Comment by dcposch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dcposch | Hacker News Reader

The first half of this talk is excellent. The story of air travel--how the engineers of the 60s thought that we'd have supersonic jets and flying cars within a few years--that's a great cautionary tale. Evolutionary biologists call it Punctuated Equilibrium: the idea that progress comes in spurts. The warning--that the evolution of computer hardware and software might be radically slower over the next 50 years than it was over the past 50--seems timely and reasonable.

The second half is not excellent. Bad mental habits and weak arguments are on display.

* Imprecision. Specifically: choosing sentences for their "punch", like a bumper sticker, without caring whether they make sense: "There is something quite colonial, too, about collecting data from users [...] I think of it as the White Nerd's Burden."

"It's a kind of software Manifest Destiny."

...cool story, bro

* Excessive negativity. If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading Everything is Problematic -- it really helped me understand where people like Maciej are coming from. http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2014/11/everything-problematic/

* Disrespect. "Google works on some loopy stuff in between plastering the Internet with ads." I guess 40 years ago he would have said "AT&T works on some loopy stuff in between sending you phone bills".

Organizations like Bell Labs--or Google X--are treasures, and as engineers we should be glad they exist.

In short: haters gonna hate

I was just about to write a similar sentiment. The first part is really great, also the parallels and the lessons to learn.

But the second half was not so great. While I agree with the overall sentiment, the concrete examples always slightly miss the point.

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The first such passage that caught my eye was the example about Windows XP:

> Rather than offer users persuasive reasons to upgrade software, vendors insist we look on upgrading as our moral duty. The idea that something might work fine the way it is has no place in tech culture.

The problem is that Windows XP is not working just fine, especially when connected to the Internet. It is full of malware and helps establishing botnets, DDOS attacks and thus feeds mafia structures. So we, as a soeciety, do have a moral obligation to retire Windows XP.

Also, nobody is forced by law to use Microsoft. There are plenty of alternatives. Most of those will run smoothly on your old hardware, such as MINT, Ubuntu or whatever. And for normal Office and Web stuff, this "jump" is surely less painful than switching to the latest Windows version.

Of course Microsoft is still to blame here, but for something entirely different: For closing Windows XP support. For not applying serious security fixing to it. I bet there are plenty of companies and people that are more than willing to pay for ongoing maintenance of Windows XP, but the only company that could offer that service denys it.

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So the author missed the real point, even though this point is totally in line with the overall sentiment of the article. And it goes on and on like that, in the second half. That makes it a really annoying read.

> The problem is that Windows XP is not working just fine, especially when connected to the Internet. It is full of malware and helps establishing botnets, DDOS attacks and thus feeds mafia structures. So we, as a soeciety, do have a moral obligation to retire Windows XP.

XP was working fine, and the fact that eventually became full of malware was because of the future-focused Microsoft wanting to make "later and greater", ripping down something and "trying again", instead of improving something that, for at least 80% of usage cases, was not infected, was already making money for business, and helping people with their lives.

I remember when bug counts were considered important. Windows 2000 reportedly shipped with 63,000 known bugs. And then Microsoft stopped reporting the figure.

The technical problem is that you can’t fix design problems without breaking stuff. What you remember: Windows Vista was horribly slow. What you didn’t see: Windows Vista moved the display system back into user-space, so misbehaving display drivers would not crash the OS as often. That required all new device drivers. Windows XP has other design problems, too, and no matter how much Microsoft patches it, it will never be as secure as Windows 10. Not without destroying all that precious software compatibility that makes an OS useful.

Windows 10 still has issues. Until a few weeks ago, it was vulnerable to root exploit via web font? WTH, Microsoft? I thought they would eliminate that category of exploits after the last root exploit via web font, 2 years ago.

The business problem is that Microsoft is trying to spread Windows into tablets and phones, and Sinofsky totally messed it up. Those third-party start menus prove that there is a market for Windows 8 guts with a Windows 7 shell. Curiously, not many people seem to want an actual Windows XP start menu, with its non-searchable interface and randomly sorted programs list and its hierarchical pop-ups that make navigating a large list into an exercise in grace. Windows 7 was the result of actually listening to users’ needs.

It was working fine, not from a techie/developer point of view, but from the 60 year old aunt with a cat that likes to play her slot machine program a few weeks before a trip to Las Vegas.

When that 60 year old aunt walks into Best Buy or Walmart to buy a new computer because something broke on the old one - everything will have changed and in her opinion none of it for the better. And she won't have any choices - sure there are likely Macs at Best Buy but she's not going to shell out $1300 for a new computer when she can get one for $500.

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The entire point of the article is that technology (like airplanes) gets to a point of good enough and the opinion of the author is mainly to leverage what we have instead of the unreal future people are dreaming about (like the notions earlier in the article about people inhabiting Mars, etc.)

Even if technology, or more likely the web, will get to a point where it's good enough, people are notoriously awful at identifying that point when it comes. See old quotes about five computers in the world and whatnot.

I always find it very hard to believe a person saying "we've reached the end now, progress was good up until now, but this is quite enough really".

>> The problem is that Windows XP is not working just fine, especially when connected to the Internet. It is full of malware and helps establishing botnets, DDOS attacks and thus feeds mafia structures. So we, as a soeciety, do have a moral obligation to retire Windows XP.

> It was working fine, not from a techie/developer point of view, but from the 60 year old aunt with a cat that likes to play her slot machine program a few weeks before a trip to Las Vegas.

Is something working fine just because you can't see the problems? As an analogy, consider building codes. A house that isn't up to code might suit me just fine until there is an earthquake and it collapses. I might not want to bear the cost of seismic retrofitting, I might not understand the risks associated with an older house, and I might dislike any changes to the status quo I'm used to. Despite that, there are risks due to living in a building that isn't up to code. If problems develop, some of the costs will be borne by me, and some by society at large.

> choosing sentences for their "punch", like a bumper sticker

> In short: haters gonna hate

and

> * Disrespect.

> ...cool story, bro

this goes to show that negativity is contingent, not that the author's points are invalid.

I had a similar feeling, and thought it was probably because I know nothing about aviation and therefore read that stuff uncritically and feel entertained.

I wonder whether that's a general principle in writing -- tell outside-your-expertise stories to entertain the reader, and then with luck (depending on your perspective), the reader reads the rest and feels entertained and informed and good emotions out of a sort of inertia the rest of the way through.

The central mistake of the second half is this: “Vision 1: CONNECT KNOWLEDGE, PEOPLE, AND CATS. This is the correct vision.”

He conflates computing with the Web, and argues that the Web is fine just the way it is; it just needs to be spread more widely. As if there aren’t plenty of people already trying to do exactly that.

What he ignores is that computing is an expression of human creativity. Like literature and music, you take it into a context that it wasn’t written for, and it rarely produces a desirable response. As long as computing is relevant, we will need new software.

The last 100 years of computing machines have proven that this still applies. A web based on ad revenue is no good in an area with poor electricity infrastructure and low bandwidth, so the famous M-Pesa has a completely different interface and different software than Wells Fargo Online® Banking.

The article/talk has some good points, but they aren’t connected together in a good way.

I totally agree, the first half about progress in air travel and computer science is great, the rest not so really

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