
Ask HN: Is there a hippie commune for hackers? - citizenkeys
Seriously, is there a hippie commune for hackers?  There's gotta be one somewhere in the Bay Area.<p>If I could just plow the fields during the day and work/sleep in a little cottage and be left alone, that'd be alright with me.
======
alexophile
I spent some time on a farm that could liberally be called a "commune" and
there's actually a ton of innovation to be had all over the place. Somewhere,
I probably still have a moleskine with notes on the matter. A couple things I
remember:

-Crop Rotations: The texts I read about this subject were the result of some very painstaking note-taking, and keeping all this information straight can confound even the very studious. We had at least 3 copies of Elliot Coleman's "The New Organic Grower" around and they were all falling apart from constant reference. Having instant access to your planting history would be invaluable, especially if coupled with pH effects of relevant crops and other useful info.

Certifications: The process for getting that nifty "certified organic" label
is quite difficult. You have to submit all sorts of things. It was even worse
for us because we had commercial kitchen equipment (we sold jarred jams,
salsas, etc)

Marketing: We sold shares of our output through a CSA (Community Supported
Agriculture) program. ~100% of people who partook found out about us from
meeting us at a farmer's market. I think there's a decent market for CSA
shares, but not really any way of comparison shopping, or even knowing what's
available.

It would be neat to work on a project to solve these problems while
simultaneously encountering them on the day-to-day. But fair warning: "plowing
the fields all day" does not really leave one in the mood for hacking.
Contemplation? Surely. Conversation? Absolutely. But I wouldn't expect to get
a whole lot of hacking done, at least not in your first season.

~~~
burgerbrain
>I probably still have a moleskine with notes on the matter.

Why do people insist on telling us the brand of their notebook? It's just a
book with some blank paper dude...

~~~
CERTIORARI
It's called "descriptive detail", and can add atmosphere to your writing.

Why do people insist on telling us their pet peeves? It's just your pet peeve
dude...

~~~
catshirt
Agreed- even defining the notebook as a moleskine suggests a certain type of
content. More so, it's a seemingly generalized trademark (like Kleenex or
Xerox).

Why _not_ call it a moleskine?

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gonzo
I made my own just outside of Austin, TX once.

Bought a 10 AC farm just outside Blanco. Was already certified for growing
organic "elephant" garlic.

Had a little cottage, a well, with rainwater collection (I flushed the toilets
with this, it was nearly trivial to change-over the plumbing.)

Dropped Cable into it (for IP).

Added 2KW of solar panels, and a 250 gallon propane tank.

Was into it for maybe $130K, fully paid-off.

Grew my own food, hacked some.

Got tired of living without other technology folk around, sold it.

~~~
centuren
Can you provide more details on this? By "little cottage", I assume this was
meant for one (you), and $130K might be a bit steep for a single-person,
experimental venture. 10 AC is hardly a small area, though, and suggests
potential to expand it to, say, a 3-10 person number. If the marginal costs
required to increase water, electricity, etc, to support such levels don't add
to the final price tag dramatically, it could be quite interesting.

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philfreo
SuperHappyDevHouse or Hacker Dojo?

<http://superhappydevhouse.org/> <http://wiki.hackerdojo.com/>

Also...

List of Hacker Spaces - <http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces>

~~~
oscilloscope
Noisebridge is an active hacker space I go to once or twice a week:
<http://noisebridge.net>

~~~
citizenkeys
Noisebridge has the right idea. If you've never been there, just show up and
hang out awhile. Seriously.

Only thing about hacker spaces in general is "no sleeping". My vision involves
a place to sleep and take a time-out.

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dstein
commune... be left alone...

Bay Area... little cottage...

hackers... plow the fields...

I don't think you've decided what you really want here.

If you want to live in a small, communal, hacker workplace in the Bay area,
then you should join or create a technology startup.

If you want to plow fields, live in a small cottage, and be left alone, you
should buy a small house in the countryside.

~~~
wlievens
Not having decided what he wants may be part of the question.

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citizenkeys
Some clarification:

Commune does not mean being without internet, nor does it necessarily imply
growing food.

Think about it: if we had bunk beds, we could stack hackers on top of each
other to save space. Compress at least twice as many in the same space. And if
we bought food in bulk, we could eat better on the same amount we ordinarily
need to live on ramen budgets.

All this being said, I am broke, broke, broke! I burned through all my school
financial aid until next semester starts in January. My email is
citizenkeys@gmail.com . If anybody's got an extra bedroom for a month...

~~~
JesseAldridge
Let me know if you figure something out.

I've got $4000 in the bank. Rent is by far my largest expense. Solve that
problem and your runway length approaches infinity.

~~~
danohuiginn
but tightly-packed communal living _is_ a solution to high rent. Share a
bedroom between 8 people. Add office space, kitchen, bathroom, and you've got
your entire startup packed into one 2-room apartment.

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danteembermage
I just watched The Secret of Kells on Netflix and was wondering the same
thing. The protagonist has a complete devotion to the creation of illuminated
texts which seemed like a perfect stand in for [insert open source project
that would illuminate the world here]

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_Kells>

~~~
ramidarigaz
Just watched that this afternoon. Fantastic film. I can't recommend it highly
enough.

------
drinian
Not a commune, exactly, but you can go live on a tropical beach with other
American hackers with CocoVivo -- <http://www.cocovivo.com/>

------
citizenkeys
Seriously... I'm going to register a domain and try and set this up on
kickstarter. If anyone wants to help out with design or whatever, send me an
email to citizenkeys@gmail.com .

In theory, if we just had a big rental place with couches, bunkbeds, a
kitchen, and a place to shower. That'd be enough to start.

~~~
dwwoelfel
Anyone thinking of working with him on a housing project should consider his
attitude toward contracts and paying rent:

"Here's how you deal with big apartment complex property management companies:
just lie. Seriously. And give a friend's phone number as your "employer". Make
up some fake paystubs in quickbooks. Big property management companies usually
hire stupid people that sit in the office all day, do nothing, and collect a
paycheck. They don't verify income, or any of the other things they request.
Since they don't care, neither should you. Fuck 'em.

Another final comment about big apartment complexes: at a certain point, if
you know you're going to move, just quit paying rent. Apartment complexes take
a hands-off approach to evictions and actually file real eviction proceedings.
As such, you can sit there and live rent free for an entire month or more
while they file the legal paperwork against you. Save that rent money you're
not paying and save it for when you do find another place." -citizenkeys

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1892706>

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organicgrant
So I wasn't acting alone when I bought capitalistcommune.org a few months
back?

I have a 'giant' mansion...in Iowa...with open rooms for hackers. Hit me up,
libertarian-capitalist-economical living can be a real ideal. See pic here:
<http://organicgrant.posterous.com/winter-home-0>

~~~
stretchwithme
That's a great idea. Can't see the photo though. Is that a gmail link?

~~~
olalonde
<http://organicgrant.posterous.com/winter-home>

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shaunxcode
wouldn't a hacker hippie commune be more about building a robotic plow and
spending your, now spare, time OCRing and analyzing old farmers almanacs to
determine the optimal time to plant/rotate/water crops?

~~~
trotsky
In today's culture, it might be dreamed up on facebook, funded on kickstarter,
promoted on twitter, picked up by 10,000 blogs that all poach from each other
and then abandoned by the next semester because the earth-water-sun interface
is ancient and suffers from significant design issues whose tickets never get
responded to by the upstream provider.

~~~
olefoo
I'm tempted to start blogging up the project proposal for a hippie arcology to
be built on a south facing slope in southern Oregon with geothermal backup
heat and a fiber optic connection to the internet for the remote workers whose
economic contributions exempt them from the maintenance duties that the less
skilled have to do (hey, someone needs to turn the compost heaps and feed the
tilapia you know). The basic design concept is to have one largish thermal
envelope that encloses multiple garden and dwelling spaces that are kept at a
relatively constant temperature year round.

I would really like to bring the Whole Earth Catalog hacking tradition full
circle.

~~~
_delirium
> I would really like to bring the Whole Earth Catalog hacking tradition full
> circle.

Sort of a tangent, but the Whole Earth Catalog scene and the tech scene were
surprisingly inter-related in the 60s-80s, which is something I didn't know
until recently. Ted Nelson, who had coined the word "hypertext" about three
years before the first WEC was published, was greatly influenced by it for his
1974 book _Computer Lib / Dream Machines_ , and Steve Jobs was an avid reader
as well. There was even briefly a software version in the 80s:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Software_Catalog_an...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Software_Catalog_and_Review)

I think I was surprised to find a connection mainly because in 2010 I
associate the Whole Earth Catalog more with anti-technology primitivists,
which doesn't seem to have originally been the case--- seems plenty of
technologists were also interested in it, since DIY doesn't _have_ to mean
primitivism.

------
gruseom
A commune where you're left alone? A charming oxymoron.

~~~
widgetycrank
Like a monastery?

~~~
citizenkeys
Basically a drop-in center / hostel: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostel>

~~~
jonhendry
Residential shared office space, really.

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cscheid
Reminds me of the setting in Stephenson's Anathem.

A high-tech monastery would be great, except that the need for a good
connection to the web pretty much kills the whole isolation idea.

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pessimizer
I've been thinking about it for years. The only problem is that most
programmers seem to be status quo capitalists bordering on libertarian. It
might be easier to teach hippies to program than programmers not to be
aspirational yuppie SWPLs.

A couple of cults have gotten by on programming and/or web design, Aum
Shinrikyo and Heaven's Gate come to mind.

~~~
citizenkeys
yeah... I looked up heaven's gate earlier.

I'm talking about a "do your own thing" place to eat, sleep, and code. not any
sort of weird cult.

~~~
pessimizer
In communes, you don't really do your own thing. I think you're talking about
an apartment building where a lot of hackers live that has a hacking room
instead of a gym. Or possibly efficiency apartments. Maybe you meant "common
kitchen" rather than commune? Like a dorm?

~~~
citizenkeys
I'm thinking along the lines of a 24-hour drop-in center / hostel for
developers instead of crazy bums.

The wikipedia entry for hostels kinda sums it up, including the picture of the
taiwanese hostel: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostel>

~~~
pessimizer
A hostel is just like a hotel, except you usually don't get a room (unless
you're willing to pony up an extra $20.) You're just looking for a cheap place
to stay, but you don't want it to be scary. Hostels generally are not scary at
all, and are filled with mostly pleasant foreigners. They used to have rules
that require that you have ID proving that you don't live in the town that
you're hostelling in, though; don't know if that's changed at all.

------
trotsky
I think the bay area hacker version of a hippie commune is a co-op loft that
hosts parties on the weekends to cover some expenses. Or some version there
of. The ones I knew of still charged rent but it was easy enough to work out a
way to do work for rent or a sliding scale.

Not nearly as communal as what you're imagining, but way more communal than
99% of living situations.

~~~
starpilot
I lived in co-ops for two years of college. It was very inexpensive, about
$550/month including "rent" (not actually rent since we were technically
owners), all utilities, furnished, and all meals, in an excellent downtown
location near campus. A comparable apartment in the area might go for
$700/month per person, assuming it's a two- or three-bedroom place, and that
doesn't include utilities or food. Of course the rooms were tiny, the house
was very used-up (the two I lived in were 50+ years old), lots of carpet
stains, scuffed floors, and you have to deal with living with 20+ young people
(noisy, drama etc.). It was a good way to meet people though. At my school at
least, co-ops were basically frats for hippies.

------
PostOnce
I was joking about this with a friend a while back. I prize my solitude a bit
much, but I think it might be fun. Outdoor work might be better for hackers'
brains than most realize. Get your body in shape in the morning and your mind
in shape in the afternoon. Hrmm.

You could always start up one of your own. Kickstarter could help. :P

------
dequantified
Maker spaces are evolving towards this ....

fabrication labs out in the woods. earthships and repraps.

Factor E farm in Missouri: <http://www.youtube.com/user/marcinose>

<http://www.openecology.org> is pretty cool idea too

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maxaf
Have you considered moving to Israel and joining a kibbutz?

~~~
berntb
Isn't there a three years mandatory military service if you move there
permanently before 4X years of age...?

~~~
edanm
I don't know details, but I'm pretty sure that only applies if you're seeking
citizenship. Also, at older ages, the amount of service you have to do goes
down considerably.

~~~
berntb
OK, thanks for information to you and maxaf.

I only know one guy that went there a bit (academic) and he loved the place.

------
ecyrb
Reminds me of the Cory Doctorow short story: "The Things that Make Me Weak and
Strange Get Engineered Away"

Available here: <http://www.tor.com/stories/2008/08/weak-and-strange>

~~~
whimsy
In case you don't like short stories and didn't click the link, the title is a
line from a Jonathon Coulton (of Portal fame) song, "The Future Soon"
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZEEDa9Mej8>

------
citizenkeys
sitting at noisebridge right now:
<https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Noisebridge>

this is almost what i had in mind, only my version has bedrooms, showers, and
allows pets.

noisebridge kicks ass. it's a giant hacker studio. i've never been here
before. if you're a hacker and live in san francisco, you owe it to yourself
to just show up here at least once.

i will be here for awhile tonight if anybody wants to chill out.

~~~
neilk
Noisebridge has had some issues (actually ongoing issues) with people that
treat it as a living space, or just "forget to take the last BART" with
suspicious regularity. Maybe your idea would solve that problem. Or maybe it
would exacerbate it, not sure.

Unrelated: there's also another movement called "cohousing" which tries to
strike a middle ground between the post-WWII standard of one-family-per-house,
and communes that tend to have a complete lack of privacy.

<http://www.cohousing.org/>

------
Inviz
I share a large close to luxury house with atleast three hackers located in
Bali, Indonesia. Recently we finished the transfer by getting a good internet
connection (not that easy in mountains, but totally worth it). My advice -
move to the friendly environment that lets you live off really small money
(100$ is a good salary for locals here) and then things are easy and pleasing.

~~~
Entlin
That sounds brillant. Do you have pictures of it that you could share?

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erikpukinskis
I met a couple of people about two years ago in Tennessee who lived in the
middle of nowhere in a house in the mountains. They had a couple of solar
panels that basically produced enough power to run an iMac so they could do
some freelance design work to make money. They had a Verizon data card for net
access.

Otherwise they lived like it was 1900.

~~~
pyre
I can't imagine that they _only_ used the iMac for design work, did they?

~~~
erikpukinskis
They were doing some sort of web design I think, so.... I don't see why not?

~~~
pyre
I was just thinking that if they didn't keep up with their skills, they might
have a hard time getting work. (Not necessarily that they were using it for
video games or youtube or anything.)

------
citizenkeys
Okay, I got the concept down:

What I'm imagining is a drop-in center / hostel for hackers. The wikipedia
article on hostels kinda sums up what i have in mind:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostel>

The pictures do a good job of showing what I had in mind.

~~~
c3o
Yes! I'm involved with a hacker space in Vienna, Austria (we're proud that
Noisebridge cites us as inspiration) and I've long believed that on the floor
above every hackerspace there should be a hostel. A "hackers in residence"
program, if you will – complete with international exchanges and a "worldwide
pass" subscription. I haven't figured out how to cover the starting costs, but
using Kickstarter is a really good idea. You should start a mailing
list/Facebook group/wiki.

------
percept
I don't know if any are hacker-specific, but you might check the list of
communities here:

<http://directory.ic.org/iclist/geo.php>

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JonnieCache
This is something I'd be very interested in, I'm currently looking for a new
place to live. If anyone knows of anyone doing something like this in the UK,
let me know!

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michaelnovati
You can also check out the Palo Alto Hacker House,
<http://www.facebook.com/hackerhouse>

~~~
whimsy
or <http://hackerhouse.bluwiki.com/>

~~~
citizenkeys
that page says its hasn't been updated since april. i am curious about the
current tenants.

------
gexla
A hacker, hippie commune? Why not just a hacker commune? Or just a hippie
commune?

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noodle
reminds me of this thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1403301>

i still really like the idea

------
noahth
if you build it...

~~~
h4x0r3d
i will come! :P

------
there
GNU?

------
dnsworks
Have you considered arcosanti? It's where most of the ravers I know went when
they realized their lives were empty without drugs.

