
Everything Old Isn't New Again (Yet) - mimixco
http://mimix.io/retro/
======
nixpulvis
This reiterated a lot of my own personal feelings these days. The irony of
Apple 1984 ad, the challenge of actually "owning" technology these days, so
on... all right on point.

For me personally the issue is more of a hardware issue (firmware too) though,
I'll be pretty happy just getting bare metal Linux (or something I can modify
myself) running on my phones and laptops.

As for the issue of accounts and lock in, I believe this is where the
government could actually do citizens a service, but will require careful
thought... so we might be better off waiting on that for a while :/

~~~
nixpulvis
Actually this is a good excuse to tell this story...

About a year ago I quit my job and moved. As a part of quitting my job I gave
up my only Mac, since it was a work laptop. Nothing unexpected about this
story so far... and it wasn't until I tried to recover the backup that I
realized my mistake.

Apple backups can only be recovered from other Apple machines. So I went into
the Apple store and tried to use a floor model. A manager quickly told me I'd
need a genius bar appointment (fine).

So I booked one. The scheduled time comes and goes, hours of time in the Apple
store just waiting to finally have a guy tell me they won't help me. Things
got a bit heated at that point :(

All this is to say, it's pretty clear Apple has no empathy for users in
general, just fear of losing the users they currently have.

I regret not taking out that laptops hard drive and smashing it to little
pieces with a sledgehammer in front of the store, the symbolism was right on
point.

~~~
Angostura
Did you try Googling. First hit

[https://www.howtogeek.com/212505/how-to-restore-files-
from-a...](https://www.howtogeek.com/212505/how-to-restore-files-from-a-time-
machine-backup-on-windows/)

~~~
nixpulvis
I tried one that didn't work before a friend with a Mac offered to lend it to
me for a few hours.

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tonic-music
That's two reports of weird scrolling. I'm sorry, guys. I wasn't trying to
change scrolling. It's an off the shelf Wordpress template. I'll look into
what's causing it and see if I can fix it. Thanks for the heads up...

Now, what do you think of the post content? :-)

~~~
th-ai
I will be studying all day, thank you =)

[http://thedemoat50.org](http://thedemoat50.org) < anyone else going?

~~~
pronoiac
I'm planning on going.

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EdSharkey
Hi David, I read your blog post and skimmed the whitepaper. My opinion is that
we are not missing encryption+metadata in our lives.

Internet companies thrive on specificity in the signals coming from end users.
Twitter/Facebook > RSS, for example.

One trouble I see is that, to be productive and to be entertained, end users
end up continuously dumping their hearts and souls onto data collectors at
large internet companies.

Conversely, these internet companies hold the ubiquitous/universal data stores
whose utility is all locked up behind the query and the scroll.

We need to invert that specificity/ubiquity relationship between end users and
for-profit companies somehow. We need a mediating layer between users and for-
profit companies. As users, we need to start with all-the-datas, ubiquity in
local caches, and produce signals only when we contribute back.

With robotics and neural links, our current direct-connect model of internet
computing poses existential risks.

~~~
tonic-music
Thanks, Ed. You are right that we need different and better business models
that incentivize good behavior on the parts of the big players. The Mimix
Company certainly intends to act like good guys. Our business isn't built
around holding or selling people's data or locking them to a platform. Having
said that, I also believe that better tools are needed and that current
software doesn't understand enough context to be useful in the kind of reading
and writing we do every day.

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YeGoblynQueenne
>> But if techno monstrosities can use open source software to create
upheaval, so can anyone else.

The thing is, most people don't want to create upheaval. Most just want to
make money. Because in our modern capitalist democracies, money is the highest
value, the moment someone has power, or knowledge that goes beyond the
ordinary the first thing they do is try to make it make money. And if they
succeed- well, out goes all the democratic, free-thinking, hacking ethos.

This is not an easily hackable system. You need people who have skills and
knowledge and also, well, let's say higher ideals. People who don't care about
money because they can have all of it that they want, but who decide they
prefer to go Buddha, and give everything to the poor. To actually "make the
world a better place", by _not_ selling you stuff.

 _Are_ there people like that? I doubt I've ever met any.

~~~
tonic-music
Very true. But I do believe it's possible to create a profitable company
around ethical, open source software that doesn't create user lock-in and
doesn't steal people's data or sell them out. That's exactly the aim of The
Mimix Company.

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kruuuder
I'm sorry that the first comment on this story is off-topic, but can someone
explain why some websites have this weird scrolling behavior? Is this a
JavaScript thing that is supposed to improve something? Why does anyone do
this? Scrolling this website with the trackpad on my MacBook feels ... wobbly.
It distracted me again and again while reading the article. As if someone is
slightly pulling on the newspaper you are holding in your hand while you are
reading it.

~~~
aaaaaaaaaab
I wanted to comment the exact same thing.

I guess they are trying to mimic Safari's built-in inertial scrolling on every
other platform, but they can't do it perfectly, so it actually ends up
breaking scrolling in Safari. Sad and pointless.

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scroot
I urge you not to take Levine's book seriously, especially when it comes to
the early history of computing and the Internet. It is a poorly researched and
argued work of history

