The author’s take is detached from reality, filled with hypocrisy and gatekeeping.

This isn’t nostalgia talking — it’s a recognition that we’ve traded reliability and understanding for the illusion of progress.

It absolutely is nostalgia talking. Yes your TI-99 fires up immediately when plugged in, and its old. However my Commodore 64 of the same era risk being fried because the 5v regulator doesn’t age well and when fails dumps higher voltage right into the RAM and CPU. Oh, and c64 machines were never built with overvoltage protection because of cost savings. So don’t confuse age with some idea of golden era reliability. RAM ICs were also regularly failed in those age of computers. This is why you had RAM testing programs and socketed ICs. When was the last time, Mr author, you had to replace a failed DIMM in your modern computer?

Today’s innovation cycle has become a kind of collective amnesia, where every few years we rediscover fundamental concepts, slap a new acronym on them, and pretend we’ve revolutionized computing. Edge computing? That’s just distributed processing with better marketing. Microservices? Welcome to the return of modular programming, now with 300% more YAML configuration files. Serverless? Congratulations, you’ve rediscovered time-sharing, except now you pay by the millisecond.

By that logic, even the TI-99 he’s loving on is just a fancier ENIAC or UNIVAC. All technology is built upon the era before it. If there was no technological or production cost improvement, we’d just use the old version. Yes, there is a regular shift in computing philosophy, but this is driving by new technologies and usually computing performance descending to be accessibly at commodity pricing. The Raspberry Pi wasn’t a revolutionary fast computer, but it changed the world because it was enough computing power and it was dirt cheap.

There’s something deeply humbling about opening a 40-year-old piece of electronics and finding components you can actually identify. Resistors, capacitors, integrated circuits with part numbers you can look up. Compare that to today’s black-box system-on-chip designs, where a single failure means the entire device becomes e-waste.

I agree, there is something appealing about it to you and me, but most people don’t care…and thats okay! To them its a tool to get something done. They are not in love with the tool, nor do they need to be. There were absolutely users of TI-99 and C64 computers in the 80s that didn’t give two shits about the shift register ICs or the UART that made the modem work, but they loved that they could get invoices from their loading dock sent electronically instead of a piece of paper carried (and lost!) through multiple hands.

Mr. author, no one is stopping you from using your TI-99 today, but in fact you didn’t use it to write your article either. Why is that? Because the TI-99 is a tiny fraction of the function and complexity of a modern computer. Creating something close to a modern computer from discrete components with “part numbers you can look up” would be massively expensive, incredibly slow, and comparatively consume massive amounts of electricity vs today’s modern computers.

This isn’t their fault — it’s a systemic problem. Our education and industry reward breadth over depth, familiarity over fluency. We’ve optimized for shipping features quickly rather than understanding systems thoroughly. The result is a kind of technical learned helplessness, where practitioners become dependent on abstractions they can’t peer beneath.

Ugh, this is frustrating. Do you think a surgeon understands how a CCD electronic camera works that is attached to their laparoscope? Is the surgeon un-educated that they aren’t fluent in circuit theory that allows the camera to display the guts of the patient they’re operating on? No, of course not. We want that surgeon to keep studying new surgical technics, not trying to use Ohm’s Law to calculate the current draw of the device he’s using. Mr author, you and I hobby at electronics (and vintage computing) but just because its an interest of ours, doesn’t mean it has to be of everyone.

What We Need Now: We need editors who know what a Bode plot is. We need technical writing that assumes intelligence rather than ignorance. We need educational systems that teach principles alongside tools, theory alongside practice.

Such gatekeeping! So unless you know the actual engineering principles behind a device you’re using, you shouldn’t be allowed to use it?

Most importantly, we need to stop mistaking novelty for innovation and complexity for progress.

Innovation isn’t just creating new features or functionality. In fact, most I’d argue is taking existing features or functions and delivering them for substantially less cost/effort.

As I’m reading this article, I am thinking about a farmer watching Mr. author eat a sandwich made with bread. Does the Mr author know when to till soil or plant seed? How about the amount of irrigation Durum wheat needs during the hot season? How about when to harvest? What moisture level should the resulting harvest have before being taking to market or put in long term storage? Yet there he sits, eating the sandwich blissfully unaware of all the steps and effort needed to just make the wheat that goes into the bread. The farmer sits and wonders if Mr author’s next article will be deriding the public on just eating bread and how we’ve forgotten how to grow wheat. Will Mr Author say we need fewer people ordering sandwiches and more people consulting US GIS maps for rainfall statistics and studying nitrogen fixing techniques for soil health? No, probably not.

The best engineering solutions are often elegantly simple. They work reliably, fail predictably, and can be understood by the people who use them.

Perhaps, but these simple solutions also can frequently only offer simple functionality. Additionally, “the best engineering solutions” are often some of the most expensive. You don’t always need the best, and if best is the only option, then that may mean going without, which is worst than a mediocre solution and what we frequently had in the past.

They don’t require constant updates or cloud connectivity or subscription services. They just work, year after year, doing exactly what they were designed to do.

The reason your TI-99 and my c64 don’t require constant updates is because they were born before the concept of cybersecurity existed. If you’re going to have internet connected devices they its a near requirement to receive updates for security.

If you don’t want internet connected devices, you can get those too, but they may be extremely expensive, so pony up the cash and put your money where your mouth is.

That TI-99/4A still boots because it was designed by people who understood every component, every circuit, every line of code.

It is a machine of extremely limited functionality with a comparably simple design and construction. Don’t think even a DEC PDP 11 mainframe sold in the same era was entirely known by a handful of people, and even that is a tiny fraction of functionality of today’s cheap commodity PCs.

It works because it was built to work, not to generate quarterly revenue or collect user data or enable some elaborate software-as-a-service business model.

Take off the rose colored glasses. It was made as a consumer electronics product with the least cost they thought they could get away with and have it still sell. Sales of it absolutely served quarterly revenue numbers even back in the 1980s.

We used to build things that lasted.

We don’t need most of these consumer electronics to last. Proof positive is the computer Mr. author is writing his article on is unlikely to be an Intel based 486 running at 33Mhz from the mid 90s (or a 68030 Mac). If it still works, why isn’t he using one? Could it be he wants the new features and functionality like the rest of us? Over-engineering is a thing, and it sounds like what the author is preaching.

Apologies if my post turned into a rant.

Broderbund was an important staple of the Commodore 64 world.

!c64@lemmy.world

!retrogaming@lemmy.world

…would also probably appreciate this content.

That was a long and winding walk, but worth it.

I will say more, the same exact team that spends time managing EKS clusters could manage self-managed clusters and have money to spare for additional hires.

Your suggestions is a large expansion of skillset needed for your alternative to the cloud solution. Your own experience in attempting to hire workers should point to the reason thats a bad idea. You’re going to need even higher skilled people, and they are going to ask for significantly more money.

One method to approach this is to use a simple personal algorithmically to create answers here. As in, you could put any security question in front of someone that uses this method, even those questions never seen, and the personal algorithm would produce an answer only the user would know. Here are a couple algorithms I made up to show an example for this post.

Input security question (the first from OP’s list): What was the first stock you ever bought?

• Algorithm number one answer: eight - Algorithm: How many words in the security question?
• Algorithm number two answer: sold - Algorithm: Ignore all words except the verb, in this case “bought”. Whatever the verb is, the answer is always the opposite verb.

This way you don’t necessarily have to write down your security question answers. Most certainly never write down your personal algorithm. Using this method it is trivially easy for you (and only you) to produce an answer from any security question given to you and equally easy for you to reproduce the answer when you need it in the future.

I have no criticism of the original post. My statement was aimed at Sal’s hyperbolic interpretation and self-projection of those few words.

Thats why creating transparent pre moderation tools like the image scanners used by many fediverse instances is so important.

Are there any moderation tool projects going on right now one could throw a few bucks at to support it?

Again, I ask: Why are you surprised that literal anti-capitalists hate billionaires?

You’re making authoritative claims to what the Fediverse is, who the people posting here are, and what their collectives beliefs and goals are. The Fediverse certainly isn’t a monolith that you can do that to. Hate isn’t an identity, nor is it the goal of the Fediverse. I think this part of the original closure notice may apply to your line of responses here.

“The worst part is that they’re so caught up in their own self-righteousness that they can’t see they’re just as bad or worse than what they’re spewing violent rhetoric at; trying to talk sense into anyone or de-escalate things is immediately met with “bootlicker”, wild accusations, and/or worse.”

I agree with you. However, I don’t think most people understand that. For most folks they haven’t been exposed to the most mentally darkest souls among us.

but also what did they expect?

Can I ask you what the worst examples of community management looks like? As in, what do you believe would be the worst part of the job?

Read his rant. It just sounds like he’s mad at us for being mean towards the poor wittle billionaires/nazis.

Considering how few references there were in the post, and your projection onto it. I think you may be part of the group he’s talking about that is causing him to close up shop. Its just my speculation though. If I’m right, how does that make you feel? Are you happy he’s closing up the instance and leaving the Fediverse or are you sad that a heavy contributor to the Fediverse is leaving?

Thanks for that context.

The specific “burned out” is a common killer among folks that try this: community management

“Well, two years in, and I cannot say this place is any better, just differently bad if not worse. Too many people here seem to think that because it’s not “corpo social media” that anything goes, and boy do some people really run with that.”

I can’t say I blame them. People can be horrible. Managing a community also means managing the worst of people. I had a former employer that did community management of a dating site. The level of mental trauma the front line workers endured was more than I could imagine. This is also why I completely understand instance admins that follow an aggressive blocking/banning approach. Beehaw put up tall walls and defederated aplenty. Blahaj.zone actively bans based upon user activity that is even on other unrelated instances. I can’t fault either of these approaches because the alternative is dealing with the worst users en masse.

I hope that instance owner/manager gets some of that much deserved rest.

This project has been discontinued and the repo archived. I am done with Lemmy, the Fediverse as a whole, and have no desire to continue developing for the platform or (especially) the demographic thereof.

Wow, what the heck happened? Do we know the dev’s lemmy username for any clues?

“trump is the highest scoring individual in a number of areas. As an example, trump is the national all-time leader in being impeached as President.”

Superman isn’t just an immigrant. He’s a refugee when his home was destroyed by civil war. He came to the USA and made it better because he’s an immigrant.

The meme game is incredibly weak compared to here (thanks PugJesus, The_Picard_Maneuver, cm0002, Stamets, LadyButterfly, etc.). Lemmy has an incredible amount of fantastic memes for it’s size.

I’d like to echo this. My entire knowledge of meme culture is supported by these diligent individuals.

I’ll also add the prior work of @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world . Miss you, squid. Hope you’re doing well in your new home.

Theres no way in hell the US will be anywhere close to first in developing stable fusion power.

Looking at the projects underway I agree with you, however the US was the first to produce a nuclear fusion reaction with a net positive energy result at the NIF in 2022. source The subsequent 5 events have increase net positive yields significantly with the 2025 experiment yielding more than 200% net energy gain.

To be able to create a energy net positive even on-demand has to be very helpful for research. I don’t know of any other country that is capable of doing that yet.

Long ago I ran a Windows Media Center PC in the living room and used the hell out of it. When WMC finally went EOL, I look for alternatives and found Plex. I never got around to setting up a Plex box, and now I see it too is ready for the scrap heap. I think this is what getting old is. You plan on doing something and never get around to it. Time passes much faster up here in age.

When did they become human remains? Before or after launch?

Long before. Its a company that, after your death, will fly some of your ashes to space. For orbital services, the ashes are then returned to your estate, and in this case that can’t happen because the vessel wasn’t recovered. They also offer deep space launches where your ashes never come back.

The actor that played Scotty on the original Star Trek has his ashes flown to space, as an example.

Are World of Warcraft gold farmers still a thing?