2021-09-28
I cheered when all (well, almost all) phones started using micro-USB for charging and data transfer. Finally I didn't have to get a new charger when I got a new phone. And you know what? I still have a micro-USB charger in my backpack, even though I'm reluctantly an iPhone user these days. Because that used to mean I could help a friend out when their phone was running out of juice.
But somewhere along the line manufacturers decided that the USB-A standard wasn't good enough. I don't know exactly what the argument was, but I assume it was something along the lines of not being able to carry enough data or power at high enough speed. And yeah, apparently we had to do something about that.
I think the USB-C standard is horrible, causing a bunch of identical-looking cables to be all different, but there was a need for it. Wasn't there?
By now you've probably figured out where I'm going with this. My home server is a Raspberry Pi. That's a sluggish thing as servers go. Wordpress is notoriously too demanding for most models, for example. Not to mention that data transfer speeds can be really really bad. I could just get a VPS and run all the software that looks slick and modern and... but I don't. I accept that my server has limitations, and I do what I can within them. Because I think that's smarter.
It's common knowledge that hardware becomes more efficient all the time (though Moore's Law has arguably hit its limit), and as that happens the price of weaker hardware goes down. Wouldn't that be a great opportunity for manufacturers? Hardware that can do all the things we did on it yesterday, but cheaper! It has all the limits of yesterday, sure, but that was okay then. Why can't it be okay now?
I'd rather be frugal with my resource usage and adapt to reality, than push for change in said reality just to have more room for increased resource usage. I realise this sounds a lot like a rant, and I guess it is, but I don't mean for it to be negative and proselytizing. I'd like to encourage more sustainable and, I guess, conservative development.
And I don't want to have to buy new cables all the time.
-- CC0 Björn Wärmedal