going strong? you don't have security updates since..a decade. The browsers (I have such a machine too, for museum purposes and occasional fun) won't load most of the sites and will be super slow. I absolutely accept and respect whomever wishes to live in the past but technology is in the now. I do not understand people talking about "saving money". New hardware allows you to be faster and more efficiently. That is worth so much more than the machine cost.
You may want to spend some time researching the "hackintosh" community. I, too, have a 2012 Mac Pro that's running strong (hexacore, 48GB memory, 1TB NVME drive, 8GB video card). Courtesy of OpenCore (https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/) you can install new(er) versions of macOS on older hardware. I have all the security updates and don't need to update to newer hardware (albeit I did update the GPU and NVME drive, which for my purposes further extended the life of the machine).
Thanks for the hint. I am aware of this afecionados community. More power to them but none of this will make your old Mac grow an M1 processor.
My previous laptoop was an Macbook pro intel 64gb ram full specs. The M processor is much faster, even with just 16GB ram. Now if going strong means use the terminal, Vim etc. all is good.
If you use a laptop professionally you do want the latest updates from apple, not a Github repository.
>I absolutely accept and respect whomever wishes to live in the past but technology is in the now.
>Advocating obsolte hardware is just wrong.
I disagree; technology is simply a means to an end. If the user, being informed of alternatives, is satisfied with the experience, it's the right tool for the job.
I understand your point but I can't see a decade old laptop to be the right tool for the job unless you really don't use photos, videos, imag editing of any sort (adobe suite), office, etc. and your job is just on the terminal.
Of course there are (obsolete) alternatives to all these commercial "ecosystem" sofwares. I feel that some people don't upgrade (latops, phones) under the excuse that "it works for me, is the right tool for the job". Or worse: are simply afraid of learning new things and using new software.
I have a feeling that many reader feel like not updating the hardware is a sort of protest against big companies. It isn't as Apple is continuously selling more phones and laptops. My guess is that the younger audience wants to be updated, the older not so much.
This is entirely fine for a subset of people but not fine if you want to be competitive in the IT business.
If you do commercial work you need to be up to date and in line with your team and company demands. If time is important, a faster processor and software optimised for it, can save you many hours. This to me is worth fare more than the price of the hardware.
Of course there will be exceptions of coders being as efficient or more efficient with basic software and older hardware but why limit yourself?
Sure, if it meets their needs all is fine. But why limit knowledge but what you need/ed a decade ago when there is so much more in the new processors, software etc.? to save money? For what ?
My point is that the article seems to suggest that is a good idea to stop buying new laptops. It isn't.
I don't think cow anology is very appropriate. Technology is moving fast (well not as fast nowadays but still pretty fast) and if you don't update your tools your work will be as obsolte as your hardware. If any of your hardware is touching the internet running obsolete stuff is a big security risk. Vivaldi browser ? Notepad? seriously...
well said! I read it but the "only using webrowser as light as possible and notepad for text, thats it" gives it away. I am just surprised how many experienced coders don't realise that technology is moving fast and, if you use obsolte hardware, your work and code will be as obsolete.
Imagine having to do any testing for a mobile app or a new website and you go like "oh sorry I only use a light web browser" or having to code anything more complex than 90s cgi scripts "oh no I use only notepad" .
Or receiving an excel or word document to edit, notepad is not going to cut it.
> I am just surprised how many experienced coders don't realise that technology is moving fast and, if you use obsolte hardware, your work and code will be as obsolete.
I think the reverse: Silly to build software on a bleeding-edge machine then act surprised when it runs like trash on customers' hardware. Instead build it on a trash machine and it will fly on better hardware.
I expect it is not such a good strategy for those whose code can't stand on its own legs outside of a Chrome distribution or VM, though.
Most people have faster machines that they could RDP into when needing to test with a fully-featured browser. The key however is that this is a pretty rare need; you can do plenty of useful things without opening up a web browser at all. Even editing Office documents is a comparatively light workload these days.
You can do plenty of useful things without a computer too :-) but that is beside the point.
For business use you do need a browser. Fast, with security updates etc. For some people doing web development having access to professional products e.g. Adobe suite is a must too. And no, you can't do that on linux.
I don't want to sound dimissive but if you code anything more than 90's stuff an 11 years old desktop won't cut it. Especially if you have an apple computer. Such a model is not just obsolete but would open a lot of security issues.
Invest in a laptop? With the current prices pretty much everyone that uses a computer professionally can afford a laptop.
Until last year I used a 2011 iMac with Linux, 24gb of RAM and an SSD. Quite a bit better in performance and security than laptops I've seen engineers issued last year.
the key is "with linux". Try developing iOS apps or do anything within the apple ecosystem (e.g. check your photos?). Not viable for 99.9% of mac users.
My computer was too old for Apple, a characteristic similar to saying 90% of brand new laptops are too blonde. There are very few modern Apple development machines but anyone with an old desktop can make most modern software. (There are also plenty of exceptions where an Arm laptop isn't usable in software development, so nothing is universal.)
Thanks, I didn't know much about that and it could be helpful with relatives, etc.
Most of the Apple hardware bought for me has been by employers who understood I wasn't going to use Apple software. In the big scheme of things, it is better to have a reduced set of drivers and pay a bit more than have an employee fiddling on drivers because Acer skimmed another $1 off their motherboard cost.
My 2011 desktop has a 3.5GHz 4-core i7 processor, 32GB of RAM and of a 1TB SSD.
In the interim there's been the adoption of USB-C, improvements in energy efficiency and widespread 4K display support - but raw performance numbers aren't much changed. Go to Dell with $2000 and with the laptop performance penalty they'll offer you... pretty much the same specs, except the CPU will have some extra 'efficiency' cpu cores and be called '11th generation' instead of '2nd generation'.
Are you perhaps thinking of some previous decade, where 10 years meant 20x the clockspeed and 2x the cores?
I do all my development on a remote server, so I really just need a terminal emulator and an internet connection. I could work with a raspberry pi if I needed to. Sure, fundamentally it's just moving the problem of where the expensive computer is, but now there's only needs to be one of them.
This is what finally convinced me to move from a 2011 MBP. The trend of offloading everything to the GPU on a system that has the weakest of GPUs killed that computer as useable.
I can't really make up if this is a joke or not. Assuming it isn't, seriously ? If someone needs a laptop the pre-requisite is to be portable. This solution is not a laptop replacement. Why not simply move around with your desktop ? Actually this is what is suggested, monitor et al.
When you have monitors at the destination, e.g. when commuting between home and office, it is much easier to carry in the backpack or in the briefcase a NUC than a laptop. A NUC-like computer weighs much less than 1 kg, typically between 0.3 kg and 0.5 kg.
Even if you go e.g. in a business trip and you carry with you a portable 17" inch monitor (weight around 1 kg) and a compact keyboard, the weight is less than that of an equivalent 17" mobile workstation, which weighs between 2.5 kg and 3.5 kg.
So yes, a NUC is much easier to carry than a large laptop, and when you already have a monitor at the destination it is much easier to carry than the thinnest and lightest ultrabook.
I have carried NUCs daily to the office for years, because it was much more convenient than carrying the laptop, but previously I have not also used them for most business trips, because I did not have a portable monitor.
A NUC can be also battery-powered like a laptop, e.g. by using a laptop charger from Anker or similar, but I have needed this very seldom.
I understand. Just talking about weight a Macbook 16" is 2 Kg. So it would be much lighter, more integrated then carrying around all these pieces. If you go in a business trip you need the integration and battery of a laptop. Allright, this is not a 17" inches but you can easily increase the text size if needed.
Of course to each its own and is perfect that this solution works for you. But suggesting that is a lighter alternative to a real, modern laptop is incorrect. As it is the article that seems to advocate using obsolete browsers, obsolete editors and no modern software for the sake of saving money or the World.
The truth is that whomever depends on a computer for paid work needs performance. New processors (like the apple M1) are much faster than a 6-7 years old laptop. And, if the green cause is important, much more efficient energy management and longer battery life.
If you need power and quality (think images/video editing) you can't work with software and hardware of a decade (of two decades ago).
Yes, it's the performance standards that keep me in the market.
While the embedded energy cost in new devices is noteworthy, I've run through the causes and consequences, and we still have a rationale to keep pushing up performance and energy at hardware level before trying to gut features.
And once you get on that treadmill, you're generally stuck buying at the same price points because when you go downmarket, the manufacturers will remove I/O and BIOS settings, solder the flash drive, etc.
That said, buying slightly old(even refurbished with no wear) is a great savings and I always tend to opt towards that for computers.
I think the trend with macbook pros without a display ( will swap over to us) with monitors at different places or a virtual reality device with some tool like immersed.
its lighter without a display, everything else is included ( keyboard, trackpad, batteries, sound and so on)
I guess you cannot call it a 'luggable' like in days of yore, since it is not heavy, but I wonder if there's a snazzy term for a portable headless computer...
I guess "portable" can mean many things. A laptop is nice to have while traveling, in the car, on the train, or when I just want to sit on the couch or on the terrace while working on hobby stuff.
And a NUC is great when I visit my parents for two weeks but want to keep working remotely. That way I don't have to disassemble my gaming setup (thinking of cable management), or worry that something happens to the PC. It's still a great remote working experience, and cheaper than a capable laptop.
I see the appeal in both. But to be honest, I'm not in need for a high end machine for my work, nor hobbies, so I just use a work laptop for work, and spin up gitpod for my own stuff, which a chromebook could run.
Thanks for sharing. I feel that this is the point of the article too "if you don't need a high end machine...." but if you do you can't really afford to change your laptop after 10 years when most of the software won't run anymore and no securities updates are circulating for 5+ years.
I find this type of advice (change your laptop only every 10 years to save the world) irresponsible to say the least.
Imagine visiting a medical doctor with obsolte X-Ray technology, lab analysis tools etc. I wouldn't feel comfortable with that regardless of the money they saved or the illusionary "save the world" green footprint.
Of course none of this matter if one doesn't require the latest technology or software (e.g. Adobe etc.).
> no securities updates are circulating for 5+ years
I don't understand this one. My laptop was born with Ubuntu 14.04 (actually it came with Windows 7, I formatted it with Linux out of the box) and software still runs and I'm still getting security updates. I'm on Ubuntu 20.04 now. Would it be different if I was on Windows? I think I would be on Windows 10 now.
The only problems I could think about are: software needs some new graphic card or more memory that could fit into the laptop. Add the lack of spare parts, but this is another kind of failure.
I've done a lot of med tech, and I can assure you, outside of most large hospitals (and even many of those.) The tech is staggeringly out of date by most standards.
Getting things approved as a medical device, and then updating the software, operating system, etc.. for it is a huge pain in the ass.
I know that wasn't the point, but just wanted to mention it.
> In the 1990's the Ergo Brick achieved significant acclaim due to its unique design. Before powerful notebook computers came along, Ergo defined the category "transportable computer" with grace and power. You used a Brick if you wanted portable horsepower (in contrast with wimpy early notebooks).
Buddy of mine sent a picture years ago of a guy who brought his iMac into the local Starbucks and did his work there on that machine, at a table, for hours.
Hello from Switzerland :) We are not in the EU not just "technically" but as a fact. None of these agreement covers the exchange of private emails or metadata with the EU.
No offence but as an "expert" there is no excuse to run a webpage/blog etc. with no https.
With Vercel, Netlify and many others offering free stating hosting and let's encrypt https certificate there is no excuse to run a site without an SSL certificate.
To me the moral of the story and that you should never ever follow instructions by an alleged bank calling you asking to confirm informations and, even worse, give them codes over the phone. Especially if you are an "expert".
The most unbelievable part is falling for the idea that if you had called back your whole account would be on hold. That was such a smoke bomb that was easily detectable.
If this seemed plausible as your dislike your bank and don't like the service why not take your business elsewhere?
From your own story, if anything, Wells Fargo prevented this from becoming a much bigger problem and acted very promptly to your request.
HTTPS provides essentially no security to a broad spectrum of attacks-- particularly, any attacker that can position himself between the webserver or name server and any CA is largely unaffected by https. Only attackers that are limited to intercepting between the webserver and end client are meaningfully thwarted. It isn't magical pixie dust. It doesn't appear that this page provides any information or service that would be meaningfully protected by https.
The most important reason to have it is to avoid the automatic search engine downraking that google now applies to non-https sites (helpfully elevating all manner of spam and scams over decades of technical documentation).
> To me the moral of the story and that you should never ever follow instructions by an alleged bank calling you asking to confirm informations and, even worse, give them codes over the phone.
Unfortunately, as pointed out by many others in this thread many banks engage in and even sometimes require you to comply with scam indistinguishable behavior, making your maxim hard to follow. Even ignoring that, everyone makes mistakes, gets distracted, or has bad days... this makes security very hard, even for experts.
HTTPS is when you ask 200 companies if either of them know the key for your bank. And they are all run by charlatan boomers who think buying more firewalls and cool security products is equivalent to securing their private cert signing keys. Why on earth would I ever want this? Like hello, have you ever seen ultracorporate tech company culture? They really don't know what they're doing. Why would you trust them let alone trust 200 of them in a way such that even if one of them messes up, all your sites are compromised?
Imagine that domain names contained the public key in them. I Google up "mybank", and it gives me https://8c789ad256afa4ca93f1af6436e7adff51cdd1c380de7d7cc78b...
This takes <1000 lines of code to implement and already stops the only thing that HTTPS stops: a noob MITM positioned attacker who can't break into CAs. The MITM can't change the Google results, because you already came from https://a4244aa43ddd6e3ef9e64bb80f4ee952f68232aa008d3da9c78e..., which you somehow obtained before the MITM happened.
interesting article! some feedback: it looks like you host your blog on github pages .Please add an SSL certificate, it is free and would eliminated the annoying browser warning.
LCARS CSS is nice and original, perhaps you can change the font/contrast to achieve something more readable (just in case here are some ideas https://www.thelcars.com/themes/ )
Thanks for the suggestions. I hadn't realized Github Pages supported SSL today for custom domains, missed a Let's Encrypt at some point I suppose. Trying to get that activated. I'll have to look into the mixed content warnings later.
Might also play with some of those newer color theme ideas, the Lower Decks inspired ones spark joy for me. (I used a different theme site for some of the colors that was at lcarsdeveloper.com and seems maybe done now. This one seems similar and I'm wondering if they just had to change domain names at some point.)
I watch lower decks with my kids instead of bluey now:D it's gggrreat! I do like the color scheme they put together as well, that should be cool, you should name a class boimler :D
you are welcome! enabling SSL should just be a click on github and is very convenient. I appreciate that your site is different and not like everything out there. Probably just adjusting the font color would go a long way in terms of readability but hey...it is your site so if you like it and gives you joy as it is perfectly fine :)
