this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
936 points (96.9% liked)

Technology

59622 readers
2877 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

The blue LED was supposed to be impossible—until a young engineer proposed a moonshot idea.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 52 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Makes me presume power harassment.

On the flip side, he was using up millions and millions of company dollars on his singleminded pursuit with no obvious results to show for it. Had things gone even a little differently, things would've gone very differently indeed. Hard to imagine most companies tolerating an employee flat ignoring instruction to change to another task when their old task was proving fruitless.

Hindsight is clear enough here, but in context it was pretty nuts what the guy was doing.

Makes you wonder how many great inventors of revolutionary tech were shoved off their path by dumb luck.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Probably far fewer than never had the opportunity to realize they could be great in the first place.

If greatness is one in a billion we have 8 (boy would the richest like us to believe that!). If it’s one in 100 million (I’m bad at math. I think it’s like) 80. Or if it’s one in a million, that’s 350 in the US alone. I’m inclined to lean toward the later, after all, if there aren’t a lot of greats waiting to be called up, how the fuck did we beat the odds by such a large margin??

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

The greats are beat into submission by capitalism and the horrors they went through to achieve greatness (usually a garbage childhood of some variety)