The lack of backwards comparability is because of the large difference in architecture.

The PS2 was a128 bit custom processor, the PS3 had PS2 hardware in the original fat versions to achieve backwards compatibility, it was dropped to reduce the price.

The PS3 was a 64 bit (I think) custom PowerPC processor.

With the PS4 Sony switched to x86_64 processors making the console essentially a PC with bespoke custom hardware. The PS5 is the same but better speced components as the tech moved on. That’s why the PS4 & 5 are compatible, they are essentially using the same architecture.

Microsoft is a similar story but they went all in on emulation of their old consoles which is why only certain games are allowed, they only allow the ones tested to work with the emulator.

Also known as a “nope rope”

So the main part of a computer that controls everything has a specific set of things it can do. Imagine that each of these things can be triggered by a button on a control panel.

Every company making this part of the computer has their own set of things and layout for the buttons to trigger them and you have to pay them money to learn what the things are and how to press the buttons.

RISC-V offers a set of things and a button layout that the community can freely see and use.

In this example a computer program is just the list of instructions saying which buttons to press in what order.

Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt

In addition to features for migrating communities and accounts I think the ability to set up a special type of instance that just archives everything from all the instances it’s federated to would be a huge benefit.

Something along the lines of an instance that doesn’t allow new content to be created, only consumed. This way if an instance were to permanently close we could migrate it’s communities to other instances from the archive.

This could also extend to migration of lost accounts, though ensuring the original account holder is the one making a request could become a nightmare of an overhead. The situation could be improved though if lemmy got some sort of feature for linking accounts across multiple instances.

My wife added ABBA’s Dancing Queen to our driving playlist for our first long trip. Silence into a deafening piano slide half way through the drive was an interesting way to nearly die from shock.

Saber