41–50 of 66 posts
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My bad, HN doesn't make obvious to screen readers who is answering to whom and I thought that you mean the comment with the Yugo radio programs.
So basically screen readers blindly stumble into comment trees? Never thought of that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My bad, HN doesn't make obvious to screen readers who is answering to whom and I thought that you mean the comment with the Yugo radio programs.
So basically screen readers blindly stumble into comment trees? Never thought of that.
That was the amazing thing about being a kid in the late 70's and early 80's. Cheap computers existed that had the tools to allow you to pass programs to others like a mix tape. Now with iDevices, you need permission from a corporation to pass programs to others. I would guess this might be problematic with protest games.
The clickbait pullquote for this is, "If you want to criticize a religion, write a book".
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You'd still need to host it, which involves money, a way to pay for it (credit card), which includes proving/disclosing your identity (which would be dangerous if you're speaking out against an authoritarian government), sometimes you legally have to be over 18 or 21 to enter into contracts (so if the service provider finds out you're underage they can shut down your account even if you otherwise pay the bill), and h…
Every desktop browser comes with a development environment far more capable than any 8-bitter BASIC. You can paste your code in an email or an IM and send it to whomever you like. Teens interested in swapping 'subversive' code today would have a vastly easier time than they did in 80s Czechoslovakia.
If nothing gets done it's probably a matter of time before general-purpose browsers end up only allowing "signed" web pages by default (this is already happening with extension API being deprecated, making things like powerful ad-blocking impossible on certain browsers).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every desktop browser comes with a development environment far more capable than any 8-bitter BASIC. You can paste your code in an email or an IM and send it to whomever you like. Teens interested in swapping 'subversive' code today would have a vastly easier time than they did in 80s Czechoslovakia.
How many people are capable of that though? Tech literacy (in terms of using a general-purpose computer and not a walled-garden) seems to be decreasing and the industry trend is to isolate users from it even more. If nothing gets done it's probably a matter of time before general-purpose browsers end up only allowing "signed" web pages by default (this is already happening with extension API being deprecated, making…
Anyone who cares to? It's not like 'tech literacy' was higher then and the point the original comment was making was that somehow, the kids today have it harder than 80s Czech teens. I don't think it stands up to scrutiny - it's not true factually now and to salvage the argument you have to come up with hypotheticals like 'only signed web pages allowed' and broadly complain about 'walled gardens' (you couldn't write your own game for your NES back then, either)
Even 'fantasy' versions of 80s-style environments exist, one of them was used to develop an actual hit game. Aspiring tinkerers have never had more choice.
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Wouldn’t you say it is easier now? Just create a web based adventure game (you can export HTML/CSS with Twine for text based adventure games), encode the URL as a QR code and simply swap those with people?
You'd still need to host it, which involves money, a way to pay for it (credit card), which includes proving/disclosing your identity (which would be dangerous if you're speaking out against an authoritarian government), sometimes you legally have to be over 18 or 21 to enter into contracts (so if the service provider finds out you're underage they can shut down your account even if you otherwise pay the bill), and h…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every desktop browser comes with a development environment far more capable than any 8-bitter BASIC. You can paste your code in an email or an IM and send it to whomever you like. Teens interested in swapping 'subversive' code today would have a vastly easier time than they did in 80s Czechoslovakia.
How many people are capable of that though? Tech literacy (in terms of using a general-purpose computer and not a walled-garden) seems to be decreasing and the industry trend is to isolate users from it even more. If nothing gets done it's probably a matter of time before general-purpose browsers end up only allowing "signed" web pages by default (this is already happening with extension API being deprecated, making…
Anyone with Google? It's not... rocket science
There is a lot left of the 1980s spirit in Czechia. * Willingness to do things by hand (such as sewing improvised masks in spring of 2020 at home). * General distrust towards authorities. * Caustic, dark sense of humor. * Readiness to be cynical/heretical about every Sacred Cause pushed by the media or activists. Americans would probably be genuinely shocked at the reception of the BLM movement here. * Corruption, un…
It's not really surprising that a country that wasn't itself a colonizer nor exactly colonized (Hitler aside) and has few nonwhite immigrants wouldn't understand the American situation while also being naively racist.
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Pretty fascinating niche. On one of my trips over there a Czech cousin told me how they had to be careful even dubbing Michael Jackson tapes in the 80s since American media was not allowed at all. These games seem a lot riskier. Edit: Thanks to the comments on this it seems things weren't so dire in the 80s. My cousin was a kid then--perhaps he was recounting more 70s era stories from his older sister or something! I…
It wasn't banned per se - it was just that with a non-exchangable currency getting hold of a copy of anything was difficult. Some western productions would make it through the iron curtain, but they needed to be checked and usually censored beforehand. Politically correct (in the original meaning of the expression) poster art was a genre in and of itself: https://www.fanthatracks.com/news/collecting/star-wars-poste..…
There is a lot left of the 1980s spirit in Czechia. * Willingness to do things by hand (such as sewing improvised masks in spring of 2020 at home). * General distrust towards authorities. * Caustic, dark sense of humor. * Readiness to be cynical/heretical about every Sacred Cause pushed by the media or activists. Americans would probably be genuinely shocked at the reception of the BLM movement here. * Corruption, un…
> Americans would probably be genuinely shocked at the reception of the BLM movement here It's not really surprising that a country that wasn't itself a colonizer nor exactly colonized (Hitler aside) and has few nonwhite immigrants wouldn't understand the American situation while also being naively racist.
You would have to put a lot more aside. Pretty much the only two eras of national self-determination since 1621 were 1918-1938 and 1989-today. This nation is located on a crossroads of powerful interests.
We have two major non-white communities in CZ. One of them are the Vietnamese, who came as guest workers in the 1980s and are climbing rapidly on the societal ladder. Their kids are integrating into the elite of the nation very fast, universities are full of them.
The second one is Roma (Gypsies), with whom the mutual relations are pretty bad. Welfare dependency, crime etc. Once Roma start moving into some neighbourhood, an exodus of everyone else follows. This is not unique for CZ, though, this pattern of failure is seen everywhere with sizable Roma communities, from France to Bulgaria and Russia.
One of the reasons might be that successful Roma leave the community and intermarry with whites. That was case of my dear friend from the ground school. She is 100 per cent Roma, her kids are 50 per cent, but they no longer have any contact to the community. She says it would be too dangerous; too much of a drug habit there, kids not exempt.