3 ms·

Not altogether different from tech. today. Ie. Year 1 nobody owns a light bulb, so sell an incredibly efficient bulb. Year 10 everybody owns bulbs so cheapen th

by josho 10y ago

Not altogether different from tech. today. Ie. Year 1 nobody owns a light bulb, so sell an incredibly efficient bulb. Year 10 everybody owns bulbs so cheapen the product to increase sales. While today we have incredible free service to grow market, then when the market had matured and growth falls and lock-in is complete reduce service to monetize. Somethings never change.

userbinator 10y ago
The article mentions CFLs and LED lamps, which are definitely subject to the same engineering pressures: This would result in increases of candlepower of 11 and 16 percent respectively.” That boost in illumination, he suggested, “would be acceptable to all flashlight users” despite the fact that the higher current would shorten not just the bulb’s life but also the battery’s. The cartel’s justification for these changes was that at the higher current levels, the bulbs produced more lumens per watt. Alas, more current means not only more brightness but also higher filament temperature and therefore shorter life. I have no doubt that LED lamps could be engineered to last essentially indefinitely --- well past the 100+ year record of early incandescents[1] --- but most consumers are lead by the advertising to seek higher brightnesses, which are achieved by running the LEDs at life-shortening higher currents and temperatures. Newer ICs with small feature-sizes are subject to far more current density and electromigration stress, to the point that CPUs are not expected to last more than a few years, whereas older ICs may remain functional for many decades. Memory and storage densities are also subject to the same effect, where it seems "capacity and speed is everything" and data retention and endurance have been sacrificed. NAND flash started out at 100K+ cycles per bit and 10+ years retention; now it's more like 1K and 1 year. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest-lasting_light_bulbs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest-lasting_light_bulbs
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Honestly, I'd be fine with optimizing products like that if two things were true: - close-to-perfect recycling infrastructure; i.e. all the stuff that breaks down and is thrown away actually gets reused to create a new generation of stuff, with minimum additional input of energy and material - civilization was a stable thing; making things throwaway depends on ensuring there's always a replacement to buy - which will be sort-of the case only until the world goes to war again (and/or western economy goes seriously belly-up), at which point we (those of us who survive, that is) will be cursing previous generations for making all advanced technology break down after a year of use, often on purpose Alas, those things are not true, and so I despair over the wastefulness of what "the market decided".
  - khedoros 10y ago
    > Honestly, I'd be fine with optimizing products like that if two things were true: If you're talking about technology being expected to break down and be cheaply replaced on the scale of single-digit years, it sounds like a never-ending nightmare. I'd need to add two more points, at least. - Strict upgrades (that is, there must be nothing about a new version of a product that's worse than the one before it); if one feature/technology was present in the older version of something, the new version must provide the same capability. I'm thinking of the old hardware I keep around because of "That one thing that only runs in Windows 98" and "That one thing I can only flash over a parallel port". - A mechanism to automatically, securely, and privately image the new machine with the previous machine's configuration and data. The nests I build on my machines feel like home. Given only your first two points, I still wouldn't buy a machine that I didn't expect to last at least 5 years, and preferably 10.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      I was thinking primarily about appliances - lightbulbs (dumb or smart), washing machines, cars, cellphones / smartphones, etc. Those two points you added don't apply to most of them. That said, I'm not sure if I agree with the first one. At least not completely. I'd like to have some ability to recover old/special features but I wouldn't mind if it required some extra work (like tracking down that motherboard model that still has parallel port on it). In the reality where all technology is being obsoleted fast and my two points hold, whatever you want to program over parallel has probably broke down already anyway. As for the second one - we don't have anything like that even today in wide use, and we cope :). On Unix you end up moving your dotfiles; on Windows I used to spend an hour or three for setting things up "my way". Personally I don't expect a new machine to immediately feel like the old one - but I do expect to be able to make it so.
      - khedoros 10y ago
        I guess that my overall point is that I dislike almost everything about the idea of disposable possessions, and I would resent being forced into it. I could imagine leasing a car, my washing machine, or another appliance if the TCO was reduced, compared to outright ownership for 10 years, but nothing that I actually care about. > I'd like to have some ability to recover old/special features but I wouldn't mind if it required some extra work (like tracking down that motherboard model that still has parallel port on it). In the reality where all technology is being obsoleted fast and my two points hold, whatever you want to program over parallel has probably broke down already anyway. If they're willing to replace the parallel device with a functionally-equivalent piece of hardware that connects to a bus that the new hardware provides, then that would be equivalent. I'd just want to avoid situations like this: If I took pains to keep OtherOS on my PS3, the replacement hardware must not have a firmware that's incompatible with my use of it. If I've got a gaggle of microcontrollers and a parallel-port programmer for them, the new hardware must either let me program them. > On Unix you end up moving your dotfiles; on Windows I used to spend an hour or three for setting things up "my way". On Unix, I move my dot files, a couple hundred gb of data, install about 500 packages, and end up tracking down, compiling, and installing a few things that aren't usually included in my repos. In Windows, a lot of the data was already transferred from the Linux side ("Unix" is invariably "Linux", on my machines), and I spend the next week tracking down installers for software, re-downloading games, etc. For the next 6 months, I'll be running into things that I need to track down and re-install. I cope with this by keeping hardware until it's absolutely unusable for what I want to do. If someone expected me to upgrade more frequently through a forced process, I'd expect them to ease my way as much as humanly possible.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  Not saying you're speeding FUD, but do you have any sources discussing CPUs (or GPUs) lasting only a few years? In my experience, desktop, server, and mobile CPUs work fine after 10 years, and I'd expect the same of current tech.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    No FUD, just physics. The parent comment mentioned electromigration[1]. From the Wikipedia article: Electromigration is the transport of material caused by the gradual movement of the ions in a conductor due to the momentum transfer between conducting electrons and diffusing metal atoms. The effect is important in applications where high direct current densities are used, such as in microelectronics and related structures. As the structure size in electronics such as integrated circuits (ICs) decreases, the practical significance of this effect increases. It remains to be seen how long modern CPUs (ICs in general) last. My i5 laptop is still running at 3 years, so there's that. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration

by josho 10y ago

userbinator 10y ago

The article mentions CFLs and LED lamps, which are definitely subject to the same engineering pressures: This would result in increases of candlepower of 11 and 16 percent respectively.” That boost in illumination, he suggested, “would be acceptable to all flashlight users” despite the fact that the higher current would shorten not just the bulb’s life but also the battery’s. The cartel’s justification for these changes was that at the higher current levels, the bulbs produced more lumens per watt. Alas, more current means not only more brightness but also higher filament temperature and therefore shorter life. I have no doubt that LED lamps could be engineered to last essentially indefinitely --- well past the 100+ year record of early incandescents[1] --- but most consumers are lead by the advertising to seek higher brightnesses, which are achieved by running the LEDs at life-shortening higher currents and temperatures. Newer ICs with small feature-sizes are subject to far more current density and electromigration stress, to the point that CPUs are not expected to last more than a few years, whereas older ICs may remain functional for many decades. Memory and storage densities are also subject to the same effect, where it seems "capacity and speed is everything" and data retention and endurance have been sacrificed. NAND flash started out at 100K+ cycles per bit and 10+ years retention; now it's more like 1K and 1 year. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest-lasting_light_bulbs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest-lasting_light_bulbs

TeMPOraL 10y ago
Honestly, I'd be fine with optimizing products like that if two things were true: - close-to-perfect recycling infrastructure; i.e. all the stuff that breaks down and is thrown away actually gets reused to create a new generation of stuff, with minimum additional input of energy and material - civilization was a stable thing; making things throwaway depends on ensuring there's always a replacement to buy - which will be sort-of the case only until the world goes to war again (and/or western economy goes seriously belly-up), at which point we (those of us who survive, that is) will be cursing previous generations for making all advanced technology break down after a year of use, often on purpose Alas, those things are not true, and so I despair over the wastefulness of what "the market decided".
- khedoros 10y ago
  > Honestly, I'd be fine with optimizing products like that if two things were true: If you're talking about technology being expected to break down and be cheaply replaced on the scale of single-digit years, it sounds like a never-ending nightmare. I'd need to add two more points, at least. - Strict upgrades (that is, there must be nothing about a new version of a product that's worse than the one before it); if one feature/technology was present in the older version of something, the new version must provide the same capability. I'm thinking of the old hardware I keep around because of "That one thing that only runs in Windows 98" and "That one thing I can only flash over a parallel port". - A mechanism to automatically, securely, and privately image the new machine with the previous machine's configuration and data. The nests I build on my machines feel like home. Given only your first two points, I still wouldn't buy a machine that I didn't expect to last at least 5 years, and preferably 10.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    I was thinking primarily about appliances - lightbulbs (dumb or smart), washing machines, cars, cellphones / smartphones, etc. Those two points you added don't apply to most of them. That said, I'm not sure if I agree with the first one. At least not completely. I'd like to have some ability to recover old/special features but I wouldn't mind if it required some extra work (like tracking down that motherboard model that still has parallel port on it). In the reality where all technology is being obsoleted fast and my two points hold, whatever you want to program over parallel has probably broke down already anyway. As for the second one - we don't have anything like that even today in wide use, and we cope :). On Unix you end up moving your dotfiles; on Windows I used to spend an hour or three for setting things up "my way". Personally I don't expect a new machine to immediately feel like the old one - but I do expect to be able to make it so.
    - khedoros 10y ago
      I guess that my overall point is that I dislike almost everything about the idea of disposable possessions, and I would resent being forced into it. I could imagine leasing a car, my washing machine, or another appliance if the TCO was reduced, compared to outright ownership for 10 years, but nothing that I actually care about. > I'd like to have some ability to recover old/special features but I wouldn't mind if it required some extra work (like tracking down that motherboard model that still has parallel port on it). In the reality where all technology is being obsoleted fast and my two points hold, whatever you want to program over parallel has probably broke down already anyway. If they're willing to replace the parallel device with a functionally-equivalent piece of hardware that connects to a bus that the new hardware provides, then that would be equivalent. I'd just want to avoid situations like this: If I took pains to keep OtherOS on my PS3, the replacement hardware must not have a firmware that's incompatible with my use of it. If I've got a gaggle of microcontrollers and a parallel-port programmer for them, the new hardware must either let me program them. > On Unix you end up moving your dotfiles; on Windows I used to spend an hour or three for setting things up "my way". On Unix, I move my dot files, a couple hundred gb of data, install about 500 packages, and end up tracking down, compiling, and installing a few things that aren't usually included in my repos. In Windows, a lot of the data was already transferred from the Linux side ("Unix" is invariably "Linux", on my machines), and I spend the next week tracking down installers for software, re-downloading games, etc. For the next 6 months, I'll be running into things that I need to track down and re-install. I cope with this by keeping hardware until it's absolutely unusable for what I want to do. If someone expected me to upgrade more frequently through a forced process, I'd expect them to ease my way as much as humanly possible.
seanp2k2 10y ago
Not saying you're speeding FUD, but do you have any sources discussing CPUs (or GPUs) lasting only a few years? In my experience, desktop, server, and mobile CPUs work fine after 10 years, and I'd expect the same of current tech.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  No FUD, just physics. The parent comment mentioned electromigration[1]. From the Wikipedia article: Electromigration is the transport of material caused by the gradual movement of the ions in a conductor due to the momentum transfer between conducting electrons and diffusing metal atoms. The effect is important in applications where high direct current densities are used, such as in microelectronics and related structures. As the structure size in electronics such as integrated circuits (ICs) decreases, the practical significance of this effect increases. It remains to be seen how long modern CPUs (ICs in general) last. My i5 laptop is still running at 3 years, so there's that. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration