Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rock climbing and the economics of innovation

softmachines.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 95 posts

Re: Rock climbing and the economics of innovation

#41

Post by ezoe »

heydabop wrote: post #37
ezoe wrote: post #22

The very interesting trend right now is there are so many new climbing shoes vendors start appearing within a couple of years. I suspect it's because the Olympic accepted free climbing. I was skeptical at first on these freshly new shoes vendors, but when I tried out their products, it's on-par quality with the existing vendors. Even more, often time, these newcomers has far durable product than the traditional vendo…

>My other complaint for a particular famous Italian climbing shoes vendor is, that they don't use strong glue. My favorites shoes are resoled shoes from said Italian vendor. Wonderful once they've got good glue on em

Well, I like their shoes because its shape fit my foot better than most of the shoes. I have a rather wide foot so some shoes just doesn't fit no matter how big it is.

Re: Rock climbing and the economics of innovation

#44

Post by peterwwillis »

hogFeast wrote: post #13

Has anyone else found that people who are really into rock climbing always feel the need to bring climbing up?

Hey bro, do you lift, bro? What are you at? Oh me, my 1rm dead is 375, bench 275, no belt, no gloves.

Hey bro, do you do intermittent fasting? Yeah I do keto too, I use a 24-48 cleanse, I'm in ketosis for twice as long now.

Hey bro, do you climb? Just redpointed a V7, up to 5.11c's on the wall after tearing a ligament on a wicked crimpy dyno. Yeah I'll be at Hueco the next two weeks.

Hey bro, do you code? Me, I write Clojure, I've been doing functional for a few years now. Hot reloading has so upped my game.

Hey bro, do you VPN? Yeah I use a pi-hole to my own vpc, all my connections are double encrypted in a VM, non-VPN traffic blocked at the gateway. No my https proxy scrubs all the cookies and I disabled persistent state in firefox.

Hey bro, do you blockchain? Yeah I use Z-coin for my farm, just got a shipment of new GPUs, I'm almost up to 2.3 teraflops.

Hey bro, do you self-host? Yeah I run my own dns, web server, file server, email server. My smart phone and smart watch have open-source firmware, and I'm betaing an openstreetmaps app.

Hey bro, do you startup? Yeah I bootstrapped 4 companies so far, two of them got round 3 funding, one's still in stealth, one was in the black for six months. Cashed out for a cool mil, reinvested into my next project, only worked 80 hours a week for two years. My old babysitter's uncle's cousin knows a Saudi prince so I'm pivoting to capture a different market.

Re: Rock climbing and the economics of innovation

#46

Post by ummonk »

diego wrote: post #5

Someone should invite that economist to a modern rock climbing gym. Then explain every piece of technology that made those wall designs affordable and commonplace in most major cities. Being able to train in state-of-the-art facilities, focusing exactly on the moves you need to make, day and night, rain or shine, that's crucial.

Eh, I'm not too sure about that. Plastic is a poor substitute for real rock, and seasonal climbers experience a noticeably marked atrophy of outdoor climbing ability during the off-season when they are limited to gym climbing.

Re: Rock climbing and the economics of innovation

#47

Post by hodgesrm »

nlfwhulsdhouv wrote: post #25
Mikeb85 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sometimes people will do extraordinary things without the motivation of money Spending money and doing things will always be more fun than earning money. People earn money to spend it on pursuits like rock climbing, even if climbing the rock itself is free, buying the equipment and taking time off to climb it costs money, so those extraordinary things were done thanks to an earlier motivation to make money.

Rock climbing has a very long and storied history of climbers living on absolute scraps to get by, just so they can climb more. This persists in the culture to this day. Yvonne Chouinard, depicted in the article, was one of those climbers. He tells stories of eating catfood and stealing leftovers from the hotels in Yosemite Valley to survive. While you're right that making money helps people live an easier life more…

Or google 'dirtbag climbing'. Fred Beckey was one of the masters. I heard a story that he didn't even have an address for much of his life.

Re: Rock climbing and the economics of innovation

#48

Post by jlittel »

I think the fascinating takeaway from Cochrane piece, and this response article, is how much innovation improves a person's performance, even if indirectly. It's a great reminder of how hard it is to measure the effects of technical innovation.

It's also amazing that even before some of these innovations (dynamic rope, cams) how many people were able to climb incredibly tough routes. The technology has opened the sport to people who enjoy the it but aren't so interested in risking their lives on a second-by-second basis.

And as an aside, having climbed the Salathe route featured in the Free Solo movie, I can't even begin to imagine the mindset you would need to consider climbing it without protection.

Re: Rock climbing and the economics of innovation

#50

Post by thefurman »

rcurry wrote: post #45
hogFeast wrote: post #13

Has anyone else found that people who are really into rock climbing always feel the need to bring climbing up?

That's nothing, wait until you meet people that train jiu jitsu.

I once lost a job opportunity by passionately speaking about nothing but jiu-jitsu during the interview. They kept asking and I kept talking. After about 20 minutes they said thank you and goodbye.
Post reply on HN