Grumbledour

My own desktop is a mid tier machine from 2013 and I do game on it and it still is fine. Of course, not everything will run on a ten year old machine, but surprisingly many games still work fine. I am thinking about an update for some time and holding back because of the much increased price and annoying availability issues, but unless I want to play something high end like say, cyberpunk, which I really would like, I don't think I would actually need a real "gaming machine" to play much of what I play today. Just a few more gigs of vram would go a long way (I only have 1).

I think the problem here is a societal one. One born of capitalism, that does not value art in itself but only the value people ascribe to it. And the problem I see is less that it replaces good artists, but that it takes away menial work that artists might use to support their more artistic endeavors.

I think this is a real problem worthy of much discussion, but I also think this is not primarily an AI topic but more a general one about what kind of human expression our societies value and want to encourage. You can't stop progress here, though we could decide to not like it and do something else.

And from my reading of it, the GDPR agrees and the whole "Data or money" thing is actually not "freely given consent" and thus void. But sadly, the data protection officers are really dragging their feet here and don't bring this to the courts. Might be because the big European publishing houses seem to all have adopted this strategy and they have a powerfull lobby. And just as facebook, most of them set ridiculous prices because they just want you to say yes to all data harvesting instead.

I noticed a kind of sickness that seems to have taken hold of many people working in tech over the last 15 years. The belief, that nothing can be done unless you got dozens of people, millions of funding and years of time. Or maybe it's just more younger people in this space, who don't remember that we used to build social networks in our free time in our garages?

Now, maybe it's mainly a hacker news problem, because you can find people out there who just build something without thinking to much about monetization and it seems many of them consciously avoid this site.

But the willingness to be an active part in making something better seems to have dwindled and people project a powerlessness to change the status quo, when indeed it was in the past always the technical people who were forerunners with this kind of stuff (and consequently are also at least partly to blame for the things we have now). But these days, you can't even convince many techies to stop using chrome, even if they admit to hating it.

I wonder how we get that back? How we can convince techies, that not only can they do it, but when they build it, they will come? Because they always do!

But discoverability seems the Achilles heel of federated services.

How would you solve that? How would I discover a blog in practice and how would this work from a technical standpoint?

I am asking not to poke holes, but because this is an interesting topic. Finding content seems the biggest problem to me in a more decentralized web and we need more good solutions and ideas here.

Maybe i am just showing my age or tea snobbery, but don't tea bags have metal clips anymore?

You mean the same Minecraft that Mojang sold me back in the day and that now requires a Microsoft account to play offline?

Probably not a big problem for Sony, but as someone who bought the game I am kind of pissed about that.

But I totally agree with you about Sony being hypocritical.

What distinguishing feature would it have to something like Gopher or Gemini[0]?

[0] https://gemini.circumlunar.space/

But having the computer of your dreams means either making sacrifices (Running a VM atop a bloated OS, on a tablet for example, while lugging around an additional keyboard) or building it yourself from the ground up.

Having something else, something more simple and often having something more text oriented is a wish I have now seen often at different places on the internet. Maybe there is something missing, maybe just a place to tie it all together, leadership, or maybe its just that everyone wants something so slightly different, that there can be no concerted effort?

But certainly people with such wishes would benefit if there was some groundwork laid. And I also think showing instead of telling what we could have could also positively impact the rest of the ecosystem.

Maybe we can't? I have been wondering about that for quite some time now.

We have been talking about ubiquitous computing for a long time, but instead of doing that, it seems we have settled on using smartphones for everything, retiring specialized or underpowered devices in their favor, even if they are just 60% as good as their predecessors.

When a company tries to build something in this niche, it seems we need as much power as possible to make it potentially as mass appealing as possible, which in turn means tradeoffs in many other areas (size, heat, battery life, software etc.) that make it unappealing to most but a small minority.

Now, it would seem easy to create a specialized device by putting some constraints on it, right? Make a computer optimized for writers! Make one optimized for day planing! Make one that is not good for playing video or games but great for spreadsheets etc. These devices could excel at their given niche and give us back advantages like weeks long battery life or incredible small size etc. But it seems, no one is willing to work with these constraints. Of course, also no one seems to be capable to create custom software, which I guess these devices would also need to be good at what they were supposed to do.

Sometimes you find these things in small, specialized markets, but even then they always seem to be not really much better or even worse than what we had in the 90s. I am not sure if it is because of market dynamics or lack of vision, but all we ever seem to get are compromises.

Especially now. When the original pandora came out, the market was different and even after the years it was delayed it was still a great machine for emulation. But now, cheap and semi-open emulation devices exist in the dozens and paying up to 10 times as much just to get linux and a keyboard is not that appealing to many people.

If they could do it for maybe <300, I think there would certainly be people considering it, but at that price (and of course the fact that it seems to never get finished) I am not sure they can rally a great community again like they could with the original device.

A community wanting such a device would maybe be better of producing a keyboard/gamepad accessory for existing hardware and hacking free software for same. The rockchip based platforms seem like a good target for example.

I am pretty sure just as the "big" reform, the pocket will let you reprogram the keyboard with QMK, so you can have every key you want.

I am a bit surprised to see no Raise/Lower Keys on the render, but maybe it's not the final layout?

And that is exactly what I try to argue against.

I think its a fair assumption here on hacker news, that most users are creators rather than consumers. And as such, the piece of software they "would never use" is very likely one they (or one of their peers) wrote.

I don't think it is a particularly good look to write adtech by day and run ublock by night, but even more than that it is also hardly sustainable. The custom solutions we run in our ivory towers and don't share with the plebes get harder and harder to create on bad, locked down platforms we help build for "them".

And I also think the assumption, that when it does not serve us, it serves them well, is also a false one. They may not know better, because they are not creators, but I think most folk have realized that computers and software often acts against their users interest.

So, who is supposed to change this, if not the people who have the knowledge and do actually build these systems? Just saying "I use something else and its their fault for not doing the same" does only make us accomplices in making the world worse for all.

I don't think your dismissive attitude towards people does you many favors and I wonder if it's a lack of empathy on your part or frustration from watching people doing the wrong thing over and over, which I also experience a lot.

But if you look at a single being as a person instead of just one sheep, their reasoning is, even if sometimes short-sighted, often sound for their circumstances. There are many pros and cons to decisions and many of the cons concerning surveillance, locked down functionality etc. are often pretty abstract and far away. The problem with many of these technologies is not really what they do today, but rather were it may lead when the become the number one choice and that is much harder for a single person to evaluate or care about.

Especially since choice often is an illusion and you can either accept the drawbacks (which in reality will rarely actually affect yourself) or stand out in the rain with your principles intact. The just as mythical market people like to uphold here on hacker news does not serve differences of sensibilities here. Either get a phone/tv/computer with tracking or ads, or get one which can not play online video. Either get a digital assistant that tracks your every move (though you probably will suffer no drawbacks because of this) or get none at all. Those are bad choices and as much as it aggravates me if people just shrug, I also find it often very hard to tell them of an alternative, because the alternative is more often than not not to play at all. (Or, if someone wants to mention the small subset of open source solutions, paying a hefty premium for years out of date hardware and buggy to non functioning software, of course only if you are even aware they exist!)

I find it really difficult to fault people for that, unless we take the broader view and fault them for the system itself.

But the bicycle for the mind idea goes further than programming your own system and doing creative works. Or rather, it starts smaller.

One example: When I encounter a word I don't know, in my native tongue or another language, how can I find out what it means? I can copy it to some service like google translate or an online dictionary. Maybe I even think of looking for a browser extension? But all these things are work and complicated. So I probably just read on. On my kobo reader, I can long press a word and get the dictionary entry. So I use that regularly to look up and learn new words which I would not if I always had to take out my phone and go online. Back in the day, google+ had a translate button, that would instantly translate text inline, which made it super easy to follow or even talk to people who wrote in a different language.

These kind of features are empowering! They use computers at what they are good at and they benefit most users who don't want to learn to program or customize their system. But they are few and far between in commercial systems or open source alternatives. An empowering system is not just one that you can customize, but also one that enhances the users own capabilities in meaningful ways. And there is a plethora of low hanging fruit there, we sadly are just too often stuck between "good enough" and "works for me"

Laying the blame for programmers writing crappy software at the feet of the mythical "idiot" user who could never comprehend a "better" system is one of the core problems why computers today suck as much as they do.

While it is certainly true that many users don't share the enthusiasm for computers many of us have and they may often also be quite unwilling to learn complex systems for small productivity boosts, it is by no means true that they are all just to dumb to be empowered by computers. They do mostly lack the frame of reference what could even be possible with these machines (As do many programmers today) and thus seldom address the big issues they face.

Application starting up slow? They all do that and there are some even slower, so computers are just slow, right? Having to click through 15 Menus to activate an often used function? Nobody ever told them there was a convenient shortcut (And since they don't know it and thus never use it, it will get removed in the next version, hooray for telemetry!)

This also extends to programmers more and more. Processing 2000 Records takes 20 seconds? That's good! Have you seen this other app! We are fast! That UI is crap! No matter, I will never use it, lets install complexopensourcetoolnotfornoobs.

One difference the article also points out is that in the early days of computing, many of these today revered (or sadly forgotten) hackers actually wanted to bring computing power to the masses. They were not satisfied with dumbing it down or building it only for themselves. We need more of this sentiment today. If every developer would use the software they build, it surely would be much more performant, easier to use and powerful under the hood.

While it may seem impossible sometimes to get all these at once, we should always strive for better computing and ease of use != dumbing down!

There is always a lot of org-mode promotion on here when the topic is interactive notebooks. And I get it, people love it and it solved many of the problems other systems have. But org-mode users need to understand that the one thing holding org-mode back is simply emacs. I know you probably all love it, but everyone else is not interested in breaking of their fingers by learning obscure key command chains just to use org-mode. Sorry, but that is just the reality. If someone can implement the majority of org-mode in a better editor, there might be more users interested. But as it stands, it's just to much of a hassle.

The one thing I really dislike about this is the omission of a headphone jack. And I really wonder why there is none.

Apart from that (and eink, but who offers that?) this looks to be my dream device. And it runs Plan 9 for gods sake!

In addition to that, as someone who has worked in web for quite a while I also find it quite baffling that the to me mostly artificial separation of frontend and backend devs has led to programmers who can only do one of them.

Sure, everyone has a specialty, but writing frontend and knowing not one line of SQL or how to structure a database or working in the backend but not knowing a bit of HTML or CSS or how to configure a web server, these examples just seem like bad programmers?

You don't need to know everything, but surely you should know enough the have an idea of the system as a whole? How can you avoid doing shoddy work otherwise?

I would still argue it didn't. It worked alright and created long lasting communities that still miss the platform. Of course, it did not kill facebook, but that seemed always like a laughable short term goal.

Everything else was just googles M.O., wasn't it? Create new shiny platform, rebuild everything around it, annoying a lot of people but also creating some value for those that opt in. Than never address the issues that arise, change strategy midway and remove all integrations, but maybe create new ones when you do the inescapable surface-level redesign that only creates more issues than addressing existing ones (Because now there is a new "strategy"). Repeat until product is canceled.

Please do! I wanted to do something similar a few years ago and was shocked that I couldm't find any information on how to.

Of course I am also an amateur when it comes to this stuff, but it seemed to me a use case that could be common with SBCs like the raspberry pi and I was sad to not find an easy to follow write-up.

You are right and i should not even have mentioned him, because i don't support him (though i wanted to once) and so really have no grounds to complain. I let my annoyance get the better of me and it seems just mean now when i reread it.

It also just undermines my skepticism and dislike of the podcasts 2.0 thing, which should have been my main point.

I really dislike this whole initiative and much prefer the patreon model.

One reason of course might be that i am listening to Jupiter Broadcast and Chris pushes this stuff hard, really annoying me with the constant talk about lightning and especially the boosts, which seem to take over half the show, because somehow he seems not to realize that the problem he has in getting regular supporters is the insane price he asks (last i looked about $2,50 per episode), but likes to give everyone several minutes of the show who sent him 20 cents.

But I think my misgivings go further than that and i am especially concerned about this taking over podcasts or even open source, because while I do understand that people need to eat, I think these two ecosystems especially thrive because so many people contribute to them without profit being their first motive. I would not ask people to do work for free, but I often find that that when profit comes into it, quality starts to suffer and ideals get lost.

Sure, lightning is in some ways similar to patreon etc. because it might still be user financed, but I feel the unpredictability of getting funds, the more attention focused model, will have similar effects on creators than other platforms with similar models do and I am mostly not fond of this.

I always saw it as a bug tbh, but reading drew's footnote on that right now, I am starting to think you and he are right!

But I think it is more complicated, because it also makes clear that IRC is not an ideal medium for many forms of messaging. It works great for free for all chat, where the discussion happens right now. But it is not great for group chats with friends or when information needs to be disseminated across a community, but I have both of these seen used often.

It just not asynchronous, while at the same time, because of the constant open connection, also not great to use on the go.

It's somehow nice to have a medium for "right here and now", but it sucks to not be able to answer a question or miss important conversation because you didn't look for 10 minutes.

Of course, multi-tier conversation options have helped traditionally, but I think that's also why i never bothered with IRC much, because it was always 3 dozen people idling who always seemed to burst in conversation once you got disconnected.

I actually don't think an e-paper Laptop is a viable product. I totally want an e-paper computer, but just linux or windows on an e-paper screen sounds dreadful.

The problem with this kind of device is not so much the hardware but software. I think this is the reason we don't see many of these kind of devices and why we probably will not get them anytime soon. Software is a big hurdle these days and it makes quite a few specialized devices like tablets or small notebooks really hard to innovate on for small companies. You can build them, but they can't unfold their full potential if they just cram software made for other devices in a smaller form factor.

I think a usable e-paper computer would probably need to start at an ereader or a traditional pda and expand from there. Not to give up general purpose computing, which I think would actually be very important and is what hampers devices like the remarkable, but to have a solid foundation of software that works great on that kind of device and makes it useful even to casual users. That would then be a great base to expand on to get a good suite of applications and develop a more broadly useful e-paper OS/UI.

I have been wondering if something like https://gtoolkit.com/ would fit the bill, though I have to admit I find it a bit hard to grok. But having a form of interactive notebook running as an OS on a simple device could be a really powerful computing experience.

There have been in few in the last years. Here are two from the top of my head. https://alternativebit.fr/posts/ultimate-writer/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/02/14/the-spudwrite-single-pu...

Also, you might like to check out the pomera https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/digital-memo-pomera-dm3...

I got similar feelings as the OP though. It's not just about notifications popping up or having a browser at hand. I feel the epaper display puts me in a different frame of mind. A "Not sitting at the computer" state, in which I think differently. So I always wondered if writing on an epaper display would not feel entirely different than looking at an empty page in a word processor. I certainly feel the difference when reading a book an my ereader vs. my phone/tablet.

I am pretty sure it's inspired by the pdp-1. There is a picture showing Spacewar. For reference, the original: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar!