4 ms·

Each year the internet and its services are less and less for hackers and more and more for the general public. This is reflected in how everything is designed.

by hedgew 8y ago

Each year the internet and its services are less and less for hackers and more and more for the general public. This is reflected in how everything is designed. The average person has totally different needs and usage patterns than power users. If you want to avoid this phenomena, where the services you use slowly degrade and lose features, favor products that specifically target power users. Products for the general population, like Android, Youtube, and Windows, will over time degrade more and more towards some lowest common denominators.

pelario 8y ago
Nice thought, but what would be the alternatives for Android, Gmail, GMaps ?
- 2RTZZSro 8y ago
  Alternative for Android? puri.sm phone. DIY rpi phone. Gmail? Fastmail. GMaps? OpenStreetMaps/OsmAnd
  - taneq 8y ago
    LineageOS is pretty good, I've been using it since the Cyanogen/Lineage split.
  - chatmasta 8y ago
    A DIY RPI phone? Is that a serious suggestion? Is anyone actually doing this? And what’s the point if the baseband is not open?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - r3bl 8y ago
    Purism phone still doesn't exist. You can't buy it. It annoys the fuck out of me when someone says that a phone that still doesn't exist and isn't available for purchase is mentioned as an "alternative". It will become an alternative once it's out. Until such time comes, stop mentioning it when discussing alternatives.
- sterlind 8y ago
  For example, my setup: Gmail: any email service Android: root it, use a custom launcher and utility apps. GMaps: Waze (lets you provide your own speech samples, even) You don't have to secede from these whole platforms - just extend around them and reach into them.
  - samstave 8y ago
    Pffft You’re examples: Google Google Google. Your examples are all fucking google.
    - golergka 8y ago
      So? These are still different products, even if they happen to be acquired by the same company.
    - sterlind 8y ago
      Could you explain how "any email service" means Google? Is ProtonMail a Google service? OP's question was about how power users can keep UX control while services degrade their features to cater to average users. That's what I care about, not ideological purity in my software stack. People like you are the tech equivalents of the militant vegan.
SuperGent 8y ago
So why can't we have the option of using 'power user' interfaces? Also I doubt that Youtube has ever been for powerusers..
- coldtea 8y ago
  >So why can't we have the option of using 'power user' interfaces? Because that means more money and effort spend by the vendor to maintain 2 sets of interfaces (and extra flags and features they could just cut entirely), and that for the benefit of a tiny sliver of its user base, and the worst and most picky at that.
- y_molodtsov 8y ago
  Power uses can utilize native clients, which they actually do.
gepi79 8y ago
"The average person has totally different needs and usage patterns than power users." There is no average person. Different person have different use cases and preferences. No person wants known liked things to be removed or made less good. Apple devices are meant for Apple power users. I use Windows and Linux (KDE) and I am uncomfortable and constraint on Mac OS. There is a reason why people spend (or spent) hours to discover and learn even their phone or TV software.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >There is no average person. Different person have different use cases and preferences Even so, most people are more alike than different.
- golergka 8y ago
  > No person wants known liked things to be removed or made less good. Have you missed dozes of HN posts and threads about git being overcomplicated and overengineered? A lot of software engineers would love for git to remove a lot of features they don't use because they find it too complex. (For the record, I personally don't agree with them at all, but it is a very popular opinion). Hell, many routinely rebase and squash commits for the sake of simplicity, throwing out a truthful development history.
coldtea 8y ago
>Products for the general population, like Android, Youtube, and Windows, will over time degrade more and more towards some lowest common denominators. There's a problem with this theory though, that the utility of some of these programs is in how many users (and thus content, etc) they have So we can't really "favor products that specifically target power users" as YouTube or Google Maps alternatives -- or, rather, we could, but they'd be weaker in the polish, content, user base department (e.g. Vimeo or some advanced Maps platform)
Applejinx 8y ago
You're assuming changes have any utility towards people in general. There are times changes will be made because they benefit the service provider at the expense of the user, because the service provider's interests are not at all the same thing as the user's interests. I realize it's axiomatic that 'to serve the customer is self-evidently the best thing for the service provider, because capitalism', but by now I think that is obviously marketing spin to cover actions in self-interest… no matter who claims it. Starkly, obviously false.
- roenxi 8y ago
  Customer: a person who buys goods or services from a shop or business. Gmail users are clearly not customers, they are not paying anything for it. Your cynicism against capitalism is unwarranted in this case.
rusk 8y ago
less and less for hackers and more and more for the general public I think this is the "excuse" but to me it seems like it's as much about "locking down" as "dumbing down". History moves in cycles [0] and I'm seeing something like how we transitioned from Home Computers to game consoles in the mid 90s. Hackers are experts at getting value out of equipment that the manufacturers never expected, and this is what you want with a nascent technology, to help build a market. But as things mature, as a business you want to lock down more and more of this creative potential for yourself and lock in the revenue. We've seen it with music like this: Vinyl (locked down) -> tapes (hackable) -> CDs (locked down) -> CD Writers -> MP3s (hackable) -> Streaming (locked down) -> ... (tapes? [1]) We've seen it with home computing like this: Pong & Atari -> Commodore, Spectrum, Apple II -> NES, Master System -> Amiga, Atari ST -> SNES, Genesis -> PC -> Playstation -> The Apple Renaissance -> The Ripened Apple Even on a smaller scale I can see Apple's pivot from "Rip, Mix, Burn" [2] to doing away with personal music altogether over the course of 10 years [3] Or my PS4 where I'm more and more likely to just download a game now than go out to the shops and buy a disc. At each stage there is a trade-off. You get a slightly more polished product, but you lose a certain degree of agency over it. I guess it's cyclical because the "locking down" goes a little too far and then people loses interest and then you need to bring in the hackers again to jump start the community once more. I'm sure there's some tie in with the innovators dilemma [4] I think the only popular industry I can think of that has resisted broad-scale hacking is the movie industry. I can only speculate that the scale, and political importance meant they had to always stay ahead of the curve. [0] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-comi... [1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/06/cassette-tapes-are-back-kind-of/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/06/cassette-tapes-are-back-ki... [2] https://www.macworld.com/article/2934175/think-retro-rip-rip-mix-burn.html https://www.macworld.com/article/2934175/think-retro-rip-rip... [3] https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/04/06/apple-shutting-itunes-music-downloads/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/04/06/apple-shutting-i... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma
aero-002 8y ago
fucking normies

by hedgew 8y ago

pelario 8y ago

Nice thought, but what would be the alternatives for Android, Gmail, GMaps ?

2RTZZSro 8y ago
Alternative for Android? puri.sm phone. DIY rpi phone. Gmail? Fastmail. GMaps? OpenStreetMaps/OsmAnd
- taneq 8y ago
  LineageOS is pretty good, I've been using it since the Cyanogen/Lineage split.
- chatmasta 8y ago
  A DIY RPI phone? Is that a serious suggestion? Is anyone actually doing this? And what’s the point if the baseband is not open?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- r3bl 8y ago
  Purism phone still doesn't exist. You can't buy it. It annoys the fuck out of me when someone says that a phone that still doesn't exist and isn't available for purchase is mentioned as an "alternative". It will become an alternative once it's out. Until such time comes, stop mentioning it when discussing alternatives.
sterlind 8y ago
For example, my setup: Gmail: any email service Android: root it, use a custom launcher and utility apps. GMaps: Waze (lets you provide your own speech samples, even) You don't have to secede from these whole platforms - just extend around them and reach into them.
- samstave 8y ago
  Pffft You’re examples: Google Google Google. Your examples are all fucking google.
  - golergka 8y ago
    So? These are still different products, even if they happen to be acquired by the same company.
  - sterlind 8y ago
    Could you explain how "any email service" means Google? Is ProtonMail a Google service? OP's question was about how power users can keep UX control while services degrade their features to cater to average users. That's what I care about, not ideological purity in my software stack. People like you are the tech equivalents of the militant vegan.

SuperGent 8y ago

So why can't we have the option of using 'power user' interfaces? Also I doubt that Youtube has ever been for powerusers..

coldtea 8y ago
>So why can't we have the option of using 'power user' interfaces? Because that means more money and effort spend by the vendor to maintain 2 sets of interfaces (and extra flags and features they could just cut entirely), and that for the benefit of a tiny sliver of its user base, and the worst and most picky at that.
y_molodtsov 8y ago
Power uses can utilize native clients, which they actually do.

gepi79 8y ago

"The average person has totally different needs and usage patterns than power users." There is no average person. Different person have different use cases and preferences. No person wants known liked things to be removed or made less good. Apple devices are meant for Apple power users. I use Windows and Linux (KDE) and I am uncomfortable and constraint on Mac OS. There is a reason why people spend (or spent) hours to discover and learn even their phone or TV software.

coldtea 8y ago
>There is no average person. Different person have different use cases and preferences Even so, most people are more alike than different.
golergka 8y ago
> No person wants known liked things to be removed or made less good. Have you missed dozes of HN posts and threads about git being overcomplicated and overengineered? A lot of software engineers would love for git to remove a lot of features they don't use because they find it too complex. (For the record, I personally don't agree with them at all, but it is a very popular opinion). Hell, many routinely rebase and squash commits for the sake of simplicity, throwing out a truthful development history.

coldtea 8y ago

>Products for the general population, like Android, Youtube, and Windows, will over time degrade more and more towards some lowest common denominators. There's a problem with this theory though, that the utility of some of these programs is in how many users (and thus content, etc) they have So we can't really "favor products that specifically target power users" as YouTube or Google Maps alternatives -- or, rather, we could, but they'd be weaker in the polish, content, user base department (e.g. Vimeo or some advanced Maps platform)

Applejinx 8y ago

You're assuming changes have any utility towards people in general. There are times changes will be made because they benefit the service provider at the expense of the user, because the service provider's interests are not at all the same thing as the user's interests. I realize it's axiomatic that 'to serve the customer is self-evidently the best thing for the service provider, because capitalism', but by now I think that is obviously marketing spin to cover actions in self-interest… no matter who claims it. Starkly, obviously false.

roenxi 8y ago
Customer: a person who buys goods or services from a shop or business. Gmail users are clearly not customers, they are not paying anything for it. Your cynicism against capitalism is unwarranted in this case.

rusk 8y ago

less and less for hackers and more and more for the general public I think this is the "excuse" but to me it seems like it's as much about "locking down" as "dumbing down". History moves in cycles [0] and I'm seeing something like how we transitioned from Home Computers to game consoles in the mid 90s. Hackers are experts at getting value out of equipment that the manufacturers never expected, and this is what you want with a nascent technology, to help build a market. But as things mature, as a business you want to lock down more and more of this creative potential for yourself and lock in the revenue. We've seen it with music like this: Vinyl (locked down) -> tapes (hackable) -> CDs (locked down) -> CD Writers -> MP3s (hackable) -> Streaming (locked down) -> ... (tapes? [1]) We've seen it with home computing like this: Pong & Atari -> Commodore, Spectrum, Apple II -> NES, Master System -> Amiga, Atari ST -> SNES, Genesis -> PC -> Playstation -> The Apple Renaissance -> The Ripened Apple Even on a smaller scale I can see Apple's pivot from "Rip, Mix, Burn" [2] to doing away with personal music altogether over the course of 10 years [3] Or my PS4 where I'm more and more likely to just download a game now than go out to the shops and buy a disc. At each stage there is a trade-off. You get a slightly more polished product, but you lose a certain degree of agency over it. I guess it's cyclical because the "locking down" goes a little too far and then people loses interest and then you need to bring in the hackers again to jump start the community once more. I'm sure there's some tie in with the innovators dilemma [4] I think the only popular industry I can think of that has resisted broad-scale hacking is the movie industry. I can only speculate that the scale, and political importance meant they had to always stay ahead of the curve. [0] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-comi... [1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/06/cassette-tapes-are-back-kind-of/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/06/cassette-tapes-are-back-ki... [2] https://www.macworld.com/article/2934175/think-retro-rip-rip-mix-burn.html https://www.macworld.com/article/2934175/think-retro-rip-rip... [3] https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/04/06/apple-shutting-itunes-music-downloads/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/04/06/apple-shutting-i... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma

aero-002 8y ago

fucking normies