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Permacomputing Principles

permacomputing.net

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Re: Permacomputing Principles

#91

Post by aleph_minus_one »

myrmidon wrote: post #88
jl6 wrote: post #21

There’s a lot to love about more mindful and resilient and ecological use of computing, but I wish they would build a consensus around that instead of bolting on extra politics. It’s a symptom of polarization… you can’t have independent causes, they have to align to a bunch of other causes too, each one taking a slice off your support base until you’re left with the tiny, powerless intersection that already agrees wi…

I completely agree. I find it generally remarkable that the whole sustainability/environmentalism cause still struggles to find conservative support, because those things are basically perfectly aligned, and preserving the environment should be a trivial sell to a conservative base (it's literally in the name). I see significant blame with environmentalist orgs/pushes like this that are deliberately anti-conservative…

> preserving the environment should be a trivial sell to a conservative base (it's literally in the name).

Be careful with such a statement: in the USA conservatism is defined as something different than what the Latin word origin suggests. See for example Russell Kirk's principles of conservatism:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Conservatism_in_t...

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#92

Post by wizzwizz4 »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #75
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is? The left-wing radicals I'm aware of are all very big on community. My understanding of the corresponding "right-wing" value is that community should be a certain way (with the radical right-wing value being that it must be a certain way, for various incompatible versions of "right way"). The radical left-wing response would be an insistence on the validity of other forms of community (notably including relatio…

> The left-wing radicals I'm aware of are all very big on community. My understanding of the corresponding "right-wing" value is that community should be a certain way (with the radical right-wing value being that it must be a certain way, for various incompatible versions of "right way"). The same statement holds for left-wing radicals: they insist that their community should be a certain way (with the radical left-…

The same statement holds for left-wing radicals on the internet, who rigidly police the boundaries of their fractious communities. I don't see this behaviour from, for instance, the local anarchists, who mostly seem focused on improving the material conditions of the downtrodden in the community, strengthening local ties, and promoting bottom-up logistics. (And, of course, there are people who seek to accomplish the same goal through right-wing methods: increasing employment, promoting local businesses, and providing grants to those who require them.)

Maybe the difference is not left versus right, but "my community" (trying to recruit people into your imagined better society) versus "the community" (acknowledging that we all live in the same world, and meeting people where they are)? Or maybe it's just that the people doing the actual boots-on-the-ground work tend to care more about doing the actual work than about fracturing over ideological disagreements. ("Leftist infighting" long predates the internet, after all: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/165.)

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#93

Post by xantronix »

jl6 wrote: post #21

There’s a lot to love about more mindful and resilient and ecological use of computing, but I wish they would build a consensus around that instead of bolting on extra politics. It’s a symptom of polarization… you can’t have independent causes, they have to align to a bunch of other causes too, each one taking a slice off your support base until you’re left with the tiny, powerless intersection that already agrees wi…

I might be biased, but, I'm curious to know if there is any specific part of the Permacomputing Principles page that stands out to you as particularly political above the rest. I don't think the intent is polarisation by any means, but I can see how this sort of movement would be a difficult pill for most to swallow. I still see plenty of value in laying down those grassroots for a future moment when the necessity for permacomputing may become much greater from a survival standpoint, or in the very least, maintenance of some sort of status quo of having people connected and with enough computing resources to continue meaningful work or maintain precious data.

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#94

Post by cindyllm »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #92
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The left-wing radicals I'm aware of are all very big on community. My understanding of the corresponding "right-wing" value is that community should be a certain way (with the radical right-wing value being that it must be a certain way, for various incompatible versions of "right way"). The same statement holds for left-wing radicals: they insist that their community should be a certain way (with the radical left-…

The same statement holds for left-wing radicals on the internet , who rigidly police the boundaries of their fractious communities. I don't see this behaviour from, for instance, the local anarchists, who mostly seem focused on improving the material conditions of the downtrodden in the community, strengthening local ties, and promoting bottom-up logistics. (And, of course, there are people who seek to accomplish the…

[dead]

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#95

Post by aleph_minus_one »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #92
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The left-wing radicals I'm aware of are all very big on community. My understanding of the corresponding "right-wing" value is that community should be a certain way (with the radical right-wing value being that it must be a certain way, for various incompatible versions of "right way"). The same statement holds for left-wing radicals: they insist that their community should be a certain way (with the radical left-…

The same statement holds for left-wing radicals on the internet , who rigidly police the boundaries of their fractious communities. I don't see this behaviour from, for instance, the local anarchists, who mostly seem focused on improving the material conditions of the downtrodden in the community, strengthening local ties, and promoting bottom-up logistics. (And, of course, there are people who seek to accomplish the…

> Maybe the difference is not left versus right, but "my community" (trying to recruit people into your imagined better society) versus "the community" (acknowledging that we all live in the same world, and meeting people where they are)?

Both for left-wing and right-wing people, it's about who is in-group vs out-group [1]. The only difference is by which values, psychometric and socioeconomic traits, ... left-wing vs right-wing people decide who belongs to their respective in-group vs out-group.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_and_out-group

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#96

Post by xantronix »

kakwa_ wrote: post #68

Are these principles really about sustainability? It seems to be far more geared toward promoting some sort of misplaced post-collapse resiliency. In other words: solving some hypothetical issues on the other side of a catastrophe for a world we don't know anything about, and almost ignoring present and actual problems.

I don't think the two are particularly incompatible. This seems more like a foundational statement than a demonstration of what permacomputing in current practice might look like. Sure, things like https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ have a performance element to them, but it's meant to be illustrative of what can be achieved more than just prescriptive.

A very solid (but mundane) example of permacomputing today is just holding onto an old ThinkPad and using it for meaningful work rather than feeling the need to buy a new machine every couple years.

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#97

Post by anthk »

HerbManic wrote: post #16

I have argued for a long time that Permacomputing will be seen as the missing part of the Free Software movement. What use is free software long term if you do not have hardware you can control, maintain and repair easily? This will mean a sacrifice in performance and functionality but gaining control and longevity. With things like Secureboot, TPM modules and ever increasing demands to lock down systems, there is th…

Nils Holm does permacomputing without writting fancy manifestos: https://t3x.org

T3X/0 will assemble binaries for Unix/DOS (maybe Windows) and CP/M.

S9 can do great stuff with very little.

Klong it's a mini APL-like CAS more bound to Statistics than Calculus. No fancy Unicode needed.

Also, Luxferre doing an ultra-minimal numeric VM:

https://codeberg.org/luxferre/mu808

Read the instructions, that mini VM it's surprisingly able.

Finally, Subleq+EForth from https://github.com/howerj/muxleq (muxleq it's just subleq with parallel mux running the exact same intstructions).

From the book you can boostrap EForth from itself with a minimal Subleq DEC file. Enough to run a Sokoban, a calculator (set complex numbers as binomials), and you can implement q+ q- q* q/ to calculate and reduce (lcm/mcm) fractions:

        2 3 1 3 q+  .s 

        3 3 

        /  . 

        1
Luxferre's Scoundrel C port can trivially ported to UXN and even maybe mu808. Eforth for sure, with cells and a minimal 'vector/array/' like implementation.

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#98

Post by yawpitch »

jl6 wrote: post #21

There’s a lot to love about more mindful and resilient and ecological use of computing, but I wish they would build a consensus around that instead of bolting on extra politics. It’s a symptom of polarization… you can’t have independent causes, they have to align to a bunch of other causes too, each one taking a slice off your support base until you’re left with the tiny, powerless intersection that already agrees wi…

If you see a substantial amount of bolted on extra politics on that page there’s a good chance you are experiencing the symptoms of polarization.

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#99

Post by IshKebab »

philipallstar wrote: post #89
myrmidon wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. I find it generally remarkable that the whole sustainability/environmentalism cause still struggles to find conservative support, because those things are basically perfectly aligned, and preserving the environment should be a trivial sell to a conservative base (it's literally in the name). I see significant blame with environmentalist orgs/pushes like this that are deliberately anti-conservative…

[flagged]

And often anti-green too, in a cut-off-their-nose way. E.g. until recently they were against nuclear power, and vehemently against HS2, apparently preferring that everyone drives instead.

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#100

Post by colechristensen »

lynx97 wrote: post #44
colechristensen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most "conservative" opinions are basically "I miss when I was young and wasn't aware of all of the stuff happening around me and want modern reality to be like my incorrect perception of how things were in my youth"

That is quite a condescending take. I get that you are extrapolating from my post that I might be conservative. That needs more nuance, but I get it. But to assume I always was, and used to be ignorant, is too far reaching. In fact, I used to be a lot more progressive in the past.

>But to assume I always was, and used to be ignorant, is too far reaching.

Eh, it was only meant to be a little mean. You were I dumb kid, I was a dumb kid, everyone was a dumb kid. I'm assuming to be human involves being a stupid child who didn't have a very good picture of reality. It is extremely common for a person to have this innate belief that their perceptions of the world as a dumb kid to be true and have that be the basis of their desires for how things should be now.

I bet you also think the music you listened to roughly in your teenage years was the best music ever made and everything made before or after isn't as good. Again, nearly everyone feels this way.

>In fact, I used to be a lot more progressive in the past.

If middle-age had a slogan, this would be it. If middle-age was a movie, this would be the subtitle. Welcome.

I'm not talking about conservative the binary, 1-dimensional political stance. I'm talking the "I want things to stay the way they were in the past" conservativism which is broad, can be about anything, and is really common particularly as one gets a little order and hasn't really reevaluated the reality they may remember incorrectly.

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