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The start of this reads like the beginning of a cult manifesto, but then transitions to a very logical solution for an important problem. Baffling. I'm in
by mikejulietbravo 2y ago
The start of this reads like the beginning of a cult manifesto, but then transitions to a very logical solution for an important problem.
Baffling. I'm in
- jldugger 2y agoIt keeps bouncing between too real and too absurd. Absurd: Not enough power on our sailboat to run Ableton and Photoshop. Real: So we replaced it with open source technology. Absurd: That technology was based on Electron. Real: Electron was too bloated. Absurd: So we ported everything over to the NES. Real: And now you can run our software anywhere you can emulate an NES
- Bluestein 2y agoExactly my feeling.- PS. Which leads me - tangentially - to think that (maybe) the solution to (at least) some of our problems might someday be found in a cult :) Who knows ... > Absurd: So we ported everything over to the NES. This was grand. The NES as a most effective "baseline" platform. Can totally see humanity sending out an NES emulator on Voyager VI as a last gasp.-
- wizzwizz4 2y agoLessWrong had some pretty good advice in the early months of the pandemic, despite their terrible track record on politics and AI. There's a lot right with the Amish. You could write an entire book about the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Cults can have a lot to offer.
- Bluestein 2y ago> Cults can have a lot to offer. ... in no small part perhaps because they remain isolated "pockets" of culture where - often - "progress" is slower or more controlled. Where idiosyncratic behavior becomes the "new" orthodoxy as behavior or culture "degrades".- Where was it ... "Nightfall" (the novel) I think it was where a cult periodically saves civilization - by being the only ones that know how to handle the aftermath.-
- throwup238 2y ago> PS. Which leads me - tangentially - to think that (maybe) the solution to (at least) some of our problems might someday be found in a cult :) The major religions have been beating that dead horse for a long time.
- bee_rider 2y agoThis is now my headcanon for why the UI of super advanced computers in 80’s sci-fi movies looks the way it does.
- Bluestein 2y agoGood call :) "8 bit 'looks' and hardware constitutes - and 'looks like' - some optimum as far as computing is concerned" ... so sufficiently advanced systems will look like it to interface with us as a sort of lingua franca.- AGIs. Alien probes. The works. They will all look to us like a C64 or NES would :)
- medstrom 2y agoIt's like how you can say that VT100 emulation has an expiration date, but you can't say that about the underlying concept of some UI based on a screenful of monospaced text, which is immortal.
- BalinKing 2y agoI apologize for an off-topic question, but I'm curious why you choose to write "." as ".-". Is it an internet convention I'm unaware of, or maybe punctuation from a language other than English?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Bluestein 2y agoNo problem, thanks.- Please, vid.: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40989221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40989221
- yard2010 2y agoThe real question stands still - how can I join your cult?
- Bluestein 2y agoSeconded.- Make it a thousand rabbits. Make it a flotilla. Make it an armada ... :)
- kragen 2y agocults are generally the only way to solve deep-rooted problems. otherwise people's habits are too strong and they keep reproducing the existing traditions that create the problems through unexamined avenues technically varvara isn't actually the nes
- Bluestein 2y ago> cults are generally the only way to solve deep-rooted problems. Now that's an interesting proposition (which, I do not contend mind you ...)
- anthk 2y agoI think they used Krita first. But UXN isn't restricted to small res art/screens. Look at oquonie.
- imp0cat 2y agoChat rooms and bare bones text editors aren't supposed to be process-heavy, and yet the popular communication platform Slack requires outrageous amounts of ram and CPU to function. [...] Making software this way is costly to off-grid users, or those on slow connections, [...] So true.
- jcgrillo 2y agoSlack had a good solution in the form of an IRC bridge but of course they killed it.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoYep. When you're small, cooperate, when you're big, kick everyone else out
- Bluestein 2y agoMoat, then drawbridge removal.-
- BizarroLand 2y agoEmbrace, Expand, Extinguish
- worldsayshi 2y agoI think you need to have the right mix of the absurd when you try to make something interesting.
- Avshalom 2y agoeverything about it reinforces the feeling that it's all just retroactive justification for finding a toy they made more fun than expected ETA: to be clear there's nothing wrong with making a toy and then turning that toy into it's own all-consuming hobby (TTRPGs for example) and one of the best parts of programming is how easy it is to do just that. It's just kind of annoying watching people wax rhapsodic about nonsense instead of copping to "yeah we're having a lot of fun, i feel like a kid again"
- subpub47 2y agoFunny, I was about to say the same thing about most "modern" tech.
- packetlost 2y agofwiw they actually live on a sailboat and have sporadic internet access and limited electricity, so saying it's retroactive justification isn't really true and minimizes the real problems they face.
- mplewis 2y agoThey could solve these problems by not living on a sailboat.
- jauntywundrkind 2y agoLiving on a sailboat approaches some very very hard life/existential pinnacles that most people never even attempt to climb. Yeah, you can have a simple regular life; that's lower on problems maybe. But man, sailing around & futzing with interesting barefoot developers projects sure sounds challenging in a lot of very very excellent ways.
- photonthug 2y agoSatellite internet is expensive, let’s all move down town! Housing in the city is expensive, let’s all move to sailboats! So you see at some point you have to address difficulties with some kind of approach besides avoiding them
- VyseofArcadia 2y agoI think the general thesis statement is, "there are very few things we do today that couldn't have been done on older hardware".
- Bluestein 2y agoWhich, holds (?) PS. Except for AI, perhaps ... ... I was going to add certain forms of cryptography to that, but then realized that we've always have had some sort of cryptography that was "hardware-appropriate" (ie. sufficiently hard to break, to be useful) for the age. So older hardware was just fine ...
- medstrom 2y agoAny crypto you did couldn't be future-proof in the way it is today though. Don't know if that's mainly due to better algorithms or from the fact modern CPUs are optimized to rapidly decrypt/encrypt things.
- fluoridation 2y agoIt was algorithms. Back in the 90s there was no AES or ECC. There was RSA, and it was feasible to generate long keys, but it was impractical. Keys from back then could probably be easily factored nowadays. I think the spread of the Internet pushed demand for longer keys and better (more secure and efficient) algorithms.
- samatman 2y agoJust because I was there (I agree with your general point) I wanted to say that I made my first PGP key in 1995 and it was a 4096 byte one, which is just as uncrackable now as it was then. I even remember being vaguely confused, because it gave you options, and I was thinking to myself "wut. Who wants the weaker-than-necessary key. I'll take the big one, thx"
- fluoridation 2y ago
- bitwize 2y agoIt could be worse. One word: Urbit. What the boat couple is doing strikes me as the most romantic sort of bricolage and just gives me the warm fuzzies all over. But Urbit just pisses me off for a variety of reasons.
- RyJones 2y agoThe Baffler was a favorite read of mine in the early 90s. https://thebaffler.com/ https://thebaffler.com/
- hardwaresofton 2y agoI’m glad I’d still around — I’m a happy subscriber
- mgaunard 2y agoFor me any potential technical argument and innovation is completely drowned in the needlessly pervasive anti-capitalist genderfluid digital nomad hippie talk.
- yawpitch 2y agoSorry? Couldn’t hear you over the unnecessarily-inserted alt-right knee-jerk anti-wokism.
- mgaunard 2y agoI'm sorry you think me not acknowledging or caring about your made-up social minority makes me some sort of political activist. What I care about is technology, and you have to dig quite hard to extract it here.
- yawpitch 2y agoFascinating that you seem to think that taking the time and energy to write a trollish shitpost about your offense at someone’s use of pronouns is somehow not acknowledging or caring about that someone’s use of pronouns. I don’t think you’re an activist, I just think you’re yet another someone who is unable to see the Amazon forest for the chip on your shoulder.