nosuchanon
@nosuchanon@lemmy.world
- Comment on Coursera and Udemy enter a merger agreement valued at around $2.5B | TechCrunch 2 days ago:
Too late. It’s all owned by Blackrock already.
- Comment on RAM prices soar, but popular Windows 11 apps are using more RAM due to Electron, Web components 1 week ago:
I mean, ymmv. The historical flood of cheap memory has changed developer practices. We used to code around keeping the bulk of our data on the hard drive and only use RAM for active calculations. We even used to lean on “virtual memory” on the disk, caching calculations and scrubbing them over and over again, in order to simulate more memory than we had on stick. SSDs changed that math considerably. We got a bunch of very high efficiency disk space at a significant mark up. But we used the same technology in our RAM. So there was a point at which one might have nearly as much RAM as ROM (had a friend with 1 GB of RAM on the same device that only had a 2 GB hard drive). The incentives were totally flipped.
I would argue that the low-cost, high-efficiency RAM induced the system bloat, as applications could run very quickly even on a fraction of available system memory. Meanwhile, applications that were RAM hogs appeared to run very quickly compared to applications that needed to constantly read off the disk.
Internet applications added to the incentive to bloat RAM, as you could cram an entire application onto a website and just let it live in memory until the user closed the browser. Cloud storage played the same trick. Developers were increasingly inclined to ignore the disk entirely. Why bother? Everything was hosted on a remote server, lots of the data was pre-processed on the business side, and then you were just serving the results to an HTML/Javascript GUI on the browser.
Now it seems like tech companies are trying to get the entire computer interface to be a dumb terminal to the remote data center. Our migration to phones and pads and away from laptops and desktops illustrates as much. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone finally makes consumer facing dumb-terminals a thing again - something we haven’t really experienced since the dawn of personal computers in the 1980s.
It is definitely coming and fast. This was always Microsoft’s plan for an internet only windows/office platform. Onedrive and 365 is basically that implementation now that we have widespread high speed internet.
And with the amount of SaaS apps the only thing you need on a local machine is some configuration files and maybe a downloads folder.
Look at the new Nintendo Switch cartridges as an example. They don’t contain the game, just a license key. The install is all done over the internet.
- Comment on AI Slop Is Ruining Reddit for Everyone 1 week ago:
Reddit was the good place after the fall of Digg 2.0. Now Reddit has become the bad place.
- Comment on Baby boomers want to axe property taxes. Millennials and Gen Z would pay for it. 4 weeks ago:
The most boomer attitude ever. I don’t want to pay taxes that support the community because I don’t have kids.
Fuck you and your entitlement. You are not an island and can’t just decide to pay for whatever services you deem necessary. How do you think roads are maintained and fire stations funded? Or the police?
You want to go back to private fire departments who serve only the rich who pay them instead of public services?
- Comment on Exclusive: Ofcom is monitoring VPNs following Online Safety Act. Here's how 5 weeks ago:
I’m guessing that third-party provider is Palantir or the NSA.
- Comment on Cornell Study Maps the Environmental Cost of AI 5 weeks ago:
How do you figure they sold out by releasing This study?
- Comment on Apple Joins Google in Offering Passport-Based Digital ID 5 weeks ago:
No one asked for this Except maybe the NSA and the government.
- Comment on U.S. Tech Layoffs Hit Two-Decade High in October 5 weeks ago:
Let’s make our own Internet with blackjack and hookers.
- Comment on Governor Newsom signs bills to further strengthen California’s leadership in protecting children online 1 month ago:
I get that we need some regulation, what I’m saying is these regulations create an environment where we’re spending a lot of money and wasting resources that could be spent elsewhere.
Let’s say you had a settlement for $250,000 as proposed in one of the regulations. What is the family actually see from that payout? What’s $250,000 to a corporation that’s worth billions upon billions of dollars? Of that settlement how much of it goes to lawyers? How much resources do the state courts expand on seeing each one of those cases? How much time does it take before the victim sees any of those funds from the payout?
Let’s say kid is traumatized and needs therapy and the parents can’t afford it. Does that mean they’re gonna have to wait six months for the courts to decide? Are the parents expected to pay for therapy out of pocket and hope they get reimbursed later?
The real question is what happens to the victim and how do they benefit from going through all of the bureaucracy and courts to get any sort of settlement?
Just because there’s some new government regulations doesn’t mean it actually addresses the underlying problem. It just creates several new problems.
- Comment on Governor Newsom signs bills to further strengthen California’s leadership in protecting children online 1 month ago:
Or you know, the parents could do their job of raising their kids, not giving them an iPad at the age of five, and leaving them to fend for themselves on the Internet. No, let’s have the government fix this problem for us by spying on everybody. That will fix everything. /s
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
The study is from 2018. I’m sure Reddit has had plenty of time to get those stats up. 15% is rookie numbers.
- Comment on Elon Musk says he needs $1 trillion to control Tesla's robot army. Yes, really. 1 month ago:
The man is insane.
- Comment on life purpose 1 month ago:
AI crap. The lady on the lower left has a cardboard box for a monitor.
- Comment on Jesus hates American "Christians" 2 months ago:
Yeah, the whole “love each other and forgive everything” lessons of my youth have been replaced by “fuck you, I’m getting mine” christians.
Ah yes, the Boomer Christians.
- Comment on Climate goals go up in smoke as US datacenters turn to coal 2 months ago:
Typical. So basically, they’re gonna turn America into Texas. Their power grid is famously shitty and has been neglected for decades due to Republican control of the government. They are constantly kicking the can down the road for some other administration to deal with it.
Everyone time there’s even a slight dusting of snow anywhere in Texas the power grid shuts off and people freeze to death. But Texas refuses to fix the power grid and nationalize because it would mean investing and bringing their shitty substandard power grid up to modern standards.
- Comment on Logitech will brick its $100 Pop smart home buttons on October 15 - Ars Technica 2 months ago:
They’re creating artificial demand And capitalizing on it to sell you a new phone and power, charger and accessories, and all kinds of other crap.
- Comment on People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads 2 months ago:
The convenience is being able to sit your fat ass on the couch and yell vaguely in the direction of a smart assistant to turn off the lights without having to get off the couch.
Were the idea that a smart refrigerator could tell you when you’re about out of milk or coming up on the expiration date Instead of having to open your fridge and take a look.
It’s a mild convenience that supposedly frees up extra time to do something else. The sad part is that something else is usually staying glued to your phone, social media, or TV.
- Comment on Logitech will brick its $100 Pop smart home buttons on October 15 - Ars Technica 2 months ago:
There has to be some sort of reasonable balance between new developments and longevity.
Asking any engineer for a device that’s near indestructible but will continue to have software updates for 10 years is a hard ask.
For a lot of devices right to repair would work just fine. Being able to swap out battery extends the life of most cell phones. But it’s an unreasonable request for that cell phone, for example, to be able to be supported for 10 years worth of software updates.
It will slow the development cycle for a lot of devices down quite a bit. Which honestly is fine. I feel like a lot of products have reached maturity, and companies are reinventing them just for the sake of reinventing them and selling a “new” product with a new battery. I’m looking at you, Apple.
The problem with determining what is an acceptable lifecycle for a product is that there will be no one left to support the product in 10 years if the company folds in the meantime. It is a significant drag on companies to support legacy products while also innovating and creating new products. It’s just a fact a fact.
And from a consumer perspective, If you want cool, new fancy, shiny shit every year and for it to be reliable and last for 10 years, it’s just not gonna happen. We have been trained To buy new shit every year and desire that new shiny upgrade Without understanding that we’re getting cheap shitty products for a premium.
Your $100” iPhone is now going to become a $3000 iPhone that lasts for five years instead of two. Tell me how that’s a win for anybody?
- Comment on People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads 2 months ago:
Why would anyone want a corporate government surveillance wire tap that’s connected to the Internet and constantly listening for voice command is beyond me.
My friend used an Alexa and smart plugs to rewire all the lights in his house because it was cheaper to get the Wi-Fi connected lights and sockets rather than rewiring the whole house.
In order to keep the thing running, no one was allowed to touch any of the lights switches on the walls because it would break the system. It was fucking hilarious listening to him yell at his Alexa to turn on the lights in the living room and have it turn on the dining room instead.
He even had the screen on the base that would follow you around as you were walking in the house and this creepy screen would constantly be monitoring you while waiting for commands.
If anyone walked in it just looked like he was screaming at the top of his refrigerator about the lights in the house.
- Comment on Climate goals go up in smoke as US datacenters turn to coal 2 months ago:
AI and the investment around it are literally the only thing holding up America’s economy right now. If you take the artificial growth and the vast amounts of investment that are being pumped in AI development data centers, the US economy has barely grown half percentage point.
No surprise that they are going to power this beast at all costs until it falls apart along with the US economy.
- Comment on Logitech will brick its $100 Pop smart home buttons on October 15 - Ars Technica 2 months ago:
We agree that something needs to be done. Stronger regulations will just be in an added requirement for the development of these devices, which will make it more expensive. You can’t have fast development, cheap things and longevity. Companies will not invest in making those products because they’ll be out of business by the time their market is saturated.
- Comment on The Great Software Quality Collapse: How We Normalized Catastrophe 2 months ago:
Yeah, my favorite is when they figure out what features people are willing to pay for and then pay while everything that makes an app useful.
And after they monetize that fully and realize that the money is not endless, they switch to a subscription model. So that they can have you pay for your depreciating crappy software forever.
But at least you know it kind of works while you’re paying for it. It takes way too much effort to find some other unknown piece of software for the same function, and it is usually performs worse than what you had until the developers figure out how to make the features work again before Putting it behind a paywall and subscription model again again.
But along the way, everyone gets to be miserable from the users to the developers and the project managers. Everyone except of course, the shareholders Because they get to make money, no matter how crappy their product, which they don’t use anyway, becomes.
- Comment on Why do companies always need to grow? 2 months ago:
There has to be some growth because inflation eats at the value of your capital every year.
- Comment on Taiwan refuses to move half of U.S.-bound chip production to American shores — trade discussion to be focused on Section 232 investigation for preferential deal on semiconductors 2 months ago:
Yeah, that only worked on small contractors when he was building his casinos because they didn’t have the infinite Russian money for lawyers.
Turns out that doesn’t work so well on sovereign nations and international corporations.