These are good points. But I wonder if the longer life really comes from it being a general purpose computer per se. The points you make are more about the internet connectivity of the device. You can use a DOS machine in 2023 because it’s almost like an appliance. It works just as well now as a text editor as in the 90s. But an internet connected device has to be supported, and good enough for today’s processor intensive web apps. That general purpose DOS machine, like the first iPad, is never running Discord or Netflix.

Because they are a soulless profit-maximizing corporation, there will come a time when Apple stops supporting perfectly functioning iPads for no reason, but I’m not sure we’re there yet. The iPads they stopped supporting really do suck from a hardware perspective.

I agree the iPad is almost completely useless, but I don’t think comparing it to 13 years before the iPad is useful. My MacBook Air is 11 years old and it’s still great because it’s good enough to run YouTube, all the major websites, office suites, etc. It’s still getting security updates from Apple. I think that’s what 90% of people use a laptop for. A computer two years older than it, on the other hand, might be useless. It’s not really linear. Hopefully, iPads from 5 years ago can last over a decade.

On The Media - a podcast analyzing the media, giving historical and scientific context to news coverage. In the process, it turns out to be the best in depth news shows. Academics and journalists love this show but it doesn’t seem to be as big of a hit with the greater public. I recommend this show very highly.

Also listen to a bunch of nerdy academic podcasts like The Dissenter and New Books in Science, Psychology, Philosophy, etc in the New Books networks.

Mastodonians, Kbingers, and Fedizens are all superb. I’m not a fan of “feds” because it has another pretty common usage. I feel like whatever term is chosen should unambiguously evoke the fediverse.

Riffing off of another comment, I think it’s ok to have terms specific to each platform, and then a term for all platforms.

Platform specific:

• Lemming
• Kbiner
• Mastadoner

Overall:

• Fediverser

“The feds” don’t have the best connotation…

Also in practice the sentences come out a bit unclear to me. “The fed that posted this clearly knew their stuff.” “Some feds just like to stir things up.”

Edit: that said, I think that’s a really good point about the need for a platform neutral term.

This is why I said fewer cars, not no cars. Most people obviously do not drive 160 miles a day. With better infrastructure and public transportation, a 2 car family might go down to 1 car, or replace half of their car trips with other modalities, etc.

Outside of the US and Canada, electric bikes look to be the future instead of mainly electric cars. E-bikes are not just massively more environmentally friendly, they’re also radically reshaping city design to be more livable. I hope the future isn’t just a different kind of car. I hope, for the sake of the environment and society, it’s a world with fewer cars.

On The Media is the best news podcast. It reports on how stories are being reported, hence “on the media”, and in the process ends up being the most informative and deep reporting available. Journalists and academics love it, it’s a legendarily good show that started on NPR radio.

Yes I use iCloud, but I think you can use any cloud service. Works great. Never had a sync issue. They also have a paid service they provide for clouding syncing.

I can’t live without Obsidian. There are other similar linked note taking apps but Obsidian is the best in my opinion, not least because it just uses your folder structure and plain text markdown. I can’t imagine doing research, or just organizing my life and thoughts, without it.

The “front page” of lemmy, either the local of the instance you’re on or the “all”, is pretty bad. Low quality, uninteresting, obscure, sometimes vaguely rude. News about small video games, hyper specific gripes, obscure memes, uninteresting articles with no comments. Compare that to reddit when it was good, which reliably emphasized the biggest world news stories, genuinely interesting user anecdotes or personal stories, academic knowledge (especially AskHistorians), videos or images that grip you, etc. I’m not sure what the issue is with lemmy’s front page. Is it an algorithm problem? Something to do with federation? Is the user base merely too small for now and this will improve on its own with more engagement?

It’s too bad because the “front page” is the user’s first taste of lemmy. Most users will browse without making an account for a while before finally making an account and subscribing to specific communities.

In general, I think lemmy is already great. There are starting to be lots of cool communities, and even if the quantity is lower, the quality seems to be higher.

Yes, they are awesome.