Discussion
Mua-hahahaha!!!
Yes. Yes that's right.
Down with the consumer economy of built-in obsolescence, disposable tech, and subscriptions.
Up with Right to Repair, Permacomputing, Library and Share Economies!
(Also trollololol on "device hoarding" and "costing economy {sic})
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/23/how-device-hoarding-by-americans-is-costing-economy.html
@tinker “Both the cellular and internet infrastructure has to operate to be backwards compatible in order to support the older, slower devices. Networks often have to throttle back their speeds in order to accommodate the slowest device”
Okay? Sounds like the cell carriers shouldn’t have spent all that money deploying stuff people don’t want.
@tinker yeah, and the "lost productivity" bit is crap.
@tinker I want to buy more devices...
but stuff i actually like.
@tinker I want to buy more devices...
but stuff i actually like.
@tinker The headline sucks, but most of the article seems to be focused on making things repairable or upgradeable (instead of outright replacement),
and that when people work on slower devices that can suck for productivity,
rather than mostly "Tech Companies Need Your Money To Survive."
@benji_w - They end with blaming individuals on not buying the latest. Its a weird thing where they are claiming an individual keeping their phone affects businesses with loss of productivity for using "slow" devices.
I think all the folks espousing what we would consider positives is lost on the author as they try to use it as evidence that these people are hurting the economy.
@johntimaeus @tinker which, I should say, is quite a bit shorter than it used to be. We still use the clothes dryer my mother gave me, which was made in 1969 (!). It has like five major components, all repairable or replaceable, and YOU CAN STILL GET THOSE PARTS. By contrast, we recently replaced the dryer in our rental house which was ~10 years old because the stupid non-repairable plastic control button assembly failed and had to be replaced every 2 years.
@tinker That's a fair and valid reading of the article.
My preferred solution would be to focus on making software bloat Not make devices behave slower, in addition to repair/reuse...
@tinker damn didn't realize i was responsible for propping up bad economic models my bad gonna keep hoarding anyway
@valkyrie - Hoarding is such charged language, too. Like. How much are they paying the writer for such blatant corporate bootlicking.
To take frugal, sustainable, an responsible actions and call it hoarding. As if not throwing things away and throwing money away and buying the latest all the time is responsible.
Just obtuse and stupid.
@tinker @valkyrie Keeping one device past two or more upgrade cycles while it's still functioning isn't hoarding, it's completely reasonable frugal behavior.
The pile of vintage computers in my office that I'll totes play with one day but they make me happy just sitting there inanimate otherwise, that's fucken hoarding.
@tinker This is such an incredibly biased and stupid article based on questionable statement of facts.
"Oh we process things at 1Gb/s instead of 100Mb/s..".. no dumbass, ideal human readable speed is still at 1200bps! ... BAUD!
just.. so much anger at this article:D
@Toxic_Flange - I *love* it! 😂
@tinker Old man yells at News.. right here, thats me right now:)
@tinker what if it ISN’T OUR JOB to prop up the economy by constantly buying stuff that is going to be (by intent!) ewaste in 5 years? 🤬
Everybody I know in tech is mad because it doesn’t have to be like this. Oh and also software doesn’t need to suck. We want bug fixes and we get “liquid glass” nonsense.
@acsawdey - Agreed. Its not our job to give the rich more money. Especially for disposable expensive crap.
Sooooo.... we're not.
We can just ignore them and do our own thing.
@tinker Yeah. Explaining to everyone I can how cloud IoT stuff just means they’ll shut it off and force you to buy something new as soon as they feel they can get away with it.
A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate
