skmurphy

I think in the early stages, the intent is self-rescue: prevent yourself from going off half-cocked. I see it as a way to gather feedback from trusted peers who have knowledge of the problem area. If it proves out, then they can help you sell it, but my primary intent was to encourage a "measure twice, cut once" approach instead of running with an idea without adequate preparation. If you cannot find at least three things that might go wrong with your approach, you probably have not thought it through. The intermediate step between soliciting feedback and "pre-wiring" is a pre-mortem, where you actively solicit potential failure modes and stumbling blocks.

In a technical environment the first step is probably to write your ideas down. Sleep on it, review, and then share with a few people you trust for candid feedback. From there you can share more widely, fine tune and adjust, or realize that you mis-assessed.

If the DNA does not encode it then it's an astounding coincidence that it happens so reliably and repeatedly.

goldfish, lobster, crocodile, crab, python, shark to name a few. It's referred to as indeterminate growth.

November 2025 roundup lists online events for bootstrappers including Bootstrappers Breakfast and Lean Culture.

There are also in-person Bootstrapper Breakfast meetings in Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley.

These events are for “entrepreneurs who eat problems for breakfast.”®

Key take-aways

"Regardless of technological innovations, the raw materials in question [wood, coal, oil] have never yet been obsolete. Exceptions to this rule are exceedingly rare. Whale oil offers a unique example of the disappearance of an energy source. Or I could mention sheep’s wool, whose use has declined by one-third since the 1950s, replaced by synthetic fibres. Or that of asbestos, now that it’s banned."

Q: Why has the history of energy been misrepresented like this?

J.-B. F.: The reason is simple: historians tend to look at energy from an economic viewpoint, seeking to understand the roots of industrialisation and growth. To that end, they convert those tonnes of wood, coal and petroleum into energy units, and examine the evolution of the mix in relative terms. So in the industrialised countries in 1900, the energy contribution of wood, for example, did indeed become negligible compared with that of coal.

Yet in terms of trees, biodiversity and climate, it’s absolute values that count, and the number of trees felled has never stopped increasing. Moreover, historians have not studied the interrelationships between energy sources – for example, all the wood needed to mine coal or all the coal necessary to extract and use petroleum.

Q: What solutions do you propose?

J.-B. F.: This is the key question that my book does not answer at all. What climate policy should we pursue once we realise that carbon neutrality is largely an illusion, and that we can slow down but probably not stop climate change?

October 2025 roundup lists online events for bootstrappers including Bootstrappers Breakfast and Lean Culture.

There are also in-person Bootstrapper Breakfast meetings in Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley.

These events are for “entrepreneurs who eat problems for breakfast.”®

Conclusion:

Gall's Law: Successful complex systems evolve from successful simple systems.

"As in the years after the Second World War, the temptation will be to use this vast increase in computational power and intelligence to ‘solve’ systems design for once and for all. But the same laws that limited Forrester continue to bind: ‘NEW SYSTEMS CREATE NEW PROBLEMS’ and ‘THE SYSTEM ALWAYS KICKS BACK’. As systems become more complex, they become more chaotic, not less. The best solution remains humility, and a simple system that works."

September 2025 roundup lists online events for bootstrappers including Bootstrappers Breakfast and Lean Culture.

There are also in-person Bootstrapper Breakfast meetings in Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley.

These events are for “entrepreneurs who eat problems for breakfast.”®

Key graf: "The problem facing the U.S. is not simply the short-term: the real problems will arise in the 2030s and beyond. Semiconductor manufacturing decision-making does not require nimbleness; it requires gravity and the knowledge that abandoning the leading edge entails never regaining it."

Key points

We had the DeepSeek Moment because of a confluence of factors misled people:

1. The ‘six million dollar model’ narrative gave a false impression on cost.

2. They offered a good clean app with visible chain of thought, it went viral.

3. The new style caused an overestimate of model quality.

4. Timing was impeccable, both in order of model releases and within the tech tree.

5. Safety testing and other steps were skipped, leaving various flaws, and this was a pure fast follow, but in our haste no one took any of that into account.

6. A false impression of ‘momentum’ and stories about Chinese momentum.

7. The ‘always insist open models will win’ crowd amplified the vibes.

8. The stock market was highly lacking in situational awareness, suddenly realizing various known facts and also misunderstanding many important factors.

GPT-5 is now having a Reverse DeepSeek Moment, including many direct parallels.

1. GPT-5 is evaluated as if it was scaling up compute in a way that it doesn’t. In various ways people are assuming it ‘cost’ far more than it did.

2. OpenAI offered a poor initial experience with rate caps and lost models and missing features, a broken router, and complaints about losing 4o’s sycophancy went viral.

3. The new style, and people evaluating GPT-5 when they should have been evaluating GPT-5-Thinking, caused an underestimate of model quality.

4. Timing was directly after Anthropic, and previous releases had already eaten the most impressive recent parts of the tech tree, so gains incorrectly looked small.

5. GPT-5 is a refinement of previous models optimized for efficiency, and is breaking new territory, and that is not being taken into account.

6. A false impression of hype and a story about a loss of momentum.

7. The ‘OpenAI is flailing’ crowd and the open model crowd amplified the vibes.

8. The stock market actually was smart this time and shrugged it off, that’s a hint.

What matters here is that we not fool ourselves into a Reverse DeepSeek Moment, in three ways:

1. America is still well out in front, innovating and making rapid progress in AI.

2. AGI is still probably coming and we need to plan accordingly.

3. Export controls on China are still vital.

key graf: Bots are docs: LLMs can’t keep secrets, no matter how well prompted, we need to store memories in a secure, separated way. Fortunately, we already have a good mechanism for this kind of semi-shared secret: documents. Asking an agent to only disclose some of what it knows about you is a bit like telling someone only to read one page out of a long document that has all of your life in it - you’d never do that! We know how to separate and share documents.

Is there a mailing list I can sign up for to be notified. The check back soon protocol reminds me of my youth.

Thanks for pointing this out. I think this is an insightful analogy. We will likely manage generated code in the same way we manage large cloud computing complexes.

This probably does not apply to legacy code that has been in use for several years where the production deployment gives you a higher level of confidence (and a higher risk of regression errors with changes).

Have you blogged about your insights, the https://stillpointlab.com site is very sparse as is @stillpointlab

The paid tax preparer also signs the return and is still "in the loop" from a liability perspective. See for example

https://www.irs.gov/payments/tax-preparer-penalties

Randy Bias also claims authorship https://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of...

this tweet by Tim Bell seems to indicate shared credit with Bill Baker and Randy Bias

https://x.com/noggin143/status/354666097691205633

@randybias @dberkholz CERN's presentation of pets and cattle was derived from Randy's (and Bill Baker's previously).

Roundup lists online events for bootstrappers including Bootstrappers Breakfast and Lean Culture.

There are also in-person Bootstrapper Breakfast meetings in Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley.

These events are for “entrepreneurs who eat problems for breakfast.”®

In his letter to his friend Guy Hickok Hemingway described an out-of-body or near-death experience triggered by the close explosion of a mortar shell that killed a soldier next to him: "There was one of those big noises you sometimes hear at the front. I died then. I felt my soul or something coming right out of my body, like you'd pull a silk handkerchief out of a pocket by one corner. It flew around and then came back and went in again and I wasn’t dead anymore.”

sources

   https://greatwar.nl/hemingway/hemingway.html

   https://www.ehemingway.com/biography

   Letter to Hickok does not appear to be available online. But his "Natural History of the Dead" is at https://short-stories.co/@ernesthemingway/a-natural-history-of-the-dead-0gpz4rgjln7d

Key points

1. Treat your spouse as an investor and board member from the beginning. You will need their advice and support. They don’t have to join you full-time in your startup–they are unlikely to be as entrepreneurial as you are. But a decision to start a business or even to invest significant effort in exploring possible companies, even if you are working full-time, will have significant near-term implications for your life together.

2. Lay out a plan and hold yourself accountable on a periodic schedule.

3. Come to an agreement on an overall plan that includes timeframes and limits on financial obligations you will incur.

5. Schedule time and expense for the mistakes necessary to learn how to thrive as an entrepreneur.

6. Plan for iteration and refinement. Base your plans on “nothing new ever works,” not just the first time but also the second. Set your spouse’s expectations that you see an opportunity that you find energizing, but you still have things to learn.

7. Commitments to customers and cofounders are important, but family commitments are more important.

8. Establish some simple practices to maintain financial transparency from the start. A monthly review of expenses with balance sheets and income statements is a good start. Quickbooks can do this for you easily in the beginning.

9. Maintain a list of critical risks and review monthly.

10. Financial outcomes are essential, but new learning enables you to define and meet goals.

Key graf:

"The Bay Area is getting old fast, and it’s accelerating. Though aging is a global trend, the San Francisco metro area — which includes San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Marin counties — is already the third-oldest among 20 of the largest regions in the U.S., trailing only two places in Florida. And no other region is growing older at a quicker pace."

More context from 2013 Chronicle article https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/families-exodus-leave...

   "Just 13.4 percent of San Francisco’s 805,235 residents are younger than 18, the smallest percentage of any major city in the country. By contrast, San Jose’s percentage of children is 24.8 percent, Oakland’s is 21.3 percent, Boston’s is 16.8 percent and Seattle’s is 15.4 percent, according to Brian Cheu, director of community development for the Mayor’s Office of Housing. Even Manhattan is composed of roughly 15 percent children, according to Dan Kelly, director of planning for San Francisco’s Human Services Agency.

    In 1970, children made up 22 percent of San Francisco. In 1960, they constituted 25 percent."

Matthew McConaughey mines 35 years of his personal journal entries to offer a playbook for entrepreneurs in "Greenlights."

His opening line is, "This is not a traditional memoir." He tells stories from his life and shares insights, but his objective is to offer approaches. Written when he turned 50, it draws on 35 years of journals he kept, starting when he turned 15.

"This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life. [...] This is a story about greenlights. This is the first fifty years of my life, of my resume so far on the way to my eulogy." Matthew McConaughey in "Greenlights"

The sources I was familiar with on this list are of uniformly high quality. I am going to check out the res. Thanks for sharing!

This is a review of the Reuters Institute 2025 Digital News Report that highlights some of its most striking findings. Additional comments on social media, misinformation, and politics. Full Reuters report at https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-repo...

Roundup lists online events for bootstrappers including Bootstrappers Breakfast and Lean Culture.

There are also in-person Bootstrapper Breakfast meetings in Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley.

These events are for “entrepreneurs who eat problems for breakfast.”®

P.T. Barnum wrote "The Art of Money Getting: The Golden Rules for Making Money" in 1880 at the age of 70 when he was already an accomplished businessman, politician, philanthropist, and author--after his hugely successful 1855 autobiography "The Life of P.T. Barnum: Written By Himself."

It's available online at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8581

This post provides a summary of the 21 rules and some commentary for today's entrepreneurs. Barnum's Advice Holds Up Well after Thirteen Decades

What was most surprising about reading his "Golden Rules For Making Money" was how timeless they were. The hold up very well 140 years later.

Related HN Posts

The Art of Money Getting or Golden Rules for Making Money by P. T. Barnum (1880) (gutenberg.org) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34447945 - Jan 20, 2023 (69 comments)

Golden Rules for Making Money (1880) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19483313 - March 2019 (191 comments)

Golden Rules for Making Money (1880) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11320169 - March 2016 (180 comments)

Golden Rules for Making Money by P. T. Barnum (1880) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=310056 - Sept 2008 (56 comments)

Art of Money Getting, by P. T. Barnum (actual book, 1880) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=88544 - Dec 2007 (12 comments)

Roundup lists online events for bootstrappers including Bootstrappers Breakfast and Lean Culture.

There are also in-person Bootstrapper Breakfast meetings in Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley.

These events are for “entrepreneurs who eat problems for breakfast.”®

Roundup lists online events for bootstrappers including Bootstrappers Breakfast and Lean Culture.

There are also in-person Bootstrapper Breakfast meetings in Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley.

These events are for “entrepreneurs who eat problems for breakfast.”®

Key points:

Timothy Gallwey’s “Inner Game of Tennis” came out in 1974 and sparked a revolution in coaching and how athletes should approach improving their performance. Entrepreneurs can use several lessons to improve their personal performance and coach others.

The inner game is about self-mastery. And the path to self-mastery starts with humility because the humble are willing to observe and listen. As Wynton Marsalis observed: “the humble improve.” This is a tough challenge for any entrepreneur. You have to have the courage of your convictions in starting a new business, but you have to be alert to what you can learn by observing and listening to prospects, customers, partners, competitors, employees, and others.

The Usual Way of Learning:

+ Criticize or Judge Past Behavior

+ Tell Yourself to Change, Instructing with Word Commands Repeatedly

+ Try Hard; Make Yourself Do It Right

+ Critical Judgment about Results Leading to Repetition of Process

The Inner Came Way of Learning

+ Observe Existing Behavior

+ Ask Yourself to Change, Programming with Image and Feel. No commands are used.

+ Let it Happen!

+ Nonjudgmental, Calm Observation of the Results: Leading to Continuing Observation of Process until Behavior Is Automatic.

It was a business decision driven by Tom Watson Jr. after listening to a lot of customer feedback. See "Father, Son, and Co." https://www.amazon.com/Father-Son-Co-Life-Beyond/dp/05533808... his autobiography of his years at IBM, and beyond. The 360 project figures prominently.

I found the article compelling and the conclusions insightful. My assumption was that that sharing them would encourage more people to read it.