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Your Computer Isn't Yours

sneak.berlin

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Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#701

Post by forest_dweller »

thotsBgone wrote: post #696
forest_dweller wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forced autonomous cars: Yes, once they are good enough. We make people wear seat-belts. Same thing. Selt belt wearing is rarely enforced anywhere (especially in Europe, in Italy nobody wears one even though it is illegal). As for autonomous cars. If they ever work, one of the first mods people will do is to add a steering wheel. > Stopping selling of knives: Yes, once we have a safer way of cutting things. Knives a…

> Seat belt wearing is rarely enforced anywhere Maybe where you live. Everybody wears one here. > Knives are a safe way of cutting things. Billions of people use them everyday without issue. You probably missed the part where I said we would only outlaw knives if we had a safer way of cutting things (reliably).

> Maybe where you live. Everybody wears one here.

Enforcement and compliance are two different things. I was saying that it cannot be enforced. Not that people won't comply.

> You probably missed the part where I said we would only outlaw knives if we had a safer way of cutting things (reliably)

You seemed to misunderstand. The way we have is perfectly safe as it is. Billions of people use them everyday without issue. There is neither the incentive or need to.

You cannot enforce the ban of knives as they are soooo trivial to make (you can make a knife by hitting a large stone against a piece of flint). Even in a very locked down environment such as a prison inmates still manage to acquire them or produce them.

Even if in your fantasy world you did outlaw them and was successful. People would hit each other with Baseball bats, Umbrellas, Pieces of wood, Bricks, lumps of metal.

You must solve the problem of why people are being violent not what they are using to be violent.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#702

Post by greyhair »

GuB-42 wrote: post #294
pdkl95 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I worry for Gen Z because they're tiny-mobile-device native. And the only usable tiny mobile devices are walled gardens. Without the ability to grow up playing with system level software, combined with the software industry's unwillingness to pass on institutional knowledge to younger generations, I fear we are already on a path towards a civilization that loses a lot of the technological capability we currently en…

Gen Z can get real general-purpose computers with a development environment for cheap. The new Raspberry Pi 400 is a modern take on home computers like the C64, but 15 times cheaper. Pi 400 full kit: $100, C64: $595 (1982) / $1576 (inflation adjusted for 2019). The computers are not just getting cheaper, educative material is easier than ever to find. Because modern computers are much more complex and do much more th…

I just made the C64 Pi 400 comparison to someone last week. It is completely analogous.

Pair that up with an arduino, and maybe wiring, and you can a have hardware interaction with a Linux desktop on the 400.

I just helped a young arduino user with reading an analog pot yesterday. There are still young people out there playing with hardware, and it is way easier today than it was for me in 1984.

Then go over and look at the people configuring and compiling custom versions of Marlin for their 3D printers.

Or the nerds designing flight computers for solid fuel model rockets.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#703

Post by forest_dweller »

ernst_klim wrote: post #698
forest_dweller wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well you are free to provide a platform that is as convenient as ios and as free as linux. Respectfully you obviously don't understand what I wrote. I was quite clearly talking about the ability to run an alternative OS on the platform. Not whether there Lineage OS or similar is as good as iOS. You can install whatever operating system you want on a Laptop or a PC. You can already run other ROM images on Android (t…

> I was quite clearly talking about the ability to run an alternative OS on the platform. I got it, and explained how it will hurt monetization of their product. Android is a different story with different (I dare say way more scummy) strategies of monetization. The point is you can't have a convenient platform which doesn't produce revenue allowing to make it convenient and rewarding the investment.

It was quite clear that you were conflating many things.

As to whether it would hurt monitisation. I don't think it will and even if it did I don't care they have more money than most countries do. If they must be required to by legal means so be it.

Also they already kinda allow some of this when you enable developer mode via a Mac with the appropriate iOS developer account. So there is no reason why they cannot do this tomorrow without the paywall.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#704

Post by greyhair »

This puts Apple's 1984 commercial completely in a different light.

As they roll over to their own silicon, it is going to evolve from being a closed system to being a really really closed system.

Twenty three years ago, Apple briefly flirted with a completely different future with the PowerPC/CHRP architecture. Briefly. At that time, I did not see them heading off in the direction that they have.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#705

Post by qayxc »

daniellarusso wrote: post #679
qayxc wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps it is considered more of a commodity now? It is and it should be. What the white beards all too often forget is the fact that the generation before them would say the exact same thing about them (lack of enthusiasm, lack of interest and knowledge, etc.). This is a story as old as time: > The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love cha…

I have to disagree with you about cars. There has been a significant increase in demand and cost for pre-owned vehicles that do not have integrated entertainment systems and drive-by-wire systems. The used truck market, I have seen vehicles triple in value over the last decade.

The issue with cars and trucks is the ability to repair them (not necessarily by yourself - just in general), not interest in the technology, though.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#706

Post by greyhair »

cutler wrote: post #565
pdkl95 wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The new Raspberry Pi 400 Learning about the Raspberry Pi is nice, but that doesn't help preserve the institutional knowledge needed to build system/low-level features in a modern OS. I'm not talking about teaching kids to program; I'm concerned about preserving in the future the knowledge of how to create all of the complex tech we use today. Many civilizations throughout history collapsed after they lost the techn…

It's also a fait accompli in education where Python reigns supreme as the primary teaching language.

There is nothing wrong with teaching Python as an introduction to programming methods and data, then diving deeper. My son started with Python in his Junior year of high school and as a senior is now learning Java.

It is just top down learning, instead of bottom up. For programming, I think either works.

I just happened to learn the other direction because of the year (early 1980s). On CP/M, you had a macro assembler right there, and it took me a while to get my hands on a Basic interpreter.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#707

Post by greyhair »

Nullabillity wrote: post #388
GuB-42 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gen Z can get real general-purpose computers with a development environment for cheap. The new Raspberry Pi 400 is a modern take on home computers like the C64, but 15 times cheaper. Pi 400 full kit: $100, C64: $595 (1982) / $1576 (inflation adjusted for 2019). The computers are not just getting cheaper, educative material is easier than ever to find. Because modern computers are much more complex and do much more th…

$100 isn't cheap for a curious kid with no income, especially if they're not already sold on it as an interest. There's a big difference between buying a computer explicitly for the purpose (even if it's cheaper), vs being able to play around with the hardware that you already have, for no new monetary investment at all.

But computing tools are cheaper now than they have been in ages.

You can buy an Atmel dip version of the chip in an arduino really cheap, and build basically what is an arduino on a breadboard. Then get a USB programming adapter (again, cheap) to get it running.

Then you can get in expensive USB logic analyzers that are plenty capable of monitoring I2C and SPI buses and learn how all that works.

None of that existed in the 1990s. It simply wasn't there.

The the price and the availability of tools is so much better today. You don't even need to buy any books, it is all online, with community members jumping in all the time to help.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#708

Post by greyhair »

mikepurvis wrote: post #546
imtringued wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why a raspberry pi is supposed to be a good device to learn programming other than the fact that it forces you to use Linux. Do kids really ssh into their raspberry pi from their phones? Or do they really buy an expensive screen, expensive cases and expensive peripherals adding up to $200? I also doubt that raspberry pis are actually the type of device that schools are interested in. What they'd want is…

I too have doubts about the real-world suitability of the Raspberry Pi in formal education environments, but certainly the business of resetting it _is_ a solved problem; every kid is issued their own SD card, and can flash it back to the starting image whenever they want.

It all depends on what you want to learn.

On a RPi, with a standard laptop on the side (Windows/Mac/Linux, doesn't matter), and some basic installed tools, you can pull down and configure Alpine Linux and run a bare bones IoT Linux platform. If you want to get really gritty, you also configure and build U-Boot as a primary loader.

Once you get passed that point, you pull docker into your Alpine build and start running containers.

Stepping through that full process will teach you research (because you are going to be reading a lot about how to pull that off), it will teach you about Linux kernel configuration. It will teach you to be at least comfortable with git.

There is a lot you can learn on a Raspberry Pi, cheaply, that only involves plugging in an ethernet port and power supply, and never seeing anything on a terminal.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#709

Post by m4rtink »

zepto wrote: post #649
m4rtink wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depend on what you want to do - Linux distro on x86 is IMHO good start, but of course its not the only option - there are now some reasonably open arm devices (including an atm laptop) from pine, there is the very open Tales workstation running on Power & RiscV showing up everywhere.

Why do people make these kinds of comments? Talos isn’t showing up anywhere, and even during the Kickstarter it was more than $3000 for just a motherboard.

As an example of what is available ? And these do get used - for example as a desktop: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ktSwuF32ywM

Also they seem to have released a cheaper micro ATX board: https://www.raptorcs.com/BB/

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#710

Post by greyhair »

rmoriz wrote: post #522
justforyou wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Rasberry PI is not open hardware, and is actually part of the problem, not the solution.

Yes and no. At least it created a modest tinkering culture while the mainstream went with smart phones. I wonder if RISC-V will help us getting over ARM* or if RISC-V SoC vendors will try to create their own walled garden, proprietary interfaces and GPUs/codec support. * = The issues with the Raspberry PI are both with Broadcom's closed source hardware (there are other tinkering boards with more open hardware) and of…

I agree there are other 'tinkering' boards with more open hardware, but the Pi has the advantage of a huge community of very nice supporters. Maybe even as nice as the community over on arduino. The biggest problem with Broadcom on the Pi is the videocore block, and if you never run the video (using it for IoT), you avoid the biggest black hole on the device.

As far as the ARM license goes, very few people are ever going to spin their own hardware, and at least the ARM programming API/ISA is very well documented. We'll see if that continues under NVidia.

Certainly MOS, ST, National, Zilog, Motorola, INtel, IBM, Dec, (etc etc) CPU were always closed source. That did not prevent anyone from learning about computer systems and programming then, and it won't stop them now.

That said, I doubt Apple will ever make the M1 available for purchase. Which is where this thread started.

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