2022-02-09

Fwd: Designing devices for long-term care and reuse

tags: software hardware

Over at Cheapskate's Guide, Andy Farnell offers a few more insights about the life of electronic gadgets or rather lack thereof:

> Someone who has the latest iPhone is telling you they have money. ... But if you see a person with an old flip-phone that means they know how to take care of things.

https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/uncharitable.html

I currently run an old Dell Notebook (>7 years?, Latitude E6 series) as my main machine. I received it second hand. I have given away a number of such machines for the price of a new disk. Said disks were removed from the previous owner. Company regulations require that the old disks are destroyed. Sigh.

And yes I have such an old flip phone now. It's absolutely sufficient for my use case. It misses out on a lot of stuff, which is actually desirable:

> Ironically, as smartphones become less secure and more Orwellian in their deceptive and creepy functions, "missing out" is precisely what many young people seem to really want. Missing out on mass surveillance, missing out on tracking, missing out on ransomware! Cyberbullying, inappropriate sexting, unexplained bills, addiction and anxiety all seem like good things to miss out on!

The site mentioned above has a number if inspiring articles. Technical details are a bit simplistic sometimes, but overall worth reading imho. They even have a nice article about gemini:

> Going Dark: Looking for the End of the Internet, Part 3: The Gemini Project

https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/gemini.html

Cheers,

~ew

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