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It doesn't work for business at all because if you want to do business you have to meet people where they are. You can't email a client and say, sorry, can you

It doesn't work for business at all because if you want to do business you have to meet people where they are. You can't email a client and say, sorry, can you please send me that contract in a text file, I only have a terminal. Or, sorry, I can't use your web portal to access the data because it uses JavaScript. If you're not doing business, using the terminal works fine. Up until you have to deal with health insurance or your power bill or your taxes or bank. Unfortunately the world now revolves around [gui] web browsers. We brought this technologically retarded hellscape on ourselves and we deserve it.

ghaff 4y ago
>[gui] web browsers You largely can restrict yourself to phone calls and postal mail. Aside from ordering from Amazon, my dad largely does. (Albeit in part because my brother and I will do various things for him he can't figure out how to do with just a phone call or letter.) But it's increasingly difficult for a lot of things and is, at a minimum, less convenient. And, as you say, in business you generally don't really have the option to basically refuse to use a computer for many purposes.
- treeman79 4y ago
  Saw an elderly lady freaking out at Walmart because they no longer could pay capital one credit card in person with a physical check.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    In fairness, paying post-paid bills by check through the mail is still an option for most things. I get most stuff handled automatically and pay most of the rest online through my bank but I still write a fair number of checks either in person or mailed.
pb7 4y ago
>Unfortunately the world now revolves around [gui] web browsers. We brought this technologically retarded hellscape on ourselves and we deserve it. This seems backwards. Limiting yourself to CLI tools do retard your abilities, modern GUI apps do not.
- kkfx 4y ago
  Sorry? CLI respect of Emacs yes, is limited and limiting, but modern GUIs are FAR more limited and limiting. Can you integrate them? No. Let's say you want in a single view a set of mails, financial transactions, notes etc. You can arrange something in a CLI, you can do it in org-mode, you can't do it in the most advanced ERP monster. Modern UIs try to go back to the original document UI concept but TOTALLY fails for the interactive part, they are mere view where you can touch some knobs someone else placed there for you, nothing more, and try to bend them is a nightmare.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    What can't you do in X Window that you can do in a terminal? I'd agree that some GUIs are bad, but the same could be said about some TUIs.
    - kkfx 4y ago
      Not in, but with modern GUIs (so X11 xlibs wrapped by some widget lib) I can't compose nor integrate anything. For instance if I want to do some simple math in an email I'm composing I need to launch another application, type the same math I've typed in the message body, evaluate it, copypaste the results, copy-pasting is the sole IPC such tools have. On a terminal, I can run a terminal based editor who typically can run code from inside the text buffer. In Emacs I can do much more in both terminal and X11. That's is. My org-mode notes links anything, meaning mails (searches, specific messages, threads), financial transactions (ledger), elisp code, for instance to act on notes themselves like an `* Online retails orders` heading with a "click here to add a new one" or to change the Emacs/EXWM graphic, for instance to present something, org-ql queries on my notes etc. In pure CLI (not TUI) I can at least cat and process programs output, in modern GUIs I can't. A simple showcase: https://youtu.be/B6jfrrwR10k https://youtu.be/B6jfrrwR10k
      - kube-system 4y ago
        This is a matter of pattern, not technology. GUI apps can and sometimes do provide interfaces for programmatic use. And some terminal applications fail to follow conventional Unix patterns.
parasti 4y ago
> technologically retarded hellscape The modern web seems pretty great to me. Why do you feel that way?
- nico_h 4y ago
  You must have a very good ad blocker.
  - plasticchris 4y ago
    It was certainly an eye opener when I went to help a friend with their computer and saw the web without ad blockers for the first time in years. I had no idea.
    - tracker1 4y ago
      Worse, if they have been infested with malware that may inject additional ads into sites like Amazon... Actually made me a fan of chromebooks for anyone that doesn't actually need more than that.
      - pb7 4y ago
        Are you sure those aren't just Amazon ads? They generated $31B in ad revenue last year.
        tracker1 4y ago
        In this case of memory, it was definitely malware... though I couldn't really speak to Amazon today if ublock/privacy-guard/pihole catch them.
- usednet 4y ago
  Censorship, mandatory KYC and ID verification, mass surveillance, ridiculous amounts of ads, everything is a subscription service and my god damn oven needs a login and ethernet connection…
random42_ 4y ago
> Up until you have to deal with health insurance or your power bill or your taxes or bank. > Unfortunately the world now revolves around [gui] web browsers. We brought this technologically retarded hellscape on ourselves and we deserve it. As bad as the web is, I certainly don't miss the days when I had to go to a physical office, wait minutes, sometimes hours, in a line and talk to somebody that may or may not help me, depending on how their day was going. Thanks but no thanks.
mikkergp 4y ago
> Unfortunately the world now revolves around [gui] web browsers. We brought this technologically retarded hellscape on ourselves and we deserve it. This seems like rose colored glasses, maybe there was a very small period of time where there was a wide variety of things you could do in a terminal, but for business purposes it was mostly native GUI’s which suffer from the same problems as the web if not worse (maybe only better because they were harder to make so there were a lot less of them)
nine_k 4y ago
There are reasonable terminal viewers for many formats. Web sites that require JS to function (and there are many) is a bigger deal. Same with pictures. It's much more realistic to run a graphical environment and use a regular browser. Just disable JS by default and put a reasonable ad blocker. Then whitelist sites where you really need JS to work, like your Jenkins host :) A reasonable PDF viewer is also not such a resource hog, same with picture viewers when you need to display pictures. Say, Firefox does a reasonable job of being both if you don't want to install dedicated software. You can make a graphical environment which is snappy, low-distraction, and very usable. (That was definitely already possible 20 years ago, when my Linux desktop was my main working machine, and ran quite adequately on a tiny fraction of today's laptop resources.)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ghaff 4y ago

>[gui] web browsers You largely can restrict yourself to phone calls and postal mail. Aside from ordering from Amazon, my dad largely does. (Albeit in part because my brother and I will do various things for him he can't figure out how to do with just a phone call or letter.) But it's increasingly difficult for a lot of things and is, at a minimum, less convenient. And, as you say, in business you generally don't really have the option to basically refuse to use a computer for many purposes.

treeman79 4y ago
Saw an elderly lady freaking out at Walmart because they no longer could pay capital one credit card in person with a physical check.
- ghaff 4y ago
  In fairness, paying post-paid bills by check through the mail is still an option for most things. I get most stuff handled automatically and pay most of the rest online through my bank but I still write a fair number of checks either in person or mailed.

pb7 4y ago

>Unfortunately the world now revolves around [gui] web browsers. We brought this technologically retarded hellscape on ourselves and we deserve it. This seems backwards. Limiting yourself to CLI tools do retard your abilities, modern GUI apps do not.

kkfx 4y ago
Sorry? CLI respect of Emacs yes, is limited and limiting, but modern GUIs are FAR more limited and limiting. Can you integrate them? No. Let's say you want in a single view a set of mails, financial transactions, notes etc. You can arrange something in a CLI, you can do it in org-mode, you can't do it in the most advanced ERP monster. Modern UIs try to go back to the original document UI concept but TOTALLY fails for the interactive part, they are mere view where you can touch some knobs someone else placed there for you, nothing more, and try to bend them is a nightmare.
- kube-system 4y ago
  What can't you do in X Window that you can do in a terminal? I'd agree that some GUIs are bad, but the same could be said about some TUIs.
  - kkfx 4y ago
    Not in, but with modern GUIs (so X11 xlibs wrapped by some widget lib) I can't compose nor integrate anything. For instance if I want to do some simple math in an email I'm composing I need to launch another application, type the same math I've typed in the message body, evaluate it, copypaste the results, copy-pasting is the sole IPC such tools have. On a terminal, I can run a terminal based editor who typically can run code from inside the text buffer. In Emacs I can do much more in both terminal and X11. That's is. My org-mode notes links anything, meaning mails (searches, specific messages, threads), financial transactions (ledger), elisp code, for instance to act on notes themselves like an `* Online retails orders` heading with a "click here to add a new one" or to change the Emacs/EXWM graphic, for instance to present something, org-ql queries on my notes etc. In pure CLI (not TUI) I can at least cat and process programs output, in modern GUIs I can't. A simple showcase: https://youtu.be/B6jfrrwR10k https://youtu.be/B6jfrrwR10k
    - kube-system 4y ago
      This is a matter of pattern, not technology. GUI apps can and sometimes do provide interfaces for programmatic use. And some terminal applications fail to follow conventional Unix patterns.

parasti 4y ago

> technologically retarded hellscape The modern web seems pretty great to me. Why do you feel that way?

nico_h 4y ago
You must have a very good ad blocker.
- plasticchris 4y ago
  It was certainly an eye opener when I went to help a friend with their computer and saw the web without ad blockers for the first time in years. I had no idea.
  - tracker1 4y ago
    Worse, if they have been infested with malware that may inject additional ads into sites like Amazon... Actually made me a fan of chromebooks for anyone that doesn't actually need more than that.
    - pb7 4y ago
      Are you sure those aren't just Amazon ads? They generated $31B in ad revenue last year.
      - tracker1 4y ago
        In this case of memory, it was definitely malware... though I couldn't really speak to Amazon today if ublock/privacy-guard/pihole catch them.
usednet 4y ago
Censorship, mandatory KYC and ID verification, mass surveillance, ridiculous amounts of ads, everything is a subscription service and my god damn oven needs a login and ethernet connection…

random42_ 4y ago

> Up until you have to deal with health insurance or your power bill or your taxes or bank. > Unfortunately the world now revolves around [gui] web browsers. We brought this technologically retarded hellscape on ourselves and we deserve it. As bad as the web is, I certainly don't miss the days when I had to go to a physical office, wait minutes, sometimes hours, in a line and talk to somebody that may or may not help me, depending on how their day was going. Thanks but no thanks.

mikkergp 4y ago

> Unfortunately the world now revolves around [gui] web browsers. We brought this technologically retarded hellscape on ourselves and we deserve it. This seems like rose colored glasses, maybe there was a very small period of time where there was a wide variety of things you could do in a terminal, but for business purposes it was mostly native GUI’s which suffer from the same problems as the web if not worse (maybe only better because they were harder to make so there were a lot less of them)

nine_k 4y ago

There are reasonable terminal viewers for many formats. Web sites that require JS to function (and there are many) is a bigger deal. Same with pictures. It's much more realistic to run a graphical environment and use a regular browser. Just disable JS by default and put a reasonable ad blocker. Then whitelist sites where you really need JS to work, like your Jenkins host :) A reasonable PDF viewer is also not such a resource hog, same with picture viewers when you need to display pictures. Say, Firefox does a reasonable job of being both if you don't want to install dedicated software. You can make a graphical environment which is snappy, low-distraction, and very usable. (That was definitely already possible 20 years ago, when my Linux desktop was my main working machine, and ran quite adequately on a tiny fraction of today's laptop resources.)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]