mantia a day ago

I’m a little surprised along this entire journey, no one reported that Imran Chaudhri paid to have a Wikipedia article written about him and his many patents to bolster his reputation years before Humane became relevant.

  • handfuloflight a day ago

    What level of corruption do you think is involved in "paying" for a Wikipedia article?

    • pedalpete 20 hours ago

      Is it corruption? Or just narcissism?

      • mantia 19 hours ago

        Right. It’s not “corrupt” to have done it.

        Is there a difference between an article you paid someone to write about you and one that was written without your involvement? Yes. There is.

        Would this article have existed at all had he not paid for it? Possible, but doubtful.

        Wikipedia is not editorial journalism, it is an encyclopedia. His inclusion in said encyclopedia was paid sponsorship. An ad. Wikipedia’s policies don’t require it to be said on the page itself, which is a shame, because knowing whether the subject of an article paid for it to exist does change the reader’s perception of the article. It absolutely does.

samr71 a day ago

I still don't understand - what was HP paying $110M for??

  • moralestapia 17 hours ago

    1. They probably still had $110M cash in hand, lol. Although Imran is idiotic enough that he probably spent all the money.

    2. Nepotism. The same reason he got that money in the first place, see also the usual suspects, Cohere, FTX, Perplexity AI, Theranos, ...

    If you knew how easy some people have it you would be extremely pissed off, and with reason.

    • hackermeows 13 hours ago

      Interesting you put perplexity in there

pedalpete 20 hours ago

I disagree with the premise that these are the "red flags" that should be avoided.

-Claiming credibility through patents -Manufacturing hype before manufacturing products -Pitching products via a TED talk -Having no plan for inevitable electronic waste

These are definitely red flags, but how often do we see this sort of thing. -Paying editors to create Wikipedia articles about you -Pivoting the product to AI, even before shipping

What the author misses is that you need to sell a product, and pre-product, you need to sell that YOU are the person to do it.

That is why Imran promotes his patents, or people talk about their PhD, etc. Nobody would have believed what he was saying without those patents. Ok, maybe if he was a Stanford drop-out, but if neither of those things..... ;)

How do we differentiate "manufacturing hype" vs "promoting a vision"? Though, when it came down to it, the vision was a vision of smoke, but we can't suggest to founders that we don't "promote a vision". Otherwise, what are employees, investors, and future customers buying into?

TED is becoming such a cliche, but I think this comment is suggesting not marketing, which is what TED is. A marketing channel, which (used to) provide a level of credibility.

Who says Humane didn't have a plan for electronic waste? They didn't talk about it, and maybe they should have. We're building hardware, and though we probably won't promote how we deal with electronic waste, we may talk about how we've focused on making our product easily refurbishable and environmentally friendly, but I doubt many people are going to even care. Do you see how many people use take away coffee cups EVERYDAY!!!

In the end, I don't think Humane really matters at all. The only people who got hurt where the VCs, and by the look of the buy-out, just barely. I'm assuming they were paying top dollar for talent in the Bay Area, and those people won't get any return on their equity, but that could have happened at any start-up where they may not have been paid as well.

The public doesn't care about Humane. The only reason it is being mentioned at all is because they were able to build some publicity.

  • mantia 19 hours ago

    “Nobody would have believed what he was saying without those patents.”

    Exactly. He used his patents from Apple to convince people of his supposed credibility or notability in order to get people to believe he was good at this. But that’s not what patents are. They’re so companies can use their employees’ contributions as legal arsenal. They do not signal competency or skill.

readthenotes1 20 hours ago

I am wondering who has the patent on "don't add a space after auto correcting" and why they are being so stingy about not letting people implement it