Ask HN: Is retrocomputing the pragmatist power user's future of the desktop?
What a strange situation we are in. You may be in a seemingly small
minority, but your rejection of &quot;modern software&quot; is a growing and
significant movement. I believe it has nothing to do with nostalgia.
There is a profound failure of the &quot;market values&quot; we believe
(ideologically) operate in our world and many rational people see the
only way out is regression.<p>Computing is transforming from enabling tools to a means of social
control and enforcement.<p>The market has completely turned around from demand&#x2F;desire driven to a
&quot;push&quot; market, where we are <i>told</i> what we are <i>expected</i> to own and
use. I call this consumer communism.<p>Cybersecurity is a lost cause. We just can&#x27;t fix it. And it&#x27;s getting
rapidly worse. The more layers of security we add (whose security?)
the less desirable and usable the products become.<p>Stability can only be found in products that are ossified, hard wired
and off-network.<p>Software Engineering is basically broken at the consumer level.
Exploding complexity has accompanied deskilling and a reckless &quot;move
fast and break things&quot; attitude that means working products are no
longer shipped (everything happens in the maintenance phase as a
long-tail SasS). The &quot;product&quot; itself is just bait.<p>Many products are just about cultivating dependency, lock-in and
removing features to squeeze users.<p>When a non-trivial number of users see a 1990s Amiga as a better
choice for serious work than the latest silicon, something has gone
quite wrong.<p>The problem is that 80s&#x2F;90s technology will eventually be
unservicable.  What can we do to take back tech and ensure a supply of
stuff that we <i>actually want</i> for the future?