It's not worthless, and neither is "watching shit scroll by for hours", but I think the better signal is in the motivation and tenacity of the kind of people wh

It's not worthless, and neither is "watching shit scroll by for hours", but I think the better signal is in the motivation and tenacity of the kind of people who set out to do this in the first place. In the 80's, this kind of people made up a very large proportion of all computer users out of sheer necessity (heck, in the 70s, you generally had to assemble your own hardware as well). Today, it's a vanishingly small fraction - but in absolute numbers, it's much much bigger, and a much much easier group to enter.