[HN Gopher] John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Ocul...
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John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset
Author : JaimeThompson
Score : 608 points
Date : 2021-10-22 15:28 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| TedShiller wrote:
| NOT doing this should be illegal
| gfodor wrote:
| Go is a solid piece of kit. No head or hand tracking, but the
| benefit is low weight and power efficiency. Basically, it's an
| all-in-one GearVR, which is a solid minimum viable standalone VR
| headset for lots of things like anything that involves a large
| virtual TV screen or spectating things like events in VR. Nice to
| see that it will be an open platform now, which will provide a
| nice baseline for apps to target who care about ensuring their
| content is accessible via cheap, open devices.
| causi wrote:
| I'm really glad for what Carmack did. It's rather sad though,
| that support was dropped for this headset after only two years.
| As a reminder, the Oculus Go was released more than a year after
| the Nintendo Switch.
| mappu wrote:
| It was obsolete at launch, though. 3DOF is "poison the well"
| territory and not good marketing for VR at all.
| baby wrote:
| VR is advancing at an incredible pace really, I don't think
| it's sad.
| gokhan wrote:
| Can you give some examples? What was not possible and what's
| possible now?
| djmips wrote:
| In this particular case, it didn't have full tracking, you
| could only rotate your head (the 3dof mentioned in another
| comment). So even at launch it was behind the times. Full
| tracking is so much better, even required for VR to work.
| baby wrote:
| It's honestly hard to describe to someone who's never tried
| modern VR, but it basically gives you full immersion. You
| can watch Netflix in VR, you can move around (if you have
| enough real-life space), you can grab and play with things
| surrounding you, it's just so close to real life it's mind
| blowing. I actually wrote about social experiences
| (specifically playing boardgames in VR!) within the Go[1],
| and you can imagine that it has evolved exponentially with
| the Quest and the Quest 2.
|
| I'm not sure how easy it is to get a demo, but look around
| you maybe malls or some arcade places will have a headset
| you can try. Or you can spend the $300 to get the Quest 2
| :) It's honestly not that much to get a taste of the
| future.
|
| [1]: https://p1x3l.com/story/239/social-virtual-reality-
| and-the-o...
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| John Carmack working for Facebook is such a huge loss for mankind
| :(. It makes me sad every time I think about it.
| monkeytaco wrote:
| He only does light consulting for them currently. He stepped
| back a couple years ago to focus on his own AI research.
| mertd wrote:
| He does not need the paycheck. He must think this endeavor is
| the most worth his while, which is fine.
| amackera wrote:
| I admire and respect John Carmack for his role in the history
| of computing (and his ongoing contributions), but I don't see
| how making 3D video games was really helping humanity more than
| this. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Carmack made multiple fundamental breakthroughs in 3D
| graphics. Not only that, but he consistently positioned
| himself _to commercialize those_ , which is not easy. His
| Quake 3 engine was the bread and butter of Id Software,
| generating billions in revenue.
|
| In recent times, he's done coronavirus simulations (I don't
| know anything else about that), and is doing AGI research.
|
| He's also a true hacker through and through. Simply having an
| example like his, as a model to follow, is helping humanity.
| I happen to be human, and I distinctly remember his .plan
| files influencing my decisions in a positive way since I was
| 13 or so.
|
| (The line about getting a hotel and accomplishing as much as
| possible in 2 days of focused effort was particularly
| impactful.)
| stagger87 wrote:
| > generating billions in revenue.
|
| Source?
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I was going to point out another HN'er that said this,
| but then I looked at the username and it turned out to be
| me in 2014. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7509095
|
| Well, at least my ideas are consistent.
|
| As for the root source, I suppose I could just ask him
| now. But the idea came from a slashdot post. Carmack
| personally responded to some criticisms of Q3 code
| quality, and said that he was proud of it, and that it
| had generated a lot of revenue for the company.
|
| Billions may have been off by a couple orders of
| magnitude though. I'm no longer sure.
|
| Maybe not too far off, though. The revenue of Q3 Arena
| alone was $11M. Far more valuable is Id Tech 3, the
| engine that was licensed by many studios over many years.
| Unfortunately, I can't seem to find revenue numbers on
| that. I wonder if it's public.
| stagger87 wrote:
| I found this,
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20100312100358/http://www.ids
| oft...
|
| 5% royalties on games sold.
| quakeguy wrote:
| He also helped to create a generation of people which
| modded and created forks of the engines he wrote to use in
| their own projects, providing the basis for tools to modify
| assets and whatnot. I owe him so much and I thank him for
| what he enabled everyday.
| xtracto wrote:
| I think a lot of people miss this. I grew up half a
| generation after him, so I got into computers by
| tinkering with Commodore Log, GWBasic and later
| C++/Allegro. But the next generation after that was of a
| huge amount of kids doing mods for Quake, Doom and the
| like. It opened the doors in an accessible way to
| computing for a lot of people.
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| Maybe he could push it to the better, who knows.
| lostmsu wrote:
| This move already does IMHO.
| pengaru wrote:
| Maybe he'd be doing something more useful elsewhere, who
| knows.
|
| One thing is certain though; Carmack is an inspiring role
| model for many developers. Facebook is not a great direction
| to lead smart people towards.
| baby wrote:
| Really? I see this as a huge win for VR, but different opinions
| I guess.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| People keep talking like he's focused solely on Facebook.
|
| He does AGI research. He's sent me screenshots of his
| experiments.
| [deleted]
| freediver wrote:
| Imagining that future is about people wearing VR devices on their
| head (even as minimal as a pair of glasses) is hard to grasp.
|
| "In their head" would be a different matter but that is not what
| the current technology is focusing on (apart from Neuralink).
|
| Edit: not propagating for any such vision the future! just
| noticing that wearing stuff on head would be clunky and
| impractical for true immersion.
| rob74 wrote:
| A VR world controlled by Facebook sounds dystopian enough
| already - now imagine the same with neural implants...
| barkingcat wrote:
| imagine if other people's "likes" and "angry face" are
| broadcasted into your neurons directly
| Arrath wrote:
| I'm just waiting for a lightweight pair of AR glasses that I
| can wear while wrenching on a hobby car that give overlays,
| labels, disassembly instructions akin to car mechanic
| simulator.
|
| If they can automagically tell me what size wrench/socket i
| need to grab, even better.
| jessaustin wrote:
| As hard as it is to find any service manual at all for old
| machinery, and then when you spend $100 to order a used
| manual off ebay find that the really useful pages are ripped
| out or covered with grease, I think a product like you
| describe is waiting on AGI more than it's waiting on nice AR
| glasses. Very few people need this product, so the
| intellectual labor to produce it will need to be nearly free.
|
| I've gotten to where I can identify most bolt head sizes on
| sight... I very rarely have to pick up more than two wrenches
| and usually the first one is right. Also I find that bolt
| sizes are typically fairly standardized on a particular
| machine. I occasionally work on a mini-excavator that has
| 10mm, 13mm, and 19mm bolts (and 8mm allen-heads), but nothing
| else I've found so far.
| Arrath wrote:
| Oh I know its a complete pipe dream, I can't help but want
| it regardless.
|
| I see you may not have had the joy of working on something
| with mixed SAE, Metric, and if you're real lucky, JIS all
| combined.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Well I haven't worked on anything with JIS! A guy I used
| to work with hadn't had fractions in school, so he would
| use the metric even on SAE parts. He couldn't figure out
| that e.g. 7/16" is smaller than 1/2".
| t-3 wrote:
| As a person who wears glasses, I'm very excited for AR devices.
| A great input device* and incremental improvements in the
| battery tech and energy efficiency would make them ideal for
| on-the-go computing, reading, and note taking.
|
| * https://wefunder.com/tapwithus looks promising, and facebook
| bought up companies doing similar things. A ring with a touch
| slider, gyroscope, and a button would be interesting.
| crowbahr wrote:
| I e purchased and learned how to use a tap strap.
| Unfortunately it doesn't really live up the the hype and
| after a few frustrating months of practice and work it now
| lives in a drawer collecting dust.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Leave it to the advertising-surveillance industrial complex to
| explore every possible route to inject outrage into subjects'
| brains (whether they want want it or not).
| spicybright wrote:
| I'm actually pretty nervous of how few Carmack's we have.
|
| Not at all saying they don't exist, but the job market favors
| engineers hopping around instead of staying at one place a while
| to become experts in things.
| elric wrote:
| > the job market favors engineers hopping around instead of
| staying at one place
|
| Does it? That's a fair description of the consulting space, but
| I don't think it's an accurate representation of the job market
| as a whole. When product companies hire software engineers,
| they tend to aim for the long haul.
| spicybright wrote:
| You'd think. Most career advice I get is you need to jump
| ship to get an actual pay raise. Maybe stay 3 or 4 years.
|
| Not enough to build up deep knowledge, at least compared to
| older engineers imo
| elric wrote:
| Being unable to get a pay raise from your current employer
| often boils down to one of two reasons:
|
| 1. You're not negotiating effectively -- a skill you can
| improve upon
|
| 2. You're not worth as much as you think you are (e.g. low
| margin industry, company doing poorly, part of a low impact
| team etc, or maybe you're just not very good at $whatever
| skill the company needs).
|
| Only #2 is a good reason to jump ship and try your luck
| elsewhere. Over the years I've learnt how to negotiate a
| fair remuneration. It's not easy, and it can definitely be
| uncomfortable at first. But in the end, it's totally worth
| it.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| I've played the "salary band" game too many times to
| believe this. Let's tie your salary to your title so that
| we have to promote you before we can pay you more. Rather
| than, say, having salaries reflect the actual market and
| having titles reflect people's actual roles in the
| company.
|
| The only blame for being underpaid that falls on an
| employee is staying somewhere they aren't valued longer
| than they should. We owe it to our families to get paid
| what we can [sustainably] earn.
| sangnoir wrote:
| 3. Salaries for those already on the payroll are not
| subject to competing offers, and employees likely have
| outdated information on market salaries, and almost
| always "anchor" on their current income. Employers have a
| _some_ competition when hiring, and are subject to some
| market forces on compensation (including "price
| transparency" on offer letters).
|
| In the current environment, you're almost always able to
| get a better offer compared to any raise offered. In most
| organizations, a manager expends less political capital
| justifying a salary band for an open position vs.
| advocating for a raise.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I don't think it's necessary to stay with the same company
| a very long time to develop "deep knowledge". on my last
| team there were two engineers with about 20 years of
| experience. one had spent all of it at that company, and
| the other had worked at five different companies in the
| same space. the former knew more about the company's code
| and was an invaluable resource for "why are things the way
| they are?" type questions. but the latter often proposed
| more novel (to us) solutions, drawing on his experience
| from previous roles. both were extremely effective
| engineers.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I think this is specific to certain areas of the software
| market. I'm in embedded systems and the engineers I've
| worked with generally stay much longer than 3-4 years.
| There's a former co-worker on my LinkedIn who's my age and
| she's been with the same company for over 20 years.
|
| I quit my last job after 5 years and over my 30 year
| career, that's the shortest stint I've had.
| samstave wrote:
| A buddy of mine just joined Palo Alto networks and they
| gave him a 30% pay increase, as well as a $100,000 signing
| bonus, and then put him on a team who sold well and he got
| a $40,000 bonus a couple months after joining.
| c21h30o2 wrote:
| One of my friends stays at his current company where he
| has stayed for years, despite only getting low single-
| digit pay increases each year.
| roody15 wrote:
| John Carmack is a living legend. Seriously impressive career!
| InitialLastName wrote:
| He's truly had an incredible run, but it's a shame he's let the
| finale be "enabled Facebook to mix eyeball tracking with
| advertising".
| asim wrote:
| This will be a massive unlock for a Metaverse funded by Zuck with
| no affiliation with Facebook. Thanks for the hardware Zuck. Now
| we'll build the new world without you.
| croes wrote:
| Not with a 3DOF headset
| Klimentio wrote:
| "but damn, getting all the necessary permissions for this
| involved SO much more effort that you would expect." srsly?
|
| He choose facebook, the cancer of our society, to persuite his VR
| dreams.
|
| What did he expect?
| ralmidani wrote:
| Massive props to John Carmack! We also need laws to protect
| consumers when they don't have an enlightened champion on their
| side.
|
| Part of the reason I buy Apple devices is because Apple is
| unlikely to get acquired or go out of business for the
| foreseeable future. I wish there were viable alternatives.
| Android devices are not an option for me, as they are more likely
| to be abandoned and/or contain Google/manufacturer/carrier
| malware, and I need to use banking and work apps.
|
| In that same vein, I have a preorder for a Framework Laptop
| because, at least for actual computers, I have the option of not
| splurging on a non-upgradeable, non-customizable Apple device.
|
| We really shouldn't have to wait for Librarian of Congress-
| granted exemptions, which can be rescinded at any time and are
| meaningless with locked-down devices anyway.
| soylentcola wrote:
| Oddly enough, this is why I stopped buying iOS devices. With my
| old Android phones/the one Android tablet I got I was able to
| install something useful and pared-down once they became older
| and unsupported. They work fine as readers/browsers on my home
| network or as "fancy" remotes and local-network media players.
|
| The only old iOS device I haven't sold/tossed is an iPad 2
| which is unbearably slow for most things, and I can neither
| downgrade the OS or install some lighter alternative. Plus it
| needs a new 30-pin power cable but I haven't gotten around to
| buying one because all the other old devices just use one of a
| pile of USB cables I have stashed around.
|
| As far as I'm concerned, at least in terms of repurposing older
| devices, iOS is like the old consoles where it's essentially
| stuck once there are no more "official" updates. If it boots
| Android, there's a decent chance I can install something custom
| on it years later.
| ralmidani wrote:
| All valid points. But I've made the mistake of trading in or
| losing all of my old Android phones which had unlocked
| bootloaders.
|
| Also, installing a phone OS is more intimidating to me than,
| say, putting Debian on a laptop/desktop. I'm happy to go into
| a BIOS, play with voltages, overclock, etc. but please don't
| ask me to hold some combination of buttons to start a process
| that can easily brick my phone.
| Pfhortune wrote:
| As someone who has loaded custom roms on more than a couple
| of dozen Android devices over the years, it is really hard
| to brick a device installing an OS. The closest I came was
| an Xperia Play years ago, but even that was recoverable
| after pulling the battery.
|
| These days there are some decently high guardrails for not
| bricking a device, as long as you follow installation
| instructions.
| kall wrote:
| Hm, I have an OG iPad that runs a few excellent apps
| (TouchOSC, Animoog, Samplr) well enough that it's still a
| worthwhile device with just those. TouchOSC in particular
| should get massive props. As of last year, it was still able
| to update and is solid and super responsive. The App Store
| still works and I can download the last compatible version of
| any app I own.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| Except for Safari, which is tied to OS updates. And of
| course Apple don't allow other browsers on the store so now
| you're stuck on the outdated browser.
|
| I know my old iPad has issues with Home Assistant's web
| interface for example.
| sbarre wrote:
| Apple allows other browsers in the App Store. I have
| Chrome on my iPad.
|
| Or do you mean the underlying rendering engine?
| m45t3r wrote:
| Yeah. I had a LG G Pad 8.3 (2013) that I used as much as last
| year until the screen separated from its body and started to
| fail as an effect. Was using it with LineageOS (don't
| remember the exactly version, but it was either Android 9 or
| 10), and it also allowed to tweak the scheduler so the CPU
| would always run at pretty much the maximum speed. The
| battery life was obviously bad but would still get one day of
| reading/watching videos (that was pretty much the main usage
| I had for it), and thanks for the tweaked scheduler the UI
| was not that laggy (it was laggy, but not worse than an
| actual low-end device).
|
| Also, different from iOS at least Google still pushes updates
| for important parts of the system (Chrome, WebView, etc.), so
| at least for casual navigation it wasn't horrible insecure.
| treesknees wrote:
| As long as that Android device has an unlocked bootloader, or
| an exploit to bypass the bootloader. The same thing can be
| said about iOS devices (other than perhaps a lack of 3rd
| party operating systems to install in the first place.)
| kingcharles wrote:
| Apple is one of the only companies I dare buy content from
| because they are too big to be acquired. I (begrudgingly) wrote
| DRM code to encrypt all the music for one of Apple's
| competitors and then they got acquired and all the music and
| video was just dead bytes on the users' hard drives and there
| were no refunds.
|
| Still, Apple is known to lock people's accounts for a variety
| of bogus reasons and then all your purchased content is lost.
| adamhearn wrote:
| This is awesome!
| nickmolnar2 wrote:
| Wasn't he supposed to be developing AGI?
| savanaly wrote:
| He remains part-time CTO for Oculus. I am talking out my ass
| but I believe the arrangement is something like 80/20 time
| split between his AGI project and Oculus.
| snek_case wrote:
| He seems to be working on AI / deep learning related projects
| if you follow him on twitter.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Cool. Now can we please have that for the Quest 2?
| ajay-b wrote:
| Now do the Oculus Quest
| lovelyviking wrote:
| How much one can improve a dictatorship working for the
| dictatorship ? Just thinking ...
| kreddor wrote:
| I'm looking forward to the day he does it for Oculus Quest 1. I
| haven't used mine in a year because Facebook.
| baby wrote:
| time to get the Oculus Quest 2 my friend!
| maximedupre wrote:
| I love the spirit, but is there any *successful* precedence?
|
| Sure, everything is now open-sourced, but setting up the kind of
| infrastructure that is necessitated to keep the thing up and
| running seems non-trivial.
| flatiron wrote:
| I don't believe it was open sourced. This is just a firmware
| that gives your root access and doesn't require any Facebook
| integration.
| nicolaslem wrote:
| > allowing for a randomly discovered shrink wrapped headset
| twenty years from now to be able to update to the final software
| version, long after over-the-air update servers have been shut
| down.
|
| This resonates so much with me. Each time I setup a new device
| that requires an Internet connection, I think about how we can
| enjoy booting 30 years old retro computers and how the next
| generation will not be able to do the same because of locked down
| hardware.
| metagame wrote:
| It's pretty likely they will; they'll just have to crack them
| first. Pretty much everyone does it with retro consoles today,
| since CDs are inconvenient and expensive for the core audience
| of that wants to play video games and DRM is always breakable.
| It'll probably be easier though, because it almost assuredly
| won't require you to take out a soldering iron, like you have
| to with most legacy consoles.
| londons_explore wrote:
| As systems get more complex, cracking/emulating them gets
| more effort.
|
| We already see this in old stuff. DOS games run great in
| dosbox, because the IBM PC was pretty simple. Same with the
| gameboy, snes, etc.
|
| When you get to more modern things like Windows 98 games, PS3
| games, xbox360 games... Most of those are much harder to
| emulate/crack/archive. They have more complex copy protection
| schemes, interact more deeply with their OS and hardware, and
| emulating them is generally more effort.
|
| The next gen of stuff will interact with closed source now-
| defunct servers. Re-implementing those servers is very much
| possible... but a massive amount of effort. Effort that won't
| happen for most products ever.
| metagame wrote:
| I think you have a few reasoning errors in your comment:
|
| The PS3 and 360 aren't actually harder to emulate because
| they have more complex copy protection; they're hard to
| emulate because they're very novel systems (hardware-wise)
| and developers had to use all sorts of tricks, which is
| something their successors are not.
|
| Meanwhile, the PS4 is literally just a PC and already has a
| pretty good emulator (if early), because the PS4 has
| desirable exclusives. The author of it only started writing
| it a couple years ago and it's already booting commercial
| games and has a handful playable; way faster than old
| emulator development was! The Xbox One is literally just an
| NT PC and lack of emulation is largely because there's not
| really a point to, yet; it's just a PC and has very few
| exclusives.
|
| The Switch is literally just a phone with a controller and
| had its first emulator booting commercial video games
| within the first two years, because it had desirable
| exclusives.
|
| The Quest is literally just a phone (even moreso, because
| it's literally Android and even their window manager is
| just a layer over Unity). It isn't emulated or cracked
| because it has no really great exclusives and Facebook
| allows as much piracy as you want.
|
| Windows 98 games are actually pretty easy to emulate; very
| little at all doesn't work with QEMU out of the box, and
| that heavy-handed approach probably isn't necessary for the
| consoles of the future; the PS4 has a great emulator that's
| basically just a compatibility layer like WINE is, because
| again, it's literally just a PC.
| amarshall wrote:
| > Xbox One ... lack of emulation is largely because
| there's not really a point to
|
| I thought it was because no had actually cracked the DRM
| yet.
| metagame wrote:
| Both have the same root problem: There's no incentive.
| There used to be reasons to crack consoles, and there
| still is for many of them, and eventually there might be
| an incentive to for the Xbox One, but there's no reason
| for the Xbox One to be right now and there never really
| has been. Pretty much all of the good Xbox exclusives are
| available on PCs as well (albeit some only via UWP, which
| had its copy protection broken a long time ago), and
| almost the entirety of its library is available on either
| the PS4 or PC, both of which are solved problems. There's
| not a reason to bother with it while Microsoft's still
| pushing firmware updates, so there's not as many
| attempts.
|
| It's also worth noting that plenty of emulators only work
| with homebrew titles early-on; a lack of a crack for the
| copy protection wouldn't in itself prevent emulation.
| monocasa wrote:
| There's tons of incentive. There's over 50 million Xbox
| One consoles out there, so there's a giant market for
| people would love to not buy any games for the one time
| cost of ~$100.
| kfprt wrote:
| PS4 has a PS specific graphics API.
| mywittyname wrote:
| This is probably beneficial, as it provides a clean
| interface for emulation writers to target.
|
| Part of the intent on getting developers to use these
| APIs as much as possible is to make forward-porting /
| "legitimate" emulation of games easier.
| kfprt wrote:
| Ideally you could map API calls to Vulkan but it would
| still be a huge amount of work.
| spicybright wrote:
| We need a law to require the removal of DRM after 10 years.
| That's more than fair for how fast hardware and games
| currently move.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I don't think we _need_ a law, we just need businesses to
| stay greedy.
|
| DRM licenses are kind of expensive and it's hard to
| publishers to justify the added cost of DRM after the
| initial release, when they've made 80% of the revenue for
| the game. So they often (though, not always) get patched
| out eventually.
| munk-a wrote:
| When a publisher has made the majority of the expected
| revenue off a property they're pretty unlikely to want to
| donate some more dev time out of the goodness of their
| heart. I think historical trends have also shown that DRM
| is almost always left in place - so I think the empirical
| data is pointing strongly at a lack of any organic
| motivation to de-DRM any products.
|
| Most of the time an anti-DRM patch gets rolled out it's
| either a company/individual that has strong personal
| feelings about DRM (i.e. somebody like Stardock) or else
| it's a patch that the devs wrote way back when to make
| testing in some environment easier that they kept around
| and valid out of the goodness of their hearts. I think in
| almost all cases it boils down to someone who personally
| disagrees with the prevailing business opinion that DRM
| is good and actually has enough political power in the
| company to force their opinion onto the business at
| large.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Depends how the DRM license is written.
|
| It could easily be a perpetual license for a given title.
| Then there is no incentive to remove it.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It _could be_ perpetually licensed. Sure.
|
| But there's a business case to be made for patching out
| DRM very early in the product lifetime. The longer a
| product is protected by DRM, the more likely the DRM is
| to be cracked, and that this crack could be applied to a
| new releases. It doesn't make sense to put a new game
| release at risk just to keep protecting some five year
| old game from piracy.
|
| If you're selling DRM, you want to disincentive
| publishers for using your protection for too long. And if
| the DRM is built in-house, you want it to keep
| functioning for a number of titles to amortize the cost
| of development.
| erickhill wrote:
| This is precisely one of the key reasons I stick with Nintendo
| consoles for gaming. Sure, they sell plenty of connected games
| and online experiences, too, but I purchase all new games as
| physical "cartridges." This way in 20 years my son will be able
| to relive Breath of the Wild and a very large library of other
| Switch classics should he so desire.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| It is refreshing indeed to see a move like this. Too many
| times, companies have just obsoleted products, turned off the
| servers and/or yanked the app (or had it yanked for them by
| $GATEKEEPER) needed for them to function, and left the buyers
| in the lurch. Speaking for myself, it's a huge factor in my
| disillusionment with tech. It was also the reason I've never
| bought a VR headset in the first place, even before Facebook
| wormed its way into Oculus.
|
| Is it too much to ask for vendors to do the right thing?
| 5faulker wrote:
| Carmark is a legend in so many ways.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| This is why I still try so hard to buy physical copies of
| games, and if there is a GOTY Edition, to have the DLC be _on-
| disk_ , as opposed to being a bunch of download vouchers.
|
| I wanna be able to play the freaking game in ten years without
| worrying about whether the game/console's online service is
| still available to do some mandatory authentication or version
| check.
| dewey wrote:
| > This is why I still try so hard to buy physical copies of
| games
|
| Aren't these also subject to disk rot?
| kfprt wrote:
| Disk rot is slower than online service rot. The other day I
| tried FC3 blood dragon and it had an error because they
| shut the servers down. It hasn't even been 10 years.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| It's certainly a possibility, but anecdotally, I have audio
| CDs from the late 80s that still play.
|
| Meanwhile, I have games I played 3-4 years ago on the PS3
| that are severely hampered because the online components no
| longer work--the servers were either shut down, or in one
| case the company completely went under.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Unfortunately, a lot of new releases need a 0-day patch to be
| playable. It's basically an anti-piracy/anti-early release
| measure.
|
| So if you really want to preserve a game on disk, you pretty
| much have to pick up another copy stamped at a later date to
| include all of the patches.
| abricot wrote:
| GOTY editions rarely need 0-day patches.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Right, that would be the "copy stamped at a later date
| which includes all the patches" version I was mentioning
| that you'd want to pick up if you own a new release copy.
| no_time wrote:
| Calling it anti piracy is a bit of a stretch. It's just
| that companies realized that the printing of the physical
| media is no longer the point of no return from a
| development standpoint.
| ralmidani wrote:
| For non-Nintendo Switch games, I buy from GOG whenever
| possible. It does require different taste in games (I grew
| up on Quest for Glory, Space Quest, and King's Quest). You
| get a tried-and-true game, DRM-free, usually for dirt
| cheap, and it probably doesn't require an RTX video card.
| It's not for everyone, but it's worked great for me.
| fossuser wrote:
| This is part of the reason I'm excited about Urbit - it's the
| only project I've seen that has a hope of resolving this.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| I'm not sure if there's already a term for this, but the "lack
| of permanency" is going to be an absolutely massive problem for
| future genealogists.
|
| Here's an example of how genealogy research looks in the modern
| day:
|
| * Newspapers (Headlines, Obits, Engagement/Marriage
| announcements)
|
| * Handwritten letters
|
| * Census records
|
| * Physical photographs
|
| * [Depending on century, location, and religious denomination]
| Baptism records
|
| * Family Bibles
|
| * Military enlistment paperwork [assuming that it wasn't
| destroyed in a fire.]
|
| * White & Yellow pages
|
| Much of this physical information has been digitized, but for
| information that was _birthed_ digitally is precariously
| susceptible to complete loss once a website goes offline, or a
| hard drive fails, or any other number of issues that happens to
| things over the centuries. War, the elements, material
| shortages, etc.
|
| There's other sources, of course. A big one is first-hand
| accounts of the past, but even such verbal interviews should be
| conducted with objects or photos to help jog the interviewees
| memories of the event.
|
| The majority of how _personal_ memories are being stored are on
| phones, in hard drives, and other various media that are
| susceptible to bit rot, proprietary encryption methods,
| technology or social media platforms that have _already_ gone
| defunct. This is a trend which is quickly increasing too. If
| some serious solutions aren 't proposed and adopted very soon,
| it seems highly likely that there's basically just going to be
| a giant void from the late 90's to at least the 2030's.
|
| Heck, just think about how 10 to 20 years ago, the most common
| way to get a PC game was on CD. Now it would be an
| inconvenience because very few people even have a headphone
| jack, let alone a CD/DVD drive.
| samstave wrote:
| Remember setting IRQ with dip switches on your 300 baud
| modem....
|
| Computers are becoming (already are) 'black-boxes' -- non
| serviceable by the mainstream.... Thank Tim Apple
| maximedupre wrote:
| Do you mean locked-down software?
|
| Do you have examples of hardware that the next generation might
| not be able to boot 30 years later?
|
| I'm curious and ignorant :D
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Lots and lots of IoT requires internet access and servers to
| stay up and running for even initialising a device after a
| reset. Some require these servers to control the device once
| it's as up. I already own a smartwatch that cannot be enabled
| because the application that used to initialise it has
| patched out support for that model.
| nicolaslem wrote:
| I was thinking about the Xbox One. Someone opening a shrink
| wrapped version in 30 years will have a useless brick because
| it needs to connect to Microsoft servers for the initial
| setup. I am not exactly sure what it does during this first
| exchange and how much of it is hardware/software but I'm
| pretty sure none of it is done in the final user's best
| interest.
| rchaud wrote:
| The same is true of some of the best work being done on the
| web, such as the NYTimes interactive infographics.
|
| Because they are so JS-heavy, and reliant on CI/CD pipelines
| for deployment, on custom CMSes, there is no way to archive
| them in the way that static pages containing just text and
| images can be archived on the Wayback Machine. Heck, even Flash
| projects from 15 years ago still run fine when compiled on
| Ruffle or some other Flash player.
| dzuc wrote:
| https://conifer.rhizome.org/ can do it
| Lochleg wrote:
| I have to point out that Ruffle falls shorts on the Flash
| games that used certain animation or ActionScript features.
| It's going to be a challenge to fully recreate Flash in a
| supposedly secure manner. I am also wondering if Flash was
| always bound to be resurrected and if the company wanted to
| let it die a natural death or just put it out to pasture.
| kingcharles wrote:
| I just got out of jail after 8 years. Went through my
| del.ici.ous bookmarks. 99% of the sites either dead or can no
| longer be viewed properly.
| pharmakom wrote:
| I would definitely read a blog (or just follow up comments)
| about a technology orientated person jumping forward almost
| a decade in time and what they find really different.
|
| Are you a professional developer? Has framework churn been
| an issue?
| kingcharles wrote:
| Yes, been a web developer since 1994. Framework churn is
| THE WORST. Ugh. Really, nothing in terms of outside
| appearance has changed. The web looks pretty much
| identical to when I was locked up in 2013. There are a
| lot more ads, and way more video ads. The Web uses up
| waaaay more RAM and CPU.
|
| Development, though, has been a bitch since I got out a
| couple of months ago. I want to use the latest
| frameworks, but I'm starting from zero again. None of the
| old frameworks even exist. I feel like I'm 5 years old
| again.
|
| The code I've written in the last few weeks has all been
| very old fashioned! I just needed to get the job done.
|
| I had zero access to the Internet in all that time. The
| biggest thing I found was TikTok. I fucking love TikTok.
| From the inside we would see the occasional video on the
| news, but it just looked like it was to make videos of
| people dancing, but it's actually fucking awesome for
| those of us with "neurodiversity".
|
| One last thing - out of the, like, 1000 online account I
| had... only 2 were accessible once I got out. Wikipedia
| and eSnipe. Can't get into anything else. Don't have
| ready access to the email address used on a lot of them.
| The others have an email address on a domain I own, but I
| can't change the nameservers because I can't get into the
| account, but my friend paid the domain fees while I was
| locked up, so I still "own" the domain. I can't get
| anything back as the court owns all the identity
| documents that I have and won't let me have them. In
| fact, when I asked a couple of weeks ago they said they
| have no idea where they put them all.
|
| Oh, and everything is SSL now. That wasn't a thing in
| 2013.
|
| Any other questions, fire away. It's a fascinating topic.
| I do feel like I teleported 8 years into the future.
| what_is_orcas wrote:
| I find it really interesting that you love TikTok.
|
| > it's actually fucking awesome for those of us with
| "neurodiversity".
|
| Can you expand upon that a bit?
|
| How engaged were you with social media before your
| sentence, and has that (or will that) change now that
| you've had some space from it?
|
| > we would see the occasional video on the news
|
| How does the picture that the media paints of the
| internet & social media compare to your observations now
| that you're able to use it hands-on?
| kingcharles wrote:
| I was really suprised about TikTok. I did a lot of social
| media marketing for nonprofits before I was locked up, so
| I was very into social media.
|
| The thing with TikTok is that there are tons of videos
| helping, supporting and bringing awareness to issues such
| as ADHD, OCD, Tourettes, differing sexualities, gender
| identity etc, that are really refreshing and have really
| helped me to understand myself and my neuro-problems that
| caused me to get locked up. No other social network has
| that type of content.
|
| Facebook was huge in 2013 and still relevant. Now I
| barely use it at all. I think Facebook has some big
| problems. I don't want to say it will go the way of
| MySpace as Facebook has been much better at adapting than
| MySpace was, and Facebook has some way smarter people and
| more money. It might even come back into trend again in
| the future if their "Meta" projects take flight.
|
| The media only really shows the goofiest or cutest videos
| from social media. Nothing of any real worth. So my view
| of TikTok was very fucked up. TikTok is different for
| every person that uses it since your For You page is
| based around how you interact with the videos it gives
| you. I get zero people dancing on my page, and a lot of
| really smart content.
|
| Also, for the first five years I didn't have any access
| to the news, for security reasons, so I was very cut off.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Also, for the first five years I didn 't have any
| access to the news, for security reasons, so I was very
| cut off._
|
| What did they get you for?
| dunnevens wrote:
| Did you notice the reduction of information density on
| web pages? I think that would be the biggest immediate
| difference. Old Reddit vs. new Reddit as one prominent
| example. The dominance of responsive designs now, as
| compared to the old separation between main site and
| mobile site, as another example. I guess hamburger menus
| weren't a big thing in 2013? I honestly can't remember.
| Maybe time to hit the Internet Archive and look at pages
| from 2013.
|
| It's interesting thinking of the changes. I guess many of
| the current trends were well underway by 2013 so the
| current state would be different but not too different to
| you. At any rate, I'm glad you're out and hope you can
| sort the ID mess.
| kingcharles wrote:
| I actually like New Reddit, except for the advertising.
|
| Design is much more responsive now, I'll give it that.
| Lots and lots of huge photographic headers. Hamburger
| menus? I'm guessing that is the name for the 3-line icon?
| They were pretty new in 2013 on mobile sites on my iPhone
| 5. And the 3-dot thing for "extra" options ... I don't
| remember that existing back then.
|
| There is a reduction in information density.. some of it
| is warranted by an increase in white space which is good.
| A lot of sites now have super-intrusive advertising
| posted all the way through the copy, which wasn't common
| in 2013.
|
| The sheer amount of data I burn through just browsing the
| Web.. that's a huge change. Even my mobile plan with
| 100GB of data gets burned in no time just browsing
| around. Sites are so, so heavy now. I saw that post
| yesterday about Discord having an enormous favicon file
| and so I can see that people just gave up trying to trim
| their code. I look at some HTML source now and I lose my
| shit because it is literally megabytes of bullshit.
| People were more careful with their code in my time.
|
| One weird thing is that my brain doesn't know it is 2021
| yet. I saw a show the other day where a woman said her
| son was born in 2011 and I did the maths and my brain
| said her son was two years old. This happens to me
| constantly. It's like my brain stopped counting time as
| soon as I entered the jail.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| > I can't get anything back as the court owns all the
| identity documents that I have and won't let me have
| them. In fact, when I asked a couple of weeks ago they
| said they have no idea where they put them all.
|
| This is perhaps not what you were expecting to be asked
| about, but I'm curious nonetheless. So when you reported
| to prison you had to hand in your passport, driver's
| license etc? And now when you were released they claimed
| that they have misplaced them? How do you get new
| documents, family members vouching for you or something
| like that?
| kingcharles wrote:
| Everything except my passport was taken either from my
| person or from my house. My passport had to be handed
| over in order to get out of jail. Actually my passport
| was handed over to the prosecutor years before I was
| released. The judge wanted the prosecutor to have it
| because it normally is held by the court, but they had
| sold R. Kelly's passport when they had it. I ended up
| spending three extra weeks in custody because the
| passport needed to go to the jail and the prosecutor's
| office refused to walk it the 100ft from their office to
| the jail and made my family come and get it and walk it
| over themselves.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| This is all sorts of messed up. Sorry you've had to deal
| with this.
| maximedupre wrote:
| Yeah that would be facinating
| kingcharles wrote:
| Ask away.
| sorry_outta_gas wrote:
| At least the artifacts can be saved and distributed, things
| like iOS apps have a short shelf-live, hell it only takes a
| year or two before they can't even be compiled again without
| modification
| causi wrote:
| Damn I miss being able to drop a URL into HTTRACK and then
| just having a whole website locally archived with everything
| working.
| Asmod4n wrote:
| Just wait for the first big JS Framework which uses the
| canvas for everything.
| Spivak wrote:
| That kind of thing makes indexing a nightmare but it's not
| any more difficult to archive than .exe or .swf files. Sure
| you need a "player" but that's true of PDF and OOXML and
| people don't really complain about those.
| Asmod4n wrote:
| In a PDF or normal program there are clear semantics what
| is text and what is something else. On a canvas,
| everything is just made up of pixels. You'd need OCR
| Software to detect what is what and they won't ever be
| 100% correct unless you use only text and fonts which are
| made to be recognized by OCR Software.
| z3t4 wrote:
| Ive implemented a text editor with screen reader support
| using the html canvas element. Every graphics interface is
| just a canvas, what is sent to the screen is just data. The
| nice thing with html is that the data is human readable.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| This goes against the idea that software is "art" in the
| sense that most works of art are created to physically endure
| over time.
| brundolf wrote:
| Huh? JS can be cached and preserved just like anything else.
| Even the (presumably JSON or CSV) data could be cached,
| though I don't know if the Wayback Machine follows API
| endpoints by default
| spicybright wrote:
| Browsers evolve and break older pages.
|
| JS that requires requests as you interact with it will need
| an implementation of the server it uses (the subset and
| data of it's endpoints)
|
| How do you preserve that?
| [deleted]
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| If it's view-only, request-response replaying could be a
| viable option. Browser software can be emulated.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| I've had some success in the past using a WARC proxy - it
| will basically record everything that traverses the
| browser and can "play it back" on demand. So while it
| won't automatically download everything on a site the
| idea is that whatever you visit with and interact with in
| a session can be "played back" in the future at some
| point.
| [deleted]
| programmarchy wrote:
| Maybe a good example is the original Nintendo (NES)
| emulators. New gaming consoles can't play those old
| cartridges, but we have a virtual layer that can. The
| same holds true for browsers, OSs, etc. It does create a
| pretty long chain of dependencies, though.
| spicybright wrote:
| Ignoring the network point I made above, it'll be a
| monumental effort to get there.
|
| Best we can hope for is virtual machines, and archive
| files targeting a specific browser version on specific
| virtual machines.
| tinco wrote:
| Browsers don't usually break older pages. The only time
| this happens when you rely on unstandardized features. At
| least, I have not noticed any page breaking in the past
| 15 years except for the ones I built using unstandardized
| API's.
| asddubs wrote:
| -https sites embedding http images
|
| -SameSite:none cookies (with bonus breakage that makes it
| impossible to use accross older and newer browsers
| simultaneously without user agent sniffing)
|
| -the planned chrome alert/prompt changes already
| mentioned below
|
| browsers have been getting a lot more comfortable with
| the idea of breaking backwards compatibility as of late.
| mappu wrote:
| The changing behaviour of browser autocomplete and the
| new disregard for autocomplete="off" really harmed
| multiple large CRM / ERP-style sites i worked on, as
| passwords would get "helpfully" autofilled into
| completely wrong fields, causing data loss.
|
| I actually still don't think there's a proper sanctioned
| solution to this, it seems to be cat-and-moused by web
| developers and browser developers every year or two.
| spicybright wrote:
| > except for the ones I built using unstandardized API's.
|
| Think you proved my point.
| [deleted]
| Macha wrote:
| The largest browser maker no longer believes so:
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/05/google_chrome_ifra
| me/
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/estark37/status/14226948565440
| 593...
| tshaddox wrote:
| How is that any different than wanting to archive a CGI
| website from the 90s with a URL structure like
| http://example.com/?query=foo? Unless there's an index
| page with links to all possible query values, or you can
| work out how to manually iterate all possible query
| values, there's not much you can do. This doesn't seem to
| have anything to do with JavaScript data visualizations
| specifically.
| titusjohnson wrote:
| That URL structure is trivial for a crawler to walk and
| index. I'm not sure why you'd assume that there wouldn't
| be an index page, such a site would have all desired
| links in the DOM, the crawler just sniffs those out and
| visits in sequence. There's no need to think that the
| links would somehow be 'hidden' from the user and have to
| be randomly enumerated...
|
| Not only that, but a site of that era probably also has a
| sitemap.xml file which would enumerate all available
| public endpoints, specifically to make it easier for
| crawlers to index everything.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > I'm not sure why you'd assume that there wouldn't be an
| index page
|
| I'm not assuming either way. I'm just pointing out that
| either type of web site could choose to have an index
| page or choose not to have an index page.
| kbenson wrote:
| If it's dynamically updating based on a database of
| information that's not shipped to the app in it's entirety,
| you either have to hope you've somehow seen and preserved
| all the date from exploring the app, or accept that some
| data may be lost.
|
| > presumably JSON or CSV
|
| That's presuming a lot. Even if it's accurate for most/all
| NYTimes infographics today, it doesn't mean it's accurate
| tomorrow, and it isn't accurate today for a lot of other
| sites.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > If it's dynamically updating based on a database of
| information that's not shipped to the app in it's
| entirety, you either have to hope you've somehow seen and
| preserved all the date from exploring the app, or accept
| that some data may be lost.
|
| Well, yeah, that's true of all normal websites too.
| That's precisely what web crawlers are for. If there's no
| index page that links to all pages, or some way of
| iterating through all the pages, you wouldn't be able to
| exhaustively archive any web site.
| kbenson wrote:
| > Well, yeah, that's true of all normal websites too.
|
| Not exactly. While you may miss data that isn't requested
| specifically, you can crawl the site and get most/all
| that is accessible through links at least. Stuff only
| available through search results won't show, but if it's
| discoverable through browsing, you can get it.
|
| The same can't necessarily be said for custom interfaces
| that are JS heavy, possibly with non-link click actions,
| custom sliders, a graphical representation of a map that
| expects a click on a region, etc. An old style page that
| lists all the regions (like states, or counties in a
| state), or even that has a dropdown in a form? Those are
| much easier to crawl and archive.
| brundolf wrote:
| Sure, that's fair if they don't have a single call that
| fetches the whole dataset. Though I'd think an article
| would often be covering a specific, bounded dataset to
| make its point, and wouldn't need to query a table of
| indeterminate length
| kbenson wrote:
| We'd hope. Sometimes weird choices are made, or even not-
| so-weird choices (like if some site in some other country
| lifts the whole thing and presents it as their own) that
| cause sites to choose to be a bit harder to scrape than
| you would assume.
| superkuh wrote:
| It's going to be like java is now. You have to find the
| exact right date for the right runtime environment to get
| your JS to execute properly. And that is quite a task.
| Complex toolkit JS is generally not forwards compatible for
| more than a couple years.
| sfink wrote:
| Uh... name one toolkit or platform or library that became
| incompatible with the JS engines after a couple of years?
| JS inherits the Web property of extreme backwards-
| compatibility. Breakages do happen, but they're
| extraordinarily rare.
|
| Unless you mean something different by compatibility?
| Sure, you won't be able to mix wildly different versions
| of libraries because _their_ APIs change. But I wouldn 't
| call that a "runtime environment".
| brundolf wrote:
| That's... not remotely true. A built JS bundle consists
| of least-common-denominator JS that in theory should
| continue to run ad infinitum. "Don't break the web" is a
| mantra among browser devs.
|
| _Rebuilding the bundle from scratch_ might be more
| complicated. But you don 't need to do that to preserve
| it.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| My guess is that it only requests data that it can
| statically parse (e.g. HTML attributes and tags) and
| archives that. Anything more complex would require using an
| actual browser (either via Webdriver, a custom build, or a
| pile of hacks that implement something identical to one);
| and would have problems with adversarial content and so on.
|
| I say this because I know that Wayback Machine didn't
| archive multi-load Flash files. That would require parsing
| SWFs and executing their embedded Action/ABC tags, which
| requires writing something equivalent to Flash Player. SPAs
| aren't much different in terms of archivability as all-
| Flash websites were.
| lgas wrote:
| I don't see how JS, CI/CD, or CMSes impact archivability, but
| something like dependence on API availability instantly ruins
| archivability.
| afavour wrote:
| I don't know why CI or a custom CMS would be the problem
| here, the output is still static HTML. IMO the problem
| compared to years ago is that the client side dependency
| trees are so much more complex, involving third party domains
| and such. But dependencies are still a problem even in Flash:
| it can load external JSON data for example, and it's a _lot_
| more difficult to sniff all that out than it is with JS.
|
| Don't get me wrong, the web is still miserable in this
| regard. But IMO it's the mobile apps that are going to be a
| giant hole in history: we'll just have some screenshots to
| look back on.
| bbarnett wrote:
| It isn't static html, it is an ever changing tapestry of js
| fetching this and that, on demand loaded content, and so
| on. To archive, one need to not only snag the page, and
| loaf time js, but also js triggered by user actions.
|
| This means you need to load the whole page, then hit js
| triggered by page load, etc, then save output to html.
|
| Because, some of those js libs won't work in future
| browsers, others won't work if they can't phone home, or
| 100 other things.
|
| Archive.org is about 100 years from now too, and js content
| is a PITA in that respect.
| javajosh wrote:
| Surely someone is archiving apks, just for the fun of it? I
| can imagine that someday we'd have a webarchive that embeds
| a simulation of the device where you can run that apk in
| your browser. Of course, if it's just an application shell
| dependent on a running backend, then yes it's not really an
| application so much as an "application shell" at this
| point, and you ALSO need to be able to move around the data
| corpus to systematically capture all reachable application
| state. This is a hard problem in general, but pretty easy I
| think when applied to specific cases.
| pharmakom wrote:
| This is why piracy is so important.
| maximedupre wrote:
| Haha well that just blew my mind xD
|
| I personally don't really care about achieving anything.
| Why is this such a big thing? Why would we want to
| achieve all the APKs? There are too many of them lol
| History? Memories? Who cares, we're all going to die lol
| And with the qty of APKs, only 0.00000001% of them will
| ever be dug out of the archives.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| It's definitely feasible to store all APKs. After all,
| Google does just that. It probably wouldn't even be a
| significant chunk of what the Internet Archive is
| currently capable of storing.
| sosborn wrote:
| > Why would we want to archive all the APKs?
|
| It is hard to know what APKs (or anything really) will be
| interesting to people 30 years out. Archiving all of them
| gives our future selves a chance at finding what they
| want to see.
|
| Here is an example pulled from a discussion I once had.
| Someone was looking for a really obscure feature phone
| game from the late 90's. I had played the original game
| on original hardware and commented about how bad that
| game was and that they weren't missing anything by not
| finding it. Their reply was essentially "I don't care if
| the game is any good, I really just want to experience
| what was like," which made sense to me after I heard it.
|
| Anyway, the game was so bad at the time it was released
| that I doubt anyone felt like it would be worth
| revisiting in the future. And yet, 25-ish years later,
| they would be wrong.
| genewitch wrote:
| Was it E.T.?
| dunnevens wrote:
| I would imagine the Internet Archive is already storing
| them. APKMirror is fairly comprehensive. Wouldn't take
| much for the Archive to mirror them.
|
| Sometimes, I wonder what the Archive stores in their non-
| public repositories. Just waiting for the day when it's
| safe to show the world.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > Because they are so JS-heavy, and reliant on CI/CD
| pipelines for deployment, on custom CMSes, there is no way to
| archive them in the way that static pages containing just
| text and images can be archived on the Wayback Machine.
|
| Welcome to the world of digital archiving. It's an
| _enormously_ complicated space, and even for just my own
| personal projects and content, I 've spent a lot of time
| thinking about how to ensure things are future proof and can
| be archived easily.
|
| As a simple example, building my personal website atop
| Markdown ensures that, even if the formatting can't be
| preserved, the core content will be since it's simple ASCII
| (yes, that's ignoring issues of long-term digital storage and
| access and so forth, but at least it's not also a bunch of
| binary blobs or database formats or whatnot).
|
| Equally alarming is that fact that so much of our digital
| lives _aren 't even in our control_. A historian used to be
| able to rely on family archives, public libraries, etc, to
| understand our past. A hundred years from now they'll be
| looking back and hoping someone somewhere preserved the
| contents of an S3 bucket before Amazon decided to delete it
| on a whim...
| tialaramex wrote:
| Some people actually use those "takeout" features to
| collect archive data. So then you do get the archive, it's
| like having somebody's cuttings from a local newspaper
| rather than a complete set of local papers on microfiche.
|
| One reason I take these is that I have RAM and I have grep
| and apparently either the people who had the data don't
| have RAM or they don't have grep, and so while I can ask my
| local Facebook archive "Er, didn't I write something about
| anti-freeze?" and get an answer in seconds, Facebook itself
| will try to suggest I might want pages about anti-freeze, a
| group that cares about anti-freeze, a sponsored advert for
| anti-freeze ... and not the thing I wrote.
| romwell wrote:
| Facebook's search and suggestion engine is hilariously
| broken.
|
| Say, I am commenting in a thread trying to respond to
| John Smith. That's the only person whose name starts with
| a J.
|
| If I start typing @J..., the suggestions would be for
| literally anyone else _but_ John Smith in the thread.
|
| On their mobile website (which lags behind the app),
| typing @John Smith will sometimes suggest a number of
| John Smiths, none of them being the one _in the thread I
| am writing in_.
|
| Same with friends. If I want to tag a friend of mine and
| start typing their name, I usually get suggestions for
| random people first (neither from my friend list or the
| comment thread).
|
| Why _on Earth_ is the list not prioritized by (friends in
| thread) / (everyone else in thread) / (friends) /
| (everyone else) is absolutely beyond me.
| zardo wrote:
| Once you do manage to tag @JohnSmith, he will get a
| notification that he has been tagged in the thread. One
| notification per thread, regardless of the number of
| individual posts he was tagged in.
|
| The link on the notification will take him to the top of
| the thread.
|
| Depending on the thread's popularity, John could have a
| very difficult time finding the posts he's tagged in.
| hinkley wrote:
| One aspect of this is to look at the ways that history is
| being rewritten now from original materials. All of the
| -isms of the 1900's painted a picture of straight, white
| (male) Captains of Industry paving a way to the future, and
| in revisiting the source materials we are discovering that
| this image paved over a lot of people that were doing a lot
| of heavy lifting.
|
| History is full of assistants, spinsters and confirmed
| bachelors whose stories are being re-told now from diaries
| and correspondence letters that have been family heirlooms
| for generations. You can't trust the contemporary reports
| as accurate, because they have a different agenda than we
| do 20, 40, 100 years in the future. We only knew of Marie
| Curie within her own lifetime, less because her work was so
| profound, but because she had a husband _in her own field_
| who conspired with her to subvert a system that didn 't
| want to give her standing. A partner outside your field
| can't do much for you, and a more selfish collaborator
| wouldn't.
|
| Who knows what polite fictions are being told about people
| now that will be reframed by our grandchildren, assuming
| that scholars can find any of it. If I had to guess it will
| be neurodiversity. Probably/hopefully doing away with the
| Tortured Genius trope.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| TBH, IMO this is all a non sequitur
|
| My point is that the nature of digital technologies is
| such that information is far more ephemeral and closed
| off than it's ever been, not just for historians but for
| we, the people who are creating that information. We
| produce a _lot more information_ , but control and long-
| term preservation is infinitely harder.
|
| Your observations regarding the challenge of historians
| is absolutely true. But the effects of technology are
| entirely orthogonal to that problem.
|
| After all, even if we had perfect digital preservation,
| what you say is still true, if only because subjugated
| groups are less represented in the digital discourse for
| many reasons, including socioeconomics, direct
| censorship/interference from power groups, etc.
| fragmede wrote:
| Fwiw, the Internet Archive is very much trying to avoid the
| random S3 bucket deletion problem, and donations to them
| are tax deductible.
|
| The issues of long-term digital storage are such that - use
| whatever you want for your own blog - but (imo) ASCII isn't
| going to save you any more than binary blobs are, 300 years
| into the future after we're all long gone and buried. We're
| already in a world where UTF-8 is taking over in many
| places. (Many places but not all. Fun fact, you can't send
| Zelle to someone with an emoji in their local contact name
| with some banks.)
|
| If I (today) said I had a word document and needed "an old
| version of Microsoft Word", I'm sure most people would know
| what I mean, and that I'd find someone with a Windows XP
| machine and a copy of Office 97'. Meanwhile, there are tons
| of people who are just going to stare at you blankly if you
| tell them about EBCDIC, never mind help you find a decoder.
| nitrogen wrote:
| 7-bit ASCII is a subset of UTF-8, so ASCII is fine in a
| UTF-8 world.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > If I (today) said I had a word document and needed "an
| old version of Microsoft Word", I'm sure most people
| would know what I mean, and that I'd find someone with a
| Windows XP machine and a copy of Office 97'. Meanwhile,
| there are tons of people who are just going to stare at
| you blankly if you tell them about EBCDIC, never mind
| help you find a decoder.
|
| Funny, I suspect the precise reverse is true.
|
| EBCDIC is a well-documented encoding. Worst case, find
| you a reference book and you can figure out how to deal
| with it, because that knowledge is open and available.
|
| The same is true of ASCII. If you can understand binary
| encodings with 8-bit groupings--a fairly fundamental
| concept in digital computing--you can probably find your
| way to an ASCII table in a library somewhere.
|
| But good luck finding a working Windows XP machine with
| Office '97 fifty or one hundred years from now, let alone
| a spec for the format.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > Welcome to the world of digital archiving. It's an
| enormously complicated space, and even for just my own
| personal projects and content, I've spent a lot of time
| thinking about how to ensure things are future proof and
| can be archived easily.
|
| For web content, in my eyes it's a pretty cut and dry
| example - if the authors of any piece of content don't want
| it to be archived and aren't forthcoming in making this
| archival a viable pursuit, then the content simply should
| not be archived. Alternatively, just get a static PDF of it
| for future reference instead of fighting an uphill battle
| against webpages and even software that's user hostile.
|
| For your own content, however, i think that you're on the
| right track. Use simple file formats, have tested backups
| and ideally rely on stable, boring software that's also
| slow to evolve and change.
| romwell wrote:
| >As a simple example, building my personal website atop
| Markdown ensures that, even if the formatting can't be
| preserved
|
| That's why I built my personal ADHD blog[1] on
| TiddlyWiki[2].
|
| It's a self-contained HTML page that has _everything_.
|
| I could have even embedded the images.
|
| You can archive it with *File -> Save As...* (single-file
| .mht works).
|
| [1] https://romankogan.net/adhd
|
| [2] https://tiddlywiki.com
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| I still don't get why Firefox doesn't support
| MHT(ML)(=EML), while Thunderbird does, considering how
| that's pretty much the best digital document format we
| have...
| robert_tweed wrote:
| I'm going to give this a try later. One small fly in the ointment
| is that if like me you do not have and do not want to ever have a
| Facebook account, it will not be possible to load this onto the
| device after 2022.
|
| This is because loading the ADB requires putting the device in
| developer mode, which in turn requires an internet connection and
| an active login to your Oculus developer account. Oculus
| developer accounts have been deprecated and will stop working in
| 2023, after which time a Facebook account is required.
| flatiron wrote:
| You sure?
|
| "In part, the unlocking is an attempt to guarantee that Go
| hardware will continue to be fully functional well into the
| future, allowing for "a randomly discovered shrink wrapped
| headset twenty years from now [to] be able to update to the
| final software version, long after over-the-air update servers
| have been shut down," Carmack wrote."
| buildbot wrote:
| This is tangential, but I really wish that their would be
| legislation, valid retroactively, to enable old unsupported
| devices to still be utilized. I think this goes somewhat beyond
| right to repair?
|
| Take for example digital backs for medium format cameras - these
| things are built in low numbers, with high end FPGAs and camera
| sensors, with JTAG interfaces ready to go and everything - but
| then forgotten about a few years later. Why not enforce the
| creation of some document on how one would build their own OS for
| it? Or how the bus from the sensor ADCs works? This all existed
| at one point internally, but now is lost, and most of this backs
| will slowly die and go to waste, even though they could easily be
| repurposed or repaired.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > This is tangential, but I really wish that their would be
| legislation, valid retroactively, to enable old unsupported
| devices to still be utilized.
|
| Not at all. This is precisely on point, and directly intersects
| with the Right to Repair as well. It's about damn time we, as a
| society, put a stop to black box devices over which we have no
| ability to inspect, repair, or repurpose after the vendor
| decides to end support.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Could not agree more.
|
| At the bare _minimum_ a vendor should not be allowed to sell
| a device that has digital locks if the user is not also given
| a copy of the keys.
|
| You can lock the device, but if I don't get a key at time of
| purchase, then I don't own the damn thing.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I'm trying to think of a situation where this is
| objectively bad, and I having trouble thinking of areas
| where this is objectively bad. The best I came up with is
| purchasing an elevator, which has a key for firemen. I
| wouldn't really want to just give everybody a copy of that
| key. But on the other hand, you can buy that key on Amazon
| for $5. It would maybe help people think about security a
| bit more if they bought a TSA-approved lock and it came
| with a TSA key with a little warning that read "Note: this
| key opens any TSA-approved locks, please only open your own
| baggage."
|
| One possibility is around DNS. A public/private keypair is
| basically a lock and a key. If you can't put ANY public
| keys on my device without giving me the private key, HTTPS
| is going to be problematic. Software updates become a
| little scarier as well, since a man-in-the-middle attack
| becomes MUCH easier to pull off. But perhaps the answer
| there is, like DNS on a desktop computer, to simply allow
| the user to edit those local keys. As long as there's a
| "Yes, I am also cool with installing unsigned software
| updates," then I don't see a problem.
| samueldr wrote:
| Thinking about situations [...] > where this is
| objectively bad
|
| Thinking here about a smartphone. Note that I'm
| explaining the current state of things, I am *not*
| excusing the state of things.
|
| Directly for end-users, generally no real scenario where
| it's bad as long as they can enroll their own keys in a
| safe fashion preventing evil-maid type attacks.
|
| Tangentially for end-users, locked devices are easier to
| make worthless for thieves. FRP on Android, or whatever
| Apple does, when it's locked to a user account even when
| reset. This is one thing that would become harder to
| implement when the root of trust can be manipulated on
| the device.
|
| Then there's supply chain integrity for OEMs. This is the
| reason some android vendors only allow unlocking when
| attached to an online account after a delay (e.g.
| xiaomi). Some unscrupulous vendors would open the box,
| replace the system image with a malware-ridden system
| image, and sell those to end-users.
|
| Finally, there's _somewhat_ a case for DRM and similar
| uses. The current implementations are built on the
| current "security" model, where it's security for the
| businesses first, then security for end-users last.
|
| Still, I agree wholeheartedly that users should be in
| control of the root of trust, in a way that does not
| reduce their abilities to use their owned devices. Add to
| that that standards-based boot should be used. All the
| time. All devices.
| sneak wrote:
| The reason Apple doesn't do this is because users will
| get deceived into providing those keys to malicious
| entities which will compromise their devices and
| everything on them in exchange for the promise of free
| games, or free in-game currency, or whatever.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > I wouldn't really want to just give everybody a copy of
| that key.
|
| Why would you give the key to everybody? Just give it to
| the owner... That's what I want. I shouldn't need to hack
| my own smartphone or have to solder a board to my Xbox to
| run my own code on it.
| sbarre wrote:
| I wonder as we (slowly) march towards "greener" laws and more
| climate-conscious ways, if some of this will tie into that?
|
| I feel like you could get good traction on right-to-repair if
| it was framed around waste reduction and a cleaner future.
|
| Which means we might not get there for a generation still,
| but these things feel related to me.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| They're _absolutely_ related. In fact, a lot of discussions
| around the Right to Repair specifically center on the issue
| of e-waste. For example, you 'll find that all over
| Framework's website. From https://frame.work/ca/en/about :
|
| > Consumer electronics is broken. We've all had the
| experience of a busted screen, button, or connector that
| can't be fixed, battery life degrading without a path for
| replacement, or being unable to add more storage when full.
| Individually, this is irritating and requires us to make
| unnecessary and expensive purchases of new products to get
| around what should be easy problems to solve. Globally
| though, it's much worse. We create over fifty million tons
| of e-waste each year. That's 6 kg or 13 lb per person on
| earth per year, made up of our former devices. We need to
| improve recyclability, but the biggest impact we can make
| is generating less waste to begin with by making our
| products last longer.
|
| Certainly, for myself, the right to repair is very much
| about ending the cycle of disposable products so we can
| create a more sustainable future.
| gibbonsrcool wrote:
| What if we required lifetime warranties for everything? By
| lifetime I mean human lifetime, not lifetime if the device. It
| sounds crazy when thinking how it'd work out in practice,
| especially with electronics, but we need drastic action like
| this to respond to climate change.
| jjk166 wrote:
| I don't want a warranty. I want my relationship with the
| company to end as soon as our transaction is complete. If
| something is worth repairing, I want to be able to pay
| whoever I want a reasonable price to repair it, regardless of
| what condition its in or how it got like that. I don't want a
| company dictating how I utilize and maintain my property
| potentially decades after I purchase it, and I don't want to
| pay an absurdly high amount for something I'm going to
| replace in a few years just because somebody may want to
| utilize it for far longer.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| This would completely close markets to new entrants.
|
| As an inventor I can't financially hope to support a device
| for a human lifetime and break even, much less profit.
|
| Right to repair and allowing these things to be legally
| opened and hacked by the end user is the right way, not
| burdening every manufacturer with unrealistic support laws.
|
| For an example, look at military equipment costs. 20 year
| support is often built into those to give you an idea of the
| cost of this. Spoiler: things will cost 10-20x what you think
| they will for a business to hope to profit.
| rob74 wrote:
| Of course for military equipment there are also other cost
| drivers - more demanding specs, less units produced to
| spread the development cost etc. etc.
| samstave wrote:
| When I was at Lockheed, they would buy $2,000 panasonic
| 'toughbook' laptops, which were then sold to the military
| for $20,000 - not including the software licenses for our
| RFID product.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| This is true, but you may find that if you had to support
| something (and keep it relevant) across 20 years those
| specs and requirements may look much the same whether
| they are military or civilian.
|
| For example, the amount of bending of the case of a
| device has to be DRASTICALLY less to allow effectively
| sealing contaminants out for 20 years vice 2, as well as
| the seals themselves being an order of magnitude better
| if there is no servicing involved. For most military
| equipment we have all of those AND regular servicing,
| something that consumers would absolutely revolt against
| nowadays.
|
| One other thing people fail to realize on the electronics
| front: many of the chips in these older systems are
| getting very difficult to come by. About 10 years ago I
| was involved in repairing F/A-18 avionics, and one
| specific chip in that system was extraordinarily
| important. It was a radiation hardened 80286 CPU, and had
| a single production run for the entire budgeted lifecycle
| of the systems it was in. Unfortunately a design flaw in
| the power delivery systems meant that the CPUs were being
| destroyed at a rate roughly 4x as fast as expected and
| they had to figure out what to do. This specific chip was
| one of the many reasons (but a key one) that we retired
| that airframe.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I've worked with EE's who spec'd a $300 high quality
| motor when a $20 one was powerful enough but didn't have
| lifetime specifications because the extra $280 was less
| than the cost of the service call to replace the motor.
|
| When you start designing things to last a long time AND
| be very reliable, the cost increases very quickly in ways
| that are not always predictable.
| kfprt wrote:
| Declare abandonment and open source all documentation and
| code. This should get you out of the human lifetime burden.
| foxfluff wrote:
| Yea I've been thinking about this. Open up specs,
| schematics, docs, and code, or actually support it
| "forever" (not literally, but a decently long time). It
| might be a bit extreme though. To provide some incentive,
| I'd consider the responsibility for recycling if you're
| unwilling to support usage. There is far too much
| throwaway crap.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| > To provide some incentive, I'd consider the
| responsibility for recycling if you're unwilling to
| support usage.
|
| Germany put the onus on the sellers here. Since 2016
| sellers of electronic appliances with a store space of
| >400m^2 and online sellers with a warehouse space of
| >400m^2 are required by law to take small electronic
| appliances (up to 25cm max side length) and dispose of
| them properly, which usually means recycling, no matter
| if you actually bought the thing from them or not, and no
| matter if you buy a new thing or not.
|
| These sellers are furthermore required to take larger
| appliances if you buy a new replacement appliance from
| them.
|
| This service has to provided free of charge (except for
| reasonable shipping costs).
|
| In practice, almost every commercial seller of new
| appliances, even those who do not fall under the law,
| will take your old appliances at least when you buy a new
| similar one voluntarily. Because if not, a lot of
| customers would just go to a competitor who does.
|
| This spread to other areas too, where e.g. a lot of
| sellers will voluntary take and dispose of your old
| mattress when you buy a new one from them.
|
| The sellers do have to dispose of the appliances
| properly, which is usually also the least expensive
| option for them. Recycling companies will come and take
| that stuff for free from the sellers, because they make
| their money by stripping anything precious out of the
| stuff.
|
| The area where this is problematic is non-commercial
| sellers and/or sellers of used stuff. But by law,
| municipalities have to take all electronic appliances
| free of charge, the drawback being that they do not have
| to provide collection/shipping. Getting your old washing
| machine to the recycling center can be a burden. In my
| city at least you can call them up and make an
| appointment for I believe 10 bucks. And they encourage
| you to tell your neighbors about the pick up time so they
| can put out their electro trash as well. My city also has
| about 40 collection containers all around the city for
| small appliances (up to desktop computer size). The one
| closest to me is about 7 mins by foot.
|
| Of course, trashing perfectly fine electronic appliances
| may be a waste sometimes (but sometimes not, because
| these old things may be extremely power hungry compared
| to newer models), and a right to repair would be better,
| but at least it's a step in the right direction.
| foxfluff wrote:
| Yea, it's the same here. Probably most of the EU.
|
| Thing is, most of the stuff I buy is online. Local
| retailers taking things for recycling does nothing to
| encourage the maker of a product I buy online to keep
| supporting it or open it up for end users (or their local
| repair services) to support it from there on.
|
| Of course it's good that local retailers offer recycling,
| it's definitely a step in the right direction, but it's
| far from having the impact I wish we could have on
| longevity / support / (semi-un)planned obsolescence.
| entangledqubit wrote:
| > I think this goes somewhat beyond right to repair?
|
| Definitely goes beyond it. This should be able to get traction
| as an anti-electronics waste policy.
|
| Designs and relevant documentation should be packaged up and
| handed over to the Library of Congress (or alternate entity) as
| soon as any design goes into mass production. LoC may release
| them when the product is no longer supported by the
| manufacturer or the company has gone out of business -- which
| could be fairly automated on the LoC side.
|
| One side-effect of this may be that companies will be
| incentivized to support hardware longer, if they believe that
| these designs have notable design elements that they do not
| wish to disclose.
|
| I'd settle for something non-retroactive. Since I don't think
| that'd be tenable technically at this point anyway.
|
| One of the cruxes in this are things like GPUs and wireless
| chips which are pretty unfriendly in terms of getting
| documentation but even providing a subset of functionality
| would be great.
| plebianRube wrote:
| I agree. Electronic waste is only getting worse over the last
| decade, with everyone getting a new phone every year, new
| laptop etc. Even if everyone optimally buys/sells used, the
| devices still end up in landfills because the hardware is no
| longer supported. Not acceptable anymore.
| userbinator wrote:
| Right to _modify_ --- i.e. what the automotive industry has had
| for around a century now.
|
| It's why you can still get parts (aftermarket, usually) for
| vehicles many decades old. I wish companies like Tesla weren't
| trying to change that, however.
| foxfluff wrote:
| > I think this goes somewhat beyond right to repair?
|
| Something like right to use would be nice. If you need specs or
| docs or source code for the software/hardware to be _usable_ ,
| then it should be provided. And IMO that should include not
| gating essential functionality behind online services unless it
| is inherent to the function.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Does this mean you get a blob image where you can have root, or
| more like Carmack of old, GPLing / open sourcing the prev-gen
| tech? I'm asking basically: Is this free as in beer or as in
| freedom?
| Macha wrote:
| > Accessing or using the unlockable software ("Software") is
| subject to the Oculus Terms of Service or, if you use your
| Facebook account to access Oculus Products, the Supplemental
| Oculus Terms of Service and Facebook Terms of Service (the
| "Applicable TOS"). For clarity, Oculus Products (as described
| in the Applicable TOS) include the Software. We provide the
| Software to you for your personal and noncommercial use only on
| your personal Oculus Products. Installing the Software voids
| all warranties, express or implied, applicable to Oculus
| Products. In no event shall Facebook, its affiliates or any of
| their respective directors, officers, employees or agents have
| responsibility or liability arising out of or relating to
| making the Software available to you.
|
| https://developer.oculus.com/licenses/go-unlock-tos
|
| Free as in beer
| [deleted]
| kactus wrote:
| I hope they do the Oculus Rift CV1 next. I'm trying to sell mine
| because it's useless without my deleted Facebook account.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| that would be dope - no chance though
| yason wrote:
| This is great as such but it really should be the law.
| snissn wrote:
| i think i threw mine out
| eatonphil wrote:
| > Oculus CTO (and former id Software co-founder) John Carmack
|
| I thought Carmack stepped down from being CTO a few years ago?
| [0]
|
| [0] https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/oculus-cto-john-carmack-
| to-...
| gjs278 wrote:
| none of these job titles matter at all
| jjulius wrote:
| The sub-heading of your link says:
|
| > Carmack says he's transitioning to the role of "consulting
| CTO" at Oculus.
|
| So he can still be called CTO.
| eatonphil wrote:
| But that was also 2 years ago. I assumed by this time they'd
| have found a permanent CTO? Maybe not.
| bluedino wrote:
| Ken Silverman must be busy
| bidirectional wrote:
| Why would the role of consulting CTO be non-permanent? It
| just implies a part-time approach.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Consulting CTO just isn't an arrangement I hear about
| very often. I'm surprised part-time (if that's what it
| is) CTO-ing works out long-term for a tech company.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Maybe it means "full time, but I reserve the right to not
| be CTO at a time of my choosing."
| cma wrote:
| I think he is working closer to full time on AI, and does
| the VR CTO thing separately.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Well that just sounds like most US jobs (i.e. at-will
| employment).
|
| And if the point is that you're clarifying with your
| employer that you're looking for an exit (even if it's
| not immediate) it probably means the employer (and maybe
| you are helping) is interviewing for your replacement
| with the goal of eventually finding it. Hence my
| curiosity that it's been 2 years and they haven't got a
| new CTO.
| jon-wood wrote:
| As a company with a strong focus on smooth 3D rendering I
| imagine it's quite difficult to find a CTO who can top
| John Carmack, and if he's willing to stick around then
| why rush it.
| kzrdude wrote:
| This is Carmack, so I'm just thinking it's a bit
| reversed. He's taking this job at-will and can cancel
| them at any time.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Well at-will employment already works in both directions.
| :)
| f311a wrote:
| I wish Sony to do the same thing for Playstation 4.
| schaefer wrote:
| The thought of Facebook having telemetry on real time eye
| tracking data for a future popular Oculus VR headset in a few
| years is horrifying.
|
| I'll never get over the sale of Oculus to Facebook.
| aaroninsf wrote:
| Me neither.
|
| Haven't touched their hardware since and won't; would pass on
| jobs if that becomes an aspect.
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