There is not a single Mastodon &server out there that have increased donations or reach a sustainable level after they reach a few thousand users.
Are you referring to active users, or just accounts-made? If you're referring to active users, then can you point to any Mastodon instance with thousands of active users and the donations they receive?
If you're referring to accounts made, then you don't really have a point because thousands of accounts are unlikely to substantially increase server costs unless they're all active (see above).
Also, there are not enough admins around “doing it because they want to” if we want the Fediverse to grow a few millions users.
Are you joking? There's no "shortage of instances" going around. As more people join the Fediverse, more admins will start instances. This is a non-issue.
In fact, I'd wager the vast majority of instance-owners are bored, twiddling their thumbs due to their lack of users.
Instagram has 2 billion users, Pixelfed largest instance has less than 200k active users. We would have to get 10 THOUSAND admins in order to compete with Instagram.
I don't see why you're being so hostile to him. I also didn't know this about a livable wage. I didn't know we were doing studies on it and thought that it actually referred to a subsistence wage.
I would actually usually say I don't like the term livable wage and think we should say "respectable wage" instead. It looks like they mean the same thing, though.
This is a great question and something we shouldn't shy away from considering.
As far as hosting a mastodon instance? That's something that should be done for free with the only income being donations.
These people do it because they want to. It's not necessarily "work" for them, which is why they do it for free anyways. It's also sustainable. As more users join their instance, costs for hosting will increase but so should donations. It's not that expensive to host servers, despite what some conpeople and their useful idiots may have told you. (don't assume you know the costs of hosting if you've never done it yourself.)
Admins get a lot of power that they have no problem abusing, either. This alone would make me a moron for even considering paying them for it.
"Yeah bro, I'm gonna pay you to host your instance where you have absolute control and can censor anything you don't like."
The integrated GPU is more or less like a very power efficient laptop 4070/4080 with unlimited VRAM
I'd love to see some benchmarks comparing the two. I don't believe that this integrated GPU is able to hold a candle to a laptop's 4070, but I'd love to be proven wrong. It also looks, per the words of the article, the CPU with performance comparable to a "mid-range" laptop GPU (think xx60s) will cost $2000. Literally paying OVER TWICE the fucking price as a laptop with a 4070. AND LAPTOPS COME WITH SCREENS! This is a complete scam.
As far as CPU speed goes, couldn't people simply choose whatever CPU they want when building their computer without paying the "framework tax"? Are you trying to claim there's something "special" about this CPU like the PS3's cell processor?
Maybe it's just me, but I can't really see how they can be better beyond philosophical reasons.
I guess bringing back stuff like the proper dropdown menu we had in the 2000s would be an example, but I don't expect most of them to do something like that.
I expect most of them to have some kind of gimmick that isn't relevant to how I use a web browser.
I skimmed it for a few seconds, got a little bit ill at the $1100 starting price, and then it occurred to me: what is this for?
Wasn't framework's whole thing about making modular laptops? What value are they bringing to the mini-ITX market? They're already modular. In fact, it looks like they're taking away customizability with soldered RAM.
You asked me what I want, and this is definitely what I don't want. If they wanted to make this product appealing to me, they'd have to lower the price and live more modest lifestyles with the more modest profit margins.
Edit: After closer inspection (albeit, not that close so I may have missed something) it looks like this... thing doesn't even have a dedicated GPU. Yeah, framework can suck my fucking balls lol.
You can literally get a 4070 gaming laptop these days for ~$1000 and framework is trying to push this shit? They can fuck off so hard it's not even funny. This is why the free world never has enough to go around, because we waste our excess on dumb shit like this.
Here's a gaming laptop with a 4070 and a 144hz screen for $900 at Walmart:
I'm good.