[HN Gopher] Permacomputing Wiki
___________________________________________________________________
Permacomputing Wiki
Author : entaloneralie
Score : 93 points
Date : 2022-06-21 20:16 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (permacomputing.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (permacomputing.net)
| dustractor wrote:
| In one of the more obscure Ursula K Le Guin books, there was a
| passage that has always stuck with me. She's describing a
| hypothetical society where (to paraphase) they had eventually
| come to the realization that:
|
| "the computer, once invented, could not be un-invented"
|
| 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't need computer skills, only the handful of people whose
| lifetime tenured position was to maintain the hut and the
| terminal. The only 'useful' 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.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| This seems like it would leave the dumb-terminal users at the
| mercy of whomever controlled the compute and storage
| infrastructure.
| gunshai wrote:
| My very first thought. hah
| guerrilla wrote:
| Weird that you automatically assumed it would be private
| property rather than democratically managed or self-managed.
| EUROCARE wrote:
| Weird that you don't consider how democracy doesn't always
| work out as intended. See: Corruption, Donald Trump. Not
| that it's bad or isn't the best we have, but there are a
| lot of superficially democratic states that became de facto
| property of one or a few. See: Russia.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Superficially democratic states (I like your term) aren't
| democracies to me. I meant literally democratic, not a
| theatrical aristocracy. I don't consider the US to be
| democratic for that reason. Something like liquid
| democracy or a representative democracy with arbitrary
| right of recall would work.
| EUROCARE wrote:
| Still, even that system could be influenced and converted
| by someone.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I don't know how to respond to your claim because it's
| too vague. In any case, perfection is the enemy of good.
| Actual democracy would be better than _this_. It seemed
| like the society they were talking about was utopian
| anyway, so everyone was being kind and cooperative
| anyway, not operating adversarially like we do today.
| widjit wrote:
| that sounds very interesting; do you have any idea which book
| this was?
| brian_herman wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Always_Coming_Home
| wcerfgba wrote:
| Sounds great! Which novel was this?
| rst wrote:
| Sounds like Always Coming Home
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Does the history deal with the obvious risks of such system?
| This looks like the postapocalyptic equivalent of "Meet hot
| milfs near <SUBJECT_CITY>".
| skybrian wrote:
| Presumably, the principle of maximizing the life of hardware
| means after it's gone into production and is widely replicated.
| (And, hopefully, standardized.) This the long-term supported
| version.
|
| 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.
|
| This is also true of education. Most of what students create
| themselves is never really used. Either it's thrown away or gets
| put on a shelf somewhere. Making things badly and throwing them
| away is an essential part of education.
| vkoskiv wrote:
| Since I recently received my MNT Reform laptop, I feel like it'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.
| amatecha wrote:
| I really want one! It will probably be my next "new computer"
| purchase, unless something more appealing to me is made
| (probably not happening). amazing balance of fully open
| hardware and sustainable/repairable. I couldn't feel good about
| buying a computer that is not OSHW. It just feels wrong to buy
| single-use unrepairable stuff that has forced obsolescence
| built in (looking at Apple ecosystem especially here). That
| said, my current hoard of old ThinkPads is doing well so it's
| pretty tough to justify purchasing anything new.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| I've been very interested in this, but one thing I haven't
| seen:
|
| What's the display like? If you have a calibrator, what's the
| gamut?
|
| They got the input devices right, but I'm curious if they got
| the output right. They paid attention to the DAC, so I have
| hope.
| rollcat wrote:
| 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.)
|
| I've recently got my hands on a PowerBook G4 (2002), a quite
| interesting and still somewhat capable machine; however the OSX
| version it'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.
|
| Treating both plaintext HTTP and modern HTTPS as first-class
| citizens is the way to go for such projects & efforts, so hats
| off.
|
| [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/web/http/headers/up...
| amatecha wrote:
| Just wanted to toss an idea, you can run latest OpenBSD on that
| G4 PowerBook and it should run well (and have all the latest
| encryption/security features of course). I've got it running on
| an iMac G4 (among many other older computers). Of course I also
| know OS X has its own appeal, just throwing the idea out there
| in case you weren't aware! :)
| amatecha wrote:
| I allow http:// on my personal site as well due to this reason.
| I strongly support the use of old computers (and am planning to
| remove all JS from my site, just haven't got around to
| replacing the ready-made theme I started with). "Old" computers
| are only "obsolete" because corporate powers pushed forward and
| left perfectly-working stuff behind.
| 320x200 wrote:
| Oh thanks for the tip! Did not know about the Upgrade-Insecure-
| Requests, will have a look and add to the wiki :)
|
| Your story is exactly why we gave both HTTP and HTTPS access.
| I'm also still super inspired and happy to see how the whole
| Amiga website ecosystems tend to be served mostly over HTTP, so
| that it's possible to browse such resources on the most
| modest/limited/bare configurations.
| bombcar wrote:
| Is it possible to MITM yourself and use a proxy to downgrade
| SSL for you?
| Taywee wrote:
| I'm actually doing this kind of thing at work right now. A
| client has a piece of software written by a vendor that went
| belly-up in 2007. The software is a central part of their
| business (don't ask me why they didn't try harder earlier to
| replace this piece of software in the past 15 years), but
| only talks SSL 3.0 and talks to internet resources to
| function.
|
| We had set up a shim for them to give them time to fix this
| mess, by setting up mitmproxy[0] explicitly enabling SSL 3.0
| and upgrading the protocol for external requests. Since then,
| the shim has been killed by a careless upgrade, and it turns
| out that most SSL software (including OpenSSL) can't even be
| forced to talk SSL 3.0 anymore. If you want to get OpenSSL to
| talk SSL 3.0, you need an old version. The modern versions
| maintain the enable-ssl3 option, but it is always forced to
| no-ssl3 at configure time. I don't know if there's an easy
| way around this, so I've set up a docker image that pulls and
| builds and old version, and installs an old version of
| mitmproxy (along with python's cryptography and other
| dependencies).
|
| It's not elegant, but it does technically work, for now. At
| some point, it's likely that the ciphers supported by it
| won't be supported by the modern internet, in which case I
| suppose you could daisy-chain mitmproxy instances, each
| upgrading the protocols for the last.
|
| If somebody has a better idea for this kind of situation, I'd
| love to hear it. I hate this setup and would love to have a
| more elegant solution.
|
| edit: I actually discovered that OpenSSL 1.1.1p doesn't force
| no-ssl if you do enable-ssl3 _as well as_ enable-ssl3-method.
| That 's a much more workable solution, and passes tests. I
| mentioned OpenSSL 3.0.4 in a previous edit of this comment,
| but it turns out that compiles, says it enables ssl3, but
| fails to complete an SSL 3.0 handshake.
|
| edit 2: If anybody is curious, here's a working Dockerfile
| example for this, with configuration, volumes, and path stuff
| left as an exercise for the reader:
| https://paste.ofcode.org/uCyMuF6NtLKGyesT8FKYTB
|
| [0]: https://mitmproxy.org/
| orang2tang wrote:
| You might be interested in this:
|
| https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/interwebppc-browser-a-r...
| feiss wrote:
| 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 :(
| MWil wrote:
| "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?"
|
| One helpful indicator would be the technology required to prompt
| and hold this discussion.
| otikik wrote:
| Yes, here are some perhaps more direct examples: Irrigation
| control for fields, temperature control for greenhouses and
| compost piles, early detection of fires via treatment of
| satellite imagery, calendar control (when to plant seeds, when
| to fertilize), knowledge repository, calculation of
| shaded/lighted areas throughout the year.
| alex_young wrote:
| "Don't do things that harm the biosphere" and "maximize the
| lifespans of hardware components" seem to be in conflict with
| each other.
|
| 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't sound too green to me.
|
| [1] https://www.koomey.com/post/153838038643
| criddell wrote:
| Maybe they should say _optimize_ rather than _maximize_ , but
| then it's pretty hard for me as a consumer to know when it
| makes sense to upgrade.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I think to truly advance this discussion in good faith (as
| opposed to just as a general snow against e-waste concerns),
| you have to look at the full lifespan story. Like, yeah, that
| computer that's 10 years old maybe shouldn't be running any
| more, but do the gains associated with _annual_ replacement
| justify the production and e-waste cost of all the intermediate
| ones? What about a 2- or 3-year replacement cadence?
|
| How does the calculus change if the computer is being operated
| somewhere where it's cold most of the year and so the "waste"
| heat still has a useful function?
|
| How does it change if throwing out the computer also means
| throwing out a battery and screen, as is the case for laptops
| and phones? Does the extra mass of a tower pay for itself in
| terms of longer lifespan as people upgrade those systems
| piecemeal?
| efsavage wrote:
| For many devices (e.g. a power tool, or part of a vehicle)
| making a chip that lasts for many years would be more efficient
| than replacing it with one that drew less power but required a
| large batch of power to manufacture, plus the cost to dispose
| of the old one.
|
| Also, there are many hardware components besides CPUs where
| durability and repurposability would far outweigh operating
| efficiency.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| On the other hand, creating a new computer and throwing out the
| old might be a lot more harmful to the environment than just
| continuing to use the old computer.
| simonh wrote:
| There's going to be break even point where it's worth doing the
| replacement.
|
| Manufacturing a modern laptop produces around 360 kg of CO2,
| while energy utilisation operating it for 8 hours a day for a
| year produces roughly 15 kg of CO2. So in CO2 terms
| manufacturing costs dominate massively over operating costs.
| Even if you run the computer for 10 years the energy
| consumption comes to less than half of the manufacturing
| footprint.
|
| That's for modern laptops though, so I suppose if a 10 year old
| computer uses vastly more energy its possible it's energy
| consumption dominates over it's manufacturing footprint in a
| much shorter period.
|
| https://circularcomputing.com/news/carbon-footprint-
| laptop/#....
| [deleted]
| pantalaimon wrote:
| But power use per CPU has increased in general.
| floren wrote:
| I could run my 38 year old Macintosh off solar panels if I
| wanted to.
|
| In contrast, I'm not aware of any currently-produced computers
| made from completely-recycled materials, so any new hardware
| you buy will have components made of materials dug out of the
| earth & processed.
| [deleted]
| nairodd wrote:
| as far as inspiration goes, Devine Lu Linvega'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
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-06-21 23:00 UTC)