Permacomputing Principles • Hacker News Board

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#171

Post by bccdee » Thu, May 07, 2026, 5:53 PM UTC

iamnothere wrote: post #111

wfurney wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, their introduction seems broadly applicable: > Whether you are a tech specialist, someone who uses a computer for daily tasks, or deals with technology only occasion, there are steps that you or the group you are involved in can take to reduce the environmental and socio-economic impact of your digital activities. Sounds great to me, but then they have these: > To mitigate this situation, this principle call…

Much of fringe politics is a social club/hobby. You can really see this in action when fringe groups stumble upon an opportunity to grow support among the mainstream, but then they choose to squander it on counter-signaling to drive away people who aren’t perfectly aligned. The “Just Stop Oil” people are a great example of this. There’s a lot of headwind behind green energy and moving away from oil, but the activists…

The way people talk about Just Stop Oil is interesting. People often say, "Just Stop Oil is doing activism wrong," but I never hear anyone talk about orgs that "do activism right" because the public never talks about them at all.

Like them or not, Just Stop Oil is very good at making headlines and stirring up controversy, which is their goal. If you go into a party with a megaphone and shout about beavers, everyone will eventually be talking and thinking about beavers. Conservatives use this strategy to manufacture controversies like "critical race theory" all the time. As a radical group, simply being in the headlines benefits them.

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#172

Post by bccdee » Thu, May 07, 2026, 6:01 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #63

thrance wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway, the thing about traditional communities, in this context - the ones that "have to be a certain way" because they've been that way for generations - is that they have immense inertia; they create real social ties that can bind people together and make them resilient even in the face of very real, structural, systemic oppression. I really don't know where you're pulling that from. Jim Crow America wasn't a go…

> Jim Crow America wasn't a good time for black people. Women got lobotomy after showing the first signs of depression. Gay people were demonized at every occasion. Many of these things were actively advocated for by the Progressive movement, back in the early 20th c. (Lobotomies came a few decades later, but were ultimately rooted in the exact same ideas about the primacy of 'science!' and trusted institutions over…

You are parroting criticisms made by antiracists and intersectional feminists who are themselves part of the contemporary progressive movement.

This is like when laypeople say "economics is all hogwash because humans aren't rational actors": They are citing behavioural economics as if it disqualifies the field of economics rather than being part of the field.

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#173

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, May 07, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #63

thrance wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway, the thing about traditional communities, in this context - the ones that "have to be a certain way" because they've been that way for generations - is that they have immense inertia; they create real social ties that can bind people together and make them resilient even in the face of very real, structural, systemic oppression. I really don't know where you're pulling that from. Jim Crow America wasn't a go…

> Jim Crow America wasn't a good time for black people. Women got lobotomy after showing the first signs of depression. Gay people were demonized at every occasion. Many of these things were actively advocated for by the Progressive movement, back in the early 20th c. (Lobotomies came a few decades later, but were ultimately rooted in the exact same ideas about the primacy of 'science!' and trusted institutions over…

> Many of these things were actively advocated for by the Progressive movement, back in the early 20th c.

Yeah, the early 20th Century American Progressive movement has no connection to the late 20th-early 21st century American progressive movement, the latter of which adopted “progressive” not in reference to the earlier movement but in reference to "progress” in contrast to what its members perceived to be increasing static defense of a corporate capitalist status quo by other elements of the American liberal movement from which it emerged. It is a essentially a social democratic movement, which is about as far from the early 20th century movement's technocratic elitism as you can get.

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#174

Post by alexwennerberg » Thu, May 07, 2026, 6:10 PM UTC

For any Bay Area folks, we have a permacomputing meetup. Planning on scheduling the next one, you can join the mailing list or RSS for updates

https://alexwennerberg.com/permacomputing.html

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#175

Post by bccdee » Thu, May 07, 2026, 6:11 PM UTC

philipallstar wrote: post #167

helpfulmandrill wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They elected a Jewish leader, so not that anti-Jew.

This guy[0]? I imagine he thinks of himself as the good Jew. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp8p7k4k8xno

No? I imagine, in this context, that he thinks of himself as an advocate against police violence, since he retweeted a video of cops kicking a man in the head and said he thought it was bad. Doesn't seem particularly Jewish to me, one way or another.

Kind of a weird comment, imo.

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#176

Post by tekne » Thu, May 07, 2026, 6:20 PM UTC

monkaiju wrote: post #138

myrmidon wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussions on colonialism and sustainable computing are completely unrelated topics by themselves (as is post-marxism). You can advocate for sustainability, right-to-repair, privacy etc. while being strongly capitalist just fine. The point is that the page puts "correct" political alignment very prominently, excluding a large intersection of people otherwise interested in the non-political parts of the movement.

I mean, not really. You could be somewhat capitalist I suppose, but certainly not "strongly" if for no other reason than that "capitalism" is defined by goals that are inherently misaligned with the others listed (sustainability, right-to-repair, privacy). You could only be capitalist insofar as you believe that companies pursuing those claims will perform better in the market, and even that gets blurry around "right…

To be fair -- IP is a regulation (it is not, in fact, natural to be able to prevent someone copying data on their own hard drive) -- so one could imagine variants of a free market which are less regulated and yet more (or less) friendly to repair/modification/hacking.

A lot of our current state of affairs is as much a symptom of regulation as of deregulation (most laws are really regulation) -- and it's unclear whether the world would be better off with more or less overall (the answer is probably "it depends" -- though I myself lean towards less)

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#177

Post by bccdee » Thu, May 07, 2026, 6:26 PM UTC

abricq wrote: post #54

While I appreciate all the stuffs mentioned here, I believe they are missing something: people should *go vote at all the elections*, and advocate for a system-level change. Systemic resilience instead of personal habits. Pretty much all their suggestions are to be applied on personal-level. And I agree with those. But they could be made 100x easier if there was some help provided by localities, municipalities & stat…

> and we can vote for these stuffs.

Can we? We can vote for a party, but I don't know that any party here has permacomputing in their platform. If you want to add something to a party's platform, the usual way to do that is lobbying, but who can afford lobbyists? The alternative—grassroots activism—tends to involve a lot of stuff like local repair cafes that attract volunteers and get people talking.

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#178

Post by realslimjd » Thu, May 07, 2026, 6:28 PM UTC

botanrice wrote: post #124

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 don't think the idea is particularly polarized and you can choose to be inspired by the premise without buying into the political aspect of it, as you may do with many things. That said, I do feel like it's cringe to say it's anti-capitalist, anarchist, etc.. I have very progressive values but just can't associate with liberal groups because of stuff like this. Like, why? Just promote the culture to everyone, capit…

What values do you have that are very progressive but not anticapitalist?

You say that you can't associate with liberal groups because of stuff like this, but liberals are not anticapitalist or anarchist. Leftists are anticapitalist but liberalism is basically advocating for softer capitalism, which is to say capitalism and strong individual rights, while leftism is focused on collectivism.

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#179

Post by yawpitch » Thu, May 07, 2026, 7:04 PM UTC

perching_aix wrote: post #169

yawpitch wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no accusation, just like there’s nothing particularly political or polarized in that piece. One can imagine an accusation, precisely as one can imagine the particularly political where it doesn’t actually exist. As for how to discern the difference, well that’s the purpose of critical thinking and metacognition.

So are you supposing they either lack or had blanked on their critical thinking and metacognition somehow, or how did you arrive at the conclusion that they are merely "experiencing the symptoms of polarization" then instead? Why couldn't they have simply also just used the same critical thinking and metacognition you yourself seem to be so proud of, to reach their conclusion? Maybe you're the one who's so aligned to…

You truly do have an impressive imagination. Again, there’s no insult, there’s simply an observation. Nothing on that page is particularly political from any position but a substantially polarized one. It’s not entirely apolitical, sure, but it’s pretty milquetoast for a manifesto. If you see polarization there it’s because you’re looking through a polarized filter, in the literal photographic sense as much as the political one: you’ve rotated your filter frame to minimize reflections of what you do like and maximize visibility of what you don’t like. If you’re offended by it, you’re looking at it from such an orthogonal direction that you really should check if you’re the one whose biases are on display.

Everyone should engage their critical thinking and develop their capacity for metacognition; no one starts with either of those skill sets, and thus I assume neither in anyone (and everyone, including myself) until I see evidence of either or both. I, very gently, pointed in the direction of engaging those skills and you see violence where violence isn’t, just like you imagine excessive pride where there cannot be any at all.

Perhaps you’ve also been primed to see violence where none exists? To feel as extreme what isn’t extreme because you’ve moved (or been moved) towards the extreme?

Again, not an ad hominem… just a question we should all be asking ourselves all the time.

Re: Permacomputing Principles

#180

Post by dvdkon » Thu, May 07, 2026, 7:06 PM UTC

phillmv wrote: post #148

myrmidon wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the far-right are idiot contrarians (my personal view) and they have no claim on capitalism. Just because far-righters are against sustainability does not mean you have to be a post-marxist anarchist (or w/e) just to be for it.

> does not mean you have to be a post-marxist anarchist if you oppose a far-right project, what are they going to call you? lol. here is your membership card for the cultural marxist party, welcome aboard comrade! i just think it's folly for people to complain that "not destroying the environment" is a partisan issue in 2026. being a nice person is a partisan issue in 2026.

Despite what "far-right" groups may claim, politics isn't one giant us-versus-them war; I refuse to stoop down to their level.

The US right likes to call their opponents pedophiles, but it would be ridiculous for anyone to adopt that label for themselves because of it.