Hacker News Reader

Comment by viro | Hacker News Reader

I must really like down votes because "single most important technology project going on out there" is quite the stretch. Hell, I would argue that over the last year during a pandemic doordash was more important(feeding people while letting them be socially distanced). People on this site like overestimate the avg. persons concern with privacy. the hardware toggles are cool tho.

View on HN

You commit same error you accuse others off. DoorDash mostly solved problems for a small part of reasonably wealthy people, mostly without families, living in big cities, that don’t cook.

You overestimate how your lifestyle isn’t representative of the world.

The only point was that DoorDash probably affected more lives in more positive ways than PinePhone ever will, however little that might be. That's probably accurate.

I disagree. DoorDash maybe affected 15 million lives? I dunno. And sure it made life more convenient for them and kept them from having to put on an oven mitt. An open phone that frees you from the largest surveillance network in human history? Might have a larger overall effect.

my lifestyle is middle class in the midwest. Why do you think a $1.99-$5.99 is a luxury?

There’s more to the world than USA, for a start. And more than just middle class.

The world absolutely doesn't begin and end with middle class in the USA. But you're just wrong to say "DoorDash mostly solved problems for a small part of reasonably wealthy people, mostly without families, living in big cities". There were times it or a competitor were a godsend for my not-quite-middle-class sister, with five children to feed, who lives in a small city a half hour from Cincinnati.

It’s not exclusively for middle class, sure, but that’s their main target market. It has other users, and it’s great if it’s solving their problems as well.

I’m not diminishing their impact (although I question lots of their business practices). But it’s not the most important tech, by a huge huge margin.

'single most important' is maybe a bit much, but..

Privacy is not the only concern, phones are massively used (about a 50% of population) and we all use them for all kinds of purposes - and that part is also growing.

Not to have an open-source option for someting this widespread is not a good idea by my opinion.

> People on this site like overestimate the avg. persons concern with ....

The "average person" concerns come from "average" understanding of the subject. Average person didn't even need a smartphone 20 or 30 years ago - SF toys :)

Importance is subjective. Personally, I think the PinePhone project is much more important than an expensive restaurant delivery service.

But you're wrong tho. most lower income people in the states don't have cars and eat fast food a lot because well food deserts. Then the pandemic happens, well fast food stayed open. Opps one huge problem, only the drive-thrus are open. I can take hours to ride the bus to a grocery store and lug 50+ pounds of groceries, or I can just spend $1.99 to have food delivered.

EDIT: subjective yea, but come on dude people being able to eat is more important than google not knowing what type of porn I like.

I'm not sure what demographic you're talking about that can afford a $2-5 premium on every meal but cannot otherwise access or afford means to safely access a grocery store or restaurant. It would be much more economical for me to take advantage of one of my local grocery stores' free scheduled pickup options and just pay for an Uber driver to take me there and back.

I'm also not sure how Doordash is supposed to help at all for people who were already eating significant amounts of fast food.

Either way, all you're really doing with Doordash is passing the risk of transmission off to someone else. Ideally the delivery person has a better immune system than you (and refrains from making contacting those with weaker immune systems), but that whittles down the demographic of those who seriously benefit from Doordash even further.

Also, the PinePhone project is poised to bring serious repairability, privacy, and security options to a device category many now consider to be essential. It's not so trivial as preventing Google from accessing up your search results.

Regardless, we're comparing potential mortality to potential rights violations. If anyone can figure out how to objectively compare the value of human lives to human rights, give me a call.

It's definitely got competition for the title of "most important" but think about how ubiquitous, increasingly closed off and intrusive modern smart phones are. I think there's some merit to the statement.

I would argue that doordash isn't a "technology project" It's a food delivery company, that happens to have a web-shop.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com