On another note, the story seems to have been removed by the moderators from the new stories page. It doesn't appear anymore if not logged. I'll delete it myself then.
Someone (pg ?) makes a "Hacker News 2" portal up and running. Seriously, I've seen this kind of stuff happen a couple of times before and it always works fine. There is a need for something that cannot be solved in any other way : less traffic.
From what I've seen before, this works like a charm. Everybody keeps up visiting the main site, but the few that needs more focus start to feed the second portal. Interesting stories of the second portal will get into the main one, adding value to submissions. Win-Win.
Remember the early days of HN ? There is a need for this kind of environment that disappeared when HN got popular. So make a second portal running, announce it, and it'll take off slowly effortlessly.
Loopt should keep a serious eye on the south korean market then, because it's currently the most advanced country with mobile phone technology. They all walk around watching real TV on their phone (not internet TV or else pseudo-TV). You can see a little of our own future just watching them.
He may be not someone who matters anymore in terms of "money & success", but my bet is on Linus Torvalds -- 100 years later. He is the only one on that list who has created something that is transcendental, wich won't stop after his death because it goes beyond himself and is slowly but surely shaping History, in a virtually unstoppable way.
Oh, and I'm a proud Windows XP user, no fanboyism inside :)
git wholly altered Linus' position in the world of software. It was like George Foreman's comeback, proving that an old dog can learn new tricks and stomp all over the youngsters in the field.
Anybody that's not looking at Linus (for a second time, if you were around for the beginning of Linux, or for the first time) with a sense of wide-eyed amazement just isn't paying attention. He's now helped reinvent two entire industries. git is pretty revolutionary...it builds on the shoulders of giants, just like Linux did previously, but it makes the leap that no one else as made and puts it into a simple package (Mercurial and darcs and bazaar all come close, of course, but all have a "research project" feel to them in several important areas--partly because git came last in the line and could learn from their mistakes, but the same is true of almost every great idea).
I think your argument also works to say that he doesn't matter (by design), in that his project can continue with or without his active participation.
If you read the kernel mailing list, there is sometimes the question of "what happens if Linus gets hit by a bus?" He always says that it shouldn't adversely affect development... :)
The crisis started in the US but is worldwide, industrialized countries are so dependent from each others now that if the US economy happen to collapse you can expect a worldwide collapse. You won't be safer anywhere else.
The $316m could accomplish much, but I doubt directly creating a startup hub. The drivers which turn cities into creative class meccas wouldn't be included, and it likely would face the same difficulties as the Middle East's education plans: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/education/11global.html
It would a powerful change if groups like Gates' (http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120113473219511...) began investing in the efforts which have the best chance of the results they're seeking: startups. I'm guessing the startup model is antithetical to what BillsG sees as the answer, which is unfortunate.
Obviously I'd choose whatever town was most SF-like. Suppose only 1/10 of the startups lived (a very conservative assumption). Don't you think a city with 1749 startups in it would feel like a startup hub?
Not directly. But if I (a) worked on nothing else, (b) did it over 10 years, and (c) trained the earlier founders to help the later ones, I could just about manage it.
Fashion != being well dressed. You can buy the most fashionable pant and still looks like a clown because it is too large or too short. But you can dress well without any clue in fashion. Just be careful about the size (that's the point when buying new clothes) and colors. Most people would go from a bad look to a decent one just by resizing their clothes to suit them correctly. And never forget : the white shirt is the best ally of men since forever.
The 3rd one concerns the karma system : makes a quota of free comments each day then the additionnal ones cost some karma to post. Sometimes your silence has a greater value than a new comment.
