[HN Gopher] The good things in the current age in tech
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The good things in the current age in tech
Author : Matrixik
Score : 51 points
Date : 2021-11-11 09:02 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.kronis.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.kronis.dev)
| c54 wrote:
| This was a nice little read to remember the good things we've got
| going for us in the world of tech. It's easy to get caught up in
| the battle of the month, or to get sad about the state of the sad
| things.
|
| But there's a lot of good too! It's worth remembering.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| And just to emphasize: almost everything is either free or
| inexpensive, both software and a lot of wonderful hardware.
| autoexec wrote:
| On the other hand, almost everything comes with hidden costs
| and risks as well. Pretty much every new technology or cool
| gadget comes to the public as a double-edged sword especially
| when it's "free" or inexpensive. In the open source/developer
| space things are often far better, but the general public is
| just screwed. Right now our lives are filled with very cool
| tech, but nearly always at a hidden price no matter what we've
| paid for it.
|
| Even the hardware is increasingly controlled and inaccessible
| (thanks to trusted computing and DRM) and most of the software
| and devices people use today routinely get code pushed to them
| remotely (often silently) with little if any ability for the
| supposed "owner" to control or understand what's being done.
|
| Still, in very specific spaces there really is some great
| hardware and software available and information is accessible
| to help people willing to put in the work to take advantage of
| it. It's nice to take some time to appreciate how far tech has
| come and how much technology is still open, accessible, and
| working for us without also being used against us.
| greenail wrote:
| My 8 year old son has a Nintendo switch. I recently showed him a
| video of the 80' "Mattel Electronic Football Handheld Game" which
| is essentially just a handful of dim LED's and some control
| buttons. I used to fight my brother to get time playing on that
| old thing. My son may never truly appreciate how far we've come
| with respect to technology.
|
| The other thing I'd like to point out is that you either could
| afford some encyclopedias or went to the library. The fact that
| you can learn just about anything today is truly amazing. Folks
| like Ben Krasnow share amazing DIY things regularly that it would
| be hard to imagine in the 80's or 90's.
| rectang wrote:
| Yeah, imagine not knowing some factoid, and it not being
| practical to find it out... That's completely different pre-
| internet vs. post-internet.
| greenail wrote:
| I'm saying people are building sputterers, waterjets and even
| fabing transistors and ICs(Sam Zeloof) in their garages. It
| goes way beyond factoids. You can connect with experts in
| just about any field.
| beebeepka wrote:
| We have reasonably powerful single board general purpose
| computers.
|
| Open source desktop operating systems have surpassed windows and
| Mac in terms of quality. It's true.
|
| AMD is stronger than ever.
|
| Mice and keyboards have improved massively. TVs finally allow
| higher than 60 Hz input. Took them 20 years.
|
| Electric vehicles are about to become the norm. Not just cars.
|
| I could go on for a while but frankly I am way more excited about
| biology. Feels like we're just a couple of major breakthroughs
| away from making huge leaps that could shake things quite a bit
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(page generated 2021-11-12 23:01 UTC)