Words are cheap. I really wish there was a way to incentivize authors like this to put their money where their mouth is, before seeking attention for their ideas.
Readit Newsfairity commented on The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman garymarcus.substack.com/p... · Posted by u/treadump
fairity commented on Google is dead. Where do we go now? circusscientist.com/2025/... · Posted by u/tomjuggler
Surprised to see this upvoted because the takeaway is completely incorrect, and based on the anecdotal evidence of one advertiser.
As someone who spends seven figures every month on Google ads, what’s much more likely to be happening here is that the individual advertiser is either getting outcompeted or they’re executing ads poorly.
Google ads revenue in the US continues to grow every quarter. And, since advertisers will generally invest in ads until the last dollar is break even, it’s likely that the total value advertisers unlock through Google ads is growing as well. Whether that’s true or not, the notion that value generated for advertisers is “dead” is absurd.
fairity commented on AWS multiple services outage in us-east-1 health.aws.amazon.com/hea... · Posted by u/kondro
As this incident unfolds, what’s the best way to estimate how many additional hours it’s likely to last? My intuition is that the expected remaining duration increases the longer the outage persists, but that would ultimately depend on the historical distribution of similar incidents. Is that kind of data available anywhere?
As is the case with most complex problems like this, the correct answer is: it depends.
In this case, it depends on what the crux of your business is. Sometimes the crux is building world-class technology. Sometimes the crux is customer acquisition.
If the crux of your business is customer acquisition, then an exceptional business co-founder will actually be the most important ingredient to long-term success.
This is one of the biggest weaknesses I've noticed in YC's mantra. In most industries, just building something people want doesn't lead to success - you have to excel at customer acquisition also. And, in these industries, as you business matures, you realize that customer acquisition, at scale, is actually the hardest problem to solve.
Who reads his blog posts like these? Okay, I'd try to frame it this way - who does he write his blog posts for? No, I am not trying to say he mustn't, but I am just curious because it's hn and he is, like what, founder of hn or creator or so (?); and whenever one of his blog posts is posted here, it gains a lot of traction. I find them really sterile, trite, and filled with basic abstracts and attempted philosophy. Oh, by the way people love to call it "essays" here, not blog posts - oh no, no - "essays" it is. I see brilliant blog posts posted here on hn and they don't even make more than few comments which can be counted on a single palm (palm as if on human hand, not the device) and then his posts just get comments after comments. What intrigues me is a lot of those comments are just trying to guesstimate, assume, interpret on his behalf what he tried to say - like when you stare at an art piece in a museum, which is just three straight lines and a dot on an otherwise blank canvas, you hear someone explain to someone else few feet away - how that art captures the sublime, infinity, futility of life, and concision, among other heavy worded things, at the same time.
So, these posts err.. essays.. of his are pieces of abstract textual art that arrive here to be interpreted by commenters and also for admiration and mandatory vc adulation (maybe)?
Or maybe since he is rich now and is influential in making other people rich, lots of them actually, he gets to post whatever it is and also gets to make them gain traction. Yeah, this makes sense. Of course.
Or maybe I am from the crowd that doesn't understand modern art of making money at all; obviously.
Years ago, I was lying in the grass, having a conversation with a fellow founder, when he noted how, on most days, he would forget to eat lunch because he was so engrossed with his work. I thought to myself, That's ridiculous. Everyone notices when they're hungry. This was just a thinly veiled brag about his work ethic.
Nowadays, I find myself skipping lunch every other day - out of forgetfulness.
> Why pretend to be smart and play it safe? True understanding is rare and hard-won, so why claim it before you are sure of it? Isn't it more advantageous to embrace your stupidity/ignorance and be underestimated?
I wish this were true, and I do think this mindset would be optimal if everyone adopted it. Unfortunately, real workplaces are filled with people who are confident and wrong. As a leader, if your intuition is more accurate than your peers and you care about objective success, it’s important to assert yourself.
fairity commented on Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI reuters.com/markets/deals... · Posted by u/jdoliner
This has been something like 80% of all the moderator commentary on HN for the past week, it has a totally predictable explanation that is in line with a decade of HN moderation practice, and the question itself is (and always has been) off-topic. It's not "technically" against the guidelines; it's flatly against them. Take questions about moderation to email: hn@ycombinator.com.
For anyone who, like me, isn't aware of the "totally predictable explanation", here's more background: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978340
Tldr; The reason it dropped off the first page was likely due to mass flagging. Whether these flags were coordinated at the behest of a self-interested party is unclear. However, when cases like this are reported, more often than not, it turns out to be a function of genuine flagging.
fairity commented on Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI reuters.com/markets/deals... · Posted by u/jdoliner
I wonder that as well. I'm pretty sure there's manual manipulation involved sometimes.
I'm actually completely fine with internal manual manipulation, bc I trust the HN crew.
I'm concerned that what we're observing is a result of external manipulation at the behest of self-interested parties.
Here's evidence of this concern: https://hnrankings.info/43004889/
If they really only raised $1.7b, per Crunchbase, then this seems to me like a very good outcome for everyone involved except its late stage investors. And, even for the late stage investors, they're breaking even.