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I feel like I really need to learn how to raise money. For $17M, one could probably build a vacuum robot prototype that’ll also clean up all of the kids toys an

I feel like I really need to learn how to raise money. For $17M, one could probably build a vacuum robot prototype that’ll also clean up all of the kids toys and sort LEGO bricks by colour and size. Parents worldwide would love it. But instead, we get a replacement for Git. And I didn’t even bother to click the link because I’m fine with how Git works. On the list of pain points in my life, “what comes after Git” has roughly the same priority as “try out a more exciting shower gel”. But did you ever step on a LEGO brick while walking to the bathroom at night? That pain is immediately obvious. Why is nobody solving actual problems anymore?

noosphr 6mo ago
I for one can't wait for open Ai to buy them and reroute every git commit to chatgpt.
bee_rider 6mo ago
I like git, it works perfectly fine on my command line. I do wonder, though, if it would have been designed differently if the whole “code forge” sort of application (or whatever GitHub and the like are called) was envisioned at the time. Pull requests aren’t even a concept in git proper, right? It seems like a kind of important type of tool. Even though git is awesome, we don’t need a monoculture.
- mzi 6mo ago
  À pull request is just you requesting someone to pull from you in git proper. So the maintainer adds you as a remote and pulls from you.
  - k33n 6mo ago
    There’s really nothing resembling a “pull request” that’s used by 99.999% of git users. We have merge requests. But we call them pull requests for some dumb reason.
- throwaway173738 6mo ago
  They sure aren’t. Before github you set up remotes or emailed patches.
- tadfisher 6mo ago
  git request-pull Docs: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-request-pull https://git-scm.com/docs/git-request-pull Generates a pretty email requesting someone to pull commits from your online repository. It's really meant for Linus to pull a whole bunch of already-reviewed changes from a maintainer's integration branch. The rough equivalent to GitHub's "pull request" is the "patch series", produced by: git format-patch Docs: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-format-patch https://git-scm.com/docs/git-format-patch Which lets you provide a "cover letter" (PR description), and formats each commit as a diff that can be quoted inline in an email reply for code review.
  - functional_dev 6mo ago
    You are right, PRs are not in git. format-patch and request-pull are originals designed for mailings lists. Github just put UI on top. Interesting that DAG model means any branch from anywhere can be merged... the forge is just coordination. Explored here if curious - https://vectree.io/c/git-graph-theory-logic https://vectree.io/c/git-graph-theory-logic
- grogenaut 6mo ago
  Sorceforge predates git by about 11 years. As do several other projects like google code. Its not a new idea. Or basically most source control systems. Git, actually, is the more unique idea, of a DVCS... versus a cVCS...
  - cornholio 6mo ago
    git is not a new idea, various features of git existed in various SCMs for decades. The distributed aspect existed in Bitkeeper too, for example. But it took a big brain with a systemic view of the problem and solutions space to bring them all together - in a lighting fast implementation to boot.
    - toyg 6mo ago
      I don't think technical features were the key to git's success. What really made the difference was: 1. it was free; 2. it was sponsored by the most fashionable project of the time (Linux); 3. it did not require a server; 4. because it was FOSS, people could extend it without asking anyone's permission; and... 5. ...once GitHub appeared, simplifying the PR process, the network effect did its thing. Git was hard to use and to understand. It did not win on technical features alone, as you said there were plenty of alternatives. It won because of community and network effects.
      - skydhash 6mo ago
        > Git was hard to use and to understand So is ffmpeg and ImageMagick. Or Blender. Or Freecad. There are domains that do require some learning and training to properly use the available tool.
- thwarted 6mo ago
  > or whatever GitHub and the like are called GitHub is a social networking site that just so happens to have code hosting related features.
  - Hamuko 6mo ago
    People keep saying this but I can't really find much anything social about GitHub.
    - toyg 6mo ago
      Some people spend most of their time in issues and PRs, which are social features mapping social interactions.
      - Hamuko 6mo ago
        Is Bugzilla also a social network?
        toyg 6mo ago
        To the degree that it emphasizes communication between individuals over being a dumb database, yes, a bugtracker can be a social network. Bugzilla is a bit too close to the "database" side of the spectrum, whereas GitHub is at the other end; Jira sits somewhat in the middle.
    - petepete 6mo ago
      You can follow, star, favourite and comment on things, you get a feed where recent updates on stuff/people you've interacted are listed, you can customise your profile page with snippets about yourself, a photo, a status, contact info and add whatever else you want (including more photos, images, charts etc) in markdown. It now has discussions which are essentially a forum. It's as much a social network/collaboration tool as it is place to store your code these days.
- imron 6mo ago
  > I do wonder, though, if it would have been designed differently if the whole “code forge” sort of application (or whatever GitHub and the like are called) was envisioned at the time. I would argue that it was purposefully designed in contrast against that model. GitHub is full of git anti patterns.
- jonhohle 6mo ago
  Perforce had change sets and there were lots of tools for code reviews that worked a lot like GitHub before GitHub (review board, phabricator, another one I can’t remember).
- red_admiral 6mo ago
  Indeed they're not; they live on the 'user layer' rather than the 'application layer'. That's not to say many git-frontends (IntelliJ, Sourcetree, Github desktop) don't support them, but "git pullrequest" isn't a thing. Edit: see "git request-pull" as mentioned below (file:///C:/Program%20Files/Git/mingw64/share/doc/git-doc/git-request-pull.html) but what it does is write "a pretty email" (the other poster's words) to STDOUT.
  - 1718627440 6mo ago
    > mentioned below (file:///C:/Program%20Files/Git/mingw64/share/doc/git-doc/git-request-pull.html) What? Is the intention, that I access your C: drive? Also is it common to have a file:// link on MS Windows? I thought this was a unix thing.
    - red_admiral 6mo ago
      Sorry. For some reason I used to get `git help ...` redirect me to the (URL of) the actual website. I think the file:/// is so that you can fire off "[cmd /c] start FILEPATH" to load the default browser, while also not having to worry about spaces in the path.
- ngc248 6mo ago
  "Pull requests" are part of git though since it was originally a DCVS it meant you would pull from an individuals git repo ... services like github etc centralized the concept
vividfrier 6mo ago
[flagged]
- sph 6mo ago
  You guys cannot be serious, it feels like Poe’s Law day everyday in here!
  - ChrisGreenHeur 6mo ago
    if you can't get ai to handle git, that's certainly a skill issue
  - vrganj 6mo ago
    It really is insane how much this topic is dividing technical folks. What GP wrote sounds like an absolute nightmare of tech debt and unmaintainable spaghetti code that nobody understands anymore to me. But I guess for some people the increased speed outweighs all other concerns?
    - thwarted 6mo ago
      "Where are we? Are we where we wanted to be?" "I'm not sure. But at least we got here fast."
  - jb1991 6mo ago
    I have to agree that the comment you are referring to seems to be nothing other than sarcasm despite that it doesn’t read that way at all. If it’s true, the world is definitely in trouble…
- solid_fuel 6mo ago
  Have you considered returning to actual software engineering and workflows that tools were designed to support instead of playing the LLM slot machine?
- satvikpendem 6mo ago
  Funny the replies you're getting here when already we see companies with engineers not having written a single line of code since late last year when models became good enough to go end to end.
sph 6mo ago
> Why is nobody solving actual problems anymore? Because that’s too risky for investors.
techpression 6mo ago
17M seems like a rounding error these days with all the AI investments. Probably some spare cash in a fund that needed to be closed or something. Solving actual problems are hard, and even harder to get money for (see research). Most VC’s are in it for the returns only, not actually making a change, there are some exceptions but they are far and few apart.
Aperocky 6mo ago
You see, the actual problem is raising the money.
fontain 6mo ago
The author is a founder of GitHub, he could raise $17m for “git but it’s called pit and a repository is a hole and committing code is called burying it” if he wanted to, investors care about pedigree.
- fxtentacle 6mo ago
  pedigree is a great word here and being upfront about it (if true) would make for some fun VC slogans: "We've replaced due diligence with a DNA test." "No mutts, no miracles. Three generations of wealth or GTFO." "Your bloodline is fine. Don't fret the cap table." "You forgot to attach the pitch deck, but we really like your family crest."
- bonesss 6mo ago
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- amoss 6mo ago
  I would use this tool. Ship it
jtfrench 6mo ago
Definitely sounded like a shower gel moment.
al_borland 6mo ago
For what it's worth, that LEGO vacuum does exist[0], it was on Shark Tank[1]. I assume they stole the idea from The Office. It doesn't sort the bricks, but I assume that was more of a stretch goal based on the insane amount of money being discussed. After all, the LEGO vacuum only cost $495k to get to market. [0] https://pickupbricks.com https://pickupbricks.com [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X25MIpQqLIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X25MIpQqLIU
- fxtentacle 6mo ago
  That one needs to be operated manually. I was thinking more along the lines of robot dog + OCR + 6 dof arm on the robot's back. This video is from 8 years ago: https://youtu.be/wXxrmussq4E?si=bgDdDvZODVov3sSC&t=15 https://youtu.be/wXxrmussq4E?si=bgDdDvZODVov3sSC&t=15 I'm sure, by now we could make them for <$1k per robot, if we wanted to. EDIT: BTW did you see that the page you linked to has this at the bottom of their landing page: "Example product" "This area is used to describe your product’s details. Tell customers about the look, feel, and style of your product. Add details on color, materials used, sizing, and where it was made." so I wonder if they actually sell anything.
  - al_borland 6mo ago
    > EDIT: BTW did you see that the page you linked to has this at the bottom of their landing page: I'm not seeing it. When I search for "example" nothing comes up, but maybe I'm looking wrong. I see it on Amazon as well, with reviews and videos from "customers", so I assume it's not vaporware and that is more an issue with people not filling out the full website template, which is also not a great sign. https://www.amazon.com/Pick-Up-Bricks-Compatible-Accessories/dp/B0CJXQ3PXL/ https://www.amazon.com/Pick-Up-Bricks-Compatible-Accessories...
  - burnerRhodov2 6mo ago
    i noticed the example product page too on their website. But why not make it like a bigger rumba on wheels?
  - Izkata 6mo ago
aaron695 6mo ago
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uwagar 6mo ago
i am actually fine with how svn works.
- hdgvhicv 6mo ago
  Guessing you aren’t working with hundreds of collaborators in a distributed offline system. Which is what git was for and why svn wasn’t enough for that type of use case.
  - uwagar 6mo ago
    u guessed right. im one of the world's few solo software developers left (behind).
    - k33n 6mo ago
      Keep on keeping on brother.
      - uwagar 6mo ago
        thank you.
  - rimliu 6mo ago
    or using branches.
    - siva7 6mo ago
      oh svn had branches. people just didn't know that they wanted a distributed cvs.
    - uwagar 6mo ago
      for me atomic commit or was that committing a bunch of files with 1 command was important. and cvs wouldnt let me do it. perforce did. but it was proprietary software, though i think they offered a free version for solo developers or something like that. and when svn came out i jumped ship.
majke 6mo ago
I’m also contemplating a lego sorting machine.
- mkl 6mo ago
  jacquesm did that impressively 9 years ago: https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14226889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14226889 (follow-up posts with more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14280569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14280569, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14654223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14654223). It doesn't solve the picking-up-off-the-floor problem.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
smartmic 6mo ago
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flohofwoe 6mo ago
Tbf, git is very much a problem that needs solving. It only works well for text data, the fact that it is decentralized adds a lot of complexity but doesn't matter for 99% of users since they use a centralized git forge like Github or Gitlab, and the UX is pretty much non-existent.
- roncesvalles 6mo ago
  But do you really think $17M is going to give us that alternative, or will it come from some brilliant guy going on a caffeine-fueled weeklong side quest (like how Git was invented)? There are some things that need to come from a place of manic self-motivated genius. It's not something that you can buy with money. The money is really just there to help you shove a mediocre solution down everyone's throats (which is exactly what's going on here).
  - flohofwoe 6mo ago
    Yeah probably right :)
  - operatingthetan 6mo ago
    I think they are going to give us _something_. Devs probably won't pick it up though.
- Borg3 6mo ago
  It works exacly as it was designed to work.. GIT as VCS.. Version Control System.. for text code sniplets. It can handle small binary blobs just fine. If you need (D)VFS aka Distributed Versioned Filesystem, grab right tool. Or write one. This is exacly way I wrote DOT (Distributed Object Tracker). Its pure DVFS repo manager, to handle binary blobs and that it.. Nothing more. People complaining about GIT not working well w/ big data just handling GIT wrong. Linus said it from the begining, its NOT tool for such datasets. Just move along.
- PunchyHamster 6mo ago
  if you don't understand git you shouldn't be coding, full stop. The exact same skill set needed to write good code is required to use git in quick and efficient matter. Then again, it is used for non-coding tasks, but any and all of it's UI problems are not from the method of storage (pretty much any modern VCS uses same "tree of linked snapshots of filesystem) so making one while still making it git compatible just with better ui (like Jujutsu) is very much possible
gyulai 6mo ago
> I feel like I really need to learn how to raise money. For $17M, one could probably ... People complaining about investors throwing stupid sums of money at stupid or trivial things unrelated (or only marginally related) to AI? ...sounds to me like the first glimpse of hope I have come across in this industry for half a decade.
- satvikpendem 6mo ago
  HN has always been skeptical of VC, ironically, so that's no indication of anything in the overall industry.
  - latexr 6mo ago
    HN is not a hive mind with a single opinion. You get the extreme opinions of both sides and every nuance in between. There are people here who despise VC and people who live for it and think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.
    - satvikpendem 6mo ago
      No, but trends are very prevalent, it is not a uniform random distribution.
      - rwmj 6mo ago
        Unless you've done a study of sentiment on HN (please link if so) then you have no idea.
- dirkc 6mo ago
  Is it unrelated though? > Today, with Git, we're all teaching swarms of agents to use a tool built for sending patches over mailing lists. That's far from what is needed today.
  - gyulai 6mo ago
    Investor narrative pointing out a relationship is not the same as substantive technological overlap.
flomo 6mo ago
> Why is nobody solving actual problems anymore? Let me just state the obvious. Of all the major problems of society, sorting legos isn't one. If you disagree, try emerging from the cellar.
- choudharism 6mo ago
  Replacing git is?
  - flomo 6mo ago
    Successfully would be big business, because everyone and everyone and the F1000 uses git. Or at least it could more of a feature than a product, and gets merged into some other VC company, or some Jira feature or etc. Who really wants cheap lego vacuums? Basement-dwellers who are getting yelled at by their mom? Not a good market.
- reverius42 6mo ago
  Maybe you're not a parent. To me, this sounds like arguing against the existence of the dishwasher by saying "of all the major problems of society, washing dishes by hand isn't one."
  - flomo 6mo ago
    What a ridiculous statement from an obviously over-privleged phony. You are actually doubling-down on being completely isolated. Kids face a lot of new problems these days. They also face some old one, like sorting their legos.
    - reverius42 6mo ago
      Sometimes you put the kids to bed before they've cleaned up the legos, because it's getting late. Then you step on a lego.
- dare944 6mo ago
  Completely unnecessary retort. At no point did anyone in this thread state that sorting legos was a major problem of society. Rather, the GP merely implied that some parents would love to have a robot to sort their kids legos, and that (ironically) even that unimportant "need" is more important than replacing git.
debarshri 6mo ago
Thing i learned about raising capital it, you need to build or have a network. Thats YC is great, accelerators, incubators help you do that. Network and story you tell. Also, every stage you raise, you have to make sure the folks you raise from help you craft the narrative for thr next round. I think if you have a healthy busy growing well, you shouldnt raise unless you have ambition and urge to go faster. Irony of thr market is, just like tinder 20% of the companies attract all the attention rest of them try to gran the attention. Those who need capital get the capital, those who need the capital die trying. Enough friday pessimisim.
- pjerem 6mo ago
  > I think if you have a healthy busy growing well, you shouldnt raise unless you have ambition and urge to go faster. My previous employer was like this. A 20yo company with a nice always increasing ytoy growth. The CEO told for 20 years that he would never raise any money. It was an incredible place to work : nice compensation, product and consumer centered, we had time and means to do the right things. Until the CEO changed his mind and raised money anyway. But we didn't have to fear anything because those investors were very different and not like the other greedy ones. Well I'm not working there anymore for a hella lot of reasons that are just the same as everywhere else. But at least the CEO who was already rich is now incredibly rich.
  - debarshri 6mo ago
    VC by default are founder friendly in my experience. If you find a greedy VC then most likely they are real VC and often gets attracted when your business is not doing great. Reputation travels in this industry therefore people care.
    - DrScientist 6mo ago
      > VC by default are founder friendly in my experience. Founders are only one stakeholder. There are employees ( I think they fall into that category ), customers, suppliers, and the wider society. It all comes back to why does the company exist - and for which stakeholders. I think that's the point the original author is making. I don't buy the argument that making money in the end is a perfect surrogate for overall good - it's not - it's an imperfect surrogate - and to pretend it is a perfect surrogate is just an excuse to behave like an arsehole. To make that concrete, let's say you are a chemical company making paints - really important job, paints are needed the cheaper you can make them, the more people can have them etc, but if you knowingly pollute a local river just because you can get away with it and increase your profits - saying that increased profits justifies polluting the river based on the assumption that river pollution is correctly priced ( free ) is an obvious convenient excuse to be a selfish arsehole.
caycep 6mo ago
granted how much did Linus spend on Git? probably well south of $17M and he's not beholden to the likes of a16z
- pjc50 6mo ago
  The first version was written in ten days apparently, so more in the ballpark of $17k.
  - jve 6mo ago
    I want people to read this sentence from https://www.linux.com/news/10-years-git-interview-git-creator-linus-torvalds/ https://www.linux.com/news/10-years-git-interview-git-creato... > So I’d like to stress that while it really came together in just about ten days or so (at which point I did my first kernel commit using git), it wasn’t like it was some kind of mad dash of coding. The actual amount of that early code is actually fairly small, it all depended on getting the basic ideas right. And that I had been mulling over for a while before the whole project started. I’d seen the problems others had. I’d seen what I wanted to avoid doing. Just so that people know that creating software is not only coding. My comment is unrelated on the point you are making about expenses.
- aorloff 6mo ago
  at the time he was probably thinking about how much time it would _save_ him
leptons 6mo ago
>Why is nobody solving actual problems anymore? They went over this, in the documentary titled "Idiocracy". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFRzIOna2oQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFRzIOna2oQ
- eastabrooka 6mo ago
  GitV2 - It's what Devs Crave.
jatins 6mo ago
> I feel like I really need to learn how to raise money Well, cofounding Github helps
Eufrat 6mo ago
Money is not given to good ideas (though, it doesn’t hurt). Money is given to friends. If you look at how VC (or really any network) funding circulates, it’s just people who are allowed to enter that circle and money just flows between them constantly. On one hand, you have trusted people who you are willing to give money, on the other hand, this inherently creates a clique. It reminds me how the Bohemian Club’s slogan, “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here” is a bit farcical given that it is impossible for the club members not to engage in commerce.
- echelon 6mo ago
  > Money is given to friends. Money is given to ideas that might become billion dollar businesses and teams that look like they can do it. Pedigree, domain expertise, previous exits.
  - imp0cat 6mo ago
    So it will be exactly like git, but with a monthly subscription fee.
    - abc123abc123 6mo ago
      And AI... always add AI!
      - ratmeadow 6mo ago
        Upon every commit, AI will review your code to check if it's worth committing or not (after all, disk space is expensive these days!). If the AI finds the code is not up to scratch, it will be reverted and you'll be given a chance to try again. Then, we will develop (read: sell) AI agents that will ingest a proposed code change (created by your front-line agent), and iteratively refactor it until the commit agent accepts it.
        EliRivers 6mo ago
        If the AI finds the code is not up to scratch, it will be reverted and you'll be given a chance to try again. That's the Platinum Premier tier. If you're on the regular tier, paying the minimum, the AI will silently fix all that right up for you.
rhubarbtree 6mo ago
Unsure if you want the real answer, but the financials on gitv2 will be much more appealing to a VC. Hardware is hard, slow, expensive, risky. Finally, China is the place to build physical things not the US.
- rwmj 6mo ago
  What would "the financials" be on a git replacement? No one makes money on git itself. Probably not much even on the services around git, given that Microsoft funds github for its own reasons, and gitlab is constantly running out of money.
  - rhubarbtree 6mo ago
    OSS as a GTM channel is well established, including amongst YC companies. So the financial model is no different from any other SaaS. Whereas hardware is high risk capital intensive and China centric.
patates 6mo ago
Not to shoot down your comment with sarcasm, I'm being really honest: I changed my shower gel with an expensive one this week, and it really had an unexpected, exciting effect. Small stuff can really have consequences much bigger than themselves. That said, if you ever decide solve the tidying the toys problem, start a kickstarter, I pledge to pledge support! :D
- internet_points 6mo ago
  i may be dense or something but what effect?
  - patates 6mo ago
    It smells better, my skin feels better after using it, and I feel happier. Showering may take little time, but I have my skin all the time :)
- secondcoming 6mo ago
  I find that sometimes changing the font in my IDE can give me an inexplicable boost
- esafak 6mo ago
  Some people are not sensitive to quality. A car is a car, a shower gel is a shower gel, etc. In the computer world, they curiously congregate around Microsoft...
rjh29 6mo ago
You missed the boat, baskets that open out into a giant play mat have flooded amazon and temu. Something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Toy-Storage-Organizer-Lego-Play/dp/B0F99K8497?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&psc=1&smid=A39QSX3U230011 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Toy-Storage-Organizer-Lego-Play/dp/...
piokoch 6mo ago
On the other side, people who were using, say, Perforce, also thought there can't be anything better. Still, BitKeeper appeared as an innovation in the area, eaten later by Git, created by angry Linus (because of BitKeeper licencing changes). So, even though Git seems to be ok (people who store large binary files or who run huge monorepos would probably disagree), maybe we can do better. Altavista was kind of okeish for search, yet Google managed to figure out something that was (at that time) way better.
jampekka 6mo ago
> But instead, we get a replacement for Git. And I didn’t even bother to click the link because I’m fine with how Git works. Perhaps you should have. Based on the link it seems like it's more an extension to than replacement for Git. The page is mostly sort of fluffy AI hype, but the concrete bits are things like integrating issue tracking and PR logic in one tool/repo, like e.g. fossil does. Also git proper could use some love too. The UI is still a mess. And the large file support and the submodule/subtree/subrepo situations are quite dismal. > $17M, one could probably build a vacuum robot prototype that’ll also clean up all of the kids toys and sort LEGO bricks by colour and size. Doing this robustly is probably quite far from robotics SOTA.
- conartist6 6mo ago
  Yeah it also sounded to me like they just want to extend git. Zed is trying the exact same thing. Neither of them is doing to be remotely prepared for what I'm going to do, which is actually replace Git.
shafyy 6mo ago
You mean the one they try to build in The Office?
latexr 6mo ago
> Why is nobody solving actual problems anymore? Because solving problems isn’t the goal, the goal is money (and sometimes a little fame) with the least possible effort, and software can be changed on a whim and is very cheap to manufacture and distribute and “fix in flight”, it’s the perfect vehicle for those who are impatient and don’t really care about understanding and studying a need.
- pas 6mo ago
  people love solving problems, but most solutions are not VC fundable (fortunately/unfortunately) sometimes it's just wait until your kid grows up and learns to put the LEGO away there's a lot of people working on hard problems that are pretty far from software being cynical about early stage software (and any company that is overpromising like Theranos, Nikola, etc..) is warranted, but also money as a reward motivates a lot of innovation (PV panels, batteries, EUV lithography)
- utopiah 6mo ago
  The problems are in fact that... the founder does not want to risk money for his own idea while funders have simultaneously also too much money while believing they don't have enough. That very simple dynamic is what is driving investment in the Silicon Valley, itself praised worldwide as the forefront. That's what bringing our own civilization on the economical (AI bubble), ecological (AI bubble, car brain) and democratic (surveillance capitalism, privacy zuckering) cliff.
raincole 6mo ago
> one could probably build a vacuum robot prototype that’ll also clean up all of the kids toys and sort LEGO bricks by colour and size. Parents worldwide would love it. And what's the next step? I can't even imagine how rich (and how large the their houses) the parents need to be for them to comfortably buy such dedicated tool. Perhaps 100x~1000x richer than me? And, while this is just pulled out from my rear side, I feel even getting this passed safety regulation would cost your $17M. It's a fully automated machine working next to toddlers! On the contrary Github is a proven product.
- Izkata 6mo ago
  Roborock released one of these about a year ago. It doesn't do as much as they want, but it can pick up things and put them into designated locations, shoes being the main example.
IanCal 6mo ago
I think it’s always good to dig a bit deeper on these things. This seems ridiculous to you, compared to a very obvious win with a Lego sorting vacuum. Lego isn’t niche, and the explanation isn’t a weird technical thing that only experts would get and understand how important or valuable it is. Yet it’s not being done. Is there nobody who has realised this gap but you? Has nobody managed to convince people with money that it’s worthwhile? Have you tried but failed? Or is it not many many thousands of people who are wrong but you? Is the problem harder than you think? I’ve worked with robotics but not for a long time and I think the core manipulation is either not really solved or not until recently. I don’t know about yours but my kids also don’t fully dismantle their Lego creations either so would the robot need to take them apart too? That’s a lot of force. And some are special. How people want Lego sorted is pretty broad. Kids don’t even need it sorted that much. And the volume can be huge for smaller buckets of things. Is the market not as big as you think? Is it big enough for the cost, I’d buy one for £100 but £1000? £10,000? How does it compare for most people against having the kids play on a blanket and then tipping it into a bucket? Or those ones that are a circle of cloth with a drawstring so it’s a play area and storage all in one? I 3d printed some sieves and that’s most of the issue right there done. People are solving actual problems, but lots of problems are hard, and not all of them are profitable. As a gut feeling, there is such a large overlap of engineers and large Lego collections and willingness to spend lots of money and time saving some time sorting Lego that the small number of implementations usually split over many years is very telling about the difficulty. For what it’s worth I want this too.
sunir 6mo ago
4 McDonalds. That’s a better way of measuring it.
- siva7 6mo ago
  Honestly it is. Investors value my company like 4 Mcdonalds.
  - sunir 6mo ago
    Exactly. A safe bet vs a great bet.
amelius 6mo ago
Git is still pretty lacking in the area of big files. This is quite annoying if you're dealing with big deep learning data. So your LEGO vacuum robot could actually benefit from a better Git.
- bootsmann 6mo ago
  Didn’t dvc try to fill this niche and absolutely fail at it?
jiggawatts 6mo ago
> sort LEGO bricks by colour and size I just looked into this out of idle curiosity, after watching some guy build a LEGO sorting machine. (They work in a warehouse that sells used bricks for model builders.) Interestingly, this is on the cusp of viability, but training the ML model would still be cost-prohibitive (for me). With $17M, it's within reach, but there's still the obvious mechanical hurdles: Kids don't disassemble their Lego, the conditions are "less than ideal", and even vibrating belts in a warehouse scenario have a lot of trouble keeping bricks separated for the camera to get a clear image. Robot hands are nowhere near the point where they can reliably (or even unreliably!) take apart two arbitrary Lego bricks that are joined, let alone anything of even mild complexity. This is hard for most humans, and often requires the use of tools! See: https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-topics/article/lego-classic-brick-separator https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-topics/article/lego-... The machine vision part is... getting there! You could pull some clever tricks with modern hardware such as bright LED lights, multi-spectral or even hyper-spectral sensors, etc. The algorithms have improved a lot also. Early attempts could only recognise a few dozen distinct shapes, and the most recent models a few hundred, but they're about 2-3 years old, which means "stone ages". A trick several Lego recognition model training runs used was to photo realistically render 3D models of bricks in random orientations and every possible color, which is far faster than manually labelling photos of real bricks. These days you could use the NVIDIA Omniverse libraries to heavily accelerate and automate this.
ludicrousdispla 6mo ago
It's primarily focused on "take from someone else" rather than create something new and useful. Consider that many of the tech posts here are of the form, "i did X but with Z" as the poster hopes they will be recognized as some master of execution.
pbkompasz 6mo ago
Yes, you may be fine with git, but can you say the same thing about AI agents? /s
palata 6mo ago
VCs have no clue. They have money and therefore they are in a dominant position. Everybody around them (professionally) is trying to flatter them and convince them that they should invest in their project. I had a few interactions with VCs (both professional and personal), where I didn't care because I wasn't benefitting from them. One of them was "an expert in CRISPR and blockchain" (WTF?) and... well I didn't need much time to see that he did not understand what a "hash" was. He was mostly an expert at repeating stories he had been told about how he would make a ton of money with the latest bullshit he didn't understand. The truth is, it's like trading. You diversify the investments and hope that the economy goes up (respectively that one of the startups you invested in gets profitable). The only thing a VC has to do is verify that they don't invest in a fraud, but even that is hard given that they never understand the technology enough to say it's worth it (they often invest in shiny bullshit).
- amenhotep 6mo ago
  In fact, a certain amount of investment in frauds is acceptable and desirable; if you give £10m to 9 frauds who spunk it straight up the wall and to 1 true visionary who builds a unicorn, that's money well spent. Plus of course you can always hope that the fraudster is good enough to sucker the next guy so you can get out. Per Matt Levine, the optimum amount of fraud is non-zero. Tune your detector too loosely or too tightly and you'll miss out.
  - bluGill 6mo ago
    The optimum amount of fraud is non-zero only because detection is expensive as you get close to zero. Getting less fraud needs to always be in mind. When someone gets away with fraud others will try to copy it so anything that has happened before has a much higher value to detect. But for fraud that hasn't happened yet don't worry about it and hope nobody figures out how to do it.
- m_rpn 6mo ago
  An expert on crisps maybe XD? i'm not really sure about your last point on investing in frauds, i guess they only care if and when the fraud gets exposed, they might purposely choose to do exactly that given the right conditions though, it is a completely perverted and deranged system at this point.
gyanchawdhary 6mo ago
@fxtentacle I’m at the airport and spat out my coffee reading your comment .. this is legendary and super funny ! Happy Friday to you kind sir
hsaliak 6mo ago
I've long had the same idea.. this one has legs.
braggerxyz 6mo ago
> ... and sort LEGO bricks by colour You never sort by color, ever! You sort by form, and then throw every color of that specific form in one bin. If you throw every red brick in the same bin, you'll never find a specific formed red brick because to many red bricks. But if you first search by form and then by color, you are much faster.
- huflungdung 6mo ago
  [dead]
- phs318u 6mo ago
  As any DBA worth their salt knows. Index the many valued column, not the column with few discrete values.
  - vanviegen 6mo ago
    Are you sure that's a good strategy if every unique index value requires you to buy a physical container?
    - vidarh 6mo ago
      Radix sort. Decide how many containers you're fine with, and group accordingly.
    - Dylan16807 6mo ago
      You can put a few shapes into one container and it's still much faster than searching color-first.
    - fxtentacle 6mo ago
      How about arithmetic coding? That will give you the highest amount of entropy reduction for any possible number of containers. Which probably means that you’ll sort similar pieces far apart but group by colors that are easy to separate, like red+yellow, brown+green
    - layer8 6mo ago
redog 6mo ago
When the sock bot dries the socks, matches and folds them together we're at peak robot. Come to think of it, its got to not lose either of them also. Current tech falls short of this.
- munksbeer 6mo ago
  > When the sock bot dries the socks, matches and folds them together we're at peak robot. Come to think of it, its got to not lose either of them also. Missing socks (and containers or their lids) are still great unsolved problems in 2026. Solving this issue is like fusion, always 10 years away.
hequmania 6mo ago
But we are not even get a replacement for git, we are getting a CLI on top of git. Since agents can use GH CLI and mcp very well, I'm very interested to see what is it that Git butler can do so much better (I also might be a bit sceptic, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt).
- petre 6mo ago
  > Git butler can do so much better Not be tied to Microslop and migrated to Azure?
  - hequmania 6mo ago
    Sounds like great use of 17M.
aleph_minus_one 6mo ago
> But instead, we get a replacement for Git. [...] Why is nobody solving actual problems anymore? While I personally doubt that for $17M one could build such a vacuum robot prototype (for a vacuum cleaner company, investing this amount of money - if it worked - would be a rounding error), I will rather analyze the point that you raised: It is a very common situation that the workflows of companies is deeply ingrained into some tool - that they can't get rid of (be it Microsoft Excel (in insurance and finance), be it Git (in software development), ...) - that is actually a bad fit for the workflow step (Git and Excel often are) So, this is typical for the kind of problem that companies in sectors in which billions of $/€ are moved do have. I am actually paid to develop some specialized software for some specialized industrial sector that solves a very specific problem. So, in my experience the reason why nobody [is] solving actual problems (in the sense of your definition) anymore is simple: - nobody is willing to pay big money for a solution, - those entities who are willing to pay big money often fall for sycophantic scammers/consultants.
- Liftyee 6mo ago
  As someone who makes things it always confuses me when millions just disappear whenever a company or government contractor makes things. Give me $17M and I'll build a vacuum robot prototype in under 2 years, I can't imagine 10 engineers getting paid $100+k/year can't do it in less time? Tooling is expensive, but not THAT expensive...
  - RamblingCTO 6mo ago
    You sure? You ever ran a business? Prototyping costs, machines, licenses, overhead etc. etc.
    - Dylan16807 6mo ago
      The prototyping and machine costs are easily under a million. It's one custom-built vacuum. You can do it with 0-3 digits of license cost too. There's no sane way the business overhead more than doubles things.
  - 6mo ago
imdsm 6mo ago
I feel exactly this way Why are we trying to replace git? What is the problem with git?
- amoss 6mo ago
  It's the old broken. Clearly it must be replaced with the new hotness.
- 52-6F-62 6mo ago
  The same reasons the world needed AI for cats funded to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. How do you expect those precious people to do anything at all without a bi-yearly expenses-paid trip to Cabo and on-site baristas?
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
mxkopy 6mo ago
Solutions to more actual problems are more expensive. It’s easier to ask millions of people for $0.01 than it is to ask thousands for $100. Things that are easy to sell to millions of people for $100 are rarely innovative (transportation, food, entertainment, etc), and if they are, they’re world-changing (cars, supermarkets, smartphones, etc).
murukesh_s 6mo ago
>Scott Chacon is a co-founder of GitHub Thought so until saw this. Man, he is the co-founder of Github and already seed-funded. How can someone refuse him? 17M is a small amount considering the valuation VS Code Agent wrappers are getting
Fomite 6mo ago
One reason I don't read HN as much as I used to is because I can't help translating numbers like that into the amount of research that could be accomplished with the same amount, and then I get angry.
mememememememo 6mo ago
17M isn't a lot of money. It is for a person sure. Retire. Cessna. etc. But not to build a butler!
Scholmo 6mo ago
Yes! I mean who tf gives some small team millions to put some Nvidia GPU into space and thinking we will have market disrupting GPU clusters in space in 10 years?! There are so many low hanging fruits in IT Industry to just being solved. Even just having something like well build, open smart home products whould have been disruptive years ago (until someone like ikea decides to enter that space).
nkrisc 6mo ago
> I feel like I really need to learn how to raise money. For $17M, one could probably build a vacuum robot prototype that’ll also clean up all of the kids toys and sort LEGO bricks by colour and size. Parents worldwide would love it. The world doesn’t need this. It would just be more plastic and electronic trash. You and your kids have hands. Pick them up. It’s what we do in my house. If you don’t have hands, use your feet.
welder 6mo ago
Your kids need to learn how to clean up after themselves. All you need is a camera pointing at the floor with image detection... when there's legos on the floor it triggers a video playing that explains how the kids need to pick up the legos. /s
- fxtentacle 6mo ago
  Actually, a camera that scores the clean up progress, together with some virtual gold coins and real loot boxes for a week of good compliance might really do the trick.
staticassertion 6mo ago
You didn't click the link. Who are you to say that they aren't solving actual problems? You might not be their target. The whole article is dedicated to explaining why they're building their product.
- layer8 6mo ago
  The article does a bad job at that, because it remains rather vague and doesn’t explain the concrete problems they are trying to solve, that aren’t either already solved by Git-linked issue trackers, or would be better solved by improving support in Git itself (like for stacked branches). Building UI and auxiliary features on top of Git is a crowded space, it’s not clear what compelling innovation they are bringing to the table.
  - staticassertion 6mo ago
    You can think that because you've read the article.
kyleblarson 6mo ago
To be fair, discovering a new shower gel that smells better or feels better is a nice experience.
robertlagrant 6mo ago
> For $17M, one could probably build a vacuum robot prototype that’ll also clean up all of the kids toys and sort LEGO bricks by colour and size. Parents worldwide would love it. Just write down how you'll spend the money to make that, what it'll eventually cost to produce, what the market size will be, and what the price will be, and if it's enough return you can easily convince someone to give you $17m to do it all.
an0malous 6mo ago
It’s probably because you’re not willing to lie enough. There was some founder back in the 2010s, I forgot his name, but he’d go around giving talks on fundraising and he basically said he just lied all the time. For example, instead of building a robot to pick up Lego bricks, say you’re building a platform for personal robotics, and it’ll cook you food, do your laundry, repair your fridge. It doesn’t matter if you have any idea how to do this, just say you need $50M and you’ll hire some robotics and vision guys to figure it out. The bigger and bolder the lie, the better.
skyberrys 6mo ago
Hasn't someone already built that robot? At least my kids tell me this exists every time I tell them to clean up their Legos. Actually it just does Legos, not the general toys.
esafak 6mo ago
I am actively looking for a replacement for GitHub and would prefer something that is not based on git.
Bnjoroge 6mo ago
you just need pedigree. any kind. where you went to school, where you worked etc.
ragall 6mo ago
You're fine with how git works, many others aren't.
drunner 6mo ago
Not to mention the irony that they need $17M to try and recreate/improve what Linus built in a week.
- Aurornis 6mo ago
  That’s not really fair. That first week prototype was proof of concept, not the Git we use today. It would easily have taken $17 million for a private team to put in equivalent work to all of the open source effort that has made Git into the tool we have today.
kva 6mo ago
Totally agree - most of these co's that get funded are pointless. FWIW, the general math here is that you'd spend < 2-3mm developing new git and most of the money goes into distribution. We've strayed really far from where technical innovation began
kordlessagain 6mo ago
Don't do that. Don't buy into the bullshit.
giancarlostoro 6mo ago
I ask myself this all the time, I have ideas now and then that I need to start writing down. Its just sad, we have so much potential as a society, but all the money goes to things like AI and bitcoin blindly. While I love some aspects of AI, and hope to someday be like the Jetsons and have a robot in my home that helps with things, and frees up me and my wife to doing other things with our family, I also don't trust something that is feeding my most intimate events from my home to a server somewhere.

noosphr 6mo ago

I for one can't wait for open Ai to buy them and reroute every git commit to chatgpt.

bee_rider 6mo ago

I like git, it works perfectly fine on my command line. I do wonder, though, if it would have been designed differently if the whole “code forge” sort of application (or whatever GitHub and the like are called) was envisioned at the time. Pull requests aren’t even a concept in git proper, right? It seems like a kind of important type of tool. Even though git is awesome, we don’t need a monoculture.

mzi 6mo ago
À pull request is just you requesting someone to pull from you in git proper. So the maintainer adds you as a remote and pulls from you.
- k33n 6mo ago
  There’s really nothing resembling a “pull request” that’s used by 99.999% of git users. We have merge requests. But we call them pull requests for some dumb reason.
throwaway173738 6mo ago
They sure aren’t. Before github you set up remotes or emailed patches.
tadfisher 6mo ago
git request-pull Docs: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-request-pull https://git-scm.com/docs/git-request-pull Generates a pretty email requesting someone to pull commits from your online repository. It's really meant for Linus to pull a whole bunch of already-reviewed changes from a maintainer's integration branch. The rough equivalent to GitHub's "pull request" is the "patch series", produced by: git format-patch Docs: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-format-patch https://git-scm.com/docs/git-format-patch Which lets you provide a "cover letter" (PR description), and formats each commit as a diff that can be quoted inline in an email reply for code review.
- functional_dev 6mo ago
  You are right, PRs are not in git. format-patch and request-pull are originals designed for mailings lists. Github just put UI on top. Interesting that DAG model means any branch from anywhere can be merged... the forge is just coordination. Explored here if curious - https://vectree.io/c/git-graph-theory-logic https://vectree.io/c/git-graph-theory-logic
grogenaut 6mo ago
Sorceforge predates git by about 11 years. As do several other projects like google code. Its not a new idea. Or basically most source control systems. Git, actually, is the more unique idea, of a DVCS... versus a cVCS...
- cornholio 6mo ago
  git is not a new idea, various features of git existed in various SCMs for decades. The distributed aspect existed in Bitkeeper too, for example. But it took a big brain with a systemic view of the problem and solutions space to bring them all together - in a lighting fast implementation to boot.
  - toyg 6mo ago
    I don't think technical features were the key to git's success. What really made the difference was: 1. it was free; 2. it was sponsored by the most fashionable project of the time (Linux); 3. it did not require a server; 4. because it was FOSS, people could extend it without asking anyone's permission; and... 5. ...once GitHub appeared, simplifying the PR process, the network effect did its thing. Git was hard to use and to understand. It did not win on technical features alone, as you said there were plenty of alternatives. It won because of community and network effects.
    - skydhash 6mo ago
      > Git was hard to use and to understand So is ffmpeg and ImageMagick. Or Blender. Or Freecad. There are domains that do require some learning and training to properly use the available tool.
thwarted 6mo ago
> or whatever GitHub and the like are called GitHub is a social networking site that just so happens to have code hosting related features.
- Hamuko 6mo ago
  People keep saying this but I can't really find much anything social about GitHub.
  - toyg 6mo ago
    Some people spend most of their time in issues and PRs, which are social features mapping social interactions.
    - Hamuko 6mo ago
      Is Bugzilla also a social network?
      - toyg 6mo ago
        To the degree that it emphasizes communication between individuals over being a dumb database, yes, a bugtracker can be a social network. Bugzilla is a bit too close to the "database" side of the spectrum, whereas GitHub is at the other end; Jira sits somewhat in the middle.
  - petepete 6mo ago
    You can follow, star, favourite and comment on things, you get a feed where recent updates on stuff/people you've interacted are listed, you can customise your profile page with snippets about yourself, a photo, a status, contact info and add whatever else you want (including more photos, images, charts etc) in markdown. It now has discussions which are essentially a forum. It's as much a social network/collaboration tool as it is place to store your code these days.
imron 6mo ago
> I do wonder, though, if it would have been designed differently if the whole “code forge” sort of application (or whatever GitHub and the like are called) was envisioned at the time. I would argue that it was purposefully designed in contrast against that model. GitHub is full of git anti patterns.
jonhohle 6mo ago
Perforce had change sets and there were lots of tools for code reviews that worked a lot like GitHub before GitHub (review board, phabricator, another one I can’t remember).
red_admiral 6mo ago
Indeed they're not; they live on the 'user layer' rather than the 'application layer'. That's not to say many git-frontends (IntelliJ, Sourcetree, Github desktop) don't support them, but "git pullrequest" isn't a thing. Edit: see "git request-pull" as mentioned below (file:///C:/Program%20Files/Git/mingw64/share/doc/git-doc/git-request-pull.html) but what it does is write "a pretty email" (the other poster's words) to STDOUT.
- 1718627440 6mo ago
  > mentioned below (file:///C:/Program%20Files/Git/mingw64/share/doc/git-doc/git-request-pull.html) What? Is the intention, that I access your C: drive? Also is it common to have a file:// link on MS Windows? I thought this was a unix thing.
  - red_admiral 6mo ago
    Sorry. For some reason I used to get `git help ...` redirect me to the (URL of) the actual website. I think the file:/// is so that you can fire off "[cmd /c] start FILEPATH" to load the default browser, while also not having to worry about spaces in the path.
ngc248 6mo ago
"Pull requests" are part of git though since it was originally a DCVS it meant you would pull from an individuals git repo ... services like github etc centralized the concept

vividfrier 6mo ago

[flagged]

sph 6mo ago
You guys cannot be serious, it feels like Poe’s Law day everyday in here!
- ChrisGreenHeur 6mo ago
  if you can't get ai to handle git, that's certainly a skill issue
- vrganj 6mo ago
  It really is insane how much this topic is dividing technical folks. What GP wrote sounds like an absolute nightmare of tech debt and unmaintainable spaghetti code that nobody understands anymore to me. But I guess for some people the increased speed outweighs all other concerns?
  - thwarted 6mo ago
    "Where are we? Are we where we wanted to be?" "I'm not sure. But at least we got here fast."
- jb1991 6mo ago
  I have to agree that the comment you are referring to seems to be nothing other than sarcasm despite that it doesn’t read that way at all. If it’s true, the world is definitely in trouble…
solid_fuel 6mo ago
Have you considered returning to actual software engineering and workflows that tools were designed to support instead of playing the LLM slot machine?
satvikpendem 6mo ago
Funny the replies you're getting here when already we see companies with engineers not having written a single line of code since late last year when models became good enough to go end to end.

sph 6mo ago

> Why is nobody solving actual problems anymore? Because that’s too risky for investors.

techpression 6mo ago

17M seems like a rounding error these days with all the AI investments. Probably some spare cash in a fund that needed to be closed or something. Solving actual problems are hard, and even harder to get money for (see research). Most VC’s are in it for the returns only, not actually making a change, there are some exceptions but they are far and few apart.

Aperocky 6mo ago

You see, the actual problem is raising the money.

fontain 6mo ago

The author is a founder of GitHub, he could raise $17m for “git but it’s called pit and a repository is a hole and committing code is called burying it” if he wanted to, investors care about pedigree.

fxtentacle 6mo ago
pedigree is a great word here and being upfront about it (if true) would make for some fun VC slogans: "We've replaced due diligence with a DNA test." "No mutts, no miracles. Three generations of wealth or GTFO." "Your bloodline is fine. Don't fret the cap table." "You forgot to attach the pitch deck, but we really like your family crest."
bonesss 6mo ago
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amoss 6mo ago
I would use this tool. Ship it

jtfrench 6mo ago

Definitely sounded like a shower gel moment.

al_borland 6mo ago

For what it's worth, that LEGO vacuum does exist[0], it was on Shark Tank[1]. I assume they stole the idea from The Office. It doesn't sort the bricks, but I assume that was more of a stretch goal based on the insane amount of money being discussed. After all, the LEGO vacuum only cost $495k to get to market. [0] https://pickupbricks.com https://pickupbricks.com [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X25MIpQqLIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X25MIpQqLIU

fxtentacle 6mo ago
That one needs to be operated manually. I was thinking more along the lines of robot dog + OCR + 6 dof arm on the robot's back. This video is from 8 years ago: https://youtu.be/wXxrmussq4E?si=bgDdDvZODVov3sSC&t=15 https://youtu.be/wXxrmussq4E?si=bgDdDvZODVov3sSC&t=15 I'm sure, by now we could make them for <$1k per robot, if we wanted to. EDIT: BTW did you see that the page you linked to has this at the bottom of their landing page: "Example product" "This area is used to describe your product’s details. Tell customers about the look, feel, and style of your product. Add details on color, materials used, sizing, and where it was made." so I wonder if they actually sell anything.
- al_borland 6mo ago
  > EDIT: BTW did you see that the page you linked to has this at the bottom of their landing page: I'm not seeing it. When I search for "example" nothing comes up, but maybe I'm looking wrong. I see it on Amazon as well, with reviews and videos from "customers", so I assume it's not vaporware and that is more an issue with people not filling out the full website template, which is also not a great sign. https://www.amazon.com/Pick-Up-Bricks-Compatible-Accessories/dp/B0CJXQ3PXL/ https://www.amazon.com/Pick-Up-Bricks-Compatible-Accessories...
- burnerRhodov2 6mo ago
  i noticed the example product page too on their website. But why not make it like a bigger rumba on wheels?
- Izkata 6mo ago

aaron695 6mo ago

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uwagar 6mo ago

i am actually fine with how svn works.

hdgvhicv 6mo ago
Guessing you aren’t working with hundreds of collaborators in a distributed offline system. Which is what git was for and why svn wasn’t enough for that type of use case.
- uwagar 6mo ago
  u guessed right. im one of the world's few solo software developers left (behind).
  - k33n 6mo ago
    Keep on keeping on brother.
    - uwagar 6mo ago
      thank you.
- rimliu 6mo ago
  or using branches.
  - siva7 6mo ago
    oh svn had branches. people just didn't know that they wanted a distributed cvs.
  - uwagar 6mo ago
    for me atomic commit or was that committing a bunch of files with 1 command was important. and cvs wouldnt let me do it. perforce did. but it was proprietary software, though i think they offered a free version for solo developers or something like that. and when svn came out i jumped ship.

majke 6mo ago

I’m also contemplating a lego sorting machine.

mkl 6mo ago
jacquesm did that impressively 9 years ago: https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14226889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14226889 (follow-up posts with more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14280569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14280569, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14654223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14654223). It doesn't solve the picking-up-off-the-floor problem.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]

smartmic 6mo ago

[dead]

flohofwoe 6mo ago

Tbf, git is very much a problem that needs solving. It only works well for text data, the fact that it is decentralized adds a lot of complexity but doesn't matter for 99% of users since they use a centralized git forge like Github or Gitlab, and the UX is pretty much non-existent.

roncesvalles 6mo ago
But do you really think $17M is going to give us that alternative, or will it come from some brilliant guy going on a caffeine-fueled weeklong side quest (like how Git was invented)? There are some things that need to come from a place of manic self-motivated genius. It's not something that you can buy with money. The money is really just there to help you shove a mediocre solution down everyone's throats (which is exactly what's going on here).
- flohofwoe 6mo ago
  Yeah probably right :)
- operatingthetan 6mo ago
  I think they are going to give us _something_. Devs probably won't pick it up though.
Borg3 6mo ago
It works exacly as it was designed to work.. GIT as VCS.. Version Control System.. for text code sniplets. It can handle small binary blobs just fine. If you need (D)VFS aka Distributed Versioned Filesystem, grab right tool. Or write one. This is exacly way I wrote DOT (Distributed Object Tracker). Its pure DVFS repo manager, to handle binary blobs and that it.. Nothing more. People complaining about GIT not working well w/ big data just handling GIT wrong. Linus said it from the begining, its NOT tool for such datasets. Just move along.
PunchyHamster 6mo ago
if you don't understand git you shouldn't be coding, full stop. The exact same skill set needed to write good code is required to use git in quick and efficient matter. Then again, it is used for non-coding tasks, but any and all of it's UI problems are not from the method of storage (pretty much any modern VCS uses same "tree of linked snapshots of filesystem) so making one while still making it git compatible just with better ui (like Jujutsu) is very much possible

gyulai 6mo ago

> I feel like I really need to learn how to raise money. For $17M, one could probably ... People complaining about investors throwing stupid sums of money at stupid or trivial things unrelated (or only marginally related) to AI? ...sounds to me like the first glimpse of hope I have come across in this industry for half a decade.

satvikpendem 6mo ago
HN has always been skeptical of VC, ironically, so that's no indication of anything in the overall industry.
- latexr 6mo ago
  HN is not a hive mind with a single opinion. You get the extreme opinions of both sides and every nuance in between. There are people here who despise VC and people who live for it and think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.
  - satvikpendem 6mo ago
    No, but trends are very prevalent, it is not a uniform random distribution.
    - rwmj 6mo ago
      Unless you've done a study of sentiment on HN (please link if so) then you have no idea.
dirkc 6mo ago
Is it unrelated though? > Today, with Git, we're all teaching swarms of agents to use a tool built for sending patches over mailing lists. That's far from what is needed today.
- gyulai 6mo ago
  Investor narrative pointing out a relationship is not the same as substantive technological overlap.

flomo 6mo ago

> Why is nobody solving actual problems anymore? Let me just state the obvious. Of all the major problems of society, sorting legos isn't one. If you disagree, try emerging from the cellar.

choudharism 6mo ago
Replacing git is?
- flomo 6mo ago
  Successfully would be big business, because everyone and everyone and the F1000 uses git. Or at least it could more of a feature than a product, and gets merged into some other VC company, or some Jira feature or etc. Who really wants cheap lego vacuums? Basement-dwellers who are getting yelled at by their mom? Not a good market.
reverius42 6mo ago
Maybe you're not a parent. To me, this sounds like arguing against the existence of the dishwasher by saying "of all the major problems of society, washing dishes by hand isn't one."
- flomo 6mo ago
  What a ridiculous statement from an obviously over-privleged phony. You are actually doubling-down on being completely isolated. Kids face a lot of new problems these days. They also face some old one, like sorting their legos.
  - reverius42 6mo ago
    Sometimes you put the kids to bed before they've cleaned up the legos, because it's getting late. Then you step on a lego.
dare944 6mo ago
Completely unnecessary retort. At no point did anyone in this thread state that sorting legos was a major problem of society. Rather, the GP merely implied that some parents would love to have a robot to sort their kids legos, and that (ironically) even that unimportant "need" is more important than replacing git.

debarshri 6mo ago

Thing i learned about raising capital it, you need to build or have a network. Thats YC is great, accelerators, incubators help you do that. Network and story you tell. Also, every stage you raise, you have to make sure the folks you raise from help you craft the narrative for thr next round. I think if you have a healthy busy growing well, you shouldnt raise unless you have ambition and urge to go faster. Irony of thr market is, just like tinder 20% of the companies attract all the attention rest of them try to gran the attention. Those who need capital get the capital, those who need the capital die trying. Enough friday pessimisim.

pjerem 6mo ago
> I think if you have a healthy busy growing well, you shouldnt raise unless you have ambition and urge to go faster. My previous employer was like this. A 20yo company with a nice always increasing ytoy growth. The CEO told for 20 years that he would never raise any money. It was an incredible place to work : nice compensation, product and consumer centered, we had time and means to do the right things. Until the CEO changed his mind and raised money anyway. But we didn't have to fear anything because those investors were very different and not like the other greedy ones. Well I'm not working there anymore for a hella lot of reasons that are just the same as everywhere else. But at least the CEO who was already rich is now incredibly rich.
- debarshri 6mo ago
  VC by default are founder friendly in my experience. If you find a greedy VC then most likely they are real VC and often gets attracted when your business is not doing great. Reputation travels in this industry therefore people care.
  - DrScientist 6mo ago
    > VC by default are founder friendly in my experience. Founders are only one stakeholder. There are employees ( I think they fall into that category ), customers, suppliers, and the wider society. It all comes back to why does the company exist - and for which stakeholders. I think that's the point the original author is making. I don't buy the argument that making money in the end is a perfect surrogate for overall good - it's not - it's an imperfect surrogate - and to pretend it is a perfect surrogate is just an excuse to behave like an arsehole. To make that concrete, let's say you are a chemical company making paints - really important job, paints are needed the cheaper you can make them, the more people can have them etc, but if you knowingly pollute a local river just because you can get away with it and increase your profits - saying that increased profits justifies polluting the river based on the assumption that river pollution is correctly priced ( free ) is an obvious convenient excuse to be a selfish arsehole.

caycep 6mo ago

granted how much did Linus spend on Git? probably well south of $17M and he's not beholden to the likes of a16z

pjc50 6mo ago
The first version was written in ten days apparently, so more in the ballpark of $17k.
- jve 6mo ago
  I want people to read this sentence from https://www.linux.com/news/10-years-git-interview-git-creator-linus-torvalds/ https://www.linux.com/news/10-years-git-interview-git-creato... > So I’d like to stress that while it really came together in just about ten days or so (at which point I did my first kernel commit using git), it wasn’t like it was some kind of mad dash of coding. The actual amount of that early code is actually fairly small, it all depended on getting the basic ideas right. And that I had been mulling over for a while before the whole project started. I’d seen the problems others had. I’d seen what I wanted to avoid doing. Just so that people know that creating software is not only coding. My comment is unrelated on the point you are making about expenses.
aorloff 6mo ago
at the time he was probably thinking about how much time it would _save_ him

leptons 6mo ago

>Why is nobody solving actual problems anymore? They went over this, in the documentary titled "Idiocracy". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFRzIOna2oQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFRzIOna2oQ

eastabrooka 6mo ago
GitV2 - It's what Devs Crave.

jatins 6mo ago

> I feel like I really need to learn how to raise money Well, cofounding Github helps

Eufrat 6mo ago

Money is not given to good ideas (though, it doesn’t hurt). Money is given to friends. If you look at how VC (or really any network) funding circulates, it’s just people who are allowed to enter that circle and money just flows between them constantly. On one hand, you have trusted people who you are willing to give money, on the other hand, this inherently creates a clique. It reminds me how the Bohemian Club’s slogan, “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here” is a bit farcical given that it is impossible for the club members not to engage in commerce.

echelon 6mo ago
> Money is given to friends. Money is given to ideas that might become billion dollar businesses and teams that look like they can do it. Pedigree, domain expertise, previous exits.
- imp0cat 6mo ago
  So it will be exactly like git, but with a monthly subscription fee.
  - abc123abc123 6mo ago
    And AI... always add AI!
    - ratmeadow 6mo ago
      Upon every commit, AI will review your code to check if it's worth committing or not (after all, disk space is expensive these days!). If the AI finds the code is not up to scratch, it will be reverted and you'll be given a chance to try again. Then, we will develop (read: sell) AI agents that will ingest a proposed code change (created by your front-line agent), and iteratively refactor it until the commit agent accepts it.
      - EliRivers 6mo ago
        If the AI finds the code is not up to scratch, it will be reverted and you'll be given a chance to try again. That's the Platinum Premier tier. If you're on the regular tier, paying the minimum, the AI will silently fix all that right up for you.

rhubarbtree 6mo ago

Unsure if you want the real answer, but the financials on gitv2 will be much more appealing to a VC. Hardware is hard, slow, expensive, risky. Finally, China is the place to build physical things not the US.

rwmj 6mo ago
What would "the financials" be on a git replacement? No one makes money on git itself. Probably not much even on the services around git, given that Microsoft funds github for its own reasons, and gitlab is constantly running out of money.
- rhubarbtree 6mo ago
  OSS as a GTM channel is well established, including amongst YC companies. So the financial model is no different from any other SaaS. Whereas hardware is high risk capital intensive and China centric.

patates 6mo ago

Not to shoot down your comment with sarcasm, I'm being really honest: I changed my shower gel with an expensive one this week, and it really had an unexpected, exciting effect. Small stuff can really have consequences much bigger than themselves. That said, if you ever decide solve the tidying the toys problem, start a kickstarter, I pledge to pledge support! :D

internet_points 6mo ago
i may be dense or something but what effect?
- patates 6mo ago
  It smells better, my skin feels better after using it, and I feel happier. Showering may take little time, but I have my skin all the time :)
secondcoming 6mo ago
I find that sometimes changing the font in my IDE can give me an inexplicable boost
esafak 6mo ago
Some people are not sensitive to quality. A car is a car, a shower gel is a shower gel, etc. In the computer world, they curiously congregate around Microsoft...

rjh29 6mo ago

You missed the boat, baskets that open out into a giant play mat have flooded amazon and temu. Something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Toy-Storage-Organizer-Lego-Play/dp/B0F99K8497?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&psc=1&smid=A39QSX3U230011 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Toy-Storage-Organizer-Lego-Play/dp/...

piokoch 6mo ago

On the other side, people who were using, say, Perforce, also thought there can't be anything better. Still, BitKeeper appeared as an innovation in the area, eaten later by Git, created by angry Linus (because of BitKeeper licencing changes). So, even though Git seems to be ok (people who store large binary files or who run huge monorepos would probably disagree), maybe we can do better. Altavista was kind of okeish for search, yet Google managed to figure out something that was (at that time) way better.

jampekka 6mo ago

> But instead, we get a replacement for Git. And I didn’t even bother to click the link because I’m fine with how Git works. Perhaps you should have. Based on the link it seems like it's more an extension to than replacement for Git. The page is mostly sort of fluffy AI hype, but the concrete bits are things like integrating issue tracking and PR logic in one tool/repo, like e.g. fossil does. Also git proper could use some love too. The UI is still a mess. And the large file support and the submodule/subtree/subrepo situations are quite dismal. > $17M, one could probably build a vacuum robot prototype that’ll also clean up all of the kids toys and sort LEGO bricks by colour and size. Doing this robustly is probably quite far from robotics SOTA.

conartist6 6mo ago
Yeah it also sounded to me like they just want to extend git. Zed is trying the exact same thing. Neither of them is doing to be remotely prepared for what I'm going to do, which is actually replace Git.

shafyy 6mo ago

You mean the one they try to build in The Office?

latexr 6mo ago

> Why is nobody solving actual problems anymore? Because solving problems isn’t the goal, the goal is money (and sometimes a little fame) with the least possible effort, and software can be changed on a whim and is very cheap to manufacture and distribute and “fix in flight”, it’s the perfect vehicle for those who are impatient and don’t really care about understanding and studying a need.

pas 6mo ago
people love solving problems, but most solutions are not VC fundable (fortunately/unfortunately) sometimes it's just wait until your kid grows up and learns to put the LEGO away there's a lot of people working on hard problems that are pretty far from software being cynical about early stage software (and any company that is overpromising like Theranos, Nikola, etc..) is warranted, but also money as a reward motivates a lot of innovation (PV panels, batteries, EUV lithography)
utopiah 6mo ago
The problems are in fact that... the founder does not want to risk money for his own idea while funders have simultaneously also too much money while believing they don't have enough. That very simple dynamic is what is driving investment in the Silicon Valley, itself praised worldwide as the forefront. That's what bringing our own civilization on the economical (AI bubble), ecological (AI bubble, car brain) and democratic (surveillance capitalism, privacy zuckering) cliff.

raincole 6mo ago

> one could probably build a vacuum robot prototype that’ll also clean up all of the kids toys and sort LEGO bricks by colour and size. Parents worldwide would love it. And what's the next step? I can't even imagine how rich (and how large the their houses) the parents need to be for them to comfortably buy such dedicated tool. Perhaps 100x~1000x richer than me? And, while this is just pulled out from my rear side, I feel even getting this passed safety regulation would cost your $17M. It's a fully automated machine working next to toddlers! On the contrary Github is a proven product.

Izkata 6mo ago
Roborock released one of these about a year ago. It doesn't do as much as they want, but it can pick up things and put them into designated locations, shoes being the main example.

IanCal 6mo ago

I think it’s always good to dig a bit deeper on these things. This seems ridiculous to you, compared to a very obvious win with a Lego sorting vacuum. Lego isn’t niche, and the explanation isn’t a weird technical thing that only experts would get and understand how important or valuable it is. Yet it’s not being done. Is there nobody who has realised this gap but you? Has nobody managed to convince people with money that it’s worthwhile? Have you tried but failed? Or is it not many many thousands of people who are wrong but you? Is the problem harder than you think? I’ve worked with robotics but not for a long time and I think the core manipulation is either not really solved or not until recently. I don’t know about yours but my kids also don’t fully dismantle their Lego creations either so would the robot need to take them apart too? That’s a lot of force. And some are special. How people want Lego sorted is pretty broad. Kids don’t even need it sorted that much. And the volume can be huge for smaller buckets of things. Is the market not as big as you think? Is it big enough for the cost, I’d buy one for £100 but £1000? £10,000? How does it compare for most people against having the kids play on a blanket and then tipping it into a bucket? Or those ones that are a circle of cloth with a drawstring so it’s a play area and storage all in one? I 3d printed some sieves and that’s most of the issue right there done. People are solving actual problems, but lots of problems are hard, and not all of them are profitable. As a gut feeling, there is such a large overlap of engineers and large Lego collections and willingness to spend lots of money and time saving some time sorting Lego that the small number of implementations usually split over many years is very telling about the difficulty. For what it’s worth I want this too.

sunir 6mo ago

4 McDonalds. That’s a better way of measuring it.

siva7 6mo ago
Honestly it is. Investors value my company like 4 Mcdonalds.
- sunir 6mo ago
  Exactly. A safe bet vs a great bet.

amelius 6mo ago

Git is still pretty lacking in the area of big files. This is quite annoying if you're dealing with big deep learning data. So your LEGO vacuum robot could actually benefit from a better Git.

bootsmann 6mo ago
Didn’t dvc try to fill this niche and absolutely fail at it?

jiggawatts 6mo ago

> sort LEGO bricks by colour and size I just looked into this out of idle curiosity, after watching some guy build a LEGO sorting machine. (They work in a warehouse that sells used bricks for model builders.) Interestingly, this is on the cusp of viability, but training the ML model would still be cost-prohibitive (for me). With $17M, it's within reach, but there's still the obvious mechanical hurdles: Kids don't disassemble their Lego, the conditions are "less than ideal", and even vibrating belts in a warehouse scenario have a lot of trouble keeping bricks separated for the camera to get a clear image. Robot hands are nowhere near the point where they can reliably (or even unreliably!) take apart two arbitrary Lego bricks that are joined, let alone anything of even mild complexity. This is hard for most humans, and often requires the use of tools! See: https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-topics/article/lego-classic-brick-separator https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-topics/article/lego-... The machine vision part is... getting there! You could pull some clever tricks with modern hardware such as bright LED lights, multi-spectral or even hyper-spectral sensors, etc. The algorithms have improved a lot also. Early attempts could only recognise a few dozen distinct shapes, and the most recent models a few hundred, but they're about 2-3 years old, which means "stone ages". A trick several Lego recognition model training runs used was to photo realistically render 3D models of bricks in random orientations and every possible color, which is far faster than manually labelling photos of real bricks. These days you could use the NVIDIA Omniverse libraries to heavily accelerate and automate this.

ludicrousdispla 6mo ago

It's primarily focused on "take from someone else" rather than create something new and useful. Consider that many of the tech posts here are of the form, "i did X but with Z" as the poster hopes they will be recognized as some master of execution.

pbkompasz 6mo ago

Yes, you may be fine with git, but can you say the same thing about AI agents? /s

palata 6mo ago

VCs have no clue. They have money and therefore they are in a dominant position. Everybody around them (professionally) is trying to flatter them and convince them that they should invest in their project. I had a few interactions with VCs (both professional and personal), where I didn't care because I wasn't benefitting from them. One of them was "an expert in CRISPR and blockchain" (WTF?) and... well I didn't need much time to see that he did not understand what a "hash" was. He was mostly an expert at repeating stories he had been told about how he would make a ton of money with the latest bullshit he didn't understand. The truth is, it's like trading. You diversify the investments and hope that the economy goes up (respectively that one of the startups you invested in gets profitable). The only thing a VC has to do is verify that they don't invest in a fraud, but even that is hard given that they never understand the technology enough to say it's worth it (they often invest in shiny bullshit).

amenhotep 6mo ago
In fact, a certain amount of investment in frauds is acceptable and desirable; if you give £10m to 9 frauds who spunk it straight up the wall and to 1 true visionary who builds a unicorn, that's money well spent. Plus of course you can always hope that the fraudster is good enough to sucker the next guy so you can get out. Per Matt Levine, the optimum amount of fraud is non-zero. Tune your detector too loosely or too tightly and you'll miss out.
- bluGill 6mo ago
  The optimum amount of fraud is non-zero only because detection is expensive as you get close to zero. Getting less fraud needs to always be in mind. When someone gets away with fraud others will try to copy it so anything that has happened before has a much higher value to detect. But for fraud that hasn't happened yet don't worry about it and hope nobody figures out how to do it.
m_rpn 6mo ago
An expert on crisps maybe XD? i'm not really sure about your last point on investing in frauds, i guess they only care if and when the fraud gets exposed, they might purposely choose to do exactly that given the right conditions though, it is a completely perverted and deranged system at this point.

gyanchawdhary 6mo ago

@fxtentacle I’m at the airport and spat out my coffee reading your comment .. this is legendary and super funny ! Happy Friday to you kind sir

hsaliak 6mo ago

I've long had the same idea.. this one has legs.

braggerxyz 6mo ago

> ... and sort LEGO bricks by colour You never sort by color, ever! You sort by form, and then throw every color of that specific form in one bin. If you throw every red brick in the same bin, you'll never find a specific formed red brick because to many red bricks. But if you first search by form and then by color, you are much faster.

huflungdung 6mo ago
[dead]
phs318u 6mo ago
As any DBA worth their salt knows. Index the many valued column, not the column with few discrete values.
- vanviegen 6mo ago
  Are you sure that's a good strategy if every unique index value requires you to buy a physical container?
  - vidarh 6mo ago
    Radix sort. Decide how many containers you're fine with, and group accordingly.
  - Dylan16807 6mo ago
    You can put a few shapes into one container and it's still much faster than searching color-first.
  - fxtentacle 6mo ago
    How about arithmetic coding? That will give you the highest amount of entropy reduction for any possible number of containers. Which probably means that you’ll sort similar pieces far apart but group by colors that are easy to separate, like red+yellow, brown+green
  - layer8 6mo ago

redog 6mo ago

When the sock bot dries the socks, matches and folds them together we're at peak robot. Come to think of it, its got to not lose either of them also. Current tech falls short of this.

munksbeer 6mo ago
> When the sock bot dries the socks, matches and folds them together we're at peak robot. Come to think of it, its got to not lose either of them also. Missing socks (and containers or their lids) are still great unsolved problems in 2026. Solving this issue is like fusion, always 10 years away.

hequmania 6mo ago

But we are not even get a replacement for git, we are getting a CLI on top of git. Since agents can use GH CLI and mcp very well, I'm very interested to see what is it that Git butler can do so much better (I also might be a bit sceptic, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt).

petre 6mo ago
> Git butler can do so much better Not be tied to Microslop and migrated to Azure?
- hequmania 6mo ago
  Sounds like great use of 17M.

aleph_minus_one 6mo ago

> But instead, we get a replacement for Git. [...] Why is nobody solving actual problems anymore? While I personally doubt that for $17M one could build such a vacuum robot prototype (for a vacuum cleaner company, investing this amount of money - if it worked - would be a rounding error), I will rather analyze the point that you raised: It is a very common situation that the workflows of companies is deeply ingrained into some tool - that they can't get rid of (be it Microsoft Excel (in insurance and finance), be it Git (in software development), ...) - that is actually a bad fit for the workflow step (Git and Excel often are) So, this is typical for the kind of problem that companies in sectors in which billions of $/€ are moved do have. I am actually paid to develop some specialized software for some specialized industrial sector that solves a very specific problem. So, in my experience the reason why nobody [is] solving actual problems (in the sense of your definition) anymore is simple: - nobody is willing to pay big money for a solution, - those entities who are willing to pay big money often fall for sycophantic scammers/consultants.

Liftyee 6mo ago
As someone who makes things it always confuses me when millions just disappear whenever a company or government contractor makes things. Give me $17M and I'll build a vacuum robot prototype in under 2 years, I can't imagine 10 engineers getting paid $100+k/year can't do it in less time? Tooling is expensive, but not THAT expensive...
- RamblingCTO 6mo ago
  You sure? You ever ran a business? Prototyping costs, machines, licenses, overhead etc. etc.
  - Dylan16807 6mo ago
    The prototyping and machine costs are easily under a million. It's one custom-built vacuum. You can do it with 0-3 digits of license cost too. There's no sane way the business overhead more than doubles things.
- 6mo ago

imdsm 6mo ago

I feel exactly this way Why are we trying to replace git? What is the problem with git?

amoss 6mo ago
It's the old broken. Clearly it must be replaced with the new hotness.
52-6F-62 6mo ago
The same reasons the world needed AI for cats funded to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. How do you expect those precious people to do anything at all without a bi-yearly expenses-paid trip to Cabo and on-site baristas?

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

mxkopy 6mo ago

Solutions to more actual problems are more expensive. It’s easier to ask millions of people for $0.01 than it is to ask thousands for $100. Things that are easy to sell to millions of people for $100 are rarely innovative (transportation, food, entertainment, etc), and if they are, they’re world-changing (cars, supermarkets, smartphones, etc).

murukesh_s 6mo ago

>Scott Chacon is a co-founder of GitHub Thought so until saw this. Man, he is the co-founder of Github and already seed-funded. How can someone refuse him? 17M is a small amount considering the valuation VS Code Agent wrappers are getting

Fomite 6mo ago

One reason I don't read HN as much as I used to is because I can't help translating numbers like that into the amount of research that could be accomplished with the same amount, and then I get angry.

mememememememo 6mo ago

17M isn't a lot of money. It is for a person sure. Retire. Cessna. etc. But not to build a butler!

Scholmo 6mo ago

Yes! I mean who tf gives some small team millions to put some Nvidia GPU into space and thinking we will have market disrupting GPU clusters in space in 10 years?! There are so many low hanging fruits in IT Industry to just being solved. Even just having something like well build, open smart home products whould have been disruptive years ago (until someone like ikea decides to enter that space).

nkrisc 6mo ago

> I feel like I really need to learn how to raise money. For $17M, one could probably build a vacuum robot prototype that’ll also clean up all of the kids toys and sort LEGO bricks by colour and size. Parents worldwide would love it. The world doesn’t need this. It would just be more plastic and electronic trash. You and your kids have hands. Pick them up. It’s what we do in my house. If you don’t have hands, use your feet.

welder 6mo ago

Your kids need to learn how to clean up after themselves. All you need is a camera pointing at the floor with image detection... when there's legos on the floor it triggers a video playing that explains how the kids need to pick up the legos. /s

fxtentacle 6mo ago
Actually, a camera that scores the clean up progress, together with some virtual gold coins and real loot boxes for a week of good compliance might really do the trick.

staticassertion 6mo ago

You didn't click the link. Who are you to say that they aren't solving actual problems? You might not be their target. The whole article is dedicated to explaining why they're building their product.

layer8 6mo ago
The article does a bad job at that, because it remains rather vague and doesn’t explain the concrete problems they are trying to solve, that aren’t either already solved by Git-linked issue trackers, or would be better solved by improving support in Git itself (like for stacked branches). Building UI and auxiliary features on top of Git is a crowded space, it’s not clear what compelling innovation they are bringing to the table.
- staticassertion 6mo ago
  You can think that because you've read the article.

kyleblarson 6mo ago

To be fair, discovering a new shower gel that smells better or feels better is a nice experience.

robertlagrant 6mo ago

> For $17M, one could probably build a vacuum robot prototype that’ll also clean up all of the kids toys and sort LEGO bricks by colour and size. Parents worldwide would love it. Just write down how you'll spend the money to make that, what it'll eventually cost to produce, what the market size will be, and what the price will be, and if it's enough return you can easily convince someone to give you $17m to do it all.

an0malous 6mo ago

It’s probably because you’re not willing to lie enough. There was some founder back in the 2010s, I forgot his name, but he’d go around giving talks on fundraising and he basically said he just lied all the time. For example, instead of building a robot to pick up Lego bricks, say you’re building a platform for personal robotics, and it’ll cook you food, do your laundry, repair your fridge. It doesn’t matter if you have any idea how to do this, just say you need $50M and you’ll hire some robotics and vision guys to figure it out. The bigger and bolder the lie, the better.

skyberrys 6mo ago

Hasn't someone already built that robot? At least my kids tell me this exists every time I tell them to clean up their Legos. Actually it just does Legos, not the general toys.

esafak 6mo ago

I am actively looking for a replacement for GitHub and would prefer something that is not based on git.

Bnjoroge 6mo ago

you just need pedigree. any kind. where you went to school, where you worked etc.

ragall 6mo ago

You're fine with how git works, many others aren't.

drunner 6mo ago

Not to mention the irony that they need $17M to try and recreate/improve what Linus built in a week.

Aurornis 6mo ago
That’s not really fair. That first week prototype was proof of concept, not the Git we use today. It would easily have taken $17 million for a private team to put in equivalent work to all of the open source effort that has made Git into the tool we have today.

kva 6mo ago

Totally agree - most of these co's that get funded are pointless. FWIW, the general math here is that you'd spend < 2-3mm developing new git and most of the money goes into distribution. We've strayed really far from where technical innovation began

kordlessagain 6mo ago

Don't do that. Don't buy into the bullshit.

giancarlostoro 6mo ago

I ask myself this all the time, I have ideas now and then that I need to start writing down. Its just sad, we have so much potential as a society, but all the money goes to things like AI and bitcoin blindly. While I love some aspects of AI, and hope to someday be like the Jetsons and have a robot in my home that helps with things, and frees up me and my wife to doing other things with our family, I also don't trust something that is feeding my most intimate events from my home to a server somewhere.