I had found this rebuttal: Ideas are cheap only if you have cheap ideas.
I would argue good ideas are not so easy to find. It is harder than it seems to fit the market, and that is why most of apps fail. At the end of the day, everyone is blinded by hubris and ignorance... I do include myself in that.
They may not be the easiest thing to find, but I'd submit that good ideas are way more common than the skill and resources needed to capitalise on them
Hey HN, Pierre here. I’m the solo creator of EbookForge.
I know the skepticism around AI-generated content (and "slop") is high right now. I share it. But I built this tool because I found that for self-education and structuring ideas, LLMs are actually incredible.
I used EbookForge itself to generate a massive, 150-page catalog containing 1,000+ book concepts. This goes beyond concept: we can then recursively generate those books fully with EbookForge. This is incredible.
Every title in the catalogue is a deep-link! If you click a book idea in the PDF, it recursively opens the EbookForge, pre-loaded via URL parameters, ready to generate anew. (you get a full 30-pages eBook within about 3 minutes)
HOW IT WAS MADE: it is basically turtles, all the way down... This is vibe-coding about vibe-coding, with Grok requests for speed and cost. Grok is amazing when it comes to the dollar. Note: Claude was down so I used Gemini CLI and it turns out it is quite capable also.
I hope you will find it useful. I am biased BUT I think it is amazing! One slop to slop them all...
PS: 3 ebooks for free if you login; if this goes down, you can use your own key client-side. If that goes down too, well then you, have the catalogue. This is the extent of my guarantee. I am not a marketing genius. Let's call it a day!
Simple example: Daughter wants a iPhone, you want a new car. Some neighbor needs help to pay healthcare bills. You don't buy the shiny things, and help the neighbor instead.
Another example: You own apartments, and some poor immigrant student can't afford the rent in the city with his university. You lower the rent, because a happy PhD is worth more than $100/month. Yes, even if you don't know him and won't gain anything from it.
Another example: You're the personnel at that top university. You agree to be paid less than you deserve so more can afford the education.
Another example: You can get in Google because of a friend. But you know someone else more qualified wants the job too. You let him
have it. Because it is best for society that everyone gets the job he deserves, and that important jobs are done efficiently, instead of cheating for your own sake.
Another example: You know you can increase sales dramatically by using gamification and abusing psychology to get your users addicted to reward mechanisms. You don't do it, because it's best for society that clueless people don't waste their time/resources with bad MMOs and Farmville, despite the interests of your company.
Another example: You can get a lot of profit by hiding poor products under shiny overpriced cases, then throwing money at marketing. You don't do it because it's not in the interests of the people.
Another example: You don't use your marketing/SEO skills to sell a fancy software which already exists as a superior FOSS alternative. (Broken window fallacy)
Another example: Don't pull out the mote from your eye, but the beam in your neighbor's eye instead (no, I'm not religious)
Another example: You agree to pay taxes so that the sick and poor stop dying and starving on the street.
Final example: You can help people around you, but you're going to appear weak and it will hurt your social status... Oh terrible... You do it anyway.
Some of these examples are poor, but I could write a book about it, and the point is obvious, isn't it? Really I can't believe I have to argue about it.
Of course that's hopelessly idealist and unpractical. But only because everyone else is selfish and shortsighted in the first place. I'm just saying this is how it would work in a perfect world, and this is how Reason says we should strive to act. Optimization requires resources to go where they are needed most. If you disagree with this statement, use arguments, and good luck. "Me first", "my family first", "my company first", "my country first" is not good enough. It's chaos. All the evil in the world rests on these "good" intentions. People get slaughtered for the sake of others' families. Do it if you want, but don't downvote me then pretend it's the moral thing to do, when it's obviously not.
Anyway I'm done with this site, constantly obsessed with personal "success" to the point of biased and blind amorality...
A faithful portrayal of the modern world.
One of these days we will drop the ego, and the sooner the better.
I don't like doing these kinds of posts but as a counter example:
> Daughter wants a iPhone, you want a new car. Some neighbor needs help to pay healthcare bills. You don't buy the shiny things, and help the neighbor instead.
Say your neighbour can't pay his healthcare bills because he was laid off for being drunk while on the job. His healthcare bills are the result of an altercation with his bookie, for gambling debts he couldn't pay. Is it worth encouraging his behaviour by supporting his healthcare bills?
> Another example: You own apartments, and some poor immigrant student can't afford the rent in the city with his university. You lower the rent, because a happy PhD is worth more than $100/month. Yes, even if you don't know him and won't gain anything from it.
The PhD student is living above his means by wanting an apartment in the city, when he could easily live a little further away for less rent. Is it good to spoil him, and give him the expectation that he can get anything without hard work?
> Another example: You're the personnel at that top university. You agree to be paid less than you deserve so more can afford the education.
The University notices your pay cut, so decides to cut the remaining staff's wages to be fair. They don't reduce the tuition fee for students but instead, hire more staff at the university with the cost savings.
I could go on with the rest of your examples but I guess the point I'm trying to make is you never know what everyone's backgrounds and motivations are.
I'm not saying don't help people out, but chose very carefully who you help out as most people aren't victims because of circumstance, but usually victims of their own doing.
All of these examples suggest that the way things are, is a direct example of the way thing should be; that there's some sense and reason for hardships that result from capitalism.
I can't agree that's the case. Believing otherwise is simply convenient.
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As a postscript, it seems to me that many people believe the myth that absolutely anyone can make it if you try hard enough - an extension of what's been sold to me as the American dream. Of course, the corollary of this, is that those who don't achieve are victims of their own laziness and lack of motivation.
I can't state strongly enough how untrue this is. Once upon a time it may have been true, but now — even those born within the same country — enter into the world on a vastly uneven playing field.
Someone who is born into poverty is quite simply likely to die in poverty. Some succeed against all odds — however luck often plays a strong part in a person's effort regardless of the amount of effort they put in.
To state that most people who are victims, are victims of their own doing, isn't true. Again, it's simply convenient to believe so, because it removes the need for altruism.
"I can't state strongly enough how untrue this is. Once upon a time it may have been true"
I would go further and say that it has never been true. It's a lie people who do well tell themselves, and everyone else, to feel better and justify a whole slew of unjust actions.
Sometimes people are also victims of their own actions, but does that mean we shouldn't help them? I don't think so.. we all mess up from time to time.
I'll bite: this is immoral, isn't it? To charge more than what you think it's worth. Because that's taking money you don't think you deserve. Anyway, this whole community seems oblivious to morals... I can almost feel the nihilism through the internet.
No, because there is no single ideal price for anything. The ideal price varies between customers.
Real world:
Customer A thinks the $14 pizza is overpriced. No sale.
Customer B thinks the $14 pizza is delicious and worth it. Would pay up to $20 if forced. Pays $14 and enjoys $6 in surplus value.
Ideal world:
Customer A thinks the $14 pizza is worth about $6. Buys it for $6 (Arriving at the deal is the tricky part).
Customer B thinks the $20 pizza is worth about $20. Buys it for $20 (Arriving at the deal is the tricky part).
Now both customers are happy with their pizzas, and the pizza maker made $26 in revenue instead of $14.
There is no "true" price for anything. It's not morally wrong for the cheap customer to pay $1 in a PWYW deal, and it's not morally wrong for the seller to enjoy it when someone pays $100 in the same deal.
The pizza maker made $26 minus whatever it costs to produce the pizza in time and materials. If the pizza cost $7 to make then the pizza maker makes $14 in profit versus $7. Also they lost a buck on that $6 pizza.
Further complexities: maybe it's a slow day and those employees were idle, and the raw materials were going to go bad without being used anyway - so if the $6 customer is buying it as cost the pizza maker may still be winning. Especially if they sold some fountain drinks to that customer, which are almost pure profit.
If you want a sustainable business, you need to cover your materials cost. Arguably paying less than the materials/shipping cost for something is morally wrong, especially if you know damn well this thing costs more than that to make and ship.
How do you know what anything is worth? If something will make me $100, but you think it is only worth $10, then what is it worth? $10 or $100?
Finding the price that the market will bare is precisely how you determine a product's monetary value.
Side note: if you want to see a entrepreneurial community without morals, I could point you to some places that would make you reconsider your opinion of HN.
It's not a moral question because it's the buyer who determines what something is worth, not the seller. The seller just sets the price. If the buyer thinks something is worth more than the price, then they'll buy it. Otherwise they'll walk away. The seller isn't taking their money, the buyer is either giving it or not.
I'm also between PointersThumb and "VonStyle".
And I learned touch typing but I don't like it.
I reached 110wpm touchtyping instead of 100, but it requires a far more rigid and precise posture (hands in front and parallel).
It's not comfortable when I'm standing at the side, bending over the keyboard, or when I'm slouching lazily in my chair.
I guess it's better for serious typing work, but for everyday use I prefer my style.
I like the design but that automatic slideshow changing every 2 seconds is annoying... That close to the text it disrupts reading, and I don't even have enough time to watch the image (I can pause with mouse but by the time I learn that I'm already annoyed).
Thanks for the honest feedback. We've been wanting to update the page for some time, but just haven't found the time yet. Will keep that in mind for the next revision.
A laughably small number of americans vote in presidential
I'm sorry but it's not logical to waste time with something which has no impact.
If there was any incentive, people would come. Like $5 or tax reductions, I don't know.
It's not rocket science to increase the participation. But I guess the vote of the pragmatic is not desired.
Actually the fact there is no incentive at all shows they want as few people to vote as possible, globally.
Maybe it's because opposition mobilizing themselves more is what allows the country to alternate leadership easily instead of being stuck in the same ideology forever, at the expense of the other 48%. Or maybe the alternate leadership is like our beating heart, a constant source of ideological thought, instead of the slumbering effect of an eternal monolithic party like in China. Be careful what you wish for.
Anyway when the choice you have is Blue or Red, "educating the masses" has little impact.
But maybe masses having little impact is actually perfection...
Putting viable life on Mars would be such an important threshold.
It would guarantee life to survive even the destruction of Earth.
Important stuff. Like Raid1 for data redundancy.
Not many things could destroy both Earth and Mars, except the expanding of the Sun in 5 billion years and maybe the fusion Andromeda/MilkyWay in 4 billion years if we're not lucky. Also aliens.
I think the dangerous part would be altering the planet to be unlivable to the current inhabitants. Which is a good reason for conducting these tests, to see if anything is there before we start transplanting life. If nothing is there, then we can move lichens etc without fear of contamination. If something is there, we don't want to destroy its habitat by introducing new life.
Ive just realised how good AND bad finding life on Mars could be. On the one hand, we find LIFE on another planet. On the other hand, it makes it incredibly difficult for humans to ever move there and begin terraforming the planet into a second home.
Evolve fast enough? We are talking about millions of your earth-years at least. And we don't even know how likely intelligent life is at all. After all, earth only produced one tool-using, technology loving species.
(Dolphins and some others seem smart, too, but they wouldn't venture to other planets.)
Ok I was half joking on that part. Presumably they will use some sort of genetically engineered organisms that are programmed to die after the terraformation.
Such a programmed death would be extremely hard to do, risky and not necessary.
You could try to introduce a weakness to a particular poison (one that is not actually poisonous to anything you might want to introduce later), but that would be selected out against pretty fast. And genedrift would probably remove it even before you actually introduce the poison.
A vital dependency on some specific substance wouldn't work either. For one thing, you'd have to provide that substance Mars-wide, and also there would be a strong selection pressure to get around that dependency.
You could try to come up with some other timing methods. But genetical engineering is not magic.
>You could try to introduce a weakness to a particular poison (one that is not actually poisonous to anything you might want to introduce later), but that would be selected out against pretty fast. And genedrift would probably remove it even before you actually introduce the poison.
You could build the architecture of the genome such that any minor mutation to the "death gene" immediately kills the organism. You could probably get it to the point that it would require $n$ simultaneous point mutations to disable the "death gene" without killing the organism. What you'd really want to worry about is whole chunks of genome being deleted (either through a serious accident in reproduction or a virus). You'd want to design the genome such that each part checks the others parts (hell just use checksums SHA3 is available now), if any part comes up bad, the organism dies.
tl;dr It should be possible to freeze evolution (or just freeze particular gene's) using modern cryptographic techniques.
That's way ahead of current technology. And, those organisms would be quite unfit, and outcompeted fast.
The latter might not be a problem on Mars. But in such a harsh environment you do not only have to worry about competition, but about surviving at all.
If something happens and they do evolve fast enough to pose a threat, perhaps they will evolve fast enough to realize that two planets with intelligent life are better than one.
I would argue good ideas are not so easy to find. It is harder than it seems to fit the market, and that is why most of apps fail. At the end of the day, everyone is blinded by hubris and ignorance... I do include myself in that.