The start of this reads like the beginning of a cult manifesto, but then transitions to a very logical solution for an important problem.
Baffling. I'm in
Baffling. I'm in
Absurd: Not enough power on our sailboat to run Ableton and Photoshop.
Real: So we replaced it with open source technology.
Absurd: That technology was based on Electron.
Real: Electron was too bloated.
Absurd: So we ported everything over to the NES.
Real: And now you can run our software anywhere you can emulate an NES
PS. Which leads me - tangentially - to think that (maybe) the solution to (at least) some of our problems might someday be found in a cult :)
Who knows ...
> Absurd: So we ported everything over to the NES.
This was grand. The NES as a most effective "baseline" platform. Can totally see humanity sending out an NES emulator on Voyager VI as a last gasp.-
... in no small part perhaps because they remain isolated "pockets" of culture where - often - "progress" is slower or more controlled. Where idiosyncratic behavior becomes the "new" orthodoxy as behavior or culture "degrades".-
Where was it ... "Nightfall" (the novel) I think it was where a cult periodically saves civilization - by being the only ones that know how to handle the aftermath.-
The major religions have been beating that dead horse for a long time.
"8 bit 'looks' and hardware constitutes - and 'looks like' - some optimum as far as computing is concerned"
... so sufficiently advanced systems will look like it to interface with us as a sort of lingua franca.-
AGIs. Alien probes. The works. They will all look to us like a C64 or NES would :)
Please, vid.:
Make it a thousand rabbits. Make it a flotilla. Make it an armada ... :)
technically varvara isn't actually the nes
Now that's an interesting proposition (which, I do not contend mind you ...)
Chat rooms and bare bones text editors aren't supposed to be process-heavy, and yet the popular communication platform Slack requires outrageous amounts of ram and CPU to function. [...] Making software this way is costly to off-grid users, or those on slow connections, [...]
ETA: to be clear there's nothing wrong with making a toy and then turning that toy into it's own all-consuming hobby (TTRPGs for example) and one of the best parts of programming is how easy it is to do just that. It's just kind of annoying watching people wax rhapsodic about nonsense instead of copping to "yeah we're having a lot of fun, i feel like a kid again"
Yeah, you can have a simple regular life; that's lower on problems maybe. But man, sailing around & futzing with interesting barefoot developers projects sure sounds challenging in a lot of very very excellent ways.
Every personal problem has at least one easy solution. better ones take more effort.
Signed, someone who has lived on a boat before.
Or whose boat came equipped with casinos, an Olympic swimming pool, Michelin-starred restaurants, and somebody else footing the bill.
Also not unlike: It's not the destination, it's the journey.
I wouldn't call any of the listed problems "real problems" in the context of my long winded disability and homelessness lmao. I used to be in their community, the mods, and indirectly, them, were abusive as hell. Their community is, last I heard, hemorrhaging queer folk (or maybe it's bled dry and queer folk just don't stick around there anymore!) because they have repeatedly shielded abusive members and placed them in positions of power, and ignored, silenced, and ejected their victims when they finally kicked up a fuss about it. Part of the move from an internal chat to Mastodon was specifically so it would take the pressure off them having to actively perform any sort of moderation duty or deal with the abusive people directly.
They are, fundamentally, rich people playing at being poor and living in a tiny sustainable island while the rest of the world burns. Their stuff is very interesting, sure, but stating "real problems they face" ignores the fact that every one of the problems they are facing are ones that they themselves have created. I actually really love some of the things they've come out with, but it's important that all of their work comes with the context that it was formed in, at least in my opinion.
edit: I forgot about the 'cult' thing... they are absolutely a cult. at least one of their members made explicit reference multiple times to being part of a cult and it was never actively denied outside of a "well, not yet, we don't have the numbers ;)" kind of thing.
Their design sensibilities are very good, and I feel exactly the same -- it just... doesn't sit right, feels bitter, somehow, to create things with their tools, in the full context of everything.
I've often mulled over starting up a little group sharing some of the same sensibilities but without the toxicity, to be honest.
Ergo: some of them are actual arseholes.
Oscar Pistorius was an abusive murdering douchebag, not just a brave para olympic gold medal winning runner.
The ones who are wealthy will hold relative power over the ones who aren't. The ones in good health may neglect or actively exclude the ones who aren't. Racism and xenophobia rear their ugly heads. And so on.
1. Leaders identify with nonbinary pronouns,
2. thus: leaders appear to be members of the/a queer community,
3. and: queer community members tend to center queer people/experiences (regardless of whether said members are shitty people for any reason),
4. yet: the leaders are specifically harming and driving out queer members of their community. This is unexpected. Not "wow, this should be impossible" unexpected, just "damn, this shouldn't have happened" unexpected.
It's quite simple and straightforward.
As an aside, (and I know I'll get downvoted for my tone, but it is what it is), for ye straight commenters: consider that your opinions on queerness and queer community dynamics probably aren't very well informed when you're entering conversations about them. (Inspired by but not personally attacking the parent comment. They might be queer too! And their statement is true, it's just off the mark in this context.)
In practice this isn't the case, because you can use this as a shield. So for homophobic people it might be advantageous to enter the community in a way that causes the least amount of personal friction. Like, simply putting pronouns in your bio and doing literally nothing else is trivial - but the social benefit is not.
It's a big problem, because people who ARE non-binary or ARE bisexual or whatever then get a ton of backlash. Because those identities are the most common to be commandeered, so to speak. At least online.
I do not have logs of direct messages because it escaped my intention -- while I planned to get them, that never happened. At the time, I was lied to and told I would be able to return, and then 3 months later I was informed I was not going to be able to return to the space. They also did not inform anyone that I was leaving, either. I had long friendships with many in that slack instance, and not only would they not know where to find me, but none of them were informed that I had even left -- as far as any of them know, I ghosted them. There was absolutely zero transparency of moderation both at the time, and as far as I am aware, to this day.
Something I forgot to mention in the above is that at the time they had a code of conduct, and this code of conduct listed a two strike system, along with a resolution system. Neither of these were followed in any capacity (likely because they didn't exist), and there was never any communication by the moderators that I had had strikes raised against me.
I'll just point out though that most problems of the world are ones we ourselves have created.
https://checkpointgaming.net/features/2020/05/making-games-a...
Not the original poster, but that’s my view exactly. If you impose the limitations upon yourself then it’s not really a “problem” for you, is it now. You just can afford to make your life shittier for an “experience” to then have fun solving the issues you’ve created for yourself
Edit: However, upon reading further comments, I don't want this to be seen as a defense of the group against actual complaints.
PS. Except for AI, perhaps ...
... I was going to add certain forms of cryptography to that, but then realized that we've always have had some sort of cryptography that was "hardware-appropriate" (ie. sufficiently hard to break, to be useful) for the age. So older hardware was just fine ...
What the boat couple is doing strikes me as the most romantic sort of bricolage and just gives me the warm fuzzies all over. But Urbit just pisses me off for a variety of reasons.
What I care about is technology, and you have to dig quite hard to extract it here.
I don’t think you’re an activist, I just think you’re yet another someone who is unable to see the Amazon forest for the chip on your shoulder.