Legitimate question; if this is a real business model (and I believe it could be) then why the fuck does Yahoo.com look like a dead clickbait aggregator instead of, yknow, what it used to look like? i.e. FINANCE ___ [Stocks] [ etc] ENTERTAINMENT ___ [Movies] [TV]
Where's that site?
Visionary leadership left the company? And arguably it lost its soul and excitement. I genuinely thought when Marissa Mayer was brought in as CEO and announced they bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash, I thought she could actually turn Yahoo! around - that she understood platforms and holistic systems; perhaps she did but her hands were tied, and then they made terrible decisions like banning porn on Tumblr - so bureaucracy, politics, and arguably the ad industrial complex and "mainstream" pressures (perhaps like billing/financial system being used as a tool to suppress freedom/sexuality/porn because they've not been successful politically) were pressures her or the Board of Directors couldn't counter.
Then Google came along and was a better search engine, for a time, that was a traffic leak for Yahoo! - and then Google has now devolved; I also thought Google had a good shot at competing with Facebook, but whomever's pulling the strings there, the launch of various platforms, they don't seem to understand it can take 5-10 years after the MVP of a product is launched for it to mature - but for whatever reason their executives or managers haven't been comfortable pulling the trigger, arguably because anyone with that entrepreneurial spirit just takes their idea and gets funding and owns a large portion of whatever they've done; but then you can never develop a full breadth, holistic ecosystem, that can grow into every crevice, nor as broadly, or nuanced as possible - so they're stuck being Search, Gmail, Calendar, etc.
I'm quite certain I've figured out the foundational MVP facilitating an "infinitely" growing system and that would allow 3rd parties to integrate, however I have severe chronic pain that messes up my executive function, so it's difficult for me to actually self-direct and execute - I'm stuck mostly in a low activity, stream of consciousness and go-with-the-flow life of routine - otherwise I would try to launch my plans, which I've done plenty of UX/UI for, as that is simple enough that somehow bypasses higher executive function (moving a pixel and then responding via visual feeling of it isn't complex) - but organizing to turn that into adequate specs to get solid estimates or fixed price quotes for work is extremely difficult to me.
On January 11th I do have a surgery that may or may not reduce my pain by 50%+, may or may not improve my executive function, ... I've even attempted to write draft "Show HN:" posts to explain what I am doing, the starting feature sets, the reasoning behind the design decisions I've made - but it just gets too complicated too quickly for me mentally then to be able to organize further or polish it. I think I have the perfect domain name for it too: ENGN (engine), what makes me smile every time I notice it in my layout/mockup of it is in the search input box it says "Search ENGN". My username on HN actually is an older incarnation of a plan I had, loceng being a short form of "local engine" - and ENGN being from engine, a name I brainstormed after Tumblr sold for $1.1 billion - and I realized that eventually I'd want to try to do my "local engine" idea but that that was too long for a brand name. Fortunately engn.com was for sale at the time, I can't remember if it was $2,000 USD or $4,000 USD - either way, not a bad price for a 4-letter .com that's pronounceable to something with meaning.
I've wanted to write a book too - on health, health systems, and on these systems we're talking about here. I'm 38 now and I taught myself to program when I was 11, learned SEO at 15, evolved to design as I'm more creative and programming became mindnumbing to me, and eventually thought I'd need (or want) VC money - so I started engaging on Fred Wilson's of USV.com's blog - AVC.com - so I have plenty of self-taught experience. The problem is even going back to my shorter or longer writings, or comments of mine on HN or other, it's nearly impossible for me to try to do the organization of it all - to compile parts, etc.
Maybe this surgery goes well and I can begin to do more, or maybe it doesn't; I've tried to hire people or get help over the years but 1) no one has been willing to engage enough as I'd need due to my executive dysfunction, and maybe that's a moot point as 2) it's extremely difficult for me to even manage someone or an ongoing project - whereas I could explain things and direct if people are initiating, if others are directing the conversation, then I could respond - but otherwise I can't do normal oversight and management any longer.
The most accurate odds I can give that this surgery will help (piriformis syndrome, my sciatic nerve goes through the piriformis muscles, rather than around it - so there's constant compression + that's worsened with use/engagement of the muscle) is 50/50. There's a high probability that this surgery t's not related to the primary source of my pain, which is from LASIK eye surgery I did 7 years ago - I got arguably the worst of the worst symptoms: central sensitization and hyperalgesia - a hypersensitivity to pain, where all sensations, pain especially, is amplified to as what seems as strongly as possible; and why I must highly limit my activity level as any little stresses on body, likely even normal natural muscle use which causes micro-tears, then compounds the problem and will take many days of very low activity to return to a still difficult-dysfunctional baseline. But perhaps there's a high probability that the sciatic nerve having been compressed for most of my life, my mind, nervous system, could handle that level of pain/sensitization - but then the damage to the cornea that happens in 100% of LASIK surgeries was what finally broke the camels back.
If this surgery doesn't go well, doesn't help - which it took me 1.5 years to even find a surgeon who does this type of specialized surgery - then I'm afraid I may end my life because this pain, the lack of productivity, of being stuck, of quite little social interaction overall - HN is likely the most stimulated my mind gets, only possible to write this fluidly when it's been at least 3 days of eating a very low inflammatory diet and very low activity level - and only if I've been mostly inactive, primarily sitting, since waking and getting out of bed - to not trigger any pain in my body. Anyway, it gets boring, repetitive.
I've thought of trying to find an Elixir/Phoenix/React/etc developer or agency on Upwork before surgery and try to struggle to get them on at least developing the initial foundation of ENGN, but aside from the struggles I listed above that I'll encounter, it also will cost additional money - and I've not worked in 5 years, I've spent $250,000+ on stem cell treatments to heal old high school football injuries, that I didn't even know I mostly had and only weren't tolerable after LASIK made my nervous system super hypersensitive - and to pay for this surgery my mother is taking $27,000+ USD out of her retirement; I'm in Ontario, Canada, but the healthcare system has been practically useless to me. Even if the foundation for ENGN would cost just $5,000 to $10,000 to get the ball rolling in terms of starting to get users to signup and bringing in revenues - it's more money, but even thinking about that additional stress would put on my mother, then adds to my already overwhelmed nervous system - so there's plenty of resistance there to overcome on its own. There's also always the potential I'd somehow hire a bad contractor or agency, bad in one or many ways, and then the MVP wouldn't get finished - primarily because of my own incompetency-dysfunction, and then I will just be reminded, again, of how stuck my life is and how it barely moves forward - personally or professionally.
I'm living a version of the Groundhog Day movie that keeps repeating itself, except where I'm in pain, and so far where I can tell people my story and ask as many people as possible to help and nothing happens. It's why last thing I try is this surgery, though I am supposed to do another PICL stem cell treatment - where they treat tissues inside of my neck - the first one did reduce my neck pain and migraine some - for whiplash related issues, in part from football - because they only treat one side of the tissues, not all of the tissues, the first treatment - and so the second treatment they target the remaining high yield tissues. But I'm certain I'll know after the surgery if there's any improvement or hope that my life can start to become different, and even though there is a stromal stem cell treatment that was developed at University of Pittsburgh - that had very successful human clinical trials, that were fast tracked under compassionate grounds in India, to heal/regenerate deeper corneal tissue for severe scarring and chemical burns - the ETA for it being FDA approved was 5 years to be clinically available in the US, perhaps less time before available in India, but I'll have nothing else significant treatment wise for further pain reduction to look forward to in the near term after getting this surgery - and so why I'm afraid I won't be around much longer if it doesn't help much.
Another frustrating thing for me: well-intentioned people like yourself will chime in and offer advice or suggestions for things they've found highly helpful - and instead of me being able to compile/organize a list of things I've tried and their outcomes, explaining why they didn't help, why I didn't continue them, why there wasn't a net benefit, I instead get reminded that that kind of writing up a complete list is an extremely difficult task for me. I'm only replying to you this morning because I couldn't actually begin responding to you yesterday even though I saw your reply because 1) I had opened my right eye already which allowed the post LASIK eye pain and symptoms to trigger fully (central sensitization/hyperalgesia), and 2) I had begun to do some activity yesterday - namely driving a short distance to my mother's for a late lunch and then take my puppy to an off-leash dog park for an hour - that relatively small amount of movement being enough to really compound/amplify with the seemingly exponentially growing pain/sensitization from the eye pain.
Central sensitization and hyperalgesia is really a different kind of beast when it comes to pain, people including most doctors really seem to have a hard time understanding it. That added stress to my nervous system from opening my right eye and triggering/ramping up the sensitization/pain from just low activity and careful movement was enough to lock up my thinking, and arguably my emotions, but more specifically the locking/the eye pain and increased pain from movement makes fluid thinking have much more friction added to it; one good or as relatable as possible thought experiment for a "normal"/unaffected person may be to imagine the feeling when you get something in your eye and you desperately react to get it out because it's so painful: now imagine that foreign object feeling is immense because it's permanent and broad, it's "a lot of objects" in your eye(s) because your cornea and nerves were sliced across 90%+ of the cornea (and so abnormally/constantly signaling as such), and imagine how your brain/nervous system may try to cope from such an overwhelming/overriding system constantly firing to draw your full attention to what your eye is telling your body is an active/present moment object in your eye - potentially as if you just walked into a sharp object and your eye is signalling for you to literally freeze still because it thinks you're in the moment just done something to critically wound your eye and moving another millimetre or less would threaten your survival (as the evolutionary strength of the reaction has come to dictate).
Well, the answer is some people after LASIK get this severe reaction, their nervous system gets overwhelmed - arguably the more naturally sensitivity, creative, healthy, and grounded people will have stronger/more detrimental symptoms/reaction to the eye damage; central sensitization and hyperalgesia that LASIK for years completely swept under the rug as being possible and only recently admitting to being a potential "side" effect. In fact they purposefully mislabeled what should be called corneal neuralgia syndrome as "dry eye syndrome" to mislead people away from learning that the "dry eye" part is actually on a spectrum of symptoms caused by the damaged cornea/nerves that happens in 100% of their surgeries; non-LASIK done research done has shown up to 40% of people have permanent problems after LASIK, and in 2011 one of the expert FDA advisors, who votes yes to approving LASIK, published a letter to the FDA asking them to immediately recall LASIK because there was data they were ignoring that they should have never been ignoring, and that it should have never been approved in the first place. Part of the medical industrial complex where arguably regulatory and institutional capture has occurred in the name of profits.
So again, I'm writing this out first thing in the morning with my right eye shut still, my eyes having had a reduced level of pain while I slept allowing my nervous system to calm down some, along with recovering from the movement yesterday that compounds with the eye pain and worsens the mental/executive symptoms/dysfunction. There are a few tangents I know I lost track of writing above, I'm not going to be able to go back to insert them, so if what I wrote above doesn't flow well or seems to be missing something then that's why.
To answer you specifically - I've done breath work and cold showers in the past, daily to multiple times daily for weeks, and there was no net benefit and arguably it was added stress to my nervous system that's already overwhelmed from active overriding [eye] pain that can't be reduced. That same eye pain and the friction it added once I'd opened my right eye, and in part I had used a lot of mental energy already writing longer comments on HN - that mental energy otherwise goes to trying to maintain focus/distraction on anything to try to keep me from getting completely sucked in/lost to the pain, the friction that will block mental (including emotional abilities/processing), lead to that small inconsequential reminder or level of frustration triggered from a well-intentioned person offering advice - where I was too blocked, too much friction/resistance from the pain at that point that it took me at least 20 minutes of going back and forth to reading parts of what you wrote then having to leave because of frustration/irritability being triggered because of the very slight pressure/stress that was added to my already overwhelmed nervous system; I'm not sure I'm describing this well here but it's best I can do at the moment.
That's why logically, emotionally I'm already certain it's the compassionate thing to do and I'll forgive myself for not being able to handle the burden nor for being able to handle knowing the burden/consequences I'd be leaving behind, logically I'm only doing the piriformis syndrome surgery as the last thing I try - so if it doesn't have a dramatic reduction in pain and cause a noticeable reduction in my executive dysfunction (my argument or hypothesis is the eye pain, a/the major source of pain could be compounding with another potentially major source of pain [piriformis syndrome, similar to sciatica], so eye pain could be say 33%, the PS could be say 33%, and the compounding could potentially cause runaway/cascading/feedback loop pain of 33%+ - for potentially a 66%+ reduction in pain/sensitization) then I'm gone. Of course I have arguments and proof points from my prior experiences with healing injuries with stem cell treatments as to why the surgery may or may not help, so the outcome is completely uncertain if it will help enough, if my executive function will improve at all, if my quality of life can improve at all, and so the most accurate odds I can give it is a 50/50 shot.
I've also done plenty of water fasting, I did carnivore/high fat red meat only diet for 8 months - now I try to stick to just organic red meat, kale, and raspberries. I've also done many Ayahuasca ceremonies, MDMA therapeutic sessions, massage, acupuncture, etc. There are pros and cons to all of it, some I've been able to maintain because it's at least neutral - other things like acupuncture are intolerable, for example, as after sessions to clear my Wood meridian energy line [3 end points at right eye] then my body is completely calm but then the pain is completely localized at my right eye and then for the following 6-8 hours I feel an intense burning sensation at my right eye - meanwhile feeling the pain and strwss referring from my eye and building up the stress into my body until there's an equilibrium of sorts where the pain level/hypersensitivity/sensitivity level in my body matches the level of pain in my eyes.
My nervous system is very healthy, it's the pain that's overwhelming, short circulating or disrupting different processes. I can't do anything more to reduce the eye pain because the stromal stem cell treatment is up to 5 years away from being clinically available, everything being delayed due to pandemic as well, so my last hope is the piriformis syndrome surgery - for which I have no real or solid reference for how much it might be sensitizing my nervous system - all I know is "sciatica" symptoms bothered me enough 15 years ago for me to first try to investigate it, but that my nervous system could handle that pain along with vast majority of high school football related injuries that I wasn't even aware I had, and it was only after LASIK that my nervous system and therefore mind was disrupter.)
Listen, first of all, do not consider ending your life. Seriously, you're way too smart for that. I'm sure you've got it worse, but I've had enormous sciatic problems in my life, I've had 3 herniated discs; they're behaving for the moment after massive doses of cortisone and without any painkillers, but I know what it feels like to cough them all out of my back at the same time. Not to be able to put a foot in front of another or turn your neck for weeks. (I'm a huuuuge fan of intramuscular cortisone injections, though. Like 5 or 6 large cortisone over a week, with some B-12. Every couple years. Not in the spine... fuck that. Alternating butt cheeks. You won't feel any benefit until the third day at least. If you can convince a doctor to give you that for a week, you will be fucking superman. They won't do this in America unless you know a doctor personally, but they'll do it in Mexico or Spain. I had it the last time my discs went out and it's been 6 years and the inflammation has not come back. They thought it would).
Anyway, before you off yourself, do try a fuckton of intramuscular steroids. The fifth day I levitated off a bed in the hospital; I hadn't walked in a week; I felt so good I went to a club; I got drunk and spent the night on a beach drinking and making out with an 18 year old model from Denmark. Seriously. There were wild cats walking around; it was winter on the Spanish coast. If you do one thing before you die, go get five cortisone shots in your ass, in a week.
I also got the hiccups for 24 hours and couldn't sleep, but that's neither here nor there. And I got temporary blindness in my left eye from fluid behind the retina, caused probably by too much testosterone. But. Goddamn it, I'm ok. You can be okay.
Enough about that.
About Yahoo and Google. That entrepreneurial spirit is, in my experience, way too often just about getting the funding and fucking off. We all know why these companies go downhill, but somehow it's always such a shock when they actually deteriorate in front of our eyes, huh? Google's search results, for instance. I would have expected their cofre business to stay more or less fine, not collapse a couple years after all the competition was eliminated.
It would be fine if they didn't grow into every crevice. Get search right, that's all we ask. I don't want Google to be my chat room or my shopping site. Why do they need to? Search is huge. They own 90% of the market.
>> but organizing to turn that into adequate specs to get solid estimates or fixed price quotes for work is extremely difficult to me.
That's always the worst. The business side. I've always just built things and hoped for the best. It sounds like you've got something interesting going there, although I have no damn clue what you're building, that's an exciting feeling. ENGN is killer. If you own ENGN.com, hell, money well spent.
I don't understand what you mean about "executive function", since you obviously have the capacity to write well-crafted email and think pretty clearly; perhaps I lack the executive function to discern your lack of executive function (I'm a brutally self-punishing alcoholic, but otherwise a damn good programmer)
Anyway I don't know if you're trying to ask for pointers to workers for this concept, I'm probably not it; I'm $200/hr and I'm already covered for the next year. This, however, should be your symphony. And I think you know how to do it.
