ewzimm

I think we will have to develop some kind of framework for the difference between consuming AI-generated content and using AI as a tool as those use-cases will likely increasingly diverge. It's very easy to have a conversation with AI, as it will mimic your style, but I'd consider actually using AI to be something more like developing and orchestrating agents, developing frameworks for tasks and understanding, generating ideas for types of work AI can do and how the tasks can be properly split by training needed. Even though AI itself can do a lot of these tasks, people who can understand what AI can do for them and why will always have an advantage, and thinking in theses types of ways requires a high degree of literacy.

I am using a M1 Mac Mini 8GB as a home server/desktop, and it works just fine. It can run games and a Minecraft server in the background while serving video and home automation, and I've never had anything force quit because of it. I agree with the people who are saying 8GB should be kept as a target spec for the low end. It's really only bloated software that has made it necessary to get so much RAM, and now that prices have gone up, if Apple forces developers to do more with less for a segment of their market, I'm all for it.

useradd has the Other category at setup. Could you argue that anything which allows arbitrary text information to be input into a user account that could be passed on to other applications technically fulfills the requirement, as the user could indicate age on the account?

Ironically, Win32 has sometimes become more universal than native Linux binaries. For example, Baldur's Gate 3 released a native Linux version only supported on the Steam Deck, whereas the Proton version is verified for Linux almost everywhere. Win32 became the stable Linux gaming ABI.

That works as reference to a frustrating situation, but Charlie Brown doesn't just miss. We assume that if the football was left where it was promised, he would have kicked it.

Maybe you suspect a similar situation with the Democrats, that those holding power sabotage their efforts, or maybe the analogy doesn't work in that way, but I think that people like this Charlie Brown trope because his failure isn't the result of a lack of ability; it's an excess of hope and trust.

I've heard plenty of people say that Americans are idiots because they don't realize the system is rigged against them and they believe the American Dream that anyone can achieve success. I think plenty of them know that the world is a harsh place with untrustworthy and adversarial people and that they are at a personal disadvantage compared to the wealthy and powerful, but they choose to persevere regardless because they believe hope is better than nihilism.

That can work against them. They might vote for a political party even if it fails them. I'm not saying that kind of hope is sane or rational from a game theory perspective, but it's very American to keep it up anyway.

Americans are a pretty diverse group, but the most iconic image anyone has of Charlie Brown is perseverance. Lucy sets up a football promising potential success, and despite the fact that she's pulled it away from him at every opportunity, he still tries to kick it anyway.

I think that's a quintessentially American fable. Most people will never achieve great success, but they can experience the thrill of imagining opportunity, and even if they know it's illusory, that moment of faith and effort before failure is the heroic action.

People will do stupid things like bet their life savings on a game or a bad idea, but they feel heroic for having tried regardless, knowing that if enough people keep trying, someone is going to succeed, and they get to experience that success vicariously in some small amount because they tried just as hard as the one who succeeded, experienced the same struggle, and somebody made it, even if it was never going to be them.

The main tiling window manager using Wayland is Sway, although personally I like the simplicity of DWM. You can easily edit the configuration and compile it yourself.

One of the things I love about XFCE is its modularity. It's literally just a collection of programs that work independently, so while I use DWM, if I need a panel, I just type "panel" into dmenu, and XFCE panel runs right on top of it with no problems, aligning perfectly over the DWM top bar.

If you want to try a more complete DE, I'd recommend COSMIC. It's fresh and fast and very customizable.

The data analysis here is interesting. One thing that stood out to me is that black metal is the 6th most common musical genre for bands, right after rockabilly. I would never have expected that.

Back in the 90's, the Sci-Fi channel would regularly run MST3K marathons that would last all weekend. It was pretty much the same experience as the modern streaming channels, and I loved it. The golden age of cable was full of those kinds of marathon runs of series.

Valve's only official statement as far as I know is that it will come when they see a significant enough hardware upgrade to warrant a new system. If they don't move to ARM, AMD's Medusa APUs are their next architecture with major upgrades, so I would guess that Valve would order another custom AMD chip but based on Medusa, which won't release until at least 2027. I would guess at least H2 2027 but probably early 2028 for an AMD-based Steam Deck 2.

What is devalued is traditional labor-based ideology. The blog references Marx's theory of alienation. The Marxist labor theory of value, that the value of anything is determined by the labor that creates it, gives the working class moral authority over the owner class. When labor is reduced, the basis of socialist revolution is devalued, as the working class no longer can claim superior contributions to value creation.

If one doesn't subscribe to traditional Marxist ideology, this argument won't land the same way, but elements of these ideas have made their way into popular ideas of value.

All that performance is still available with Linux, and it's great. I use plenty of modern systems, but my home desktop is over 12 years old (from the last generation of hardware before everything was locked down) with Debian 13. Turn it on, log in, and the fraction of a second it takes for the login screen to disappear is all it takes for the system to be fully up and running.

I'm also a long-time Linux user, but there are some things that still need Windows, so here are my cheat codes to make it usable:

O&O Shutup: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

All the missing privacy switches you'd want. Run it after any updates.

PowerToys: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/

The real utilities you'll want to control your UI as a power user. Just autohide the taskbar and disable showing badges and flashing. It's a lost cause, and you can mostly just forget it exists. Use alt+space to launch things and keyboard or mouse shortcuts for window management. It's actually pretty good at mixing floating and tiling.

WSL: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

I'm sure you know about it, but it works well even for most GUI apps these days, although it still doesn't support fractional scaling.

You're in good company. Something similar, minus the hydrogen phase, is proposed by Roger Penrose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycles_of_Time

I don’t know if some people are just wired differently, but I can back up the feeling of not caring at all where I fall in a hierarchy or how much people respect or don’t respect me.

The things I find most thrilling always relate to being challenged. Finding someone better than me qualifies. Having ideas challenged or being proven wrong are the most positive experience I’ve had, especially being forced to change deeply held beliefs. I mention this because it’s one of those things that I always hear people say that everyone hates, but I’ve always felt the opposite, just from a pure chemical feeling perspective. I don’t think I could possibly be unique in that experience.

Wouldn't this depend a lot on how management responds to your use? For example, if you just kept a log of prompts and outputs with notes about why the output wasn't acceptable, that could be considered productive use in this early stage of LLMs, especially if management's goal was to have you learning how to use LLMs. Learning how not to use something is just as important in the process of adapting any new tool.

If management is convinced of the benefits of LLMs and the workers are all just refusing to use them, the main problem seems to be a dysfunctional working environment. It's ultimately management's responsibility to work that out, but if the management isn't completely incompetent, people tasked with using them could do a lot to help the situation by testing and providing constructive feedback rather than making a stand by refusing to try and providing grand narratives about damaging the artistic integrity of something that has been commoditized from inception like video game art. I'm not saying that video game art can't be art, but it has existed in a commercial crunch culture since the 1970s.

It's the networking effect. When all the other kids are playing a game, it's tough for some kids to be the only one not on it. Then it becomes one of their primary means of socializing. To a lot of kids, there are only two games in the universe: Roblox and Fortnite. That's all any of their peers play. They're not in getting into other ones where their friends aren't. It's the same as social networks.

Whether it's irresponsible to let kids play the same games as their friends is of course up to individual parents. I think it's possible to both be exposed to these types of traps and learn how to avoid them. They can't gamble without access to money from parents anyway.

But dinner parties mean time away from Roblox and YouTube! I know this struggle, especially in winter. I think kids still want to socialize but struggle more often these days with how to do it. It’s easier for many of them to do it online when they can leave a situation at any time they want, and it’s hard to adapt to the pressure of being stuck in a social situation. What used to be “rage quitting” in games seems to be normal now. Maybe kids just need to learn more about the art of the excuse to leave.

When you shelter your children from the world to an extreme degree, you end up getting one of the most popular stories in both Europe and Asia for the last 2500 years:

https://theconversation.com/how-the-buddha-became-a-christia...

This isn’t about wanting or not wanting Google but wanting freedom. I don’t avoid Google completely, but I don’t want to be dependent on them. I always want to have free and open alternatives to what they provide.

The AOSP works for those different companies because it’s free to modify. Huawei had to move away from Android (still using parts) because Google services were not free or available to them. That was fine because at least the core parts remained free.

If the basic functions of life like paying for things don’t work without Google, it’s a problem. That’s bad for people and too much pressure for Google to do the right thing for people who have different needs.

It’s dangerous to assume so much as this about the thoughts of someone on comments, but let me offer a supporting opinion to the other point:

People like things to be consistent and reliable. When we’re talking about technology, they probably don’t know what specific coding or licensing or development practices lead to that, but they know that they don’t like it when something they use gets worse over time.

When things they use everyday change at the whim of one company that has full control, they don’t always like it. Having software that’s free to modify and distribute makes it so people will always have options and not depend on one company or another having the same opinions about what makes software good.

This is some quality information!

About the return on investment, the methodology is interesting, and I’m surprised that a hand crank to nuclear would increase so little in efficiency. But although the direct comparison of EROI might be small, I wonder about this part from that article:

“It is in part for these fully encompassed systems reasons, that in the conclusions of Murphy and Hall's paper in 2010, an EROI of 5 by their extended methodology is considered necessary to reach the minimum threshold of sustainability,[22] while a value of 12–13 by Hall's methodology is considered the minimum value necessary for technological progress and a society supporting high art.”

So different values of EROI can yield vastly different civilizational results, the difference between base sustainability and a society with high art and technology. The direct energy outputs might not be thousands of times different, but the information output of different EROI levels could be considered thousands of times different. Without a massive efficiency increase, society over the last few thousand years got much more complex in its output. I’m not trying to change terms here just to win an argument but trying to qualify the final results of different capacities of harnessing energy and technology.

I think this gets to the heart of the different arguments we’re making. I’m not in any way arguing that these old architectures are more common in total quantity than ARM. That difference in production is only going to increase. I wouldn’t have known the specific difference, but your data is great for understanding the scope.

My argument is that projects meant to make technology that has been manufactured for a long period of time and has been widely distributed more useful and sustainable are worthwhile, even when we have more common and efficient alternatives. This doesn’t in any way contradict your point about ARM architecture being more common or useful, and I’d be fully in favor of someone extending this kind of project to ARM.

In response to some of the other points: using an external crystal is just an example of how you could use available parts to maintain the Z80 if it needed fixing but you had limited resources. In overall terms, it might be easier to throw away an ARM microcontroller and find 100 replacements for it than even trying to use an external crystal for either one, but again I’m not saying it’s a specific advantage to the Z80 that you could attach a common crystal, just something that might happen in a resource-constrained situation using available parts. Better than the kid in Snowpiercer sitting and spinning the broken train parts at least.

Also, let me clarify the archive.org part. I wasn’t trying to demonstrate the best process for getting info. I just picked that because they have lots of scanned books to simulate someone who needed to look up how to program a part they found. I know it’s using ARM, but the reason I mentioned that had to do with the distribution of paper books on the subject and how they’re organized. The book I linked to starts with very basic concepts for someone who has never programmed before and moves quickly into the Z80, all in one old book, because it was printed in a simpler time when no prior knowledge was assumed.

There are plenty of paper books on ARM too, and probably easier to find, but now that architectures are becoming more complicated, you’re more likely to find sources online that require access to a specific server and have specialized information requiring a certain familiarity with programming and the tools needed for it. More is assumed of the reader.

If you were able to find that one book, you could probably get pretty far in using the Z80 without any familiarity with complex tools. Again, ARM is of course popular and well-documented, but the old Z80 stuff is still out there and simple enough to understand and even analyze with your bare eyes in more detail than you could analyze an ARM microcontroller without some very specific tools.

So all that info about ARM is excellent, but this isn’t necessarily a competition. It’s someone’s passion project who chose a few old, simple, and still-in-production technologies to develop a resilient and translatable operating system for. It makes sense to start with the earlier technology because it’s simpler and less proprietary, but it would also make sense to extend it to modern architectures like ARM or RISC-V. I wouldn’t be surprised if sometime in the future some person or AI did just that. This project just serves as a nice starting point for an idea on resilient electronics.

You can have a very usable phone with https://f-droid.org/

Obviously, you will be able to find plenty of examples of things that don't work, and you probably have a bank app or some other thing that you need Google for, but alternatives do exist, and I'd argue that you can have a healthier, more productive, and more enjoyable experience if you can have all your needs met by software that isn't treating you as a product.

My opinion is you should use whatever works; I do. But try not to absolutely need software that you can't control.

I appreciate the thought and detail you put into these responses. That's beyond the scope of what I anticipated discussing.

The types of things I had in mind are old techniques that people use for processing materials, like running a primitive forge or extracting energy from burning plant material or manual labor. What's the energy efficiency difference between generating electricity with a hand crank vs. a nuclear reactor? Even if you take into account all the inputs it takes to build and run the reactor, the overall output to input energy ratio is much higher, but it relies on a lot of infrastructure to get to that point. The type of efficiency I'm thinking of is precisely the energy required to maintain and run something vs. the work you get out of it.

In the same way, while old computers are much less efficient, models like these that have been manufactured for decades and exist all over might end up being a better fit in some cases, even with less efficiency. I can appreciate that the integration of components in newer machines like the ATSAMD20 can reduce complexity in many ways, but projects like CollapseOS are specifically meant to create code that can handle low-level complexity and make these things easier to use and maintain.

The Z80 voltage is 5V+/-5%, so right around what you were thinking. Considering the precision required for voltage regulation required is smart, but if you were having to replace crystals, they are simple and low frequency, 2-16Mhz, and lots have been produced, and once again the fact that it uses parts that have been produced for decades and widely distributed may be an advantage.

Your point about documentation is a good one. It does require more complicated programming, but there are plenty of paper books out there (also digitally archived) that in many situations might be easier to locate because they have been so widely distributed over time. If I look at archive.org for ATSAMD20 I come up empty, but Z80 gives me tons of results like this: https://archive.org/details/Programming_the_Z-80_2nd_Edition...

Anyway, thank you again for taking so much time to respond so thoughfully. You make great points, but I'm still convinced that it's worthwhile to make old hardware useful and resilient in situations where people have limited access to resources, people who may still want to deploy some forms of automation using what's available.

Projects like this one will hopefully never be used for their intended purpose, but they may form a basis for other interesting uses of technology and finding ways to take advantage of available computing resources even as machines become more complicated.

I agree with your point! Old electronics aren't going to be appropriate for every situation, and modern alternatives are superior for lots of situations. But that doesn't mean that it isn't worth maintaining projects to keep the old ones useful. Plenty of people are still using technology developed thousands of years ago even when there are modern alternatives that are thousands of times more efficient. It just suits their situation better. Putting one of these things in something like a tractor or a dam or anything that has enough energy to spare is exactly the use case. And the relative simplicity of old technology can be a benefit if someone is trying to apply it to a new situation with limited resources or knowledge.

A lot of functions of electronics don't require tons of processing power or efficiency. Microcontrollers can be used for just about anything. General purpose computing can be put to whatever purpose you can image.

Things supported by this OS like the Z80, 8086, 6502 etc. use around 5-10W. Using simple parts to control complicated machines is a standard operation, and even advanced electronics tend to use a lot of parts using older manufacturing techniques because it's more efficient to keep the old processes running.

Here's a fun article with some context about old processors like this still in production: https://hackaday.com/2022/12/01/ask-hackaday-when-it-comes-t...

Civilization doesn't even have to collapse for a project like this to be useful. Like you said, there's lots of e-waste. If you happened to live in a place that ended up with a lot of this stuff but didn't have a lot of infrastructure, you could possibly build up some convenient services with something like this. I like the idea of building software to make hardware less reliant on external resources in general. Over time, it could be useful to have more resilient electronics, because we seem to be designing machines to be more reliant on specific networked infrastructure every year.

I loved both of these games and spent a lot of time with them. The Baldur's Gate review here stays pretty close to others I've read, but the Fallout 2 review is the more interesting part because it's more opinionated, and in ways I disagree with. It's interesting how much everyone involved seemed to dislike the game, but very much fits the late 90's vibe. It's also what made it one of my all-time favorites. I never felt like I was playing through someone else's story. It felt like a set of content you could actually create your own character and play through, directed by your character's own motivations rather than the writer's. It's a quality that's rare to find in games, but the conditions of a bunch of people creating as much content as they could without a specific direction make sense for how this kind of thing would have to come together. Baldur's Gate is great, but much more linear and gives less opportunities for choices and role-playing. I wish more games would revisit the freedom of Fallout 2.

It sounds great, but I'm still not sure what they'll have to do to make it worth an upgrade for people who already use a Steam Deck and a HMD. I already use the Steam Deck like this often, just using an HDMI cable and an adapter to connect it to a Quest 3 for a giant display, but I can also run all the Quest window management on the side without taking resources from the Deck, and if I feel like continuing on the Deck alone, I can unplug the cable and keep using it on the small screen. It's a pretty nice setup.

I'm wondering if it would be worth just getting whatever adapter they come up with and the next gen Steam Deck to use the same way rather than investing in Deckard, but I'm interested in seeing their case!

I can tell you that your response is at least relevant for me because I happen to be working with Remix right now, not because of any influencers but just because I happen to be working on a Shopify project. I've seen lots of frameworks come and go and evolve, so I'm not surprised that this one changes a lot, but I always enjoy getting opinions from people with experience. Whether or not I'll end up resenting it in the future, I don't know, but at least I'll have been warned.