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Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

> /etc/hosts

> Gopher is making a comeback, and gemini is growing.

> Pi zero 2W

Another thing you need to keep in mind is that the number of people with the skills necessary to use this is low. Not to mention that new generations have grown up with the current status-quo and seem to be happy enough with it not to search for alternatives.

If things get really bad (a debate for which I'm not taking either side), only a very small minority will be able to use the aforementioned workarounds and can trivially be marginalized and crushed with legislation and its enforcement.

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> Not to mention that new generations have grown up with the current status-quo and seem to be happy enough with it not to search for alternatives.

Even though this is true, it is not impossible to expand their horizon. We still have not figured out the pedagogy or even andragogy of how to teach technology.

Check out my progress with my daughter(10): https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids, We are also making a card game https://punkjazz.org/programming-time/easy.html to play with her and donate to other kids interested in learning.

Spending time with pi zero and arduino and building retropie games, using links2 instead of chrome from time to time, she is making great progress. Make the lights in her room work after few claps, with arduino nano and sound sensor so her code can control the light.

And this is only with 20-30 minutes per day.

You might think that the kids are blind to what is going on, but they do see, they know something is wrong, they know they are being exploited and cheated to buy lootboxes and skins.

her website might spark some nostalgia feelings of the early web: https://punkjazz.org/jackie/

:) at least it makes me feel like things are not as bad.

It’s on this community right here to make these things as easy and accessible as possible for everyone to use.

I don't think that's HN and ycombinator. The original intent of HN was to support yc, an incubator that creates semi-giants like Airbnb and DoorDash. If push really comes to shove, most people here are going to look out for themselves. They may not like the current big tech companies, but probably would have no problem becoming the next one.

> number of people with the skills necessary

I repeatedly run the experiment to pitch a low-tech solution to a high-tech fund and aim exactly there:

Reduce the required skill to 1) signing a hosting contract and 2) copying a single file to that webspace. Really!

So that's several orders of magnitude more people than today. Instantly.

But got it the 3rd time officially now, that such would have no societal impact and isn't considered innovative, either. The time isn't here yet.

> Another thing you need to keep in mind is that the number of people with the skills necessary to use this is low.

Then maybe the Eternal September will pass, and October will finally come.

You download a file and run it on your Pi, its literally made to teach children computing. You can buy a used android phone and do it easier a pi is too expensive or hard.

Questions people will ask:

1. What is a Pi?

2. Where's the keyboard/mouse/screen?

3. What does "download a file" mean?

4. What does "run it" mean?

And as for using an Android... that immediately defeats the purpose since they're basically Google data vacuums.

I don’t see your point. Using the Internet is a data vaccum, you will probably google it even and watch the lecture on YouTube.

You don’t need to do any of this this listen to the Feynman lectures.

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