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Compost-Fueled Cars: Wouldn't That Be Great? - Onion Talks - Ep. 1
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All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this video.The “only” thing missing, is to get the best engineers, and pay them double what they normally make.Source: https://youtu.be/DkGMY63FF3Q
> If he gets pulses 10,000 times faster, he says he can modify waste on an atomic level.The great thing about articles like this is that it reminds me to go rewatch the the video "Compost-Fueled Cars: Wouldn't That Be Great?"[1], which neatly summarizes so much of the breathless excitement of vague, detail-free scientific and entrepreneurial claims.
"Compost-Fueled Cars: Wouldn't That Be Great? - Onion Talks - Ep. 1", 2012-10-17. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q
⬐ JoeAltmaierOr "Solar Roads" for a real-world example.
Not exactly what you are asking for, but the Onion did a great send up of techno-utopian TED talks here:
⬐ ethbroPoint being that's every TED talk.(1) Outline a problem everyone agrees with, (2) present cool research that works as a prototype, (3) skip over any scaling and manufacturing issues, (4) end with a joke.
Everyone leaves happy. ;)
Half of the problem is solved, we only need the engineers to solve the last little part...:
TED talks have gained a lot of traction too...
> If you can make that cartridge dirt cheap, you will have invented an exciting new technology.Step 1: Have the idea.
Step 2: Implementation.
We're already half way there!
⬐ stephengillieStep 4: Profit!⬐ abhi3188I missed Step 3!⬐ welly???⬐ welly?⬐ matthew349hallThere is no step 3.
They are gonna hire this guy next to research Compost Fueled Cars: https://youtu.be/DkGMY63FF3Q
⬐ spraakActually I remember an article from the local paper here (on Kaua'i) where someone on the island had made just that.. though I think the compost was making biofuel of some sort
"We've already completed step 1. We're half way there." applause
Yeah, exactly. "It just needs implementation. I'm an idea man."
⬐ wellyWellyWellhttp://www.catb.org/jargon/html/S/SMOP.html
I am reminded of:
Have you ever met someone who was a hobbyist or amateur engineer at best, but always has grand ideas about how things should work? But has no idea of the type of investment or execution it would take to pull off. That is what I think of whenever I hear management strategies like these. It is like the management version of the compost fueled cars guy:https://youtu.be/DkGMY63FF3Q?t=10s
Deciding that you only want the best people is easy. Is there really a business out there who decides they want terrible staff? Determining who those people are is extremely difficult. Even if you are successful in identifying the best people, can you keep them? Whenever I find exceptional people, it takes more than 'not firing' them to keep them.
More realistically. Policies like these aren't designed with any idea of identifying or retaining talent. Instead they are usually a means to affect work culture. Like grading on a curve. It makes everyone work harder.
Exactly. Reminds me of this parody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q
Reminds me of this parody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q
> From further reading, her initial idea was just that, an idea. She thought it would be possible to make a handheld device that could do blood tests.Reminds me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q
Why did they spend so much time and money addressing the limited range of electric cars... in Israel. A country smaller than New Jersey.It seems like his initial market had little need for his one differentiating feature.
I can't help but wonder if this Onion Talk was modeled after Better Place after reading the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q
⬐ mcphilipFTA:>Step 3: Think locally and globally--all at once
>[...]
Completely delusional futurist zealotry attempting to solve all problems at once, from what I gather.
⬐ GabrielF00Focusing on the Israeli market made a certain amount of sense. They positioned this as a sort of a patriotic project that would be transformative for a small country and they had the country's top leadership involved from the beginning. They were probably in a much better position to get what they wanted from government and local businesses than they would have been in the US. It's also a lot easier to build enough charging stations to cover any place a customer wants to go if your target country is very small.⬐ jrochkind1Focusing on the Israeli market probably makes a lot of business sense, for the reasons you say. Parent commenter's point is that once you've made that (sensible) choice, there's no need, for that market, to focus on increasing the range between charges, because that market doesn't need increased range, that's not what will help you succeed in that market.
tl;dr. Do not sign the document. Beyond this case, it could also affect your future employability. VCs fund good teams, not ideas, which are cheap. If your partner doesn't realize that, she also has a hard lesson in front of her. Another great HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3844893+++++++
IANAL.* This is mostly based on my personal experience with NDAs, employment docs, and patent applications. NDA may also go by the name of a "confidentiality agreement" or a "proprietary information" document. You should also refuse to a non-compete agreement that says you can't pursue a related business or anything barring you from recruiting someone from this business. She may also ask you to sign a "work for hire" agreement that assigns your work product to her, which would also give away your ownership claim. Obviously, this work-for-hire contract is typically signed when you're getting paid as an employee or contractor.
More to beware: You may also be presented with documents assigning away all "inventions". Be especially wary of this, as you may be signing away your idea and your right to pursue something even vaguely related later. You may also be giving her what she needs to file a patent.
As others have suggested, company uses of NDAs are all over the place. Many companies do require them. Many don't. Strictness is all over the place, as is validity by state. For example, non-competes are almost unenforceable in California. Some companies who ask you to sign such an agreement will offer to compensate for the time you're under a non-compete -- for example, you can't work at a competitor for 2 years, so they pay your salary for 2 years after separation. If you had to sign a document like this to take a job, sometimes this stuff is negotiable, though not often at big companies or at the entry level. You may see "in perpetuity" given as the timeline for some of the things she's asking you to sign. Consider that as well. The "unpaid intern" part may not even be legally valid. There are stringent employment rules governing interns, generally an internship is supposed to benefit the intern more than the mentor and it is generally illegal to just use interns as a cheap/free alternative to paid labor. That said, this often goes enforced.
Again, don't sign anything. It's better to be in an uncomfortable position where you haven't signed than in a position where you have signed and have to hire a lawyer to even get back to where you started. You need to think about future employers. They may ask you to sign general HR documents or NDAs, and one of the things they often ask you to legally acknowledge is that you aren't bound by other documents you've signed. This is why I really hate these things. Lawyers can't read code, and engineers can rarely understand the convoluted nonsense of a document than can come back to bite them later. You don't know who's going to be running the company 10 years later, when you're long gone but the documents you signed are still in force.
As sjg007 suggested, you may consider going to the professor.
Finally, the cliche is that ideas are cheap. (If she doesn't get that, send her this Onion video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q) The reality your partner is going to learn is that even if you signed 100% of the code away, it's not much good to her. She can't maintain it and iterate it to a winning product. Anyone who can is either going to want money, or more likely equity. If the idea is truly a good one, as soon as another good dev sees it, or hears her talk about it (and isn't under NDA) could rewrite it. The source is irrelevant, there will always be clones for good ideas. VCs don't expect a perfect product, but they will fund a team that they think can get to one. Teams without technical founders don't get funded.
(*though I spent considerable personal money to hire a human resources lawyer specializing in NDAs when a former employer presented me with a very lopsided NDA. I considered that a small expense to protect my career.)
If you haven't seen The Onion's[1] Onion Talks and want a good satirical criticism of TED, I highly recommend them:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q
(There are more if you want to find them, I didn't want to pollute commentspace with too many links)
[1] The Onion is a satire newspaper, one of the first newspapers to heavily adopt an online format. They just killed their print edition for good last year.
⬐ kgermino>They just killed their print edition for good last year.Minor nit - only because it's so recent. They just killed their print edition for good last week. Thursday, to be exact. I know they dropped a bunch of cities last year though so maybe you're thinking of that.
⬐ mcintyre1994Ha! This one feels relevant :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o⬐ Houshalter⬐ netherThat was made last year? Wow. That's surprisingly prescient.> [1] The Onion is a satire newspaper, one of the first newspapers to heavily adopt an online format. They just killed their print edition for good last year.The Onion originated online actually. The print edition was mostly an experiment.
⬐ mbrubeck⬐ chaghalibaghaliThe Onion has been in print since 1988, and wasn't online until 1996. Source: The Washington Post [1].[1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11...
Sam Hyde's 2070 Paradigm Shift is also a great parody (delivered at an actual TEDx event) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yFhR1fKWG0⬐ AndrewBissellWe looked at the data. WE LOOKED AT THE DATA.
Hi HN, FuturePrize is a crowdfunding site for incentivized prize competitions – kind of like if you mixed Kickstarter with the X-Prize.This isn’t a minimum viable product (we had a couple of alternate takes on the site that we ended up scrapping), but it’s definitely a more basic version of what we have in mind. It’s still a little rough around the edges, but we would greatly appreciate any feedback HN might have.
We’ve gone ahead and seeded the site with half a dozen prizes of varying degrees of crazy, that we hope illustrate the range of projects you might see on FuturePrize – from absurdly ambitious, literal moonshots like the Icy Moon FuturePrize, to something pretty basic like “A Software Fix for Glowing Pet Eyes in Photos” that just represents an unmet consumer need.
We realize this site could be a bit controversial on HN, where the “Idea vs Execution” debate happens frequently, and usually leans pretty heavily towards “Execution” being everything. That’s mostly true, but it’s our view that ideas can definitely be very important. People seem to know this instinctively when they hang on to them like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, even if deep down they know that they may never get the chance to execute on them. It’s our belief that providing a platform that allows the free exchange and funding of ambitious or novel ideas - where people can get a bit of recognition for their idea, and maybe even choose to keep a very small portion of the funds raised - could be a very beneficial thing.
Also, just to clarify, when we picture our average prize creator, they look more like your average HNer with a folder full of side projects that they don’t have the time or exact skillset to take on, rather than your stereotypical “Idea Guy” - although there could definitely be a lot of diamonds in the rough from them as well.
If the site is successful, there will probably be a lot more “noise” than on Kickstarter or Indiegogo – unfunded prizes, or crazily unrealistic prizes that get a lot of pledges but have very little chance of being won. It’s our view that this is actually a good thing. These prizes would be more like crowdfunded moonshots… stretch goals for humanity. If no one wins, none of the donors are charged – no harm, no foul… but, if someone manages to pull it off, there are tremendous benefits for everyone.
Also, just wanted to post this before anyone else does:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q
;)
If you haven't seen them, make sure to check out The Onion's TED parodies - Onion Talks:http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4NL9i-Fu15hhYGB-d0hmS...
They may be the funniest thing The Onion has ever done.
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Edit: of particular interest to the HN crowd would be their takedown of the "Idea Guy":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q
and the "Social Media Consultant":
I have a great idea then: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q
Peter Molyneux in a nutshell : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3QBut aside from the hate 22cans is doing some impressive stuff