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Comment by skybrian

> If your computer can’t lie to other computers, then it’s not yours.

And why is that not okay?

I think this sort of attitude is left over from when computers were expensive. Nowadays, I have multiple computers, some of which are fun toys I mess with, while others are appliances that I just use for their intended purpose. And that's fine, because when I screw up, maybe I don't want to have broken the computer that I use for video chats and to do my banking? Maybe I don't want my main phone to stop working?

It's okay to be a hacker and buy a router that you just use as a router and a Chromebook that you just use for web browsing. You can also buy a Raspberry Pi and mess with embedded programming on cheap devices. The appliance computers should be as low-maintenance as possible so you have more time for hacking.

The nice thing about really cheap devices like a Raspberry Pi Pico is that if you actually build something useful for real work, you can deploy it, stop messing with it, and buy another computer for experiments.

parent skybrian 3 years ago

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