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Comment by hailwren | Hacker News Reader

I don't think you get the newcomer novelty buff when your val approaches 13 digits.

Big companies are lumbering behemoth, crude assemblages of barely cobbled-together incentives and principal agent problems in a trenchcoat. Getting them to change direction, or worse, try something new at scale, is a massive undertaking

Nah, you just need to get the CEO behind it. Most coordination issues get solved when the CEO is breathing down your neck to get something done. Trouble is that they don't do this enough.

Eh, zero guarantees on that one.

The Fire Phone was Jeff Bezos' personal baby, and we know how that went. Then there was the Apple G4 Cube with Steve Jobs, the Model X' Falcon Wing doors and Elon, and lets not even talk about the Metaverse and Zuck.

> The Fire Phone was Jeff Bezos' personal baby, and we know how that went.

I'd rather guess that Jeff Bezos' opinion on what makes a good phone is/was different on the opinion of many potential buyers.

An Amazon phone with Amazon Video, playing Amazon Music, making phone calls throug the Amazon messenger, with an Amazon Browser that overlays ads to Amazon products, and has Amazon Voice Recognition ... blah blah blah

I imagine when you are a billionaire from one company, every time you hear the name of the company you hear your name, so you can't really think about what Joe Schmoe wants in a phone independently of your ego.

I guess this is what Steve Jobs was better at. SOME focus on the customer independent of his ego and Apple Apple Apple. I did say ... SOME.

Actually, you've provided examples that prove the point. None of those were especially good (though everyone wanted the G4 Cube), and yet they made it to market anyway. Why?

Because the CEO was behind it, breathing down their necks.

Pretty much every example is considered an abysmal failure that often costed the actual workers their careers while their CEO carried on.

If you consider that outcome a worthwhile endeavor, I don't know what else to say.

He's definitely not talking about worthy endeavour.

He's talking about an endeavour reaching the market.

I'm sure if Zuckerberg wants to spend $10B on Nuclear Fusion it will happen.

It’s fission, not fusion:

https://www.esgdive.com/news/meta-inks-nuclear-deals-terrapo...

…and if they do all of this, it’ll be closer to $20B than 10!

If all it took to get viable fusion power was a FAANG CEO with $10B to burn, I'd be first to petition for it to happen, and even throw whatever money I can spare onto that pyre.

Viable, of course, meaning safe? lol

No, of course not. We can worry about making it safe after we have any form of it working first.

(Also yes, I'm serious.)

Have you done any deep reading on Fukushima?

(Doesn’t seem like something to move fast and break things on - change my view?)

Is this a “we can technology our way out of anything” stance?

This is its worth knowing how to do.

I've never seen a real effort to make fusion happen and I believe the issue here is that starting small may well be big (like a small elephant). If it costs say $30 billion to build a fission reactor, I don't think anyone will get it done for less than $3B a year in R&Do over ten years.

I'm talking fusion because it's something out there. And in the context of something like the metaverse.

Fission is something you can buy today at retail.

Even my poor country has a Nuclear reactor.

I'm talking fusion because it's something out there. And in the context of something like the metaverse.

Fission is something you can buy today at retail.

Even my poor country has a Nuclear reactor.

CEOs have limited bandwidth, and can only breath down so many necks at once.

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