I seriously hate this market so much.

People contribute to it. People don’t leave for alternative markets without central networked service dependency. Such alternative markets would need financial power to contribute to their survival (of course there’d be pressure to kill them), and for that they need to grow. It’s a chicken and egg problem.

Until enough people get burned by it, nothing will change. When they will, it’ll still be very uncertain, because there are harder and easier markets to make money. P2P applications make little money, because of their advantages being downsides for those trying to commercially sell them, for example. Providing infrastructure makes more money, but still less than platforms, where you sell infrastructure, connectivity, moderation and advertising simultaneously.

So when it’s only professionals’ and businesses’ choice, we lose and platforms win. They need to eat something, they prefer to eat better than to build a better world where someone else will say “thank you” to them and that’s all.

Conscious customer associations and education are mechanisms that might eventually change things, but that will take time, because both have been unbalanced by the insane amount of money tech industry has raised in the last 20 years and will raise more. Society takes time to adapt. Then it’ll be so-so, not good and not terrible, like with most things.

I was born in 1996, but the older generation (it’s Russia) that remembers Soviet schools sometimes remembers Soviet educational PCs. Those were a few series, I don’t remember names, the point is there were Apple II clones and there were PDP-11 clones (but in PC form factor, even with networking ability in the sense of there being one master machine and slave machines booting from it ; but those were not terminals).

So, that older generation remembers as if something normal being taught to program in BASIC, FORTRAN, later C or Pascal and operate machines. Soviet life was quite a lot poorer than even 90s despite all the retroactive disdain for that decade, still informatics classes were apparently at least educationally useful and had at least one operable machine usually.

The 90s generations at least got some computer instruction of general use.

And my generation got Windows machines and no real understanding by anyone what informatics classes are even for. Unless it’s some special school or at least with math focus.

Things people were taught in the 80s and which somehow don’t transition at all to their operation of modern PCs, that contrast still terrifies me.

So - it’s the same everywhere, it seems, because of the idea prevalent in the 00s that my generation is going to just wing it because of being exposed to electronics since childhood. An absolutely nutcase and absolutely winning (in the sense of popularity) idea.

I even have a pre-school brochure somewhere, if I’m not mistaken, with algorithmic problems and solutions. The earlier the better.

One can think in paranoid/cynical ways - “fools are easier to rule” or “so that’s why they were pushing hacker movies in the 90s to scare everyone”. I honestly think it was just fear of some day being less than capable of understanding the technology we rely upon to keep breathing. And that fear is unsubstantiated, because similarly to that most people don’t understand city planning, logistics, oil refineries, electrical engineering and one can go on. But due to that fear of singularity it was easier to start imagining that somehow new generations will gain hard knowledge naturally.

But even that wouldn’t be much of a problem if not for Microsoft. Hate them with passion. EDIT: For managing to sell, coerce and impose their monopoly upon the world and upon education most of all

More oligopolies than cartels, but zaibatsu are a common stereotype as something culturally normal for Japan, yes.

Of what I’ve read about Japan, a cartel being considered something bad in the society is an improvement.

Ah, yes, the bigger the company, the more willing to save something negligible on tools its business depends upon.

Honestly that’s why I wish more of FOSS were hobbyist like AROS, Haiku and such. FOSS projects shouldn’t be too readily usable by businesses, that allows bullshit shops with arrogant pigeon management to keep existing without building proper processes.

I mean, there’s some equilibrium here probably, but with what projects get from businesses bigger than nation-states using their work, - we’re far from it.

At the same time there are things like Java, PostgreSQL, Redis, Nginx and so on. I don’t know.

It just seems sometimes that FOSS breaks market mechanisms in favor of big businesses not giving back to the rest of economy, which seems the opposite of its intuitively and emotionally perceived goal.

But maybe archivers are not it. Not a fan of the idea of having a set of 10 different archivers all often needed, like people did in the 90s. OK, I was a baby in the 90s. Many people didn’t have PCs in the 90s.

But can we just go back to weak connectivity (say, asynchronous message exchange of everyone to everyone via BT ; global cryptographic identities and message ids, sort of a global p2p cryptographically contracted Usenet), a zoo of common operating systems and hardware platforms, evolution, competition, geekiness, interesting things.

An interesting thought for sure, a thought about preparing for winter with, eh, expected uncertainty and fuel crisis started to form in my head. Like framing the balconies and additionally insulating old balcony doors and such stuff. Not even speaking about a reserve of matches, salt, sugar, canned meat and such.

Efficiency of processes is different in every situation, including long-standing ones, like one area having plenty of seawater and some other area having just lots of sand, some places being moderate-temperatured and some like central Siberia with hot summers and cold winters, things like that.

Meaning that one can’t say that gas cars are “better for the planet” or “worse for the planet” than EVs. Period.

This study is true for some set of conditions, but it’s pretty clear that people referring to it will use it outside of the scope.

There are better arguments than unprovable claims. Say, EVs use “universalized” energy, that is, can be charged from the grid, while gas cars require different kinds of gas depending on the specific engine and regulatory requirements. EVs have electric machines in them, pretty similar to those in electric trains or whatever else, but that’s not as important as less wear and more universality. EVs in theory should require less maintenance, but since these are usually new fancy cool things, their electronic components might have the common downsides of all new cars. Fire hazards are different between them. On the other side, gasoline can be stored more easily.

I mean, one would think civilization can exist without choosing just one.

If it took Russia so long with far smaller military budget, for USA it would take an existential war, so abundance of funds is sort of a defense social contract. Things cost 5x what they could, but they get designed, produced, procured, maintained and combined into a system.

Unless there’s some political struggle where the old military industry supports one side and the other needs a new military.

In that light I’m glad I never played that, living in Moscow near an internal troops division. Doesn’t matter, though, someone has.

Well. To hang pictures and hooks it makes sense to have wall panels with holes or whatever. And not drilling bearing walls.

Small-small price might be even fine, it’s scary how we live in a world full of wireless connectivity. Just some wire between rooms, LOL.

Just - if attaching stuff with magnets isn’t generally common (except fridge doors), then making magnetic concrete walls doesn’t seem to have potential in helping with that.

When I saw that headline, I was thinking of something like concrete magnetic floors in space, something sci-fi.

Flying concrete from Earth’s gravity well seems very expensive, though.

And he started with police officers being supervised, but the real problem is not what we all see about an event, it’s whether we who see it one way have power over those who pretend they saw something else. So if those deciding also don’t want to reduce police officers’ loyalty to their superiors and readiness to obey on the job, they might find an excuse for a clear murder in FHD.

Usually the place of origin of a technology is also where most its uses are pioneered.

Non-malicious compliance would be a protocol extension, don’t ask me how, but if WebSockets exist, then it’s possible to make an EuHTTP standard to which you’d upgrade. So that all these popups wouldn’t be needed and you’d conveniently set things up on the client.

Actually owch. One can just take some WS library and make a Gemini-like protocol, only over WebSockets (allowing for much of normal infrastructure to support it, you know, nginx, haproxy, lots of stuff), that would leverage convenient existing technologies and without need for Google’s browser engine more complex and expensive than a rocket.

OK, that’s called NOSTR, they are just not aiming for replacing Web in any form. For now.

EDIT: And this probably is not what’s being discussed.

The whole global auto industry should be incentivized to go back to that “runs forever” design focus of the Mercedes W123 series and improve on it with more longevity, cheaper serviceability.

That works when the car itself is something produced in small batches and a very capital design and costs accordingly, or when its maintenance makes bank and for the producer at that, or when there’s continued growth, so you don’t sell new cars to people with old cars.

I mean, of course there’s the variant of cars being as modular as PCs and a Mercedes of Theseus being possible. Always profitable for the producer, since from time to time the customer buys spare parts (a law is necessary that it’s legal to make and sell spare parts for anyone ; just like with Apple stuff, official things will be more popular), and never just fully going to junk at once. Seems the most realistic variant for me, economically, of the good ones.

There’s another variant, a dystopian one, being implemented in fact, where car producers own you via parts pairing, planned obsolescence, parts barely surviving guarantee age and impeded repair and telemetry, all at once.

Without ability to put pressure almost like in war, the modular variant would be the equilibrium, unfortunately we the humanity haven’t yet adjusted our societies for computers (no need for a more complex description).

It’s group identity shift conflicting with memory, I think. Group identity did allow agreeing with “you guys” 20 years ago, but now it doesn’t. It’s hard to choose in favor of things you liked and against your group.

I’m from a completely different country and all, but 20 years ago my sister had a friend from such a family that she mostly was interested in Christian versions of all the same art, Christian fantasy, Christian rock, it’s strange. At the same time Harry Potter was allowed, and, eh, USSR nostalgia too. Now the former wouldn’t be, I think, and the latter has turned into something almost national-socialist, nothing cool there, in such groups. (OK, this might seem more contrast than it really is, honestly for such people USSR nostalgia even then had such traits, even a bit before I was born probably.)

There are different kinds of “old cars”, the kind of old cars made before 70s that are really inefficient with gasoline, but might last another hundred years if maintained, and the kind of old cars made up to 90s that are harder to keep from falling apart, and then the kind made later, which is - not really for future generations.

The more optimized their production is and the less luxurious they are as a thing, the closer they are to something that’ll only last their guaranteed time. Preferably for the producer - falling apart into rust a couple of days after that.

which is probably better than diverging hallucinations

Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

… lost in recent like 20 years, in my childhood dissent was far more normal than now. I think it’s social media, but also the commonly pursued concept of what’s socially respectable, solid and real.

And dissent is, by normalization, what allows peace in society.

Isn’t Skillet kinda fine?..

I’ve read this happened because sometime in the 80s comrade Reagan decided to own the Japanese instead of letting competition do its work (for cars, but with electronics similar things followed). He’s somehow often associated with liberal capitalism and so on, but the guy believed that “monopolies are efficient”, but at the same time by some magic if a monopoly stops being efficient, then all the capital and technology base for competition to replace it will just materialize in one place in one moment all by themselves. So I’m not even sure if “comrade” is irony. The ironic part is that the US president whose term coincided with Soviet system conclusively losing the Cold War is also the one who supported state capitalism and ideologic pressure in society.