caned

Hah?

I miss making monthly trips to the local university library as a child. I would have some infatuation, often related to electronics or programming, and would get a big book on it and just dive in for a few weeks. There were magazines on microfilm. It felt like a privilege to get that information. You had to wait to get to it and would only possess it for a while. The ideas would simmer for long stretches without any ability to instantly cross-check your information or get clarifications or feedback on work. Trite, I know, but I feel joy just thinking about that whole experience.

We need the kind of populace that will care about - and demand - federated communications immune to censorship. Until then, we're entitled only to continue consuming garbage.

I'm genuinely curious. Can you elaborate?

Cite evidence.

It's never been a better time to start consuming less. Let's drive that demand way, way down.

You are an inspiration, Cliff! I also read your book as a child in the early 90s. I had dreams of hanging out in Berkeley and hacking on Unix. I eventually did both, and it has shaped my whole career. I've been blessed. My son is a big fan of yours, too. I'm going to show him this talk. Thank you for all that you do!

meow

The article seems to state as much minus the obfuscation. However justified they are to respond, this can be a slippery slope. We're bound to hear more reports of hidden user data exfiltration.

This show captures much of what I miss about computing in the 80s and 90s. You could get your hands on hardware, be able to largely understand what all the hardware and software was doing. You mostly used computers as tools, which only accepted commands and didn't try to affect your decisions or workflow (yes, there was Clippy). The leaps forward in computing power, memory and storage were more impactful to the everyday user. There was a sense of wonder, and it didn't envelop your and everyone's life. Most of all, we weren't yet slaves to our computers, and they weren't devices crafted to endlessly grab your attention by any means necessary.

The enforcement of read-only protection for pagecache pages (and the scatterlists and or other structures they point to) seems to be diffuse and incredibly fragile.

I was expecting to read about flame retardants in car seats causing infertility.

The imports themselves may be dynamic. I once did a little review of dependencies in a venv that had everything to run pytorch llama. The number of imports gated by control flow or having a non-constant dependency was nontrivial.

Two words: Fabrice Bellard

[delayed]

I miss the people of her generation. I feel like we could use their perspective, experience and fortitude right now. I sure miss their music too...even though Bird Lives.

I might relate to this, but I also spent more time talking to friends on the phone 20 years ago. The perception of this greatness can't be disentangled from the experience of youth.

I like to think that the enthusiasm for retro computing can make a clearing for innovative things to happen. I imagine such an environment can support values that aren't normally represented in fashionable, modern, commercial technology of today.