I believe the Jesus Jones song, "Right Here, Right Now" has become an ironic commentary on Gen X; in that brief moment in the 90's when we thought the nuclear sword of Damocles dangling over all of us had finally been cut down...
Not a great song, but one that expresses the zeitgeist in a pretty succinct way.
We thought that we were at the cusp of a new era... one where we could overcome the injustices of the past and author a future based on the best version of ourselves.
In the end, Gen X never even got a chance to start; we watched from the sidelines as geriatric Boomers clung (and still cling) to power -- leaving less and less of that (ever more naive) dream behind.
"Right here, right now,
there's no other place I'd rather be.
Right here, right now,
watching the world wake up from history."
The song hasn't aged well & has become a cloy reminder of that time and what we didn't become.
Personally, I find this aspect of the work somewhat profound.
My graveyard of projects and dreams stretches out behind me and I feel saddened to know that these articles representing portions of my life never achieved what I had hoped for them.
However, I've come to view my work like a mandala or some representation of our mortality itself; our works and our lives are temporary.
We can make the most of the brief moment that we have – whether that be through work or through parenting or through base jumping – whatever that may be for each of us, or we can choose to do nothing with that moment, knowing that it's ephemeral and will be gone soon anyway.
I choose to try making each day's the best code I have ever written; I want it to be "beautiful" and maintainable in spite of knowing that it will be refactored, deleted or decommissioned at some point.
It wasn't an attitude of naive hope that there wouldn't be nefarious actors leveraging the protocol; there was a different kind of people using the Internet.
There's no need to design security in the system when you literally know everyone who is using it. And everyone who was using it had the same goals in mind.
So, I don't disagree with the sentiment -- people today would probably do it a little bit differently; however, I do disagree with the expression -- people designing these protocols weren't naive. They were trustful because they had to be.
In the early days of building something new, nothing works without trust; not the Internet... not Bitcoin... not a nascent venture... nothing.
While I don't disagree, if people at the time had assumed that everyone on the network could be trusted (forever), why design the IPv4 address space to make room for 4 billion devices? Why support so many ports and concurrent connections? The two assumptions don't quite match up.
> 4 billion devices? Why support so many ports and concurrent connections? The two assumptions don't quite match up.
Because when TCP and it's predecessors were invented there were only a few computers in entire world. In initial ARPAnet there were only 4 hosts (In September 1973 there were 42 computers connected to 36 nodes)
But each computer had many users. That's why there were so many ports, because the thinking was there will be big computers with many users each running their own internet connected clients and servers.
That was true even in the beginning of 1990's, when I want to high school, I had access to Unix shared between 2000+ people.
To expand on what's being referenced here, consider the following: video game speedruns.
Throughout the 80s, 90s, and early-to-mid 2000s, there was a certain level of trust in the claims people made about PBs (Personal Bests) and WRs (World Record/Ranking). There was no practical way to record, host, or especially upload literal hours of footage (VHS footage) of a run you did. Even if you did somehow achieve all of the above, it would be a grainy, low quality video which is hard to see, maybe with a stopwatch nearby so people can verify your claim. People would be watching this through RealPlayer, if they could watch it at all!
So what do you do in such a situation where people have no practical or easy means to verify claims? You build credibility off of how active you are with other members of the community. You post and comment on forums about what strategies you're trying, what difficulties you're dealing with, and what new information you might have uncovered through trial and error. You don't prove your work, you prove your worth. Your standing is evidence of your claim.
To me, this is a great example of "personality-credit" communities that's existed online; Usenet and BBS aside. The mentality has largely faded away with improvements to bandwidth and services like Twitch and YouTube, but considering the technological challenges of what someone in say, 1993 would be dealing with in trying to prove they just set a new record can really give a glimpse into what things used to be like.
I recon that the cutout in front of the toilet has a purpose... the existence of that cutout seems to align well with the idea that one might put a sponge on a stick through it in order to clean their back orifice.
The toga thing has been addressed by others as our cultural mores being projected on people with different values...
Otherwise, I found the article interesting and entertaining.
> The toga thing has been addressed by others as our cultural mores being projected on people with different values...
It's not about projecting cultural values. It's about a supposedly trustworthy publication that published rubbish. The author of the article doesn't know basic things about the life of the people they are discussing.
I guess that implies that esoteric aspects of toga wearing in ancient Rome is a "basic thing" that one should know before writing anything about Roman toilets.
I'm sorry that it seems to be so problematic.
This piece seems interesting and illuminating regarding a specific aspect of a culture that we are thousands of years removed from. It's a pop-piece, meant to be approachable and to stir the curiosity of the reader.
I can't imagine how many different ways it probably gets things wrong... and I guess that in itself is interesting to think about... but because it's impure does it mean that it has no value?
Is anything with a hint of inaccuracy (according to our own perspective and understanding) deigned unworthy of inclusion and distribution?
Does one need to be perfect in order to be published?
> I guess that implies that esoteric aspects of toga wearing in ancient Rome is a "basic thing" that one should know before writing anything about Roman toilets.
Yes. Because there is nothing esoteric about knowing how people dressed if you are going to talk about their lives.
> Does one need to be perfect in order to be published?
Well, it seems revealing that we're discussing togas and not sponges on sticks. I'd wager that's because earlier statements made in this thread regarding the universal, unequivocal truth that no one used shared sponges on sticks may not necessarily be so easy to defend.
Judgements of competence and honesty are subjective; we can all fail to distribute them fairly (especially when it comes to ourselves).
Rarely, when it comes to a history of an entire culture that spans hundreds of years and thousands of miles, can we find one perspective that describes a universal "truth."
All we have are shades of approximation.
That doesn't mean that there's no value in that approximation, it just means that we have to be a little patient with each other while each of our generalizations don't necessarily conform to the ineffable complexity of such a large group of people over such a large area over such a large timespan.
Current availability is not a guarantee of current delivery.
I (current) = V (voltage)/R (resistance)
Typical skin resistance can be as high as 100MΩ (mega ohms) but is often cited as 10MΩ. Even if we assume just 1MΩ (1000000 ohms) skin resistance, then at 2.3V as shown in the video the current would be 0.0000023 A or 2.3 μA (micro amperes).
I believe the Washington state gas tax charged to standard internal combustion vehicles is much a lot about volume + mass; moving more stuff around less efficiently is going to inherently take more calories & therefore more tax will be paid.
That said, I've been really disappointed with the way the Washington state EV tax you reference was implemented. I mean, I'm just fine paying my fair share, but I should be taxed in the same manner as any other user of the same resources.
To that end, we have vehicle inspection stations & using those to check odometer readings on an annual basis would make for fair taxation.
As it is, I stopped paying registration, insurance and left our Leaf sitting in the driveway since the pandemic started because of the way this tax is levied.
PHP's documentation was always excellent, available and was always a quick Google search away from finding the relevant materials. It was tangibly superior at the time.
Coding with other languages at the time always involved some kind of physical reference book (or some closed off "compiled" walled "context sensitive" help system whose search capability and discoverability was little-to-none).
Although I had sooo many O'Reilly reference books, I don't think I ever had an O'Reilly PHP reference book... (Not sure there ever even was one because it would be totally unnecessary)
PHP's documentation is still excellent and is still available at the same place it was 20 years ago: Typing php.net/FUNCNAME in the address bar gives the documentation for FUNCNAME(). I'm glad my current work is only about 1% PHP and not the 100% it used to be, but whenever I need to edit one of those PHP scripts we still have around, I know how to get by, even though I'm seriously rusty.
Not a great song, but one that expresses the zeitgeist in a pretty succinct way.
We thought that we were at the cusp of a new era... one where we could overcome the injustices of the past and author a future based on the best version of ourselves.
In the end, Gen X never even got a chance to start; we watched from the sidelines as geriatric Boomers clung (and still cling) to power -- leaving less and less of that (ever more naive) dream behind.
"Right here, right now,
there's no other place I'd rather be.
Right here, right now,
watching the world wake up from history."
The song hasn't aged well & has become a cloy reminder of that time and what we didn't become.