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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: November 13th, 2023

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  • I like the look & the idea of the Cybertruck.

    I do like the idea of shaking up established notions when it comes to aesthetics, design, and functionality. The Cybertruck really is a concept car that actually made it to production - you just don’t see that.

    That said, I greatly dislike everything else that has come from this. It’s become this weird divisive thing, a political statement, a rolling monument to billionaire hubris, an expensive flex, and in general, saying things loudly at great expense to the owner on so many fronts. It doesn’t even do its stated purpose - a pickup truck - all that well. All we need are statistics that indicate that these are dangerous to everyone else on the road, and it’ll tick just about every “bad” box there is.


  • Before we had stuff like Google Maps, or any digital navigation service really, nobody could then, either.

    Even when asking someone for directions to get to where they live you get the wrong number of stoplights, turns, and so on. Street-names are also a gamble because maybe they (mis)remember that the street they commute on changed four years ago. I would wager that most folks are just not “wired” for this sort of task, and is why (shipping) pilots, trackers, and trail-guides are a thing.


  • Mesh networking is a good way to get a functional enclave going. NYC is going hard on this right now. It’s built to be a on-ramp for the internet, but also hosts its own services.

    The hard part is that suburbia (where I assume most lemmings are) is more or less built to make any kind of community, let alone a radio network, really hard to pull off. Urban areas have an outsized advantage due to population density and that most folks live multiple stories above ground; everyone is already in a tower. It’s not impossible in a flatter environment, just harder.

    Long-distance links… well, I don’t have an answer. In theory people could pool their resources and get a few satellites up to do this. I suggest satellites since it’s way easier than the other models, although maybe fiber links are cheaper to lease these days? Either way, keeping that model going (maintenance, support, etc) would require cash-flow. Outside of something like Patreon, this would just reinvent the existing ISP model and should be approached with caution.








  • The end result is that I don’t feel like I truly own my phone

    You kinda/sorta don’t. Manufacturers saw an opportunity to create a closed environment around the tech, not unlike gaming consoles, and made sure it happened that way. It may also be a side-effect of smartphones emerging from the same manufacturers that made far less capable and less open devices in generations prior (think old flip phones and 1st gen cell phones). Just like with game consoles, DRM (coupled with DMCA advantages) and the attached walled-garden retail environment are the prime motivators there. Marketing and financing help make sure it stays this way.

    At the same time, providing a watered down platform for the masses did accelerate all the things OP is talking about. Phone/tablet apps make user interaction insanely^1 easy to do without any understanding of the platform its on. In contrast, PC’s do a great job of requiring some amount of tech literacy before you start. So most people that would be stymied by the complexities^2 in a Windows system or Mac can easily do all kinds of internet-enabled things, for cheaper, on their phone. It’s not a root cause by any measure, but I really do think that the commodification of software services in this way, has thrown gasoline on whatever fires were already burning.


    1. Note: not “insanely great”.
    2. I know what you’re thinking, dear reader. You would be surprised.