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If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

muezza.ca

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Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#341

Post by account42 »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #202
Gigachad wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hard time believing that companies like Discord are using Electron simply because they do not know what they are doing.

I completely agree with you. It would be extremely odd for a company like Discord, who has done things like using nightly Rust in production, to naively choose Electron because they "don't know what they're doing" with native apps. Many people on HN either don't understand or don't care for trading off runtime performance and other technical qualities for other things like e.g. development speed, DX, easier hiring, e…

> Many people on HN either don't understand or don't care for trading off runtime performance and other technical qualities for other things like e.g. development speed, DX, easier hiring, etc.

Most people on HN understand those tradeoff very well but also understand that those tradeoffs are being optimized for the company's profit and not for the good of society overall. Without meaningful competition (and for Discord that would mean interopable clients, not just alternate chat applicaitons with their own servers) the incentive for making more efficient software is ~0.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#342

Post by account42 »

JohnFen wrote: post #298
anthk wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been under a coma since 1997? How's everything?

We use Qt where I work. It's insanely expensive if you're using it commercially.

That really depends which addional parts of Qt you use and what additional services you need. The core is LGPL, which is free even for commercial closed source use.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#343

Post by account42 »

fooker wrote: post #114
drpixie wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the result of Google making Chromium more and more like a whole OS (and everyone else following along). Is it ridiculous to give a browser such fine-grained access to your computer? If we were actually designing web standards for usability (instead of for maximising attention) our browsers would look al= lot more like Web 1.0 and nothing like Web 3.0!

It was java applets or flash before this.

Websites that required Java or Flash for basic functionality like navigation or showing text were always ridiculed. But somehow what is now supposed to be acceptable for JS-heavy sites?

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#344

Post by account42 »

emodendroket wrote: post #217
drpixie wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the result of Google making Chromium more and more like a whole OS (and everyone else following along). Is it ridiculous to give a browser such fine-grained access to your computer? If we were actually designing web standards for usability (instead of for maximising attention) our browsers would look al= lot more like Web 1.0 and nothing like Web 3.0!

Why? Is there something wrong with the concept of Web apps?

There is something wrong with perverting webbrowsers to serve webapps at the expense of their ability to efficiently navigate hypertext documents.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#345

Post by account42 »

chaxor wrote: post #307
nortonham wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with what you're saying but firefox with ublock origin and reader mode is definitely useful

Is there a good way to automatically *always* have reader mode on? Better yet, are there any ways to *not even load the other junk*, just load the text only for the reader mode. As far as I understand, Firefox still loads everything, does the parsing for everything, loads all those ads etc (and no, uBO does not get all of them), and then - *if you click the reader button in the URL box* - it will switch to reader mod…

> Better yet, are there any ways to not even load the other junk, just load the text only for the reader mode.

You can use uMatrix to default block all stylesheets and JS. Then apply your own user stylesheet.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#346

Post by lttlrck »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #254
deelowe wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MicroSDs and even thumb drives are INSANE. I remember how difficult it used to be to move large amounts of data reliably. Superdisks, Zip drives, CD-R/RW, and on and on. Portable storage solutions were an absolute nightmare for ages.

I was thinking back on this the other day and I remembered my iPod Classic with the 1.8" HDD in it. Boggles the mind how that thing didn't just immediately die. The number of 2.5" drives I've lost in laptops and external drives over the years...

I have a Sony Vaio from around 2003 with a 1.8" HDD. A beautiful machine. Still works. The HDD is very slow though... it was ok back then.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#347

Post by anthk »

amatecha wrote: post #320
anthk wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man login.conf . Also, if you dare, sysctl hw.smt=1 Add hw.smt=1 to /etc/sysctl.conf if you waqnt that setting persistent. Also, install and enable obsdfreqd and read the docs at /usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/.

Oh that's good to know, I didn't realize obsdfreqd was an optional thing - I thought the frequency scaling was a new thing that's always on now. Thanks! As for login.conf, yeah, I already raised those limits (especially to debug firefox with gdb lol), haven't enabled SMT though. Not sure it will help much with pages bogging down the CPU though, considering, waves broadly at the state of the web today >_>

Install Ublock Origin right now if you didn't.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#348

Post by JohnFen »

account42 wrote: post #342
JohnFen wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use Qt where I work. It's insanely expensive if you're using it commercially.

That really depends which addional parts of Qt you use and what additional services you need. The core is LGPL, which is free even for commercial closed source use.

I don't know the details, but you're likely right. We certainly use more than just the core -- the core isn't where the value of Qt really is.

That said, the cost really is extreme. So much so that there is an ongoing effort to remove Qt from our products entirely. There is general agreement among the devs that the cost is not justified by the benefits, and nobody can remember why it was chosen in the first place.

All that said, I like Qt. It's quite capable and you can produce decent, portable UIs with it. But I agree it's too expensive to justify.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#349

Post by JohnFen »

wk_end wrote: post #317
anthk wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qt has QML. I think that "well-known software company" was not as productive as it was.

I don't know what "[it] was not as productive as it was" means (it's a logically nonsensical statement, so I assume you made a typo). It was not an especially great (though not terrible) or productive place to work, I'll give you that. For colour, I'll add: it was a fairly old application first developed before QML/Qt Quick. It was also a multiplatform desktop application; then and now it's unclear to me as to whethe…

Qt used to be quite bad. It isn't anymore. Where I work, we use it and it's decent. We don't use Qt Quick, though.

Re: If you're happy with OpenBSD, probably any computer is good enough

#350

Post by JohnFen »

Gigachad wrote: post #269
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Productive" is a nice euphemism for "I'm a web developer and can't be bothered to learn anything that isn't Javascript".

These same companies are writing custom SSD drivers and cutting edge Rust backends for the absolute best performance. I think it's pretty safe to say they picked Electron because it's the best tool for the job, not because the worlds devs are all too lazy.

> they picked Electron because it's the best tool for the job

Yes, but things they're counting as "best" include considerations other than performance and resource usage. Not that they're wrong in doing so -- everything's a tradeoff, after all, and engineering is mostly about selecting tradeoffs.

But as a user, Electron apps tend to be pretty bad, and so from my point of view, Electron is as well. I tend to avoid them as a result. But my point of view as a user is very narrow.

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