Ask HN: What's something that HN has been wrong about?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34603175

by kashnote • 3 years ago

12 64 3 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

The one example that most folks know about is Dropbox, where pretty much everyone hated on the original post that Drew submitted. And we all know where Dropbox is at now.

What are some other examples of HN hating on an idea and then it turning out to be the next big thing?

neximo64• 3 years ago

Heres another one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3818055

wslh• 3 years ago

But the user posting the comment only has ~3k of karma ;-)

smoldesu7• 3 years ago

Where is Dropbox now? Last I checked their stock had slid 50% since IPO and they hadn't added major functionality to any of their clients. Most people I know switched to Google Drive, iCloud or selfhosted.

Is there any reason, 10 years after release, why I should be using Dropbox instead of my own network attached storage? Or does their product really just boil down to "storage as-a-service, as a service"?

ndneighbor• 3 years ago

I think your comment does prove that on a long enough time horizon cynicism is the correct disposition to have when it comes to weighing new things. It's on the founder/team to constantly prove that not to be the case.

In the case of Dropbox, I would say HN was directionally correct that the software would be commoditized, but I would say that the avg. commenter then would not be able to predict the IPO.

nscalf2• 3 years ago

Dropbox is an $8.5b publicly traded company, so it’s in a much better place than an idea that got shot down on the internet and never went anywhere.

smoldesu7• 3 years ago

Fair enough. One has to wonder how much of their market share was cannibalized by the likes of Google, Apple and Microsoft though. Dropbox certainly didn't try to distinguish themselves from the pack, and now they're barely on the map. I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of middle-schoolers today have never even heard of it.

rejectfinite• 3 years ago

They invented the market that Google Drive and Onedrive took over.

There is little need to pay separate for Dropbox now that it is in Google Suite/Workspace and Microsoft Office 365.

But for a few years they were the only ones.

gardenhedge3• 3 years ago

I pay for dropbox. You recommend that I should use my own network attached storage? I don't even know what that is or how it works.

smoldesu7• 3 years ago

Ok? You do know about iCloud and Google Drive though, and both of those are cheaper-per-gigabyte than Dropbox. If you're still paying for Dropbox in 2023, that's a you-problem.

HeyLaughingBoy2• 3 years ago

Sure. I built a webapp that uses Dropbox as a global, read-only storage that is accessed on average just once a day per app instance. At midnight, or at startup, each site synchronizes its local file list with a common dropbox site.

Yes, there are many other ways this could have been done, but it was built to be administered by non-technical people who at least understood how to upload files to Dropbox and they have access to all of Dropbox's file management tools. A massive chunk of functionality that we didn't have to build out!

dilyevsky2• 3 years ago

They’ve been commoditized by box, drive, icloud and everyone under the sun like everyone here predicted. Still a multi-billion company tho so I guess it’s not a bad outcome. For me the lesson here is even if your idea is obvious, if you have first mover advantage and execute well you can still succeed

wruza• 3 years ago

they hadn't added major functionality to any of their clients

Stagnating!

Seriously, which major functionality you’d want to add to your, idk, snow brush, duct tape, thermometer?

Or does their product really just boil down to "storage as-a-service, as a service"?

I’m not using cloud storage/sync, but if I did, that would be an exact formula for choosing a product. I mean I’d want to put files in a dir (v-drive?) and that’s it. And when the time comes, Dropbox will be first, because it’s basically synonymous to it, unless price-prohibitive. Am I missing something here?

Maybe features you talked about are sharing, social-something, smartphone integration, etc. Genuinely not sure.

adastra2212• 3 years ago

Bitcoin, and cryptocurrency in general. I mean think what you want about the industry, but it has definitely been a financial success. Yet HN has had a non-stop hate boner for it since 2010.

minimaxir• 3 years ago

That depends how you define success. I don't think many consider a zero-sum game where only the winners are publicized a success.

adastra2212• 3 years ago

It is objectively not a zero-sum game, which is my point. It has grown from a million, to billion, to trillion dollar industry.

punkbit• 3 years ago

Noticed the same since the early days.

smoldesu7• 3 years ago

It's wild that people can say this on the heels of widespread systemic failure like FTX, Terra, and all the other rug pulls/scams. We tried cryptocurrency; it's incompatible with our societal and governmental paradigms.

I was rooting for cryptocurrency 7 years ago, when it wasn't sold as "digital gold" or whatever asinine label people give it nowadays. I'll eat the crow and admit I was wrong to not anticipate the abuse of an open, distributed system. The landscape of cryptocurrency today is an irrecoverable mess, evidenced by the slipping valuation and hemorrhaging trade volume.

gardenhedge3• 3 years ago

I'm sure there have been traditional businesses that were systemic failures and scams

c7DJTLrn• 3 years ago

There are billions of dollars of cryptocurrency moving around on black markets every day. It is a massive success for shady business.

adastra2212• 3 years ago

Those were custodial companies. The whole point of crypto is not your keys, not your coin.

yboris5• 3 years ago

Financial success while ignoring externalities? Is the amount of pollution created as a byproduct of using all the electricity not in the calculation?

Being surprised that there is a pushback against such a technology seems inappropriate or foolish.

adastra2212• 3 years ago

One could make literally the same arguments about Uber and Airbnb. HN has it in for crypto specifically, for whatever reason.

colechristensen• 3 years ago

Do you actually know anyone who has actually ever used cryptocurrency for a real transaction? Beyond something like buying coffee? And not for black market purposes?

adastra2212• 3 years ago

Yes: me.

willio58• 3 years ago

Haha so true, it’s pretty wild and sometimes I feel crazy not being a crypto hater on here. Don’t get me wrong, there are scams galore in the space but I think there’s a real place for crypto in the future.

adastra2212• 3 years ago

I co-founded a bitcoin company. Spent the most active 5 years of my professional life there. No regrets!

nitwit0052• 3 years ago

You're going to have to define success here.

People made a lot of predictions about what the impact of crypto currency or blockchains generally would be. Few of those seem to have come to pass.

qup• 3 years ago

The Musk Twitter takeover discussion was full of predictions about how long the site would continue to function, most of which have already been exceeded.

arp2422• 3 years ago

Maybe we should put a lettuce in front of a camera. Seemed to have done the trick last time.

clipsy• 3 years ago

Let’s not forget, there were also many people on HN predicting at various times during the buyout that:

* Musk would somehow weasel his way out of the contract

* Musk would demonstrate that Twitter had lied to the SEC about bot numbers

* Musk would embrace a policy of free speech absolutism (within legal limitations) upon taking over

None of which came to pass.

bjourne• 3 years ago

I think lots of people were wrong about the F-35. It is a very good warplane even though it cost a ton of money to develop. (Military aviation nerds, feel free to contradict me)

secfirstmd• 3 years ago

It's an incredible plane and only going to get better.

Also a great budget to bury black projects...

sklargh• 3 years ago

Finland's selection of the F-35 added data to a growing feeling of mine that the F-35 is a software and production problem reaching maturity.

I look at Finland as a country that takes defense seriously and expects to fight hard with exceptionally degraded facilities and logistical support. They chose the F-35 vs. the Super Hornet+Growler, Gripen+GlobalEye & Rafale means something. At a minimum they think the marginal cost of the aircraft is worth the supply chain it offers.

I strongly suspect that the aircraft is a far more capable electronic warfare platform than is generally understood. A very good local defense blog covered the process extensively and is well worth spending time with - https://corporalfrisk.com/2021/12/11/f-35a-is-hx-the-winner-...

dilyevsky2• 3 years ago

I still remember g+ post from I think one of Google’s vps advocating to scrap the whole program in favor of A-10. Lol what a clown town it was

nitwit0052• 3 years ago

Most of the complaints seemed centered around cost and delays, rather than the engineering somehow being bad (oxygen issue was an exception). You're echoing the same cost complaint.

tedunangst• 3 years ago

Intel has gone bankrupt at least a dozen times by now.

arp2422• 3 years ago

HN has been wrong about almost every single topic. It has also been correct about almost every single topic. That's because "HN" isn't a monolithic entity but lots of individuals who often disagree. People complaining about the "HN hivemind" are mostly just folks who have trouble comprehending that people with different opinions exist.

I'd also have to disagree with your "everyone hated on Dropbox"; you can read the original thread at [1], many people said "wow, great!" That's actually the majority of the comments, and BrandonM's comments (which is what people usually refer to) is a lot more friendly and nuanced than "hating on the idea". After Drew's response, BrandonM's response can essentially be summarized as "right, I see how this would be useful".

Like I said: HN is lots of different people who disagree on essentially everything.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

yboris5• 3 years ago

There's something to be said for The Wisdom of Crowds - an observation that given certain conditions, a crowd can make better estimates / predictions / etc than individuals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

One example is the consistent love for Rust, which makes me think it's probably a technology worth adopting (if it fits the project).

pjot• 3 years ago

HN has continuously surprised me by the range of opinions, professions, ideas, etc presented. The diversity here is much broader than one might initially assume.

dang• 3 years ago

Thanks for taking care of defending BrandonM this time :)

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

NaOH• 3 years ago

The iPad did not get a particularly warm welcome. In defense of 2010 HN commenters, not that many people commented, and what was written from announcement toward release (and afterward) trended toward a more welcoming mindset.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081097

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081397

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081519

ashwagary• 3 years ago

Bitcoin.

The value of censorship resistant low fee fixed supply digital money seemed to fly over the heads of people that many would expect to see the potential.

It still amazes me to this day but as they say, "you will buy bitcoin at the price you deserve".

Ask HN: What's something that HN has been wrong about?

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