sofon

Could you not get a prenup?

Are many/most companies with billion dollar valuations so exposed?

I would imagine most billion dollar companies have multiple sites and manufacturing and data centers spread across multiple sites.

That's such a neat idea. I wonder why floating plants don't already exist. I'm also surprised that I've not seen it in Scifi.

Why? VCs might just be not very good at selecting good plays?

Yes, or some startup figures out that they can start doing it and charge the tech companies for access to their platform.

An open standard would be better of course.

Sun was serious about software at least to the extent that Acorn was.

Interesting thread.

I think self-driving cars are short term doomed, and we've doomed them.

The problem is we view them as a purely technical problem where-as the real issues are sociological. It's not possible to create a self-driving car that acts perfectly on roads designed for humans (arguably, it's not possible to have humans acts perfectly either).

There are two solutions to this problem. Either shift human expectations such that they accept the failures of self-driving cars, or change the roads to make it easier for automated cars to drive on them.

I believe we should overwhelmingly be doing the second. We should be augmenting and instrumenting our road infrastructure to make self-driving easier. And in particular, we should be concentrating our efforts where this is easier, and has the most value (probably transit).

I don't see how that follows. They don't just waste money, they redirect resources that could be deployed better elsewhere.

Urgh, it's really bullshit.

A minority of Japanese workers are Kaishain (Salarypeople), and there's nothing you really really /need/ from a corporation. Corporate socialising is a thing, as is finding a partner at work. But given the low marriage rates in Japan, not really that big a deal. I guess there are people who are about the reputation of working at a well known company.

I read the article, but I can't see how the title is supported.

What is for example, the second largest tech hub and how narrow is silicon valley's lead over it.

I would guess that the bay area if way way ahead of anywhere else (I don't like it, but it seems to be self apparent) and the lead is not narrow at all.

I agree, we can't proceed without mistakes. But it's incorrect to say that there is no cost, and that we shouldn't minimise mistakes (which is what the comment I was replying to was implying).

The VC stuff... I'm not sure that it's not sustainable. The way VCs are selected is not totally efficient (I would say, not even very efficient). More than that, successful exits for VCs don't always mean that a product or service provided value to the world at large (or was a good use for limited engineering talent), there are lots of ways for a VC to get a successful exit without that happening (including a follow on investing giving them liquidity, before there is even a product on the market for example, or the company being acquired without having developed anything useful).

It's probably not very bad, but stupid experiments can have a negative influence on the community as a whole.

Let's say e-ink keyboards are a good idea, but it's too soon. An early implementation will quite possibly delay (more make completely unviable) trying the experiment again.

If it's just a bad idea, resources will have been diverted into the development of a failed product (which is years of someones life spent on something useless). Not only that, but the cost of trying other ideas is increased. You have to hire and train more developers to work on other projects, to make up for the time wasted. The cost of developers increases for other companies, perhaps trying out better ideas.

This particular instance probably isn't very significant. But people apply the same logic to "what's the harm in VCs funding blockchains for pets", or any other buzzword without really understanding it. Well the harm is that they shift the entire ecosystem toward something that is possibly not very useful. They increase the costs for other companies (perhaps bootstrapping) their own ideas. And they push us toward a market that is driven by buzzwords, not logic, which is where most of us end up working.

> - Earth will have another 10,20,30 Billion people living on it

Unlikely.

> - These people, ... lots of kids, and more

Also unlikely.

> - Human will inhabit more parts of the Earth that are uninhabitable

Unlikely

> spending of billions of additional humans (iPhones, Televisions, etc)

Unlikely

> - New technologies will require orders of magnitude more energy, such as flying cars, space travel, etc.

Yes, likely.

World population is set to decrease. Birth rates in the US, UK, Japan, South Korea, China are all below replacement. This seems to be a general trend that happens when countries reach a certain level of development.

I think most models should show world population peaking, and then declining.

I agree that nuclear is probably our best bet. The high profile screw ups (like Fukushima) are annoying and decrease public trust. But we need to get better at creating/regulating safe nuclear solutions.