In a totally unrelated matter to the subject, I found the linked website's name very strange! Visiting the website, I can see in the address bar that the name is in Chinese or Japanese!! This is the first occurrence I witnessed of this kind.
First of all, I suggest that moderators add this to the comments' section in the linked guidelines. It should clearly states that pasting AI-generated replies is discouraged and does not fit within the community spirit.
Second, I have to confess that I did this sin a couple of times now, but I came to realize that this is neither good for me nor for the HN community. Although I used AI just for rephrasing, I decided to not do this ever and I'd rather write my own words with mistakes than post generated words based on my thoughts.
It happened for me once and it strikes me like a nuke and I felt truly embarrassed. A couple of months I wrote that comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42264786) then I asked ChatGPT to rephrase it and then mistakenly, pasted both comments, the original above and the generate one below and I hit submit. Shortly after, a user comes, read my comment and replied with that embarrassing reply and honestly, I deserve it. From that moment I realized how things can got messed up quickly when you rely heavily on that AI.
There aren't that many Alphabet acquisitions[1] that start with "W", compared to all the companies that start with "A":
1 2
1 6
1 @
28 A
15 B
8 C
18 D
6 E
10 F
10 G
4 H
9 I
5 J
5 K
8 L
14 M
8 N
10 O
22 P
4 Q
13 R
27 S
12 T
3 U
5 V
9 W
1 Y
8 Z
Normalizing these counts with respect to English character frequencies that appear in text[2], the top three unexpected company initials appear to be "Q", "J", and "P".
Wix too. Very interesting that founders of Waze and Wix have Unit 8200 pedigree and Wiz co-founder was part of an elite recruitment program in the IDF. On account of the mandatory draft, it was bound to happen but those three companies have very similar names as well.
Everyone in Israel who is entrepreneurial tries to self-select into 8200 - it's the equivalent of American high schoolers who want to enter VC and tech entrepreneurship targeting CS@Stanford.
In Israel, the university you attended matters less than the unit you served. For example, if you want to become a senior politician, you join Sayeret Matkal and if you want to become an academic you end up in Talpiot (which the founders of Wiz are alums of).
8200s success is largely due to a couple early exits by 8200 alums (Gili Raanan, Nir Zuk, Shlomo Kramer) who were biased in recruiting from their unit. 8200 alums aren't better or worse than other Israelis - they just have a better network.
And Israel has multiple SIGINT and offensive/defensive cybersecurity units, all of whom created similar networks as well.
It's the same in the US as well - if you join the right divisions and units and take advantage of educational programs with the GI Bill, you will open a lot of doors professionally speaking.
Is it possible the foreignness makes ‘W’ appealing as it signals cool modern tech alignment or something?
Like how ‘X’ attracts marketing and typographic knuckle-draggers in English, or how all our AI companies have butthole logos for reasons that only make sense if you understand the underlying companies and culture.
There's 5 of them, two of which happen to have been acquired by Google. Fair to say it's likely a coincidence.
Interestingly, they all use "vav vav" as the start of their Hebrew names. "Vav" is the hebrew letter for V, so it's kind of like using VV to represent W.
Maybe you're right, and it's a stylistic thing! My knowledge of Hebrew ends in Hebrew school, and that mostly focused on blessing and prayers over startup naming.
Despite commenting on this literally five seconds ago in the sibling comment, I hadn't made the connection that if "vav" is V, then using "vav vav" is like "VV" which is like "W". I wonder if this is a real thing.
In any case, I'm pretty sure it's just a coincidence, I don't think it's a stylistic thing, unless I'm missing something.
It has vav which gets transliterated as v, u, o, or w. How does the average modern Hebrew speaker pronounce these company names in a sentence? Vix, Vayz, Viz? Is the "w" transliteration an example of Latin to Hebrew transliteration but not vice-versa?
It's pronounced the same as in English. Wiz, Waze, Wix. It's written with "double vav" in Hebrew, not just a single vav which would make it read as Viz.
I bet someone has actually studied the effect of leading letters in startup names and funding & acquisitions, I vaguely seem to remember a story about it in the past.
The irony is how quickly we had shifted from AI will help in curing cancer and other diseases to using AI to destroy and kill our enemies. What weird times to be alive!
> The irony is how quickly we had shifted from AI will help in curing cancer and other diseases to using AI to destroy and kill our enemies.
"We" have been mainstream (?) talking about AI killing since (at least) the first Terminator movie in 1984. The geeks/nerds have much earlier: Frank Herbert talked about humans outsourcing their thinking and being 'enslaved' in Dune with the Butlerian Jihad in 1965. Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are from 1942.
Magical thinking is rarely constructive as an argument, but as a fig leaf, it might keep opposition talking for long enough to force through a fait accompli.
I was really enjoying reading this piece until I read the above, then I realized I am reading for a big developer, the maker of, Celeste [1]. I am definitely adding this to my list of favorite articles about making games.
I think Celeste was popular enough in the indie space to get "big developer". To put some words in OP's mouth, its not "Big Developer" as in a large studio. But "Big Developer" as in well known and acclaimed.
In the article they make that 2025 is a tipping point where open source frameworks and libraries "just work", making speedy, fun development possible without needing to fight the clunkiness of heavyweight engines.
And any new stuff regarding Celeste or from their devs will forever be relevant to me! Highly recommend to any who haven't played it.
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