Gradient-Ascent

I have just scraped the comment section of the recent "Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch" announcement:

- Aditya and Karan (Warrant)

- Anta and Karthik (Inai)

- Nishant and Pranav (Nino Foods)

- Jan and Anahi (Perfekto)

- Bruno and Guilherme (Jestor)

- Antonio, Felipe, Joaquin and Francois (Chipax)

- Ali and Omair (Abhi)

As with every place "you need to fit in": Do you fit in here?

I have the feeling that YC have "their favs": Kind of: Young, global and more and more very "boring"/normal business. They rather replace existing businesses with something better, than to innovate/disrupt. It works for them now, since they are such a household brand.

"No shit" - It's a bit over the top to denounce me here as "Mr. Obvious", but funny, so this shall be forgiven to you. Musk is hot and at the forefront and he said it the other day. There is a lot of running away with bitcoins still/currently (Mt. Gox) and they are not insured. Probably the endgame of Bitcoin: All Bitcoin get lost or stolen, but were reimbursed/payed out via an insurance :-D - The full value of all Bitcoin payed by the insurance.

Populating a place (making babies) is not a problem and if it starts to be one, then something is wrong with the place: If future prospects are very grimm, then people stop having kids. This is something seen across the entire western world. Wages are too low and to add insult to injury people outside the west (Jews, Arabs, PoC) demand immigration to solve the (wrong) problem, but serving their own interests.

This became such an accepted narrative, that it is hard to correct (I just did) and gets pushed and used else/everywhere, like here, in a small island: Pitcairn.

Something is wrong with the place itself: "As of 2012, just two children had been born on Pitcairn in the 21 years prior."

Which is also shown in the absolute migration numbers: "For a recent survey that contacted hundreds of islanders who have left Pitcairn over the years, only 33 participated and just 3 expressed a desire to return."

It's like a company which pays peanuts having 80% of their positions open and complaining about not being able to find new employees and "HR (desperately) searching".

The article is out of the category that HR pulls all the time ala "Why you should work at place XYZ". But the reality is, that they only hire one specific person out of 100, that has exactly the skill they need.

So, fundamentally everything is going the right way on Pitcairn: A harsh place gets depopulated. And someone is spinning the fairytale and roses story, because it's one of the rare things there is to do: A payed (government) job on the island.

And: Everyone is just so isolated on that island and super-welcoming (of course) to someone new (and nice, ... he needs to be "a nice chap") arriving, because... excitement.

You make a lot of typical western assumptions here and also assumptions because you have a migration background yourself ("they want to (re)populate the island" - Why would they "want that"? - Edit: Now I got you, but the island is just small and populated already and also: Populating a place (making babies) isn't a problem for most people ;-), they actually enjoy it and in the case with this island they even start very young :-O. The website offers relocation to a super-remote, poor and harsh place. It's out of the category that HR pulls all the time ala "Why you should work at place XYZ". But the reality is, that they only hire one specific person out of 100, that has exactly the skill they need. I think the "child rape" cases are rather a symptom: Life is hard, there is nothing to do. If your life expectancy is 25 years, then you rather reproduce early. Reproducing (populating) a place is not a problem. If it starts to be one ("As of 2012, just two children had been born on Pitcairn in the 21 years prior.") then something is wrong with the place itself. And as the migration numbers show: "For a recent survey that contacted hundreds of islanders who have left Pitcairn over the years, only 33 participated and just 3 expressed a desire to return." something is wrong with the place.

It's like a company which pays peanuts having 80% of their positions open and complaining about not being able to find new employees and "HR (desperately) searching".

So, fundamentally everything is going the right way on Pitcairn: A harsh place gets depopulated. And someone is spinning the fairytale and roses story, because it's one of the rare things there is to do (a payed (government) job on the island).

still had a hand written note taped to the side of it, something to the effect of "Please don't turn this computer off."

You sound like "nobody has cleaned this piece of paper off [yet]" or "will be cleaned of soon". But it is the central piece of the exhibit, very intentionally. Probably written by TBL himself and illustrating a feature of the new invention: "The internet is always on"

And I heard of this before, that TBL developed the WWW on a (NEXT-)workstation, which also was the first www-server with a sticker on it that said "This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER DOWN!" (https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:This_Machine_is_a_...)

You don't own your bitcoin then (if you are not the only one who has the key) - Elon Musk pointed that out. The custodian owns your Bitcoin (and can run away with them or also lose the key).

Can you just use one dish and then connect everyone to this one dish? Costs 100$ a month divided by all inhabitants. It makes sense to setup one dish and connect a couple of people to it. It does not make sense to setup one dish next to another.

Remote areas = Mostly people, that can't actually afford it.

Does Starlink support this or is it against their interest?

Today's analogy is bitcoin... Will all Bitcoin just be lost one day, because all keys get lost?

I am aware that "there are solutions", but are they (really) enough? Isn't "breaking in" required at some point?

Another endgame for Bitcoin is that all Bitcoin are stolen through the one tool which helps with ("unbreakable") encryption: Hacking / social engineering.

Besides that we hab substantial discussions about why PGP isn't really cutting it for use with email (to cumbersome, at one point you lose your private key, recipient struggles to decrypt, etc.).

Everything is hackable. Connect a computer to the internet and you basically have lost.

We know that today, encryption isn't the final solution when there are hackers and social engineering.