This show captures much of what I miss about computing in the 80s and 90s. You could get your hands on hardware, be able to largely understand what all the hardware and software was doing. You mostly used computers as tools, which only accepted commands and didn't try to affect your decisions or workflow (yes, there was Clippy). The leaps forward in computing power, memory and storage were more impactful to the everyday user. There was a sense of wonder, and it didn't envelop your and everyone's life. Most of all, we weren't yet slaves to our computers, and they weren't devices crafted to endlessly grab your attention by any means necessary.
One thing i found very interesting over the years is that when people seem to abuse systems ( key activation, share netflix accounts, vpn, torrents) it’s considered a serious crime, but when companies openly abuse systems ( unsubscribe maze, addiction, fraud ) it’s frowned upon.
That should be the other way around. Until then systems will always try to rule over people and people will adapt for better or for worse.
While I sympathise with the sentiments here, it's just not true, or at least is a gross exaggeration. While IANAL, nor have I read every jurisdiction's laws, I'm fairly certain we have yet to see someone prosecuted for sharing a Netflix password. This place would've been inundated with posts about it.
Also, the EU and other jurisdictions have already passed laws and regulations about dark patterns, and continue to do so. iirc, there are jurisdictions considering laws regarding content algorithms. There are laws regarding certain addictive patterns (remember the whole debacle regarding micro-transactions targeted towards children?). None of this is to say that these things don't still happen, but rather to refute the notion that these patterns are merely frowned upon.
I spend a few minutes on the internet regarding this and it seems the internet is indeed of opinion that Voltaire never said it, but there's no actual proof Strom said it as well. No matter for the topic where i think the quote fits pretty well.
I'm not a slave to my computer. Stop using bad services that are designed to manipulate your behaviour. There's still the good old Internet out there with genuinely interesting content.
IPv8 and it's (eventually mandatory) device-attestation-auth-at-protocol-level will end all of this pseudoanonymous free thinking information exchange. It was good while it lasted.
That IPv8 proposal that was circulating a few weeks ago was not a serious proposal (written entirely by a single person with no substantial involvement in IETF before then) and has no roadmap to any kind of adoption.
A very subjective view - but as originators and not just users of technology, we must be objective, too.
There are, genuinely, people out there who will believe anything their phone will tell them to believe. Its not just about 'good old Internet' - its about the literacy rate of the user.
Literacy can be assayed by many different metrics - mine, personally (back to the subjective), is this: the ratio between whether the user is capable of programming the computer, compared to the computer, programming the user.
Time is running out to do something effective about that enslavement - well, there are other very effective things that can be done to 'cure' people of electronic enslavement (EMP and/or other disaster) - but the point is, if we want to do something effective, we must be teaching new generations, old technology.
Technology doesn't get old - users do. However, users getting older 'feel better about this fact', often ignored, by upgrading to new technology - and into this very slippery wheel of consumerism has been deposited a great deal many traps, by operating system vendors, to keep us in the wheel.
The solution is to promote, among as young a generation as can tolerate it - immediately - the idea of using old technology to do wonderful and new and interesting things.
>Everyday user
Yes, a majority of every day users do not need this kind of backwards-focused thinking, to get work done. It is, very specifically, about the kids.
We have to make sure there are still hackers in 10 years time.
Computers still do the exact same thing they did back then, which is to read opcodes and do binary math. That is all. It is people and corporations that found a way to monetize them which is hostile to us users. But I think that with time, this too shall pass and computers will still do what they always did. You can still enjoy designing a small PCB, working with microcontrollers and building something fun.
This is the way! Just because shitty and privacy invading and infatile services and tools exist, does not mean you have to use them.
Self-host, program in C or what ever you find sexy, and enjoy.
If you work for Evilcorp, perhaps consider joining a smaller company and settle for a lower salary in return for being treated like a human and not like a cog in a machine?
The enforcement of read-only protection for pagecache pages (and the scatterlists and or other structures they point to) seems to be diffuse and incredibly fragile.
The imports themselves may be dynamic. I once did a little review of dependencies in a venv that had everything to run pytorch llama. The number of imports gated by control flow or having a non-constant dependency was nontrivial.
Imports gated by control flow aren’t a huge obstacle, since they’re still statically observable. But yeah, imports that are fully dynamic i.e. use importlib or other import machinery blow a hole in this.
I miss the people of her generation. I feel like we could use their perspective, experience and fortitude right now. I sure miss their music too...even though Bird Lives.
I lost both my grandmothers this past 7 years. One about the same age as Betty, the other a few years younger. It's amazing how much insight you can glean from one-off comments in passing conversation you can pick up, or for that matter drop.
I'm in the middle of Gen-X... kind of the last generation raised "tough" so to speak. Also a generation facing massive ageism, despite knowing and understanding technology as well or better than the younger generations. First generation to make less than that which came before. By the same token, I don't think my generation has a lot of stand-out leaders in its ranks. We've mostly been good by example, but starkly independent.
All I know is that I miss both of my Grandmothers deeply.
Okay pathetic downvoters. If the commenter loves music of her generation so much then they should actively look to support local live arts that play that kind of music. But yeah never mind lets only support Big Music Industry instead (or other big entertainment industries).
I might relate to this, but I also spent more time talking to friends on the phone 20 years ago. The perception of this greatness can't be disentangled from the experience of youth.
I like to think that the enthusiasm for retro computing can make a clearing for innovative things to happen. I imagine such an environment can support values that aren't normally represented in fashionable, modern, commercial technology of today.
I've found adherence to C++ conventions in low-level software to be a rather contentious issue, mostly recently when working in an ML compiler group. One set abhorred the use of macros, the other any kind of polymorphism or modern C++ feature.
Coming from a background of working with OS kernels and systems software, I don't mind the kind of explicit "C++ lite" style used by the OP. Left to my own devices, I usually write things that way. I would think twice if I was trying to design a large framework, but ... I try to avoid those.
That is impressive. It certainly shows what is possible _if_ you are familiar enough with the intricacies of modern C++. I'm not sure how I feel about a workflow where one needs to continually address "overhead" introduced by the language environment.
