[HN Gopher] Hundred Rabbits is a small collective exploring the ...
___________________________________________________________________
Hundred Rabbits is a small collective exploring the failability of
modern tech
Author : Bluestein
Score : 354 points
Date : 2024-08-01 17:00 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (100r.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (100r.co)
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| Their philosophy makes me think they should just use Windows XP/7
| or something and call it a day. Offline first? "past-proofing"?
| These are desktop and console programs where the OS vendors have
| spent onerous amounts of capital to maintain backward API
| compatibility. In other words: Windows and Win32, and nothing
| but. Everything else, including the Web, has been broken and
| deprecated several times over.
| mikae1 wrote:
| https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/duskos
|
| _> Dusk OS is a 32-bit Forth and big brother to Collapse OS.
| Its primary purpose is to be maximally useful during the first
| stage of civilizational collapse, that is, when we can 't
| produce modern computers anymore but that there's still many
| modern computers around._
| Bluestein wrote:
| > 32-bit Forth OS mixed with C
|
| I mean, what's not to love here? :)
| kragen wrote:
| the z80
|
| more generally, collapseos is cosplay, not engineering
|
| in more detail, collapseos is not a pragmatic engineering
| effort to foster resiliency, but an essentially religious
| effort to atone for the sins of the worldly through ascetic
| renunciation of pleasures such as guis, returning to an
| imagined arcadian past of austere virtue
|
| see against-collapseos.md in
| http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/pavnotes2.git for the full
| critique
| mburns wrote:
| DuskOS != CollapseOS (same author, the latter inspired
| the former).
|
| DuskOS doesn't run on z80. It's i386 or ARM. Whether that
| makes it a serious effort or not is still up for debate.
| kragen wrote:
| apologies! i haven't investigated duskos in any detail
| and so whatever opinions i may have about it are not
| worth considering
| pmarreck wrote:
| that URL leads directly to what looks like the contents
| of a .git directory (so, all the metainformation but no
| project directory listing)
|
| I'm curious because I buy this comment more than their
| mission statement, although I absolutely agree with their
| stance on the "longevity/maintainability problem" in
| software and hardware.
|
| but as soon as I saw the ranting about colonialism I was
| like "oh... basically, anarchist anti-capitalists"
|
| as soon as they have kids, they will quickly abandon
| their non-acquisition of resources stance, LOL
| kragen wrote:
| cf. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41133098
|
| collapseos isn't a 100r thing, and i haven't seen
| anything from virgil that sounds like an anarchist anti-
| capitalist. i have a lot of sympathies for the anarchist
| anti-capitalist point of view although personally i've
| suffered a lot more harm from anti-capitalism than from
| capitalism
| pmarreck wrote:
| I have sympathies for it too. But I am also not at all
| surprised by your "harmed more by anti-caps than caps"
| statement.
|
| The funny thing about having a kid (he's 3) is that you
| are forced to re-evaluate all your values and
| preconceived notions to see what it is you really want to
| transmit to your kid.
| kragen wrote:
| well, i live in argentina, see, so i've had the
| opportunity to live under an anti-capitalist government.
| if you've only lived in a society where capitalists have
| all the power then it would be unsurprising if the
| powerless anti-capitalists haven't harmed you
| copx wrote:
| I can't see the file there.
| kragen wrote:
| it's a git repo, you have to clone it
|
| i've added a header to that effect since it seems to have
| been confusing people
| djur wrote:
| There's something ironic about condemning someone for
| "ascetic renunciation of pleasures such as guis" and
| publishing it as a Markdown file available only by
| cloning a git repo.
| kragen wrote:
| the markdown file does say that this point of view
| resonates with me ;)
|
| there are other advantages as well. if someone clones the
| git repo, they'll still be able to read it after i die
| and my site goes down; and there's no incentive for
| anyone to pressure me to rewrite history by deleting
| things from it, which is a thing that has happened to me
| in the past, since i can't delete them from remote clones
| Bluestein wrote:
| The way you put it, it makes sense.-
|
| PS. For many XP was some sort of "sweetspot", as far as Win OSs
| are concerned.-
|
| PS. Then again, it depends. How much evidence of "past-
| proof"-ness do you need - in terms of "backstory" to meet that
| requirement? Linux, or - even better - some BSD variants go way
| further back.-
| senorrib wrote:
| Windows has become a garbage pile of spyware lately, but even
| Linux can't really compare to the insane level of backwards
| compatibility Windows offers.
| anticorporate wrote:
| > even Linux can't really compare to the insane level of
| backwards compatibility Windows offers.
|
| My experience is quite the opposite. I still play the
| Windows Entertainment Pack version of Tetris. In Linux,
| thanks to Wine, it just works. In Windows 10, I'm told to
| contact the publisher for a new version.
| pmarreck wrote:
| NixOS can.
|
| Because literally every piece of software in the Nix repo
| includes all dependencies (including things like build
| dependencies, not just runtime dependencies) that existed
| at the time it was built, all the way down to the metal
| basically
| kragen wrote:
| well, all the way down to the kernel, not the metal
| pushfoo wrote:
| TL;DR: They already wrote Varvara[1] + software[2] for it
|
| My understanding is:
|
| * The authors wanted to run on a Raspberry Pi powered by solar
| + batteries
|
| * They're often somewhere in the Pacific so their internet
| connection is often bad
|
| * Varvara[1] is the portable-enough solution which works for
| them
|
| * Others liked it enough to write a bunch of other tools[2]
|
| It's all pretty much self-hosting at this point. It's not for
| everyone, but why bother with Windows if it fits your needs?
|
| [1]: https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/varvara.html
|
| [2]: https://github.com/hundredrabbits/awesome-uxn?tab=readme-
| ov-...
| anthk wrote:
| They run 9front, much better than XP and 7. No reinstalls, no
| DLL hells, everything it's statically compiled, updates can be
| done totally in place and offline.
|
| Good luck running Windows 7 on an RPI and with a laughable
| power draw.
|
| Oh, and don't even compare VS + MSDN documentations (huge GB's
| wasted) vs what Acme can do and just the plan9's 9.intro.pdf
| book. The disk usage would wear out any SD in days. 9front,
| otoh, can even selfcompile itself in a breeze. Try that under
| Windows.
| Bluestein wrote:
| The _constraints_ under which they work are wonderful. Power
| included. It basically _mandates_ excellence, efficiency.-
| anthk wrote:
| Not just that. For any non-JS web, they can compile and
| share netsurf offline from 9front and happily post at HN or
| read lots of sites such as http://68k.news and
| https://midnight.pub
|
| And, with a Gemini client for 9front (there are a few),
| between the gemini 'capsules' (sites and blogs) and
| gemini://gemi.dev (web decrafying proxy to gemini, where
| you can read news stripping out the 95% of the pages,
| scripts, trackers and all the bullshit, they can get
| totally covered.
|
| Gopher9 (Gopher client) makes a good point with
| gopher://magical.fish for global news, translation services
| and such. Much less bandwidth spent than the web, for sure.
|
| With a bare irc client (again, literally few lines of shell
| scripting under 9front due how's designed) they can connect
| to the public IRC servers from bitlbee.org and connect to
| modern disservices such as Discord and Slack, at least
| being able to chat against their peers.
| Avshalom wrote:
| The thing is, while it might mandate efficiency, what they
| made was an un optimized 8 bit VM synthesizing 16bit
| arithmetic running on 64 bit hardware. It's not efficient
| at all, it's just that the constraints they gave themselves
| leaves enormous amount of power on the table.
| kragen wrote:
| you will probably be interested in the efficiency
| measurements i made in the thread linked from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41132868. the
| standard sdl uxn implementation is less inefficient for
| things like text editing than you'd expect from the facts
| you mention, and i suspect uxn11 may actually be pretty
| decent
| mephitix wrote:
| I think their philosophy / research is in understanding how to
| build modern software that is more resilient. So from that
| research/exploration standpoint it makes sense to me they would
| go that route instead of using older tech
| bagels wrote:
| My solution would have been: older copies of photoshop that don't
| require an internet connection and a larger battery + solar
| panels.
| Bluestein wrote:
| PS. Were they not to be bitrotten beyond repair, maybe some old
| "shareware" copy of Paint Shop Pro or similar, on a CD-ROM
| even.-
| imrejonk wrote:
| A larger battery and more solar panels doesn't seem to be an
| option for the authors:
|
| > The modern stack doesn't really work for us, it doesn't apply
| to the limitations that we have on the boat. We have 180 watts
| of solar. We just spent the whole summer with two 6-volt
| batteries, which is very small. When you're going down that
| route, at every turn people are telling to just put more solar
| panels, or to buy more batteries. That is such a modern way of
| solving your problem. In reality, technology like
| this(especially high-tech) rarely solves problems. It creates a
| lot of other problems, which on a sailboat is very immediate.
| Putting more solar would mean more windage, more chance of
| things flying off and cutting our limbs. More batteries would
| mean the boat would be heavier, it would stop us from being
| able to run away from storms.
|
| https://100r.co/site/weathering_software_winter.html
| Bluestein wrote:
| The _constraints " are amazing. And basically *drive* good
| solutions.-_
| James-Livesey wrote:
| When faced with a similar situation and come up with multiple
| potential solutions -- such as settling for older Adobe
| software versus creating your own resource-efficient graphics
| application, I'd definitely take the more creative and fun
| solution over the quick and simple one! Interesting how
| people's approaches vary in this way.
|
| (That does change somewhat when doing paid work though...)
| mikejulietbravo wrote:
| The start of this reads like the beginning of a cult manifesto,
| but then transitions to a very logical solution for an important
| problem.
|
| Baffling. I'm in
| jldugger wrote:
| It keeps bouncing between too real and too absurd.
|
| Absurd: Not enough power on our sailboat to run Ableton and
| Photoshop.
|
| Real: So we replaced it with open source technology.
|
| Absurd: That technology was based on Electron.
|
| Real: Electron was too bloated.
|
| Absurd: So we ported everything over to the NES.
|
| Real: And now you can run our software anywhere you can emulate
| an NES
| Bluestein wrote:
| Exactly my feeling.-
|
| PS. Which leads me - tangentially - to think that (maybe) the
| solution to (at least) some of our problems might someday be
| found _in_ a cult :)
|
| Who knows ...
|
| > Absurd: So we ported everything over to the NES.
|
| This was grand. The NES as a most effective "baseline"
| platform. Can totally see humanity sending out an NES
| emulator on Voyager VI as a last gasp.-
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| LessWrong had some pretty good advice in the early months
| of the pandemic, despite their terrible track record on
| politics and AI. There's a lot right with the Amish. You
| could write an entire book about the Rocky Horror Picture
| Show. Cults can have a lot to offer.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > Cults can have a lot to offer.
|
| ... in no small part perhaps because they remain isolated
| "pockets" of culture where - often - "progress" is slower
| or more controlled. Where idiosyncratic behavior becomes
| the "new" orthodoxy as behavior or culture "degrades".-
|
| Where was it ... "Nightfall" (the novel) I think it was
| where a cult periodically saves civilization - by being
| the only ones that know how to handle the aftermath.-
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> PS. Which leads me - tangentially - to think that
| (maybe) the solution to (at least) some of our problems
| might someday be found in a cult :)_
|
| The major religions have been beating that dead horse for a
| long time.
| yawpitch wrote:
| And then resurrecting it.
| Bluestein wrote:
| (I See what you did here :)
| bee_rider wrote:
| This is now my headcanon for why the UI of super advanced
| computers in 80's sci-fi movies looks the way it does.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Good call :)
|
| "8 bit 'looks' and hardware constitutes - and 'looks
| like' - some optimum as far as computing is concerned"
|
| ... so sufficiently advanced systems will look like it to
| interface with us as a sort of lingua franca.-
|
| AGIs. Alien probes. The works. They will all look to us
| like a C64 or NES would :)
| medstrom wrote:
| It's like how you can say that VT100 emulation has an
| expiration date, but you can't say that about the
| underlying concept of _some_ UI based on a screenful of
| monospaced text, which is immortal.
| BalinKing wrote:
| I apologize for an off-topic question, but I'm curious why
| you choose to write "." as ".-". Is it an internet
| convention I'm unaware of, or maybe punctuation from a
| language other than English?
| Bluestein wrote:
| No problem, thanks.-
|
| Please, vid.:
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40989221
| yard2010 wrote:
| The real question stands still - how can I join your cult?
| Bluestein wrote:
| Seconded.-
|
| Make it _a thousand rabbits_. Make it a flotilla. Make it
| an armada ... :)
| kragen wrote:
| cults are generally the only way to solve deep-rooted
| problems. otherwise people's habits are too strong and they
| keep reproducing the existing traditions that create the
| problems through unexamined avenues
|
| technically varvara isn't actually the nes
| Bluestein wrote:
| > cults are generally the only way to solve deep-rooted
| problems.
|
| Now _that 's_ an interesting proposition (which, I do not
| contend mind you ...)
| anthk wrote:
| I think they used Krita first. But UXN isn't restricted to
| small res art/screens. Look at oquonie.
| imp0cat wrote:
| Chat rooms and bare bones text editors aren't supposed to be
| process-heavy, and yet the popular communication platform
| Slack requires outrageous amounts of ram and CPU to function.
| [...] Making software this way is costly to off-grid users,
| or those on slow connections, [...]
|
| So true.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Slack had a good solution in the form of an IRC bridge but
| of course they killed it.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Yep. When you're small, cooperate, when you're big, kick
| everyone else out
| Bluestein wrote:
| Moat, then drawbridge removal.-
| worldsayshi wrote:
| I think you need to have the right mix of the absurd when you
| try to make something interesting.
| Avshalom wrote:
| everything about it reinforces the feeling that it's all just
| retroactive justification for finding a toy they made more
| fun than expected
|
| ETA: to be clear there's nothing _wrong_ with making a toy
| and then turning that toy into it 's own all-consuming hobby
| (TTRPGs for example) and one of the best parts of programming
| is how easy it is to do just that. It's just kind of annoying
| watching people wax rhapsodic about nonsense instead of
| copping to "yeah we're having a lot of fun, i feel like a kid
| again"
| subpub47 wrote:
| Funny, I was about to say the same thing about most
| "modern" tech.
| packetlost wrote:
| fwiw they actually live on a sailboat and have sporadic
| internet access and limited electricity, so saying it's
| retroactive justification isn't really true and minimizes
| the real problems they face.
| mplewis wrote:
| They could solve these problems by not living on a
| sailboat.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Living on a sailboat approaches some very very hard
| life/existential pinnacles that most people never even
| attempt to climb.
|
| Yeah, you can have a simple regular life; that's lower on
| problems maybe. But man, sailing around & futzing with
| interesting barefoot developers projects sure sounds
| challenging in a lot of very very excellent ways.
| photonthug wrote:
| Satellite internet is expensive, let's all move down
| town! Housing in the city is expensive, let's all move to
| sailboats! So you see at some point you have to address
| difficulties with some kind of approach besides avoiding
| them
| Avshalom wrote:
| UXN/Varvava don't do anything about relieving those pain
| points. WRT electricity it actually adds to the pain.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I think the general thesis statement is, "there are very few
| things we do today that couldn't have been done on older
| hardware".
| Bluestein wrote:
| Which, holds (?)
|
| PS. Except for AI, perhaps ...
|
| ... I was going to add certain forms of cryptography to
| that, but then realized that we've always have had some
| sort of cryptography that was "hardware-appropriate" (ie.
| sufficiently hard to break, to be useful) for the age. So
| older hardware was just fine ...
| medstrom wrote:
| Any crypto you did couldn't be future-proof in the way it
| is today though. Don't know if that's mainly due to
| better algorithms or from the fact modern CPUs are
| optimized to rapidly decrypt/encrypt things.
| fluoridation wrote:
| It was algorithms. Back in the 90s there was no AES or
| ECC. There was RSA, and it was _feasible_ to generate
| long keys, but it was impractical. Keys from back then
| could probably be easily factored nowadays. I think the
| spread of the Internet pushed demand for longer keys and
| better (more secure and efficient) algorithms.
| RyJones wrote:
| The Baffler was a favorite read of mine in the early 90s.
|
| https://thebaffler.com/
| mgaunard wrote:
| For me any potential technical argument and innovation is
| completely drowned in the needlessly pervasive anti-capitalist
| genderfluid digital nomad hippie talk.
| munificent wrote:
| I had the good fortune to meet and spend some time with Devine at
| Handmade Seattle a couple of years ago. It was an absolutely
| wonderful, inspiring experience.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Wishing to thank you for your comment, please, do tell. Can
| imagine it would have been (inspiring, etc.).-
| munificent wrote:
| They are exactly like you'd imagine from their online work.
|
| Extremely passionate about ecology. Pessimistic about where
| the world is headed but optimistic about our individual
| ability to cope with it.
|
| Super into low-level programming and old school pixel art and
| that whole aesthetic.
|
| Absolutely full of stories about sailing. And just completely
| _present_ in conversation.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > Pessimistic about where the world is headed but
| optimistic about our individual ability to cope with it.
|
| Therein lies one key, methinks. I find that refreshing. It
| seems a viable "compromise", and, a solution to "data
| disaster driven dispair" :)
|
| ... faith in the individual.-
|
| > And just completely present in conversation.
|
| Incredible.-
|
| Many thanks for sharing.-
| 0x3444ac53 wrote:
| You being in awe of them is very relatable to me lol. I
| discovered them a few years ago and seem to be surrounded by
| people that just don't "get it". A lot of people think
| programming and/or computer science as a way to make art, as
| a tool.
|
| What I think is cool about 100r is that it is not "computer
| generated art" or "digital art", but rather "computer
| science/language design/programming as art". It's like they
| have this respect and reverence for it that I've often felt,
| and I often feel isolated in feeling.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > that it is not "computer generated art" or "digital art",
| but rather "computer science/language design/programming as
| art".
|
| And, what an enormous difference there is, between these
| two things.-
| montebicyclelo wrote:
| Their 2d music programming language, Orca is very cool/fun. Some
| examples:
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=MNF8SF69QvM&list=PLb1uDATFJPcEEG...
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=DBI8eBMGyYs
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=mxr8Dtw2R5w
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=RDZiKYSGsjg
| smrq wrote:
| Orca singlehandedly got me out of a multi-year musical rut.
| It's such an interesting and different way of sequencing than
| the traditional piano roll experience. Like modular synthesis,
| it can be easier to just use it like a toy and not make
| anything "finished", but it really can spark the imagination.
| Bluestein wrote:
| The _best_ kind of tool (for creative work at least).
| Unpretentious "toys" that - particularly - don't "get in the
| way ...
| metasyn wrote:
| for anyone curious about learning, i made a tutorial and
| playground for orca:
|
| https://metasyn.srht.site/learn-orca/
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Orca's great!
|
| Here's a blog post I wrote after spending a long weekend
| figuring out how to use it to make some procedurally generated
| music: https://inventingsituations.net/2021/12/26/procedural-
| music-...
|
| and the screen-cap of some of the generated music:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF-DD43sk2E
| wdfx wrote:
| See also https://midinous.com/
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Wow that's beautiful. Looks intimidating. But cool.
| mephitix wrote:
| Occasionally i've stumbled upon some neat tool or beautiful
| software and i'm like, wow - who's behind this? And then I
| realize it's these two folks. Their approach is so surprising and
| inspiring, thanks for putting out some cool stuff into the world!
| hosh wrote:
| Have you looked into the permatech community in general?
| worldsayshi wrote:
| What do you mean by permatech community? When i googled it I
| didn't find anything that fits the context.
| miffi wrote:
| The search term is "permacomputing" afaik.
|
| Here's 100r's (specifically xxiivv's) page on the topic
| https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/permacomputing.html
|
| The first paragraph gives a good overview of the idea:
|
| > Permacomputing encourages the maximization of hardware
| lifespan, minimization of energy usage and focuses on the
| use of already available computational resources. It values
| maintenance and refactoring of systems to keep them
| efficient, instead of planned obsolescence, permacomputing
| practices planned longevity. It is about using computation
| only when it has a strengthening effect on ecosystems.
| lancesells wrote:
| So it's like permaculture but for software.
| hosh wrote:
| That's the idea. However, my initial criticism of the way
| permacomputing is formulated are:
|
| 1. We could have examined each of the 12 Permaculture
| Design Principle and attempted to directly apply them to
| software design. For example, "Observe and Interact" is
| so broadly useful and versatile (and the core of
| adversarial domains, such as warfare), it can easily be
| applied to software. You won't see it directly listed
| here: https://permacomputing.net/Principles/
|
| 2. The permaculture ethical principles are not there in
| full. "Care for life" refers to "Care for Earth", "Care
| for People", but nothing about "Fair Share". Comparing
| these two ways of looking at it, I don't see how the
| permacomputing formulation is an improvement on how the
| permaculture ethical principles are formulated.
| Furthermore, I think this has more to do with not
| sufficiently delving into the place of technologies
| within a regenerative paradigm. I am speculating here
| with little basis, but I don't think the people who came
| up with this got their hands dirty with planting,
| nurturing, and harvesting things.
|
| However, reading more with 100r, CollapseOS, DuskOS,
| there is a lot of thought put into this even if I think
| there are some key things missing from my experience with
| permaculture.
|
| It is why my friends and I are exploring the ideas of
| "permatech", what is Technology's full, integrated place
| within a living systems world view? We have yet to come
| up with anything coherent yet.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > planned longevity.
|
| What a grand concept.-
| hosh wrote:
| Oops, I meant "permacomputing". Among my friends in a
| private discord group, we were generalizing that to all of
| tech and I forgot it originated from "permacomputing".
|
| There is a related project from permacomputing that I'd
| like to highlight: CollapseOS/DuskOS which has overlapping
| and adjacent ends with what 100 Rabbits are trying to do
| with UXN. I know there are attempts to port UXN to DuskOS.
| azthecx wrote:
| What do you mean permatech?
| hosh wrote:
| I meant to say "permacomputing":
|
| https://permacomputing.net/
|
| http://collapseos.org/why.html
|
| https://100r.co/site/weathering_software_winter.html
| venantius wrote:
| Two people and a pet isn't really a "collective"
| subpub47 wrote:
| This is the best critique of the entire idea, clearly.
| nfrmatk wrote:
| That's the most constructive takeaway you have when looking at
| all their work? That's an unnecessarily limited view and
| doesn't add to the conversation.
|
| From my vantage point their work fits the definition nicely.
|
| "A collective body" [1] ... "Collectivized or characterized by
| collectivism" [1] ... "A political or economic theory
| advocating collective control especially over production and
| distribution" [2]
|
| [1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collective [2]:
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collectivism
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's a completely throwaway dis. As much as I
| like Orca it easily could be that calling themselves "a
| collective" is putting on airs or pretending to be a bigger
| movement than they are. But it could also be tongue-in-cheek,
| self-parody, or theater of the absurd (which seems more
| likely).
| tumult wrote:
| There are a bunch of contributors to these projects. I wrote
| the C version of Orca (and helped design the second version of
| its evaluation strategy) but also had help and ideas from other
| contributors as well. I wrote the Windows version of Uxn,
| Uxn32, which was a from-scratch implementation, except for a
| couple of things like the palette mixing table. The code from
| Uxn32's VM core ended up in other versions of Uxn emulators,
| which were then modified and improved by the people running
| those projects. There is not any governing body, committees, or
| authoritative leadership for these projects. We just talk to
| each other through various channels and do stuff. It's a
| collective.
| austinl wrote:
| Their sailing videos are very inspiring--from what I remember,
| they sailed from Vancouver to Japan, then down to New Zealand and
| back to Vancouver over the course of a few years.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueTCjpNXing
| sgu999 wrote:
| Ha, thanks for sharing! I quickly looked for something like
| that on their site but didn't find it.
|
| Love their editing style. Very inspiring indeed.
| 0x3444ac53 wrote:
| They're the best! I first came across orca while learning about
| esoteric languages, and to see how it spun out and evolved into
| the entire Vavara virtual computer has been amazing.
|
| They're smart, capable, and committed to openly sharing knowledge
| and ideas in their community.
| joeatwork wrote:
| UXN / Varvara (a project by these folks) is something really
| special https://100r.co/site/uxn.html - an approach to creating
| intelligible software by applying strict complexity constraints,
| sort of like Viewpoint Research's STEPS project, but with more
| concrete goals and an even smaller and simpler basis.
| metasyn wrote:
| for anyone curious about learning, i made an online port of UXN
| using emscripten that allows you to code and compile and
| emulate in a browser:
|
| https://metasyn.srht.site/learn-uxn/
| chiffre01 wrote:
| I read this and thought it was satire at first:
|
| "We eventually ported our tools to C, but while we had achieved
| ideal energy usage, portability was still an issue, so we kept
| looking. We learnt 6502 Assembly, seeing players run our games as
| NES roms on all these different platforms gave us an idea."
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| Wow, a _website_ about the "failability of modern technology"
| and "low-tech solutions" that connects to doubleclick.net,
| play.google.com and embeds a youtube video. Is this a joke?
| chambored wrote:
| Have you looked at their body of work? An embedded YouTube
| video does not negate their ethos.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| Well, it kind of negates it a little bit, because they are
| against trackers, and state that their website does not use
| them, but they are spreading Google's trackers through their
| website.
|
| Of course, this is almost certainly accidental and I'd think
| it would be corrected if it were brought to their attention,
| and the meat of their work is in domains other than
| lightweight websites.
| subpub47 wrote:
| I'm glad this is the best critique we can do.
| mrandish wrote:
| Brings to mind a comment I saw here the other day observing
| that some on HN seem to default to a rather "unkind" mode.
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| I don't default to unkind mode on every topic. Perhaps I
| phrased the comment too negatively here however. Note
| though that as a later comment pointed out, they claim to
| have "no tracking or analytics," so clearly this was a
| mistake on their part. A commitment to no tracking is also
| something I would expect from a site like this making the
| claims they are making. So clearly my criticism itself was
| well placed, even if the delivery was too harsh. Also, I
| would think they would at least check to see what embedding
| a youtube video does before doing it. And I do think
| embedding the youtube video is strange even ignoring the
| tracking for a site that describes itself as "small." Is it
| really small if you have a massive iframe embedded in it?
| eichin wrote:
| compare, perhaps, the adjacent thread that had comments
| like "I got that complaint about my blog too, and here's
| how I fixed it" and a bunch of other things that seemed
| plausible and helpful? (I don't know if 100r will make
| those changes, but I'm certainly going to look at them
| for some of my own youtube links...)
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| It's a cynical point of view ("Yet you yourselves
| participate in society! Curious!") but it holds some
| validity. They are using some very advanced tools to rage
| against the capitalist machine. Attacking modern power
| structures using tools and privileges that arise from those
| same power structures seems... well, _ungrateful_ at times.
| The lives they 're living were utterly inconceivable for
| most of human history.
|
| That said, it'd be even more cynical to dismiss all of the
| work and thought that Rek and Devine have put out there
| because certain elements of it seem a bit hypocritical from
| a certain point of view. I just spent a couple of hours
| surfing through their site, reading about their philosophy,
| and find myself respecting the parts I disagree with almost
| as much as the parts I identify with. That kind of content
| is exactly what HN's good for discovering.
| omoikane wrote:
| The HN audience seem to encourage this type of comment by
| consistently upvoting them, like how the current top
| comment is one that complains about tracking due to
| embedded video as opposed to something that is materially
| related to the site contents.
|
| I will do my part by upvoting the _other_ comments, but
| judging by the karma ranking and comment history of some of
| these commenters, I think I am in the minority.
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| >by consistently upvoting them
|
| My comment is actually downvoted at -3 points currently.
| As for the top comment, I don't see the issue with
| pointing out that the site is enabling the tracking of
| users when it claims not to, especially since it is
| directly related to the topic of the site itself. I don't
| think being unconditionally positive is in line with the
| site's goal of promoting "intellectual curiosity."
|
| >judging by the karma ranking and comment history of some
| of these commenters
|
| That top comment is from John Nagle of Nagle's algorithm.
| I doubt his karma is from being negative.
| skadamat wrote:
| We sorely need more serious experimentation with computing &
| computing cultures and IMO Hundred Rabbits is a great example of
| this. Instead of talking about ideas, they practice what they
| preach.
|
| As with most experiments, we can observe and borrow shadows of
| their ideas into our own life hopefully!
| Bluestein wrote:
| > We sorely need more serious experimentation with computing &
| computing cultures
|
| Indeed.-
|
| PS. If we stop and examine, our entire computing "paradigms"
| have been - mostly - driven, propelled forward by "industrial",
| commercial, business productivity (use cases) ...
|
| ... but what would have happened / will happen were these
| paradigms to emerge (and emerge mainly) from _art_ , creation,
| play, instead?
| skadamat wrote:
| One quirk here is that they say "This website has no tracking or
| analytics." but Brave is showing Double Click / Google Ads? Might
| be an oversight!
| tsunitsuni wrote:
| it is the embedded YouTube video most likely :)
| kragen wrote:
| i think this is the culprit: <iframe
| width="560" height="315"
| src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_1Y8PwD5XDs" title="YouTube
| video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay;
| clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-
| picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
|
| it seems to be doing telemetry/surveillance to play.google.com
|
| a thing to keep in mind is that accelerometer access has
| recently been shown to leak enough information about passwords
| to compromise them
| tek256 wrote:
| One of their founders, Devine, gave a wonderful talk at Handmade
| Seattle 2022 titled Weathering Software Winter
| (https://vimeo.com/780005704) that sparked some really
| interesting conversations about software resiliency and data
| preservation!
| irusensei wrote:
| I'd the name related to Centzon Totochtin?
| axblount wrote:
| Hundred Rabbits is like Urbit without the evil aura and digital
| real estate.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Hundred Rabbits is... nothing? Nirvana?
| nathanfig wrote:
| At WHOI we frequently run into some of these issues. Ocean-going
| projects often have long periods of disconnect, or have just a
| tiny bandwidth-capped connections that are meant for sending home
| critical data and not for automated software updates...
|
| So much software also just takes for granted that it should be
| allowed on the Internet.
| tomwphillips wrote:
| >So much software also just takes for granted that it should be
| allowed on the Internet.
|
| Indeed, and I find it a problem on land too. I use Miro at work
| and it is _awful_ on an unreliable internet connection, like on
| trains in the UK.
|
| I really value local-first software for this reason. I'd like
| to see more of it.
| rendang wrote:
| This page https://100r.co/site/philosophy.html says > Preparing
| for impending apocalyptic events should mean collective action
| and structural reform, not individualism and isolation.
|
| What apocalyptic events?
| Animats wrote:
| Site: "This website has no tracking or analytics."
|
| Privacy Badger blocked tracking from:
| googleads.g.doubleclick.net static.doubleclick.net
| play.google.com www.google.com www.youtube.com
|
| Because <iframe width="560" height="315"
| src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_1Y8PwD5XDs"
| title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0"
| allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write;
| encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"
| allowfullscreen> </iframe>
|
| If you use anything from Google, you will be tracked.
| lovethevoid wrote:
| The embed has to be changed to YouTube-nocookie (which is what
| happens when you enable privacy enhance mode when sharing
| embeds). But that might not entirely comply with GDPR, as
| Google still does attempt other measures of tracking.
|
| So they should either introduce a cookie banner, find an
| alternative host that more strictly adheres to privacy
| concerns, or just host the video themselves in a video element.
| kragen wrote:
| also you could just embed a self-hosted image that _links_ to
| youtube. presumably if somebody clicks on the image with the
| youtube logo on it they know they 're going to youtube
|
| i mean peertube is a great alternative, and nowadays browsers
| are pretty okay at just playing bare mp4 files if you re-
| encode them with ffmpeg -movflags faststart -c copy, but if
| for whatever reason you choose to use youtube instead there
| are some harm-reduction measures you can take
| KronisLV wrote:
| > also you could just embed a self-hosted image that links
| to youtube.
|
| I've done this in the past by literally grabbing a
| screenshot of the video thumbnail (and the play button) and
| adding a link to that image.
|
| Sure, it won't play in the same page and won't be up to
| date with thumbnail or other presentation changes but I
| didn't care - it was a small image that also didn't include
| any executable code or privacy risks.
| kragen wrote:
| yes, exactly!
| Bluestein wrote:
| Peertube. Now _there 's_ an idea whose time has come.-
| Animats wrote:
| I'd like to see Peertube clients as widely available as
| Wordpress clients. They don't have to be federated. You can
| just host your own stuff.
| troupo wrote:
| Apparently there's http://youtube-nocookie.com/ that doesn't do
| that, but of course that's not the default.
|
| Someone just pointed out I have the same problem on my blog and
| I'm very pissed. It's not enough that their embeds break every
| Lighthouse metric and recommendation. It's all this, too
| Bluestein wrote:
| > If you use anything from Google, you will be tracked
|
| Google's become a marketing-profiling engine, wrapped in ad-
| serving infrastructure, wrapped in the decaying remnants of a
| search engine.-
| devjab wrote:
| It's been like that since August 2000 when they launched
| their premium sponsorship program, which was replaced by
| AdWords later that year.
|
| I'm not sure you can fully blame Google for what the web
| became though. Part of the reason search engines are close to
| useless here 24 years later is because most of the content
| people produce go to SoMe sites. Sites like Hacker News,
| sites like Medium and so on and because of how everything
| became a popularity matrix people are posting soooo much
| useless stuff online. Where it used to be you actually had to
| have something to say to bother putting it online, because it
| took an effort, we now live in a world where 90% or the talk
| people do is while they're on the shitter. Those 90% is a
| number I pulled out my ass, but it would be hilarious to see
| an actual number on just how much internet "content" gets
| created by people on a toilet.
|
| It is what it is though. To make a functional search engine
| today which was on par with Google in 2000, you'd probably
| need access to browser bookmarks of the people you've ranked
| as having interesting taste in what they bookmark. Which
| probably isn't really possible without breaking a lot of
| laws, if at all.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > on just how much internet "content" gets created by
| people on a toilet.
|
| I'll pull out an equally haphazard guess: Up to 5%.-
| buyreddit wrote:
| Makes sense. Tangentially, people always mention of
| spending time on the toilet, but I never could relate as
| its a max 2-3 minute activity for me, usually less. Only
| have enough time to read some Reddit posts. Maybe, as I get
| older, this will change.
| codazoda wrote:
| I love their work. I've also been working on some video to
| teach people how to publish their own book (the first of which
| I'll make available free when it's ready).
|
| Anyway, I'd like to NOT embed YouTube. Maybe I will anyway, but
| I wonder if anyone has alternatives, especially if they are
| scrappy, tiny alternatives like those that I imagine 100r might
| produce.
|
| I'm considering MP4 or WebM in HTML and wilder ideas like an
| audio file and a few images that are started at the same time
| with JS.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| The simplest thing would be to simply link to a Youtube
| video, perhaps with a small warning that it will take them to
| Youtube which uses trackers. You could even make the link an
| image that is the thumbnail of the video.
|
| Not the prettiest or purest solution, but very simple.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Anyway, I'd like to NOT embed YouTube. Maybe I will anyway,
| but I wonder if anyone has alternatives, especially if they
| are scrappy, tiny alternatives like those that I imagine 100r
| might produce.
|
| I use lite-youtube on my site for this reason. Instead of
| embedding the YT player directly, it shows a thumbnail that
| pulls in the embed when you click to watch the video.
|
| That way visitors aren't tracked unless they actively click
| the thumbnail to watch the embedded player. Iirc it also
| works as just a link so visitors have the option to cmd+click
| or right-click-copy to avoid the embed.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Turn your videos into HLS playlists (.m3u8) or mp4 and host
| the individual video files behind Cloudflare. Serve them on
| the frontend using JW Player or some other JS video player
| and from the backend using a $5 DigitalOcean droplet that
| serves the files from block storage.
|
| You'll have to learn some ffmpeg incantations but the
| bandwidth will be free and your total costs will be the tiny
| VM and block storage. Might even be able to point Cloudflare
| at a public bucket and skip the VM.
|
| If you need to store and serve several terabytes of content,
| a dedicated server instead of block storage will be your best
| bet (again with Cloudflare), you'll just need to figure out
| offsite backup and restoration.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Doesn't cloudflare TOS forbid video content?
| jrvieira wrote:
| why wouldn't you host your own video file? I don't understand
| this dependency on youtube
| saulpw wrote:
| Streaming is important, especially for longer videos. I
| don't believe any static hosting site supports video
| streaming.
| j3s wrote:
| Rek drew the pufferfish on my website & i love it to death
| https://j3s.sh
| apsurd wrote:
| I read all your poems just now. They're perfect, thank you!
| Just what I need. They speak to me.
| latentnumber wrote:
| Thank you for the poems. They're weirdly soothing.
| kragen wrote:
| we had a really wonderful thread about uxn/varvara on here in
| june: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40805267
| istrice wrote:
| I've been following these guys for a decade now (maybe more??)
| and I was always blown away by their skills and aesthetics.
| Devine has been a huge influence on my own artistic style and
| finding xxiivv.com on some random chan during high school, and
| getting lost in it, was a big mind-changing event. Glad to see
| they're still sailing around the world.
| pmarreck wrote:
| I never heard of these guys and this is a fascinating rabbit
| hole. I don't agree with everything they stand for (and that's
| OK!) but the long term maintainability and sustainability of
| computer software and hardware I am 100% onboard with.
| yllautcaj wrote:
| I think sailing and free software have in common the type of
| freedom that is not unlimited, necessarily constrained by the
| reality of sharing a planet with billions of other primates.
| There are a lot of rules one must follow to share the pacific
| ocean (especially the parts close to land) with other people, but
| that doesn't make travel under wind power any less captivating.
|
| Also, the Yamaha 33 is an impressively tiny and light boat for
| the sailing they're doing, let alone living and working on.
| edgarvaldes wrote:
| The name reminds me of the fictional Twelve Monkeys.
| codazoda wrote:
| I guess I'll also take the opportunity to point out that my Neat
| CSS framework was partially inspired by reading their work.
|
| I continue to use it for nearly all my projects now. I have
| become addicted to the smallness of it all.
|
| https://neat.joeldare.com
| sarimkx wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38878760
|
| Crazy how HN works. I posted this 6 months ago because I collect
| unique personal websites, but no one took a bite...
|
| Glad people took interest this time.
| criddell wrote:
| It's been submitted many times. Sometimes people read and
| comment, sometimes they don't.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=100r.co
| rewgs wrote:
| Love these two. I'm always so happy to see whenever they're
| posted to HN. They're such interesting people, and I so deeply
| respect their commitment to their values and continuous
| evolution. The world needs more people like this.
| golergka wrote:
| > To undermine the capitalist structure and its abusive scripts
| about human worth in relation to work, productivity, and
| ownership. To subvert oppressive gender norms and put in question
| the binary. To actively unlearn biased and colonial thinking.
|
| It's hard to take people with this political manifesto seriously,
| but I have to give credit where it's due -- their work is
| impressive. Many artists say that they "explore" something and
| end up with completely bland "social critique" pieces that don't
| say anything new, but these guys manage to do a lot of
| interesting stuff, especially Orca.
| incanus77 wrote:
| If anyone is interested further, I would highly recommend one of
| Devine's latest talks, from Strange Loop:
|
| https://100r.co/site/computing_and_sustainability.html
|
| Transcribed and video format. Among other things, they came into
| computing from a bit of a different direction and ended up
| building tools and a platform that I'm betting 90% of people in
| the industry would revere in awe as things beyond their
| understanding. Truly an inspiration.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| They've been around for 15+ years I think. Recently found some
| clones of their repos that aren't available/updatable. Very
| fascinating folks and collective activity. More than just
| software-making
| mgaunard wrote:
| "a small collective exploring the failability of modern tech"
| really just means "a couple living on a boat".
| barbs wrote:
| From their mission statement (https://100r.co/site/mission.html):
|
| > _Diversity is important in nearly all aspects, whether it 's
| with computers, or with life itself. A polyculture of tools and
| systems distributes the surface of attack and creates resilience.
| Viruses can attack a single crop, or a single computer
| architecture. The more services, or resources are centralized,
| the more power is concentrated into fewer hands and more easily
| taken over._
|
| Feels particularly relevant given the recent Crowdstrike outage.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| https://100r.co/site/princess_louisa_inlet.html
|
| "PLI is truly a picturesque place, nestled between
| extraordinarily large mountains and cliffs, blessed with clear
| waters and lush forests. The waters in the inlet are very calm,
| it is well-shielded. Any boat wakes travel far thoughout the
| inlet, from wall to wall, and take a long while to subside. If
| motoring in this inlet, go slow."
|
| Wow. Surprised to see one of my favourite places show up on HN.
|
| If you have the opportunity to go to Princess Louisa Inlet, I
| _highly_ recommend it.
|
| The contrast between the glaciers and the ocean is breathtakingly
| beautiful.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Princess+Louisa+Inlet/@50....
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