Hacker News: thelastgallon

New comment by thelastgallon in "How to earn a billion dollars"

thelastgallon — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 18:14:00 +0000

The people who create real value rarely make any money.

Linus Torvalds created Linux which allowed companies to use commodity hardware. Before Linux, every company had to pay massive taxes to Sun (Solaris) or IBM (AIX) to run a server. With Linux, commoditty hardware ecosystem blossomed, and the first companies like Google built massive datacenter. This wouldn't have been possible if they had to buy Solaris servers to run their datacenters.

The value created by Linus is probably tens of trillions of dollars. I don't think he is a billionaire. There is a guy who is a trillionaire today. It is hard to make an argument that Musk created more value than Linus. Tesla is a trillion dollar company with negative YoY growth.

Linus Torvalds is not a visionary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-YL0BeWZyU

The people who become billionaires are experts at becoming billionaires, creating value probably has nothing to do with it. They have either inherited wealth or in the right networks. The example PG gives of starting with 2 million USD is someone who is already incredibly wealthy and in the top 1% (1% globally, not just US). As always, there may be some rare exceptions where the founders actually created value and became billionaires.

New comment by thelastgallon in "How to Earn a Billion Dollars"

thelastgallon — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 17:39:24 +0000

> starting from 2 million && 93% growth > 9.45 months to become a billionaire (500x growth)

There is a much simpler way to become a billionaire. No Revenue (Silicon Valley): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo

New comment by thelastgallon in "How to Earn a Billion Dollars"

thelastgallon — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 16:40:00 +0000

And no nfts and crypto

New comment by thelastgallon in "How (and Why) SpaceX Will Colonize Mars"

thelastgallon — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 06:06:26 +0000

> Mars is basically a colder Antarctica that looks like the Arizona desert with air you can’t breathe and a sun that radiates you to death if you’re exposed to it for long. Every part of Mars is dramatically less livable than the least livable place on Earth.

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Mars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0Yqy_-PCfY

New comment by thelastgallon in "A low-carbon computing platform from your retired phones"

thelastgallon — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 06:00:01 +0000

Agreed. All parts of a device that we buy must be user replaceable. Phones can have decades of life. After their initial use as a first phone, they become a hand me down for their children, and they can become further hand me downs for people in third world countries or continue to live on as computers that can take on a variety of other roles.

The OS must be user replaceable so we can run what we like. If this is not possible, we should at least be allowed to a run a VM on the phone (we can assume <5% loss of performance).

Silicon lives matter. We must make sure our device has many afterlives until its eventual death (5 decades later).

New comment by thelastgallon in "Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models"

thelastgallon — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:48:05 +0000

The simplest explanation is Anthropic hasn't paid the necessary ‘taxes’ to get the required blessings. SpaceX did the right thing: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-03/spacex-ip...

New comment by thelastgallon in "Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]"

thelastgallon — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 05:32:00 +0000

Doing nothing at work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48442880

The first comment is spot on.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496420: Time and time again at many companies, including well-reputed ones, I have seen that preventing issues gets you no recognition, but building a giant pile of kindling and then putting out the inevitable fire will get you recognition twice. Even in "good" orgs.

Iraq Goes Solar [video]

thelastgallon — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 05:17:05 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3GpGs5OWJfU

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48513538

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

The Greatest Story Ever Told (2017)

thelastgallon — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 12:47:17 +0000

Article URL: https://collabfund.com/blog/the-greatest-story-ever-told/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48503453

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by thelastgallon in "The Future of Email"

thelastgallon — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 11:43:02 +0000

Are there any options left at all to self host email?

New comment by thelastgallon in "The Future of Email"

thelastgallon — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 11:41:35 +0000

Recent discussion:

Gmail Thinks I'm Stupid, So I Left: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48375016

How to (Inadvertently) Sabotage Your Organization (2019)

thelastgallon — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 05:27:14 +0000

Article URL: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-to-inadvertently-sabotage-your-organization/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48500259

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by thelastgallon in "Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]"

thelastgallon — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 05:22:30 +0000

+10,000%

Often, 'leaders' make mistakes and people below suffer the consequences. It is important to let these leaders deal with the pain caused by their decisions from their cluelessness about how things work.

New comment by thelastgallon in "Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]"

thelastgallon — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 05:13:00 +0000

This is how people get promoted at work. They break something, it escalates and gets visibility, emails sent to executives. Now, they 'fix' it, many thank yous from everyone for a job well done. Another version of this is delay the work you are supposed to do a long time back and let it gain visibility. Executives are blind, they can't see work being done by people who take ownership and get shit done before it becomes a problem. However, executive will remember the name of the person who breaks shit and 'saves' the day.

New comment by thelastgallon in "How a new DSL may survive in the era of LLMs"

thelastgallon — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 01:06:40 +0000

Yet another YAML?

Peanuts just got a high‑protein upgrade [video]

thelastgallon — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:02:41 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwihGfxqqfs

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494070

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by thelastgallon in "Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time"

thelastgallon — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:40:31 +0000

US consumers and businesses buy almost all their stuff from China. China's massive footprint of Coal should be added to US emissions.

New comment by thelastgallon in "Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time"

thelastgallon — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:38:19 +0000

This administration is hitting milestones without even trying!

New comment by thelastgallon in "Solar Energy Saves Europeans $135M a Day"

thelastgallon — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 07:40:58 +0000

> Fine if you can float that kind of cash to feel better about yourself,

Why do you need to float cash? Thats your assumption.

New comment by thelastgallon in "Solar Energy Saves Europeans $135M a Day"

thelastgallon — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 07:39:36 +0000

> massive maintenance

What maintenance for solar panels? Please share your videos of oil changes on your solar panels.

As opposed to equipment for fossil fuel which (a) doesn't burn fuel (b) has no moving parts (c) doesn't have thousands of parts and therefore runs free of any maintenance forever?

I wonder where these kind of people come from and what kind of education they have? Even Pakistan seems far more technologically advanced, they've been rapidly deploying solar with no issues.