6 ms·

The Lone Coder

105 points by weare138 6y ago

karmakaze 6y ago
Not a TL;DR but if you prefer to read comments skipping the article, here are some juicy bits about supporting a web browser supporting a "fork of Mozilla Firefox for the Power Macintosh and Mac OS X Tiger PowerPC". > If you aren’t paying for the software, then please don’t be a jerk. There is a human at the other end of those complaints and unless you have a support contract, that person owes you exactly nothing. Whining is exhausting to read and “doesn’t work” reports are unavoidably depressing, disparaging or jokey comments are unkind, and making reports nastier or more insistent doesn’t make your request more important. This is true whether or not your request is reasonable or achievable, but it’s certainly more so when it isn’t. > As kindly as I can put it, not all bug reports are welcome. > And that puts undue pressure on the one guy who is pushing this specific platform forward on what is arguably its most important tool. (On top of all of this Kaiser, a medical doctor and infectious diseases expert, [...] during a pandemic, [...] who briefly hinted at this in his TenFourFox post, literally was the person who called off Coachella this year.) So in addition to maintaining a fork of Firefox he averts an explosion of COVID-19 cases from Coachella in his day job.
- bombcar 6y ago
  I think it goes beyond “free” software and should be a rule of thumb for any bug reports - be polite, be descriptive, be appreciative and don’t expect anything. It’s rare software where the “customer” whether paying or not has much influence on getting something fixed - your best bet is almost always going to be following the list above.
tux 6y ago
Said to see old project folding. Many people still use older hardware.
- justinsaccount 6y ago
  Nothing is stopping those people from running linux on the older hardware and using modern software. Personally I don't understand why people spend any amount of energy supporting abandoned proprietary closed source platforms.
  - tux 6y ago
    Because not all software works on older hardware. Simply installing linux won't help. There is limitations in older hardware, slow cpu, less memory, etc. For example try running modern firefox on slow netbook, it takes 100% of resources.
JKCalhoun 6y ago
Dug the 68k.news link in the post: http://68k.news http://68k.news Now that takes me back to an early web. I kinda like it. I got more content from scanning one screens-worth of that page than the actual Google news.
- thitcanh 6y ago
  In a honest non-secure version, just like in the old times.
johnchristopher 6y ago
> On top of all of this Kaiser, a medical doctor and infectious diseases expert, has had an immeasurably difficult job over the last year as the public health officer for an entire county during a pandemic, a position he was recently removed from after gaining a reputation of being ahead of the curve on things like requiring mask-wearing. Some people accomplishes so much, they are a hard example to follow.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hellbannedguy 6y ago
  I've noticed a lot of doctors have a Lot of hobbies, and other business adventures. That's all I'll say before I get in trouble.
  - illys 6y ago
    No reason for trouble: I notice it too. They certainly need some kind of way to get their minds away from injured people, sick children, parents with cancer, dying elderly people, devastated relatives... Keeping sanity requires some other occupations.
leonroy 6y ago
> my G5 has not been my daily driver for a good couple years; my daily driver is the Raptor Talos II So I looked up the Raptor Talos II. It's a $7k (starting price) workstation running IBM Power9 RISC based CPUs which are typically used in super computers. OOC why would someone want to use such a niche architecture for their primary workstation vs say an AMD Epyc or Intel equivalent?
- hlandau 6y ago
  The primary appeal of Raptor's products is that the firmware is completely open source. Compare this with x86, where all modern Intel and AMD systems rely on vendor-signed firmware blobs as an intrinsic part of the boot process. POWER9 has some deployment in supercomputer clusters but its primary use is in IBM servers, basically the modern descendant of IBM minicomputers. These are purchased by businesses that want to run IBM i or AIX (or Linux).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    Are there any laptops this open?
  - angrais 6y ago
    Why does the fact it being open source impact a product decision? Especially when that likely doesn't matter in practice, e.g., I doubt owners of the device are contributing to the source frequently, if ever.
    - gogopuppygogo 6y ago
      The more open source hardware we have the more innovation we can expect if the open source softens movement is any indicator. Financially supporting a nascent open source hardware movement seems like a good thing.
    - hlandau 6y ago
latte 6y ago
The website is down right now, here's the archive link if anyone is interested: http://web.archive.org/web/20210418161124/https://midrange.tedium.co/issues/the-lone-coder-505212 http://web.archive.org/web/20210418161124/https://midrange.t...
hyperpallium2 6y ago
The user-entitlement reminds me of the recent Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26847780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26847780

105 points by weare138 6y ago

Not a TL;DR but if you prefer to read comments skipping the article, here are some juicy bits about supporting a web browser supporting a "fork of Mozilla Firefox for the Power Macintosh and Mac OS X Tiger PowerPC". > If you aren’t paying for the software, then please don’t be a jerk. There is a human at the other end of those complaints and unless you have a support contract, that person owes you exactly nothing. Whining is exhausting to read and “doesn’t work” reports are unavoidably depressing, disparaging or jokey comments are unkind, and making reports nastier or more insistent doesn’t make your request more important. This is true whether or not your request is reasonable or achievable, but it’s certainly more so when it isn’t. > As kindly as I can put it, not all bug reports are welcome. > And that puts undue pressure on the one guy who is pushing this specific platform forward on what is arguably its most important tool. (On top of all of this Kaiser, a medical doctor and infectious diseases expert, [...] during a pandemic, [...] who briefly hinted at this in his TenFourFox post, literally was the person who called off Coachella this year.) So in addition to maintaining a fork of Firefox he averts an explosion of COVID-19 cases from Coachella in his day job.

bombcar 6y ago
I think it goes beyond “free” software and should be a rule of thumb for any bug reports - be polite, be descriptive, be appreciative and don’t expect anything. It’s rare software where the “customer” whether paying or not has much influence on getting something fixed - your best bet is almost always going to be following the list above.

tux 6y ago

Said to see old project folding. Many people still use older hardware.

justinsaccount 6y ago
Nothing is stopping those people from running linux on the older hardware and using modern software. Personally I don't understand why people spend any amount of energy supporting abandoned proprietary closed source platforms.
- tux 6y ago
  Because not all software works on older hardware. Simply installing linux won't help. There is limitations in older hardware, slow cpu, less memory, etc. For example try running modern firefox on slow netbook, it takes 100% of resources.

JKCalhoun 6y ago

Dug the 68k.news link in the post: http://68k.news http://68k.news Now that takes me back to an early web. I kinda like it. I got more content from scanning one screens-worth of that page than the actual Google news.

thitcanh 6y ago
In a honest non-secure version, just like in the old times.

johnchristopher 6y ago

> On top of all of this Kaiser, a medical doctor and infectious diseases expert, has had an immeasurably difficult job over the last year as the public health officer for an entire county during a pandemic, a position he was recently removed from after gaining a reputation of being ahead of the curve on things like requiring mask-wearing. Some people accomplishes so much, they are a hard example to follow.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hellbannedguy 6y ago
I've noticed a lot of doctors have a Lot of hobbies, and other business adventures. That's all I'll say before I get in trouble.
- illys 6y ago
  No reason for trouble: I notice it too. They certainly need some kind of way to get their minds away from injured people, sick children, parents with cancer, dying elderly people, devastated relatives... Keeping sanity requires some other occupations.

leonroy 6y ago

> my G5 has not been my daily driver for a good couple years; my daily driver is the Raptor Talos II So I looked up the Raptor Talos II. It's a $7k (starting price) workstation running IBM Power9 RISC based CPUs which are typically used in super computers. OOC why would someone want to use such a niche architecture for their primary workstation vs say an AMD Epyc or Intel equivalent?

hlandau 6y ago
The primary appeal of Raptor's products is that the firmware is completely open source. Compare this with x86, where all modern Intel and AMD systems rely on vendor-signed firmware blobs as an intrinsic part of the boot process. POWER9 has some deployment in supercomputer clusters but its primary use is in IBM servers, basically the modern descendant of IBM minicomputers. These are purchased by businesses that want to run IBM i or AIX (or Linux).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dehrmann 6y ago
  Are there any laptops this open?
- angrais 6y ago
  Why does the fact it being open source impact a product decision? Especially when that likely doesn't matter in practice, e.g., I doubt owners of the device are contributing to the source frequently, if ever.
  - gogopuppygogo 6y ago
    The more open source hardware we have the more innovation we can expect if the open source softens movement is any indicator. Financially supporting a nascent open source hardware movement seems like a good thing.
  - hlandau 6y ago

latte 6y ago

The website is down right now, here's the archive link if anyone is interested: http://web.archive.org/web/20210418161124/https://midrange.tedium.co/issues/the-lone-coder-505212 http://web.archive.org/web/20210418161124/https://midrange.t...

hyperpallium2 6y ago

The user-entitlement reminds me of the recent Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26847780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26847780