5 ms·

A cynical person (not me, not I, I'm not a cynical person) might think that this is the opening salvo in a campaign to "save" the US tech sector by getting rid

A cynical person (not me, not I, I'm not a cynical person) might think that this is the opening salvo in a campaign to "save" the US tech sector by getting rid of old hardware. See the comments in this very thread calling for a "cash for clunkers for old devices" or a "remote kill-switch" to disable them (!) Right now you can go to eBay and buy a used PC for $200 that will do everything you need to do, including gaming. You can buy a 64GB iPhone X for $100, which will do everything a new phone will do (basically). Can you imagine the drain on the hardware sector in the US due to these old devices piling up? And the trend is only going to accelerate. If the powers that be aren't conspiring to "fix" this "issue", it's only a matter of time until they do.

hnuser123456 2y ago
As soon as they feel like TPM isn't pushing enough HW upgrade purchases...
- heraldgeezer 2y ago
  Yup Windows 10 EOL will be fun... Windows 10 is "still" on 47% of PCs with Steam installed. Windows 11 is at 49%. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
  - moffkalast 2y ago
    > Linux: 1.92% (-0.16%) > Arch Linux (64-bit): 0.16% (-0.01%) > Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS (64-bit): 0.07% (-0.01%) > Linux Mint 21.3 (64-bit): 0.07% (-0.04%) > Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (64-bit): 0.07% (0.00%) > Linux Mint 22 (64-bit): 0.06% (+0.06%) > Ubuntu Core 22 (64-bit): 0.06% (0.00%) > Manjaro Linux (64-bit): 0.06% (0.00%) Year of Linux in gaming, everybody! :(
  - sandwichmonger 2y ago
    It'll be another Windows XP situation of a large percentage of people refusing to upgrade for 8 years past EOL, the only difference is that XP was a better operating system and doesn't have anything built in that could forcefully update you at M$' will.
    - heraldgeezer 2y ago
      >refusing to upgrade Well, Windows 11 has pretty strict requirements on CPU and TPM to be officially supported. If my computer could have it officially, I would have installed it already.
isodev 2y ago
I think hardware vendors have been allowed way too much freedom in trying to turn hardware into a subscription. The yearly release of new phone models isn’t helping either.
- winwang 2y ago
  What if we turned hardware support into a subscription (kind of like JetBrains model I think?) and stopped yearly releases in favor of more interesting releases? I wonder how many resources are used just to make the next iteration a bit shinier to catch the consumer's eye.
  - SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
    I'm reading this as "Samsung charges a $10 monthly subscription fee to keep your phone up to date" and I already know how that would turn out.
    - winwang 2y ago
      I was thinking more like "Samsung charges $50/year after the typical 3-4 years of updates they normally give."
  - qwertycrackers 2y ago
    I think what is this ignoring is that "security updates" are generally corrections to defects in the original product. In principle, a complete product would ship with no defects. You could run it for 1000 years unpatched and it would be no less secure than the day it shipped. Manufacturers ship security updates because the original product was defective. So it makes sense that they remain on the hook for security updates -- we paid them full price up front.
    - Wowfunhappy 2y ago
      I am extremely sympathetic to this view--but is it practical? Like, should Apple be forced to continue releasing security fixes for the original iPhone?
heraldgeezer 2y ago
200 for gaming might be cutting it close for me but I am using a 10 year old PC with an upgraded GPU. I guess thats "bad" lmao. Can we end of life the people who will decide and implement some shit like that? :) Also enterprise will buy new and then sell, why Thinkpad etc is popular. Should that also be banned? No used cars too, sound good. No used goods at all. Imagine the productivity!!!
technofiend 2y ago
>Right now you can go to eBay and buy a used PC for $200 that will do everything you need to do... 100%! And the average HN poster presumably has the skills to make that work. My suggestion to retire vulnerable devices isn't a US jobs or tech sector program; it was born from a sincere desire to see vulnerable and most likely already compromised devices removed from use. It seems logical to me if we're going to look for vulnerabilities in order to help harden devices you might want to address ones with known issues. And frankly the reason so many devices still out there are in use because their owners simply don't know any better or see no value in upgrading. Cash for clunkers creates an incentive to fix a situation that I'm guessing many don't even know exists.
- phendrenad2 2y ago
  I mean if we're committed to spending a bunch of taxpayer money on this problem, maybe education and investment into Linux is better than spending it to increase the amount of toxic waste in the ground.
- technofiend 2y ago
  For example getting rid of these: https://apnews.com/article/fbi-justice-department-chinese-hacking-84e16185ae16367443a5e083adb74c8c https://apnews.com/article/fbi-justice-department-chinese-ha...
getcrunk 2y ago
I’ve bought three laptops this year from eBay. The second was shortly after the first because I thought it was such a good deal. A few months later the first laptops exhaust started smelling like burning plastic and i also discovered that if you move the lid/screen a certain way the laptop hard freezes. A few months after that same smell from the second laptop (different model/seller) that progressed into a proper burning smell. In both cases I’m out my purchase price and for the total could have bought new. On a whim after coming across the thinkpad subreddit I bought a t480s recently. As soon as I got it paid attention to folding the hinges excessively and noticed it creaks sometimes and the exhaust also gets a little too toasty. So this one is going back. I’m not against used. I’m a lifelong 2nd hand buyer. No problems with phones or even mini pcs. I don’t recommend laptops anymore tho. Too delicate and can have hidden issues. If you read this far. It’s not enviornmental cus my bought new laptop (4yo) doesn’t have any issues. And also I did take off the back cover in both laptops and didn’t see any obvious blown parts. And neither are overheating from sensor data even under p95
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  After going through 6 very high end gaming laptops the last few years, I agree. 4/6 of them failed for insanely stupid issues, 2 were my fault.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  Yes, laptops are really not a great for resell. We only buy new and kept ours until they die, and they sure die or become quirky in ways we'd be pissed about if we bought it in that state. The big issue is of course repairability: buying a second hand business DELL Opiplex is mostly fine because replacing anything other than the motherboard/power supply will be dead simple, and even that can be managed either through salvaging or diy. A flacky or half broken laptop is a world of hurt, for any brand, even if you're into soldering.
- transpute 2y ago
  Some eBay ex-enterprise laptops include vendor warranty that can sometimes be extended. Dell US-based ProSupport and Lenovo International Warranty (3 years, optional years extra) offer competent phone support and relatively quick repairs. Well worth the insurance for mobile computing devices in a hostile world.
rdujdjsjehy 2y ago
This seems like that useless definition of "need" that completely discards any real standards for the sake of an argument. A 200 dollar computer at best is going to let you play low demand indie games and things with garbage mode settings for running on potatoes.
- ruthmarx 2y ago
  > A 200 dollar computer at best is going to let you play low demand indie games and things with garbage mode settings for running on potatoes. That's not true. I still regularly use an old Dell Latitude from almost 15 years ago sometimes - it cost under $150. I can do everything I need on it, even compile Firefox. I can't run most new AAA games, but can play a bunch of FPS games from about up until when it came out. It still plays CSGO just fine, for example. The real advances in performance the last decade has been in GPU performance, not general performance.
  - rdujdjsjehy 2y ago
    What settings do you play CSGO on? And is it just CSGO or can you play Counterstrike 2?
    - ruthmarx 2y ago
      Low to be fair, it depends how hot the laptop gets, but usual around 800x600 or 1024x768 and everything low quality. Not great compared to modern hardware, but not as useless as you were suggesting either. Can't play CS2 because of it needing DirectX12 and the last driver for the video card not supporting it. I've wondered if it would work on Linux since DirectX isn't a factor but haven't tried yet.
- dangrossman 2y ago
  $200 on eBay will get you a used laptop with a Core i7, 16GB RAM and SSD; essentially the same specs as my year-old $1000+ laptop, other than having a newer generation CPU. It'll play many brand new games at 720p or better and acceptable framerates. I still use an original Microsoft Surface Pro pretty often, and can barely tell the difference between using it and that year-old PC for web browsing, document editing, and tablet-style gaming. The Surface Pro came out in 2013.
sandwichmonger 2y ago
I use multiple Windows 2000 computers as daily drivers for hobbies, writing documents, internet, et cetera. It's hilarious to me that I get better performance doing those things on a 20+ year old computer and OS than I used to on a recent computer simply using an internet browser.
- sulandor 2y ago
  it'll also be part of a botnet within seconds if you visit a wrong website. though i also miss the ui-latency of the civilized age ...
  - sandwichmonger 2y ago
    Not a problem, I just won't visit anywhere dodgy. Either way, I've got the latest service pack and have been using them for a year or so every day without issue.
  - deafpolygon 2y ago
    probably already is, and doesn't know it.
- zekica 2y ago
  You are not "simply using" an internet browser. You are using an entire (browser) OS in itself on a 4x pixel count display with antialiased text, transparency, blur, scaling, video compositing... The OS itself is using additional compositing for windows using indirect rendering - all the things that add latency. Additionally, you are using a remote application that has it's own latency when talking to the remote server and even locally executing JS is doing everything in a single thread, plus V8 JIT only works for hotspots in the code.
  - jjk166 2y ago
    Do any of those additional things add value to the user in this application? If your taxi driver takes you for a 2 hour scenic tour of the city when you simply wanted a direct 20 minute trip, you don't cut them slack for all the extra work they did, you complain they provided a terrible service.

hnuser123456 2y ago

As soon as they feel like TPM isn't pushing enough HW upgrade purchases...

heraldgeezer 2y ago
Yup Windows 10 EOL will be fun... Windows 10 is "still" on 47% of PCs with Steam installed. Windows 11 is at 49%. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
- moffkalast 2y ago
  > Linux: 1.92% (-0.16%) > Arch Linux (64-bit): 0.16% (-0.01%) > Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS (64-bit): 0.07% (-0.01%) > Linux Mint 21.3 (64-bit): 0.07% (-0.04%) > Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (64-bit): 0.07% (0.00%) > Linux Mint 22 (64-bit): 0.06% (+0.06%) > Ubuntu Core 22 (64-bit): 0.06% (0.00%) > Manjaro Linux (64-bit): 0.06% (0.00%) Year of Linux in gaming, everybody! :(
- sandwichmonger 2y ago
  It'll be another Windows XP situation of a large percentage of people refusing to upgrade for 8 years past EOL, the only difference is that XP was a better operating system and doesn't have anything built in that could forcefully update you at M$' will.
  - heraldgeezer 2y ago
    >refusing to upgrade Well, Windows 11 has pretty strict requirements on CPU and TPM to be officially supported. If my computer could have it officially, I would have installed it already.

isodev 2y ago

I think hardware vendors have been allowed way too much freedom in trying to turn hardware into a subscription. The yearly release of new phone models isn’t helping either.

winwang 2y ago
What if we turned hardware support into a subscription (kind of like JetBrains model I think?) and stopped yearly releases in favor of more interesting releases? I wonder how many resources are used just to make the next iteration a bit shinier to catch the consumer's eye.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
  I'm reading this as "Samsung charges a $10 monthly subscription fee to keep your phone up to date" and I already know how that would turn out.
  - winwang 2y ago
    I was thinking more like "Samsung charges $50/year after the typical 3-4 years of updates they normally give."
- qwertycrackers 2y ago
  I think what is this ignoring is that "security updates" are generally corrections to defects in the original product. In principle, a complete product would ship with no defects. You could run it for 1000 years unpatched and it would be no less secure than the day it shipped. Manufacturers ship security updates because the original product was defective. So it makes sense that they remain on the hook for security updates -- we paid them full price up front.
  - Wowfunhappy 2y ago
    I am extremely sympathetic to this view--but is it practical? Like, should Apple be forced to continue releasing security fixes for the original iPhone?

heraldgeezer 2y ago

200 for gaming might be cutting it close for me but I am using a 10 year old PC with an upgraded GPU. I guess thats "bad" lmao. Can we end of life the people who will decide and implement some shit like that? :) Also enterprise will buy new and then sell, why Thinkpad etc is popular. Should that also be banned? No used cars too, sound good. No used goods at all. Imagine the productivity!!!

technofiend 2y ago

>Right now you can go to eBay and buy a used PC for $200 that will do everything you need to do... 100%! And the average HN poster presumably has the skills to make that work. My suggestion to retire vulnerable devices isn't a US jobs or tech sector program; it was born from a sincere desire to see vulnerable and most likely already compromised devices removed from use. It seems logical to me if we're going to look for vulnerabilities in order to help harden devices you might want to address ones with known issues. And frankly the reason so many devices still out there are in use because their owners simply don't know any better or see no value in upgrading. Cash for clunkers creates an incentive to fix a situation that I'm guessing many don't even know exists.

phendrenad2 2y ago
I mean if we're committed to spending a bunch of taxpayer money on this problem, maybe education and investment into Linux is better than spending it to increase the amount of toxic waste in the ground.
technofiend 2y ago
For example getting rid of these: https://apnews.com/article/fbi-justice-department-chinese-hacking-84e16185ae16367443a5e083adb74c8c https://apnews.com/article/fbi-justice-department-chinese-ha...

getcrunk 2y ago

I’ve bought three laptops this year from eBay. The second was shortly after the first because I thought it was such a good deal. A few months later the first laptops exhaust started smelling like burning plastic and i also discovered that if you move the lid/screen a certain way the laptop hard freezes. A few months after that same smell from the second laptop (different model/seller) that progressed into a proper burning smell. In both cases I’m out my purchase price and for the total could have bought new. On a whim after coming across the thinkpad subreddit I bought a t480s recently. As soon as I got it paid attention to folding the hinges excessively and noticed it creaks sometimes and the exhaust also gets a little too toasty. So this one is going back. I’m not against used. I’m a lifelong 2nd hand buyer. No problems with phones or even mini pcs. I don’t recommend laptops anymore tho. Too delicate and can have hidden issues. If you read this far. It’s not enviornmental cus my bought new laptop (4yo) doesn’t have any issues. And also I did take off the back cover in both laptops and didn’t see any obvious blown parts. And neither are overheating from sensor data even under p95

JohnMakin 2y ago
After going through 6 very high end gaming laptops the last few years, I agree. 4/6 of them failed for insanely stupid issues, 2 were my fault.
makeitdouble 2y ago
Yes, laptops are really not a great for resell. We only buy new and kept ours until they die, and they sure die or become quirky in ways we'd be pissed about if we bought it in that state. The big issue is of course repairability: buying a second hand business DELL Opiplex is mostly fine because replacing anything other than the motherboard/power supply will be dead simple, and even that can be managed either through salvaging or diy. A flacky or half broken laptop is a world of hurt, for any brand, even if you're into soldering.
transpute 2y ago
Some eBay ex-enterprise laptops include vendor warranty that can sometimes be extended. Dell US-based ProSupport and Lenovo International Warranty (3 years, optional years extra) offer competent phone support and relatively quick repairs. Well worth the insurance for mobile computing devices in a hostile world.

rdujdjsjehy 2y ago

This seems like that useless definition of "need" that completely discards any real standards for the sake of an argument. A 200 dollar computer at best is going to let you play low demand indie games and things with garbage mode settings for running on potatoes.

ruthmarx 2y ago
> A 200 dollar computer at best is going to let you play low demand indie games and things with garbage mode settings for running on potatoes. That's not true. I still regularly use an old Dell Latitude from almost 15 years ago sometimes - it cost under $150. I can do everything I need on it, even compile Firefox. I can't run most new AAA games, but can play a bunch of FPS games from about up until when it came out. It still plays CSGO just fine, for example. The real advances in performance the last decade has been in GPU performance, not general performance.
- rdujdjsjehy 2y ago
  What settings do you play CSGO on? And is it just CSGO or can you play Counterstrike 2?
  - ruthmarx 2y ago
    Low to be fair, it depends how hot the laptop gets, but usual around 800x600 or 1024x768 and everything low quality. Not great compared to modern hardware, but not as useless as you were suggesting either. Can't play CS2 because of it needing DirectX12 and the last driver for the video card not supporting it. I've wondered if it would work on Linux since DirectX isn't a factor but haven't tried yet.
dangrossman 2y ago
$200 on eBay will get you a used laptop with a Core i7, 16GB RAM and SSD; essentially the same specs as my year-old $1000+ laptop, other than having a newer generation CPU. It'll play many brand new games at 720p or better and acceptable framerates. I still use an original Microsoft Surface Pro pretty often, and can barely tell the difference between using it and that year-old PC for web browsing, document editing, and tablet-style gaming. The Surface Pro came out in 2013.

sandwichmonger 2y ago

I use multiple Windows 2000 computers as daily drivers for hobbies, writing documents, internet, et cetera. It's hilarious to me that I get better performance doing those things on a 20+ year old computer and OS than I used to on a recent computer simply using an internet browser.

sulandor 2y ago
it'll also be part of a botnet within seconds if you visit a wrong website. though i also miss the ui-latency of the civilized age ...
- sandwichmonger 2y ago
  Not a problem, I just won't visit anywhere dodgy. Either way, I've got the latest service pack and have been using them for a year or so every day without issue.
- deafpolygon 2y ago
  probably already is, and doesn't know it.
zekica 2y ago
You are not "simply using" an internet browser. You are using an entire (browser) OS in itself on a 4x pixel count display with antialiased text, transparency, blur, scaling, video compositing... The OS itself is using additional compositing for windows using indirect rendering - all the things that add latency. Additionally, you are using a remote application that has it's own latency when talking to the remote server and even locally executing JS is doing everything in a single thread, plus V8 JIT only works for hotspots in the code.
- jjk166 2y ago
  Do any of those additional things add value to the user in this application? If your taxi driver takes you for a 2 hour scenic tour of the city when you simply wanted a direct 20 minute trip, you don't cut them slack for all the extra work they did, you complain they provided a terrible service.