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Build Unix, Not Uber

thesephist.com

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Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#91

Post by trasz »

dasil003 wrote: post #11
tmp_anon_22 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

Reddit is more like Usenet than Slashdot.

I’d say Reddit is literally just a technically inferior version of Usenet.

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#92

Post by trasz »

kortilla wrote: post #75
meheleventyone wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that more to do with when GPS was deployed. Doing things early is harder and takes longer, even more so when you’re first. Comparatively Starlink has fewer novel problems to solve. If you’re going to compare the two you need to control for confounding factors.

>Comparatively Starlink has fewer novel problems to solve. Lol, this is worse than the infamous Dropbox comment. There are no LEO providers except for Starlink for a reason. Starlink required novel launch techniques, novel antennas, novel network management, and that’s just what we know about publicly.

The “infamous Dropbox comment” was technically valid - there’s no novel technology there. What the comment missed was the business part - Dropbox is technically inferior, but at the same time it’s superior business-wise, and that’s a common theme for the vast majority of web startups.

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#93

Post by trasz »

msla wrote: post #54
pj_mukh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want something that doesn’t operate on scarcity (like the corporation), but can work at the velocity of a corporation. Things like GPS and the internet would’ve been deployed much faster by a private corporation but then they would be dumb monopolies as opposed to the public good they are now. Also we need a space to work on big dumb ideas and toys[1] and neither Unix, Uber or GPS fit in that category. What is that…

The Internet already got out so fast it beat the Big Government Solution, which was OSI, so comprehensively that people these days don't even know that there was an OSI protocol suite, let alone that it got beaten by the TCP/IP stack. Back in the early days, the ARPANET stuff was seen as a sideshow, whereas OSI was going to be the Serious Network for Serious Users, with X.500 directory services supporting X.400 email…

I believe OSI was at least as much corporate as it was governmental. And, like most corporate solutions it ended like it ended, with design by committee.

IP on the other hand was neither, like much of successful technology.

As a side note, the OSI layers are useful as a mental model, but trying to maintain that separation in actual implementation is a poor idea; that’s one of the things IP got right: it doesn’t really match OSI layering, and does cut through layers when it makes sense.

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#94

Post by scoopertrooper »

m_mueller wrote: post #73
p33p wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are called mutual companies in the US — at least insurance — New York Life, Northwestern Mutual, MassMutual, etc

I‘m not aware of any software company organised this way though. Wouldn’t it make sense for a company like Red Hat or Cannonical - FOSS based service companies?

It's an interesting question. It'd certainly be an odd cooperative.

Most cooperatives have a large number of members with roughly equal economic power. So, ideas like one-member-one-vote and equal income distribution make sense.

However, in the case of companies requiring FOSS services, I imagine the most valuable customers would be large corporations working in highly risk averse industries like telecommunications and banking that feel the 'need' for a support contract to go along with their linux distribution.

But there would likely be a mix of large blue-chip companies, smaller service suppliers to the aforementioned companies, and other companies that want to leverage services beyond consulting like Red Hat's managed OpenShift offerings.

So our FOSS cooperative membership distribution would probably be heavily weighted towards smaller companies, but most of the revenue would come from the long tail.

I don't see how the small cadre contributing the majority of the revenue would be satisfied having effectively zero voting power. So you might have to mix up the model a bit to assign voting power on the basis of revenue contributed or some proxy like the number of contracts signed.

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#95

Post by dylan604 »

wizofaus wrote: post #88
seba_dos1 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe my perspective is different because I'm relatively young, but everywhere I worked every dev was using GNU/Linux at work and only a tiny minority expressed that they'd prefer macOS. Windows was always something that was used exclusively by non-dev departments (aside of testing machines for checking compatibility). I seem to remember only a single exception, and that was a WordPress developer who worked with and…

I don't doubt such shops exist but based on job ads I've seen and interviews I've done they're very much the minority at least in my part of the world. Why a non-iOS developer would choose macOS I don't quite get but each to their own. I'm willing to bet a significant percentage of developers do typically use Windows, even if there is growing tendency to use WSL+Docker for core development activities.

Non-iOS developer that chooses to use macOS right here. Why? First, because it's not Windows. Second, it runs other software that I need that isn't available on nix. I can run nix style stuff with BSD flair. I can run things native, no VM or docker container. There's lots of reasons. Mainly, I abhor Windows.

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#96

Post by dasil003 »

trasz wrote: post #91
dasil003 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Reddit is more like Usenet than Slashdot. I’d say Reddit is literally just a technically inferior version of Usenet.

Fair point. I was including Slashdot in the Digg lineage, but it does not have social voting/ranking so I probably should have left it off.

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#97

Post by fetzu »

lattalayta wrote: post #24
thesephist wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

If you want to appreciate GPS, check out this article and explanation of how it works. It's been posted to this website a few times now: https://ciechanow.ski/gps/

What a fantastic deep dive ! Thanks for (re-)posting this, never had stumbled upon it here before.

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#98

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

jayd16 wrote: post #16
sklargh wrote: post #2

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.

I wonder if Uber is feasible with wifi and cell tower location routing alone and if not how close you could actually get.

Not once you get outside cities. I can drop a cell call by walking across my living room.

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#99

Post by nonameiguess »

m_mueller wrote: post #73
p33p wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are called mutual companies in the US — at least insurance — New York Life, Northwestern Mutual, MassMutual, etc

I‘m not aware of any software company organised this way though. Wouldn’t it make sense for a company like Red Hat or Cannonical - FOSS based service companies?

I think it's close to the way the Apache Foundation or the CNCF operate. In fact, at one point, US life insurers that operated as mutual organizations did make an argument they should be classified as non-profits and not have to pay income tax, but that didn't seem to work.

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#100

Post by cwzwarich »

m_mueller wrote: post #73
p33p wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are called mutual companies in the US — at least insurance — New York Life, Northwestern Mutual, MassMutual, etc

I‘m not aware of any software company organised this way though. Wouldn’t it make sense for a company like Red Hat or Cannonical - FOSS based service companies?

One of the most well known is Igalia: https://www.igalia.com
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