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Comment by mmoez | Hacker News Reader

Was the garage actually used?

Or was it just a folkloric step that is now required by any computer company to emulate other successes in Silicon Valley?

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The post has a photo of the actual garage in use. https://blog.jessfraz.com/img/garage.jpg It specifically says: "In typical cliche computer company fashion we have been working out of my garage."

Curious what they're doing with all those 3.5" and 5.25" floppies.

props from the last startup to use this set

I have a couple boxes of floppies in my home-office and it's on a shelf above my bench PSU as well, so it's believable.

Is this "computer company" a hardware company? If so that garage is astonishingly spartan for a workspace I presume prototyping is supposed to happen at.

Looks like one of the higher end hobbyist Weller soldering irons and an old single channel bench power supply. I'd have to hazard that this is an office that happened to be set up in a garage.

I started with Oxide a few weeks ago and I promise I've spent a number of work days in the garage! Until we get some furniture in the new office building it's been a good place to get together.

That's your most pressing question?

I've read the whole blog announcement and couldn't find anything but PR stuff for investor consumption.

The garage thing was too much for my taste! It's like trying to forcibly resurrect Apple or HP's first years in the 2020s.

Do people still need physical presence in a garage to get things done? Working remotely is now an established practice...

I imagine hardware design doesn't have as much established success as writing software in a "remote worker" set up.

True, but was any hardware prototyping or design actually happening in that garage? Or were they just using the garage to write blog posts and record a podcast?

They have a cult of personality going that they're trying to monetize. Nobody following this cares about a product.

I'm following it and I do care about better big hardware.

Definitely the second one. The sad thing is that there are investors/consumers out there who give bonus points to companies who go through this arbitrary stuff

how do you know?

Consider how much time certain founders spend at networking conferences telling stories about things that are extremely tangential to the actual technical advantages that help businesses compete. Then study how successful they are compared to those who don't.

My point here is that a lot of businesses secure funding and clients through "qualitative" means (WeWork) rather than through technical means (AMD)

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

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