The Onion
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 12 months, 2013–2026
3:32 · 1M views · Oct 17, 2012
An Onion Talks satire in which a young media professional pitches compost-powered cars, offering the idea itself and leaving all implementation to others.
HN uses it as shorthand for vague, detail-free visionary pitches and as a satirical jab at TED-style techno-utopian talks.
13 comments from Hacker News
If you haven't seen The Onion's[1] Onion Talks and want a good satirical criticism of TED, I highly recommend them: this video (There are more if you want to find them, I didn't want to pollute commentspace with too many links) [1] The Onion is a satire newspaper, one of the first newspapers to heavily adopt an online format. They just killed their print edition for good last year.
> If he gets pulses 10,000 times faster, he says he can modify waste on an atomic level. The great thing about articles like this is that it reminds me to go rewatch the the video "Compost-Fueled Cars: Wouldn't That Be Great?"[1], which neatly summarizes so much of the breathless excitement of vague, detail-free scientific and entrepreneurial claims. [1] this video
If you haven't seen them, make sure to check out The Onion's TED parodies - Onion Talks: [LINK] They may be the funniest thing The Onion has ever done. =================================== Edit: of particular interest to the HN crowd would be their takedown of the "Idea Guy": this video and the "Social Media Consultant": [LINK]
Not exactly what you are asking for, but the Onion did a great send up of techno-utopian TED talks here: this video
tl;dr. Do not sign the document. Beyond this case, it could also affect your future employability. VCs fund good teams, not ideas, which are cheap. If your partner doesn't realize that, she also has a hard lesson in front of her. Another great HN post: [LINK] +++++++ IANAL.* This is mostly based on my personal experience with NDAs, employment docs, and patent applications. NDA may also go by the name of a "confidentiality agreement" or a "proprietary information" document. You should also refuse to a non-compete agreement that says you can't pursue a related business or anything barring you from recruiting someone from this business. She may also ask you to sign a "work for hire" agreement that assigns your work product to her, which would also give away your ownership claim. Obviously, this work-for-hire contract is typically signed when you're getting paid as an employee or contractor. More to beware: You may also be presented with documents assigning away all "inventions". Be especially wary of this, as you may be signing away your idea and your right to pursue something even vaguely related later. You may also be giving her what she needs to file a patent. As others have suggested, company uses of NDAs are all over the place. Many companies do require them. Many don't. Strictness is all over the place, as is validity by state. For example, non-competes are almost unenforceable in California. Some companies who ask you to sign such an agreement will offer to compensate for