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Computer Files Are Going Extinct

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Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#321

Post by Zee2 »

mukti wrote: post #206
esotericn wrote: post #86

You can pry my files from my cold dead hands. What amuses me about all of this is that it seems to just further cement software developers as magicians. Back in the day it was the Windows control panel. Nowadays? I have direct experience with tons of people navigating cloud service settings or whatever else via endless GUIs. Just give me the filesystem. It's all a bunch of JSON configs or whatever anyway. find -name…

I'm often able to mystify people by fixing something by dropping to a shell and modifying files.. even some developers. I think the one thing that this article points out is how unaware some developers about what they're doing. The author had an example where he used NPM to download dependencies and said "websites were made of files; now they are made of dependencies." While that is not wrong, its too often how peopl…

I think the author's point of "made of dependencies, not files" is that they are not human files. They are autogenerated webs of dependent repositories, not to be touched by the user, unless something has gone seriously wrong. I wouldn't qualify personal files that are directly created and managed by a human user as being the same thing as a mass of folders curated and managed by a dependency manager utility.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#322

Post by walshemj »

smolder wrote: post #309
robocat wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the renaissance of language, the minting of new words and concepts, the remixing of our heritage words with new Unicode characters and the mashing of new syntax. I see it as progress - which destroys meanings as much as liberating new meanings. A word becomes a poetic palimpsest of needlessly complex layers. I am an engineer-type, I like concrete words with focused meanings, I failed English at school while ex…

There's definitely a mix of good and bad as language changes. Losing the word "meme" to the colloquial definition is a loss and a massive disappointment to me, because I think the gene analogy is insightful. When I talk to people about memes-as-in-memetics they're bound to get confused or even disbelieve me that it had any other meaning. I've been accused of man-splaining in situations where I am legitimately being h…

Praxis has a specific meaning and is a classical Greek concept.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#323

Post by robocat »

smolder wrote: post #309
robocat wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the renaissance of language, the minting of new words and concepts, the remixing of our heritage words with new Unicode characters and the mashing of new syntax. I see it as progress - which destroys meanings as much as liberating new meanings. A word becomes a poetic palimpsest of needlessly complex layers. I am an engineer-type, I like concrete words with focused meanings, I failed English at school while ex…

There's definitely a mix of good and bad as language changes. Losing the word "meme" to the colloquial definition is a loss and a massive disappointment to me, because I think the gene analogy is insightful. When I talk to people about memes-as-in-memetics they're bound to get confused or even disbelieve me that it had any other meaning. I've been accused of man-splaining in situations where I am legitimately being h…

> Losing the word "meme" to the colloquial definition is a loss and a massive disappointment to me

I love "The Selfish Gene", but it make me happy that memes and virality are modern metaphors for chunks of thought transmitted by wet symbolic processors. I believe that children now bellyfeel the meanings which is fantastic, even if they don't know the exact sense.

> Literally should mean literally, and only literally

I think I used to agree, but now I just like to amuse myself (and sometimes others) by misusing it. I do the same with many other words (sophisticated, nice, proud, etc). I like the layers of meaning, and I love multiple connections, although I still don't like most poetry.

> 3) Create new words and change meanings to suit their narrative/sales pitch

This is a true evil: the defiling of words for commercial gain riles me.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#324

Post by pvaldes »

fl0under wrote: post #301
nostrademons wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if this is actually computer literacy plummeting or if it's a wider population of students being expected to understand computers. When I was in high school the vast majority of my peers understood how to bundle up a bunch of photos, documents, etc. into a zip file and e-mail them. This is because my peers were nerds, and we were excited about this new computer technology and eager to learn everything we…

I am in my early twenties and I would expect none of my peers during high school would have difficulty zipping up some files. Perhaps I am just in that brief period of time where more people than just the nerds knew the basics of the filesystem.

There are several layers in this problem. To be able to zip files like a pro is great, but maybe those people shouldn't be doing it when they can use bzip2, gzip or xz instead that perform better.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#325

Post by Const-me »

pnutjam wrote: post #242
unqueued wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I might imply that your highschool teacher friend is instead falling out of computer literacy, and that highshool students are moving away from her form of a computer-based workflow. I suppose, in the same way that people using crayons are moving away from the printed word. > Perhaps instead of email, you teacher friend could find out how her students send things to each other and meet them half way? Make up a goog…

Email is actually pretty crappy for files. She should setup an https drop and get a way better experience.

I use pcloud.com for a similar problem.

They have custom HTTP JSON RPC protocol, it uses POST and GET verbs. Their web site calls that one. They also have more performant TCP binary endpoints for use by native clients, with the same payload packed into custom binary format.

For users, it's a web app with download and upload links.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#326

Post by beerandt »

robocat wrote: post #237
perl4ever wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think vastly more people are reading and writing due to modern computer literacy, and I can't stand the way they are changing the meaning of words because they don't read books . It appears vocabulary is increasing, but people get their vocabulary from inadequate online dictionary entries and/or peers that don't read books either. So to me, because I grew up reading books, it's incredibly aggravating because it see…

I love the renaissance of language, the minting of new words and concepts, the remixing of our heritage words with new Unicode characters and the mashing of new syntax. I see it as progress - which destroys meanings as much as liberating new meanings. A word becomes a poetic palimpsest of needlessly complex layers. I am an engineer-type, I like concrete words with focused meanings, I failed English at school while ex…

Latin was invented for a reason. Common language became vulgar.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#327

Post by Frost1x »

aidenn0 wrote: post #295
nostrademons wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if this is actually computer literacy plummeting or if it's a wider population of students being expected to understand computers. When I was in high school the vast majority of my peers understood how to bundle up a bunch of photos, documents, etc. into a zip file and e-mail them. This is because my peers were nerds, and we were excited about this new computer technology and eager to learn everything we…

Even fairly computer-savvy younger kids don't really use e-mail. I had 3 HS students in a D&D group a few years back (now they are finishing college), and they were fairly tech savvy (2 of them went on to major in CS). I setup a listserv for our group to coordinate schedule &c. The response was "I don't really check my e-mail, can we use FB messanger?"

I somewhat understand this gripe against email but the issue I have with everyone who hates email is that you then diverge into about a dozen other communication mediums no one can settle on, making the overhead of checking all points of contact and remembering where relevant information as a chore.

Because of that, I prefer email. I'm more than happy to pickup new technology and use it but I have no desire to do so if it's going to take more time to do something I already have little desire to do.

My current location literally has 8 communication mediums and its miserable to deal with. Then I send emails and people complain... it's like people enjoy wasting their time.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#328

Post by spats1990 »

greggman2 wrote: post #145
fenwick67 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps instead of email, you teacher friend could find out how her students send things to each other and meet them half way? "Please turn in your assignments via Snapchat by 7AM tomorrow"

A friend recommended an accountant to me here in Japan. He wanted to do all correspondence via the Line App including tax forms etc. Another contract made a Facebook messenger group and shared all versions of files by pasting them in to the messenger chat. Wasn't particular happy about those but fortunately both were fairly short term things and to be honest I couldn't really think of anything better that I believe I…

Line accountant!! Same in Korea but with KakaoTalk. People use it for everything. People who are worried about the dominance of WhatsApp or Messenger should see what 90 percent+ dominance by one platform looks like. I did all the organising for a rental contract here through KakaoTalk. It also has a bank and in-app payments system. You can use it to buy someone a coffee at starbucks.They just recieve a barcode to be scanned at the counter. You can buy gifts for people and have them shipped without knowing the address, because the recipient just inputs it after recieving the notification.

And despite this vast monopolistic ecosystem DaumKakao put ads in the app this year. Greedy.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#329

Post by panic »

antaviana wrote: post #226
cproctor wrote: post #74

To a computer science teacher, this feels like trying to walk up a down escalator. First-year CS students (middle school or high school) with experience using Apple products don't have a concept of a filesystem. The shift to auto-saving documents also corrodes the intuition that files get stored on disk in some non-magical way. In the same way that it's now easier to teach networking and graph theory because youth ex…

My hairdresser, who knew I was into computers, once asked me “when I delete a picture on my mobile phone, where does it go?”. I first thought he was asking if there was some kind of Recycle Bin on Android, but then he said: “when we die, our body is burier or burned, that is it becomes bones or ashes, but what happens with the picture on the mobile phone, what does it become?”

There's a kind of pillow covered in small, reversible sequins, which makes a pretty good analog for the situation inside the computer. If you pet one of these pillows, your hand's motion flips the sequins to show one color or the other, creating patterns. Petting all over the pillow in a single direction restores the pillow to a single color, erasing the pattern. But the pattern didn't really "go anywhere" in the sense that a physical object would -- it was just an arrangement of sequins.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#330

Post by beerandt »

pasabagi wrote: post #247
l_t wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of precision. I think a big problem with modern use of English is that it has reduced precision. What reduces precision? 1. Increased reliance on idioms to communicate. Idioms use analogies, and usually reduce precision. Our increasingly shared cultural context via the Internet means that more and more idioms are entering common use and (IMO) reducing the clarity of communication. 2. Reduced general vocabula…

I frequently write to my grandma, who is fairly well-educated, and her writing is technically good. It is, however, bad writing. It's a pattern I've noticed quite a lot with older people. They write perfectly-formed garbage. I think the amount of time people spend writing today is greater than at any time in history, and I think it shows. That's my intuition. But I'd also note, your points (1, 3 for example) contradi…

Are you sure it's not just generational misunderstanding?

A lot of people describe dialogue from early movies in a similar way, just because it's difficult to understand. Especially the early noir stuff. They're speaking perfect English, but it might as well be a foreign language to most English speakers today.

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