• Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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    1 year ago

    The default assumption shouldn’t be that they do something, they very clearly only package existing technology. They clearly don’t have the know-how to make a functioning modem based on existing specifications, much less develop new tech. Why do you believe they do innovate? Because they told you? I’d suggest the evidence against the null hypothesis just doesn’t exist.

    The graphic I linked shows the reality, that all the underlying tech is from the public sector.

    Also, you didn’t even bother to contradict what I said that most of the programming is stapling together existing APIs. That’s true, isn’t it?

    • AlotOfReading@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You have no idea how modern technology is produced. Any particular product is usually the result of dozens to thousands of iterations, some funded with public money and many not. Let’s take an example from your chart: DRAM. I actually don’t know when DARPA “developed” DRAM (since DARPA usually funds private companies to do development for them), but it must have been before 1970 when Intel designed the 1103 chip that got them started. Do you think that pre-1970s design is remotely similar to the DRAM operating on your device today? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not.

      And no, modern device development does not consist of gluing a bunch of APIs together. Apple maintains its own compilers, languages, toolchains, runtimes, hardware, operating systems, debugging tools, and so on. Some of that code had distant origins in open source (e.g. webkit), but that’s vastly different than publicly funded and those components are usually very different today.

      They’re failing to produce competitive modems because modern wireless is one of closest things humans have to straight up black magic. It’s extremely difficult to get right, especially as frequencies go up, SNR goes down, and we try to push things ever faster despite having effectively reached the Shannon limit ages ago.

      • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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        1 year ago

        So you’ve vaguely waved your hands in the direction of innovations that you think are different now than in the 1970s but not explained how they’re different or where those innovations came from.

        You aren’t actually pointing to any serious innovations silicon valley have done.

        Modern device development consists of more than gluing a bunch of APIs together, but it largely does consist of that.

        Apple maintains those things not for innovation purposes, but so they can keep a walled garden. If they maintain objective C and iOS and MacOS on their own terms then they can keep people locked into their ecosystem and overcharge them for devices they will then overcharge for repairs in order to upsell people into the next model. They are notorious for this shitty behaviour. It’s not real innovation.

        And when you say wireless is straight up black magic… you mean it’s a real technology that was developed by researchers, not capitalists, because real R&D is expensive, so capitalism socialises the costs and privatises the rewards.