fsebugoutzone.org:9999

Post A2P0V2hrJ8VEyHcfGS by adfeno@ecodigital.social
(DIR) More posts by adfeno@ecodigital.social
(DIR) Post #A2IzLzlLcKxQKgcJJg by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T21:51:49Z

2 likes, 1 repeats

I haven&#39;t talked about my goal for personal computing in a while. With Sundog nerdsniping me in to attempting to turn the LibSSH-ESP32 port in to the basis of a full fledged SSH client for the ESP32, I guess I should spend a few minutes talking about why I bother with this bullshit.

(DIR) Post #A2IzLzwgwA20trvMzw by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T21:57:29Z

2 likes, 1 repeats

Computers could be good, but they aren&#39;t. That&#39;s the gist of it. I guess I mean Good with a capital G, as in &quot;a force for good in the world&quot;, but I also mean good with a lowercase g, as in &quot;not super shitty to use, or think about&quot;. I&#39;m not going to waste a lot of bits talking about how computers are bad. I&#39;ve done this a lot before, and you probably already agree with me. I&#39;ll quickly summarize the high points.

(DIR) Post #A2J1ddX9Cdi2VlVyQi by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T22:02:08Z

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What&#39;s wrong with (modern) computing? - Computers spy on us all the time- Computers are insecure, while pretending not to to be. - Computers enable new modes of rent seeking, further exasperated by shitty patents and worse laws- Computers/the modern internet encourage behaviors which are bad for our mental health as individuals. - Computers and the modern internet, in concert with modern capitalism have built a world essentially without public spaces. You know, all that bullshit.

(DIR) Post #A2J1ddjCTpLn799bDU by thor@pl.thj.no
2020-12-17T22:24:50.352177Z

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@ajroach42 ah, the &quot;politics&quot; of computers... what they&#39;re used for, not how well they function...

(DIR) Post #A2J22GJ6hAnLiPgp2u by thor@pl.thj.no
2020-12-17T22:29:15.744021Z

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@ajroach42 i&#39;d say the overall quality of software has been falling. there are even appliances with software bugs now...

(DIR) Post #A2J2VC0LlrkqlkiAsa by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T22:03:20Z

1 likes, 1 repeats

As I said, it&#39;s a summation. There&#39;s nuance. There are more problems. That list should serve as an okay shorthand for the kind of thing I&#39;m talking about. Computers? They&#39;re bad.

(DIR) Post #A2J2XbhPD7jD2R0AAy by alcinnz@floss.social
2020-12-17T22:09:57Z

1 likes, 0 repeats

@ajroach42 Sounds like you&#39;d enjoy World Wide Waste by Gerry McGovern!

(DIR) Post #A2J2akhqBAwRqFhlQW by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T22:06:57Z

2 likes, 2 repeats

But I&#39;m here, talking to you, through a computer. I derive my living from computers. I spend most of my free time in front of a computer. In spite of all the ways computers are lowercase b bad, computers enable a lot of Good. I believe in the potential of computers, in our digital future.

(DIR) Post #A2J2al1gzMoypozcMy by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T22:08:42Z

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I&#39;ve spent a lot of time thinking about what the next 30 years in computing might look like, the successes and failures of the last 30 years, and the inflection point at which a computer is Good Enough for most tasks. I&#39;ve spent a lot of time thinking about the concept of planned obsolescence as it applies to computing, and what modern computing might look like without the profit motive fucking everything up.

(DIR) Post #A2J2alMxiHpptmwbWS by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T22:11:06Z

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Sidebar: I&#39;m just a dude. I&#39;m a sysadmin. I spend a lot of time using computers, and specifically I spend a lot of time fixing machines that are failing in some way. But I&#39;m just some dude who thinks about stuff and imagines futures which are less horrible than present. I&#39;ve said that as a way to say: I don&#39;t claim to have The Answer, I just have some ideas. I&#39;m going to talk about those ideas. Sidebar over.

(DIR) Post #A2J2am8SrfpgH7AXZ2 by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T22:18:46Z

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So how did we get from the gleaming promise of the digital age as imagined in the 70s to the harsh cyberpunk reality of the 20s? Centralization, rent seeking, planned obsolescence, surveillance, advertising, and copyright. How do we move forward? Re-decentralization, a rejection of the profit motive, building for the future/to be repaired, building for privacy, rejecting advertising, and embracing Free software.

(DIR) Post #A2J2fmWGrf4Wuigvi4 by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T22:23:15Z

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Personally, there&#39;s another facet to all of this: I use and maintain computers professionally, and recreationaly. Sometimes, I want to do something that doesn&#39;t feel or look like my day job. Unfortunately, most of my hobbies feel and look a lot like my day job. To that end, I have some weird old computers that I keep around because they&#39;re useful and also because they&#39;re Vastly Different than the computers I use at work. My #zinestation, mac plus, and palm pilots fall in this camp.

(DIR) Post #A2J2fmk62G8Bbb9yG8 by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T22:29:04Z

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I can do about 80% of what I want to use a computer for with my 486 based, non-backlit, black and white HP Omnibook. Add my newly refurbished and upgraded Palm Lifedrive, and I&#39;m closer to 95%. Let&#39;s run through those tasks: Palm: - Listen to music (The palm is a 4GB CF card with a 2GB SD card, basically.) - Watch movies (I have to encode them specially for the palm, but the lifedrive makes a great video iPod.) - Read books (plucker is still pretty great) - RSS (ditto above)

(DIR) Post #A2J2g5k5OWPcX4IjNg by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T22:29:31Z

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Omnibook: - Email (via some old DOS software the name of which I&#39;ll have to look up, and lots of effort on getting my mail server configured correctly. + an ESP32 based modem. This took some doing and I still don&#39;t love how I&#39;m doing it. I&#39;ll do a blog post about it eventually.) - Social (mastodon via brutaldon via lynx via telnet over tor to an onion endpoint I run in my home, not ideal, or via BBS) - Write (via Windows 3.1 notepad)

(DIR) Post #A2J3FqarC9KfyS2AIC by wauz@muenchen.social
2020-12-17T22:42:57Z

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@ajroach42https://yewtu.be/watch?v=CDdvReNKKuk

(DIR) Post #A2J3jd8Lnoz8uttymu by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T22:32:20Z

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- Consult reference material (via the internet or gopher over my esp32 modem with the appropriate DOS software and SSL proxy, or more likely, via a real hacky thing I wrote to mirror a bunch of websites to a local web server.) - Develop (frankly Via GW-BASIC, although I&#39;d love to start doing real programming again.) - Games (this is the thing the omnibook is worst at! I consider that a strength most of the time, but I do have a lot of parser based IF games on it.)

(DIR) Post #A2J3jdHvEEdpOaNchs by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T22:36:16Z

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There was a time in the recent past when I used a Pentium MMX laptop as my only computer outside of work for weeks at a time. It could do basically everything I wanted it to do, including some far more impressive games. It&#39;s batteries gave out, finally, but until then it made a decent little computer.

(DIR) Post #A2J3jdW6NVz46Z0woC by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T22:40:26Z

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The only real problem I run in to in these setups are the hoops I have to jump through because I&#39;m the only one using them, and because (wireless) networking technology has advanced in ways that are not backwards compatible on the hardware level, while leaving laptops without a clear upgrade path. ...

(DIR) Post #A2J3jdjZZQl8mLJho0 by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T22:40:32Z

3 likes, 4 repeats

This feels like a kind of rambling sidebar, but there&#39;s a point: Most tasks that computers are used for on a daily basis could be completed on much less powerful hardware if there wasn&#39;t a profit incentive in the way.

(DIR) Post #A2J66Co23Qf9pcI4qe by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T22:46:28Z

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So, circling back to the original point: I&#39;m imaging a world in which computers are different.Specifically, different in that they are designed to be cheap, easily repaired or replaced, and to just Do Their Job forever. (This requires defining the job they are supposed to do.)

(DIR) Post #A2J66D3d7R8ibzaXA0 by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T22:47:56Z

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No one gets upset that their typewriter can&#39;t browse the internet, you know? But a computer isn&#39;t an appliance, it&#39;s an everything machine, and as an Everything machine, if it can&#39;t do the New Shiny Thing we have to throw it away and get a new one. That&#39;s the mentality I&#39;m trying to break out of.I want to define a(n extendable!) list of tasks that I feel like will be relevant indefinitely, and build a machine to last 30 years.

(DIR) Post #A2J6weXqAPzav7j46K by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T22:57:23Z

1 likes, 1 repeats

Which, finally, brings us back to the ESP32! See thread: https://retro.social/@ajroach42/105397577137324735Basically, the ESP32 is a simple microcontroller (that is to say, it&#39;s a computer! It&#39;s just not a computer the way we usually think about it.) It&#39;s really cheap, like $3 or $4 for a simple board. There are folks making software for it already to treat it like a desktop computer. It&#39;s not completely open or completely standardized or capable of everything I want out of my #PersonalComputer but ...

(DIR) Post #A2J6wemjH3tzfIgxJA by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T23:03:08Z

1 likes, 1 repeats

They get most of the way there on every count, and they have built in wifi and are so very cheap. It would be entirely possible to base a new paradigm of multi-decade computers on the ESP32, but built in such a way as to be agnostic to the actual hardware (that is to say, you follow the write once run anywhere model of Java, and use the ESP32 as the host of a virtualized environment OR you build for the ESP32, and then emulate the ESP32 on newer hardware in the future)

(DIR) Post #A2J6wf4SDA52YGz6w4 by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T23:11:58Z

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This is basically the approach that Infocom took in the 80s when they developed text adventure games for every computer on the planet. They invented a fake computer, compiled all their games for that fake computer, and then wrote emulators for that fake computer for every major machine of the era. As a result, basically any computer can run an infocom game.

(DIR) Post #A2J6wfIHNl8hF9S9U8 by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T23:16:13Z

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Now, is the ESP32 a good home for a multi-decade computer? I dunno! It&#39;s a little more limited than I would have picked (I&#39;d have probably stopped in the early multimedia era), but it&#39;s also way less power hungry than what I would have picked, and frankly significantly cheaper and easier to understand. So I&#39;m going to spend the next few months exploring the ESP32 as the basis for a purpose built computer that inherits the legacy of the tinkerers of the microcomputer era.

(DIR) Post #A2J6wfYaP8BQ3j5Au0 by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T23:22:47Z

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Principles I plan to adhere to in my ESP32 exploration: - Offline first, but networked- Understandable is better than &quot;easy to use&quot; - don&#39;t make assumptions about available hardware - Don&#39;t re-invent the wheel without a good reason - don&#39;t try to build a modern computer - Decide what this machine should do, make sure it&#39;s good at those things.

(DIR) Post #A2J9oE58yGzGOQybwW by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T23:38:51Z

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Further thoughts: Chip-8 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP-8 - Chip 8 is a virtual machine from the 70s for making games and software portable. It&#39;s part of the reason your graphing calculator plays games. The 100 year computer project (https://thedorkweb.substack.com/p/the-100-year-computer) that sent me careening back down this path has a lot in common with chip-8 (and the article mentions it by name.)

(DIR) Post #A2J9oEPLl99NP6QkRE by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T23:42:48Z

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I have other thoughts but it&#39;s dinner time. I&#39;ll revisit it.

(DIR) Post #A2J9oEs42O7Qq9rgC8 by kelbot@fosstodon.org
2020-12-17T23:56:14Z

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@ajroach42 Between your threads and my own rambling about low power devices and project ideas I keep coming back to wishing for basically an as open as it can be, simple, somewhat modern PDA type device based on an esp32 (or similar hopefully fully open microcontroller ideally) with some added features that PDAs didn&#39;t have. Mainly thinking about inputs and outputs that pdas lacked.

(DIR) Post #A2J9vkzd0V3gUYzIgK by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-17T23:57:39Z

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@kelbot And I&#39;m just trying to replace my Omnibook or my tandy 102. (ultimately, these goals largely overlap.)

(DIR) Post #A2JA4dnH8vZWloRiQS by kelbot@fosstodon.org
2020-12-17T23:59:14Z

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@ajroach42 Going to dig through some of my github stars and NC bookmarks a little later for some stuff I&#39;ve saved that is relevant to this.

(DIR) Post #A2JACx4RM8J2sBRCBE by kelbot@fosstodon.org
2020-12-18T00:00:42Z

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@ajroach42 Right! If something like this gets going I could see multiple slightly different form factors with a common base becoming pretty easy to accomplish.

(DIR) Post #A2JLaumQcfGaDNdqu8 by popolon@pleroma.popolon.org
2020-12-17T23:51:05.639500Z

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@ajroach42 Espressif also made ESP32-C based on RISC-V (ESP based on Xtensa LX6 is now named ESP-S by Espressif). So this is a more long term evolution. They currently give away RISC-V based boards, if you mail to them and have good projects (else it’s abour 2~3€ the board :)

(DIR) Post #A2JLavCJ4RxzVdkWEy by msh@coales.co
2020-12-18T02:08:08Z

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@popolon @ajroach42 another interesting sub-$10 option notwithstanding the machine learning marketing sorta-BS:https://www.seeedstudio.com/Sipeed-MAIX-I-module-WiFi-version-1st-RISC-V-64-AI-Module-K210-inside-p-3206.htmlI am giving the emerging RISC-V options a serious look.

(DIR) Post #A2JTaghxk1fyCjxJRo by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-18T03:33:19Z

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We&#39;ve talked a little about hardware. We&#39;ve talked a little about use cases, but we should probably dig deeper in to that. The remaining piece of this puzzle is software, which I think is closely tied to, but ultimately separate from, use cases. I&#39;ll talk about that now, a bit, until I fall asleep. So first things first, it&#39;s late and this might be incoherent.

(DIR) Post #A2JTagqTEOTud7w6i0 by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-18T03:37:30Z

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In order for a decade spanning computer to be remotely useful, it needs software that speaks common protocols and file formats.These protocols and file formats should be open standards, well defined, and well documented. In my current use cases, I mostly use plaintext files, csv, and HTML. When I need to use a more specialized software, I convert between an old file type and a new file type using a piece of open source software on a more modern system.

(DIR) Post #A2JYXIE8nvENBECvDM by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-18T03:44:49Z

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This takes the form of, for example, antiword or pandoc, running on Linux. Ultimately, there are still these least common multiple kind of standards out in the world, and they&#39;re likely to stick around forever (can you imagine a world without plaintext files?), And converters to get back to these platform agnostic file types are likely to stick around too. But filesystems, transfer protocols, etc? These things change, and often with good reason. Our system will need to keep up.

(DIR) Post #A2JYXNTZHzXfSWSoSG by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-18T03:53:45Z

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My solution to this problem so far has been intermediary computers. One example: Fetch the emails or the RSS feeds on my laptop, convert them, shuttle them over serial to the old machine.Another: use the older machine as a serial terminal to a more modern box. Do my actual work on the more modern box. This extends the life of the older machines, and lets me access modern conveniences when I want them, but it doesn&#39;t actually provide a model for a computer that will remain relevant.

(DIR) Post #A2JYXTaAaMO6OjbAZs by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-18T03:58:21Z

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I dunno what the answer is here, but I suspect it&#39;s something like 1 - define a native format for networked data that you&#39;re willing to support. 2 - provide several common network interfaces including serial/uart and wifi. 3 - be willing to whack another machine on to the serial port and let it translate a new hardware or software protocol when the existing ones are no longer supported. (Such as what I do now with the omnibook and my ESP32 wifi modem.)

(DIR) Post #A2JYXWkCpVCMCjJj8a by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-18T04:04:05Z

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And 4 - be willing to adapt. The point of this project, as I see it, is to provide a standard set of tools and protocols and file formats that should be relevant and workable for decades. If 2.4 and 5ghz wifi stop being supported by new radios in ten years, or WPA2 is replaced with WPA3 or whatever, we write new firmware, install a new radio, or migrate all our data (stored in open formats), and software (open source and largely platform agnostic), somewhere else.

(DIR) Post #A2JYXbrpmZGs5pvODo by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-18T04:04:11Z

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Treat it like a faulty part. Replace it. It&#39;s the ship of theseus. It&#39;s my grandfather&#39;s axe. The thing remains the thing becuase it works the same way and performs the same functions.

(DIR) Post #A2JYXhz92IgT4FOJRw by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-18T04:06:11Z

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On the other hand, until such time as there is reason to do otherwise, and for as long as is reasonable after there is reason to do otherwise, support the standards, and fight to keep them backwards compatible.

(DIR) Post #A2JYXmsaq5PkFNMeQq by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-18T04:21:12Z

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Last bit for tonight: peripherals. PS/2 is fine. USB2PS2 adapters are cheap and easy and can be made by hand. You could even wire up a couple of USB ports that just concert straight to PS/2. I don&#39;t love the idea of trying to support multipurpose USB 1 or 2, much less USB 3 or C, so I won&#39;t.Printers are good and important. They&#39;re also pretty complicated. Serial printers exist, and lots of printers that don&#39;t speak serial do at least use postscript, so I&#39;m confident we&#39;ll sort printing.

(DIR) Post #A2JYXqxhf1sWuNmmx6 by abloo@fedi.absturztau.be
2020-12-18T04:33:26.766317Z

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@ajroach42 I&#39;ve lost hope in printers long agoHaven&#39;t printed from my computer in years

(DIR) Post #A2Ji1JQPoWA1AdL0LY by yaaps@banana.dog
2020-12-18T03:35:51Z

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@ajroach42 Support for the Extensa core is being merged into LLVM, so your language and compiler options are going to be nice, and ESP-32s are going into lightbulbs so there&#39;s plenty potential for salvageI&#39;ve been working with zig as a front end for C to trying setting up a cross compiler environment. I&#39;ve always hated builds so this project is especially easy to procrastinate on, but if one of us gets that working then it&#39;s pretty easy for someone to build that code for RISC-V or other LLVM supported architecture later

(DIR) Post #A2Ji1JgMrCv9y6nkDA by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-18T04:10:12Z

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@yaaps I don&#39;t know zig, but am otherwise pleased with the contents of this post.

(DIR) Post #A2Ji1JuC1nyoezGmlE by yaaps@banana.dog
2020-12-18T06:07:31Z

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@ajroach42 While zig is a new C-like language with some interesting features, what you&#39;d be most interested in would be its utility as an alternative front end for Clang:https://andrewkelley.me/post/zig-cc-powerful-drop-in-replacement-gcc-clang.htmlBesides the features in that blog, there&#39;s some nice things about the way zig manages libc for the cross compiling environment and tracks changes in your code to reduce unnecessary recompilingBut I&#39;m not trying to open up rabbit holes under your feet while you&#39;re just crossing the field. I&#39;ve got to crack open a couple laptops to shuffle SSDs around to get a working dev laptop again

(DIR) Post #A2KoHA4h8iQ5gg4wls by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-18T04:26:56Z

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I guess one other thing to talk about is operating systems. The thing is, I don&#39;t care. As long as the OS itself isn&#39;t a hindrance to what I want, I don&#39;t care what it is. Several folks are running CP/M on this hardware. I dunno why you&#39;d want to do that/why you&#39;d standardize around that, but I&#39;m a DR fan and I like CP/M so let&#39;s fuckin go.

(DIR) Post #A2KoHAgyqN2pbPzWRk by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-18T18:50:39Z

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I said yesterday &quot;No one gets upset when their typewriter can&#39;t connect to the internet&quot; or something like that. It was off the cuff. I hadn&#39;t thought about it much. I&#39;m thinking about it now. No one gets upset that their typewriter can&#39;t connect to the internet because that typewriter could never connect to the internet. That is a central component to this idea.

(DIR) Post #A2KoHBJcWhx9XG4Nfs by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-18T19:03:17Z

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It&#39;s frustrating when a 10 year old computer can&#39;t get on facebook or watch 480p on youtube anymore, even thought it could five years ago. The computer hasn&#39;t changed. Facebook and youtube have become more complicated. They didn&#39;t need to, but they could get more complicated because the average computer got faster, and the average internet connection got faster over that time span. So a computer that could do X lost it&#39;s ability to do X as a result of a third party.That&#39;s frustrating.

(DIR) Post #A2KoOUt49qTGGN8aJc by benis@cawfee.club
2020-12-18T19:05:52.527671Z

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@ajroach42 use mpv and paste the URL as the input

(DIR) Post #A2KogRBGg1lHyqCp4S by amerika@freespeechextremist.com
2020-12-18T19:09:07.408735Z

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@ajroach42 Layers of bad code and stuff thrown in by bloated corporate teams...

(DIR) Post #A2Kp9GCoYpnqL7fn4y by msh@coales.co
2020-12-18T19:14:15Z

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@ajroach42 a depressingly large number of people think that computers (mobile devices included) &quot;wear out&quot; with age and use due to this phenomenon. The fact is that in the past 20 years or so that the reason the same computer is slower at doing the same tasks now compared to then is almost entirely due to surveillance and targeted marketing practices.Even if you&#39;re not mining bitcoin literally most of the energy expended by most computers is driven by this BS.

(DIR) Post #A2KpUP1oxAyxmfc1SK by Canageek@cybre.space
2020-12-18T19:18:02Z

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@msh @ajroach42 Even when that isn&#39;t the reason, fancier and fancier GUIs don&#39;t help, doubly so when they are done through layers of web browers and whatnot.And even if you avoid that, you&#39;ve got the issue if your computer doing a ton of stuff in background for security reasons instead of everything being coded for speed as the main and often only consideration.

(DIR) Post #A2KqFrOvHZXxOH30uu by meowski@freespeechextremist.com
2020-12-18T19:26:43.817735Z

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@ajroach42 a mid grade 10 year old computers can play 480p or even 1080p videowhy are you getting on facebook though? don&#39;t do that. problem solved

(DIR) Post #A2KqRgYrPU21FMKnfk by moth@stereophonic.space
2020-12-18T19:28:51.727565Z

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@meowski The thread is good.

(DIR) Post #A2KrUtxo8XGbdW6JMm by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-18T19:11:20Z

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So a portion of the multi-decade computer platform would need to be multi-decade support from network services. When I was a web developer, we used to call this idea graceful degradation, or progressive enhancement. The idea is: don&#39;t assume JS will be there, but feel free to use it if it is. Specifically, this means Don&#39;t Break if CSS or JS or images are missing. We abandoned that idea in web development, and frankly most web developers never embraced it to begin with.

(DIR) Post #A2KrXv3GY1kFsb5oKu by mdm@mcnamarii.town
2020-12-18T19:40:39Z

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@msh @ajroach42 And that&#39;s why I have to love iOS devices. Don&#39;t get slower with age. Just gifted an iPhone 6 (with a small crack in the screen) to an older relative for free, to replace the buggy, pile of crap android device they were using. Their Android phone was so buggy and slow they could barely send text messages -- the iPhone 6 is fast and quick as the day it was made. They&#39;re apparently loving it.

(DIR) Post #A2KrepgkszdvH0rOJE by meowski@freespeechextremist.com
2020-12-18T19:42:26.909664Z

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@moth part of the issue is people are pursuing frivolous goals in their computing. if the goal is to watch netflix or play games and see every hair on someone&#39;s head in glorious hi def video then yeah i mean, upgrade your hardwareif the goal is just to check email and do stuff at a terminal then there&#39;s no reason to constantly upgrade- although admittedly it becomes more and more difficult to maintain old hardware even for basic computing, but not impossiblecommercialization is a double edged sword. mass production at commercial scale has enabled the improved performance and reduced cost

(DIR) Post #A2L3LTg9gyauxY7Iwa by amatecha@merveilles.town
2020-12-18T21:53:18Z

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@msh @ajroach42 @solderpunk I recently left a couple comments on a hacker news thread about exactly this. We have mind-bogglingly powerful CPUs that are being used to interpret 5mb of JS to send a message or read a chunk of text (news article, recipe, whatever). Such a total waste.

(DIR) Post #A2L4P6RI8fQvzlSOC8 by msh@coales.co
2020-12-18T22:05:10Z

1 likes, 0 repeats

@mdm @ajroach42 Hmmm...that Apple devices may be the best alternative might be an even more depressing thought

(DIR) Post #A2L4vjJn7gStqKVSro by mathew@mastodon.social
2020-12-18T22:08:28Z

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@ajroach42 DR-DOS was so much better than MS-DOS...

(DIR) Post #A2L4vjUQU8yKNJTxRY by djsumdog@djsumdog.com
2020-12-18T22:11:07.496694Z

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@mathew @ajroach42 I remember DR Dos. I think I had DR DOS5 and 6. I remember it had one of those disk compressors built-in and it had a primitive task switcher for DOS. It was like ... 8~9 MB though; huge back then. My dad deleted it for the space

(DIR) Post #A2L5196yeRrPHt5yXg by mathew@mastodon.social
2020-12-18T22:11:50Z

3 likes, 1 repeats

@djsumdog @ajroach42 Not many people know that CP/M had multi-user support long before any Microsoft OS did.

(DIR) Post #A2L8CQwczLcddyKQdc by TheMadPirate@freespeechextremist.com
2020-12-18T22:47:48.081736Z

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@ajroach42 But expected.Software Engineers hate backward compatibility. They believe that it stifles innovation.

(DIR) Post #A2L8GKBs2g0rr2JVM8 by TheMadPirate@freespeechextremist.com
2020-12-18T22:48:30.276218Z

1 likes, 0 repeats

@amerika @ajroach42 a &quot;System Identification Number&quot; or S.I.N.

(DIR) Post #A2LpFjp5YG0r5kcl84 by lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me
2020-12-19T06:50:11.477846Z

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@ajroach42 I embraced it, but I&#39;m a developer that does just web, backward/forward compatibility in non-web is something quite usual, even if it&#39;s degrading gracefully (oups…) because the web is spreading everywhere.

(DIR) Post #A2LpST0jN18SiL8hJg by lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me
2020-12-19T06:52:26.616926Z

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@ajroach42 I embraced it, but I&#39;m a developer that *doesn&#39;t* do just web, backward/forward compatibility in non-web is something quite usual, even if it&#39;s degrading gracefully (oups…) because the web is spreading everywhere.

(DIR) Post #A2MaFwhuLOl0tfrmFM by kzimmermann@fosstodon.org
2020-12-19T15:36:50Z

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@ajroach42 I have a 2006 32-bit machine (Dell Latitude) that has 4GB RAM. In 2017, it worked great, and I could do everything I needed and had still plenty of RAM untouched (no swap used!) I left it home to embark on a long assignment out of town, taking another one with me.When I came back a little over 8 months later, I could not use it with a browsing session without using swap anymore. And everything else was the same.The web - slowly but surely - has turned to shit.

(DIR) Post #A2MaU28KxxcTmRwi92 by ajroach42@retro.social
2020-12-19T15:39:22Z

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@kzimmermann Powerful anecdote, and pretty common. I use a Thinkpad x220 as my daily driver right now. I&#39;ve used this machine or a variant on it for *years.* In the last 8 months, it has gotten progressively more difficult to use this machine in the same way I had been previously, to the point that I&#39;ve given up on it. Not on the machine, on the things that I used to do.

(DIR) Post #A2MbeYAEpcaJyJPiJE by kzimmermann@fosstodon.org
2020-12-19T15:52:29Z

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@ajroach42 I feel you.Since I have moved around since then and left my 2006 machine at a friend&#39;s place, I have not had the chance since 2018 to try to use it again, and I&#39;m quite curious to fire it up again.Yet, I&#39;m afraid that when I finally do so, it will also be my farewell bid to it.And even with old-machine-oriented distros like Puppy Linux the usability factor has greatly deteriorated, since so many things moved to the browser (and data silos). That is a really sad reality.

(DIR) Post #A2P0V2hrJ8VEyHcfGS by adfeno@ecodigital.social
2020-12-19T21:58:59Z

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@ajroach42 #ProgressiveEnhancement is better than #GracefulDegradation since it provides more #Accessability.

(DIR) Post #A31VMnXVdQewF8ykOu by flapflap@freesoftwareextremist.com
2021-01-08T09:25:14.113418Z

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@ajroach42 &gt;So how did we get from the gleaming promise of the digital age as imagined in the 70s to the harsh cyberpunk reality of the 20s? By being collectively naive enough to believe that adding unlimited technology to existing patterns wouldn&#39;t dramatically exaggerate existing problems and proclivities.desuyone.png

(DIR) Post #ACy0DwiXJLsSdnZR68 by poindexter@tilde.zone
2021-11-01T17:45:26Z

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@mdm @msh @ajroach42 Interesting, I have an iPhone 6s with a broken screen that I thought about switching to from an Android device. I&#39;m tempted to replace the screen myself and see if it&#39;s usable in 2021.

(DIR) Post #ACy0DxJl4xeSVEzA7E by mdm@mcnamarii.town
2021-11-01T18:39:58Z

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@poindexter @msh @ajroach42 An iPhone 6S? It definitely is. It&#39;s even still on Apple&#39;s &quot;supported&quot; listed and is getting regular iOS updates. (That&#39;s six years of updates, so far.)I can&#39;t think of an Android phone that got more than 2. Maybe 3, at most.

(DIR) Post #ACy0DxqN7hju8OFCwy by msh@coales.co
2021-11-01T19:32:51Z

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@mdm @poindexter @ajroach42 Apple is closest to being acceptable for software support than any android vendor has ever been. They still get failing grades for actively making their hardware less repairable and more closed than could ever be justified.Unless and until a vendor addresses both I am done with both android and iOS and have made my #pinephone my daily driver. Perhaps if #fairphone becomes more accessible to me I&#39;ll try android again.

(DIR) Post #ACy65vLn6nbFoHUQEK by Ricardus@mastodon.sdf.org
2021-11-01T20:38:56Z

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@ajroach42 I remember when QVC was a big computer reseller and they were always pimping the latest and greatest hardware to their customers, who were basically all retired old people, telling them they needed the latest PENTIUM (or whatever it was at the time) to check their AOL email and read the latest news on AOL AARP forum.So much wasted power for proplr doing very little.

(DIR) Post #ACy6Dwfq4XweENgwym by Ricardus@mastodon.sdf.org
2021-11-01T20:40:22Z

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@ajroach42 I remember when QVC was a big computer reseller and they were always pimping the latest and greatest hardware to their customers, who were basically all retired old people, telling them they needed the latest PENTIUM (or whatever it was at the time) to check their AOL email and read the latest news on the AOL AARP forum.So much wasted power for people doing very little.

(DIR) Post #ACy8VtaUUA4DmPsS1o by dazinism@social.coop
2021-11-01T21:05:44Z

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@mshGoogle recently pushed further with 5 years of monthly updates for Pixel 6 &amp; 6pro (including all phone component firmware - which FairPhone can only do for a couple of years on the FP4)Hopefully other #android devices will follow (Samsung went from 3 to 4 years of updates on top end devices recently)The Pixel 6 &amp; 6 pro are powerful &amp; expensive. Will be interesting to see if Pixel 6a arrives &amp; pricingUse my #GrapheneOS Pixel 3XL as https://hub.libranet.de/wiki/graphene-os/wiki/GrapheneOS-workstation @mdm @poindexter @ajroach42

(DIR) Post #ACyGuS7iX5I7TTdhZY by mdm@mcnamarii.town
2021-11-01T21:15:25Z

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@dazinism @msh @poindexter @ajroach42 I don&#39;t trust any of these companies to actually follow through with these promises -- I make my opinions of them based upon their actual past behavior, which, for updates, hasn&#39;t been great.I don&#39;t believe Apple is supporting phones for longer than everyone else out of the goodness of their hearts (it&#39;s possibly just because their hardware is similar in between models), but the fact remains that nobody else even comes close.

(DIR) Post #ACyGuSlm89KlTiNh0i by dazinism@social.coop
2021-11-01T21:43:34Z

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@mdmFor years Google have consistently delivered on the timelines they guaranteed for device updates. Generally they do a month or 2 longer than guaranteedIn one case (a tablet a few years back) they did 6 months extraTheres numerous options for keeping devices going longer. You dont get component firmware updates (many laptops &amp; PCs dont get more than 2 years of these) after Google drop support, kernel &amp; operaring system can be. My favourite for older … 1/2 @msh @poindexter @ajroach42

(DIR) Post #ACyGuTHKEqZT3Z8tBg by dazinism@social.coop
2021-11-01T21:45:31Z

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@mdm…devices is divestos.org unlike others they do verified boot where possiblehttps://hub.libranet.de/wiki/and-priv-sec/wiki/verified-boot @msh @poindexter @ajroach42

(DIR) Post #ACyGuToeExE4iujV7w by msh@coales.co
2021-11-01T22:39:59Z

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@dazinism I&#39;m glad to see things moving in the right direction, though I can&#39;t help but feel the vendors are being dragged kicking and screaming due to overwhelming consumer demand and threat of government regulation rather than wanting to respect their customers.Considering the maturity of the industry now 5 years is really a bare minimum and 10 years would be a good ultimate goal. I just retired a daily driver notebook that was 9 years old so why not? A bit absent from this discussion is repairability too. @mdm @poindexter @ajroach42

(DIR) Post #ACyQqEiHRtEoGaMyzw by dazinism@social.coop
2021-11-02T00:31:22Z

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@mshMy point was that laptops (and netbooks) arent really any better. Like your 10 year old netbook theres still folks who are using the 10 year old Samsung Galaxy S2 as their main phoneIts likely neither the S2 or your netbook has been getting proper updates to component firmware or drivers for most of their lifeA real issues is the myriad of different (cheap?) devices. Whos going to spend the time properly maintaining the code for all these different devices? @mdm @poindexter @ajroach42

(DIR) Post #ACyXwZnYfQEh4roC3M by kadin@mastodon.sdf.org
2021-11-01T20:33:05Z

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@ajroach42 In retrospect, one of the most regrettable parts of the &quot;PC revolution&quot; is how much wheel-reinvention happened due to disconnects between large systems people and micro/PC people.E.g. the high watermark of hardware-enforced security in operating systems is arguably still Multics…developed 1964-67. Just one example.So much knowledge from the development of large multiuser systems was ignored or not known to PC developers, and we now live with the consequences.

(DIR) Post #ACyYN5jUYforeKY9xY by portpupper@social.sakamoto.gq
2021-11-02T01:55:46.796832Z

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@MxCraven @ajroach42 I’ve found exactly three use cases where a modern Pi has unacceptably low performance:1. Video games (some more so than others)2. Running a web browser3. I/O from the SD cardEverything else is plenty good enough.

(DIR) Post #ACyYWKEnzwjvF5bFBI by daniel@campduffel.social
2020-12-18T03:04:28Z

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@ajroach42 I&#39;ve been reading through your goal of a multi-decade computer and it echos a lot of thoughts I&#39;ve had. I&#39;m building a house this spring and want to put in a whole home system that will hopefully be as future-proof as reasonably possible. It is a hard goal. My gut tells me that you&#39;re a little on the primitive end with your use cases, but not by much. I think things got good enough around 2010 on the hardware/software end. Any reason you would shy away from Raspberry Pi?

(DIR) Post #ACyYWKmTyjg6vXM8fo by daniel@campduffel.social
2020-12-18T03:26:54Z

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@ajroach42 I think one significant goalpost was reached when peripherals got better than human senses could discern. Another was the maturity of software RAID systems. Yet another, was the plateauing of audio/video codecs. One of the biggest hurdles for me is the reliance of smart phones to capture recordings. They are too convenient and have amazing quality. Getting the iPhone to talk to Linux is always a PITA. If Linux smartphones take off, I have a hard time figuring out what else I need.

(DIR) Post #ACzspwxWRy734s6vXk by ajroach42@retro.social
2021-11-02T16:56:34Z

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@dazinism @msh @mdm @poindexter I think it&#39;s important not to throw &quot;cheap&quot; under the bus when talking about problems of support. Maybe &quot;cheap&quot; devices do get updates for a reasonable amount of time, and many expensive devices don&#39;t. (Juicero et al.) Cheap is good, because it enables adoption, which can encourage open source support. Locked firmwares and DRM are at least partially to blame for the situation we are in now, and that happens in ever market segment.

(DIR) Post #ACzspxWyKAT8qohEnY by msh@coales.co
2021-11-02T17:17:59Z

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@ajroach42 Very much this. I think the connection between cheap and supported is pretty weak and that the most premium devices are vulnerable to loss of support due to closed hardware and firmware.The challenges in supporting consumer devices are often created rather than inherent. If they were designed to be more openly accessible than community support would be able to better fill the gaps left by vendors in the long term.@dazinism @mdm @poindexter

(DIR) Post #ACzt7TCdozUM0FXKsq by abloo@fedi.absturztau.be
2021-11-02T17:22:58.806831Z

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@dazinism @msh @mdm @poindexter @ajroach42 the flagship Samsung phones don&#39;t get updates for very long eitherSource: I had an s7 that almost never got updates

(DIR) Post #AD6cYSykQMgi0q2pbE by dazinism@social.coop
2021-11-05T23:20:11Z

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@mshI&#39;m all for cheap, just as far as I&#39;ve seen (got best knowledge about android phones) cheap devices do not get good support/updates, some more expensive ones also dontAs far as I&#39;m aware, I think due to their massive complexity (&amp; huge number of different phones), community extended support of androids is best effort (&amp; lacking)- e.g. some devices have open drivers, but I dont think anyones taken up proper maintenance after the vendor stopsIts about… 1/2 @ajroach42 @mdm @poindexter

(DIR) Post #AKjO4f8432aByWmppQ by elb@mastodon.sdf.org
2022-06-22T01:03:01Z

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@ajroach42 Necro-toot reply, but...I was very surprised recently when my dual PIII machine turned out to be _almost completely useless_ for the web. Firefox barely even started at all, much less loaded pages! Not very many years ago (like, inside five?), it was painful but not impossible.I used that computer from 1998 until 2007 or so, upgrading drives and RAM.

(DIR) Post #AKjO4hxXWcwkkksyLA by ajroach42@retro.social
2022-06-22T01:08:00Z

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@elb I have had decent luck with early XP era gear, as long as I can get at least 2GB of RAM in to it, and as long as I run a 32 bit linux distro (but those are getting hard to find.) It&#39;s SLOW online, but it only gets unusable when you&#39;re on Windows, IME. I mean, it&#39;s slow enough that it is essentially useless, and finding 32 bit builds of stuff is getting harder and harder.

(DIR) Post #AKjO4iUrWjbMQ6TaHQ by elb@mastodon.sdf.org
2022-06-22T01:11:12Z

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@ajroach42 I&#39;m running Debian 11 on that machine; I haven&#39;t run Windows on anything I use regularly in almost 30 years.I don&#39;t think it has that much RAM, I think it&#39;s something like 768 MB. That plays a big role, for sure. I don&#39;t know how high it can go, but that&#39;s the DIMMs I had.

(DIR) Post #AKjO4ivRvsrvkYuoim by ajroach42@retro.social
2022-06-22T01:13:56Z

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@elb RAM is the biggest limiter for sure. I struggled to get p3s to play nice on the web with less than 1GB circa 2012 or so. I mean, I did it. 512 was enough most of the time, but it wasn&#39;t fun. Today, though, 2GB is barely enough. I have a computer lab with 10 desktops in our computer lab with 2GB, and they can do a dozen things at once, as long as none of those things is the web. Or they can do one web browser and nothing else.

(DIR) Post #AKk1lXhbQtoLbcqano by zleap@qoto.org
2021-11-01T20:26:51Z

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@ajroach42 What is the Mastodon performance like. ?

(DIR) Post #AKk1lYPComgnmrFPlY by oblomov@sociale.network
2022-06-22T08:41:16Z

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@zleap @ajroach42 Out of curiosity, I tried loading Mastodon in elinks and it doesn&#39;t work after login (needs JS enabled to work).OTOH, Mastodon can be perused from the command line via other tools leveraging the underlying API, (check out Toot https://github.com/ihabunek/toot as an example), and of course it can be used with any RSS reader too, for reading.

(DIR) Post #AKkdG1ToytBGx2nYum by dushman@shitposter.club
2022-06-22T15:41:24.326650Z

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@ajroach42 My previous 10 y.o rig had no issues with yt playback in 1080p on any OS. A lot of websites are getting way too bloated these days though, software in general also.

(DIR) Post #AKkdHXyvcruu2k4jS4 by dushman@shitposter.club
2022-06-22T15:41:40.953194Z

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@ajroach42 Btw, why even use facebook?

(DIR) Post #AKkdwbl8UBfldFCfQW by getimiskon@udongein.xyz
2022-06-22T15:49:04.213195Z

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@dushman @ajroach42 I think I could do most of the stuff I do every day just by using my good old late 2000s rig with 4 GB of RAM. I generally try to use programs that require fewer resources when possible.

(DIR) Post #AKkeOFScz7ISaBj5Xc by dushman@shitposter.club
2022-06-22T15:54:05.915469Z

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@getimiskon @ajroach42 I guess my current build is kinda overkill but that extra performance comes in handy for some things. I went as far as to set up custom memory timings just to see if I could push it even futher.

(DIR) Post #AKkeOfSALSNNCHi5Qm by dushman@shitposter.club
2022-06-22T15:54:10.079820Z

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@getimiskon @ajroach42

(DIR) Post #AKkecuAeQG1qtfJ4Do by dushman@shitposter.club
2022-06-22T15:56:42.793527Z

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@getimiskon @ajroach42 I also pushed my CPU all the way from 3.6 GHz to 4.4 on all cores while simultaneously undervolting it. Well, I basically OC&#39;d everything while keeping it smooth and stable.

(DIR) Post #AKkejxs14BNIOhxMzA by dushman@shitposter.club
2022-06-22T15:58:01.383843Z

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@getimiskon @ajroach42 At least I can enjoy super fast compile times and such compared to my previous setup. I also got this one built before the shortages hit so I didn&#39;t overpay.

(DIR) Post #AKkfSgmvQLyERvtxXU by dushman@shitposter.club
2022-06-22T16:06:06.312462Z

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@getimiskon @ajroach42 In general I also try to use lightweight software too. Maybe not all the way, but my current Linux install uses 650mb of ram and like 0.X-1% CPU at idle so that&#39;s pretty good imo.

(DIR) Post #AKkfXDrwN7woCrPQrw by dushman@shitposter.club
2022-06-22T16:06:55.441231Z

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@getimiskon @ajroach42 More like 600mb, actually. I&#39;ll check when I&#39;m home.