johncarpinelli

I like this idea. If any rent-seeking group achieves market dominance, the government should regulate their prices. For example, the price of prescription drugs and higher education should be set by the government. Laissez-faire capitalism only works in markets with price competition.

Ultimately, I think most industries will evolve into government regulated monopolies. Consolidation is a standard part of the life-cycle for most markets. We should embrace the efficiency that dominant players can achieve.

With regard to individuals, I think a universal basic income is the long-term solution. Let a few people become billionaires, while the masses are paid to relax at home. There is a large amount of wasted resource in industries like retail, marketing and sales. Society would probably be better off if those industries shrank.

Actually, the US is described as the Saudi Arabia of wind. Most of the potential is on-shore which has better economics than off-shore also.

http://www.pickensplan.com/wind/

There is also the option of part-time consulting to pay the bills while building the startup. As a Django consultant, this person could probably make $50k annual income by consulting a few days per week. The rest of his time could be dedicated to the startup business.

Even if you have low living costs, you should still consider opportunity costs of not working. A consultant making $100k per year who takes two years off to do a failed startup has effectively lost $200k in income.

Was the Xbox 360 really a huge success? It came second or third in sales for its generation of consoles. 75 million units in seven years is a small number compared to mobile devices. Android sold 144 million devices in Q4 2012 alone.

I think the next generation of consoles are going to struggle against cheaper systems like OUYA and tablets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#Worldwide_sales_fi...

Wii – 99.38 million as of 31 December 2012

Playstation 3 – (IDC January 2013 estimate: "about 77 million")

Xbox 360 – 75.9 million as of 31 December 2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#Historical_sales_fig...

I like the Australia idea, but I'd save up $10k before departing. Relocating to another country is expensive.

I suggest to find some freelance programming jobs online. He could make some money writing articles about the stock market for SeekingAlpha.com.

In terms of education, I think he should do some courses with Coursera or one of the other free online institutions.

Stefan,

Lower your expectations. Be grateful for your health and living in a developed country like Switzerland. You have awesome mountains there.

Startups are an escapist fantasy for millions of people. I would guess 99% of web startups make no money. Most HN readers are in the same situation as you, but that doesn't make them losers. Enjoy life and think of your startup like a lottery ticket.

I agree that home robots will be task specific and not anthropomorphic. Examples I would buy if they were cheap:

-robot to stack and unstack the dishwasher

-robot wheels to put the garbage bin out for weekly collection

-robot mower to cut the lawn

-robot laundry hamper to take clothes to washing machine when full

-robot to clean kitchen benches and stove-top nightly

Air pollution has dropped 50% judging by the chart in this article. Much better than the LA Times prediction.

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/stories/study-c...

I guess they were too optimistic on the home robot. Hopefully, they will start to become useful in the next few years. I personally would like to see Microsoft, Google and the other big tech brands launch home robots.

OK, I am sold on Go as my next language for web applications. Unfortunately, I can't throw away the existing PHP/MySQL code. Any suggestions on how to integrate Go and PHP into a single web server? Should I be using FastCGI for Apache to call the Go programs?

If it hits Mars, it could help to terraform the planet. The CO2 ice caps would melt and heat the atmosphere. It would melt a significant amount of frozen water in the soil and thicken the Martian air with water vapor too.

Wikipedia is predicting a 1 in 1250 chance of hitting Mars. Outgassing as the comet nears the sun could change its trajectory significantly also.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2013_A1

Yes natural gas overtook coal as the leading source of electricity in the USA. The transition was in 2012.

I enjoy driving electric too. Electric motors are quiet, clean and responsive. There are 18 models of plug-in hybrid coming to the market by 2018. I think the hybrids will sell better than the pure battery vehicles as they don't cause range anxiety.

http://www.torquenews.com/1075/plug-hybrids-chevy-volt-rapid...

The Chevy Volt has a data link and remote apps for IOS and Android. There's a web API that allows sites like Volt Stats to download from thousands of cars. The Chevy is not a $15000 car, but the prices are dropping. The Nissan Leaf can be bought for under $20k after tax rebates in California.

http://www.voltstats.net

Let's hope they land humans on the Moon and Mars in the next 13 years. Elon has much more capital now than back in 2002. They are the most likely company to settle space.

Good point about false positives. The device could upload images to a human operator who would activate the defenses. This would add some reaction time, but it would reduce the potential for false positives.

If the device has image recognition to detect firearms being brandished, the operator could trigger the defenses before the first shot is fired perhaps.

A low-cost clone could be mounted on the ceiling in a room. Some stun grenades and tear gas would disable the shooter anywhere in the room. This would be a cheap solution. Include a wireless mesh network connecting the devices, and they could disable the shooter even as he flees the first room.

An automatic gun defense device like a smoke detector that is cheap and ubiquitous. The device should cost $100-$200 and could be installed in schools, shopping malls, cinemas and street lamps.

If the device detects a gun-shot, it locates the shooter through triangulation of the sound and image recognition. Non-lethal defenses would be deployed automatically to prevent continued shooting: e.g. stun grenade/flashbang, tear gas, electric shock. After detecting a gun-shot, the device would record audio/video and call 911 automatically. The shooter's escape could be tracked through a network of the devices.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroshock_weapon#Wireless_lo...

We need the FDA to regulate drugs and medical devices. There's too much potential for quackery. I don't think removing the FDA is going to find a cure for diabetes. It's a fundamental research problem at this stage. Stem cells are showing some potential as a future cure. See the article below.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/252759.php

We need more funding for medical research. PhDs should not be low-paid labor. Too many smart people drop out of research careers due to the low salaries. We should be paying medical researchers similar incomes to engineers at Silicon Valley tech firms.

California taxes are funding one of the biggest research efforts into stem cells. So the big tech firms are contributing to the effort through their taxes.

http://www.cirm.ca.gov/

Totally agree. Learning object oriented frameworks gives me a headache. I learned C back in 1991 for first-year CS classes. Consider all the software built in C: Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, etc. It's the dominant infrastructure of the web.

What language will be used to build the first human-level AI? I think it will probably be C, and less than 1 million lines of code.

This is why code changes should not be moved to production late on Friday. Staff go home and problems don't get noticed or fixed in a timely fashion.

I think the point is to ride in a limousine across the tarmac and then step directly onto your jet without any hassles. Direct point-to-point travel to any airport is convenient too. The Citation X can fly coast-to-coast in under four hours.

"The rover team's assessment is that the bright object is something from the rover, not Martian material," mission team members wrote in an update today. "It appears to be a shred of plastic material, likely benign, but it has not been definitively identified."

http://news.yahoo.com/bright-object-mars-actually-plastic-cu...

I've used IUI for mobile web apps. It seems faster than JQuery Mobile. See their site below.

http://www.iui-js.org/

FB is a strong company and they'll probably get back to a $100bn valuation in a few years. However, I don't think FB is the source of the current tech boom. It is driven by smart phones and app stores. Suddenly, there are a billion people walking around with internet tablets in their pockets. FB benefitted from this new platform just like Instagram, Dropbox, Airbnb etc.

FB is a much larger company than the average IPO. Larger companies often grow slower as they dominate their markets. With 900 million users, it would seem that the developed countries are fairly saturated and won't see much growth in the user base.

I would be interested to see some projections for FB costs over the next five years. They no longer have the lure of pre-IPO equity to attract new employees. They might have to pay higher salaries instead. Many insiders will be cashing out in the coming months and moving on, so I would guess that FB salary costs are going to climb significantly.

The innovations of the past century were easier for amateur inventors to build without capital. Think of the Wright Brothers - a couple of bicycle makers built the first powered aircraft.

Could the equivalent pair of bicycle mechanics build the first reusable spaceship or electric flying car? Building a new space launch system will cost $500m+. Neither governments nor large aerospace firms are willing to take large risks with this amount of money. Incremental improvements to proven systems are much easier to justify.

I think crowd-funding and the Internet will lead to a new boom in innovation. The Pebble watch is a good example. The VC's turned them down, and now the public has pre-purchased $7m of Pebble watches in two weeks.

We need new forms of risk capital for inventors. VCs and governments are not going to fund enough high risk innovation. They both rejected my pitch for electric aviation saying it was "too ambitious for a startup" (http://electrictakeoff.com).

Electric air taxis would be great for commuters. You would have to streamline check-in and security though. People will ditch their cars for a faster trip time.

Consider this scenario for a 20 mile commute: 1) Bike or walk one mile to local air strip ( a converted road) 2) 18 mile electric flight to destination town. 3) Bike or walk one mile to office from landing strip.

Takeoff and landing must be silent and fast. See http://electrictakeoff.com for an example.

Electric aviation and space launch. See our web-site, http://electrictakeoff.com, for details. We are looking for collaborators, co-founders, volunteers, etc.

I agree with PG that ambitious startups are better. However, I think engineers should focus on sectors where the customers are dissatisfied. Aviation seems like a good candidate. Most people dislike oil dependence also.

Tactically, we are aiming to fly advertising banners as a short-term path to revenue. The next market would be air freight with prices lower than diesel trucking. Passengers would come last after the technology is proven.