Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47810109

Points: 17

# Comments: 2

There are also in-person Bootstrapper Breakfast meetings in Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley.

These events are for “entrepreneurs who eat problems for breakfast.”®

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47697855

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

"Akrasia is weakness of will. You know you shouldn’t eat the cake; you eat the cake anyway. Temptation overwhelms correct reasoning in the moment. This is not what’s happening at the NRDC (assets ~$300M, Yale Law pipeline, board stocked with people who have read every document I’m about to cite). Akrasia would require that the people setting obstruction strategy haven’t connected the climate math to their own filings. At staff quality and funding levels that high, that’s not credible.

What’s actually happening is correct calculation with externalized cost. The NRDC’s litigation revenue model and donor base cannot survive a pivot to pro-nuclear. The fundraising enemy has to remain the enemy. The obstruction is the product. So obstruction continues, the costs land on people who will never attend a Rockefeller Brothers Fund board meeting, and everyone who filed the intervener petition goes home with their career intact."

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47534769

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

The problem:

"An American consumer wants a German duvet cover, 130x200 cm. They go to Amazon. They get four pages of Chinese-manufactured polyester comforters keyword-stuffed with every bed size ever conceived by humanity. The sponsored listings at the top are for products that share no meaningful attributes with what was searched. The organic results, if you scroll far enough to find them, are identical in kind if not in degree.

This is not a search failure. Amazon’s search works exactly as intended. The intent is not to return what you asked for. The intent is to return what someone paid to show you.

Every subsequent problem in Amazon’s retail business is downstream of that choice, and the choice was rational at every level of the org chart."

The threat: "The threat to Amazon’s retail search isn’t a startup. It’s Grainger. W.W. Grainger sells industrial and MRO (maintenance, repair, and operations) supplies to corporate and institutional buyers. Roughly 1.7 million products. Catalog search that returns what you searched for, because the customer is a procurement manager with a part number who will immediately go elsewhere if the results are wrong. Grainger doesn’t sell sponsored placements above the right answer. Grainger’s business model depends on the right answer appearing first. They have existing distribution relationships, existing shipping infrastructure, existing corporate account relationships, and a search product that works because their incentive structure requires it to work."

After a long and detailed analysis, the bottom line on what Amazon businesses survive:

"Prime Video survives. Content lock-in is real. The subscriber base that stays for The Boys and doesn’t care about retail benefits is real, and it’s underrepresented in how people analyze Amazon’s decline narrative.

What doesn’t survive at current scale: the everything-store growth story, the AWS infrastructure dominance thesis, the 33% cloud market share trajectory, the Bedrock-as-AI-moat narrative, the $2 trillion valuation multiple."

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47420129

Points: 6

# Comments: 2

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47382142

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

There are also in-person Bootstrapper Breakfast meetings in Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley.

These events are for “entrepreneurs who eat problems for breakfast.”®

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47255497

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

Randall Jarrell's "Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57860/the-death-of-th... Is a much grimmer perspective.

Richard Grenier captured the truth for civil society: "As George Orwell pointed out, people sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." (h/t https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/07/rough-men/)

All we have of freedom, all we use or know – This our fathers bought for us long and long ago. Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw— Leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the Law. Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue, 1899 https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/kipling/old_issue/

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2026/02/16/once_un...

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/john-ivison-sources-ottawa-conside... "The most likely scenario seems to be that Canada will buy around 40 F-35s and complement them with up to 80 Saab Gripens, which would be made in Quebec."

Gripens are less capable but half the price of F-35, allowing Canada to trade 40 F-35's on order for 80 Gripens to be built in Canada.

Sizing the decision also allows you to avoid the other side of the coin of "analysis paralysis," which is "extinction by instinct," where you proceed purely on pattern matching. Obviously, you need to rely on reflexes in situations where you don't have time to calculate, like maintaining your balance or pulling your hand away from something very hot. And there is value in letting the smell of smoke, a fire alarm, a cry for help, or other critical interrupts immediately redirect your attention to a new action.

My frustration with the “reversible decision” or “recoverable decision” framing is that it ignores the need to acknowledge the irrevocable commitment of resources and the opportunity cost of a course of action, and use those to guide the level of planning needed.

Planning is expensive, and overplanning is a waste. Still, a prudent survey of likely risks and outcomes should encourage you to plan in advance for certain likely situations and undertake mitigation efforts.

+ Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator, launched Garry's List, a California nonprofit organization.

+ The 501(c)(4) will distribute voter guides, research explainers, and digital content on economic policy.

+ Tan argues that California's innovation environment faces pressure from upcoming ballot measures.

Closing quote: “California should prioritize retaining and attracting entrepreneurs and investors—the people who create jobs, strengthen the tax base, and fund essential services,” Tan said. “Policies that drive them out of the state harm innovation and make it more difficult to support core public needs, from infrastructure to public safety to education."

Related article https://missionlocal.org/2026/02/sf-garry-tan-california-pol... with related HN discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46980591

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46983062

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

There are also in-person Bootstrapper Breakfast meetings in Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley.

These events are for “entrepreneurs who eat problems for breakfast.”®