[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)