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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML Permacomputing
qmr wrote 1 day ago:
> Permacomputing is a design practice that encourages the maximization
of hardware lifespan, minimization of energy usage
These two aims are diametrically opposed.
Compare performance per watt, P4, to Centrino, to M3 for example.
amatecha wrote 15 hours 54 min ago:
The argument I've heard is (and unfortunately I can't find offhand
where I've heard this), is basically rather than having new computers
made and all the vast energy usage required to do so (mining/refining
metals, computer usage to design new hardware, factories assembling
stuff, electronics manufacturing, packaging, shipping, and all the
pollution from these processes), it's far less harmful to the
environment to just keep using what you have, as long as you can.
The impact of continuing to use that old computer is even less when
your source of energy is a renewable resource like solar or
hydroelectric.
Nasrudith wrote 11 hours 50 min ago:
The only problem is that it the argument is intuitive but isn't
true. It hasn't been true for justifying using gas guzzlers instead
of more efficient vehicles and is based upon farcial assumptions
about "new vehicle people" pancaking their old cars every six
months instead of the actual truth where even the neophiles cars
wind up still on the road even if they get new ones, that most
people don't in fact have the brand new but the backlog of
previously new.
It hasn't been true for servers either, as reflected by the resale
price of old server hardware. It turns out power over a long time
frame dominates over the manufacturing costs. From what I've seen,
the argument is just bad math and bad assumptions all the way down
at best. At worst it is willful ignorance in service of validating
their assumptions regardless of the truth.
kev009 wrote 1 day ago:
Depends what you are accounting and optimizing for. At the high end
of computing this is generally true but occasionally vendors get
pretty far in front of their skis to goose performance like current
Nvidia hardware or the P4 of yore. There are plenty of SoCs over the
last decades that use a few watts that can do useful work. An MSP430
of any vintage could run for years on a battery bank. If the desired
work meets a small power envelope newer doesn't automatically win if
you are working in small quantity like home projects.
oxw wrote 1 day ago:
Permacomputing meeting in SF March 1st
HTML [1]: https://alexwennerberg.com/permacomputing.html
plastic-enjoyer wrote 1 day ago:
I've read a few years ago about permacomputing and _still_ don't know
what permacomputing is
ronsor wrote 1 day ago:
The idea seems to be a simple enough computing system (instruction
set, programs, CPU, etc.) so that it can be documented, operated, and
recreated indefinitely with the least amount of hassle, ideally
reusing existing hardware.
fodkodrasz wrote 1 day ago:
I find the CollapseOS approach unrealistic and somewhat self-indulgent.
In a real collapse scenario, having a portable Forth environment for
arbitrary microcontrollers wouldnât put us meaningfully ahead. The
primary value of computers wouldnât be to run new minimalistic
programs from scratch for stuff we only automate in a situaton where
we are living in economic and technical abundance, but to access and
preserve existing information systems and whatever remains of digital
infrastructure, especially libraries, CAD/CAM systems, etc.
A more practical strategy would be maintaining simple yet complete
computing environments that can operate on salvaged hardware. NetBSD is
a good example: it supports a wide range of hardware, has a relatively
straightforward codebase, and provides a full source-based system with
a usable graphical userland, with a wide variety of tools available.
In a âcollapse computingâ context, it is far more plausible to
repair and reuse an x86-compatible machine than to rely on extremely
minimal custom setups that can barely run a Forth interpreter. With
salvaged x86 hardware, one could install a robust OS like NetBSD and
immediately run a broad set of existing tools, which is likely to be
far more useful than rebuilding a software ecosystem from near-zero on
constrained microcontrollers.
This is why having a NetBSD and pkgsrc mirror is my approach to
collapse computing instead of fantasizing on building from scratch.
vdupras wrote 1 day ago:
Your reasoning is sound, but is already covered by Collapse OS'
manifesto. It refers to two stages of collapse, Collapse OS being for
the second.
As long as we have working modern machines, self-contained modern
open source OSes, NetBSD being one, are good choices.
One problem there is with such system is their overall complexity.
Sure, you can use them, and they're pretty flexible for the user.
However, when necessity forces you to crack the kernel open, the
learning curve is pretty big.
For example, let's imagine a computer with a broken SATA controller.
How would NetBSD behave on it? Hard to say, NetBSD developers don't
develop with that target machine in mind. Usually, when you have such
a machine, you replace it or repair it. But what if you can't? Maybe
you'll have to play in the kernel to manage to do something with that
machine, route around it. Maybe it will work, but maybe you'll be
stuck, and maybe that in that particular situation, it's going to
have tragic consequences.
And that's kind of what Dusk OS ( [1] ) is about.
HTML [1]: http://duskos.org/
iamnothere wrote 17 hours 43 min ago:
Exactly, DuskOS is for maintaining a somewhat degraded level of
civilization and perhaps rebuilding, while salvaged machines are
still common. CollapseOS is there if things get even worse, to
retain a minimal level of computing capability during the
transition to whatever comes next. Itâs hard to imagine the need
for CollapseOS while things are still working, but in some horrible
future where itâs the only system keeping the water system
running, people will appreciate it.
yellowapple wrote 13 hours 37 min ago:
The additional value in Collapse OS is that â as the hardware
capable of running even Dusk OS (let alone a more complicated
32+-bit operating system) continues to break down and dwindle in
supply â you still have an option such that you can
reasonably-comfortably use those more constrained systems for
simple tasks and free up the complicated hardware for complicated
tasks. You don't need a multicore 64-bit CPU to keep a typical
water system running; an 8-bit microcontroller is typically
enough, and having a software stack already ready to go
(including an ease of adapting to whatever specific hardware
might be wired to that microcontroller's pins) is a pretty big
deal even long before the point where we're shooting each other
over the last Z80s and PICs.
0_____0 wrote 1 day ago:
The viewpoints that the folks who run this site have are probably quite
alien to your own. They remind me more of the hackers of yore, how
people who interacted with technology at the margins of society used to
be, before computer tech became the new finance. Iconoclasts,
idealists.
I think it's worth reading the some of the rest of their site if you
have time. If you look at this page and are about to crap on it on HN,
take a bit and read collapse and goals and see if you have a more
nuanced view of who they are and what they're doing.
sph wrote 12 hours 22 min ago:
> The viewpoints that the folks who run this site have are probably
quite alien to your own.
As someone that finds more kinship with the ideas in this post, this
very well sums up the deepening alienation I experience when I
compulsively open a new tab to this forum.
I do not believe that, when I created my account 15 years ago, anyone
would have called the work of Devine Lu Linvega alien or iconoclast.
To me that's one of the purest examples of a hacker. A person that
explores the art of computer programming just for the fun of it,
instead of relegating it to simply a means to an economic end.
overfeed wrote 18 hours 55 min ago:
> take a bit and read collapse
Fears of a collapse are overblown by people who underestimate the
resilience of communities, and over-index on individualism, i.e.
preppers.
There is no shame in being a prepper - if you're completely honest
with yourself in the odds of the apocalypse you're gearing for, and
perhaps after talking to your therapist about ways your childhood
fears and insecurities may be showing up in your adult life.
iamnothere wrote 17 hours 34 min ago:
The permacomputing community arenât quite preppers, although
there is some overlap in interests with that community. Preppers
are usually concerned about one or more possible disasters and
think that with the right gear they can survive the big war, the
solar flare, whatever. Permacomputing is a mix of people who think
we are already doomed due to climate change, concerned people who
think we arenât yet doomed and want to help/lead by example with
simpler tech, and tech minimalists who arenât worried about doom
and who find the projects congruent with their desire for a simpler
lifestyle.
overfeed wrote 16 hours 37 min ago:
I was simply commenting on the Collapse page[1] that was
mentioned by gp - not the larger permacumputing community. The
collapse page[1] is pure nerd-prepper material - I say this a
subscriber to r/DataHoarder with a Kiwix SBC in my go-bag; I know
my people. I also am self-aware enough to realize this fantasy is
in line with XKCD #208[2].
Anyone that is in the US that is seriously modeling an
infrastructural collapse scenario (not a brief period of
unavailability), has to consider what that entails: that the
federal, state and local governments have failed. If that
happens, you'll have much bigger, and more fundamental problems
to tackle.
1. [1] 2.
HTML [1]: https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/collapse.html
HTML [2]: https://xkcd.com/208/
yellowapple wrote 13 hours 18 min ago:
Calling that collapse page ânerd-prepper materialâ is a bit
reductionist; there's very clearly a solarpunk/left-libertarian
bent to it (even ignoring the broader context of the rest of
the site) that contrasts pretty starkly with the typical
prepper âmy house is my castleâ right-propertarian
mentality. The prepper seeks to survive and rule over the
ashes, assuming the throne of the same legacy socioeconomic
systems that produced the collapse in the first place; the
solarpunk seeks to survive and build something better than
ashes, learning from the mistakes of those legacy socioeconomic
systems and hopefully preventing history from repeating itself.
The prepper centers on the individual, or maybe one's family;
the solarpunk centers on the community.
gsf_emergency_6 wrote 21 hours 53 min ago:
[1] [2] Remembering that HN is where results (serendipity) are
nonlinearly coupled to effort, by design
Keeps my work on track to _increase everyone's luck_ and not turn
into "new finance"
>who run this site
This breaks their hearts, because you got upvotes for literally quite
opposite of the truth.
HTML [1]: https://100r.co/site/about.html
HTML [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Rabbits
stackghost wrote 19 hours 50 min ago:
I've read this comment about 5 times and still have no idea what
you're trying to say
amatecha wrote 16 hours 3 min ago:
it's a bot or AI or something, check their other comments.
totally nonsensical posts
0_____0 wrote 20 hours 42 min ago:
I'm sure I got some things wrong but I'm not sure from your comment
what exactly that is.
Barrin92 wrote 1 day ago:
>If you look at this page and are about to crap on it on HN
Hundred Rabbits pops up here pretty frequently and people mostly have
good things to say, how can anyone dislike them, they're an oasis in
a desert full of AI crap these days. I always end up going down some
rabbit hole (no pun intended) on their site.
abetusk wrote 23 hours 28 min ago:
My main critique is their non-commercial licensing. For example,
the linked article is BY-NC-SA4.0.
My critique is pretty minor as most of the technical releases from
100 rabbits, as far as I can tell, is libre/free licensed, with the
non-commercial licensing reserved for writing and art. Even so, it
means there's effort required to decouple the non-commercial
aspects of projects from their libre parts and sends a big signal,
to me at least, that I should only ever consider their strictly
technical work for use.
When talking about permacomputing, for example, I don't know why
one wouldn't encourage, in any way possible, commercial viability
that would lead to the stated goal.
I have an affinity for the 100 rabbits folks, and I deeply respect
a lot of their work, but their reliance on non-commercial licenses
means that they're tacitly supporting copyright terms that are
dis-proportionally long that, in most cases, is well over a century
at this point.
Note that Stallman also has the same stance, putting his work under
a "no-derivatives" license, so it's not like free software folks
believe in "free culture", either.
geocar wrote 18 hours 22 min ago:
> When talking about permacomputing, for example, I don't know
why one wouldn't encourage, in any way possible, commercial
viability that would lead to the stated goal.
Because capitalism is what destroys the world. Fucking duh.
There's very little point in spending so much time thinking about
C compilers in forth that run on scavenged z80s these days if
capitalism is actually viable.
yellowapple wrote 13 hours 30 min ago:
> Because capitalism is what destroys the world. Fucking duh.
The issue is that âcommercialâ includes plenty of
not-necessarily-capitalist entities as well, like sole
proprietors and cooperatives (sole proprietors being
single-member worker cooperatives).
Of course, a society in which worker cooperatives and
individual craftspersons are the dominant forms of economic
participation is probably (hopefully!) also a society which has
done away with intellectual property and the enforcement
thereof, rendering software license terms (including
non-commercial use clauses) entirely moot.
geocar wrote 11 hours 30 min ago:
> The issue is that âcommercialâ includes plenty of
not-necessarily-capitalist entities as well
I see no issue, and believe me, I have the deepest empathies
for people who participate in capitalism under duress.
If you could explain why I or anyone else should need to help
some people murder so that those
"not-necessarily-capitalists" we are so worried about can use
my software without legal threat, I would happily listen to
it, but I think you will be unconvincing.
I mean, you have realised that someone could just ask, right?
I could listen to them, and if they had a reason that I
agreed was good, I could give them whatever they needed for
themselves without accessorising myself to that murder that
others would do with those things.
entaloneralie wrote 23 hours 24 min ago:
It's a good stance, I commend it. Although, there's a history as
to why the license is there.
The license exists there so that we were able to do take down
requests on OpenSea. We had to make the asset license explicit
for OpenSea to take down the copied works off their network.
In a different world where we are not made to participate in
crypto ecosystems against our will, we would not have that
restriction.
abetusk wrote 22 hours 55 min ago:
I know I wouldn't want to restrict the use of my works just
because there's a crypto bro out there that might profit from
an NFT.
When putting software under a libre/free license, there are
compromises to be made to promote freedom. One of them is
accepting that the software that's created might be used for
purposes that are considered bad by the author, such as being
used by military entities for violence [0]. This would be the
same argument I would make for artistic works, where I would
argue that the benefits of providing freedom in use of the
works outweighs the potential for abuse.
Part of my worry is that there's a large part of technology
that is artistic (writing, text, pictures, illustration, art,
music, etc.) that will be buried under a century of copyright.
The overlong copyright terms means that parts of our culture
will be restricted from the commons well beyond the window of
relevancy.
[0]
HTML [1]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#NoMilitary
entaloneralie wrote 22 hours 41 min ago:
When it happens to you, you can see how you react. I sure
remember having your stance at one point, in the abstract. My
personal use of license is reactionary to the situations I've
experienced.
I never really looked into the GPL before, their stance on
military use includes freedom of usage for institutions whose
purpose is surveillance and warfare, my gut feeling is that
they might not have asked themselves freedom for whom? the
missile manufacturer? I'm not sure that this sounds like
freedom.
I'll say this right out, I'll bounce out of open source if I
ever see my code used for military purposes. I'll keep
releasing works under the MIT until I can no longer in good
conscience do so.
abetusk wrote 22 hours 0 min ago:
Thanks for the clarity, I think I have a more consistent
view of your ethics now.
I'm not sure if it's cultural, but in the US there's a
strong sentiment for freedom of speech. Freedom of speech
is most important not when people are saying things that
one agrees with, but when they are saying things for which
one disagrees.
The FSF's stance on software freedom is almost surely well
thought out and deeply ideological. On one hand, it means
that for every bad case scenario, the freedom allows the
option for other good case scenarios. On the other hand, it
identifies how difficult and fickle it is to enforce a
purity test for usage and that any organization involved in
such a decision is bound to be corrupted.
Note that MIT is one of the more permissive libre/free
licenses, allowing for commercial re-use without a copyleft
component, network usage without providing source or patent
exemption. At the very least, you might want to consider
GPL or AGPL as they might help some of the bad use cases
you're trying to guard against.
yesbabyyes wrote 21 hours 2 min ago:
Crockford's license seems like a good alternative in this
case!
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4762107
Arubis wrote 1 day ago:
Whoooooo, this comment made me feel ancient. For what it's worth, the
time when this sort of thinking was the dominant paradigm
_overlapped_ with HN.
iberator wrote 1 day ago:
This is insane. why program Lisp when u can write in assembler or
bootstrap FORTH interpreter?
Btw. books rules in apocalypse. Just print them on some platinium paper
and voila!
AI can't destroy them (yet).
PaulDavisThe1st wrote 1 day ago:
Personally, I think there would be more value for most people in
having the .zim of wikipedia (.en) on their phone.
Even when cellular communications and wifi are no longer useful,
having the entirety of wikipedia in a solar-rechargeable device
strikes me as incredibly valuable. The copy I took last year is about
103GB.
patosullivan wrote 1 day ago:
Urbit vibes
xantronix wrote 1 day ago:
Howso? I can understand why there may be some parallels when it
comes to ensuring agency and sufficiency, but in a much broader
context, these ideas and movements seem to come from opposite sides
of the same coin.
xori wrote 1 day ago:
~~Written by the same people?~~
EDIT: ha, confused with
HTML [1]: https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/uxn.html
xantronix wrote 1 day ago:
lol yeah I'm pretty sure that if the UXN people were calling the
shots, Curtis Yarvin and his adherents would be among the first
to, let's say, receive a complimentary package at a French
Revolution-themed day spa.
siev wrote 8 hours 43 min ago:
Exactly my thought haha. And Urbit comes from the LISP/Lambda
Calculus world of concerning themselves with high level
abstractions and mathematical elegance above all, while Uxn and
similar systems follow in the footsteps of Forth and the idea
of "get something small and low level working as soon as
possible."
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