<story><title>Just Landed</title><url>http://www.getjustlanded.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pg</author><text>Are you sure you wouldn&apos;t say the same thing if it was 1975 and they&apos;d made a Basic interpreter for a toy computer used by a few hobbyists?&lt;p&gt;Big things often start small.  In fact, &lt;i&gt;usually&lt;/i&gt; start small.&lt;p&gt;And in any case it&apos;s just mean of you to piss all over these guys&apos; efforts. It makes me embarrassed for HN when people launch something new, and this is the sort of response they get.</text></item><item><author>frisco</author><text>This is the quintessential first world problem.  Out of the range of problems facing society that you could solve, of all the ways you could create value by making peoples&apos; lives better, you settled on &quot;making airport pickup easy&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Now, this is probably a completely rational move from the company&apos;s perspective.  Silicon Valley over the last few years has been backstopped by acquihires and other such soft landings, and big companies desperate to hire outstanding talent are often very willing to pay high prices for a great team.  From the landing page at least, it certainly doesn&apos;t look like the Just Landed guys are amateurs.  They&apos;re probably a very talented, capable team.&lt;p&gt;If they&apos;re successful, I won&apos;t begrudge them their success.  However, I do lament the idea that the best minds of a generation are being focused on getting people to click on ads and minimizing the number of loop-arounds you have to do at the airport.  I don&apos;t buy the idea that these guys wouldn&apos;t be focused on &quot;harder&quot; problems if consumer web didn&apos;t exist; of course they would.  This kind of talent rises to the challenge. The idea that these are the problems whose solution drives us forwards is just a monumental lapse of creativity.  Technology is an amazing thing, and we can do so much with it.  I really think it&apos;s just an exposure issue -- people are used to web, and fields like the life sciences or hardware seem mysterious and complex.  How do those become opened up?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>iloveyouocean</author><text>Totally agree.  When I first joined HN (2100+ days ago) there were posts nearly every day of the &apos;Show HN: My new startup/website/app/etc&apos; type and the thoughtful feedback and comments were genuinely helpful and insightful.  It wasn&apos;t uncommon for multiple people to actually take screenshots and rework design elements, provide thorough user interaction impressions and potential improvements, offer assistance in numerous ways (debugging, introductions, alpha/beta testing, etc.), and be generally supportive.  HN truly seemed like a community of semi-collaborative or at least fully helpful hackers.&lt;p&gt;It saddens me that the most common response these days seems to be some version of &apos;Let me list all the reasons why this is crap.&apos;&lt;p&gt;What happened?</text></comment>
<story><title>Just Landed</title><url>http://www.getjustlanded.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pg</author><text>Are you sure you wouldn&apos;t say the same thing if it was 1975 and they&apos;d made a Basic interpreter for a toy computer used by a few hobbyists?&lt;p&gt;Big things often start small.  In fact, &lt;i&gt;usually&lt;/i&gt; start small.&lt;p&gt;And in any case it&apos;s just mean of you to piss all over these guys&apos; efforts. It makes me embarrassed for HN when people launch something new, and this is the sort of response they get.</text></item><item><author>frisco</author><text>This is the quintessential first world problem.  Out of the range of problems facing society that you could solve, of all the ways you could create value by making peoples&apos; lives better, you settled on &quot;making airport pickup easy&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Now, this is probably a completely rational move from the company&apos;s perspective.  Silicon Valley over the last few years has been backstopped by acquihires and other such soft landings, and big companies desperate to hire outstanding talent are often very willing to pay high prices for a great team.  From the landing page at least, it certainly doesn&apos;t look like the Just Landed guys are amateurs.  They&apos;re probably a very talented, capable team.&lt;p&gt;If they&apos;re successful, I won&apos;t begrudge them their success.  However, I do lament the idea that the best minds of a generation are being focused on getting people to click on ads and minimizing the number of loop-arounds you have to do at the airport.  I don&apos;t buy the idea that these guys wouldn&apos;t be focused on &quot;harder&quot; problems if consumer web didn&apos;t exist; of course they would.  This kind of talent rises to the challenge. The idea that these are the problems whose solution drives us forwards is just a monumental lapse of creativity.  Technology is an amazing thing, and we can do so much with it.  I really think it&apos;s just an exposure issue -- people are used to web, and fields like the life sciences or hardware seem mysterious and complex.  How do those become opened up?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jgrall</author><text>When pg comes to your defense, it&apos;s a good day ;)</text></comment>