Hacker News Reader

Comment by floodle | Hacker News Reader

I think a horse and buggy and a car are different classes of technology.

A better comparison is old cars and new cars. Creating waste is not the only purpose of cars, but manufacturers sure do like to push newer models for the sake of sales, disregarding the waste problem.

Right now my 40 year old car still runs just fine. But that's because public infrastructure still supports it. With tricks like manufacturer-specific garages and forced software obsolescence, a car I buy today might well not be usable in 40 year's time.

View on HN

> Right now my 40 year old car still runs just fine

But it doesn’t have modern safety features, to say nothing of its fuel efficiency.

> that's because public infrastructure still supports it

Public infrastructure supports old computers fine. Just like with old cars, people value the new things being brought to the table.

That doesn’t mean every new feature is wanted. But on the balance, most people upgrade their phones and computers out of choice.

Computers and phones are in fundamentally different categories because one has open software and the other doesn't.

Whether you or people in aggregate choose to do things is distinct from whether they are effectively forced via planned obsolescence. That's what makes it planned.

I know that my old car has lower fuel efficiency. It's actually not that bad, my 20 year old car gets about 45-50 UK MPG, a new one of the same shape etc would get about 60-70. The distinction is small enough that scrapping the car and making a new one would be worse overall from an emissions perspective.

But again, that's my choice. New phones have better cameras than mine. I don't care, I have a real camera for that.

> Computers and phones are in fundamentally different categories because one has open software and the other doesn't

I have a grandparent who uses the same phone we got her a decade ago. It runs entirely on closed-source software. It works fine. Same for the Windows computer we got her five years before that. Meanwhile, my friend who runs AOSP on his phone has a new device every six months.

And I switched from an old phone ('13 model) to one a single year newer so I could run open software on it.

(Just counteracting your anecdote about the friend...shrug)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com