5 ms·

> It's when technical people look at what seems like a groundbreaking idea, seem unimpressed, and say "couldn't you just _____", were the blank is filled with s

by dvt 5y ago

> It's when technical people look at what seems like a groundbreaking idea, seem unimpressed, and say "couldn't you just _____", were the blank is filled with something a nontechnical person doesn't understand or considers very cumbersome. This is basically putting the cart before the horse and pretty much the definition of hindsight bias. We all know the BrandonM/Dropbox quip, but that's just a fun anecdote, not some universal axiom. I don't really have any dog in this race (I won't use Mighty because my PC/Laptop is more than capable of hundreds of tabs and Electron apps), but if it succeeds, good on Suhail!

bmmayer1 5y ago
What is the BrandonM/Dropbox quip?
- easton 5y ago
  This one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- KineticLensman 5y ago
  "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software."
- MsMowz 5y ago
  When Drew Houston first posted Dropbox on HN, BrandonM had the top comment that doubted its viability/usefulness as a product. It's been the topic of a lot of discussion since then, including between the two themselves. >I have a few qualms with this app: >1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account... From: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
  - BrandonM 5y ago
    Sorry, I can't resist... I just noticed from the URL that my comment was the 9,224th item ever on Hacker News. Hacker News was a very different place back then. YC wasn't well known at all. Hell, the iPhone hadn't been released yet. We still had to walk uphill both ways to get to school and back. Few seem to consider that contextual difference. Poor word choice aside for a moment, "quite trivially" meant something very different in 2007 than it has come to mean today.
- dang 5y ago
  Other users have provided the link, but my heart sinks a little every time I see this brought up, especially when the commenter is singled out by name. People forget that this is a real person. He also happens to be a first-class HN contributor, and has been for many years. I realize it's internet fun to point neon arrows at people seeming outrageously wrong in the past, but the truth is that people aren't reading that comment accurately and there's a huge dose of hindsight fallacy here. When he wrote "I have a few qualms with this app", he didn't mean the software. He meant their YC application. (Note the title of Drew's post: "My YC App"). He wasn't being a petty nitpicker—he was earnestly trying to help, and you can see in how sweetly he replied to Drew there that he genuinely wanted them to succeed. We should be so lucky for all responses to "crazy new ideas" to be that decent. This community would be healthier, and actually the current thread is a standout example of how far from true it is. The criticisms he was raising turned out not to be problems in hindsight, but were on point in 2007, when the idea of file synchronization was widely derided as a solution-in-search-of-a-problem which only technical users would ever care about, users who (as the comment pointed out) could already roll their own solutions. The idea had recently been publicly mocked in a famous blog post—singled out as the prime example of an idea only technical users would ever care about—and even YC funded Dropbox because they believed in Drew, not the idea. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229275
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jasode 5y ago
    >, but the truth is that people aren't reading that comment accurately and there's a huge dose of hindsight fallacy here. I appreciate your defense of that comment as it made me re-read it as charitably as possible. That said, I think you're still overlooking some of the reasons that cause the eyerolling of it that's separate from hindsight bias. First was the "quite trivially" phrase in the comment. That type of verbiage automatically triggers the perception of haughtiness. Imagine if someone did a Show HN of a new webcam security doorbell and a commenter said, ", you can already build such a system yourself _quite trivially_ by getting some components from DigiKey and soldering them yourself". Can you see how that sounds really dismissive? Second, it was overlooking the idea that the YC app(lication)s are not intended to create products for Linux power users like BrandonM who can string together curlftpfs with CVS/SVN. So for him to avoid that comment required stepping outside himself to see the perspective of non-techies. He could still dismiss Dropbox... but for different reasons related to not meeting needs of the end user mass market rather than purely base an opinion off his personal skillset.
villasv 5y ago
> pretty much the definition of hindsight bias This. The antidote is to revisit examples of "couldn't you just X" where X indeed prevailed. There are even instances where superseding technology was actually better, but it was too late to replace X. My favorite example is Iridium (and the whole satellite internet industry so far, let's see what will happen with Starlink). It's one thing to remove friction, but only if the new cost structure is still favorable. Disruption doesn't happen because new tech is better/cooler, it happens when it introduces competitive advantage.
simonh 5y ago
It’s not hindsight bias if you think it’s face smackingly obvious at the time. I agree there’s still a conundrum here, why is something obviously one way to some very smart people like BrandonM while the exact opposite seems just as obvious to other people. I suspect it’s more about what people value than what they know technically.
sirsinsalot 5y ago
> but if it succeeds, good on Suhail! Well, not exactly. There's plenty of people who have been successful at, frankly horrible things. I count this kind of "not your computer, ours" rent seeking change as "bad if successful".
- dvt 5y ago
  I don't really buy this. A lot of complaints are about the privacy of the whole ordeal. That's kind of moot considering Google has access to all of my banking emails, Dropbox has access to all of my invoices, Apple has access to all of my photos, and Equifax already leaked my SSN years ago. Most of my life already doesn't happen on my personal locked-down device.
  - suhail 5y ago
    Fwiw, unlike the examples above, we have permission to your data (if you give it to us) but we don't own or control any of it. We don't store it elsewhere. We don't sell it to the highest bidder. We don't mine it for some other purpose. Let me be clear: we plan to charge a subscription. That's our only business model. I think we can improve privacy and security for most users who have trouble managing it. For instance, we can patch Chrome zero-days (many have occurred this year) a lot faster for everyone. What we offer today is a faster way to use applications that do own your data so you can be much more productive and hopefully enable a new set of applications never before possible. We help improve decentralization of the web over duopolies like Apple/Windows. We make the browser more powerful, not less. We improve the market share of Linux as a consumer computing OS as it underlies our tech. In time, we might be open to people owning their own hardware and running Mighty on it but I think a lot of people will prefer we make it "just work" for now. I don't view either world as mutually exclusive. If there's an opportunity to research making things trustless, we'll work on that.
    - sirsinsalot 5y ago
      I dont have an issue with this specific case, more the industry shift to rent seeking. Cars have subscriptions. Next your thin client hardware needs to pay rent to work. It is a slippery slope and claiming virtue doesnt decrease the gradient. Also, history tells us when companies say they wont be evil... they mean "not yet". It is a middle man power play pure and simple. The rest feels like classic SV/startup window dressing to get the job done.

by dvt 5y ago

bmmayer1 5y ago

What is the BrandonM/Dropbox quip?

easton 5y ago
This one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
KineticLensman 5y ago
"For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software."
MsMowz 5y ago
When Drew Houston first posted Dropbox on HN, BrandonM had the top comment that doubted its viability/usefulness as a product. It's been the topic of a lot of discussion since then, including between the two themselves. >I have a few qualms with this app: >1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account... From: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- BrandonM 5y ago
  Sorry, I can't resist... I just noticed from the URL that my comment was the 9,224th item ever on Hacker News. Hacker News was a very different place back then. YC wasn't well known at all. Hell, the iPhone hadn't been released yet. We still had to walk uphill both ways to get to school and back. Few seem to consider that contextual difference. Poor word choice aside for a moment, "quite trivially" meant something very different in 2007 than it has come to mean today.
dang 5y ago
Other users have provided the link, but my heart sinks a little every time I see this brought up, especially when the commenter is singled out by name. People forget that this is a real person. He also happens to be a first-class HN contributor, and has been for many years. I realize it's internet fun to point neon arrows at people seeming outrageously wrong in the past, but the truth is that people aren't reading that comment accurately and there's a huge dose of hindsight fallacy here. When he wrote "I have a few qualms with this app", he didn't mean the software. He meant their YC application. (Note the title of Drew's post: "My YC App"). He wasn't being a petty nitpicker—he was earnestly trying to help, and you can see in how sweetly he replied to Drew there that he genuinely wanted them to succeed. We should be so lucky for all responses to "crazy new ideas" to be that decent. This community would be healthier, and actually the current thread is a standout example of how far from true it is. The criticisms he was raising turned out not to be problems in hindsight, but were on point in 2007, when the idea of file synchronization was widely derided as a solution-in-search-of-a-problem which only technical users would ever care about, users who (as the comment pointed out) could already roll their own solutions. The idea had recently been publicly mocked in a famous blog post—singled out as the prime example of an idea only technical users would ever care about—and even YC funded Dropbox because they believed in Drew, not the idea. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229275
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jasode 5y ago
  >, but the truth is that people aren't reading that comment accurately and there's a huge dose of hindsight fallacy here. I appreciate your defense of that comment as it made me re-read it as charitably as possible. That said, I think you're still overlooking some of the reasons that cause the eyerolling of it that's separate from hindsight bias. First was the "quite trivially" phrase in the comment. That type of verbiage automatically triggers the perception of haughtiness. Imagine if someone did a Show HN of a new webcam security doorbell and a commenter said, ", you can already build such a system yourself _quite trivially_ by getting some components from DigiKey and soldering them yourself". Can you see how that sounds really dismissive? Second, it was overlooking the idea that the YC app(lication)s are not intended to create products for Linux power users like BrandonM who can string together curlftpfs with CVS/SVN. So for him to avoid that comment required stepping outside himself to see the perspective of non-techies. He could still dismiss Dropbox... but for different reasons related to not meeting needs of the end user mass market rather than purely base an opinion off his personal skillset.

villasv 5y ago

> pretty much the definition of hindsight bias This. The antidote is to revisit examples of "couldn't you just X" where X indeed prevailed. There are even instances where superseding technology was actually better, but it was too late to replace X. My favorite example is Iridium (and the whole satellite internet industry so far, let's see what will happen with Starlink). It's one thing to remove friction, but only if the new cost structure is still favorable. Disruption doesn't happen because new tech is better/cooler, it happens when it introduces competitive advantage.

simonh 5y ago

It’s not hindsight bias if you think it’s face smackingly obvious at the time. I agree there’s still a conundrum here, why is something obviously one way to some very smart people like BrandonM while the exact opposite seems just as obvious to other people. I suspect it’s more about what people value than what they know technically.

sirsinsalot 5y ago

> but if it succeeds, good on Suhail! Well, not exactly. There's plenty of people who have been successful at, frankly horrible things. I count this kind of "not your computer, ours" rent seeking change as "bad if successful".

dvt 5y ago
I don't really buy this. A lot of complaints are about the privacy of the whole ordeal. That's kind of moot considering Google has access to all of my banking emails, Dropbox has access to all of my invoices, Apple has access to all of my photos, and Equifax already leaked my SSN years ago. Most of my life already doesn't happen on my personal locked-down device.
- suhail 5y ago
  Fwiw, unlike the examples above, we have permission to your data (if you give it to us) but we don't own or control any of it. We don't store it elsewhere. We don't sell it to the highest bidder. We don't mine it for some other purpose. Let me be clear: we plan to charge a subscription. That's our only business model. I think we can improve privacy and security for most users who have trouble managing it. For instance, we can patch Chrome zero-days (many have occurred this year) a lot faster for everyone. What we offer today is a faster way to use applications that do own your data so you can be much more productive and hopefully enable a new set of applications never before possible. We help improve decentralization of the web over duopolies like Apple/Windows. We make the browser more powerful, not less. We improve the market share of Linux as a consumer computing OS as it underlies our tech. In time, we might be open to people owning their own hardware and running Mighty on it but I think a lot of people will prefer we make it "just work" for now. I don't view either world as mutually exclusive. If there's an opportunity to research making things trustless, we'll work on that.
  - sirsinsalot 5y ago
    I dont have an issue with this specific case, more the industry shift to rent seeking. Cars have subscriptions. Next your thin client hardware needs to pay rent to work. It is a slippery slope and claiming virtue doesnt decrease the gradient. Also, history tells us when companies say they wont be evil... they mean "not yet". It is a middle man power play pure and simple. The rest feels like classic SV/startup window dressing to get the job done.