Jeff Bezos is saying the quiet part out loud.

[ninesigns@birdity.club]

@terminaltilt This Jeff Bezos quote is like 10 yr old

[bartok@kolektiva.social]

@terminaltilt Rent to not-own

[normandunbar@mastodon.scot]

@filobus @terminaltilt What other options are there? Oracle? Microsoft? If you had to use the cloud, where do you go to avoid the big guns and trump buddies?

[stevejb@beige.party]

@dutchking @terminaltilt Same here, I never used a cloud.

[stevejb@beige.party]

@tokyo_0 @terminaltilt AI PCs can't do AI Calculations locally. They simply have one-key access to AI. For instance a Microsoft AI computer has a Copilot key on the keyboard. All AI computing is done at data centers. No home computer has the power to do AI work.

[nini@oldbytes.space]

@terminaltilt Rentier class need stringing up. Or strapped down, eitherway heads must roll.

[rhold@norden.social]

@terminaltilt Well, didn't we have that mainframe situation when we started with computers?

[random_industries@mastodon.social]

@terminaltilt "Reject this future. :NoAI: & Keep your hardware local." = always did & always will 😀

[cascheranno@hachyderm.io]

@terminaltilt considering I can get work done & have fun with any of fifty different sbcs (pi & its competitors, arduino, esp32) this isn’t a dire risk.

[justinmac84@mastodon.social]

@terminaltilt So what can we do about it?

[iron_bug@friendica.ironbug.org]

@cnx @terminaltilt I use Linux. and I have never ever used any SaaS.
and yes, it is Linux with only a very few GNU untils. because I can build Linux-based system without gnu utils at all. this is not important and does not have any special meaning,
really, I don't like it where GNU goes nowadays and prefer to avoid it, except, maybe GCC with is not ruined yet (but they try!).

[iron_bug@friendica.ironbug.org]

@ninesigns @terminaltilt yeah, it really sounds like 10 years old kid. a mentally healthy adult person cannot say such a rubbish.

[fietsbel@mastodon.social]

@terminaltilt Once they have a complete monopoly, they could charge their clients a fortune -which they would be obliged to pay, in a completely #digital society Besides, once they literally own our data juridically, they could reveal, cq sell them to any company or other instance, without even asking. - In connection with a #neofascist state, this would create hell for individuals. We would be deprived of all political, socio-economic and personal, including digital rights.

[yoshi@toot.community]

@terminaltilt Linux isn't a panacea and, in many ways, it's not ready for consumer prime time but, given the alternatives, it's the only choice for thinking users.

[jorge1981@mastodon.social]

@terminaltilt No vuelvo a comprar nada en la tienda del calvo, 😡

[ninesigns@birdity.club]

@iron_bug @terminaltilt it's very funny to namecall those you disagree with as "kids" or "insane".

He was perfectly sane and rational in his position to wish for bringing everything to cloud to make money of it.

[pjs@c.im]

@terminaltilt

Watch the latest one-hour-presentation of Cory doctorow at 39c3 about anticircumvention law and the war on general-purpose computer. And search the eff site for countermeasures

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/

[dmian@mastodon.social]

@terminaltilt Him and all the other billionaires and tech bros can go fuck a cactus. 🌵 They can kiss it and call it Ramona if they want. Billionaires should not exist. They’re the cancer of our societies. #BillionairesShouldNotExist

[joepie91@fedi.slightly.tech]

@andre_ourednik @terminaltilt You're likely significantly overestimating the difference, and it may not even be a positive one. Servers in datacenters get rotated out and disposed of on a fixed schedule, typically, long before they actually stop working - whereas consumer hardware often gets handed down until it literally breaks.

Not to mention all the technical and resource overhead of remote anything. That network hardware and corresponding power use isn't free to the environment either.

If you're looking for a way to materially reduce the environmental footprint of computing, I would suggest that "the advertising industry" is probably the first place to look instead. They're responsible for a vast, vast chunk of energy and resource usage in computing and networking, while providing marginal to no value to society - it's a purely extractive industry.

Even ignoring the web, look up the power consumption of a single one of those video ad units they put on train stations and in shopping centers, and you'll probably be reeling from just how environmentally wasteful all this stuff is - and consumer hardware will suddenly look like a drop in the bucket. As a teaser: virtually all of those advertising screens have audible active cooling despite sound insulation attempts.

So... no, there's really no environmental point in a rental model. Insofar it makes any positive difference at all, that sure isn't the intention behind it, and all it does is further support an extractive culture that destroys the environment with no consideration for anything but its own profits. You don't even get to choose whether the hardware is turned on anymore. That is not an environmental win.

[jsc@hcommons.social]

@terminaltilt Quite right. Good, fast, and cheap computers are easily available to everyone these days. OS and browser "upgrades" are a lie. C.f. Liquid Glass, anyone? An old Windows or MacOS box that won't receive an "upgrade" could run Linux and still provide SSL for secure transactions, messaging, images, video...but no, now your bank or business or travel website is like, oh, you've got to upgrade your browser! If anything the apologists for capitalism say is true, then enshittification will eventually drive people to sane alternatives.