Hacker News Reader

Comment by carlosjobim | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

Because we exist within a market, where the choices of others end up affecting us - if the market "votes" for a competing thing, that might affect the market for the things you care about.

Your car analogy isn't great, but we see a similar dynamic playing out with EV vs combustion, and we did with film-vs-digital cameras. "Don't buy a digital camera if you like film" sure didn't help the film photographers.

They are pushing hard the adoption of restrictive platforms where people that have no idea how technology works lose the ability to control their devices, a fucking basic right. And this is done transparently to people that are not tech-savvy. This affects everyone, but the main difference is that is extremely hard to make people that are not in technology understand WHY such platforms should be avoided.

The market for operating systems naturally falls into oligopolies.

It's usually not financially feasible for third-party applications to support more than a few of them.

Users tend to have strong preferences toward operating systems that have lots of applications built for them.

But here we're talking about developers. They will have other platforms they can use.

And I don't believe for a moment that Google will have any success with this new project. They simply aren't capable anymore of making projects such as these work. MacOS, Windows and Linux will stick around long after this project is abandoned.

Here's to hoping that's the case. But the GGGP was arguing about that other case, where in fact Google manages to lock down the desktop to the point that you have to ask their permission in order to be able to ship a piece of software.

And since we've already seen two other players take that exact stance thinking that the third (who is already doing similar stuff on their mobile platform) is going to do the same thing is not just a theoretical risk.

Standards fill this gap, allowing for interoperation. When was the last time you had to write custom logic for your browser to access 99% of the domains you access?

I've certainly run into websites that were doing something nonstandard and my browser of choice didn't work as intended. Sometimes when I've complained to the site operator, they've told me that browser isn't supported.

I can (and have) told them they should build to web standards rather than specific browsers, but they're only motivated to care if it impacts a large enough percentage of users.

So markets determine the outcome even when standards exist.

Working as intended is the functionality on the site, and I didn't claim everyone followed all standards. But given you had the correct address for the site, your browser captured the DNS resolution and pushed a content request to that particular site's server.

Yes, the web is fairly good these days. That's only adjacent to the topic under discussion though, isn't it?

In terms of downloadable apps & games, there hasn't historically been anything that solved the operating system level oligopoly issue.

Because our kids will be forced to use it in schools.

And what happens when your bank or government portals decide that the only methods to access their services is through apps installed on trusted platforms?

You use another device for that. It has already happened. Many banks require that you verify through an iOS or Android app. But here we are talking about programming on a computer. In which way does the requirements of a bank or a government portal influence the way you can program on a MacOS, Windows or Linux device?

> I don't sit around all day complaining about Triumphs because I drive a Honda.

I mean, you could decide to complain or not complain, either is fine under a discussion thread of that specific topic. I have posted many comments like "I will never buy * because ..." on forums which I think is perfectly fine.

What matters is whether a comment contains valuable information and is contributing to the discussion. If others can use the information to form their decision, it's a net value add.

I don't see much value in complaining about something before trying it, before the project has started, when it's just a rumor. Is that an honorable or fulfilling way to spend the limited time we have on earth? Complaining about some product which you will never have any interest of buying, which hasn't even been decided yet?

When will hackers wake up? You are wasting your time being angry at completely meaningless things in this world and complaining about things which don't affect you in the slightest. The clock is ticking, we are all approaching our graves further each day. TICK! TOCK!

I don't understand how complaining is bad, but complaining _about_ complaining is totally okay and valuable. And now you have me mildly complaining about complaining about complaining.

It will affect every hacker parent that has to buy a Google sanctioned device for his/her kid to use in school. At least with ChromeOS you can enable the Linux VM which makes it an Okish Linux machine on which a kid can learn to program if interested.

> completely meaningless things in this world

I wouldn't say so. Based on ongoing discussions, I am 90% sure I won't ever buy any product that is from Google or runs Google's OS.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com