5 ms·

I really don't understand the HN reaction here. Why all the presumed negativity? This is tech, the best encyclopedia in the world is built on volunteer work and

I really don't understand the HN reaction here. Why all the presumed negativity? This is tech, the best encyclopedia in the world is built on volunteer work and donations. A genius builds the de-facto version control system on his own in 3 months for fun. 2 guys in a garage build revolutionize search. Certainly there are logistical differences between these things, but I don't understand why one would assert with confidence that such a project (that already seems to be working) couldn't work.

GCU-Empiricist 9y ago
Because this requires brick and mortar industrial hardware to be logistically salable, lacking that it becomes vaporware. I think an unconscious bias may be that a bad but free connection that can negatively impact the perception of web solutions from casual users, which in the end is the revenue base for everyone here involved in B2C business models.
- bigiain 9y ago
  I wonder? Unreliable but redundant commodity grade hardware pretty much allowed "cloud computing" to eat 99.9% of "big iron" sales. I strongly suspect what Google does internally with software defined networking looks a lot closer to what these people are doing than the traditional "buy a small number of powerful-but-expensive entrenched vendor network hardware" approach. This mesh is kinda the network equivalent of autoscaling or autorepairing cloud computing strategies that are so common these days. Once this grows to 2 or 3 IXP connections it won't surprise me much to find they stomp the traditional ISP model reliability-wise, and if they can build that "virtually", where they don't need much more than a bunch of somewhat transient mesh participants with a few medium reliability "super nodes" which are mostly completely remotely configurable...
bigiain 9y ago
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" -- Upton Sinclair I wonder how much it's because so many Silicon Valley salaries are dependant on people assuming that replicating what they do is way harder than it really is? What happened to Britannica or BitKeeper or AltaVista might just happen to the ISP industry - or any other Start-up-de-jour...
thomastjeffery 9y ago
The problem here is that those of us who have a positive presumption have almost nothing to say. The success speaks for itself. Positive comments are generally avoided on HN, unless they actually have a something to add to the discussion. To contrast, those with negative presumptions have plenty to say, and incentive to say it (arguments are a form of discussion). This leaves us with a skewed representation of attitude.
cabaalis 9y ago
I love HN but there is a very healthy level of suspicion for developing different ways of attacking already-solved problems. May not be the best example but look at the comments on announcing Dropbox. Doing > Wanting to do in nearly every instance. So to borrow from popular culture, Just Do It, and Haters Gonna Hate.
- gowld 9y ago
  > May not be the best example but look at the comments on announcing Dropbox. This is the opposite direction. Mesh NYC is saying that ISPs are useless because anyone can string up some APs and get access to the Internet.
- Pica_soO 9y ago
  Remember the guys who had it easy learning at university? Imagine you are one of them- good at using existing rules, good at ingesting and reusing existing knowledge. But deep down know you are unable to recombine, think outside the box or just experiment childishly - to truly innovate - then those tinkerers poking the unknown could render you a obsolete dinosaur any day. Which explains while there is always a caste of "professionals" who for the sake of "security"(job) - defend against the relentless wave of people who unleashed could undo there little safe space in life. To be fair- most of them have familys, so they are not doing that for greed- but because out of vulnerability.
  - ybloviator 9y ago
    Or, just maybe, they've poked an antenna up in the air in NYC and noticed the 5GHz spectrum is totally polluted and barely usable. You want WISP competition (co-op business model or not), then lobby the FCC to free up some spectrum for it. Cheap gear is here, spectrum is the scarcity.
    - Pica_soO 9y ago
      You are right. http://reboot.fcc.gov/spectrumdashboard/searchSpectrum.seam http://reboot.fcc.gov/spectrumdashboard/searchSpectrum.seam So here is the plan- we jam a frequency of a local TV-station, nobody views, who is just sitting on the spectrum for license worth. After proofing for one year and one day, that nobody listened to it and nobody cared- we pronounce that this spectrum is unclaimed and should be returned to the government to be auctioned off. Under normal circumstances this should not go through legally- but hey, there is booty, there is a government in debt and there are interested parties. Its the perfect storm and just having legal rights - didn't help the native Americans either, didn't it? Come to think of it- maybe planning the heist in public was - ill advised.
golemiprague 9y ago
There is a difference between providing virtual service to providing physical service. There is also a difference between providing a non critical business like wikipedia to providing a critical service which needs to work reliably all the time and the two people who invented a search engine in a garage are charging for it using ads. So people predict that this service will have to charge in some stage and will become like any other ISP only with some technology that does't have much advantage over technologies the other ISPs are using now.

GCU-Empiricist 9y ago

Because this requires brick and mortar industrial hardware to be logistically salable, lacking that it becomes vaporware. I think an unconscious bias may be that a bad but free connection that can negatively impact the perception of web solutions from casual users, which in the end is the revenue base for everyone here involved in B2C business models.

bigiain 9y ago
I wonder? Unreliable but redundant commodity grade hardware pretty much allowed "cloud computing" to eat 99.9% of "big iron" sales. I strongly suspect what Google does internally with software defined networking looks a lot closer to what these people are doing than the traditional "buy a small number of powerful-but-expensive entrenched vendor network hardware" approach. This mesh is kinda the network equivalent of autoscaling or autorepairing cloud computing strategies that are so common these days. Once this grows to 2 or 3 IXP connections it won't surprise me much to find they stomp the traditional ISP model reliability-wise, and if they can build that "virtually", where they don't need much more than a bunch of somewhat transient mesh participants with a few medium reliability "super nodes" which are mostly completely remotely configurable...

bigiain 9y ago

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" -- Upton Sinclair I wonder how much it's because so many Silicon Valley salaries are dependant on people assuming that replicating what they do is way harder than it really is? What happened to Britannica or BitKeeper or AltaVista might just happen to the ISP industry - or any other Start-up-de-jour...

thomastjeffery 9y ago

The problem here is that those of us who have a positive presumption have almost nothing to say. The success speaks for itself. Positive comments are generally avoided on HN, unless they actually have a something to add to the discussion. To contrast, those with negative presumptions have plenty to say, and incentive to say it (arguments are a form of discussion). This leaves us with a skewed representation of attitude.

cabaalis 9y ago

I love HN but there is a very healthy level of suspicion for developing different ways of attacking already-solved problems. May not be the best example but look at the comments on announcing Dropbox. Doing > Wanting to do in nearly every instance. So to borrow from popular culture, Just Do It, and Haters Gonna Hate.

gowld 9y ago
> May not be the best example but look at the comments on announcing Dropbox. This is the opposite direction. Mesh NYC is saying that ISPs are useless because anyone can string up some APs and get access to the Internet.
Pica_soO 9y ago
Remember the guys who had it easy learning at university? Imagine you are one of them- good at using existing rules, good at ingesting and reusing existing knowledge. But deep down know you are unable to recombine, think outside the box or just experiment childishly - to truly innovate - then those tinkerers poking the unknown could render you a obsolete dinosaur any day. Which explains while there is always a caste of "professionals" who for the sake of "security"(job) - defend against the relentless wave of people who unleashed could undo there little safe space in life. To be fair- most of them have familys, so they are not doing that for greed- but because out of vulnerability.
- ybloviator 9y ago
  Or, just maybe, they've poked an antenna up in the air in NYC and noticed the 5GHz spectrum is totally polluted and barely usable. You want WISP competition (co-op business model or not), then lobby the FCC to free up some spectrum for it. Cheap gear is here, spectrum is the scarcity.
  - Pica_soO 9y ago
    You are right. http://reboot.fcc.gov/spectrumdashboard/searchSpectrum.seam http://reboot.fcc.gov/spectrumdashboard/searchSpectrum.seam So here is the plan- we jam a frequency of a local TV-station, nobody views, who is just sitting on the spectrum for license worth. After proofing for one year and one day, that nobody listened to it and nobody cared- we pronounce that this spectrum is unclaimed and should be returned to the government to be auctioned off. Under normal circumstances this should not go through legally- but hey, there is booty, there is a government in debt and there are interested parties. Its the perfect storm and just having legal rights - didn't help the native Americans either, didn't it? Come to think of it- maybe planning the heist in public was - ill advised.

golemiprague 9y ago

There is a difference between providing virtual service to providing physical service. There is also a difference between providing a non critical business like wikipedia to providing a critical service which needs to work reliably all the time and the two people who invented a search engine in a garage are charging for it using ads. So people predict that this service will have to charge in some stage and will become like any other ISP only with some technology that does't have much advantage over technologies the other ISPs are using now.