HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

did this idea spark from PG's old talk on new ideas https://youtu.be/R9ITLdmfdLI? One of them is literally "search engine for developers/hackers"

Reminds me of this video of Paul Graham, where he says that startup ideas like a beautiful woman to a nerd, "if you got me, you wouldn't have a clue what to do with me"! [see 3:00 onwards ish in video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI

⬐ CartyBoston

Hah! All nerds are attracted to women. Hah! Nerds don't know how to have sex.

God he is tone deaf.

I always believed paulg was way ahead of his time.

- LISP over C++/Java

- The first ever web app in Viaweb

- The first ever startup accelerator

- Check this talk from 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI; a lot of today's most impressive cos Superhuman, Lambda School, Netflix happen to emerge mysteriously from the talk as is.

⬐ meowface

(PyCon 2012)

>Email was meant to be kept simple, [...] instead of trying to come up with a new email, stop breaking the current one, and keep using it.

The "email was meant to be kept simple" can't be stated in isolation. Many suffering recipients of email see the outside world stuffing their inbox as making "email complicated". They can't control how others misuse email.

Paul Graham explained that email has become overwhelming for him and his peers.[1]

What's your recommendation for their pain points with the current email system?

[1] from 7m29s to 11m50s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI&feature=youtu.be...

⬐ pmlnr

Use CalDAV for tasks sync, keep email for communication?

Again, stop breaking it.

⬐ jasode

>, keep email for communication? Again, stop breaking it.

It's a matter of a different perspective and "breaking it" is in the eye of the beholder.

For many end users of email (and Google Inc's point-of-view apparently), it's the other users sending me emails that's "breaking it" beyond SMTP's original design intentions.

>Use CalDAV for tasks sync,

E.g. it's the other users who send "tasks" and "appointments" inside a freeform email instead of strictly using CalDAV. Their abuses of email has broken the SMTP system. If overloaded email usage by other humans who don't categorize what they send into strict protocols such as CalDAV is a fact of life, the Google response is to add some complexity to the UX/UI to let users conveniently copy paste it into the sidebars for Tasks and Calendar. Google may be wrong (as the blog post argues) but I think it's worth entertaining the idea that the multipurpose usage of email has already "broken email".

For many people, your suggestion of putting 17k of emails into a single namespace alongside other important emails is not acceptable. They want a UX/UI to make a first crude pass at filtering it into a hierarchy. This does have a negative side effect if "hiding" it from some users who don't notice it's there.

⬐ cup-of-tea

It seems like he's talking about a very specific use of email. I can't be the only person who actually writes letters to people using email and not expecting anything to end up on their "todo list".

⬐ jasode

>I can't be the only person who actually writes letters to people using email and not expecting anything to end up on their "todo list".

Many like you definitely exist but your "pure 100% communications only" usage isn't what the Gmail enhancements (that many dislike) were trying to solve.

The blog author, Avi Ashkenazi, wrote:

>From a business perspective I understand that there are more people using Gmail than Calendar, Keep or the new Tasks, but the way Google has attempted to bring people into the fold and have them use add-ons and the rest of their products is just crazy.

There is overlap between the non-communication features that Avi Ashkenazi mentioned and what Paul Graham is talking about. PG recommends creating a new and different protocol. Avi Ashkenazi is saying don't try to shoehorn things like "tasks" into the Gmail UI/UX because it makes it complicated. Google/Alphabet apparently is working from a different philosophical base: many people use Gmail as the central dashboard so let's put everything there.

⬐ heavenlyblue

The issue with this approach is that quite frankly - email by itself should be just like our water supply.

Better water exists, but it's not much better than the usual one. You can use water for many things, but it doesn't matter whose supply you're using.

E-mail must be kept that way: there's nothing to invent in terms of email itself. You can only invent on top of it. It's just like HTTP: HTTP/2 exists, but it doesn't change the idea of HTTP, it only evolves it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI

This was the first time I watched pg give a talk. It was the talk that brought about the biggest change in the way I think about the world, my ambitions. The talk was the beginning, reading more about pg, I came across his essays and then HN.

PG talks about this idea of looking back at the present from the future in this video [1]. Applying this technique to the way power on the internet is distributed, it seems ridiculous to me that Governments have massive surveillance capabilities on its citizens, big corporations exploit customer data at the expense of customers, and that the internet is used as a tool to control political dissidents. So this is something that will eventually change for the better.

As the OP points out, transparency and oversight are the short term solutions. If the present is any indication, implementing these effectively with cooperation from Governments and corporations around the world will likely remain a pipe dream.

The OP also mentions reducing power differences as a long term solution. IMO, one of the best ways to do that would be to educate the masses about the mentioned problems and how it affects everyone involved. Once a sufficiently large population cares enough about the problems at hand, change should not be far away.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI

⬐ None

None

Would have been good for pg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3695076 / https://web.archive.org/web/20120314171633/http://blog.metri... / https://web.archive.org/web/20120312055157/http://www.youtub...

I find these stories helpful on a lot of levels, and they provide great insight into problem solving, technology, and you end up learning a large amount about why things are the way they are when people recount how they got started. E.g Anthony Casalena is young by non-tech standards and I still find it totally foreign that when he started squarespace he bought 2 physical dedicated servers and hooked them up in New York at pier 1 hosting, he needed to own the physical boxes and have 2 for redundancy.

I am not doing a startup but have found these talks particular insightful generally. I am looking for some more Inspirational ones if anyone knows any great founders or leaders with inspirational stories, or particularly good interviews. Here are some I have found particularly good:

[0]Ashton Kutcher, Startup School

=====================

I listed this first because it is most likely to get dismissed. Give it a chance. He starts off shaky and it is really a great Meta look at how people are out of their element, but really come back, win the crowd and provide insight when it is unexpected.

[1]Kevin Rose, Foundation

=================

He has done 43 interviews with very prominent tech leaders for his foundation series. Some of them are Elon Musk, Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey, Ben Horowitz, etc.

[2]Paul Graham, Pycon 08'

==================

This is one of the most interesting things I have seen in a long time. He makes predictions, and talks about technology climate and infrastructure. To reiterate, it is 7 years old but just brilliant in terms of his foresight.

[3]Steve Wozniak, HAAS B-School

=========================

Steve Wozniak is just an amazing person.

[4]Elon Musk, interview by Sal Kahn

=========================

Guy is a great entrepreneur and will likely add a lot of value to the world. Talks about how he got started and future predictions. It is 3 years old, so interesting to re-eval now.

[5]Patrick Collison, Startup School Europe

=========================

The history of stripe.

[8]Jessica Livingston, PG: Y-Combinator

============================

This was done after Sam Altman had taken over as president. They both talk about their roles in founding the company and what the early days were like. At the time, one of the few interviews with Jessica that was publicly available.

===========================

  Instructional Series

===========================

[6]Sam Altman How to Start A Startup

=======================================

One of the best resources explaining how startups work and the important parts of both the product and the business aspects. Interesting class by Adora Chung of the now defunct Homejoy, which is insightful both because she is super smart, and you can retroactively post-mortem the company and apply her own advice to the company.

[7]Stanford/GreyLock CS183C Blitzscaling

===================================

Similar to Altman's how to start a startup. Interviews great founders and provides a more instructional look at how to think about startups, technology and the key components of products and businesses.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxF-mxuv4uI

[1]http://www.foundation.biz

[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI

[3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WBX6SACViI

[4]https://www.khanacademy.org/talks-and-interviews/khan-academ...

[5]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG3ppXsfzqU

[6]http://startupclass.samaltman.com

[7]https://medium.com/notes-essays-cs183c-technology-enabled-bl...

[8]http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2014-10-10/paul-graham-...

Numbering system deviates as new editions added.

⬐ icpmacdo

The CS183C lectures are on Greylock's youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/greylockpartners/videos

⬐ sparkzilla

You may be interested in newslines I made of Paul Graham, Sam Altman and Jessica Livingston. http://newslines.org/paul-graham/ http://newslines.org/jessica-livingston/ http://newslines.org/sam-altman/

Yep. I like his talk at Pycon in 08, where he talks about building a better email client[0] but it is also noted in your link. Thanks, I switched back from mobile and meant to post it.

Incidentally, if anyone has seen his Pycon talk, one of his ideas is "Bring Back the Old More's Law", and if you are curious it is ~2-3 minutes here[1]. I have always been wondering what he means when he says a "sufficiently smart compiler is a byword for impossible" is this an AI reference or a deeper computer science theory that I am missing. Always been really curious.

[0]https://youtu.be/R9ITLdmfdLI?t=7m40s [1]https://youtu.be/R9ITLdmfdLI?t=21m38s

⬐ sitkack

"Sufficiently Smart Compiler" refers to something which has been hand waved away as a "Simple Matter of Engineering" or an "Exercise for the Reader" as to be impossibly difficult. Compilers are already very smart, usually the sufficient part of the SSC is a tongue in cheek Spock like sufficient. See the failure of Itanium betting that it could produce the SSC to create fast code. It was never built, the performance never matched expectations and it failed.

This seems to me a clarification of the strategy PG proposed during a talk at PyCon 2012 and an essay called "frighteningly ambitious startup ideas". It is a great way to think about and frame how to judge startup ideas.

Mainly centering around high potential technology, overlooked ideas and opportunities that these startups can take advantage of.

My question becomes, and it seems PGs, how can you do this without the value of hindsight. One one hand, you could sit and reason why startup x or your startup idea is the Microsoft in this scenario. But you can also easily delude yourself.

Pebble, IMO, is shaping up alot like early Apple did. They are entering a competitive industry with a new product, facing a goliath and have a huge emphasis on their design & focus on developer. Which makes me believe history will repeat itself. That if we have the Apple for wearables, there should be, or soon, a Microsoft for wearables.

Just a thought, would love any point for/against.

For reference:

http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI

⬐ seiji

PG proposed during a talk at PyCon 2012

That was a great talk. Everybody should re-watch it. Even if just for the one off question "why does HN violate the HTTP spec by sending invalid line endings?" (Answer: "because it works for me!")

pretty much inspired by PG? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI#t=450

For those that haven't seen or read Paul Graham's bit on ongoing diagnosis: http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html (#7)

Or if you prefer to watch it from 2012's PyCon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI#t=1587

I wonder if those with [Tourette Syndrome](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI) fit into 'accents'. While one can understand someone with Tourette Syndrome, it's very distracting to the discourse at hand.

Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI&t=43m53s

⬐ Jun8

He mentions the Malkovich room at YC, a half floor. Has anyone seen it?

I think much of the push back to App.net comes from not understanding the context in which Dalton et al. is building the platform.

Frankly, it wasn't until Dalton linked to PG's write-up of his PyCon talk that I really began to understand what his intentions were.

The write-up: http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI

⬐ Toph

What's with the constant hums... Has PG always talked like that? Truly curious. No means of disrespect.

Paul Graham wraps it up pretty well in PyCon 2012 a few weeks ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI