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This is the kind of comment dictators love. Crushed spirits. It's a cold, emotionless, frank extrapolation to a future without hope. You've already given up. Ma

This is the kind of comment dictators love. Crushed spirits. It's a cold, emotionless, frank extrapolation to a future without hope. You've already given up. Maybe you can drag a few more down with you.

sneak 6y ago
My comment didn't suggest if this future is good or bad, or if I am pleased or dismayed by the state of affairs. I stuck to the facts and my own predictions about future facts and left my emotional opinions out of it. Perhaps these sort of closed systems are crushing to you, as you have correctly assumed that they are to me. They aren't to most people: the iPhone is wildly popular. Many people will be very happy to get new M1 macs, xboxes, and iPhones this christmas. Most people prefer the conveniences of central management, having never personally experienced the terrifying and violent failure modes of ubiquitous surveillance and censorship.
- fartcannon 6y ago
  I believe most people like what they're told to like. I think a small number of taste makers can change the future drastically and you never know how your words will influence people. If you ever want it to be different, you and I and everyone who cares have to simply say that it is different. If you want it to be different, you have to ignore them and get people jazzed about a more open future. Eventually one of us will either become famous enough for us to do something about it, or inspire someone else.
- maccard 6y ago
  > Most people prefer the conveniences of central management To be fair, it's a pretty broad stretch to compare buying an xbox to "terrifying and violent failure modes of ubiquitous surveillance and censorship". The console experience is easy to understand for non-technical folk, is vertically integrated (you buy a headset with the correct label and you can voice chat with your friends, you know you have the prerequisite account to play X game on your platform), is fully usable with a controller and designed from the ground up for a tv. The gaming PC experience is... far worse. If you buy a $1000 gaming PC, you're going to need to install steam/epic/gog/xbox/origin/ea to play the top 5 games of the year, deal with awful audio issues, masses of account systems with varying levels of "party" support, hardware/driver incompatibilities, background software issues (antivirus, etc), varied levels of online play/party support, mixed support for controller/kbm, the list goes on. Networking issues? Hope you don't accidentally have a double NAT, or you might run into [0]. That's before touching on the actual open way of running proton on linux (You have an Nvidia card? tough. Have an AMD card? that's great, just compile your own mesa). It's tempting to distill this down to "convenience", but it's much more than that. For many people (including myself, a professional programmer) that convenience is the difference between gaming being a way I want to spend my time or not. I'm not choosing between an open and closed device, I'm choosing between a closed device or no device. [0] https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/hardware-network/connect-network/troubleshoot-party-chat https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/hardware-network/connect... (disclaimer: I work for Epic, we have skin in this, but this is my own personal experience, and I don't work on the store)
  - fartcannon 6y ago
    I would prefer folks like yourself choose no device.
  - sneak 6y ago
    I'm comparing the future of all commonly available computing devices (phones, PCs, consoles, et c) following the xbox model to terrifying and violent failure modes of ubiquitous surveillance and censorship. When all systems available follow only these cryptographically enforced rules, your tools will make it impossible for you to do basic human life tasks without being censored and surveilled. I encourage you to study what happens to societies that go through that.

sneak 6y ago

My comment didn't suggest if this future is good or bad, or if I am pleased or dismayed by the state of affairs. I stuck to the facts and my own predictions about future facts and left my emotional opinions out of it. Perhaps these sort of closed systems are crushing to you, as you have correctly assumed that they are to me. They aren't to most people: the iPhone is wildly popular. Many people will be very happy to get new M1 macs, xboxes, and iPhones this christmas. Most people prefer the conveniences of central management, having never personally experienced the terrifying and violent failure modes of ubiquitous surveillance and censorship.

fartcannon 6y ago
I believe most people like what they're told to like. I think a small number of taste makers can change the future drastically and you never know how your words will influence people. If you ever want it to be different, you and I and everyone who cares have to simply say that it is different. If you want it to be different, you have to ignore them and get people jazzed about a more open future. Eventually one of us will either become famous enough for us to do something about it, or inspire someone else.
maccard 6y ago
> Most people prefer the conveniences of central management To be fair, it's a pretty broad stretch to compare buying an xbox to "terrifying and violent failure modes of ubiquitous surveillance and censorship". The console experience is easy to understand for non-technical folk, is vertically integrated (you buy a headset with the correct label and you can voice chat with your friends, you know you have the prerequisite account to play X game on your platform), is fully usable with a controller and designed from the ground up for a tv. The gaming PC experience is... far worse. If you buy a $1000 gaming PC, you're going to need to install steam/epic/gog/xbox/origin/ea to play the top 5 games of the year, deal with awful audio issues, masses of account systems with varying levels of "party" support, hardware/driver incompatibilities, background software issues (antivirus, etc), varied levels of online play/party support, mixed support for controller/kbm, the list goes on. Networking issues? Hope you don't accidentally have a double NAT, or you might run into [0]. That's before touching on the actual open way of running proton on linux (You have an Nvidia card? tough. Have an AMD card? that's great, just compile your own mesa). It's tempting to distill this down to "convenience", but it's much more than that. For many people (including myself, a professional programmer) that convenience is the difference between gaming being a way I want to spend my time or not. I'm not choosing between an open and closed device, I'm choosing between a closed device or no device. [0] https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/hardware-network/connect-network/troubleshoot-party-chat https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/hardware-network/connect... (disclaimer: I work for Epic, we have skin in this, but this is my own personal experience, and I don't work on the store)
- fartcannon 6y ago
  I would prefer folks like yourself choose no device.
- sneak 6y ago
  I'm comparing the future of all commonly available computing devices (phones, PCs, consoles, et c) following the xbox model to terrifying and violent failure modes of ubiquitous surveillance and censorship. When all systems available follow only these cryptographically enforced rules, your tools will make it impossible for you to do basic human life tasks without being censored and surveilled. I encourage you to study what happens to societies that go through that.