From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_ADSP_CUSTOM_MED, DKIM_INVALID,DKIM_SIGNED,FREEMAIL_FROM,MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 13218 invoked from network); 20 Jan 2023 02:29:28 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (50.116.15.146) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 20 Jan 2023 02:29:28 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A3A7D4250E; Fri, 20 Jan 2023 12:29:05 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mail-lf1-f45.google.com (mail-lf1-f45.google.com [209.85.167.45]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 51DBA4250D for ; Fri, 20 Jan 2023 12:29:00 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mail-lf1-f45.google.com with SMTP id a11so6126507lfg.0 for ; Thu, 19 Jan 2023 18:29:00 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20210112; h=cc:to:subject:message-id:date:from:in-reply-to:references :mime-version:from:to:cc:subject:date:message-id:reply-to; bh=FhczAGENCBYU12BL6S4B0qM7ECnalYSHKVh4FLEvoOI=; b=m0/nwXNXUwkvvSSdGQM93XjXQLAUSIpTOJgPQrJB8fGkDY1iuJl+HYW62dGBU0wElu 23gsRuCS/7bDi5MPZAbi6iivXqZw7EIxPTXja5YP8rAZiJfRimr7TzhvyNmenpjTh95D TXTUC5KnfJ4jML29aHDhhoxo4/P5+d8hNyz8FkDmIwHCUSGW8bPEZsw/Pg+cS3HlESFi 0lOf7Xw/DVh8Lc1KFH9lBka22CuFqjzSZJWr7DRhIuVsZQfM3wjzlZeoFXg08zRPvTAm guOzF0WgSc4M5/391S+y/nNhx8Xb5mirdBJj96VEBNY9jcnDsNiN//un1w9xX3vFETKB U3Tg== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20210112; h=cc:to:subject:message-id:date:from:in-reply-to:references :mime-version:x-gm-message-state:from:to:cc:subject:date:message-id :reply-to; bh=FhczAGENCBYU12BL6S4B0qM7ECnalYSHKVh4FLEvoOI=; b=dfRw6dIxPzi7YIUNS0H09OGUPFWbO214hO9uWCintIuN8hLOWrzAncayMCWhVUHxMD RfV/A363bX2bcRFexwWW2nCbhCylYw85DBF+Wv1h7Qiv7b0/zoW4hGnVgR92RZftG9kj aHLQA7rC42yCjLJT3tK4jncICiOP8KcmaRWFAxSfRvdilQ0FsajZ1Ow1hWGvvPQS9TVH KKb+O3XdGJh+8G9DtqeV0ITQ04bd2nHIcSAHPGlbq0vooYgyc4UUD8vmnDK0ucc3rM8d JlCr9uG3BTWMEq4UthDovgTOrd1jpYJKMIj1Pa2YIFfF0FFERR7cfJ/5YIFvqTTtD3qa OD8g== X-Gm-Message-State: AFqh2kq7rf5gSsqrC4pyQ5579pcV9T0hpqgLozlt04sC5FZq5LeweN9A VWIRy2VOoNINsZ7WQpSK1T6+pq2D7NMeOjVutZhnVgp/hHg= X-Google-Smtp-Source: AMrXdXvG8bhEMPIPQguAoX11QVqGH6Aasyu8APVC5M2p6xviRYaNWbUzWoXIbaiY02LFVl9VtYVLNq44VO54ie603C0= X-Received: by 2002:a05:6512:344b:b0:4cb:2639:2adc with SMTP id j11-20020a056512344b00b004cb26392adcmr952177lfr.56.1674181678590; Thu, 19 Jan 2023 18:27:58 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <202301180943.30I9hrOw030485@freefriends.org> <202301181513.30IFDDUJ015224@freefriends.org> <20230118151446.GD2964@mcvoy.com> <202301190802.30J82KwQ025718@freefriends.org> <20230119150434.GA626@mcvoy.com> In-Reply-To: From: Dan Cross Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2023 21:27:22 -0500 Message-ID: To: Rich Salz Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Message-ID-Hash: 5OWWSMD6LSGGLTWCWMKNWVCBNRL75QDC X-Message-ID-Hash: 5OWWSMD6LSGGLTWCWMKNWVCBNRL75QDC X-MailFrom: crossd@gmail.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; header-match-tuhs.tuhs.org-0; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: Bakul Shah , The Eunuchs Hysterical Society X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: The era of general purpose computing (Re: AIX moved into maintainance mode List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: On Thu, Jan 19, 2023 at 5:30 PM Rich Salz wrote: >> What % of people running Chromebooks, Android or IOS >> do any real programming on it? Even for laptops and >> desktops that % is quite low. Most people run just a >> few apps. > > So what. How many people fix their own cars, TVs, etc. I think that was Bakul's point: almost nobody does. Most folks could be plopped down in front of a Chromebook or something and wouldn't be seriously impeded with what they do. Before my mom died, I was seriously considering setting something like that up for her. In many ways that's also true of _most_ computers these days: that desktop machine that lets you install whatever OS you want probably has a little constellation of microcontrollers embedded in it that come to life and do all sorts of stuff before the real cores ever come out of reset (power sequencing, turning on DIMMs and the IO buses, etc). What on earth are they running? Not to mention the megabytes of firmware that run before the OS ever starts to do all sorts of stuff: BAR assignment, DRAM training, all sorts of ACPI AML flows, running firmware blobs from device ROMs, etc. By the time the kernel begins execution, a lot of stuff we have no insight into whatsoever has already run, and we're mostly powerless over that. A lot of that stays resident and keeps running, even after the host OS takes over. SMM, UEFI bits, all kinds of weird goo. Who's bit-banging I2C to talk to the temperature and current meters on your DIMMs? The whole thing is built to give the OS the illusion that it's in control, but really, it isn't. Mothy Roscoe talked about this at length at OSDI'21: https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi21/presentation/fri-keynote That said, I don't think that general-purpose computers as we know them will disappear. There will always be a need for, say, specialist workstations for development or engineering or media editing or whatever. On the other hand, when I was at Google I felt that the powers that be were trying pretty hard to get most developers using a cloud-based IDE-ish thing that was internal (and was remarkably good for what it was). So maybe at some point "workstations" really will be glorified 3270s talking to remote cloud services. At least until the next cycle of moving away from centralized computing and pushing compute out to autonomous edge devices kicks in. - Dan C.