Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42006490

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40361044

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In the long-term, just "information", in general. That is everything around information and knowledge: acquiring it (including things like tutoring), storing it, protecting it (e.g encryption), manipulating it, proving that you have some information (identification, credentialing) etc

Basically, the field is limitless, since working with information is fundamental to being human.

Google currently tries to be "the information company", but insufficiently. They have lots of problems and I think there are a lot better ways to do things.

Immediate-term, the entry and starting point can be "storing information".

The fundamental idea behind that is the fact that our worlds are more and more digital. Everything about how we work with information is via computing, but our tools for doing that are still very limited.

The idea would be that the tool helps people 'save' anything. All regular "browser downloads" get saved there by default. As do everything else: is there a YouTube video you like and want to always have access to? saved (it's legal: personal, noncommercial use). Article you read on the web and never want to not be able to find? saved. A movie you watched and always want to have access to? saved (well, this isn't legal right now, but bound to be in the future. it doesn't make sense that we can't own media anymore and everything has to be streamed and you can't even be sure what platform currently has rights to it. you should be able to buy media and own it)

In general, we media consumption is primarily digital now and we should be able to store all of our things in our personal digital space.

You currently have all downloads saved to your iCloud by default, but that constrains you to the Apple system. This would be platform inter-operable. It would work on any platform and you would be able to save anything digital. Anything.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40289164

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39472326

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i. Tesla’s Elon Musk May Have Boldest Pay Plan in Corporate History http://web.archive.org/web/20180208004856/https://www.nytime...

ii. Tesla’s Pay Deal to Keep Elon Musk: All or Nothing https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/23/teslas-pay-deal-to-keep-elon...

He does and suddenly "oh the reward is far too much"?

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36989073

Points: 2

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36137836

Points: 1

# Comments: 6

With water, it is still very very cheap relative to the value it provides. Why isn't water 20% of the GDP of the world? Isn't it that important? (https://alexdanco.com/2015/11/23/ways-to-think-about-water/, never read this essay btw, read several of Alex's other essays though. I'm assuming the essay talks about the importance of water)

3rd paragraph. I'm not arguing against profits just, overly high ones in the face of cheap 'raw materials'.

4th and 5th. Questioning high profit margins in businesses (didn't realize eggs too had high margins tbh) and wondering if profits should be capped seem like obviously related things.

Solutions? In the case of SaaS:

— Product pricing starting high, but declining over time (yes, literally making laws that new software MUST be absurdly expensive at first).

Would mean:

(i) Fewer 100th x competitor software product since it's hard convincing people to part with say $100, you need to actually have a 10x solution.

(ii) Increased organic word of mouth growth, since users have an incentive (declining pricing) to increase total users.

The true reason is that they price similarly to physical infrastructure companies, without the same recurring costs. The difference between physical infrastructure costs and total expenses which goes into reproducing the product/service for each new additional user, which software coys do not have deal with, is what makes up "high software margins".

But pure software products/services shouldn't be priced like their counterparts with recurring costs. They have an abundance quality.

Software companies would probably argue with you if you questioned their pricing, given the relatively low marginal recurring costs they incur, probably throwing terms like "capturing the value you create" at you.

But that isn't how price works. Price isn't determined by value created. Nor is it determined by supply/demand

So the trick has been pricing at similar rates as regular physical infrastructure companies. At a closer look, one could decide that is wrong. Unlike what most people think, the price of a product/service isn't determined by demand/supply. Price is determined by scarcity/abundance, so that demand/supply only come to matter in the face of scarcity.

"Capturing value" is a bogus concept which shouldn't exist.

Think about air. Air is pretty cheap to the average human. Sure, there are other factors surrounding its existence like its quality in certain places based on gases dumped into the atmosphere by natural or human activity, or other things like geographical altitude. But no average healthy human pays a dime to afford air, important as it is to them. Ergo, air is very very cheap, even though it is of enormous value to each human.

The reason air is cheap is that there is an absolute abundance of it. This abundance exists in multiple dimensions, including:

(i) absolute abundance: there is so much being produced that compared to amount used up, the ratio of amount used up is completely negligible, hence never any scarcity (ii) its natural existence and recycling: there are no factories managed by certian companies who need to buy raw materials to produce and sell air as a good, or recycle used air for re-use (iii) It is 'plumbing' free i.e getting it to users is free. No one needs to build an air supply chain.

Water, which is also naturally existing, in comparison, is far more expensive than air. (i) It needs refining (production managed by people) for certain uses. (ii) It needs actual plumbing to get to users.

Not to talk about the same factors like pollution affecting it which also affect air.

So air is pretty valuable. The only reason for its cheapness is its absolute abundance, not the value it creates. Granted, air is entirely naturally-ocurring, and then some people might argue that it is what is responsible for its cheapness. How about water then, which does require some work to become usable to end-users?

Why doesn't water have high profit margins?

And software is abundant not quite in the same way that air is, but like water is. Sure it does need some 'producing', but it is virtual and easily copy-able. New work done in making it available to one more user is very low. That factor is what gives it its abundance.

Why do software companies have high profit margins then? Why aren't Google and Facebook ads a lot cheaper than they are since it's all built on dirt-cheap software?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35904339

Points: 2

# Comments: 6