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Lets think about what technologies are most likely to be around after an apocalyptic event... Probably something that everyone has, that there are millions of..

Lets think about what technologies are most likely to be around after an apocalyptic event... Probably something that everyone has, that there are millions of.. something with a screen and a keyboard... very light and easy to transport.... maybe even something with a battery, and signals processing chips.... na screw it, lets just use a desktop. :P

BeefySwain 7y ago
To be fair, the scope of a project that would require the ability to jailbreak / root arbitrary mobile devices running arbitrary OS versions would be massive, much less creating an OS that would run on all of them. Smart phones are a lot of things, but general purpose computers are not one of them.
- wailupe2k 7y ago
  https://www.kingoapp.com/android-root/devices.htm https://www.kingoapp.com/android-root/devices.htm , I think there will be a few orders of magnitude more devices laying around that are easily jail broken than z80s.
amiga-workbench 7y ago
What on earth are you going to do with a pocket botnet? Without some kind of USB-OTG adaptor to break it out into useful GPIO for interfacing with other machinery, its going to be limited to playing flappy bird and failing to send telemetry over the now-destroyed mobile network.
- wailupe2k 7y ago
  A modern android cell phone has a camera, screen, light, keyboard, speakers, battery, and a cpu that is many times faster than the z80 counterpart and all the software to go with it. There are also various short range communication and mesh networking abilities (NFC /Bluetooth/WIFI). Its not too difficult to create a wifi router out of a phone. You can purchase many USB to GPIO boards cheaply online (as a pepper your stock piling stuff anyway, your not going to just find a z80 laying around either, there are even adapters for ham radios you can pick up cheaply). I could easily see using a camera network from cell phone for proximity alerting, mesh networking of a few city blocks to create a communications network and basic note taking and information storage fitting into a few phones storage, in addition to having a fully functional Linux machine. I'd wager that if you take all the time it takes to create this project and compare its success to the time it takes to buy 30 GPIO adapters, download the rootkit library for android and some cables, that you'd have more success going with the phones. Also, just think about moving around... a backpack of cell phones isn't going to have the failure rate that you'll get with exposed electronics.
  - albandread 7y ago
    I agree for hardware; we need to etch the instructions into a stone tablet; for powering up and rooting an android phone. Some of the phones are water resistant; shame the batteries will likely kill most of them.
vertex-four 7y ago
Z80 doesn't imply a desktop. See e.g. the Cambridge Z88. A Z80-based computer is also significantly easier to repair with rudimentary tools, and to create from scavenged parts, than an Android device. It can also be powered from pretty much anything, making for a great tool in an environment which is at risk of losing reliable widespread power distribution capabilities and which probably cannot create new li-ion batteries.
boomlinde 7y ago
Something with a life expectancy of 3-5 years

BeefySwain 7y ago

To be fair, the scope of a project that would require the ability to jailbreak / root arbitrary mobile devices running arbitrary OS versions would be massive, much less creating an OS that would run on all of them. Smart phones are a lot of things, but general purpose computers are not one of them.

wailupe2k 7y ago
https://www.kingoapp.com/android-root/devices.htm https://www.kingoapp.com/android-root/devices.htm , I think there will be a few orders of magnitude more devices laying around that are easily jail broken than z80s.

amiga-workbench 7y ago

What on earth are you going to do with a pocket botnet? Without some kind of USB-OTG adaptor to break it out into useful GPIO for interfacing with other machinery, its going to be limited to playing flappy bird and failing to send telemetry over the now-destroyed mobile network.

wailupe2k 7y ago
A modern android cell phone has a camera, screen, light, keyboard, speakers, battery, and a cpu that is many times faster than the z80 counterpart and all the software to go with it. There are also various short range communication and mesh networking abilities (NFC /Bluetooth/WIFI). Its not too difficult to create a wifi router out of a phone. You can purchase many USB to GPIO boards cheaply online (as a pepper your stock piling stuff anyway, your not going to just find a z80 laying around either, there are even adapters for ham radios you can pick up cheaply). I could easily see using a camera network from cell phone for proximity alerting, mesh networking of a few city blocks to create a communications network and basic note taking and information storage fitting into a few phones storage, in addition to having a fully functional Linux machine. I'd wager that if you take all the time it takes to create this project and compare its success to the time it takes to buy 30 GPIO adapters, download the rootkit library for android and some cables, that you'd have more success going with the phones. Also, just think about moving around... a backpack of cell phones isn't going to have the failure rate that you'll get with exposed electronics.
- albandread 7y ago
  I agree for hardware; we need to etch the instructions into a stone tablet; for powering up and rooting an android phone. Some of the phones are water resistant; shame the batteries will likely kill most of them.

vertex-four 7y ago

Z80 doesn't imply a desktop. See e.g. the Cambridge Z88. A Z80-based computer is also significantly easier to repair with rudimentary tools, and to create from scavenged parts, than an Android device. It can also be powered from pretty much anything, making for a great tool in an environment which is at risk of losing reliable widespread power distribution capabilities and which probably cannot create new li-ion batteries.

boomlinde 7y ago

Something with a life expectancy of 3-5 years