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Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

> unless you're the sort of person who doesn't understand why IRC got marginalised

Or X Windows. I still hear the occasional diatribe, on how X is "just as good as" Windows or Mac (usually from a person that pretty much exclusively uses CLI). These folks can't understand why desktop Linux hasn't crushed the Microsoft/Apple hegemony.

People who hang in like-minded communities can often assume that "everyone" is just like they are; when, in point of fact, their community represents the tiniest sliver of an edge case.

There's a lot of tecchies, in the world.

But there are a lot more non-tecchies, and they are the ultimate arbiters of what succeeds or dies.

The Internet (actually, every type of infrastructure or social construct) will be shaped by this great mass of uneducated, non-technical, ADHD, etc. people.

The tech folks that make the huge piles of money, know this, and work to serve (and train) the masses.

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GP> Private spaces might be a big net win.

I am old enough to remember the pre-Internet geek world; things like cons and zines were way more important than now, but they existed, and we definitely didn't expect for there to be, let alone rely on, mainstream channels providing our social contact.

> there are a lot more non-tecchies, and they are the ultimate arbiters of what succeeds or dies.

Succeeds, yes. Dies? I think no. There aren't many mechanisms to kill off things in the long tail, other than whatever the kids mean when they whinge about "discovery".

In The Time Machine, the Morlocks use the Eloi for sustenance. I suggest we do something similar, living among ourselves in our caverns, letting the masses frolic upon their platforms, and merely harvesting a few percent (2?) of the revenue every now and then; not so much as to threaten their existence, but enough for us to thrive.

> "We must be as stealthy as rats in the wainscoting of their society." — ♝

Well, "dies" happens, when the Eloi don't use/buy something.

Morlocks like to be paid. If they don't get paid, they might not do it.

> ...when the Eloi don't use/buy something.

As Morlocks provide all the infra for the Eloi, we can certainly provision it also for ourselves. (how many days of HN could fit in an average TikTok video?)

  It['s Morlocks'] care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
  It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.
  It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care to embark and entrain,
  Tally, transport, and deliver duly the [Eloi "members"] by land and main.

The relative market share of X window system, NS Windows, and macOS has nothing at all to do with technical merits of either. MS Windows dominated the corporate world because of MS Office, corporate-level technical support, and efficient salespeople. MacOS became prominent because of the superior hardware produced by Apple.

While indeed uneducated (in specific tech; may otherwise be smart), non-technical, highly varied people who all have too little time constitute the bulk of any audience, big moneyed interests always have and will continue to shape this audience's perception, especially where there is a network effect. It's not just Chrome vs Firefox or X vs Mastodon; the same mechanics stand behind the likes of Coca-Cola.

What are you talking about, X just works. I haven't had to go diving in and manually configure X in _years_ and I remember when you had to tell X to treat your mouse wheel as an extra button just to get it to work. And I say this as someone who uses exclusively nvidia GPUs.

The most I have to do is set the monitor layout and KDE/gnome work exactly like windows with a graphical UI.

I get it. You prefer wayland, as do many people. You can push wayland without making things up about X. Honestly, if X fixed the screen tearing issue I'm not sure there would be a strong reason to prefer wayland over it other than technical purity.

The parent post never brought up Wayland, and it’s off-topic, but the security of having input only going to specific apps and not every X client is a massive win and one reason I’ve used sway since 2018.

I took it as a joke (I hope).

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