• ameancow@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Voyager’s mission parameters and expectations have only decreased since 1977, it will never be required to run newer software or investigate new objects. It is winding down and is just sending back enough data that we can use our more powerful Earth-based computers to detect the most subtle changes to the cosmic medium.

    Meanwhile, we have a constantly accelerating global marketplace of new software and new ways of both working and playing games. If ya’ll were operating on a system designed to stay functional for 40+ years you would not like that system.

    All that said, we do have a pretty bad problem with bloatware and software/hardware companies colluding to leverage consumers to buy and upgrade phones and computers more than necessary.

    I just don’t think it’s a fair comparison if we were to get really pedantic and serious about a joke meme.

    • rarsamx@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      It’s not only commercial software.

      We’ve come to expect more from our computers and as our processors gain more power we find ways to use it. I’m running things on a laptop that before would have required a workstation. I wanted to run an LLM on an old desktop, and 8GB RAM wasn’t enough.

      • BreakerSwitch@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        True, but one of the biggest things we’re using that power for recently is “why bother optimizing?” With splashes of “can we obtain any more data from the user?”

      • ameancow@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        The backache and frustration with the number 67 for existing already did that, but thank you for reminding me that we had a good Windows OS once.