m0xEE @m0xee@librem.one

@romin
Why not? Nowadays SSDs somehow offset this problem, but it's still way faster than retrieving same files from slower storage, besides, I believe heat dissipation for RAM is more efficient than it is for storage in most systems.
And I would choose such a use any day over storing 50 open tabs, most of which can't get swapped out because some web dev decided to keep the audio device open or use a high-precision timer 😏

@takao

@romin
Nope. It's being used for filesystem cache 😜

@santiago
I agree, definitely technically possible, but lack of persistent connection and tables for representation would make it suboptimal.
Also, although Lagrange, that most use, does preload images, AFAIR they aren't supposed to be inline in gemtext, so showing thumbnails, but providing larger resolution images on request would also pose a challenge — they would have to be on their own pages, which in turn can be automatically generated, something like that 🤔

@santiago
You're right though: we have to draw a line where it ceases being the means of presenting content and becomes an application platform.
I have a few things on this old phone so it's useful again: I can browse Fedi, I can browse Gemini, I have these remotes that I have hacked together to control various devices in my home, but what these do is send simple HTTP requests, with e.g. WebRTC it's possible to do the video conferencing within the browser — this is too much!

@santiago
I don't hate all web, I like CSS for example — when it's not automatically generated and isn't a result of years of hacking, therefore still human-readable. I like how with nice fonts, minimal CSS and a few color emojis thrown in here and there you can make very simple pages, only a couple of kilobytes big, look sleek — or at least less ugly 🤭
And this works even on my old Lumia — phone that is a decade old and in browser that hasn't been updated in years.

@santiago
That's the beauty of it — it's not "one size fits all", that is why I think it became (on its scale) so succeccful! I like mostly text content, so for me it's perfect, but I do realize that there are others who like other types of content: there are photos, there are videos, and Gemini simply won't cut it.
There are attempts to extend it, like Molerat — something like Gemini with minimal styling, but you're never sure what would stick.
Then there is "smol web"…

@santiago
Yep, now on checkout I have to scan a QR code with a phone that has to be connected to the Internet to enjoy the same discounts that I used to just carrying a piece of plastic with me — there are certainly people who are always online and always have their phone with them, who might like it, but to me it feels totally dystopian, and they probably don't even realize it 🫠
But in any case, I think there are more good things than bad ones 😁

@santiago
And computers became so powerful that even a decade-old system is fine for a lot of things, this in turn makes it possible for us to have more open hardware, and with RISC-V, hopefully, even truly open. There are still some things that surprise me in unpleasant way, like my favourite local supermarket chain obsoleting cards for their loyalty program and replacing them with a mobile "app".

@santiago
True, people were greeting Google with open arms in hopes that it would help strip Microsoft of their market dominance, not realizing they were falling into a new trap, probably even more cunning than the old one. In the end Google just took MS' place and some realized it all too late.
But I remain positive, we have lots of decentralized alternatives now and Gemini gives me lots of old Web vibes, having enough content to not feel like a ghost town.

@Hyolobrika
It works fine at the moment — because I have unfollowed a lot of people and re-followed them from this one, I'm using it as archive-only at the moment.
If I start using it more or less regularly — people start following me there and at more that a hundred active followers it becomes unusable.
I'm looking for a better solution. Problem is, unless you self-host, with fediblock-happy crowd you can never be sure who blocks whom and will you be able to talk to some people tomorrow 😩

@santiago
I have an old ThinkPad T43 from about the same era (early to mid 2000s) and I can use Matrix chats, I can read emails, I can browse Gemini and even the Web (without all the fluff, using w3m), listen to music and watch videos at 720p and even low-complexity 1080p ones, I can code using vim, it even runs Quake3 more or less well…
Just start Firefox, open 4-5 tabs of "modern" web — and the machine becomes unusable 😂

@santiago
Yes, and TenFourFox was never exactly stellar in terms of performance, it feels sluggish even on my PowerMac G5 Dual.
I used to be able to make music — including recording a couple of instruments at 48 kHz applying effects in real-time on my PowerPC Mac Mini, now I doubt I would be able to even read the news using a more or less modern browser on that machine.
The Web is one of the worst offenders when it comes to making machines obsolete.

@Hyolobrika @kravietz @tml

Sorry for this mess, friends 😣
I should making an account on an instance that doesn't have such a short character limit.

@Hyolobrika
But there sure were earlier precedents — such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky's case in the very beginning of Putin's rise to power. I wanted to elaborate on it further in our other thread — the one about Lithium in Mexico, but my reply got too long and I wasn't even close to finishing my thought,, so I decided not to post it 🤭

@kravietz @tml

@Hyolobrika
Back to our days — it *used* to be an overstatement, although companies leaving Russia being forced to transfer their assets to new owners for a morsel of their real value was close enough to that already, but now we have an excellent case in point: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-exiled-journalist-his-wife-are-extremist-group-2024-07-03/
Your family gets declared an extremist group and gets stripped of all property, pretty neat, huh?

@kravietz @tml

@Hyolobrika
In any case — this is why the Soviet "socialist" system fell into the right soil: people weren't used to owning anything, no such *tradition* — and now they didn't own a thing again, not much changed. Those who did — wealthy peasants "kulaks" and remnants of old noblety were declared enemies and were stripped of all property, either jailed or exiled (sounds familiar? 😅).

@kravietz @tml

@Hyolobrika
Richard Pipes (who is considered a major Russophobe by Russian authorities) has a theory about why Russia is this way and lack of private property is the core problem.
Sure — not only Russia had absolute monarchy, but it didn't last that long anywhere in Europe. In part, it was the reason why Russian Empire ceased to exist: these reforms were long overdue and it, among other things, was the reason for serious political crisis.

@kravietz @tml

@Hyolobrika
It's not about socialism — it never really existed in Russia… ever. Not for everyone, but even for the privileged class, part of what the Decembrists were fighting for was constitution — to limit the absolute monarchy. You go against the Tsar (state) — you lose everything. Even physical punishment for the nobles wasn't out of the question in those times.

@kravietz @tml

@iska
Sterilising strays is humane — cellar of an average block of flats in big cities is littered with dead kittens who never manage to get out, some die of wounds they get from encounters with other animals such as stray dogs — before they learn to fight or evade them by climbing trees, some become roadkill… 😿
I find them never getting born preferrable to dying this way.

@kravietz @maniamakash @tml
Whether those are formally private enterprises or controlled by a state-approved officials, only matters to those who care about semantics more than they do about the essence — they are the ones who are supposed to get fooled by the newspeak. War isn't as bad if we call it "special military operation", right? 😉