I've a Compag Armada E500, and it runs Windows 98 fairly swiftly with its PIII processor and 256MB RAM. I've also a 2009 MacBook and it runs Snow Leopard like a dream, yet with "only" 2GB of RAM. And either of these machines could do nearly anything I ask of a PC today - programming, web browsing, comms, gfx edits, even some gaming, while feeling snapper, with less shite flying in my eyes ("notifications" and their wretched noises) as I work.
Someone will explain to me the business and economic reasons, but that just flies over my caveman brain that asks "why does bashing rock feel slower?"
The problem with these comparisons is often that the old OS doesn't actually do the same thing modern software does. Smoothly rendering a GIF/mp4/webm in a chat channel will bring that Windows 98 machine to its knees. Even complex software like web browsers on these older machines do a lot less work. They were also often a lot slower, as load times for modern SSDs are closer to old RAM than to the hard drives at the time.
I can imagine that your particular workload doesn't require all those bells and whistles, and I think it's probably true that only running the bare minimum software like you would back in the day is horrifically inefficient on modern operating systems. But, at the same time, kernels don't crash as often, disks encryption is actually a thing now, file downloads are no longer expressed in kilobits per second and the much prettier screens render much smoother media for a fraction of the performance impact.
Of course there are inefficiencies that could be fixed (like how chat apps are skins around browsers now) but a lot of efficient software from back in the day cost an arm and a leg to build. In the end, the software industry found out that customers are happier to pay when you deliver new features faster than when you deliver new features later (which still run on the old hardware, though the customer may have already replaced said hardware at the time you release your feature).
With current prices for RAM and other system components, I hope companies will once again feel the pressure to build for limited hardware. Then again, when I look at the hardware developers are lugging around, I highly doubt things will change quick enough.
Animated GIF is a format that was designed for playback on late 1980s PCs with a 20 MHz 386 and VGA graphics…
If anything, this example proves the point that we’ve made the simple stuff much too complex. The GIF format hasn’t changed, but somehow getting those indexed color frames to screen on time now requires a GHz core.
About twenty years ago I was generating long animated GIFs. They worked fine in Firefox. In Internet Explorer they started fine but became jankier as playback progressed. I realised that every time IE displayed a frame it was rereading the entire file from the beginning to get to the current frame. Which took longer and longer as the current frame advanced.
It's just so easy to squander performance without noticing.
I got my Steam Deck that month, so pleased to be a part of it. The Deck fills a gap that has been empty in my soul since the PSP was discontinued, and feels like a genuine step forward that makes technology fun again.
It's fully open! It has a KDE desktop that I can access any time! I can shove in any size of SSD I like!
And I'm playing Halo 3... on Linux... on hardware made by Steam. If you spoke that sentence to me in 2009, I'd suggest you ought to be sectioned.
They aren't comparable. Showing an ID to a staff member isn't stripping my anonymity. I know the retailer won't have that on file forever, tied to me on subsequent visits. Also they stop ID'ing you after a certain age ;)
There isn't any way to achieve the same digitally.
Actually there is, various age verification systems exist where the party asking for it does not need to process their ID, like the Dutch iDIN (https://www.idin.nl/en/) that works not unlike a digital payment - the bank knows your identity and age, just like they know your account balance, and can sign off on that kind of thing just like a payment.
I hope this becomes more widespread / standardized; the precursor for iDIN is iDEAL which is for payments, that's being expanded and rebranded as Wero across Europe at the moment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)), in part to reduce dependency on American payment processors.
The privacy issue has two facets, when I show ID to get in to a club or buy alcohol, the entire interaction is transient, the merchant isn't keeping that information and the issuer of the credential doesn't know that happened (i.e. the government).
Just allowing a service provider to receive a third party attestation that you "allowed" still allows the third party to track what you are doing even if the provider can't. That's still unacceptable from a privacy standpoint, I don't want the government, or agents thereof, knowing all the places I've had to show ID.
> Just allowing a service provider to receive a third party attestation that you "allowed" still allows the third party to track what you are doing even if the provider can't. That's still unacceptable from a privacy standpoint, I don't want the government, or agents thereof, knowing all the places I've had to show ID.
Isn't this solvable by allowing you to be the middle man? A service asks you to prove your age, you ask the government for a digital token that proves your age (and the only thing the government knows is that you have asked for a token) and you then deliver that to the service and they only know the government has certified that you are above a certain age.
The service gets a binary answer to their question. The government only knows you have asked for a token. Wouldn't a setup like that solve the issue you're talking about?
We have a similar system in Italy so the age verification process itself doesn't personally concerns me that much since the verification process is done by the government itself and they obviously already have my information.
I'm personally more interested in the intuition people have when it comes to squaring rejecting age verification online while also accepting it in a multitude of other situations (both online and offline)
In real world scenarios, I can observe them while they handle my ID.
And systematic abuse(e.g. some video that gets stored and shows it clearly) would be a violation taken serious
With online providers it's barely news worthy if they abuse the data they get.
I'm not against age verification (at least not strongly), but I'd want it in a 2 party 0 trust way.
I.e. one party signs a jwt like thing only containing one bit, the other validates it without ever contacting the issuer about the specific token.
So one knows the identity, one knows the usage
But they are never related
I know they're not compatible. I'm asking if you're also ok with those. There are also plenty of situations where you are asked to provide an ID, digitally, when above a certain age. For example booking hotels and other accommodations.
Personally I'm still trying to figure out where my position is when it comes to this whole debate because both camps have obvious pros and cons.
Nothing any government in my lifetime has done has arrested this feeling of decay, decline and desperation. It's like the occupational political class has a miserable vendetta and must afflict it upon the population. But I'm not actually miserable like you, I don't want to feel like you, we invented liberty in this country, now fuck off the lot of you thank you.
No, but you can get the form to request the form. Then it must be stamped by an official in the [strikethrough]Ministry of Information[/strikethrough] Ofcom. Please allow 4-5 months for processing thanks to our partners delivering efficient intersection of Government and Industry, Capita.
Someone will explain to me the business and economic reasons, but that just flies over my caveman brain that asks "why does bashing rock feel slower?"
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