You can install Linux on a mobile phone, Steam Deck is Linux and almost all games nowadays just work on Linux.
We have a practical modular and repairable laptop like Framework.
Building your own PC has never been simpler and easier - it’s almost like legos at this point.
PCs are most silent, energy efficient, nicest form factors. You can get PC on a usb stick, or a tiny box.
We have reproducible Linux distros like NixOS and Guix.
We even have an Open Source instruction set: RISCV.
Everything is awesome if you want to do personal computing. It’s just turns out most people don’t want a PC, and they want a stripped down, dumbed down, appliance instead.
It looks most haven’t read the article up until the point where it addresses exactly what you’re talking about. And it says:
In the short term, we can do things like support open projects like Linux, support non-predatory and open source software, and run apps and store data locally as much as possible. But some bigger structural changes are necessary if we really want to launch the era of Personal Computer 2.0.
See, there’s a problem with all your examples (Linux, Framework…) except perhaps the Steam Deck: none of those are mainstream yet. And the effort to make them so is significant, possibly herculean. But most of all, political: companies do bad stuff only because we let them. They’re allowed to use DRM, and have been given the power to sue us if we break them — at lest in the US. They’re allowed to collect and sell our data. They’re allowed to “sell” us stuff, even though it’s not actually a sale, and when it’s inconvenient to keep us locked in they’re allowed to lock us out. We should question those allowances. That is, push for better laws.
Personally, I would love to see the 30 million lines problem solved, and have someone deliver a simple computer that’s good enough for most uses — including gaming. Probably has to be something like RISC-V, considering that one is not allowed to just make and sell a CPU that’s compatible with the mainstream ones (ARM, x86…) — which is utterly ridiculous by the way, instruction sets are interfaces and as such anyone should be allowed to copy it, no authorisation nor fee required.
But I’m not sure we could ever have that without first cleanly separating hardware companies from software companies. The rule is simple: companies that distribute hardware should be forbidden to distribute software — not even Open Source. They’re only allowed to provide the manual required to operate the hardware. It can be done in a kinda extra-territorial way too: if a company distributes both, we just don’t buy their hardware. (And there are ways to determine if 2 companies really are separate.) Do that, and suddenly hardware companies will be motivated to make simple hardware with standard interface, and software companies (and open source alternatives) will be able to actually compete, instead of having to do everything on top of the 3 top kernels out there (NT, Linux, Darwin). Though it might be too radical to seriously consider. I like the idea, but I’m pretty sure it would have a host of adverse effects.
People don’t want personal computers, just like they don’t want to do their own plumbing, do their own banking, etc. Before personal computers they just didn’t use computers at all, now they are just using appliances.
Masses as perfectly happy buying a locked down iPhone, Android, Macbook, Spotify subscription etc.The system works for them perfectly fine, also better than ever. They don’t want freedom and empowerment (but also responsibility) that comes with actually being in control.
But. Personal computing is not dead, just because masses don’t want it. There’s probably more total personal computer users now than there was 20 years ago. And what they can do is better than before too. It’s just that the total number of “computing as a service/appliance” market is now almost everybody else.
I call out just-world fallacy. Many things are decided at scale that people do not want. To give you 2 examples of blatant examples that happened in my country (France):
2005, there was a referendum asking if we wanted the new EU constitution. About 60% said no if I recall correctly. A few months later they just voted the same thing in congress, and it passed.
2022 or so, the government was dead set in enacting a retirement reform that would push the retirement age 2 years later (from 62 to 64). Every survey said over 75% of the population was against it, including ~90% of workers. They still passed it.
Also I recall a US study that say that whether a reform passes or not is mostly determined by what the rich want, not by what the people want: if the rich want something and the people don’t, it often passes, anyway, and if the people want something that the rich don’t, it never passes.
It would be more accurate to say that if rich people wanted it they would have legislated it. And I have a feeling that true personal computing actually goes contrary to the interests of the tech giants. Just do not forget that what tech giants want, may be very different from what people want — and that’s before we touch on whether “want” is conditioned on being informed or not.
People don’t want personal computers, just like they don’t want to do their own plumbing, do their own banking, etc.
That I can get behind. I’m sad about it, but yeah. People don’t (want to?) understand what computers actually are, and I can believe that most are happy with appliances.
Masses as perfectly happy buying a locked down iPhone, Android, Macbook, Spotify subscription etc.The system works for them perfectly fine, also better than ever. They don’t want freedom and empowerment (but also responsibility) that comes with actually being in control.
I’d agree that many people are like that. But are most? I’m not sure to be honest. If we just take the locked down part for instance, are people actually happy they can’t install third party apps on their iPhone without oversight from Apple? Are people actually happy they don’t even have the option?
But. Personal computing is not dead, just because masses don’t want it. There’s probably more total personal computer users now than there was 20 years ago. And what they can do is better than before too. It’s just that the total number of “computing as a service/appliance” market is now almost everybody else.
There’s a network effect though. I gotta use the messenger protocols (and therefore, app) everyone else is using, else I’m being locked out of my friends and family. If I want to pay for stuff online I need to install the 2FA banking app on my phone, and depending on the bank that phone better not be rooted. Overall, there’s a social pressure not to do anything that causes friction with the way other people work or communicate.
For instance, people tell me that recruiters are all on LinkedIn now. But I may have to set up an account and do some of their bullshit if I actually want to be seen by recruiters and raise my salary. Knowing that doing so will ever so slightly contribute to the strength of this network, and ever so slightly increase the incentive for everyone else to stay or follow suite. Same deal with Facebook, I have known some groups who only communicated through it. The result was I wasn’t informed, and soon my involvement dwindled. I don’t want this crap, but as a result I’m locked out of some things.
To be honest, I fear the day when personal computing starts to be banned altogether. I know it sounds tinfoil hat, but that conspiracy already started with the DMCA, where besides a few exceptions people are forbidden to even talk about flaws in their own computers that they bought. What if a sufficiently right-wing government with crazy-rich control freaks in it decide that people need to be “protected”, and all new computers sold must run Trusted Boot, no opt out, and only a few select vendors are allowed to sign operating systems for it? Sure they’d have special provisions for programmers, but in this world people who want actual personal computers are likely to find themselves outside of the law. It’s no question some tech giants actually want this world. Apple led the way with their locked down iPhone, and got away with it because unlike Microsoft back in the day they never dominated the market so completely, but ever since everyone else want a slice of the pie, with Microsoft itself attempting the locked down app store model on desktop computers — fortunately so far they have failed.
Granted, that dystopia is far from inevitable. But it’s probably more likely than most are willing to admit, especially taking into account the rise of fascism.
To achieve what you’re saying, you would need to have any hardware company pair with a software company to have this software available for their hardware when they launch and vice versa. Consider that IBM wrote software simply so that they could sell their computers. If you sell a very nice brick, nobody is going to buy it until they can do something with it. Unless, of course, you go very cheap.
Which reminds me, a company has tried this. They have a hardware team, and they make hardware, and they expect the community, or some other company, to make the software. They are called pine.
f you sell a very nice brick, nobody is going to buy it until they can do something with it.
In a world where companies are allowed to ship software with their hardware, a pure hardware company is indeed at a fatal disadvantage.
But what if no one can do both? One possible outcome is that no one tries radically different hardware: everyone would stick to existing designs and just make them faster, or add instructions here and there at a pace they can expect the software folks to catch up quickly. My hope is that we would see radically different designs, but most of all they’d be radically simpler (at the ISA level, the internals may optimise like crazy), so the software folks can pick it up quickly enough for the new thing to be competitive at all.
I agree. I would like a RISC-V desktop and a modular open-hardward ARM laptop, and they should run the particular set of packages that make up my desktop, assembled and tuned specifically for me.
That’s all doable, I just can’t afford it. But it’s still cheaper than the Apple gear people talked about recently on here.
I am probably different then most people that use PC - but saying that ‘PC is Dead’ feels kinda like an attempt to make the first page of Hacker News - no offense :)
I use FreeBSD (more or less similar things would also work on NetBSD/Linux/Illumos) on the PC (or name it desktop/laptop) since 2005 - and not much changed for me since then.
I run my preferred window manager under X11 - I changed browser from Opera 12.x to Firefox, I still use GIMP and Inkscape, switched from OpenOffice to LibreOffice, things like that. No subscriptions required for any of them.
I only pay for one subscription service that I need - my phone/SIM card - and its about $2.50 a month.
I can cancel my other non critical subscription for half of F1TV (I share that with my buddy) and its about $2.50 a month … but looking how dull often F1 races are - I maybe switch to ‘look after it happened’ model - as these races are available online anyway.
As for DRM or streaming services - never bought any of them - I always get movies/series from torrent networks - all valuable things are there - and if they are not there - it usually means its not valuable anyway …
I make that attempt every time I post something on my blog, my last success was in 2020, despite systematically getting upvoted — for some reason most upvotes don’t count. I still try just to be sure, but to be honest I kinda gave up, it’s just too crowded out there.
Outcome? Multiple comments. Multiple visits to your blog/page/article/content/… - but bedsides that - nothing else.
I started my blog personal non-profit FreeBSD/UNIX blog at 2018 - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/ - and after all that time … and so called Hacker News effect I still got only about $300 for 6 years of writing - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/donate/ - details here - you can not live of it.
So not matter how good it feels to be that ‘top’ on Hacker News, Lobsters or Reddit … it will not pay your bills.
… and the recruiters will not come either - a good LinkedIn profile will provide that - not a ‘famous’ blog.
That does not mean that I will stop here - I really like to share what I know - I really like to watch how the things I shared for free make other people thrive and finally success in their struggles. But that Hacker News effect - while nice - but does not change much.
Outcome? Multiple comments. Multiple visits to your blog/page/article/content/…
That’s all I’m asking for. And I already get that from here or the relevant subreddit, often with relevant feedback on what I missed, or miscommunicated. Getting anything more will probably take a lot more effort. Like write an actual book, make a video game, or design a serious piece of hardware — the kind of stuff I don’t even know I can do right now. (Edit: and even those are unlikely to pay the bills, so…)
and the recruiters will not come either - a good LinkedIn profile will provide that - not a ‘famous’ blog.
I’m considering selling my soul to that devil, and finally setting this up after all these years of everyone telling me I should be on it… what does a “good” profile looks like? How do I set one up?
Generally fill all areas like Education, Experience, add some Summary, Skills, Trainings, connect with people you know or worked for, exchange Recommendations with some of them … things like that.
I’m not sure that I can fully agree with the original article. Like the author I prefer to “own” my media so I still buy CDs and DVDs and I run MythTV as my DVR. But the problem isn’t the PC, it’s that “convenient enough” actually exists as an option. In the market, convenient enough will drive out “better” every time it can gain a foothold. In my house we constantly compare MythTV to TiVo. As a technology TiVo is finally on it’s deathbed because it’s built on top of CableCard technology. But, what TiVo brought to the table as a DVR is the literally the ruler for DVRs in my house. To get MythTV to do the same things as TiVo, I have to jump through some high hoops. What this author is bemoaning is that paying someone for a subscription to a streaming service is probably the easiest way to get back what I got from TiVo.
PC was never better and more alive?
You can install Linux on a mobile phone, Steam Deck is Linux and almost all games nowadays just work on Linux.
We have a practical modular and repairable laptop like Framework.
Building your own PC has never been simpler and easier - it’s almost like legos at this point.
PCs are most silent, energy efficient, nicest form factors. You can get PC on a usb stick, or a tiny box.
We have reproducible Linux distros like NixOS and Guix.
We even have an Open Source instruction set: RISCV.
Everything is awesome if you want to do personal computing. It’s just turns out most people don’t want a PC, and they want a stripped down, dumbed down, appliance instead.
It looks most haven’t read the article up until the point where it addresses exactly what you’re talking about. And it says:
See, there’s a problem with all your examples (Linux, Framework…) except perhaps the Steam Deck: none of those are mainstream yet. And the effort to make them so is significant, possibly herculean. But most of all, political: companies do bad stuff only because we let them. They’re allowed to use DRM, and have been given the power to sue us if we break them — at lest in the US. They’re allowed to collect and sell our data. They’re allowed to “sell” us stuff, even though it’s not actually a sale, and when it’s inconvenient to keep us locked in they’re allowed to lock us out. We should question those allowances. That is, push for better laws.
Personally, I would love to see the 30 million lines problem solved, and have someone deliver a simple computer that’s good enough for most uses — including gaming. Probably has to be something like RISC-V, considering that one is not allowed to just make and sell a CPU that’s compatible with the mainstream ones (ARM, x86…) — which is utterly ridiculous by the way, instruction sets are interfaces and as such anyone should be allowed to copy it, no authorisation nor fee required.
But I’m not sure we could ever have that without first cleanly separating hardware companies from software companies. The rule is simple: companies that distribute hardware should be forbidden to distribute software — not even Open Source. They’re only allowed to provide the manual required to operate the hardware. It can be done in a kinda extra-territorial way too: if a company distributes both, we just don’t buy their hardware. (And there are ways to determine if 2 companies really are separate.) Do that, and suddenly hardware companies will be motivated to make simple hardware with standard interface, and software companies (and open source alternatives) will be able to actually compete, instead of having to do everything on top of the 3 top kernels out there (NT, Linux, Darwin). Though it might be too radical to seriously consider. I like the idea, but I’m pretty sure it would have a host of adverse effects.
If people wanted it they would legislated it.
People don’t want personal computers, just like they don’t want to do their own plumbing, do their own banking, etc. Before personal computers they just didn’t use computers at all, now they are just using appliances.
Masses as perfectly happy buying a locked down iPhone, Android, Macbook, Spotify subscription etc.The system works for them perfectly fine, also better than ever. They don’t want freedom and empowerment (but also responsibility) that comes with actually being in control.
But. Personal computing is not dead, just because masses don’t want it. There’s probably more total personal computer users now than there was 20 years ago. And what they can do is better than before too. It’s just that the total number of “computing as a service/appliance” market is now almost everybody else.
I call out just-world fallacy. Many things are decided at scale that people do not want. To give you 2 examples of blatant examples that happened in my country (France):
Also I recall a US study that say that whether a reform passes or not is mostly determined by what the rich want, not by what the people want: if the rich want something and the people don’t, it often passes, anyway, and if the people want something that the rich don’t, it never passes.
It would be more accurate to say that if rich people wanted it they would have legislated it. And I have a feeling that true personal computing actually goes contrary to the interests of the tech giants. Just do not forget that what tech giants want, may be very different from what people want — and that’s before we touch on whether “want” is conditioned on being informed or not.
That I can get behind. I’m sad about it, but yeah. People don’t (want to?) understand what computers actually are, and I can believe that most are happy with appliances.
I’d agree that many people are like that. But are most? I’m not sure to be honest. If we just take the locked down part for instance, are people actually happy they can’t install third party apps on their iPhone without oversight from Apple? Are people actually happy they don’t even have the option?
There’s a network effect though. I gotta use the messenger protocols (and therefore, app) everyone else is using, else I’m being locked out of my friends and family. If I want to pay for stuff online I need to install the 2FA banking app on my phone, and depending on the bank that phone better not be rooted. Overall, there’s a social pressure not to do anything that causes friction with the way other people work or communicate.
For instance, people tell me that recruiters are all on LinkedIn now. But I may have to set up an account and do some of their bullshit if I actually want to be seen by recruiters and raise my salary. Knowing that doing so will ever so slightly contribute to the strength of this network, and ever so slightly increase the incentive for everyone else to stay or follow suite. Same deal with Facebook, I have known some groups who only communicated through it. The result was I wasn’t informed, and soon my involvement dwindled. I don’t want this crap, but as a result I’m locked out of some things.
To be honest, I fear the day when personal computing starts to be banned altogether. I know it sounds tinfoil hat, but that conspiracy already started with the DMCA, where besides a few exceptions people are forbidden to even talk about flaws in their own computers that they bought. What if a sufficiently right-wing government with crazy-rich control freaks in it decide that people need to be “protected”, and all new computers sold must run Trusted Boot, no opt out, and only a few select vendors are allowed to sign operating systems for it? Sure they’d have special provisions for programmers, but in this world people who want actual personal computers are likely to find themselves outside of the law. It’s no question some tech giants actually want this world. Apple led the way with their locked down iPhone, and got away with it because unlike Microsoft back in the day they never dominated the market so completely, but ever since everyone else want a slice of the pie, with Microsoft itself attempting the locked down app store model on desktop computers — fortunately so far they have failed.
Granted, that dystopia is far from inevitable. But it’s probably more likely than most are willing to admit, especially taking into account the rise of fascism.
To achieve what you’re saying, you would need to have any hardware company pair with a software company to have this software available for their hardware when they launch and vice versa. Consider that IBM wrote software simply so that they could sell their computers. If you sell a very nice brick, nobody is going to buy it until they can do something with it. Unless, of course, you go very cheap.
Which reminds me, a company has tried this. They have a hardware team, and they make hardware, and they expect the community, or some other company, to make the software. They are called pine.
In a world where companies are allowed to ship software with their hardware, a pure hardware company is indeed at a fatal disadvantage.
But what if no one can do both? One possible outcome is that no one tries radically different hardware: everyone would stick to existing designs and just make them faster, or add instructions here and there at a pace they can expect the software folks to catch up quickly. My hope is that we would see radically different designs, but most of all they’d be radically simpler (at the ISA level, the internals may optimise like crazy), so the software folks can pick it up quickly enough for the new thing to be competitive at all.
I agree. I would like a RISC-V desktop and a modular open-hardward ARM laptop, and they should run the particular set of packages that make up my desktop, assembled and tuned specifically for me. That’s all doable, I just can’t afford it. But it’s still cheaper than the Apple gear people talked about recently on here.
I am probably different then most people that use PC - but saying that ‘PC is Dead’ feels kinda like an attempt to make the first page of Hacker News - no offense :)
I use FreeBSD (more or less similar things would also work on NetBSD/Linux/Illumos) on the PC (or name it desktop/laptop) since 2005 - and not much changed for me since then.
I run my preferred window manager under X11 - I changed browser from Opera 12.x to Firefox, I still use GIMP and Inkscape, switched from OpenOffice to LibreOffice, things like that. No subscriptions required for any of them.
I only pay for one subscription service that I need - my phone/SIM card - and its about $2.50 a month.
I can cancel my other non critical subscription for half of F1TV (I share that with my buddy) and its about $2.50 a month … but looking how dull often F1 races are - I maybe switch to ‘look after it happened’ model - as these races are available online anyway.
As for DRM or streaming services - never bought any of them - I always get movies/series from torrent networks - all valuable things are there - and if they are not there - it usually means its not valuable anyway …
Probably I am not the target for the article :)
I make that attempt every time I post something on my blog, my last success was in 2020, despite systematically getting upvoted — for some reason most upvotes don’t count. I still try just to be sure, but to be honest I kinda gave up, it’s just too crowded out there.
To be honest - being on the front page of Hacker News is REALLY overrated - as much as I like the page.
I have been there multiple times - sometimes with my creations - sometimes with not mine:
Outcome? Multiple comments. Multiple visits to your blog/page/article/content/… - but bedsides that - nothing else.
I started my blog personal non-profit FreeBSD/UNIX blog at 2018 - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/ - and after all that time … and so called Hacker News effect I still got only about $300 for 6 years of writing - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/donate/ - details here - you can not live of it.
So not matter how good it feels to be that ‘top’ on Hacker News, Lobsters or Reddit … it will not pay your bills.
… and the recruiters will not come either - a good LinkedIn profile will provide that - not a ‘famous’ blog.
That does not mean that I will stop here - I really like to share what I know - I really like to watch how the things I shared for free make other people thrive and finally success in their struggles. But that Hacker News effect - while nice - but does not change much.
Regards,
ver
That’s all I’m asking for. And I already get that from here or the relevant subreddit, often with relevant feedback on what I missed, or miscommunicated. Getting anything more will probably take a lot more effort. Like write an actual book, make a video game, or design a serious piece of hardware — the kind of stuff I don’t even know I can do right now. (Edit: and even those are unlikely to pay the bills, so…)
I’m considering selling my soul to that devil, and finally setting this up after all these years of everyone telling me I should be on it… what does a “good” profile looks like? How do I set one up?
Here is mine - https://linkedin.com/in/vermaden/ - but there are better ones for sure.
There are some howtos on that as well:
Generally fill all areas like Education, Experience, add some Summary, Skills, Trainings, connect with people you know or worked for, exchange Recommendations with some of them … things like that.
Hope that helps.
Maybe I will be able to help - time will show :)
Here:
Nope. Already flagged and dead. 😢
At least I tried :)
https://newrepublic.com/article/72792/the-pc-officially-died-today
“The PC Officially Died Today” Nicholas Carr, January 27, 2010
I’m not sure that I can fully agree with the original article. Like the author I prefer to “own” my media so I still buy CDs and DVDs and I run MythTV as my DVR. But the problem isn’t the PC, it’s that “convenient enough” actually exists as an option. In the market, convenient enough will drive out “better” every time it can gain a foothold. In my house we constantly compare MythTV to TiVo. As a technology TiVo is finally on it’s deathbed because it’s built on top of CableCard technology. But, what TiVo brought to the table as a DVR is the literally the ruler for DVRs in my house. To get MythTV to do the same things as TiVo, I have to jump through some high hoops. What this author is bemoaning is that paying someone for a subscription to a streaming service is probably the easiest way to get back what I got from TiVo.