Slightly misleading title. He's famous for first to jump from the stratosphere, breaking the sound barrier. That wasn't the cause of his death. More on him https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Baumgartner .
Maybe a more interesting and impressive fact from the wiki is learning about Alan Eustace, who was a senior VP of engineering at Google. Just before retiring, on October 24, 2014 *at age 57*, he made a free-fall jump from the stratosphere, breaking Felix Baumgartner's world record. He won the Laureus World Action Sportsperson of the Year in 2015.
He only did it once he knew it was possible. And different mechanism (that most people wont understand). While yes he beat the record. Felix did it first.
That was very different. Somehow the entire front page was Erlang, but it was only for a day or 2. AI is different from that. It's like a good 40-50% of the posts for at least a year or more, and I don't see it going away anytime soon. It's also different from web3/etc. as those were at most 10% of the posts and most of us can see it's just hype.
I'm not fighting for a split/fork, just stating the fact that it's nothing compared to Erlang.
IIRC that was a deliberate campaign to make the site unattractive to a spate of non-technical folks who had apparently all simultaneously discovered it.
"We've had a huge spike in traffic lately, from roughly 24k daily uniques to 33k. This is a result of being mentioned on more mainstream sites [...] You can help the spike subside by making HN look extra boring. For the next couple days it would be better to have posts about the innards of Erlang [...]"
"Ok, ok, enough Erlang submissions. You guys are like the crowdsourced version of one of those troublesome overliteral genies. I meant more that it would be better not to submit and upvote the fluffier type of link. Without those we'll be fine."
Hats off to years of dedication that wants his creation to shine.
My question is: It says you sold the assets and everything to the new company, yet also personally invested in the new company for years of runway. I don't get it. If the exchange of funds is equal, why not just transfer ownership? If net money out is greater, then why not just transfer and fund. If net money in is greater, why not just sell for the net amount?
OK, interesting question. Long story short, companies are made of many shareholders with different needs and wants and financial expectations. We can split this into: "what are the needs of the investors of the Dark Inc" and "what are the needs of the founders of Darklang Inc".
Dark Inc investors signed up for a unicorn ($1B company) or better. They didn't get that, and they aren't interested in shares in a small business making programming languages. So they want to shut it down, they're not interested in funding it, and actually would much prefer to not have shares than to have shares in it. They are also interested in their reputations, so having a "soft exit" is better than a hard shutdown - usually that's an acquihire where they get a bit of cash back and get to say "we succeeded" but they also don't want to damage their reputation by shutting down products that are in use.
Meanwhile, the new founders of Darklang Inc are interested in building this cool language, and so want a (possibly small) business making programming tools while continuing to make a living. That company needs money to run until it gets revenue.
It is much simpler and cleaner to sell the assets than to sell the company (many acquisitions are structured this way). It's not just money in vs money out, it's what are the needs of the stakeholders. It's in the interest of both Dark Inc investors and Darklang Inc founders for Dark Inc to sell assets and shut down. Dark Inc investors are relieved of reputational liability and can close their books on the investment, and Darklang Inc gets a clean start.
In this case there's more money in than out - that money isn't just for buying assets though, it's for running the company for several years.
I don't watch Futurama, so I may be wrong in how the story goes. But I think he thought that he's rich but inflation shouldn't be much lower than interest (irl, it's actually way higher), so the 4 billion is likely worth 4 bucks or at most 4 hundred.
It seems like the episode treats him as legitimately rich, but you're right: assuming targeted 2% inflation, it's like $10. That's being pretty generous too, 1000 years is a long time to go without some kind of societal shakeup event where people stop honoring 800 year old numbers on a screen as legitimately valuable. It's not like there is any entity today who would feel obligated to give you $4 billion dollars for your 11th century banknote.
4 hours on TurboExpress may be pushing it. I think it's more like 3hrs+. There is no disappointment though as any kid should be amazed that getting that kind of graphics (one and only full current gen console -- none of the 2 older gens made it) into a 2 gameboy sized system for 3+ hrs is quite impressive.
Maybe a more interesting and impressive fact from the wiki is learning about Alan Eustace, who was a senior VP of engineering at Google. Just before retiring, on October 24, 2014 *at age 57*, he made a free-fall jump from the stratosphere, breaking Felix Baumgartner's world record. He won the Laureus World Action Sportsperson of the Year in 2015.
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