It's probably alarmist, but this has me thinking: What if governments and bastard oligarchs actually manage to reverse the personal computing revolution of the last 50 years?
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It's probably alarmist, but this has me thinking: What if governments and bastard oligarchs actually manage to reverse the personal computing revolution of the last 50 years? Nothing in tech is inevitable, not even individual practical access to hardware.
Hold on to Your Hardware
A warning about rising prices, vanishing consumer choice, and a future where owning a computer may matter more than ever as hardware, power, and control drift toward data centers and away from people.
マリウス (xn--gckvb8fzb.com)
@lmorchard They've been complaining about it since the 80's. Which explains a few things about how it was taught in the 90's.
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@robdaemon @trevorflowers @lmorchard The worrisome part of this is that the AI bubble burst could accelerate this: superscalars sitting on new data centers and hardware with no use for it. Sell it or... convince the public that this is now their new computer [as though that were the plan all along] and they should buy this new cloud terminal device and pay them so they can recoup some of their huge mistakes.
@tankgrrl @robdaemon @trevorflowers @lmorchard what?? Push risk onto the public?? That’s unpossible!
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I know just little enough about the production of ICs to think that building a DIY microprocessor would be akin to when that kid David Hahn tried building a nuclear reactor in his garage in the 90s. But then again, maybe that's what *they* want me to think
@lmorchard I wrote a book about that sort of thing some years ago. It's rather outdated at this point but it might give you some ideas.
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@thomasfuchs @lmorchard I’m not sure they’re gonna win that one, for the pessimistic reason that it’s quickly becoming An Industry that will surely lobby.
@maddiefuzz @thomasfuchs @lmorchard To keep printers out of non-company hands.
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I know just little enough about the production of ICs to think that building a DIY microprocessor would be akin to when that kid David Hahn tried building a nuclear reactor in his garage in the 90s. But then again, maybe that's what *they* want me to think
@lmorchard only one way to find out!!!
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I know just little enough about the production of ICs to think that building a DIY microprocessor would be akin to when that kid David Hahn tried building a nuclear reactor in his garage in the 90s. But then again, maybe that's what *they* want me to think
@lmorchard there is a, probably now adult, person out there doing exactly this, with the same attitude as the nuclear reactor kid.
last time I checked in, he was working in the 300 nanometer scale. zaloof, or something like that. He's on YouTube.
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It's probably alarmist, but this has me thinking: What if governments and bastard oligarchs actually manage to reverse the personal computing revolution of the last 50 years? Nothing in tech is inevitable, not even individual practical access to hardware.
Hold on to Your Hardware
A warning about rising prices, vanishing consumer choice, and a future where owning a computer may matter more than ever as hardware, power, and control drift toward data centers and away from people.
マリウス (xn--gckvb8fzb.com)
@lmorchard My gut reaction from living through a decade of stupid component shortages is "yes, this is alarmist, BUT I'm still holding onto my gaming PC just in case".
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@lmorchard They practiced with locked phones and every new form since. A lot of their moves on PCs look like maneuvering for the same thing.
@trevorflowers @lmorchard I agreed to set up a friend's W11 laptop to dual-boot Linux Mint. I have probably done this fifty times or more (with various versions of Windows != 11 though). Usually a 15-minute process excluding the download intervals.
Dear reader, the pain that ensued thanks to secure boot, TPM, and Bitlocker was extraordinary. Hours of messing with one-off ISO builds and the limited access to BIOS parameters just about broke me.
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It's probably alarmist, but this has me thinking: What if governments and bastard oligarchs actually manage to reverse the personal computing revolution of the last 50 years? Nothing in tech is inevitable, not even individual practical access to hardware.
Hold on to Your Hardware
A warning about rising prices, vanishing consumer choice, and a future where owning a computer may matter more than ever as hardware, power, and control drift toward data centers and away from people.
マリウス (xn--gckvb8fzb.com)
@lmorchard everyone rolled their eyes at me for only shopping for old laptops, but here we are.
As nice and easy as it would be to just buy the latest M5 macbook, they're basically kill-switched now. I dont play games, so as long as this a pre-secureboot intel machine can still push Linux and some form of browser, I'll rock it til it dies or I do.
and of course they can bury my Amiga with me.
Besides, youve already built yourself a kit z80, between that and all your retro stuff you probably wont need to go full Ben Eater in the garage. Though he does make it look "easy". -
@lmorchard everyone rolled their eyes at me for only shopping for old laptops, but here we are.
As nice and easy as it would be to just buy the latest M5 macbook, they're basically kill-switched now. I dont play games, so as long as this a pre-secureboot intel machine can still push Linux and some form of browser, I'll rock it til it dies or I do.
and of course they can bury my Amiga with me.
Besides, youve already built yourself a kit z80, between that and all your retro stuff you probably wont need to go full Ben Eater in the garage. Though he does make it look "easy".@macross @lmorchard Do you not already have an Amiga-compatible casket on order? I figured this was a given.
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On one hand, I'm kinda looking forward to when bubbles burst and used hardware shows up cheap as liquidated surplus. On the other hand, I've got doomsday thinking like "how hard would it be to manufacture a DIY 6502 or Z80 in my garage?"
@lmorchard I looked into it a while ago (around when I was running a makerspace), the main issue is that CPU manufacturing has always been highly protected by patents and corporate secrecy. While 80s-level processors should be pretty cheap to manufacture in theory, the equipment to do it is no longer in production and the processes to do it repeatably are buried in the Amstrad documents vault.
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@robdaemon @trevorflowers @lmorchard
Yes let's regress all the way back to dumb terminals connected to mainframes and just give it a new name, "cloud computing".
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It's probably alarmist, but this has me thinking: What if governments and bastard oligarchs actually manage to reverse the personal computing revolution of the last 50 years? Nothing in tech is inevitable, not even individual practical access to hardware.
Hold on to Your Hardware
A warning about rising prices, vanishing consumer choice, and a future where owning a computer may matter more than ever as hardware, power, and control drift toward data centers and away from people.
マリウス (xn--gckvb8fzb.com)
@lmorchard no, yeah, we've been chewing on it also
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I know just little enough about the production of ICs to think that building a DIY microprocessor would be akin to when that kid David Hahn tried building a nuclear reactor in his garage in the 90s. But then again, maybe that's what *they* want me to think
It's not crazy impossible. It's hard as hell, but making ICs with much larger transistors is possible. There's prior art.
Sam Zeloof, iirc, fabbed an amplifier in his parent's garage using a secondhand electron microscope from Craigslist and years of effort. And has since founded a new foundry company that does not have any products yet so fingers crossed. He's not the only one either.
Both russia and china are making their own ICs too, and catching up.
Especially if you partner with others, it's doable. The info is out there, the machinery is not cheap but is attainable for probably more like 15% of the population than 0.01%, the knowledge and experimentation and iteration takes a lot of time, and...
There's a lot of caveats but it _is_ possible.
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I know just little enough about the production of ICs to think that building a DIY microprocessor would be akin to when that kid David Hahn tried building a nuclear reactor in his garage in the 90s. But then again, maybe that's what *they* want me to think
@lmorchard
Sam Zeloof has made PMOS integrated circuits (far easier than NMOS or CMOS) in his garage.
https://sam.zeloof.xyz/ -
On one hand, I'm kinda looking forward to when bubbles burst and used hardware shows up cheap as liquidated surplus. On the other hand, I've got doomsday thinking like "how hard would it be to manufacture a DIY 6502 or Z80 in my garage?"
@lmorchard I've been looking into this and 180 nm Fabs are reasonably common because that's what a lot of automotive parts and not use so if you can design something from turn of the Millennium era technology we can reasonably get it manufactured somewhere in the world
We're going to have to subscribe to the Steamboat Chronicles School of software engineering for a while until this whole mess sorts itself out
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It's probably alarmist, but this has me thinking: What if governments and bastard oligarchs actually manage to reverse the personal computing revolution of the last 50 years? Nothing in tech is inevitable, not even individual practical access to hardware.
Hold on to Your Hardware
A warning about rising prices, vanishing consumer choice, and a future where owning a computer may matter more than ever as hardware, power, and control drift toward data centers and away from people.
マリウス (xn--gckvb8fzb.com)
@lmorchard I've been hoarding any computer that runs for a long time now, looks like I was right to do so
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Oh, they’re absolutely are. Just look at all the laws that are being passed now and some states. I think it’s Colorado. I just read who wants to put identification personal identification into the OS.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @lmorchard both parties have gone full mask off. All my worst Nightmares are happening before my eyes
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It's probably alarmist, but this has me thinking: What if governments and bastard oligarchs actually manage to reverse the personal computing revolution of the last 50 years? Nothing in tech is inevitable, not even individual practical access to hardware.
Hold on to Your Hardware
A warning about rising prices, vanishing consumer choice, and a future where owning a computer may matter more than ever as hardware, power, and control drift toward data centers and away from people.
マリウス (xn--gckvb8fzb.com)
@lmorchard trully great read. thank u!
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@lmorchard I've been looking into this and 180 nm Fabs are reasonably common because that's what a lot of automotive parts and not use so if you can design something from turn of the Millennium era technology we can reasonably get it manufactured somewhere in the world
We're going to have to subscribe to the Steamboat Chronicles School of software engineering for a while until this whole mess sorts itself out
@lmorchard I could see countries building their own computer hardware industries as a matter of basic access and security against shocks. How many countries would pay 50 billion dollars to have enough a Guaranteed Supply of computers for people and businesses?
