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Post-Apocalyptic Programming

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Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#71

Post by blamestross »

manofmanysmiles wrote: post #65
blamestross wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I only see people. I only see atoms dancing around. That doesn't make it a useful abstraction at the scale we are discussing. Government is just an abstraction over a group of people self organizing. > People feeling they have a right to use violence to achieve their goals, not so much. Agreed, but government monopoly on violence is the only system that seems to have stuck. I would prefer a system of anarchy where…

> Libertarian presumption that people, removed from the system of control, would all act better" My premise is more: "If people act better, and then perhaps we won't need a system of external control." I will admit I dream of a world that may not be possible. However, I will continue dreaming, and act to see this dream come to fruition.

The path to such a future will either be paved with mass extermination to lower to population to remove scarcity or via surviving with government until scarcity is defeated and government can be safely dismantled.

I do agree that there is a root problem with any existing power structure not being truely incentivized to reduce scarcity and then loose power, but that doesn't make the thanos solution more ok.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#72

Post by manofmanysmiles »

blamestross wrote: post #60
manofmanysmiles wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me a government, and I’ll believe you that it’s not a superstition. I only see people. People organizing and working together is great. People feeling they have a right to use violence to achieve their goals, not so much. Edit: https://xkcd.com/386/ I will take this opportunity to to try to express myself a bit more clearly. I don't really expect to convince anyone of anything, but rather I would like to reach t…

> I only see people. I only see atoms dancing around. That doesn't make it a useful abstraction at the scale we are discussing. Government is just an abstraction over a group of people self organizing. > People feeling they have a right to use violence to achieve their goals, not so much. Agreed, but government monopoly on violence is the only system that seems to have stuck. I would prefer a system of anarchy where…

Replying to the lower comment by 'alehlopeh' since I don't think threaded replies go this far down.

Right now, I'm looking for people with "naive optimism" who would like to see this world. There are a few of us. I'll share concrete details with those folks.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#73

Post by speed_spread »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #34
kibwen wrote: post #23

Even aside from the apocalypse, I was wondering recently how someone might "pass down" some piece of software, like say a video game, to their descendants. If you want to leave a written record for future generations then it's easy enough to print out a book on some acid-free paper and reasonably expect that it will last for up to a millennium. But for robustly archiving a piece of software it's not enough to print o…

I am most worried about the hardware. I am afraid we will have to start all the progress completely from scratch.

IMHO, modern microcontrollers is where it's at when it comes to preserving the current technological base. They're 32 bits and relatively high powered, yet cheap and reliable enough. They don't need cooling and are robust to be fed from different power sources. If you base your software stack on, say, the ARM Cortex M4 or even M0+, you should be good for long time. You can stash a lot of spare parts and can maintain boards using simple soldering techniques.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#74

Post by manofmanysmiles »

manofmanysmiles wrote: post #24

I love prepping, up to a point. If we all would like to live in a world without war, the only path I see is if people learn to be strong as individuals, able to self govern, grow emotionally and take responsibility for their own actions. As long as we use collective thinking and externalization our power in organizations, believe in superstitions like money, government, “the greater good”, rather than recognizing wha…

Replying to myself to say I will not be replying any more unless it's to people that do "get" what I'm saying. I chose not to expend any more energy arguing.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#75

Post by hunterb123 »

andsoitis wrote: post #62
hunterb123 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of anything more useful than becoming a "prepper" and hoarding data on hard drives these days. There's hardly any difference than prepping and camping, you just take your gear with you every now and then, practice with your gear, use your rations and replace. Prepping is usually pretty ecological as well, it leads to coops, greenhouses, chicken coops, water recycling, composting, solar, repairing skills…

You do you, but for me, orienting my entire life around potential catastrophe would be unbearable.

I don't remember saying I orientated my entire life around catastrophes?

It's just getting groceries like normal once you have everything setup.

Camping is a fun hobby, I do it a couple times of year anyway so my extra stays ready and gets use.

I do like the peace of mind knowing the family will have supplies during storms and other events like lockdowns.

Some people prefer the head in the sand strategy or to wing it when something happens, or to depend on more prepared people, that would stress me out and be unbearable.

You don't do anything to prepare for emergencies?

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#76

Post by seanw444 »

hunterb123 wrote: post #20
havblue wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I get the idea that prepping can become an unnecessary use of resources and result in people thinking you're crazy, I still think of the simple fact that all civilizations end eventually. Certainly they collapse for different reasons and at different rates. But the lights will go off eventually for our generation, or the next, or the next... Nothing lasts forever so it's probably worth planning for some level o…

The whole purpose of prepping is to prepare the necessary amount of resources for an emergency. If you stock too much food or water it will expire, you have to rotate it, so you eat it and restock. If you stock too many non-perishables of something you don't need you won't have enough room for more useful things. Prepping and looking crazy aren't coupled. Prepared people can be normal, it's not just what you see on T…

Unless you want to die, there's no reason not to prep. It's weird that it's looked down on.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#77

Post by ifyoubuildit »

kibwen wrote: post #23

Even aside from the apocalypse, I was wondering recently how someone might "pass down" some piece of software, like say a video game, to their descendants. If you want to leave a written record for future generations then it's easy enough to print out a book on some acid-free paper and reasonably expect that it will last for up to a millennium. But for robustly archiving a piece of software it's not enough to print o…

I think you could design a device that optimizes for longevity. Build the cheapest, simplest device that can run your piece of software, and then produce lots of them.

On the simplicity side, all of the parts would be solid state, it would handle whatever power you have on hand, the inputs and outputs would allow for using whatever devices you could cobble together in a post apocalyptic world.

Then on the software side, every one of these devices could easily export a standard image that could be used to build another device.

A lot of handwaving here, but most of what we sell these days is basically disposable because that's what is incentivized. If we actually optimized for longevity, we could probably do some amazing things.

Edit: for bonus points, each device will include detailed technical documentation on how to produce the device itself from scratch. It could be a sort of rosetta computer.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#78

Post by dhosek »

I had a softer core version of this with the first computer I personally owned, a Spectravideo MSX machine with a Z-80 processor. I had more than a hex pad, I had a BASIC interpretter which included an actual manual. And I had a Z-80 assembly reference manual that my older brothers had liberated from the high school’s TRS-80 lab. The company itself was defunct and there was no deeper documentation of the system available (plus this was the pre-internet days so even if it were, finding it would be a challenge). I spent time peeking and poking data into every one of the computers 64K bytes of RAM and managed to find the memory which had the definitions of the displayed characters (and used this to allow me to type ä, ö, ü and ß for a drill and practice program I wrote for studying German). I also wrote part of a disassembler but never got around to handling the multi-byte opcodes of Z-80 assembly.

This kind of low-level experimentation can really help you get your mind around what a system can do.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#79

Post by lordleft »

wokwokwok wrote: post #51

> what if you are the only survivor with some programming skills sitting in front of a computer you’ve never heard of, with some hex pad to enter machine codes, with maybe some pen and paper. What will you do? Leave it on the ground and forage around until I find a computer that runs windows. It's not great, but, it'll do. Failing that, a phone and a solar charger. Charming as it is to build yourself toys 'from scrat…

Hope that I remember Assembly from my Computer Architecture course.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#80

Post by hunterb123 »

seanw444 wrote: post #76
hunterb123 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole purpose of prepping is to prepare the necessary amount of resources for an emergency. If you stock too much food or water it will expire, you have to rotate it, so you eat it and restock. If you stock too many non-perishables of something you don't need you won't have enough room for more useful things. Prepping and looking crazy aren't coupled. Prepared people can be normal, it's not just what you see on T…

Unless you want to die, there's no reason not to prep. It's weird that it's looked down on.

Yeah it's a strange attitude, everyone preps in some way or another, but people act like you are a doomsday believer if you keep supplies for emergencies.

Those same people who judge get helped in those emergencies by those who are prepared.

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