3 ms·

I grew up with spectrums and ms-dos with a turbo and a reset button. I feel sad for my kids who will grow up with iPads and Windows 14 PCs with not the slighte

by keyle 4y ago

I grew up with spectrums and ms-dos with a turbo and a reset button. I feel sad for my kids who will grow up with iPads and Windows 14 PCs with not the slightest clue on how things are running and the OS shielding them from crashing the thing or running viruses for fun. Same things for young lads that come out of university today with their degrees. They're well spoken and can recite algo theory like nothing but still have no clue what's underneath and why it works. Have we reached that level of the civilisation that goes extinct, for forgetting how its own inner machines work?

rr3932 4y ago
The iPad is an appliance. If you’re looking for buttons, something to hack on and break, try: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/ Personally I think it’s never been a better time to be a hacker. $5 PCBs from free and good CAD software and one can even make their own ASICs now. I wish I was a kid today!
- safety1st 4y ago
  HG Wells appears to have been one of the more prescient science fiction authors. In The Time Machine the Morlocks maintained the underground machines that fed and clothed the beautiful Eloi who lived above ground (and periodically they would come up to the surface to eat the Eloi). Today the iPhone is one of the biggest status symbols the beautiful people covet, the most important thing in their lives (their Instagram account) depends on it. Yet none of them have a clue how it works. Like the Morlocks, hackers kind of understand how it works and can maintain it to a degree but can't really build a new one. We may be only one supply chain collapse and food shortage away from HG Wells' fiction becoming reality... :)
Syonyk 4y ago
> Have we reached that level of the civilisation that goes extinct, for forgetting how its own inner machines work? Probably. Almost nobody under the age of 40 works in the "deep weeds" anymore (firmware, kernel, casually "Ring 0 and below" spaces). A decade ago, it was about 30. I'm the last wave, it seems, of people in these spaces, and that's quite terrifying. But I get it. The hardware is maddeningly complex, rapidly getting more complex to solve the problems created by the last complexity, and the whole stack is cracking and crumbling around the edges (the uarch vulns and Intel pulling SGX from consumer chips are a reflection of this). Another decade, this entire low level group will have retired to something far away from computers, and... we'll see what happens. Nothing good, I fear.
- b112 4y ago
  I often wonder the same. I grew up at a time, where I had to learn assembly on the C64, to get my machine to handle > 300 baud with uploads/downloads, on a BBS I wrote. On the hardware side, it was very easy to learn how to fix said machines, with schematics provided in the back of the user manual. This level of understanding is not as easily possible today, and my understanding grew outward from that. I think two things, the need to understand low level to work with hardware competently in the past, and that it was fun to work with hardware in the past, have led to a theoretical golden age of people who understood it all. I have deep understanding of baremetal, right through to frontend. Part of that comes from working with computing as it changed and morphed. People today are graduating, entering the field, but are starting at a higher level. One other thing to bear in mind. When I entered this field, it wasn't to make money. Salaries were abysmal, and on top of that, the field was seen as "boring" and "stodgy" to a great many. And there were often even poor employment prospects! This meant that people who worked in computing prior to 2000 or so, did so because of joy. They didn't think "Oh, I can make a good living here, I choose this job". In fact, people would tell you not to work in computing, who on Earth would hire you! So people from this era often were in this field, because they were drawn to it not for income, or job security, but instead because it was more important to work with the fun and joy of computing. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with entering a field to make a living, or for job security, the motivations are different. An example here ; using a computer is different than building computing. Enjoying using a web browser, enjoying interacting online, that is not "enjoying computing". Yet most people I speak of, were building circuit boards, coding in basic, when kids. How many CS graduates were coding apps, building webpages, for 100% fun, without any encouragement when 5? So I think the same capability is there, it is just that most people today are not interested in computing. They just happen to make a living there, and so those enjoying computing as a primary are awash in a sea of those who couldn't really care less.
  - makapuf 4y ago
    As someone said, kids this day build computers with arduinos and stm32.
  - mfuzzey 4y ago
avgcorrection 4y ago
I grew up with Unix 1 and a soldering iron. I feel sad for my kids who will grow up with ms-dos and high-level languages and not have a clue how things really work. Whither civilization?
- SuperQue 4y ago
  Kids these days and their electricity. They'll never learn to be a good barrel cooper.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
"Have we reached that level of the civilisation that goes extinct, for forgetting how its own inner machines work?" extending this logic. modt people in the wedt can't go food, connect plumbing or fix a broken chair. only 10% of the people will find correct ancor for drywall or fix a flat on a bycicle
KronisLV 4y ago
> Have we reached that level of the civilisation that goes extinct, for forgetting how its own inner machines work? This thought was expressed in Isaac Asimov's short story "The Last Question" [PDF]: https://physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf https://physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf > Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face -- miles and miles of face -- of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole. Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough. So Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share in the glory that was Multivac's I wonder whether they'll have to deal with CrashLoopBackoff errors in 2061.
mbrodersen 4y ago
I am 100% sure we can’t reboot civilisation. All the easily accessible resources needed to bootstrap has been depleted years ago.

by keyle 4y ago

rr3932 4y ago

The iPad is an appliance. If you’re looking for buttons, something to hack on and break, try: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/ Personally I think it’s never been a better time to be a hacker. $5 PCBs from free and good CAD software and one can even make their own ASICs now. I wish I was a kid today!

safety1st 4y ago
HG Wells appears to have been one of the more prescient science fiction authors. In The Time Machine the Morlocks maintained the underground machines that fed and clothed the beautiful Eloi who lived above ground (and periodically they would come up to the surface to eat the Eloi). Today the iPhone is one of the biggest status symbols the beautiful people covet, the most important thing in their lives (their Instagram account) depends on it. Yet none of them have a clue how it works. Like the Morlocks, hackers kind of understand how it works and can maintain it to a degree but can't really build a new one. We may be only one supply chain collapse and food shortage away from HG Wells' fiction becoming reality... :)

Syonyk 4y ago

> Have we reached that level of the civilisation that goes extinct, for forgetting how its own inner machines work? Probably. Almost nobody under the age of 40 works in the "deep weeds" anymore (firmware, kernel, casually "Ring 0 and below" spaces). A decade ago, it was about 30. I'm the last wave, it seems, of people in these spaces, and that's quite terrifying. But I get it. The hardware is maddeningly complex, rapidly getting more complex to solve the problems created by the last complexity, and the whole stack is cracking and crumbling around the edges (the uarch vulns and Intel pulling SGX from consumer chips are a reflection of this). Another decade, this entire low level group will have retired to something far away from computers, and... we'll see what happens. Nothing good, I fear.

b112 4y ago
I often wonder the same. I grew up at a time, where I had to learn assembly on the C64, to get my machine to handle > 300 baud with uploads/downloads, on a BBS I wrote. On the hardware side, it was very easy to learn how to fix said machines, with schematics provided in the back of the user manual. This level of understanding is not as easily possible today, and my understanding grew outward from that. I think two things, the need to understand low level to work with hardware competently in the past, and that it was fun to work with hardware in the past, have led to a theoretical golden age of people who understood it all. I have deep understanding of baremetal, right through to frontend. Part of that comes from working with computing as it changed and morphed. People today are graduating, entering the field, but are starting at a higher level. One other thing to bear in mind. When I entered this field, it wasn't to make money. Salaries were abysmal, and on top of that, the field was seen as "boring" and "stodgy" to a great many. And there were often even poor employment prospects! This meant that people who worked in computing prior to 2000 or so, did so because of joy. They didn't think "Oh, I can make a good living here, I choose this job". In fact, people would tell you not to work in computing, who on Earth would hire you! So people from this era often were in this field, because they were drawn to it not for income, or job security, but instead because it was more important to work with the fun and joy of computing. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with entering a field to make a living, or for job security, the motivations are different. An example here ; using a computer is different than building computing. Enjoying using a web browser, enjoying interacting online, that is not "enjoying computing". Yet most people I speak of, were building circuit boards, coding in basic, when kids. How many CS graduates were coding apps, building webpages, for 100% fun, without any encouragement when 5? So I think the same capability is there, it is just that most people today are not interested in computing. They just happen to make a living there, and so those enjoying computing as a primary are awash in a sea of those who couldn't really care less.
- makapuf 4y ago
  As someone said, kids this day build computers with arduinos and stm32.
- mfuzzey 4y ago

avgcorrection 4y ago

I grew up with Unix 1 and a soldering iron. I feel sad for my kids who will grow up with ms-dos and high-level languages and not have a clue how things really work. Whither civilization?

SuperQue 4y ago
Kids these days and their electricity. They'll never learn to be a good barrel cooper.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

"Have we reached that level of the civilisation that goes extinct, for forgetting how its own inner machines work?" extending this logic. modt people in the wedt can't go food, connect plumbing or fix a broken chair. only 10% of the people will find correct ancor for drywall or fix a flat on a bycicle

KronisLV 4y ago

> Have we reached that level of the civilisation that goes extinct, for forgetting how its own inner machines work? This thought was expressed in Isaac Asimov's short story "The Last Question" [PDF]: https://physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf https://physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf > Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face -- miles and miles of face -- of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole. Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough. So Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share in the glory that was Multivac's I wonder whether they'll have to deal with CrashLoopBackoff errors in 2061.

mbrodersen 4y ago

I am 100% sure we can’t reboot civilisation. All the easily accessible resources needed to bootstrap has been depleted years ago.