merger

It becomes a lot harder to switch programming languages and tools once you are dependent on some of these IDE features. Switching from using Eclipse for Java to using Closure without quite the tooling you've had before could be pretty hard if you join a new team.

Something just tells me transportation is not going to be the industry revolutionized by drones. I'm sure they'll revolutionize another industry, and another tech will revolutionize tansportation.

I guess at least companies are dreaming again and trying crazy ideas, aka "moonshots".

Quadcopter Drones are just not viable for delivery with current battery technology. Maximum lift is a couple of pounds for 15-20 minutes of flight. Wide use of overhead power lines in cities makes drone delivery unsafe in cities. Rural areas could make sense, lots of open space for landing, sparse population and long drives for drivers,straightforward navigation and obstacle avoidance. But that's not something Quadcopters would be good for, these long-distance hauls, some sort of drone plane would make more sense.

I feel this is somewhat misguided, even a modern version of a pneumatic mail tube system would make more sense to me.

There many other much better use cases for drones and Quadcopters in other industries. I'd expect self-driving cars to have more impact on delivery.

This is, imo, what is wrong with startup culture.

What is the "game"? Are we trying to build great products to "change the world" (aka another anon msging app or "Uber for X") as so many proclaim or are we just here to get rich quick - adopting the previous generation's mantras to fit in and get funding.

Why are you here? Why did people come in the early ninetees? We should live our rhetoric and stop mostly aiming for money. Sometimes they go hand in hand but what is our primary motivation these days?

Sorry this is not aimed at your response in particular, I just think we as a whole have lost our way and our former identity with startups becoming the new Wall Street.

EDIT: made less ranty

Also, why use such a heavily loaded and overloaded term? I am sure he had his reasons, maybe because it is ambiguous.

I'm pretty sure we all agree that standard oil and internet explorer were not of great benefit to society.

"Patents were originally created give monopolies as a reward for innovation."

That's a common misconception. The original reasoning for patents was to provide a limited (in time) monopoly to inventors in exchange for sharing (and describing in detail) their invention with the whole of society.

Interesting anecdote, afaik Gore & Associates, Inc.'s Goretex patent expired before it was universally used for outdoor clothing, thus any brand coukd release their own unlicensed goretex-like material. They have since stopped patenting many of their inventions afaik.