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Dusk OS: 32-bit Forth OS. Useful during first stage of civilizational collapse

duskos.org

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Re: Dusk OS: 32-bit Forth OS. Useful during first stage of civilizational collapse

#21

Post by hillytop »

tired_star_nrg wrote: post #11
hillytop wrote: post #4

The rationale is silly, but the project itself looks interesting. No need to tie it in to civilization collapse though, an odd marketing angle really.

I mean we already see the issues with international supply chains failing during covid, and we haven’t even really seen the significant impacts from climate change. Yeah, most people on HN aren’t going to really need this in the next 5-10 years as we’re predominantly in locations that will be maintained the longest. What about people in countries that already barely have functioning supply chains? This could be immed…

Immediately useful how exactly?

Re: Dusk OS: 32-bit Forth OS. Useful during first stage of civilizational collapse

#22

Post by jacquesm »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #17

This is like TempleOS but for collapsists

TempleOS is at the rocket science level compared to this.

But a 32 bit FORTH implementation may well have embedded uses in the present (though, in some circles building something like this is more like a rite of passage and anybody able to use it properly is likely able to re-implement it, possibly better).

Re: Dusk OS: 32-bit Forth OS. Useful during first stage of civilizational collapse

#23

Post by hutzlibu »

tired_star_nrg wrote: post #11
hillytop wrote: post #4

The rationale is silly, but the project itself looks interesting. No need to tie it in to civilization collapse though, an odd marketing angle really.

I mean we already see the issues with international supply chains failing during covid, and we haven’t even really seen the significant impacts from climate change. Yeah, most people on HN aren’t going to really need this in the next 5-10 years as we’re predominantly in locations that will be maintained the longest. What about people in countries that already barely have functioning supply chains? This could be immed…

"This could be immediately useful for them."

That's the thing: there are already many hackers and makers working on all kinds of ways to reuse old electronic. If they cannot really use this now - who can after a collaps?

Re: Dusk OS: 32-bit Forth OS. Useful during first stage of civilizational collapse

#27

Post by jacquesm »

hillytop wrote: post #21
tired_star_nrg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean we already see the issues with international supply chains failing during covid, and we haven’t even really seen the significant impacts from climate change. Yeah, most people on HN aren’t going to really need this in the next 5-10 years as we’re predominantly in locations that will be maintained the longest. What about people in countries that already barely have functioning supply chains? This could be immed…

Immediately useful how exactly?

Very low hardware requirements, so basic industrial control at the level where you'd otherwise use an Arduino or so but on scavenged hardware. Forth is ridiculously simple to get an implementation running.

https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth/blob/master/jonesfort...

Is a nice starting point. It's obviously not as compact as say 'Brainfuck' but it is far more versatile.

Re: Dusk OS: 32-bit Forth OS. Useful during first stage of civilizational collapse

#28

Post by anigbrowl »

tired_star_nrg wrote: post #11
hillytop wrote: post #4

The rationale is silly, but the project itself looks interesting. No need to tie it in to civilization collapse though, an odd marketing angle really.

I mean we already see the issues with international supply chains failing during covid, and we haven’t even really seen the significant impacts from climate change. Yeah, most people on HN aren’t going to really need this in the next 5-10 years as we’re predominantly in locations that will be maintained the longest. What about people in countries that already barely have functioning supply chains? This could be immed…

I think the overlap between 'people in civilizational collapse zones without reliable internet access' and 'people with Forth and general computing skills sufficient to expertly operate random hardware' is very narrow indeed. It's a cool project, but the complexity of most hardware is such that solo reverse engineering it for practical purposes is likely a fictional scenario. The chances of an engineering community that can be productive under civilization-ending pressures also seems pretty unlikely.

If you have technology skills and reasonably expect to experience some sort of apocalyptic scenario, ISTM you'd be better off with a solar charger, a few rugged smartphones, and several SD cards containing backups of Wikipedia and as much reference material as you can collect. Getting to a better location (either by traveling or improving a deficient one) is likely to take up most of your mental and physical energy, and electronics are in the 'nice to have' part of your inventory, below weapons, tools, and basic survival supplies.

If you want to go really cheap and low power, consider stocking up on ESP32 devices, which are super-capable and can be had for only a few $ each.

Re: Dusk OS: 32-bit Forth OS. Useful during first stage of civilizational collapse

#30

Post by knowledge-clay »

throwawayadvsec wrote: post #12

what advantages would this have over something like IDK, debian?

It's much, much, much simpler and more compact.

The core system is about 8000 lines of code. The C compiler is 1400. Its memory footprint is extremely small (1MB to have a C compiler running on bare metal in the PC architecture). From here, you have a system capable of building C programs as well as bootstrapping itself.

This is level of simplicity is staggering and empowering -- it is completely reasonable to read and understand every single line of code in Dusk OS. This would be incomprehensible in something like Debian.

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