3 ms·

The fact that this comments section indicates such a yawning chasm of gaps in knowledge (much less, understanding) - in a forum whose users are generally known

by phs318u 10mo ago

The fact that this comments section indicates such a yawning chasm of gaps in knowledge (much less, understanding) - in a forum whose users are generally known to be more technically savvy than most - is exactly why IPv6 is still not widely adopted. There is confusion about the less obvious benefits, confusion about how it works, confusion about the dangers (how do I adjust my well honed IPv4 spidey senses?), and confusion about how I transition my current private network. An epic failure of change management. Here’s a prediction. Linux on the desktop will have >50% penetration well before IPv6 does.

djha-skin 10mo ago
No. It's not adopted everywhere because it's awful. At least on the data center side.
n_u 10mo ago
> There is confusion about the less obvious benefits, confusion about how it works, confusion about the dangers (how do I adjust my well honed IPv4 spidey senses?), and confusion about how I transition my current private network Could you be specific about what the misconceptions are?
- phs318u 10mo ago
  I had Copilot produce this for you based on the comments in this discussion (as at just before the timestamp of this comment). https://copilot.microsoft.com/shares/656dEMHWyFye5cCeicgGv https://copilot.microsoft.com/shares/656dEMHWyFye5cCeicgGv
  - phs318u 10mo ago
    Interesting that this is getting downvoted. I truly wonder why. One of the things LLMs are good at is summarising and extracting key points. Or should I have gone to the trouble to do this myself - read the entire comment thread and manually summarise - when the person I was replying to hadn’t done that? My comment was meant in good faith: “here’s the info you wanted and how you can easily get them yourself next time”.
    - fruitworks 10mo ago
      1. People come here for discussions with real people. The other night I was at a party and we had a great time playing chess and board games. It would be weird if someone started using stockfish, even if it is a better player. Everything stockfish does, it already knows. It doesn't learn or explore the game-space. 2. The response is still too wordy, generic, and boring. So LLMs are not really better players, at least for now. 3. With LLMs, you can produce a ton of text much faster than it can be read. Whereas the dynamic is reversed for ordinary writing. By writing this by hand, I am doing you a favor by spending more time on this comment than you will. But by reading your LLM output I am doing you a favor by spending more time reading than you did generating. You could probably get away with using an LLM here by copying the response and then cutting down 90% of it. But at that point it would be better to just restate the points yourself in your own words.
      - phs318u 10mo ago
        So cheap questions where the answers could be readily had are not downvoted even though the answers to their question are right here in the discussion. Whereas because I did not do the legwork that my correspondent would not do, I am penalised. That’s what I’m hearing. EDITED TO ADD: > by reading your LLM output I am doing you a favor by spending more time reading than you did generating How could my respondent (presumably on whose behalf you are making the argument) possibly be doing me a favour when they asked the question? Is it each of our responsibility to go to some lengths to spoon feed one another when others don’t deign to feed themselves?
        renewiltord 10mo ago
        [dead]
      - braiamp 10mo ago
        And yet the llm did a better work of disparaging everyone comments as uniformed, which they are btw.
    - fainpul 10mo ago
mike_d 10mo ago
> such a yawning chasm of gaps in knowledge ... in a forum whose users are generally known to be more technically savvy There is a heck of a Dunning–Kruger joke to be made here.
Tractor8626 10mo ago
One would think that in 30 years there will be some sort of best practises established. Some articles to refer people to. Or at least some people to share their experience and answer practical questions. And yet there is still only "you doing it wrong, and I won't tell you how to do it right"
- piekvorst 10mo ago
  IPv6 existence is questioned not because people fail to configure it. It’s because they do not understand the problems it solves. Those problems are so large they’re invisible at the individual human scale. You either know them (which is not a secret) or invent superficial charges against the design.
  - Tractor8626 10mo ago
    No. People fail to configure it. Then start to question why this piece of garbage exist. It doesn't matter what problems it supposed to solve if it doesn't work.
    - braiamp 10mo ago
      Here's a counter: people don't need to configure it. They just need to connect to the network and the network is smart enough that it's essentially plug and play.
      - Tractor8626 10mo ago
        Maybe your magic ipv6 configures everything. My have certain shortcomings: it doesn't assign dns names to hosts and doesn't configure firewall rules
dmitrygr 10mo ago
> less obvious benefits if they are so unobvious that nobody knows about them, perhaps they are not benefits at all, but fringe minutiae?
- phs318u 10mo ago
  Perhaps. Who knows? <<< that’s the point I’m making.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
troad 10mo ago
> The fact that this comments section indicates such a yawning chasm of gaps in knowledge (much less, understanding) - in a forum whose users are generally known to be more technically savvy than most - is exactly why IPv6 is still not widely adopted. No, it isn't. Everyone here has the causality backwards. We don't know it because we've never needed to know it, and we've never needed to know it because it's not really required for anything (i.e. the cost of adopting/learning it > benefit). This has been a frustrating HN discussion to read, to be honest, because the consensus view strikes me as so off base. It's not that IPv6 has been miscommunicated, or that it hasn't been taught enough to undergrads. It's that it has been designed with virtually no incentives to encourage people to actually adopt it, with the entirely predictable consequence that no one adopted it. Therefore, none of us need to know it, schools don't need to teach it, etc. Folk are internalising the wrong lesson here. Incentives matter. No amount of mandated IPv6 instruction or well-intentioned blog posts explaining IPv6 are going to change anyone's incentive structure. And then when those things fail, there's a predictable and tiresome tendency to blame the users for not switching. If you want people to adopt new tech, make it actually do something new. Give people some reason to want to switch. "It mostly does the same thing as the old tech did, but it also takes effort and money to learn it / switch to it" is a terrible pitch, with entirely predictable consequences, and it's far too common in technical circles.
- braiamp 10mo ago
  > with the entirely predictable consequence that no one adopted it As the sibling comment pointed out: it's very close to 50% adoption, you just don't see it https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html
__s 10mo ago
IPv6 already hit 50% https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html
- braiamp 10mo ago
  It's so funny to see predictions that aged worse than milk. Ipv6 adoption isn't up to individuals, it's up to ISPs. We consumers aren't supposed to know about ipv6. The change will be silent and continuous.
- liquidpele 10mo ago
  “Given addresses” != adoption. Hell, I had to disable it in osx because it breaks the damn hotspot connection functionality. Wasn’t using it, it’s just there, breaking shit and being useless.
  - db48x 10mo ago
    That’s Apple’s fault. Why are you blaming it on IPv6? Oh, because Apple can do no wrong.
  - Dagger2 10mo ago
    Google's stats are tracking the percentage of people that reach Google over IPv6. That means they've not just been given addresses, but they configured them and are actively using them. How can that possibly not count as "adoption"?
- mnau 10mo ago
  Measly 30 years after it was approved. We will likely get AGI before we finish the transition.

by phs318u 10mo ago

djha-skin 10mo ago

No. It's not adopted everywhere because it's awful. At least on the data center side.

n_u 10mo ago

> There is confusion about the less obvious benefits, confusion about how it works, confusion about the dangers (how do I adjust my well honed IPv4 spidey senses?), and confusion about how I transition my current private network Could you be specific about what the misconceptions are?

phs318u 10mo ago
I had Copilot produce this for you based on the comments in this discussion (as at just before the timestamp of this comment). https://copilot.microsoft.com/shares/656dEMHWyFye5cCeicgGv https://copilot.microsoft.com/shares/656dEMHWyFye5cCeicgGv
- phs318u 10mo ago
  Interesting that this is getting downvoted. I truly wonder why. One of the things LLMs are good at is summarising and extracting key points. Or should I have gone to the trouble to do this myself - read the entire comment thread and manually summarise - when the person I was replying to hadn’t done that? My comment was meant in good faith: “here’s the info you wanted and how you can easily get them yourself next time”.
  - fruitworks 10mo ago
    1. People come here for discussions with real people. The other night I was at a party and we had a great time playing chess and board games. It would be weird if someone started using stockfish, even if it is a better player. Everything stockfish does, it already knows. It doesn't learn or explore the game-space. 2. The response is still too wordy, generic, and boring. So LLMs are not really better players, at least for now. 3. With LLMs, you can produce a ton of text much faster than it can be read. Whereas the dynamic is reversed for ordinary writing. By writing this by hand, I am doing you a favor by spending more time on this comment than you will. But by reading your LLM output I am doing you a favor by spending more time reading than you did generating. You could probably get away with using an LLM here by copying the response and then cutting down 90% of it. But at that point it would be better to just restate the points yourself in your own words.
    - phs318u 10mo ago
      So cheap questions where the answers could be readily had are not downvoted even though the answers to their question are right here in the discussion. Whereas because I did not do the legwork that my correspondent would not do, I am penalised. That’s what I’m hearing. EDITED TO ADD: > by reading your LLM output I am doing you a favor by spending more time reading than you did generating How could my respondent (presumably on whose behalf you are making the argument) possibly be doing me a favour when they asked the question? Is it each of our responsibility to go to some lengths to spoon feed one another when others don’t deign to feed themselves?
      - renewiltord 10mo ago
        [dead]
    - braiamp 10mo ago
      And yet the llm did a better work of disparaging everyone comments as uniformed, which they are btw.
  - fainpul 10mo ago

mike_d 10mo ago

> such a yawning chasm of gaps in knowledge ... in a forum whose users are generally known to be more technically savvy There is a heck of a Dunning–Kruger joke to be made here.

Tractor8626 10mo ago

One would think that in 30 years there will be some sort of best practises established. Some articles to refer people to. Or at least some people to share their experience and answer practical questions. And yet there is still only "you doing it wrong, and I won't tell you how to do it right"

piekvorst 10mo ago
IPv6 existence is questioned not because people fail to configure it. It’s because they do not understand the problems it solves. Those problems are so large they’re invisible at the individual human scale. You either know them (which is not a secret) or invent superficial charges against the design.
- Tractor8626 10mo ago
  No. People fail to configure it. Then start to question why this piece of garbage exist. It doesn't matter what problems it supposed to solve if it doesn't work.
  - braiamp 10mo ago
    Here's a counter: people don't need to configure it. They just need to connect to the network and the network is smart enough that it's essentially plug and play.
    - Tractor8626 10mo ago
      Maybe your magic ipv6 configures everything. My have certain shortcomings: it doesn't assign dns names to hosts and doesn't configure firewall rules

dmitrygr 10mo ago

> less obvious benefits if they are so unobvious that nobody knows about them, perhaps they are not benefits at all, but fringe minutiae?

phs318u 10mo ago
Perhaps. Who knows? <<< that’s the point I’m making.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

troad 10mo ago

> The fact that this comments section indicates such a yawning chasm of gaps in knowledge (much less, understanding) - in a forum whose users are generally known to be more technically savvy than most - is exactly why IPv6 is still not widely adopted. No, it isn't. Everyone here has the causality backwards. We don't know it because we've never needed to know it, and we've never needed to know it because it's not really required for anything (i.e. the cost of adopting/learning it > benefit). This has been a frustrating HN discussion to read, to be honest, because the consensus view strikes me as so off base. It's not that IPv6 has been miscommunicated, or that it hasn't been taught enough to undergrads. It's that it has been designed with virtually no incentives to encourage people to actually adopt it, with the entirely predictable consequence that no one adopted it. Therefore, none of us need to know it, schools don't need to teach it, etc. Folk are internalising the wrong lesson here. Incentives matter. No amount of mandated IPv6 instruction or well-intentioned blog posts explaining IPv6 are going to change anyone's incentive structure. And then when those things fail, there's a predictable and tiresome tendency to blame the users for not switching. If you want people to adopt new tech, make it actually do something new. Give people some reason to want to switch. "It mostly does the same thing as the old tech did, but it also takes effort and money to learn it / switch to it" is a terrible pitch, with entirely predictable consequences, and it's far too common in technical circles.

braiamp 10mo ago
> with the entirely predictable consequence that no one adopted it As the sibling comment pointed out: it's very close to 50% adoption, you just don't see it https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html

__s 10mo ago

IPv6 already hit 50% https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html

braiamp 10mo ago
It's so funny to see predictions that aged worse than milk. Ipv6 adoption isn't up to individuals, it's up to ISPs. We consumers aren't supposed to know about ipv6. The change will be silent and continuous.
liquidpele 10mo ago
“Given addresses” != adoption. Hell, I had to disable it in osx because it breaks the damn hotspot connection functionality. Wasn’t using it, it’s just there, breaking shit and being useless.
- db48x 10mo ago
  That’s Apple’s fault. Why are you blaming it on IPv6? Oh, because Apple can do no wrong.
- Dagger2 10mo ago
  Google's stats are tracking the percentage of people that reach Google over IPv6. That means they've not just been given addresses, but they configured them and are actively using them. How can that possibly not count as "adoption"?
mnau 10mo ago
Measly 30 years after it was approved. We will likely get AGI before we finish the transition.