Excellent, well done. Looking forward to hearing a discussion about this on your podcast! Might you go chase some other startup ideas? Does this "validate" the career model of creating something new, for you? Or would you not do it again?
> At a YC event last week Brian Chesky gave a talk that everyone who was there will remember. Most founders I talked to afterward said it was the best they'd ever heard. Ron Conway, for the first time in his life, forgot to take notes.
Is there a recording? It's very frustrating to read things like this and not be given a link.
> The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's rating system focuses on occupant safety, not the safety of other road users, and tax policies subsidize heavier vehicles.
Sociopathic. Regulations and safety standards should be updated to consider both occupants' and others' safety.
The auto manufacturers won't like this, because they are cheap and greedy.
Yeah, there is. It's called everyone having an automated driving system like FSD. The NHTSA is too concerned with me taking my eyes off the road for 2 seconds while FSD is enabled versus getting manufacturers to actually implement this stuff.
Why can I take my eyes off the road with FSD off and not with it on? They should mandate driver monitoring in every car when you're not driving with an autonomous system. As a motorcycle rider also, I'm telling you that everyone is literally on their phone when driving. I can see it all because I sit higher than everyone else. That's what the NHTSA should focus on.
Unfortunately this very application, Gov.uk Notify, is currently being used by Councils to send emails to residents directing them to an outsourced company's website, https://www.householdresponse.com, to input sensitive details about where they live.
While some parts of Gov.uk are done well, there are still terrible practices everywhere due to cheapness and ignorance and presumably because the Gov UK people can't do everything, unfortunately, even though it would be cheaper and better if they did.
Yes - another bit that I worked on (albeit tangentially).
The QR code stuff was an interesting one. There was a worry that people would generate fraudulent codes - hence the weird (in my opinion) signing requirements.
Similarly, with a URl there was a risk that people would open the page and think that was all they needed to do. Hence a code designed to be read by a specific app.
I think (and you'll have to forgive my slightly hazy memory of a difficult time) that it was based on the same code New Zealand were using for their check-in service.
Oh no, a really sad Far Side cartoon! Which is very closely related to a shaggy dog joke you can spin out for ages, "$5 talking dog for sale", which ends with the setup / punchline, "why so cheap?" / "because he's a goddamn liar!"
I highly recommend some of the best content on Youtube, Ed Pratt's series [0] where he unicycles around the world. [0] https://www.youtube.com/@EdPratt
You're choosing to pick the negatives but the potential upsides (even excluding personal desires) are monumentally massive.
How about not having 25% of the population walking around with an underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex at any one time, that need 30 years of education before they have the wisdom to do anything halfway useful. How about government policies that operate with a decades long view instead of just one election term. Global ID's would rise massively and decisions would have a far more balanced outlook.
Yes of course there are positives. Don't worry, we have never let negative consequences hold back progress before.
But the blind optimism is staggering, and let's get philosophical: what's the ultimate good, objectively? (Subjectively obviously _I_ and _you_ think it's that we get to be around for longer.) But objectively, from a humanity standpoint, is it (1) the most people in existence, (2) the most people to ever have existed, (3) the most consciousness, (4) the most happiness? Etc.
If we start letting people live forever, over a long time, because of resources, fewer people will ultimately exist. We'll also have slower progress because old ideas will live longer. It's very hubristic to think we've peaked, and it's inevitable that the first live-forever generation will put the brakes on progress/change.
I'd say those downsides far outweigh the upsides you've proposed.
