Comment by shit_game | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shit_game | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

This is the result of the long-planned desire for consumer computing to be subscription computing. Ultimately, there is only so much that can be done in software to "encourage" (read: coerce) vendor-locked, always-online, account-based computer usage; there are viable options for people to escape these ecosystems via the ever growing plethora of web-based productivity software and linux distributions which are genuinely good, user friendly enough, and 100% daily-drivable, but these software options require hardware.

It's no coincidence that Microsoft decided to take such a massive stake in OpenAI - leveraging the opportunity to get in on a new front for vendor locking by force-multiplying their own market share by inserting it into everything they provide is an obvious choice, but also leveraging the insane amount of capital being thrown into the cesspit that is AI to make consumer hardware unaffordable (and eventually unusable due to remote attestation schemes) further enforces their position. OEM computers that meet the hardware requirements of their locked OS and software suite being the only computers that are a) affordable and b) "trusted" is the end goal.

I don't want to throw around buzzwords or be doomeristic, but this is digital corporatism in its endgame. Playing markets to price out every consumer globally for essential hardware is evil and something that a just world would punish relentlessly and swiftly, yet there aren't even crickets. This is happening unopposed.

What can we do? Serious question.

It's so hard to grasp as a problem for the lay person until it's too late.

Honestly; I don't know. I don't think there really is a viable solution that preserves consumer computation. Most of the young people I know don't really know or care about computers. Actually, most people at large that I know don't know or care about computers. They're devices that play videos, access web storesfronts, run browsers, do email, save pictures, and play games for them. Mobile phones are an even worse wasteland of "I don't know and I don't care". The average person doesn't give a shit about this being a problem. Coupled with the capital interests of making computing a subscription-only activity (leading to market activity that prices out consumers and lobbying actions that illegalize it), this spells out a very dire, terrible future for the world where computers require government and corporate permission to operate on the internet, and potentially in ones home.

Things are bad and I don't know what can be done about it because the balance of power and influence is so lopsided in favor of parties who want to do bad.

Presumably the answer is the same as nearly every real problem we face today: organize. Yes, it will be tough to organize around this problem specifically, but imagine a truly muscular working class movement like once existed in the early 20th century in many places: they raised armies, published their own newspapers, ran radio stations, started universities, even ran cooperative factories, all under the active opposition of capital. Surely a modern version of such a movement would recognize the need for secure, trustable, affordable, ad-free computing devices and invest accordingly.

It will take decades to build this power, just like it did then, but the alternative (which we are witnessing in slow motion in the meantime) is too grim to let stand.

I guess we can support open hardware projects like RISC-V, and homegrown chips. DIY chips will be expensive and very limited at first, so hopefully hobbysts will prioritize efficiency while they get better.

Fortunately we won't ever see a shortage of monitors and input devices, because then how would we consume the rent-a-remote-desktop services.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com