The Noisy Channel

I've spent some time pondering over this, so here's my 2 cents: 1. Build your product first. 2. It's expensive. If you still believe your idea is unique[1], hire help. 3. Algorithms are not patentable. Systems and methods are. See: http://paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html If you want to patent an algorithm, you have to frame it as a computer system executing that algorithm. Then it's mechanical; phew. The default euphemism for algorithm is "system and method." Try a patent search for that phrase and see how many results you get. 4. It's a long process. See PG's footnote: [3] Applying for a patent is now very slow, but it might actually be bad if that got fixed. At the moment the time it takes to get a patent is conveniently just longer than the time it takes a startup to succeed or fail. and this: http://paulgraham.com/startupfaq.html There are two kinds of patent suits: 1. Random people suing you in the hope of getting money. 2. Competitors suing you in order to destroy you. Until you're successful, you won't have to worry about the first type. And once you are successful, you'll inevitably have a lot of them to deal with, valid or not. So fatalism is the right plan for type 1 suits. and the classic: http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html One way to put up barriers to entry is through patents. But patents may not provide much protection. Competitors commonly find ways to work around a patent. And if they can't, they may simply …

Thanks. I'm sensitive about parasitic blogging--in fact, I've blogged about it: http://thenoisychannel.com/2008/12/20/fair-use-and-seo/ In this instance, my genuine hope was to get people to read Jeremy's post, and an unsolicited email from Jeremy about his spike in traffic--which is how I found out that HN had picked up my post--assures me that I accomplished that.

It's interesting to see how some ideas keep looping around. When I see this I'm reminded of a startup Modista from ~2008 which did visual-similarity for browsing fashion products. Here's a writeup from a point when they did only shoes, but I know they expanded beyond shoes at somepoint: https://thenoisychannel.com/2008/11/05/modista-similarity-browsingfor-… I think they died over legal issues with rights to product images. But in the vibewall demo, I wonder if the embedding is capturing the right similarity concept for this application. E.g. in the results most similar to this men's polo, I see a bunch of henleys, a women's quarter-zip pull-over, a women's full-zip fleece, a men's tank, a women's top with a plunging neckline, even a baby wrap! These are appropriate to be worn by different people in different social contexts and in different seasons. The main visual similarity seems to be that they include human upper bodies on white backgrounds? https://vibewall.shop/?id=c43bc222-e68b-11ef-8208-0242ac110005