Mastodawn

RE: https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/116127740444038853

The unadmitted reason this is happening (and the AI bubble besides): Moore's Law *has ended*. The only way for hardware sales to go in future is *down* because your next PC or Mac will work just fine until it breaks or dies of old age. So by ramping prices artificially via this RAM/SSD futures bullshit, they're keeping profits high for as long as possible.

Charlie Stross Feb 25

I just noticed I have 18Tb of storage plugged into my desktop (a laptop with its own 2Tb of built-in SSD) and WTF am I doing with it all?!?

Hugo Mills Feb 25

@cstross @blogdiva Cat pictures. It's usually cat pictures. Have you checked Menhit's home directory?

DressToKILT Feb 25

@darkling @cstross @blogdiva literally came here just to say "it's cat pics, isn't it?"

@cstross @blogdiva I have such large storage, where I keep all my audio and film and game installer backups because fuck streaming.

@cstross /dev/random > randomnes_store_for_later_use.txt

Mark Dennehy Feb 25

@cstross @blogdiva Tell me you have an oversized porn library without telling me you have an oversized porn library :D

Charlie Stross Feb 25

@markdennehy @blogdiva Actually most of that storage is redundant backup drives :)

Mark Dennehy Feb 25

@cstross @blogdiva A redundantly backed up porn archive, you say? 😜

@cstross @blogdiva Sell it and retire with a huge pile of cash?

your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦Feb 25

it’s been so cheap to add another drive or RAM, IF YOU HAVE THE MONEY.

since my divorce, been so broke, everything i have is a hand-me down or refurbished.

that’s why i switched to linux. i’ve squeezed the proverbial blood from Dell Inspiron bricks with SOLDERED RAM. i have ran webservers on tablets meant for kids to play CandyCrush.

don't matter if the tech is cheap if i got no money to spend.

it’s why i can see the scarcity they are creating.

it’s like a divorce.

Charlie Stross Feb 25

@blogdiva I rely on these machines for earning my living. Still, with prices soaring I'm going into "make do and mend" mode for the foreseeable future. And turning old kit over to Linux or BSD …

Kinene⭐🐻Feb 25

@cstross @blogdiva I converted to Linux around 2000, after one too many "blue screens of death." Before that, it was CP/M, then pirate copies of 3.1 and 98 on various computers.

your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦Feb 25

@cstross this is the way

Negative12DollarBill Feb 25

@cstross @blogdiva Doesn't the "earn my living" part mean you can claim it/write it off on your taxes?

Wiredfire Feb 25

@negative12dollarbill @cstross @blogdiva only partially. A decade or two back you could write off the full cost of computing hardware against tax but it was so widely and comprehensively abused that the Inland Revenue put a stop to it.

Charlie Stross Feb 25

@negative12dollarbill @blogdiva Yes, but first I have to *earn* the money. (I'm still in a rough patch financially following a year of downtime due to COVID then finishing a series of novels that had dwindling sales before spinning up a new series, because: COVID and age-related decline in energy.)

Negative12DollarBill Feb 26

@cstross @blogdiva
Sorry to hear that. Somehow I didn't know that about you.

Jernej Simončič �Feb 25

@cstross @blogdiva Somebody is bragging how rich they are :)

Mark Harris Feb 25

@cstross @blogdiva Backing up the Epstein Files?

your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦Feb 25

@nzlemming @cstross LMAO

@cstross Vast plains in which you torture imaginary friends.

Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️‍⚧️Feb 25

@cstross @blogdiva
sciop.net ?

Alien software, human hardware Feb 26

@cstross @blogdiva cat videos?

@cstross There's also the "hardware still works fine but software goes planned-obsolescence" route, but Microsoft just did that a few months ago and it'll be awhile before they can get away with doing it again.

@cstross I am willing to entertain the "we're going to get rid of consumer computer hardware that isn't rented" scenario.

In the 1970s, there was a thriving market for making, selling, and applying custom/aftermarket car parts. The entire auto industry systematically murdered it by successively moving cars into a space where you couldn't do that. It's not like we don't know a large market can't be expunged.

The incumbents have a strong general incentive to keep people from having options.

@graydon @cstross that's not fair - there was no attempt to kill aftermarket parts, the aftermarket is thriving.

A poor comparison

⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️Feb 25

@furicle @graydon @cstross indeed. My car is in the shop *right now* having 3rd party parking sensors added.

Jernej Simončič �Feb 25

@falken @furicle @graydon @cstross Speaking of parking sensors, my mother bought a new car 3 years ago. The model she chose included parking sensors, and had to be sold with them – except thanks to the shortages, Opel couldn't actually include them, so the dealership had to add aftermarket sensors to the car.

@jernej__s @falken @graydon @cstross
GM supplied them for my truck a good nine months after purchase, along with the seat warmer controller computer.
Gave me a discount for it at least.

@furicle @cstross It is not what it was and a whole lot of effort has gone into, e.g. doing things with on board computers to prevent off-brand parts. (Not, in autos, as much as in heavy machinery including farm machinery.) "Right to repair" didn't start with small electronic gadgets.

Or look at the cost of replacing a headlight; lots of effort has gone into making you buy the big assembly and not either a standard headlight or replacing a bulb.

Charlie Stross Feb 25

@graydon @furicle This goes back a long way, though. I remember being appalled in 1991 when the windscreen wiper on my car packed up and discovering it needed a sealed assembly with motor, gearing, and two arms to fix it—it wasn't designed to be repairable. (I shared a house with a car kitbasher, though, so he got it working again: opened it up and replaced the stripped plastic gear.)

@cstross @furicle Back to at least to the 1970s!

The core point I'm after is that collusion across entire industries to prevent unwanted behavior (that is, not giving them maximal money) has a deep history of being found completely legal and proper and more or less working.

A combination of pricing people out of the market and pressure to make every device a managed device has been going on about personal computing hardware for at least ten years. Turning that up to 11 isn't implausible.

Rob Landley Feb 25

@graydon @cstross @furicle There's a reason I'm not too upset about a supply chain collapse. (Although I'm watching food distribution closely.)

A raspberry pi is an outright miracle of computing... by 1990s standards. It can be a media center, server, gaming, the works. The sane open source people make the same hardware do more over time.

Alas Linux stopped being sane ~10 years ago, because https://www.zdnet.com/article/graying-linux-developers-look-for-new-blood/ eventually became the "here's a nickel kid" dilbert strip unix greybeards.

Graying Linux developers look for new blood

The top Linux developers are getting older and The Linux Foundation is addressing the issue.

ZDNET

@cstross @graydon

The parts are bought by the OEMs as assemblies, and installed as assemblies. They aren't interested in fixing them as it's cheaper to use whole units that robots assemble.

No attempt to kill the aftermarket - the aftermarket is happy to sell whole wiper motors instead of almost zero profit bushings springs and brushes, and one part instead of 1000 per car.

Lots of things have changed, and may be anti consumer, not arguing that, but it's driven by costs and requirements.

MidgePhoto Feb 26

@furicle @cstross @graydon
I think it is actually easier to get one bushing etc than it was in 1985 (the last time I rebuilt an engine)

MidgePhoto Feb 26

@furicle @cstross @graydon
For two reasons: a record that a bushing is in stock in the warehouse is more likely to mean it is in stock in the warehouse;
All bushings in the world can be found, and posted.

Ian Turton Feb 25

@cstross @graydon @furicle At various repair cafés over the past year I've fixed 3 Kenwood mixers, the oldest from 1950 was easy to disassemble and repair with common parts, the second from the 1990s or early 2000 had a simple break away pin to save the gear box if you overstressed it and the latest one from 2020 had a sealed gearbox where the drive shaft had bent £70 to replace. Planned obsolescence.

rob los ricos Feb 25

@ianturton @cstross @graydon @furicle

gorilla amps were usually 25 watts, if not 50 watts. they shipped with 15 watt speakers. blew 'em out. i replaced the blown speakers with ones rated for the amps. nice little second income for a year or so.

ahistorical immaterialist Feb 25

@cstross @graydon @furicle one of the brake lights on my previous car broke. What should have been a $5 bulb, instead I was quoted $700 to import the assembly from Japan, plus labour. For a brake light, likely illegal for me to drive it without paying $700 to fix it.

adamrice Feb 25

@graydon @furicle @cstross The headlight thing is less bad in the USA today than it was in, say, the 80s, when all cars had “sealed beam” headlights by law. With ordinary headlights today, you can buy just the bulb. I’m guessing that LED headlights require you to buy the whole unit.

@graydon @cstross again, wasn't the intention.

Modern headlights throw a lot more light than any old headlamp, and aerodynamic styling and mileage drives custom swept shapes that aren't standard

We used to replace bulbs often, now it's only when defective or damaged.

There was no conspiracy to kill the aftermarket

Rob Landley Feb 25

@graydon @furicle @cstross Obama's "cash for clunkers" program was another direct attack on aftermarket parts, by eliminating working vehicles that predated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention provisions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-JOYGlsnKw

Late stage capitalism performing regulatory capture literally bought them and destroyed them en masse.

Government "Helps" By Destroying 700,000 Working Cars - Cash For Clunkers

YouTube

@graydon @cstross and you know they probably won’t even have to tell governments that they will implement whatever sort of age gating or identity verification/tracking governments want on those systems. Because the governments will easily be able to force them to even assuming the system owners don’t want to in the first place.

DressToKILT Feb 25

@graydon @cstross just remember, communists are the ones who want to take your private property!

@dresstokilt @cstross "Every accusation is a confession" is not limited to skeevy remarks and musings about genocide. Pretty much everything ever said about the perils of communism also counts.

Charlie Stross Feb 25

@graydon @dresstokilt Yep: it is glaringly obvious today that "the menace of the communist international conspiracy!!!" was 100% right-wing projection (of what they wished they could get away with, or what—once the Heritage Foundation got going—of what they were actively trying to achieve).

Irene (she/they, Sir/Mr.)Feb 25

@dresstokilt please learn the difference between personal property and private property before fearmongering about who is coming to take what from whom, it is the capitalists who are coming after personal property and the only people who fear the abolition of private property are themselves actual or aspiring despots @graydon @cstross

DressToKILT Feb 25

@Irenetherogue @graydon @cstross Here this might be helpful for you to read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm

Sarcasm - Wikipedia

Irene (she/they, Sir/Mr.)Feb 25

@dresstokilt heres one for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive-aggressive_behavior

@graydon @cstross

Passive-aggressive behavior - Wikipedia

Charlie Stross Feb 25

@Irenetherogue @dresstokilt @graydon At least 2/3 of the people in the thread you just rudely barged into are not USAns. We understand and use sarcasm *and* irony. (And you're one toot away from a block right now.)

HP van Braam Feb 25

@cstross Yeah, I recently came to a similar conclusion.

I had replaced the fans in my 4 year old laptop and now it is ... just fine. Like I'm actually no longer even considering replacing it.

Now I did buy a ridiculous laptop 4 years ago, but still.

I wonder how many people could extend the life if their machines by just cleaning out the dust/replacing the fans.

@hp @cstross As I get older, I realize I want my computer to last more than 5 years minimum, with the pricing sky-rocketing. It seems insane for a computer with a dedicated graphics card.

Pete / Syllopsium Feb 26

@MythicNation @hp @cstross Unless you need to run an up to the moment game, you do not need recent hardware.

This fanless browsing box is a second hand Optiplex 3000 thin client (Wyse 5070 is also good). It has 32GB RAM and 1TB NVMe. Not good for games though.

My main system is a dual Xeon system that is really high end - for 2013. Plus a 2017 graphics card.

My lounge gaming system does have a 2024 GPU, it is in a second hand workstation from 2018 and is fast enough to run VR.

I'm considering getting another workstation system, to run bleeding edge Unix releases. Likely to be a second hand 2016 workstation, cost of up to 300 quid.

There are disadvantages with this such as increased power consumption, proprietary power supplies and cabling, but it's often also possible to hack the BIOS to add in NVMe support and resizable BAR support if they're not included (obviously check before buying, and some Dell systems don't support turbo boost properly)

@cstross ...which only works for as long as nobody else can start producing alternative hardware.

And, come on: decades-old DDR3 is barely 5 times slower than modern DDR5. For most practical uses, cheap and somewhat slower than top-end memory would be perfectly fine.

an actual bus Feb 25

@mbpaz @cstross There is so much untapped wealth in all the old tech collecting dust all over the world. Commercial software steals this wealth from us by dropping support but free software unlocks it all back.

I'm writing this on a laptop from 2010 that I've been using as my only personal computer for about two years. It's running linux and can stream video in 720p when the website isn't too bloated, 480p otherwise, and I can use it to work on my godot game.

✶Rayotron✶Feb 25

@renardboy @mbpaz @cstross

Yup, I'm posting this with a 2010 Core 2 Duo running Linux. I use it for internet, video editing, making music with Reaper, etc. I'll never stop using C2D computers for most duties.

an actual bus Feb 25

@rayotron @mbpaz @cstross Obsolescence is a cage made of twigs 😎

BashStKid Feb 25

@cstross There was a nice analogy for this on Greg Jenner’s You’re Dead to Me history programme;
back in the days of the viciously colonial spice trade, the Dutch tried to maintain high prices by burning spices in the Amsterdam docks; no matter that thousands of islanders had been killed, and hundreds of sailors drowned to get them, they burned them rather than accept a less than stratospheric price, while also starving their competition of product.

@cstross @blogdiva My desktop computer broke a year ago. I replaced the required parts and now it’s working again, of course better on paper, as the old one was over ten years old — mostly.

But in practice, the difference is not very much. Disk access is faster as I upgraded the spinning metal with SSDs, but mostly it does what its previous incarnation did.

And I’ve also been running a Thinkpad over a decade old (with debian), and it, too, does most of the things I want a computer to do.

Kinene⭐🐻Feb 25

@pare @cstross @blogdiva My "new," computer is a ThinkPad X240, running Linux. Purchased used on eBay about 2 years ago for under $200. 8gb mem, ~400gb ssd. It is still quite adequate. And smaller than newer laptops.