Well ok, I guess he can do whatever he wants. There's expectations from the context though.
That speech was the first time I understood how people can become too famous for their own good.
I saw him the day before (and I've got the photos to prove it) and he made a bunch of factual mistakes. Nobody cared enough to push back. I only did a little when he claimed raspberry pi prices have been stable and plentiful throughout the pandemic. But even I quickly gave up and I'm usually an asshole about things being right. Because it doesn't matter. (2019: 1gb pi4 was $35.00 and now it's $132.95 for the record. Buying 1000 cheap computers to sit on them 4 years and then just resell would have made you about $100,000)
He can basically say whatever and do whatever and people just politely murmur in approval because he's computer royalty. There's no real feedback loop or anything to keep him in check.
Of course you don't. You're just being an asshole
As a addendum, if it's hnuser:kristopolous pointing this out, then since there is no clout and prestige attached to my name I get attacked.
I claimed this social phenomena existed and then it happened like a scripted play in these replies.
I had to Google this. Seems it is some US-only thing I've never heard of.
The rest of the world calls digital radio "DAB" and occaisionally "DAB+". I've bought 2 DAB radios so far this year, since moving back to a country where I speak the native language.
I met him Saturday too and I was struck by how lovely and down to earth he seemed.
Who cares if he isn’t intimately familiar with RPi4 prices and availability? The cyclical and location-based nature in how these things work makes it impossible for anyone not absurdly obsessed to keep track. (I bought 8GB units in 2020, 2021, and 2022 at list price. If I wasn’t trying to get some CM4 units, I wouldn’t even be aware there is an ongoing shortage and I consider myself to be incredibly plugged in)
I found his talk about his home stereo to be far more interesting than a talk about the inner-workings of UNIX that’s he’s undoubtedly given a thousand times before. To each their own.
He says he has about 100 of them and made a number of specific claims on it - that he's some huge supporter of it. I chose that example because it was conclusively wrong.
Regardless, that's not the point.
The point is everyone will rise to his defense based on his status regardless of his content.
Not like that has been clearly demonstrated in my replies or anything ...
I met Ken the day before and he told me he was nervous about his talk. I hope he knows that most of us in the audience really loved what he shared.
I have to say I was disappointed by the question at 59:23. They seemed to expect a retrospective on Ken’s career or some grand philosophical statement on software or open source. To be honest, I was pretty surprised by the direction of the talk myself, but I ultimately enjoyed it.
You see, Ken decided to talk about his 75 year project: his music collection. He talked about audio formats, collecting music from different groups, sourcing metadata, building hardware to play music and more. He was deeply interested in the topic and honestly probably a bit obsessive for multiple decades. This was very humanizing. And to be completely honest he reminded me a lot of my girlfriend’s father who we think is undiagnosed autistic.
Ultimately, I think the reason why Ken was so prolific over such a long time is his ability to be deeply interested in problems. He was not too fussy about tools. He didn’t push Go or Linux or UNIX. He wasn’t self aggrandizing. He just wanted to tell people about his project that he’s been working on. Honestly, I thought it was a great lesson that might have gone over a lot of people’s heads.
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