 The last 10 years or so of tech: 2013: Blockchain! It's a like a database, but slower and worse! 234 comments
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@foolishowl @thomasfuchs HTML was perfect for what it was designed to do, and then someone decided to use it for something it wasn't designed to do, and now we get layer upon layer of cruft in so many attempts to "fix" HTML, all doomed to fail. HTML doesn't need fixing.  @Vishnu2jd @thomasfuchs I literally have to wait minutes for an Electron-based text editor to launch. It's a huge waste of resources. @foolishowl Then that would be a system on which it takes minutes to open a web page, right? @nitind No. In fact I have a Web-browser based markdown editor running on an SBC that opens slower than a native app, but much faster than an Electron-based app running locally.   If Electron was a vehicle, it would require a complete 747 to write HelloWorld. But the pilots would still need to wear space suits, because the effing thing would periodically catastrophically decompress at cruising altitude  @thomasfuchs 2025: Shall we meet again to swap some data on our external storages? I got some really good movies and documentaries from my friends! (sent as handwritten letter via snail mail)  @jwildeboer @thomasfuchs Ah, yes. Like the LAN parties 20+ years ago, which all started out by everyone clogging up the network by copying stuff from each other's shared folders. ๐  @thomasfuchs  @the5thColumnist @thomasfuchs: It was always a colossally stupid idea based around Austrian School-influenced right-libertarian ideas about ownership and property, combined with the worst database ever designed with serious intentions.  Only if it's the "receipt" you're buying and selling. (It's not a receipt.) @1dalm @the5thColumnist @thomasfuchs nfts weโre never going to be that because you were never really buying a thing, just the pointer to the thing. If you want to support artists, just buy their things and give them money. @1dalm @the5thColumnist @thomasfuchs NFTs were never gonna be that because that's not what they're for. That's just the PR campaign. NFTs are tokens carrying programs called "smart contracts", which are meant to automate things like contract enforcement. Ever seen reports of malicious NFTs emptying people's wallets? That's the intended use case, but used maliciously. Making them into expensive links to jpegs was a mistake.  @reallokiscarlet @1dalm @the5thColumnist @thomasfuchs So youโre talking about a scheme similar to the piece of shit that used to be the owner of the Las Vegas Review Journal, Sherman Frederick? His idea was to sue everyone who linked to or quoted LVRJ stories. He even set up a corporation for it. A few people got duped into paying 10K settlements via threat before a judge told the fuckhead to knock it off. Copyright troll shit. From a newspaper publisher. And a so called minister. @RodneyPetersonTalent @1dalm @the5thColumnist @thomasfuchs Think more like if your gym membership card was harvesting credit card data while it sat in your wallet. @1dalm @the5thColumnist @thomasfuchs What you say NFT:s could have been is just the sales pitch for the scam. More like a non-duplicable, provably transferable, proof of purchase. Of course, only useful if there is no competing idea of ownership. eg: if someone steals your NFT, are you going to try to recover the NFT itself, or try to get something else declared to be the NFT? It is an interesting idea, but with absolutely no one willing to do anything to translate "interesting" into "potentially useful".  @the5thColumnist @thomasfuchs The point of NFTs was to boost the cryptocurrencies they were based on by driving up demand. Increasing the apparent size of the market, and inventing a new speculative investment that was neither a financial security nor a commodity, made it easier to engage in wash trading. https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/feature/NFT-wash-trading-explained  @the5thColumnist @thomasfuchs If it's inherently infinitely copyable, does the concept of counterfeiting apply at all? @thomasfuchs   @Salty @KimSJ @srtcd424 @thomasfuchs Tesla Motors is a car company. It makes cars with a notably poor build quality which have doors that don't open, windows that don't seal, and batteries which set themselves on fire. I am attempting to generate humour by implying that Tesla's cars fit the pattern that was identified above. @Salty @KimSJ @srtcd424 @thomasfuchs I have. A girlfriend, back when I was a kid, was obsessed with that movie (even though we were too young to watch it.) It's a good movie although I think it's irresponsible in how easily it allows itself to be misinterpreted. @passenger @KimSJ @srtcd424 @thomasfuchs Then you remember that the unnamed narrator turns out to BE Tyler Durden. He had a psychotic break because his job was to decide whether it was cheaper to let his companyโs cars kill people and pay out on lawsuits or recall & fix them to save lives. About 20 years before Tesla built their first car. Or VW diesel engines, or Jeeps that squash you against your garage, or Toyotas with self-removing wheels, etc. I get it, Musk is a born-rich prick with @passenger @KimSJ @srtcd424 @thomasfuchs with Nazi sympathies and less than half the brains he thinks he has. But personally, the bandwagoning on Teslas is just dumb. @thomasfuchs @Salty ...and roofs... and steering wheels... but yeah, bandwaggonning on Tesla's killer cars is dumb. @Salty @srtcd424 @thomasfuchs All modern cars with Engine Management that stops you driving when an unimportant sensor fails, warning lights that appear and disappear at random, drive-by-wire software with bugs that jam on the throttle, etc, etc. I'll draw a line there. If you have kids Airbnbs/Verbos are family roadtrip game changers. Staying in hotels with kids SUUUUUUUCKS! Staying in an Airbnb is legitimately a pleasure in comparison.  @srtcd424 @thomasfuchs to be fair Uber was actually *way* better than taxis and really forced that industry into improving their user experience. booking was annoying, cars always late, vehicles barely roadworthy and often filthy and uncomfortable. they needed some real competition. most of the problems with Uber are in countries where nobody regulated them, so primarily the US. in the UK they're not as bad. still problematic for many reasons but at least they offered a valuable service. @gsuberland @srtcd424 thatโs extremely different in different places, in many European cities cabs have always been reliable, well kept and clean ยฏ\_(ใ)_/ยฏ @thomasfuchs @srtcd424 yeah the UK ones were hot garbage, especially outside of London @srtcd424 @thomasfuchs people soon forget how horrible it used to be in the early 2000s when you had to sit in a city center taxi rank waiting room where everyone working there had been smoking 40 cigarettes a day for the last two decades.    @thomasfuchs I agree completely, although just want to caveat that I've enjoyed some aspects of VR. I played a game called Super Hot on my son's Quest 2 and it was... extraordinary. Like, roll on the holodeck levels of immersion. Of course, the whole *verse thing is just rehashed Second Life cobblers, into the sea with that. @tehstu of course most stuff has some highlights, but all of these things were hyped as โwill revolutionize everythingโ The real problem was the Hype that overpromised and underdelivered. VR has things going for it, but it also has detriments and the lack of honest communication hurt it in the long run. It is all motivated by greed. THE NEXT INTERNET! Investors are supposed to pour billions into it. It is ultra cynical, dystopian even! Human progress as a commodity, extracting as much wealth as possible for the select few that invested first.  @thomasfuchs really the original iteration of vr was way overhyped. 1996- vr: its like being in the game if the game was running at 6fps and you were charged for every 5 minutes of play! At least current vr games are fun, tho im not happy on facebooks near monopoly on the hardware @thomasfuchs and all to protect the established oligopolies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft. De-rail the masses from attacking your profitable business @thomasfuchs Java! It's like a real language but slower, worse, and it only works on Solaris and Windoze 95! @thomasfuchs I actually changed career out of technology in 2003 when: "portal servers! Like app servers but worse" happened. Now I just get annoyed from the periphery.  @thomasfuchs @sknob thatโs a little unfair to VR, for me itโs like text-based MUCKs but slower and worse @thomasfuchs not to mention the explosion of different front end technologies or different full stacks + micro services / graphql / data lakes / indexing / ... in 3 decades I feel that things got really complex compared to the features delivered and the time spent. @bangskij tbf, the original iPhone in 2007 supported 3rd party stuff only as websites  @thomasfuchs meanwhile in small business it's walking into a potential client and "We're going to start with getting you onto new(er) computers and getting rid of Office 2010 since it's been EOL for several years and has a bunch of security issues."  @thomasfuchs Don't forget the Metaverse. It's like World of Warcraft, but slower and worse!   @thomasfuchs * Cloud computing as everyone's default. @thomasfuchs putting VR in the same category of worthless technologies as NFTs and the blockchain is WILD @thomasfuchs If you use VR for experiences that are specifically made for VR instead of using it for stuff like "big virtual monitor with bad pixel density" then it's not a scam. @thomasfuchs insert any new software as well, with always internet enabled and spyware built in  @thomasfuchs whatโs weirder is itโs like a ten year cycle where the same things, still not ready, are re-presented as miracles @thomasfuchs technically both DeepL and Google Translate are "Ai" and very useful to me. I think there will be more to stay from the Ai hype than from the blockchain hype.  @thomasfuchs @freeformz congrats, you found one stupid marketing image that doesnโt make any sense from who knows who. Have you tried VR?  @thomasfuchs Letโs use VC compression on that post: 2013: VC, working as designed  Summary last 30 years or so: In the nineties, it became clear that computers eat up more time than they save. Strangely enough, the word never got around, everyone tries to solve it with even more digitalization and still wonders why we all have less and less time. But the next hype will finally change it for the better. But slower and worse.๐  @wagesj45 yeah sorry, I forgot a few: 2015: Self-driving cars! Like bullet trains, but slower and worse! @thomasfuchs I agree on many things that are pure hype for investors. But I do believe that blockchain could help the everyday person if developed right. I am slightly against NFTS for speculative trading and investing. But as proof of ownership of as a protected representation of art or photography I approve of. Iโd love to know your opinions on these topics because good discussions leads to a better understanding of one another. I hope you have a wonderful day! :)  @thomasfuchs what if I told you blockchains actually improved bank security because chained encrypted transactions is an excellent idea from a cryptographic standpoint? and VR is amazing when it works well, just, none of the commercial directions seem to be aligned with what it actually needs. NFTs were just a weird use of blockchains. LLMs/AI have significantly improved what we can do with human language, but as with any tool, don't give it to an idiot, because they'll do stupid things ๐คท  @thomasfuchs VR is actually super amazing... for all the things techbros DON'T want to use it for. @thomasfuchs I was thinking earlier about hoverboards. In BttF2 hoverboard were cool things, like skate boards, but they hoovered in mid-air. Yet somehow we were sold cheap tat that were called hoverboards but didn't hover and had wheels; and sometimes caught fire. Now everyone is trying to sell us AI that isn't intelligent but it's just an algorithm that produces interesting results; and is sometimes wrong.  @thomasfuchs @thomasfuchs 100%, LLMs are just the hot new tech. In all of these cases, the technology has been over-applied, and then most of those use cases do not survive, with countless products, startups, and companies failing in process. There's no problem with that itself, but that many think that each one has / is / will be revolutionary is foolhardy.  @thomasfuchs if you can figure out what the next one is, and you have no morals, you can make a lot of money  @thomasfuchs vr is pretty cool tho tbh sadly there aren't many AAA vr titles tmk, but boneworks and half life alyx are both great games @thomasfuchs Full self-driving also goes in here somewhere, it's like public transport but a lot more dangerous.   @thomasfuchs VR is cool to game. It is not cool to work in it or anything else. VR is an awesome gaming platform.  @thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io I'm trying really hard not to get personally offended by the second one. ๐คฃ @thomasfuchs The NFTs were a complete scam, I don't know about the others but the AIs are useful @thomasfuchs VR one doesnโt really make sense tbh. It was never intended to be a monitor replacement @thomasfuchs there's almost practical uses for VR in 3D design, but also yes. the last decade or so of tech has been inventing solutions, then having to invent the problem/market they're meant to answer    @thomasfuchs i will say VR is cool as a gaming device, i wish it would get more love there  @thomasfuchs @Seirdy Yeah no, I haven't found any mix of psychotropics and lighting with monitors that enables phantom touch or anything even remotely similar.
What are you using? @thomasfuchs Well VR ended up actually being something, but yeah I feel like people were hyping it up with similar intentions for a while. It's in the same proprietary hardware hell as printers now tho.  @thomasfuchs I hate that I, a fairly tech illiterate person, *know* an example of twchies pushibg shit for algorithms to make decisions machines should bever make, which now is being replaced by "AI".  @thomasfuchs You forgot the most important part. It's slower, worse, AND more expensive! Cha-ching! @thomasfuchs I'm with you on blockchain and NFTs, but I love my Valve Index for VR. Too early to say on AI.  @thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io I still want a VR headset. @thomasfuchs ai is for algorithms what react is for javascript: way too freaking much for the job  @thomasfuchs vr is the only good thing in this entire list the rest of it could become outlawed and i would not care even a little bit  @thomasfuchs  @thomasfuchs Buzzwords! Hype! The latest buzzword will save us! Oh wait, there's a new one - quick, move onto the new grift!  @thomasfuchs 2010: 3D television! It's like regular TV, but more expensive and worse!  @thomasfuchs The 1994 VR hypetrain was much worse; it was minature CRT's and Polhemus trackers! It'll come around again. @thomasfuchs I mean, all new tech is potentially better but also currently slower and worse. Some tech never leaves that phase  @thomasfuchs I resent that, VR is very good as a monitor replacement when you're not in 2016 and do more than just make planes float in space @thomasfuchs I can at least defend VR as a piece of high end niche tech, I have played some VR games that absolutely couldn't be matched by single monitor counterparts. Blockchain has yet to find a use case and the only thing of worth AI has produced is Plankton scream singing the Maneskin cover of Begging   @thomasfuchs Yeah, I mostly agree, but VR is not worse than a monitor... unless your use case for VR is... using it as a monitor substitute! |
Gregory's Server
@thomasfuchs Electron apps should be in there, following from the decay of SGML, a system of markup that exclusively focuses on semantics and is totally independent of the device used to display text, to modern Web design, which uses horribly convoluted code to fully determine a "user experience".