[HN Gopher] The decline of computers as a general-purpose techno...
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The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology
Author : matt_d
Score : 285 points
Date : 2021-02-23 15:29 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (cacm.acm.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (cacm.acm.org)
| SiVal wrote:
| There's no doubt that we're getting an ever-widening variety of
| clients, but this "general purpose" notion is a bit slippery. I
| remember when "general purpose" meant that not only did computers
| crunch numbers for science and engineering, but they could
| finally handle more general business computing such as accounting
| and text-heavy business data processing, which was much larger
| than number crunching--more general purpose.
|
| Then we got microcomputers, and we added consumers and individual
| employees to "general purpose", and "word processing, word
| processing, word processing, and spreadsheets" became the new
| definition of general purpose computing, dwarfing big iron data
| processing. Then laser printers and desktop publishing, then
| Photoshop, CDs and "multimedia", and then The Internet (meaning
| the web) exploded and general purpose computing suddenly meant
| email, instant messaging, and so many new home pages that Yahoo
| could hardly list them all.
|
| In the Internet Boom, nobody defined general purpose computing as
| mostly word processing, much less business data processing, and
| forget about scientific calculating.
|
| Fast forward a couple more decades, and general purpose computing
| is streaming YouTube celebs, texting, binge watching streaming
| "TV", getting most of your news managed by Big Tech censors so
| you can't "misunderstand", keeping up with ever-streaming
| timelines of your 900 closest friends, going to work or school
| via Zoom, doing most of your shopping....
|
| And where is word processing in this general purpose computing?
| Probably bigger than ever, but now buried in the "other" category
| because newer components of general purpose computing dwarf it.
|
| So if some of this is done with a laptop, and some with a
| "phone", and some with a flat screen in your car, and some with
| your TV remote, and some with an iPad...I suspect that
| "computers" could easily be described as either declining or
| growing for general purposes depending on which of many
| reasonable definitions you employed.
| brucehoult wrote:
| You are trying to define tasks as "general purpose". They
| aren't and never can be.
|
| The point is that the basic modern computer design works well
| (enough) for almost all of those tasks. For the most part all
| that you need is the basic operations on 32 or 64 bit
| "integers": move, compare, add, subtract, and, or, xor, shift
| left, shift right.
|
| With this you can do spreadsheets, word processing, database,
| accounting, desktop publishing, web browsing, email, instant
| messaging, decoding MP3 audio and JPEG photos and MPEG video.
| And show it all on a GUI on a high resolution bitmapped
| display.
|
| You can increase the efficiency of some of those tasks with
| hardware and special purpose instructions for floating point
| arithmetic (though spreadsheets for example hardly benefit) and
| SIMD processing for media. See my other (top level) post.
|
| But you don't _need_ them, especially if you have many general
| purpose CPU cores.
|
| Don't forget the original Macintosh did basically all of those
| tasks with just a simple integer-only CPU running at 8 MHz. No
| FPU, no GPU, no media instructions.
|
| A modern multi-GHz CPU can do all those tasks acceptably using
| only simple integer instructions as long as you don't insist on
| very high resolution video (and games) at high frame rates.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| >And show it all on a GUI on a high resolution bitmapped
| display.
|
| Minor quibble aligning with my minor quibble with the article
| itself: modern graphics has been depending on a dedicated
| graphics subprocessor for ages now. Even most Linux distros
| that aren't targeting extremely constrained hardware vend a
| graphics subsystem that assumes an accelerator card.
|
| Perhaps the graphics card can even be noted as the harbinger
| of the specialized-hardware trend (if one ignores the audio
| coprocessors before it). This trend has been riding alongside
| the CPU trend for ages.
| Zigurd wrote:
| "Personal" computers were subversive when first introduced. They
| were designed for complete control by an individual. They were
| also, initially, not networked. When networks first appeared it
| was with the assumption that the user community of the network
| did not have a persistent high level of malicious security
| threats.
|
| In a kludgy, gradual way personal computers were tamed. This was
| inevitable. If you network completely general purpose, user-
| controlled machines in an institutional environment you will get
| security chaos.
|
| Some of this, though, like putting digital rights management into
| personal computers, was tragically evil. What we are left with is
| neither here nor there: Computers are _not_ secure. Our
| communications are _not_ secure and are under constant
| surveillance. And we do _not_ control machines we supposedly own.
| Lose, lose, lose.
|
| You cannot have security _and_ surveillance and central control
| of "personal" devices. You cannot protect "digital rights" and
| sell entertainment content to users that truly control their
| personal computers.
| carapace wrote:
| To some extent this is just the Futumura Projections writ large,
| eh?
|
| ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_evaluation#Futamura_pr...
| )
|
| Anyway, I don't see the problem. I don't see how e.g. better GPUs
| cannibalize the performance of general-purpose CPUs, and I doubt
| that the market for general purpose computing isn't already
| saturated. You can buy CPUs for a couple of bucks (little ones),
| you have a supercomputer in your pocket (phone), and people only
| buy fancy chips to play video games.
| mattkevan wrote:
| Thing is, in the 'olden days', the only thing you could do with a
| home computer was tinker - the job of a computer was to be a
| computer but little else. And the number of people interested in
| doing that was small.
|
| Today, the job of a computer is everything. Computers are in
| everything and do everything. They are our interface to the
| world. Their value is what they enable - writing, tax returns,
| video consumption, gaming and everything else, not the fact
| they're a 'computer'.
|
| For those of us who want a computer to tinker with, we've never
| had it so good. There's so many more options than there's ever
| been for hackable tech. Just because most people don't want to do
| that doesn't mean they're wrong, it just means they have
| different priorities.
|
| I love the fact I don't have to muck about with my iPhone to get
| it to work just as much as I love mucking about with my raspberry
| pi to get it to work.
| DerekL wrote:
| I'm confused. What does this comment have to do with the
| article?
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| _I love the fact I don't have to muck about with my iPhone to
| get it to work ..._
|
| I have changes I want to make to my iPhone. Some of them would
| be as easy as adding a trigger to an SQLite datbase that a
| stock "app" uses. I'm not "allowed" to.
|
| I don't think companies should be legally permitted to take
| away the rights of an owner to do what they please with their
| own property. Locked bootloaders, e-fuses, crypto keys buried
| inside hardware, etc, should all be able to be overridden by a
| physical interlock. (Like Google did with Chromebooks, for
| example.)
|
| Flip that switch and you lose the "walled garden". Okay. So be
| it. No running software that "trusts" my device (which is,
| arguably, misplaced trust anyway). No "app store" for me. I can
| live with that. It's my device and my choice to make. I get to
| make the call to give up "security" for freedom.
|
| It's morally wrong to take away the ability of the owner to do
| what they wish with their devices. It should be illegal too.
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| This is exactly why Richard Stallman created GNU and the GPL.
| He might seem like an idealist or even an extremist but he's
| been warning us about this very thing for decades now.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The Right to Read is coming closer each day. Almost nobody
| cares. It seems like an increasing number of technical
| people _want_ that future to happen. It fills me with
| immeasurable sadness. I am having a really hard time coming
| to terms with the fact that computers aren 't "for" me
| anymore.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| I think this is related to techies have given up selling
| _things_ , and now sell subscriptions, or best of all
| remotely terminated licenses for "purchase". If you have
| a general purpose device, you'll find all those
| artificial limitations can just as easily be removed,
| thus destroying the rent.
| pjmlp wrote:
| All the anti-GPL techies have themselves to thank for.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Believe me, in general I'm with you. But at the end of the
| day you just _don 't have to buy an iphone_. Get an android
| device, flash it with Linux, buy a pinephone, do whatever you
| want! But Apple doesn't sell tinker's devices, they sell a
| walled garden. Why force them to spend even 10 seconds of
| effort on something that isn't their business, when there are
| plenty of other options?
|
| There's a reason I don't have any Apple device: they don't
| make anything that I want. It seems pretty pointless to
| mandate that all companies must sell products that I like.
| asdff wrote:
| That's like saying you don't have to buy a car, or you
| don't have to get an air conditioner. Sure, you could
| tolerate a 2 hour bus ride and a summer with 90+ degree
| heat waves, but there is no reason to put yourself through
| that given the cost of the alternative luxury is not
| insurmountable even for working people in expensive places.
|
| We are in a similar place in the mobile world, where life
| is getting increasingly reliant on electronic luxuries. If
| you want to take advantage of the convenient electric
| scooter or rideshare, you need an app. If you want to cash
| a check without going to a bank or paying a fee with a
| third party like a grocery store, you need an app. If you
| want to get early warnings from the city and/or state about
| earthquakes of all things, you need an app (MyShake). And
| for all those apps, you can't build from source on your own
| hardware. There is rarely a mobile website alternative. You
| need to get them from one of two centralized and moderated
| marketplaces, where only sanctioned and licensed devices
| may participate. You could make a stand here with a dumb
| phone and yell at the clouds that the world is this way,
| and it really is bad that it is this way, but you'd
| realistically be living a decade in the past and miss out
| on all this useful functionality.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| But I mean, you can just buy a different type of car.
| Like, if you feel really strongly that every car ought to
| have a headphone jack because otherwise consumers are
| stripped of their right to play music through a headphone
| jack in their car, you can buy a car that has one. You
| aren't forever stuck on the bus, you just have to look at
| more than one whole car before you decide which one to
| buy.
|
| Same goes for Apple; I would never use an Apple device,
| because I like to have control over my technology.
| Somehow, despite my amazingly brave stand against tyranny
| and capitalism, I still have a phone, running a LineageOS
| install that took me 20 minutes and an online guide to
| get running years ago. On the other hand, if I wanted to
| give my grandma a device I was confident she couldn't
| somehow force into a bad state, I would like it to be
| legal to sell me one.
| njharman wrote:
| No it's not! The parent listed other phones as options,
| not "do without a phone".
|
| Following your weird examples the parent's comment is
| like saying you don't have to buy a *Ford* car, or a
| *Carrier* AC. There are many more car and AC options if
| you don't like Ford or Carrier.
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| They also listed the Pinephone, which had no facility to
| do most of those things. It's either Apple or Android,
| and both of these are making it harder and harder over
| time to run your own software stack.
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| As someone who owns a Pinephone, don't buy a Pinephone if
| you're expecting a functional, usable device. It might get
| there in a year or more, but it's nowhere near there now.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| _Why force them to spend even 10 seconds of effort on
| something that isn 't their business..._
|
| The law should make it "their business". I don't believe it
| should be possible to waive your right to legally do what
| you want with your property.
|
| (I have similar feelings about restrictive covenants in the
| conveyance of real property, for example.)
|
| Since we're editing here:
|
| _It seems pretty pointless to mandate that all companies
| must sell products that I like._
|
| We mandate lots of consumer protections. This seems no
| different to me.
| doteka wrote:
| You have the right to do whatever you want to with your
| iPhone. Apple is not obligated to make it easy for you to
| do so, or honor their warranty if you choose to fiddle
| with it. The law getting involved here would be total
| overreach, and I say this as someone who's politically
| left, a total commie by US standards.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The technical protections in a modern device are
| impossible, from a practical perspective, for an
| individual to defeat. For all practical purposes Apple
| has removed the rights of owners to do what they please
| with the devices they own. It's not that they didn't make
| it easy-- they made it completely impossible.
|
| I am not mature, informed, or articulate enough to argue
| about this objectively. I cannot conceive of how society
| benefits from taking away the rights of owners.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| But you can cooperate with others to figure out to defeat
| those protections, or not buy into the Apple ecosystem in
| the first place. I agree they make it very difficult to
| fully personalize their products and share your dislike,
| but to me this is like complaining about a case being
| glued shut or requiring a special driver to access.
| grawprog wrote:
| >but to me this is like complaining about a case being
| glued shut or requiring a special driver to access.
|
| Both of those are fairly valid complaints though.
| Intentionally making a device hard to access or repair is
| almost as bad as not allowing it at all. That shows an
| actual concerted effort to stop or make it as difficult
| for consumers as possible.
|
| That's basically the definition of anti-consumer
| practices.
|
| It in no way benefits me to not be able to use a standard
| screw driver to open something and have to either
| purchase an expensive proprietary tool or at worst take
| it to an 'authorized' repair shop that has the license to
| use the proprietary tool.
| doteka wrote:
| I'm sorry to say, but your first paragraph is blatantly
| false. The jailbreaking community has been active since
| the iPhone product line existed, up to this day. Feel
| free to look it up. They provide instructions that a high
| school script kiddie is able to follow. I know because I
| was one of them.
|
| If you were not motivated enough to research the options
| available to you, you cannot in good faith argue that
| Apple did anything wrong here.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I'm well aware of jailbreaks. I've jailbroken a number of
| Apple devices and some consoles.
|
| In every "jailbreak" case, the manufacturer's intention
| was to make practically impossible owner control of
| devices. Jailbreaks are about exploiting bugs. The
| manufacturer's intention remains the same-- to remove
| owner control. Just because Apple made mistakes in their
| implementation of their architecture of control doesn't
| change their intention.
|
| re: impractical for individuals - Try un-blowing an
| e-fuse in a Nintendo Switch. That's practically
| impossible. That's the kind of protections I'm talking
| about.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| I mean if I sell you a brick, it's not gonna connect to
| wifi. I'm not advertising it as connecting to wifi, so if
| you buy it than it's really your fault for thinking it
| will. Similarly, Apple doesn't prevent you from doing
| anything you want with an I-Phone. You can (if you so
| choose) saw it in half, open it up and try to figure it
| out, and interact with it in any way you please. If those
| interactions don't yield results you want, you really
| can't blame Apple since they pretty much told you what
| you were getting.
|
| Now there are some real scummy practices that Apple uses,
| and those should be regulated. Software that detects
| tampering and shuts down the device? Sure, get rid of it.
| Some vital service they can (and do) shut down at any
| time, bricking the device? Regulate it to nothing. But
| ultimately 'do what you want with your property' is
| completely different from 'sell whatever I personally
| want in a device regardless of how others feel'. Apple
| sells a walled garden by design, and buying one of their
| devices pretty much entails realizing that.
| mrzimmerman wrote:
| Don't you suppose you're being a bit dogmatic about it?
| Every device has to be as flexible as possible or it's
| against the law? Genuinely not trying to straw man, but
| should my oven manufacturer have to account for me
| wanting to turn it into a space heater if I feel like it?
|
| Companies make and sell products for specific use-cases
| all the time. Saying the can't sell something unless they
| also make the product able to break away form that
| specific use case, regardless of time and cost to the
| company and consumers for parallel built in systems or
| whatever the lift may be doesn't sound feasible to me.
|
| I don't know, I'm on your side that I should be able to
| dismantle my iPhone and use the parts to my hearts
| content if I want to. But I'm not sure that it's
| something Apple has to build into the system just in case
| someone feels like doing it, especially since I could buy
| any number of other computing devices that might work
| just as well.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| What Google did with the Chromebooks-- an interlock that
| zeros the manufacturer-provided root-of-trust-- is a good
| example of all that I want. No more, no less. Let me flip
| a switch and make the device "untrusted" so that I can
| load my own software.
|
| I am being dogmatic. I can't think objectively about this
| because I have yet to see how it benefits society to
| absolutely remove the rights of owners to legally do what
| they please with their property (at least in terms of
| chattels).
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Even with an iPhone, you have the _right_ to flash
| whatever firmware you feel like. This has been upheld in
| US Supreme Court cases. Apple simply is under no
| obligation for it to be easy for you to do so. Jailbroken
| iPhones aren 't illegal. Apple treats them as a security
| risk, since mechanisms for jailbreaking iPhones exploit
| security flaws in order to get root-level code execution.
| I can't say they're wrong to do so! It's no secret that
| they do. Or that Apple doesn't ship anything but iOS to
| an iPhone, or that you won't be able to install apps from
| outside the App Store. These are marketed as features.
|
| Most people are interested in solving a task, and their
| device helps them with this. They are uninterested in
| general-purpose computers. And there's no shortage of
| them for the rest of us! Android devices are the obvious
| choice here, with their user-exposed flashable ROMs. (Not
| just the OS, but _every_ ROM is exposed through fastboot)
| Or PinePhone. Or whatever Firefox is doing. You 've got
| choices for tinkerers and general-purpose computation, it
| just doesn't live in a device with an apple logo.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _you have the right to flash whatever firmware you feel
| like... Apple simply is under no obligation for it to be
| easy for you to do so_
|
| This is disingenuous. Apple is not being called out for
| failing to create desirable functionality for iPhones.
| Rather Apple (et al) are being criticized for
| deliberately acting to purposefully constrain
| functionality. The first criticism would be asking
| manufacturers to do work to improve their products. The
| second criticism is telling them to stop crippling
| devices they sell.
| sjy wrote:
| > should my oven manufacturer have to account for me
| wanting to turn it into a space heater if I feel like it?
|
| No, because their failure to do this has no structural
| consequences for the market in ovens or space heaters.
| Apple's control over the market for software that can run
| on 2 billion iOS devices, on the other hand, is a big
| deal. Some think it's Apple's just deserts for creating a
| platform that users like; others think the government
| should end that control using the antitrust laws passed
| to limit corporate power at this scale.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _Believe me, in general I 'm with you. But at the end of
| the day you just don't have to buy an iphone. Get an
| android device, flash it with Linux, buy a pinephone, do
| whatever you want!_
|
| The problem with this argument is the same as any essential
| utility. At some point, it becomes impossible to live a
| normal life without access to a certain facility. If access
| is only available through a monopoly provider or a small
| enough number of providers that they tend to move the
| market in unison even if not actively collaborating, that
| can become a serious problem.
|
| This is why we have government regulation of essential
| markets. Regulators might impose pricing limits in
| violation of the "free market", to prevent exploitation of
| vulnerable customers (and in this context, remember that
| most or all customers might be in that category) where
| competition fails to do so effectively on its own. But laws
| and regulations can also impose other safeguards, such as
| requiring honest advertising, adequate privacy and security
| protections, or interoperability.
|
| I think it is no longer credible, at least in my country
| (the UK) and others like it, to argue that a modern
| smartphone is a luxury. People use their phones to access
| government services, shops and home delivery services,
| banks and financial services. They are by far the dominant
| communication device of our age, not just for calls but
| also texts, emails, numerous Internet-based communications
| channels. Some people no longer have any other reasonably
| convenient means to access those services and
| communications. Some of those services and channels are
| provided exclusively via mobile apps and simply aren't
| available to those who don't have a phone (which is in
| itself a problem, because obviously not everyone does, and
| this is making things very difficult for some demographics
| during the strange times we are living in).
|
| This being the case, it is reasonable to argue that people
| should not have to choose between two dominant ecosystems
| for their phone when both have serious problems in areas
| like privacy, security, reliability and data lock-in, some
| of which are a direct result of the interests of the
| providers of those two dominant platforms, without any
| realistic ability for most people to protect themselves
| from those risks or with any such ability relying
| essentially on luck (for example, the availability of
| jailbreaks and the continued operation of essential apps
| despite any jailbreak that has been applied).
| ravi-delia wrote:
| It may well be that internet access in general is an
| essential utility, though I'd disagree that any device in
| particular is. However, the fact that the 'two dominant
| platforms' continue existing is mostly due to people's
| personal preferences. Besides, saying that Android
| devices even approach the same level of locked-downness
| of Apple devices is absurd; I run an open source version
| of android on all my mobile devices, and not once was it
| particularly difficult to install.
|
| Even more, it doesn't seem to me that cell phone
| manufacturers are currently moving the market in
| particular unison. There are still more and less open
| devices, just as there are more or less expensive ones.
| Perhaps we're moving slowly towards that, but we're
| certainly a long way away as of now.
|
| My primary issue is the difference between ensuring that
| no one has to get screwed and ensuring that no one can
| get a product they want. So long as there are more open
| devices, no one is compelled to use an IPhone. Anyone who
| wants to be protected from big bad apple may simply
| refrain from paying them. A utility is generally
| regulated not because of its vitality, but because of
| inherent restrictions on consumer choice. Unless it
| becomes impossible to just not buy Apple's shitty locked
| down hardware, it doesn't make sense to constrict.
| colllectorof wrote:
| This is fake insight.
|
| Most people I know who are any good at programming had started
| learning about it by modifying something either on their own
| computers (pre-2000) or on the web (post 2000). They took
| things they found _interesting or useful_ and somehow
| introspected and changed them. Good chunks of skills gained by
| that were transferable to professional environment.
|
| Today, this is not how people get into tech. There is an ever
| increasing gap between technologies used for professional
| computing and things that are observable and modifiable by a
| normal person out there.
|
| Curiosity and experimentation have been replaced by
| (appropriately named) coding bootcamps.
| CryptoGhost wrote:
| You are talking about a barrier to entry (in the sense that
| it used to be easier) for a person who is new to general
| purpose computing to get on boarded while the person you are
| replying to is talking about the opportunity increase in the
| number of systems you can with work with presently.
| novok wrote:
| I think it's actually easier today, because of the large
| amount of free well made educational resources out there,
| stack overflow, raspberry pi, instant IDEs from just typing
| in a URL, scriptable and popular online games like roblox
| and more. While in the past you had books you had to buy
| and if you were lucky, some help on IRC and basic on your
| computer, that you were encouraged to use to get some basic
| games on your computer if you were a gen X kid.
| mattkevan wrote:
| It's definitely easier today.
|
| As a kid I got into programming in basic on my Acorn
| Archimedes because I had a book on basic. However I never
| got further than that because I didn't have access to any
| more advanced programming books.
|
| Now, all the information about it everything is available
| within a few minutes of searching.
| milesvp wrote:
| This is a problem EE's currently talk about. People good at
| analog electronics are starting to age out of the workforce.
| There are a ton of people who got into electronics 40+ years
| ago by fiddling with things. This is harder today than it was
| back when through hole was how components were made (though
| the maker movement has changed that trajectory IMO). I could
| easily see the same problem with CS in general as access to
| general computing becomes less populous. I've even heard
| rumor it's happened to some degree already when people talk
| about an unusual age band for devs born around +/- 1975 who
| tend to have a particularly good grasp of computers due to
| growing up with the first personal computers.
| margalabargala wrote:
| I agree that the proportion of people getting into tech via
| curiosity and experimentation has decreased.
|
| However, I'm not convinced that the absolute number has
| decreased. It's completely possible that larger numbers than
| ever of people are getting into tech as an extension of their
| own curiosity, and are simply less visible due to being
| outnumbered by the masses from bootcamps.
| Terretta wrote:
| Look at cars, consider both tinkering and "right to repair, but
| with no guarantee on know-how".
| higerordermap wrote:
| But most tinkering journeys do not start with dedicated
| hardware. They start with hardware intended for something else,
| generally on a quest to solve some problem or do something
| cool..
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The evolution of graphics cards into CUDA machines for
| machine learning applications is one example of this
| phenomenon.
| [deleted]
| wayneftw wrote:
| > I love the fact I don't have to muck about with my iPhone to
| get it to work...
|
| Imagine being able to quickly and easily add your own custom
| programs to your iPhone without asking anyone's permission
| though? Also, what if - as the owner of that device - you had
| full control over it's capabilities like you do with a desktop
| computer? Adding these abilities certainly would not be the
| downfall of phone ecosystems as we know them. People that want
| convenience wouldn't leave their app store.
|
| The fact that they _are_ our interface to the world is exactly
| the reason why we need to take control of them away from the
| Apple /Google oligarchy. People need to stop comparing these
| devices to gaming consoles, which don't impact the world even a
| fraction as much as smartphones, when we're talking about
| making new rules for running smartphone platforms.
| randcraw wrote:
| I would love to fully access the data on my phone. But of
| course it would also introduce security holes currently
| unimagined. Maybe someone can devise a secure sandbox model
| to enable this, but after Java's failure to resolve this
| problem, I'm not holding my breath.
| mikestew wrote:
| _But of course it would also introduce security holes
| currently unimagined_
|
| I would argue that at least some of those holes were indeed
| imagined, that's why iOS works the way it does and not the
| way parent would like.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| iOS works the way it does to make money for Apple. First
| it was to appease carriers to enable the devices to
| exist. Then it was to appease publishers to get content
| on the devices. Now it's to make that sweet, sweet app
| store commission. That there are benefits for device
| owners who are willing to give up their freedom is a
| happy accident.
| mindslight wrote:
| Note that every stage you have described has been called
| "security". Security is inherently a multi-perspective
| endeavour, and the word gets abused by powerful entities
| looking to preserve _their own_ security, likely at the
| expense of your own (eg the TSA). I do agree that end
| users receive benefits from Apple 's security, but to
| insist that explains the whole story is hopelessly
| ignorant.
| CountSessine wrote:
| _Imagine being able to quickly and easily add your own custom
| programs to your iPhone without asking anyone 's permission
| though?_
|
| Or even better, imagine being able to quickly and easily add
| your own custom programs to someone else's iPhone, without
| asking anyone's permission though?
|
| That's kind of the problem, isn't it?
| [deleted]
| wtetzner wrote:
| > That's kind of the problem, isn't it?
|
| But those aren't the same thing. Me being able to install
| what I want on my phone doesn't give me the ability to
| install it on other people's phones.
|
| I currently have the ability to install apps on my phone
| from the app store, but I can't make that decision for
| someone else's phone. So why would it be different for
| software that doesn't come from the app store?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > Imagine being able to quickly and easily add your own
| custom programs to your iPhone without asking anyone's
| permission though?
|
| Cool? I'm a software engineer and I have no desire to do
| this. The number of people who care about this feature is
| vanishingly low. I think it is reasonable to lament losing a
| particular feature for tinkerers, but it becomes unreasonable
| to demand that businesses cater to this very small niche.
|
| > Adding these abilities certainly would not be the downfall
| of phone ecosystems as we know them. People that want
| convenience wouldn't leave their app store.
|
| Downfall? No. But locked down systems are a somewhat
| effective way of keeping badware off of devices for the
| masses.
| [deleted]
| wayneftw wrote:
| The key here is that it's "badware as defined by Apple and
| Google" though. Who watches the watchers??
|
| If you're not advocating self reliance and self governance
| for people, you're not thinking long term. It's
| historically proven bad advice to willingly give all
| control to central powers.
|
| > ...locked down systems are a somewhat effective way of
| keeping badware off of devices for the masses.
|
| Developers are not the masses. The masses aren't installing
| the necessary tools and compiling their own programs and
| they never will. I'd settle for signing a written agreement
| with Apple and waiting a week for approval when I buy my
| phone so that I can actually control my own device.
|
| I'm not arguing for letting me put my apps on everyones
| iPhones, just mine.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| I agree with you. We have these amazing devices in our
| pockets, but we can only install things on them that are
| approved by enormous, faceless corporations whose
| incentives are often misaligned with our own well-being.
|
| I don't advocate removing all safety checks from phones,
| but making somebody jump through 15 hoops to install a
| non-corporate-approved app is stupid.
|
| Secondly, these companies stop a lot of badware, but they
| also act as gatekeepers to stop anti-establishmentware
| that may be for the public benefit at the detriment of
| the gatekeepers' stranglehold on power.
|
| In other words, these devices are systems of perpetuating
| the status-quo and safeguarding the profits of the ones
| making them. This in itself I'm not upset about: of
| course capital seeks to cement its own power. The real
| issue I have is how much potential is destroyed as
| collateral damage.
| a_c_s wrote:
| Nobody's permission is required to write apps for your own
| iOS device.
| [deleted]
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Maybe not to write them, but to run them you need Apple to
| sign them. A free developer account can be used to have
| Apple sign your app, but then Apple will only give you
| permission to run that app for 7 days, and only give you
| permission to install 3 apps signed that way at a given
| time. In any case, side loading iOS applications absolutely
| requires Apple's permission.
|
| Unless you were talking about jailbreaking.
| brucehoult wrote:
| So get a paid developer account.
|
| Freedom to modify is not the same as zero cost. You paid
| for the iPhone hardware, after all. Just pretend it cost
| $99 more and came with the right to load your own apps.
| sjy wrote:
| Freedom to modify is also not the same as a renewable
| 7-day licence to run up to 3 custom apps, as long as you
| maintain a $99/year subscription and a device that can
| run Xcode.
| halostatue wrote:
| Just as it's not possible to provide "Lawful Access to
| Encryption" (master keys) without weakening crypto, it's not
| possible to "quickly and easily add your own custom programs
| without asking permission" that _also_ provides the safety so
| your mom or grandfather don't install something that allows
| crooks to drain their bank accounts.
|
| General purpose computers are great for people who know what
| they're doing (although there are some _really_ good phishing
| scams out there that can even fool trained people), but
| they're an absolute disaster for the vast majority of people
| who _don't_ become specialists in computer security.
|
| I _just_ had a support ticket opened by someone who goes
| between different stores for a client...and this man sent his
| password in the clear in the support ticket. This man isn't
| an idiot, it's literally _not_ in his job description to be a
| computer security expert (his job has to do with hardware
| sales or lumber or something like that).
|
| This man would be better served with two things we're
| building later this year (AD integration and an Android
| version of the employee app), because then he can just log in
| with the same (probably simple and insecure) password that he
| uses for his Windows log-in at work. He is the type of person
| that, when told to do something, would simply install program
| X because someone told him to do so (never mind that program
| X is actually malware).
|
| So no, while I think that Apple's signing restrictions are a
| little on the draconian side, I don't think that that Windows
| 95-like "permissions" are what most people want or need.
| wayneftw wrote:
| So, you're saying that there is absolutely now way, no how
| that we can put up a fence to keep people with low
| understanding of tech from compiling and installing some
| random app?
|
| I don't buy it.
|
| > I don't think that that Windows 95-like "permissions" are
| what most people want or need.
|
| That's an extremely bad faith take on my argument because
| there's a very wide spectrum of possibilities between the
| Windows 95 free-for-all and what we have with iOS. You're
| presenting a false dichotomy.
|
| For one thing, iOS could easily put up tons of scary
| warnings before letting you sideload things. That would be
| enough to dissuade most people from doing it. However, I'd
| be willing to go to extremes to get control over the
| devices which I supposedly own. Make me come into the Apple
| store and sign away any rights to a warranty from Apple.
| Make me pay extra. Whatever you want - just don't put every
| single user in prison because a likely majority of people
| can't handle making good decisions on what software to
| install.
|
| The idea that we must remove any and all control from users
| to protect the innocent is just as bad as the idea to have
| a War on Drugs - and I highly suspect that these
| preventions are actually in place for the same reason: to
| actually control people and rake in profits, not to protect
| them.
| halostatue wrote:
| Google puts up tons of scary warnings for
| sideloading...and IIRC, that's part of Epic's case
| against Google (the warnings discourage people from
| installing alternative stores or from alternative means),
| in addition to Google's position on Play. (I do not
| believe that Epic has a meaningful case on any front, but
| that's ultimately for the courts to decide. The courts
| often decide wrongly, as was recently done for Oracle v
| Google re: the copyright of status of APIs.)
|
| You say that Apple can make you pay extra. OK. Here's a
| $99/year developer contract with which you can develop
| and install software that you want as you want (I believe
| that these builds are good for ~90 days, so you
| recompile/reinstall every 90 days; unlike the 7
| previously mentioned). But people don't _like_ that and
| have said that's unfair.
|
| I am completely saying that there's no _meaningful_ way
| we can put up a fence to keep people who _shouldn't_ be
| running random apps from doing so. We can't keep users
| from clicking on _links_ that they shouldn't be clicking
| on. Just this morning, I had a neighbour ask me about one
| of those full-screen "WARNING FROM MICROSOFT YOUR
| COMPUTER IS INFECTED" pop-ups; even though she was smart
| enough not to click on anything, she _still_ copied down
| the phone number to maybe call the scammer. My father, a
| couple of weeks ago, didn't know about Ctrl-W / Command-W
| on a similar full-screen hijack that had affected both
| his Chromebook (locked down) and my mom's MacBook (mostly
| not locked down).
|
| I remember a few years ago there were a number of minor
| malware issues that were caused by people following
| instructions randomly on the internet to open the
| javascript console and "paste this in to see something
| neat". So no, I don't believe we can put a fence that
| protects the ignorant / unready / unwise but enables the
| people who think that they know better (and actually
| sometimes might).
|
| If you can crack that, then there's going to be a lot of
| people who will be at your door to reward you...and then
| many more looking for the backdoors you left so that they
| can continue to infiltrate systems for their own rewards
| (whether state actors or criminal actors).
| sjy wrote:
| You mention that the JavaScript console has been used
| maliciously - doesn't its continued existence show that
| we _can_ put up a fence that's good enough? Even the most
| locked down corporate PCs still provide access to the
| console. I've also never heard of anyone being tricked
| into rooting an Android device or enabling USB debugging.
| halostatue wrote:
| It shows just the opposite. These instructions were being
| provided to people who should never be opening the
| JavaScript console because they couldn't understand what
| they were pasting into said console. And for some
| browsers, that means potentially opening up things like
| USB because of inane standards like WebUSB.
| dschuetz wrote:
| It's declining perhaps, yes, but it's not there yet. Because
| modern _workloads_ shifted mostly towards gaming, crypto-mining
| and web browsers doesn 't mean that general-purpose computers
| declined. It only means they haven't developed very fast, but
| that is thanks to Intel and Microsoft.
|
| In my opinion, the OS needs to go all virtual+distributed for
| general-purpose to survive. Or else all hardware will become web
| browser accelerators. Even now all browsers already have their
| own hardware drivers for video.
| spoonjim wrote:
| What I find is that people of my generation have some basic
| idea of at least some computer jargon because of what we had to
| learn just to get our PCs working in the 80s and 90s. What in
| fuck's name is a parity bit? We learned because we wanted to
| get our modems configured to play Doom together when our moms
| weren't on the phone. I'm not talking about people who went
| into computers, I'm just talking about the people who used
| them.
|
| Nowadays everything just works so damn well. My _phone_ works
| with my _printer_ without any driver installation let alone
| mucking around. So nobody has any idea how anything works.
| dschuetz wrote:
| The people who grew up knowing what a parity bit was, are in
| the IT consulting business now, myself included. I think
| that's how things naturally change. IT and computer hardware
| has become _that_ much complex and popular at the same rate,
| you now need people and abstraction for that. It doesn 't
| have to be a bad thing though.
| asdff wrote:
| I really don't think its any more complex than it was
| 20-30-40 years ago. At the end of the day, none of this GUI
| abstraction does anything more than what the computer can
| do at the command line, and that's practically been etched
| in stone at this point--some of these bash commands are
| older than my boomer parents. Instead, people just don't
| have to bother learning beyond the abstraction to get work
| done anymore. It's just like cars: you don't need to know
| how to drive a stick shift and all the mechanical theory
| behind shifting gears smoothly if you have an automatic
| transmission instead.
| asdff wrote:
| I think consumer devices are going to remain consumerified, but
| we will see an increase in people across disciplines who need
| and make use of general compute power. More industries are
| starting to recognize the importance of statistical modelling
| and interpreting data, and that means being able to develop
| bespoke analysis on general purpose computing hardware. Right
| now it's just the data scientists and engineers doing this
| work, but I wouldn't be surprised if this grows to include
| investors, accountants, actuaries, urban planners, etc, in the
| coming decades. I expect we will see more smaller companies
| with unique cluster offerings to compete against AWS and their
| increasing prices, especially as hardware grows cheaper by the
| year.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| "Decline" as in "Still growing but not as much as some other
| things". This analysis sounds like sour grapes. "Phones get all
| the love!" doesn't actually mean that general-purpose computing
| is declining. Just the opposite. It continues to grow in power as
| it always has.
| tartoran wrote:
| I agree and the pool of tinkerers and intelectually curious has
| been growing steadily. There are so many free resources
| available that the barrier to entry has lowered enormously.
| However, the enormous growth has gone towards consumption and
| that is not necessarily a bad thing.
| solinent wrote:
| I think as computers fail to get faster, we won't be able to
| improve performance without making application specific logical
| units, however, we may still be able to make it general purpose.
| asdff wrote:
| I'm waiting for automatic code optimization. Write the code
| going from an input to an output however you like, show the
| computer your input and output, have it rewrite the most
| optimal (and probably very weird looking) code possible to go
| from your supplied input to your supplied output, and reap the
| efficiency rewards to mastering a stack of arcane low level
| code reference books without spending the thousands of hours of
| your precious and limited free time to do so. That would be a
| huge leap imo.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| What I'm most interested in is what the trends will be in how
| those specialized circuits are developed.
|
| Circuit design has been marching steadily along for decades,
| and between the tools available to allow non-specialists to go
| from abstract hardware description to image-ready chip
| specification and the ever-cheapening, ever-broadening
| capabilities of custom chip fab, are we approaching an era
| where fabricating mid-range specialized circuits is on par with
| the difficulty of writing and compiling software, only a bit
| slower?
| niftich wrote:
| Note that the article is about innovation and performance gains
| in general-purpose processors slowing, and about the increasing
| shift onto specialized computing engines by those who seek
| further performance gains for specific workloads.
|
| This was foreshadowed with the Netburst not being able break 4
| GHz in 2004-2005, and CPUs having to shift to multi-core. This
| bought "classic" CPUs more time, but CUDA showed up in 2007 and
| GPUs went from strictly specialized computing engines to general-
| purpose (in research, if not yet in the home). CPUs have also
| been steadily gaining SIMD extensions.
|
| Now GPUs are showing promise for NN workloads, but in
| environments where the stack is tightly controlled, NN co-
| processors are showing up. This is because tightly controlling
| the stack has the benefits of being able to optimize and
| harmonize software and hardware, and interop outside of the stack
| (and in some cases, stack longevity) is not a factor.
|
| The article isn't truly about how more and more computing
| environments tightly control their stack, but that mechanism does
| play a part in the design choices that result.
| pwdisswordfish6 wrote:
| You must be new here to expect Hacker News to read an article
| before commenting.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| The article discusses the current trend but you hint at the
| possibility of a trend reversal. The CPUs are more and more
| multicore with wider SIMD. Many now have dynamic clock rates or
| low clock rates. The GPUs which use to actually have fixed
| functions now more and more are just GPGPUs. This to me is a
| convergence.
| d--b wrote:
| The fact that I can use Python to program a game on a raspberry
| pi, and use the same language to train GPT-3 is evidence that
| general purpose computing has not been declining...
| lenkite wrote:
| Python cannot be used for accessible mobile apps AFAIK.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| I see a connection between this and the troubles Intel is facing,
| and the general decline of CISC processors.
| coldtea wrote:
| If by decline most meant "computers being more affordable,
| powerful, and with more languages, compilers, documentation, FOSS
| and proprierary software available than ever, not even close to
| the 'heyday' of general-purpose computer era they have in mind in
| the 80s or so" then they're right. Though I think they mean "I
| want a specific vendor to make a product they don't want to
| make".
|
| (This is not about TFA, which examines a more well dedined
| "universal vs specialized processor" dichotomy, but about the
| frequent laments about general purpose computing).
| blt wrote:
| This seems a little sensationalist to me. The GPU is a general-
| purpose device optimized for highly parallel workloads. One could
| just as easily say that a traditional CPU is a special-purpose
| device optimized for branch-heavy code at the expense of parallel
| throughput.
|
| The current state of GPUs is based on Nvidia's decision to focus
| on GPGPU instead of being a DirectX accelerator forever. They
| specifically decided to make the device more general-purpose than
| it needed to be at the time. Presumably they thought there was a
| chance to start another virtuous cycle for parallel computing.
|
| I don't think we are close to realizing the GPU's potential as a
| general-purpose device. Imagine the kind of software we will have
| when every phone has the equivalent of today's biggest desktop
| GPU inside it.
|
| The next revolutionary general-purpose device will probably feel
| like a niche product at first, just as the 3Dfx Voodoo did in
| 1996.
| williesleg wrote:
| Part of The Great Reset. Computers are too powerful. Just give
| them a locked-down iPad. Of course, we'll have India write all
| the code, they do it cheap.
| nathias wrote:
| it looks like we're going back to terminals (renting cloud
| resources), where owning your own computer will be an
| increasingly niche hobby
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| In some ways I don't mind that. If all the normal people are
| off using their terminals then perhaps workstations will shift
| back towards supporting advanced users.
| brucehoult wrote:
| That was a decade or more ago. Now we're getting heavier and
| heavier JavaScript and WebASM running locally on our "dumb
| terminals" -- and with them using local permanent storage too.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Where is all the unpaid innovation happening, where are people
| creating for the joy of creating? 8 bit micro controllers and
| little SoCs.
| xkeysc0re wrote:
| I bought a wi-fi modem for my Commodore 64. It's everywhere,
| you just gotta poke around
| op03 wrote:
| Here you go -
| https://twitter.com/sndrv/status/1356884973979115522
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Some people literally created an online dumpster fire. You send
| it an email, it prints it out, and the paper goes into a
| flaming dumpster. It then sends you the video of this
| happening.
|
| Why? _Just because they thought it would be cool._ (Er, hot.)
|
| https://hey.science/dumpster-fire/
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Why does it have to be unpaid?
|
| https://twitter.com/mntmn
| jonathanaird wrote:
| It's happening in the tools for thought community on Twitter.
| It's more about the software layer and innovations in human
| computer interaction design. A lot of the ideas from the 60's
| and 70's are having a resurgence like Memex, backlinks,
| moldable dev environments etc.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I dunno, PC sales are growing a lot this year, and with remote
| work, they are bound to stay that way for the next years
| konschubert wrote:
| The economy is finally catching up with building use cases around
| what a computer can do.
|
| The result is that special-purpose computing is growing, and
| general-purpose computing is on the decline.
| brainless wrote:
| This is what I personally feel is just missing these days. I was
| never part of the leading edge of hobby computing.
|
| I was very far off, geographically, growing up a teenager in
| India. But back then, 1998 - 2006 ish, I feel the Internet was a
| lot more about experiments. I would read up on some software or
| hardware group all the time. LUGs were way popular. I used to be
| on chat rooms from MIT or other unis every other day.
|
| Nowadays most people I see of that age group are happy with a
| YouTube video on their smartphones. General purpose of computers
| is simply not visible. Not even to the level that I, a curious
| teenager, had experienced in those years from so far in India.
|
| We have too many tall-walled gardens now.
|
| Update: I should add I am happy with how powerful computers are
| these days, but they are not for the purpose of learning or
| tinkering the actual device or its software. It is just way to
| consume media for the mainstream.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| I was a computer geek from about 1981 onwards, starting with
| Commodore PETs at high school. These machines were uniquely
| accessible. You could do surprisingly creative graphics using
| only the graphic characters hardwired into the machine (no
| bitmaps, colours or sprites). But these characters were printed
| right on the keyboard, and could be used in normal BASIC
| "PRINT" statements to do quite performant animations and such,
| without any advanced programming skill.
|
| That was as good as it got. The difference between a beginnner
| dabbling with his first PRINT loop and an advanced assembly
| language programmer wasn't that great because the machine was
| so limited; you could go from one extreme to the other in skill
| in a year or two if you were interested enough. My natural
| response to seeing the "MISER" adventure, after solving it of
| course, was "I have all the programming skills to make a game
| like that" and did so.
|
| And while then as now, only <1% of the general population was
| interested enough to get good at programming these things,
| another 10-20% was interested enough to hang around, dabble,
| try the latest cool programs that came down the pipe, or were
| made by the 1%. I had people playing a game that I made that
| consisted of one (long) line of BASIC.
|
| Then, it seemed, most of the rest of the population (the other
| 80-90%) got computers too, Commodore 64s mostly where I lived.
| And still, even if only a tiny minority actually programmed
| their own stuff, it felt like a part of a vibrant scene, you
| could always show off your stuff.
|
| With modern machines, even without the discouragement of locked
| down operating systems, missing accessible programming
| languages and such... there is just no hope of making something
| "cool" you can impress your friends with. So the tiny minority
| that does learn HTML5, Javascript, Arduino programming, what
| have you, is relatively obscure and seems to be a shadow of its
| former self. It isn't really. It's just that 99.99% of the
| computing power now in the hands of the population will never
| be tinkered with.
| randcraw wrote:
| > With modern machines, even without the discouragement of
| locked down operating systems, missing accessible programming
| languages and such... there is just no hope of making
| something "cool" you can impress your friends with.
|
| Every modern computing machine I know allows you to add a
| very rich set of coding tools, other than unjailbroken mobile
| devices perhaps. Yeah, poor access to mobile sucks, but if
| you feel the need to hack, you won't let walled gardens stop
| you.
|
| Web scraping is an insanely rich source of data for building
| cool tools. Then you might add a bit of simple machine
| learning, like a voice-based interface or a GAN-based video
| face-melter or visualizing web-scraped results on a map.
| These sorts of tricks were hard or impossible to do 10 or 20
| years ago. But not today.
|
| If you want to hack, I'd start by immersing yourself in
| Linux. Or Raspberry Pi. Better yet, both.
| IQunder130 wrote:
| You are looking at this through the eyes of someone who is
| already comfortable with their understanding of computers
| and software. To a kid with no prior knowledge, the entry
| barriers might appear impossibly high.
| novok wrote:
| No, they're lower than ever. They're one google search
| away from a huge amount of usable resources, youtube
| videos, web IDEs that they can use on their locked down
| iPad / School Chromebook and more.
| mrob wrote:
| >there is just no hope of making something "cool" you can
| impress your friends with
|
| I believe there is hope of making cool graphics effects with
| GPU shaders. GPU tech is still advancing similar to how CPUs
| were back then, so people have not yet explored all the
| possibilities of the hardware. You can do impressive things
| just by experimenting even if you don't have a lot of
| theoretical knowledge. Sites like shadertoy.com make it easy
| to get started.
| 8draco8 wrote:
| Classic PC and even some laptops especially with open operating
| systems are still fantastic tool for learning and tinkering.
| There's just more options now for people that simply wants to
| consume media without thinking too much about everything else.
| PC enthusiast scene is getting bigger every year.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Learn what? Installing Linux on a computer doesn't really
| teach you anything much at all about computers. It teaches
| you about _Linux_.
| sriku wrote:
| That's today, but it wasn't so initially. You'd learn about
| your monitor's scan modes, how the disk is structured,
| dumping bytes between devices, optimizing for load by
| placing bytes on the outer sectors of floppy disks, using
| RAM as a disk to speed things up, and whole lot of
| "useless" things that build machine sympathy.
| randcraw wrote:
| Yes, but it's also true that drivers and peripherals are
| generally a lot more complicated today and hardware
| services more federated across layers of dependency and
| security than in the days of DOS or Windows 3. Reverse
| engineering today's Windows 10 wifi-based encrypted RAID
| disk array is a good deal trickier than a 30 year-old DOS
| FAT IDE drive ever was.
| 8draco8 wrote:
| Well you still have easier and more difficult distros.
| You can go easy route and play with Ubuntu or Fedora but
| you can approach linux from the hard side and try Arch or
| Gentoo
| G3n0t wrote:
| Non sense. Linux makes many details about computers much
| more explicit than Windows does. Even installing Ubuntu
| teaches you something about how computers boot, what
| partitions are and file systems do. Linux also makes it
| easy to get started in programming on the OS level --
| thanks to the Internet it is way easier to find information
| about how everything works.
|
| So from a learning experience perspective, a kid tinkering
| with Linux might gain more insight into how computers work
| and than, say, on Windows or Mac.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Agreed. I still remember my first foray into linux
| install. PC wouldn't boot afterwards and I had no one to
| shepherd me through it. These days if I want to get
| information on how to get something working, 9/10 someone
| already posted it for your benefit.
|
| Some of things are worse, but some things got infinitely
| better.
| koonsolo wrote:
| Why the negative outlook? The world now is way more awesome for
| hackers than it was back then!
|
| 1. You can find any information you want, in an instant.
|
| 2. Hardware is very cheap, computers can be tiny, you can order
| components from anywhere
|
| 3. Robotics and electronics are way cooler now, with drones
| etc.
|
| 4. Software development is way more productive with all the
| libraries and tools we have right now.
|
| 5. When I was a kid, games were made by 1 or a few people. It
| quickly evolved into big studios. But nowadays, a solo or tiny
| team can release super successful games.
| kuschku wrote:
| > 2. Hardware is very cheap, computers can be tiny, you can
| order components from anywhere
|
| In the past I could get any component I might need from a
| local store in 20 minutes. now I've got 2 weeks to 3 months
| turnaround on shipping from shenzhen.
| krageon wrote:
| I really miss hardware shops now that you pointed this out
| :(
| StavrosK wrote:
| In the past, there were only enough components to fill a
| few shelves. Also, you can get many, many components from
| local stores now, if you're willing to pay the 4x-10x
| premium.
|
| Not many people are, so local stores aren't as common.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| >You can get many many components from local stores now,
| if you're willing to pay the 4x-10x premium
|
| Well. No. RadioShack is closed. Fry's is closed. If I
| needed a resistor, I honestly wouldn't know where to go.
| Probably AliExpress or DigiKey. There's no local stores
| left.
| notriddle wrote:
| Comic books shops are suffering the same problem. It's
| not just computers.
| kuschku wrote:
| In 2010, the local store had more components than I can
| order at reichelt, and was cheaper than aliexpress (if
| you include shipping).
|
| I really miss having a place (back then we even had ad
| dozen of them in a few km distance) with a huge selection
| carrying every component you might ever need, and with
| enough technical expertise that you could show your
| circuit diagram and get feedback how to improve it. This
| is something only seen in shenzhen today.
|
| Now I just don't do any small projects anymore as there
| are no stores in the entire state left, and the extreme
| premium in shipping and waiting time of aliexpress just
| isn't worth it anymore.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I really miss having a place (back then we even had ad
| dozen of them in a few km distance) with a huge selection
| carrying every component you might ever need
|
| That sounds very atypical. I live outside a major US
| metro and I know of one good computer store in the area
| (Micro Center). I imagine there a few small places that
| carry electronic components but not sure how many. And it
| wasn't much different 10 to 20 years ago unless you count
| Radio Shack which wasn't really all that great.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| I count RadioShack, because it was great. As late as 2016
| they had their transisor, resistor, capacitor buckets and
| speaker wire. You couldn't get arbitrary ICs there, but
| for basic components or last-minute bodges they were key.
| And now they're no longer carried.
| StavrosK wrote:
| How much is AliExpress shipping for you? It's free (or a
| few cents) for most of the world, AFAIK.
| kuschku wrote:
| Depends on the seller, but quite a bit if you desire 24h
| or even 14 day shipping instead of the usual 90 day
| shipping
| rjsw wrote:
| There was only one store like that in my childhood city
| but it had everything you might want.
|
| There would be a queue of people waiting on a Saturday to
| give their handwritten list of components to an employee
| to go find.
| IQunder130 wrote:
| The obverse of this is that everybody can get whatever they
| need from Shenzen nowadays, not just some privileged
| American communities.
| kuschku wrote:
| I live in Germany, so I never had the advantages of the
| US situation with fry's, radioshack or microcenter.
|
| And companies sending parts remotely always existed, all
| that happened is now some have less access.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > 5. When I was a kid, games were made by 1 or a few people.
| It quickly evolved into big studios. But nowadays, a solo or
| tiny team can release super successful games.
|
| And games will look exponentially better considering the
| tools we have at disposition now. Also, selling millions of
| units of one game is "possible" even for Solo developers
| (while it's obviously going to be a superstar kind of
| probability). in the 90s reaching that kind of market was
| impossible without a huge corporation support.
| brainless wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, I am not talking about myself here. I am
| still an absolute curious fellow. I just started learning
| woodworking, I am 37 years old now. I start learning
| something new each year.
|
| I meant the current trend of digital products which are, in
| my opinion, more like a TV than "computers".
| imagine99 wrote:
| What, if any, resources did you use to learn woodworking?
| In-person courses and hackerspaces are not available in my
| area right now and I wonder if there are any good online
| classes. And by that I'm not talking about those quick-cut
| YouTube videos where you need a workshop worth 50k in
| machinery and tools to properly follow "this one easy
| trick" ;-)
|
| If you have any resources you can share/recommend, I'd be
| very curious also ;-)
| ammojamo wrote:
| Sounds like you might like Wood Working for Mere Mortals
| (https://woodworkingformeremortals.com/). I haven't taken
| any of the courses Steve offers but I'm a huge fan of his
| YouTube videos.
| ouchjars wrote:
| Rex Krueger has the most budget-conscious channel I know
| of (https://www.youtube.com/c/RexKrueger). His
| "Woodworking for Humans" series starts out with just
| needing three tools and bootstrapping your way to more.
|
| Personally I started with restoring discarded and
| thrifted furniture. The initial outlay was just for some
| glue, varnish, and sandpaper.
| koonsolo wrote:
| > I meant the current trend of digital products which are,
| in my opinion, more like a TV than "computers".
|
| That is true. But I really wonder if the hacker/consumer
| ratio has shifted over the years or not.
| technothrasher wrote:
| I have also been disillusioned of late with the computing
| hobbies that have fueled me most of my life. I'm still
| heavily involved with computing for my employment, but
| there's just something that doesn't spark my curiosity as
| much as it used to.
|
| Interesting that you mentioned you've moved to woodworking,
| as I found a way to rekindle my curiosity be exploring
| older technology as well. I've dived head first into
| antique clock and watch repair.
| tartoran wrote:
| I took up to painting as Im involved too in computers as
| my day job. The contrast is wonderful, there is freedom
| in it, there is a sense of limitless possibilities and no
| pressure or hard deadlines. I've often said to myself if
| I went to art school I'd probably have been interested in
| computers now. I have also become disillusioned a while
| ago with computers and I think there is a limit to any
| interest without taking a break. But recently about an
| hour a year ago I started to become interested in
| programming again and one was using racket/lisp/scheme
| and second was Linux. I'm a new Linux user I am very
| stoked about it.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| The challenge with technology these days is that while the
| capabilities have gone in one direction, the culture has not
| necessarily gone in the direction many of us who came of age
| during an earlier era wish it might have. To some extent, I
| guess this is just a part of what happens when cutting edge
| things go mainstream -- no frontier lasts forever, sadly.
| II2II wrote:
| It's worth noting that the article is about the development of
| specialized hardware rather than walled gardens. In many cases
| this can be hugely beneficial. Not only has it allowed for the
| development of energy efficient hardware to watch videos on a
| smartphone, the same concept has allowed for the development of
| efficient encoding hardware for video to serve that market.
| Likewise, the energy efficient processors that enable media
| consumption have other applications. In the end we carry around
| a tremendous amount of general purpose computing power in our
| pockets.
|
| Walled gardens and specialization are somewhat different
| concepts. The former is primarily concerned with restricting
| how hardware is used, while the latter is mostly concerned with
| optimizing hardware for specific applications. While there are
| times when these two concerns can overlap, this need not be the
| case.
|
| This can be seen historically. Early microprocessors were
| developed for integer calculations, with floating point
| operations being done in software or with an optional floating
| point coprocessor. Floating point was integrated, and became a
| fundamental part of our notion of general purpose
| microprocessors, later in the game. The path taken in computer
| graphics was much more complex, but it is also worth noting
| that it started off as specialized hardware. Experimentation
| resulted in GPUs becoming a generalized tool. Recent
| developments have encouraged them to diverge into a multitude
| of different specialized tools. Both of these examples
| illustrate how specialization has broadened what can be done,
| without creating and environment that restricts what can be
| done.
|
| While I agree that walled gardens encourage media consumption
| at the expense of experimentation or creation, this is more of
| a cultural thing. There is far more money to be made in the
| former than the latter, so that is what the market focuses
| upon.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| The difference is that those people who are happy with YouTube
| videos wouldn't have been tinkering with computers in 2006. You
| have to remember that tinkering with computers was and still is
| a nerdy niche. Let's say there are 1000 people in the world. Of
| those, 10 are hackers (in the "tinker with computers" sense,
| not on the malicious sense), 20 are enthusiasts, the rest are
| neither. In 1990, you'd have 15 people on the net talking about
| computers and doing stuff with them. Everyone else is watching
| TV, reading books, whatever. In 2006, you have 100 people: 10
| hackers, 20 enthusiasts, 70 people who found cat videos. In
| 2021 you have 990 people on the net: same hackers abs
| enthusiasts but also a whole bunch of people who are here for
| the cat videos. Does that detract from what the 10 hackers are
| doing? I don't think so. In fact, it adds opportunity to the
| hackers and enthusiasts.
|
| We didn't lose the hacker spirit. Go look at hackaday.com to
| see what people are working on. We simply gained an audience.
| nightski wrote:
| You are creating a false dichotomy of cat videos vs. hacker.
| I've watched a cat video or two. I've also spent the vast
| majority of my life programming (coming up on 40).
|
| My point is, video games were my gateway to programming. I
| got into mods and then expanded from there. I'm sure I am not
| alone. It's these natural paths that spark curiosity which
| are being cut off.
| garden_hermit wrote:
| Is there any evidence that these paths are being cut? Mod
| communities for video games seem like they are thriving.
| Look at the sheer array of Minecraft mods, or mods for
| nearly any popular game on Steam.
|
| Combine this with popular and easy game making software
| like RPGMaker, or even the ease that someone can set up a
| basic game on Unity. Beyond this, there are programs like
| Scratch and Processing that allow for fun and relatively
| easy computational tinkering.
|
| I doubt the natural paths of curiosity have shrunk, though
| they may look different. Rather, the number of people using
| computers has massively increased, and the number of
| computer "tinkerers" is just a smaller proportion of people
| of the larger whole.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I am oversimplifying the situation. There are more than
| 1000 people in the world, everyone can enjoy cat videos. My
| main point is not that the world is divided into hacked and
| cat videos lovers. (There are two types of people: those
| who divide people into two categories and those that don't
| :)).
|
| My point is that there is a small percentage of the
| population who are makers and a large percentage who are
| consumers. The Internet of 30 years ago was mostly
| populated by the makers so it felt like everyone was a
| maker. Now it is much more representative of the real
| public because the consumers joined. It now feels like it's
| mostly consumers because in the world's population
| consumers outnumber makers by a large percentage. However,
| and this is the crux of my point, the _absolute_ number of
| makers did not go down and in fact went up. You won't find
| many makers in your Facebook feed, in relative numbers. But
| maker communities are bigger, better, easier to find, and
| easier to join than ever before. Just because consumers
| have joined the makers does not mean that things are worse.
| They are better. The rest is nostalgia.
| bigsuperlatives wrote:
| Somehow related:
|
| > //i.ibb.co/3Sv29Qs/23340-en-REVIEW-FINAL-Mail.png ^^
| ekianjo wrote:
| > But back then, 1998 - 2006 ish, I feel the Internet was a lot
| more about experiments. I would read up on some software or
| hardware group all the time. LUGs were way popular. I used to
| be on chat rooms from MIT or other unis every other day.
|
| > Nowadays most people I see of that age group
|
| These are not the same people at all.
| watwut wrote:
| You cant compare back-then-yourself to general population now
| and assume the comparison is good comparison between
| generations.
|
| Plenty of your peers were not on those chat rooms. They did not
| interacted with tech like you or even did not interacted with
| tech at all. They had different hobbies and interests,
| different habits then you.
| blowfish721 wrote:
| From my perspective I think it might feel that way because back
| then it was mostly tech curious people who used the internet.
| Now it's mainstream and everyone is connected which means most
| of the content is produced for massconsumation. Back when I got
| my first computer and got online, in around 1996 I think, the
| computers were still quite expensive and I would have killes to
| have access to the information and tinkerboards/cheap computers
| that are available today.
| brainless wrote:
| I clearly remember my friends' parents being scared of me
| since I used to open up PCs and see what components were in
| them.
|
| I have been using laptops that can not be easily
| opened/upgraded for the last 4-5 years. Devices are being
| made mainly for people to consume media and that's it. I
| think computers of the earlier era and now are not at all
| comparable. The devices now are not really "computers" as
| they used to be. They are opaque all-soldered-and-sealed
| boxes. How will you inspire anyone to tinker with them?
|
| Adding a graphics card to a box was such a cool thing for all
| of my gamer pals. Video cards, audio cards, or any upgrades
| would naturally involve casual talks about tech. Who does
| that these days, unless you own and upgrade a desktop?
| exporectomy wrote:
| I think you're comparing the wrong things. When I was a
| kid, I tinkered with clocks and watches. I thought digital
| ones were opaque boxes and remember calling them boring.
| The mechanical clocks were much more fun and
| reconfigurable.
|
| Does that mean we've sadly come to the end of the era of
| hobbyist friendly alarm clocks? Maybe, but so what? We then
| got computers instead. Now we have Raspberry Pi's for kids
| who see cellphones as boring black boxes. There's always
| something and it's fine if it's not the same thing it used
| to be. The same thing happened with cameras - people used
| to build their own cameras out of bits of wood and develop
| their own pictures from glass plates. but cheap film
| cameras eliminated that hobby from the mainstream. It's
| fine. Technology moves on. Now we have 3D printers that
| enable kids to make things they never could have before
| without access to an expensive milling machine.
| auggierose wrote:
| I never liked to tinker with hardware. Tinkering with
| software was more fun, and the hardware that I can run my
| self-made software on is now more powerful than ever. Even
| an iPad, or rather, especially an iPad.
| harlanji wrote:
| Maybe we could make an Internet for Age 35+ or so. Remember
| when one could take over Yahoo chats with Javascript? With
| containers and stuff, the Internet could be a lot of fun
| again. App battles in the park by old timers on the chess
| tables.
| sneak wrote:
| It's called the internet. The things you describe are still
| happening across a thousand IRC servers you've never been
| invited to.
| fsflover wrote:
| > Nowadays most people I see of that age group are happy with a
| YouTube video on their smartphones. General purpose of
| computers is simply not visible.
|
| Have a look at GNU/Linux phones recently developed:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PinePhone
| cosmodisk wrote:
| I feel very similar. It took less than 2 decades to go from
| tinkers, creators,and just general curiosity, to somewhat
| mindless consumption of videos,or photos. When the Covid wave
| started last year, we had to assess who has necessary equipment
| at home to be able to work remotely. A lot of people don't even
| have a computer at home,all they need is a phone or a tablet,
| which are created for consumption,not to be creative with it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The mainstream was never going to be part of the tinkerers and
| hackers. But the depressing thing is to what extent todays
| hackers have become consumers.
|
| But, we've still got linux and a lot of hardware support for
| that. I'll likely be the last bastion of general purpose
| computing.
| rimliu wrote:
| No, the depressing thing is how many people on HN want others
| to be just like them.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Which is why certain people question "culture fit" as an
| exhaustive reason for not hiring
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I hear people saying this a lot, and I admit I sometimes think
| it myself. But I'm not sure how true it is, as opposed to just
| a perception.
|
| > Not even to the level that I, a _curious_ teenager, had
| experienced in those years
|
| I think therein lies the rub. Teenagers curious about computers
| aren't very common. And even back then (early 2000s), my
| experience in Europe was the same [0]. Most of the people in my
| school didn't really care about computers. They had other
| interests and pursuits.
|
| The difference today is that computers are much more widespread
| because they allow people to do much more diverse things. At
| the time, they would maybe type up a report or something and
| that's it. There wasn't Facebook et al., so many people didn't
| spend any significant amount of time in front of the computer.
| Idle time would mostly be spent in front of the TV or hanging
| out with friends.
|
| I think the reason this perception comes up is that at the
| time, people who "spent time on computers" were doing so out of
| curiosity and interest in learning about them. So the shortcut
| is that since now many more people are spending a good chunk of
| their day in front of the computer, that must mean they're as
| interested in them as the "curious teenagers" of our time.
| That's simply not true. Just look at what they do on the
| computer. It's mostly idle scrolling on some form of social
| media.
|
| And, to address the subject of the OP, I'm also wondering
| whether there's an actual _decline_ in the "general-
| purposeness" of the computer, as opposed to there just being
| more "non general-purpose" computers.
|
| There's a definite decline in the percentage, and maybe even in
| absolute numbers if we look at people who used to use computers
| because they had no alternative but who are now better served
| by smartphones or tablets and also for uses which need
| "specialized processors" (say ML).
|
| I draw a parallel to my feeling whenever I see discussions
| about iOS being locked down and people expecting the whole of
| the HN crowd to be up in arms about it. In my case, I was one
| of those curious teenagers of yore. I still love tinkering with
| computers, etc. But phones? I just can't be bothered to care
| about them. Can I make calls and check some maps? It's great!
|
| I have an iPhone and treat it pretty much like a dishwasher. I
| barely have any apps installed. Neither allows me to install
| whatever random app I want. It's not an issue for my
| dishwasher, and frankly, nor is it for my iPhone. Whatever
| "general computing" I feel like doing, I prefer doing it on an
| actual computer.
|
| Of course, there are other philosophical considerations in this
| discussion which I understand and can get behind, but the point
| is that, to many people, a computer is an appliance. They want
| it to do certain things. Does it do that? Great! If it doesn't,
| it's not fit for purpose. They simply do not care if some guy
| some where would like to do some thing with it but can't
| because Microsot / Apple are locking it down.
|
| ---
|
| [0] I went to school in the suburbs of Paris, so many of the
| kids' parents were pretty well-off and many were even working
| in computer-related fields, so there wasn't any access problem.
| Practically all of them actually had at least one up-to-date
| computer at home.
| sriku wrote:
| This looks spot on.as I understand, what you're saying is
| that folks curious about computers shouldn't expect others in
| general to be curious about them too, despite their ubiquity?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I don't think the problem is curiosity around computers. Back
| in the day, computers were just a novelty and weren't yet
| essential to most jobs. It's fine if people didn't care then.
|
| Nowadays however most white-collar jobs and daily life tasks
| involve computers at some point, and knowing how to use &
| program them would make these tasks more efficient - almost
| _too_ efficient, to the point where it goes against corporate
| interests (turns out society normalized and encourages
| business models that bank on artificially created or
| maintained inefficiency) which is partly why general-purpose
| computing is on the decline now.
| shaan7 wrote:
| > But phones? I just can't be bothered to care about them.
| Can I make calls and check some maps? It's great!
|
| I understand where you are coming from, and it makes 100%
| sense if you own a PC/laptop as well. But guess what? In a
| lot of places the majority of population (including younger
| people) do NOT have them. Their first and only experience of
| computers is a mobile phone. Even though "teenagers who care
| about computers" is a low number, now a lot of them won't
| realize that something like a general purpose computer exists
| (until way later, if they end up using a computer at work).
|
| I grew up being fascinated with how useful and flexible
| computers are and fell in love with creating software. I'm
| quite sure that I would not have happened if I was born
| during the last 10 years.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Is it really any more limiting? They can make programs in
| Scratch or other web apps on their phone. It's not "real"
| native software but it wasn't in the 1980's either. Kids
| then used BASIC interpreters. Compilers for "real"
| programming languages like C were unaffordable. Even
| assembly language and machine language were often
| inaccessible because computers didn't have an assembler or
| hex editor and you couldn't get new software like that
| without spending money.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| You can't use Scratch on your iPhone, and the built-in
| basic programming was far more "native" than any similar
| smartphone equivalent we have today. My TI-89 calculator
| remains way more programmable than my smartphone.
|
| I'm not sure why it has become so common on _Hacker_ News
| to defend this trend and/or pretend it's not a trend.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Then just install Pythonista.
| [deleted]
| Lio wrote:
| Isn't that the wrong comparison though? If you want to
| run scratch just use something other than an iPhone.
|
| When I was a kid we had 8bit micros. They were
| programmable but they were also eye wateringly expensive.
| So it was a struggle to own anything you could program at
| all.
|
| Also they all came with closed source, proprietary OSs.
|
| I used to spend a fair amount of time just starring at
| adverts for things I couldn't afford and that would be
| obsolete before I could.
|
| Now you can get a whole computer given away free on the
| front cover of a magazine and it will do a pretty good
| job of running scratch for you.
| LocalH wrote:
| ML wasn't totally inaccessible by that metric, it was
| quite common to store ML in DATA statements and POKE it
| into the desired memory locations. Depending on the
| platform it would either be directly called with SYS or
| CALL type statements, or it'd be vectored through USR()
| (or perhaps the ampersand in Applesoft).
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I do get your point, but I don't agree it supports the
| thesis that there's a "regression" happening.
|
| Broadly, I could see two situations in which people only
| get a phone and have no computer: either "poor" countries,
| where they can't afford a computer and will get a phone
| that's better than nothing, and very affluent ones where
| they'll just get a phone or tablet and not care. Although
| I'm not sure that this second category has no computer.
|
| While I do sympathize with this, and I think that it would
| more likely than not allow people to discover this
| curiosity by, as you say, being fascinated with how
| flexible phones would be, my point is somewhat different:
| this isn't "going back". Phones never were open. And I'm
| pretty sure that the people who can't afford a computer now
| couldn't afford one in the 90s.
|
| As such, for me, this is more of a lost opportunity to
| progress rather than a regression.
| shaan7 wrote:
| [for simplicity, I'm using the term "computer" as a
| desktop/laptop computer]
|
| > Phones never were open
|
| They certainly were more open than today. It was much
| easier to fiddle around with the software with
| smartphones that Nokia used to have, for example. Both
| iOS and Android were easier in that respect, too. So
| there's clearly been a regression there. However, if you
| meant "phones were never as open as PCs", ah yes then I
| agree.
|
| > As such, for me, this is more of a lost opportunity to
| progress rather than a regression.
|
| I would agree with the spirit of that, but the problem is
| that a lot of computers are actually being "dumbed down"
| so that they are more similar to phones simply because a
| larger population is used to them. For example most young
| people might not find it weird if some day MS or Apple
| make it painfully difficult to install PC/Mac apps from
| outside their stores.
|
| You're right we are not there yet (yay?), but we seem to
| be moving towards that.
| Talanes wrote:
| >It was much easier to fiddle around with the software
| with smartphones that Nokia used to have
|
| Uh, as a young person during that time, I think there may
| have been one kid in my high school who was the right
| combination of nerdy and well-off to get a smartphone. It
| was still cool if your flip-phone came with any internet-
| connected features at all.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I think there is an other issue, which is that in the time
| when most of us got involved with computers they were devices
| in which almost anything could be done but hardly anything
| had been done, this attracted people who were explorer types,
| but also people who wanted something to be on the computer
| that there wasn't would be pushed to developing it
| themselves.
|
| Now we live in an age where multiple versions of nearly
| everything seems to be available. Just buy what you want,
| don't learn to make it would seem to be the imperative of the
| day.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I don't think it's curiosity about computers - it's more
| general curiosity about how certain kinds of systems work. It
| isn't even about appliances and mass consumption. That's a
| relevant view, but not a very revealing one.
|
| Computers are an idealised example of an organised system
| which is assembled/operated by solving puzzles. Some people
| enjoy solving those kinds of puzzles. Most people don't. The
| first kind of person doesn't really understand the second
| kind of person - and vice versa.
|
| Something interesting and disturbing has been happening over
| the last twenty years. The Internet stopped being a
| technological puzzle and became a _social and political
| puzzle._
|
| This kind of "cultural engineering" - where the currency is
| attention, influence, patronage, and sometimes actual
| spending, not puzzle prowess - appeals to a completely
| different kind of person. And these people have been driving
| the development of the Internet for a while now.
|
| People who like solving computer puzzles have been completely
| blindsided by this and continue to act as if technology is
| still somehow primary - when it isn't, and hasn't been for a
| while.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Lots of technologies start out appealing to technologists
| until they mature enough to reach mainstream adoption. It's
| not disturbing, it's a sign that they were successful! Cars
| did the same, and aeroplanes, and electricity. I'm happy
| the internet is now as common and easy to use as
| electricity. Geeks can move on to the next interesting
| immature technology. Perhaps cryptocurrency or machine
| learning or whatever. The world is full of exciting things.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Cryptocurrency has now pretty solidly transitioned from
| hobbyist/enthusiast to monetization through
| centralization. Which is a little ironic but that's how
| it goes.
| watwut wrote:
| > Computers are an idealised example of an organised system
| which is assembled/operated by solving puzzles. Some people
| enjoy solving those kinds of puzzles. Most people don't.
| The first kind of person doesn't really understand the
| second kind of person - and vice versa.
|
| Plenty of puzzle lovers don't care about computers at all.
| Plenty of good programmers and tinkerers don't care about
| puzzles of different kind.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Something interesting and disturbing has been happening
| over the last twenty years. The Internet stopped being a
| technological puzzle and became a social and political
| puzzle.
|
| The "internet" as a thing is still capable of the same
| things it was 20 years ago. The proportion of people using
| the internet who care more about the social and political
| puzzle rather than the technological is what dramatically
| increased.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| > Most of the people in my school didn't really care about
| computers
|
| When I was in university in the Netherlands studying CS in
| the early 90s, many (I would say most) didn't care about
| computers; they were there because 'money later' or 'making
| games'. By far most never wrote a line of code. It was
| frightening (to me) how much they had to catch up as the
| lectures were fast paced. Many changed to psychology or law
| in the first 2 years.
| brainless wrote:
| You are right overall but the smartphone does not inspire
| tinkering at any level. It feels closer to the TV to me than
| the computer. Computers used to be boxes which, even non-
| developers, would open up and upgrade RAM, HDD, etc.
|
| That encouraged tinkering to a high degree. I remember having
| lengthy talks about what components to use to build a PC with
| gamers or videgraphers. The more computers become a closed
| box which can not be opened, casual onlookers will have no
| reason to even configure them.
|
| The industry is simply not giving people a box to open.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The industry is simply not giving people a box to open.
|
| The industry is, it's people who don't want it.
|
| The sealed boxes are some combination of more resistant to
| damage and longer lasting and smaller fo factor that a
| modular box can't be, the sealed software is less prone to
| malware and blue screens of death.
|
| The cloud makes things work like an appliance, rather than
| having to worry about dying drives and backups and figuring
| out port forwarding on your router. It also helps companies
| extract maximum rents on their product, but the point is it
| came with some benefits that consumers do value.
| visarga wrote:
| > Nowadays most people I see of that age group are happy with a
| YouTube video on their smartphones.
|
| YouTube is a fantastic resource for any hobby or subject. It's
| like a world wide university.
| smk_ wrote:
| Except that the algorithm is optimized for revenue and
| attention-grabbing content (the opposite of university
| material), and will gradually steer watching habits in that
| direction.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| The percentage of people who tinkered and explored, and did all
| the fun stuff back then is probably still the same as now. But
| back then most of the "normal" people didn't use the internet
| at all, and now use it for youtube and facebook.
| javajosh wrote:
| Software is economically worthless without making it
| artificially scarce. A lot of "software innovation" is not
| about building better software, but _building software you can
| charge for_ , which means "walled gardens", patents, DRM,
| license servers, anti-tampering mechanisms, and the like. In
| essence all content (music, movies, software, books, etc)
| follows the same pattern.
|
| Note that profit-driven entities _can_ give away software, but
| only if it supports another artificially scarce good. Google
| rents space on its search tool, as Facebook rents space on its
| social media tool. Ad space is scarce, and made more valuable
| the more Google and Facebook give away (which is proportional
| to the attention they capture).
|
| But devs generally don't like artificial scarcity, so the
| platforms need a path in for them. I think Apple demonstrates
| this most clearly: the iPad and iPhone are software consumption
| devices, but the Mac is _also_ a software creation device, and
| therefore is generally more open, free, and changeable.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Linux is software, Linux is economically worth a lot, Linux
| isn't artificially scarce.
| IQunder130 wrote:
| Control of where Linux development is going is indeed
| economically worth a lot. Copies of the Linux kernel are
| near enough to worthless for the distinction not to matter.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _Software is economically worthless without making it
| artificially scarce. A lot of "software innovation" is not
| about building better software, but building software you can
| charge for, which means "walled gardens", patents, DRM,
| license servers, anti-tampering mechanisms, and the like. In
| essence all content (music, movies, software, books, etc)
| follows the same pattern._
|
| You remind me of Cory Doctorow's _" The Coming War on General
| Computation"_ keynote, which interestingly didn't notice that
| streaming and similar cloud-based services would become the
| DRM of the last decade.
|
| Or, as it turns out, the rising appeal of _non_ -general
| purpose devices that are more efficient.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg
|
| [1] https://joshuawise.com/28c3-transcript
| dsr_ wrote:
| "Software is economically worthless without making it
| artificially scarce"
|
| This is wrong, and every open-source project including
| OpenBSD and Linux, emacs and vim is counter-evidence.
|
| "A lot of "software innovation" is not about building better
| software, but building software you can charge for" -- this
| is correct.
| [deleted]
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Economically worthless is a very bad phrasing, but the
| concept is very real (economists go with non-excludable,
| but that has an underwhelming impact on laypeople),
| software authors have a really hard time capturing the
| value they create.
| javajosh wrote:
| I've always thought of it as the turn-style in front of
| the theme-park. Without that turn-style, the theme-part
| is economically worthless no matter how good it is.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yes, that's the idea, but keep in mind that "economically
| worthless" has a literal meaning that is almost opposite
| of what you are trying to say.
| dsr_ wrote:
| And not only that... but a theme park without an entry
| fee is still a money-maker via snacks, drinks, souvenir
| cups, and extra-cost rides and line-skipping.
|
| In much the same way that a company can produce an open-
| source product and charge for support, feature
| development, consulting, data feeds and sometimes SAAS
| operation.
| javajosh wrote:
| I just mean you can't charge for it directly. "Utility"
| is perhaps what you mean. Note that the most important
| achievements (scientific and artistic) in human history
| were economically worthless for their authors, but have
| had enormous _indirect_ positive economic benefits.
| tartoran wrote:
| Yes but that's not what the parent meant but in a money
| making way, and that has been something big companies
| realized a long time ago and capitalized on it. The general
| trend has been to create attractive gardens, get people
| used to them then raise up the walls. In the end even open
| source has stated to make a bit less sense to its creators
| and maintainers who are people and need to eat too
| willismichael wrote:
| I think you mean a different definition of economic worth
| than the GP post. One meaning is the developer's ability to
| sell the software, the other meaning is the value derived
| by using the software.
|
| I maintain an open source project that sits in a very small
| niche. Based on downloads, stars on GitHub, and comments on
| forums, I estimate that hundreds or thousands of people
| find it useful. I do get the occasional donation, but if I
| calculated dollars per hour that I have put into this
| project, it would probably be in the single digits.
| IQunder130 wrote:
| What is the market price of a copy of the Linux kernel, I
| ask?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Software is economically worthless without making it
| artificially scarce.
|
| Worthless to whom? Maybe for corporations who want to make
| billions by exploiting a legal monopoly. For the rest of
| humanity, abundant software is extremely valuable.
| swiley wrote:
| >Software is economically worthless without making it
| artificially scarce.
|
| If that were the case no software would be written except by
| hobbyists as a kind of joke. Software provides value other
| than being scarce and it's really the _maintenance_ of the
| software that people are wanting (those paying attention at
| least) not the software itself.
| silasdavis wrote:
| I don't think scarcity in ad space is particular artifical.
| Attention is a limited resource.
| mathis wrote:
| Link was broken for me. This one works:
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3430936
| ArtWomb wrote:
| Fab numbers are astronomical. "TSMC recently announced plans for
| a $19.5B 3nm plant for 2022". How can the next computing paradigm
| even take off when all the oxygen is depleted in chasing "proven"
| technologies?
| the8472 wrote:
| What are the other options you would want to replace those
| proven technologies with? Sure, there are better semiconductor
| materials but they're expensive and already used where it makes
| economical sense. Nanotubes or graphene can't be handled at
| scale yet. Superconductors need huge contraptions for cooling.
| Using organic molecules is messy, see OLED. Optical parts might
| help, but that is difficult with silicon which brings us back
| to the other semiconductor options. Spintronics are already
| being put to use but those things have eye-watering prices.
|
| Look at intel, even incremental changes can go wrong and cost
| you competitiveness.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| Classic innovator's dilemma. I personally am biased to
| silicon optics after seeing a few impressive demos. Albeit in
| laboratory conditions, under controlled settings ;)
|
| Rise of the learning machines
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-020-00748-w
| jlokier wrote:
| That's not as much money as it sounds for the industry.
|
| Apple revenue is more than that _each month_.
|
| There's enough money around. So it seems unlikely that the cost
| of TSMC silicon fabs would be the obstacle to others developing
| alternative computing paradigms.
| 6pac3rings wrote:
| How is the "Cage of Birds" experiment going at TSMC?
| aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote:
| Could you give some more search terms? Google isn't returning
| anything.
| rektide wrote:
| > We do mean that the economic cycle that has led to the usage of
| a common computing platform, underpinned by rapidly improving
| universal processors, is giving way to a fragmentary cycle, where
| economics push users toward divergent computing platforms driven
| by special purpose processors.
|
| computing in my view is rapidly subliming away into the cloud.
| whether users will have much computer at all in front of them is
| questionable, or perhaps semi-vestigial. work/applications are
| headed into data centers. want photoshop today? even the old-
| fashioned install & run it yourself version has major cloud
| connectivity.
|
| even within the world.of.consumer electronics, I don't see
| specialization as a trend. video game consoles have tended
| towards "exactly like a pc" over time. cell phones are pc's with
| the most proprietary/controlled drivers on the planet. 5g base
| stations are pc software-defined-networks plus gobs of general
| purpose dsps/sdrs. in the smaller computing/devuce world, arm and
| espressif and soon risc-v are cutting out larger & larger
| swarths.
|
| thus far ai processors have had fairly wide ability to operate
| models in a cross-architecyure fashion. make sure you can run
| onnx or tf-lite. big only marginally customized gpus still have a
| huge presence. there is variety here but remarkably little end
| user differentiation.
|
| where are the specialized systems this write up talks to? where
| are the fragmented systems? the door is opening as we try to re-
| learn how to make silicon foundries, how to do open source chip
| making, but I haven't seen what's being talked about here,
| specialization, bifurcation of capabilities.
|
| but cloud? cloud is murdering the shit out of general purpose
| computing. applicationization of software turns software
| effectively hard to end users. we have no power, no ability to
| adapt or change or see the computing. it's 100% what is given to
| us. every system is 100% special/specialized, and in the post Pax
| Intertwingularis death of the api & interoperability, that means
| radical rigidity. systems are radically more specialized &
| in&general, but it's not a hardware problem like this paper
| asserts and it's not something on thebhorizon: it's already
| happened, it's already made the general.purpose computer
| obsolete, and it's at the software level, it's about where most
| of the world's computing is run, on special systems, on the
| clouds.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| "I think there is a world market for maybe five clouds." -- not
| Thomas Watson
| ip26 wrote:
| _This fragmentation means that parts of computing will progress
| at different rates. This will be fine for applications that move
| in the 'fast lane,' where improvements continue to be rapid, but
| bad for applications that no longer get to benefit from field-
| leaders pushing computing forward, and are thus consigned to a
| 'slow lane' of computing improvements. This transition may also
| slow the overall pace of computer improvement, jeopardizing this
| important source of economic prosperity._
|
| This is perceptive, but also red ocean thinking. Moving ML to GPU
| is only bad for other workloads if CPU languishes as a result.
| But I think there's reason to believe it's a blue ocean. The more
| performance ML gets out of GPU, the more money the ML business
| can pour into semiconductors, batteries, EDA, and so forth. CPU
| benefits from all of these.
|
| I think you can see this at work in the laptop market. Cell phone
| R&D has driven battery technology. Server R&D has driven
| efficient high-performance x86 cores. Both have driven power-
| efficient process nodes. Put them together and you can make
| incredible laptops.
| mannykannot wrote:
| The article is factually correct, but I feel that the analysis is
| missing some of the historical context. Here's a quite probably
| strained analogy to cosmology:
|
| Microprocessors and CMOS upended the computer industry, to the
| extent that a few years later, all the big companies in
| computing, up to that point, were in precipitous decline (even
| IBM, which embraced the new world order with the PC, only delayed
| this reckoning.)
|
| In those days, microprocessors and DRAM alone were the cutting
| edge of technology, and they opened up all sorts of possibilities
| (though this also depended on some additional special-purpose
| equipment, notably for graphics and networking.)
|
| One might draw an analogy here to the Big Bang. What happened
| next was like a period of cosmic inflation, in which Moore's law
| and Dennard scaling (plus fiber optics and the wiring of the
| world) created exponential growth. As in cosmology, we end up
| with a much bigger but quite uniform universe, in this case
| because the growth of the basic technology alone was enough fuel
| for all the innovation we could come up with.
|
| It was only after inflation that the universe became really
| interesting. It is still overwhelmingly hydrogen, but it has
| differentiated: there are also galaxies, stars, planets and
| people.
|
| So, the long-delayed conclusion to this analogy: innovation in
| computing is now more mature, but it is not shrinking, it has
| diversified - and there are still 10^n (for some large n) 8- and
| 16-bit microprocessors being made, and there are still hobbyists
| doing clever things with what is now basic, even primitive,
| hardware (that, not so long ago, was unattainable) - but we also
| have emerging technologies (machine translation and autonomous
| vehicles, for example) that quite a few people, not so long ago,
| assumed would be forever beyond the capabilities of mere
| machines.
| ksec wrote:
| This is a very hardware focused overview of technology. To
| summarise, Moore's Law is dead. Specialise processors takes over.
| And they will be owned by specific Companies.
|
| That is all true as I have been posting pretty much exactly the
| same on HN for a few years. The real question is though, does it
| matter?
|
| I am not convinced, at least not yet convinced what we are doing
| now on a computer is that much different to 20 years ago. Excel,
| Web Browsing, Media Consumption and Content Creation like
| Photoshop. The only real recent innovation is Machine Learning
| that greatly increase productivity in certain niche.
|
| And it does not seems to me any of the above activity is going to
| fundamentally shift. There is nothing in terms of Hardware tech
| limitation that is holding up performance for further
| productivity increase, rather it is Software that is not getting
| much improvement if you consider the worst and best software
| could have performance different of 100x.
|
| To give an example, I could bet with few billion dollar we could
| create a Hardware GPU that is 80% close to Nvidia GPU or AMD GPU.
| I am also willing to bet even with 10 Billion dollar funding we
| cant get a CUDA Compatible Library or Drivers that is 80% of what
| Nvidia is offering today.
| brucehoult wrote:
| What the authors have completely missed in their analysis is the
| rapidly-growing trend of specialising standard general-purpose
| CPUs -- that is adding special-purpose _instructions_ to general
| purpose CPUs instead of adding special-purpose processors.
|
| This process started a couple of decades ago, adding instructions
| to assist in the calculation of hashes and encryption, and
| relatively narrow SIMD parallel processing to assist multimedia.
|
| Now virtually all high volume general purpose processors have
| such instructions.
|
| If you count simple floating point add, subtract, multiple,
| divide as special purpose then this process started 50+ years
| ago.
|
| The advantage of doing this is less added area and power
| consumption, and the ability to mix special purpose and general
| purpose operations at a much finer-grained level. Sometimes its
| worth copying a few MB of data across to a GPU's local RAM,
| downloading a special program to it, and then copying the results
| back.
|
| The number of potential special purpose operations that are
| useful to someone is probably unbounded. But each one might be
| useful to only a small number of people. It's not feasible to
| just keep on adding everything someone thinks of to the volume
| leader mass-market processor.
|
| Three related things are happening to help with this:
|
| 1) adding reconfigurable hardware to a general purpose processor
| or embedding the processor into reconfigurable hardware. Here we
| have Xilinx "Zynq" and MicroChip "PolarFire SoC" with ARM and
| RISC-V (respectively) hard CPU cores inside an FPGA. We also have
| Cypress PSoC which I believe is more like adding a small amount
| of reconfigurable hardware on the side of a conventional CPU
| core. If the performance needs of the general-purpose part of the
| processing are relatively low then you can use a "soft core" CPU
| built from the FPGA resources themselves. Each FPGA vendor has
| had their own custom instruction set and CPU core, but now people
| are moving more and more to instructions sets and cores they can
| use on any FPGA -- chiefly RISC-V.
|
| 2) making custom chips with a standard CPU core augmented with a
| few custom instructions / execution units. Again, much of this
| activity is centred around RISC-V though ARM has announced
| support for this with one or two of their standard CPU cores,
| initially the Cortex A35. Going into full production of a chip
| like this has costs in the low millions of dollars, with
| incremental unit costs as low as $1 to $10. Small numbers of
| custom chips (100+) can be made for $5 to $500 each depending on
| the size of the chip and the process node -- bigger, slower nodes
| are cheaper.
|
| 3) adding special purpose instructions that can be more flexibly
| applied to a larger range of problems. The main contender here is
| support for "Cray-style" processing of (possibly) long vectors of
| flexible length. If appropriately designed the same program can
| run at peak efficiency (for that chip) on CPUs with vastly
| different vector register lengths. This is in contrast to
| traditional SIMD where the program has to be rewritten every time
| a CPU is made with longer vector registers -- and it is very
| inconvenient to deal with data set sizes that are not a multiple
| of the vector length.
|
| If suitable primitives are included for predication of vector
| elements and divergent and convergent calculations then such a
| vector processor can run the same algorithms as GPUs (e.g.
| directly compiling CUDA and OpenCL to them). CPUs with
| sufficiently long vector registers can then compete directly in
| performance with GPUs on GPU-style code. All while staying
| tightly integrated with general purpose computations.
|
| ARM SVE and the RISC-V V extension are the examples of this, with
| I think the RISC-V version being the more flexible and forward-
| looking.
| kristianpaul wrote:
| Yeah computers are everywhere now " Collectively, these findings
| make it clear that the economics of processors has changed
| dramatically, pushing computing into specialized domains that are
| largely distinct and will provide fewer benefits to each other.
| Moreover, because this cycle is self-reinforcing, it will
| perpetuate itself, further fragmenting general purpose computing.
| As a result, more applications will split off and the rate of
| improvement of universal processors will further slow."
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