Everything Old Isn't New Again (Yet)
1–10 of 20 posts
Re: Everything Old Isn't New Again (Yet)
#2I'm sorry that the first comment on this story is off-topic, but can someone explain why some websites have this weird scrolling behavior? Is this a JavaScript thing that is supposed to improve something? Why does anyone do this? Scrolling this website with the trackpad on my MacBook feels ... wobbly. It distracted me again and again while reading the article. As if someone is slightly pulling on the newspaper you are holding in your hand while you are reading it.
Re: Everything Old Isn't New Again (Yet)
#3I'm sorry that the first comment on this story is off-topic, but can someone explain why some websites have this weird scrolling behavior? Is this a JavaScript thing that is supposed to improve something? Why does anyone do this? Scrolling this website with the trackpad on my MacBook feels ... wobbly. It distracted me again and again while reading the article. As if someone is slightly pulling on the newspaper you ar…
I wanted to comment the exact same thing.
I guess they are trying to mimic Safari's built-in inertial scrolling on every other platform, but they can't do it perfectly, so it actually ends up breaking scrolling in Safari. Sad and pointless.
Re: Everything Old Isn't New Again (Yet)
#4That's two reports of weird scrolling. I'm sorry, guys. I wasn't trying to change scrolling. It's an off the shelf Wordpress template. I'll look into what's causing it and see if I can fix it. Thanks for the heads up...
Now, what do you think of the post content? :-)
Re: Everything Old Isn't New Again (Yet)
#5This reiterated a lot of my own personal feelings these days. The irony of Apple 1984 ad, the challenge of actually "owning" technology these days, so on... all right on point.
For me personally the issue is more of a hardware issue (firmware too) though, I'll be pretty happy just getting bare metal Linux (or something I can modify myself) running on my phones and laptops.
As for the issue of accounts and lock in, I believe this is where the government could actually do citizens a service, but will require careful thought... so we might be better off waiting on that for a while :/
Re: Everything Old Isn't New Again (Yet)
#6That's two reports of weird scrolling. I'm sorry, guys. I wasn't trying to change scrolling. It's an off the shelf Wordpress template. I'll look into what's causing it and see if I can fix it. Thanks for the heads up... Now, what do you think of the post content? :-)
I will be studying all day, thank you =)
http://thedemoat50.org < anyone else going?
Re: Everything Old Isn't New Again (Yet)
#7This reiterated a lot of my own personal feelings these days. The irony of Apple 1984 ad, the challenge of actually "owning" technology these days, so on... all right on point. For me personally the issue is more of a hardware issue (firmware too) though, I'll be pretty happy just getting bare metal Linux (or something I can modify myself) running on my phones and laptops. As for the issue of accounts and lock in, I…
Actually this is a good excuse to tell this story...
About a year ago I quit my job and moved. As a part of quitting my job I gave up my only Mac, since it was a work laptop. Nothing unexpected about this story so far... and it wasn't until I tried to recover the backup that I realized my mistake.
Apple backups can only be recovered from other Apple machines. So I went into the Apple store and tried to use a floor model. A manager quickly told me I'd need a genius bar appointment (fine).
So I booked one. The scheduled time comes and goes, hours of time in the Apple store just waiting to finally have a guy tell me they won't help me. Things got a bit heated at that point :(
All this is to say, it's pretty clear Apple has no empathy for users in general, just fear of losing the users they currently have.
I regret not taking out that laptops hard drive and smashing it to little pieces with a sledgehammer in front of the store, the symbolism was right on point.
Re: Everything Old Isn't New Again (Yet)
#8>> But if techno monstrosities can use open source software to create
upheaval, so can anyone else.
The thing is, most people don't want to create upheaval. Most just want to make money. Because in our modern capitalist democracies, money is the highest value, the moment someone has power, or knowledge that goes beyond the ordinary the first thing they do is try to make it make money. And if they succeed- well, out goes all the democratic, free-thinking, hacking ethos.
This is not an easily hackable system. You need people who have skills and knowledge and also, well, let's say higher ideals. People who don't care about money because they can have all of it that they want, but who decide they prefer to go Buddha, and give everything to the poor. To actually "make the world a better place", by not selling you stuff.
Are there people like that? I doubt I've ever met any.
Re: Everything Old Isn't New Again (Yet)
#9>> But if techno monstrosities can use open source software to create upheaval, so can anyone else. The thing is, most people don't want to create upheaval. Most just want to make money. Because in our modern capitalist democracies, money is the highest value, the moment someone has power, or knowledge that goes beyond the ordinary the first thing they do is try to make it make money. And if they succeed- well, out g…
Well, not that anyone is perfect, but Bill Gates does give a lot of money to charity.
Re: Everything Old Isn't New Again (Yet)
#10Hi David, I read your blog post and skimmed the whitepaper. My opinion is that we are not missing encryption+metadata in our lives.
Internet companies thrive on specificity in the signals coming from end users. Twitter/Facebook > RSS, for example.
One trouble I see is that, to be productive and to be entertained, end users end up continuously dumping their hearts and souls onto data collectors at large internet companies.
Conversely, these internet companies hold the ubiquitous/universal data stores whose utility is all locked up behind the query and the scroll.
We need to invert that specificity/ubiquity relationship between end users and for-profit companies somehow. We need a mediating layer between users and for-profit companies. As users, we need to start with all-the-datas, ubiquity in local caches, and produce signals only when we contribute back.
With robotics and neural links, our current direct-connect model of internet computing poses existential risks.