If YC has that 2 person teams tend to be more nimble than 50 person founding teams, why would agent swarms be different?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50236628

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Many of the best startup ideas by the best product and engineering minds failed to gain attention and funding. Same with much of the best music - relegated to hard drives with derivative ideas only resurfaced decades later

I would expect much of the recent math dump will be leveraged by other LLM-driven research teams rather than read in depth by a human

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50001511

Points: 3

# Comments: 7

He established the National Design Studio, and turned to entrepreneur and designer Joe Gebbia to lead it."

Great show of leadership to take credit 5 paragraphs before mentioning anyone else on your team, and to avoid mentioning them by name so they can't be given too much credit ;)

The same has happened with modern finance. Despite more technology that has power to drive more transparent/efficient markets, we have less perfect information sharing and a larger group of middlemen capturing a growing share of profits of the economy

Aren't republicans in Texas trying to rewrite history books to ignore lynchings and burnings of Black Wall Street and claim that slaves were treated pretty well?

Seems like every country has factions who do this - right?

Maybe a signal of how rigid the moats/lobbies are on insurance and private equity

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49357746

Points: 6

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They are there when you need them. They get the job done (very) well. They look sleek

You put them away when you want to connect. Be present. Listen. Engage. Relate

They do not ask for attention. They do not desire attention. Would a wrench ask you how your day went? Would your calculator? Why should your “AI problem solver”?

Internet 1.0 was a bubble. Nasdaq IPOs liquidating in 6 months. Some cool things were discovered and built in the aftermath, including Alphabet’s theory of management

Internet 2.0 was a stretched out disaster. Engagement farming. Addiction loops built using dark patterns to capture your spend. Venture deployed to sales and marketing not R&D.

Popularized by: Facebook Zynga Slack a16z New Twitter (not old twitter)

Internet 3.0 whispered decentralization but became a centrally controlled casino. Crypto, kalshi, polymarket. Why run GPUs on CNG to validate your bet’s outcome when you can gamble on zero carbon? Innovation! They didn’t even try to hide it, a16z bragged about dumping on Indonesian retail investors on the All in Pod. Then bought off an election to avoid SEC intervention (remember Sarbanes Oxley?)

Venture is the house of the internet. The house always wins. Some win. Some lose. And society is left devoid of arts, culture, and human connection.

Profiteers leveraged algorithms to hold you from the actual relationship you want with technology. Ash Kechem’s Pokédex helped him understand the world. It didn’t pull him out of it.

Internet 4.0 is another bubble. This time with autonomous guns and democratic backsliding. The overpromises and debts are now feeding off sycophancy and dark patterns - bringing out the worst of us.

When 83% of America doesn’t trust AI, we should stop to ask WHY. It’s not because people hate wrenches or calculators or synthesizers. It’s because they hate calculators that are designed like a slot machine.

Computers should be a tool. That’s there with you. That you trust. That you keep by your side when you might need it. It’s not just one tool, it’s a multitool. With new tools added every day.

Venture capital is surely to blame. The big boys on wall street too (kudos to Dalio for catching the K-shape regression 5 years before Fink did).

Probably Yale’s (non-diversified) endowment return in the peak era tipped the scales, which made every other large pool of capital think they could match that performance. Fund managers overpromised (none of them had much prior experience, and some were just greedy). Which dragged venture capital (20%+ IRR) into the territory that used to be called “private equity” (10-15% IRR). But when the IRRs don’t add up 10 years later, everyone squeezes the user to extract what they feel they should have gotten. Not willing to accept that it was a bad bet and that diversification of assets is sound financial advice.

Let’s build Internet 5.0 together. We don’t need to wait until the aftermath of the bubble, we can start now.

Let’s build an internet we don’t hate. An internet that supports and fulfills us IRL (as best as possible, given the difficulties of travel and immigration and visas).

An internet that is authentic. And human. An internet that lets us choose to wield AI as a magical powerful special omnipotent multitool. Like Ash’s Pokédex.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49238489

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Broadly speaking, companies that spend 40%+ of revenue on sales and marketing end up being a bit of a drag on society. Eg. Salesforce’ product quality is far lower than winners in other sectors that sit closer to 10-15% of revenue on sales and marketing

Maybe - just as how the city of Sao Paolo implemented a ban on billboards - we can implement a law where a 3 year rolling average of sales and marketing spend cannot exceed 20% of revenue in that period

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49190679

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49026848

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Given the data on this[1], this is a confusing choice of hire to ensure AI gains are distributed equitably

[1] https://economicprinciples.org/Why-and-How-Capitalism-Needs-...

They run counter to the notion of sovereignty and local agency which we value greatly in the US

The irrationality of strict country borders and heavy migration controls will emerge as a heavy global challenge due to economic and climate migration and aging populations

I don't think we have a good answer for what replaces them, but I don't believe there's enough evidence to state that hasty decisions made after WWI and WWII should forever govern global human freedoms - and we need a better approach than war to renegotiate some of this

https://economicprinciples.org/Why-and-How-Capitalism-Needs-...

At the core, this is what the pessimism is about. If AI replicates the advent of personal computers and the Internet, our society will look more like India where everyone has technology but only 5-10% of people live really well