<story><title>Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award</title><url>https://amturing.acm.org/?2023</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>passwordoops</author><text>HN comment of the year winner right here! Makes you wonder how many other laws are built on nothing.&lt;p&gt;If there&amp;#x27;s one thing I leaned doing a Ph.D. is if you dig deep enough, you find many foundational laws of nature rely on some necessary assumption that, if proven incorrect, would topple the whole thing</text></item><item><author>caseysoftware</author><text>Bob has been an active member of the Austin startup community for 10+ years and I&amp;#x27;ve talked with him many times. As a EE, it was cool meeting him the first time and once I&amp;#x27;d chatted with him a few times, I finally asked the question I&amp;#x27;d been dying to ask: How&amp;#x27;d you come up with &amp;quot;Metcalfe&amp;#x27;s Law&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;Metcalfe&amp;#x27;s Law states the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of devices of the system.&lt;p&gt;When I finally asked him, he looked at me and said &amp;quot;I made it up.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Me: .. what?&lt;p&gt;Him: I was selling network cards and I wanted people to buy more.&lt;p&gt;Me: .. what?&lt;p&gt;Him: If I could convince someone to buy 4 instead of 2, that was great. So I told them buying more made each of them more valuable.&lt;p&gt;It was mind blowing because so many other things were built on that &amp;quot;law&amp;quot; that began as a sales pitch. Lots of people have proven out &amp;quot;more nodes are more valuable&amp;quot; but that&amp;#x27;s where it started.&lt;p&gt;He also tells a story about declining a job with Steve Jobs to start 3Com and Steve later coming to his wedding. He also shared a scan of his original pitch deck for 3Com which was a set of transparencies because Powerpoint hadn&amp;#x27;t been invented yet. I think I kept a copy of it..</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>magic_hamster</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s worth mentioning Moore&amp;#x27;s Law, which was actually a short term prediction, arguably turned into a business goal. The &amp;quot;law&amp;quot; states that the number of transistors in integrated circuits (like CPUs) will be doubled every two years (or 18 months by some variations). It wasn&amp;#x27;t entirely made up, as it was mostly based on advances in manufacturing technology, but it was a prediction made in 1965 that was supposed to hold for ten years. However reality kept up with this prediction for far longer than anticipated until the physical limits of silicon miniaturization became apparent in recent (ish) years, until the mid 00&amp;#x27;s (maybe later?).</text></comment>
<story><title>Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award</title><url>https://amturing.acm.org/?2023</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>passwordoops</author><text>HN comment of the year winner right here! Makes you wonder how many other laws are built on nothing.&lt;p&gt;If there&amp;#x27;s one thing I leaned doing a Ph.D. is if you dig deep enough, you find many foundational laws of nature rely on some necessary assumption that, if proven incorrect, would topple the whole thing</text></item><item><author>caseysoftware</author><text>Bob has been an active member of the Austin startup community for 10+ years and I&amp;#x27;ve talked with him many times. As a EE, it was cool meeting him the first time and once I&amp;#x27;d chatted with him a few times, I finally asked the question I&amp;#x27;d been dying to ask: How&amp;#x27;d you come up with &amp;quot;Metcalfe&amp;#x27;s Law&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;Metcalfe&amp;#x27;s Law states the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of devices of the system.&lt;p&gt;When I finally asked him, he looked at me and said &amp;quot;I made it up.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Me: .. what?&lt;p&gt;Him: I was selling network cards and I wanted people to buy more.&lt;p&gt;Me: .. what?&lt;p&gt;Him: If I could convince someone to buy 4 instead of 2, that was great. So I told them buying more made each of them more valuable.&lt;p&gt;It was mind blowing because so many other things were built on that &amp;quot;law&amp;quot; that began as a sales pitch. Lots of people have proven out &amp;quot;more nodes are more valuable&amp;quot; but that&amp;#x27;s where it started.&lt;p&gt;He also tells a story about declining a job with Steve Jobs to start 3Com and Steve later coming to his wedding. He also shared a scan of his original pitch deck for 3Com which was a set of transparencies because Powerpoint hadn&amp;#x27;t been invented yet. I think I kept a copy of it..</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>toyg</author><text>CS &amp;quot;laws&amp;quot; like Metcalfe&amp;#x27;s are closer to Murphy&amp;#x27;s Law than Newton&amp;#x27;s...</text></comment>