Comment by sylware | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sylware | Hacker News Reader

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Here, only regulation can help, there is no going against corpos with billions of $ and backed by funds of thousands of billions of $. Much of Big Tech abuses non pertinent complexity and size, not to mention their manic usage of planned obsolescence. There, the regulation should secure and set in ice a basic subset of file formats and protocols for interoperability which are known to be reasonable to implement again from scratch with "Small Tech". And by subset, I meant for instance noscript/basic HTML for the web; UTF-8 text files for text; I guess JSON should be favored over XML; a subset of PDF (certainly not all of it...);etc. If an online service have a 'chat', a basic IRC bridge should be there with a properly display access URL, etc, etc. That does not block "new" and "innovative" things to happen in any way.

Some of Big Tech hates "small is beautiful" and stability in time then will fight hard with their $ for that not to happen (administration "corruption"). Complexity and size (including the SDK then the computer language syntax complexity) is their bread and butter to keep "control" and keep alternatives away.

For the "bootstrappable", it is the starting point of building from 'small and simple' toward big and complex, aka the SDK 'binary seed'. At the time anybody would expect a 'simple C compiler' with a simple linker and assembler buildable with that simple C compiler... but people at the gcc steering commitee and the usage of many C extensions without maintaining proper fallback to assembler source files (in kernels, hence linux) broke the chain of 'sanity' for good. Now you must have an ultra complex c++ compiler to "bootstrap" (~LFS), not to mention the required zillions of complex tools required by the "build systems". Lately, it seems AI coding may be the salvation here... How? AI seems to assist writting c++(insert you computer language with a complex syntax here) to simple C "transpilers" (somebody pretended to have done the same with a rust->simple C transpiler, was published here on HN). I have to say I have never used AI, since they are gated with the web engines of the whatwg cartel (I cannot even get a token to use some web API), I have never tested.

The conclusion: fixing the software stack to let sane small alternatives to 'exist' and be 'real life' is probably not going to be calm and quiet.

Re: regulation, there were antitrust laws well before the Internet, but they haven't been properly enforced wrt big tech. I see no need for new laws (especially laws that cover technical details because politicians always screw those up), but it would be about time to invoke them. Else I hope they enshittify their way to collapse. The way things are going I think that's likely although it could take until 2038

Re: bootstrapping, your computer, your OS, your choice. When I power on my laptop it starts grub, linux, a shell script, sysvinit, at the moment openrc then kicks in (I want to replace that one), and all that's left running is init, sysklogd, chronyd, cronie, and agetty.

And I don't think vibe coding is going to help much at all unless you want another templeos. I think it could do that.

Here, "regulation" is more about a "minimal platform for interop" than anti-trust.

That "minimal platform for interop" would be made of simple but able to do a good job enough and stable in time file formats and protocols. This minimal platform must be reasonably implemented with "Small Tech" (excluding de facto the whatwg cartel web engine and computer languages with ultra-complex languages or heavy runtime this is common sense).

That "minimal platform" should probably be made with subsets of current file formats and protocols. As I said, for instance a subset of PDF (with validation tools), mandatory handling of basic UTF-8 text files, no script/basic HTML for the web, brutally simple SMTP support (aka self-hosted, not paying for DNS, or email addresses with IPs literals, only the commands to send actually emails without fideling around), IRC bridge for chat, etc.

BTW, on the "assembly to save us", I was talking about very high level languages with interpreters/JITs coded directly in assembly (aka binary specifications), then Mr. Bellard quickjs, but also obviously python (but it seems its syntax is going amok which is bad omens)/lua/etc.

This "platform" should slow down a lot the endless enshitification cycle we are into.

If AI coding is that powerfull (cannot test it as its access is gated by the whatwg cartel web engines), it can probably help: like I said, since we are not alone, look at what the others like me did: they are using it to write transpilers from ultra-complex computer language syntaxes, I saw on HN this norvegian guy who is using AI coding to help write directly in 'human readable' assembly (here x86_64) the binary specifications of its own everyday software.

This plaform must be very rigid, but not completely, namely rational removal/restructuring could happen. Basically, implementation "from scratch" by "Small Tech" must always be reasonable.

Aside of all that, there is the ultimate hard truth: for much software developement, but not all, it is extremely hard to justify a permanent income and that honestly. Making all that very complicated to fit in any economy.

Politicians don't understand the Internet, never mind its protocols. That's why they use silly terms such as "cybercrime". "Cyber" means "the Internet and I don't understand any of it"

Code written in assembly is more error prone, more difficult to debug and harder to understand than higher level languages. After years of reading and writing code I know being able to reason with others about the source code of a given program is more important than what the actual language is, or any of the other purities programmers like to keep. Without readable source, the program either dies a slow death or becomes some kind of minefield. And besides, throwing out decades of development is such a waste of effort.

I don't understand your comment on permanent income and the economy. Sorry.

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