That word is so misused in this context, it is now bereft of meaning. “Democratisation” does not mean that a person without a skill can now achieve a result. A local pastry shop which makes cakes to order does not “democratise” baking. LLMs do not “democratise” software, anyone with access to a computer could already build and host any of these tools.
“Democratisation” is the word shady actors want to put in our heads to make us not think of the bad parts. Like how countries with “democratic” and “people's republic” in the name are the least democratic. If you have to keep repeating how democratising you are, you aren’t at all.
Language evolves. What is certainly true is that the scribal class of people who could program has had its gates of entry almost deleted, and people, without sacrificing a meaningful part of their available time, can build tools to solve their problems.
To me, this is democratization.
Sure anyone could have, but that's always a scale.
Of course. My objection is that the word democratisation was specifically chosen to manipulate us. That’s what bad actors do, they pick positive words to describe bad things so it’s hard to argue against them.
It’s fascinating how a community who can clearly see through “think of the children” as the ruse that it is¹ just gobbles up “democratisation” until they choke. Tech people love to believe they’re immune to manipulation, when doing so is the easiest trick in the book. All you have to do is make the problem interesting enough and the critical part of the brain shuts off.
¹ Because of course we should protect children, that’s positive. The issue becomes when bad actors use that as an excuse to promote actions which do not have protecting children as their true intent.
Technically anyone could write a full book or transcribe them before the printing press came around, but it certainly was a democratizing force for publishing when it was invented. The democratization is in the scale and leverage available to the average person.
> We teach the population at the cheapest possible rate; and the aim all the democratization (if we may use the word) of literature proposes to itself in this country, is to store the minds of the many, of the anonymous multitude, with a large portion of valuable, because practically useful, facts. [Meliora, vol. ii, no. 6, 1860]
I’m not sure you understand that quote, or how it (doesn’t) relate to the point.
For one, it even has a parenthetical saying “if we may use the word” meaning the word isn’t being used in it’s proper sense, that’s the whole point of that expression. For another, the quote itself is referring to teaching, as in imparting a skill, and a central point of my comment is that having a skill and having a result done for you are not the same thing. Finally, if you have to go back two centuries to find an example… The countries that I mentioned didn’t even have those names yet, it is clear (if you engage in good faith) that the point regards the modern world and is not a criticism of societies since the dawn of men.
My disagreement is about the usage of the word, not about whether marketers or politicians have used it for other purposes. Sure, using “democratize” to mean “make broadly accessible” has bleached its political force, but that sense has been attested since the late 1700s to the present. Prescriptively, you can argue it shouldn’t be used that way. Descriptively, it has been, for a long time.
> Sure, using “democratize” to mean “make broadly accessible” has bleached its political force
Making and distributing software was already “broadly accessible”. The people who could build and host software before (those with access to computing device) are the same who can do it now.
Tyler Durden, Don Drapper, Patrick Bateman, are all characters that you’re not supposed to want to be like but that “blackpilled” men completely miss the point and worship. There must be a name for this type of character influence. It reminds me of the “torrent nexus” trope but for people.
Correct. I wouldn’t really call them anti-heroes, however, as those are still meant to be sympathetic.
To put it less ambiguously, I’m looking for a term for a character which is written to be repulsive but a number of people in the real world misinterpret as a role model.
> You can’t update safari separately from the os i found out
I was on Sequoia all throughout Tahoe and still updated Safari to the 26.x versions. There might be a limit to how far back they let you do that, though.
I had an M1 MBP that I needed to re-pave with Monterey. Yes, it's end-of-support, but it's also only 4 years old. And runs on that Mac.
So, first step, I make a USB installer, and run it. Great. Reboots, and says "FYI, this is an unsupported OS. You can install a newer OS instead, or run Monterey in "Reduced Security" mode." That was fine for me.
"Installation of Reduced Security mode failed." Nothing else. Eventually my understanding of this was because the machine had been upgraded previously all the way to Tahoe, that somewhere along the line some firmware or something in the EFI had been upgraded and was too new for Monterey. No thanks to Apple. No info, debug logs, anything, just "Installation failed. Reboot?"
So what then?
Hmm, more research. "Do an IPSW image restore via DFU", i.e. pave it with a largely installed image. Could work, might have the same issue, but since I'm stuck right now, with a Mac I can't install anything on, a four year old $3,000 brick, why not?
Alright, I have a Mac Studio. I get the IPSW image, and Apple Configurator. Connect the two as per Apple's instructions and the MBP does indeed show up in Configurator as being "not booted, DFU mode".
Apple's instructions, "Drag the IPSW image onto the DFU 'box' for the target Mac". No. It doesn't light up like it's accepting a drag and drop, and indeed it doesn't. Nor does it accept a "restore..." or similar from the Configurator menu options. There's nothing in Configurator that seems to allow you to image the MBP. Again: no error, no instructions, just the error "bonk" noise.
So... off to ChatGPT, Reddit, etc., I go.
Much repeating of the same. However, ChatGPT pokes a little button. Near the very end of its answer, it says "Newer versions of macOS may have limitations on the age of the image they might restore. You may need a slightly older macOS to do this. Even an Intel MBP running Ventura could work."
As fortune has it, my fiance happens to still have her old i5 MBP with touchbar, and the latest version of Ventura... let's plug it in, let it catch a little charge and boot...
Alright, I need Configurator on this laptop.
No soup for you, says the App Store, "You need macOS Sequoia to install Configurator".
Back off to Reddit, where I find someone who has helpfully zipped up an older version of Configurator that runs on Ventura, and in the end, I'm able to re-pave via IPSW.
But Apple's docs absolutely are incorrect/incomplete about Configurator, and DFU restores.
"You can use Restore... in the Configurator menu to select the software image". No, you can't, even leaving aside the "old/unsupported". It actually means restoring from a "backup" (presumably Time Machine, though it doesn't specify) and you can't select any file or image.
"Drag the image onto DFU". Doesn't work in that situation, no error, no "hey, you're doing the right thing but I can't do this", just acting like a fool trying to drag the image onto DFU only to have it bounce off.
Like I said, I didn't have DFU port issues, but Apple's docs on how to make this happen were either non-existent, or incorrect about the process, or flat out told me I couldn't do it. But mostly non-existent and overly simplistic covering the most basic scenarios only - which I get for general support, but by the time you are "connect to a second mac in DFU mode and run Configurator" in their own words, we're way beyond simplistic "you can just install a newer macOS" type "instructions".
Fun fact, the Google Chrome team was very aware of “browser chrome” as a term when they named their browser. They make that clear in the introductory comic.
> Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.
> the company that hid an image of topless woman in The Rescuers (1977) movie
Disney is guilty of a lot of crap—everything else that you mentioned and much more—but that specific instance wasn’t their fault and they acted to correct it once they knew.
Again, I’m not here to defend Disney, they definitely are rotten, but we can point that out by listing all the things they definitely did badly and on purpose rather than leaning on dubious situations which weaken the argument.
And the overwhelming majority of LLM users will never use them or even understand what they are or how to set them up. Those people will remain dependent, and we shouldn’t ignore that.
Ricky Mondello is a principal software engineer at Apple, on the Authentication Experience team, and responsible for the Passwords app and developing the roadmap for passkeys.
That word is so misused in this context, it is now bereft of meaning. “Democratisation” does not mean that a person without a skill can now achieve a result. A local pastry shop which makes cakes to order does not “democratise” baking. LLMs do not “democratise” software, anyone with access to a computer could already build and host any of these tools.
“Democratisation” is the word shady actors want to put in our heads to make us not think of the bad parts. Like how countries with “democratic” and “people's republic” in the name are the least democratic. If you have to keep repeating how democratising you are, you aren’t at all.
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