@Shrigglepuss When I was looking to put together my current desktop I went to a local shop and the kids there honestly thought I was joking when I said I wanted something to last a decade. My last computer did 8 years and I only replaced it because I used to live by the sea, and I was down to my last working USB port due to rust.

Got the current one from a GNU/Linux specialist. Installing Debian was a dream. Didn't need a single non-free driver. How it should be.

https://www.linuxnow.com.au

@Shrigglepuss

with Coreboot or libreboot, pls.

@Shrigglepuss computers haven't gotten more "powerful" in over a decade. Hardware is spinning its wheels against incrementally shittily programmed software

@Shrigglepuss But how will the blessed line continue to go up if society isn't buying gadgets every three seconds?

Won't somebody please think about the line? D=

@Shrigglepuss My main computer is a 2012 Mac mini but I also use a 2015 MacBook Pro. While both do everything I need to do at speeds I can live with, I still confess to lusting after an M4 mini when it becomes available. I’ll just need to let the irrational part of my brain override my Scottish heritage. Should be a battle royale.

@Shrigglepuss

I miss the days when high-capacity storage was prohibitively expensive and law enforcement were tech-illiterate.

@Shrigglepuss Heard a great thing on the radio the other day: it's important to recycle phones, computers, etc, because we nearly have enough of the essential minerals dug out of the ground to keep them all going by recirculating the stuff, instead of sending children down mines

@Shrigglepuss holy shit, I’ve never considered how good things could be if we pivoted towards narrower and more suitably designed computers. The technology is all there to make lifetime usage computers.

@Shrigglepuss I say do more with less,
Write lean code, assume you have a very limited memory and cpu time budget. Don't load what you don't need, don't write what won't be read. Don't compute what won't be used.
Pretend everyone is using ten to fifteen year old hardware. With outlook 98, IE, the active-x plugin their bank used to require and malware running, with as voodoo extreme 3dx Hercules with 2mb of video ram and the wrong drivers installed.

@Shrigglepuss Also I hope hardware manufacturers help us start to make less bloated software

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kZRE7HIO3vk

@Shrigglepuss hopefully #riscv will be the turn to more efficient computers. If they also get more powerful at the same time though, I wouldn't be sad.

@Shrigglepuss absolutely this. Much easier to reduce software bloat than improve your hardware. Ran xubuntu for years on an old laptop and probably got better or equivalent performance than most modern laptops available new, really great.
https://xubuntu.org/

@Shrigglepuss Having worked in IT since the 90s, I agree. The main reason personal computers and laptops are getting more powerful is because the applications are bloating, requiring more and more resources. Same with Windows and Mac.
Give me a bog standard laptop that can do the basics with ease.

@Shrigglepuss I'll start being excited about computers when companies stop needlessly making every program you use take up more and more ressources by the month

@Shrigglepuss

There was some science fiction story, where a man walking meets a computer in the form of a spear, lying in the dirt where it had been dropped a thousand years before. It speaks to him, encouraging him to pick it up, explaining that it could be useful.

That's the sort of computer longevity I daydream of.

@Shrigglepuss God yes, and also creating a healthier GPU market (stop crypto and AI from gobbling up all graphics cards, more good alternatives to Nvidia, developing open standards for compute further instead of Nvidia working on their own damn thing with CUDA, and not just focusing on developing gimmicks)

@Shrigglepuss Oh, no, I'm totally the opposite. I'm a "need-for-speed" tech junkie, addicted to progress. Bigger better faster. More cores, more ram, better graphics, faster processing times. Bleeding edge or bust for me.

But I don't like web apps, and I'd rather sit at my desk in front of my desktop PC with chonky keyboard, mouse, and external monitor, than on the couch with my phone or laptop. So I guess that makes me a bit of an enigma. 😜

(cc @CiaraNi)

@Shrigglepuss I'm interested in seeing the software we currently have better utilize what resources are already available, rather than constantly requiring more to do the same thing, but, somehow, slightly worse.

@Shrigglepuss I would say the same thing about smartphones. More resistents, better batteries and actually customizable

@Shrigglepuss Getting more powerful isn't just uninteresting but an antifeature. Every time they get more powerful it's license for all the software to do more unnecessary and often hostile stuff.

@Shrigglepuss
I'm still using a solar-powered scientific calculator I think I bought in 2012?

@Shrigglepuss hardware is as good as it needs to be, but software improvement has stalled, and in many cases, regressed.

@Shrigglepuss I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people paid more to work less, and I want computers to match

@Shrigglepuss
But I need to compile my rust…

@Shrigglepuss I fully agree. There's a ton of room for optimizations to be made. But since «memory got cheap» it's apparently acceptable to waste a gazillion Watts to just read a mail.

@Shrigglepuss optimization and resilience are so forgotten

@Shrigglepuss agreed. same

I'm writing (slooooowly) a book about sw/hw performance

@Tamasg @Shrigglepuss In a long term, we must remake all of the hardware and software architectures in order for them to become simpler. the simpler, the more repairable.

@Shrigglepuss@godforsaken.website I wanna see everything get cheaper, the only thing that needs increases is storage.

I want a 50 euro machine in 10 years to do what 500 euro does today