Your Computer Isn't Yours • Hacker News Board

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#641

Post by kd913 » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

the_only_law wrote: post #380

m4rtink wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the issues you list should not be a problem if you use a Linux distro on a fairly standard pc/laptop. Pretty much all inside it is open for you to look into and change as needed.

At the OS level sure. Its still running on a completely non-free / hardly hackable platform though riddled with all sorts of backdoors and other curiosities. I'm aware of things like coreboot / libreboot, but support is even more limited there and porting involves a deep understanding of the x86 platform in my brief experience.

You don't need any of that to understand how x86 or the OS works. Realistically you can do the entire learning with QEMU/VM and not be restricted by the hardware at all?

At some institutions they teach how OS work by students implementing Pintos, a full x86 OS.

In my first year I had to build a full raspberry pi emulator from scratch and then code an assembler for it. These programs would then run natively on the raspberry pi. People wouldn't even touch the hardware until much, much later into the project when the emulator has confirmed to be working.

I disagree with the view that you need a full FOSS hardware to understand a platform. You can do a lot with a VM/QEMU.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#642

Post by reactordev » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

pdkl95 wrote: post #247

emptysongglass wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's worse is the number of other posts with the top comments being vociferous defenses of these companies as if they needed these people to defend them or cared one iota for their welfare. It feels like it's Stockholm Syndrome on a mass scale. I worry for Gen Z because they're tiny-mobile-device native. And the only usable tiny mobile devices are walled gardens. They scream outrage when they're not allowed their t…

> 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…

Omg, I can’t up vote this enough. I have been telling principal/director-level engineers this for almost a decade. We shouldn’t be making hiring bar so high that it requires a PhD but rather hire on aptitude and hunger for knowledge and feed them. So much of being a senior+ in tech is knowledge sharing which we don’t do enough of. I’m guilty of this too! I value my personal time and don’t want to spent it building training materials.

The whole “playing” with system level software is how I became an engineer in the first place!

It’s also extremely apparent when you suggest a new way of doing things and older folks look at you like you’re crazy or worse, actively block because “we’ve always done it this way”. Those youngsters in those tiny screens have big ideas, from a different perspective, and we should acknowledge that and learn what they know.

Back to topic, I think the maturity of software engineering has enabled a lot of what we see today due to the macro cash grab of capitalism. There are things that stand firm beyond it, but 80%> of software written is logical duplication of software already written (for another company perhaps).

I’m guessing on the percent but it’s important to know that global overall LOC is really just hashing out the same stuff we’ve been doing (albeit in maybe a slightly more novel way) to get business value.

20%< is moving that stick forward.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#643

Post by pizza234 » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #493

pizza234 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not anymore. Consumer usage nowadays is very browser centered, which is something one can experience with a Linux distro on pretty much any machine. I agree that it's not as much as a polished experience, but that's the point as indicated - trading off polish for ownership. I'm excluding from the discussion professional documents editing - compatibility with Libreoffice is mediocre (at best) in my experience, but hav…

This is completely conceding the point. Nothing but the browser is up to par, and even that is not as ‘polished’. If all people need is a browser, they should buy ChromeOS or an iPad.

"Not as polished" doesn't imply "not up to par".

Ironically, one of your two suggestions is a Linux distribution.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#644

Post by drummer » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

You now pay a premium price for beautifully designed spyware.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#645

Post by rsanheim » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #311

brnt wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even so, I install Ubuntu on a wide range of machines, laptops included, and I can't recall having any hardware related issues since, oh, 2005 or so? Parent must be very unlucky, or in fact not realise it is their tweaking and tuning that causes issues.

Could also be selective memory. "I can't recall having any hardware related issues since, oh, 2005 or so" --> oh, that issue? Yes, of course I had that, everybody has that, that's par for the course...

The last time I attempted was 2017/18. Pretty plain clone PC desktop - MSI motherboard, ryzen 1600, AMD Radeon 580, etc. I bought a couple a different WiFi dongles to make sure the chipset was supported.

Yet the problems remained. Maybe when people say they had lots of problems and it wasn’t worth their time, take them at their word ?

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#646

Post by mikepurvis » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #616

mikepurvis wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a QBasic kid as well, but I think it was pretty clear to me even at the time that QBasic was a mickey mouse environment. You couldn't get into 32-bit mode, or dynamically allocate memory with pointers, much less blt sprites or backgrounds around at a usable speed. I'm not saying it's exactly equivalent, but there's certainly a perspective which could argue that a) the free JavaScript interpreter available on ev…

I get the argument that many kids are growing up today without necessarily touching a "real" computer, just a tablet. That said, as someone who got into PCs quite early on, I'm a bit skeptical that the world we live in today where you can assemble a working computer based on a Raspberry Pi with loads of open source software for probably about $100 somehow is less accessible to a kid who wants to hack around on comput…

I think the key with the Pi is that it needs to find its way into the house for some other reason than just to be an educational aid. Positioned that way it will be about as interesting to most kids as a plate of cold spaghetti— am thinking here of the book I was given as a teenager on developing ActiveX components, because it was an enterprise-y thing, when what I really wanted was a book on DirectX, for making games.

But yeah, if the Pi shows up as part of an IOT system, or as a TV/streaming box, or to play retro games on, or whatever, then it's there and it's available to be tinkered with; and from my limited experience, basically none of those use cases will run on their own without at least a little bit of tinkering. :) Even my little Linux-running Powkiddy emulation handheld has probably consumed about as much of my tinkering time as it has my retro gaming time.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#647

Post by rsanheim » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

randlet wrote: post #400

dasKrokodil wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would argue that Apple cares a bit more Have you read the article? Spoiler: They don't.

Exactly. Apple has done a good job of selling the "we care about your privacy" line, but it's still just a line they're feeding you.

If you compare how Siri works compared to comparable services, or Apple Maps, this just isn’t true.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#648

Post by awinter-py » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

> These machines are the first general purpose computers ever where you have to make an exclusive choice: you can have a fast and efficient machine, or you can have a private one

as a many-years linux laptop user I have had this choice for many years

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#649

Post by zepto » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

m4rtink wrote: post #425

the_only_law wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the OS level sure. Its still running on a completely non-free / hardly hackable platform though riddled with all sorts of backdoors and other curiosities. I'm aware of things like coreboot / libreboot, but support is even more limited there and porting involves a deep understanding of the x86 platform in my brief experience.

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.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#650

Post by rsanheim » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

grey_earthling wrote: post #151

rsanheim wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tech corporate response may be one of the best avenues to actually apply any leverage against apple with this current situation. I've already heard of friends at big-tech companies where network admins are applying corporate wide VPN policies to block apple's ocsp.apple.com requests after the outage that happened yesterday and basically nuked productivity for hours. In some cases it meant engineers _could not_ de…

We're already used to being unable to deploy code due to a GitHub or NPM outage. I don't think this will persuade the corporate people with the money to invest in switching. By analogy, look at how many staff hours are wasted supporting IE.

I think there is a huge difference in these two things:

* I can’t work because a 3rd party we use for code hosting / dep management is down * I can’t work because my laptop literally can’t run any programs due to a poor security program installed and required by the laptop manufacturer