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

Open Source Low Tech

opensourcelowtech.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 143 posts

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#81

Post by ndr »

maeln wrote: post #51
xmprt wrote: post #3

I like the idea behind this. I feel like far too often, the solutions we build for poor communities involve specific materials that can't be manufactured locally, so it just creates more dependence rather than self-sufficiency. It's one thing to build and ship 1000 bicycles to a poor village, but it's another to teach a village how to make bicycles with random spare pipes and materials they can find anywhere. That wa…

> It's one thing to build and ship 1000 bicycles to a poor village, but it's another to teach a village how to make bicycles Buying and shipping X amount of Y to is easy to calculate the cost. And it's a fixed one time cost. Perfect for PR OP, and humanitarian operation with limited budget and/or available work hours. Teaching takes the most valuable resources of all: Time. And it's harder to predict how long (and th…

There are game-theoretically aligned ways.

See for example https://oneacrefund.org/ [0] where they have a revolving loan fund.

OAF lends materials and teachers to farmers to make the more productive, by the end of the program they got productive enough to pay back the loan and OAF can lend the same money to someone else.

It's super capillary, with many boots on grounds and quality problems.

Embedded into this there's a good feedback channel: farmers who don't think are getting a good service stop paying back the loan. This allows OAF to go and audit what's failing there.

[0] The person who started also appeared in a podcast where they explained the basics https://foreveron.com/podcast/episode-035/

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#82

Post by idiotsecant »

dtj1123 wrote: post #49
xmprt wrote: post #3

I like the idea behind this. I feel like far too often, the solutions we build for poor communities involve specific materials that can't be manufactured locally, so it just creates more dependence rather than self-sufficiency. It's one thing to build and ship 1000 bicycles to a poor village, but it's another to teach a village how to make bicycles with random spare pipes and materials they can find anywhere. That wa…

I think this extends to wealthy communities too. Basically every item in my home more complex than a spoon is beyond my capacity to manufacture or repair. A resource that teaches me how to build useful things without relying on a complex supply chain or prohibitively expensive tools would be pretty darn liberating.

You know you already have that resource, right? That's what the internet is. There's nothing stopping you from learning, for example, woodworking today. You just have to start.

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#83

Post by cwmoore »

Geezus_42 wrote: post #44
bloqs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had never really considered the _competence_ of help before. It makes a huge amount of sense and is a strong argument for intelligent younger folk looking for a meaningful career. Instead of engineering for the pocket lining of your chosen billionaire, why not use those incredible skills to use in frugal or humanitarian engineering

> why not use those incredible skills to use in frugal or humanitarian engineering Because no one is willing to pay them for it and they have bills to pay.

This is the reason we won’t tax the bots for UBI, they have bills to pay too.

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#84

Post by cwmoore »

idiotsecant wrote: post #78
nchmy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my fairly extensive experience, non-profit organizations are not just full of and run by grossly incompetent people, but deeply arrogant and/or deluded ones as well. I have NEVER found an organization that has a genuine desire to seek truth, efficacy etc. They often go with whatever their first (inevitably insufficient) idea was, and not only reject all criticism but respond with indignity, etc... There's no meani…

There are plenty of nonprofits making a difference, your cynicism aside.

How is that difference measured, in general?

Setting aside cynicism is one thing but what answers are there for skepticism besides the very common moralizing personal attacks?

When I see a lot of nonprofit leadership improving their own lot much more reliably than the people “they serve”, I wonder if the handouts are just being politically diverted to the best and most politically valuable promoters.

If UBI is off the table, competition for gatekeeping resources becomes a dark market.

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#85

Post by ipsod »

bloqs wrote: post #12
nchmy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly agree that it's incomparably more important to teach a man/village how to fish/build a bike than to give them one. Unfortunately most people who focus on "helping" are grossly incompetent and have largely misaligned incentives (and oversight). As for local innovation, it think it very much depends on where. I've visited and lived in many communities in developing nations in Latin America and there's a dist…

I had never really considered the _competence_ of help before. It makes a huge amount of sense and is a strong argument for intelligent younger folk looking for a meaningful career. Instead of engineering for the pocket lining of your chosen billionaire, why not use those incredible skills to use in frugal or humanitarian engineering

Check out David Malawey's work: https://www.youtube.com/@davidmalawey

He's teaching proper engineering with commodity parts and accessible technologies.

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#86

Post by hmhrex »

My wife came across the Jean Pain compost water heater recently, and I've been really intrigued by the idea. I haven't found a great compact design though, and most of the information I see online treats it more like a fun project than something that could be iterated on and refined. Would love to find somewhere to trade ideas on this and potentially replace some or all of gas water heater.

Here's a decent post about the idea: https://waldenlabs.com/compost-water-heaters-from-jean-pain/

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#87

Post by swiftcoder »

hmhrex wrote: post #86

My wife came across the Jean Pain compost water heater recently, and I've been really intrigued by the idea. I haven't found a great compact design though, and most of the information I see online treats it more like a fun project than something that could be iterated on and refined. Would love to find somewhere to trade ideas on this and potentially replace some or all of gas water heater. Here's a decent post about…

You might want to look at biogas digester design - I met farmers near Hanover who were running big biogas digesters, and using the excess heat to heat their homes and pools all winter…

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#88

Post by phrotoma »

Geezus_42 wrote: post #53
gaigalas wrote: post #15

Reminds me of https://www.opensourceecology.org/ , but way more low tech. One could actually try the Open Source Low Tech designs without having a small fortune to spare or gathering a considerable community to cooperate.

Seems dead.

Only seems that way. They've been around for over twenty years and AFAICT they have staying power. Youtube uploads from the founder last month.

https://youtube.com/@marcinose

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#89

Post by mschuster91 »

nchmy wrote: post #5
xmprt wrote: post #3

I like the idea behind this. I feel like far too often, the solutions we build for poor communities involve specific materials that can't be manufactured locally, so it just creates more dependence rather than self-sufficiency. It's one thing to build and ship 1000 bicycles to a poor village, but it's another to teach a village how to make bicycles with random spare pipes and materials they can find anywhere. That wa…

I strongly agree that it's incomparably more important to teach a man/village how to fish/build a bike than to give them one. Unfortunately most people who focus on "helping" are grossly incompetent and have largely misaligned incentives (and oversight). As for local innovation, it think it very much depends on where. I've visited and lived in many communities in developing nations in Latin America and there's a dist…

> I strongly agree that it's incomparably more important to teach a man/village how to fish/build a bike than to give them one. Unfortunately most people who focus on "helping" are grossly incompetent and have largely misaligned incentives (and oversight).

It goes deeper than that if you ask me. It's rarely about "helping" in a lot of cases in the first place, and there's no incompetence at play either.

Just look at food aid to Africa. You know, the campaigns with banners of emaciated African children holding empty food bowls. These aren't primarily about helping African children, but about diverting European (or American) oversupply towards Africa to stabilize prices in the domestic markets - and they all but wiped out African food industry. Simbabwe was known as the "corn chamber of Africa" but lost that in a matter of decades as the cheap food from Europe was cheaper than they could produce. Or clothing donations, these ended up as "mitumba" in Africa, and wrecked local supply chains so hard that, by the time the Chinese came around, there was nothing left to fight.

Post reply on HN