• TommySoda@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    This isn’t sustainable. Almost all of our infrastructure runs on computers and eventually it will reach a point where you have a computer in charge of vital infrastructure that won’t be able to buy replacement part and it’ll just fail.

    • imjustmsk@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      nah all of the datacenters they build for AI, will come to use then.

      they will say"Need computing? Don’t worry, just rent from us, for an ever increasing and enshittifying subscription"

      • TommySoda@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        We can’t even get them to upgrade our infrastructure to the 21st century in some cases so good luck with that. We still got shit running on Windows 7 or even Windows XP.

        • BritishJ@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Windows 7. Don’t moan, it was the last good windows. Plus all the themes and hacks you could get for XP. Times were good

      • Link@rentadrunk.org
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        2 months ago

        You can’t interact with a computer in the cloud though without some kind of computer in front of you.

        • HereIAm@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          We’ll just return to terminals. Just a screen, and input devices connected to a server :(

          • Link@rentadrunk.org
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            2 months ago

            Right but surely you still need a CPU and RAM at the very least to process the Remote Desktop connection.

            • HereIAm@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              I bit of ram, but then I’d imagine you only need some purpose built chip for the connection, input and display logic. Effectively you’d need little more than a chrome cast-like device.

    • SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      We used to get by with much less. If only we could start writing more efficient software again…

    • Samskara@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      There‘s existing infrastructure, that runs on hardware from the 1980s. Especially in industrial applications there are still plenty of gigantic machines controlled by a 386 or a C-64.

      The used vintage market can keep these running for a long time. Eventually you replace them with an emulator or an FPGA that runs the same software.

      Big banking, insurance, airlines, shipping, governments, militaries bought huge IBM mainframes from the 1960s onwards. They ran for decades. Many of these were transformed into virtual machines, still running their ancient FORTRAN code.

      There’s also the story of (IIRC Minutemen) nuclear missiles needing 5.25 floppies to program their guidance systems. These were still operational in the early 2000s. Lots of military weapons systems run on ancient hardware.