The general movement of UI paradigm has been from one tech to the next with a focus on backwards compat. Almost amusingly so at times, but this is how all the earlier users and use cases can most easily progress. E.g. * hollerith cards and sundry + printer * printing teletype * dumb (video) terminal * smart (cursor addressable) terminal * images of smart terminals * images of smart terminals with color (businesses resisted color for years) * ... ? And in the meantime we have an evolution of support for modelling things visually and working with more descriptive protocols - or even function-defining protocols to raise the abstraction chatting with the display server in realtime. In this, "abstracted" means something that can be sent over the network instead of using a local buffer. These are in a less strict order than foregoing... * text, color plotters, VDST, and all that other old slow stuff * [skipping a bit up through bitmapped greyscale graphics] * bitmapped color graphics * abstracted 2D graphics (-> W and X) * abstracted 3D graphics (OpenGL + GLX) * dynamically client-extendable remote graphics servers (NeWS, mostly 2D) * ... ? So here I am, waiting for the next stage in these. Hypothesizing that finally we'll get something with 3D abstracted, network graphics (display lists in GLX but accelerated with something like XCB?), where the primary display coördinate space is (x, y, x) instead of (x, y), where the client can push some code to the remote server and raise the abstraction on the fly, finally . Where maybe we'd be able to permission the objects in that space and share it among users live. Where the 2D apps would be inside the 3D space instead of the other way around. Something for the 2000s instead of familiar abilities provided in 1990. But instead, Wayland. Wayland, which is not backwards compatible with X. Wayland, which is 2D at its heart. Wayland, another 1990 era graphics system with a super thin offering of features for actual end users (not devs) which come at substantial cost in lost X features. Wayland, which resists the one user doing things we've long thought of as normal - in the name of "security". Wayland is not what I've been waiting for.
> Whose definition are you using? To be honest, I've never really thought about it... I suppose I mean in both a sociological and self fulfillment way. > Would you say you were satisfied in life? Despite having a good upbringing, were you (prior to medication) content or happy? I would say "yes" overall. Aside from the depression (typically manifesting as a week or two of me emotionally spiraling down to deep dark places every month or so), I was very happy and satisfied. That's what makes the depression so annoying for me. It makes no sense compared to my other aspects of life. > In fact, I am in the midst of another bout now. One that's lasted about 3 or so years. *fist bump* > To me, I have always considered emotions/states like depression and anxiety to be signals. A warning that something in one's current environment is wrong -- even if consciously not known or difficult to observe. And if anyone is curious, I have analyzed this for myself, and I believe the etiology of my issues are directly linked to my circumstances/environment. I think that's a great hypothesis so long as it's not a blanket applied to everyone (which I don't think you're doing, to be clear; I mention this only because it is what motivated my original response to the other commenter). I don't want to go into private details of family members without their permission, but I will say that given the pervasive depression in my family and mental health issues like schizophrenia and bipolar disorders (neither of which I have, thank goodness), I feel like there's something biologically... wrong (for lack of a better word?)... with us, particularly since you can easily trace this through my mother's side. > The smart-ass in me can't help but suggest that maybe medication was your cow? Ha fair. I interpreted the story to be about depression being a symptom of your situation (job, health, etc.) and if you just fixed that then there's no need for medication.
"Incredibly brave post from Peter about the insane regulatory friction our society must endure and which is directly responsible for the premature deaths of the startups attempting to build wealth for our future, as well as millions of people whose emancipation from (inter alia) air pollution is delayed for decades by the same regulations that were intended to drive improvement of the environment. Peter is brave because, descriptively, the regulatory state functions collectively as a cartel with a monopoly on the veto and can apply it essentially at will with no real accountability. If one of the thousands of officials Peter's companies work with takes a dim view of this post, they could quietly and anonymously kill the company by shadow banning progression of any of hundreds of strands of regulatory approvals needed to obtain permission to operate. What are Peter's companies trying to do? Crush babies into gold? No, they're finding economic ways to fix air pollution. He's going to spend the better part of a decade of his life fighting some avatar of "the department of improving the environment" for the right to spend his own money improving the environment. I too have heard, and experienced, insane horror stories. The US is currently rapidly losing an energy production war with China. We have all the money and natural resources anyone could ever want, and China - a communist dictatorship - is deploying more electricity generation capacity in months than the US has deployed, ever, since the invention of electricity. Why? Solar photovoltaic power, which is approximately free and works best in uninhabitable deserts that are otherwise so economically useless that they remain federal land and are used for such things as atomic bomb testing, must go through the same environmental impact assessments, which take many years, as an oil refinery or explosives plant. Solar energy, which has a lower impact than practically any other land use and is by far the best per dollar spend for improving the environment. We should be granting 99 year solar leases on BLM land and inviting the top 10 deployers to an annual dinner at the White House! This is not a market failure. This is a regulatory failure, and it is actively killing us. More Americans die every month than on 9/11 from the impacts of air pollution that would have been addressed a decade ago if builders were allowed to build. This is not some academic niche issue. Thousands of people are actively killed by our neglect of this problem. Two years ago I wrote this: https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/2023/11/10/permitting-reform-or-death/ The situation, expressed in real world time-to-deployment, has not materially improved. The regulatory state is a bizarre hydra where, somehow, painstaking reforms to speed up review often end up taking longer. Such is the case for California's fire hazard reduction burn process, which takes so long that the forests often burn up in the mean time. ( https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2025/01/17/the-los-angeles-wildfires-are-self-inflicted/ ) Earlier this year, the fires took 10,000 houses and nearly 100 people with them, and now, nearly a year later, almost none have been rebuilt, while the city council's response to housing scarcity is ... rent control. Elon, I'm ready to go to Mars! My radical view is that if McMaster-Carr can fit 500,000 SKUs into its 4000 page catalog, the federal government should be able to fit all its laws and regulations into the same space. The constitution can be on page 1. In 1875, the federal code was less than 2000 pages. Today it is over 12 million. At the current rate we are generating new law faster than anyone could ever read it. The law of the land should be portable." https://x.com/CJHandmer/status/1991589814865654084?s=20
While I am firmly in the “de-regulation is bad, because every single one of those is written in blood” camp, I also sympathize with startups and businesses desperately trying to innovate in a regulated market and being stymied by said bureaucracy. What I’ve come around to is the exact opposite of most de-regulation stans: bigger government . The tradeoff for regulations from the government is having said government shoulder the burden of helping new businesses successfully navigate said regulations quickly and efficiently. It shouldn’t be on the small business owner or startup founder to trawl through thousands of pages of texts and attempt to figure out where their business sits within them, the government should instead have an ombudsman or agent - paid with by tax dollars from successful businesses - work full-time with that business to figure things out. Want to start a bar? Here’s the application for a liquor license, here’s the plain-language requirements for accessibility and hygiene, here’s a taxpayer-supported payroll system to ensure labor law compliance, and here’s the map of areas where you can setup shop without requiring a separate permit process. Of course, the problem with said approach is that it requires funding, which requires more tax revenue, which means higher taxes. Under the current neoliberal, laissez-faire Capitalism system in the USA, that simply isn’t happening at present, if for no other reason than established players have captured regulatory agencies and government officials to deliberately hamstring new businesses. Selling deregulation in business, especially “hardtech”, is exactly what those ghouls want. Don’t take the bait. Be better, even if it’s harder.
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