Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Post-Apocalyptic Programming

zserge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 165 posts

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#101

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

speed_spread wrote: post #73
qwerty456127 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Devices running on high density flash will not be reliable long term. None of these devices have ECC to reduce the probability of catastrophic failure from accumulated bit flips.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#102

Post by Banana699 »

Kadin wrote: post #55
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…

Printing the source out on paper would probably be the most long-lasting storage method (aside from engraving it into large pieces of stone, maybe). But typing the source code back in for most non-trivial pieces of software would be really painful. "Here's the source code, go type it in" hasn't been a very popular method of distributing software, for good reason, in a long time. Maybe there's some way that you could…

Saving the source alone hardly solves anything, the comment you're replying to highlights the real problem : The Stack. Everything from the compiler\VM to the OS to the instruction set architecture and everything in between. You have to save and store all of that.

You need a format other than text, text is extraordinarily inefficient and lossy at anything that is not declarative factual information. There has to be artifacts.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#103

Post by eternityforest »

squarefoot wrote: post #81

In a post apocalyptic world, aside 1st necessity goods (food, drinkable water, medicines, knowledge on how to build/repair things), there will be a lack of energy; be prepared to keep armed watch of your roof if you have solar panels there. I wouldn't even try to keep powerful computers around if I couldn't supply them (and their peripherals) with what I have at hand, which could well be no more than a couple solar p…

I wish more preppers would focus on rebuilding the modern supply chain as fast as possible. As long as there's a chip fab, a car factory, a lab that makes medicine, the priority should be to get it running and defend it.

There will be people who want to loot or destroy it. Ecofascist primitivists could even be one of the major groups involves. But in a lot of disaster scenarios it should be possible to get a modern farm and the most critical labs running at least for a while, and start working on sustainable supplies.

In some scenarios there might not really be any physical disruption at all besides the economy, starvation, or war not leaving time to keep tech running.

I almost get the feeling a lot of preppers don't even want the modern world to exist though. They'd rather have privacy and hard work that see everyone sheltered in office jobs again.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#104

Post by otikik »

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…

The windows computer would try to dial home and then refuse to run because it is not "Genuine" or it can not run without "Essential Cloud Services" enabled or something like that.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#105

Post by drdeca »

manofmanysmiles wrote: post #57
Nursie wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me know when libertarianism achieves any more than attracting bears - https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-... Personally I enjoy my government roads, schools, fire service and all the rest. Perhaps when you’ve grown emotionally, you’ll understand that government is people working together to achieve a common good. It’s flawed and easy to get wrong, it oversteps and overspends, but I’ll tak…

Show me a common good, and I’ll listen to you. I only see people. Every time we generalize it results in violence and conflict. I am 100% supportive of people working together.

“Superstition” is just as much an abstraction over a general pattern of things happening as “government” is.

You say “show me a government and I’ll listen”; I say “Show me a superstition (and an explanation for in what sense you have shown me one), and I’ll show you a country (in the same sense).”

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#106

Post by _int3_ »

In post-apocalyptic world I imagine, internet , would be scarce. Nobody will have full time internet connection except maybe internet centers. You will have to walk to nearest center. and upload and download your content. Your software that requires internet connection will stop working one by one. Also , electricity. People will use more low power CPU.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#107

Post by SQueeeeeL »

Banana699 wrote: post #98
pvg wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those things are in your paper encyclopedia too, they just won't ever be fixed.

The same medium that makes it hard to fix mistakes makes it hard to commit that many mistakes to begin with. And paper is distributed, hard to counterfeit and long-lasting in ways we haven't figured out how to replicate in electrons yet.

It's actually extremely easy to distribute something signed so that you're sure it's "authentic", at least that no bits are wrong. Assuming that somewhere in the chain, there exists trust. But it's the same with books, you have no way to know a book is authentic without buying it from a valid store

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#108

Post by mikewarot »

It might be more appropriate to consider the computers you currently have in stock, and how you could power them, and swap out parts to keep them running, in the future.

Repair skills are about to become very valuable in many parts of the world where they were previously dismissed due to globalization.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#109

Post by AlphENsign_Tech »

otikik wrote: post #104
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…

The windows computer would try to dial home and then refuse to run because it is not "Genuine" or it can not run without "Essential Cloud Services" enabled or something like that.

No post body was provided.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#110

Post by guessbest »

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…

I disagree. With a discovered machine, the scavenger wants to use a bit of the found computer's CPU time to hack in the machine if it was an authentication device that needs to be bypassed to start a 'tractor' or 'combine harvester'. Not all computers are disconnected from the supply chain.
Post reply on HN