Re: Cutting Edge Computing for Hobbyists

On 2022-01-02, Jason Evans <[email protected]> wrote:
> I've been watching Jason Scott's documentary series on BBS's in the 1980s 
> and 90's. It amazes me that a lot of them were built by people in their 
> garages.

I'm a bit younger than the BBS era myself (yeah I can't believe I
landed on Usenet myself) and I found the documentary fascinating both
in what happened and in how similar the BBS and Fido era issues are to
today's social media issues.

> A question that's been bugging me tonight is, what are some areas today 
> that an "amateur computerist" can get into that's aren't already 
> completely overrun with people?

I'd push back on the idea that having something be overrun by people
makes it unsuitable for amateur growth. For example, today's fractal
antennas were pioneered by a ham radio enthusiast who worked in
antennas for their day job.

Personally I think there's a lot of room in communication systems for
growth. Most people that use the internet just use big websites on the
web. There's a rich internet of source and destination IPs out there
sending data each other that is available for networking and the web
is only _one part_ of it. And where previously spam was a large issue,
I wonder if advances in machine learning and bayesian/causal
statistics have made it easier for hobbyists to come up with anti-spam
measures that are more sophisticated than the Scorefiles of slrn.

There's also cryptocurrencies which are wide open and full of bullshit
with some nuggets of usefulness mixed in (IMO).

- meff