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Being Raised by the Internet

jimmyhmiller.github.io

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Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#271

Post by kragen »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #247
kragen wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i mean, you could totally solve a problem yourself and not write it up. i did that lots of times too! it'll be interesting to see what happens with llms and things like stack exchange

>i mean, you could totally solve a problem yourself and not write it up. i did that lots of times too! sure. that's how we shifted to a hustle culture. launch something useful, get fanbase, and then think of writing it up for marketing purposes. but obviously the dynamic here isn't necessarily a community of like minded people sharing info. But more of a semi-captive audience interested in seeing more of the product.

no, i mean, for example, i got gnu patch to compile and work on windows nt 3.51 under cygwin, but i never made the additional effort to send the necessary diffs to paul eggert so that, if he wanted to integrate them, nobody else would have to do the same thing

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#272

Post by tycho-newman »

kragen wrote: post #266
immibis wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin can come off that list - it's real estate trading for people who can't grasp real estate trading. Cool concept when it was invented, but its net effect has been rather negative, serving to further concentrate wealth.

i don't agree, but that's probably just because you don't know what you're talking about, which is probably because you're here to do ideological battles instead of share knowledge (for evidence, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41687424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41685852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41681866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41678925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id…

Central control of money supply is a good thing. It helps avoid counterfeiters. It also helps make sure that we are broadly using the same means of exchange.

Crypto moves control from the state to whoever runs the tech stack or has cheap enough power to mine crypto. Which in many places is still … checks notes … the state!

Had Russia kept its reserves in Bitcoin or any other crypto, I am skeptical that the clever finance ministries of Europe and America would be unable to reach them. Moreover, the holders of these reserves haven’t sold them. They’re holding them to secure other financing for Ukraine. Which is honestly what anyone does with money they hold - they use it to invest and generate revenue.

An integrated financial world makes armed conflict more costly by threatening a belligerent’s access to markets. That is a good thing and why blockades (i.e sanctions) can be effective in shortening or ending a conflict.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#273

Post by anthk »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #159
throwanem wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Servers are overly friendly and will interrupt conversations to ask if the food is up to standard, etc. The median American in any restaurant with chairs not bolted to the floor can be assumed to operate on roughly the level of a marginally clever, but ill-parented and intemperate, four- or five-year-old child. Even nice places have to deal with this, because neither the child nor the American recognizes any such d…

I'll take even the worst, unkempt dining experience at a deep south waffle house over the treatment that europoor Parisians give to those who don't speak perfect french at even high end restaurants in the heart of Paris. Also, foie gras, traditional veal, and many other European delicacies are disgusting (ethically). Coincidental, even the ghettos of Baltimore/Detroit likely have a higher GDP per capita than most of…

Most food in the US it's a turd compared to a semi-decent restaurant in Spain being far more cheaper.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#274

Post by anthk »

ZeWaka wrote: post #201
rescbr wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m also from the Internet :) I miss that cozy weird familiar and insane place. OTOH, 20 years ago my only concern was school and I had the energy to pull all-nighters. Now I have to pay my bills.

in the modern age of Forums not being as popular, Discord (rip IRC) communities seemingly occupy this space now - they can be quite cozy, and give off a lot of the old vibes

Not even close. Discords owns your data and once the so-called-Discord-groupchat (server my ass, is NOT a server) closes down, you are out.

WIth Usenet your posted data and articles/discussions could be in your hard drive forever.

With Jabber and IRC you could bring your chat client, anything. Heck, even MSN/AOL supported several clients, both graphical and terminal, such as AMSN, tmsnc, Gaim/Pidgin, Miranda IM...

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#275

Post by immibis »

kragen wrote: post #266
immibis wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin can come off that list - it's real estate trading for people who can't grasp real estate trading. Cool concept when it was invented, but its net effect has been rather negative, serving to further concentrate wealth.

i don't agree, but that's probably just because you don't know what you're talking about, which is probably because you're here to do ideological battles instead of share knowledge (for evidence, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41687424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41685852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41681866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41678925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id…

Thanks, you have really raised the quality bar for discussion by combing through another user's comments and cherry-picking ones you don't like. Especially complaining about comments on political posts being political. And complaining about the same thread multiple times is chef's kiss.

The rest of your comment was only added an hour after the comment was originally posted, presumably because you realised in hindsight you were doing the thing you were complaining about. It was a good start, but you should have deleted the old comment instead of appending to it.

Brief commentary on the appended content: the blockchain rules constitute a state (as in a country/government/central authority) and it's good that there's a way to take money away from criminals, actually. Even cryptocurrency people agree, since Ethereum even forked itself to cancel a criminal's transaction once, and the post-fork chain is massively more popular.

It's simple selfishness - the people with authority to choose to fork had much more money post-fork, so they chose to fork and take the money away from criminals. In other circumstances, they are the ones having money taken away by the government, so they choose to not fork or design protocols in ways that help the government get money. No moral position is involved.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#276

Post by Aachen »

throwanem wrote: post #157
strken wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what could be going unsaid here. The schizophrenic dad, absent mother, limited and erratic money for food, no adults to do the shopping and cooking, and mentions of programming blogs and escaping poverty all paint a clear picture. It's an open account and I don't feel the need to pry or ask questions about the exact conditions of the household, which were presumably not good, but I don't see anything vag…

You're doing all I could ask. Early in the history of the thread it looked like there would be a turn toward the sort of "Why didn't he just...?" questions that often tend to arise. They're not more useful in this context than any other, and it was that waste of effort on points uselessly missed that I sought to deter.

Ooh, now I finally understand what kind of thing one would want to avoid. The original comment could perhaps have been more concrete by saying something like (for stupid, privileged people like me)

> People who've never really known anything but stability in their lives tend to make a lot of assumptions they're not equipped to recognize, so it's usually just better not to create the opportunity [for them to ask "why don't you just ..."].

Skimmed a dozen sub-replies that were sorted above this but now I finally get it

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#277

Post by razakel »

ehnto wrote: post #221
Der_Einzige wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take even the worst, unkempt dining experience at a deep south waffle house over the treatment that europoor Parisians give to those who don't speak perfect french at even high end restaurants in the heart of Paris. Also, foie gras, traditional veal, and many other European delicacies are disgusting (ethically). Coincidental, even the ghettos of Baltimore/Detroit likely have a higher GDP per capita than most of…

Brexit was a product of democracy, as sad as that is. Your own country is just barely holding on to it's democratic status, in the eyes of other first world nations. I wouldn't be so quick to throw stones. The US GDP doesn't seem to be getting it's citizens much in return, it's a very poor measure for a country's success and prosperity.

"Democracy" is a funny way of spelling "fraud".

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#278

Post by kragen »

tycho-newman wrote: post #272
kragen wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't agree, but that's probably just because you don't know what you're talking about, which is probably because you're here to do ideological battles instead of share knowledge (for evidence, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41687424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41685852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41681866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41678925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id…

Central control of money supply is a good thing. It helps avoid counterfeiters. It also helps make sure that we are broadly using the same means of exchange. Crypto moves control from the state to whoever runs the tech stack or has cheap enough power to mine crypto. Which in many places is still … checks notes … the state! Had Russia kept its reserves in Bitcoin or any other crypto, I am skeptical that the clever fin…

your argument about 'central control of money supply' is exactly backwards. the problem with 'counterfeiters', if we look only at the facts and avoid the question-begging derogatory term, is that they can print money while providing nothing in return; that's exactly what a mint printing paper money does, as do other entities with central control of the money supply. so, far from avoiding counterfeiters, it officially licenses them. you could as well say that stand-your-ground laws help avoid murder because the killings they permit are not murder, since the law permits them

most states are unwilling to allow a foreign power to print unlimited amounts of the money they use, because this would represent a major concession of sovereignty. this ensures that almost no two countries use the same means of exchange

your argument about who has control has more merit. but you're overlooking structural differences; it's like saying that democracy moves control from the king to whoever is popular enough to get votes, or that freedom of speech moves control from the ministry of truth to whoever has enough money to run a printing press. the structural differences prevent cryptocurrency miners and exchanges like coinbase from simply inflating bitcoin into worthlessness the way my local currency has been inflated over the last year. the most extreme event we've seen along those lines was ethereum's controversial unwinding of the dao theft; nothing similar has ever happened in bitcoin, and probably nothing similar will happen in the future in ethereum or zcash

it is definitely true that russia could not have kept its reserves in bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, because the market capitalization of bitcoin was far too small to provide 300 billion dollars of liquidity if it had to sell off those reserves. that is probably still true and may possibly remain true forever. but you can bet your life that every head of state who saw that confiscation is formulating a strategy to ensure it won't happen to them; that will have the opposite effect on financial integration from the one you want

i'm skeptical about your integration thesis, though, partly because it was very popular in 01914, and partly because of the limited repercussions from the usa's completely unprovoked invasion of iraq in 02003. (arguably the invasion of the ukraine is one of those repercussions, but that hardly seems like a major disincentive to future us presidents who find tempting countries to invade!)

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#279

Post by throwanem »

Loughla wrote: post #149
Aeolun wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, not certain about wait staff. I’m certain that barbers do it everywhere I’ve ever been though.

Historically, in the United States, the barbershop was a meeting place. It was a place you went to talk and relax. It's weird in the modern society of fast cuts and what not. But barbers tend to go into that business because they like talking to people. And you're right, every barber I've ever had has pried into my life. But I've also been more willing to share life experiences with barbers, and listen to their exper…

I think for many men this may be the only professional they engage whose job involves touching the body and doesn't presumptively involve pain. (Not everything a doctor does will hurt, but one wisely assumes anything a doctor does might. This does make a difference, I think.)

"Intimacy" is a word and concept much misunderstood in this culture as relating only to sex, but at root it has to do with the passage of social and personal boundaries; its root intima refers to the inside of something, and so "intimacy" more usefully describes a spectrum of closeness or a point thereupon.

In that frame, the work of a barber is very slightly more intimate than that of many professionals. I don't know whether it's for having helped create that context - nobody makes you sit down in the chair - in which folks feel a little easier about speaking of things they never ordinarily would. But if I wanted to explain the "barbershop effect" I think it's something I would want to investigate.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#280

Post by Aachen »

andersa wrote: post #161
ndavis wrote: post #156

I was booting Linux while sleeping in a car, and in and out of motels, eating from food banks, with drug addicted parents, as a teenager. There was something to "the internet" back in the day as a way to cope when faced with that sort of situation. The author is not alone. We were blessed to have a computer through it all. I hope "kids these days" have the same opportunity with their phones.

Spoiler: They don't. The phones are hostile to experimentation and the social media apps they will use to kill time are designed to get them stuck in an infinite loop of watching pointless "content" and as many ads as possible.

> designed to get them stuck in an infinite loop of watching pointless "content" and as many ads as possible

Wouldn't TV have been the equivalent in the era OP is talking about?

Going on the internet and seeking out coding tutorials, as the article describes, is a choice most people didn't make back then; it's the most nerdy of kids doing this outside of school. While an addiction takes that choice away or makes it much harder, most kids are not addicted (~90% aren't in UK, ~55% aren't in India, for 11- to 14-year-olds per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problematic_smartphone_use#Pre...)

If you have a credible source on phones in 2024 providing fewer learning opportunities than computers in the <2000s, either anecdotal (kids who you observe are otherwise curious but don't seek out non-entertainment content) or by looking at a large enough sample to have some measurable difference in the population, I'm interested. It sounds like an assumption based on the (justified) negativity around social media as a concept rather than an actually observed effect

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