Post B8RAM8vo6PS7GTvjhQ by fribbledom@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by fribbledom@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #B88ldyzk6BQWgvAe5g by fribbledom@mastodon.social
2 likes, 8 repeats
Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to fit everything into 640 KB.Now one browser tab needs 2 GB of RAM so 17 analytics companies can find out I looked at socks.
(DIR) Post #B88m2kutZuDKGgiSmm by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
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@fribbledomit's infuriating what they do with all the precious RAM we let them allocate
(DIR) Post #B88oBbsYkVcukjyPE8 by dbrgn@chaos.social
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@fribbledom that's what a SOCKS proxy is made for... I think.
(DIR) Post #B88tIum3Oam79XEUsq by 12thRITS@mstdn.social
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@fribbledom
(DIR) Post #B88u4jD9gnbvBuhzdI by trainguyrom@techhub.social
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@fribbledom the best part is all of this tracking results in useless data that fails to actually target any better than just guessing demographics that would enjoy the given content that the ads gets loaded around (y'know how ads were targeted back in the broadcast TV/Radio days)
(DIR) Post #B88ugPWlJzIx9BqdVo by the_wub@mastodon.social
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@fribbledom Apparently you can get help for that kind of sock fetish. If you feel the need for help, that is.Otherwise just keep enjoying yourself.You can confuse the analytics companies by looking at other foot related apparel. Or even branch out into gloves and mittens every now and again.
(DIR) Post #B88wZxwz8ggNn0AUDI by joannaholman@aus.social
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@fribbledom likewise, why does a simple app need a gig or two of random data and cached files on my phone?
(DIR) Post #B88wfNtO7BRzh94MFs by Megawatt@infosec.exchange
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@fribbledom QEMM
(DIR) Post #B88yXgNThdZkcMbC9g by ATLeagle@mastodon.online
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@fribbledom I was so proud when I could carry TWO Linux kernels on a single 3 inch floppy. 2 gigs on a tab is so obscene
(DIR) Post #B88z04PnvRCJHFDu88 by pela0ykuza@mastodon.la
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@fribbledom True...
(DIR) Post #B88zqSFUYcqyFpNWzY by Zero2beach@mstdn.social
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@fribbledom eso sí que es.
(DIR) Post #B891WIlgITwsxzx8z2 by syferdet@toad.social
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@fribbledom Wool or cotton? In the future, everyone will be judged by the material used for the socks they wear.
(DIR) Post #B894ghl0XhlpEAI31c by katchwreck@mastodon.social
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@fribbledom Wing Commander was tough to load
(DIR) Post #B8965ui7cRCsazWahs by dazzr@social.tchncs.de
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@fribbledom Adblocking is both a matter of resistance and personal internet hygiene. There is no right to surveillance capitalism, you can ban who you dislike. Period. Doctor recommended (OK, a Ph.D., but you can take my word for it).A thorough multilayer approach is recommended to poop in the AdTech teapot: 1) Network-wide DNS filtering w/ Pi-hole, explicitly banning all Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and other notorious enshittification actors.2) Linux OS instead of Microsoft/Apple. Linux does not track, the others do.3) Firefox w/privacy extensions uBlock Origin and EFF Privacy Badger, Ungoogled Chromium.4) On Smartphones: Use AdGuard Pro (iOS) or Rethink DNS (Android), but be aware that tracking is a built-in feature of mobile OS and is more difficult to suppress.
(DIR) Post #B896G4RwGSb3hEnYwq by d1@autistics.life
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@fribbledom what has this world come to?
(DIR) Post #B897ORtn44IGh4Nub2 by renardboy@mastodon.social
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@fribbledom For a while before I had to pay bills using online services I had a "pure" CLI setup, running barebones distros without X installed. Was pretty cool, had a command line application for just about anything. Even wrote a novel using a text-based word processor called wordgrinder.It was surprising how much you could still see of the web using elinks, I could even use facebook 😂 Unsurprisingly banking was out of the picture though, I had to borrow my mom's windows laptop to do that.
(DIR) Post #B89AV3CnZXdDzw7CYC by bitterseeds@fosstodon.org
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@fribbledom NoScript helps.
(DIR) Post #B89CBj8GBCFI9FuDVw by GeePawHill@mastodon.social
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@fribbledom Sure, but think about how very much more surveillance that tab can do!
(DIR) Post #B89CYZVy6UZYypt93g by brouhaha@mastodon.social
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@fribbledom Given how much money I just paid for 64 GiB of DDR5 ECC RDIMMs, I'm going to start billing all web sites that run JavaScript on my computer.
(DIR) Post #B89DxWzohkgcMYJbXc by popekingjoe@mastodon.social
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@fribbledom relevant
(DIR) Post #B89ENFRwZ2JPTNjZgW by Brahvim@mastodon.gamedev.place
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@fribbledom ...More like 1,700 companies these days...
(DIR) Post #B89GFshCxo3WmhUMtM by deepfryed@fosstodon.org
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@fribbledom best part is the ads they show you won't be anything related to socks.
(DIR) Post #B89M5U8g0i0PS3lMkC by viharm@twit.social
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@fribbledom well said 👏
(DIR) Post #B89QHTfHzwijGzzVxI by abmallgren@mastodon.social
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@fribbledom They don't have construction materials in Europe either?
(DIR) Post #B89R7Wwv23FWWA3exE by AbramKedge@beige.party
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@fribbledom remember, exTENDed memory TENDs to be useful, while exPanded memory is Practically useless. Back in those days I regularly had to talk sewerage workers through editing CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to get the data from their gas safety monitors to upload. There was only one editor guaranteed to be installed on their computers, edlin -- which could be a challenge.Funny enough, unlike a few of our directors, not one of them had any problems following the instructions over the phone.
(DIR) Post #B89VL0Ijc5zb8FwU6q by artwaw@c.im
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@fribbledom I feel very seen right now.
(DIR) Post #B89XgYe1JwvDdTIu8G by dr_laemmerbein@mastodon.social
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@fribbledom Ah, it was nice to have that much time. And the occasional defrag run!
(DIR) Post #B89Yt6MRtBB5dQd8RE by jollysea@chaos.social
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@fribbledom only to suggest you buy a weirdly shaped object. they don't even use all that data they collect in a way that would advance anything!
(DIR) Post #B89ZiW8rnOZEMUnIsC by yacc143@mastodon.social
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@fribbledomI can sadly confirm that figure. A docker container with a scraper worker that starts internally a browser and does the whole Chaptcha bullshit comes at about 1.5-2.0GB depending on the website, so a fully interactive website with some history on memory at 2.0gb sounds reasonable with Chrome.And it doesn't sound too bad my router has 64GB nowadays. But then I remember my first computer had 64KB RAM (and wasn't that huge) and a super fast 1Mhz 8 bit CPU.
(DIR) Post #B89aRQTLip9hoDmyJc by SunDancer@metalhead.club
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@fribbledom "do I really need the CD driver? can I go without for game X?"Gods what time that was.
(DIR) Post #B89gByJ4l5w5pszuNs by Gillinger@mas.to
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@fribbledom @NormanDunbar Files=40 Yes!
(DIR) Post #B89gCXiT6g2nem9BK4 by guacamole@chaos.social
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@fribbledom but does the Browser tab require EMS vor XMS?
(DIR) Post #B89jfN7prVFh4PS0VE by nomadicrobot@mas.to
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@fribbledom DOS 6.22 memmaker; good times
(DIR) Post #B89kMKLk3dgSuhRDOa by statsguy@mas.to
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@fribbledom 640 KB? Luxury!When I were a lad, I used to have to write x=10 rather than x = 10 so that I could fit everything into 16 KB.
(DIR) Post #B89m55YM19fO0ZFFVA by BoloMKXXVIII@mastodon.social
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@fribbledom Which was it now? Expanded memory or extended memory?
(DIR) Post #B89oM83CBXruaKvLXs by ohir@vivaldi.net
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@fribbledom > fit everything into 640 KBThere were times before computers got that unimaginble huge amounts of RAM (640kB). Then we (I am a greybeard) were forced to code our silicon chess players into the 1kB, GUI included:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1K_ZX_Chess
(DIR) Post #B89pJD13Mpe54R5rG4 by whitemice@mastodon.social
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@fribbledom 128Gb of RAM :$229.99 as of 2025-02-16 $669.99 as of 2025-12-29 $869.99 as of 2026-02-18 $1,099.99 as of 2026-03-11$1,199.99 as of 2026-05-21Dual 1TB NVMs : $104.99 as of 2025-03-26$282.99 as of 2025-12-29$299.00 as of 2026-03-21$292.00 as of 2026-06-17I bought at the right time! I had been hesitating on making the investment in rebuilding my home server . . .
(DIR) Post #B89w0xubU5jEh1KBRw by ingram@mastodon.social
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@fribbledom And if you had some EMS or XMS the hours spent trying to LOADHIGH to make use of all that extravagance.And to think people criticised the "bloat" of VBRUN300.DLL back in the day.
(DIR) Post #B8A2OZbY6qaxyp3J5c by seedy60@vee.seedy.cc
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@fribbledom But I thought 640KB was enough for anyone?
(DIR) Post #B8A2OZnbO2EiaCgvsO by fribbledom@mastodon.social
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@seedy60 Only when barefoot.
(DIR) Post #B8A3OR4XvrTpTJ77Dc by WhyNotZoidberg@topspicy.social
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@fribbledom Extra funny when running Linux: the whole OS starts up using <850 MB. Starts Firefox, opens one tab: Memory use now 3.5GB.
(DIR) Post #B8A3OwzLGkKaSQvPY8 by christopherkunz@chaos.social
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@fribbledom Were they Winsocks?I‘ll see myself out.
(DIR) Post #B8ADU6RqWa3EmnLxZo by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
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@patterfloofwebsites should be paying us for loading them in our browser! /hj@fribbledom
(DIR) Post #B8ADYXNmKDCJToZ5uq by SmartmanApps@dotnet.social
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@fribbledom
(DIR) Post #B8AE4Y8V3hQd5FgQBk by aquarion@mendeddrum.org
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@fribbledom My New Hobby: Opening random "partner" options on these boxes, finding their privacy policy, and noting whether it:a) 404s, or b) is "Our Legitimate Interest is that we want to track you". Both of which are (untestedly) illegal.
(DIR) Post #B8AEDJrdUVArQTydQe by niko@graz.social
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@fribbledom progress
(DIR) Post #B8AERrINzSvjAMQDiK by 0ptimist@troet.cafe
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@fribbledom 😂😂👍👍👍
(DIR) Post #B8AUB1n1Jpi03ZkOPo by cchisholm@infosec.exchange
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@fribbledom Oh god, this is me.
(DIR) Post #B8AUVcx6rHYB6fHyvw by fribbledom@mastodon.social
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I've written about programming languages, compilers, open source, distributed systems...The Fediverse's response:"Tell us more about CONFIG.SYS and sock surveillance!"Love it! 🤣
(DIR) Post #B8AUpoQntDcoV1nrOq by KasTasMykolas@river.group.lt
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@lord @fribbledom and this amount of "partners" is considered low, by current standards ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(DIR) Post #B8AV5dZa1qXRSKSDmC by morgan@leds.social
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@fribbledom > Now one browser tab needs 2 GB of RAM so 17 analytics companies can find out I looked at socks.deserves a no context tshirt.
(DIR) Post #B8AXQMH3jwK5nJndAm by CarbonCatalyst@mastodon.social
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@fribbledomReturn to Windows ME
(DIR) Post #B8AYSoBv12Z2uY7wwa by llewelly@sauropods.win
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@fribbledom never fear. Now that AI has set a new precedent by forcing RAM prices to double every 6 months, soon the era of needing to optimize for minimal memory use will return!
(DIR) Post #B8AZBBhaxpUyZR6aki by llewelly@sauropods.win
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@fribbledom you know the old saying. An army lives on its feet blogs. Or something like that.
(DIR) Post #B8AZepYFss8QYis5NA by martin_ueding@bonn.social
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@wolf480pl @patterfloof @fribbledom I got a work laptop with 64 GB of RAM such that I can run VS Code, Slack, Obsidian, Spotify and Zotero (all Electron apps which ship their own copy of Chromium engine).I am kind of happy that RAM got expensive again such that programmers might actually start to value it again …
(DIR) Post #B8AZk3p8FQ9MGtG8f2 by martin_ueding@bonn.social
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@fribbledom I used to have 256 MB of RAM in the 64 MB era and it was luxurious. Now I have 16 GB in my personal laptop and I sometimes consider upgrading to 32 GB to fit all the browser tabs in there …
(DIR) Post #B8AZt8rOtJUOUxeOrQ by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
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@martin_ueding @patterfloof @fribbledom you do realize this can be read as a "fuck you, got mine"? :PI would appreciate if programmers and product managers started caring more about resource usage.I'd also appreciate a job where I get to spend a significant portion of my time optimizing code.But I'm not seeing any of these happen yet, and I'm not holding my breath.
(DIR) Post #B8AbaMc3jdfFYceGhs by rk@well.com
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@fribbledom …*frantically increases BUFFERS=*
(DIR) Post #B8Abyz3SScIrjVChH6 by hyperpac@mastodon.social
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@fribbledom To be fair - optimizing config.sys and autoexec.bat wasn‘t so much fun back in the days either. It was more a pain in the a** when your favourite game just wouldn‘t run. @bijram
(DIR) Post #B8AfNhJnqBmHpJKDUO by raptor@infosec.exchange
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@fribbledom @buherator accurate 💯
(DIR) Post #B8B7oHdSEdlEhuyxzE by FritzAdalis@infosec.exchange
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@fribbledom @kevin These kids today don't know what it's like getting 639k free base memory so your badly coded bbs will load.
(DIR) Post #B8BJC8zb7TgMLcv5pQ by martin_ueding@bonn.social
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@wolf480pl @patterfloof @fribbledom I didn't intend that meaning but I see what you mean. My job is in LLM Inference, and there we actually look into performance as it is a business interest to have that run efficient on the servers. I guess when it runs on customers's computers, the motivation is less clear.
(DIR) Post #B8BVc1rBTI47CD5sDQ by eggimt@chaos.social
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@fribbledom EMM386.EXE FTW!
(DIR) Post #B8Bv0mEjBLJQqP0HuS by quinn@social.circl.lu
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@fribbledom yeah this is definitely my network. I'm old and bitter and surprisingly difficult to track.
(DIR) Post #B8Bzig85eHWASh5XCC by geert@society.oftrolls.com
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@fribbledom They needed less than 640 KiB to land on the moon....And it did include telemetry!
(DIR) Post #B8CbyX4os3PRHDXrwu by DerPumu@mstdn.games
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@fribbledom 17? you're off an order of magnitude ;)
(DIR) Post #B8Ck3zg0lQIF3i3ZIG by phil_stevens@mastodon.nz
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@fribbledom But the value to you, the lucky end user, is that you will have ads for socks served to you for the next year and you don't have to do a thing.
(DIR) Post #B8I5WcPkydfhMiJ89A by DrHyde@fosstodon.org
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@fribbledom but it's important, after you've bought a year's supply of socks, to helpfully remind you tomorrow that socks exist!
(DIR) Post #B8I5bQzsqzdVP3VBpY by DrHyde@fosstodon.org
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@fribbledom FWIW please don't tell us about CONFIG.SYS. I have only recently managed to purge that information from my poor little brain.
(DIR) Post #B8IEFH9Tg1F25LUx9c by wanwizard@mastodon.scot
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@fribbledom I wrote code for a Honeywell Bull DPS, which had a maximum binary size of 32KB. We had to write the code modularly, so we could swap out binaries in order to make bigger apps.After that for an IBM S/36 which had 256KB of RAM, followed by an IBM 4341 which was absolute luxury, which no direct limits anymore.
(DIR) Post #B8IIM0bXzscQbn5s1Y by _michaljan@mastodon.social
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@fribbledom 17? That's rookie numbers. What about 1034?
(DIR) Post #B8IQlcNDVf1AcT74bY by ruurd@mastodon.social
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@fribbledom nowadays available DOS memory fits into your browser tab. Progress they call that.Oh and stop giving me scary memories. I can remember effing around with QEMM and HIMEM.SYS and whatnot. Brrr.
(DIR) Post #B8IaqSLFEa4QUo8VzU by Jhelberg@mastodon.social
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@fribbledom GNU Emacs used to be 8Mb in core. This was 50 years ago and was considered HUGE. Now, it occupies less than 50Mb and is considerably more functional. Progress is not measured in footprint.
(DIR) Post #B8N2y8CnfnjjkgdsJc by kev@dragonscave.space
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@fribbledom @simon I've used this for years, pretty nice. https://pi-hole.net/
(DIR) Post #B8R9WdLDnHxkWNFvsG by fribbledom@mastodon.social
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The funniest thing about that post is that nobody even questioned the 2 GB browser tab.Somewhere along the way we all just accepted that as perfectly normal.
(DIR) Post #B8R9jhty9L2sQhk7UW by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
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@fribbledom I think it's on the edge of what's acceptable. If you had said 4GiB that'd begin to be hard to believe
(DIR) Post #B8R9r3I91LjinRYLqK by fribbledom@mastodon.social
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@wolf480pl Give it two more years 🙈
(DIR) Post #B8RA4K7dkxLWlBy5EO by lx@swiss.social
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@fribbledom I mean these days people use web apps for everything and you rarely install actual desktop apps. 2GB for those would be fine, so it "feels right" that web apps need more memory too.
(DIR) Post #B8RAE1ejGhuyNr4UkK by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
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@fribbledom I think the recent RAM shortage will delay the shift from 16GB to 32GB as the new most common memory capacity of a personal computer for a few more years.
(DIR) Post #B8RAIdEjUD3k636lvs by fribbledom@mastodon.social
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@lx Got it. We replaced "Next -> Next -> Finish" with "Add to Cart" for another RAM kit.
(DIR) Post #B8RAM8vo6PS7GTvjhQ by fribbledom@mastodon.social
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@lx Apple users: *hide*
(DIR) Post #B8RAX6XBM5nb11dfiy by lx@swiss.social
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@fribbledom That makes me wonder if browsers can compress/dedup web frameworks from their memory like the OS does with DLLs. I assume not which would explain the memory thirst.
(DIR) Post #B8RDNPTEOaeCiCrMfY by midzer@chaos.social
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@fribbledom Living on 8GB RAM, having 4919MB available now.(Ok, just some tools open and a browser instance with < 10 tabs)Edit: My mastodon web client tab is using 130MB.
(DIR) Post #B8REyHW12FDIhzJ94C by fedops@fosstodon.org
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@fribbledom the average phone has 4-6 GB of Ram.2 GB for the one single application most people use on their PCs is not concerning to them.
(DIR) Post #B8RKbQLAeno78xie1I by faoluin@chitter.xyz
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@fribbledom 2 GB for a document.
(DIR) Post #B8RQfnrbjw0CyzMXmy by anthropy@mastodon.derg.nz
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@fribbledom https://mastodon.derg.nz/@anthropy/116936850826928017 this seems like the perfectly appropriate place to mention you can emulate that whole 640kb 8086 machine in CSS nowRT: https://mastodon.derg.nz/users/anthropy/statuses/116936850826928017
(DIR) Post #B8RV6FyMFo0lVTOCiu by mancavgeek@social.teamb.space
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@fribbledom only 17?
(DIR) Post #B8SW29AHutP0LaX9Jg by peteriskrisjanis@toot.lv
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@fribbledom yep, that checks out.Shit.
(DIR) Post #B8aF9s7X1kmzqT1PCi by fribbledom@mastodon.social
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@delegatevoid @martin_ueding @wolf480pl @patterfloof That 8GB swap cracks me up for some reason.
(DIR) Post #B8aFF3mP6dDRSBc4ye by delegatevoid@mastodon.gamedev.place
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@fribbledom @martin_ueding @wolf480pl @patterfloof Yeah, no idea why it does that....Could probably manually disable it.
(DIR) Post #B8aWJWk3l9crSGiGxM by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
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@delegatevoidyeah but it seams you've read only 66GiB of data from the disk wince the last reboot, otherwise the unused RAM would've been used to cache it, right?@martin_ueding @patterfloof @fribbledom
(DIR) Post #B8aWalddd0fcZuvjrU by delegatevoid@mastodon.gamedev.place
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@wolf480pl @martin_ueding @patterfloof @fribbledom I honestly don't know, I never really cared about it until I saw the message here.Thing is, I did IT for over a decade and after that I completely lost interest to fiddle with computers. I just want stuff to work and right now stuff just works, so tend not to notice such details 🤭 But now I am interested, so will take some time to check what it really means.
(DIR) Post #B8aaF2qpLo0TPNzrdI by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
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@patterfloofSwap should be enough to fit all anonymous pages of all programs you're gonna run concurrently at peak usage - that way every page can be evicted from page cache, either to a file or to swap.Or at least that's one way of doing it.The other way is disabling swap and setting per-application memory limits using cgroups - this is what's usually done when running kubernetes. @delegatevoid @fribbledom @martin_ueding