[HN Gopher] Permacomputing
___________________________________________________________________
Permacomputing
Author : tosh
Score : 164 points
Date : 2026-02-17 12:40 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (wiki.xxiivv.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wiki.xxiivv.com)
| jvanderbot wrote:
| There's something alien about pages like this. Seems like
| ramblings of an artistic that is vaguely tech themed but it's of
| course possible it contains deep insights. I just rarely get
| through one of these enough to learn what those are.
| Kuinox wrote:
| Permaculture is the art of picking words that sounds logical
| and smart, make studies with n=1 to determine what is better,
| erect rules to follow based on that, and the communities that
| group around that. This is the same thing for computers.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| They're an interesting set of people. I highly recommend
| reading some of the rest of their pages - you may not agree
| with everything they put forth, but they are clearly thoughtful
| people with a coherent if alien ideology.
|
| I think about _collapse_ more after encountering their writing.
| What it means for us, what it means for the people after us,
| what we owe them.
| patosullivan wrote:
| Urbit vibes
| xantronix wrote:
| 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:
| ~~Written by the same people?~~
|
| EDIT: ha, confused with https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/uxn.html
| xantronix wrote:
| 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.
| iberator wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| 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.
| Arubis wrote:
| 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.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >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:
| 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.
| entaloneralie wrote:
| 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:
| 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] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#NoMilitary
| entaloneralie wrote:
| 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:
| 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:
| Crockford's license seems like a good alternative in this
| case! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4762107
| geocar wrote:
| > 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:
| > Because capitalism is what destroys the world. Fucking
| duh.
|
| The issue is that "commercial" 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:
| > The issue is that "commercial" 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.
| gsf_emergency_6 wrote:
| https://100r.co/site/about.html
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Rabbits
|
| 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.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I'm sure I got some things wrong but I'm not sure from your
| comment what exactly that is.
| stackghost wrote:
| I've read this comment about 5 times and still have no idea
| what you're trying to say
| amatecha wrote:
| it's a bot or AI or something, check their other comments.
| totally nonsensical posts
| overfeed wrote:
| > 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:
| The permacomputing community aren't 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 aren't yet doomed and
| want to help/lead by example with simpler tech, and tech
| minimalists who aren't worried about doom and who find the
| projects congruent with their desire for a simpler lifestyle.
| overfeed wrote:
| 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. https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/collapse.html
|
| 2. https://xkcd.com/208/
| yellowapple wrote:
| Calling that collapse page "nerd-prepper material" 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 "my house is my castle" 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.
| sph wrote:
| > 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.
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| I find the CollapseOS approach unrealistic and somewhat self-
| indulgent. In a real collapse scenario, having a portable Forth
| environment for arbitrary microcontrollers wouldn't put us
| meaningfully ahead. The primary value of computers wouldn't 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 "collapse computing" 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:
| 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 (http://duskos.org/) is about.
| iamnothere wrote:
| 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. It's hard to
| imagine the need for CollapseOS while things are still
| working, but in some horrible future where it's the only
| system keeping the water system running, people will
| appreciate it.
| yellowapple wrote:
| The additional value in Collapse OS is that -- 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 -- 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.
| plastic-enjoyer wrote:
| I've read a few years ago about permacomputing and _still_ don't
| know what permacomputing is
| ronsor wrote:
| 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.
| oxw wrote:
| Permacomputing meeting in SF March 1st
|
| https://alexwennerberg.com/permacomputing.html
| qmr wrote:
| > 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.
| kev009 wrote:
| 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.
| amatecha wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-02-22 16:01 UTC)