Internet in Paradise (2006) | Hacker News Reader

Internet in Paradise (2006)

100r.co

90 pointstosh18 comments

The authors, Rabbits, are the ones behind Uxn! Verge did a feature about them [1]. What a fascinating lifestyle.

I'm especially a fan of their quote: " if your new software no longer runs on old hardware, it is worse than the old software.", which embodies their motivation behind Uxn and their other software

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/22935074/hundred-rabbits-uxn-roms-p...

I'm sorry nothing I've written recently runs on a 68030, but I don't think it would actually be a good idea to do anything about that. People probably like 64-bit address spaces and if you think modern computer security is bad, try old computer security.

Nobody but programmers gives a damn what width their memory bus is. How can you possibly imagine otherwise?

"Old computer security" did not have "download and execute code from arbitrary strangers" in its threat profile, but the fact that our industry has driven that exact policy to become the dominant method of running software is the basis of much wasted electricity in our sisyphean efforts to protect our data in the land of SPAs and Service Workers.

Would I change it if I could? Probably not -- I feel like things evolved this way for a reason, and I have no reason to think they'd turn out differently with a slightly different path. But that doesn't mean I can't empathize with the author.

It's easy to dismiss pithy quotes. It can be more useful to take them as a challenge to understand, so that you benefit from exploring other viewpoints.

> Nobody but programmers gives a damn what width their memory bus is. How can you possibly imagine otherwise?

Ideally, yes. Practically, abstractions leak.

A NES is Turing Complete, so can theoretically do anything. Practically it's much better suited to some tasks than others, which is why you're not going to see one play 4K video, and everything you see will be made of 8x8 or 8x16 blocks with a limited color palette.

Consumers get wind of this and even if they don't understand very well what a data bus is they do get overall idea that more bits -- roughly more functionality. That's why there's a huge enthusiast segment discussing various hardware stats with gusto, even if they can't actually explain what's the technical difference between DDR3 and DDR4.

This happens everywhere. Theoretically, a car gets you from A to B, it doesn't matter much how. Practically, lots of people care about whether a car is electric or an ICE, because the difference between them can't be entirely abstracted.

Actually, that’s a sticking point for electric cars - range anxiety. Using an electric car like an ICE car means you fill up when the tank is empty, not realizing that, because it’s electric, it means you can charge the car at home (assuming you have a garage), and can charge it every night, and wake up in the morning with a full "tank". Similar service for gasoline cars never took off. Why is this relevant here? Because in the service of going from A to B, the theory is incomplete if it assumes all cars have an infinite range. They don't, but consumers (who may not know what a memory bus even is) need to be taught why they don't need a 400 mile battery on their new-fangled electric car.

I understand your metaphor, but you've failed to address time. The problem is not leaving with half a tank. The problem is the time required to "refill" the tank. The equivalent being baud rate or whatever measure you want to use to account for the bus limitation.

> Nobody but programmers gives a damn what width their memory bus is. How can you possibly imagine otherwise?

You don’t think users like it when their storage sizes (let alone individual file sizes) are over 4GB?

There’s a reason there’s only like two good Nintendo 64 games even - because the hardware is so limited you couldn’t fit anything more in there if you tried.

Theodore Levitt: “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”

The users want to play Call of Duty. The Call of Duty developers want their game to be 100GB.

Although, sometimes the users want to make large language models or edit large photos.

> "Old computer security" did not have "download and execute code from arbitrary strangers" in its threat profile, but the fact that our industry has driven that exact policy to become the dominant method of running software is the basis of much wasted electricity in our sisyphean efforts to protect our data in the land of SPAs and Service Workers.

That started way before SPA's and service workers. Ever download some shareware/freeware from a random bbs/ftp or similar? Ever downloaded some random exe from a website in the 90's or 00's? Ever used napster/kazaa/limewire/bittorrent to pirate software? I'm guessing basically all HN readers have done at least one of those, at least once.

I think it's fair to say that ever since the internet allowed us to share code we have "downloaded and executed code from arbitrary strangers", in more or less secure ways. The internet was a bit less malicious back then, so we were generally afforded more naivety to do so but I think the current way for normal people to do it (sandboxed js in a browser VM) is the most secure way to do it yet.

Rabbits (the authors): originally from Quebec, both techies, lived in Japan, then bought a boat and went sailing since, for the past few years.

I find it very refreshing to read their thoughts and ramblings. Living on a boat for years is also a very interesting, and challenging, life decision. I am thankful that they share a lot about it. It's a bit like being with them.

I met Devine in January of 2010 at one of their Aliceffekt shows. Really nice person who explained their custom CMS to me that they had built for xxiivv.com. It’s a shame that archive doesn’t have the assets for the site saved from around that time because it was one of the most visually striking and mysterious sites that I had seen at the time, with a constructed (human) language used to navigate the site that’s explained in later years on their wiki.

(2017)

Thanks. Their choice of an ambiguous date format ("17.06.06") is unfortunate, at first i thought this article was from 2006.

They delivered an excellent keynote address at this year's Libre Planet conference. I will look into the possibility of locating the link.

Worth listening particularly if you think you'd like to buy a sailboat and gadabout the world. Engaging, geeky, and informative.

They gave a very nice keynote on this year's Libre Planet. I'll see if I can find the link to the recorded talk.

This is the recording: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/software-doldr...

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