Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 144 posts

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#21

Post by augustl »

mrob wrote: post #8

TempleOS has no process isolation, so it's completely unaffected by Spectre and Meltdown. I'm starting to think there's a lot of wisdom in its design. Complexity of modern computer systems keeps increasing but the value I get from that complexity isn't increasing nearly as fast. Spectre and Meltdown are just recent examples of some of the cost of that complexity. Do we really need an OS too complex for any one person…

You raise an interesting point!

Maybe everything should have access to everything, and then you keep your _real_ secrets, like encryption keys, on dedicated hardware that locks away the key to the outside world and only does signing. Like a Trezor bitcoin wallet or secure enclave on iOS.

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#22

Post by b6 »

mrob wrote: post #8

TempleOS has no process isolation, so it's completely unaffected by Spectre and Meltdown. I'm starting to think there's a lot of wisdom in its design. Complexity of modern computer systems keeps increasing but the value I get from that complexity isn't increasing nearly as fast. Spectre and Meltdown are just recent examples of some of the cost of that complexity. Do we really need an OS too complex for any one person…

> Do we really need an OS too complex for any one person to completely understand?

I think the answer to this is yes. But at the same time, I think we're kind of messing up because children today don't have the same kind of systems a lot of us grew up with -- ones that boot instantly into programming consoles with easy ways to make sounds and draw graphics. Terry's vision to create a modern system like that is deeply good, I think. Personally I imagine something more like booting into a console that understood Forth and/or Lisp, and had what we now consider to be reasonable resolution and number of colors... but Terry is building his dream, not mine. Also, God provided a specification to Terry.

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#23

Post by dfox »

chungy wrote: post #9
mrob wrote: post #8

TempleOS has no process isolation, so it's completely unaffected by Spectre and Meltdown. I'm starting to think there's a lot of wisdom in its design. Complexity of modern computer systems keeps increasing but the value I get from that complexity isn't increasing nearly as fast. Spectre and Meltdown are just recent examples of some of the cost of that complexity. Do we really need an OS too complex for any one person…

It's a bit similar to Windows 9x -- anything can do anything. It might not be suspectible to Meltdown and Spectre per se, but the lack of security that grants that property still means a lack of security.

Windows 9x has process isolation, but has no concept of permissions thus any process can do anything that is provided by the OS API (which includes reading and writing memory of other processes, injecting code into kernel and such things). This means that it is very unlikely for misbehaving process to compromise the integrity of OS itself or other processes (modulo the fact that such process can confuse some other OS component, eg. window manager, such that the system becomes essentially unusable).

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#24

Post by founderling »

He has a donate button on his homepage. I wonder if that brings in something? Anybody here who ever used a donate button on their website and can tell something about it?

How does one even receive 'donations'? Is that like getting paid? Do they have to create an invoice for tax reasons? How is it taxed?

It would be nice if there was a number, how much is donated per month. I can imagine donating something. Depending on how much cash flow there already is.

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#25

Post by StanislavPetrov »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #7
galfarragem wrote: post #5

In a recent HN thread fellow HNers were asking what is a real artist: this is it.

How do you mean? TempleOS is undoubtably a pretty interesting achievement, both in the artistic and technological sense - but Terry has serious mental issues, and we shouldn't overlook them as "oh, that's just how artists are".

In fact, if you do a careful study of history, many of the best artists have "serious mental issues". The question is, how do we define "serious mental issues" and "art"? I don't think its a coincidence that people with off-the-charts creativity are mentally different than most other people. If your thought process is that far removed from others in regards to art ("creativity"), then it only stands to reason that your thought process would be very different from other people in other regards, too.

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#27

Post by mrob »

sharpneli wrote: post #10
mrob wrote: post #8

TempleOS has no process isolation, so it's completely unaffected by Spectre and Meltdown. I'm starting to think there's a lot of wisdom in its design. Complexity of modern computer systems keeps increasing but the value I get from that complexity isn't increasing nearly as fast. Spectre and Meltdown are just recent examples of some of the cost of that complexity. Do we really need an OS too complex for any one person…

That's like saying "I don't have any doors in my house, just open frames. So I'm not affected by the weaknesses in locks."

If lack of doors was standard, everybody would see the open frames, and culture would adapt to them. Weaknesses in computer security are much harder to spot. Spectre has been possible for decades without mainstream attention. It's this lack of understandability that I think is dangerous. Many people will assume systems are secure just because they don't see an obvious way to exploit them, and because the complexity has grown far beyond what will fit into a human brain there will undoubtedly be non-obvious flaws. Is weak security really better than no security? The "no security" model really means "socially enforced security", which is playing to human strengths. It's much easier to understand than figuring out the full consequences of speculative execution.

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#29

Post by terminalcommand »

b6 wrote: post #22
mrob wrote: post #8

TempleOS has no process isolation, so it's completely unaffected by Spectre and Meltdown. I'm starting to think there's a lot of wisdom in its design. Complexity of modern computer systems keeps increasing but the value I get from that complexity isn't increasing nearly as fast. Spectre and Meltdown are just recent examples of some of the cost of that complexity. Do we really need an OS too complex for any one person…

> Do we really need an OS too complex for any one person to completely understand? I think the answer to this is yes. But at the same time, I think we're kind of messing up because children today don't have the same kind of systems a lot of us grew up with -- ones that boot instantly into programming consoles with easy ways to make sounds and draw graphics. Terry's vision to create a modern system like that is deeply…

The console of today's youth is in the browsers. Any kid can open the developer's console and start typing JavaScript, the results are displayed immediately on the screen. Considering that JavaScript has it's roots in Scheme, it is a good language for kids to experiment on.

For learning lower level constructs maybe Webassembly will help the future generations. The interested kids can also purchase raspberry pi s and dive into a world of low-level programming.

Re: TempleOS creator Terry Davis is homeless and living in a van

#30

Post by kentiko »

newsbinator wrote: post #4

When I googled I found more details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/7218gh/templeos_crea... > Despite the mean spirited attention he gets, he does have a following of people who seem to genuinly feel for him, and want to do nice things for him. One thing his followers did which at least seemed well intentioned was buying him a drum set. Terry likes to use drum sticks, but didn't have a set, so a gofundm…

It blows my mind that a mental ill person is ending up homeless like this. Society should take care of theses cases.
Post reply on HN