[aperture]

I think it was a good post overall, but what got to me was his lack of doing anything about his issues. When Mr. Pike wanted a revolutionary OS, plan9 was created. When Mr. Pike wanted a language fixing problems dealt with in C, Go was created. When it comes to a machine that's roll-able without persistent local storage, he merely wishes for it to be a reality? I can understand if, through working with Google, the only research in that area is tied to the Chromebook, but still. He certainly has the capability to cause influence (First link on hn), but he's not getting into the core of the problem. I love this guy just as much as the rest of the community, but I find it puzzling steps aren't already being taken to make this next dream of his a reality. I also agree that cloud is not the answer for everything, so it would be enlightening for a new tablet-esque roll able device to be made that swims against the general Mac-inspired cloud tablet trend. But if Rob Pike isn't going to make it a reality, I doubt someone else will release it in his vision or to his liking. Perhaps he has a few ideas or tricks to make things "just work". And that's what I'd look forward to.

[tree_of_item]

The 9p protocol addresses a lot of the network activity described in the article, but I'm not sure what Rob Pike could do to make the hardware he describes a reality. All the examples you gave were software.

[pi18n]

Surely Rob Pike could get funding to start a hardware company, especially if the aim is going to be low powered devices connecting to cloud services?