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I think most tech is bullshit. 4k screens, multi-camera phones, new gadgets. Bullshit. I have a 6 year old laptop, and an external monitor someone threw away. I have a 30 Euro 18 buttons mouse, from a non-brand, and a 20 Euro pair of headphones that are some 5 years old. All good. Am working on a multi hour documentary with these. My phone is 7 years old. My desk is made out of an old closet. My electric scooter is 8 years old. Not made out of an old closet!

Audio systems....bullshit. Microphones...mostly bullshit. Cameras, pretty bullshit.

What I mean is the difference between brands and prices is almost non-existent in terms of quality + what you do with them matters. The reason people are obsessed with these is because companies are great at selling illusions and useless features, plus blowing out of the water tiny miniscule differences to make them look important. Hard truth to swallow if you are a techy-guy/girl. But that's the truth.

@tio You missed gaming chairs. There are ones with built in back massagers

To say there’s no difference is just sour grapes IMO. My $400 1440p IPS monitor with a wide color gamut and accurate colors is a much more pleasant experience than my basic 10-year-old 1080p one next to it. Same with the $200 mechanical keyboard vs a mushy rubber dome setup, and $350 headphones vs some $30 Amazon special.

It’s true that cheap tech can still be “fine”, but to say the expensive stuff isn’t actually better is just cope IMO.

@tio I mostly agree with this.

The problem IMO is that people don't like "good enough."

I have a great pair of earbuds that ran me $50. The sound quality *is* audibly different compared to, say, dollar store earbuds. I've wanted to try out other pairs for a while, but my conclusion is always the same: what I've got is good enough. There's no reason to buy a new pair, and it would actually be deeply unethical.

Ditto for the Framework laptop: I want it, but I have a good ThinkPad. Good enough.

I have a gaming PC at home, and for that there's a reason to update every few years since video cards do change. For anything else? Nope. A 10 decent year old laptop with a bit of ram and an ssd is basically going to run perfectly for most tasks.

And as for video, unless I'm specifically looking at something, 480p is just fine. Who needs that detail for most things?

I think that changes a lot for a lot of people. It's great that we can have more power, but we are unlikely to need it for anything. At that point, making stuff that lasts sounds like a better deal to me.
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@tio For the most part, I agree with you. I can definitely say having more pixels on a display is a generally good thing for me, so I do love my 4k for everything. And there are some price points in terms of what's "pro grade" and such. But, for the most part, many of those differences have disappeared over the last several years and it's all just different points of marketing hype.

@tio This is very true of 90% of consumer goods, although heavy use items and tools that last and don't break or fall apart on you over time is worth paying a lot more for a high quality one --if you can find one--, or even for a used one of a much older vintage and better durability compared to what's modern and available.

The problem IMO is that people don't like "good enough."
And this feeling for sure comes from the ads-industry. From youtube reviews, to TV ads, online articles, and so forth. Everyone screams at you to buy the new tech, because they say it is so much better....

I am skeptical about 4k monitors, but then I haven't seen a very large one in 4k playing a 4k video for instance. I wonder if it is 4 times better quality than a FullHD. I am skeptical about that 😁

@roadriverrail @tio

I find a large 4K monitor is fantastic for working in Blender and Kdenlive. You can edit 2K video at full size and still have room for all the UI (and be able to read it).

I am doing documentaries/videos on a 17inch laptop + a 23inch (quite bad) external monitor. I do really fine with that. I edit 4k videos too. But when editing it is not advisable to edit the raw 4k for example - use proxy clips. Makes editing much faster.

So I personally do not understand the use of 4k screens for video editing. Also, since pretty much no one has a 4k screen, and on 20ish inches and lower screens seems to not even make any difference between that and fullhd, plus all online 4k videos are extra-compressed.... is it worth it?

I am again extremely skeptical about these practices. I suspect it is the ad-market that made people think these differences are important.

@tio Er. Not the framework. Stupid me, posting at midnight. Framework is my work laptop >_>

The MNT Reform: I really want it, I can afford it, but it's just an expensive toy.

@tio That is fair, but what does that have to do with tech? You seem to assume that brands are tech?

Tech is one domain where this kind of BS is spreading, of selling very similar products every year or even month, for the sake of selling them, not because they are better. They invent a lot of bs features that are useless, and exaggerated claims about the "new features". This is ofc true for clothes, food, and pretty much everything.

I write about these in detail here https://www.tromsite.com/books/

@tio @deshipu Tech products sold by brands are successful because they are not buy by tech savvy people. That's also why you'll never win an argument with these folks who are blinded by look and marketing. It's so satisfactory to think you're belonging to an elite because you have the best product... While the reality is that you're buying this false sentiment.

@wwwgem @tio But is it really false? If I buy elegant shoes or a nice hat, I can wear them and feel good about it, and people will see me wearing them and will appreciate them. There is nothing false about it. And the same applies to the other accessories, like headphones, watches, and even smartphones and laptops to some degree, if you are around people who appreciate those things. The sentiments are true, there is nothing false about them.

The sentiments are perhaps true, but likely created by false advertising for these products, making them look more important than they are. "fashion" is an umbrella word for "selling more shit that is useless/exact as the previous shit". For the sake of trading. It is a trade based society after all, so all of us have to constantly trade. Which is insane.

@tio @wwwgem I am pretty confident that we had fashions way before we had trading, and we had trading before we had commerce, so I don't agree that fashion only exists to improve sales.

Do you think that this false advertising is more common in tech than in other areas? If yes, why do you think that is the case, and how do you think it could be improved?

People have traded for thousands of years. Sure, what you call as "fashion" may not have started with trade, but trade for sure promoted and abused the concept. You can call "fashion" anything and sell infinite stuff based on that. In this regards, "fashion" is a very harmful practice/notion.
Do you think that this false advertising is more common in tech than in other areas?
I do not know, but the amount of BS in advertising in general is astonishing. Actually advertising is all about selling you false or exaggerated claims.
how do you think it could be improved?
That's what I spent the last decade trying to figure out. The short answer is to move past a trade-based society, towards a sharing-society. So that people are not incentivized to promote false products and so forth. The long answer resides in this book I wrote "The Origin of Most Problems".

@tio @wwwgem You are very persistent in advertising your book, even though you are not selling it – don't you think it's curious how moving from trading your book for money to sharing it freely somehow did not magically remove the incentive to advertise it? Do you think it's an exception from the rule you have discovered, or that maybe there are more similar cases like that?

I am not advertising anything. I am sharing. It is a big difference. Advertising is a practice withing the market system (trade society). And my book is free you don't have to trade anything for it.

@tio @wwwgem That is your (re)definition, and it doesn't match the usus. It being free is exactly my point, despite the fact that you are not trading it, you are still advertising it, and as a solution to most problems, no less, which strikes me as exactly the kind of exaggeration that those tech companies use when describing their products. So no, I don't think your hypothesis holds.

Go read more about advertising for some context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising - this is what I am referring to. Me sharing my book, or the free things I am doing, is not advertising. If that's advertising then anything you share about your own personal projects is advertising. And that will make the world a lot more confusing.

@tio @wwwgem Fine, it's not advertising, it's promotion, but it suffers from all the same problems, including exaggeration, selective information, and annoyance. Whether for commercial gain or other reasons, people will always try to manipulate other people into doing what they want, and removing trade is not going to change that.

It is true that one may be biased in sharing their own things (books, videos, projects, whatever) but when they sell these products (thus relying on an income that's generated via these products) the likelihood for them to lie, exaggerate, deceive and so forth, is far greater.

To put it simply, if I were to sell my book, and that money helps me pay my rent or buy food and so forth, then I will be more aggressive in "promoting" my book simply because I need to pay my rent and need food to eat. However, because I do not trade my book for anything, I am a lot less biased in sharing it with people. I have nothing to gain personally if you read it.

So yes, trade has a very bad influence and makes things a lot worse in this regards.

@tio @wwwgem In our commercialized world, commercial gain dominates as an incentive, but if you remove it, it's not like all the evil in the world will disappear with it, magically turning people into angels. Other incentives would fill the void and become more prominent, chiefly the desire for power, however it would be achieved in the new regime. Status, fame, honor, divine favor, mating opportunities, belonging to a group, etc.

if you remove it, it's not like all the evil in the world will disappear with it, magically turning people into angels.
We should not exaggerate of course. But right now we can see that taking the trade away creates a lot more honest beings. We provide lots of examples in that book that I "advertised" 😁 - plus we have this directory here https://www.directory.trade-free.org/ full of examples like that.

So I think we have enough to prove that humans would behave a lot, lot better if they were not engaging into trading this for that.
Other incentives would fill the void
You assume there is a "void" that needs to be filled. But why should that be?
the desire for power
This perhaps goes hand in hand with trade-advantages. Kings, Musk, and others, have a lot of power and power trips, simply because they can take advantage of poor people who do as they say. If people were not so poor, and they had access to at least their needs as trade-free, likely they would be harder to manipulate, and thus grow this "power". In other words, a boss is powerful only when the employees need the job he/she offers and have no other alternative, else these people can leave, and the boss will have no more power over them.
Status, fame,
Are traded nowadays, this is why I'd argue they are a result of the same system of trade. Why people want to become famous? Likely because fame means money, thus access to the things you need/want. Also because celebrities are sold, traded, and thus they become popular (on tv, magazines, online) promoting that lifestyle. Again through trades (they pay people to do marketing and all that). Then people see it and want to become like them. Classic value influence.
mating opportunities, belonging to a group, etc.
Education is very important. You cannot have a different kind of society with people who are adapted to this one. No more than bringing someone from a tribe to live in NY.

Yes we made a book where we highlight just that, how a few companies make most of the stuff you see in the world. We even made a search engine here https://www.tromsite.com/tbf/ where you can search for a brand and see who owns it.

@sj_zero @tio I'd also like to point out that video isn't that hard, short of 4k.

My thinkpad T420s can, WITHOUT THE GPU, play 720p@60FPS video with unoptimized (non-vectorized) software decoding. Using "proper" asm decoders and a few other optimizations should get to 1080p at 60FPS easily enough.

It's Good Enough.

@tio @roadriverrail I have a 48" 4k monitor. I *love* it.

I don't need it, though. It makes work easier, but a 1080p monitor that was half the size would probably be good enough, too.

I can't imagine that I'd *ever* want 8k, and I'm not buying another monitor until my current one dies - which should hopefully be more than ten years from now.

@tio let see how's your setup

17inch screen, fullhd. Core i7-7700HQ, 32GB of RAM, 500GB SSD + 20TB HDDs in total. 😀 - and I max out everything considering I run over 30 websites, 5 servers, write lots of books, and work on a 6h documentary that uses at least 3TB of files 😁