On the other hand, were I an American interested in projecting power across the globe, not so much.
I wonder if it is more of this administration’s fantastic 5d chess. Amazing how quickly a bunch of infantile idiots can dismantle the incredibly powerful US empire of the 50’s and beyond.
What if you are an American who is not interested in projecting power across the globe? What if you would like to stop spending 1/3 of your budget on the military?
I take no pride in being an Empire or hegemon. I know this will be ugly and disorderly and could almost certainly be handled better, but as an American, I am looking forward to the day when problems 5000 miles away from my home are no longer treated as my problem.
> What if you are an American who is not interested in projecting power across the globe? What if you would like to stop spending 1/3 of your budget on the military?
What do you think the second, third and fourth order effects of this would be for you?
If you look at oil prices, the Iran-US-Israel-Saudi war is now everyone's problem globally, whether they're part of the hegemon or not.
It's very difficult to disconnect from the problems of the world when your fuel is imported (+) from the middle east and your chips are imported from the Far east. Trying to be an autarky is .. well, the US might be able to do it, but it will be fearsomely expensive.
(+) US is currently a net exporter of oil/petroleum products, but that is a recent development and subject to change
Circling the wagons and tending our own garden is a nice ideal, but is no panacea just because we build some factories in Cleveland, celebrate the end of Globalism , claim ‘US energy independence’ (that’s gotten quiet lately.) reassessing our footprint? Yes great idea. Large poorly thought-through snap actions because headlines are needed? No thanks.
>I take no pride in being an Empire or hegemon. I know this will be ugly and disorderly and could almost certainly be handled better, but as an American,
Exactly. I'm gonna say the same thing I said when we pulled out of Afghanistan.
It's not my country and it never was. I wish them the best.
But the US consumer is also quite self-centered. They will happily torch alliances and neighborly relations over perceived personal benefits. I doubt the US consumer would lift a finger for Taiwan. It will be a combination of weakness and indifference.
Matter of fact, the vast majority has moved on to Wayland years ago, both KDE and Gnome have reported their usage stats and neither sees a point in keeping X11 afloat. I too have been using Wayland (KDE) for years, it addressed some decades-long struggles around multi monitor and DPI layouts. I use input methods for CJK that work better and more consistently than before. As far as I'm concerned, this ship has sailed, for the better.
Telling. Downvotes but actually no arguments. Fitting, because there are none.
Referring to a baseless prediction by Sam Altman that AI will become like electricity without any push-back? Who really thinks Sam is working toward that future?
He already worked to undo every early promise made (non-profit, open source models, strong governing board, strong ethics/alignment/security focus). He's flip-flopped on other things like first characterising Trump "an unprecedented threat to America", then contributing 1M USD to Trump's inaugural fund far exceeding his earlier political contributions.
Lately OpenAI, under his supervision, has also been working with Anthropic to lobby regulators in Washington for restrictions on open weights models - why so if not to undermine a free market in favour of an oligopoly?
Beyond that, you have the simple fact that most of his personal wealth and very probably the fate of OpenAI hinges on AI inference NOT becoming an interchangeable commodity.
I mean.. Honestly. The naivete is downright astounding.
I believe Sam is working towards the future. I do believe in his good parts. I have listened to a fair number of hours of interviews with Altman and do believe he is sincere.
You can never please everyone , and some stdlibs can age like milk (see ocaml).
Having libraries allow the community to explore rather than saddling it with a bad default. See the number of http server frameworks etc.
The real solution here is not for the stdlib to become a black hole, swallowing up every half-way popular library a but rather for “rustaceans” to adopt a more security-conscious approach to writing programs- C programs typically have few and well-chosen dependencies. Some languages, like Odin, completely eschew package managers because they see the very real issues stemming from writing a program with scores or hundreds of dependencies.
You seem to be ignoring that most people who want off the infernal npm/cargo hamster wheel are conscious that it implies a bit of spoilt milk or moldy bread in exchange for stability and that they're fine with it.
The gains are just too numerous and important to reject the few rust spots on a "good enough" stdlib.
But well, the kind of people who nod a bit too much while reading https://boringtechnology.club/ aren't using Rust. They're on C99, ANSI CL, Ada, maybe Python, Perl or Tcl.
I also like https://computer.rip/ - not personal anecdotes from people who were there, but definitely well researched and interesting technology history.
And it seems to store that info locally as even typing the url manually after being redirected from here you still get the eggcup. Using the link in private mode does work though, probably need to clear the local storage
Given the context and your reference to Quake, I assume by "the older days" you mean the 90s, and specifically PCs and early Windows?
If you weren't previously aware of "The Old New Thing" blog, Raymond Chen has been sharing stories about Windows 95 development for decades at this point. So many in fact, he published a book under the same name (the book is essentially a best-of collection from the blog in paper form).
The os2museum[1] blog is also a gold mine. Tim Paterson at one point tried to start blogging, sharing a few anecdotes about the early days of DOS[2]
Speaking of books, you might enjoy "Showstopper!" about the development of NT, even tough it is a bit shallow on the technical side. For the technical aspects, you might want to get it together with "Inside Windows NT" (first edition) by Helen Custer.
You might also enjoy: "Another Boring Topic" [3] YouTube channel, covering (among other things) early Windows development in excruciating detail and "Old Computers Sucked" [4], actually trying to run the software on era appropriate hardware. "Cathode Ray Dude" is all over the place but often also covers hardware and software of roughly that era[5].
A sibling comment already mentioned JWZs blog, if you have fond memories about Netscape, you might enjoy "Project Code Rush" [6].
Another fata point for all those who sided with OpenAI and Anthrophics claims that they are somehow more responsible and careful and that others, especially those pursuing pesky open weights models are a danger.
Would be great for us (Europeans).
On the other hand, were I an American interested in projecting power across the globe, not so much.
I wonder if it is more of this administration’s fantastic 5d chess. Amazing how quickly a bunch of infantile idiots can dismantle the incredibly powerful US empire of the 50’s and beyond.
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