[HN Gopher] Build Unix, Not Uber ___________________________________________________________________ Build Unix, Not Uber Author : feross Score : 25 points Date : 2022-07-29 20:32 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (thesephist.com) (TXT) w3m dump (thesephist.com) | abathur wrote: | At the risk of saying something dumb and meta... it's ideas all | the way down (for a really long time now). | | The individual corporations are ideas, and then of course there's | the idea of the corporation itself. As the post notes, | corporations only work because of other ideas about property | rights and scarcity. But more fundamentally they only work | because they're an idea quite a few people already believe in. | | I'm a little fuzzy on the level at which the post means | "autonomous ideas" will steer society--do they mean autonomous | ideas like Unix? Or autonomous ideas like governments and | corporations and pope-less religions? | | I think the post helps draw a latent curiosity out of me that I | probably wouldn't have put quite like this, but: _can_ we better | identify and allocate resources towards good ideas that don 't | make market sense? | andrewxdiamond wrote: | > good ideas that don't make market sense | | I think this is incorrect framing. You have to shape the | market, not the idea. | | Capitalism's fault is not accounting for externalized costs, | like climate change. | | The market allocates resources very effectively, but the costs | the market uses to allocate resources are lies. They omit costs | that producers can ignore or otherwise avoid paying for. | | If these externalities were captured and embedded into the | price of the good/service, the market could actually account | these issues. | sklargh wrote: | It's always interesting to me how little credit is given to GPS | in Uber's story. The existence of space-based, free and | ubiquitous semi-precise navigation was an enormous subsidy. | abathur wrote: | I listened to a podcast this week (https://why-is-this- | happening-with-chris-hayes.simplecast.co...) where GPS featured | prominently. It's about an upcoming ~Netflix show (called The G | Word), so I assume there'll be a whole episode on it? | thesephist wrote: | That's interesting! I think GPS falls in the category of "works | so reliably that I don't perceive it as technology" for me. But | yes, GPS an underrated piece of infrastructure, even more | impressive as it's globally available (edit: as in, US tech | infra made available beyond US). | tmp_anon_22 wrote: | > how little credit is given to GPS in Uber's story | | Uber would not exist without GPS. I wonder how many other of | the unicorns: | | * Twitter without Rails | | * Facebook without PHP (I think this is fair but maybe not) | | * Reddit without Python | | * Tesla and Solar City without huge government subsidies | | Crazy to think how many Lake Tahoe vacation homes were | transferred thanks to these projects. | axblount wrote: | Maybe this is apocryphal, but I think I remember hearing that | Reddit was originally written in some kind of lisp. Not to | say it doesn't owe its success to python. | Phrodo_00 wrote: | Very early versions, but they were already using python | before you could create your own subreddits, for example | (which is around the time when it started becoming more | mainstream) | cosmotic wrote: | There are a lot of alternative programming languages that | those companies could have used. There's no GPS alternative | for Uber. | aunderscored wrote: | GLONASS, But that's splitting hairs | dasil003 wrote: | Middle three don't feel a major dependency. I would say: | | - Twitter without iTunes Podcast Directory (because it killed | Odeo, the parent business) | | - Facebook without MySpace / Friendster | | - Reddit without Digg / Slashdot | armitron wrote: | Unix was a terrible idea that probably set us back multiple | decades not to mention fueling the computer security circus and | the trillion dollar cybercrime industry it spawned. But yes, we | need more ideas like it <s> | | I'd prescribe the author multiple courses of The Unix Hater's | Handbook but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a cure. | vanjajaja1 wrote: | what's the tldr on a proposed world where the unix mistake | didn't happen? how could have computing played out and iterated | better? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-29 23:00 UTC)