We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible - brewski
https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/we-need-save-what-made-linux-and-foss-possible
======
saidajigumi
– We collaborate inside proprietary environments

Why is that? Why have users chosen those environments? _Assume they are
rational beings, and get at the heart of it._ Ask: "How can we address the
actual user needs while supporting our goals?"

– Many Linux and FOSS geeks today use Linux only professionally

Same answer as above.

– We're not modeling our values

WHY? (Hint: "the use of nonfree" is not, and has never been a primary human
motivator _even for many people who "get it"_.)

etctera.

Finally, regarding the below... only one of these, the first, even
tangentially touches on _the user experience_. There's an implied expectation
of so much FOSS advocacy which reduces to "by _writing and using_ our
software, you will be wearing a hairshirt for the cause". This mindset is
guaranteed to fail in front of users, who are by and large "non-believers".

         "Having real-time chat is absolutely essential to the advancement of free software."
        "We're the resistance now." "We need to create mass movement."
        "Volunteer to write free and open code, to participate in communities."
        "If you didn't live the history, learn from those who did."
        "If you did learn from history, teach those who need to know it. Respectfully."
        "Be patient. Remember that the tortoise won not only because it was patient, but because it ignored insult, ridicule and dismissal."
        "Model your values. Use free software and hardware."
        "Remember always how 'the rights to copy, share, modify, redistribute and improve software' are fundamental rights that matter to people."
        "Work to convince developers that their software freedom matters."

~~~
kazinator
> _Why have users chosen those environments?_

Because they don't give a rat's ass about the freedom aspect of free software.
If software A requires four clicks to do something, but B has a way to do it
in 3, they are on B without a second thought.

But in this case, those users are not just any old end users; the are actually
supposed to be FOSS developers, so there is a heavy irony there.

I think what is doing on is that large numbers of people are now "reluctant"
FOSS developers. They do FOSS because someone told them to. They got a job
somewhere and the job involves writing code that gets upstreamed somewhere and
is redistributable. Well, they don't give a damn about that, it's just a job,
no different from working on proprietary software. Or they work on some
proprietary stuff, but it interacts with and depends on some FOSS pieces so
they get in there and make changes out of necessity, and those changes are
freely licensed only because they are derived from a work which requires that
due to copyright doctrines about derived works.

It's partly a generational thing. Notice how Doc Searls looks about fifty-
something. He remembers a grassroots free software movement which was about
actually about displacing proprietary software and liberating the user, and
not about about providing reliable commodity middleware for locked-down
devices and cloud services.

If you were born after 1990, you don't know a world in which Linux and other
FOSS wasn't used for making locked-down tech, and proprietary web sites that
lock in millions of people and step on their privacy. So of course it's hard
to understand someone like Doc Searls.

The free software ideology originated in a world in which you still installed
applications locally and ran them on local data, on a machine where you were
allowed to stick in a floppy disc with any piece of machine language in its
boot sector that could easily take over the machine. The machine that was
understood to be owned by you once you paid for it.

~~~
Drdrdrq
>> Why have users chosen those environments?

> Because they don't give a rat's ass about the freedom aspect of free
> software. If software A requires four clicks to do something, but B has a
> way to do it in 3, they are on B without a second thought.

Convenience always wins. Always. Users do care about free (as in beer) and
they care if the product or service will disappear without warning (hello
Google!). But the definitions of FOSS are so strict that they harm developers,
and thus products, and thus convenience for users.

OP is describing the symptoms of this phenomena.

~~~
kazinator
Traditional free software developers do not use the most convenient program
without caring about freedom.

Otherwise, for instance, nobody would be debugging with gdb, rather than
Visual Studio or what have you.Nobody would be LaTeXing instead of using MS
Word or Adobe Illustrator.

GIMP isn't as good as Photoshop (if I believe what people say), yet people
still use it. (I've only ever used GIMP since 1996; I have no idea about
Photoshop and don't care; it's not free, won't use it.)

People went through all sorts of inconveniences to use free software, like
manually figuring out monitor clock timings to stick into their X
configuration, building their own custom kernels and whatnot.

You can't say "convenience wins" with a straight face; that's like saying free
software doesn't exist.

~~~
thrower123
> nobody would be debugging with gdb, rather than Visual Studio

If Visual Studio ran on Linux, would anybody bother with gdb? Currently, the
second-highest voted UserVoice issue for Visual Studio is people asking for a
Linux version (and rather hilariously not understanding what a colossal
rewrite that would entail...)

[https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-
stud...](https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio-
ide/suggestions/10662897-visual-studio-for-linux)

> Nobody would be LaTeXing instead of using MS Word or Adobe Illustrator.

LaTeX might just be easier than trying to typeset something reliably in Word.
I know I always wrote in plain-text and then did a final pass to paste and
format it into Word immediately before printing.

> GIMP isn't as good as Photoshop (if I believe what people say), yet people
> still use it.

Photoshop is stupidly expensive still, and cracking software has fallen out of
favor

~~~
keithnz
Interestingly enough Visual Studio now supports cross platform debugging ( you
still need Visual Studio running on windows, but it can debug a linux based
program )

~~~
kazinator
A variant called Embedded Visual Studio already supported cross debugging of
Windows CE targets twenty years ago. (I was there and used it). Maybe that's
not quite cross-platform, but kind of half-way.

------
jonawesomegreen
> We collaborate inside proprietary environments, such as Slack and Google
> Hangouts. Most of the chat and messaging systems in use today are also
> proprietary and closed. So are most video-conferencing systems and the
> codecs they use.

This one in particular worries me. Having access mailing list conversations
and IRC logs provides such a rich history of open source development. I worry
about every open source project moving to github / slack, where we may not
have nearly as good a record of conversations that formed the software in 20 -
30 years.

On the other hand you won't see any argument from me that these services
provide an easier workflow than what existed before, and maybe that easier
workflow opening development up to a wider community is more important.

~~~
rst
For what it's worth, there are workalikes for both Github and Slack which are
at least tolerable -- Gitlab has most of Github's core features, and there are
multiple slack-alikes (the one I've got experience with is Zulip, which I, at
least, find to be a whole lot better than Slack). BUT...

Just having open-source (or free software) alternatives doesn't necessarily
solve the problem. Gitlab and Zulip still leave your data scattered around
back-end DBs which may not be terribly accessible in 20 years' time if the
software itself doesn't still run.

~~~
tabbott
Zulip lead developer here.

For chat apps, I don't think the problem of "data scattered around backend-
DBs" is a real concern. E.g. Zulip has a well-defined data export format
that's easily parsable JSON and contains all non-transient data (i.e. the
status of who's typing right now isn't included):
[https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/export-
and...](https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/export-and-
import.html). And so do most of the other popular chat systems.

I'd be surprised if Zulip doesn't still run in 20 years, but in any case, we
have data import tools for the export formats of Slack, Mattermost, Gitter,
and HipChat, and ultimately it wasn't that much work (The most recent few
we've added were each a few person-weeks' work). So I think we can safely
assume that at least for chat, it'll be possible to import the history.

But even if they don't, there are already scripts to export the public history
of a Zulip organization and turn it into a webpage that can be hosted wherever
(see for example: [https://leanprover-
community.github.io/archive/](https://leanprover-
community.github.io/archive/)).

The [https://zulipchat.com](https://zulipchat.com) homepage and
[https://zulipchat.com/for/open-source](https://zulipchat.com/for/open-source)
are relevant reading for folks considering Zulip for their open source
project.

~~~
wmf
Can non-admins export data? Mailing lists often allow downloading archives in
mbox format and people also have local archives.

In cases of catastrophic failure or why-style "digital suicide", it seems like
modern tools could easily leave a community with no records at all.

~~~
tabbott
Yes, via the Zulip API, which is how the Lean Prover tool works. Zulip's "full
organization data" export tool is only available to administrators, and we
haven't heard any complaints about that model.

------
AdmiralAsshat
So the initial letter hits upon something that the article itself ignores,
namely that the FOSS community requires _more than just developers_. I see
this attitude all the time in certain circles that only the developers
contribute any value to a project, and prospective contributors should either
learn to code or get f--ked. It's not terribly welcoming to the larger
community (of whom the majority are _not_ developers), and the fact that many
of these projects lack adequate documentation, wide availability, or a
centralized support forum only reinforces that understanding.

It's a problem that can be remedied, provided the projects stop pretending
that the packagers, technical writers, GUI/UX artists, and community managers
are expendable.

~~~
wrs
Having lived through the entire history of free software (well, Free Software
with capital letters, anyway) it always comes back to this: Software freedom
is fundamentally valuable only for developers, because only developers can use
the freedom it gives. (That's pretty much the definition of
"developer"—someone who can modify software.) Users get value only as a _side
effect_ of this developer freedom, because a developer builds a product for
them.

Free Software originated in the hacker community—which is a community of
_developers developing for developers_. It's always struggled to extend those
values in a way compatible with the rest of the world. Notice that developer
tools like GCC or Linux are the big success stories of Free Software, whereas
end-user tools like OpenOffice or GIMP have always been kind of…meh.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> Software freedom is fundamentally valuable only for developers, because only
> developers can use the freedom it gives.

That is akin to saying that democracy is fundamentally valuable only for
politicians, because only politicians can use the freedom it gives.

That is simply completely wrong. You don't have to be a developer yourself in
order to benefit from not being dependent on a monopoly. The fact that you can
buy development work on the free market benefits every user of Free Software.
The fact that the code of Free Software is easier to inspect benefits every
user of Free Software.

There is no need for everyone to be a politician for democracy to be generally
valuable, there is no need for everyone to be a car mechanic for freedom to
repair cars to be generally valuable, and there is no need for everyone to be
a developer for freedom to inspect and change software to be generally
vaulable. Those freedoms are what enable free markets instead of monopolies.

~~~
wrs
I said _fundamentally_ for a reason. All of those things are of course user
benefits, but they are indirect side effects. Users get none of those benefits
without enlisting a developer to take advantage of them. So the most powerful
evolutionary pressure is to make free software that is valuable _for
developers_. The closer it gets to a “pure” user problem, the less incentive
there is for developers to work on it, and the worse it gets. (As a general
rule.)

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> All of those things are of course user benefits, but they are indirect side
> effects. Users get none of those benefits without enlisting a developer to
> take advantage of them.

That is not really true.

For one, even users of purely proprietary software do benefit from the work
that developers of Free Software do, because the market pressure exerted by
their presence in the market does affect the pricing and quality of
proprietary offerings. While that is an indirect effect, it does not in any
way require "enlisting a developer".

Also, in order to have a free market choice in who you hire to do development
work for you, you don't need to enlist a developer. That freedom of choice is
every user's immediate freedom.

> The closer it gets to a “pure” user problem, the less incentive there is for
> developers to work on it, and the worse it gets.

But that has nothing to do with whether it's a "user problem", but only with
whether it's a problem of people who value their freedom. If a user values
freedom and thus invests in it, such as by paying a developer for doing some
work for them, then they will get just as much freedom as developers who value
their freedom and for their reason invest in it. The problem is not that they
are users, the problem is that they are unwilling to invest in their freedom,
and instead expect others to invest for them.

The problem is the expectation that developers invest in the freedom of users.
Developers will invest in their own freedom first and foremost, obviously. If
you expect developers to invest effort into solving problems of non-
developers, you should also expect non-developers to invest in developers
solving their own problems. Like, you should expect users to pay developers so
they can work on stuff that is of no importance to the user.

------
pdonis
Searls says that the fight for general purpose computing is the one most worth
having: but I think he's using a definition of "general purpose computing"
that most non-developers won't even understand, much less agree with.

The problem is that development is an extremely _special_ purpose--one that
most people don't do and don't understand the needs of. As a developer, I want
a level of control over every aspect of my computer that most people don't
want, need, or even think of. To most people, "general purpose computing" just
means their computer (or more likely their phone, these days) can run any app
they want it to run. It doesn't mean what Searls (and the people whose
articles he references, like Doctorow) takes it to mean.

And to the ordinary person, the idea that it is essential to society that
developers have the freedom to configure their computers however they want,
regardless of what the government or some corporation says, doesn't sound like
something worth fighting for; it sounds like something scary. They don't think
of Stallman developing Gnu or Linus Torvalds developing Linux; they think of
computer viruses and worms running rampant.

~~~
mwcampbell
Maybe we can at least make sure that the next generation of children get it,
or at least the kids that we are close to. This is on my mind because I have
five nieces and one nephew, all of whom are less than five years old. I gave
three of them Amazon tablets the Christmas before last, and have come to
regret it. I will do what I can to make sure that their next computers will be
general-purpose as we developers understand it.

It may be worthwhile to reflect on my own early experience with computers. In
1988, when I was almost 8, my family's first computer was an Apple IIGS. As I
explained in my personal retrospective on that machine a few years ago [1],
that machine had kind of a split personality, because it combined
compatibility with the earlier 8-bit Apple II models with a more or less Mac-
like, native 16-bit environment. The legacy 8-bit environment included BASIC
in ROM, whereas the native 16-bit environment could only be programmed with a
dedicated development environment that wasn't included with the computer. Of
course, even many 8-bit Apple II programs were written in assembly language
and were locked down to varying degrees (e.g. copy protection, no easy way to
break into the BASIC interpreter). But at least that BASIC interpreter was
available in the 8-bit environment. So the 16-bit environment represented
another step in the direction of separating users from developers.

I remember one experience that, I think, helped spark my interest in
programming. One day when I was about 8, my uncle Eric was over at our house,
and he brought with him a disk full of 8-bit Apple II games. One of those
games was written in BASIC and somehow involved shapes crudely rendered in
text mode (I don't remember anything else about the game). He had modified
those shapes to bear the names of his kids. That was interesting all by
itself. But then, if I remember correctly, he went in and modified the game to
show the names of my siblings and me instead. These days, we call this live
coding. And with most off-the-shelf software now, it's impossible. If we can
fix this for free software, I think more people will be enthusiastic about it.
Of course, the specific example I recounted here is pretty trivial, but the
lesson is clear: we need to make it practical for people to modify the
software they use every day, on the fly, with low friction. Then, the freedom
to modify software will matter to more people.

[1]: [https://mwcampbell.us/blog/apple-
iigs.html](https://mwcampbell.us/blog/apple-iigs.html)

------
zanny
Its more abjectly a moral failing of society that institutions have not
aligned to enable free software proliferation.

Software, and information in general, have been a prisoners dilemma for time
immemorial. The optimization of utility is total freedom of information - but
such a state of affairs means benefactors reap the labors of others and have
no obligation to give anything in return.

Copyright was fabricated to solve 18th century problems with an 18th century
bureaucratic solution. The whole free software movement in general emerged as
a counterculture to how intensely harmful to society that policy influenced
the natural state of affairs to become.

If anything, the fact free software enthusiasts have lost sight of what the
ultimate goal has to be - the abolition of copyright and institution of basic
standards of living for all citizens derived from the productive gains of the
extraordinary multiplicative effects technology, itself derived substantially
from free software, produces - is what really needs to shift. Anything less
keeps the movement in an atrophying limbo where fresh minds join, put in their
best effort, and fall out from the captured value innovation produces in our
society.

We need to move towards a state of affairs where enthusiasts can produce
freedom respecting code because they want to, that don't go hungry or homeless
for their efforts, and where all of society can reap the benefits of theirs
(and billions others) generosity and compounding efficiency produced through
technological innovation. And where everyone has access to the fruits of those
labors regardless of means as a way to improve the collective knowledge of
mankind for all the rest of us.

Just think for a moment of the bizarre world where the brightest need not toil
to manipulate tired and depressed minds psychologically to siphon scarce money
from them to line the pockets of robber barons masquerading as productive
members of society, but instead could comfortably collaborate towards actually
making the world a better place.

~~~
mwfunk
Free Software enthusiasts can't advocate against copyright, because it's the
only thing that gives the GPL any meaning at all. In a copyright-free world,
any company could make a proprietary GCC fork, lock its code up behind many
layers of physical and digital security, make all its developers/employees
sign NDAs and other legal agreements ensuring they don't leak any of the new
code, et voila. Hardly sounds like a Free Software utopia.

~~~
gnomewascool
> Free Software enthusiasts can't advocate against copyright

You're right that we can't advocate for just eliminating copyright, without
shooting ourselves in the foot. However, eliminating copyright, combined with,
say, an obligation of software companies to disclose the source code of their
"products" to their customers, or, less intrusively, with making the type of
NDAs you describe illegal, would work.

~~~
zanny
More generally it comes back to the right to repair. We operate in this
perverse economy where we lack a meaningful right to repair in the digital age
because understanding on the subject is so scarce, but I personally believe in
a strong consumer right to repair, and in a post-IP world that would include a
requirement to disclose source of software - in practical terms, so the owner
of the tractor can fix bugs in the tractors computer, but in general so anyone
purchasing software - or just goods of any kind - should have the right to
understand what it is and how it works.

Its one of the defined software freedoms of the FSF, after all, and its
fundamentally why software freedom is advocated for, but it absolutely doesn't
need copyright to be enshrined in law.

------
jondubois
I still cannot believe that we live in a world were:

\- A website with a silly name like 'Facebook' is worth half a trillion
dollars and is extremely profitable.

\- A website with a silly name like 'Twitter' which only lets you post 140
characters at a time is worth 30 billion dollars.

\- An app with a silly name like 'Snapchat' which loses billions of dollars
per year is worth almost $15 billion.

\- An international taxi service with a silly name like 'Uber' which is losing
billions of dollars per year is worth almost $100 billion.

\- That software developers don't see anything wrong with building apps on top
of proprietary cloud APIs (e.g. Amazon Lambda) - The closest real-world
analogy that I can think of is that it's like building a house with your own
bare hands for years and then, once you finally finish it, you start paying a
corporation rent (at whatever rate they ask for) so that you can live in your
own house! Meanwhile, the whole time, there was an even better plot of land
right next door which was 100% free but you ignored it because the signposts
on the corporate land were flashing with bright neon lights.

The economy makes so little sense that there is no incentive left to create
value. The best you can do is just look for the next financial scheme to take
advantage of. I bet it will be something completely random and useless.

~~~
theamk
Re Lambda, I think the closest analogy is renting unfurnished office.

When our company moved into next office, it had bare walls with old ugly
wallpaper. We paid for the new wallpaper, carpet, interior walls, wiring,
etc... And we also kept paying the rent to the building owner, and were at
their mercy when they eventually decided to stop renting out that space.

Even then, this made perfect sense for business. All-new construction would
have been way longer and more expensive, even taking limited lease time in the
account. Why would software equivalent of this (Lambda) be different?

~~~
swagasaurus-rex
Running your own servers doesn't require you to bid for sparse plots of land,
like constructing your own office space does.

------
acd
A bug in GPL is that it allows SAAS Software as a service built on Open source
software which means Software as a service can leech on open source software
without contributing back.

[https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-
whitesource/t...](https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-
whitesource/the-saas-loophole-in-gpl-open-source-licenses)

Using AGPL instead of GPL closes the Saas loop hole.

Also due to close to zero bank interest rates the general availability of
venture capital is to some extent stopping new open source software. Instead
of giving away your software for free as Open source software you start a
venture capital funded Software as a service instead.

~~~
Drdrdrq
> Using AGPL instead of GPL closes the Saas loop hole.

In spirit maybe, but not in practice because of its loopholes. That was the
reason MongoDB changed their license.

------
bregma
I love the way commenters here equate FLOSS development with unpaid hobbyist
developers.

Fact: most of the contributors to the Linux kernel are highly-paid
professionals who do that work full time.

The same goes for many, if not most, of the popular and successful FLOSS
projects.

It is an error to assume that free (as in speech) software is only made by
free (as in beer) development.

~~~
megous
Fact based on what? I don't doubt the kernel claim. There are regular LWN
summaries, about what companies contributed to whatever release.

But I have no clue what you're basing your second claim on. There's huge
amount of FLOSS programs that work fine, are useful, but don't get much
contributions. And I don't know about any studies/overviews on what number of
programs say in a Debian distro is a work of passion, and what is created by
paid devs.

------
bencollier49
Here's a thought - can we trace this back to the point at which everyone moved
from Slashdot to Hacker News? All of a sudden the dominant social incentive
changed from open software to startups and profit.

~~~
jslabovitz
Perhaps...

But if you do that, it would also be interesting to trace free software back
to the point where the GPL became popular. (GPL was published in 1983, but in
my recollection it wasn't until the early/mid-90s that it surged into general
usage.) Before that, 'free' software generally meant public domain: no
licenses, no limitation on use -- at all. We had two or three decades of free
software of that type, mostly distributed over Usenet, BBSes, FTP/Gopher, etc.

I'm probably being too oblique, but I believe it's short-sighted to believe
free software must only be _ideologically free._ There was, in fact, an
earlier period, where developers release software for free because, well, why
not?

Okay, time for this retired grumpy programmer to retreat back to his hut in
the forest now...

~~~
PeterisP
My memory of that period (mid-90s-299ish) is that in a majority of cases the
widely used 'public domain' software was distributed without restrictions but
also without source code, and thus did not really enable modification and
redistribution of improved versions even if the licence (or lack of it) didn't
prohibit me to do so; so back then the 'ideologically free' movement towards
open source software did result in an actual increase of practical freedoms.

~~~
jslabovitz
Ah, I did not explain clearly. My mistake. I wasn't talking about binary-only
shareware distribution, but rather source code (primarily Unix/C-based on
comp.sources.*). I'm thinking about the Usenet software itself (B News, C
News, rn, tin, vnews), sendmail/bind, early Pine/Mutt/procmail (?), scripting
languages like Perl/Python/Ruby, and so on. And a pile of early microcomputer
code for Z80/8080/6500/6800/etc.

------
ralph84
Most people engage with FOSS for practical reasons, not ideological reasons.
Given that developers of proprietary software have made a lot more money on
the whole than developers of FOSS, I don't see that changing anytime soon.

~~~
jordigh
The ideological reasons are practical reasons. We don't want to give you
software freedom because we believe in some abstract ideology. We want to give
you free software because we believe this is the way that you will eventually
get the best software that will let you do the most.

Indeed, for software of good quality, free software wins. GNU R has completely
dominated most areas of statistical computing, for example. The ideology is
there not because we think you're "impure" or "evil" or something if you use
non-free software, but because we think you'll be happier if you do, because
you deserve it, because we all deserve free software.

~~~
Funes-
>The ideological reasons are practical reasons. We don't want to give you
software freedom because we believe in some abstract ideology. We want to give
you free software because we believe this is the way that you will eventually
get the best software that will let you do the most.

While I wholeheartedly agree with this particular stance--doing away with
ideology and sticking with ethics and pragmatism--, I am not sure that
everyone in the FOSS community, if such thing exists, adheres to that same
premise.

~~~
the_af
In fact, that's only the ideology of Open Source software.

Free/libre software (e.g. GNU and the FSF) believe in "free as in speech" for
ideological reasons, not for tech quality reasons. In fact -- they argue --
one should sacrifice convenience and sometimes even short-term quality in
favor of freedom. I certainly see the merit of that line of thought, though
it's also a very hard road, and harder still to convince people.

Ideology is not a bad word :)

~~~
jordigh
I'm not saying the quality of the software is the most important thing. I'm
saying that software freedom is a pragmatic goal. Being able to fix your own
software or bring it to anyone competent who can repair it is a practical
thing. Giving the software to your friends is a practical thing. Being able to
modify the software is a practical thing. Knowing that your software won't spy
on you is a practical thing.

Software freedom is not some abstract ideology with no relation to pragmatics.

------
throw2016
What made Linux and FOSS possible is a specific time and context and that is
not happening again. There is no job security, everything is about building a
resume, getting a job and hanging on or a startup, everything is related to
money or status.

There is also an ahistorical perspective of tech, as if things just are or
happen with no deliberate effort and its an open question whether there is any
real commitment or concern for the principles which drove the open source
movement.

In many ways Slashdot defined the original generation and Hackernews defines
this one. And even paying lip service to principles would be quaint here.
Defending building surveillance systems and stalking people 24/7 while
referring to general users as idiots are often the top voted comments. This is
a huge shift.

~~~
fuzzfactor
from the article's comments:

Dave Taht • 44 minutes ago We really, really, really need a return to our core
values I remember how fired up I was in 1999, when I wrote this -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxLbNCB-
YKI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxLbNCB-YKI) and how fired up I am now to
try and get our internet back. Still it is hard to be a revolutionary with two
kids and a mortgage, and we've lost most of the next generation of coders to
javascript and student debt.

------
sovande
Sure, we need naive wish lists, but for open source to be more than a curios
historical blip and not fall into a Venezuelan disaster, the least we can
demand of FSF and OSI is to give us a proper open source license so those who
want to _do_ open source work can also succeed commercially. They need to
understand and address problems faced by MongoDB, Redis, Elastic et. al. and
support their needs with a new license (something better than AGPL). Not flat
out dismiss the problems and swipe it under the rug.

~~~
yarrel
No, they need to make clear that VC funding isn't entitled to returns on bad
business models. _That_ is the real problem.

------
shmerl
Yeah, I'm often puzzled by some FOSS developers not using open communication
tools and not running Linux on their actual day to day work computers.

~~~
jlarocco
I've seen (and also not understood) the use of Slack/Gitter/etc. but the "not
running Linux" part is a surprise to me, personally.

I've used Linux or BSD on all of my personal machines for a long time, and
assumed, wrongly I guess, that most other people were in the same boat. I'm
not sure it's a problem, but it's interesting.

~~~
the_af
Agreed, I've been using desktop Linux on my home laptop for more than a decade
now. Every piece of software I want, wireless printers, videogames (many
AAA!), everything just works.

I'm puzzled. I think it was just the unfortunate rise of mobile.

------
degobah
We also need to donate more to FOSS. And find more ways to monetize FOSS. It's
tough for many FOSS projects to succeed on a volunteer basis.

------
jsnz
The opinions in this article are simply fear-mongering and divisive of the
programmer community as whole.

They are formulated on an irrational fear of FOSS being extinguished by the
greed of the corporations.

So long as there is at least one programmer left with the will to post their
source to the world FOSS will not die.

Let's also not be so one-eyed as forget to value equally the contribution of
all programmers who write great software whether free or not, open or closed-
source - we can still admire the fruits of their labours if not their
algorithms.

FOSS community, please stop wringing your hands in fear, go write some code
with them!

------
mtaksrud
This! Like much else, these kind of movements (FOSS etc.) depends on having
good “institutions” that work. In this case e.g. the documentation project and
similar. They are fundamental building blocks ...

------
danans
I don't think the problem is that FOSS (as a movement) can't accomplish what
proprietary software does. For a while, some FOSS software did address certain
user needs better than proprietary software.

But the world of proprietary software (including permissively licensed open
source software) just moved faster, because its associated business models
gave it the money, incentives, and the early signals needed to attack problem
spaces in human-computer-interaction and secure, managed application
platforms, among other things, that FOSS didn't have the resources to address,
and so it just fell behind in key areas relevant to users.

We just don't know what the FOSS movement could have achieved given similar
resources (or how it would have gotten those resources in the first place
without a business model), or a lot more time.

------
makz
I have several things to say here.

I see we are still debating the same points as many years ago (GIMP vs
Photoshop, Visual Studio, paid vs unpaid labor, chicken and egg,
convenience...). It’s like we haven’t learned anything.

About the end of general computing, I don’t see it as a bad thing. In some way
it has always existed. Right now we have server computers, desktop computers,
smart phones, mainframe, cloud... even on a single class of computer we have
some segmentation. It just means we’ll have even more specialization. And FOSS
still can have a place there.

Speaking about that, I believe FOSS is stronger at the foundational layers.

Maybe the future is kind of and hybrid model in which we have lots of new
computer classes with FOSS as their foundation. Not very different from what
we have now, just much more diverse and, I hope, more open.

------
Jorge1o1
There's a great deal of irony in a publication promoting FOSS, but their own
website is closed source.

~~~
skyfaller
Is Linux Journal's website closed source? Looks like it's running Drupal to
me, a quick scan of the HTML reveals <meta name="Generator" content="Drupal 8
([https://www.drupal.org)"](https://www.drupal.org\)") />. Drupal is GPLv2+,
seems fine.

Would be nice if they replaced Disqus with e.g.
[https://commento.io/](https://commento.io/) though.

------
Yaa101
Convenience seems to be the only value of things in the real world, so bad
even that people en masse are prepared to submit to slavery to get it.

I suggest that the FOSS community now finally starts building something
convenient for themselfs instead of making things hard and massochist.

------
workingpatrick
Bit of hypocrisy on the part of the author for publishing on this platform....

The comment section of this article: "Our discussions are powered by Disqus,
which require JavaScript. "

------
ngcc_hk
Wonder how many free software would be in china inside e-great wall?

What wonder what we use if majority of computer is intel based and they have a
parallel computer controlled your cpu?

Strangely arm is sort of open what can you pay to develop your own total open
env and ...

Any further, wonder what is open source movement is all about if not asking
for a mixed environment ? It is the dying middle that might be the problem or
is there no problem. Wonder.

------
fgheorghe
Linux was built in an era of fierce resistance from the corporate world, so
what is there to save today when everything runs or touches OSS in one way or
another and most decent developers will make an OSS contribution, to claim on
their CVs?

------
interfixus
> _Our discussions are powered by Disqus_

Abandon all hope.

------
fopen64
That's what happens when you are bogged down in Donglegate-like discussions.

------
gridlockd
Don't listen to the Copyleftists. FOSS is bigger than ever because _non-
copyleft_ free software is what professionals can build on.

For the most part, Copyleftists are stuck in Hobbyland and it really shows
when you look at the software they produce. Their business models - if they
even have one - largely don't work. Given that software is very expensive to
produce, copyleft software eventually runs out of suckers to support it after
the "fun factor" wears off and the "real work" starts.

The Linux kernel is the major exception, but only because the particular
exceptions that the GPL grants to it do not encumber the enterprises that
develop Linux. Wherever it does, enterprises will choose non-copyleft
alternatives (e.g. Sony and Nintendo building on FreeBSD).

------
nevrthepfhor
People choose proprietary software because proprietary software doesn't make
you memorize and type things like "systemctl suspend" for the most basic of
tasks such as putting your computer to sleep.

They don't want to find, audit, install, and evaluate dozens of obscure third-
party extensions to make their OS usable.

They want options for setting their background image besides Fit to screen.

And they want to be able to use their friend's computer without having to
learn how to use all their friend's customizations.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
> People choose proprietary software because proprietary software doesn't make
> you memorize and type things like "systemctl suspend" for the most basic of
> tasks such as putting your computer to sleep.

Nothing says that all free software will be good or user-friendly (systemd is
an excellent case-in-point). But you can choose a better alternative.

Proprietary software _sometimes_ has short-term convenience benefits, but even
thinking slightly-longer-term quickly shows that it's never worth it.

Even with less-than-ideal software like systemd, it's still miles better than
proprietary alternatives. Yes, you may have to run "systemctl suspend"* to put
your computer to sleep, but you don't end up with Candy Crush embedded in your
program launcher, or over-12-years-outdated bash, etc.

[*] It's pretty easy to wrap 'systemctl suspend' in something friendlier, such
as a shortcut.

~~~
nevrthepfhor
Yes, Windows Home is awful, but I believe I got a Windows 10 Pro key for ten
dollars. I think I used the same key on two different computers. No Candy
Crush, slightly better control over the system.

It would be nice to have an OS that's actually fun and intuitive for normal
people (nevermind me), not stripped down and sanitized, and also doesn't have
corporate bloat and massive data collection by default.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
> an OS that's actually fun and intuitive for normal people (nevermind me)

That's no version of Windows, in my experience. I suffered through Windows
3.1x to XP to Vista to Window 7 (and tried out Windows 10), and none of these
were fun or intuitive, certainly not compared to what I used immediately
before (Atari ST) or immediately after (Ubuntu Feisty Fawn).

In 2019, Ubuntu is far more intuitive and manageable for an ordinary person.
No going to the internet to download dubious software (or getting malware
through the Windows Store, as per my Windows 10 experience), no weird Candy
Crush and 'telemetry' (data siphoning) or any of that Microsoft sort of
goodness.

~~~
nevrthepfhor
Driver issues alone disqualify Ubuntu versus Windows (where are all the three-
monitor setups and touchscreen laptops?). So does the complete lack of desktop
background options. And having to hold down `Alt` to make the Suspend button
appear (which doesn't say Suspend on it by the way). Even the word suspend is
so serious like you're punishing your computer, not putting it to bed.

Ubuntu is all business all the time. A five year old would get bored of it
within five minutes. iPads are probably crack cocaine in comparison.

Settings doesn't even have an appearance and personalization section. Ubuntu
is more stripped down than a Holocaust victim. And there's nothing fun about
the Holocaust.

------
groovybits
I am generally a fan of Linux and FOSS on my personal gear. However, I'm still
not sure where this article is coming from, or who it addresses.

The author seems to be mixing the use of FOSS in the professional world with
the use of FOSS in their personal world.

In a professional environment, there is no room for "modeling your values". It
sounds harsh, but that is the way it is. You use what works. Yes, Linux OSs do
some things better than Windows OSs, and vice versa.

~~~
dreamcompiler
I think part of what the author is addressing is the ignorance exhibited in
your comment. I don't mean to be rude; it's easy not to see the big picture
when you're busy just making a living.

To me, Searls' point is that an overwhelming pressure to monetize everything
has corrupted the health of the open source community. This is not just
holier-than-thou moralizing; there will be real financial consequences if the
creators of open source products don't start eating a lot more of their own
dogfood.

~~~
lotyrin
Are you sure he's the ignorant one?

As a young adult who had a roof over their head by default, I was 100% FOSS
and installed Gentoo on anything I owned that could even limp its way along
that path (and discarded devices that couldn't), I refused to use proprietary
messaging tools and social networks, and I accepted that I had limited myself
to the social and economic opportunities that these things allowed me, as a
sort of altruistic techno-hippie.

Now I am on LinkedIn, Slack, on a Mac and an iPhone, backing up to a
proprietary NAS, operating most things in Amazon's or Microsoft's clouds using
managed services that lock me and my clients in to their ecosystems, running
default OS on most of everything. The technology choices in my day job are
made by whoever has the power to make them, for whatever reasons those people
may have -- and "freedom" or even "sustainability" for that matter are pretty
low on their list of priorities. The technology decision in my home life come
down to "what do I have time and energy to put up with?" and "is there a risk
that I'll have to fuss with this in order to make sure it's operational when
my wife wants to use it, late at night on some weekend when I'd rather be
relaxing?".

Maybe when and if I return to a survival-by-default - when the mortgage is
paid and health risks are (well enough) accounted for I'll be able to "model
my values", but probably not before then. Even that might require a divorce,
in adult life one's motivations and their consequences are not solely one's
own to keep.

Aside from that, given the experience I've had with FOSS, at this point I
doubt even if I were 100% financially independent and early retired if I'd go
back to participating except to go to low effort to upstream fixes to my own
problems (here's a patch/pull request, if you don't like how it's indented or
documented, that's your problem to solve, not mine). The incentives are all
awful with so many volunteers trying to create software for users or use cases
that are fantasies, bike shed arguments, corporate interests trying to get
their way and take advantage of free labor, corporate leech organizations
saving millions in license fees for proprietary software and contributing
nothing but sassy bug reports, the folks who are militant and awful to each
other about inclusion/exclusion topics, well-meaning but ignorant people who
refuse to understand their behaviors and words cause others grief, projects
with lack of vision, leaders who are reluctant to lead.

Further aside still, there's a reason normal human beings don't use free
software or decentralized whatever and it's because the developers of those
things don't have the resources or vision to build software for normal human
beings: people who won't edit a config file, won't author content in Markdown,
don't want to read a man page of flags to understand the permissions in their
chat channel, don't want to have to have a tower PC whirring and heating up a
corner somewhere in order to solve what seem to them like simple problems,
etc. etc. etc.

~~~
dreamcompiler
I don't disagree. You point out that there are no incentives for FOSS
developers to cater to the muggles. Fine, so how do we fix that? I really want
to know. I have to believe it's possible.

~~~
Drdrdrq
I do believe it is possible, but it is a compromise. Let go of one of the
freedoms so that other freedoms (like "right to repair") have a chance. In
other words: Commons Clause.

~~~
yarrel
Compromise sounds nice but when the "compromise" is a one-sided capitulation
it's not _really_ compromise.

~~~
Drdrdrq
Do read the license, it's really short and to the point. At least for me I
don't think I'm giving up much (as a user) by using Commons Clause software. I
just can't sell the app or services without obtaining permission from authors.
Which seems fair to me - if I earn money, they should get a piece of the
value.


A Tower of Molten Salt Will Deliver Solar Power After Sunset - robszumski
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/a-tower-of-molten-salt-will-deliver-solar-power-after-sunset
======
dredmorbius
In a world of _very_ poor options for energy storage, molten salt seems to be,
from very rough calculations, something which might scale to what Tom Murphy
("Do the Math") refers to as a "nation-scale battery" \-- up to two weeks of
stored generation capacity.

My own _very_ naive and rough back-of-the-napkin calculations suggest that a
total thermal storage facility roughly comparable with existing US oil storage
tanks in Oklahoma could provide that capacity.

More generally, the strength of molten salt is to even out supply to
variability in either demand or incident sunlight. Note also that concentrated
solar power requires _concentration_ -- you cannot focus _diffuse_ light
(e.g., hazy or overcast conditions), though PV still delivers some power under
such circumstances.

But PV is instantaneous, and other storage options -- batteries, pumped hydro,
compressed air energy storage (CAES), flywheels -- are either limited by
material and/or sites, or by costs or engineering challenges.

Salts are plentiful, as are insulating options. Thermal energy systems are
well understood. The concept is inherently distributable (no need to put it
all in one spot), and, modulo spills, generally environmentally benign.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1viied/grid_sc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1viied/grid_scale_thermal_energy_storage_this_might_work/)

~~~
david-given
That's electricity only, though, right? The last time I looked at numbers that
was a third of actually energy _consumption_ , the rest going for heat and
transport. (That was for the UK.)

Not that I'm saying liquid-salt batteries is are a bad thing; if they work,
they'll fill a much-needing-filling hole in our energy infrastructure. But
they only solve a small part of the problem.

~~~
yk
But electricity is in some sense the highest quality energy. You can easily
replace heating with a resistor and combustion engines with electrical motors,
where the reverse is usually much harder.

~~~
dredmorbius
Better to swap heat exchanges or induction heating for resistors.

But electrical applications require access to ample amounts of demand-
following supply. An inherent challenge with existing models.

------
cinquemb
_That is, unless declining battery costs make storing PV power more
economical. James Nelson, a California-based energy modeler with the Union of
Concerned Scientists, says this intrasolar race will be good for the
environment: “I’m glad we have multiple technologies that can help the
transition from gas power plants.”_

I agree with his remarks in principle, but really, there is far more abundant
Na/K in the earths crust than the currently touted Li. And the Li would
probably go to better use in ~65C melting point salts(by weight LiNO3 5%,NaNO3
6%,KNO3 23%,CsNO3 44%, Ca(NO3)2 19%, although the Cs would be the limiting
resource if the competition for Li usage wasn't there)[0].

[0] [http://moscow.sci-
hub.bz/9b519cf6102a9b10fc60ce9035594865/ra...](http://moscow.sci-
hub.bz/9b519cf6102a9b10fc60ce9035594865/raade2011.pdf?download=true)

------
talos
Yes, they're finally building the solar plant from SimCity 2000!

~~~
Terr_
Even on turtle-speed, the sun always shines -- must be a city-ordinance.

------
robszumski
The most interesting part of a facility like this is that it takes up the same
amount of space as a regular field of solar, but it much more efficient. The
trade off though, is the huge tower, which doesn't lend itself to more
populated areas.

~~~
dredmorbius
CSP works best where your sunlight is intense and rarely obstructed by clouds,
fog, haze, dust, etc. Pretty much desert.

Which is precisely where you don't find a whole lot of people.

Cooling systems (for the cold end of your Carnot cycle) are a challenge if
water's limited, though there's no reason generally nonpotable water, even
salt water, could be used for the open loop.

------
Animats
It will be interesting to see how the numbers work out. This has been proposed
before, but not built at full scale.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
This technology is actively in use in Spain.

[http://www.economist.com/node/13725855](http://www.economist.com/node/13725855)

------
Gustomaximus
There is a plant using molten salt storage in Spain since 2009 if interested;

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andasol_Solar_Power_Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andasol_Solar_Power_Station)

------
lifeisstillgood
Fantastically the UK just signed an agreement with China to let China build a
fission plant in the most populous south east, with the usual capital cost and
total lack of realistic decommissioning plans, and still the price planned for
the next thirty years is already above all our other sources

Nice to know the govt. is still on the ball

/sarcasm


Ask HN: How are you productive without a computer? - singularity2001
Imagine it's a lovely day, you want to spend it outside and still boost your company (or project). What can you do? (If you exclude talking and reading)
======
baccheion
A large (artist's) sketchpad, brainwave entrainment (or silence), and time
spent thinking, reflecting, synthesizing, etc.

As someone who's been constantly on the computer since I was 12 (30 now), I
learned early on that it's good to know when I'm spinning in circles blindly
more than progressing, and to then move away from it to a quiet place (maybe
I'll pace around the living room, or work at the kitchen table), then work in
"low tech silence."

As a programmer/designer, there tends to be a lot of conceptual thinking and
synthesis involved with what I'm doing, which can often be done (better, even)
away from the computer. When I'm on the computer, I'm either learning,
doing/implementing, or screwing around. Deep thinking happens (better)
elsewhere.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I circle the parking lot, or the block if its a hard problem. Once I went
clear around an 80-acre field before I had it solved (why the belly button on
our spherical projection of 2D data).

------
Nooance
I'm currently sitting on a beach, in the shade, reading this post on my phone.
(And also reading up and planning the marketing for my startup, and probably
writing a Facebook post and a blog post soon. Edit: Nope, still reading HN.
It's getting cold though. Should've brought a blanket.)

I wouldn't universally recommend typing on your phone, but I'm (relatively)
fast at it, and I can do it wherever. The limiting factor is formulating and
such anyway, for me.

My current view: [https://m.imgur.com/cMXoY7H](https://m.imgur.com/cMXoY7H)

------
RUG3Y
Thinking and generating ideas for me is easier without a computer. Computers
are distracting. The more I practice thinking and writing my ideas down, the
better I become at having thoughts that are useful. It's pretty elementary
stuff, but I think the conundrum is that it doesn't feel immediately
productive. This kind of thinking marinates and adds value to your work over a
long period of time, versus something like answering an email, which has
immediate results but usually is of little value.

------
manibatra
I would say exercise. A jog or a swim. Exercise has boosted my productivity a
lot. Enabled me to work longer hours. Helps me be in a better mood and just
feel healthy which spills over to my work.

------
LarryMade2
Sheet of paper and optionally a writing instrument. Otherwise some thing that
you can find interesting to observe or study. If failing that, random reading
material.

Ideas come from anywhere.

------
stephenr
I find riding my bike gives me great thinking time (once you have a regular
route that you can ride without getting lost/know where to look out for
dangerous traffic).

Also, gardening/diy work that's not overly complex can let your mind wander a
bit. I find it works both ways - I think about solutions to diy/garden
problems while at my desk and software problems with a shovel/hammer/etc in my
hands.

------
partisan
I took my notebook out the other day at a coffee shop after my laptop battery
died. I sat at an outside table and thought about a performance issue we were
facing and came up with a solution in about 15 minutes. That was way more
productive than the 15 minutes on my laptop would have been.

------
newman8r
introspection, meditation, and pondering your big picture - think about your
project - what about your project is stressing you out? what can you do
tomorrow to address the components that you're not comfortable with?

------
AnimalMuppet
I use a pen and a pad of paper. But I have to have the right kind of problem -
more of a big-picture issue. I can't be trying to do something that requires
close interaction with the code.

------
meric
Meditation to keep the mind up for the next day.

------
mtmail
I guess that leaves thinking and writing.

~~~
singularity2001
And drawing. And recording your promo video ...

------
tmaly
I exercise, go for a walk.

I also have a sketch pad where I can work out ideas on paper.


Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence [pdf] - haltingproblem
https://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf
======
barli
I'm a Ukrainian jew.. Good topic :) Are you jewish?

~~~
haltingproblem
Not jewish, interested in the variations amongst individuals and groups of the
human race. I have worked with a number of Ashkenazi Jews in multiple fields
and have been astonished at the overwhelming proportion (relative to
population). There have been many cultural explanations of the phenomenon
(e.g. Talmudic education) which I find unconvincing. Genetic selection
supported by hundreds of years of cultural practices and socio-political
constraints seems most plausible.

Q: are other populations where similar phenomena have played out?


Funding Breakthrough Research: Promises and Challenges of the “ARPA Model” [pdf] - dsr12
http://www.nber.org/chapters/c14096.pdf
======
godelmachine
Cf. →
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17333424](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17333424)


Internet Society told to halt .org sale by its own advisory council - sohkamyung
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/19/internet_society_org_sale/
======
ocdtrekkie
If this sale is successfully prevented, the next step needs to be to identify
and purge ISOC and ICANN of anyone who negotiated or advocated for this deal.
Not just because of the corruption issue, but the pure lack of good judgment.

I keep thinking about the fact that first, ICANN was freed of it's tie to the
US government, and since then, it's been business deal after business deal to
corrupt the domain system.

~~~
sebazzz
We shouldn't be surprised. The whole TLD debacle has been a bit cash grab,
which hasn't been beneficial to anyone but a few. Take the subsequent acquired
domain of ".dev" by Google for instance, which then reserved it for internal
usage only.

~~~
packetlost
.dev is available for public registration... I have one.

~~~
echelon
"vanity" domains are $200/yr or more

Including "{firstname}.dev"

Nonsense.

If Google's worried about domain squatters, it controls the TLD rules and can
come up with a less moneygrab strategy. Perhaps require a Github account and
limit to one domain per customer?

FCFS is fairer than extortion.

~~~
kick
_require a GitHub account_

You do know that there are devs that prefer other code hosting platforms,
right? GitHub is a proprietary service that's generally terrible for
developers.

~~~
echelon
> GitHub is a proprietary service that's generally terrible for developers.

In what way? I find it incredibly awesome.

------
metaphor
So if I'm understanding this correctly...even if the Chapters Advisory Council
formally recommends NOGO on the sale (which they haven't officially voted on
yet), ISOC would not be legally bound in any way to bend the knee, and a
hypothetical board decision to move forward with the sale anyways--assuming
ICANN blessings--would risk organizational implosion stemming from the rage of
its chapters followed by unfolding of a fragile justification for its tax
exempt charity status?

~~~
matthewheath
Yes.

------
mxuribe
This whole situation is ridiculous. We need an alternative to all this
centralized control, and we need it now.

~~~
rasengan
> We need an alternative to all this centralized control, and we need it now.

The Handshake Naming System [1] provides a decentralized option, works
directly with the existing legacy system so there will be 0 difficulty in the
transition, and it’s usable right now [2]!

Just install hsd [3] and point your resolution to localhost to join the
movement to an internet owned by the people.

[1] [https://handshake.org](https://handshake.org)

[2] [https://hnscan.com/names](https://hnscan.com/names)

[3] [https://github.com/handshake-org/hsd](https://github.com/handshake-
org/hsd)

~~~
jude-
What happens when Ethos starts running their own mining software (or bribes
existing miners) in order to jack up prices for .org?

~~~
rasengan
In Handshake, rather than renting your domain from .org or .com, you own your
tld.

This means that nobody will be able to charge you for using your own name. No
more rent seeking or getting taxed by a pseudo government of the internet.

~~~
danShumway
> In Handshake, rather than renting your domain from .org or .com, you own
> your tld.

Given the conversation we had on
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22312014](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22312014),
I think this claim is leaving out a lot of information. Handshake is not
optimized for ordinary people to buy TLDs the same way they buy .com domains.

\- There's no market information I can find about what a TLD will cost on
average.

\- Purchasing a TLD will take at least 5 days at a minimum, with no guarantee
that you're going to get the TLD at the end.

\- Auctions are blind, so you have almost no guarantees at all -- you'll just
have to guess what the market value is.

\- The intention is still for TLD owners to be able to sell access to
subdomains, which will enable the exact same rent seeking and exploitation.
The only difference is that there'll be no regulation on the rent seekers.

\- Given that subdomains allow us to repeat names (myname.com vs myname.org vs
myname.io), having one TLD system is going to be a _decrease_ in the number of
available domains, not an increase. The increase comes from the fact that
we'll have a ton of TLDs and people will rent subdomains on them (see above).

That's not to say Handshake might not still be a good idea in the sense that
it increases competition overall, but I think it's borderline deceptive to say
that everyone is just going to own a TLD. Registering a TLD in Handshake may
end up being significantly more complicated and significantly more costly than
buying a .org domain today -- especially once the good names get used up and
new users are effectively forced to rent from existing owners or compete in
blind auctions over much more limited resources.

I'm a little bit irritated at this comment, because I've followed Handshake
for a while and it's been really hard to get concise, clear information about
how it works, even from the main project website. People don't understand the
product being offered, and Handshake advocates keep posting very vague
statements about how problems are just 'solved'. And whenever I dig into those
claims and try to find out how they're solved, I find out that the
implementation details aren't as clear cut.

I _want_ a project like Handshake to succeed, but y'all need to be a lot more
up-front about the tradeoffs.

~~~
rasengan
> Registering a TLD in Handshake may end up being significantly more
> complicated and significantly more costly than buying a .org domain today

It’s significantly easier than the process is today. It’s very hard to get a
TLD from ICANN as the process consists of a non refundable application fee of
185k with no guarantees you’ll be approved.

> There's no market information I can find about what a TLD will cost on
> average.

Rather than artificial set costs, the market will dictate this.

> The intention is still for TLD owners to be able to sell access to
> subdomains, which will enable the exact same rent seeking and exploitation.

People can either register their own TLDs or choose one owned by someone who
doesn’t want to gouge people.

> Auctions are blind, so you have almost no guarantees at all -- you'll just
> have to guess what the market value is.

Yes, and every bidder will have to be serious about wanting to win a domain
instead of squatting every last domain.

I appreciate your comments, and understand your concerns. I would be irritated
too if I couldn’t find information about how this worked. Unfortunately, all
the details (like Bitcoin was at the beginning) are buried in technical papers
and developer docs. Luckily, Handshake is a community owned, community run
project, and comments like yours help to propel the project forward and bring
the explanation that people deserve.

Thank you for your help and questions, and please keep them coming!

~~~
danShumway
> Rather than artificial set costs, the market will dictate this.

But you're coming into this conversation claiming that Handshake is going to
democratize TLDs, that anyone will be able to buy one. We don't really know
that the average cost of a TLD won't spike up to a thousand dollars, right? We
don't know that every fortune 500 company in the world and every government in
the world won't step in and snatch up every auction that gets posted. By
design, there's no way for us to stop them from doing that.

There are very plausible scenarios here where ordinary people will not be able
to buy TLDs under Handshake. Meanwhile, the worst case pricing scenario for
the .com domain market, even with all of the centralization problems, is that
it ends up costing $10-20 more per year over the 5-10 years.

I'm not saying that there aren't advantages to letting the market decide, and
I'm not saying that the worst-case scenario will necessarily happen. It might
be great. But I am saying that people learning about Handshake for the first
time are looking at it as a drop-in replacement for .com, and it's decidedly
not. I'm skeptical anyone has any idea what price or availability is going to
be.

> or choose one owned by someone who doesn’t want to gouge people.

Without protocol-level migration tools between TLDs this is still
centralization. I'm still stuck relying on a rented product owned by a private
individual that I can move away from.

Remember, when .com and .org came out, they were also owned by an organization
that didn't want to gouge people.

The decentralization benefits of Handshake are entirely encapsulated in
ordinary people owning their own TLDs. We really shouldn't be talking about
rented subdomains at all, rented subdomains are the problem that Handshake was
advertised as solving.

> Unfortunately, all the details (like Bitcoin was at the beginning) are
> buried in technical papers and developer docs.

For what it's worth, Handshake isn't the only project of its type that
struggles with this. It was similarly difficult to find out how projects like
IPFS really worked.

~~~
rasengan
> We don't know that every fortune 500 company in the world and every
> government in the world won't step in and snatch up every auction that gets
> posted. By design, there's no way for us to stop them from doing that.

There is a scarcity of coins which will help to prevent this. Whenever you bid
on a name, your coins are further locked up until the end of the auction.

> Remember, when .com and .org came out, they were also owned by an
> organization that didn't want to gouge people.

No I don’t remember this - it never happened. Quick history lesson: It was 50
dollars to get a .com or any name, and later 35 dollars. Network solutions had
a monopoly on it.

> The decentralization benefits of Handshake are entirely encapsulated in
> ordinary people owning their own TLDs.

Absolutely! In addition, it serves to solve issues with the CA system. It
democratizes ownership of the internet and makes it safer.

------
stjohnswarts
This whole thing is ridiculous. It makes me both laugh and cry. Selling org to
an "unavailable name" private equity firm is just ironic to the extreme.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
It's worse than ironic. It's crony capitalism. An inside deal with no benefit
to external people, where the transaction will make money for the insiders.
It's all hidden because it's corrupt.

------
scarejunba
Well, I have to say I'm quite proud of everyone who stood up and made a fuss
over this. It is blatant corruption. Keep the good fight going, folks!

~~~
ce4
> Was...

Is it over yet? From how i read it, no:

'[The internet society] will vote this month on whether to approve a formal
recommendation that the society “not proceed [with the sale] unless a number
of conditions are met.”'

~~~
rocqua
Those conditions require the release of new information and, I would assume,
re-scrutinizing the decision based on that new information.

This information should reveal that indeed this is a fraudulent sale. If the
information does not reveal that, there is less of a reason for blocking the
sale. Really, what should be reversed is the decision to remove price-hike
caps on the .org TLD.

------
haidersf
I wonder if this is a deliberate strategy ... I .e. first advisory council
halts, does their DD, and then says its all good... which they can then point
to and create a defense. Prob not the case but can't rule anything out.

------
willart4food
Once the deal goes through someone from the ISOC will be getting a high-paying
job at Ethos. Wait for it . . .

~~~
grumple
Already happened:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethos_Capital](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethos_Capital)

~~~
dwnvoted2hell
Isn't this level of quid pro quo corruption punishable? Or does nobody even
care anymore?

~~~
TheFiend7
Everyone is in bed with each other. They all inside trade, they all bribe each
other for different leverages. And a lot of plebeians support it ironically.

------
notlukesky
Snake biting it’s own tail:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros)


Show HN: Stellar.js - markdalgleish
http://markdalgleish.com/projects/stellar.js/

======
wolfeidau
Hacking around with it now looks awesome, especially love the background
effect on the documentation page.


Auto Smiley Generator - huhtenberg
http://fffff.at/auto-smiley

======
callahad
Reminds me of Andi Albrecht's mercurial hook [0] which posts a photo from your
webcam to Twitter whenever a merge fails.

[0]: [http://andialbrecht.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/when-merging-
fa...](http://andialbrecht.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/when-merging-fails/)

------
toisanji
:) just tried it, its pretty cool, but has a lot of false negatives. Opening
my mouth was enough to trigger a smile and I can't even make a real smile. It
was cool that it have a false trigger when I frowned.

~~~
eam
So :D => :) ?

~~~
alagu
I don't think it is able to differentiate type of smileys. Only :). No :o, :p
or :D

But damn cool app :)

------
hkuo
Hilarious. Doesn't seem that useful as evidenced by him not being able to not
smile. He should make an LOL version of this though!

~~~
nym
There are all sorts of uses! For example, you could make a site called
smilelinks that is automatically generated based off the webpages that make
you smile. My guess is cuteoverload would dominate the list.

------
khelloworld
Nice demo to learn openFrameworks from. Cool app too.

------
nym
:)

------
apsurd
Upvoted for happiness inducing factor! yay =)

~~~
calcnerd256
Is that akin to saying "It made me smile."?

~~~
apsurd
yes.


For Big Tech to retain government protections, they must stop the censorship - Melchizedek
https://www.city-journal.org/html/platform-or-publisher-15888.html
======
tomohawk
Yeah, government needs to remove the protections from youtube and the like.
They are trying to have their cake and eat it too. They are not like telcos.


You’re Too Cheap to Fly Faster - benjaminfox
https://medium.com/lift-and-drag/7885a299bca2
======
vidarh
A big part of the problem is that it is not just about price. New York to
London is 5-6 hours. But back when I did business travel regularly
(SFO<->LHR), the door to door time for me on an 11 hour flight was 16 hours
after a lot of practice. So on a 5-6 hour flight, half would likely be spent
on either end (and this is without checked luggage). At that point saving 2-3
hours in-air is not making enough of a dent in the travel time for it to be
attractive to pay all that much more.

Much less saving 10% of the time.

~~~
harisenbon
Completely agreed. I mainly fly internationally, and while shaving 2 hours off
a 8 hour flight would be wonderful, it doesn't help me, as the majority of my
time is spent in airports between the flights.

For me to get to where my family lives (one layover), it takes me:

1 Hour drive to airport

2 Hours because it's an international flight

8 Hour Flight

2 Hours Immigration / Baggage

1 Hour Re-checkin

3-5 Hour Layover

30 Minute Commuter Flight

30 Minutes for baggage

30 Minutes drive home

So for my entire flight, the flying (even on a 8 hour flight) is less than
half of my total time. By lowering the amount of time between connections, or
lessening the amount of connections that need to be made, you can get greater
gains than by flying faster planes.

Cheaper planes and cheaper flights could actually make overall flying time
SHORTER, because there would be more planes in the sky, and less time between
fights.

\-----------------------

Long rambling story:

When I first rode the bullet train back in college, I thought it would be like
riding an airplane, at least from a management perspective. My friends and I
bought the ticket a week in advance, made sure we were packed, and got to the
station a good hour in advance of my train leaving.

It was only then that I realized that the security for getting on a bullet
train is "show me your ticket" and that if you miss your train, you can just
sit in the non-reserved seating on the next available train that will be along
in under 5 minutes. (Back then it was more like 10, but still)

While you can't really compare trains and planes (and automobiles) in these
situations, it still makes me think that the solution to faster travel is not
faster planes, but better infrastructure and administration for travel.

~~~
zanny
I wish we had more trains. Not just for passengers, but in general. They just
get the best cost per mile per pound were gonna get on planet Earth, since the
physics of cars requires constant acceleration / deceleration and 2 dimensions
of movement, and planes require lift.

I'd _love_ a train from Miami to Boston that hits all the major cities and
averages something between the terrible 80 mph Amtrack trains and the way too
expensive per mile (or km in a more civilized country =P) bullet trains in
Korea or Japan.

Also, that doesn't cost $200 and doesn't take 2 days trip. It should be so
much cheaper taking a vacation on wheels than paying the cost to get luggage
airborne, and it really is the infrastructure being awful.

Wow, a round trip ticket to Austin is around $800. That is just unacceptable.

~~~
newbie12
The fundamental problem is that the ground experience is managed by the
airports, which are usually unionized governmental entities with little
concern for the customer's time, and by the TSA. Similarly, despite very
compelling economics, interstate passenger rail is a failure in the US because
the government corporation Amtrak has a monopoly, deals with some of the most
absurd unions in America, and doesn't seriously innovate.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
This post is drool. "Blame the unions" is the new right wing "blame Jews" I
guess.

Most airports in the states are reasonably run and don't waste our time,
compared to many other European and Asian countries.

Passenger rail doesn't work well in the states given the distances involved,
we just aren't that dense. Where it does make sense in the eastern corridor,
Amtrak is able to make a profit. Amtrak long haul routes however exist only
for those afraid to fly.

Long haul routes in china only make money because they have much more volume
than us, and people who don't mind traveling 2 days from shanghai to urumuqi
to save on a 6 hour flight.

------
georgemcbay
The economics behind the failure of the Concorde are far more complicated than
"people didn't buy enough tickets". There were an extremely limited amount of
routes (basically you could fly out of NYC or Washington DC to either London
or Paris), mostly due to the problem of sonic booms, but also because the
plane design was such that there was essentially a minimum travel distance for
it to ever be reasonably economically viable. It isn't like there was a
Southwest offering Concorde flights from LA to SFO at 1.5x or 2.0x times the
price of a normal ticket. The Concorde actually sold pretty well given how
limited the routes were until the entire airline industry started to crater
around the turn of the century (9/11, etc).

There was also a lot of politics behind the Concorde discontinuation that had
nothing to do with pure economics.

Having said all of that, our cheapness does seem to be doing harm to a lot of
industries over time, where if you want to buy a new product your choices are
like a dozen shitty things made by the lowest bidder in China or 2 "premium"
choices that are only marginally better than the cheap shit at like 5 times
the cost. Something similar to the capitalistic middle-class squeeze we have
been going through seems to apply to product choices as well.

~~~
omni
I can think of at least 113 other reasons as well. I'd imagine a fatal crash
would have had much more impact on consumer attitudes towards the Concorde
than it would towards other, more "conventional" plane models.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590>

~~~
mortenjorck
It's strange. The Concorde crash was clearly due to a cascade of safety
protocol violations, from Continental's runway debris and subsequent skipped
runway inspection, to Air France's overweight takeoff, yet the Concorde
itself, despite a spotless record, became the target of public outrage.

~~~
breser
The safety issues were not the full reason that the Concorde was grounded
permanently. It was grounded temporarily until the design issues raised by the
crash were resolved by design changes (Kevlar lining in fuel tanks, burst
resistant tires). If safety was the real driver, the improvements would never
have been made and deployed.

The real problem was that the Concorde was a 1960's design in 2003 with only
20 units produced. As such it did not continue to receive upgrades and other
refinements that other aircraft do. Compare what a 737-100 looked like and
what a 737 you'd fly on today looks like. That's just the visual changes,
think of the improvements you can't see. Like improved cockpit controls. With
only 20 units parts were expensive. Airbus didn't want to support the aircraft
either.

I'm sure there was some decrease in passengers after the crash. But I don't
think there was a public outrage. With time the numbers would have recovered.
They retired the plan not even a full year after restoring service.

As I understand it Air France was selling tickets at less than their cost to
operate it. While both BA and AF announced the cancelations at the same time,
I wouldn't be surprised if Air France was the group that decided to pull the
plug first. Taking out half the planes would have made the maintenance even
more expensive for BA.

Finally, Richard Branson tried to buy the BA Concorde fleet and continue
operating it. Branson is not an idiot at business, he obviously thought there
was a market there. For some reason that's not clear BA refused to sell to
him. Which leads to the other possible reason for retirement, the airlines
figured out they could make more profit selling subsonic first class than
Concorde tickets. Not selling to Branson prevented him from having the
supersonic competitive advantage.

------
zurn
We're not nearly cheap enough: The plane ticket price doesn't capture the cost
of flying, the majority of which comes from the greenhouse gas emissions.
Further working in the wrong direction is the tax freeness of jet fuel and the
2-3x amplified effect of co2 when injected directly to the upper atmosphere.

~~~
zanny
I have to think the only reason trains pretty much died as an industry in the
last hundred years is due to government fiddling or poor infrastructure
maintenance. In a trifecta of balancing cost to time to carrying weight,
trains should almost always win, with cars never winning in any of them and
planes winning only at time investment.

Yet we all drive cars (which win in being personal transport where free wheels
in 2d on tarmac is much more portable than steel wheels on tracks in 1d) even
though they should cost significantly more, take longer (if we had even a
reasonable bullet train at 150 - 160 mph, not even close to the 260mph
Japanese / Korean lines) and carry less (especially compared against fuel
consumption or just the raw bearing weight of car frames and rubber tires
against rail cars).

An amtrack ticket from NY to Austin is $800 round way, and 50 hours each way.
I can rent a car for $100 a day, and do that drive in 40 hours. So I save
time, it costs the same when you factor in gas, and the only benefit is I can
read a book on the train. Which is a nice plus, but not double the price
worth.

~~~
yew
Trains _didn't_ die as an industry. Actually the US has an exceedingly good
(privately-owned) freight rail system, compared to the rest of the world
(assuming you're talking about the US from the Amtrak reference).

What did happen is that Amtrak was displaced by said freight rail system. It
doesn't really own any rail - everything is under contract, with freight
getting first priority contractually. Though it also has other issues.

~~~
ams6110
Moving freight by train is also a lot more efficient than moving people by
train. Freight doesn't need room to walk around, doesn't need to eat, doesn't
need to sleep, doesn't need bathrooms.

~~~
venus
The tohoku shinkansen in Japan can have trainsets with up to 1600 people in
one 16-car train, and can slam them down the line at 250+kph, one every 3 or 4
minutes. A couple of E5s could do 1400 people at 320. If that isn't efficient
then I'd love to know what is!

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Japan is a very compact country. Lovely for anyone in the DC-Boston corridor,
doesn't scale to most of the states however. Consider how there isn't much of
anything between San Francisco and LA.

Love the Shinkansen though. My preferred method of travel within Japan.

~~~
venus
The "compact" excuse is a cop-out, IMO. LA and SF are two massive cities well
within high speed train range. Of course there's nothing in between them -
there's no transport! You're thinking backwards. Put a station 150km outside
of SF with a 30 minute commute and do you think there'll still be nothing
there in 5 years?

My point is that these lines would be considered viable in Japan - more than
viable; completely obvious. The fact we can't seem to build them - can't even
take the idea seriously - is more about the nature of our society than
anything to do with geography.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Its not really that though, there is nothing between LA and SF because the
land is not really suitable for big cities. Japan is quite lucky because much
of the island is unsuitable for habitation pushing many of the cities into a
narrow band (e.g. Tokyo - Osaka). You can't really fight geography, and you
work with what you got.

> Put a station 150km outside of SF with a 30 minute commute and do you think
> there'll still be nothing there in 5 years?

At Shinkansen ticket/pass prices? Really? Depends if we can become as rich as
the Japanese. I also find this to be a bad outcome; if you work in SF, why not
just live in SF? Do we really need to build a 150km-away bedroom community?

~~~
venus
> Japan is quite lucky because much of the island is unsuitable for habitation
> pushing many of the cities into a narrow band

Lucky? How is that lucky? I believe this is the first time I have ever heard
someone describing a lack of habitable land as "lucky".

It's true that in the last 50 or so years, the USA has become extremely
suburbanised, totally reliant on cars for transport, which makes it hard to
pick "winners" as to where gets a station, but you can't just use that as an
excuse to do nothing!

> At Shinkansen ticket/pass prices? Really? Depends if we can become as rich
> as the Japanese.

The Japanese are far from "rich". Anyway, a commuter pass pass from, say,
Utsunomiya to Tokyo only costs a few hundred, and is anyway paid by employer.
The alternative is spending several times that on housing, in a situation of
intense competition for limited housing stock in a viable commuting range.

> if you work in SF, why not just live in SF? Do we really need to build a
> 150km-away bedroom community?

I don't understand this answer. Obviously, not everyone can live in the CBD of
the city they work in. That's the problem fast transport solves in this
situation. What's your better idea?

Anyway I'm not blindly recommending anything the Japanese do. I'm just saying
that fast transport has the effect of greatly expanding the viable urban
living of a major city.

------
ajhit406
The article is correct to a large extent. But I'm surprised it didn't mention
the elite group who fly considerably faster: private jet owners and corporate
jet "beneficiaries".

These individuals are not nearly as price sensitive as the average consumer,
and face much larger opportunity costs when sitting around at the airport or
moving slowly in flight.

With some of the newer (and very expensive) private jets like the Gulfstream
650 and Citation X, passengers benefit from an approximately 15-20% flight
time savings (depending on the length of the trip and desired fuel
efficiency). This is a considerable amount of time for most c-level execs of
large companies.

However, where I personally see the biggest time advantage in flying private
is the process of actually boarding and securing the plane. Private jets and
smaller airports are orders of magnitude more efficient.

Pulling up to a hangar at Van Nuys instead of waiting 2 hrs in the delta
check-in line at LAX is well worth the extra money to the ultra rich. Time
from pulling into the airport in your car to takeoff can be as little as 10
minutes.

In the late 1990's, as research on super sonic flight was becoming very
popular, there seemed to be a divergence in thought: One camp was for larger,
slower, but more comfortable airplanes; and the other for smaller, sleeker,
uncomfortable supersonic rollercoaster rides through the stratosphere.

It would be interesting to see airlines' market research around higher speed
aircraft, and whether there was enough demand for super sonic flights. My
intuition tells me they did perform this research, and the data told them that
it wasn't economically feasible.

With the introduction of the A380 and other mega jumbos on the way, it became
clear that the conclusion is that we'd all prefer to fly slower, but more
comfortably. Though, while it appears we only have 2 market segments, super
expensive and super cheap, there are some companies who are innovating on the
fringes to make private jets more accessible.

NetJets and FlexJet are the first few that come to mind. Maybe there's a YC
company that can further optimize this market? I for one would love to travel
out of smaller airports if there were more options...

~~~
starpilot
> It would be interesting to see airlines' market research around higher speed
> aircraft, and whether there was enough demand for super sonic flights. My
> intuition tells me they did perform this research, and the data told them
> that it wasn't economically feasible.

This is why Boeing's Sonic Cruiser (mentioned in the article) was canceled.
The jump in drag approaching the sound speed cascades into more complex and
costlier aircraft engineering, which ends up in the fare. Lockheed's Skunk
Works also shopped around a quiet supersonic platform (not subject to the
sonic boom flight restrictions in the US) biz jet to Wall Street banks in the
early '00s, who were the most avid flyers of the Concorde, but there wasn't
enough interest to fund it.

> there are some companies who are innovating on the fringes to make private
> jets more accessible

This would be air taxi companies like DayJet, which went bankrupt due to the
late '00s recession. In an age when most people comparison shopped for
airfares $20-50 cheaper, offering a seat costing $200+ more for slightly
shorter flights wasn't a great value proposition, and still isn't. Better
preboarding and seating on the planes is somewhat taken care of already by
business+ class (you also get those airline clubs in the departure areas).
This small chunk of benefits still costs too much for most consumers, with the
vast majority of first/second class tickets acquired through flyer miles or
corporate sponsorship. Air taxi seating would cost even more than first class
due to reduced economy of scale. Would this be worth it to skip the TSA line?
I'm not sure. Kavoo is a new air taxi operator that flies (slower) turboprops
though.

> I for one would love to travel out of smaller airports if there were more
> options...

This was the original goal of Eclipse Aviation's Eclipse 500 (in fact the EA
logo depicted travel between regional airports like Van Nuys, bypassing hubs
such as LAX). I think the higher energy requirements and generally greater
distances of air travel magnify cost differences in small transit vs mass
transit (taxicab vs. bus), making jet air taxis cost prohibitive at this time.

Disclosure: Former Eclipse Aviation engineering intern

------
Ensorceled
The worst part of my flight, and most of the time the largest part, is the
Home->Gate->Plane part. Why would I pay to optimize the least unpleasant part
of the journey?

Give me a way to skip the whole "everybody is a possible terrorist" fiasco and
now we're talking ...

~~~
michaelfeathers
Few people now remember it, but back in the earlier days of commercial
aviation flying was a breeze. You could walk up to a counter, buy a ticket,
walk to the gate and walk on.

It was that way for a long while.

~~~
Ensorceled
Yeah, I remember the days of "arrive 30 minutes early for international
flights just to be on the safe side". Now the "rule" is you can't even fly if
you arrive that "late" for an international flight.

------
rdmckenzie
Not only are we to cheep to fly fast but we've also banned supersonic flight
over most "civilized" land masses. There are only three or so US mainland
airbases where it is legal to break mach 1 due to the fact that the voting
public doesn't want to listen to sonic booms. Thanks to relatively new "shaped
sonic boom" technology it is possible to massively reduce the acustic profile
of supersonic flight but the damage is done. We're too cheap to fly fast and
the technology which we need to fly fast still doesn't come cheap.

------
phy2
Hard to believe an article on this topic fails to mention airline
deregulation[1]. When an industry transitions from mandated prices to open
price competition the profit formula changes. It is logical that carriers
would prefer efficient, reliable, high capacity planes over faster
alternatives post deregulation. Also, given the small number of plane
manufacturers and the huge costs of R&D to bring out a new plane, it is
unlikely a manufacturer would invest in building a supersonic jet that does
not meet the current operating needs of its clients. Maybe Elon will do planes
next? The average altitude of Tesla and Space X's vehicles is probably around
35k feet...

[1]<http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/AirlineDeregulation.html>

------
jostmey
Travelling from city to city may indeed take longer than we would like. But
the real innovation isn't making airliners faster - it is in getting people
from their location and onto the aircraft sooner. The lengthiest leg of the
flight to me is the time spent waiting at the gate.

------
chasing
Yes, I'd rather flights be faster than cheaper. But for most people, saving a
few hours isn't worth spending a few hundred or thousand dollars extra on a
flight. Which sounds kind of reasonable, to be honest.

~~~
rpedroso
I fly about once a month for personal visits. While I'd love to reach my
destination faster, I struggle enough to afford tickets at their current
prices. If I'm not prepared to spend $30 for a better seat, I'm definitely not
about to spend a small fortune for a few extra hours at my destination.

I use Hipmunk to find flights, and by default they sort results by "Least
Agony" -- which means least total flight time / stops. Those tickets are
generally more expensive, and I often have to sacrifice agony for price.

Not everyone can afford fast.

------
philsmith35
When we purchase a plane ticket, we aren't given an option for speed; only
price. Therefore, we optimize that variable.

~~~
imjk
Actually trip duration is an option, and one which I regularly prioritize.

~~~
rocky1138
Yes but trip duration in terms of number of stops or speed of the jet that
takes you there?

~~~
mikeash
Total number of hours from start to finish is commonly displayed. If you want
less time traveling, it's trivial to choose that when it's available.

------
gilgoomesh
I live in Australia and occasionally have to fly to the U.S. for business (the
Pacific flight alone is a 15 hour trip one way and an 18 hour trip return). I
would lower my consulting fees and channel the money into my airfares if I
could get a flight that would do it in half the time. 24+ hours travel time
(including connecting flights airports and taxis) is torture.

Sadly, I don't think I'll get the opportunity for anything quicker in my
lifetime. I predict there will be humans on Mars before a supersonic cross-
Pacific passenger aircraft.

------
dnautics
for many routine flights (transcontinental vs transoceanic) this isn't the
only reason - sonic booms are a problem. And even if you could go from LA to
NYC in two hours (versus four), then also add in an invariant hour and a half
time you spend going through security, waiting for the plane, boarding, and
really the difference is not enough to justify the added cost.

------
greatquux
Pick 2 out of 3: cheap, fast, good. I guess we've chosen cheap and good.
That's why I don't fly United. :)

~~~
vidarh
I used to always fly United between LHR and SFO when I flew regularly. Their
standard in every class was poorer than Virgin Atlantic or BA for example, but
contrary to those United at least had one big advantage:

To get upgrades with Virgin or BA was like winning a lottery. It happens
rarely, and getting up in the frequent flier tiers takes a _lot_ of flying and
usually buying more expensive tickets. And the benefits are relatively
limited. But when you get bumped up with either one it's the royal treatment.

United was more basic when comparing on a class by class basis: Crappier
seats, not as good food, etc. But after two returns on a flight as long as
LHR<->SFO I was at a sufficient tier in their frequent fliers program to get
automatic free upgrades to premium economy, and a miles multiplier that meant
I'd get a free business class upgrade every 3rd leg from then on (and often
more frequently than that, if there were free business seats), as well as
priority boarding etc.. I'd still pick Virgin or BA for "one off" occasional
flights any day, but United was great for frequent long haul flights.

~~~
ubernostrum
United has changed, and not in a way that would make this easier. Now they
offer paid first-class and "premium economy" upgrades to passengers at or
shortly before check-in, usually steeply discounted, and consensus from
passengers with status seems to be that A) it's not offered to them and B)
it's offered _before_ status upgrades are applied, so if first class fills up
from the cheap upgrades, there will not be any status upgrades on the flight.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Does United even offer first class on international flights though? I thought
they only offered business class on international flights (first class on
domestic flights, but so what?).

~~~
jbuzbee
Yeah. United has both business and first on International flights. Having been
in both, I'd say that there isn't a whole lot of difference though. But In
both cases, I just love those lay-flat seats when doing a 14-hour flight
between LA and Sydney...

------
atdt
Shaving a few hours won't open new markets or otherwise fundamentally alter
our relationship with distance. It's telling that "convenience" is the selling
point, which implies a difference of degrees rather than kind, and shows a
lack of ideas of what we could do with this technology.

The next great hop in transportation would have to be instant or near-instant
teleportation. And faster jets don't meaningfully bring us closer to that.

~~~
rationalthug
While cutting time in the air by half may not make a fundamental difference,
cutting it by five or six times could. Point-to-point sub-orbital services
have the potential to do this, though there are challenges for this type of
flight that bring its difficulties closer to orbital operations than the
(mostly) straight up and down trajectories that will be flown by Virgin
Galactic, XCOR, etc.

------
cafard
I would also point out that the US considered and rejected the notion of
building a supersonic passenger plane, in part because of concerns about its
effect on the upper atmosphere, in part because of the economics. The debate
about building took place about the time that the Concorde was under
development, i.e. well before much of the HN readership was born.

------
negamax
Point well made. But I rather see efficiency in airport terminals immediately
as compared to aeroplane speeds, at least right now. For international flights
it's a norm to arrive ~1-2 hrs earlier. Sometimes this time is nearly 20-30%
of the entire flight time and in some extreme cases, may be even more.

------
vaadu
Article talks of mach 5 but fails to mention that our best body designs begin
to melt at mach 3.

------
mindcrime
I'm just waiting for the invention of the Star Trek "transporter" or the
TARDIS.

~~~
delinka
Star Trek's transporters would be excellent. We could recover all that land
that's covered in paving, no longer care about location, eliminate the
pollution of today's internal combustion engines...

The sad thing is that if this could happen in the next decade, I fear it would
quickly become a target of the entire transportation industry as they scramble
to lobby for laws to prevent its use. And the same thing would happen for
Trek's matter replicators.

But if I've learned anything comparing science fiction and the real world,
it's that our scientific understanding of the universe comes slowly enough
that society adapts. The only notable exception is the near-instant
communication provided by the internet and its effects on "intellectual
property" hoarders.

</ramble>

~~~
magic_haze
_If_ we manage to create transporters at all (never mind the next decade), the
impact on religion and legislation would be far greater than on the
transportation industry. If your body is destroyed and reconstructed, are you
still the same person? What if you could make copies? It's just information,
after all. And so on...

Do any of the Star Trek episodes investigate this aspect of the transporters?

~~~
delinka
I do not recall any real attention paid to such aspects of the transporter. I
do recall, however, the inventor of the device showing up in an episode of
_Enterprise_ [1] and referring to all the dialog that came up when the device
was new; his comment? "Metaphysical nonsense."

[1] - _Star_ _Trek:_ _Enterprise_ episode "Daedalus" - Dr. Emory Erickson
according to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transporter_(Star_Trek)>

------
cultureulterior
Ballistic travel is my preferred method.

~~~
delinka
That's gotta be a helluva kick.

~~~
angersock
Yep. Flying UDP-packet class.