14 ms·

The good things in the current age in tech

170 points by Matrixik 5y ago

ashleyn 5y ago
Tooling in general has massively improved. I compare Cargo or NPM to what was available 15-20 years ago and it's leaps and bounds above anything that was (or is still) available for languages like C or C++. It was exceedingly common to look at an OSS project and know immediately it would be a massive PITA to set up and build - the more modern a project is, the less this seems to be a problem.
c54 5y ago
This was a nice little read to remember the good things we’ve got going for us in the world of tech. It’s easy to get caught up in the battle of the month, or to get sad about the state of the sad things. But there’s a lot of good too! It’s worth remembering.
greenail 5y ago
My 8 year old son has a Nintendo switch. I recently showed him a video of the 80' "Mattel Electronic Football Handheld Game" which is essentially just a handful of dim LED's and some control buttons. I used to fight my brother to get time playing on that old thing. My son may never truly appreciate how far we've come with respect to technology. The other thing I'd like to point out is that you either could afford some encyclopedias or went to the library. The fact that you can learn just about anything today is truly amazing. Folks like Ben Krasnow share amazing DIY things regularly that it would be hard to imagine in the 80's or 90's.
- Bellend 5y ago
  Oh man that thing is a blast from the past. It's crazy the memories that come flashing back just from seeing that image. It's extraordinary that my brain hasn't ditched the thing as garbage and deleted it. Must be 35+ years ago. Jesus.
- clove 5y ago
  Thanks for raising our future generation on videogames and smart phones. I'm sure you're raising a productive citizen, there. A Switch is $350, by the way, not including games - money that you could have put into your son's education, nutrition, skill-building, etc. The next generation is going to be a bunch of talentless game addicts.
  - Apotheos 5y ago
    What even is this comment? What a weird projection on the commenter's part. Love the part about calling out the price of a Switch, without considering that the parent might also spend tons of money on education as well. To top if off the guy is an options trader! Lol!
    - clove 5y ago
      Instead of responding to the comment, you engage in ad hominem - a classic sign of no argument.
- rectang 5y ago
  Yeah, imagine not knowing some factoid, and it not being practical to find it out... That's completely different pre-internet vs. post-internet.
  - greenail 5y ago
    I'm saying people are building sputterers, waterjets and even fabing transistors and ICs(Sam Zeloof) in their garages. It goes way beyond factoids. You can connect with experts in just about any field.
    - rectang 5y ago
      True! I just focused on factoids because that's what I feel most keenly. Even though the availability of educational resources has arguably made a bigger difference in my own life, the thing that tickles my fancy is still that I can get answers to silly questions like "what is that damn lyric?" that were completely mysterious before.
  - handrous 5y ago
    On the other hand, 99% of my looking stuff up online is very low-value, and the trade off for that ease is that any time some question of trivia comes to mind I sort of itch until I find it out, even if it doesn't matter, whereas before most such questions would hardly have entered my conscious mind to begin with.
- daltont 5y ago
  Fascinating side bit about the Mattel Football game is Mark Lesser's role in it and that he went to develop NHL '94 for the Sega Genesis.
kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
And just to emphasize: almost everything is either free or inexpensive, both software and a lot of wonderful hardware.
- autoexec 5y ago
  On the other hand, almost everything comes with hidden costs and risks as well. Pretty much every new technology or cool gadget comes to the public as a double-edged sword especially when it's "free" or inexpensive. In the open source/developer space things are often far better, but the general public is just screwed. Right now our lives are filled with very cool tech, but nearly always at a hidden price no matter what we've paid for it. Even the hardware is increasingly controlled and inaccessible (thanks to trusted computing and DRM) and most of the software and devices people use today routinely get code pushed to them remotely (often silently) with little if any ability for the supposed "owner" to control or understand what's being done. Still, in very specific spaces there really is some great hardware and software available and information is accessible to help people willing to put in the work to take advantage of it. It's nice to take some time to appreciate how far tech has come and how much technology is still open, accessible, and working for us without also being used against us.
  - linguae 5y ago
    You bring up a great point: how do we deliver high-quality software to the general public that is stable, easy-to-use, and secure, yet respects user privacy? Ad-tech and other forms of surveillance technologies have become quite prevalent in consumer technology in recent years, such as the proliferation of smart TVs with ads. I find free, open source software to respect my privacy and generally be stable and secure, but I find it harder to use than proprietary alternatives, and I think the reason it's harder to use is because there's no money being poured into making it easier to use. With the exception of Firefox it's hard for me to think of a commercially-backed desktop FOSS project, while when it comes to system software (e.g., operating systems, compilers, databases, Web servers, Web frameworks, etc.), I can list plenty of examples of commercially-backed projects. I don't think it's a coincidence that FOSS has done so well in the server room (where big companies have backed the development of Linux, MySQL, Node.js, LLVM/Clang, and many other projects) and in computer science academia (funded by grants from industry and government, as well as the free time of students and faculty; heck, RMS himself had an office at MIT and won awards with large monetary prizes), yet it has struggled to gain a significant foothold on desktops used by the general public except for LibreOffice and Firefox, the latter of which was quite popular during the interregnum of Internet Explorer 6 and Google Chrome. There are two possible avenues to improve the situation on the desktop: 1. One challenge is the sheer complexity of modern desktop software. Take a program such as GIMP, LibreOffice, Firefox, and consider how many lines of code these programs are written in. Even for a senior-level software engineer it will take some on-boarding time to become familiar with the codebase of one of these projects. Modifying the program could become quite an effort. If even experienced software engineers struggle to find the time to contribute code to FOSS projects, then making such a contribution would be almost impossible for members of the general public, the vast majority of whom have no coding experience. I'm wondering how much of this complexity could be pared down such that it would lead to a FOSS software ecosystem where it's easier for users, technical and non-technical, to make contributions. The easier it is to make contributions, the greater the likelihood we'll have a thriving ecosystem of FOSS for desktop computing. Alan Kay's Viewpoints Research Institute's STEPS project (http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf) appears to be an interesting starting point. 2. Another challenge is thinking of new funding mechanisms for FOSS that don't rely on unpredictable donations, the backing of large corporations, or licensing changes (such as the moves that MongoDB made a few years ago in an attempt to stop cloud service providers like Amazon). For example, there should be other business models Mozilla could use in case Google shuts off its funding, but the challenge is I'm struggling of thinking of them.
beebeepka 5y ago
We have reasonably powerful single board general purpose computers. Open source desktop operating systems have surpassed windows and Mac in terms of quality. It's true. AMD is stronger than ever. Mice and keyboards have improved massively. TVs finally allow higher than 60 Hz input. Took them 20 years. Electric vehicles are about to become the norm. Not just cars. I could go on for a while but frankly I am way more excited about biology. Feels like we're just a couple of major breakthroughs away from making huge leaps that could shake things quite a bit
- musicale 5y ago
  > keyboards have improved massively Features such as RGB lighting/doubleshot keycaps, Bluetooth, and USB are nice, but for me the massive improvements have been retro features from the 1980s (or earlier), such as electromechanical switches, tactile feedback, keybed curve/sculpting, and well-made, swappable keycaps (including ones made from PBT as well as ABS plastic.) And excepting Apple laptops (I still have the "butterfly" keyboard as well as the trackpad with poor palm rejection.)
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Doubleshot are also retro 80s? Backlights and true wirelesses are only real new features I see. Then again I haven't tried anything analog.
  - beebeepka 5y ago
    My mechanical keyboard allows you to adjust actuation point per key. Never tried this specific feature as it requires installing their software but I do change the global actuation when playing games and coding. Remember old mice? Remember having ps/2 being stuck to 85 Hz, or when you had to trick windows into clocking usb to 250hz, even 500hz and that 1khz was outright impossible? This Quake player remembers
    - makapuf 5y ago
      I remember having to clean the mouse ball and their small rolling cylinders...
Steltek 5y ago
Putting Jitsi aside for the moment, Zoom and other video call systems saved lives during the pandemic. It enabled fewer in person gatherings, staved off depression/suicide by maintaining social connections, and enabled remote work. Less momentously but significant to me, my kids have learned an insane breadth of technologies by watching science and maker Youtube channels, presented in a very accessible way to kids. At 7yo, I didn't know what a lathe or welder was, let alone excitedly insist that my parents get one. 3D printing wasn't mentioned but hot damn, it's satisfying to fix the unfixable by printing a new part. It wasn't too long ago that "broken plastic doohickey" meant throwing the whole thing in the trash. And another one for kids: cheap and individual computing devices. No more time sharing of a modem on the single computer in the house! In fact, touch interfaces and responsive graphics has kids learning skills before they can even read. Watching elementary kids work on and submit homework on a Chromebook is kind of interesting, compared to my education.
- KronisLV 5y ago
  Hello, author of the linked blog post here. I actually did another blog post about self-hosted chat platforms (Rocket.Chat in particular) just yesterday: https://blog.kronis.dev/tutorials/lets-run-our-own-chat-platform https://blog.kronis.dev/tutorials/lets-run-our-own-chat-plat... (admittedly, the level of detail and quality of it could be higher, still working on that) Either way, if nothing else, i wanted to drop by and express my agreement with your point about technologies to chat with others, both in video form and otherwise. Personally, i think that both the self-hosted options and the ones available in the cloud (such as Discord) can have a large positive impact on us, especially during the current times. For example, they allow me to embrace a more asynchronous way of work - at my current company, we've essentially replaced the daily stand ups with the Standup & Prosper app (https://standup.teaminator.io/ https://standup.teaminator.io/) and have discussions more freely in the chat channels otherwise, while still having weekly video meetings, which works for us. At the same time, everything from Discord to even WhatsApp lets me keep in touch with my friends and acquaintances, even though we live pretty far away - actually, i've moved to the countryside almost a year ago and somehow it still hasn't felt lonely to me thanks to these technologies (while also having lots of other things to do). I'm not sure precisely why that is, but those platforms somehow feel more enjoyable to me than something like Facebook or Instagram, they allow for a bit smaller and more personal/private conversations, that leave me feeling more socially satisfied than just "shouting into the void". Of course, YouTube is also immensely useful and i can't believe that i forgot to mention 3D printing, even though my printer loves to cause me trouble every now and then: https://blog.kronis.dev/tutorials/how-to-make-your-3d-prints-stick-to-the-base https://blog.kronis.dev/tutorials/how-to-make-your-3d-prints...
kangasp 5y ago
This captures my feelings on development today. Flashing an LED on an uC before Arduino was hard. His home page says every key press adds entropy, which is an interesting idea. That's good to think about, but what about the delete key.
- Havoc 5y ago
  >Flashing an LED on an uC before Arduino was hard. And with ESPHome's ability to flash from the browser and OTA it becomes even easier. Still can't believe the browser part actually works lol
kaycebasques 5y ago
My unfiltered additions: * SpaceX. I have lots of reservations about the company but the fact that they are consistently doing things previously thought impossible is very important for humanity in general. * The new Dune movie was downright amazing. The CGI was believable and an important part of the story. * AI-generated art. Fascinating. * Wikipedia. Wow. * I can invest in lots of different assets relatively easily. * Playwright and Puppeteer. I have automated a lot of workflows thanks to those projects. Pressing a button and watching those workflows run is an empowering experience. * Raspberry Pi and Arduino. A month back I built little hack projects for the pure joy of exploring. Very rejuvenating experience. * Electric cars. I'm particularly excited about the F-150 Lightning. They really leaned into the whole electric thing and tried to find some compelling use cases e.g. the generator and the massive front storage (Disclosure: I have some Ford stock, less than 1% of my overall portfolio). The prospect of cities with much less air pollution is wonderful. * Wind + solar + nuclear energy. And a nod to geothermal and hydroelectric. Our civilization will make the transition. It will be messy and could have been much less painful but we will do it.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I have no reservations about SpaceX. SpaceX is doing what every entrepreneur wished they were doing. I want to buy stock in SpaceX. I don't even care if the stock tanks, I just want a piece of the dream.
  - GDC7 5y ago
    > I just want a piece of the dream As I said many times, space has become a religion for people who identify themselves as atheists. And Musk is the techno-utopian Pope, with stock ownership in one of his scam companies becoming a form of techno-utopian indulgence Many of you are unfortunately too smart to keep believing in absence of evidence, unlike religious individuals who can hold a belief for their whole life. When you'll realize that there is nothing for us up there, then disillusion and disappointment will be a tough pill to swallow. Every human activity in space has not only failed to break even but proved to be a financial disaster of epic proportions. The sheer amount of mass that we need to bring up there in order to live and thrive as a specie is so enormous that no rocket, no matter how big or reusable will get us there. You need a sci-fi type discovery such as the anti-gravity equation that Cooper finds inside the Black hole Gargantua and sends back to Murph. As an aside, yes, Interstellar is my favorite movie, but I am a practical person and also capable of separating science from sci-fi.
civilized 5y ago
If you're a parent of a young child, check out https://www.starfall.com https://www.starfall.com. It'll teach your kids phonics even if their teachers aren't.
bpodgursky 5y ago
My take: fusion will change everything. I don't think people understand that controlled fusion is actually on the horizon finally, and it is going to change absolutely everything.
- dcx 5y ago
  It just so happens that a short while after I saw this comment, this [1] turned up on my recommendations feed. What would you say are the counterarguments that lead you to believe fusion is on the horizon? (Ideally in more specific terms than "when a distinguished but elderly scientist", etc.) Just to be clear, I don't personally have a position on this; I don't know enough about the field. But I'm very interested in understanding developments in energy production, as at the end of the day, this is humanity's only real source of leverage. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JurplDfPi3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JurplDfPi3U
- alexashka 5y ago
  - You know, a brilliant scientist who beats his wife, will continue beating his wife, right? - Yes, but if he invents X, that'll change everything! - ... Weren't we supposed to be working 1-2 hours/week by now, thanks to techno-utopia? :) Technology at this point is like children running around with scissors. What's needed is some adult supervision, not new toys.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    No, what we need is infinite clean energy.
    - alexashka 5y ago
      I agree. That'll help the wife a great deal.
  - npteljes 5y ago
    Well, OP didn't say "for the better".
jcun4128 5y ago
easy access to compute, internet bandwidth, Amazon same day delivery pretty nuts able to buy whatever random electronic component, I'm lucky I picked up coding/I can make a lot of things that I want to make, others just need to put the time in, all the repos people have made/public, all the how to videos on YouTube space travel is nice, still early
IndexCardBox 5y ago
These are all good points. I still remember needing to buy tech books and $100 copies of VB for my expensive computer. Now far better tooling and way more learning resources are available for free on a $100 Chromebook. As much as people complain about the walled gardens of Google and Facebook, overall the barrier of entry to computing as fallen significantly.
ianhorn 5y ago
I’d expand “tech” beyond computers. I’ve recently gotten into mini painting and sculpting. I can get paints and brushes and magic epoxy putties and sculptable thermoplastics and precision tools for less than a nice dinner out, which is so cool. I’d bet it’s not too long ago that this would have to be something you’re seriously pursuing to make the costs worth it. [0] Or if we’re sticking with tech = computers, I can sculpt for free in blender (the software) and print it with a 3d printer. Or paint in procreate/photoshop on my ipad with this fantastic not-really-a-pencil (and somehow procreate is only $10??). Or learn to draw from the internet. Or the fact that nothing like D&D Beyond existed for a game I’m playing, so I was able to put up an app based on free software (react + yjs) on cloud servers god knows where for dirt cheap without knowing much of anything about any of those things. Hobbies and leisure activities seem to be pretty accessible (in price). The downside for me is that all the accessible addictive stuff (like this site) makes it hard to actually dedicate time to the hobbies I want to spend time on. [0] Unfortunately, I couldn’t find data on prices of various art supplies going very far back.
jrumbut 5y ago
People bemoan the quality of software (and certainly all the complaints are true, we have a long way to go as an industry quality wise), but 10-15 years ago I remember it wasn't uncommon to buy a piece of shrink wrapped software that should be compatible with your machine and it would just not work. Failure to install, or crashing on startup, sometimes even requiring a reinstall of the entire OS. This would happen in the open source community too, but that was to be expected. I haven't experienced this in many years though, so I suspect we are doing something better. Also package management has come a long, long way. Everything has a package manager now, that creates a new kind of problem but it's better than before.
- jart 5y ago
  That's because the distribution is being controlled by central entities, e.g. distros, app stores, etc. People mostly gave up trying to distribute release binaries on their own. Independent distribution now happens primarily by sharing the source. So the whole not working aspect is still very much alive for source builds, which rarely work; at least, not unless you run them inside a Docker container that's exactly the same as whatever the developer uses. Particularly if the software was written recently, and isn't a decades old C program or simple Python script without dependencies.
  - jrumbut 5y ago
    That's very true, and those central distribution channels are a mixed blessing. The Docker containers are beneficial though! At least now I have an example of a system where the software works to dissect and if my use case is a one-off I can run it in the Docker container then move on with my life.
    - jart 5y ago
      It is beneficial, but you have to trade away a lot of control of your system and distribution in order to get those benefits. I personally have more hope for alternatives like Actually Portable Executable, since it hybridizes the zip format with conventional static executables that run on multiple platforms, so you get the best of the both worlds: a fast conventional executable that functions as a container.
forgotmypw17 5y ago
To me it is retrocomputing and "Web 2.5", or whatever you may call it -- people building fast, compatible websites that really work in "any browser"
qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
>Debian has been an extremely reliable distro that i've used in a number of scenarios and has largely avoided the problems that Ubuntu or even CentOS (RIP) have run into. What problems are being referred to?
- KronisLV 5y ago
  I actually try to write down some of the more annoying instances of software breaking on me (or not being nice to use) in another part of my blog: https://blog.kronis.dev/everything%20is%20broken https://blog.kronis.dev/everything%20is%20broken I'm afraid that i don't have an article about those distros in particular, but some of the issues that i've run into over the years: - Ubuntu introduced snaps as an alternate way of packaging software, however in practice this sometimes means that certain packages migrate over to snaps only - not only is this challenging from the perspective of wanting to pin specific versions of packages to be used, but also sometimes presents problems in regards to how the software runs and how it uses the file system - in regards to server software that shouldn't matter too much, but when you're trying to install a browser for something like automation (say, Selenium), i've found that the count of moving parts is directly proportional to the chances of things breaking (e.g. Java --> Selenium library --> Gecko webdriver --> local browser and how it's installed --> the actual site that you want to test) - Debian is also known for including slightly older (and sometimes better tested) software in its releases, so even though they will usually be behind Ubuntu, they can be good for when you want things to "just work" (e.g. how many pick CentOS over Fedora for particular setups) - as for CentOS, i rather enjoyed its longer life cycle, however towards the end of its life, i found some packages breaking without clear reasons - for example, a regular update once ruined my install of xrdp, so i could no longer graphically connect to the server (needed it for a niche use case) - now, this is perhaps more of a nitpick rather than an outright problem, but there's a divide between DEB and RPM distros and how they do things, for example, how Apache2/httpd has both different names and different configurations on those distros, for seemingly no good reason - also, depending on what you're doing, SELinux can have missing policies and cause issues with the software you're trying to run (there was this kerfuffle a few years ago about Docker (maybe Swarm) not playing nicely with the firewall on CentOS; i still remember that because someone actually suggested turning it off!) That's not to say that Debian is blameless either, i've had some things go wrong with it as well, for example: - the worst problem by far was GRUB breaking and preventing startup after an unattended update: https://blog.kronis.dev/everything%20is%20broken/debian-and-grub-are-broken - Debian's older software also meant that for a while Ubuntu was a better choice for using WireGuard: https://blog.kronis.dev/tutorials/how-to-publicly-access-your-homelab-behind-nat Of course, normally you'll want to pick whatever you're the most comfortable with, i'd say that apart from the snaps, Ubuntu LTS seems superior to Debian in some ways, since Debian's LTS offering isn't entirely official: https://wiki.debian.org/LTS https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
jrm4 5y ago
So, I want to give a shout out to -- "pessimism" as one of the good things? Weird, I know. But I would say that a little over a decade ago, it feels like Facebook wasn't even being questioned and that everything new in tech was always awesome. And was always like, we are screwed if people don't begin to see how creepy this stuff is. Now, I mean, there's work to do, but I don't get seen as the paranoid weirdo when I criticize Facebook anymore. :)
Robotbeat 5y ago
Kinda minor, but nice: 1) SSDs ubiquitous and don’t suck. 2) 3D printers that work well and are cheap, open source ecosystem. Prusa and Ender. 3) VR that is actually good, doesn’t require external sensors and wires, and is pretty cheap. oculus Quest 2. More major: 1) cheap Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries. Good for DIY. Long cycle life, less likely to start on fire, Cobaltfree and dirt cheap. Being used on base Model 3s and Ys. Makes going off grid feasible when combined with solar power which is also crazy cheap.
- maccard 5y ago
  > 3D printers that work well and are cheap, open source ecosystem. Pity we haven't solved that for normal printers yet...
DethNinja 5y ago
I don’t want to dox myself but I’m currently solo developing an application that would’ve took a company of minimum 100 to build just 15 years ago. People are amazed when they see the stuff I solo built and imagine there is a huge company behind it. It is all because of advances in DevOps, cheap server infrastructure, and good quality open source libraries. It is actually scary to see this first hand because human productivity is increasing at a such a rapid speed, it will result in extreme levels of excess productivity in future. So an economy without scarcity is getting closer to our reach but political landscape, general populace, and influential people try their hardest to prevent this from happening.
- mellavora 5y ago
  Yes, likewise. I've built an app which is in clinical use at multiple institutions. Solo. In my spare time. Sure, I'm a good developer. But as DethNinja points out, the real enabler of this are the advances in cheap server infra + libraries. It's the tooling as much as the tool-user.
- high_5 5y ago
  All that productivity is standing on the shoulders of (infrastructure) giants.
mikewarot 5y ago
Software defined radio (SDR) is amazing stuff. $30 buys you a kit that can receive a 2 Mhz slice of radio spectrum anywhere from about 60 to 1200 Mhz, and it runs through a USB 2 port! I learned there was a VOR navigation system nearby, and was able to build a flowgraph in GNU Radio that showed the bearing as I moved around the area. It's amazing how much computing power you can get for about that amount of money as well, with the Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards.
gherkinnn 5y ago
Air Drop makes me smile every time. It’s the small things.
uncomputation 5y ago
Very good perspective. It’s the “epicurean treadmill” of technology. 20 years ago, you would’ve spent days or weeks getting a server and infrastructure set up. The slower pace was due to natural constraints and generally speaking things are simpler within constraints. Now that you can spin up an infinitely scalable, globally available cluster of servers in minutes, the question rather becomes “what now?” It’s absolutely an objective improvement. Things have gotten better. But the human mind is not built to be satisfied. We always reach out for more, to push the boundaries, and now that the boundaries are pushed so much further than before, the questions and demands asked are much greater.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Havoc 5y ago
Also accessibility of homeservers. Damn near anything these days has enough power to run a hypervisor and an assortment of things on top of that.
skeeter2020 5y ago
The content of these lists is almost irrelevant; their real value is the act of sitting down and thinking about all the amazing, positive things we often overlook in a period of increasing angst, stress and negativity. It would make me really happy if everyone reading this today (especially so soon after Remembrance Day) took a moment... “And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”
Russelfuture 5y ago
There are a few good things, but mostly, much of the modern tech is nasty and just not good - honestly. I am in my 60's now, and still remain a pure hacker of tech - really. I built a working IEC fusion reactor in my basement, I run a 12+ node LAN at the Farm, and recently bought another car. I love the idea of Tesla, and the F-150 Lightening, but the Tesla SUV is $120,000 in Canada, and that is just too much. But I do have Elon Musk's Starlink dish, and it is just magic wonderful. It's $145 per month here, but we can afford that. Some tech is truly great - but an awful lot is just terrible. You need to know this. And it gets worse each year. Honestly, aeriously. My partner has a MacBook Air - the SSD just died. We are lucky, since it is a 2012 version. We just ordered a 250gb upgrade (and the damn little 5-point screwdriver to open the back of the damn thing. But we expect to be able to fix it fine. But since 2018, the vermin at Apple have been soldering the (failure prone) SSD chips to the mainboard. We find the old-tech is good ( I run mostly Linux boxes - for various needs). Honestly, everything is getting crappy and nasty. You need to appreciate what I saw when younger - the first Moon landing - and the last on in 1972, with the electric car on the moon. It's 2021, and we could not go to the moon, if Earth's life depended on it. I watched and experienced the transition from propeller drive Viscount aircraft, to DC-9s, and then 747's. As a kid in University, I flew to England, on Wardair, and we drank cheap drinks in the upstairs lounge for most of the flight. Way better than Concorde! I put email into a major Gov't Ministry (as an independent consultant, and I watched it make major changes, as a stiff, old-world style org was flatlined by the technology (we used Novell Networks). We installed a DecSystem 2020, and changed completely how a big, powerful group operated. We watched the Space Shuttles debut, and promise space-travel for all nations, with the ISS, which was billed as a stepping stone to the planets and maybe even the stars. I bought and demonstrated a Z80 Northstar 64K, with a working Pascal compiler which could do what the DEC 2020 could do, at a tiny fraction of the cost. We saw the disruption of the disruptive tech that was only a few years old. I paid $6000 for an initial IBM 5150 P/C, with dual drives, which had a Fortran compiler, which was solid and good and gave the right answers. And I bought one of the first lunch-box sized cellphones, which was just awesome, science-fiction level cool - and then replaced it in a few years with a Motorola handset - and then a flip-phone. The technology was wonderful, it was reliable, and bloody well made. Now, it is crap. Seriously. It still is sort-of workable, but I find everything has some kind of trick, or some kind of gotchya worm built into it now. Stuff fails regularly. Products are released, and the public customers are used as testers. Early versions of anything now are riddled with bugs, flaws, and are horribly, badly engineered. Boeing builds expensive aircraft on the cheap, and the dogshit crappy software flies perfectly fine aircraft into the ground. The USA gives up on space - were it not for Elon Musk, they would have no civilian space transport to the ISS. Electronics are built with custom ASIC chips, not industry standard hardware - so that failure in in-built, and hardware has to be thrown away every few years. The internet, which promised knowledge and access-for-all, has morphed into a shit-stained back alley, dominated by scammers and hard-core criminals. Everything good, useful or honest is behind a paywall. I have to grit my teeth to use it now. This was not how it was supposed to be. It's wonderful to see the videos on the little helicopter flying on Mars - really very amazing. But exploring by sending robots is tragic and cowardly - and offers so little. Honestly - we need to change the program. We need to deregulate basically everything. Everything. It sounds crazy, but otherwise, the future is going to be 20 or 30 billion people, choking on their own fumes, fighting over the few remaining resources. We need to drive the technology forward with a military-grade urgency. I know it's possible, because I saw it happen when I was young. And it is not happening now.

170 points by Matrixik 5y ago

Tooling in general has massively improved. I compare Cargo or NPM to what was available 15-20 years ago and it's leaps and bounds above anything that was (or is still) available for languages like C or C++. It was exceedingly common to look at an OSS project and know immediately it would be a massive PITA to set up and build - the more modern a project is, the less this seems to be a problem.

c54 5y ago

This was a nice little read to remember the good things we’ve got going for us in the world of tech. It’s easy to get caught up in the battle of the month, or to get sad about the state of the sad things. But there’s a lot of good too! It’s worth remembering.

greenail 5y ago

My 8 year old son has a Nintendo switch. I recently showed him a video of the 80' "Mattel Electronic Football Handheld Game" which is essentially just a handful of dim LED's and some control buttons. I used to fight my brother to get time playing on that old thing. My son may never truly appreciate how far we've come with respect to technology. The other thing I'd like to point out is that you either could afford some encyclopedias or went to the library. The fact that you can learn just about anything today is truly amazing. Folks like Ben Krasnow share amazing DIY things regularly that it would be hard to imagine in the 80's or 90's.

Bellend 5y ago
Oh man that thing is a blast from the past. It's crazy the memories that come flashing back just from seeing that image. It's extraordinary that my brain hasn't ditched the thing as garbage and deleted it. Must be 35+ years ago. Jesus.
clove 5y ago
Thanks for raising our future generation on videogames and smart phones. I'm sure you're raising a productive citizen, there. A Switch is $350, by the way, not including games - money that you could have put into your son's education, nutrition, skill-building, etc. The next generation is going to be a bunch of talentless game addicts.
- Apotheos 5y ago
  What even is this comment? What a weird projection on the commenter's part. Love the part about calling out the price of a Switch, without considering that the parent might also spend tons of money on education as well. To top if off the guy is an options trader! Lol!
  - clove 5y ago
    Instead of responding to the comment, you engage in ad hominem - a classic sign of no argument.
rectang 5y ago
Yeah, imagine not knowing some factoid, and it not being practical to find it out... That's completely different pre-internet vs. post-internet.
- greenail 5y ago
  I'm saying people are building sputterers, waterjets and even fabing transistors and ICs(Sam Zeloof) in their garages. It goes way beyond factoids. You can connect with experts in just about any field.
  - rectang 5y ago
    True! I just focused on factoids because that's what I feel most keenly. Even though the availability of educational resources has arguably made a bigger difference in my own life, the thing that tickles my fancy is still that I can get answers to silly questions like "what is that damn lyric?" that were completely mysterious before.
- handrous 5y ago
  On the other hand, 99% of my looking stuff up online is very low-value, and the trade off for that ease is that any time some question of trivia comes to mind I sort of itch until I find it out, even if it doesn't matter, whereas before most such questions would hardly have entered my conscious mind to begin with.
daltont 5y ago
Fascinating side bit about the Mattel Football game is Mark Lesser's role in it and that he went to develop NHL '94 for the Sega Genesis.

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago

And just to emphasize: almost everything is either free or inexpensive, both software and a lot of wonderful hardware.

autoexec 5y ago
On the other hand, almost everything comes with hidden costs and risks as well. Pretty much every new technology or cool gadget comes to the public as a double-edged sword especially when it's "free" or inexpensive. In the open source/developer space things are often far better, but the general public is just screwed. Right now our lives are filled with very cool tech, but nearly always at a hidden price no matter what we've paid for it. Even the hardware is increasingly controlled and inaccessible (thanks to trusted computing and DRM) and most of the software and devices people use today routinely get code pushed to them remotely (often silently) with little if any ability for the supposed "owner" to control or understand what's being done. Still, in very specific spaces there really is some great hardware and software available and information is accessible to help people willing to put in the work to take advantage of it. It's nice to take some time to appreciate how far tech has come and how much technology is still open, accessible, and working for us without also being used against us.
- linguae 5y ago
  You bring up a great point: how do we deliver high-quality software to the general public that is stable, easy-to-use, and secure, yet respects user privacy? Ad-tech and other forms of surveillance technologies have become quite prevalent in consumer technology in recent years, such as the proliferation of smart TVs with ads. I find free, open source software to respect my privacy and generally be stable and secure, but I find it harder to use than proprietary alternatives, and I think the reason it's harder to use is because there's no money being poured into making it easier to use. With the exception of Firefox it's hard for me to think of a commercially-backed desktop FOSS project, while when it comes to system software (e.g., operating systems, compilers, databases, Web servers, Web frameworks, etc.), I can list plenty of examples of commercially-backed projects. I don't think it's a coincidence that FOSS has done so well in the server room (where big companies have backed the development of Linux, MySQL, Node.js, LLVM/Clang, and many other projects) and in computer science academia (funded by grants from industry and government, as well as the free time of students and faculty; heck, RMS himself had an office at MIT and won awards with large monetary prizes), yet it has struggled to gain a significant foothold on desktops used by the general public except for LibreOffice and Firefox, the latter of which was quite popular during the interregnum of Internet Explorer 6 and Google Chrome. There are two possible avenues to improve the situation on the desktop: 1. One challenge is the sheer complexity of modern desktop software. Take a program such as GIMP, LibreOffice, Firefox, and consider how many lines of code these programs are written in. Even for a senior-level software engineer it will take some on-boarding time to become familiar with the codebase of one of these projects. Modifying the program could become quite an effort. If even experienced software engineers struggle to find the time to contribute code to FOSS projects, then making such a contribution would be almost impossible for members of the general public, the vast majority of whom have no coding experience. I'm wondering how much of this complexity could be pared down such that it would lead to a FOSS software ecosystem where it's easier for users, technical and non-technical, to make contributions. The easier it is to make contributions, the greater the likelihood we'll have a thriving ecosystem of FOSS for desktop computing. Alan Kay's Viewpoints Research Institute's STEPS project (http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf) appears to be an interesting starting point. 2. Another challenge is thinking of new funding mechanisms for FOSS that don't rely on unpredictable donations, the backing of large corporations, or licensing changes (such as the moves that MongoDB made a few years ago in an attempt to stop cloud service providers like Amazon). For example, there should be other business models Mozilla could use in case Google shuts off its funding, but the challenge is I'm struggling of thinking of them.

beebeepka 5y ago

We have reasonably powerful single board general purpose computers. Open source desktop operating systems have surpassed windows and Mac in terms of quality. It's true. AMD is stronger than ever. Mice and keyboards have improved massively. TVs finally allow higher than 60 Hz input. Took them 20 years. Electric vehicles are about to become the norm. Not just cars. I could go on for a while but frankly I am way more excited about biology. Feels like we're just a couple of major breakthroughs away from making huge leaps that could shake things quite a bit

musicale 5y ago
> keyboards have improved massively Features such as RGB lighting/doubleshot keycaps, Bluetooth, and USB are nice, but for me the massive improvements have been retro features from the 1980s (or earlier), such as electromechanical switches, tactile feedback, keybed curve/sculpting, and well-made, swappable keycaps (including ones made from PBT as well as ABS plastic.) And excepting Apple laptops (I still have the "butterfly" keyboard as well as the trackpad with poor palm rejection.)
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Doubleshot are also retro 80s? Backlights and true wirelesses are only real new features I see. Then again I haven't tried anything analog.
- beebeepka 5y ago
  My mechanical keyboard allows you to adjust actuation point per key. Never tried this specific feature as it requires installing their software but I do change the global actuation when playing games and coding. Remember old mice? Remember having ps/2 being stuck to 85 Hz, or when you had to trick windows into clocking usb to 250hz, even 500hz and that 1khz was outright impossible? This Quake player remembers
  - makapuf 5y ago
    I remember having to clean the mouse ball and their small rolling cylinders...

Steltek 5y ago

Putting Jitsi aside for the moment, Zoom and other video call systems saved lives during the pandemic. It enabled fewer in person gatherings, staved off depression/suicide by maintaining social connections, and enabled remote work. Less momentously but significant to me, my kids have learned an insane breadth of technologies by watching science and maker Youtube channels, presented in a very accessible way to kids. At 7yo, I didn't know what a lathe or welder was, let alone excitedly insist that my parents get one. 3D printing wasn't mentioned but hot damn, it's satisfying to fix the unfixable by printing a new part. It wasn't too long ago that "broken plastic doohickey" meant throwing the whole thing in the trash. And another one for kids: cheap and individual computing devices. No more time sharing of a modem on the single computer in the house! In fact, touch interfaces and responsive graphics has kids learning skills before they can even read. Watching elementary kids work on and submit homework on a Chromebook is kind of interesting, compared to my education.

KronisLV 5y ago
Hello, author of the linked blog post here. I actually did another blog post about self-hosted chat platforms (Rocket.Chat in particular) just yesterday: https://blog.kronis.dev/tutorials/lets-run-our-own-chat-platform https://blog.kronis.dev/tutorials/lets-run-our-own-chat-plat... (admittedly, the level of detail and quality of it could be higher, still working on that) Either way, if nothing else, i wanted to drop by and express my agreement with your point about technologies to chat with others, both in video form and otherwise. Personally, i think that both the self-hosted options and the ones available in the cloud (such as Discord) can have a large positive impact on us, especially during the current times. For example, they allow me to embrace a more asynchronous way of work - at my current company, we've essentially replaced the daily stand ups with the Standup & Prosper app (https://standup.teaminator.io/ https://standup.teaminator.io/) and have discussions more freely in the chat channels otherwise, while still having weekly video meetings, which works for us. At the same time, everything from Discord to even WhatsApp lets me keep in touch with my friends and acquaintances, even though we live pretty far away - actually, i've moved to the countryside almost a year ago and somehow it still hasn't felt lonely to me thanks to these technologies (while also having lots of other things to do). I'm not sure precisely why that is, but those platforms somehow feel more enjoyable to me than something like Facebook or Instagram, they allow for a bit smaller and more personal/private conversations, that leave me feeling more socially satisfied than just "shouting into the void". Of course, YouTube is also immensely useful and i can't believe that i forgot to mention 3D printing, even though my printer loves to cause me trouble every now and then: https://blog.kronis.dev/tutorials/how-to-make-your-3d-prints-stick-to-the-base https://blog.kronis.dev/tutorials/how-to-make-your-3d-prints...

kangasp 5y ago

This captures my feelings on development today. Flashing an LED on an uC before Arduino was hard. His home page says every key press adds entropy, which is an interesting idea. That's good to think about, but what about the delete key.

Havoc 5y ago
>Flashing an LED on an uC before Arduino was hard. And with ESPHome's ability to flash from the browser and OTA it becomes even easier. Still can't believe the browser part actually works lol

kaycebasques 5y ago

My unfiltered additions: * SpaceX. I have lots of reservations about the company but the fact that they are consistently doing things previously thought impossible is very important for humanity in general. * The new Dune movie was downright amazing. The CGI was believable and an important part of the story. * AI-generated art. Fascinating. * Wikipedia. Wow. * I can invest in lots of different assets relatively easily. * Playwright and Puppeteer. I have automated a lot of workflows thanks to those projects. Pressing a button and watching those workflows run is an empowering experience. * Raspberry Pi and Arduino. A month back I built little hack projects for the pure joy of exploring. Very rejuvenating experience. * Electric cars. I'm particularly excited about the F-150 Lightning. They really leaned into the whole electric thing and tried to find some compelling use cases e.g. the generator and the massive front storage (Disclosure: I have some Ford stock, less than 1% of my overall portfolio). The prospect of cities with much less air pollution is wonderful. * Wind + solar + nuclear energy. And a nod to geothermal and hydroelectric. Our civilization will make the transition. It will be messy and could have been much less painful but we will do it.

WalterBright 5y ago
I have no reservations about SpaceX. SpaceX is doing what every entrepreneur wished they were doing. I want to buy stock in SpaceX. I don't even care if the stock tanks, I just want a piece of the dream.
- GDC7 5y ago
  > I just want a piece of the dream As I said many times, space has become a religion for people who identify themselves as atheists. And Musk is the techno-utopian Pope, with stock ownership in one of his scam companies becoming a form of techno-utopian indulgence Many of you are unfortunately too smart to keep believing in absence of evidence, unlike religious individuals who can hold a belief for their whole life. When you'll realize that there is nothing for us up there, then disillusion and disappointment will be a tough pill to swallow. Every human activity in space has not only failed to break even but proved to be a financial disaster of epic proportions. The sheer amount of mass that we need to bring up there in order to live and thrive as a specie is so enormous that no rocket, no matter how big or reusable will get us there. You need a sci-fi type discovery such as the anti-gravity equation that Cooper finds inside the Black hole Gargantua and sends back to Murph. As an aside, yes, Interstellar is my favorite movie, but I am a practical person and also capable of separating science from sci-fi.

civilized 5y ago

If you're a parent of a young child, check out https://www.starfall.com https://www.starfall.com. It'll teach your kids phonics even if their teachers aren't.

bpodgursky 5y ago

My take: fusion will change everything. I don't think people understand that controlled fusion is actually on the horizon finally, and it is going to change absolutely everything.

dcx 5y ago
It just so happens that a short while after I saw this comment, this [1] turned up on my recommendations feed. What would you say are the counterarguments that lead you to believe fusion is on the horizon? (Ideally in more specific terms than "when a distinguished but elderly scientist", etc.) Just to be clear, I don't personally have a position on this; I don't know enough about the field. But I'm very interested in understanding developments in energy production, as at the end of the day, this is humanity's only real source of leverage. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JurplDfPi3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JurplDfPi3U
alexashka 5y ago
- You know, a brilliant scientist who beats his wife, will continue beating his wife, right? - Yes, but if he invents X, that'll change everything! - ... Weren't we supposed to be working 1-2 hours/week by now, thanks to techno-utopia? :) Technology at this point is like children running around with scissors. What's needed is some adult supervision, not new toys.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  No, what we need is infinite clean energy.
  - alexashka 5y ago
    I agree. That'll help the wife a great deal.
- npteljes 5y ago
  Well, OP didn't say "for the better".

jcun4128 5y ago

easy access to compute, internet bandwidth, Amazon same day delivery pretty nuts able to buy whatever random electronic component, I'm lucky I picked up coding/I can make a lot of things that I want to make, others just need to put the time in, all the repos people have made/public, all the how to videos on YouTube space travel is nice, still early

IndexCardBox 5y ago

These are all good points. I still remember needing to buy tech books and $100 copies of VB for my expensive computer. Now far better tooling and way more learning resources are available for free on a $100 Chromebook. As much as people complain about the walled gardens of Google and Facebook, overall the barrier of entry to computing as fallen significantly.

ianhorn 5y ago

I’d expand “tech” beyond computers. I’ve recently gotten into mini painting and sculpting. I can get paints and brushes and magic epoxy putties and sculptable thermoplastics and precision tools for less than a nice dinner out, which is so cool. I’d bet it’s not too long ago that this would have to be something you’re seriously pursuing to make the costs worth it. [0] Or if we’re sticking with tech = computers, I can sculpt for free in blender (the software) and print it with a 3d printer. Or paint in procreate/photoshop on my ipad with this fantastic not-really-a-pencil (and somehow procreate is only $10??). Or learn to draw from the internet. Or the fact that nothing like D&D Beyond existed for a game I’m playing, so I was able to put up an app based on free software (react + yjs) on cloud servers god knows where for dirt cheap without knowing much of anything about any of those things. Hobbies and leisure activities seem to be pretty accessible (in price). The downside for me is that all the accessible addictive stuff (like this site) makes it hard to actually dedicate time to the hobbies I want to spend time on. [0] Unfortunately, I couldn’t find data on prices of various art supplies going very far back.

jrumbut 5y ago

People bemoan the quality of software (and certainly all the complaints are true, we have a long way to go as an industry quality wise), but 10-15 years ago I remember it wasn't uncommon to buy a piece of shrink wrapped software that should be compatible with your machine and it would just not work. Failure to install, or crashing on startup, sometimes even requiring a reinstall of the entire OS. This would happen in the open source community too, but that was to be expected. I haven't experienced this in many years though, so I suspect we are doing something better. Also package management has come a long, long way. Everything has a package manager now, that creates a new kind of problem but it's better than before.

jart 5y ago
That's because the distribution is being controlled by central entities, e.g. distros, app stores, etc. People mostly gave up trying to distribute release binaries on their own. Independent distribution now happens primarily by sharing the source. So the whole not working aspect is still very much alive for source builds, which rarely work; at least, not unless you run them inside a Docker container that's exactly the same as whatever the developer uses. Particularly if the software was written recently, and isn't a decades old C program or simple Python script without dependencies.
- jrumbut 5y ago
  That's very true, and those central distribution channels are a mixed blessing. The Docker containers are beneficial though! At least now I have an example of a system where the software works to dissect and if my use case is a one-off I can run it in the Docker container then move on with my life.
  - jart 5y ago
    It is beneficial, but you have to trade away a lot of control of your system and distribution in order to get those benefits. I personally have more hope for alternatives like Actually Portable Executable, since it hybridizes the zip format with conventional static executables that run on multiple platforms, so you get the best of the both worlds: a fast conventional executable that functions as a container.

forgotmypw17 5y ago

To me it is retrocomputing and "Web 2.5", or whatever you may call it -- people building fast, compatible websites that really work in "any browser"

qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago

>Debian has been an extremely reliable distro that i've used in a number of scenarios and has largely avoided the problems that Ubuntu or even CentOS (RIP) have run into. What problems are being referred to?

KronisLV 5y ago
I actually try to write down some of the more annoying instances of software breaking on me (or not being nice to use) in another part of my blog: https://blog.kronis.dev/everything%20is%20broken https://blog.kronis.dev/everything%20is%20broken I'm afraid that i don't have an article about those distros in particular, but some of the issues that i've run into over the years: - Ubuntu introduced snaps as an alternate way of packaging software, however in practice this sometimes means that certain packages migrate over to snaps only - not only is this challenging from the perspective of wanting to pin specific versions of packages to be used, but also sometimes presents problems in regards to how the software runs and how it uses the file system - in regards to server software that shouldn't matter too much, but when you're trying to install a browser for something like automation (say, Selenium), i've found that the count of moving parts is directly proportional to the chances of things breaking (e.g. Java --> Selenium library --> Gecko webdriver --> local browser and how it's installed --> the actual site that you want to test) - Debian is also known for including slightly older (and sometimes better tested) software in its releases, so even though they will usually be behind Ubuntu, they can be good for when you want things to "just work" (e.g. how many pick CentOS over Fedora for particular setups) - as for CentOS, i rather enjoyed its longer life cycle, however towards the end of its life, i found some packages breaking without clear reasons - for example, a regular update once ruined my install of xrdp, so i could no longer graphically connect to the server (needed it for a niche use case) - now, this is perhaps more of a nitpick rather than an outright problem, but there's a divide between DEB and RPM distros and how they do things, for example, how Apache2/httpd has both different names and different configurations on those distros, for seemingly no good reason - also, depending on what you're doing, SELinux can have missing policies and cause issues with the software you're trying to run (there was this kerfuffle a few years ago about Docker (maybe Swarm) not playing nicely with the firewall on CentOS; i still remember that because someone actually suggested turning it off!) That's not to say that Debian is blameless either, i've had some things go wrong with it as well, for example: - the worst problem by far was GRUB breaking and preventing startup after an unattended update: https://blog.kronis.dev/everything%20is%20broken/debian-and-grub-are-broken - Debian's older software also meant that for a while Ubuntu was a better choice for using WireGuard: https://blog.kronis.dev/tutorials/how-to-publicly-access-your-homelab-behind-nat Of course, normally you'll want to pick whatever you're the most comfortable with, i'd say that apart from the snaps, Ubuntu LTS seems superior to Debian in some ways, since Debian's LTS offering isn't entirely official: https://wiki.debian.org/LTS https://wiki.debian.org/LTS

jrm4 5y ago

So, I want to give a shout out to -- "pessimism" as one of the good things? Weird, I know. But I would say that a little over a decade ago, it feels like Facebook wasn't even being questioned and that everything new in tech was always awesome. And was always like, we are screwed if people don't begin to see how creepy this stuff is. Now, I mean, there's work to do, but I don't get seen as the paranoid weirdo when I criticize Facebook anymore. :)

Robotbeat 5y ago

Kinda minor, but nice: 1) SSDs ubiquitous and don’t suck. 2) 3D printers that work well and are cheap, open source ecosystem. Prusa and Ender. 3) VR that is actually good, doesn’t require external sensors and wires, and is pretty cheap. oculus Quest 2. More major: 1) cheap Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries. Good for DIY. Long cycle life, less likely to start on fire, Cobaltfree and dirt cheap. Being used on base Model 3s and Ys. Makes going off grid feasible when combined with solar power which is also crazy cheap.

maccard 5y ago
> 3D printers that work well and are cheap, open source ecosystem. Pity we haven't solved that for normal printers yet...

DethNinja 5y ago

I don’t want to dox myself but I’m currently solo developing an application that would’ve took a company of minimum 100 to build just 15 years ago. People are amazed when they see the stuff I solo built and imagine there is a huge company behind it. It is all because of advances in DevOps, cheap server infrastructure, and good quality open source libraries. It is actually scary to see this first hand because human productivity is increasing at a such a rapid speed, it will result in extreme levels of excess productivity in future. So an economy without scarcity is getting closer to our reach but political landscape, general populace, and influential people try their hardest to prevent this from happening.

mellavora 5y ago
Yes, likewise. I've built an app which is in clinical use at multiple institutions. Solo. In my spare time. Sure, I'm a good developer. But as DethNinja points out, the real enabler of this are the advances in cheap server infra + libraries. It's the tooling as much as the tool-user.
high_5 5y ago
All that productivity is standing on the shoulders of (infrastructure) giants.

mikewarot 5y ago

Software defined radio (SDR) is amazing stuff. $30 buys you a kit that can receive a 2 Mhz slice of radio spectrum anywhere from about 60 to 1200 Mhz, and it runs through a USB 2 port! I learned there was a VOR navigation system nearby, and was able to build a flowgraph in GNU Radio that showed the bearing as I moved around the area. It's amazing how much computing power you can get for about that amount of money as well, with the Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards.

gherkinnn 5y ago

Air Drop makes me smile every time. It’s the small things.

uncomputation 5y ago

Very good perspective. It’s the “epicurean treadmill” of technology. 20 years ago, you would’ve spent days or weeks getting a server and infrastructure set up. The slower pace was due to natural constraints and generally speaking things are simpler within constraints. Now that you can spin up an infinitely scalable, globally available cluster of servers in minutes, the question rather becomes “what now?” It’s absolutely an objective improvement. Things have gotten better. But the human mind is not built to be satisfied. We always reach out for more, to push the boundaries, and now that the boundaries are pushed so much further than before, the questions and demands asked are much greater.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Havoc 5y ago

Also accessibility of homeservers. Damn near anything these days has enough power to run a hypervisor and an assortment of things on top of that.

skeeter2020 5y ago

The content of these lists is almost irrelevant; their real value is the act of sitting down and thinking about all the amazing, positive things we often overlook in a period of increasing angst, stress and negativity. It would make me really happy if everyone reading this today (especially so soon after Remembrance Day) took a moment... “And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”

Russelfuture 5y ago

There are a few good things, but mostly, much of the modern tech is nasty and just not good - honestly. I am in my 60's now, and still remain a pure hacker of tech - really. I built a working IEC fusion reactor in my basement, I run a 12+ node LAN at the Farm, and recently bought another car. I love the idea of Tesla, and the F-150 Lightening, but the Tesla SUV is $120,000 in Canada, and that is just too much. But I do have Elon Musk's Starlink dish, and it is just magic wonderful. It's $145 per month here, but we can afford that. Some tech is truly great - but an awful lot is just terrible. You need to know this. And it gets worse each year. Honestly, aeriously. My partner has a MacBook Air - the SSD just died. We are lucky, since it is a 2012 version. We just ordered a 250gb upgrade (and the damn little 5-point screwdriver to open the back of the damn thing. But we expect to be able to fix it fine. But since 2018, the vermin at Apple have been soldering the (failure prone) SSD chips to the mainboard. We find the old-tech is good ( I run mostly Linux boxes - for various needs). Honestly, everything is getting crappy and nasty. You need to appreciate what I saw when younger - the first Moon landing - and the last on in 1972, with the electric car on the moon. It's 2021, and we could not go to the moon, if Earth's life depended on it. I watched and experienced the transition from propeller drive Viscount aircraft, to DC-9s, and then 747's. As a kid in University, I flew to England, on Wardair, and we drank cheap drinks in the upstairs lounge for most of the flight. Way better than Concorde! I put email into a major Gov't Ministry (as an independent consultant, and I watched it make major changes, as a stiff, old-world style org was flatlined by the technology (we used Novell Networks). We installed a DecSystem 2020, and changed completely how a big, powerful group operated. We watched the Space Shuttles debut, and promise space-travel for all nations, with the ISS, which was billed as a stepping stone to the planets and maybe even the stars. I bought and demonstrated a Z80 Northstar 64K, with a working Pascal compiler which could do what the DEC 2020 could do, at a tiny fraction of the cost. We saw the disruption of the disruptive tech that was only a few years old. I paid $6000 for an initial IBM 5150 P/C, with dual drives, which had a Fortran compiler, which was solid and good and gave the right answers. And I bought one of the first lunch-box sized cellphones, which was just awesome, science-fiction level cool - and then replaced it in a few years with a Motorola handset - and then a flip-phone. The technology was wonderful, it was reliable, and bloody well made. Now, it is crap. Seriously. It still is sort-of workable, but I find everything has some kind of trick, or some kind of gotchya worm built into it now. Stuff fails regularly. Products are released, and the public customers are used as testers. Early versions of anything now are riddled with bugs, flaws, and are horribly, badly engineered. Boeing builds expensive aircraft on the cheap, and the dogshit crappy software flies perfectly fine aircraft into the ground. The USA gives up on space - were it not for Elon Musk, they would have no civilian space transport to the ISS. Electronics are built with custom ASIC chips, not industry standard hardware - so that failure in in-built, and hardware has to be thrown away every few years. The internet, which promised knowledge and access-for-all, has morphed into a shit-stained back alley, dominated by scammers and hard-core criminals. Everything good, useful or honest is behind a paywall. I have to grit my teeth to use it now. This was not how it was supposed to be. It's wonderful to see the videos on the little helicopter flying on Mars - really very amazing. But exploring by sending robots is tragic and cowardly - and offers so little. Honestly - we need to change the program. We need to deregulate basically everything. Everything. It sounds crazy, but otherwise, the future is going to be 20 or 30 billion people, choking on their own fumes, fighting over the few remaining resources. We need to drive the technology forward with a military-grade urgency. I know it's possible, because I saw it happen when I was young. And it is not happening now.