That's an angle that more people should talk about, honestly.
The mistreatment of the American populace isn't just to keep a steady supply of cheap labor for the rich people's investments, it's to keep a steady supply of cheap lives for the government to do their dirty work.
My generation's dead and disabled veterans fell in service to that sweet Iraqi oil. Oh and the Saddam hidden underground meme, can't forget that one!
If these are just little low-powered PCs where you can pop in a USB drive and install a real OS, I could see some uses for them. Hopefully we aren't entering the wonderful world of phone-like locked down firmware with these things.
But I already have old PCs that are great at, you know, running software on their actual hardware. So realistically I'll never consider one of these unless they do something awesome like subsidize the cost and sell them as normal little x86-64 PCs with some janky stripped down version of windows installed.
I think it's more of a way for those of is in the US to hang on to some shred of optimism. Surely somebody somewhere will continue to make nice things for normal people, right?
I've spent just a little bit of time in Europe, with most of it in Sweden. I have seen with my own eyes how civilized societies can have nice things in shared spaces!
Excellent! It's hard to believe how much easier the Linux experience can be than Windows. Take your PC and boot Linux Mint from a thumb drive. If you like it, it can be installed in like 5 clicks. (assuming you already prepped the machine, backed up, etc. I dual booted at first but that only lasted about 2 weeks before I wiped windows)
I have personally since moved to Debian KDE Plasma. It's a target platform at work, and it's more of a server machine at home. Plus doing a few more things via CLI or via finding old forum posts or documentation is fine by me.
I might try Garuda on the new PC we've been putting together, though. It looks like a well polished gaming-focused OS that is also Arch-based to get me into that whole family of distros. (because Valve went that way of course, and in the future I'll always want a PC that can seamlessly run SteamVR. Plus computers are fun.)
Attitudes like that are not how we got a trillion dollars in spare data center infrastructure to find a use for!
Those consumers will be happy owning nothing THIS time!!
Throw a self hosted Jellyfin server in the mix, and you can access your entire FLAC library from any device you want! Your friends can listen at the same time, if you want to give them logins.
There's always Goat Simulator 3 if you can be happy with gaming culture satire and way fewer guns.
The tech companies are doing a great job at making me uninterested in the hottest new phones. I used to follow the news about them and know the tech specs and stuff, because I'm a nerd and gadgets are fun and smart phones in particular are the intersection of SO much technology and engineering. Moore's law was alive and well during all my formative years, so I am even conditioned to expect the excitement.
But lately, not only have I been ignoring what the big players are offering, I have been ignoring the phone I already have! Instead I have a PC at the end of the couch with a monitor on an arm that s swings right over my lap.
I use my phone pretty much just for music, web browser, Voyager (Lemmy on the go), and occasional texting. When I am at home I will sometimes misplace my phone for hours and just not worry about it.
I have already pushed the megacorp phone + social media experience so far out of my daily life, that if future options for open linux phones are rough around the edges and don't have tap to pay then oh well I don't think I care.
It's much easier to live without the shiny new thing once you see how well your brain does when separated from it. (and you have some loved ones who are still hopelessly addicted to the scroll)
Yeah, they seem to think we are like the drug addicts who will seek out the batch killing people with ODs because it must be strong.
Should we tell them that the free first hit is supposed to make the user feel GOOD? Meh, let's watch how much money they can burn before it all crashes down.
I mean, if you have enough hardware in the form of giant power-sucking data centers in every town, the latency could get pretty low! /s
Oh touche, not Michael Woolridge! The technology has created an entire segment of the economy worth many trillions of dollars based on NOTHING BUT promises! We are living in a promise-based economy!
/s but not really
Except if THAT is a 12 o'clock flasher, in which case it is correct about 30 times each day.