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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • The screw heads are mainly to prevent people from tampering with stuff they aren’t supposed to unscrew. Hard drives, for example, all use the same star-shaped heads that most people don’t have screwdrivers for.

    I do think that people passionate about information technology – those who love it for the intrinsic awesomeness and not the money it brings – could break away with some of the legacy bullshit that holds back the quality of the software we use, if they were given the opportunity to defy software “tradition” and the profit motive. As of now, there is no systemic path forward, only occasional improvements incited by acute inadequacy of existing conventions for the growth of interested businesses.



  • Many things that were conceptually conceived in the 20th century didn’t become viable until the 21st, such as OLED, VR and AR, raytracing, telesurgery, a whole slew of types of artificial organs, a gigantic amount of miscellaneous advancements in integrated circuit fabrication, alternative vehicle fuel such as methane, hydrogen and rechargeable batteries; maglev trains, innumerable safety improvements in aviation, mRNA vaccines and so on and so forth. I don’t think it’s fair to credit all that stuff to the 20th century, unless someone somewhere saying “be real cool if we could do that” counts as inventing something.





  • There’s no modem needed, actually. All of that can be done in software, and you can configure a desktop as a PPPoE client (that’s the protocol your router uses to log into your ISP’s network and receive internet connectivity). Obviously, you’d need to configure that PC as a router for other computers to also share the connection, and running a typical interactive system 24/7 as a router is hideously inefficient in terms of power use.