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Comment by cabaalis | Hacker News Reader

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.

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Yeah, I just figured that a pro-anonymity, pro-startup, pro-charity, anti-monopoly, anti-comcast community would see this as a win on all fronts.

At least that was my read on this community.

My reading of the negativity in this thread isn't "here is why I am opposed to your project" but rather "here is why your project seems like it will fail". The latter isn't anti-startup or pro-comcast at all.

...but why The Facebook? We already have MySpace.

...but why Dropbox? We already have google drive/OneDrive/WebDAV.

...but why an Airbnb? We already have BnBs, hotels, and hostels.

Which are all questions that the founders of Facebook, Dropbox, and Airbnb needed to answer to be successful. Questions are a contribution.

And those commenters have a different understanding of what success is for a project like this, then the team of volunteers working on it, and the customers who are using it. The success of this project is entirely defined by those two groups. I am inspired by this project and see a great deal of "good will" value and the potential to serve as an emergency backup internet in the increasing hurricane season prone NYC floodplain is an additional value stream for sure.

It's easy to imagine reasons something might fail, even for something that actually will be a success.

Compared to most funded startups, this idea seems extremely practical and feasible (1.6 million people in Manhattan alone). Wireless internet is already a successful business model (Monkeybrains in SF), and extending it with mesh may add latency but I'm not going to pretend to know more about it that the guy who is currently doing it...

> 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.

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.

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.

You are right. 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.

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