I was just thinking in the back of my head about how cheap LEDs have made types of lighting that would’ve cost way too much (both to install, and in electricity usage) no longer stupidly expensive.

For example, I noticed on Amazon some cheap furniture that has LEDs/power outlets sort of integrated right into them. Looks pretty cyberpunk-ish to my eyes. And I know years ago that sort of thing would’ve been marked up to high heavens.

Fancy lighting in general has changed drastically in price/design.

So…what are some things, due to changes in demand or changes in tech or changes in anything…that would’ve been really expensive back in the day, but which no longer seem to be, making them more frugal than they used to be?

  • @DagamantEnglish
    19•8 months ago

    UNIX

    AT&T, IBM, and a few others used to charge tens of thousands of dollars for it but Berkeley and Linus Torvalds both created kernels that didn’t use any of their code and pushed UNIX into a very niche market while open source UNIX derivatives took over the market. This is vastly over simplified but UNIX now has open source derivatives that anyone can use, modify, or distribute.