11 ms·

This is a big victory for the parents, teachers, and students who wrote to Google asking them to make this change. https://pirg.org/articles/why-google-announce

This is a big victory for the parents, teachers, and students who wrote to Google asking them to make this change. https://pirg.org/articles/why-google-announced-chromebooks-will-last-for-10-years/ https://pirg.org/articles/why-google-announced-chromebooks-w... Google and other tech companies should continue to find ways to stop the disposability treadmill that pressures us to replace our phones and laptops in favor of newer models. With e-waste the fastest growing waste-stream in the U.S., it’s not sustainable to consume technology at this rate. This is a meaningful step toward a tech industry making products designed to last.

mrtesthah 3y ago
Google's per-user software subscription model works to their benefit here, as it lets schools and businesses trade the money saved from a less frequent hardware upgrade schedule for additional years of Google product usage.
tgv 3y ago
> This is a big victory for the parents, teachers, and students Who should never have been using computers in the first place. There's really no point. Using gmail and gdocs doesn't teach anything of value. A lot of the other software is pricey and sometimes even detrimental to the school result.
- lern_too_spel 3y ago
  Writing papers in a word processor is a far different experience from writing papers on paper.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    Thankfully. Handwriting caused me massive hand cramping until much later in life when I re-trained myself to hold a pen differently. A lot of my school essays were optimized for the fewest number of words that met the base requirements. That in itself is a useful skill, but I don't recommend it as a coping mechanism to avoid physical pain.
  - nocman 3y ago
    Yeah, writing on a word processor is a million times better (at least it is for me). Don't get me wrong, I do think it's bad that writing things by hand is becoming more and more rare all the time. In particular, handwritten letters and notes have an extra bit of "personal touch" to them that can make them very valuable to the recipient. However, from the time I was in High School to today I would never want to be required to write a paper, well, strictly on paper (from the beginning). I want all of that ability to quickly edit at my fingertips.
    - com2kid 3y ago
      As someone who has physical problems writing by hand, papers I wrote by hand in school where better. Being forced to slow down gave me mental time to edit before I committed to page, by the time my pencil made a mark I was already on the 2nd or 3rd revision of what I was going to write.
      - nocman 3y ago
        On a computer I can easily rewrite the same phrase 10 times, reorganize a sentence for the best sounding flow, move or remove whole paragraphs multiple times, until I am satisfied I have said what I wanted to say in the best way I know how. I can save off any number of possibilities and compare them side by side. Also, none of this prevents me from spending 30 minutes beforehand thinking about what I am about to write. Although, I will admit, even if I do that I am likely to have at least a text editor open to jot down a few notes as I think about it. I do agree, however, that the up-front thinking is a very good idea.
      - Thedarkb 3y ago
        I also have physical problems writing by hand, and it led to me handing in a lot of unfinished essays after running out of time in exams. If I hadn't gotten a special dispensation to type my exams later on, I wouldn't really have anything to show for my education. Before my issues were diagnosed, my teachers and parents felt that it was due to a lack of effort on my part and that they could punish me into writing properly, and I feel that having access to Chromebooks is worth it if it even spares one kid from having to deal with that.
  - cududa 3y ago
    Okay, and? Hand written papers haven't been a thing in nearly 2 decades unless it was some form of punishment. Also, teachers don't want to have to context switch between reading each paper, adjusting to each student's handwriting
    - LordDragonfang 3y ago
      Handwritten essays are still widely used in testing environments (including those arguably most important to a student's future, AP tests).
      - NavinF 3y ago
        You listed the one exception to the rule. Most AP tests (physics, math, econ, etc) don't have that. Even the SAT essay is gone. That one AP test the final stronghold for an obsolete medium
        easton 3y ago
        The ones you listed still have FRQs that require critical thinking. Econ is writing a paragraph and drawing a graph, as I recall, and Physics has a question where you have to reason out an experiment. And all of the history and english ones require long form writing.
        NavinF 3y ago
        Weird, I don't remember writing paragraphs for any of those tests. I took almost all the AP tests available, tho that was a decade ago. At most I labeled some axes and that was enough for perfect scores
    - lern_too_spel 3y ago
      > Okay, and? You appear to be violently agreeing with me that there is a point to giving kids computers to use gdocs.
  - butlike 3y ago
    For me it's the lack of context switching that would get to me. I'm many years out of school (for now) but I do remember having a blank page in front of me as being somewhat inspiring. It was a new, fresh invitation to write something. Ctrl + N in a word processor just opens up a new window, and for whatever reason, doesn't carry that same weight of inspiration.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    My boss always loves it when I write the documentation for my code on a wide-ruled paper in cursive instead of in our Wiki system.
- Klugistiono 3y ago
  ah yes of course why should a school teach kids not relevant knowledge like computer? Perhaps to make sure that poor kids can never learn it or what is your logic behind this?
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    I am married to a teacher who teaches 8-9 year olds. This is her perspective from many years with that age group. Computers and screens are introduced too early. The kids just use them to zone out and mess around. The kids all forget their passwords, so login is a pain. To solve this the school made the same password for all. Some brat sets all the girls avatars to boobs. The various ways kids look up porn is a continual frustration. It doesn’t add to the learning, it makes lazy teachers lives easier. Some classes play Minecraft - I’m unclear how that’s teaching. Some use iPads to take creative photos. It’s not creative and is a waste of time and lazy. Computers have a place in schools, and it’s with older kids than 8-9 and needs to be way more prescriptive when used with <10 year olds. Edit: Probably relevant, my wife and I went to a Steiner school, as does our kid. That system has a pretty old fashioned view on screen time and devices - as I started typing this our child stated that metal work and leather work lessons were starting soon.
    - sebzim4500 3y ago
      >Some classes play Minecraft - I’m unclear how that’s teaching There are definitely ways to teach within Minecraft. Redstone springs to mind, but I imagine there are others.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      > The kids all forget their passwords, so login is a pain. I really wish Google would make fingerprint sensors standard for Chromebooks.
      - autoexec 3y ago
        I'm not sure collecting kids biometrics makes anything better. Fingerprints are easy to find, capture, and replicate using things students have readily available like glue or gummy bears (https://it.slashdot.org/story/10/10/28/0124242/aussie-kids-foil-finger-scanner-with-gummi-bears https://it.slashdot.org/story/10/10/28/0124242/aussie-kids-f...). Once a fingerprint is compromised the user is screwed forever because it can't be reset.
- mongol 3y ago
  You don't use gdocs to learn gdocs. You use it to write an essay or something. It is a tool, like a pen.
  - tgv 3y ago
    Which is only needed at the end of secondary school, and only at higher levels. Before that, essays are very short, and should be handwritten, or they not even part of the curriculum.
    - creatonez 3y ago
      If we want schools to reflect useful skills, we'd be better off introducing typing and computer skills younger and dropping the requirement for cursive penmanship. This has already been done (in many cases, 15+ years ago) at most American grade schools -- touch-typing and computer skills instruction now starts only 1 or 2 years after handwriting instruction. This means it is introduced in 2nd or 3rd grade. (Most essay-writing remains on paper until 6th grade, though)
- greiskul 3y ago
  My mom sent me a photo of me when I was about 8 years old, playing on the home computer. It was very expensive to have a computer in Brazil at that age, and my parents used it for their work. I used it for games. I grew up using computers. Just getting the games to run, was something that needed knowledge back then. That lead me to at my teenage years, to try out programming, cause I wanted to make some changes to the open source version of a mmorpg my brother and I played. That lead me to choosing computer science. That lead me to being a FAANG engineer. I had a leg up agaisnt every single one of my peers during all my teenage and university years. When my peers were learning to use a computer, I was already programming. When they were learning to program, I was already good at it. You say that computer for young kids have no value? Useless? That computer usage was the single most valuable thing that has happened to me in all of my life!
  - robrtsql 3y ago
    Which open source version of an MMORPG was that? If you don't mind me asking.
    - greiskul 3y ago
      Tibia.
  - rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y ago
    Yeah keep scrolling down until you see that comment from a teacher who thinks it’s a distraction. In general Just because you had a clear purpose for and interest in computers doesn’t mean it’s gonna be the same for other kids
  - nonameiguess 3y ago
    Not to be antagonistic, but this story makes it sound like your advantage came from the fact you had a computer early and your peers didn't. If everyone gets one, there is no advantage. You've just created a new necessity instead.
    - pb7 3y ago
- doctor_eval 3y ago
  I mean you can apply this kind of comment to literally any technology. Cars, carpentry, electricity… computing is part of the fabric of society and making it totally inaccessible won’t help anyone. Imagine this: > Who should never have been using electricity in the first place. There's really no point. Using power tools and washing machines doesn't teach anything of value. A lot of the other appliances are pricey and sometimes even detrimental to the school result.
  - tgv 3y ago
    The weird thing is: arguments change their meaning when you change the words. But indeed, washing machines wouldn't be very useful in a school.
- thefurdrake 3y ago
  > Who should never have been using computers in the first place. Is... is this comment in good faith? Are you sure about that, bud? Parents and teachers shouldn't be using computers in the first place? What a concerning and confusing view of the world.
samtheprogram 3y ago
Ironically (because related to Google), I feel that the constant churn of web development is what makes these older devices unusable. I have several devices from early to mid 2010's, and the real reason these devices are annoying to unbearable to impossible to use (assuming Linux or Windows for security updates) is that they become very slow while just browsing the web or simply playing a video with a newer codec that has no hardware support on these older machines. In my mind, this 10 years of updates is fantastic, but also not very practical towards the end of the support cycle. Better to have the option, though.
- noirscape 3y ago
  Generally speaking I'd suggest installing Firefox on older devices. It's usually at least slightly more usable as long as you don't have too many tabs open. I'd also recommend Firefox in general but that's neither here or there.
  - skinkestek 3y ago
    On a slightly newer machine (3 years old, 32GB memory) Firefox (or rather LibreWolf) again runs nicely with a few hundred tabs. It would probably run fine with that amount of tabs also if it had 16 or maybe 8 GB, but not together with 2 or 3 IDE instancee, Teams, Slack and ome or more applications running in debug.
    - pbmonster 3y ago
      I have absolutely zero issues on 10 year old hardware with 16GByte of memory. Hundreds of tabs (Firefox is really good about moving them out of memory when they don't get used for a while - which, lets be honest, are almost all of those tabs) and the normal everyday onslaught of office software, a fat IDE, and a CAD editor. This stuff is not rocket science. It's not even performance gaming. We worked efficiently in 2013, and it still works today. All it takes is some memory and a halfway decent SSD.
    - mymac 3y ago
      It bloody well should though, 32G is massive.
froh 3y ago
til "PIRG" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Interest_Research_Group https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Interest_Research_Gro...
Zambyte 3y ago
> Google and other tech companies should continue to find ways to stop the disposability treadmill that pressures us to replace our phones and laptops in favor of newer models. The treadmill is powered by "intellectual property". Abolish "owning" ideas, and you abolish the treadmill. Capitalism would solve this issue if it were allowed to run its course. Unfortunately we've let artificial monopolies run rampant in the name of "innovation". All that we've innovated is screwing people over as much as possible.
- LordDragonfang 3y ago
  Intellectual property is capital. Advocating for communal ownership for the intellectual means of production is more communist than it is capitalist. The market can then fix it once you've removed intellectual capitalism from the equation.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    There are plenty of capitalists who would disagree by arguing that "intellectual property" isn't capital because such thing isn't even possible. Many anarcho-capitalists hold this position. I'm not versed enough to argue it in depth, but the basic premise is that you can't "own" an idea/thought, and there's no scarcity at play with ideas so it fails the basic test for property.
    - squarefoot 3y ago
      I guess the system worked around that limitation by hiring people with ideas and have them sign NDAs.
  - teddyh 3y ago
    Bitcoin is commonly held to be worth something, i.e., an asset. But there are many who argue that its “true” value is 0. Something similar to that divergence is happening here. We, as a society, have a convention, a habit, where copyrighted works, trademarks, mining rights, etc. are restricted by law to be controlled by a single legal entity. This makes these a tradable commodity. But if the law did not apply to these, they would become worthless. It is, in fact, these laws which have created this tradable commodity from nothing. Other laws could be created to do the same to any number of currently freely available things; this does not prove that these things should be covered by such laws merely because it would create a kind of property which would have value.
avgcorrection 3y ago
> Google and other tech companies should continue to find ways to stop the disposability treadmill that pressures us to replace our phones and laptops in favor of newer models. With e-waste the fastest growing waste-stream in the U.S., it’s not sustainable to consume technology at this rate. This is a meaningful step toward a tech industry making products designed to last. Uh-huh. Alternatively you could go back to books, pencil and paper.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Like most schools around the world still do today.
- scbzzzzz 3y ago
  I am really heartbroken by your response, I always feel the world/society should fight planned obsolescence. people/planet over profits. and then I see a person responding with a joke (I hope you don't mean it) when we(society) have means to make products last but some corporation chose profits against it and then greenwash with 5min mother earth videos. I know you are aware/heard of planned obsolescence. some people complain, these corporations have to maintain and it costs them, but those people don't realise We are gifted with wonderful opensource community like (pixelexperience os maintainers). These corporation can design it to make it easy for opensource community to maintain it after EOL. Since you are here in HN, there is high probability you are one of the geeks in industry. I hope you fight for "planet/people over profits".
  - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    >I am really heartbroken by your response, I always feel the world/society should fight planned obsolescence. alternative explanation - they feel there is overuse of computing devices and that one could really go back to pencil and paper for lots of tasks.
    - walteweiss 3y ago
      ‘Uh-huh’ changes that context and makes it sarcastic.
waynesonfire 3y ago
They should have written to the schools to ban these devices.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
neycoda 3y ago
This is why we need money spent on recycling and proper cleanup. Not just shipping things to countries with lesser economies and lighting the piles of garbage on fire, but taxing profits of these devices and creating jobs for salvaging and turning the garbage back into resources that can be re-"mined" (so to speak, but from storage areas). If this is considered unrealistic, OK, then we're right back to the same problem no matter which form of garbage we're creating.

mrtesthah 3y ago

Google's per-user software subscription model works to their benefit here, as it lets schools and businesses trade the money saved from a less frequent hardware upgrade schedule for additional years of Google product usage.

tgv 3y ago

> This is a big victory for the parents, teachers, and students Who should never have been using computers in the first place. There's really no point. Using gmail and gdocs doesn't teach anything of value. A lot of the other software is pricey and sometimes even detrimental to the school result.

lern_too_spel 3y ago
Writing papers in a word processor is a far different experience from writing papers on paper.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  Thankfully. Handwriting caused me massive hand cramping until much later in life when I re-trained myself to hold a pen differently. A lot of my school essays were optimized for the fewest number of words that met the base requirements. That in itself is a useful skill, but I don't recommend it as a coping mechanism to avoid physical pain.
- nocman 3y ago
  Yeah, writing on a word processor is a million times better (at least it is for me). Don't get me wrong, I do think it's bad that writing things by hand is becoming more and more rare all the time. In particular, handwritten letters and notes have an extra bit of "personal touch" to them that can make them very valuable to the recipient. However, from the time I was in High School to today I would never want to be required to write a paper, well, strictly on paper (from the beginning). I want all of that ability to quickly edit at my fingertips.
  - com2kid 3y ago
    As someone who has physical problems writing by hand, papers I wrote by hand in school where better. Being forced to slow down gave me mental time to edit before I committed to page, by the time my pencil made a mark I was already on the 2nd or 3rd revision of what I was going to write.
    - nocman 3y ago
      On a computer I can easily rewrite the same phrase 10 times, reorganize a sentence for the best sounding flow, move or remove whole paragraphs multiple times, until I am satisfied I have said what I wanted to say in the best way I know how. I can save off any number of possibilities and compare them side by side. Also, none of this prevents me from spending 30 minutes beforehand thinking about what I am about to write. Although, I will admit, even if I do that I am likely to have at least a text editor open to jot down a few notes as I think about it. I do agree, however, that the up-front thinking is a very good idea.
    - Thedarkb 3y ago
      I also have physical problems writing by hand, and it led to me handing in a lot of unfinished essays after running out of time in exams. If I hadn't gotten a special dispensation to type my exams later on, I wouldn't really have anything to show for my education. Before my issues were diagnosed, my teachers and parents felt that it was due to a lack of effort on my part and that they could punish me into writing properly, and I feel that having access to Chromebooks is worth it if it even spares one kid from having to deal with that.
- cududa 3y ago
  Okay, and? Hand written papers haven't been a thing in nearly 2 decades unless it was some form of punishment. Also, teachers don't want to have to context switch between reading each paper, adjusting to each student's handwriting
  - LordDragonfang 3y ago
    Handwritten essays are still widely used in testing environments (including those arguably most important to a student's future, AP tests).
    - NavinF 3y ago
      You listed the one exception to the rule. Most AP tests (physics, math, econ, etc) don't have that. Even the SAT essay is gone. That one AP test the final stronghold for an obsolete medium
      - easton 3y ago
        The ones you listed still have FRQs that require critical thinking. Econ is writing a paragraph and drawing a graph, as I recall, and Physics has a question where you have to reason out an experiment. And all of the history and english ones require long form writing.
        NavinF 3y ago
        Weird, I don't remember writing paragraphs for any of those tests. I took almost all the AP tests available, tho that was a decade ago. At most I labeled some axes and that was enough for perfect scores
  - lern_too_spel 3y ago
    > Okay, and? You appear to be violently agreeing with me that there is a point to giving kids computers to use gdocs.
- butlike 3y ago
  For me it's the lack of context switching that would get to me. I'm many years out of school (for now) but I do remember having a blank page in front of me as being somewhat inspiring. It was a new, fresh invitation to write something. Ctrl + N in a word processor just opens up a new window, and for whatever reason, doesn't carry that same weight of inspiration.
- vel0city 3y ago
  My boss always loves it when I write the documentation for my code on a wide-ruled paper in cursive instead of in our Wiki system.
Klugistiono 3y ago
ah yes of course why should a school teach kids not relevant knowledge like computer? Perhaps to make sure that poor kids can never learn it or what is your logic behind this?
- lostlogin 3y ago
  I am married to a teacher who teaches 8-9 year olds. This is her perspective from many years with that age group. Computers and screens are introduced too early. The kids just use them to zone out and mess around. The kids all forget their passwords, so login is a pain. To solve this the school made the same password for all. Some brat sets all the girls avatars to boobs. The various ways kids look up porn is a continual frustration. It doesn’t add to the learning, it makes lazy teachers lives easier. Some classes play Minecraft - I’m unclear how that’s teaching. Some use iPads to take creative photos. It’s not creative and is a waste of time and lazy. Computers have a place in schools, and it’s with older kids than 8-9 and needs to be way more prescriptive when used with <10 year olds. Edit: Probably relevant, my wife and I went to a Steiner school, as does our kid. That system has a pretty old fashioned view on screen time and devices - as I started typing this our child stated that metal work and leather work lessons were starting soon.
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    >Some classes play Minecraft - I’m unclear how that’s teaching There are definitely ways to teach within Minecraft. Redstone springs to mind, but I imagine there are others.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    > The kids all forget their passwords, so login is a pain. I really wish Google would make fingerprint sensors standard for Chromebooks.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      I'm not sure collecting kids biometrics makes anything better. Fingerprints are easy to find, capture, and replicate using things students have readily available like glue or gummy bears (https://it.slashdot.org/story/10/10/28/0124242/aussie-kids-foil-finger-scanner-with-gummi-bears https://it.slashdot.org/story/10/10/28/0124242/aussie-kids-f...). Once a fingerprint is compromised the user is screwed forever because it can't be reset.
mongol 3y ago
You don't use gdocs to learn gdocs. You use it to write an essay or something. It is a tool, like a pen.
- tgv 3y ago
  Which is only needed at the end of secondary school, and only at higher levels. Before that, essays are very short, and should be handwritten, or they not even part of the curriculum.
  - creatonez 3y ago
    If we want schools to reflect useful skills, we'd be better off introducing typing and computer skills younger and dropping the requirement for cursive penmanship. This has already been done (in many cases, 15+ years ago) at most American grade schools -- touch-typing and computer skills instruction now starts only 1 or 2 years after handwriting instruction. This means it is introduced in 2nd or 3rd grade. (Most essay-writing remains on paper until 6th grade, though)
greiskul 3y ago
My mom sent me a photo of me when I was about 8 years old, playing on the home computer. It was very expensive to have a computer in Brazil at that age, and my parents used it for their work. I used it for games. I grew up using computers. Just getting the games to run, was something that needed knowledge back then. That lead me to at my teenage years, to try out programming, cause I wanted to make some changes to the open source version of a mmorpg my brother and I played. That lead me to choosing computer science. That lead me to being a FAANG engineer. I had a leg up agaisnt every single one of my peers during all my teenage and university years. When my peers were learning to use a computer, I was already programming. When they were learning to program, I was already good at it. You say that computer for young kids have no value? Useless? That computer usage was the single most valuable thing that has happened to me in all of my life!
- robrtsql 3y ago
  Which open source version of an MMORPG was that? If you don't mind me asking.
  - greiskul 3y ago
    Tibia.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y ago
  Yeah keep scrolling down until you see that comment from a teacher who thinks it’s a distraction. In general Just because you had a clear purpose for and interest in computers doesn’t mean it’s gonna be the same for other kids
- nonameiguess 3y ago
  Not to be antagonistic, but this story makes it sound like your advantage came from the fact you had a computer early and your peers didn't. If everyone gets one, there is no advantage. You've just created a new necessity instead.
  - pb7 3y ago
doctor_eval 3y ago
I mean you can apply this kind of comment to literally any technology. Cars, carpentry, electricity… computing is part of the fabric of society and making it totally inaccessible won’t help anyone. Imagine this: > Who should never have been using electricity in the first place. There's really no point. Using power tools and washing machines doesn't teach anything of value. A lot of the other appliances are pricey and sometimes even detrimental to the school result.
- tgv 3y ago
  The weird thing is: arguments change their meaning when you change the words. But indeed, washing machines wouldn't be very useful in a school.
thefurdrake 3y ago
> Who should never have been using computers in the first place. Is... is this comment in good faith? Are you sure about that, bud? Parents and teachers shouldn't be using computers in the first place? What a concerning and confusing view of the world.

samtheprogram 3y ago

Ironically (because related to Google), I feel that the constant churn of web development is what makes these older devices unusable. I have several devices from early to mid 2010's, and the real reason these devices are annoying to unbearable to impossible to use (assuming Linux or Windows for security updates) is that they become very slow while just browsing the web or simply playing a video with a newer codec that has no hardware support on these older machines. In my mind, this 10 years of updates is fantastic, but also not very practical towards the end of the support cycle. Better to have the option, though.

noirscape 3y ago
Generally speaking I'd suggest installing Firefox on older devices. It's usually at least slightly more usable as long as you don't have too many tabs open. I'd also recommend Firefox in general but that's neither here or there.
- skinkestek 3y ago
  On a slightly newer machine (3 years old, 32GB memory) Firefox (or rather LibreWolf) again runs nicely with a few hundred tabs. It would probably run fine with that amount of tabs also if it had 16 or maybe 8 GB, but not together with 2 or 3 IDE instancee, Teams, Slack and ome or more applications running in debug.
  - pbmonster 3y ago
    I have absolutely zero issues on 10 year old hardware with 16GByte of memory. Hundreds of tabs (Firefox is really good about moving them out of memory when they don't get used for a while - which, lets be honest, are almost all of those tabs) and the normal everyday onslaught of office software, a fat IDE, and a CAD editor. This stuff is not rocket science. It's not even performance gaming. We worked efficiently in 2013, and it still works today. All it takes is some memory and a halfway decent SSD.
  - mymac 3y ago
    It bloody well should though, 32G is massive.

froh 3y ago

til "PIRG" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Interest_Research_Group https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Interest_Research_Gro...

Zambyte 3y ago

> Google and other tech companies should continue to find ways to stop the disposability treadmill that pressures us to replace our phones and laptops in favor of newer models. The treadmill is powered by "intellectual property". Abolish "owning" ideas, and you abolish the treadmill. Capitalism would solve this issue if it were allowed to run its course. Unfortunately we've let artificial monopolies run rampant in the name of "innovation". All that we've innovated is screwing people over as much as possible.

LordDragonfang 3y ago
Intellectual property is capital. Advocating for communal ownership for the intellectual means of production is more communist than it is capitalist. The market can then fix it once you've removed intellectual capitalism from the equation.
- freedomben 3y ago
  There are plenty of capitalists who would disagree by arguing that "intellectual property" isn't capital because such thing isn't even possible. Many anarcho-capitalists hold this position. I'm not versed enough to argue it in depth, but the basic premise is that you can't "own" an idea/thought, and there's no scarcity at play with ideas so it fails the basic test for property.
  - squarefoot 3y ago
    I guess the system worked around that limitation by hiring people with ideas and have them sign NDAs.
- teddyh 3y ago
  Bitcoin is commonly held to be worth something, i.e., an asset. But there are many who argue that its “true” value is 0. Something similar to that divergence is happening here. We, as a society, have a convention, a habit, where copyrighted works, trademarks, mining rights, etc. are restricted by law to be controlled by a single legal entity. This makes these a tradable commodity. But if the law did not apply to these, they would become worthless. It is, in fact, these laws which have created this tradable commodity from nothing. Other laws could be created to do the same to any number of currently freely available things; this does not prove that these things should be covered by such laws merely because it would create a kind of property which would have value.

avgcorrection 3y ago

> Google and other tech companies should continue to find ways to stop the disposability treadmill that pressures us to replace our phones and laptops in favor of newer models. With e-waste the fastest growing waste-stream in the U.S., it’s not sustainable to consume technology at this rate. This is a meaningful step toward a tech industry making products designed to last. Uh-huh. Alternatively you could go back to books, pencil and paper.

pjmlp 3y ago
Like most schools around the world still do today.
scbzzzzz 3y ago
I am really heartbroken by your response, I always feel the world/society should fight planned obsolescence. people/planet over profits. and then I see a person responding with a joke (I hope you don't mean it) when we(society) have means to make products last but some corporation chose profits against it and then greenwash with 5min mother earth videos. I know you are aware/heard of planned obsolescence. some people complain, these corporations have to maintain and it costs them, but those people don't realise We are gifted with wonderful opensource community like (pixelexperience os maintainers). These corporation can design it to make it easy for opensource community to maintain it after EOL. Since you are here in HN, there is high probability you are one of the geeks in industry. I hope you fight for "planet/people over profits".
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  >I am really heartbroken by your response, I always feel the world/society should fight planned obsolescence. alternative explanation - they feel there is overuse of computing devices and that one could really go back to pencil and paper for lots of tasks.
  - walteweiss 3y ago
    ‘Uh-huh’ changes that context and makes it sarcastic.

waynesonfire 3y ago

They should have written to the schools to ban these devices.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

neycoda 3y ago

This is why we need money spent on recycling and proper cleanup. Not just shipping things to countries with lesser economies and lighting the piles of garbage on fire, but taxing profits of these devices and creating jobs for salvaging and turning the garbage back into resources that can be re-"mined" (so to speak, but from storage areas). If this is considered unrealistic, OK, then we're right back to the same problem no matter which form of garbage we're creating.