Microsoft's Windows 10 move could drive landfill surge
Microsoft's Windows 10 move could drive landfill surge
Australia produces 500,000 tonnes of e-waste a year but only about half of it is recycled. There are concerns Microsoft's decision to end support for its Windows 10 operating system later this year, which could affect 240 million computers globally, will worsen the problem.
I wish they had at least named the problem as the TPM 2.0 requirement, and also noted that it's not really necessary for MS to add that requirement.
It's probably also too much to expect the ABC to mention that you can just install a Linux on these computers and continue using them. They at least sort of give a nod to that idea when they quote that "The best form of e-waste recycling is actually reuse".
There's possibly a silver lining (a very slight one given how depressing the immensity of the unnecessary waste) that Linux users may be able pick up some useful second hand hardware for free if businesses are going to be throwing it out.
Computerbank repurpose https://www.computerbank.org.au/
TPM 2.0 requirement
Pretty easy work around though for that but I guess you do need some basics down.
But I agree it's baffling they 'require' it.
This...it's a massive issue because it doesn't need to exist. This is literally only happening because microsoft want to garden wall the shit out of everything and scrape user data because they wildly overinvested in AI
We've got to be all over eBay and marketplace come 10's official EOL so we can all get cheap homelabs
We need scavenger groups for this.
I'd be down to help👍
Get the trunk ready for the stacks of goodies 😉
INSTALL LINUX
Don''t send to landfill. Give it to someone who uses Linux. The cost/availability of used/refurbished hardware isn't great in Australia. I think a lot ends up being dumped.
Old laptops are great for remote admin and coding under linux. I like ex-enterprise mini pcs for home servers. They have reasonably fast CPUs and use much less power/noise than real servers. And old Windows computers with a wipe and update to Linux make great low maintenance computers for older relatives.
hell, I still have a toshiba satellite 300 running. Mostly used for junking around and testing stuff on a different subnet to my main network.
woohoo. looks like ill be getting some friends and family laptops to repurpose soon.
Thats shocking. Windows 10 does fine but companies always have to push for further development! If it aint broke, dont fix it.,
It's partially liability. When Microsoft ends security updates all liability during a cyber security incident would fall on the end company knowingly running unsupported, and at that point not officially licensed for use software.
The solution obviously being installed Linux or pass legislation to make artificial hardware requirements illegal for operating systems (tpm 2.0).
Ik ur supposed to run llms on gpus but ik macs work well are their any devices that will be eol that will be good/effective at running large llms
You can run deepseek-r1:8b (one of their reduced models) on a Raspberry Pi 5, though it is slow: https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/how-to-run-deepseek-r1-on-your-raspberry-pi-5
I imagine any Win10 computer that anyone is still using at work would be considerably more powerful than an RPi5, and should be able to run r1:8b at a more comfortable speed, and possibly r1:14b.
You can find guides online for system requirements for the various models, though I wouldn't necessarily trust them, as they may have been targeting better speed of response than you care about. Once you've got ollama set up on your machine, it shouldn't be much hassle to just try a few of the smaller distilled models yourself and find which one which has a quality-to-speed ratio you're happy with.