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Post-Apocalyptic Programming

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Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#121

Post by peterkelly »

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 think you missed the point.

The intro is what in TV and other forms of media is called a "framing device". Here it's used as a story to provide motivation as to why someone could potentially need to build their own software stack. It's not meant to be taken literally.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#122

Post by NegativeLatency »

ifyoubuildit wrote: post #77
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 si…

So a 6502(C)?

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#123

Post by lliamander »

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #107
Banana699 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

True, though the process of establishing the trust and authenticity around digitally signed artifacts is not as widely established or disseminated as it is with print media.

Also, establishing what a signature means often requires out-of-band information. I really like the concept of annotations for a signature that would communicate the signer's relationship to the work: http://www.loper-os.org/?p=1545

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#124

Post by CoffeeCollector »

WalterBright wrote: post #83
jollyllama wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, all of this "build from the ground up" post-apoc stuff is fantasy. It would be scavenge and cobble together. If there was time to do any of this, you'd be trading a bit of your clan's goods for a disk with some rare library on it for calculating dates and times based on the planets and stars. I think that scavenging old libraries and installers is going to become more of a thing as they disappear from the int…

I was going to throw my old encyclopedias away, but then there came this wave of increasing attempts to edit articles on wikipedia to: 1. rewrite history through the lens of a political point of view 2. conduct disinformation campaigns 3. create hoaxes for personal amusement 4. conduct marketing campaigns 5. clean up reputations 6. redefine words to justify past lying I decided to keep the paper ones for the time bei…

Pretty sad that you of all people are getting downvoted for telling the truth.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#125

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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.

funny enough it was Apple that stopped you from running software because their server was down

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#126

Post by saurik »

peterkelly wrote: post #121
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 think you missed the point. The intro is what in TV and other forms of media is called a "framing device". Here it's used as a story to provide motivation as to why someone could potentially need to build their own software stack. It's not meant to be taken literally.

> Here it's used as a story to provide motivation as to why someone could potentially need to build their own software stack.

I dunno: sounds like it failed.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#127

Post by WalterBright »

bitwize wrote: post #115
WalterBright wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Libertarian presumption that people, removed from the system of control, would all act better Libertarians don't believe anything resembling that. Libertarianism requires a government empowered to use force to guarantee peoples' fundamental rights. If you have more questions about what Libertarianism actually is, feel free to ask, as I am one.

Libertarianism requires someone empowered to use force. The idea of multiple competing law enforcement apparatus within the same jurisdiction is not just theoretical wankery, either; it's actually been tried. Most notably in the Icelandic Commonwealth, which endured for 300 years.

> Libertarianism requires someone empowered to use force.

As I said.

> The idea of multiple competing law enforcement apparatus within the same jurisdiction is not just theoretical wankery, either; it's actually been tried. Most notably in the Icelandic Commonwealth, which endured for 300 years.

Libertarianism doesn't specify the form of government, just the role of government.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#128

Post by phire »

sitkack wrote: post #92
phire wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to go down that rabbit hole, I think you are better-off just relying on the ubiquity of android phones. Instead of preloading an e-reader. Preload a usb-c flash drive with various databases, and an APK with the software to read/copy the databases (and other useful utilities). Flash drives are small, and reasonably cheap. You can stash them in your house, or carry one in your wallet. If there is an apocaly…

A small device to that is designed to sideload "the most compatible" APKs that are useful would be neat. The thing it loads could be a micro VM that runs something like Lua, is able to access the camera, microphone, speaker. Should be able to get code onto via QR codes or an audio codec.

I don't think you can get much smaller than a USB C flash drive, and then might as well put the whole dataset on it.

I think you want multiple APKs as part of the database (or databases, so each phone isn't required to contain the full dataset, and the total dataset can be larger than the size of a typical phone storage)

The most basic APK should only consern itself with sharing the database via adhoc wifi, USB flash drive, or perhaps direct phone-to-phone USB connection. It shouldn't even do indexing, or viewing of advanced files. Nothing more than what you need to propergating the databases and allowing the user to install more APKs with the more advanced indexing/viewing tools, which can then be used to find even more useful APKs like calculators and programming environments.

You might actually want to do multiple independent versions of the core APKs, so if there are bugs which make one fail in the wild, the fittest version will survive. One should target really old android version so they work on the oldest android devices. Another should target the newest android sdk to give it the best chance of working into the future. And maybe a few middle ground options.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#129

Post by AstralStorm »

marcosdumay wrote: post #84
kosherhurricain wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without highly automated, industrialized farming, majority of people's occupation will be food production, as it was most of human history. And post apocalypse labor shortages would mean nobody will be growing food for you, so you most likely need to do it yourself. If I survived and was industrious, I would start making tractors to sell, instead of twiddling with Forth.

With enough solar panels, abundance of corrected soils, and a much smaller population, one can coast on the current agriculture investment and get a reasonable productivity (you will still spend a month or two every year on it) for a lifetime or two. Plenty of time to reboot tractors.

Heck, you don't really need tractors, these can be substituted with manpower. They're a nice to have more than a must.

What you will need, however, is someone to maintain waterways and water treatment facilities, and the necessary components. Can't count on rainfall being sufficient or wells being clean. This comes with maintaining the power supply and electronic components thereof.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Programming

#130

Post by AstralStorm »

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.

Oh, so you will need a good cracker for it.

Or use Linux...

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