Quite the opposite: I had an idyllic childhood in a southern state suburb that voted for George H.W. Bush twice. I grieve for the loss of that America and fear the regression to the global mean.
The amount of hate (used in the sense that it seems people online use) here is amusing. All he is saying is build things you want to see in this world. Implicit in his argument is the view that the majority in US tech are building what the elite demand, and his previous article outlines his view of this as a certain path to techno-feudalism, which I think is a reasonable extrapolation. The dissenters (aka haters) simply believe their 996 code-monkeyry will be rewarded when this future is realized.
My primary concern with this offering is vendor of the enabling silicon. I think it’s important to consider who you do business with. The industrial uptake of RPi boards has poisoned their mandate and made them forget making a world where all children can discover the magic of computing, not just the special chosen ones.
They don’t want you to sell Teensy certainly because they believe they can make more money that way. Who cares? You have a far richer ecosystem yourself. Why spend energy over this? If your customers care, help them transition to your ecosystem and move on. If your ecosystem doesn’t have something your customers need, build it.
If you were a tiny player I think I’d have more sympathy.
Personally, I’d consider adding embedded Rust to your ecosystem as more worthy of your efforts. Bunny and Xobs’ Xous is something you should look into along with their Baochip.
Here the provider is being abused by the customer. Because of the nature of global travel, there is a race to the bottom phenomenon of what kind of tourist behaviour is tolerated. An old housemate of mine from university days, who runs a bicycle tour [1], makes his guests sign a document where they are made to explicitly acknowledge their role as travellers. The reward is a deep cultural intimacy.
This is why I use the term symbiosis in my comment further below. There is a relationship that needs to be understood by both parties and each has to have the resolve to not be exploitative nor to tolerate exploitation.
Speaking of that trip. I should go again. The food, oh man the food!
Thank you Bryan for writing this. I’m not American, but the behaviour Bryan is calling out is in my opinion why American capitalism is in decline.
When an entity parts with their money for your product or services it is a recognition of the value you provide to them. There is symbiosis here. When you lose track of this, you end up with cronyism.
Ultimately, for the individual, it’s a matter of how you want to die. You either aim to have a fat bank account, or you aim to have a fantastic adventure making things you want to see in the world happen.
I think it’s pretty clear what Mr. Cantrill has chosen.
As a kid I loved waiting for whenever this show would air. It was like looking into the future. Now I can look into the future any time I want and all I see is garbage.
Take care Stewart, thanks for sharing the magic that computing is.
You can reply concisely and technically. Suggested answer:
No. Verification does not depend on the TimeProofs service being online.
A TimeProofs proof is a self-contained, cryptographically signed file. Anyone can verify it offline or with independent tooling by:
recomputing the hash,
checking the signature,
validating the timestamp against the public specification.
The service is only required at issuance time to sign the proof. Verification is intentionally decoupled to avoid vendor lock-in and single points of failure.
If TimeProofs disappeared tomorrow, all existing proofs would remain verifiable.
He’s clearly educated and articulate, so not much else makes sense.
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