Technology

Yeah, we get it, Bezos. You want us to shove more and more money down your throat.

Reading the article, the analogy with an own generator and the power grid kind of makes sense at first... until you also make an analogy with broadcast and cable TV for example - you don't get to choose what's on, and in the latter case you're practically paying for ads and some programming in between. So... how about no.

My fear is that those shortages (artificial or not) might at one point really drive us in a different direction. My only option for now is to vote with my wallet and use my stuff for as long as practically feasible.

It's not at all surprising that fatcats looks at the juicy profits that Apple makes with their iOS closed garden and think "I want me some of that" - wanting to be a monopolist with captive customers makes the most business sense and is the most natural thing in a Capitalist Economic and Political environment.

Most of the economic activity around Technology nowadays is rent-seeking and only the part which isn't at all about money - open source - isn't about corraling people into closed spaces, removing their choices and then extracting the most money possible from people who now have no other option.

It's kinda like 20 or 30 years ago when Banks looked at cash payments and thought that they should find a way to get comissions on those, same as they got with card payments, so already back they they were pushing things like electronic wallets (back then those were basically a special kind of card) and keep pushing it for decades (often with the support of governments, since 100% electronic payments are great for civil society surveillance), and nowadays in some countries there are pretty much no cash payments so that relentless push for controlling and getting a cut of every single trade has worked in those countries (and people in those places, such as Sweden, having traded a small hidden increase in price - due to banks now getting comissions in everything - and huge loss of privacy for a tiny bit of convenience genuinelly think they're better of).

So yeah, these software fatcats will totally try and get together with hardware makers with a dominant market position to slowly close down PC technology - for example the whole point of TPM is to take control away from the owners of the hardware and the "trusted" in "trusted platform" (aka TPM) isn't about it being trusted by the owner of the hardware, it's about it being trusted by the business selling the OS, who in turn can sell access to the thus gatekept environment to software making businesses.

I believe the whole requirement for TPM 2.0 in Windows 11 even though it doesn't actually need it is just a step in a broader strategy to turn PCs into a closed platform controlled by Microsoft, whilst as we see here other companies are trying to created closed platforms by having everything run in their servers, like Google tried almost a decade ago for games with Stadia and was also tried 2 or 3 decades ago by the likes of Sun Microsystems with the push for Thin Clients.

I worked with someone that defend this isea to the letter, just not contemplating companies.

The argument stemmed from an alledge visit he had done to Japan, where he had seen terminals connected to mainframes, and people used those from their house.

I was only able to raise one argument: that is not my computer.

Mind that this man was extremely tech savvy, an experienced and proficient programmer and played the roles of IT solutions an security implementer and supervisor at the company we worked at. And we handled sensitive information.

To him, relegating everything to an outside server was a dream, as removed the hassle and responsability of having to maintain, repair, replace and upgrade hardware. Everything needed should be a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse or trackball.

Alternative Advice: Buy up old used mini-pcs if hardware is too expensive. Don't buy AWS unless you actually need cloud services (i.e. you're hosting a website).

I won't say VPSs don't have their utility, but anyone framing it as an alternative to owning a PC is completely DeLuLu and need their head examined.

My answer to that: 🖕

so everyone owning their own pc is "antiquated" but everyone owning their own car is super cool and awesome. got it.

Internet and access to servers is the first thing that govts turn off when they get uppity.

Seems like a fatal risk to have online only services.

"Own nothing and be happy"

Make no mistake, the oligarchs see the personal computer as a 40-year-old experiment that has failed, or needs to fail. They want their mainframes and CPU/hr billing back. Server hosting for enterprise uses has already gone this way for the most part. Small consumers are next.

Something something my cold dead hands

Nah, Bezos. Linux is getting better by the day.

How he thinks he can make more billions by forcing yet another subscription model that takes ownership away from individuals.

They gotta do something with all those data centres once the AI bubble pops. Pop pop!

Seize the means of computation!

Cloud is just a fancy word for giving up your freedoms. You rely on some greedy corporation and for what? What would the benefit even be?

So stupid, given how quickly computers have become more powerful and cheaper over time. Local PC hardware will never be antiquated, and is only becoming more important over time.

Imagine the tracking and monitoring of activity they could do. Might as well go voyeur at that point.

Well chucklefuck you need a basic PC to act as the client. You know what kind of computer most people have? A shitty PC good enough to be the fuckin client. Why would they want to pay for a shitty pc to rent another one when they can just use the fucking shitty PC they bought at walmart for 300 for 8 fuckin years like they do now? That is $3 a month amortized beat that bitch.

Salesman shills product, nothing new. Besides, there is too much commodity hardware floating around for this to be plausible.

Shit like this is why I'm glad I'm almost dead.

TBH I don't think he's wrong, especially in HIS position.

Namely I think having the flexibility of the cloud is amazing... but NOT at the cost of losing sovereignty.

So when Bezos uses AWS he is actually smart because he remains sovereign. When anybody else though does rely on another system that they do not own for critical tasks then then lose sovereignty and thus agency.

TL;DR: cloud or not, maintain your agency.

╭∩╮( ͡⚆ ͜ʖ ͡⚆)╭∩╮

Genuenly I refuse to use cloud PCs, I don't give a fuck how "cheap" they are or how "convenient" they are I ain't using it. If there is still hardware being produced that works with Linux I'm buying it, if no hardware exists I'm gonna keep using my old hardware until new hardware that does support Linux comes out.

The only thing that's gonna be replaced is capitalism and by extension the capitalist class.