Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html <comment><USER2> I'm surprised that someone hasn't taken on Google in search. Cuil tried, and they had a huge spike in traffic at launch. Then people discovered the product was broken. Also, they didn't have a revenue model. They were able to build a full search engine with about 50 people and $50M, which indicates the price of entry isn't that high.

Over time, hardware gets cheaper, and the cost of building a search engine declines. This has not been matched with a reduction in ad density. The cost improvement is going into Google's profit margin. That indicates a vulnerability.

Google has some striking weaknesses. The two I focus on are provenance and business background. I've done work on business background (see "sitetruth.com"). That tries to find the real-world business behind a web site that's selling something, and then uses the data available about real-world businesses to check it out. That can then be fed into search result ordering. SiteTruth is a demo; it's running off free data sources. Paying for higher quality data from Dun and Bradstreet and other non-cheap sources would make the business background check much better.

Google's other big weakness is provenance. Search engines should find the original source of information. Much of the Internet is sites scraping other sites, linking to other sites, and commenting on other sites. We see this on HN all the time, where someone links to an article, but the actual source is two blogs deep. The original source should be the primary search result, perhaps annotated with notes about the more heavily promoted sites mentioning it. This means more attention to when something appeared and better matching of content. Google already does this for news. For ranking purposes, attention metrics for scraper sites need to be credited to the original source, not the scraper site.

One possible customer for such a system is Bloomberg. The people who get those expensive terminals could use both of those features. Then offer it to the better universities, so that students grow up using something less consumer- oriented with Google. That strategy worked for Facebook.

<comment><USER3> The quality of Google's search results has already gone down, thanks to results being personalized based on previous searches and other data, a feature it seems _no one_ asked for. And they continue to cannibalize themselves by making ads more and more indistinguishable from normal search results. I'm sure that's made them a lot of money in the short-term, but everyone now knows they can't be trusted, as quality is no longer sacred (which was its main appeal back in the early days!). They are now in the same category of pedestrian ad peddlers as Facebook and Twitter.

Therefore a competing product doesn't need to be as good as current Google, only as good as it used to be. Still hard, but far from impossible for someone with money.

What may be harder is Cuil's second problem as mentioned: Finding a revenue model. You can't compromise your data by manipulating searches (lessens quality) and you can't compromise your integrity by prioritizing ads (lessens trust). I'm sure a lot of people would pay big money for the answer, which no one seems to have (as demonstrated by Twitter's descent into ad trickery such as camouflaging the ad disclaimers).

<comment><USER4> Not just that. I think one of the biggest issues Google has had recently is that they're trying too hard to guess what their users 'might' want instead of what they actually want.

Try and search anything even remotely technical or specific. Google brings back a few thousand irrelevant results, often with stuff like 'not found: word you were actually after' underneath in grey. Sometimes even when you do add quotes or speech marks around the term.

A better Google would be one that doesn't assume people want 'any old possible answer' and tries to answer specific queries as easily as general ones.

<comment><USER5> Advertising has given Google tunnel vision with respect to search, I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To my mind, these are the most important, unsolved problems:

\- environmental degradation is based on two exponential growth trends: human population and per-capita consumption (driven by economic growth). Solving either could be, literally, a save the world scenario. The first is easiest technically, (healthcare, non-coercive birth control, education, economic opportunity for women) but a political minefield. (yes, population is still growing exponentially)

\- dealing with climate change. At a minimum, this means figuring out how to handle a significant rise in sea level in the next 100 years. Walls? Relocation? We need to think about response now, more so than avoidance.

\- actually doing geo-engineering to prevent/reverse the greenhouse effect

\- preventing a nuclear war

\- preventing a large asteroid collision

\- dealing with large-scale disruption of employment (for example retail continues to be hammered by online stores, self-driving trucks, etc.) Build a better Mechanical Turk might be a useful strategy.

Obviously some of these are low-probability short-term events, but they have very high costs. In a sense, you would be taking advantage of people's tendency to systematically under-invest in problems of that kind.

<comment><USER7> Fun fact: not only population is no longer growing exponentially, it doesn't even grow linearly. The growth is now _sublinear_, and it looks like we'll have peak population around 2070. Problem solved. Let's do something more interesting.

<comment><USER6> Frome wikipedia: "Global human population growth amounts to around 75 million annually, or 1.1% per year." 1.1% is exponential growth when the base is growing, just like 1.1% compound interest displays exponential growth. It is still growing exponentially, although the rate is declining.

<comment><USER7> If the rate is declining, the growth is no longer exponential :)

<comment><USER6> picture two exponential growth curves, one steeper than the other, over time the a trend moves from the steeper curve to the less steep curve. The "population" whatever it is, is still growing exponentially at the less steep curve.

<comment><USER8> The idea is that an exponential curve is no longer the correct model for forecasting growth past 2070.

Arguing about how to express that is sort of pointless.

<comment><USER9> Population growth in non-human species is quite well documented and is in fact not exponential, although the early stages look exponential.

It is in fact a logistic sigmoid function. It is amazing, in that it is not what you'd expect : clearly the vast majority of species have the ability to correctly estimate the carrying capacity of a habitat and only overshoot by a little bit.

So the Malthusian argument is incorrect, probably, if humans are like other animals (and since population growth curves in many localities do indeed look like S-curves I would say that this ought to be the default claim). Human population size will by itself stop just shy of the carrying capacity of the planet. Which is exactly what you'd want to happen.

In all likelihood, this will happen without active measures from governments (which won't work anyway due to the global nature of the required policies), with or without popularizing contraceptives, with or without female labor participation, ... (not saying those aren't desirable, just that they aren't necessary)

The alternative requires an assumption that humans are hugely different from the species that we evolved from, and since this certainly isn't true in the biological sense, why would our population growth be so very different ? Humans are not the first large animal to "conquer the planet", and reach population numbers in the billions, with some fish well on the way to trillions even today, and we aren't the biggest species in terms of total biomass by a very long way (amongst non-plants that honour likely goes to ants, but even pathetic species of bacteria dwarf their numbers). Will we be the last one ? Perhaps, but it seems unlikely.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function#In_ecology:_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function#In_ecology:_modeling_population_growth)

<comment><USER6> I refer you to the 12,000-year human population growth chart on Our World In Data, in a post by Max Roser.

[https://ourworldindata.org/world-population- growth/](https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth/)

Growth is clearly exponential. Your theories don't fit the data.

<comment><USER9> I'm looking at that graph. I see a spike in the growth rate, after the spike it goes to zero. I'm not an expert (I have a masters in statistics actually) but that doesn't look very exponential to me.

Can you explain what I'm missing ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of my beliefs about startups is that the jump from side project to business shouldn't even seem that hard. It definitely shouldn't seem "frighteningly ambitious". Look at the origin stories of the big 5:

GOOG: we've got a search engine that we did as an academic project. Lots of people are using it. Let's turn it into a business.

FACE: we've got a social network that lots of college kids are using. Let's turn it into a business.

AMAZ: let's sell books over the internet.

AAPL: Hmmm, my crazy genius friend Woz built an awesome "personal computer" in his spare time. Let's scale up production and sell it.

MSFT: Let's scale up our software development business and go after much bigger targets.

<comment><USER11> Survival bias. Look it up.

Also worth looking up: wishful thinking.

<comment><USER12> Life is not a lottery.

EDIT: Statements like "survival bias" are used by people that often subscribe to Narrative Fallacies.

Companies like GOOG, FACE, APPL, MSFT are not successful because they won some big lottery.

They are successful because the identified "objectives" and made the _right_ calculations to those objectives.

And if they stop making the _right_ calculations to their ojectives they WILL end up like Kodak, Nokia & HP

<comment><USER13> You don't think some amount of luck is involved? I believe most of your example successes had moments where they avoided failure only via outside factors they didn't predict, control, etc.

<comment><USER12> "Luck" strikes _every-one_ once in a while.

What matters is whether you are ready or not. To make use of your "Luck"

<comment><USER13> I don't feel like that's the case every time. Sometimes you make the right decision for the wrong reasons. Or your bad decisions, by way of luck, end up not hurting you.

Bill Gates, for example, initially declined IBM's approaches to build DOS for them. He declined, and referred them to Gary Kildall. IBM only came back to Gates because the deal with Kildall fell apart. There was no vision, skill, etc, in that sequence of events. Just luck. I imagine other highly successful people could point out similar stories in their past.

Gates likely would have been successful either way, but perhaps not to the same degree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The 'frightening ambition' on display here seems to be to beat out incumbents.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, and PG is right to point out that the rewards for doing so are huge (this reads a lot like Zero to One).

But in terms of social impact I look at these ideas, with the possible exception of Moore's Law (albeit they are from five years ago) and think, meh?

How much does an incrementally better Google, a slightly faster GMail (exists, if you're willing to give up spam filtering), a replacement to Oxford/Harvard, a slightly better Netflix really get us? Certainly it doesn't seem to solve any of the major challenges that we face today.

<comment><USER15> To replace something you have to offer something better, and often, there's a ton of value there:

\- Google: Actually there's a lot to improve on Google, and a ton of value there. Just think that instead of what Google gives on medical info, you'll be refereed to an AI that will ask you questions, and give you top quality information like a medical expert would(or better - more time, better quality content, etc...). Or the million ways better search could help engineers/scientists/lawyers/etc...

Actually i would like to see something like a subscription marketplace for quality search engines(where your query is refered to the most suitable search engine and profits are shared fairly). Would be interesting.

\- Replace universities: Just solve the affordability problem. That would be huge enough.

\- Ongoing diagnosis - If it works well, and affordable enough, could create plenty of value. But that's a big if.

But the rest, sure they seem mostly about money.

<comment><USER16> Google already aims to provide better medical results. They recently hired former FDA head Rob Califf to help lead that effort.

I'm also fairly convinced big tech companies will eat up any emerging market that's within it's competency unless there's some core violation of principles. Take Duck Duck Go, for example. They've definitely managed to steal market share away from Google because they clash with Google's lack of concern for pure privacy. Snapchat managed to do the same to Facebook because of their disappearing images, but now that Facebook has incorporated those features into Instagram, that point of difference is dead.

For as long as big tech maintains the startup mindset, challengers will invevitably be swallowed either through competition or acquisition. In my opinion, the most ambitious startups are those pursuing underserved markets encumbered by bureaucratic or corporate incompetency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can't believe how naive people are sounding regarding Google on this thread. Almost like you guys were living under a rock for the last decade.

Many have tried to fight Google based on the (incorrect) idea that having "a better search engine" will win. I guess this is why people still keep building these things.

You can't win Google by "building a better search engine". Many smart people before you have tried and didn't succeed, and it wasn't because they were not smart enough, or because the product was inferior. It's because search engine has become a stable category, just like you eat the same cereal every morning.

People won't suddenly ditch all cereals from general meals just because some newcomer cereal company makes a "better cereal". You have to build something completely different, or at least position it that way so people perceive it as a different category.

While all these people were "trying to beat google", it was actually Facebook that came close to "beating" google at its own game. Don't just build a better something. Build something different.

<comment><USER18> I'm not saying you're wrong. But I literally tried a new breakfast cereal this morning. And it was crap :-)

<comment><USER19> Try soybean powder in hot water with salt, Sichuan pepper oil ( _huajiao you_ ), fresh diced coriander, crushed garlic, crushed ginger and dry chilli flakes. Popular in parts of China, high in protein and goes well with breads for dipping. Damn tasty! How's that for a search result?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> barry-cotter Eliezer 1710 days ago | parent | favorite | on: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious I...

Can you say where the scariest and most ambitious convincing pitch was on the following scale? 1) We're going to build the next Facebook! 2) We're going to found the next Apple! 3) Our product will create sweeping political change! This will produce a major economic revolution in at least one country! (Seasteading would be change on this level if it worked; creating a new country successfully is around the same level of change as this.) 4) Our product is the next nuclear weapon. You wouldn't want that in the wrong hands, would you? 5) This is going to be the equivalent of the invention of electricity if it works out. 6) We're going to make an IQ-enhancing drug and produce basic change in the human condition. 7) We're going to build serious Drexler-class molecular nanotechnology. 8) We're going to upload a human brain into a computer. 9) We're going to build a recursively self-improving Artificial Intelligence. 10) We think we've figured out how to hack into the computer our universe is running on.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510702)

</comment><comment><USER20> 1\. A New Search Engine

Turns out it's not about new search engines but rather how to capture search intent. Amazon did that to beat Google.

2\. Replace Email

This will be done by notifications and direct messaging. Kids these days don't bother with email.

3\. Replace Universities

Turns out this is just upscaling. Most of the job training stuff is dropping out of the lower orbit of a university and being swallowed up by the new in faux DeVry tech boot camps. But want to be an AI expert? Want to be a doctor? You still need to put in time in academia.

4\. Internet drama

They all mostly caught up. Still can't beat Netflix though.

5\. The Next Steve Jobs

Conan O'Brien, a fellow Harvard alum, said it much better. In the pursuit of being someone else you end up being yourself. Just be yourself.

6\. Bring Back Moore's Law

This is happening in GPUs.

7\. Ongoing Diagnosis

This is happening.

3-5 years is about a cycle that turns high tech to low tech. Most of the stuff talked about in 2012 are now low tech. Things like mobile app development or tablets or 4k TVs. Twas a good feeling back then, now it's all AI and MR and rapid fabrication.

<comment><USER21> > Kids these days don't bother with email.

This seems to be a life phase, not a long term trend.

<comment><USER22> Not from what I'm seeing. Companies running on WeChat, WhatsApp, and the ever popular Slack. My immigration attorney asked to connect on WhatsApp to avoid email. All anecdotal, but I'm old enough to remember things before we had email and the people mentioned above aren't young either.

<comment><USER23> I think you have to be in some fairly specific companies to think this is normal.

Everywhere else you have a company email account and it's your principle way to have a paper trail.

"Not using email" is definitely a kids phase. Then you go work for a non- startup company and email is everything.

An ambitious startup idea would be oust Microsoft Outlook from this role - find a way to globally distribute the meeting room asset tracking stuff securely and seamlessly.

<comment><USER22> > "Not using email" is definitely a kids phase. Then you go work for a non- > startup company and email is everything.

One of the companies I am talking about has revenue in the billions and operations across the globe and is publicly traded. The employees, young and old, want to communicate in real time, to get things done quickly. Many employees even have chat access to the highest levels of the company, including the CEO.

<comment><USER24> No one is disputing that they don't use chat. Everyone uses chat. But they also still use email. This company in question gives every employee an email address, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> These are not frighteningly ambitious. How about:

— A platform for CRISPR-assisted human genome editing. I, for one, welcome improving our inefficient, disease-ridden, short-lived bodies.

— A morality API. Various human societies have different moral concerns and taboos. Can we expose some tweaks and tools to navigate this as continuous spectra?

— Post-government transitional structures. Hierarchical power arrangements and traditional governments are doomed anyway; let's use network science to simulate and explore how things might work in the future.

And I still want my thermonuclear power generation. If electricity is to finally totally replace combustion, we need it cheaper. MUCH cheaper.

<comment><USER25> This is actually a really good list.

The "big problems" being solved in tech right now are mostly just people fiddling around with tooling and business models. I wish more of us would dig into these kinds of opportunities... things with a profound possibility to change civilization for the better.

I think there's a lot of skepticism about that kind of endeavor, because there are so many 20 year olds who think they are going to "change the world" without either understanding the world, or really having the deep seated motivation required to see such a project through hell.

But the fact that the area is blanketed in charlatans doesn't mean the underlying concept—looking deep into our future and try to accelerate big difficult changes—is flawed.

It's just the people best suited to do it—with the skepticism, experience, and skin in the game—tend to write it off as a silly idea. Maybe they need to do more drugs.

I'm actively working on #2 and #3, which I think are probably the same problem in different forms, but I think my efforts in the area would be well characterized as "hampered by mental illness". Not to say I won't get there, but maybe you have to be a little crazy to try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> To me the one single biggest challenge with startup ideas is that I always feel I'm too late on the market while it's not actually too late.

I asked HN how to deal with this but my question was too difficult to read since I've tried to make thought experiment of imagining you are back in 90s.

Here is my post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14336513](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14336513)

May be somebody can give thoughtful answer to this deep question.

<comment><USER25> My advice: be dumber. Stop thinking about your place in an abstract historical era, just think about your next sale.

You can think about your place in abstract historical eras on your next mushroom trip in Mexico.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> _The point when it became clear to me that Microsoft had lost their way was when they decided to get into the search business._ [This was PG's view in the article]

In retrospect, this seems to be a wrong conclusion. I know Bing is far far away from Google; But I think that Bing investment was well worth it for Microsoft. If you have followed Build 2017 conference, it is obvious how Microsoft is leveraging AI/ML in several of their products; and of course, they have a good offering of cognitive service cloud APIs. Without their heavy investment in Bing, Microsoft perhaps would have found it hard to make such quick jump onto the AI/ML bandwagon.

As a side note, is Microsoft still considered a company on its way to oblivion? I personally think they reinvented themselves in the new era. Am I mistaken in my view?

<comment><USER28> > As a side note, is Microsoft still considered a company on its way to > oblivion? I personally think they reinvented themselves in the new era. Am I > mistaken in my view?

You are not mistaken but back in 2012 when the article was written it was pretty common to bash Microsoft.

In fact, PG had written an older essay with a click-bait title of "Microsoft is Dead" [1] in 2007. Naturally, many people didn't realize he meant that metaphorically so he wrote a rejoinder titled "Microsoft is Dead: The Cliffs Notes" [2].

[1] [http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html)

[2] [http://www.paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html)

<comment><USER25> Notably Ballmer left in 2014.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Long time lurker here and 1st time participant.

>The most ambitious is to try to do it automatically: to write a compiler that will parallelize our code for us.

Does anyone know if this has been accomplished in any form or fashion by anyone/startup?

or is there anyone doing the below part atleast?

>An optimization marketplace would be a way to generate the sufficiently smart compiler piecemeal

I am very interested in finding a solution to these problems.

<comment><USER30> Welcome to HN! :)

> Does anyone know if this has been accomplished in any form or fashion by > anyone/startup?

There are compilers that are able to auto-parallelize specific kinds of software fragments, but most of them are not able to optimize general-purpose programs in a reasonable way.

There were and still are research projects in many computer science departments that try to find ways to auto-parallelize C or Fortran code, but many believe that these low-level languages provide a too unconstrained memory and type system, which makes auto-parallelization efforts really hard, because a "sufficiently smart compiler" has to prove certain properties about the code to guarantee correctness of the optimization (parallelization).

There are also people who think there's not much room for parallelization in general-purpose software development (business applications) that mostly wrap specific libraries. The libraries itself may exploit parallelization, but this is usually hand-crafted by their developers and not done using tools.

I am not saying, it's not possible, but it has been tried _many_ times, and building a new language (or improving one) may be less effort, than trying to auto-parallelize classic, old code (C, Fortran, etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> re: "Email was not designed to be used the way we use it now. Email is not a messaging protocol. It's a todo list."

But I think it is an event protocol of sorts, with TODO being a subset. Subject, msg body, etc. are universal to a lot of things. For example, the difference between say email and SMS is more UI than the actual structure of the messages. The text transcript of a phone call could fit into the same bucket.

To point is, the "email" UI / UX is awful. It hasn't evolved. It might as well be a fax machine. (Goggle) Wave might have been a step in the right direction. The idea was right and solid, but Google (being Google) fucked up the launch / rollout. And now we're still stuck with the same shite email experience. And thus Graham's article is still relevant.

Note: We're all but stuck with the email protocol. The world isn't going to change en masse. That is my client experience can be improved without having to abandon the protocol. Come on. That's not risky, nor is it rocket science.

<comment><USER32> It's a protocol to send messages between two addresses, an electronic analog of mail. I really don't see why it is supposed to be "actually a todo list".

<comment><USER33> The great thing is email is easily extensible. Think of all the things that can be done on email!

<comment><USER34> Exactly. And I've grown so weary of all the disjointed UI/UX of the web that I've been shoe horning more and more of my daily workflow and information retrieval into email.

<comment><USER31> Understood. But it doesn't have to be this way. All that money and brainpower, and no one in SV can fix an obvious and known problem??

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> _It seems reasonable to assume Bill Clinton has the best medical care available. And yet even he had to wait till his arteries were over 90% blocked to learn that the number was over 90%._ Wonder if some startup is working on this area of non intrusive diagnosis of arteries blockage ?

<comment><USER36> I want to see a startup which invented a fridge/cupboard and a toilet that worked together.

You have the inputs, you have the outputs, now you can perform analysis to improve lifestyle health.

People are not calorie counters, they're intrinsically lazy, they'll mostly accept the defaults their fridge and cupboard tell them to do.

I think you could save millions of lives this way.

It's one of the elements in 1999 AD, the Ford corporation video made in the 60s, but it's never been implemented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Objectively, is there any reason why a "search engine whose users consisted of the top 10,000 hackers and no one else would be in a very powerful position despite its small size?"

Is the hypothesis that hackers are more likely to spread the search engine to other users, or is it something else?

<comment><USER38> I think PG has something about this but ideas is hackers are early-adopters and usually a sign of future trend.

<comment><USER37> My gut feeling agrees with that, but I would love to hear a more objective or well-reasoned explanation of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> What would Steve Jobs do?

A Mac Nano for $99 to compete with the Raspberry Pi.

A Mac Mini for $199 to spread the love of OSX.

An iPhone mini for $199 to spread the love of iOS.

A 60" Apple TV (yes, with screen) with an iPod like remote.

Siri.com as a text search engine.

Apple Pay as money transfer between individuals.

If Apple wants to keep their high quality mark untouched, they should spin a second company codenamed "Orange" and deliver lower quality devices in order to spread their platforms.

It is time for Apple to leave the constrained niche they've cornered themselves into. 10% of the top market is a good position to hold forever, just like Rolex, but in the era of social virality market penetration is a must for survival, you must be everywhere and in every device.

<comment><USER25> Apple's weakness will always be that they strive towards perfection, which biases them towards creating monolithic mass market product lines.

Things an end user might constitute a critical modification for some market, like a bottle opener super glued to the back of a phone, is a blemish in the eye of Jony Ive. Apple employees are grossed out by hacks, so they can't operate in the long tail. They can only go after the big glorious spike toward the perfect unified One True Way and therefore are destined to hold only 20% market share.

They serve that 20% damn well though. People who want designers to think things out for them.

There's another kind of designer, who designs for chaos, for modification, for play. But those people don't work at Apple.

<comment><USER39> Which is a very valid point, I applaud them for their vision for excellence. But in today's world, where market share is crucial for the adoption of new technologies, they can hardly survive with a 20% share of the marketplace in the near future.

For payment networks total penetration is crucial, for open markets, social platforms, productive software, for search engines. Again, a Rolex can survive as a timeless jewel in your wrist since it does not need interaction with the rest of the world, but good luck competing with Whatsapp, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Paypal, even Uber or MS Office if only 10% of your userbase can afford your exclusive products.

That's why I propose they create a sister business in charge of expanding their market penetration with cheaper products or face extinction by isolation. Apple for the elites, Orange for the plebes, both using their platform which in turn will allow them to capture a greater market share for their future technologies.

I can't do Facetime with my mother or brother because they don't have Apple products. We could if they had an Orange product for $99 running OSX or iOS.

<comment><USER25> You just explained exactly why FaceTime will lose to snapchat/Facebook/WebRTC/etc in the long run. Facebook profits from every platform. Apple profits from there being a hierarchy of incompatible platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> These are the kind of "ideas" that get people to waste a lot of time and VC money, so I invite the author to either put his money where his mouth is or accept the existing solutions in spite of his minor look-and-feel/nostalgia gripes.

I'm sure even in 2012 some of his "$50 ideas" (or no, he said he'd spend $1000 potentially!) could be solved _with the existing solutions_ and a little tweaking. I know for a fact gmail has a reduced loading mode that is snappier and lighter weight.

> Is there no configuration of the bits in memory of a present day computer > that is this compiler? If you really think so, you should try to prove it, > because that would be an interesting result.

I'd again invite the author to "try" and recreate a human mind in computer memory - surely "some combination of bits exist" for it, and attempting to do so "would be an interesting result!" etc etc

What this basically reads as is a bunch of "here are some simple things that can be reinvented by oneself, but I'm lazy so someone make new services here so I can come in and comment about how I was just thinking I needed one and that I'll 'check it out' and..." For the time that's passed between this article's writing and now surely he could have just hired a hacker with that "$/month" he'd otherwise spend to set up a configuration that better suits his whim (likely from existing tools, userscript tweaks, settings/labs/etc) and pocket the difference.

<comment><USER41> I believe the authors main gig is precisely "putting his money where his mouth is".

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I would still recommend going after a brand new product category. While it may not sound "ambitious", but more like you're building a toy (say a drone or an AI machine), it's most likely that the next gigantic company is not a new search engine or new operating system.

It's _extremely_ difficult to get into an existing product category such as operating systems, search engines, email, etc.

</comment><comment><USER43> I think there is a clear distinction to make, sure, you should be frighteningly ambitious if you want to have an impact. But the initial idea should not be frighteningly ambitious, in fact it should be the exact opposite, and should be something simple to execute with the minimum amount of capital to be able to test it in the wild.

</comment><comment><USER39> The Next TV.

I firmly believe the next wave of technology will hit our TVs. The final nut has been cracked and that is the remote. Typing on a TV is the worse and voice won't help, so a dual touch/keyboard piece of glass is all needed to make the TV the next entertaining device after the mobile phone. But they need to converge all devices needed right now into one. I don't need a pc, a mobile working as a remote, a tv device and a tv screen in order to enjoy the future. I need ONE TV with a glass remote. That's it. Google and Apple are missing the elephant in the room.

What would Steve Jobs do? A 60" Apple TV with an iPod like remote for $3995 in dark aluminum and a 40" version for $1995 and still sell the attachable box for $150 for those who already have a shitty TV. Allow Safari and all apps without restrictions, even Popcorn Time. Can't fight what the consumers want.

<comment><USER24> I really don't think consumers want this. We're moving away from our TVs, not towards them. I think that's why Apple never released this product and probably never will.

<comment><USER25> Plus AR turns TVs into just another app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Out of curiosity, how viable is a search engine for hackers (in terms of a business model)? What are some "weaknesses" of Google that this search engine might take advantage of? One thing I noticed is the amount of "low-quality" pages that appear on the page#1 for popular keywords.

<comment><USER45> google provides qualitative answers. what would be really neat was a search engine that provides quantitative answers or raw data.

i'd like to be able to search google for "all the pages that contain a particular javascript snippet", for example. obviously, google has that data. obviously, they dont want to make it available.

there are services that offer such things but they suck because their datasets are way too small.

on google specifically: the results pages dont matter anymore. nobody clicks anything but the "#1 results" if they click even that. for questions, google very often responds with something like a quora question or some widget of its own, or something else that is really useful - and if its not useful, you try another query instead of clicking through the results pages.

results pages are mostly kept for nostalgia it seems.

<comment><USER6> This sounds a lot like Wolfram Alpha, although google does now provide some quantitative results. It works as a calculator and as a units translator for example.

that's a good point about only the first few results mattering.

<comment><USER45> this does not sound like wolframalpha at all.

wolframalpha is computer algebra software turned into a web service which allows for searching some papers, pre-written articles and a bunch of interesting, curated numbers.

wolframalpha provides qualitative answers to "questions about math".

answering the physics problem "whats the speed of light" with "er its fast" is qualitative. saying its 2.99+/\- epsilon _10^6 km /s is a quantitative result based on data gathered from some experiment.

answering the search engine problem "whats the speed of light" with "2.99+/\- epsilon _10^6 km/s" is not a quantitative result. in a search engine contexts, thats just the most likely correct result . qualitative. just a guess. some computer looked at a bunch of data and decided that one of them was probably right based on some popularity heuristic. its like asking an expert who makes an educated guess and claims its right because seniority.

a quantitative search engine would be capable of answering questions like "how many sites do X".

wolframalpha doesnt do that. its just maple in a browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Graham predicted Slack (email replacement) would be big before Slack existed (launched Aug 2013 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slack_(software)#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slack_\(software\)#History))

<comment><USER47> Perhaps retroactively that conclusion can be made based on Slack's marketing material, but Slack hasn't replaced email for most people. Definitely not for me.

After our acquisition, we transitioned from small startup where it was super useful to a large enterprise (5500 employees) and I've found that Slack is pretty difficult to scale here beyond engineering/product management.

Slack is strong with helping small scrum teams collaborate, or fielding employee questions in town hall meetings. But, then there's #channel overload which compounds the distraction problem and feels just as bad as email with hundreds of unread messages. And, we have a lot of teams in completely different time zones (India), so the synchronous stream of communication doesn't work as well because it's difficult to track conversations. It's also not inclusive by nature; I have to invite external people to participate, which is a security concern at my company, so it's disabled and used for internal purposes only.

All that said, I love Slack but it is what it is. Asynchronous email is still very valuable to me, much more than Slack.

<comment><USER48> Slack replaced Skype chats mostly for me and it did also reduce email.

It was really important for us, because important decisions were being agreed in the midst of a Skype chat, which was only in your history on one machine and not easily searchable.

We also had Google Hangout chats/conversations which are searchable. However this caused further confusion about having to search via email/Skype/Hangouts to find out what was said. Also the conversation from one Hangout was separated from the other - where as we could replace that with one slack channel from all the Hangouts that we had.

Skype for Business now does something similar in that it also keeps you chat history in Outlook.

However I really like the clean separation of emails vs Slack chats. Slack is completely independent of my email so I'm not dependent on Gmail or Outlook.

For me it means that email becomes reduced but I regard it as a channel that is reserved for more important communication, i.e. I'll email something if I want it to be on record as having been written. All the chat fluff gets dumped in Slack.

<comment><USER49> I am routinely amazed that people find Slack innovative. It's basically a pretty front-end to IRC. And your chat logs were always searchable.. open in a text editor and Ctrl-F. Even the integrations aren't novel, IRC bots have existed for decades.

IRC also has the added benefit of being scalable and free. And everyone has their favorite client already that is more customizable than any Slack client. And you can own your own data/conversations, as an organization. I have never really been comfortable with the notion that Slack can poke around in any channel's history regardless of how secret those conversations are thought to be.

<comment><USER50> A great deal of tech, especially today, is just re-writing things from the past, closing up the protocols, and then putting marketing behind them to make it look like you're inventing something. Slack (IRC) is one. Look at the dozens of instant messaging clients that are just clones of ICQ from the 90's. Social networking sites are pretty much rehashed (albeit giant) BBS systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> How about smaller scale ideas? For example is it worth starting a social network + IM combination? Let's say it's targeted towards a niche audience. How do you evaluate those things? Is the general rule don't take FB, Snap head on?

</comment><comment><USER52> (2012)

I also can't think of any startup in the 5 years since that has really taken off by pursuing one of these ideas. (Unless you stretch the definitions enough to consider Snapchat a replacement for email.)

<comment><USER53> Slack could be described as a replacement for email, but in a behavioral sense. DuckDuckGo was the attempt at a new search engine, but it hasn't reeeally worked. Khan Academy is replacing universities. Even universities are starting to replace themselves by offering many of their courses online, and streaming many of their lectures. Netflix is obviously the winner under 'Internet Drama', and it's clear that a lot has changed in the last 5 years. No idea about the next Steve Jobs. The Moore's Law thing: Heroku, Kubernetes, and many other startups that try to simplify the cloud.

So you're right, not many "startups" in here, with the exception of Slack and DDG. I think it's more common for an existing and mature company to take over these spaces when the time is right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Taking on Google means finding away around the moat they have with their economies of scale due to their size in the market and the mindshare that goes along with it (when the term google became a verb I figured search was a solved problem and Google had won).

Better for someone to find a better way to organize the world's internet data or links or find a way for me to get more out of it. It's one thing to find me the most relevant website but maybe finding a way for me to do more with that will get me to leave Google.

</comment><comment><USER55> What are the most frighteningly ambitious YC startups in recent memory?

<comment><USER56> They weren't YC as far as I know, but Planetary Resources comes to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Don't do what venture capitalists want you to do - do what you want to do.

And if you don't have any ideas then you shouldn't be an entrepreneur because then you're just in it for what, the money? Entrepreneurship is about making something that you MUST get out into the world because you are so driven to do so.

Being an entrepreneur without an idea building what Paul Graham tells you to means you should have a job, not a company.

</comment><comment><USER39> Apple is underplaying Siri and they should morph her into a full fledged TEXT search engine. I rarely use voice to make any search on my laptop but text would be the perfect input mechanism for Siri integrating her with all apps, the web, and the IoT.

</comment><comment><USER58> We tried #6 at ufora: "make a large number of CPUs look to the developer like one very fast CPU." [https://github.com/ufora/ufora](https://github.com/ufora/ufora)

</comment><comment><USER33> Don't reinvent email. Just add tags to indicate TODO fields in the email headers. Then youre building on the preexisting infrastructure. And it can handle the degenerate case where the TODO is to read, since it is email.

<comment><USER59> header tags could also indicate if something was to be interpreted as a certain type, no? "quick message/alert" vs "long form message" vs "automated message" vs "from human", etc. Agents could then determine what to do with it - log it, send other notification, delete it, auto-reply, add to calendar, etc.

I'm no expert, but I'd think some of this is already being done, no? However, there's more value to a few companies to have walled-garden messaging platforms vs 100% open and interoperable, and that's not a problem solved by tags.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _" A New Search Engine"_

I really wish the moat weren't so big on this one. The path Google is taking pretty clearly ends with no merit driven organic search results.

</comment><comment><USER60> I believe we are in the early phase of the adoption curve for #2 replace email- slack, #4 internet drama- netflix, hbo etc, #5 next steve jobs- elon musk.

</comment><comment><USER61> Safe to say that almost all wildly successful, frighteningly ambitious startups now and going forward will be enabled by machine learning/AI.

</comment><comment><USER62> I would think that any regular reader of HN would think this list is tame and unimaginative.

But I'll agree that investing in computational power is worthwhile. I say that because of all of this year's news in quantum computing, and because the amount of energy required to represent and flip a single bit should be infinitesimal. So I don't think that it's been shown in principle that achieving higher speeds requires higher (at runtime anyway).

Honestly, it should be NATO initiative. It would be worth a lot more than landing on the moon.

</comment><comment><USER63> Ok, (3), (6), and (7) are _actually_ reasonably ambitious. The rest seem like making a business out of small conveniences.

</comment><comment><USER64> I also feel that Google search results have become spammy lately. For technical topics, or opinions on a social topic, HN's search box can yield some gold mines.

What struck me the most from the essay is the section regarding universities. I don't think universities should be replaced. I think that they should _go back_ to what they originally were, centuries ago, but enhanced by technology, better understanding of the learning process and sensitivity to each learner's personal development.

That means students who are there because they want to learn, not just as a career stepping stone or for rites of passage, and who are free to follow their interests flexibly.

Tutors who are passionate about their subjects, and want to share and who care about the flock they've taken in.

A better peer-learning system; to openly share ideas, adjust and enrich own thoughts and build projects together.

A dynamic curriculum; solid trees of knowledge that are open to wide-ranging thoughts and student needs and whims.

Taking advantage of current technologies, blending them in the curriculum for a better learning experience.

Greater sensitivity to each student's circumstances, who may change their mind to pursue another interest, who may decide to take a break from learning, who may be suffering from crises, ranging from personal to existential.

...

Universities are supposed to be where you can learn freely, and possibly for the undergraduate, to prepare him/her for the real world.

Yet your university experience is measured by what grade you graduate with. No doubt students need assessments - but it should be feedback for further development. Why can't we see the university as an incubator of personal development, where learning is a naturally iterative process?

But it seems that in the "real world", all this seems to be wishful thinking. Universities _have_ to make money! It's not just for commercial reasons, but research needs funding, whole populations need educating (and get jobs.) And recruiters are not that interested in personal journeys, because that's not what companies want - they want newly minted cogs to add to their great machines.

So yes, it is frightening to think about it - it's very messy! In my view, the core issue with universities is that they are not adapting fast enough, and has become too bloated and possibly too commercialised that they have lost perspective of their original mission. So rather than build an entirely new system to replace universities, wouldn't it be more feasible for existing universities to be bolder and make the changes themselves?

The other approach is to provide an alternative learning experience to universities (rather than replacing them.) This is an idea that has been knocking around in my head for a while: how about a public learning centre using _MOOCs_ as the main resource? This will democratise MOOCs even more; you will have richer peer support, greater motivation to complete the course, and local subject matter experts can volunteer as 'mentors' to support the group though with no actual obligation to pass anyone.

 _Libraries._ Libraries can do this.

</comment><comment><USER65> Why is he comparing YCombinator to a university? I don't get it

</comment><comment><USER66> I'm surprised health care isn't on the list.

</comment><comment><USER67> The days of true innovation are passed.

<comment><USER68> I agree, seems like the weeks, months and years are just beginning.

<comment><USER67> What innovation is happening now? Everything is hype with little to show.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I very much like nearly all of Paul Graham's thinking. For his essay this time, I don't like his thinking.

I believe that his essay here, and nearly all VCs and media pundits, make the same, horrible mistake about planning successful startups:

(1) We have to realize that successful startups are exceptional, one in a million or so. So, for the planning, we are likely planning something exceptional.

(2) A successful startup is usually one of a kind, unique, quite different from the past. E.g., HP, Seagate, Intel, Microsoft, QUALCOMM, Apple, Cisco, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Applied Materials, Amazon, etc.

So, from (1) and (2), in planning a successful startup, we are looking for something both exceptional and new. So, for our plan, we will have to dig enough to be exceptional (the common, ordinary need not apply) and also new (no sense in looking at and trying to build incrementally on the closely related past).

E.g., for the A-bomb, don't go to a bunch of experts in WWI field artillery. Instead, need something both exceptional and new.

E.g., many VCs claim to have "deep domain knowledge", but that has to mean that they spent a lot of time looking at poor business plans and what is in the market now -- not both exceptional and new.

So, (1)-(2) is the horrible mistake.

But, wait, there's more:

(3) Given a candidate startup plan, how to heck to evaluate it accurately? All concerned very much need to know.

Well, good planning of projects both exceptional and new really is possible: Examples include Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Channel Tunnel, Ike's Overlord (invasion of Normandy), the Manhattan Project, turbojet engines, the H-bomb, the US SSBNs, the Boeing B-52 and 707, the engines for the SR-71, the SR-71 in total, GPS, Intel's step to 14 nm, Microsoft's Windows NT, RSA public key encryption, and much more.

So, it is possible to evaluate projects; a project that passes a good evaluation becomes low risk, indeed, for both the technical risk and the market and economic risk.

Then, on (3) PG's essay and VC work in general is short on how to evaluate projects.

My startup is one of the ones on PG's list. I don't regard the project as risky.

Okay, let's see how this goes: The project is a new Web site. The site is totally safe for work and squeaky clean and respectable. The site has only two main Web pages, and both are just dirt simple, so simple they will work fine on essentially any device with a Web browser up to date as of about 10 years ago -- mobile to high end workstation. The project is to solve a pressing problem so far solved at best poorly and shared by essentially every Internet user in the world, especially in the more advanced countries. The project seems to deserve on average at least 30 minutes of eyeball time a week for each of its users -- that's a lot of eyeball hours per year. The site is ad supported with some quite good, new opportunities for good ad targeting.

So, sure, from the above, do some simple, back of the envelope estimation arithmetic and come up with the most valuable company in the world so far -- sure, > $1 T.

Now do we need to look at this "obliquely"? Not really. Once explained, it's all plenty clear and obvious.

Do we need to start on just a small part of the whole problem? Not really.

Does such a big goal have to be a big project? Not really -- I'm a solo founder.

Is the project risky? Now, not really; for me, never was.

Is the project difficult to evaluate? Not really -- I had to evaluate the project and would not have proceeded unless I saw a solid project. But so far I'm the only person who has done any even a little serious evaluation of the project.

Is the project a huge amount of work? Nope, not really. To date it's 24,000 Visual Basic .NET Framework 4.0 programming language statements in 100,000 lines of typing I entered into my favorite text editor KEdit on Windows XP SP3. Nope, didn't use an _integrated development environment_ \-- for me learning to use one of those was harder than just typing in the code!

As of now, all the code is as I originally designed it and appears to run correctly. Debugging was no problem. The code is surprisingly fast and efficient (at one point, converting to a solid state disk drive would make the code fast beyond belief). The code is nicely documented. No _refactoring_ needed. The code is fine.

I want to do some more testing, tweak a few places, add some data, and then go live. The code as it is is ready for fairly serious production, and the architecture is easily scalable to serve the world.

So, how can my project be so exceptional? And new? Well, it's new because I thought of it, and on first glance nearly no one would believe that the problem could have a good solution. Well, without some good original research in applied math (the users will never be aware of) with some advanced prerequisites, there is no good solution. So, without looking into the math, and nearly no one in business can, there is no way to believe in the project; so, I'm the only person who does believe in the project.

Nothing "frightening" about it!

So, my view is that the essay is poor on (1)-(3) and, with that poor foundation, makes lots of mistakes, e.g., that big results need a big project.

<comment><USER70> What's your startup?

<comment><USER69> I was just trying to comment on PG's essay and say that there needed to be improvement on (1)-(3).

For an example, I used some of the attributes of my startup.

For my startup, I intend to announce a beta test here at HN.

For any equity investors, I totally gave up: They make the mistakes (1)-(3) which means that they don't like my project and I don't want to report to a BoD with them on it -- on my BoD, after my first presentation of the ad targeting part of the project, they'd all upchuck, soil their clothes, furniture, and carpet on their way, screaming in agony and outrage and terrified of their fiduciary whatever, to the restrooms. After they recovered they'd meet at the closest bar and vote to disband my company. Why? My presentation would have some math in it, math they didn't understand, and listening to math one does not understand for more than five minutes at a time is worse than a root canal procedure. In all their careers they've never seen any role for math. E.g., for ad targeting, they'd be thinking in terms of demographics, gen X, Chablis and Brie set, McMansion set, etc., and none of that would be in my targeting math.

The equity investors didn't want me when I started writing the code; now I don't want them; and as soon as my project gets any reasonable revenue forever I won't want them, their check, their BoD, or anything else. My project is to be exceptional; equity investors are not exceptional.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> It's (still) a good essay, but should probably have a (2012) in the title.

<comment><USER68> There certainly is a ripeness factor when it comes to idea suitability and this can be a major or minor influence depending on the situation.

Sometimes ambition is great enough even when finances are inadequate, where just moving a little bit in the ultimate direction (like shipping hardware) is materially out of reach for such an extended period, startup and growth potential can never be realized without the most exceptional source of funds to provide leverage.

This pushes the time horizon further out as it would naturally take much longer to connect with such an elusive benefactor on terms that can truly maximize the performance of the combined resources.

So it seems like a good idea to have ideas that can stand the test of time, the more ambitious you are.

Great advice from pg about tactically limiting the depth to which your full ambition is displayed day-to-day so that rather than pie-in-the-sky being constantly pursued, stakeholder interactions can be punctuated by achievable milestones they can visualize being reached.

In a capitalist arrangement it can come back to the visionary exceptionalness of the capitalist as the limiting factor as to when or if you can bring your full potential squarely within sight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I think there may be room to replace the telephone. Most of my phone calls are junk. Amazon may be on the way to doing this with Echo calling.

Make a new spam free telephone system on the ip network

</comment><comment><USER73> You know what's frighteningly ambitious? Replacing ALL apps and websites by a single one. That's right, my plan is to build one system that will make all the others obsolete.

I've been expecting and actively looking for this for more than a decade. I have never found anyone discussing this idea, even less attempt to implement it. People really can't imagine what the post-app world will look like. Even people here on Hacker News. I don't expect most VCs to appreciate it either. I'm on my own, and I hope people will realize how important this is when they'll see it.

The key to understand this is to realize that it's not just about building another app. It's not just about building another OS. It's not just about building another programming language. We need to completely rethink the way we think and communicate. We need to invent a new communication paradigm, a new medium for thinking.

The goal should be to eliminate the gap between the thought of something and the existence of something. I should be able to think about X, and X should then exist. That's the gist of it.

Obviously, it's unreasonable to expect that gap to disappear within the next 10 years. However, I believe that 10 years is enough to reduce that gap by more than it was reduced in the past 1000 years.

Google asked themselves what email would look like if it was invented in 2009. I'm asking what language would look like if it was invented today. Who else attempted anything like this in recent history?

Now back to something more concrete you can all relate to. How many apps do you have on your phone? How many online accounts have you created in your life? How many different messaging apps are you using? Most people are very adaptable, and don't realize that the answer is "too many". We've seen many attempts to improve this situation, with things like the semantic web, OAuth, WeChat, personal assistants, ethereum, Vurb, bots, Google Lens, etc. That's not sufficient. We need something much more ambitious. We need real disruption.

I intend to make 50% of existing jobs obsolete within the next 10 years. I'll need some help. Who's in?

<comment><USER74> >How many apps do you have on your phone? How many online accounts have you created in your life? How many different messaging apps are you using?

"Single point of failure," "Separation of concerns," and "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" are the phrases that come to mind. Risk mitigation is a concern for many of us, and what you describe sounds Orwellian to me.

Have you checked out Urbit? I believe it's a decentralized/federalized system instead of the centralized on you describe.

But, I'd be interested in seeing your prototype of The Borg :)

<comment><USER73> What I'm describing is a completely decentralized system with no single point of failure.</comment></comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg's personal challenge for 2017 is to visit every US state - <AUTHOR> https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10103385178272401&id=4 <comment><USER2> Serious question: _why is this noteworthy?_

</comment><comment><USER3> Non mobile link: [https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103385178272401?pnref=...](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103385178272401?pnref=story)

</comment><comment><USER4> Let me guess. Preparation for Zuckerberg2020.com ?

</comment><comment><USER5> Other discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13313459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13313459)

</comment><comment><USER6> Mind changing this to the non-mobile site link?</comment>


Why I'm Learning Perl 6 - <AUTHOR> http://www.evanmiller.org/why-im-learning-perl-6.html <comment><USER2> Perl 6 has been an absolute joy to program in.

The built-in command line parsing makes whipping up little CLI tools a breeze: [http://perl6maven.com/parsing-command-line-arguments- perl6](http://perl6maven.com/parsing-command-line-arguments-perl6)</comment>


I'm an Impostor - <AUTHOR> https://davidwalsh.name/impostor-syndrome <comment><USER3> I used to feel this way for years, even till very recently. After I resigned from my company in 2012 after a fallout with my partners, the highest trafficked job search website in Nigeria - Jobberman - reached out to me to take up the recently open position of CTO. The expectations brought on an overwhelming feeling of being an impostor. There were a number of things I was doing for the first time, and a number of situations I had never been in prior. For instance:

\- I had built numerous medium traffic web applications in the past but had never done MySQL replication.

\- I had not had the privilege of managing an application that averaged 4000 visitors at any given time.

\- As much as I had a good working knowledge of administering servers, I wouldn't say I had up to a 100 hours in total of administering Linux machines. I had been a Windows server guy for years, but had a couple of personal apps running on Linux VMs

\- I had never done application performance monitoring

I could go on and on, but these thoughts exaggerated the negatives so much in my head that as much as I knew I had work to do, and knew how to teach myself to do it, I knew I didn't deserve the role. In the end, I did my best and transformed the company's infrastructure but never did get to shake off the feeling.

I can go on and on about why I did feel that way but I guess like the blog post says, we can think always of more ways to cut ourselves down, than otherwise.

Being more active on IRC has helped dispel this feeling over time. Self realization when discussing with people you believe should know more than you do also helps - less than two weeks ago, some developer friend of mine was excitedly telling me how they recently learned of the format of IPv4 addresses, something I probably knew before I turned 12. Blogging more often is something I intend to get back to as well. I used to be pretty active 7 - <USER2> years ago until I got "too busy".

I should add that this is my first lengthy comment on HN, as I never did feel I was good enough to comment on this forum. :)</comment>


Show HN: Neural network trained to generate GitHub repository names - <AUTHOR> http://colinmorris.github.io/rbm/repos/ <comment><USER2> Found a great name for my next project on the first try. Plugin-plugin is really going to take off.

<comment><USER3> I'm partial to "hello-bark" myself.

It looks like jashkenas is getting into the soft-serve business with "backbone.dq".

<comment><USER4> My favourite is SystemShart. I think I might add that to my Exception hierarchy.

[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shart](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shart)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really like your Hidden Unit Zoo here [http://colinmorris.github.io/rbm/zoo/](http://colinmorris.github.io/rbm/zoo/) as a window into what this thing is actually "thinking" about. The "top matches" for a given hidden unit are pretty helpful.

</comment><comment><USER6> The post behind it has the show-stealing line, and it was written by the author.

> Practical Applications

> _None whatsoever._

Excellent write-up, and great visualizations of the hidden layers!

</comment><comment><USER7> > github-les

Relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/624/](https://xkcd.com/624/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I love how close some of these are to plausible.

"HelloWaurd", "ruby-franwork", "Contect-Server", "php-squere", "griend" (friend + grind?).

Also: "libdog". A library, for dogs. Does exactly what it says on the tin.

<comment><USER9> Your examples just look like spelling errors ("contact", "framework", "Word", "square".) I got a lot of ones that looked indistinguishable from real repos, at least on first glance. E.g., "WebDashApp", "PlayFrameProject", "check-bat", "language-1", "data-cores", etc. As a random sample of just the first 5 I got.

I wonder what libdog would do. Is it meant to be used by dogs, or used by humans to interface with dogs. Or perhaps an accessibility library to make regular apps usable by dogs.

<comment><USER10> What's libdog?

I don't know man, what's libdog with you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Someone should build something like this, based off startup domain names, cross-checked with availability.

</comment><comment><USER12> I love this, the blog post is a great write-up. Not a trivial algorithm to implement (although a theoretically interesting one), kudos!

<comment><USER8> The board game names example in the blog post is hilarious, as an example of what happens when you have much less training data :)

Also, the map of the imaginary Township of La Lala in the header is brilliant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just got 'facebook-backend' lol

</comment><comment><USER14> Pretty nifty! Less than a minute's worth of click reload yielded some pretty good ones.

<comment><USER15> My favorite one that it generated was "phatss". Google it and it seems to yield porno...

<comment><USER8> "shartraster".

My inner 12 year old is giggling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "check_crap" Fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER17> flappyster - a combo of flappy bird and friendster, I think it could work.

</comment><comment><USER18> It might be a fun idea to get names from this and make projects around them.

I got bookwark.js, I wonder what that is meant to do.

<comment><USER19> I got spackshacking...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I got _Greenero_ which is a fantastic name for a money related app. This is really fun.

</comment><comment><USER21> The blog post is really excellent.

</comment><comment><USER22> Docker-iOS, great :) that'd be super useful running containers on my phone

</comment><comment><USER23> I wish this was restricted to just the 3.9 million repos of the JavaScript build systems and task runners. The remainder of the repos just tainted the training set.

</comment><comment><USER24> I can only assume that "Scalp_game" is either a new PC title that involves phrenology, or a means by which shampoo companies can alter product ratings.

</comment><comment><USER25> blooder.js there's a Peter Thiel joke here somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER26> Try the actor generator. I got samuel m. lee, heh

</comment><comment><USER27> I was thinking about the exact same app. Nice. Is each generation guaranteed to be unique ?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's guaranteed to not exist in the training set (i.e. to not be a real GitHub repo that existed before 2015). But the model can certainly repeat itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> One thing that I find amazing about this job is how it retarget the purpose of a neural network. This is not a classifier, this is not a here-are-a-bunch-of- fuzzy-images-tell-me-what-character-it-is.

This using knowledge, combines the fundamentals to create something new and plausible. A thin shadow of imagination?

<comment><USER9> It's not a new idea. Since char-rnn came out, people have been using it to generate music, generate fake linux code, write Shakespeare, make chatbots, etc. And before that people were using markov models to do the same things. There have been a lot of markov generators including a fake headline generator, and a subreddit populated entirely by markov chain bots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> it will be great if you can add some optional features to the interface, like the programming language(python, ruby, java, etc.), the category of the repo (game, development, database, etc), etc

</comment><comment><USER30> This is cool. A few funny ones I found:

ExampleTester

Commanater

java-cruft

Generatter

the-git

</comment><comment><USER31> javalovize-2.4 will, maybe, force you to love java?

</comment><comment><USER32> "open-hate", how lovely.

</comment><comment><USER33> projectool

=)</comment>


If You Can Copyright an API, What Else Can You Copyright? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/05/api-copyright/ <comment><USER2> If I had to explain the issue at stake here, I'd do it this way.

Imagine you go into a fast-food restaurant. "I'd like a burger," you say to the cashier. You get a burger. The next day, you go to a different restaurant. "I'd like a taco," you say. They bring you a taco.

Just then, a lawyer bursts in. "I'm sorry, but my client, the burger restaurant, has a copyright on that. No other restaurant is allowed to accept orders in the form of 'I'd like a(n) X'".

Would that be crazy?

APIs are the computer equivalent. If you go to a blog and request a page like 'someblog.com/posts', then you go to a movie theater's site and request a page like 'moviesite.com/movies', you wouldn't think of those two actions as having anything in common. Sure, both sites use a url like '/items' to serve up that kind of item. Why wouldn't they?

But if the courts rule that APIs can be copyrighted, the movie site might either have to license the right to have URLs like '/movies', or do something else.

What else? Whatever they can think of - and think of it first. Because the race will be on to copyright every imaginable scheme. '/show/me/movies' and '/movies=all' and '/3932939' will soon be taken. Even if they can come up with a new convention, they'll likely be in court for the right to use it.

Does that sound good for consumers - ostensibly the ones whom intellectual property laws should benefit? Does it sound good for new businesses who don't have legal departments?

Or would it be crazy?

<comment><USER3> Except that isn't a good analogy. It's much more like copyrighting the Burger King menu, which is the interface to ordering services from Burger King.

By the way, you can copyright restaurant menus.

<comment><USER4> Entirely wrong analogy. The order counter is the interface, and the menu is the documentation.

<comment><USER3> Sure.

Is the source code the software or the compiled binary? What is copyrightable? One or both?

Is an API the source code, the compiled binary, or the running process of the software? What is copyrightable?

Computer software is considered copyrightable. Source code and binaries are both copyrightable.

Even if you didn't copy the source code, if your software is "substantially similar" to another copyrighted software, you could violate their copyrights. The argument is whether or not an API is a substantial part of some computer software.

In this case, it's the Java libraries. Since the Java libraries only value is the Java APIs, I believe it would be hard to argue that copying the Java APIs did not violate Sun's (and now Oracle's) copyright.

That's why I think that it's very frightening that Google has to rely on this argument to defend itself rather than, say, the statue of limitations on copyright or, better, an explicit license grant from Sun.

<comment><USER5> > _Is the source code the software or the compiled binary? What is > copyrightable? One or both?_

The source code is the creative work, and the compiled binary is a mechanical transformation of the work, and thus both are covered by the same copyright. I don't see how this is mysterious.

> _Is an API the source code, the compiled binary, or the running process of > the software?_

It is none of those. The I in API stands for _interface_ — that is, it's an abstract description of the things a library provides and how you interact with them. The source code, the compiled binary and the running process are concrete implementations, not abstract interfaces.

> _Since the Java libraries only value is the Java APIs_

What on earth? Are you really saying the only value of the Java standard library is the names and type signatures of the packages and methods, and not the actual functionality they provide? The library could actually not implement any of the methods and it would be just as valuable?

I have to assume you are just very confused about what the word "API" means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What about hardware registers such as the layout for memory-mapped I/O? You know, "write value X to byte offset Y to switch the device into state Z."

If that's copyrightable, the Linux kernel is basically one big copyright violation, because I'm sure a lot of the device driver writers weren't given a license...

<comment><USER3> No, because that is an idea and not a specific, fundamental expression of an idea. Only a specific software is copyrightable.

Is the portion of software that "write[s] value X to byte offset Y to switch the device into state Z," copyrightable?

Well, it would depend on how unique the source code was, such as pushing a VGA card into Mode-X or making an Arduino do something spectacular. But only that specific source code would be copyrightable.

Given the fundamental nature of the idea, the copyright likely won't stop you from writing another piece of software along similar lines, though someone may patent the idea of controlling an Arduino to steer a hovercraft and prevent you from going to market.

[edit: spelling of Mode-X]

<comment><USER7> A register interface (the VGA registers, let's say) is not a "specific, fundamental expression on an idea"? Say what? The register interface is (quite literally!) a physical machine that implements the idea. It's much more concrete than any piece of software ever could be.

I re-read that post several times to be sure. I honestly think you're managed to get your head into a space where you're confusing up with down. This is just plain wrong, and shockingly so.

<comment><USER3> The register interface of a VGA card was copyright IBM 1989, but that wasn't the question.

The question was whether the fundamental operation of a von Neumann machine was copyrightable. No, it isn't. That's just an idea, not a specific expression.

An example I grew up with was convincing a VGA adapter to go into 320x240 mode. That was a rather clever hack. The original source code to do it was copyrightable. He published it in Dr. Dobb's journal in 1991 and then later in his own book.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_X>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1\. Phone numbers that spell words

2\. Order Forms

3\. Login Screens

4\. Diner order slang

5\. Hand signals used on the stock exchange floor

<comment><USER3> To assuage your fears or maybe exacerbate them:

2, 3 are already copyrightable. (Rightly so.)

4, 5 are not copyrightable because they aren't fixed expressions in a tangible medium. 1 isn't copyrightable because a phone number is a fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I assumed we were talking about Java library APIs (like Hash, List, etc). Is this over REST style HTTP calls instead?

<comment><USER10> The legal debate is over Java APIs. The broader debate is over all APIs, since the ruling would be very unlikely to specify one single language. If Java APIs are copyrightable, all APIs are copyrightable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My vote goes to browser vendor prefixes (eg: -webkit-make-awesome-coffee)

</comment><comment><USER12> 1\. Music, etc (anything that can be formally described by a markup language)

2\. DNA sequences

3\. Anything subject to algebraic expression

4\. Proofs and Arguments (_Paley's_ Divinewatcher, _Descarte's_ Mind-Body Problem, _Nozick's_ Experience Machine, _Gödel's_ Incompleteness Proof)

5\. Programmatic Techniques for manipulating one's own brain

6\. Expression of physical laws

7\. E=MC^2, Gravity, etc. (assuming God is a "Programmer of Nature")

8\. Personality types (fitting analytic descriptions; Analytic/Description Psychology, Jungian psychology, "narrative psychology"), because eventually:

9\. Neural Networks, and the like

10\. The Universe itself

(11. Historically rooted chess strategies (the notation as a historical marker of creativity in time))

(12. Just about anything that might exist within the domain of W3C Provenance)

((13. Anything conceptually dependent on _techne_))

<comment><USER12> It's not clear to me why you're downvoting, each of these components bypasses the "do not contain innovative technology that should be protected from competitors" feature.

You're being unfair with these downvotes, and perhaps a bit uncouth since no general idea, or specific idea, as to why it's being downvoted is presented. Each of these is innovative in some way, and we can see a predictable trend where we will first assume that the problem is unique (whatever the API, etc tries to solve) and then "give due diligence" to creativity/labor where necessary.

If you're taking this post as a "troll" attempt or a "joke," the joke's on you. This is what I truly believe, and I'm fairly, genuinely answering the question.

You're downvoting because of the content of my thought.

Cheers.

<comment><USER3> Look up U.S. Copyright law and the case history on each of the suggestions you made. It looks like you may be surprised.

I am tempted to go through them all myself, but it is less fun and may make you feel better about the state of copyright if you do the research yourself.

Two for free: music is already copyrightable; DNA is not copyrightable.

<comment><USER12> DNA is still an open debate. Are you telling me a fact of law? Are we interpreting this question in the same way?

I'm talking about music as a expressed through a markup language. So I'm thinking the "concept" of a concept album can be copyrighted IF APIs are copyrightable. What kind of metadata would it possess? Does the author of the music have the ability to extend that metadata?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> excuse-me IIRC The last version of Sun's 'ls' command used every upper and lower case character as an option flag.

Oracle now owns Sun and so has copyright on every upper and lower case letter ( at least when used as an option flag)

<comment><USER3> That's not correct. Consider this comparable example following your logic:

The Oxford English Dictionary has a copyright on the dictionary of every English word, and therefore Oxford Press has a copyright on every English expression.

<comment> excuse-me Wait till they get a US lawyer !</comment></comment></comment>


Greenland is melting - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/24/greenland-is-melting <comment><USER2> Not really, no. [http://beta.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice- shee...](http://beta.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet- surface-mass-budget/)

<comment><USER3> "Is melting," not "has melted." Did you misread the headline and then accidentally skip the article?

<comment><USER4> I did skip the article considering it's New Yorker article (i.e. very long). The title is however "Greenland is melting", and the link provided by the gp shows that year to date (from 1-Sep to today), Greenland has acquired more surface ice mass than 2 standard deviations above the mean historical rate (over the last 24 years). So, no, Greenland is not melting.

<comment><USER5> From the same link:

> As mentioned, satellites measuring the ice sheet mass have observed a loss > of around 200 Gt/year over the last decade.

Looking at the data for one year is not very useful. This is a long term process, as the long article you didn't read went to great pains to explain.

<comment><USER4> Fair enough. It would also be useful to know that 200 GT/year translates into 0.01% per year. Or 1% per century. It's indeed a long term process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could you protect the ice with giant drone-dragon-sunsails?

</comment><comment><USER7> (2016)</comment>


Installing Hubot on Heroku - <AUTHOR> http://visuallounge.techsmith.com/2011/11/dev_corner_-_installing_hubot.html

<comment><USER2> Note: hubot is super-awesome fun, but will _destroy_ your campfire chatroom. Once hubot gets in there, it will be full of random images and stupid crap. Makes it a lot more fun and a lot less useful at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't want to be a hater, but how is this a blogpost(and on the front page of HN)? All of this is literally in Hubots readme.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you've never used Heroku or git, the Read Me isn't all that helpful. I tried to fill in some of the blanks that I ran across while getting it up and running.</comment></comment>


NASA publishes unblured photo of French military camp - <AUTHOR> https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/DatabaseImages/ESC/large/ISS060/ISS060-E-36932.JPG <comment><AUTHOR> Photo is from Captieux firearm field, taken by Christina H Koch from ISS.

Source: [https://m.nextinpact.com/brief/une-astronaute-de-la-nasa- pub...](https://m.nextinpact.com/brief/une-astronaute-de-la-nasa-publie-des- photos-d-une-base-militaire-depuis-l-iss-9818.htm)</comment>


Are you a TechStars applicant? Join us for a live chat to see who gets in - <AUTHOR> http://www.chatzy.com/937035240686

<comment><AUTHOR> Notices are out... did you get in?</comment>


How the Poor Can Afford to Live in New York - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-26/how-the-poor-can-afford-to-live-in-new-york

<comment><USER2> As a native New Yorker who grew up not exactly well off I think this is article misses a few things.

It is different to be born and raised here than to move here.

People have large support systems in the form of extended family. This makes everything from child care to meals cheaper. Not so much roommates, but assorted cousins aunts and uncles.

There is a huge underground economy of "under the table " workers. Most of the kids I knew had some sort of after school menial job and were paid in cash. Many of the adults I knew growing up never left Brooklyn and worked miscellaneous all cash jobs. I even dated a girl from Brooklyn recently that had never had a bank account or drivers license.

There are a lot of places in New York the author would never even visit, let alone live. Places still ungentrifed or too far from Transportation. That is where the poor live.</comment>


Show HN: GameOfCoins.de – Virtual Cryptocurrency Trading - <AUTHOR> https://gameofcoins.de <comment><USER2> Next step is to rank the participants, start making actual trades based on the top 50%, then ICO a coin promising a share of those profits for $30 million in ETH

<comment><USER3> Why not just go straight to the ICO? Most projects seem to do that and they still manage to raise those millions.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello, I created this for fun, although more professional tools are available for virtual trading this one is just focused on cryptocurrencies and for the fun aspect. The cryptocompare's API is used. I am willing to develop this a bit further, currently it's just a day old project.

<comment><USER4> Great idea, now I can see how I would suck about making the right coin choices! How about also showing the buying price to make it more apparent for me? :)

Also, something to keep in mind: There are occasional errors about database being locked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I may implement couple of features this weekend, I agree it'd be much better to see a bit of history!

Changed my database server, should give no errors as of now ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can make much more profit trading here than is actually possible, because buying virtually won't affect the market.

<comment><USER6> Yes it should take into account the trade volume and if you buy a significant amount there should be a penalty fee to emulate this somewhat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm jealous. I've been working on almost the exact same thing for a week now.

Really jealous.

And a bit angry! Haha.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe you tried to include too many features? :) My friends just wanted to give cryptocurrencies a try, and all these charts and orders are too complicated! This is where they can create a portfolio in couple of clicks and check it weeks later if they feel like it!

<comment><USER7> No, my idea is slightly more involved. However I want to use my own data, not other people's, so I spent time setting up a proper DB schema to hold exchange data from various providers. This is not complicated but also not trivial.

<comment><USER8> well, if you find yourself not wanting to work on it because someone else did it already, would you consider putting your schema online?

<comment><USER7> No I'm still working on it. I will definitely consider pushing code to GitHub.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow we are competitors: [https://www.cryptoground.com/](https://www.cryptoground.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yours looks really nice, keep it up ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bought some DOGE, sold it back, and now have $0, at the very bottom of the leaderboard:

[https://gameofcoins.de/leaderboard/710](https://gameofcoins.de/leaderboard/710)

I have company, though. :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Neat project; I'm starting to think that most of these sites, and services that gamify crypto-speculating are training models around user behavior/mimicking trades.

Also, it threw a 500 internal server error after linking Twitter

</comment><comment><USER12> Someone seems to have hacked it already: [https://gameofcoins.de/portfolio/bury](https://gameofcoins.de/portfolio/bury)

Race condition?

</comment><comment><USER13> Fun! It would be nice to see what price we bought the currency at in Trade History, plus what our current profit is per currency.

</comment><comment><USER14> would be nice to track my trade history so i can see when i'm up or down on an particular coin

<comment><AUTHOR> It should now be implemented ;) .. half of it lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can't go short? nobody can make returns on a down day except possibly selling back to USD?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't want to convert this to a full-fledged trading platform with Stop Losses and orders etc. it requires too much effort. but if you want to test that I can recommend you Etoro's virtual mode. But thanks for your comment :)

<comment><USER15> short sells have nothing to do with stop losses and complex order types. but, alright, permabull virtual virtual currency trading.

<comment><USER16> You've virtually described the current state of bitcoin. People buy it and never sell it and never use it.

<comment><USER15> and thats okay. the M1 money supply is a tiny fraction of the currencies people actually respect, so it looks like bitcoin is working at the same standard those are held at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why the .de domain?

Feature request: Let me input exact amounts instead of only via the slider.

</comment><comment><USER18> Where is IOTA? I want to "buy" it. Keep working on it, its really nice!

<comment><AUTHOR> It is interesting that IOTA is missing.. because I already query 1300 coins. Let me check what is wrong :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yesterday I subscribed. Today I get spam. Anyone else?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't even ask for email.. how can I spam? :/ There is no "subscription" on the website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sqlite in production? Seriously? And Python 2.7... Move to 3.x and PostgreSQL at least ;-)

PS. Nice idea

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know Python3 offers better performance to be honest, but Sqlite is a real ordeal for this t2.micro now ;)

(Switched to PostgreSQL in a hot-change fashion!)

<comment><USER21> SQLite can handle a lot more than people think. The SQLite website uses it for production ([https://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html](https://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html))

<comment><USER22> It can handle a _lot_ of reads, but you'll have problems with multiple concurrent writes (at least with Python). I run read-heavy production websites on SQLite just fine, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not sure if this is a nice idea, a nice execution, or nothing at all. There was a HN post not too long ago on "please tell us what you do first thing". Guess you should (re)read that. Any action requires my twitter or a new account. And you call people without Twitter old school?

Jokes on you!

(So:

1\. create a proper landing page

2\. Allow us to check on what this is without sharing our data with you; because we won't without knowing what this is in this era.

3\. Twitter new school? Ha!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha sorry to offend you, I meant to say like Username/Password is kind of old-school in this era where the importance of digital identities are realised and there are many startups around it, Twitter uses an Authorization protocol (OAuth) which makes them "new school". I quite dislike Twitter.

<comment><USER23> You didn't offend, no worries. I understood what you meant. I just included it as a minor, not well understood it seems from the downvotes, joke to take the edge of the comment. My main message was you should update your landing page to explain what it is. That should reduce the bounce rates. Having to sign up without information on what you are signing up for is a big barrier and might (will) scare people away.

P.s. [https://gameofcoins.de/](https://gameofcoins.de/) works but [https://www.gameofcoins.de/](https://www.gameofcoins.de/) linked from your page results in a dns error. I guess your dns records need some tuning.</comment></comment></comment>


Aberdeen University Students Use Video Tech to Recreate 'Earliest Pictish Fort' - <AUTHOR> https://digit.fyi/aberdeen-students-use-video-tech-to-recreate-earliest-pictish-fort/ <comment><AUTHOR> For anyone interested in this, Dunnottar Castle is one of Scotland's oldest and most famous fortifications. It's been besieged by Vikings, seized by William Wallace and during the 16th century held out against Cromwell's forces so that the Scottish Crown jewels could be smuggled away - a legendary place.

The fact that a group of kids in the 18th century threw a load of carved stones into the sea is particularly sad.</comment>


When I Thought I Was Smart - <AUTHOR> http://toyblog.typepad.com/lemon/2008/04/when-i-thought.html

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, a lot of those "let's talk about improving the company" retreats do end up being historic wastes of time -- but not necessarily because the meeting itself happened, but because nothing happened afterward. Or more specifically, the people with the power to make changes based on what they are being told rarely take any followup action. For them, the conversation at the retreat is the action.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great stuff. When a committee's job is to make sure that each individual in the room does what is necessary to keep their employeement with the company, the life is ready to be sucked out of out of the company.

</comment><comment><USER4> "comfort is the last state of mind before death."

Does this mean that being comfortable at a company that it's about to die? Not sure I understood this one, explain please!

<comment><USER5> As long as you live you always have something to worry about.

      A possible interpretation along the line: "Only the Paranoid Survive" by Andrew S. Grove

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "i still think i'm smart, actually."

Not smart enough to use proper capitalization, it seems...</comment>