Most people don't have a problem with files. You learn what a file is in your first computer class day and you're done with it.

Files are not just about organization, primarily, they are the fundamental unit of information. They decouple data storage from processing, transformation, and transfer. It's how we give physicality to information. They give the user freedom in multiple ways:

- Freedom to open the file with whatever program I want, allowing me to experience it however (with a player), but also to create derivative works (in an editor).

- Freedom to store the file wherever I want, both locally or remotely.

- Freedom to share the files with others, via whatever mechanism I want.

Without files, computing is just about individual consumption. You don't own anything. That song you bought? You don't own it, it's some kind of abstract entity in Apple Music. The only thing you can do with it is press play. Living in an OS without files is like living in an universe where everything is liquid and containers of any kind are forbidden, all you can do is open the tap and drink straight from the stream.

Even if you create something? It's locked in some kind of vacuum that Apple controls. Wanna back it up? Pay Apple for Apple cloud. Wanna share it with someone? Figure it out, probably step one is to ask them to buy an Apple device.

I laugh whenever people say that Apple is "easier". The contortions I've seen people do just to get stuff from one device to another even within their own ecosystem.

The tragedy of all of this is that people that live in mobile are becoming less capable with technology over time. People talk of "the digital native" generation but kids these days know way less capable with machines than their parents. It used to be that everyone and their cousin knew how to use a P2P program, to burn a CD, to use external drives. Now you ask someone to send you some trip pictures and they'll just WhatsApp them to you. If you ask them to send you the high res originals they look at you with amazement: files? formats? compression? what's that???

The video comes off as she doesn't care about her mom, or the recipe, or cooking, and the person doesn't even know what a peach is. The tone in which she says "what did mom mention...", as if she's clearly distracted thinking about something else, probably her busy NY job, and just have AI deal with this annoyance of family as fast as possible... plus she needs AI to read the email and tell her which peaches to get? I dunno, read the email and interpret it yourself, you probably know your mom better than Siri? And call your mom in case of doubt? Maybe I'm too Spanish... but it felt quite dystopian...

Meanwhile China exports cheap stuff, is leading the world efforts developing green technologies, is leading the efforts democratizing AI technologies, and doesn't bully people around with their army.

Sure the US, with its bipartisan system, is barely more democratic than China, but should also judge countries by their actions not just their deliberation process.

If you "rationally" decide to kill me, I'd rather you had been told by "god" not to kill me, even if I don't believe in god and generally think that non-theistic morality is better and more democratic.

Did you write the copy? This is very good.

i just gave up. grapheneos + olauncher give me a minimal and open source enough experience to make it somewhat tolerable, but it makes me sad that as a society we've come to expect that you are carrying a computer with you at all times to exist.

One side of it is the advent of open-weights models. This alleviates part of my fears, fears of my free software and open-source tools being made irrelevant by black-box machines built by American corporations that absorb infinite capital, with capital gaining infinite power against labour.

But the other side, is that I am slowly witnessing how LLM's are not diminishing my value as a software engineer, more on the contrary. I see the outcome of projects that are vibe-coded to oblivion, immediately turning into unmaintainable messes no matter how many tokens you drop into them. Architectural insight, establishing proper processes, properly trading off features, applying engineering restrain, are more important than ever. I see my influence in projects even more crucial than before. Furthermore, the skills that I gained by sculpting code with my bare hands are only gonna become more and more rare, as I belong to one of the last generations that wrote code on their own.

I realized this weekend that a good analogy, is that we are like airplane pilots. Modern commercial planes run mostly on auto-pilot; the job of the pilot is nonetheless of uttermost importance, and is remunerated accordingly. We are code pilots with auto-pilot for code, and because of that a small team can build systems with levels of complexity before unimaginable used by thousands or millions of users, and for this reason, our responsibility and impact on projects is greater than ever.

I do miss some of the craft. As others wrote here, I can visualize in my head codebases I wrote even two decades ago, I even remember the color scheme of the editor I used for them. This won't happen with the code of the new era. I miss hand-optimizing a clever algorithm, designing elegant abstractions using rare language features, obsessing about a crucial piece of code. I worry about some of my brainpower atrophying. But maybe, if I open my heart to it, there will be good things that come on the other end of all this crazy time. Even if I sometimes feel like I am "just" a manager now, if I look closely, I can notice how I am still an engineer, perhaps, more than ever. And with my intelligence I can build great things, perhaps, greater than ever.

one thing that helps me is using OLauncher as replacement from the system "shell" UI. it's on f-droid.

and the News Feed Eradicator browser extension. God's send.

and of course don't install Insta, X, Reddit, etc.

To be honest, life without a smartphone was increasingly becoming a PITA.

For example, Ryanair doesn't accept printed tickets anymore.

A few clubs in Berlin (Tresor, Ohm, Oxi) have recently replaced their cloakroom by automated lockers that require a smartphone to operate.

I've encountered a few gyms (2 in Spain, 1 in USA) that use live-updated QR codes to enter the gym.

I did a project in the US and the client's office required a smartphone to open the door.

In Spain it's common since the pandemic to have restaurants that only offer the menu as QR code.

In fact, the pandemic was rough, as you had this system where you had to register with a QR code in most places. In many places they had a paper-registry that I could use, but often I would have to end up just using a friend's phone.

Plus all 4G dumbphones are crap compared to older 2G models. The few that exist are built really bad, designed for old people, lack features like T9. 2G is out already in great parts of the world.

To be honest, it saddens me deeply that the only way to live in society today involves carrying an internet-connected computer in your pocket. But it was just too much of burden... With GrapeheneOS the experience still feels somewhat acceptable and I get a somewhat similar feeling of control to what I get using NixOS on my laptop. But still...

Maybe then many people would stop carrying their own portals, as you can briefly use the public ones for the one-off situation where you need it, but enjoy a portal-free mind the rest of the time. Also quite useful in case emergencies as it seems those portable-portals tend to run out of battery, or get lost or damaged...