@nprofile1q... I did (beat that), but I struggled with today's, and my relative (to other days) time shows it. Seems you did, too.

@nprofile1q... And here, I think there are 3 houses with solar panels, out of 218 in my neighborhood. Which is so sad, considering we have the Texas sunshine — around 230 sunny days per year. And large roofs. And massive power bills due to our ACs.

But excluding perhaps a handful of power blips that last a second or 2 each — presumably them switching things around to work on infrastructure — we’ve had ONE week of power instability in 13 years. In 2021 during The Big Freeze, when it got to DEEP into the negatives (F and C). Other than that one week, we’ve not had a power outage in the 13 years I’ve lived here, so this will also be a big reason people haven’t forked out for solar. Along with the fact that the power company that serves this area is a non-profit co-op, so our rates are reasonable. Around 13c/kWh (R2.10/kWh).

@nprofile1q... May I introduce you to @nprofile1q.... Dan is very active here (we don’t hold that against him). And has written excellent spy-scifi (and other) books.

@nprofile1q... @nprofile1q... @nprofile1q... No, I don’t think this is a good example of your point. In fact, the opposite. It’s ONLY because it happens to be in my interest and in my area of expertise. I’m glad I did know. If my check engine light comes on, I’ll immediately take my car to the shop. I won’t go buy one of those ODB port readers to see what the code means for myself. I just simply have no interest. Mr Mechanic, fix my car pls. Or if my microwave breaks today, I’ll have ordered a new one before you can say “I wonder what is wrong”.

@nprofile1q... @nprofile1q... @nprofile1q... Indeed, and although your point stands, it's funny that this is to get my money OUT of them, so I'm TRYING to take my business elsewhere. LOL. (No, I don't think it's nefarious, just incompetent.)

@nprofile1q... Earlier today, I tried to download a form from a well-known UK investment/trading company.

(Details obfuscated to protect the stupid.)

Link to the form on their website: https://<domainless-internal-hostname>:8080/path/to/form

I had to copy the link, and replace https://<domainless-internal-hostname>:8080 with https://<public domain>, and then it worked.

lol and facepalm.

@nprofile1q... @nprofile1q... Your last sentence is what I was trying to bring across. That for most people, they WANT to outsource all the crap repairs. They don't want to think about it or learn it or understand it in the least. And that that is OK. Normal even.

Nerds can and will nerd. We'll learn to more or lessor degrees about many different things. Non-nerds are NOT wired that way.

@nprofile1q... @nprofile1q... Exactly that: when my AC breaks, I called the HVAC company. When my hot water heater breaks, I call the plumber. When my sprinkler springs a leak, I call my sprinkler guy. When my car breaks or my check engine light comes on, I take it into the shop. Each of them know infinitely more about those products than I ever will. They have the right tools. It takes them minutes to diagnose and often fix what would take me hours. I work at a job I enjoy so that I have money to outsource to others what I don't have the time, energy, or interest to learn myself.

Now, I will concede that this comes from a position of massive privilege, that I have the funds to do so. But if you do have the funds, it makes perfect sense to live like that.

We live in a specializing era. We specialize ourselves. I'm not "in I.T.". I'm in this tiny 0.1% corner of I.T. where I know a few things quite well (and many other I.T. things only very generally). When someone at works needs help with our ecom CDNs, they come to me. When I need help with a firewall rule, I go to the network team. I don't freaking go learn the firewall system.

@nprofile1q... @nprofile1q... Yes, I don’t doubt that (that you are wired the way you are). And of course there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s even neat that you’re that curious. But my argument isn’t about you. It’s about the vast majority of people who aren’t like that. I’m a *little* bit like that. I like to understand the basics of many things. ACs, engines, differentials, the split phase power we get here, solar, EVs, astronomy, molecular science, magnets, etc. I mean, I literally just finished watching a random video of a tire repair on a heavy construction vehicle. But try to get into it with most people at parties and see their eyes glaze over nearly immediately. My argument is that they are in the vast majority, and we are in a tiny minority, and that that is the *correct* balance for it. It’s normal and healthy for most people to have ZERO interest and ZERO knowledge of how the things they use everyday work.

@nprofile1q... @nprofile1q... if I could be MORE than 100% ok with people not knowing how those things work, I would be. Completely. I’m not only ok with people not knowing how things work, I think that’s the ONLY reasonable position to hold in our ultra specialized world. Nerds can nerd out all they want. But for 99% of people, they never have to even have heard the word “compressor” to be able to have their food safely cooled. And that’s the CORRECT level of knowledge they should have — zero! The world is INFINITELY complex these days. We know a tiny bit about our own interests/job/hobbies. And that’s at the limit of what most people have time for. So yes, I am completely 100% ok with people not knowing how 99% of the things they use on a day to day basis work. That’s what specialists, tradespeople, mechanics, etc. are for.

@nprofile1q... @nprofile1q... Oh my goodness. I don't even know where to start. So much wrong in so few paragraphs. lol.

You think files should download over ftp with filezilla and every protocol should have its own handler and we should use them all. C'mon, man. Think who uses webbrowsers. It's mainly not techies. Hell, even most techies would hate that. It's awesome that browsers have become a useful multitool that abstracts all that away from us!

And don't come with FILES should use FILE Transfer Protocol. Text files (html) are files, too. In fact, you know the old saying, on *nix, everything is a file.

The Downloads folder is NOT for exes and zips. It's for everything. When you DOWNLOAD something from the internet, it goes to DOWNLOADS (imagine that!). You are then free to leave it there (like most of us do and have Downloads folders that are total chaos) or to move it somewhere else you want to better organize it.

Old school and nostalgia aren't an excuse or a justification for wanting things to not change. You think corporations have decided that people don't need to know how file systems or RAM or processors work?!? What the hell? PEOPLE NEVER KNEW. A few geeks did. Computers are a mass market tool. People don't know how electricity works. Or car engines. Or microwaves. Or TVs. Why the hell should they know how computers work. They shouldn't! They shouldn't even need to (and don't!) know what the word protocol means. Except for a handful of nerds. And nothing stops those nerds from understanding it however deep they want to go.

As soon as computers became a mass market tool (which no-one "decided", it organically happened), they NEEDED to abstract everything technical away. Same as every other mass market product. And that's a GOOD thing. It's even a good thing for us nerds, 99% of the time.

I just wanna browse Amazon to buy another bag of dogfood, man. I don't wanna think about the underlying protocols. Switch tools to grab images. Etc. You're describing hell for 99.9999% of people.