[HN Gopher] Build Unix, Not Uber
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       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?
        
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       (page generated 2022-07-29 23:00 UTC)