green tech, medical tech etc. I would argue that most new startups will start working on meaningful products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> How about just being reasonably rigorous in your assessment instead of being overly cautious or overly idealistic? This division into can-do and can't-do seems to represent two opposite extremes that might not reflect the majority.

What's the real data here? From a practical standpoint, isn't it just risk vs reward? Can-do's probably get a bigger reward than can't do's, but they fail more. A can't-do gets smaller reward, but succeeds more.

</comment><comment><USER11> This goes back to the glass half full/glass half empty discussion. It's not anything really new or different. The problem is half full people, tend to turn into half empty people as they age, get more conservative and have power/established interests to protect.

In short, disruption seems scary when you are part of the powers that be.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've found the best places to work are quite negative about their own products (I wish I could find the release announcement Facebook had for one of their open-source libraries, with endorsements like "okay, I guess" and "oh, that thing") and ideas. If you're able to shoot down bad ideas fast, and have a culture where that's ok, people are much more willing to make all sorts of crazy suggestions, and you have a better chance of finding one that will actually work.

</comment><comment><USER38> Way too general to be useful.

I think it's useful to be optimistic when it comes to visions of the future and how a business can accomplish it. Electric cars for everyone? Sure, give it a try. All that can be lost is a little money, and maybe you make a huge fortune and change the world. Isolated government programs can be a similar story -- e.g. NASA, which is unlikely to lose anything but a small amount of money but can be really inspiring or create some great things.

However, when it comes to government policy, the downside can be utter disaster. It pays to be a little skeptical that the "help the poor" bill (or whatever other utopian title) will actually deliver as advertised. Or skeptical that a war will be a simple in-and-out proposition.

Or some things just have little upside. We see this all the time in engineering. Someone wants to use a fad technology or model of some kind, or wants to reimplement something to be a little faster, or whatever. There's huge project risk that it could derail other projects and destabilize the entire product -- which is fine if you're going to change the world with it, but not fine for a 10% speedup on some specific workload.

Moral of story: optimism and "can do" attitude is good when the upside is huge and the downside is contained (like in a startup). Not exactly a profound revelation.

</comment><comment><USER39> And venture funds also have to be picky about start-ups that they are going to fund; I understand that the author is working for a venture fund, and that he tries not to be a 'hater'. Is the Andreessen Horowitz portfolio really breathtakingly innovative, or is it more of the same?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreessen_Horowitz#Investments](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreessen_Horowitz#Investments)

"In February 2011, Andreessen Horowitz invested $80 million in Twitter,[2] becoming the first venture firm that holds stock in all four of the highest- valued, privately held social media companies: Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and Zynga"

[http://a16z.com/](http://a16z.com/)

Otherwise its a great article.

The lesson that I took home: I always held that asking/questioning of assumption is also of value; but this article told me that I have to be careful here, and that style of communications is often also very important - style determines how a person is evaluated by others.

</comment><comment><USER40> Pleasantly surprised to find the son of David Horowitz is a rap fan. Not only does this article start with a Rick Ross (ugh) quote, but most of his blog posts all start with music lyrics too. [[http://bhorowitz.com](http://bhorowitz.com)] Seems he's on the Board of Rap Genius.

</comment><comment><USER41> Not even sure why this needs an article. The great majority of people in the world are "can't-do" people. It's entrepreneurs who buck the trope and create the things that end up being valuable. It's risky and scary and you'll probably face opprobrium. Fuck the noise.

<comment><USER42> You might also fail because you refused to consider reasonable objections (because people didn't put them in a tone you approved of), and then blow a lot of money and put yourself in debt you might never escape.

So you know, it's a trade-off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I think this article missed a point. It is not a battle between "Yes, if" and "No, because" \- each has its own place and each should be used with care.

The first stage of innovation should use "Yes, if" approach. This is similar to brainstorming session, where negativity should be kept to minimum. This mentality lets people find ways around the obstacles.

When the idea is ready for evaluation, it should be evaluated in light of resource constraints and similar. In this phase "No, because" approach should be used to identify all possible downsides. If the answer is "No", the idea can be either retired or returned to brainstorming session, until it is ready for re-evaluation.

So it is not a question of Yes/No, it is a question of appropriate answer in appropriate moment.

</comment><comment><USER44> One thing to ponder: this is a strong counterpoint to the "Lean Startup" culture, which basically states that unless you have people telling you not just that something _can_ be done, but that they will pay you for it yesterday, it's not worth working on.

<comment><USER45> I don't see the two as mutually exclusive. The lean startup methodology doesn't care at all what people think about the feasibility of something. What matters in that methodology, however, is whether people will pay for something, _if implemented_.

A side note is that people telling you they will or won't pay for something can be quite misleading. The act of talking is quite disconnected from the act of actually paying you.

<comment><USER44> "Why would I ever need anything other than a horse to get around? Mine gets me where I need to go just fine. And more cheaply, too."

The short-sightedness of the people cited in the article doesn't just come from critics, but from the potential market as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> He is concerned about this because it directly impacts him and his line of work. But this is nothing new even in technology. The one glaring example is Apple. When the first iPhone came out Apple was the savior but soon the number of people hating Apple is greater and more vocal that the so called fanboys. I think its simply that success begets hate on a superficial level and in some cases makes people look into certain aspects of that success with more scrutiny which might beget dislike(or hate). Its just what it is. Point being, even the most educated, practical thinking people on the planet succumb to mob mentality, particularly online. Deal with it.

</comment><comment><USER47> "Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone," obligatory to mention the other inventor: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray)

</comment><comment><USER48> I have found that there are many more ideas than time or energy to do them all.

How does one foster a successful "Should-Do" culture instead of a "Can't-Do" culture?

</comment><comment><USER49> My thumb rule: As long as you are young, given the time, you can do anything that you can conceive in the mind.

I firmly believe, that its a practical thing, that with time, most people who aren't way successful become pessimist, yet.. their kids always have the fresh start.

It is upto the young generation, to carry the baton of HOPE! If young people won't dream, who will?

</comment><comment><USER50> "Bitcoin could never succeed as a currency. It's too unstable"

<comment><USER51> If you bought at the beginning of December, it's certainly "succeeded" in turning 1/3rd of your money into nothing...

<comment><USER50> sure that's a clever argument?

what if you bought it at any other time during the few years it exists?

anyway that was not the point. The point was people failing to see the innovation and seeing only the problems. Which was the point of this article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> No, [your "Soylent" food replacement will not work] because...

</comment><comment><USER53> Looking at you Krugman.

</comment><comment><USER54> Ben, your site is so Goddamn frustrating on mobile.

</comment><comment><USER55> One more quote to start this off.

 _I do not bring a weapon. I am the weapon._ \-- Michael O. Church

I like the overarching theme of what the OP is saying. Good companies provide multiple ways to succeed. Shitty firms provide multiple ways to fail, and only one way to succeed. That's why closed allocation is such a pile of 9/11 nukular buttfail: because it's founded on the idea that a person is only admitted _one_ avenue for success (but there are numerous ways a person might lose face).

Good institutions provide multiple ways for the people within them to succeed. This encourages creativity. Bad companies lay down multiple ways to fail, and only admit one way to succeed. It is known.

I don't think this is only an artifact of company size. I've seen small companies with that negative, embarrassment-averse culture; I've also seen large companies create pockets of the positive, open-allocation type culture.

 _Hardly a day goes by where I don't find something in my Twitter feed crowing about how a startup that has hit a bump in the road is "fu &%@d," or what an "ash%le" a successful founder is, or what an utterly idiotic idea somebody's company is._

I am all for product risk and innovation. If someone tries to cure cancer and fails, I'm going to praise her to the moon for trying. On the other hand, moral failure (asshole founders) I cannot support. There is a huge difference between a scientist who tries for 20 years to cure cancer and falls short (but probably delivers a lot of useful research along the way) and an Evan Spiegel, who fails morally. "We're a startup" has been used too many times to justify reckless management and moral bankruptcy. Well I say: fuck that shit.

I am all for removing the stigma against good-faith failure. The problem in the VC-funded startup world is all the bad-faith failure that is out there. When someone gets fired with no severance because his 24-year-old, inexperienced, technically incompetent manager turns out to be a wad, no one should congratulate the company for "taking a risk". Recklessness, the defining trait of the current crop of VC-funded cool kids, is not a virtue.

 _It seems like there is a movement to replace today's startup culture of hope and curiosity with one of smug superiority._

That "culture of hope and curiosity" is long gone. Snarky people like me are working our asses off in the effort to bring it back. We do it by taking down the Evan Spiegels and Lucas Duplans of the world. We need to take out the trash so there is some fucking space for the good guys.

 _Some people would like to turn the technology startup world into one great big company with a degenerative Can't-Do Culture._

That's VC-istan, not in some future dystopia but right now. With all of the co-funding and note-sharing and collusion, VC has degenerated into a feudal reputation economy that behaves like a large and dysfunctional company where people are too busy padding their resumes and manicuring their reputations to even consider doing anything remotely ballsy. That's exactly what has already happened.</comment>