Post B0HspIXHo8WJdl9BcO by tbortels@infosec.exchange
(DIR) More posts by tbortels@infosec.exchange
(DIR) Post #B0Hs27GAwWAeTkgy8m by mhoye@mastodon.social
2025-11-15T15:53:53Z
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This is that oddball 4th gen iPod touch with no rear camera.It’s last update was iOS 9.3.5, so it’s missing a few of that platform’s more recent conveniences, but it’s still one of my favorite pieces of mobile computing ever made.It’s so small.
(DIR) Post #B0Hs28FVGVE9XxNwjQ by mhoye@mastodon.social
2025-11-15T16:09:49Z
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Even picking it up today, 15 years after it was made, it feels like a postcard from a better future not taken.In a lot of ways this - the inexpensive base model of its generation and I think the cheapest iPod Touch ever sold - is the absolute high water mark of Apple's industrial design ethos. Everything you could remove from Usable Computer and still have Usable Computer left is gone. Everything left is incredibly well polished.And somehow, it still has room for a headphone jack.
(DIR) Post #B0Hs28ucnc7XbUcmpM by mhoye@mastodon.social
2025-11-15T17:06:05Z
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But it's also a monument to the kind of engineering the Libreware world has never done well; software deeply integrated with hardware, a total commitment to a user-facing idea rather than the permissible gradients of copy and pasting text. We don't really have an equivalent to this kind of effort in open spaces. It takes a particular commitment and focus, and our zeal tends to nest elsewhere.
(DIR) Post #B0Hs29cEBUzzmj1bn6 by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-11-16T01:08:31Z
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@mhoye Thanks for saying that. Hardware matters.From a product point of view, software tied to hardware peculiarities is death, it defies the must-always-change-product ethos of sell sell sell. But that sort of integration is a superior experience. Repairability movements sort of acknowledge this. Some update ability is needed, and if you keep something long enough universal protocol/interface X is obsolete/useless in 5, 10 years (though often itself an effect of product thinking).We could have so many kinds of hardware now, and without it being soooo different internally, like in the past.
(DIR) Post #B0Hs2Dn0fM04jK6H9U by mhoye@mastodon.social
2025-11-15T17:16:01Z
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Flatpak, snaps, kuberdockering and every other kind of containerization - and the app store model, and the Wayland process model both count - all of it is basically the same shape: isolation in the name of safety that avoids fully explaining safe for who, safety of what. Restrictions on Freedom To interoperate and compose software, so business models around the code are Free From the risks of user agency.The paucity of ambition here, the distrust of the operator just kills me.
(DIR) Post #B0Hs2JKW4ClzugobZY by mhoye@mastodon.social
2025-11-15T17:16:57Z
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There has to be a better path through this. Our choices can't be retrocomputing or inflicting SAAS on ourselves. There have to be better models than choosing between "elegant interfaces, zero interop, zero composability" and "Bitbanging on a Glorified PDP-11".
(DIR) Post #B0Hs2OrJVgyl3rCMt6 by mhoye@mastodon.social
2025-11-15T23:04:34Z
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And if you’re wondering if it’s still useful….
(DIR) Post #B0HspIXHo8WJdl9BcO by tbortels@infosec.exchange
2025-11-15T17:25:29Z
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@mhoye As soon as you bring networking into it you have to deal with *other people* and compromise sets in while attack surface increases. I think we may have hit that sweet spot with the modem - each interaction was intentional and discrete, and the norm was not connected most of the time.
(DIR) Post #B0HspJT4LIk0WyBKgS by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-11-16T01:17:23Z
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@tbortels Yes! Network is critical, but networking 100% of the time is a need of surveillance and often, bad design.I need to find the reference again, but there is a story somewhere about telephone use amongst some amish or similar folk. Acknowldging that they're needed for business, and life-saving in emergencies, but they decided too disruptive to have in the house.So the solution was to make a small house out front with the phone and desk and office stuff; you'd go out there to do things, then go back to whatever.The point being, for me, that the useful disruption can and should be concretely and discrete-ly decided upon.This computer I'm typing on is my lab machine I do dev work on, debian 13. It has a browser and I obviously do net stuff on it. But I have a second almost identical machine (Optiplex 7050 SFF) I'm thinking of making the media machine, music, browsing, blah blah, and strip this one down to dev work. Leave the net up, I'm not particularly exposed. But for my internal mental landscape, sitting in front of THAT computer would be a different mindset from sitting in front of THIS computer.My phone, I've turned LOCATION off, originally as an experiment, to see how much I actually used that service. Turns out rarely! Map navigation, only. So when I run CoMaps it says "turn location on", I do so. Then generally that or next day, turn it off again. I've been thinking about, what happens if I turn mobile (data) off? And use it wifi only? I know that's not really daily-practical, but I could do it for a day or two and see what the result is, which never seems to be what I think it ought to be.@mhoye
(DIR) Post #B0JTVrwGMVE16vO9AW by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-11-16T19:43:14Z
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@mhoye Here's a perfect example of form and function well integrated.The controls were asymetrical, befitting body and function.https://4dproducts.co.uk/insights/design-classics-sony-walkman