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Permacomputing Wiki

261 pointsby entaloneraliealmost 3 years ago

23 comments

dustractoralmost 3 years ago
In one of the more obscure Ursula K Le Guin books, there was a passage that has always stuck with me. She&#x27;s describing a hypothetical society where (to paraphase) they had eventually come to the realization that:<p>&quot;the computer, once invented, could not be un-invented&quot;<p>They put most of the storage on the moon, most of the processing power in a network of satellites, and in every village there was a hut with a dumb terminal. The vast majority of the population didn&#x27;t need computer skills, only the handful of people whose lifetime tenured position was to maintain the hut and the terminal. The only &#x27;useful&#x27; function provided by the terminal was you could tell it what you had and what you wanted, and if there were people nearby with complementary needs and wants, it would tell you which direction to walk.
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rollcatalmost 3 years ago
I absolutely love it, that the website is available over plaintext HTTP. (The maintainer(s) should consider honouring the Upgrade-Insecure-Requests header[1], so that modern browsers still get the HTTPS version.)<p>I&#x27;ve recently got my hands on a PowerBook G4 (2002), a quite interesting and still somewhat capable machine; however the OSX version it&#x27;s stuck on (10.5.8) is having more and more problems reaching the TLS-secured web: TenFourFox is no longer maintained; Safari, curl, etc are all built against an ancient release of OpenSSL; etc. Even downloading TenFourFox is no longer possible, as system Safari can no longer load SourceForge, since SF requires a more modern TLS version than what the OS can understand.<p>Treating both plaintext HTTP and modern HTTPS as first-class citizens is the way to go for such projects &amp; efforts, so hats off.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;docs&#x2F;web&#x2F;http&#x2F;headers&#x2F;upgrade-insecure-requests" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;docs&#x2F;web&#x2F;http&#x2F;headers&#x2F;up...</a>
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betwixthewiresalmost 3 years ago
Ugh. Permaculture might have biosphere balance as a secondary effect, but the idea and focus of effort is about allowing natural processes to perform the maintenance for you. It is about using living machinery to automate the process. It jives well with sustainability, and that&#x27;s fantastic, but that&#x27;s not the focus. The focus is on the efficient production of useful goods in ways that require minimal maintenance by letting other creatures do all the work for you.<p>How exactly do you do computation in that way? There are ways, I&#x27;m sure. But not with anything resembling computers we use today. You&#x27;d basically need living computers. I&#x27;d love that, but I am not a fan of this rebranding of the term &quot;permaculture&quot; to shoehorn silicon into the sustainability movement, it doesn&#x27;t fit, unfortunately.
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alex_youngalmost 3 years ago
&quot;Don&#x27;t do things that harm the biosphere&quot; and &quot;maximize the lifespans of hardware components&quot; seem to be in conflict with each other.<p>Post 2008, CPU typical use efficiency per Watt has doubled every 1.5 years [1]. This means that your decade old machine is probably burning a lot of coal and dumping heavy metals into the atmosphere. Doesn&#x27;t sound too green to me.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.koomey.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;153838038643" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.koomey.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;153838038643</a>
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narratoralmost 3 years ago
What are you going to do about tin whiskers[1] showing up in electronics? How will you get lead soldered electronics that don&#x27;t grow tin whiskers and short randomly now that the EU has banned lead solder in new products? Are you going to use electronics from before 2006 when the RoHS legislation came into effect? Is anyone making consumer electronics with everything nickel plated for durability despite the cost and weight issues?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Whisker_(metallurgy)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Whisker_(metallurgy)</a>
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Ficealmost 3 years ago
&gt; Human-sized computing: a reasonable level of complexity for a computing system is that it can be entirely understood by a single person (from the low-level hardware details to the application-level quirks).<p>&quot;Personal Mastery: If a system is to serve the creative spirit, it must be entirely comprehensible to a single individual.&quot;<p>Dan Ingalls. Design Principles Behind Smalltalk, 1981. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;worrydream.com&#x2F;refs&#x2F;Ingalls%20-%20Design%20Principles%20Behind%20Smalltalk.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;worrydream.com&#x2F;refs&#x2F;Ingalls%20-%20Design%20Principles...</a>
MWilalmost 3 years ago
&quot;Is there even place for high technology (such as computing) in a world where human civilizations contribute to the well-being of the biosphere rather than destroy it?&quot;<p>One helpful indicator would be the technology required to prompt and hold this discussion.
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vkoskivalmost 3 years ago
Since I recently received my MNT Reform laptop, I feel like it&#x27;s appropriate to shill it here. Built like a tank, to be upgradeable for a long time. Also comes with more sustainable LiFePO4 batteries! I love mine, and will be using it for a very long time.
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gtirlonialmost 3 years ago
<i>&gt; Human-sized computing: a reasonable level of complexity for a computing system is that it can be entirely understood by a single person (from the low-level hardware details to the application-level quirks).</i><p>That ship sailed many decades ago.
hoshalmost 3 years ago
It&#x27;s a good attempt, though reading <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;permacomputing.net&#x2F;Principles&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;permacomputing.net&#x2F;Principles&#x2F;</a> ... I don&#x27;t think the authors really needed to create a different set of design principles for computing. Rather, applying the existing permaculture ethical and design principles to computing would have gotten everything and a lot more.<p>For example, rather than &quot;Care for Life&quot; and &quot;Care for Chips&quot;, those are still derived from the ethical principles of &quot;Care for Earth&quot;, &quot;Care for People&quot;, and &quot;Fair Share&quot;. And those three ethical principles are more comprehensive. Further, it would contextualize the <i>purpose</i> of computing, and not just simply designing the thing itself, in isolation.<p>The 12 design principles for Permaculture are also far clearer because they contextualize the relationship of the computing with the people, rather than the design of the machine by itself.<p>For example, &quot;Expose Everything&quot; is not a bad design principle when looking at just the machine (&quot;observability&quot;), but it is not nearly as versatile as the more generalized Permaculture design principle of &quot;Observe and Interact&quot;. It&#x27;s more important to look at a computational device&#x27;s place in the overall ecology. When I apply this to my backyard, I cannot always directly &quot;observe and interact&quot; the root system of plants. If I dig up the plant to examine its root system, then I have most likely killed that plant. I have to make guesses. Looking at it from a different angle, the Permaculture design concept of &quot;Zones&quot; was is a way to organizing things so one can systematically &quot;Observe and Interact&quot;.<p>Another Peramculture design principle is &quot;Integrate not segregate&quot;, another reason to &quot;Expose Everything&quot;.<p>Another one is &quot;Keep it small and simple&quot; in which there are two better Permaculture design principles, &quot;Use Small and Slow Solutions&quot;, and &quot;Apply self-regulation and accept feedback&quot;. Those two principles allows for the system to adapt, change, and grow, within the local conditions, and take advantage of regenerative cycles.<p>So I think it is a nice try, but I think the author has not yet really applied the Permaculture principles sufficiently broadly and flexibly.
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xialvjunalmost 3 years ago
I think permacomputing is something about software rather than hardware. For hardware, to human civilization it&#x27;s all about the use of power. But for software, we have lost so many things. Many documents have lost, many software can run in nowhere. That&#x27;s the problems we should solve.
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nairoddalmost 3 years ago
as far as inspiration goes, Devine Lu Linvega&#x27;s ideas and lifestyle is pretty interesting to me. would recommend people check him out. definitely adjacent. edit: also the low tech movement can be relevant
kepanoalmost 3 years ago
I love this idea and what is proposed in the Principles, but it&#x27;s missing a crisp definition. It relies a bit too much on the reader&#x27;s knowledge of permaculture.<p>I like the idea of piggybacking on permaculture but it&#x27;s not a perfect analogy, because computing isn&#x27;t exactly a naturally flourishing phenomenon.<p>What does carry over is the idea of being more thoughtful about computing, reducing energy waste, and generally architecting these systems for a longer time horizon. Perhaps in a way that can encourage stewardship over multiple generations.
skybrianalmost 3 years ago
Presumably, the principle of maximizing the life of hardware means after it&#x27;s gone into production and is widely replicated. (And, hopefully, standardized.) This the long-term supported version.<p>But to get the design right, you need to make prototypes, and probably a lot of them. I try to minimize design mistakes because reprinting a part is tedious, but I still have a box full of 3D printed parts that turned out not to fit quite right.<p>This is also true of education. Most of what students create themselves is never really used. Either it&#x27;s thrown away or gets put on a shelf somewhere. Making things badly and throwing them away is an essential part of education.
eternityforestalmost 3 years ago
I like the idea in theory, but basically all systems currently in use, are good enough to run &quot;pseudosimplicity&quot; programs without trouble.<p>We don&#x27;t need to make stuff all that lightweight, Moore&#x27;s law seems to have won. We just need to not invent a new way to make things horribly slow or otherwise bad, like, by not making stuff cloud first or have a mandatory blockchain feature.<p>Of course, a movement can be about more than one thing at once, and if the permacomputing community values through and through simplicity for it&#x27;s own sake, I can&#x27;t argue with that.
bullenalmost 3 years ago
This is what this looks like in practice: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;move.rupy.se&#x2F;file&#x2F;cluster_client.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;move.rupy.se&#x2F;file&#x2F;cluster_client.png</a><p>You can also use streacom cases with Atom 8-core (load balancer) and Xeon for that extra kick in computing, but 3x Raspberry 4 can saturate a symmetric 1Gb&#x2F;s.<p>Rather than 1x 10Gb&#x2F;s it&#x27;s better to have 2x 1Gb&#x2F;s (preferably distant from each other) with all passively cooled components under 60 celcius at full blast during the hottest day in summer.<p>The whole capable of running atleast 24 hours on lead-acid backup.
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feissalmost 3 years ago
I love the concept, it’s very appealing. However, I can’t stop thinking that this is mostly aimed to a post apocalyptic scenario, and if that is the case, computers would be the least thing to worry about :(
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pabs3almost 3 years ago
Reminds me a bit of the Bootstrappable Builds project.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bootstrappable.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bootstrappable.org&#x2F;</a>
def-almost 3 years ago
I was expecting this to be about Reversible Computing: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Reversible_computing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Reversible_computing</a>
ermiralmost 3 years ago
Could computers be built without perishable components such as capacitors? From my experience they&#x27;re the first components that usually break down or have the shortest shelf life.
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goodpointalmost 3 years ago
&gt; Avoid unreliable dependencies, especially as hard (non-optional) dependencies.<p>Meanwhile: cloudflare outage, SaaS and cloud oligopolies, browser monopoly.
pkdpicalmost 3 years ago
I love it, the principles really hold up to decent scrutiny.
tpoacheralmost 3 years ago
Nice site.<p>Is it also available on gemini by any chance?