4 ms·

I'm an exited valley founder who just launched an emergency preparedness site for the rational crowd: https://theprepared.com https://theprepared.com Have been

I'm an exited valley founder who just launched an emergency preparedness site for the rational crowd: https://theprepared.com https://theprepared.com Have been prepping in the SF / startup community for almost 10 years and teaching other techies how to prep for a long time, but historically was face to face because of stigma, etc. We started The Prepared because prepping is very rational and it's gone mainstream enough to have threads like this on HN. Beginners checklist here: https://theprepared.com/guides/emergency-preparedness-checklist-prepping-beginners/ https://theprepared.com/guides/emergency-preparedness-checkl... Post on reasons why liberals should be preppers: https://theprepared.com/blog/five-reasons-why-liberals-should-be-preppers/ https://theprepared.com/blog/five-reasons-why-liberals-shoul... Happy to help anyone in their journey. (long time personal HN members but this is a new account)

maxerickson 9y ago
You should own your Amazon referrer link existence and not hide them behind your own tracker/reflector.
- the_prepared 9y ago
  We're not hiding anything - it's plainly written around the site we make affiliate fees on some of our links, and it never affects what we write or recommend. We make nothing on most of the top links people click on. Our URL redirects are for our analytics.
agentdrtran 9y ago
That site seems great but it's still a tough sell when the "welcome to rational prepping" guide includes AI and CRISPR as causes.
- jorazzle 9y ago
  Why? Elon just said AI is a bigger threat than North Korea.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    Elon says a lot of things!
    - jrockway 9y ago
      Maybe he's just talking about his AIs when they're near bright white trucks on sunny days.
    - hobofan 9y ago
      I don't think you can count that in the "many things he says" category, with how consistent and insistent he is with those statements over quite some time now. That being said, I'm personally not sure if one should put too much weight on his opinions regarding that matter.
  - legulere 9y ago
    Artificial intelligence is a total misnomer. The current machine learning techniques that are becoming successful are better described as pattern recognition. A network that is designed to recognize kittens (or other stuff) is neither intelligent nor dangerous.
- the_prepared 9y ago
  Thanks for the feedback, but why do those seem contradictory? Honest question. As someone else said, very sane people like Musk, Hawkings, and Gates are warning of AI CRISPR. It's not the cliche SkyNet or Ghost in the Shell stuff per se. For example, automation and how it's effecting the economy really does matter, regardless of how much we in the valley would like to avoid that narrative.
  - guscost 9y ago
    > very sane people like Musk, Hawkings, and Gates Ehhhh... those folks are smart but none of them would make a top 10 list of the sanest people according to me. > It's not the cliche SkyNet or Ghost in the Shell stuff per se. For example, automation and how it's effecting the economy really does matter Sure, but this sounds like a cop-out in context.
    - good_vibes 9y ago
      who does make the 'top 10 list' of sanity for you?
      - guscost 9y ago
        What a fun question! You go first, though :D
    - the_prepared 9y ago
      Yeah sane wasn't the best word for those hypomaniacs, but you got what I meant - they are not irrational tin foil hatters. Why does that sound like a cop out? Economic decline, the U.S. erosion of the fundamentals of a quality life, overpopulation / too many dependents and not enough young workers, etc... those are all valid reasons to prepare. As is preparing for car accidents, sudden layoffs, floods, and so on.
      - guscost 9y ago
        Yeah I get your meaning. And maybe this is silly and unfair, but to me "AI" in the context of prepping suggests very particular things. What you're describing should probably be called "social unrest" or "revolution" caused by displacement of labor.
alabut 9y ago
Can confirm. The founder of this site is actually a close personal friend that started teaching me about this stuff years ago, first in a more casual way when catching up and then recently much more in-depth as he started documenting his experience. I'm still more of a prepper lurker that's reading up on this stuff while friends are starting to take it more seriously. I personally don't know if prepping is a fad like cold war-era nuclear bunkers, a potential lifesaver like a beefed up version of the red cross emergency kits, or somewhere in between as a useful hobby like hiking and camping, but my inner research nerd is having a great time learning more. It helps that my YC team was a product review website and there's a lot of gear junkies in the survivalist crowd, so that's been my entry point into it, not so much the angle on being freaked out about the news.
pdfernhout 9y ago
Here are some preparedness-related ideas from 1999 as part of a hope by me to eventually use to design self-replicating space habitats (though not enough time to move them much further along): http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/ http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/ "The OSCOMAK project will foster a community in which many interested individuals will contribute to the creation of a distributed global repository of manufacturing knowledge about past, present and future processes, materials, and products. ... The OSCOMAK project is an attempt to create a core of communities more in control of their technological destiny and its social implications. No single design for a community or technology will please everyone, or even many people. Nor would a single design be likely to survive. So this project endeavors to gather information and to develop tools and processes that all fit together conceptually like Tinkertoys or Legos. The result will be a library of possibilities that individuals in a community can use to achieve any degree of self-sufficiency and self-replication within any size community, from one person to a billion people. Within every community people will interact with these possibilities by using them and extending them to design a community economy and physical layout that suits their needs and ideas. ..." Here is my own list of concerns from 1999 (I'd add supervolcanoes and Cascadia subduction zone to that list now -- and of course replace Y2K with the Year 2038 problem): http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/fears.htm http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/fears.htm Here is a picture of what happened to my mother's home city in the Netherlands when she was a teenager -- her family's house burned during the initial invasion -- and then she saw people including an elderly relative starve to death a couple years later -- so disasters do happen and sometimes seemingly out of the blue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_bombing_of_Rotterdam#/media/File:Rotterdam,_Laurenskerk,_na_bombardement_van_mei_1940.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_bombing_of_Rotterdam#/m... Most US Americans may ignore this fact, but our lives in the USA are completely dependent on the continual error-free functioning of decades-old Soviet missile-launch computers built with computer chips we tried to sabotage: http://www.businessinsider.com/russias-dead-hand-system-may-still-be-active-2014-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/russias-dead-hand-system-may-... "To deter the possibility of a U.S. nuclear first-strike, the Soviets created a system called Perimeter, also known as "Dead Hand." The Dead Hand was a computer system that could autonomously launch all of the USSR's nuclear weapons once it was activated, across the entirety of the Soviet Union." Let's hope those 1970s-era Soviet computer engineers knew how to build reliable systems from unreliable components! But, it still may be prudent to prepare for the situation where those Soviet computers eventually fail in some unexpected way. Example: "99 red ballons - Nena" (but failing from a large earthquake misinterpreted as a nuclear strike may be more likely): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14IRDDnEPR4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14IRDDnEPR4 Humans have become a geological force with all our technologies of abundance -- including control of nuclear energy as well as massive use of fossil fuels. But then we ignore the implications of all that technology because dealing with the implications requires thinking differently -- and thinking differently can be hard, expensive, and sometimes painful. Related humor on the difficulty of thinking differently: "Star Wars: The Death Star Cantina | WDR" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yl_reBjVqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yl_reBjVqU As Albert Einstein said, "The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. (1945)". Of course, any Apple watch these days has more power than the computers used to design the first atomic weapons. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/07/turings-cathedral-george-dyson-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/07/turings-cathed... "[N]o other book has engaged so intelligently and disconcertingly with the digital age's relationship to nuclear weapons research, not just as a moral quandary to do with funding, but as an indispensable developmental influence, producing the conceptual tools that would unlock the intellectual power of the computer." I generalized Einstein's theme for our new century to: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity." http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-tran...

maxerickson 9y ago

You should own your Amazon referrer link existence and not hide them behind your own tracker/reflector.

the_prepared 9y ago
We're not hiding anything - it's plainly written around the site we make affiliate fees on some of our links, and it never affects what we write or recommend. We make nothing on most of the top links people click on. Our URL redirects are for our analytics.

agentdrtran 9y ago

That site seems great but it's still a tough sell when the "welcome to rational prepping" guide includes AI and CRISPR as causes.

jorazzle 9y ago
Why? Elon just said AI is a bigger threat than North Korea.
- throwanem 9y ago
  Elon says a lot of things!
  - jrockway 9y ago
    Maybe he's just talking about his AIs when they're near bright white trucks on sunny days.
  - hobofan 9y ago
    I don't think you can count that in the "many things he says" category, with how consistent and insistent he is with those statements over quite some time now. That being said, I'm personally not sure if one should put too much weight on his opinions regarding that matter.
- legulere 9y ago
  Artificial intelligence is a total misnomer. The current machine learning techniques that are becoming successful are better described as pattern recognition. A network that is designed to recognize kittens (or other stuff) is neither intelligent nor dangerous.
the_prepared 9y ago
Thanks for the feedback, but why do those seem contradictory? Honest question. As someone else said, very sane people like Musk, Hawkings, and Gates are warning of AI CRISPR. It's not the cliche SkyNet or Ghost in the Shell stuff per se. For example, automation and how it's effecting the economy really does matter, regardless of how much we in the valley would like to avoid that narrative.
- guscost 9y ago
  > very sane people like Musk, Hawkings, and Gates Ehhhh... those folks are smart but none of them would make a top 10 list of the sanest people according to me. > It's not the cliche SkyNet or Ghost in the Shell stuff per se. For example, automation and how it's effecting the economy really does matter Sure, but this sounds like a cop-out in context.
  - good_vibes 9y ago
    who does make the 'top 10 list' of sanity for you?
    - guscost 9y ago
      What a fun question! You go first, though :D
  - the_prepared 9y ago
    Yeah sane wasn't the best word for those hypomaniacs, but you got what I meant - they are not irrational tin foil hatters. Why does that sound like a cop out? Economic decline, the U.S. erosion of the fundamentals of a quality life, overpopulation / too many dependents and not enough young workers, etc... those are all valid reasons to prepare. As is preparing for car accidents, sudden layoffs, floods, and so on.
    - guscost 9y ago
      Yeah I get your meaning. And maybe this is silly and unfair, but to me "AI" in the context of prepping suggests very particular things. What you're describing should probably be called "social unrest" or "revolution" caused by displacement of labor.

alabut 9y ago

Can confirm. The founder of this site is actually a close personal friend that started teaching me about this stuff years ago, first in a more casual way when catching up and then recently much more in-depth as he started documenting his experience. I'm still more of a prepper lurker that's reading up on this stuff while friends are starting to take it more seriously. I personally don't know if prepping is a fad like cold war-era nuclear bunkers, a potential lifesaver like a beefed up version of the red cross emergency kits, or somewhere in between as a useful hobby like hiking and camping, but my inner research nerd is having a great time learning more. It helps that my YC team was a product review website and there's a lot of gear junkies in the survivalist crowd, so that's been my entry point into it, not so much the angle on being freaked out about the news.

pdfernhout 9y ago

Here are some preparedness-related ideas from 1999 as part of a hope by me to eventually use to design self-replicating space habitats (though not enough time to move them much further along): http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/ http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/ "The OSCOMAK project will foster a community in which many interested individuals will contribute to the creation of a distributed global repository of manufacturing knowledge about past, present and future processes, materials, and products. ... The OSCOMAK project is an attempt to create a core of communities more in control of their technological destiny and its social implications. No single design for a community or technology will please everyone, or even many people. Nor would a single design be likely to survive. So this project endeavors to gather information and to develop tools and processes that all fit together conceptually like Tinkertoys or Legos. The result will be a library of possibilities that individuals in a community can use to achieve any degree of self-sufficiency and self-replication within any size community, from one person to a billion people. Within every community people will interact with these possibilities by using them and extending them to design a community economy and physical layout that suits their needs and ideas. ..." Here is my own list of concerns from 1999 (I'd add supervolcanoes and Cascadia subduction zone to that list now -- and of course replace Y2K with the Year 2038 problem): http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/fears.htm http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/fears.htm Here is a picture of what happened to my mother's home city in the Netherlands when she was a teenager -- her family's house burned during the initial invasion -- and then she saw people including an elderly relative starve to death a couple years later -- so disasters do happen and sometimes seemingly out of the blue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_bombing_of_Rotterdam#/media/File:Rotterdam,_Laurenskerk,_na_bombardement_van_mei_1940.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_bombing_of_Rotterdam#/m... Most US Americans may ignore this fact, but our lives in the USA are completely dependent on the continual error-free functioning of decades-old Soviet missile-launch computers built with computer chips we tried to sabotage: http://www.businessinsider.com/russias-dead-hand-system-may-still-be-active-2014-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/russias-dead-hand-system-may-... "To deter the possibility of a U.S. nuclear first-strike, the Soviets created a system called Perimeter, also known as "Dead Hand." The Dead Hand was a computer system that could autonomously launch all of the USSR's nuclear weapons once it was activated, across the entirety of the Soviet Union." Let's hope those 1970s-era Soviet computer engineers knew how to build reliable systems from unreliable components! But, it still may be prudent to prepare for the situation where those Soviet computers eventually fail in some unexpected way. Example: "99 red ballons - Nena" (but failing from a large earthquake misinterpreted as a nuclear strike may be more likely): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14IRDDnEPR4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14IRDDnEPR4 Humans have become a geological force with all our technologies of abundance -- including control of nuclear energy as well as massive use of fossil fuels. But then we ignore the implications of all that technology because dealing with the implications requires thinking differently -- and thinking differently can be hard, expensive, and sometimes painful. Related humor on the difficulty of thinking differently: "Star Wars: The Death Star Cantina | WDR" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yl_reBjVqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yl_reBjVqU As Albert Einstein said, "The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. (1945)". Of course, any Apple watch these days has more power than the computers used to design the first atomic weapons. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/07/turings-cathedral-george-dyson-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/07/turings-cathed... "[N]o other book has engaged so intelligently and disconcertingly with the digital age's relationship to nuclear weapons research, not just as a moral quandary to do with funding, but as an indispensable developmental influence, producing the conceptual tools that would unlock the intellectual power of the computer." I generalized Einstein's theme for our new century to: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity." http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-tran...