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.
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In fact, you’re already likely renting rather than owning in many different areas. Your means of communication are run by Meta, your music is provided by Spotify, your movies are streamed from Netflix, your data is stored in Google’s data centers and your office suite runs on Microsoft’s cloud.
Not this one, no.
This one has never had a single Meta-owned account because it values privacy.
It has never subscribed to Spotify or Netflix because it values ownership and control.
It has, since the Snowden revelations, successfully cut Google and Microsoft from its life and replaced them with AOSP and Linux.
It has started to build servers from hardware old and new, running FOSS services that rival and replace most big tech solutions people feel they “need” nowadays.
And it has started to help others take control of their data and computing, move to software and services that respect their rights, and to see value in privacy, ownership and freedom.
It may not be much. It may not scale. And it may not provide “AI” capabilities. But it’s a start. It’s a lighthouse that shows this dystopia is not inevitable.
We need to answer the push towards centralised consumption with a refusal to consume, and a counterpush towards decentralised cells of resilience. If datacentres aren’t profitable, there is very little incentive to only build and sell hardware for them exclusively.
This one has built its lighthouse.
When will you?
Nice reading, I really enjoyed its style. Really a good summary of what happened to the IT-related price increase of the last months. Thank you for this.
This has gotta be the least trustworthy URL I’ve ever seen on a legitimate link
Can’t deny, it looks puny!
Software bloat will hurt more and will require re-thinking. Efficiency will matter again.
This is the next battlefront. I already see it happening. Software requiring significantly more resources with each iteration to do the same job.
They’re going to try and push us off older devices, and hope we use their devices instead.
The AI bubble can’t burst soon enough.
I do too.
I heard a theory that the AI bubble might not burst as we think it will. It will slowly deflate.
Companies can re-negotiate contracts and if they do, we may see a slow deflation rather than a huge all in one burst. The push will very slowly move away from datacenters and go back to consumers…but the factories were all set up for very specific chips because of prior years AI push. Very expensive blip in 10 years but prices do not go back down…they just stay the same for longer.
But IDK I am not an economist.
