you would be surprised how much work a CPU under 100mhz can do when there isn’t an operating system/browser in the way

Latest cool thing I saw : Doom on my earbuds https://doombuds.com/ which IMHO demonstrate greatly how much more powerful so many tiny things around us really are.

Sorry buddy but you are not “smart enough” to use that super powerful tool that supposedly can do everything extremely convenient for you! /s

Right, except that unlike Explorer or IE after that, it siphons everything it can to send it back to Redmond so even if one does not use it, it is STILL a problem.

“bend the productivity curve” is such a beautiful way to say that they are running out of ideas on how to sell that damn thing.

It basically went from :

• it’s going to change EVERYTHING! Humanity as we know it is a thing of the past!

… to “bend the productivity curve”. It’s not how it “radically increase productivity” no it’s a lot more subtle than that, to the point that it can actually bend that curve down. What a shit show.

Right, sorry maybe I got a bit excited by my point. It wasn’t about this HDD example in particular, it was about the broader consumer hardware trend.

Another interesting metric is piracy trends, checking a popular show, e.g Fallout and its latest episode namely S02E05 :

• 1080p ~15k seeds
• 720p ~3k seeds
• 480p ~0.2 seeds

… and 2160p gets 50 seeds!

Of course that’s just 1 datapoint and it’d have to be replicated (maybe it was released after the other versions, maybe it’s a show people do NOT want in high res, etc) but it’s quite a big gap.

I’m not arguing about prices. I wish prices would keep on going down but that’s just my preference as a consumer. It has nothing to do with my argument though.

I’d be curious to know if game size is increasing over time. My intuition is that we also peaked at 200GB installs. There are bigger games but on average I’m not sure we installation size keeps on growing.

Interesting, I’m not sure if there is a metric for it, maybe Steam most popular configuration could be used then see if it’s average time does it indeed last longer? My intuition is it might indeed but I didn’t check the actual data.

Honestly I don’t think it matters so much…

I think we reached peaked IT few years ago.

Nobody needs (that’s the crux term here, need, not “want” or “desire” or “wish”) a bigger hard drive. It’s the same way nobody needs an 8K TV and they they aren’t sold. Why?

I’m glad you ask, it’s all connected! If you stick to “just” a 4K TV, because you have normal human eyes, then the content you need is “just” 4K so a movie is just 2GB or so… and thus you don’t need a larger hard drive, thus not CPU, GPU, memory, etc. The current setup is simply “good enough”.

I can already hear the steps of that ONE person who edits 360 8K videos for National Geographic preparing to argue “actually…!” and yes, they ARE right. Some people, professionals, DO need super high res, super high framerate, super high everything … but that’s NOT your average consumer. You average consumer STOPPED upgrading because they need to. Most consumer who still upgrade mostly do it because of habit, because they get coerced into it (e.g. MicroSlop Windows 11) but not because they genuinely need to.

So… yes I “wish” I had better everything, including hard drive, but the truth is we “peaked” in terms of actually required spec a couple of years ago, same for phones that are now the same equivalent small slabs.

My point is I’m wondering if this AI bet will have deeper consequence for the industry overall with the realization for most people (again, please before you reply : your average consumer, the person who browse the Web, watch a video of a TV series, play some games for fun, NOT a professional!) that the hardware they have TODAY is good enough.

FWIW I do have 2 Linux phones and… they work. The problem IMHO is that non-software companies believe THEY can lock or profit their customers via an “app”. If they only provided a Web page instead rather than a mandatory mobile application then it wouldn’t matter so much.

So, despite have working Linux phones (albeit far from perfect) I’m still relying on a deGoogled Android phone so that I can run mobile “apps” for only a couple of, quite important to me, services.

To summarize, I don’t think it’s the OS themselves that fuel lock-in but rather apps that require those locked down OSes.

TBH I don’t think he’s wrong, especially in HIS position.

Namely I think having the flexibility of the cloud is amazing… but NOT at the cost of losing sovereignty.

So when Bezos uses AWS he is actually smart because he remains sovereign. When anybody else though does rely on another system that they do not own for critical tasks then then lose sovereignty and thus agency.

TL;DR: cloud or not, maintain your agency.

Neat, my current setup is :

• stream from FIP.fr via cvlc
• when I absolutely love a tune, buy on Bandcamp
• if it’s not available or I bought it elsewhere, e.g. old CD, then get from Soulseek
• scp my ~/Music directory on my mobile phone

I tried LMS for few weeks but honestly just plain VLC is enough for me.

Anyway, point is, this decision makes me want to buy from Bandcamp even more.

Lot of complex discussions here about Ham radio operator, new hardware or protocol like Mestastic, SDR, etc so I’d start with “just” what people already have at home and only AFTER go there, if need be.

If you have WiFi Mesh at home or IoT via ZigBee or Z-Wave you already are doing mesh networking. Sure you might not have Internet access this way but the principle is already there via your existing relative affordable infrastructure.

😁

controversial take.

Nope, I agree, and so far you get only upvotes so… we agree.

I don’t use eSIM most of the time but when I travel and I don’t want roaming, damn it’s nice. I just go on Airalo or Saily, pick a destination, pay something like 20 bucks and get the data. I load it up on my phone, travel, land and voila, works right away while I’m still on my way through customs. No WiFi needed, no “quick” trip to a random shop or a large provider that’ll try to upsell whatever. I just land, connect, use my VPN and voila.

Also if your phone doesn’t support eSIM you can use https://jmp.chat/esim-adapter

1st time in my life I get a Error HTTP 451 even had to look up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_451 and I have to admit the reference to Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 is pretty neat.

Consequently because the proxy link you provided is relying on CloudFlare which is itself blocking access I recommending link first to the original content https://annas-archive.org/torrents and optionally to mirrors, proxies, etc.

FWIW I replaced my Samsung “smart” TV by a Nebula Mars video projector. It’s very convenient and let’s me forget I have it, tucked away and hidden most of the time. Yes it is “smart” but it’s Android and I can connect via adb to it to install apps like VLC, make it start on boot, etc. I’m not updating it.

Next time I do buy a replacement though I’ll verify first in forums if it can be rooted to have the level of control I need. Maybe there will be a OSHW equivalent to https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer for video projectors as unfortunately it seems like a trend.

Meanwhile ASML just stops doing R&D and give up on its extremely specialized supply chain. /s