Not really...

Almost all IoT devices work by phoning home. They call some remote server, and do some API stuff, send some message poll for new messages / instructions. They tend to have very little if anything listening.

If they do get onwd its because the infrastructure that supports them gets compromised, at which point its really the infrastructure that was hacked and not the device. The other thing that happens - all the gosh darn time - is what ever little web based interface they have for setting up wifi/IP settings/etc is some terrible CGI thing with some form of injection vulnerability. Again though if that gets pwnt, it is only after some ofther failure of your internal network security. That is a concern, I understand defense in depth, I get foothold and dwell time issues, However a newer kernel won't prevent that kind of compromise. Lack of shell escaping on calls to system() or bad choices around using eval() will get you popped on Linux 7.0 as easily as 2.0.

spending effort to maintain support for stuff nobody is using is not reasonable. Would you write a book, if you were certain nobody would ever read it or even want to?

Don't say "but what about a diary," even a private diary generally has one intended audience if it is the author themselves, for their own recollection.

writing software that no computer will ever run makes very little sense, even from an educational standpoint.

- as to the hidden breakage. Probably not much, because if you don't know about those 486s lurking out there, you are not updating the firmware/OS/other software on them either, and they will continue humming a long as they have until something else breaks.

This is a part everyone seems to miss when the get freaked out about Linux itself or some distribution dropping support for something 30 years old...

In 2026 if you are still using a computer older than mid-90s (and very more than likely even one from after the mid 90s) it is because it is part of some very specific process that almost certainly has you not making changes, which are almost certain to include software changes too.

Just because Linux 7.x can't be built for i486 any more does not stop you from grabbing any prior version and using that. Thinking about 486s specifically, I know there are actually a lot of odd things like hardened industrialized PCs and some routers and the like running licensed 486 cores and late manufacturing Intel parts; that are still in use. You can even still buy some new. It would not surprise me to learn people are running Linux on a good number of them, it would surprise me to learn people are running Linux newer than 5.10 or 5.15 on them. Even in the most exotic memory configurations a 486 is going to top out at 3.5GBs of memory, I guess you could do nearer to 4GB on a ISA only system (No PCI or VLB). You really going burn 16MB or more of that just on the kernel?

Let's be real if you are running a 468 you are probably using using Linux 2.0 - 2.6 already. Not being able to use 7 hardly affects you.

 

This is wrong on so many levels I don't even know where to begin

A minimal Arch install still takes up an outrageous 3 GB of disk space. Even fedora with gnome doesn't take that much space

Apple would not have existed w/o Jobs or Woz. It would have existed w/o Cook - someone else would have run the thing. How successfully is anyone's guess, but it would have been hard to go wrong after Jobs designed you a winning formula

How exactly would they serve us the ads?

Okay, I read the South Korean law requirements, but what has Singapore been asking, for Apple to make that a requirement?

Yeah, once South Korea knows someone's age, why can't they automatically calculate the future age from the age that's inputted and the time lapsed since?

Besides, why do they need anyone's age? All they need is whether somebody is or isn't an adult, which would simply be a "yes/no" flag

Fight the good fight. Despite being early adopter of Gmail, I moved away from everything Google after they demanded I perform age verification. Thankfully I've seen it coming and they were unable to hold my data hostage.

I don't trust Google, therefore I suspect this is about loading ads and claiming they were displayed even if user never got to see them.

If one has Windows 11, one should look at converting it into Tiny11, and then only installing the software one's really going to use. And only allow Windows Defender updates, and security updates on Windows update

I disagree. Windows 7 was a quality OS. If one wants to go under the hood, even the Windows 8 kernel was great, even if the Metro UI sucked. Problem is that from that point, Microsoft didn't know how to leave well enough alone

They could have done a few things:

1. 1. For the traditional desktop Windows, take the 8 kernel, put the Windows 7 Aero interface on top of it, maybe change the start button from a flag to the 8 Window, but other than that, leave it alone!
2. 2. For touch PCs, have Metro if mouse is disabled, but otherwise, stay w/ the Windows 7 UI.
3. 3. For Windows Phone, have the Metro interface

From that point, the main work Microsoft should have done should have been on the phones - porting as many apps as possible to Windows Phone 8, so that that would have had a better showing in the market. Instead of acquiring Nokia

If there was a way of only doing the security updates, but preventing any other updates, such as the removal of Wordpad, or the alteration of Notepad and Paint, I'd be fine w/ it. One security practices is to always have the latest security patches, so I'm fine w/ that. However, I don't want them pushing an alternate Outlook version on me every release, or mucking around w/ the user interface of a package just so that their programmers aren't just twiddling their thumbs

Yeah, that one is asinine