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

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

duskos.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 152 posts

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

#131

Post by febusravenga »

jacquesm wrote: post #116
actionfromafar wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35046551 "easy to imagine - a large enough collapse that making new ones is very very hard, especially compared to scrounging and repurposing the huge amount of existing ones. Imagine a huge population decline, and search parties looking through the ruins for useful tech, like computers, decades later. Such a society could probably make new computers, but the cost of making new, m…

Yes, it would make for a nice movie. But real life isn't a movie and of course I'm fine with individuals making their own decisions I still think we should look at the general picture through the lens of finding out what the likelihood of certain scenarios is first. Prepping for an intermediate stage is ultimately not a very good disaster mitigation strategy, you plan for the worst and hope for the best. This interme…

Och c'mon. Agriculture even from 200 years ago can feed much more than 2/3x people than directly working with it. There always will be place for people tinkering and trying new things and or trying to bring old things to life. Computers do have legit use cases like communication, access to knowledge etc... There will be place for comp geeks in post apo world, but certainly not for many. They will have to prove themselves useful though.

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

#132

Post by febusravenga »

supazek wrote: post #14

Neat project. I tend to believe things like this will be more useful 50-100 years post-collapse though. And it seems to me the post-apocalyptic computer niche will be more likely filled by the vast quantities of RPis left in junk drawers rather than the dozen or so computers that will have been prepped with something like this.

Post apo Graphikos - list of addresses of drawers with unused rpis to be used to save humanity by playing doom and block ads in non existing internet, seems like good good artifact for post apo Indiana Jones

Where can I enlist my drawer?

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

#133

Post by febusravenga »

Drblessing wrote: post #129

> "The first one is when the global supply chain is broken and the second one is when, in a particular community, the last modern computer dies." Can someone please explain to me how modern computers will die? I don't see how solid state electronics will break, will they eventually rust in 100 years or something?

Not my area, but at least "big" electronics will probably die because of whiskers that grow until you've got raandom shorts in circuits.

Not sure if integrated circuitry suffers from this or other similar phenomenon to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy)

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

#134

Post by jacquesm »

febusravenga wrote: post #131
jacquesm wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it would make for a nice movie. But real life isn't a movie and of course I'm fine with individuals making their own decisions I still think we should look at the general picture through the lens of finding out what the likelihood of certain scenarios is first. Prepping for an intermediate stage is ultimately not a very good disaster mitigation strategy, you plan for the worst and hope for the best. This interme…

Och c'mon. Agriculture even from 200 years ago can feed much more than 2/3x people than directly working with it. There always will be place for people tinkering and trying new things and or trying to bring old things to life. Computers do have legit use cases like communication, access to knowledge etc... There will be place for comp geeks in post apo world, but certainly not for many. They will have to prove themse…

Yes it can. But whether or not we'd be able to maintain that level of efficiency is very much an open question, it presumes the availability of 10's of millions of horses and people that know how to use them as well as a ton of tools that we haven't got. Cut the power and you have a problem on a scale that is hard to imagine.

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

#135

Post by jacquesm »

eternityforest wrote: post #126
jacquesm wrote: post #19

After civilizational collapse you won't need computers, you'll need bows, arrows and basic agricultural tools that don't require motors. Forget about electricity or anything requiring it, that will be the least of your problems. Assuming there is still sunlight enough to keep photosynthesis running. If not, you may want to find some place high. And if you are going to do something like this then you really should mak…

Are we currently doing all we can to prevent collapse? It seems like they vaguely try to stop pollution and WW3, but what about the Carrington event? And why does it seem like individuals are far more interesting in preparing for collapse than preventing it? It really feels like people would rather live in 1800 than continue with industrial society, even if the environmental toll and body count was far higher than wh…

> And why does it seem like individuals are far more interesting in preparing for collapse than preventing it?

That is a great question for which I don't have an answer, but thank you for asking it, it is something to think about.

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

#136

Post by hutzlibu »

tired_star_nrg wrote: post #128
hutzlibu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

Sorry, I’m not following. Are you saying they are able to use this now? Or that it can’t be used now?

The author is saying his project has only use after a collaps. I doubt this project will be useful after a collapse, if no one can make use of it today.

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

#137

Post by jacquesm »

sremani wrote: post #100

For Duck OS to shine, you really do not need a civilizational collapse. Consider a world that existed in 1960s, where computers were not affordable by a median family and only Universities and Research institutions can have them. We can get into that world with a dash of hyper-inflation and war in wrong places. Semi-conductor industry has complex supply chains, and if cost of bunker fuel shoots to say $500 dollars a…

A dash of hyper inflation and some war in the wrong places and you'd be very, very lucky indeed if you ended up in 1960. In that case you'd be in 2023 in five more years. I think the chances of shooting way past that are much higher than being able to stop the slide in 1960. But I like your optimism.

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

#138

Post by uoaei »

KerrAvon wrote: post #104
uoaei wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet the US national grid would be back up in some capacity within a year. People tend to assemble in times of crisis.

Have you been in a coma during the past decade? I can’t fathom how you could possibly come to this conclusion after COVID.

Despite all the kerfuffle there were massive mobilizations of people and resources still, and that was even in the face of a silent killer, one that didn't trigger apocalyptic feelings in a critical mass of people as much as, say, widespread EMP attacks from nuclear explosions in orbit that affect every piece of electronics we've come to rely on, or a horrendous chemical spill that changes the atmosphere's chemistry. The latter are much more immediate and appeal to deeper instincts as regards risk assessment than an invisible microbe that only infects a few species of mammal.

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

#139

Post by jacquesm »

ethbr0 wrote: post #130
jacquesm wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty dangerous when those that are in a position to make a difference are also able to position themselves in such a way that they won't go down with the ship if they don't.

That's getting into Illuminati territory. Thiel is rich and powerful, but he isn't that rich and powerful. There are more than enough counterbalancing forces. And it starts to be way too thought policy (for me) deciding "You can't be rich and worry about civilization collapsing."

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-val...

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

#140

Post by jacquesm »

actionfromafar wrote: post #111
jacquesm wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much larger hardware requirements.

And brain requirements. Forth is frustrating to me, but APL is just all too much.

APL is super powerful, I got to the level where I could 'read' (decode) it but I've never managed to get proficient at a level where I could write a significant chunk of code in it. Say a line or two ;)

FORTH is extremely easy to get into, a very powerful metaphor that has a ton of parallels in other languages, even if you don't realize it. There are strong connections between FORTH, LISP and shell programming languages to the point that they are in a manner of speaking different ways to express the same thing. Of those three I think LISP is the most complete and feature rich, and FORTH probably the least because it is much more barebones. But that upside of that is that it also requires absolutely no supporting infrastructure, the most basic access to a machine at the hardware level is enough to bootstrap to a usable system in an absolute minimum memory profile.

Post reply on HN