Counterpoint. I have a Dell laptop from 2017 at work. I keep it around for plugging in to network equipment and that sort of thing. I've had Win 11 on it for the last few years, and it was getting unusably slow. Also, the battery, even though replaced in the last year, would only last about an hour of normal use. I had a similar belief about browsers and the web. No matter how light your OS, the browser and web experience is the bottleneck. But then a couple weeks ago, I installed Arch and IceWM with Firefox. What a difference. The thing is snappy, even in the browser. And the battery lasts all day. I was blown away.
Like others, I love this idea. A related idea I had was a library of 3d models of parts. Like thingiverse, but specifically for repair/replace components and not limited to plastic. My thought was if it's plastic you could 3d print whatever little busted plastic part was going to send your household item to landfill. But also models of things like automotive parts that you could have made by somewhere like xometry. I thought of it as an "international component database."
I'd forgotten about those little cables. If I recall correctly, they were small round cables, with maybe four conductors and a little flat connector with a clip?
It doesn't sound to me like you've pulled much wire. I'm sure there will be a point in time when that sort of thing can be automated, but it's at least an order of magnitude more difficult a problem than driving a car.
Seems like a weird crusade. Pointing everything directly at the IP address might not seem so swell when it's time to upgrade the server or the address has to change for some reason. Sure would be nice to just update the DNS record to point to the new address.
Not a developer by trade. But incidentally, today I took my first stab at "vibe coding". I wrote a little gui program to streamline a process that I've been doing for years. The code is an absolute wreck. But the program works and does what it's meant to do. I wouldn't ever expect anyone to maintain it, but for what it is, I can't complain. The alternative would have been for the tool to have not been written at all. The level of effort was so low that a) it passed the threshold of it being worth my time, and b) if it needs to be re-vibe-coded over again, then no worries.
I love Linux. I've been using it for about 25 years now. I try to be a realist, and historically, it has always been my opinion that it is a less polished experience, suitable mainly for power users. But my opinion now is that many flavors actually do offer a superior desktop user experience for most use cases.
Nice, I worked at one of those mom and pop computer shops in the late 90's. I built the computers, and I even went with my boss (the shop owner) to those shows a couple times. From what I remember, the show scene was pretty well declining at that point, at least in our area. I still remember the TV ads, though. "SUPER VGA! CD-ROM!!"
I can absolutely relate. I bought a series x at launch with the exact same idea, and have had the same disappointment. Minecraft and Borderlands have been about the only solid split screen titles on this whole generation. That being said, I do feel like I've gotten my money's worth out of the hardware. It just didn't play out like I was hoping. Also, I agree with the article's complaint about gamepass. I had ultimate starting when I bought the console in 2020. I don't remember what I paid at the beginning, but I think it was like $8/month. They lost me when they just upped it from $20-$30. I mean, $20 was already a stretch, but a 50% increase on top of that? Bye.
You know, this is true. And I've read any number of "you should never use dd, use this instead" articles over the years. But man, do I love me some dd.
I mostly agree. Tapes worked pretty well. The big advantage of CD's from my perspective was the ability to jump straight to a track. Rewinding and fastforwarding was quite annoying. But CD's skipped like crazy on any mobile application, especially on the early hardware. Of course mp3's solved this. And there was a nice time, albeit short, time where we downloaded music and felt as if it was ours to own. Granted, a lot of this was probably pirated, otherwise maybe you ripped a CD. But still it represented a great state of solid technology (they just played for you without any fuss) and reasonable ownership. Then along came streaming. It does, of course, have its advantages, but they come with many significant drawbacks.
This is a very different take than my own. I do agree with the author on one point. I think trying to pinpoint a specific range of years to define a generation is missing the point. It's more about culture and the experience of your upbringing than it is about a particular date. I was born in '83, and I couldn't identify more with GenX. I listened to all the same music, experienced the free-range childhood, share the ideology, etc.
That being said, I don't view it in a negative light at all. Whatsoever. I don't feel that the adults let us down. I don't consider myself a trauma victim. And I never felt alone. I, too, walked myself home from school and found my own snacks. And then I took off again. On my bike or on foot. I met up with friends or cousins and we lived a life I could only dream about now. We built forts, played in the mud, shot our bee bee guns. Rode bikes, used tools, fixed things. We crashed, we got hurt, we solved our own problems. We lived, we learned, we built confidence, capability, and self sufficiency. We had a freedom that makes me want to weep yearning for it now.
Our parents, mine at least, didn't neglect me. They trusted me. And they didn't trust me not to fuck up. They knew I'd do that. They trusted me to learn from it.
Absolutely true. I bought a "dumb" Samsung around 2010. It still works to this day. In 2020, I bought a mid-range TV with Android. The computer in it died after 3 years, and I wasn't able to find a replacement at a reasonable cost. I sat on it for 2 years before finally ewasting it, because the wastefulness made me sick. I guess my main point is that it was the "smart" part that failed. If it was just a display, it would almost certainly still be trucking along.
I agree that he came out blasting, and the language and tone, particularly at the beginning are pretty off-putting. That being said, having read the full post, I can't say I disagree with the motives and point of view.
That only makes sense if you have the opportunity to make more money than you'd be paying the mechanic with the time you spent fixing the car. I'd venture to say that's true less often than not. Even if you day job makes more per hour than you're saving by repairing the car, it doesn't necessarily mean you can just choose to book more hours on the job. To make it more concrete, let's use the given example. Let's say the repair is $300 in parts, and $700 in labor. Let's call the shop rate $100/hour, to be conservative. So in order for it to make sense for me financially, I have to a) have a job that makes at least $100/hour and b) have the choice to work an extra 7 hours.
Agreed on the ridiculous page counts, but I don't find Stephenson's pages a slog. Exhausting, maybe. There's a lot going on. But he makes me laugh. I'd like to meet that guy.