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How to Build a Low-Tech Website

solar.lowtechmagazine.com

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Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#131

Post by emodendroket »

rossdavidh wrote: post #49
tw1010 wrote: post #33

Small sub-cultures, like this one, do experiments all the time in their little corner of the web. Some of the cultures die after a while, and some grow into something else, something bigger, something that starts to percolate on the mainstream surface, albeit possibly only tangental to how it started. I'm not sure I'd predict this movement will grow into something that reaches mainstream tech, but let's say I'm wrong…

Could well not happen, but the most likely driver of slimmed down websites, anyway, would be a desire to make them load better in India, Africa, parts of Latin America and eastern Asia that have low connection speeds. Not saying that's how it will go, but it's feasible that to get to the second and third billion internet users, you need to be slimmer.

Smaller Web pages would be nice on my phone in Massachusetts when I've got spotty service, honestly.

Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#132

Post by emodendroket »

msla wrote: post #97
eutropia wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this seem a bit uncharitable a characterization? What's an example of a "real low-tech website" that does better than the work presented here? Are you browsing hackernews using lynx or surfraw?

https://yarchive.net/ That's a low-tech website. Absolutely nothing but content.

According to the article, the goal here was to demonstrate the possibility of making an attractive, modern-looking Web page while still having it be lightweight. Your example does not achieve the first goal at all.

Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#133

Post by newsDerp »

tw1010 wrote: post #33

Small sub-cultures, like this one, do experiments all the time in their little corner of the web. Some of the cultures die after a while, and some grow into something else, something bigger, something that starts to percolate on the mainstream surface, albeit possibly only tangental to how it started. I'm not sure I'd predict this movement will grow into something that reaches mainstream tech, but let's say I'm wrong…

  Can anyone here think of [...] 
  how [...] this experiment 
  could [be] squeezed into 
  a form [...] as the next 
  big [...] thing?
This is definitely firmly in the "Internet of Things" genre of niche interests. Remote power monitoring and other system diagnostics for systems designed to account for expected faults, and manage their own capacity to operate, for sure are useful for internet managed consumer appliances.

Right now we only think in terms of wi-fi routers and phones, but when 4 out of 5 useless gadgets (oh boy! internet-enabled shampoo bottles that also can advertise hair gel! yaayy!) have a battery and 5G internet, an RSS/JSON/XML feed of their status will be abundantly relevant.

To... someone. Probably not me, but I'm sure someone will want this.

Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#134

Post by azdle »

trqx wrote: post #113
azdle wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/feeds/all.atom.xml ^ seems to have full articles.

I mean article content, not just the first line or the title. This way articles are cached in case of downtime.

For some reason Firefox is only showing the contents when you click that link, but it's all in there and it shows the full article in ttrss for me.

Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#135

Post by stcredzero »

Didn't Bruce Sterling or William Gibson write a story where there was a street tribe called the "LoTeks?" I think it was William Gibson in the Johnny Mnemonic short story. Molly Millions fought a monomolecular weapon wielding assassin, using the LoTek's space to defeat him with "culture shock."

Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#136

Post by xigency »

JacobJans wrote: post #110
tw1010 wrote: post #33

Small sub-cultures, like this one, do experiments all the time in their little corner of the web. Some of the cultures die after a while, and some grow into something else, something bigger, something that starts to percolate on the mainstream surface, albeit possibly only tangental to how it started. I'm not sure I'd predict this movement will grow into something that reaches mainstream tech, but let's say I'm wrong…

It seems to me that it would eventually be possible, to build a relatively cheap system that can both soak up power and transmit/recieve data without any external wiring. You could hook up a raspberry pi to a solar system, weatherproof it, then deploy it in the wild. Add a wireless "router" of some sort, and then you have a mobile broadcasting station. Imagine a world where such systems are very cheap to build. Also…

If you plaster random devices in public places I think you'll get something like this happening:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic

Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#137

Post by woah »

l_t wrote: post #106
tw1010 wrote: post #33

Small sub-cultures, like this one, do experiments all the time in their little corner of the web. Some of the cultures die after a while, and some grow into something else, something bigger, something that starts to percolate on the mainstream surface, albeit possibly only tangental to how it started. I'm not sure I'd predict this movement will grow into something that reaches mainstream tech, but let's say I'm wrong…

I think the article hits on the key problem: "Less than 100% reliability is essential for the sustainability of an off-the-grid solar system." IMO, this can only become mainstream once there is no longer an expectation of "100%" uptime for websites in general. It's far-fetched, but I can imagine it becoming mainstream if mesh networking becomes popular, or if the Internet were to become a widely self-hosted platform…

Having been in the “mesh” space for years, there’s a ton of this techno-primitivism fantasy floating around. The reality is that people want to access the internet and they want it to work well.

This article is a perfect example. This solar powered server which does not have 100% uptime for artistic reasons is probably sitting in someone’s kitchen next to a refrigerator which uses many times as much power and definitely has 100% uptime.

Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#138

Post by mmt »

woah wrote: post #137
l_t wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the article hits on the key problem: "Less than 100% reliability is essential for the sustainability of an off-the-grid solar system." IMO, this can only become mainstream once there is no longer an expectation of "100%" uptime for websites in general. It's far-fetched, but I can imagine it becoming mainstream if mesh networking becomes popular, or if the Internet were to become a widely self-hosted platform…

Having been in the “mesh” space for years, there’s a ton of this techno-primitivism fantasy floating around. The reality is that people want to access the internet and they want it to work well. This article is a perfect example. This solar powered server which does not have 100% uptime for artistic reasons is probably sitting in someone’s kitchen next to a refrigerator which uses many times as much power and definit…

> refrigerator which uses many times as much power and definitely has 100% uptime.

Except that the making-cold mechanism of fridges have nowhere near a 100% duty-cycle. You probably wouldn't notice if it didn't even meet two "nines" of uptime.

In fact, that's how frost-free freezers work, by taking advantage that fact to run a heater(!) for some number of minutes several times a day. A defrost timer that does 10 minutes every 8 hours reduces compressor uptime to 98%.

Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#139

Post by fenwick67 »

woah wrote: post #137
l_t wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the article hits on the key problem: "Less than 100% reliability is essential for the sustainability of an off-the-grid solar system." IMO, this can only become mainstream once there is no longer an expectation of "100%" uptime for websites in general. It's far-fetched, but I can imagine it becoming mainstream if mesh networking becomes popular, or if the Internet were to become a widely self-hosted platform…

Having been in the “mesh” space for years, there’s a ton of this techno-primitivism fantasy floating around. The reality is that people want to access the internet and they want it to work well. This article is a perfect example. This solar powered server which does not have 100% uptime for artistic reasons is probably sitting in someone’s kitchen next to a refrigerator which uses many times as much power and definit…

A refrigerator is not 99.999% available (power outages). Maybe 99.9% if you live somewhere without trees and snow.

Re: How to Build a Low-Tech Website

#140

Post by Mtinie »

I love the aesthetic! Great work.

Here's my unsolicited design riff on the "battery indicator." I'm a fan of the concept, but the 100vw element width of the yellow fill was distracting me from the rest of the content. I used DevTools to mock up a narrow version which fits within the right content gutter, right next to the scroll bar. I had to tweak the percentage metric display a bit by stacking the sun above the value and removing the "%" indicator, but feel the end result has increased readability and is still understandable.

https://imgur.com/a/IIPZILz

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