> There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery.
I know Neal said the essay was quickly obsolete, especially in regards to Mac, but I'll always remember this reference about hermetically sealed Apple products. To this day, Apple doesn't want anyone to know how their products work, or how to fix them, to the point where upgrading or expanding internal hardware is mostly impossible (no M-series Mac Pro discrete GPUs?). Even after 25 years, some things never change.
Given that LLMs can make their own calls to the command line, I think it's obsolete ten times over. Much of the learning curve - and therefore most of the downside from CLIs, is now gone. A person can now learn only the most basic facts about operating systems - and let the AI handle the rest. Given all of that, I'm not sure where the world of software and IT is heading.
There's a danger though that people won't even learn the basics.
A) LLM's caused disasters because juniors have no clue on the context of the applying commands.
B) With the current enshittification, your comment it's the obsolete one. 100 times over. Why? Enjoy your crappy iOS'ified OS with a maze of dependencies (Python3 for instance), SIP and updates breaking everything.
C) If any, the newbies are the doomed ones, as they don't know anything about computers. Solaris SMF commands (or AIX ones) blindly applied ro RHEL systems? Why not?
By "the basics", I mean the Unix command line model, with its shells and file descriptors and piping. What matters less now are the arcane details, like which flags to use when running a command.
(Obviously, the difference is in number of users -- not many hams, and lots of internet users, and "a sufficiently large difference in quantity is a difference in kind")
I don´t see the relation to this debate. HAM Radio communications do not need encryption, as they have a fully different purpose. You would not discuss private/sensitive matters anyway as the whole thing is just a hobby/learning/experimentation or sport. Your life´s important decisions don´t depend on this type of communication.
Besides, I think one of the most important motivations behind this restriction is to avoid misusing frequencies for commercial purposes.
Uh, there is nothing stopping a crazy guy with a cell of white supremists in idaho for communicating with another sell of malitia guys in utah via ham. If I were said crazies I would certainly want to encrypt that traffic. Given a rural enough compound it might be one of the only ways that they can communicate, certainly starlink exists these days but you catch my meaning.
Ham is useful, there are things about it that make it DIFFERENTLY useful than the internet. (see also number stations)
It's contested, in the USA the spectrum is allocated so the FCC regulations seem to allow an abridgement of first amendment freedoms in exchange for use of the regulated spectrum. Is that constitutional? Why are broadcast airwaves censorsed, but the cable companies that were built with public right of ways contracted to private companies because they're natural monopolies allowed to swear on cable channels? It's not clear to me this is just.
Note that this only applies to amateur radio bands. It's perfectly legal to encrypt your Meshtastic comms, for example (again, unless you transmit under ham rules).
If you haven't read and/or prefer an app format, the "Sorcery!" series was made into a wonderful set of games by Inkle in 2013: https://www.inklestudios.com/sorcery/
I strongly recommend the Sorcery games for anyone looking for any kind of rich gameplay experience on mobile.
In an ecosystem that's been almost entirely consumed by upgrade treadmills and habit loops, it's a perfect counterpoint that is about storytelling and gameplay that's all about emphasizing craft.
The map art reminds me of that used in Elden Ring, I wonder if that's been influenced by this. I wouldn't be surprised as the director of the Souls games was an avid adventure book player.
From what I’ve heard, his story is rather interesting. He had books with knights and medieval imagery, but couldn’t read or speak English, so he’d make up his own stories.
I think that’s part of why the Souls games (and later Elden Ring) have such a fascinating fusion of East and West. Isolation necessitates imagination.
OP here. One thing I don't have a good answer for yet: this mostly uses Wikipedia as a source. How can I pay back to volunteer editors ("Wikipedians") if this is at all successful? I've seen other sites like newsasfacts.com suggest giving a proportion of profits to the Wikimedia foundation, but obviously they are ultimately separate from the volunteer base, and its fundraising appears increasingly controversial [1, 2].
I slightly balk at the idea, but is a cryptocurrency token possibly the answer? Generate, distribute to editors and have donations come inbound somehow? I see the dangers here!
> * The main thing that makes ChatGPTs ui useful to me is the ability to change any of my prompts in the conversation & it will then go back to that part of the converation and regenerate, while removing the rest of the conversation after that point.
Agreed, but what I would also really like (from this and ChatGPT) would be branching: take a conversation in two different ways from some point and retain the seperate and shared history.
I'm not sure what the UI should be. Threads? (like mail or Usenet)
I have ChatGPT4, I have no idea what arrow you are talking about. Could you be more specific? I see now arrow on any of my previous messages or current ones.
By George, ItsMattyG is right! After editing a question (with the "stylus"/pen icon), the revision number counter that appears (e.g. "1 / 2") has arrows next to it that allow forward and backward navigation through the new branches.
This was surprisingly undiscoverable. I wonder if it's documented. I couldn't find anything from a quick look at help.openai.com .
Careful what you trust with help.openai.com. You used to be able to share conversations, now it's login walled when you share, and the docs don't reflect this (if someone can recommend a frontend that has this functionality, for quick sharing of conversations with others via a link, taking recommendations, thank you in advance).
I understand your point, but my take is that when we talk about AI and its impact, we're talking about the entire system: the model, and what is buildable with the model. To me, the gains available from doing innovative stuff w/ what we're colloquially calling "UI" exceeds, by a bunch, what the next model will unlock. But perhaps the main issue is that whatever this amazing UI might provide, it's not protectable in the way the model is. So maybe that's the answer.
