
Kickstarter project spent $3.5M to finish a prototype and ended in disaster - tmflannery
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/07/how-one-kickstarter-project-squandered-3-5-million/
======
tibbon
I don't get it; Kickstarter isn't a store. I personally never expect anything
to come through and get it in the mail when I back a Kickstarter project. I
_might_ get something, but it isn't a promise.

Why is it a shock that Kickstarter projects fail? No one is shocked when VC
backed companies fail, and these projects are just as likely (if not more
likely) to fail. There's no more due diligence than watching a video and
reading over some text frequently in funding a project.

Even projects with competent people in well funded companies fail all the time
and get shut down (see Google Buzz, Google Health, etc). There is no such
thing as a promise that things will succeed.

I wish Kickstarter would put big lettering near the 'support' button that says
in big red letters, "Kickstarter is not a store"

~~~
njharman
The article isn't about people not getting a product or expecting a "store".
It's about how a more than tripple funding KS which got an additional 3
million in VC backing could not actually accomplish their goal.

I bet they would have been more successful with less money. Money gives you
freedom(to start over, to feature creep, to bikeshed, to grow faster than you
can manage, etc) and security (which makes you less "hungry" and desperate).

~~~
simonh
Frankly the whole product concept seems to me to be completely ridiculous. I
doubt it was viable however much money they got.

I thought long and hard before posting this, because obviously hindsight is
20/20, but I went back and looked at the product description again and I stand
by my opinion. IHMO it was a turkey from the word go.

~~~
rasz_pl
Whole product can be replaced by an app.

~~~
err4nt
This functionality currently exists for any _online_ password on
Windows/Mac/iOS in 1PassWord, and I'm sure there are many other wallets and
password managers for other platforms that do similar things. Having a USB key
for this almost feels like a step backward - how do you plug that into your
phone or tablet? 1Password will automagically enter and submit any remembered
password in your browser, and any non-web password can be stored and retrieved
from the app itself at any time. I didn't even care about that feature when I
bought the app, but it has become a lifestyle changer for me and I'd say it's
the killer feature.

The worst part is, I can buy 1Password for Mac for $50, and the iOS version is
less than $20. Anybody interested in this sort of thing should really check
out the alternatives already!

------
Eduardo3rd
Sounds like a larger version of the problems that most hardware crowd funding
campaigns run into. I think that we've done ourselves a disservice as a
hardware community by promising to deliver consumer electronic devices for
less than $250k in a few months. It doesn't seem to matter how complete your
design is, what manufacturing partner you've lined up, or what pedigree your
team has - everyone is spending more than they raise and taking longer than
they budgeted.

I think it would be wise for hardware companies to collectively start lowering
expectations from campaigns like the one described here.

The team at Spark Devices did a great job with this process. Their first
project, the wi-fi bulb socket [0], had a large funding goal and a more
realistic timeline. When the campaign failed to materialize they shifted
directions to the Spark Core [1], which was much more successful and delivered
very close to the projected timeline if I remember correctly. Now they are
closing a sizable series A [2] to build an operating system for the internet
of things.

If they had originally made the Spark socket goal $100k they would have
reached their goal and then likely failed to deliver with the cash they
raised, which would have pulled them down into the mess that is described in
this article.

Maybe more hardware teams should take a good hard look at how they view
failure and decide if they want to be the next Spark or the next myIDkey.

[0] - [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sparkdevices/spark-
upgr...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sparkdevices/spark-upgrade-your-
lights-with-wi-fi-and-apps) [1] -
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sparkdevices/spark-
core...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sparkdevices/spark-core-wi-fi-
for-everything-arduino-compatible) [2] -
[http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/08/spark-io-
raises-4-9-million...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/08/spark-io-
raises-4-9-million-series-for-an-internet-of-things-os/)

~~~
sliverstorm
I have no evidence, but it seems like as a community people significantly
underestimate the challenges of hardware development.

I'm not sure whether it's because the community thinks "Oh, hardware is so
much easier than software! This will be a snap!" or if it is the more subtle
"We haven't done this before, so we aren't aware of the pitfalls"

~~~
morgante
> Oh, hardware is so much easier than software! This will be a snap!

I've literally never heard anything say or think that. Myself included, nearly
every software developer I know is intimidated by how _hard_ hardware seems.

~~~
Balgair
Whew! it's not just me then! I've been picking at a bluetooth/arduino 9 degree
of freedom accelerometer for about 6 months now. It's terribly difficult to
deal with. All the wires, the voltages, the heat and power, the damn
bluetooth, letting all the magic smoke out, etc. All the physical details that
aren't 'documented' like with a language or other programming project, mostly
because...physics ...isn't well documented. I love, it don't get em wrong, but
yes, hardware/software interfacing is like pulling teeth. I think the main
issue is that you don't even know what to ask Google, let alone anyone else.
It's hard just to formulate the right questions, let alone get answers.

~~~
sliverstorm
Maybe it's just because we approach it from different sides of the fence, but
I always found accelerometers very easy to use in hardware but impossible to
use in software!

I'm not good enough at DSP to isolate the signal from the noise.

~~~
Balgair
Bingo! I2C is just 4 wires, but getting that data out is the trick. You have
hiccups in the transmission, some bit flips, and then the actual data to
contend with.

Signal to noise is actually pretty easy, just have a Fourier transform to pick
out the differences between a background you set before. Typical applications
are pretty immune and the ratios are very high usually.

~~~
sliverstorm
See, I have no trouble reliably getting the data out of the sensor and into a
variable. But I can't implement the fft() in C for the life of me, and even if
I could, my little itty-bitty microcontrollers probably don't have that level
of number crunching.

~~~
Balgair
Ahhh! Yes, I do all the post processing off the chip. You could play with a
...oh geeze, its Friday, what are they called...? The things that configure
themselves to be a circuit and can only be configured once. Jeeze, sorry on
the name here. JFET maybe? I'm sorry. Try arduino as a good intro. I think
they have some fft libraries.

~~~
sliverstorm
I don't know about single-write chips of that nature, but are you thinking of
CPLD/FPGA?

~~~
Balgair
BINGO! FPGAs, thank you!

------
bsder
Standard startup problem--too many salaries.

This kind of project needs something like 2 engineers _max_ who really know
what they're doing. Unfortunately, very few people know what they're doing.

Anything more than that and you are doomed. The hardware is about $100K to
develop if you know what you're doing. Probably closer to $250K if you don't.

Everything else is _time_ \--software, debugging, user testing, etc.

Andrew "bunnie" Huang's blog is great for understanding all the crap you are
going to wade through to do production.
[http://www.bunniestudios.com/](http://www.bunniestudios.com/)

The discussions about what goes into producing the DEFCON badges each year are
also fascinating:
[http://www.nutsvolts.com/uploads/magazine_downloads/DEFCON-1...](http://www.nutsvolts.com/uploads/magazine_downloads/DEFCON-16-Badge.pdf)

The DEFCON discussion is always especially interesting because it is a _VERY_
constrained problem: low volume overall (for electronics <50,000 is low
volume) but high volume in terms of units-per-time, tight cost constraint,
generally a tight battery constrain, and a desire for hackability.

Operations is hard. Let's go shopping.

There is a reason why there is a Chief _Operations_ Officer in manufacturing
companies ...

~~~
GFischer
Thanks to the link about the DEFCON badges, really cool :)

~~~
bsder
Read some of the articles about other years, as well. They are _ALWAYS_ a
fascinating read.

------
patio11
Please remember this article the next time you're inclined to say "Why did
Paypal freeze pre-orders of a promising new startup when they clearly look
like intelligent, diligent founders and have not a whiff of scam risk about
them?"

~~~
jay_kyburz
Who is PayPal to decide whether or not a company can achieve their goals.

~~~
aristus
They are deciding whether or not to take on the risk of essentially
underwriting the project. PayPal is on the hook for chargebacks; recently I
got back $400 we had paid last _November_ to a company that turned out to have
been incompetent / scammy. I didn't initiate a chargeback until a couple of
months ago.

Whether or not you agree with the outcome of their decisions, you can't simply
huff that PayPal has no "right" to decide whether to take on those kinds of
risks. They clearly have skin in the game.

~~~
jxjdjr
But they shouldn't have skin in the game. Treating people like children
without the capacity to make grown up decisions will only encourage this type
of behaviour. Whytf do we need something like charge back?! To me it just
seems like a poor justification for having a centralised router of money.

~~~
DanBC
Try setting up a project that only takes Western Union cash transfer or
bitcoin as payment.

People like the safety net of chargeback and it encourages them to fund you.

------
funkyy
So people supported project and paid for a product they were presented, but
creator decided on the fly it wasnt good enough so they changed it?

How ridiculous is this. People paid for a product (support) in order to
receive what they were presented. The creator could then release version 2.0
after a year with updated features instead of making this decission. It would
be like person would buy an Iphone 4 in shop and after he paid the guy behind
the counter would say "sorry, I changed my mind, you will get Iphone 5 in 1
year because its better. Your money is ours now, so good bye and see you in a
year."

The decisions made behind this seems to be immature - similar unfortunately to
pretty large chunk of Kickstarter startups.

The Kickstarter seems to replaced government grants for some, where people
would risk it to achieve success, but if they fail cause of issues/bad
decision they don't care because it wasn't their money anyway. To many people
with no prior life experience starting projects and businesses.

~~~
dm2
Donating money to a KickStarter project is not the same as buying something.

You're not paying for a product, you are helping fund a company or project who
has no legal obligation to give you anything.

If you are donating to a KickStarter just because you want the reward they are
offering then you should do sufficient research on the company and their
founders to ensure that you trust that they will deliver what they promised.

~~~
JeremyBanks
While I agree with the spirit of the above comment, and am not upset when
projects I fund are delayed or cancelled, you're not technically correct:

 _Is a creator legally obligated to fulfill the promises of their project?_

 _Yes. Kickstarter 's Terms of Use require creators to fulfill all rewards of
their project or refund any backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill.
(This is what creators see before they launch.) This information can serve as
a basis for legal recourse if a creator doesn't fulfill their promises. We
hope that backers will consider using this provision only in cases where they
feel that a creator has not made a good faith effort to complete the project
and fulfill._

[https://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/kickstarter+basics](https://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/kickstarter+basics)

This isn't just hypothetical:
[http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150780/firstofakind-
kickstar...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150780/firstofakind-kickstarter-
lawsuit-highlights-risks-of-crowd-funding.html)

~~~
dm2
If a project creator takes the money and disappears then it's fraud, that's
what that quote is referring to.

From that same FAQ: "Kickstarter does not guarantee projects or investigate a
creator's ability to complete their project. On Kickstarter, backers (you!)
ultimately decide the validity and worthiness of a project by whether they
decide to fund it."

In court it's probably about as valid as a Terms of Service agreement on a
website or a "by reading this you must keep the contents of this email
confidential" at the bottom of an email.

~~~
funkyy
What if project creator takes money, then over thinks it and uses money to
sponsor his ambitions? Is Kickstarter ego boost fund, or actual project
funding?

Most users sponsor project to get early and discounted access to cool stuff -
if you fund Kickstarter projects for other reasons - good for you. But dont
expect others to follow. Some people hard earned money are in stake, they
expect to get something from it and when creator just blatantly changes what
he has to offer while sponsoring his high lifestyle from money received -
thats just bad.

You got money for something - do it. You want to develop something different,
better? First finish what you have promised, then move on for money your
company earned itself.

~~~
dm2
"Most users sponsor project to get early and discounted access to cool stuff"

There is a reason why KickStarter forbids calling a reward a pre-order.

I think a good solution would be to forbid the product being developed from
being offered as a reward and instead allow a coupon (free, half-priced,
whatever) to be the reward with the understanding that the technology product
might never be produced.

Kickstarter has many other products that are not technology focused, these
kinds of development issues and product delivery issues are less of a problem
when you don't have major technical challenges to overcome.

Look at Lockitron, it seems like such a simple concept and device, but as
they've shown, making it a reality is difficult.

There is a high chance of failure in the startup world, investors should be
aware of this. Kickstarter should make this very clear to people and limit the
types of rewards so that people (who arguably shouldn't be "investing") are
not disappointed if the project just doesn't work out.

~~~
teraflop
> There is a reason why KickStarter forbids calling a reward a pre-order.

Plenty of people do it anyway. For example:
[http://earin.se/](http://earin.se/) \-- "We are live at Kickstarter. Order
your Earin and help us get the world’s smallest wireless earbud to market."

------
fleitz
Of course it didn't pan out, you can only do a project like this on a budget
of 20-50K.

Beyond that budget everyone will focus on engineering it to work with every
authentication system ever, rather than creating a simple USB HID device that
types a username, the tab key, a password, and presses enter.

Problem: Users cant remember their passwords.

Actual Solution: Device that stores and recalls their passwords.

Engineering Solution: A bunch of crypto stuff, tempest hardening, pen testing,
some more crypto, a provably secure RNG, 3 different interfaces and drivers to
integrate the device with Linux, OSX, and Windows crypto systems, a bunch more
user installable software for 3 platforms, tamper resistant chips, etc.

~~~
dublinben
That actually sounds like the Marketing Solution, since they had a simple,
working prototype at the very beginning.

------
DigitalSea
I remember when I first about all of the buzz about this Kickstarter project,
I knew it was going to be trouble. Hardware is a notoriously expensive
business to get into. As the company learned you can easily burn through a few
million in cash just putting out a prototype. Once you have something ready
for production, until you're manufacturing at a decent scale, your costs are
incredibly high: economies of scale 101.

Call me crazy, but how about Kickstarter clamps down on ambitious hardware
products like this? I don't think they are doing enough and it's tarnishing
their image as a credible crowdfunding platform (at least to me anyway). It's
obvious that there are very few exceptions here that a hardware Kickstarter
campaign will not fail (Oculus Rift comes to mind and a few other smaller
ones).

~~~
famousactress
Don't forget Pebble :)

Definitely hardware failures are a PR challenge but kickstarter's margins
aren't affected by COGs and hardware projects tend to require more money (as
you pointed out). They've got lots of motivation to make it work.

~~~
DigitalSea
Pebble is definitely a success, OUYA is another success, the Neil Young
endorsed Pono player and service seems to be well underway and looking like
another success and of course, the LIFX wifi enabled multi light-bulb as well.
When you run the numbers, the percentage of success for hardware projects is
quite small. But as you point out, Kickstarter get their fees regardless of
success or failure. I think Kickstarter does care, the problem is just a lot
bigger than they currently know how to fairly solve.

------
danielweber
$500,000 from Kickstarter, $3,000,000 from "investment rounds."

------
hristov
It is very curious as to why they failed if they had a working prototype. They
are blaming feature creep, but I am not sure about this. If it looks like you
are going to fail because of feature creep, why not just go back to the
original working prototype?

Personally, I very much doubt they ever had a working prototype.

------
dredwerker
This was created in response to this if I remember rightly:
[http://hackaday.io/project/86-Mooltipass](http://hackaday.io/project/86-Mooltipass)
The mooltipass is an offline password keeper. The concept behind this product
is to minimize the number of ways your passwords can be compromised, while
generating and storing long and complex random passwords for the different
websites you use daily. It is designed to be as small as possible so it can
fit in your pocket. Simply visit a website and the device will ask for
confirmation to enter your credentials when you need to login.

------
post_break
This reminds me of lockitron. It's still not really shipping. Take a look at
the lockitron subreddit.
[http://www.reddit.com/r/lockitron](http://www.reddit.com/r/lockitron)

------
dsugarman
I wonder the % of really unhappy funders and % who understand the risk. I
assume most funders would know there is not 100% chance of a deliverable and
fund projects hoping to contribute to a brighter future.

------
lhnz
It's plainly obvious that Kickstarter is a way of crowdfunding investment in
creative projects.

It's in tabloid's interests to stroke controversy by suggesting it's a store
whenever projects fail.

Clickbait articles like this will continue to be made as people are gullible
and easily manipulated.

~~~
astrange
It's a store for the reward you paid for. The projects have absolutely
promised to give it to you.

~~~
lhnz
Either way it's on the project founders and the consumer-investors not
Kickstarter.

~~~
VikingCoder
If some noticable percentage of the time, you walked into Costco, and paid for
something, but then they didn't give it to you, that would be news, too.

It's valid to question the Kickstarter model, because sometimes, projects
don't deliver.

I still think it's a great model, but I understand the risk. It is valid to
inform people of the risk, though. That's news.

------
autodidakto
Grammar Nazi Time. An excerpt from Oxford's American:

1 (of a person) surprised and confused so much that they are unsure how to
react: he would be completely nonplussed and embarrassed at the idea. 2
informal (of a person) not disconcerted; unperturbed.

usage: In standard use, nonplussed means ‘surprised and confused’: the
hostility of the new neighbor's refusal left Mrs. Walker nonplussed. In North
American English, a new use has developed in recent years, meaning
‘unperturbed’—more or less the opposite of its traditional meaning: hoping to
disguise his confusion, he tried to appear nonplussed. This new use probably
arose on the assumption that non- was the normal negative prefix and must
therefore have a negative meaning. It is not considered part of standard
English.

------
richardw
This is a story? A well funded tech product didn't materialise? Typical day
for a VC. Selected and paid for by the general public? That's insane.
Kickstarter sounds almost destined to fail but somehow it's succeeded so well
that a failure is a story.

------
anjc
How much value is lost through poor investments which nobody hears/cares
about? "Disaster" seems a bit strong. Tough luck to the backers, but that's
how it goes.

------
alexnking
In my opinion, Kickstarter projects should _not_ be legally obligated to
deliver hardware rewards. We already have something just like that called
"stores" and "preorders". I want to fund projects where the creators don't
need to be 100% sure their idea will work before having the means to try it
out. And I certainly don't want people to be able to sue those creators if it
doesn't work out.

~~~
dragonwriter
> In my opinion, Kickstarter projects should not be legally obligated to
> deliver hardware rewards.

There's an easy way around that for projects, don't offer the output of the
project as a reward for backing it.

> I want to fund projects where the creators don't need to be 100% sure their
> idea will work before having the means to try it out.

Okay, back projects where the creators don't offer the output of the project
as the reward for backing it. (Or, projects where the development is already
done, and the Kickstarter is just being done for initial _production_ costs,
so the product isn't speculative.)

> And I certainly don't want people to be able to sue those creators if it
> doesn't work out.

The only reason people could sue the creators is if the creators offered
something in exchange for money, received the money, and didn't deliver as
promised.

The creators are in full control of what they offer as rewards. It seems to me
that the problem is that some people want creators to be able to _use_ the
promise of a product they don't know that they can produce as _inducement_ for
people to give money, but not be obligated to actually follow through.

~~~
jacalata
This project advertised itself as having all the development finished and only
needing pre-order cash to kick off the manufacturing, so that's not really a
good guide:

 _The "Designs" are complete, patents filed, component suppliers selected, the
manufacturing process is defined, the CM [contract manufacturer] chosen so all
we need is your support in this project as we size the first myIDkey
production run and ship product in September 2013. Please make a pledge and
receive your myIDkey!_

------
arbuge
>> But when Ars reached Chen by phone, he seemed nonplussed by his own
company's failure. "Do you know what the percentage of completion is for
Kickstarters in general for technology-based startups?" Chen asked. "Probably
85 percent of all startups fail."

I wonder if this is actually true and if there's any hard historical data on
this. It sounds to me like a statistic he just made up.

------
volaski
I think HN is pretty much a biased crowd for this topic. A lot of people seem
to think of it as a charity kind of thing here--which is understandable
because HN is full of creators who sympathize with them--but I doubt that's
what the _real_ majority of the people who backed those projects think.

------
lily2014
I do think that Kickstarter is a famly type project. We saw one's idea. And
his plan.We back him.And there are many backers so each of backer will not
loss much money. We backed a dream together, we share the risk. And we do wish
a success fund project can reach their goals, build a great company.

------
xorcist
When an operation that _should_ be "two guys in a garage" starts futzing with
C[ETF]O titles, that is my cue to run the other way.

So far it's been a 99% successful guiding principle (with the big exception
early in Internet advertising I wouldn't have enjoyed anyway).

------
lily2014
Kickstarter is a platform where normal people can back those people have dream
and great idea. As to the creators company can not acheieve their goas,
kickstarter can not guarantee it. But it has already list all those rules to
protect backers right.

------
dkersten
_A3 to an A5 ARM processor_

That was never going to be an easy switch. A3 is a microcontroller, A5 is a
full blown cpu.

------
aikah
are there any "aborted" projects where backers sued and won? it seems it's up
to the justice system to decide what kickstarter terms are because their own
TOS are quite vague.

------
gearhart
From the title, I thought this was an Onion article.

------
pistle
Wait. I might not get my bite of potato salad?

------
jokoon
well with capitalism the only viable option is to waste money until a project
works...

didn't bill gates already say something about it ?

the revenues from IT project investments are so high compared to investment
costs, that in the end you never lose money by seeing so many projects crash
like that.

Of course if the government would manage those things, it might be a little
more efficient and might deliver more results... I guess that's how the
silicon valley works... Freedom has the advantage of letting the market
decide, but for innovation it's never really obvious...

go and downvote my political comment

~~~
macspoofing
>well with capitalism the only viable option is to waste money until a project
works...

What's the alternative?

The economy is an incredibly complicated system. Any top-down model will fail.
What we have right now (free-market base and government regulation) kinda
works. Or at least, it works better than anything else we tried.

~~~
jokoon
> What's the alternative?

government research, like darpa.

~~~
macspoofing
Government-funded research is perfectly fine, and necessary even. Private
market wouldn't send a man to the moon or build the LHC because it's just too
expensive and not at all commercializable. Then again, government research
can't match the rate of innovation of private industry, when it comes to
products with an actual market need, across the millions of products in the
industry (from cars, to smartphones, to web-apps, to blenders, to toothpaste).
So you need both.

A top-down approach to controlling all aspects of the economy, a la communism,
has pretty much been shown to be a disaster. It has to be. How can you create
a bureaucracy to track millions of products and expect to 'compete' with a
bottom-up approach of free enterprise? Even conceptually, at best, you'll be
behind. At worst, you destroy the economy.

~~~
jokoon
You sound like the classical nowadays ron paul libertarian.

> How can you create a bureaucracy to track millions of products and expect to
> 'compete' with a bottom-up approach of free enterprise?

Because real, ground breaking research is truly expensive. Making a new
product is not research. Kickstarter has its flaws because it's often made of
non-experts. Meanwhile, the IT field is mostly filled with codemonkeys making
products, who will only end up doing "innovation" who can benefit them but not
their competitors or the whole industry.

The true innovators are entities like intel, nvidia, IBM, AMD, ARM, the IETF
and IEEE who are able to create standards like USB, wifi or bluetooth. You
won't see Kickstarter pushing new standard that would have a real impact on
markets.

I don't see kickstarter to help funding something like bittorrent, the
raspberry pi, firefox or docker for example. Kickstarter is great to give a
chance to broke, talented hackers so they can get some experience in the
business, but I don't think I could expect anything else really meaningful.
Everything is patents, and real research is gloomy. It's lego prototypes at
best, against patents holders.

That's why I think the capitalistic, patent holding investment model is doomed
to waste money over and over until you might end up with some groundbreaking
product. If a new product can threaten a company market, it will most surely
land in a trash bin one way or another.

~~~
macspoofing
>The true innovators are entities like intel, nvidia, IBM, AMD, ARM, the IETF
and IEEE who are able to create standards like USB, wifi or bluetooth.

You mean all those private companies? I wasn't talking about Kickstarter.
Kickstarter is a toy service for funding toy products.

When I said a top-down vs bottom-up approach to the economy, I meant a single
government-controlled bureaucracy vs. private enterprise. In this case it
would be government vs. IBM, AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and every other private
enterprise. I didn't mean Fortune 500 companies vs. startups.

~~~
jokoon
Of course those companies will do the work, but the difference is in where the
money comes from and on what research it's spent on.

Was is the government, or did it come from private profits ? How much money
private companies are willing to invest, and where do they really direct their
research ?

That's why the government's spending is a little more focused and objective
because it won't be research that will increase profits of certain companies.
You can be sure government research will benefit everyone.

If apple invests a lot of money to have a unscratchable screen, it's not
really smart research. In the same idea, intel doesn't seem to really improve
its processor designs like it was able to increase frequency for so many
years. That's why darpa, the DOD and NASA do more relevant research, because
they know what direction to give it.

The development of computers for example, started because the army was using
it. Darpa released the internet protocols to the public. The DOD made the GPS
possible.

Today technology is much more complex than what it was 100 years ago, so even
if the research is executed by private companies, you can't really expect
private capitals to search for discoveries that might not be exclusive to
them. Even patents can't always generate revenues because it's easy for china
or russia or other countries to find out what discoveries were made, and find
it back and sell it. That's why it's important to consider how research funds
are spent, on what, for what expectations.

~~~
macspoofing
>If apple invests a lot of money to have a unscratchable screen, it's not
really smart research. In the same idea, intel doesn't seem to really improve
its processor designs like it was able to increase frequency for so many
years.

That's just wrong and it hurts ... Intel is improving their design every year.
They extract much more efficiency per CPU cycle, per Watt than we have ever
before. It turns out there are fundamental physical limits to what we can do
with Silicon and we are hitting them now, after near 40 years of exponential
growth driven largely by private industry. Are you purposely so ideological
blind that you aren't even willing to grant that??!

You're arguing for either-or and I'm saying you need both. There are areas
where, the government laid the ground work and private industry took and ran
with it. The government was never going to create a smartphone. Smartphones
are a product of years of iteration, coupled with runs of hundreds of millions
of units.

>That's why darpa, the DOD and NASA do more relevant research, because they
know what direction to give it.

No, they don't. They didn't know that people would have wanted to use
computers at home or in their pocket. They didn't know you could miniaturize
transistors to the extent that quantum effects would be a problem. They didn't
know, and they didn't care.

I honestly don't know what you're arguing. You seem to argue for some form of
traditional Communism in place of the free market system with now (with
government regulation). We generally know how that goes. Focused government
research will create the impressive Soviet space program and leave little room
for TVs, microwaves and smartphones, and spread misery and massive waste
around.

~~~
jokoon
Markets are good at making products, but markets are awful at making
scientific and technological discovery.

Markets will indeed improve existing technology, but they won't find anything
really ground breaking. A smartphone is just a compact desktop, with less
functionalities and capabilities. It's just another product, there's nothing
really new about a smartphone.

DARPA and NASA can do research markets just can't do, not because the markets
are not able, but because markets are just an economical tool to deliver
products.

I'm not arguing for communism, but I think that real research can't be driven
by profits.

> Focused government research will create the impressive Soviet space program
> and leave little room for TVs, microwaves and smartphones, and spread misery
> and massive waste around.

Since when does TV, microwaves and smartphone solve misery and waste ? I'm
just saying you need space for both capitalism and government, I think today,
after the end of the cold war, in the US, there is just too much space given
to companies and capitalism, and not enough to research that benefits the
public.

Without support of the government, Tesla would have never appeared. Markets
are just not able to create real alternative, they tend to scratch for more
monopoly and monolithic technologies. More lawyers, more intellectual
property, less engineering and real innovation.

It's crazy to read you talk about the soviets, to even manage to have a space
program without capitalism shows that capitalism is not essential. It's a
catalyst, nothing more. It won't give new technlogies, because money speaks
for money, not for improvements. Learn to make the difference between
increased profits and globally increased efficiency.

