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Using computers more freely and safely
21–30 of 70 posts
Re: Using computers more freely and safely
#22I am not technical. I come from a science background so I am somewhat limited in regards to software development.
I used to try a lot of APPS to produce documents and scruture my mind. Notion, google docs, word, calc, excel... It was fine but it I agree that some times is a pain. Google docs run very slow in my computer, Windows overheats in my laptop , etc.
Finally I discovered Emacs. I am pretty bad with elisp but I love it. Now I just use, Emacs, a couple of web browsers, bash, Python and some perl scripts.
While this article oversimplificates some things It has valid points for specific cases. btw, I like this web design!
Re: Using computers more freely and safely
#23With the mindset described, I'd say most of the software that the World runs on nowadays shouldn't be used. Also:
> My first resolution is just to bring less software into my life. It is still early days, we don't really understand computers yet.
While philosophically kind-of true, this approach - especially for things to come - will get you quickly lost in the modern "software-eaten" World, IMHO.
Re: Using computers more freely and safely
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every single thing on your list (except the info manager and maybe more obscure web browsers) has tens of thousands into the hundreds of millions of users. Except for the web browsers, none of the things you listed are the result of or otherwise benefited from meaningful forks. You will never understand, much less be able to make meaningful edits in afternoon to, the entire Linux kernel. Likely much the same for Perl…
It is probably best to say the author's advice is not practical and, for most people, not desirable. It is also worth adding the solution is problematic in the sense that being able to understand software from top to bottom is a skill set that few developers even have, even for the most trivial of applications. Most developers build their software on the shoulders of others. That said, the author's point about the tr…
I agree with your first paragraph entirely and it's worded more generously than mine.
I think there's something valid in your second, but on the whole simplicity is often a myth. Hardware is complex, the world is complex, the software stack simply reflects these complexities, it does not invent them.
It feels great to have simple code until your environment no longer mirrors that code's assumptions. You have an MBR bootloader that assumes the A20 line is on the keyboard controller, upgrade hardware, and suddenly you can't boot anymore, bet you wish you had a more complex bootloader now. You have a graphics renderer that knows no one has more than 4GB of VRAM so it measures allocatable memory by allocating up to 4GB of textures until it gets E_OUT_OF_MEM. Except on modern cards it overflows its texture counter, bet you wish you had a more complex renderer.
And this is ignoring inherent complexity, or the nature of handling errors even without changing hardware, but I've ranted enough on this. There is a narrowly valid point here but it is presented without caveat and thus far too broadly.
Re: Using computers more freely and safely
#25While the premise of the post is interesting, I've stopped reading it when reaching "a computer from 2015 is 2-5 times slower than an Apple 2e from 1986 just at reading a keystroke and displaying it on screen" and only scanned the rest. If oversimplifications are being used to prove a point, the argument becomes weak. I actually read it some months ago, because I'm interested in the smol net, and I use and like the G…
Pity you stopped reading there because that point has some pretty solid support: https://danluu.com/input-lag/
Dan Luu's post, which I also read months ago, is very detailed, has a lot of data, but fails to make sense or come to a helpful conclusion in the end. Like so many of his posts.
With helpful conclusion I don't mean just stating the facts or comparing transistors or input latency with network latency. As if developers stopped caring and created crappy software on purpose.
The post compares an Apple 2e, which is a single-tasking OS that just displays the pressed key in the basic interpreter on the screen, and modern devices, where it is not always clear, what kind of app or setup is being used. But we know, that it's plenty of layers of GUI and OS code, that most people don't want to miss. Not to mention, that mot of the higher input lag is not detectable by humans in normal work conditions.
Yes, there were years, were CPU performance couldn't keep up with added features, like immediate spell checking. I used computers through all those years and know this first-hand.
And I never dismissed the importance of input lag. I pointed out the oversimplification to support the main argument of the linked post, which suffers from this as a result.
Re: Using computers more freely and safely
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you missed the point.
I read the whole thing, they have a section called "the punchline" that restates those bullet points. If the point isn't "the punchline", and the text certainly supports that is indeed the point, I'm not sure what is. What do you think the point is?
Everything is monolithic by accident. Source code used to be able to be shared and compiled directly with little effort. Now we have created tools to create entire systems dedicated to running source code. We have literally codified a poorly designed, middle-manager riddled organization into our current systems.
Re: Using computers more freely and safely
#27> Prefer software with thousands rather than millions of users Yep, guess which software shows up as a toy CTF challenge for the weekend? Just because you can understand how something works doesn’t mean it’s secure.
Excellent advice. I will now look only for things that I have no chance to understand.
Proprietary systems are probably the best bet since we are, by definition, not allowed to understand. Only windows for OS and secure pulse for internet connection for me - there couldn't possibly be any major security flaws with that logic right?
Re: Using computers more freely and safely
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pity you stopped reading there because that point has some pretty solid support: https://danluu.com/input-lag/
Dan Luu's post, which I also read months ago, is very detailed, has a lot of data, but fails to make sense or come to a helpful conclusion in the end. Like so many of his posts. With helpful conclusion I don't mean just stating the facts or comparing transistors or input latency with network latency. As if developers stopped caring and created crappy software on purpose. The post compares an Apple 2e, which is a sing…
> But we know, that it's plenty of layers of GUI and OS code, that most people don't want to miss.
You're missing the main point: you're just assuming that we must trade those features for improved latency, but this is just not true. The properties he measured are a result of particular architectural and abstraction choices, but other choices could be made that don't necessarily require such sacrifices. For instance, the exokernel.
Re: Using computers more freely and safely
#29This is the "just eat less" dieting advice applied to software. I understand the desire to grow your own food and bake your own bread, as a response to the onerous, distressing complexity of the systems we live inside, but you have to accept the cost of that being more work and less connection.
The move towards "growing your own food" or "baking your own bread" in the software sense does not necessarily equate to more work and less connection. On the contrary, it can lead to a deeper understanding and mastery of technology, fostering a sense of empowerment and self-sufficiency. Developing one's software or systems can provide tailored solutions to meet specific needs, which could result in less work in the…
>> does not necessarily equate to more work and less connection. On the contrary, it can lead to a deeper understanding and mastery of technology, fostering a sense of empowerment and self-sufficiency.
Those are not alternatives though. It most certainly does mean more work, and even something as good as achieving mastery & empowerment in this area of your life has opportunity cost that might not be worth it for all.
Re: Using computers more freely and safely
#30So much can be commented on in response to points or perspectives that aren’t included in a person’s position. The amount of remarks on the unspoken tend to increase in relation to the responder’s nitpickiness over the author’s choice of words.
One of the strangest things is when people over-interpret modest remarks as declarations of war against the fabric of sensibility and human decency. This seems to be a trend nowadays.
I don’t think that the author of this article/talk meant to discourage people away from all software contrary to the types he discussed here and it doesn’t sound like that. It reads like a modest appeal.