I actually agree there's an issue here. I feel we've been dumbing down interfaces so much, to the extent that people who in previous generations would barely write and who wouldn't affect anyone outside their close friends and family, now having their voice algorithmically amplified to millions. And given that the algorithms care only about engagement, rather than eloquence (let alone veracity), these people end up believing that their thoughts are as valid regardless of substance, and that there's nothing they could gain by learning numeracy.
EDIT: It's not a new issue, and Asimov phrased it well back in 1980, but I feel it got much worse.
> Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge'.
I tried to play a game with some family this weekend. It requires using your phone. Literally every turn I had to answer someones question with "READ YOUR FUCKING PHONE ITS TELLING YOU WHAT TO DO RIGHT THERE" "where" "REEEAAAAAD"
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isn't a theory just a hypothesis that's supported by research? the article mentions the published research about this theory (or hypothesis, I suppose)
I think I must have been 3 or 4 years old when I fully got the concept that even 3 out of 10 is better than 0 out of 10, and worth doing. Then maybe somewhat later but still not recently when I got the similar concept that even if you need all 10 components of a system before you get the payoff, you still have to build up the individual bricks one at a time if you ever even want a chance at maybe getting all 10.
Even in a security context where on one hand it's true that the tiniest pinhole is all it takes, it's also true that there is no such thing a no pinholes, and yes, 80% coverage, even 10% coverage, is better than 0% coverage.
I work in video/audio production so a lot of my work ends up venn diagramming with events. Especially media projection/delivery at events. Sound systems, projectors, etc.
When you organize a conference on a location, you are using what they have on site or at best your laptop is hooked in. You have way too much to worry about to bring all your own hardware and to build out the entire media infrastructure conference in a hotel or convention space or wherever you are holding the event. That’s assuming you’re even allowed to access the areas in systems that would allow you to implement your own!
That is an unbelievably laborious task that is unreasonable to put on basically any group. At best weeks of work/installs on top of all the other massive logistic issues you’re handling. If they have a Windows terminal for you to show your presentation, you’re not going to rebuild everything from the ground up just so you can show some static images on open source software/machines. It’s just not reasonable.
What is your point? Do you like to imply being involved with open source is hypocritical unless you are using it 100% of your life?
That tells me more about you than it does about them. You must walk through your life extremely carefully not to do things that are inconsistent with each other.
If you rent a venue a lot of the tech needed for a conference is already going to be there — and for such a conference they will not have a ton of choices. Secondly open hardware is not very established in the conference hardware space. The reason for that are multiple, but one has to do with the fact that most of the gear requires extremely specialized build chains or equipment and you'd have to compete with decades of R&D and optimized manufacturing processes.
Your open source SM58 is going to be more expensive and less reliable unless you invest decades into it. To get out an okay microphone. Can you tell me why anybody should in your opinion be doing that in their spare time?
While I agree it's unavoidable to use non-open hardware, someone out there should be investing in an open SM58: that is the only way for smaller shops to compete with the likes of Shure. Building together and ensuring no-paperweight-if-you-go-out-of-business will reassure some of your potential customers and speed up your development.
I am not against your idea. In the end the hardest parts are going to be automating the winding of the coil and creating/fixing the membrane.
So maybe there is someone out there who enjoys going through a ton of prototypes to get something reliable out.
But the issue I think this is going to have is how reproducable that is going to be for your followers. I think in open source there is a spectrum: one the one side you have things like most software or simple standard-parts open hardware projects. On the other side you have things like an open source marble statue, where you still need to bring all the knowledge of how to make the marble statue — draw a circle, draw the rest of the owl and all that.
A microphone with complex coil winding and gluing a micron-thin membrane to a coil is going to be somewhere inbetween.
What exists btw. are condensor mics, but there you need to buy the membrane-assembly yourself.
For a long time, GUADEC, Gnome User and Developer Conference, was supported for video recording by Collabora and other smaller free software companies which did the heavy lifting in Gstreamer too (a/v framework that's the base for GNOME apps). My apologies if I am misrepresenting who did what, maybe it was Igalia or another company: this was 15-20 years ago.
How much of the actual video recording equipment was coming with free firmware — probably none — does not change the fact that these are people improving the situation rather than just accepting that the hardware you buy is at the mercy of the original vendor.
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