3 ms·

Rant: I am only 41 and don't care about these articles anymore. I was able to explain the problems this article raises, to a 20-year girl who knows almost not

Rant: I am only 41 and don't care about these articles anymore. I was able to explain the problems this article raises, to a 20-year girl who knows almost nothing about technology, in a 15-minute conversation. And she agreed the current situation spells doom for future buyers and that she still wants to be able to buy a pink laptop and put whatever CPU, GPU and RAM she wants in it. Quote from her: "Why must I buy a VAIO or Acer when I need some more colors? Why can't I buy a lime green ThinkPad and then replace the CPU?". So look, we all get it just fine. Can you start doing something? This endless virtue signalling will not achieve anything, is this not glaringly obvious at this point? You all really underestimate the unbridled relentless greed of the shareholders and their servants. They will NEVER stop. If you want a change, pioneer it. And to the general HN audience: please understand most devs and hardware guys here are almost literal slaves. A good chunk of you (especially Americans) are privileged beyond what like 80% of us here will ever have, in terms of income and job security. Please start using your free bandwidth to do good! Patting yourself on the back like "hey, I can articulate the problems, I am helping!" is just you being a quiet accomplice in a future state of affairs where there will be no recourse. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot: get off my lawn. :P Seriously though, those articles don't help nothing. Awareness has been raised a long time ago. It's time for action. Corporations only understand one thing: coercion. Especially if you hit them in the wallets. Everything else they ignore.

temptemptemp111 5y ago
Your attitude is so much better than your peers (on this website)... They simply will not comprehend it because they're on a lower wavelength where their sense of responsibility is lacking.
pdimitar 5y ago
And uninformed anonymous downvotes is what will make me leave HN one day. Sure, stay in your filter bubble and downvote opinions you don't like.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
LegitShady 5y ago
She could buy a vinyl skin for many models of laptop and get probably a better laptop andamy different colours and textures.
- pdimitar 5y ago
  That's what I would recommend but nowadays I am worried this will impact thermals negatively, since many new laptops very heavily rely on chassis passive cooling and not only on the dedicated fans. So I didn't tell her because I didn't want the poor girl to invest a month of income on a laptop, put a skin on it, and have it burn out promptly in 3-6 months.
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    I don't put them on the bottom or near the keyboard, I don't think being on the screen really matters. Maybe if your laptop can do 1000 nits or something. But I don't know for sure. never had a problem.
noirbot 5y ago
What power do you think American software developers have here that they're not exercising? They should all quit their jobs and move into hardware design so they could band together and start a non-profit chip manufacturer to support some new laptop company? And in the meantime, not buy from any other corporation so we can "hit them in their wallets" and coerce them to... something? All so Apple might offer color options on their laptops? I don't think most of them underestimate the relentless greed of corporations. If anything, HN is one of the forums I'm on that's the most anti-corporate while not being explicitly communist/anarchist. You can dismiss the OP as simply complaining, but they're also literally writing an alternate OS for tips. Is that not "using their free bandwidth to do good"? Does it not count because it's not hardware? What about companies like System76 and Framework that are seemingly trying to do exactly what you're claiming people in the US aren't doing? I generally agree with where you're trying to go, and the futility of just complaining, but you're painting with a really broad brush, assuming a lot of bad/ignorant intentions on the part of anyone you disagree with, and only proposing vague "go do something you ignorant privileged Americans" to solve it.
- pdimitar 5y ago
  Truthfully, so far I am mostly recognizing only System 76 and Frame.Work as making a true difference. As for your questions, they are fair. My main point was that lengthy rants against corporations will achieve nothing and are a distraction from more noble pursuits. I am not saying "quit your job". I am saying however that many of those devs have the free time and energy bandwidth that many others don't, and maybe that should be used to put their wallet/actions where their mouth is. My comment was however mostly a harsh criticism of the endless echo chamber that HN can be. Almost nobody cares what we here think though. I agree that I painted this with a broad brush. It's something that's ticking me off and it gets really sad and frustrating seeing people just yammering their mouth endlessly. :| But sure, that's only my problem, I can easily concede that.
  - noirbot 5y ago
    I appreciate the honesty - I guess from my side of this, I have an similar annoyance of people who have lengthy rants against corporations that boil down to "why won't someone else do something about this". Which isn't to say that I think you're not well-intentioned, or not doing anything yourself, but that there's a streak on HN and in general of "why won't the government pass a law to fix X" or "why isn't everyone at (insert unethical company here) doing something about their employer". Ultimately, the problem is a combination of things - some portion of devs just don't agree with you that this is a problem, another portion is radical to the point of only investing in a solution so pure as to be unworkable, and the remaining portion that may agree with you (myself included) isn't enough of the population to matter outside of doing something drastic like quitting their jobs en masse. I recently purchased a Framework laptop. I'd imagine the overlap of people who own S76 or Framework computers and people who are on HN is pretty high. You're already grousing at a group of people who's most likely to be doing everything you think they should be doing, and it hasn't made things better, so out of frustration, we're all ranting to anyone who will listen about how we've done what we can and it's still not better.
bigpeopleareold 5y ago
I don't know, I found the articles interesting. It's a niche market calling saying "I will give you money if you just make design decisions that made your computers great to work with in the past." How big is this market? What can really be expected from trying to sell to that market when computers are complex things to build? If anything, there are companies out on the market trying to serve this niche market. System76 has been around for awhile now, for example (I bought a System76 laptop in 2013 and I hated it, but that's a different story.) I think a few of us would at least hope that these companies look at old ThinkPads and take a few notes. I think maybe that time is coming soon (I would hope :) )
rejectfinite 5y ago
>A good chunk of you (especially Americans) are privileged beyond what like 80% of us here will ever have, in terms of income and job security. Stay mad pajeet
908B64B197 5y ago
> And to the general HN audience: please understand most devs and hardware guys here are almost literal slaves. A good chunk of you (especially Americans) are privileged beyond what like 80% of us here will ever have, in terms of income and job security. Why not simply... create as much value? Equal skills, equal pay.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > Why not simply... create as much value? > Equal skills, equal pay. Muahahahaha, good one!

temptemptemp111 5y ago

Your attitude is so much better than your peers (on this website)... They simply will not comprehend it because they're on a lower wavelength where their sense of responsibility is lacking.

pdimitar 5y ago

And uninformed anonymous downvotes is what will make me leave HN one day. Sure, stay in your filter bubble and downvote opinions you don't like.

dredmorbius 5y ago
Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

LegitShady 5y ago

She could buy a vinyl skin for many models of laptop and get probably a better laptop andamy different colours and textures.

pdimitar 5y ago
That's what I would recommend but nowadays I am worried this will impact thermals negatively, since many new laptops very heavily rely on chassis passive cooling and not only on the dedicated fans. So I didn't tell her because I didn't want the poor girl to invest a month of income on a laptop, put a skin on it, and have it burn out promptly in 3-6 months.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  I don't put them on the bottom or near the keyboard, I don't think being on the screen really matters. Maybe if your laptop can do 1000 nits or something. But I don't know for sure. never had a problem.

noirbot 5y ago

What power do you think American software developers have here that they're not exercising? They should all quit their jobs and move into hardware design so they could band together and start a non-profit chip manufacturer to support some new laptop company? And in the meantime, not buy from any other corporation so we can "hit them in their wallets" and coerce them to... something? All so Apple might offer color options on their laptops? I don't think most of them underestimate the relentless greed of corporations. If anything, HN is one of the forums I'm on that's the most anti-corporate while not being explicitly communist/anarchist. You can dismiss the OP as simply complaining, but they're also literally writing an alternate OS for tips. Is that not "using their free bandwidth to do good"? Does it not count because it's not hardware? What about companies like System76 and Framework that are seemingly trying to do exactly what you're claiming people in the US aren't doing? I generally agree with where you're trying to go, and the futility of just complaining, but you're painting with a really broad brush, assuming a lot of bad/ignorant intentions on the part of anyone you disagree with, and only proposing vague "go do something you ignorant privileged Americans" to solve it.

pdimitar 5y ago
Truthfully, so far I am mostly recognizing only System 76 and Frame.Work as making a true difference. As for your questions, they are fair. My main point was that lengthy rants against corporations will achieve nothing and are a distraction from more noble pursuits. I am not saying "quit your job". I am saying however that many of those devs have the free time and energy bandwidth that many others don't, and maybe that should be used to put their wallet/actions where their mouth is. My comment was however mostly a harsh criticism of the endless echo chamber that HN can be. Almost nobody cares what we here think though. I agree that I painted this with a broad brush. It's something that's ticking me off and it gets really sad and frustrating seeing people just yammering their mouth endlessly. :| But sure, that's only my problem, I can easily concede that.
- noirbot 5y ago
  I appreciate the honesty - I guess from my side of this, I have an similar annoyance of people who have lengthy rants against corporations that boil down to "why won't someone else do something about this". Which isn't to say that I think you're not well-intentioned, or not doing anything yourself, but that there's a streak on HN and in general of "why won't the government pass a law to fix X" or "why isn't everyone at (insert unethical company here) doing something about their employer". Ultimately, the problem is a combination of things - some portion of devs just don't agree with you that this is a problem, another portion is radical to the point of only investing in a solution so pure as to be unworkable, and the remaining portion that may agree with you (myself included) isn't enough of the population to matter outside of doing something drastic like quitting their jobs en masse. I recently purchased a Framework laptop. I'd imagine the overlap of people who own S76 or Framework computers and people who are on HN is pretty high. You're already grousing at a group of people who's most likely to be doing everything you think they should be doing, and it hasn't made things better, so out of frustration, we're all ranting to anyone who will listen about how we've done what we can and it's still not better.

bigpeopleareold 5y ago

I don't know, I found the articles interesting. It's a niche market calling saying "I will give you money if you just make design decisions that made your computers great to work with in the past." How big is this market? What can really be expected from trying to sell to that market when computers are complex things to build? If anything, there are companies out on the market trying to serve this niche market. System76 has been around for awhile now, for example (I bought a System76 laptop in 2013 and I hated it, but that's a different story.) I think a few of us would at least hope that these companies look at old ThinkPads and take a few notes. I think maybe that time is coming soon (I would hope :) )

rejectfinite 5y ago

>A good chunk of you (especially Americans) are privileged beyond what like 80% of us here will ever have, in terms of income and job security. Stay mad pajeet

908B64B197 5y ago

> And to the general HN audience: please understand most devs and hardware guys here are almost literal slaves. A good chunk of you (especially Americans) are privileged beyond what like 80% of us here will ever have, in terms of income and job security. Why not simply... create as much value? Equal skills, equal pay.

CRConrad 5y ago
> Why not simply... create as much value? > Equal skills, equal pay. Muahahahaha, good one!