Rephrasing a common quote - talk is cheap, that’s why I talk a lot.
If this system was in use by car companies, the consequences would be similar, only 2 or 3 companies worldwide, making a few models each, all of them much more expensive than what they are now.
And, as it happens, those 2 or 3 companies not really following the regulations, practically employing inspectors instead. Like Boeing.
I mean, there’s also no safe touchscreen on a mobile phone, and one would think a main personal mobile communication device should have the least disruptable user interface possible.
A stylus makes some sense, it’s a more convenient tool for drawing on a screen. But touchscreens must die.
I’m trying to dial someone or do anything at all in a dark place, I have to look with my eyes at a burning screen (notably with some crappy flat design of all UI elements, as is custom today) and try to hit it with my fingers. My fingers notably come from factory without backlight or auto-aim.
I could just remember which key is which, and rely on my tactile feeling to find them.
I’m trying to do anything at all in frosty weather (that kind when you feel like scratching your skin, normal winter, minus 10 Celsius is enough to feel that), I have to take off my glove and try to hit whatever with my fingers which become obviously clumsier under such temperatures.
And I can’t simultaneously do something and look at the display, because I’m poking my fingers at that display to do something!
And it’s easier to do something you didn’t intend.
I hope everything with a touchscreen dies as a consumer good, similarly to young nuclear scientist kits for toddlers, asbestos roof tiles, lead paint, you get the idea. Some things are bad.
That’s like muscle atrophying from lack of gravity. The gravity was the importance of such nuance for, well, making money. In this analogy.
Where did it go - well, to picking the right advertising and promotion system, the right platform. Good or bad attention is more important now than reputation.
One could foresee this when the Web, consisting of web directories, web rings and people talking about things in small communities on forums and in groupchats, with their ICQ number being their main identifier, was defeated by Google. It was the first indication that reputation loses to discoverability.
So, why are they cutting this - because this level has become subject to a higher level of competition. Where the specific business going bad doesn’t matter.
It’s new quantities, but an old mechanism, though. Humans were making up shit for all of history of talking.
In olden days it was resolved by trust and closed communities (hence various mystery cults in Antiquity, or freemasons in relatively recent times, or academia when it was a bit more protected).
Still doable and not a loss - after all, you are ultimately only talking to people anyway. One can build all the same systems on a F2F basis.
This and many other new problems are solved by applying reputation systems (like those banks use for your credit rating, or employers share with each other) in yet another direction. “This customer is an asshole, allocate less time for their requests and warn them that they have a bad history of demanding nonexistent books”. Easy.
Then they’ll talk with their friends how libraries are all possessed by a conspiracy, similarly to how similarly intelligent people talk about Jewish plot to take over the world, flat earth and such.
Yes. Except this works only in dynamic, that is, while USD keeps devaluing compared to much of the world’s currencies and goods, that might help exports.
And also revitalize the economy by somewhat hurting speculative assets.
But IRL it’s a gamble, and those who have power keep power.
No. It won’t be. But things change. Some buildings crumble. Some are reinforced and kept standing. Where there were streets, new buildings are erected. Where there were rivers and bulwarks, streets are made with pipes underneath.
So this particular building will have to change to avoid crumbling. Well, as it always happens.
It would be good (and for the US as well), but it’s possible the ship has sailed.
See, such racket schemes, if we use the tone of the article which I mostly agree with, are benefit not only to such US companies. They have already become popular and they will continue to be used.
So no. Unless suddenly a few liberal-democratic revolutions happen and everyone suddenly feels peaceful and reasonable.
On the plus side, maybe the notion of American Exceptionalism will diminish a bit, which is long overdue.
And I have a pet conspiracy theory that this is intentional. American elites are secretly tired of exceptionalist sh*t and think it’s hurting them too. And thus have come up with a solution to return sobriety.
It’s either I get that or a foldable 1 screen phone (like a flip phone).
From the times when things were actually convenient to use. Buttons shouldn’t get random presses while the thing is in your pocket. Screens should be protected from scratches and dirt while in your pocket. It’s more compact when folded while in your pocket, while thicker, but an apple fits in my pocket, so thickness is not a problem.
Remind me what happened? Ah, yes, Steve Jobs went out on a stage and confused the hell out of millions of hamsters, telling them he’s brought them their Star Trek communicator. Well, that’s not what he said, but that’s what they heard and what he meant.
I’ve gotten used to making sure my hands are not sweaty when using a phone, and that it’s practically not usable when it’s cold and your fingers are not very precise, like when walking or when in a crowded place, and that you should be careful with that pocket to not occasionally unlock the thing and repost something personal into apartment building common WhatsApp chat, things like that.
But sometimes I recall that with a Motorola flip phone I could do everything with no loss of ability or speed in all these situations.
Not even talking about battery life.
On another note, after Tim apple bribed Trump with a gold ball I’ve decided to no longer buy apple products again.
Oh, that’s when.
MS has nothing to do with it, except that BitLocker is much better than anything any Linux distro has to offer today.
It’s a piece of software with closed source code. I am aware that people can hide (and have done so many times) a backdoor or a mistake in source code so that it’ll be harder to find than many problems in binaries without source provided.
Still harder to audit.
You need to have the disk decrypt without user input, and you can’t have the secret with the user. (As the user is untrusted - could be someone stealing the laptop.) The normal Linux user mantra of ”I own the machine” does not apply here. In this threat model, the corporation owns the machine, and in particular any information on it.
Smart cards?
Hate RHEL all you want, but first take a look at what distros have any kind of commercial support at all from software vendors. This is the complete list: RHEL, sometimes Rocky, sometimes Ubuntu.
I know.
Basically, corporate requirements go completely against the requirements of enthusiasts and power users. You don’t need Secure Boot to protect your machine from thieves, but a corporation needs Secure Boot to protect the machine from you.
Sigh. Okay.
I think you can:
I’m not sure it’s much more work than what I’ve seen in corporate environments with Windows.
That’s a question similar to legalization of sex work.
I mean, selling data on someone is not cool. But what’s completely illegal, but in demand by everyone, becomes something completely unregulated in practice and still a huge market. While otherwise it could be at least partially constrained by some norms. Similarly sex work is very much not cool. But at least in some countries it gives smaller chance of being murdered to workers.
So - I live in Russia, I’m not sure I like the way it happens here more. Especially when combined with slow encroachment of mandatory centralized services for everything connected to government, municipal services, utilities, documents. They want control like in China, but can’t be bothered with security at least like in China.
Nothing more Russian than police giving someone their database for a bribe.
And it’s even more Russian that police then pays for convenient service to someone who’s bribed enough policemen to assemble enough data.
It’s a common banality to say that Russian culture is somehow deeply authoritarian, but actually it’s suppressed anarcho-capitalism all around. LOL.
(And it makes perfect sense that Ukrainian special services are working the same way. Shouldn’t have invaded such a similar country.)
Humans don’t want to feel lonely. Find machines (imaginary ones at that) as if there weren’t plenty of stray cats and dogs, humans from abusive families or without family, just those suffering.
That’s because fulfilling your search for the others for real means you know what? It’s real no matter what, you can’t turn it off once you’re done with your daily portion of worrying about the future.
But one thing I’ll add to this - if a robotic system as complex as human brain and with similar degree of compression and obscurity is some day formed, and it does have necessary feedbacks and reacts as a living being, I might accept you should treat it as such. Except one would think that requires so many iterations of evolution that it’s better to just care, again, for cats, dogs, hamsters, rabbits, humans if you’re feeling weird.
I had one such, HP something, with Atom and 1024x600 display. Ran Linux with dwm, conkeror, mpd and even some games in Wine. I really liked that, actually. Except for the 1024x600 part, at least 1366x768 would be better.
Yes, I understand that, I meant that it somehow felt for me that it’s a dinosaur term in English that nobody uses. Dunno why.
I mean, a PC from year 1999 is in the realm of possible for plenty of more localized production chains than needed to have that monster with Ryzen in the name.
And it’s not unreasonable to expect such a scattering of production. It happened with plenty of technologies. Also it’s not unreasonable to expect a return from more sophisticated and powerful material culture to one less so at both, but more accessible.
That’s what happened with automobiles a few times in history, that’s what happened with construction technologies and money many times in history, with food, with warfare.
That semiconductors are something challenging in complexity to produce - that actually makes such scattering more probable.
It’s not much different from chinaware or late medieval metallurgy needed for firearms. Strategic technologies are hard to achieve and it’s simpler to purchase their output, but eventually everyone realizes they need their own.
So I really hope that instead of the same not really diverse ecosystem of Intel, AMD and ARM powerful hardware we’ll have a thousand different local manufacturers of partially compatible hardware far weaker, like Amiga 1200, but more interesting.
Perhaps this will also be similar to the transition from late Rome to early Middle Ages.
It just makes sense historically. More distributed production environment can support smaller efficiency, - can’t make and sell on the same scale, - but there will be constant pressure to have it.
Of course, in reality this is all alarmism for no reason. There will be a bubble burst, suppose, - well, then there’ll be plenty of cheap hardware thrown out. The RAM manufacturers will have hard times, but it’ll balance out eventually. Just how it did after the dotcom bubble, not in the best way, perhaps with only a few manufacturers remaining, but it will. Or if there will be no bubble burst, suppose all that computing power founds an application with non-speculative value, - well, there’s still long way to go before your typical PC usage starts requiring really expensive amounts of RAM. If we drop the Web, even with modern Linux or FreeBSD one could survive on 2GB RAM and Intel C2D in year 2019. Then on 4GB, almost comfortable, even playing some games.
One good thing I’m seeing - those RAM prices can eventually kill the Web. It’s the most RAM-hungry part of our needs for no good reason. Perhaps Gemini is not what can replace it, it’s too basic, but I can see it becoming in corporate interest to support a leaner non-compatible replacement for the same niche. And corporate interest kills.
Or perhaps they’ll like some sort of semantic web gone wrong way - with some kind of “web” intended for AI agents, not humans, with humans having a chat prompt.
That part of the problem makes rules of the game more similar to how they were before the Internet. It’s almost a return to normalcy.