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Thing is, in the ‘olden days’, the only thing you could do with a home computer was tinker - the job of a computer was to be a computer but little else. And the

Thing is, in the ‘olden days’, the only thing you could do with a home computer was tinker - the job of a computer was to be a computer but little else. And the number of people interested in doing that was small. Today, the job of a computer is everything. Computers are in everything and do everything. They are our interface to the world. Their value is what they enable - writing, tax returns, video consumption, gaming and everything else, not the fact they’re a ‘computer’. For those of us who want a computer to tinker with, we’ve never had it so good. There’s so many more options than there’s ever been for hackable tech. Just because most people don’t want to do that doesn’t mean they’re wrong, it just means they have different priorities. I love the fact I don’t have to muck about with my iPhone to get it to work just as much as I love mucking about with my raspberry pi to get it to work.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Terretta 6y ago
Look at cars, consider both tinkering and “right to repair, but with no guarantee on know-how”.
higerordermap 6y ago
But most tinkering journeys do not start with dedicated hardware. They start with hardware intended for something else, generally on a quest to solve some problem or do something cool..
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  The evolution of graphics cards into CUDA machines for machine learning applications is one example of this phenomenon.
wayneftw 6y ago
> I love the fact I don’t have to muck about with my iPhone to get it to work... Imagine being able to quickly and easily add your own custom programs to your iPhone without asking anyone's permission though? Also, what if - as the owner of that device - you had full control over it's capabilities like you do with a desktop computer? Adding these abilities certainly would not be the downfall of phone ecosystems as we know them. People that want convenience wouldn't leave their app store. The fact that they are our interface to the world is exactly the reason why we need to take control of them away from the Apple/Google oligarchy. People need to stop comparing these devices to gaming consoles, which don't impact the world even a fraction as much as smartphones, when we're talking about making new rules for running smartphone platforms.
- randcraw 6y ago
  I would love to fully access the data on my phone. But of course it would also introduce security holes currently unimagined. Maybe someone can devise a secure sandbox model to enable this, but after Java's failure to resolve this problem, I'm not holding my breath.
  - mikestew 6y ago
    But of course it would also introduce security holes currently unimagined I would argue that at least some of those holes were indeed imagined, that’s why iOS works the way it does and not the way parent would like.
    - EvanAnderson 6y ago
      iOS works the way it does to make money for Apple. First it was to appease carriers to enable the devices to exist. Then it was to appease publishers to get content on the devices. Now it's to make that sweet, sweet app store commission. That there are benefits for device owners who are willing to give up their freedom is a happy accident.
      - mindslight 6y ago
        Note that every stage you have described has been called "security". Security is inherently a multi-perspective endeavour, and the word gets abused by powerful entities looking to preserve their own security, likely at the expense of your own (eg the TSA). I do agree that end users receive benefits from Apple's security, but to insist that explains the whole story is hopelessly ignorant.
  - mikewarot 6y ago
    Why is giving you a person, access to all of your data a problem? The root cause is the complete lack of facilities to quickly and simply delegate capabilities to applications. There is no way to tell the OS, give this file to this application. Instead of trusting nothing, and providing the PowerBox facility to allow the user to do this, all the popular OSs just trust the applications with everything that the user has permissions to access, by default. --- If you want to pay for a purchase at a store with cash, you carry a number of units of currency... and you only give the clerk the appropriate amount, and you can count the change to verify the transaction is correct. Giving you a person, access to your cash is a solved problem. 8) There is no equivalent way to work with an application on mainstream OSs. This is collective insanity, which I've been calling out for more than a decade.
colllectorof 6y ago
This is fake insight. Most people I know who are any good at programming had started learning about it by modifying something either on their own computers (pre-2000) or on the web (post 2000). They took things they found interesting or useful and somehow introspected and changed them. Good chunks of skills gained by that were transferable to professional environment. Today, this is not how people get into tech. There is an ever increasing gap between technologies used for professional computing and things that are observable and modifiable by a normal person out there. Curiosity and experimentation have been replaced by (appropriately named) coding bootcamps.
- CryptoGhost 6y ago
  You are talking about a barrier to entry (in the sense that it used to be easier) for a person who is new to general purpose computing to get on boarded while the person you are replying to is talking about the opportunity increase in the number of systems you can with work with presently.
  - novok 6y ago
    I think it's actually easier today, because of the large amount of free well made educational resources out there, stack overflow, raspberry pi, instant IDEs from just typing in a URL, scriptable and popular online games like roblox and more. While in the past you had books you had to buy and if you were lucky, some help on IRC and basic on your computer, that you were encouraged to use to get some basic games on your computer if you were a gen X kid.
    - mattkevan 6y ago
      It’s definitely easier today. As a kid I got into programming in basic on my Acorn Archimedes because I had a book on basic. However I never got further than that because I didn’t have access to any more advanced programming books. Now, all the information about it everything is available within a few minutes of searching.
- milesvp 6y ago
EvanAnderson 6y ago
I love the fact I don’t have to muck about with my iPhone to get it to work ... I have changes I want to make to my iPhone. Some of them would be as easy as adding a trigger to an SQLite datbase that a stock "app" uses. I'm not "allowed" to. I don't think companies should be legally permitted to take away the rights of an owner to do what they please with their own property. Locked bootloaders, e-fuses, crypto keys buried inside hardware, etc, should all be able to be overridden by a physical interlock. (Like Google did with Chromebooks, for example.) Flip that switch and you lose the "walled garden". Okay. So be it. No running software that "trusts" my device (which is, arguably, misplaced trust anyway). No "app store" for me. I can live with that. It's my device and my choice to make. I get to make the call to give up "security" for freedom. It's morally wrong to take away the ability of the owner to do what they wish with their devices. It should be illegal too.
- ravi-delia 6y ago
  Believe me, in general I'm with you. But at the end of the day you just don't have to buy an iphone. Get an android device, flash it with Linux, buy a pinephone, do whatever you want! But Apple doesn't sell tinker's devices, they sell a walled garden. Why force them to spend even 10 seconds of effort on something that isn't their business, when there are plenty of other options? There's a reason I don't have any Apple device: they don't make anything that I want. It seems pretty pointless to mandate that all companies must sell products that I like.
  - EvanAnderson 6y ago
    Why force them to spend even 10 seconds of effort on something that isn't their business... The law should make it "their business". I don't believe it should be possible to waive your right to legally do what you want with your property. (I have similar feelings about restrictive covenants in the conveyance of real property, for example.) Since we're editing here: It seems pretty pointless to mandate that all companies must sell products that I like. We mandate lots of consumer protections. This seems no different to me.
    - 6y ago
DerekL 6y ago
I'm confused. What does this comment have to do with the article?
mikewarot 6y ago
>For those of us who want a computer to tinker with, we’ve never had it so good. I disagree to an extent. While the hardware is much, MUCH faster, efficient, reliable.. it isn't something we can tinker with anymore. Would you feel safe picking up a random USB drive and running the programs on it? A huge chunk of the fun of early PCs is gone. You can't just find new stuff and try it out to see how well it works. If its open source, you get dependency hell, if it works at all. Plus there could be any number of backdoors or bugs in it waiting to subvert your system. Plus the ever present threat of having all of your passwords and/or data exfiltrated to who-knows-where. In the days of 2 floppy disk machines, none of this was a worry.
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  > Would you feel safe picking up a random USB drive and running the programs on it? Sure, why not? Just don't run it on the same computer that you access your sensitive data on. Given that you can buy a fully functional and tinker-friendly computer for like 20 bucks, this seems like a pretty straightforward solution.
  - mikewarot 6y ago
    You could spend $20, but then never trust that computer again... it gets expensive, even at $20/pop... when it used to be the time to copy a floppy. It really isn't the same. You always have to worry these days. It's similar to the fact that going into a crowd was no big deal in the past, but now it is.
    - boring_twenties 6y ago
      Why $20/pop? Just reuse the same untrusted computer for all untrusted things? Not to mention, sticking random floppies in your main computer was never exactly safe to begin with. The heydey of the Michaelangelo virus was 1991, if memory serves.
      - mikewarot 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Terretta 6y ago

Look at cars, consider both tinkering and “right to repair, but with no guarantee on know-how”.

higerordermap 6y ago

But most tinkering journeys do not start with dedicated hardware. They start with hardware intended for something else, generally on a quest to solve some problem or do something cool..

shadowgovt 6y ago
The evolution of graphics cards into CUDA machines for machine learning applications is one example of this phenomenon.

wayneftw 6y ago

> I love the fact I don’t have to muck about with my iPhone to get it to work... Imagine being able to quickly and easily add your own custom programs to your iPhone without asking anyone's permission though? Also, what if - as the owner of that device - you had full control over it's capabilities like you do with a desktop computer? Adding these abilities certainly would not be the downfall of phone ecosystems as we know them. People that want convenience wouldn't leave their app store. The fact that they are our interface to the world is exactly the reason why we need to take control of them away from the Apple/Google oligarchy. People need to stop comparing these devices to gaming consoles, which don't impact the world even a fraction as much as smartphones, when we're talking about making new rules for running smartphone platforms.

randcraw 6y ago
I would love to fully access the data on my phone. But of course it would also introduce security holes currently unimagined. Maybe someone can devise a secure sandbox model to enable this, but after Java's failure to resolve this problem, I'm not holding my breath.
- mikestew 6y ago
  But of course it would also introduce security holes currently unimagined I would argue that at least some of those holes were indeed imagined, that’s why iOS works the way it does and not the way parent would like.
  - EvanAnderson 6y ago
    iOS works the way it does to make money for Apple. First it was to appease carriers to enable the devices to exist. Then it was to appease publishers to get content on the devices. Now it's to make that sweet, sweet app store commission. That there are benefits for device owners who are willing to give up their freedom is a happy accident.
    - mindslight 6y ago
      Note that every stage you have described has been called "security". Security is inherently a multi-perspective endeavour, and the word gets abused by powerful entities looking to preserve their own security, likely at the expense of your own (eg the TSA). I do agree that end users receive benefits from Apple's security, but to insist that explains the whole story is hopelessly ignorant.
- mikewarot 6y ago
  Why is giving you a person, access to all of your data a problem? The root cause is the complete lack of facilities to quickly and simply delegate capabilities to applications. There is no way to tell the OS, give this file to this application. Instead of trusting nothing, and providing the PowerBox facility to allow the user to do this, all the popular OSs just trust the applications with everything that the user has permissions to access, by default. --- If you want to pay for a purchase at a store with cash, you carry a number of units of currency... and you only give the clerk the appropriate amount, and you can count the change to verify the transaction is correct. Giving you a person, access to your cash is a solved problem. 8) There is no equivalent way to work with an application on mainstream OSs. This is collective insanity, which I've been calling out for more than a decade.

colllectorof 6y ago

This is fake insight. Most people I know who are any good at programming had started learning about it by modifying something either on their own computers (pre-2000) or on the web (post 2000). They took things they found interesting or useful and somehow introspected and changed them. Good chunks of skills gained by that were transferable to professional environment. Today, this is not how people get into tech. There is an ever increasing gap between technologies used for professional computing and things that are observable and modifiable by a normal person out there. Curiosity and experimentation have been replaced by (appropriately named) coding bootcamps.

CryptoGhost 6y ago
You are talking about a barrier to entry (in the sense that it used to be easier) for a person who is new to general purpose computing to get on boarded while the person you are replying to is talking about the opportunity increase in the number of systems you can with work with presently.
- novok 6y ago
  I think it's actually easier today, because of the large amount of free well made educational resources out there, stack overflow, raspberry pi, instant IDEs from just typing in a URL, scriptable and popular online games like roblox and more. While in the past you had books you had to buy and if you were lucky, some help on IRC and basic on your computer, that you were encouraged to use to get some basic games on your computer if you were a gen X kid.
  - mattkevan 6y ago
    It’s definitely easier today. As a kid I got into programming in basic on my Acorn Archimedes because I had a book on basic. However I never got further than that because I didn’t have access to any more advanced programming books. Now, all the information about it everything is available within a few minutes of searching.
milesvp 6y ago

EvanAnderson 6y ago

I love the fact I don’t have to muck about with my iPhone to get it to work ... I have changes I want to make to my iPhone. Some of them would be as easy as adding a trigger to an SQLite datbase that a stock "app" uses. I'm not "allowed" to. I don't think companies should be legally permitted to take away the rights of an owner to do what they please with their own property. Locked bootloaders, e-fuses, crypto keys buried inside hardware, etc, should all be able to be overridden by a physical interlock. (Like Google did with Chromebooks, for example.) Flip that switch and you lose the "walled garden". Okay. So be it. No running software that "trusts" my device (which is, arguably, misplaced trust anyway). No "app store" for me. I can live with that. It's my device and my choice to make. I get to make the call to give up "security" for freedom. It's morally wrong to take away the ability of the owner to do what they wish with their devices. It should be illegal too.

ravi-delia 6y ago
Believe me, in general I'm with you. But at the end of the day you just don't have to buy an iphone. Get an android device, flash it with Linux, buy a pinephone, do whatever you want! But Apple doesn't sell tinker's devices, they sell a walled garden. Why force them to spend even 10 seconds of effort on something that isn't their business, when there are plenty of other options? There's a reason I don't have any Apple device: they don't make anything that I want. It seems pretty pointless to mandate that all companies must sell products that I like.
- EvanAnderson 6y ago
  Why force them to spend even 10 seconds of effort on something that isn't their business... The law should make it "their business". I don't believe it should be possible to waive your right to legally do what you want with your property. (I have similar feelings about restrictive covenants in the conveyance of real property, for example.) Since we're editing here: It seems pretty pointless to mandate that all companies must sell products that I like. We mandate lots of consumer protections. This seems no different to me.
  - 6y ago

DerekL 6y ago

I'm confused. What does this comment have to do with the article?

mikewarot 6y ago

>For those of us who want a computer to tinker with, we’ve never had it so good. I disagree to an extent. While the hardware is much, MUCH faster, efficient, reliable.. it isn't something we can tinker with anymore. Would you feel safe picking up a random USB drive and running the programs on it? A huge chunk of the fun of early PCs is gone. You can't just find new stuff and try it out to see how well it works. If its open source, you get dependency hell, if it works at all. Plus there could be any number of backdoors or bugs in it waiting to subvert your system. Plus the ever present threat of having all of your passwords and/or data exfiltrated to who-knows-where. In the days of 2 floppy disk machines, none of this was a worry.

boring_twenties 6y ago
> Would you feel safe picking up a random USB drive and running the programs on it? Sure, why not? Just don't run it on the same computer that you access your sensitive data on. Given that you can buy a fully functional and tinker-friendly computer for like 20 bucks, this seems like a pretty straightforward solution.
- mikewarot 6y ago
  You could spend $20, but then never trust that computer again... it gets expensive, even at $20/pop... when it used to be the time to copy a floppy. It really isn't the same. You always have to worry these days. It's similar to the fact that going into a crowd was no big deal in the past, but now it is.
  - boring_twenties 6y ago
    Why $20/pop? Just reuse the same untrusted computer for all untrusted things? Not to mention, sticking random floppies in your main computer was never exactly safe to begin with. The heydey of the Michaelangelo virus was 1991, if memory serves.
    - mikewarot 6y ago