This piece always brings me to tears. I was lucky enough to meet Part, have a brief conversation and shake his hand after a performance in Hamburg… A moment I will never forget.
The internet is cables and other hardware, and protocols, none of which is going anywhere. The Web, an internet application, seems to be dying, and certainly newsgroups and other internet applications have also died, but the internet itself isn't dead or dying. In fact, it's growing as the global rollout of broadband continues and the unconnected get connected.
the protocols are going if they are not enforced by a google. google was the "US" that gave you the post-WW2 "peace" on the web. The big players only follow "your" standards when it suits them.
consider mobile apps on android and apple. they are an example of internet without browser. you only get widely used standard browsers if big money sees a moneymaking point in having them.
This is all part of the continuing trend toward luxury - brands are abandoning the middle class and below, focusing on higher margins and lower volume - brands make more money, engage with easier buyers and have to work less. I don’t know how all this works in the end but it does seem to be a real trend.
It’s a nice list, but honestly, none of these improvements are really life changing (except the reduction in crime that has been noticeable and good). Things otherwise got a bit nicer and a bit cheaper and a bit faster - but life would have been just fine without these improvements.
After smoking in bars was banned, my brother and I noted how run-down and dreary the places we hung out looked. We just hadn't been able to see it before through the haze.
I always hated the smoke and the way your hair and clothes would still reek of it the next morning. Now, on the rare occasions I catch a whiff of cigarette smoke, it's nostalgic and almost smells good.
Many of us still love going to pubs. So much better not waking up reeking of second hand smoke. I went skiing in Austria a few years back and some of the places still allow smoking inside. I couldn't handle it, I can't believe I ever did.
> none of these improvements are really life changing
They don't really cover it, but one literally life changing one has been medicine; a lot of things that were a death sentence (and often a very nasty, slow, painful one) in the 90s are now quite treatable. Particularly cancers, but also there've been big improvements in cardiac treatment, and the treatment of certain diseases (particularly HIV).
Sadly, true. Those who work on the industry will never rebel, the pay is too good and the nerdy excitement of being able to solve very interesting problems is too addictive. Our greatest minds are wasted in the finance sectors and big tech.
Did the same voyage in a similarly sized boat, solo. Departed Berkeley then out under the bridge to half moon bay, then off the deep end for Honolulu. Took a bit longer than expected and was nearly hit by a passing vessel, but smooth sailing otherwise!
I'd like to know more about the near-miss. Was it close to either port or was it during the open-ocean portion of the voyage?
The "Loose Ends" section of Teplow's write-up mentions that he didn't bring along a radar detector. Then or now, would a radar detector significantly increase a solo sailor's situational awareness?
It was with a freighter, China to Panama bound - no one on watch - about a quarter of the way across to Hawaii. My boat was so small it was mostly invisible to radar - I spotted it on the horizon, but it appeared to be on a parallel course so I wasn't too worried - I went back to sleep and was woken by engines. After crash gybing out of the way, I radioed the vessel many times, with no response. Out of paranoia I then did the rest of the leg with a strobe on - my next encounter was a vessel that had stopped because it thought I was in distress...
I had an old i5 Mac mini laying about I wanted to use desktop Linux on the other day. The last time I tried, was about 20 years ago. I note nothing has changed since.
Can anyone comment on why Wenfeng shared his secret sauce? Other than publicity, there only seems to be downsides for him, as now everyone else with larger compute will just copy and improve?
Well, American investors seem to be shaking in their boots and publicizing this attracts AI investments in China because it shows China can out/compete with the US in spite of the restrictions.
Aren’t there a ton of blockchain projects trying to do this kind of distributed compute / LLM with tokenisation rewards etc? Theta project comes to mind
Tech elite currently enjoy disproportionately large benefits from rampantly un-balanced systems that allow them to exploit people for their work and therefore they stand to lose quite a bit from any rebalancing of said systems.
Basically, workers get nothing and CEOs get everything.
It represents something they can't control and which could ultimately be used to take them down a peg or two, if not more, by ostracizing them in the public's eyes.
