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Hundred Rabbits is a small collective exploring the failability of modern tech

780 points by Bluestein 2y ago

stonethrowaway 2y ago
Their philosophy makes me think they should just use Windows XP/7 or something and call it a day. Offline first? “past-proofing”? These are desktop and console programs where the OS vendors have spent onerous amounts of capital to maintain backward API compatibility. In other words: Windows and Win32, and nothing but. Everything else, including the Web, has been broken and deprecated several times over.
- mikae1 2y ago
  https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/duskos https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/duskos > Dusk OS is a 32-bit Forth and big brother to Collapse OS. Its primary purpose is to be maximally useful during the first stage of civilizational collapse, that is, when we can't produce modern computers anymore but that there's still many modern computers around.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    > 32-bit Forth OS mixed with C I mean, what's not to love here? :)
    - kragen 2y ago
      the z80 more generally, collapseos is cosplay, not engineering in more detail, collapseos is not a pragmatic engineering effort to foster resiliency, but an essentially religious effort to atone for the sins of the worldly through ascetic renunciation of pleasures such as guis, returning to an imagined arcadian past of austere virtue see against-collapseos.md in http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/pavnotes2.git http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/pavnotes2.git for the full critique
      - mburns 2y ago
        DuskOS != CollapseOS (same author, the latter inspired the former). DuskOS doesn’t run on z80. It’s i386 or ARM. Whether that makes it a serious effort or not is still up for debate.
        kragen 2y ago
        apologies! i haven't investigated duskos in any detail and so whatever opinions i may have about it are not worth considering
      - pmarreck 2y ago
        that URL leads directly to what looks like the contents of a .git directory (so, all the metainformation but no project directory listing) I'm curious because I buy this comment more than their mission statement, although I absolutely agree with their stance on the "longevity/maintainability problem" in software and hardware. but as soon as I saw the ranting about colonialism I was like "oh... basically, anarchist anti-capitalists" as soon as they have kids, they will quickly abandon their non-acquisition of resources stance, LOL
        kragen 2y ago
        cf. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41133098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41133098 collapseos isn't a 100r thing, and i haven't seen anything from virgil that sounds like an anarchist anti-capitalist. i have a lot of sympathies for the anarchist anti-capitalist point of view although personally i've suffered a lot more harm from anti-capitalism than from capitalism
        pmarreck 2y ago
        I have sympathies for it too. But I am also not at all surprised by your "harmed more by anti-caps than caps" statement. The funny thing about having a kid (he's 3) is that you are forced to re-evaluate all your values and preconceived notions to see what it is you really want to transmit to your kid.
  - stonethrowaway 2y ago
    [flagged]
- Bluestein 2y ago
  The way you put it, it makes sense.- PS. For many XP was some sort of "sweetspot", as far as Win OSs are concerned.- PS. Then again, it depends. How much evidence of "past-proof"-ness do you need - in terms of "backstory" to meet that requirement? Linux, or - even better - some BSD variants go way further back.-
  - senorrib 2y ago
    Windows has become a garbage pile of spyware lately, but even Linux can't really compare to the insane level of backwards compatibility Windows offers.
    - anticorporate 2y ago
      > even Linux can't really compare to the insane level of backwards compatibility Windows offers. My experience is quite the opposite. I still play the Windows Entertainment Pack version of Tetris. In Linux, thanks to Wine, it just works. In Windows 10, I'm told to contact the publisher for a new version.
      - lmm 2y ago
        Emulators tend to be better for compatibility than live systems. Did you try using Wine on windows? And if you take a similar-vintage Linux program, you may well find it runs more easily under SFU or WSL on Windows than on a current version of Linux.
    - pmarreck 2y ago
      NixOS can. Because literally every piece of software in the Nix repo includes all dependencies (including things like build dependencies, not just runtime dependencies) that existed at the time it was built, all the way down to the metal basically
      - kragen 2y ago
        well, all the way down to the kernel, not the metal
- pushfoo 2y ago
  TL;DR: They already wrote Varvara[1] + software[2] for it My understanding is: * The authors wanted to run on a Raspberry Pi powered by solar + batteries * They're often somewhere in the Pacific so their internet connection is often bad * Varvara[1] is the portable-enough solution which works for them * Others liked it enough to write a bunch of other tools[2] It's all pretty much self-hosting at this point. It's not for everyone, but why bother with Windows if it fits your needs? [1]: https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/varvara.html https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/varvara.html [2]: https://github.com/hundredrabbits/awesome-uxn?tab=readme-ov-file#applications https://github.com/hundredrabbits/awesome-uxn?tab=readme-ov-...
- anthk 2y ago
  They run 9front, much better than XP and 7. No reinstalls, no DLL hells, everything it's statically compiled, updates can be done totally in place and offline. Good luck running Windows 7 on an RPI and with a laughable power draw. Oh, and don't even compare VS + MSDN documentations (huge GB's wasted) vs what Acme can do and just the plan9's 9.intro.pdf book. The disk usage would wear out any SD in days. 9front, otoh, can even selfcompile itself in a breeze. Try that under Windows.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    The constraints under which they work are wonderful. Power included. It basically mandates excellence, efficiency.-
    - anthk 2y ago
      Not just that. For any non-JS web, they can compile and share netsurf offline from 9front and happily post at HN or read lots of sites such as http://68k.news http://68k.news and https://midnight.pub https://midnight.pub And, with a Gemini client for 9front (there are a few), between the gemini 'capsules' (sites and blogs) and gemini://gemi.dev (web decrafying proxy to gemini, where you can read news stripping out the 95% of the pages, scripts, trackers and all the bullshit, they can get totally covered. Gopher9 (Gopher client) makes a good point with gopher://magical.fish for global news, translation services and such. Much less bandwidth spent than the web, for sure. With a bare irc client (again, literally few lines of shell scripting under 9front due how's designed) they can connect to the public IRC servers from bitlbee.org and connect to modern disservices such as Discord and Slack, at least being able to chat against their peers.
    - Avshalom 2y ago
      The thing is, while it might mandate efficiency, what they made was an un optimized 8 bit VM synthesizing 16bit arithmetic running on 64 bit hardware. It's not efficient at all, it's just that the constraints they gave themselves leaves enormous amount of power on the table.
      - 2y ago
- mephitix 2y ago
  I think their philosophy / research is in understanding how to build modern software that is more resilient. So from that research/exploration standpoint it makes sense to me they would go that route instead of using older tech
bagels 2y ago
My solution would have been: older copies of photoshop that don't require an internet connection and a larger battery + solar panels.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  PS. Were they not to be bitrotten beyond repair, maybe some old "shareware" copy of Paint Shop Pro or similar, on a CD-ROM even.-
- imrejonk 2y ago
  A larger battery and more solar panels doesn’t seem to be an option for the authors: > The modern stack doesn't really work for us, it doesn't apply to the limitations that we have on the boat. We have 180 watts of solar. We just spent the whole summer with two 6-volt batteries, which is very small. When you're going down that route, at every turn people are telling to just put more solar panels, or to buy more batteries. That is such a modern way of solving your problem. In reality, technology like this(especially high-tech) rarely solves problems. It creates a lot of other problems, which on a sailboat is very immediate. Putting more solar would mean more windage, more chance of things flying off and cutting our limbs. More batteries would mean the boat would be heavier, it would stop us from being able to run away from storms. https://100r.co/site/weathering_software_winter.html https://100r.co/site/weathering_software_winter.html
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    The constraints" are amazing. And basically *drive* good solutions.-
  - mdorazio 2y ago
    I love what they're doing, but these are reasons that don't hold up to scrutiny. gluing flexible panels to the deck would solve the windage problem and the boat is over 16,000 pounds laden... adding another ~80 pounds (less if LiFePO) of batteries would decrease their "run away" ability by about 0.5%. They pretty clearly ran into a challenge, chose the fun solution rather than the practical one, and ran with it. Which is great.
mikejulietbravo 2y ago
The start of this reads like the beginning of a cult manifesto, but then transitions to a very logical solution for an important problem. Baffling. I'm in
- jldugger 2y ago
  It keeps bouncing between too real and too absurd. Absurd: Not enough power on our sailboat to run Ableton and Photoshop. Real: So we replaced it with open source technology. Absurd: That technology was based on Electron. Real: Electron was too bloated. Absurd: So we ported everything over to the NES. Real: And now you can run our software anywhere you can emulate an NES
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    Exactly my feeling.- PS. Which leads me - tangentially - to think that (maybe) the solution to (at least) some of our problems might someday be found in a cult :) Who knows ... > Absurd: So we ported everything over to the NES. This was grand. The NES as a most effective "baseline" platform. Can totally see humanity sending out an NES emulator on Voyager VI as a last gasp.-
    - wizzwizz4 2y ago
      LessWrong had some pretty good advice in the early months of the pandemic, despite their terrible track record on politics and AI. There's a lot right with the Amish. You could write an entire book about the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Cults can have a lot to offer.
      - Bluestein 2y ago
        > Cults can have a lot to offer. ... in no small part perhaps because they remain isolated "pockets" of culture where - often - "progress" is slower or more controlled. Where idiosyncratic behavior becomes the "new" orthodoxy as behavior or culture "degrades".- Where was it ... "Nightfall" (the novel) I think it was where a cult periodically saves civilization - by being the only ones that know how to handle the aftermath.-
munificent 2y ago
I had the good fortune to meet and spend some time with Devine at Handmade Seattle a couple of years ago. It was an absolutely wonderful, inspiring experience.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  Wishing to thank you for your comment, please, do tell. Can imagine it would have been (inspiring, etc.).-
  - munificent 2y ago
    They are exactly like you'd imagine from their online work. Extremely passionate about ecology. Pessimistic about where the world is headed but optimistic about our individual ability to cope with it. Super into low-level programming and old school pixel art and that whole aesthetic. Absolutely full of stories about sailing. And just completely present in conversation.
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      > Pessimistic about where the world is headed but optimistic about our individual ability to cope with it. Therein lies one key, methinks. I find that refreshing. It seems a viable "compromise", and, a solution to "data disaster driven dispair" :) ... faith in the individual.- > And just completely present in conversation. Incredible.- Many thanks for sharing.-
    - lomase 2y ago
      Extremly passionate about ecology but lives in a boat....
      - agys 2y ago
        How is this a contradiction?
        lomase 2y ago
montebicyclelo 2y ago
Their 2d music programming language, Orca is very cool/fun. Some examples: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MNF8SF69QvM&list=PLb1uDATFJPcEEG3w715GzbD4AE232Pdcu&index=6 https://youtube.com/watch?v=MNF8SF69QvM&list=PLb1uDATFJPcEEG... https://youtube.com/watch?v=DBI8eBMGyYs https://youtube.com/watch?v=DBI8eBMGyYs https://youtube.com/watch?v=mxr8Dtw2R5w https://youtube.com/watch?v=mxr8Dtw2R5w https://youtube.com/watch?v=RDZiKYSGsjg https://youtube.com/watch?v=RDZiKYSGsjg
- fk-corporation 2y ago
  Nice. I may not (correction: almost definitely don't on 80% of stuff) agree with them politically, but I have to admire their creativity and product execution.
- smrq 2y ago
  Orca singlehandedly got me out of a multi-year musical rut. It's such an interesting and different way of sequencing than the traditional piano roll experience. Like modular synthesis, it can be easier to just use it like a toy and not make anything "finished", but it really can spark the imagination.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    The best kind of tool (for creative work at least). Unpretentious "toys" that - particularly - don't "get in the way ...
- metasyn 2y ago
  for anyone curious about learning, i made a tutorial and playground for orca: https://metasyn.srht.site/learn-orca/ https://metasyn.srht.site/learn-orca/
  - j-pb 2y ago
    Do you use a specific browser? Looks broken-ish to me on most things but firefox, and on firefox the example play button also doesn't work for me. Super cool in theory though!
mephitix 2y ago
Occasionally i've stumbled upon some neat tool or beautiful software and i'm like, wow - who's behind this? And then I realize it's these two folks. Their approach is so surprising and inspiring, thanks for putting out some cool stuff into the world!
- hosh 2y ago
  Have you looked into the permatech community in general?
  - worldsayshi 2y ago
    What do you mean by permatech community? When i googled it I didn't find anything that fits the context.
    - miffi 2y ago
      The search term is "permacomputing" afaik. Here's 100r's (specifically xxiivv's) page on the topic https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/permacomputing.html https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/permacomputing.html The first paragraph gives a good overview of the idea: > Permacomputing encourages the maximization of hardware lifespan, minimization of energy usage and focuses on the use of already available computational resources. It values maintenance and refactoring of systems to keep them efficient, instead of planned obsolescence, permacomputing practices planned longevity. It is about using computation only when it has a strengthening effect on ecosystems.
      - lancesells 2y ago
        So it's like permaculture but for software.
        hosh 2y ago
        That's the idea. However, my initial criticism of the way permacomputing is formulated are: 1. We could have examined each of the 12 Permaculture Design Principle and attempted to directly apply them to software design. For example, "Observe and Interact" is so broadly useful and versatile (and the core of adversarial domains, such as warfare), it can easily be applied to software. You won't see it directly listed here: https://permacomputing.net/Principles/ https://permacomputing.net/Principles/ 2. The permaculture ethical principles are not there in full. "Care for life" refers to "Care for Earth", "Care for People", but nothing about "Fair Share". Comparing these two ways of looking at it, I don't see how the permacomputing formulation is an improvement on how the permaculture ethical principles are formulated. Furthermore, I think this has more to do with not sufficiently delving into the place of technologies within a regenerative paradigm. I am speculating here with little basis, but I don't think the people who came up with this got their hands dirty with planting, nurturing, and harvesting things. However, reading more with 100r, CollapseOS, DuskOS, there is a lot of thought put into this even if I think there are some key things missing from my experience with permaculture. It is why my friends and I are exploring the ideas of "permatech", what is Technology's full, integrated place within a living systems world view? We have yet to come up with anything coherent yet.
venantius 2y ago
Two people and a pet isn’t really a “collective”
- subpub47 2y ago
  This is the best critique of the entire idea, clearly.
- nfrmatk 2y ago
  That's the most constructive takeaway you have when looking at all their work? That's an unnecessarily limited view and doesn't add to the conversation. From my vantage point their work fits the definition nicely. "A collective body" [1] ... "Collectivized or characterized by collectivism" [1] ... "A political or economic theory advocating collective control especially over production and distribution" [2] [1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collective https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collective [2]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collectivism https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collectivism
  - blacksmith_tb 2y ago
    I wouldn't say it's a completely throwaway dis. As much as I like Orca it easily could be that calling themselves "a collective" is putting on airs or pretending to be a bigger movement than they are. But it could also be tongue-in-cheek, self-parody, or theater of the absurd (which seems more likely).
- tumult 2y ago
  There are a bunch of contributors to these projects. I wrote the C version of Orca (and helped design the second version of its evaluation strategy) but also had help and ideas from other contributors as well. I wrote the Windows version of Uxn, Uxn32, which was a from-scratch implementation, except for a couple of things like the palette mixing table. The code from Uxn32's VM core ended up in other versions of Uxn emulators, which were then modified and improved by the people running those projects. There is not any governing body, committees, or authoritative leadership for these projects. We just talk to each other through various channels and do stuff. It's a collective.
austinl 2y ago
Their sailing videos are very inspiring—from what I remember, they sailed from Vancouver to Japan, then down to New Zealand and back to Vancouver over the course of a few years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueTCjpNXing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueTCjpNXing
- sgu999 2y ago
  Ha, thanks for sharing! I quickly looked for something like that on their site but didn't find it. Love their editing style. Very inspiring indeed.
0x3444ac53 2y ago
They're the best! I first came across orca while learning about esoteric languages, and to see how it spun out and evolved into the entire Vavara virtual computer has been amazing. They're smart, capable, and committed to openly sharing knowledge and ideas in their community.
joeatwork 2y ago
UXN / Varvara (a project by these folks) is something really special https://100r.co/site/uxn.html https://100r.co/site/uxn.html - an approach to creating intelligible software by applying strict complexity constraints, sort of like Viewpoint Research’s STEPS project, but with more concrete goals and an even smaller and simpler basis.
- metasyn 2y ago
  for anyone curious about learning, i made an online port of UXN using emscripten that allows you to code and compile and emulate in a browser: https://metasyn.srht.site/learn-uxn/ https://metasyn.srht.site/learn-uxn/
chiffre01 2y ago
I read this and thought it was satire at first: "We eventually ported our tools to C, but while we had achieved ideal energy usage, portability was still an issue, so we kept looking. We learnt 6502 Assembly, seeing players run our games as NES roms on all these different platforms gave us an idea."
- ropejumper 2y ago
  How so? NES games are genuinely more portable than C programs that do anything involving graphics or IO. A simple example is the fact that they use Plan 9 C. I urge you to try making a simple game that runs on both Plan 9 and Linux. The only reason C is portable is because a lot of collective effort was put into porting various libraries to various systems, and homogenizing them to look kinda the same if you squint. Uxn creates a very easy to implement virtual computer that is actually identical. A Uxn program is more portable than a C one for their purposes. And I think it's obvious how that could have came to them from NES emulators, which have similar properties.
fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
[flagged]
- chambored 2y ago
  Have you looked at their body of work? An embedded YouTube video does not negate their ethos.
  - Vegenoid 2y ago
    Well, it kind of negates it a little bit, because they are against trackers, and state that their website does not use them, but they are spreading Google's trackers through their website. Of course, this is almost certainly accidental and I'd think it would be corrected if it were brought to their attention, and the meat of their work is in domains other than lightweight websites.
- subpub47 2y ago
  I'm glad this is the best critique we can do.
  - mrandish 2y ago
    Brings to mind a comment I saw here the other day observing that some on HN seem to default to a rather "unkind" mode.
    - fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
      I don't default to unkind mode on every topic. Perhaps I phrased the comment too negatively here however. Note though that as a later comment pointed out, they claim to have "no tracking or analytics," so clearly this was a mistake on their part. A commitment to no tracking is also something I would expect from a site like this making the claims they are making. So clearly my criticism itself was well placed, even if the delivery was too harsh. Also, I would think they would at least check to see what embedding a youtube video does before doing it. And I do think embedding the youtube video is strange even ignoring the tracking for a site that describes itself as "small." Is it really small if you have a massive iframe embedded in it?
skadamat 2y ago
We sorely need more serious experimentation with computing & computing cultures and IMO Hundred Rabbits is a great example of this. Instead of talking about ideas, they practice what they preach. As with most experiments, we can observe and borrow shadows of their ideas into our own life hopefully!
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > We sorely need more serious experimentation with computing & computing cultures Indeed.- PS. If we stop and examine, our entire computing "paradigms" have been - mostly - driven, propelled forward by "industrial", commercial, business productivity (use cases) ... ... but what would have happened / will happen were these paradigms to emerge (and emerge mainly) from art, creation, play, instead?
  - tomooot 2y ago
    I think modding communities are a reasonably good analog to this. Up until someone realized you could change the alpha channel of wall textures to make them transparent, the way to get a custom skin in Counter Strike Source (and 1.6), was to drop a file into your install directory. The game would check for files named the same as it's default resources, read them in for use instead of the original. But then people started using the aforementioned transparent walls in competitive matches, and so a new variable was introduced to force the use of the defaults. The next game (CS:GO) provided skins through a marketplace, including the use of loot-crate mechanics, the prices of in demand items sky rocketed, they are now used as currency for hackers and online gambling, and the online skin gambling sites have been caught advertising fraudulently through streamers. "rare" skins can sell for tens or hundreds of THOUSANDS of dollars. In short, a great feature got exploited, commercialized, more exploited, and inspired a great amount of profiteering and sketchy business practices while ruining community aspects of a whole genre of entertainment (lots of copycats). What I'm trying to say, is I think those paradigms most likely would have been co-opted by third parties in the name of greed and profit, destroying the communal and humanistic aspects of them in short order.
- jll29 2y ago
skadamat 2y ago
One quirk here is that they say "This website has no tracking or analytics." but Brave is showing Double Click / Google Ads? Might be an oversight!
- tsunitsuni 2y ago
  it is the embedded YouTube video most likely :)
- kragen 2y ago
  i think this is the culprit: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_1Y8PwD5XDs" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> it seems to be doing telemetry/surveillance to play.google.com a thing to keep in mind is that accelerometer access has recently been shown to leak enough information about passwords to compromise them
tek256 2y ago
One of their founders, Devine, gave a wonderful talk at Handmade Seattle 2022 titled Weathering Software Winter (https://vimeo.com/780005704 https://vimeo.com/780005704) that sparked some really interesting conversations about software resiliency and data preservation!
irusensei 2y ago
I’d the name related to Centzon Totochtin?
- entaloneralie 2y ago
  It is! :)
axblount 2y ago
Hundred Rabbits is like Urbit without the evil aura and digital real estate.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  Hundred Rabbits is... nothing? Nirvana?
  - culi 2y ago
    Urbit had a fair bit of creativity in both aesthetic and tech. But yeah I agree it was mostly a crypto scam mainly driven by a no-longer-open/loud neonazi.
    - nemo44x 2y ago
      If you think Curtis Yarvin is a Neo-Nazi then I’m afraid you’re so far out there and uninformed you’re probably beyond saving.
      - BizarroLand 2y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin
      - otabdeveloper4 2y ago
        > uninformed Yeah, nah. They know exactly what they are doing.
nathanfig 2y ago
At WHOI we frequently run into some of these issues. Ocean-going projects often have long periods of disconnect, or have just a tiny bandwidth-capped connections that are meant for sending home critical data and not for automated software updates... So much software also just takes for granted that it should be allowed on the Internet.
- tomwphillips 2y ago
  >So much software also just takes for granted that it should be allowed on the Internet. Indeed, and I find it a problem on land too. I use Miro at work and it is _awful_ on an unreliable internet connection, like on trains in the UK. I really value local-first software for this reason. I’d like to see more of it.
- polairscience 2y ago
  You're telling me. Being on HN and working on remote autonomous systems is such a dichotomy. We measure transmission rates in Kb still and costs in thousands of dollars. Not to mention power consumption. Sometimes I wish there was a conference for people working on these kinds of projects. "The union of Luddite scientists annual meeting" or something.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    > "The union of Luddite scientists ... Somebody really ought to set that up, assuming it doesn't already exist in some fashion ...
    - disqard 2y ago
      Paging Abner Coimbre... Bluestein, you should check out the Handmade Conference(s). https://handmadecities.com/ https://handmadecities.com/
      - Bluestein 2y ago
        On my way. Really appreciate the tip!
rendang 2y ago
This page https://100r.co/site/philosophy.html https://100r.co/site/philosophy.html says > Preparing for impending apocalyptic events should mean collective action and structural reform, not individualism and isolation. What apocalyptic events?
Animats 2y ago
Site: "This website has no tracking or analytics." Privacy Badger blocked tracking from: googleads.g.doubleclick.net static.doubleclick.net play.google.com www.google.com www.youtube.com Because <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_1Y8PwD5XDs" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen> </iframe> If you use anything from Google, you will be tracked.
- ghostwords 2y ago
  (I develop Privacy Badger.) Privacy Badger can replace YouTube embeds with "click to activate" placeholders. Faster browsing, better privacy, easy-to-use controls, at least when the replacement works properly. See "Pro tip #1" in https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/privacy-badger-puts-you-control-widgets https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/privacy-badger-puts-yo...
  - CalRobert 2y ago
    Thank you for developing an amazing tool!
    - ghostwords 2y ago
      Thank you for using Privacy Badger!!
  - mattlohkamp 2y ago
    ah thanks for this! youtube embeds disabled by default is an improvement I didn't even know I was looking for!
    - ghostwords 2y ago
      You're welcome!
  - SushiHippie 2y ago
j3s 2y ago
Rek drew the pufferfish on my website & i love it to death https://j3s.sh https://j3s.sh
- blainelewis1 2y ago
  I also really enjoyed your poems :) I aspire to have an interesting website like yours. I came back to read them again and your website was down though :(
  - j3s 2y ago
    thank you! > I aspire to have an interesting website like yours let me know if you need help / inspiration! > I came back to read them again and your website was down though sorry about that, i was moving & my server came with me :)
- apsurd 2y ago
  I read all your poems just now. They're perfect, thank you! Just what I need. They speak to me.
  - j3s 2y ago
    you're welcome :)
- latentnumber 2y ago
  Thank you for the poems. They're weirdly soothing.
  - j3s 2y ago
    <3
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- hoosieree 2y ago
  Nice site. This and 100r are an antidote to the soulless corporate AI slop that's slathered over everything these days. And a webring too? Don't mind if I do...
kragen 2y ago
we had a really wonderful thread about uxn/varvara on here in june: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40805267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40805267
istrice 2y ago
I've been following these guys for a decade now (maybe more??) and I was always blown away by their skills and aesthetics. Devine has been a huge influence on my own artistic style and finding xxiivv.com on some random chan during high school, and getting lost in it, was a big mind-changing event. Glad to see they're still sailing around the world.
pmarreck 2y ago
I never heard of these guys and this is a fascinating rabbit hole. I don't agree with everything they stand for (and that's OK!) but the long term maintainability and sustainability of computer software and hardware I am 100% onboard with.
yllautcaj 2y ago
I think sailing and free software have in common the type of freedom that is not unlimited, necessarily constrained by the reality of sharing a planet with billions of other primates. There are a lot of rules one must follow to share the pacific ocean (especially the parts close to land) with other people, but that doesn't make travel under wind power any less captivating. Also, the Yamaha 33 is an impressively tiny and light boat for the sailing they're doing, let alone living and working on.
edgarvaldes 2y ago
The name reminds me of the fictional Twelve Monkeys.
codazoda 2y ago
I guess I’ll also take the opportunity to point out that my Neat CSS framework was partially inspired by reading their work. I continue to use it for nearly all my projects now. I have become addicted to the smallness of it all. https://neat.joeldare.com https://neat.joeldare.com
- msephton 2y ago
  Nicely done!
sarimkx 2y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38878760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38878760 Crazy how HN works. I posted this 6 months ago because I collect unique personal websites, but no one took a bite... Glad people took interest this time.
- criddell 2y ago
  It's been submitted many times. Sometimes people read and comment, sometimes they don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=100r.co https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=100r.co
  - sarimkx 2y ago
    Yep...I understand.
rewgs 2y ago
Love these two. I’m always so happy to see whenever they’re posted to HN. They’re such interesting people, and I so deeply respect their commitment to their values and continuous evolution. The world needs more people like this.
golergka 2y ago
> To undermine the capitalist structure and its abusive scripts about human worth in relation to work, productivity, and ownership. To subvert oppressive gender norms and put in question the binary. To actively unlearn biased and colonial thinking. It's hard to take people with this political manifesto seriously, but I have to give credit where it's due — their work is impressive. Many artists say that they "explore" something and end up with completely bland "social critique" pieces that don't say anything new, but these guys manage to do a lot of interesting stuff, especially Orca.
incanus77 2y ago
If anyone is interested further, I would highly recommend one of Devine’s latest talks, from Strange Loop: https://100r.co/site/computing_and_sustainability.html https://100r.co/site/computing_and_sustainability.html Transcribed and video format. Among other things, they came into computing from a bit of a different direction and ended up building tools and a platform that I’m betting 90% of people in the industry would revere in awe as things beyond their understanding. Truly an inspiration.
- fitsumbelay 2y ago
  They've been around for 15+ years I think. Recently found some clones of their repos that aren't available/updatable. Very fascinating folks and collective activity. More than just software-making
mgaunard 2y ago
"a small collective exploring the failability of modern tech" really just means "a couple living on a boat".
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  And discovering that consumer hardware doesn't do well in a marine environment.
- mazdayasna 2y ago
  "they/them x iel/ielle" really just means "a heterosexual couple"
  - ropejumper 2y ago
    I wonder why this bothers you so much as to go on the internet and tell everyone what you personally think about who those two people actually are.
    - mgaunard 2y ago
      I believe clear and succinct writing is the key to effective communication.
      - ropejumper 2y ago
        A very good way to make writing clearer is to replace the words that you don't care to know with other words that are completely inaccurate. Question: how is it helpful for you to label them as a straight couple? Why would it matter to you? Why is adding the "straight" qualifier better than just leaving it as "they're a couple"?
      - throw4847285 2y ago
        The content matters though. If you are clearly and succinctly communicating something insecure and stupid, you don't get any bonus points.
  - 2y ago
barbs 2y ago
From their mission statement (https://100r.co/site/mission.html https://100r.co/site/mission.html): > Diversity is important in nearly all aspects, whether it's with computers, or with life itself. A polyculture of tools and systems distributes the surface of attack and creates resilience. Viruses can attack a single crop, or a single computer architecture. The more services, or resources are centralized, the more power is concentrated into fewer hands and more easily taken over. Feels particularly relevant given the recent Crowdstrike outage.
_whiteCaps_ 2y ago
https://100r.co/site/princess_louisa_inlet.html https://100r.co/site/princess_louisa_inlet.html "PLI is truly a picturesque place, nestled between extraordinarily large mountains and cliffs, blessed with clear waters and lush forests. The waters in the inlet are very calm, it is well-shielded. Any boat wakes travel far thoughout the inlet, from wall to wall, and take a long while to subside. If motoring in this inlet, go slow." Wow. Surprised to see one of my favourite places show up on HN. If you have the opportunity to go to Princess Louisa Inlet, I highly recommend it. The contrast between the glaciers and the ocean is breathtakingly beautiful. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Princess+Louisa+Inlet/@50.205178,-123.7702667,4330m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x548777c24cbae27f:0x39070ea21de66503!8m2!3d50.1811701!4d-123.8133618!16s%2Fm%2F02w7y1s?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/place/Princess+Louisa+Inlet/@50....
yardie 2y ago
I've been following their travels since I guess 2016. Right around the time we were winding down our own seabattical. It's good to see they are still out there, traveling. creating, and coding. Even on our much bigger boat, boat projects were much bigger and more complex. So, there is a lot to be said about their minimalist travels. It really strips you down to the essence and encourages you to focus on what's most important.
- chadk 2y ago
  "seabattical" Love it!
karaterobot 2y ago
One thing modern tech gets right is that it tries to get you to correct the spelling of 'failability' by adding red lines under the letters when you type it into a web page.
onewheeltom 2y ago
Look at the cool stuff at they are doing and stop fussing about tracking.
aetherspawn 2y ago
I'd like to know if they ever nearly died (or became very uncomfortable) from running out of food, broken boat, or otherwise. Their boat is very small and has only one engine, and it looks like they will sail thousands of kms in one leg on occasion. I am soft. If I must do this, and I would kick and scream, I would sell my house and buy a yacht with megalitres capacity of water, batteries, refrigerators, and starlink. But I do not think that I could be happy doing this. I would find it more anxious than normal life.
- SushiHippie 2y ago
  > from running out of food According to their page they can store up to 4 months of provisions > Fully-geared, stocked with provisions for 4 months (food & water) Pino weighs 7484,274 kg (16,500 lbs)【7 484 kg】, or 8.25 tons. https://100r.co/site/pino.html https://100r.co/site/pino.html
- pengaru 2y ago
  Somewhat unintuitively, smaller vessels have a strength advantage, assuming a well-made closed-top vessel... your main risk AIUI is getting dismasted in a capsize. TL;DR is strength increases with square of the length, forces acting on the vessel increase with the cube of the length. This guy is the champion of tiny blue-water vessels: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCptM0nqGDJLz14oP6ROdKRw/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCptM0nqGDJLz14oP6ROdKRw/vid...
- akeck 2y ago
  Rek went overboard in a Pacific storm north of Japan. ("Busy Doing Nothing" book)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
habosa 2y ago
It’s weird to be a “fan” of programmers but I’m a big fan of Hundred Rabbits. Orca is one of the most fun projects I’ve used in years and the fact that it’s from some hackers on a boat makes it all the more delightful. I hope they keep it up (I donated, I’ll probably donate again now).
gmd63 2y ago
"Go slow, and fix things." Stark contrast from the core attitude of mainstream extractive tech work, and a necessary ethos amid a growing storm of complexity that humanity increasingly depends on We are trying to go slow and fix things biologically that our natural evolution has left us vulnerable to. Cancer, prion diseases, etc. Yet we have resigned the evolution of information tech over to God as we haphazardly race in a survival of the "financially fittest" sort of contest, rewarding the companies that win at financial selection
- vinnyvichy 2y ago
  In this respect, their page for hacking baguettes by sun&sea is my personal favourite https://100r.co/site/solar_cooking_experiment.html https://100r.co/site/solar_cooking_experiment.html 100Rabbits is like the coming true of Grothendieck's 1972 permatech lecture given at CERN* https://github.com/Lapin0t/grothendieck-cern https://github.com/Lapin0t/grothendieck-cern >"I think that agriculture, stockbreeding, decentralized energy production, medicine of a certain kind, very different from the medicine that prevails today, will come to the fore. It's impossible to say which part purely creative joy will play in these new developments. My hope is, it will be a creative development in which there will be no essential difference between conceptual activities and manual physical activities. When people become masters of their own needs to the point where an appreciable part of their creativity remains free---and this will take a time we can't predict, it may be a generation, it may be ten, no one knows---at that point, anyone, not just a certain scientific elite, will be able to devote a significant part of their time to purely creative, purely speculative, purely playful research" *which I (or 1 of you?!) will post soon (Thanks Bluestein for showing the best time to post this stuff!)
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    > When people become masters of their own needs to the point where an appreciable part of their creativity remains free... compare with VADM EJK ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41144977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41144977 ): > It is essential to extend the knowledge and the practice of "initiative of the subordinate" in principle and in application until they are universal in the exercise of command throughout all echelons of command. (with Grothendieck being a little more optimistic than King, as the latter stops short of pushing universal initiative all the way to the bluejacket)
freethejazz 2y ago
Similar cross of art, low power/resilient tech, and sailing I saw at strange loop last year. Non-standard tech talk for sure, but fit right in at that conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3u7bGgVspM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3u7bGgVspM
- acedio 2y ago
  The presenter, Devine, is one of the folks behind 100r :)
  - freethejazz 2y ago
    :facepalm: no wonder it rang a bell… I thought, “I wonder if these are the same folks” and even looked at their route map but somehow missed that key detail. Appreciate the graceful response :)
ratmeadow 2y ago
My first impression after reading a bit about their lifestyle was "how on earth do they have time for all this?" Things like maintaining the boat, sourcing fresh food every day for cooking, making games, creating art. Meanwhile they do all this in a very constrained environment, which can't help efficiency. Where is the time in the day for everything, after working? Then I saw they say they only work during the morning. Soooo... kinda no shit, you can live a more creative and meaningful life if you don't work. Which most people can't afford(?) to do. Where's the secret? What's the cheat code they have?
- ropejumper 2y ago
  The cheat code is that they have a Patreon. They make things that people like, so people pay them for it. "They don't work" is a bit reductive. Working is producing value, and value is whatever people are willing to pay for. It's not like they're millionares or something. They just managed to cut expenses low enough, while convincing people to pay them for the things they produce.
  - ratmeadow 2y ago
    This seems plausible enough. I guess I'm surprised that one can live sustainably with such a lifestyle and income. Wild because I would consider myself "barely getting anywhere in life" living the typical 9-5 job, probably earning more cash and with even less spare time. Theoretically higher work efficiency, but perhaps for naught? If one can get by with a more enjoyable life and working less, living on a boat. Also I did not mean to say that their creative output is not useful because it's not work. They are definitely doing more useful work than me.
    - ropejumper 2y ago
      Maybe, but your life is almost definitely more luxurious (unless you live somewhere where that's not the case). Not everyone could manage to live like this, I think.
xiwenc 2y ago
Reading through the homepage one part stood out: they burn through quite some laptops. I wonder, perhaps it’s related to their environment? Salpeter is probably damaging the electronics. Consumer laptops were never designed to be out on sea for such extended time. Now… what could they do about this issue? Assuming this is the root cause of the failures.
- barbs 2y ago
  I can't find the link right now but I believe they've learned to clean all the ports and keep the laptops in boxes with desiccants to keep them dry
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    > keep the laptops in boxes with desiccants to keep them dry Such a simple solution. Have a special low-humidity environment.-
- 159753456 2y ago
  > what could they do about this issue? The problem is the moist, salty air, circulating through the electronics. Use a tablet (it's closed, doesn't suck in air for cooling), ideally a waterproof one. There are also "sealed", splash-proof keyboards, but even if using a regular keyboard, replacing that from time to time is far cheaper than replacing a whole laptop.
swiftcoder 2y ago
That their static site generator is hand-coded in plain old C never ceases to amuse (and for the record, I'm all for quirky low-fi tech like this)
rcarmo 2y ago
Every time this comes up in HN I lose myself in the weeds and spend hours poking at their site(s), which is saying something. My own quest for “less” keeps getting postponed, though.
doovd 2y ago
One thing I don't get is how they sustain themselves in terms of income - does anyone know what they do to support their lifestyle? Just really curious (and potentially out of the loop). Thanks.
- lomase 2y ago
  I don't think they sustain themselves with this project.
  - doovd 2y ago
    Ahh right so this is not a 365days per year thing, but they have relatively normal jobs in the industry?
    - myaccountonhn 2y ago
      I think they worked in the industry and don’t need to work to sustain themselves now. Probably they had a few years of runway and then together with their income sources can sustain themselves at a slight negative.
    - lomase 2y ago
      I doubt it. In my experience most people who have this kind of lifestyle is people who dont need to work.
  - copx 2y ago
    They get 900 USD a month of stable income from Patreon. Add to that income from art commissions etc. and realize that they don't have to pay rent, car insurance etc. Looks sustainable enough.
    - lomase 2y ago
      Mantaining a boat is very expensive. The people I know with boats all make what we call good money here. But I guess by HN standards are different to mine.
Inviz 2y ago
A single 1$ STM32 blue pill (or one 4$ STM32F4, or god forbid esp32) could do so much more than a NES at lower energy consumption.
- criddell 2y ago
  There's definitely some tension between their constraints and desires. I love that they are able to productively use hardware that is usually considered obsolete. But they also have a pretty severe power and space budget. If I were asked to advise on a small, low power computing setup, it would be hard to beat a modern phone of some type. But that choice violates so many of their stated objectives it's a non-starter. The old TRS-80 Model 100 fits some of the goals. It runs for a long time on just four AA batteries. But it's text only and perhaps even too limited even for 100R. I'd love to see a modern version of that machine with a bitmapped display, running a minimal (not Linux) OS, that can run for months on four AA batteries. Maybe something like a somewhat upgraded Psion 5. I think much of the Psion software is available so maybe it's actually a possibility.
  - Inviz 2y ago
    In my opinion mid-level STM32F4 or high level STM34H7 would be pretty great machines for people who'd like to self-constrain themselves. Very capable, and with a lot of freedom to improvise unorthodox solutions. There're so many modes of operations, sub-systems (i.e. creative use of DMA to emulate extra UARTs), ability to drive LCD if needed, all the GPIOs, ability to add external RAM, etc. In fact i've been working on and off on implementing operating system that uses CANOpen framework (a higher-level system based on CAN bus) for super-reliable wired networking. I want to follow similar path of travelling on expedition truck and doing programming for the truck sub-systems on the go.
  - ndiddy 2y ago
    The AlphaSmart Dana has a similar form factor to the TRS-80 Model 100. It runs Palm OS and can easily be converted to run off of standard rechargeable AA batteries. The downside is that the batteries only last for 20-25 hours of screen on time.
sulandor 2y ago
reminds of moxxie's boat http://vimeo.com/15351476 http://vimeo.com/15351476
mihaic 2y ago
I'm always a bit conflicted when I see these kinds of stories, due to the message they send. I remember vising the Seychelles a few years ago, and finding it an earthly paradise, the kind that everyone should experience at least once. Yet it's a tiny nation state that can only properly handle a limited amount of tourists. In essence, I've started believing that all these "digital nomads" that work remotely in one of these places are simply abusing their quota of earthly paradise, which really is in a fixed supply. I'm not really blaming them, but let's not glamourize this.
- lbotos 2y ago
  Uh, 100R live on a boat? Like, sure, we can call them digital nomads but they are very much different from the “startup that has no office we have a travel stipend and work from anywhere” crowd. (I’ve been that person before. That’s easy mode compared to how 100R live.)
  - Levitz 2y ago
    How many people can afford to live on a boat, sailing between countries, building and designing like they do? The motivations beat those of the average digital nomad by a mile, and I applaud them, but this is still squarely into "rich people" stuff.
    - lbotos 2y ago
      Why do you have "rich people" in quotes? They live in a 1982 sailboat as their primary residence. They use older hardware and are trying to be sustainable. Does this look like "rich people" to you? https://100r.co/media/content/travel/hathayim14.jpg https://100r.co/media/content/travel/hathayim14.jpg There are definitely rich people that live on $500,000 boats and sail the world. 100R doesn't appear to be that? I'm pretty sure they've actually decided "not to make a lot of money" and are rich in experiences from going all in on this lifestyle.
  - mihaic 2y ago
    You're right, it's a totally different thing that they're doing. That's why I'm conflicted, since I'm openly against digital nomads. It's still glamourizing a lifestyle that I can't see working on a larger scale, and which doesn't contribute to the infrastructure that enables it.
bArray 2y ago
A "small collective" is two people in this case? I think they are at risk of becoming exactly what they hate, with a convoluted build stack that outside people struggle to use. Why was 6502 decided on instead of Java for example, which is relatively platform agnostic?
- rkachowski 2y ago
  Java is seemingly the first thing they considered[1], but it was too fragmented and complicated for their purely pragmatic usecase. [1] https://100r.co/site/weathering_software_winter.html https://100r.co/site/weathering_software_winter.html
agys 2y ago
These two precious human beings are an inspiration for me since very long. Their radical life choices are a teaching for me; the most important part being that it all happens incrementally: tooth paste can be replaced with something that has less chemicals, no packaging, cheaper (and that doesn’t clog the pipes of the boat… a “fix” that came later) and likewise many other things in our daily lives.
louwrentius 2y ago
I have so much more interest in people behind Hundred Rabbits and how they try to live than all of the modern world that makes people miserable for shareholder value.
durpleDrank 2y ago
Before his pivot to programmer sailor he helped start the Montreal chiptune scene under the name of http://toycompany.cc/ http://toycompany.cc/ Congrats on everything Aliceffekt !
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
heraldgeezer 2y ago
Why such old computers? I get linux and open source, but you can use new stuff. The keyboard error specifically. Also maybe then have a spare usb one. Laptops in general are bad.
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
I couldn't find it anywhere, how many people are living on this boat? Do they have financial support from someone on land? It is a collective, do people swap in/out of living on the boat?
- Bluestein 2y ago
  As I understand it, it's just two people on the boat, with - of course - a pet rabbit.-
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
I want to get on board with these groups, would really want to be in one. Can't all society be cool and live like this? But. I keep coming back around to, where are they getting all this stuff. Everything that keeps them going has to be made somewhere, by working stiffs with day jobs. There is no escaping Moloch. These groups are the odd random cast off, and I really want to be them, but everyone can't be them, or their wouldn't be any of the things that keep them going. They are living on the cast offs of the rest of us still in the machine.
- throw4847285 2y ago
  Have you seen the movie My Dinner with Andre? At its core is a debate over whether or not people need to get to the top of Mount Everest (metaphorically) to have a transcendent experience, and if so, what do you do for the people who can't afford to get to the top of Everest? I've seen the movie several times and I always leave conflicted. I find these kinds of radical departures from "normal life" to be thrilling, even just vicariously. And modern life is constructed in such a way that it's extremely hard to break free from "the machine" (as you call it) without something radical, which is usually inaccessible. I often settle on a more optimistic note, wherein the people living on boats in the ocean are setting some kind of example that even if it can't be followed directly, maybe it can give a little jolt, shocking you out of complacency.
  - myaccountonhn 2y ago
    Woah, one of my favorite movies is referenced here. That’s cool to see. I really like your takeaway. It’s very important to have ideas of what life could be, so we have something to work towards as individuals and society. I read a book a while back, passions and the interests, which talks about the philosophical underpinnings of capitalism. It’s interesting to think that capitalism as it was originally conceived was meant to lower our passions in favor of commerce, since it was considered the most tamable vice. No wonder we feel inspired when people choose to try something different.
  - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
    Thank you, I'll check it out.

780 points by Bluestein 2y ago

Their philosophy makes me think they should just use Windows XP/7 or something and call it a day. Offline first? “past-proofing”? These are desktop and console programs where the OS vendors have spent onerous amounts of capital to maintain backward API compatibility. In other words: Windows and Win32, and nothing but. Everything else, including the Web, has been broken and deprecated several times over.

mikae1 2y ago
https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/duskos https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/duskos > Dusk OS is a 32-bit Forth and big brother to Collapse OS. Its primary purpose is to be maximally useful during the first stage of civilizational collapse, that is, when we can't produce modern computers anymore but that there's still many modern computers around.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > 32-bit Forth OS mixed with C I mean, what's not to love here? :)
  - kragen 2y ago
    the z80 more generally, collapseos is cosplay, not engineering in more detail, collapseos is not a pragmatic engineering effort to foster resiliency, but an essentially religious effort to atone for the sins of the worldly through ascetic renunciation of pleasures such as guis, returning to an imagined arcadian past of austere virtue see against-collapseos.md in http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/pavnotes2.git http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/pavnotes2.git for the full critique
    - mburns 2y ago
      DuskOS != CollapseOS (same author, the latter inspired the former). DuskOS doesn’t run on z80. It’s i386 or ARM. Whether that makes it a serious effort or not is still up for debate.
      - kragen 2y ago
        apologies! i haven't investigated duskos in any detail and so whatever opinions i may have about it are not worth considering
    - pmarreck 2y ago
      that URL leads directly to what looks like the contents of a .git directory (so, all the metainformation but no project directory listing) I'm curious because I buy this comment more than their mission statement, although I absolutely agree with their stance on the "longevity/maintainability problem" in software and hardware. but as soon as I saw the ranting about colonialism I was like "oh... basically, anarchist anti-capitalists" as soon as they have kids, they will quickly abandon their non-acquisition of resources stance, LOL
      - kragen 2y ago
        cf. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41133098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41133098 collapseos isn't a 100r thing, and i haven't seen anything from virgil that sounds like an anarchist anti-capitalist. i have a lot of sympathies for the anarchist anti-capitalist point of view although personally i've suffered a lot more harm from anti-capitalism than from capitalism
        pmarreck 2y ago
        I have sympathies for it too. But I am also not at all surprised by your "harmed more by anti-caps than caps" statement. The funny thing about having a kid (he's 3) is that you are forced to re-evaluate all your values and preconceived notions to see what it is you really want to transmit to your kid.
- stonethrowaway 2y ago
  [flagged]
Bluestein 2y ago
The way you put it, it makes sense.- PS. For many XP was some sort of "sweetspot", as far as Win OSs are concerned.- PS. Then again, it depends. How much evidence of "past-proof"-ness do you need - in terms of "backstory" to meet that requirement? Linux, or - even better - some BSD variants go way further back.-
- senorrib 2y ago
  Windows has become a garbage pile of spyware lately, but even Linux can't really compare to the insane level of backwards compatibility Windows offers.
  - anticorporate 2y ago
    > even Linux can't really compare to the insane level of backwards compatibility Windows offers. My experience is quite the opposite. I still play the Windows Entertainment Pack version of Tetris. In Linux, thanks to Wine, it just works. In Windows 10, I'm told to contact the publisher for a new version.
    - lmm 2y ago
      Emulators tend to be better for compatibility than live systems. Did you try using Wine on windows? And if you take a similar-vintage Linux program, you may well find it runs more easily under SFU or WSL on Windows than on a current version of Linux.
  - pmarreck 2y ago
    NixOS can. Because literally every piece of software in the Nix repo includes all dependencies (including things like build dependencies, not just runtime dependencies) that existed at the time it was built, all the way down to the metal basically
    - kragen 2y ago
      well, all the way down to the kernel, not the metal
pushfoo 2y ago
TL;DR: They already wrote Varvara[1] + software[2] for it My understanding is: * The authors wanted to run on a Raspberry Pi powered by solar + batteries * They're often somewhere in the Pacific so their internet connection is often bad * Varvara[1] is the portable-enough solution which works for them * Others liked it enough to write a bunch of other tools[2] It's all pretty much self-hosting at this point. It's not for everyone, but why bother with Windows if it fits your needs? [1]: https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/varvara.html https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/varvara.html [2]: https://github.com/hundredrabbits/awesome-uxn?tab=readme-ov-file#applications https://github.com/hundredrabbits/awesome-uxn?tab=readme-ov-...
anthk 2y ago
They run 9front, much better than XP and 7. No reinstalls, no DLL hells, everything it's statically compiled, updates can be done totally in place and offline. Good luck running Windows 7 on an RPI and with a laughable power draw. Oh, and don't even compare VS + MSDN documentations (huge GB's wasted) vs what Acme can do and just the plan9's 9.intro.pdf book. The disk usage would wear out any SD in days. 9front, otoh, can even selfcompile itself in a breeze. Try that under Windows.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  The constraints under which they work are wonderful. Power included. It basically mandates excellence, efficiency.-
  - anthk 2y ago
    Not just that. For any non-JS web, they can compile and share netsurf offline from 9front and happily post at HN or read lots of sites such as http://68k.news http://68k.news and https://midnight.pub https://midnight.pub And, with a Gemini client for 9front (there are a few), between the gemini 'capsules' (sites and blogs) and gemini://gemi.dev (web decrafying proxy to gemini, where you can read news stripping out the 95% of the pages, scripts, trackers and all the bullshit, they can get totally covered. Gopher9 (Gopher client) makes a good point with gopher://magical.fish for global news, translation services and such. Much less bandwidth spent than the web, for sure. With a bare irc client (again, literally few lines of shell scripting under 9front due how's designed) they can connect to the public IRC servers from bitlbee.org and connect to modern disservices such as Discord and Slack, at least being able to chat against their peers.
  - Avshalom 2y ago
    The thing is, while it might mandate efficiency, what they made was an un optimized 8 bit VM synthesizing 16bit arithmetic running on 64 bit hardware. It's not efficient at all, it's just that the constraints they gave themselves leaves enormous amount of power on the table.
    - 2y ago
mephitix 2y ago
I think their philosophy / research is in understanding how to build modern software that is more resilient. So from that research/exploration standpoint it makes sense to me they would go that route instead of using older tech

bagels 2y ago

My solution would have been: older copies of photoshop that don't require an internet connection and a larger battery + solar panels.

Bluestein 2y ago
PS. Were they not to be bitrotten beyond repair, maybe some old "shareware" copy of Paint Shop Pro or similar, on a CD-ROM even.-
imrejonk 2y ago
A larger battery and more solar panels doesn’t seem to be an option for the authors: > The modern stack doesn't really work for us, it doesn't apply to the limitations that we have on the boat. We have 180 watts of solar. We just spent the whole summer with two 6-volt batteries, which is very small. When you're going down that route, at every turn people are telling to just put more solar panels, or to buy more batteries. That is such a modern way of solving your problem. In reality, technology like this(especially high-tech) rarely solves problems. It creates a lot of other problems, which on a sailboat is very immediate. Putting more solar would mean more windage, more chance of things flying off and cutting our limbs. More batteries would mean the boat would be heavier, it would stop us from being able to run away from storms. https://100r.co/site/weathering_software_winter.html https://100r.co/site/weathering_software_winter.html
- Bluestein 2y ago
  The constraints" are amazing. And basically *drive* good solutions.-
- mdorazio 2y ago
  I love what they're doing, but these are reasons that don't hold up to scrutiny. gluing flexible panels to the deck would solve the windage problem and the boat is over 16,000 pounds laden... adding another ~80 pounds (less if LiFePO) of batteries would decrease their "run away" ability by about 0.5%. They pretty clearly ran into a challenge, chose the fun solution rather than the practical one, and ran with it. Which is great.

mikejulietbravo 2y ago

The start of this reads like the beginning of a cult manifesto, but then transitions to a very logical solution for an important problem. Baffling. I'm in

jldugger 2y ago
It keeps bouncing between too real and too absurd. Absurd: Not enough power on our sailboat to run Ableton and Photoshop. Real: So we replaced it with open source technology. Absurd: That technology was based on Electron. Real: Electron was too bloated. Absurd: So we ported everything over to the NES. Real: And now you can run our software anywhere you can emulate an NES
- Bluestein 2y ago
  Exactly my feeling.- PS. Which leads me - tangentially - to think that (maybe) the solution to (at least) some of our problems might someday be found in a cult :) Who knows ... > Absurd: So we ported everything over to the NES. This was grand. The NES as a most effective "baseline" platform. Can totally see humanity sending out an NES emulator on Voyager VI as a last gasp.-
  - wizzwizz4 2y ago
    LessWrong had some pretty good advice in the early months of the pandemic, despite their terrible track record on politics and AI. There's a lot right with the Amish. You could write an entire book about the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Cults can have a lot to offer.
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      > Cults can have a lot to offer. ... in no small part perhaps because they remain isolated "pockets" of culture where - often - "progress" is slower or more controlled. Where idiosyncratic behavior becomes the "new" orthodoxy as behavior or culture "degrades".- Where was it ... "Nightfall" (the novel) I think it was where a cult periodically saves civilization - by being the only ones that know how to handle the aftermath.-

munificent 2y ago

I had the good fortune to meet and spend some time with Devine at Handmade Seattle a couple of years ago. It was an absolutely wonderful, inspiring experience.

Bluestein 2y ago
Wishing to thank you for your comment, please, do tell. Can imagine it would have been (inspiring, etc.).-
- munificent 2y ago
  They are exactly like you'd imagine from their online work. Extremely passionate about ecology. Pessimistic about where the world is headed but optimistic about our individual ability to cope with it. Super into low-level programming and old school pixel art and that whole aesthetic. Absolutely full of stories about sailing. And just completely present in conversation.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    > Pessimistic about where the world is headed but optimistic about our individual ability to cope with it. Therein lies one key, methinks. I find that refreshing. It seems a viable "compromise", and, a solution to "data disaster driven dispair" :) ... faith in the individual.- > And just completely present in conversation. Incredible.- Many thanks for sharing.-
  - lomase 2y ago
    Extremly passionate about ecology but lives in a boat....
    - agys 2y ago
      How is this a contradiction?
      - lomase 2y ago

montebicyclelo 2y ago

Their 2d music programming language, Orca is very cool/fun. Some examples: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MNF8SF69QvM&list=PLb1uDATFJPcEEG3w715GzbD4AE232Pdcu&index=6 https://youtube.com/watch?v=MNF8SF69QvM&list=PLb1uDATFJPcEEG... https://youtube.com/watch?v=DBI8eBMGyYs https://youtube.com/watch?v=DBI8eBMGyYs https://youtube.com/watch?v=mxr8Dtw2R5w https://youtube.com/watch?v=mxr8Dtw2R5w https://youtube.com/watch?v=RDZiKYSGsjg https://youtube.com/watch?v=RDZiKYSGsjg

fk-corporation 2y ago
Nice. I may not (correction: almost definitely don't on 80% of stuff) agree with them politically, but I have to admire their creativity and product execution.
smrq 2y ago
Orca singlehandedly got me out of a multi-year musical rut. It's such an interesting and different way of sequencing than the traditional piano roll experience. Like modular synthesis, it can be easier to just use it like a toy and not make anything "finished", but it really can spark the imagination.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  The best kind of tool (for creative work at least). Unpretentious "toys" that - particularly - don't "get in the way ...
metasyn 2y ago
for anyone curious about learning, i made a tutorial and playground for orca: https://metasyn.srht.site/learn-orca/ https://metasyn.srht.site/learn-orca/
- j-pb 2y ago
  Do you use a specific browser? Looks broken-ish to me on most things but firefox, and on firefox the example play button also doesn't work for me. Super cool in theory though!

mephitix 2y ago

Occasionally i've stumbled upon some neat tool or beautiful software and i'm like, wow - who's behind this? And then I realize it's these two folks. Their approach is so surprising and inspiring, thanks for putting out some cool stuff into the world!

hosh 2y ago
Have you looked into the permatech community in general?
- worldsayshi 2y ago
  What do you mean by permatech community? When i googled it I didn't find anything that fits the context.
  - miffi 2y ago
    The search term is "permacomputing" afaik. Here's 100r's (specifically xxiivv's) page on the topic https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/permacomputing.html https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/permacomputing.html The first paragraph gives a good overview of the idea: > Permacomputing encourages the maximization of hardware lifespan, minimization of energy usage and focuses on the use of already available computational resources. It values maintenance and refactoring of systems to keep them efficient, instead of planned obsolescence, permacomputing practices planned longevity. It is about using computation only when it has a strengthening effect on ecosystems.
    - lancesells 2y ago
      So it's like permaculture but for software.
      - hosh 2y ago
        That's the idea. However, my initial criticism of the way permacomputing is formulated are: 1. We could have examined each of the 12 Permaculture Design Principle and attempted to directly apply them to software design. For example, "Observe and Interact" is so broadly useful and versatile (and the core of adversarial domains, such as warfare), it can easily be applied to software. You won't see it directly listed here: https://permacomputing.net/Principles/ https://permacomputing.net/Principles/ 2. The permaculture ethical principles are not there in full. "Care for life" refers to "Care for Earth", "Care for People", but nothing about "Fair Share". Comparing these two ways of looking at it, I don't see how the permacomputing formulation is an improvement on how the permaculture ethical principles are formulated. Furthermore, I think this has more to do with not sufficiently delving into the place of technologies within a regenerative paradigm. I am speculating here with little basis, but I don't think the people who came up with this got their hands dirty with planting, nurturing, and harvesting things. However, reading more with 100r, CollapseOS, DuskOS, there is a lot of thought put into this even if I think there are some key things missing from my experience with permaculture. It is why my friends and I are exploring the ideas of "permatech", what is Technology's full, integrated place within a living systems world view? We have yet to come up with anything coherent yet.

venantius 2y ago

Two people and a pet isn’t really a “collective”

subpub47 2y ago
This is the best critique of the entire idea, clearly.
nfrmatk 2y ago
That's the most constructive takeaway you have when looking at all their work? That's an unnecessarily limited view and doesn't add to the conversation. From my vantage point their work fits the definition nicely. "A collective body" [1] ... "Collectivized or characterized by collectivism" [1] ... "A political or economic theory advocating collective control especially over production and distribution" [2] [1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collective https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collective [2]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collectivism https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collectivism
- blacksmith_tb 2y ago
  I wouldn't say it's a completely throwaway dis. As much as I like Orca it easily could be that calling themselves "a collective" is putting on airs or pretending to be a bigger movement than they are. But it could also be tongue-in-cheek, self-parody, or theater of the absurd (which seems more likely).
tumult 2y ago
There are a bunch of contributors to these projects. I wrote the C version of Orca (and helped design the second version of its evaluation strategy) but also had help and ideas from other contributors as well. I wrote the Windows version of Uxn, Uxn32, which was a from-scratch implementation, except for a couple of things like the palette mixing table. The code from Uxn32's VM core ended up in other versions of Uxn emulators, which were then modified and improved by the people running those projects. There is not any governing body, committees, or authoritative leadership for these projects. We just talk to each other through various channels and do stuff. It's a collective.

austinl 2y ago

Their sailing videos are very inspiring—from what I remember, they sailed from Vancouver to Japan, then down to New Zealand and back to Vancouver over the course of a few years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueTCjpNXing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueTCjpNXing

sgu999 2y ago
Ha, thanks for sharing! I quickly looked for something like that on their site but didn't find it. Love their editing style. Very inspiring indeed.

0x3444ac53 2y ago

They're the best! I first came across orca while learning about esoteric languages, and to see how it spun out and evolved into the entire Vavara virtual computer has been amazing. They're smart, capable, and committed to openly sharing knowledge and ideas in their community.

joeatwork 2y ago

UXN / Varvara (a project by these folks) is something really special https://100r.co/site/uxn.html https://100r.co/site/uxn.html - an approach to creating intelligible software by applying strict complexity constraints, sort of like Viewpoint Research’s STEPS project, but with more concrete goals and an even smaller and simpler basis.

metasyn 2y ago
for anyone curious about learning, i made an online port of UXN using emscripten that allows you to code and compile and emulate in a browser: https://metasyn.srht.site/learn-uxn/ https://metasyn.srht.site/learn-uxn/

chiffre01 2y ago

I read this and thought it was satire at first: "We eventually ported our tools to C, but while we had achieved ideal energy usage, portability was still an issue, so we kept looking. We learnt 6502 Assembly, seeing players run our games as NES roms on all these different platforms gave us an idea."

ropejumper 2y ago
How so? NES games are genuinely more portable than C programs that do anything involving graphics or IO. A simple example is the fact that they use Plan 9 C. I urge you to try making a simple game that runs on both Plan 9 and Linux. The only reason C is portable is because a lot of collective effort was put into porting various libraries to various systems, and homogenizing them to look kinda the same if you squint. Uxn creates a very easy to implement virtual computer that is actually identical. A Uxn program is more portable than a C one for their purposes. And I think it's obvious how that could have came to them from NES emulators, which have similar properties.

fngjdflmdflg 2y ago

[flagged]

chambored 2y ago
Have you looked at their body of work? An embedded YouTube video does not negate their ethos.
- Vegenoid 2y ago
  Well, it kind of negates it a little bit, because they are against trackers, and state that their website does not use them, but they are spreading Google's trackers through their website. Of course, this is almost certainly accidental and I'd think it would be corrected if it were brought to their attention, and the meat of their work is in domains other than lightweight websites.
subpub47 2y ago
I'm glad this is the best critique we can do.
- mrandish 2y ago
  Brings to mind a comment I saw here the other day observing that some on HN seem to default to a rather "unkind" mode.
  - fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
    I don't default to unkind mode on every topic. Perhaps I phrased the comment too negatively here however. Note though that as a later comment pointed out, they claim to have "no tracking or analytics," so clearly this was a mistake on their part. A commitment to no tracking is also something I would expect from a site like this making the claims they are making. So clearly my criticism itself was well placed, even if the delivery was too harsh. Also, I would think they would at least check to see what embedding a youtube video does before doing it. And I do think embedding the youtube video is strange even ignoring the tracking for a site that describes itself as "small." Is it really small if you have a massive iframe embedded in it?

skadamat 2y ago

We sorely need more serious experimentation with computing & computing cultures and IMO Hundred Rabbits is a great example of this. Instead of talking about ideas, they practice what they preach. As with most experiments, we can observe and borrow shadows of their ideas into our own life hopefully!

Bluestein 2y ago
> We sorely need more serious experimentation with computing & computing cultures Indeed.- PS. If we stop and examine, our entire computing "paradigms" have been - mostly - driven, propelled forward by "industrial", commercial, business productivity (use cases) ... ... but what would have happened / will happen were these paradigms to emerge (and emerge mainly) from art, creation, play, instead?
- tomooot 2y ago
  I think modding communities are a reasonably good analog to this. Up until someone realized you could change the alpha channel of wall textures to make them transparent, the way to get a custom skin in Counter Strike Source (and 1.6), was to drop a file into your install directory. The game would check for files named the same as it's default resources, read them in for use instead of the original. But then people started using the aforementioned transparent walls in competitive matches, and so a new variable was introduced to force the use of the defaults. The next game (CS:GO) provided skins through a marketplace, including the use of loot-crate mechanics, the prices of in demand items sky rocketed, they are now used as currency for hackers and online gambling, and the online skin gambling sites have been caught advertising fraudulently through streamers. "rare" skins can sell for tens or hundreds of THOUSANDS of dollars. In short, a great feature got exploited, commercialized, more exploited, and inspired a great amount of profiteering and sketchy business practices while ruining community aspects of a whole genre of entertainment (lots of copycats). What I'm trying to say, is I think those paradigms most likely would have been co-opted by third parties in the name of greed and profit, destroying the communal and humanistic aspects of them in short order.
jll29 2y ago

skadamat 2y ago

One quirk here is that they say "This website has no tracking or analytics." but Brave is showing Double Click / Google Ads? Might be an oversight!

tsunitsuni 2y ago
it is the embedded YouTube video most likely :)
kragen 2y ago
i think this is the culprit: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_1Y8PwD5XDs" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> it seems to be doing telemetry/surveillance to play.google.com a thing to keep in mind is that accelerometer access has recently been shown to leak enough information about passwords to compromise them

tek256 2y ago

One of their founders, Devine, gave a wonderful talk at Handmade Seattle 2022 titled Weathering Software Winter (https://vimeo.com/780005704 https://vimeo.com/780005704) that sparked some really interesting conversations about software resiliency and data preservation!

irusensei 2y ago

I’d the name related to Centzon Totochtin?

entaloneralie 2y ago
It is! :)

axblount 2y ago

Hundred Rabbits is like Urbit without the evil aura and digital real estate.

actionfromafar 2y ago
Hundred Rabbits is... nothing? Nirvana?
- culi 2y ago
  Urbit had a fair bit of creativity in both aesthetic and tech. But yeah I agree it was mostly a crypto scam mainly driven by a no-longer-open/loud neonazi.
  - nemo44x 2y ago
    If you think Curtis Yarvin is a Neo-Nazi then I’m afraid you’re so far out there and uninformed you’re probably beyond saving.
    - BizarroLand 2y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin
    - otabdeveloper4 2y ago
      > uninformed Yeah, nah. They know exactly what they are doing.

nathanfig 2y ago

At WHOI we frequently run into some of these issues. Ocean-going projects often have long periods of disconnect, or have just a tiny bandwidth-capped connections that are meant for sending home critical data and not for automated software updates... So much software also just takes for granted that it should be allowed on the Internet.

tomwphillips 2y ago
>So much software also just takes for granted that it should be allowed on the Internet. Indeed, and I find it a problem on land too. I use Miro at work and it is _awful_ on an unreliable internet connection, like on trains in the UK. I really value local-first software for this reason. I’d like to see more of it.
polairscience 2y ago
You're telling me. Being on HN and working on remote autonomous systems is such a dichotomy. We measure transmission rates in Kb still and costs in thousands of dollars. Not to mention power consumption. Sometimes I wish there was a conference for people working on these kinds of projects. "The union of Luddite scientists annual meeting" or something.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > "The union of Luddite scientists ... Somebody really ought to set that up, assuming it doesn't already exist in some fashion ...
  - disqard 2y ago
    Paging Abner Coimbre... Bluestein, you should check out the Handmade Conference(s). https://handmadecities.com/ https://handmadecities.com/
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      On my way. Really appreciate the tip!

rendang 2y ago

This page https://100r.co/site/philosophy.html https://100r.co/site/philosophy.html says > Preparing for impending apocalyptic events should mean collective action and structural reform, not individualism and isolation. What apocalyptic events?

Animats 2y ago

Site: "This website has no tracking or analytics." Privacy Badger blocked tracking from: googleads.g.doubleclick.net static.doubleclick.net play.google.com www.google.com www.youtube.com Because <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_1Y8PwD5XDs" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen> </iframe> If you use anything from Google, you will be tracked.

ghostwords 2y ago
(I develop Privacy Badger.) Privacy Badger can replace YouTube embeds with "click to activate" placeholders. Faster browsing, better privacy, easy-to-use controls, at least when the replacement works properly. See "Pro tip #1" in https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/privacy-badger-puts-you-control-widgets https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/privacy-badger-puts-yo...
- CalRobert 2y ago
  Thank you for developing an amazing tool!
  - ghostwords 2y ago
    Thank you for using Privacy Badger!!
- mattlohkamp 2y ago
  ah thanks for this! youtube embeds disabled by default is an improvement I didn't even know I was looking for!
  - ghostwords 2y ago
    You're welcome!
- SushiHippie 2y ago

j3s 2y ago

Rek drew the pufferfish on my website & i love it to death https://j3s.sh https://j3s.sh

blainelewis1 2y ago
I also really enjoyed your poems :) I aspire to have an interesting website like yours. I came back to read them again and your website was down though :(
- j3s 2y ago
  thank you! > I aspire to have an interesting website like yours let me know if you need help / inspiration! > I came back to read them again and your website was down though sorry about that, i was moving & my server came with me :)
apsurd 2y ago
I read all your poems just now. They're perfect, thank you! Just what I need. They speak to me.
- j3s 2y ago
  you're welcome :)
latentnumber 2y ago
Thank you for the poems. They're weirdly soothing.
- j3s 2y ago
  <3
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hoosieree 2y ago
Nice site. This and 100r are an antidote to the soulless corporate AI slop that's slathered over everything these days. And a webring too? Don't mind if I do...

kragen 2y ago

we had a really wonderful thread about uxn/varvara on here in june: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40805267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40805267

istrice 2y ago

I've been following these guys for a decade now (maybe more??) and I was always blown away by their skills and aesthetics. Devine has been a huge influence on my own artistic style and finding xxiivv.com on some random chan during high school, and getting lost in it, was a big mind-changing event. Glad to see they're still sailing around the world.

pmarreck 2y ago

I never heard of these guys and this is a fascinating rabbit hole. I don't agree with everything they stand for (and that's OK!) but the long term maintainability and sustainability of computer software and hardware I am 100% onboard with.

yllautcaj 2y ago

I think sailing and free software have in common the type of freedom that is not unlimited, necessarily constrained by the reality of sharing a planet with billions of other primates. There are a lot of rules one must follow to share the pacific ocean (especially the parts close to land) with other people, but that doesn't make travel under wind power any less captivating. Also, the Yamaha 33 is an impressively tiny and light boat for the sailing they're doing, let alone living and working on.

edgarvaldes 2y ago

The name reminds me of the fictional Twelve Monkeys.

codazoda 2y ago

I guess I’ll also take the opportunity to point out that my Neat CSS framework was partially inspired by reading their work. I continue to use it for nearly all my projects now. I have become addicted to the smallness of it all. https://neat.joeldare.com https://neat.joeldare.com

msephton 2y ago
Nicely done!

sarimkx 2y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38878760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38878760 Crazy how HN works. I posted this 6 months ago because I collect unique personal websites, but no one took a bite... Glad people took interest this time.

criddell 2y ago
It's been submitted many times. Sometimes people read and comment, sometimes they don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=100r.co https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=100r.co
- sarimkx 2y ago
  Yep...I understand.

rewgs 2y ago

Love these two. I’m always so happy to see whenever they’re posted to HN. They’re such interesting people, and I so deeply respect their commitment to their values and continuous evolution. The world needs more people like this.

golergka 2y ago

> To undermine the capitalist structure and its abusive scripts about human worth in relation to work, productivity, and ownership. To subvert oppressive gender norms and put in question the binary. To actively unlearn biased and colonial thinking. It's hard to take people with this political manifesto seriously, but I have to give credit where it's due — their work is impressive. Many artists say that they "explore" something and end up with completely bland "social critique" pieces that don't say anything new, but these guys manage to do a lot of interesting stuff, especially Orca.

incanus77 2y ago

If anyone is interested further, I would highly recommend one of Devine’s latest talks, from Strange Loop: https://100r.co/site/computing_and_sustainability.html https://100r.co/site/computing_and_sustainability.html Transcribed and video format. Among other things, they came into computing from a bit of a different direction and ended up building tools and a platform that I’m betting 90% of people in the industry would revere in awe as things beyond their understanding. Truly an inspiration.

fitsumbelay 2y ago
They've been around for 15+ years I think. Recently found some clones of their repos that aren't available/updatable. Very fascinating folks and collective activity. More than just software-making

mgaunard 2y ago

"a small collective exploring the failability of modern tech" really just means "a couple living on a boat".

SoftTalker 2y ago
And discovering that consumer hardware doesn't do well in a marine environment.
mazdayasna 2y ago
"they/them x iel/ielle" really just means "a heterosexual couple"
- ropejumper 2y ago
  I wonder why this bothers you so much as to go on the internet and tell everyone what you personally think about who those two people actually are.
  - mgaunard 2y ago
    I believe clear and succinct writing is the key to effective communication.
    - ropejumper 2y ago
      A very good way to make writing clearer is to replace the words that you don't care to know with other words that are completely inaccurate. Question: how is it helpful for you to label them as a straight couple? Why would it matter to you? Why is adding the "straight" qualifier better than just leaving it as "they're a couple"?
    - throw4847285 2y ago
      The content matters though. If you are clearly and succinctly communicating something insecure and stupid, you don't get any bonus points.
- 2y ago

barbs 2y ago

From their mission statement (https://100r.co/site/mission.html https://100r.co/site/mission.html): > Diversity is important in nearly all aspects, whether it's with computers, or with life itself. A polyculture of tools and systems distributes the surface of attack and creates resilience. Viruses can attack a single crop, or a single computer architecture. The more services, or resources are centralized, the more power is concentrated into fewer hands and more easily taken over. Feels particularly relevant given the recent Crowdstrike outage.

_whiteCaps_ 2y ago

https://100r.co/site/princess_louisa_inlet.html https://100r.co/site/princess_louisa_inlet.html "PLI is truly a picturesque place, nestled between extraordinarily large mountains and cliffs, blessed with clear waters and lush forests. The waters in the inlet are very calm, it is well-shielded. Any boat wakes travel far thoughout the inlet, from wall to wall, and take a long while to subside. If motoring in this inlet, go slow." Wow. Surprised to see one of my favourite places show up on HN. If you have the opportunity to go to Princess Louisa Inlet, I highly recommend it. The contrast between the glaciers and the ocean is breathtakingly beautiful. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Princess+Louisa+Inlet/@50.205178,-123.7702667,4330m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x548777c24cbae27f:0x39070ea21de66503!8m2!3d50.1811701!4d-123.8133618!16s%2Fm%2F02w7y1s?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/place/Princess+Louisa+Inlet/@50....

yardie 2y ago

I've been following their travels since I guess 2016. Right around the time we were winding down our own seabattical. It's good to see they are still out there, traveling. creating, and coding. Even on our much bigger boat, boat projects were much bigger and more complex. So, there is a lot to be said about their minimalist travels. It really strips you down to the essence and encourages you to focus on what's most important.

chadk 2y ago
"seabattical" Love it!

karaterobot 2y ago

One thing modern tech gets right is that it tries to get you to correct the spelling of 'failability' by adding red lines under the letters when you type it into a web page.

onewheeltom 2y ago

Look at the cool stuff at they are doing and stop fussing about tracking.

aetherspawn 2y ago

I'd like to know if they ever nearly died (or became very uncomfortable) from running out of food, broken boat, or otherwise. Their boat is very small and has only one engine, and it looks like they will sail thousands of kms in one leg on occasion. I am soft. If I must do this, and I would kick and scream, I would sell my house and buy a yacht with megalitres capacity of water, batteries, refrigerators, and starlink. But I do not think that I could be happy doing this. I would find it more anxious than normal life.

SushiHippie 2y ago
> from running out of food According to their page they can store up to 4 months of provisions > Fully-geared, stocked with provisions for 4 months (food & water) Pino weighs 7484,274 kg (16,500 lbs)【7 484 kg】, or 8.25 tons. https://100r.co/site/pino.html https://100r.co/site/pino.html
pengaru 2y ago
Somewhat unintuitively, smaller vessels have a strength advantage, assuming a well-made closed-top vessel... your main risk AIUI is getting dismasted in a capsize. TL;DR is strength increases with square of the length, forces acting on the vessel increase with the cube of the length. This guy is the champion of tiny blue-water vessels: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCptM0nqGDJLz14oP6ROdKRw/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCptM0nqGDJLz14oP6ROdKRw/vid...
akeck 2y ago
Rek went overboard in a Pacific storm north of Japan. ("Busy Doing Nothing" book)

deleted 2y ago

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habosa 2y ago

It’s weird to be a “fan” of programmers but I’m a big fan of Hundred Rabbits. Orca is one of the most fun projects I’ve used in years and the fact that it’s from some hackers on a boat makes it all the more delightful. I hope they keep it up (I donated, I’ll probably donate again now).

gmd63 2y ago

"Go slow, and fix things." Stark contrast from the core attitude of mainstream extractive tech work, and a necessary ethos amid a growing storm of complexity that humanity increasingly depends on We are trying to go slow and fix things biologically that our natural evolution has left us vulnerable to. Cancer, prion diseases, etc. Yet we have resigned the evolution of information tech over to God as we haphazardly race in a survival of the "financially fittest" sort of contest, rewarding the companies that win at financial selection

vinnyvichy 2y ago
In this respect, their page for hacking baguettes by sun&sea is my personal favourite https://100r.co/site/solar_cooking_experiment.html https://100r.co/site/solar_cooking_experiment.html 100Rabbits is like the coming true of Grothendieck's 1972 permatech lecture given at CERN* https://github.com/Lapin0t/grothendieck-cern https://github.com/Lapin0t/grothendieck-cern >"I think that agriculture, stockbreeding, decentralized energy production, medicine of a certain kind, very different from the medicine that prevails today, will come to the fore. It's impossible to say which part purely creative joy will play in these new developments. My hope is, it will be a creative development in which there will be no essential difference between conceptual activities and manual physical activities. When people become masters of their own needs to the point where an appreciable part of their creativity remains free---and this will take a time we can't predict, it may be a generation, it may be ten, no one knows---at that point, anyone, not just a certain scientific elite, will be able to devote a significant part of their time to purely creative, purely speculative, purely playful research" *which I (or 1 of you?!) will post soon (Thanks Bluestein for showing the best time to post this stuff!)
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  > When people become masters of their own needs to the point where an appreciable part of their creativity remains free... compare with VADM EJK ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41144977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41144977 ): > It is essential to extend the knowledge and the practice of "initiative of the subordinate" in principle and in application until they are universal in the exercise of command throughout all echelons of command. (with Grothendieck being a little more optimistic than King, as the latter stops short of pushing universal initiative all the way to the bluejacket)

freethejazz 2y ago

Similar cross of art, low power/resilient tech, and sailing I saw at strange loop last year. Non-standard tech talk for sure, but fit right in at that conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3u7bGgVspM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3u7bGgVspM

acedio 2y ago
The presenter, Devine, is one of the folks behind 100r :)
- freethejazz 2y ago
  :facepalm: no wonder it rang a bell… I thought, “I wonder if these are the same folks” and even looked at their route map but somehow missed that key detail. Appreciate the graceful response :)

ratmeadow 2y ago

My first impression after reading a bit about their lifestyle was "how on earth do they have time for all this?" Things like maintaining the boat, sourcing fresh food every day for cooking, making games, creating art. Meanwhile they do all this in a very constrained environment, which can't help efficiency. Where is the time in the day for everything, after working? Then I saw they say they only work during the morning. Soooo... kinda no shit, you can live a more creative and meaningful life if you don't work. Which most people can't afford(?) to do. Where's the secret? What's the cheat code they have?

ropejumper 2y ago
The cheat code is that they have a Patreon. They make things that people like, so people pay them for it. "They don't work" is a bit reductive. Working is producing value, and value is whatever people are willing to pay for. It's not like they're millionares or something. They just managed to cut expenses low enough, while convincing people to pay them for the things they produce.
- ratmeadow 2y ago
  This seems plausible enough. I guess I'm surprised that one can live sustainably with such a lifestyle and income. Wild because I would consider myself "barely getting anywhere in life" living the typical 9-5 job, probably earning more cash and with even less spare time. Theoretically higher work efficiency, but perhaps for naught? If one can get by with a more enjoyable life and working less, living on a boat. Also I did not mean to say that their creative output is not useful because it's not work. They are definitely doing more useful work than me.
  - ropejumper 2y ago
    Maybe, but your life is almost definitely more luxurious (unless you live somewhere where that's not the case). Not everyone could manage to live like this, I think.

xiwenc 2y ago

Reading through the homepage one part stood out: they burn through quite some laptops. I wonder, perhaps it’s related to their environment? Salpeter is probably damaging the electronics. Consumer laptops were never designed to be out on sea for such extended time. Now… what could they do about this issue? Assuming this is the root cause of the failures.

barbs 2y ago
I can't find the link right now but I believe they've learned to clean all the ports and keep the laptops in boxes with desiccants to keep them dry
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > keep the laptops in boxes with desiccants to keep them dry Such a simple solution. Have a special low-humidity environment.-
159753456 2y ago
> what could they do about this issue? The problem is the moist, salty air, circulating through the electronics. Use a tablet (it's closed, doesn't suck in air for cooling), ideally a waterproof one. There are also "sealed", splash-proof keyboards, but even if using a regular keyboard, replacing that from time to time is far cheaper than replacing a whole laptop.

swiftcoder 2y ago

That their static site generator is hand-coded in plain old C never ceases to amuse (and for the record, I'm all for quirky low-fi tech like this)

rcarmo 2y ago

Every time this comes up in HN I lose myself in the weeds and spend hours poking at their site(s), which is saying something. My own quest for “less” keeps getting postponed, though.

doovd 2y ago

One thing I don't get is how they sustain themselves in terms of income - does anyone know what they do to support their lifestyle? Just really curious (and potentially out of the loop). Thanks.

lomase 2y ago
I don't think they sustain themselves with this project.
- doovd 2y ago
  Ahh right so this is not a 365days per year thing, but they have relatively normal jobs in the industry?
  - myaccountonhn 2y ago
    I think they worked in the industry and don’t need to work to sustain themselves now. Probably they had a few years of runway and then together with their income sources can sustain themselves at a slight negative.
  - lomase 2y ago
    I doubt it. In my experience most people who have this kind of lifestyle is people who dont need to work.
- copx 2y ago
  They get 900 USD a month of stable income from Patreon. Add to that income from art commissions etc. and realize that they don't have to pay rent, car insurance etc. Looks sustainable enough.
  - lomase 2y ago
    Mantaining a boat is very expensive. The people I know with boats all make what we call good money here. But I guess by HN standards are different to mine.

Inviz 2y ago

A single 1$ STM32 blue pill (or one 4$ STM32F4, or god forbid esp32) could do so much more than a NES at lower energy consumption.

criddell 2y ago
There's definitely some tension between their constraints and desires. I love that they are able to productively use hardware that is usually considered obsolete. But they also have a pretty severe power and space budget. If I were asked to advise on a small, low power computing setup, it would be hard to beat a modern phone of some type. But that choice violates so many of their stated objectives it's a non-starter. The old TRS-80 Model 100 fits some of the goals. It runs for a long time on just four AA batteries. But it's text only and perhaps even too limited even for 100R. I'd love to see a modern version of that machine with a bitmapped display, running a minimal (not Linux) OS, that can run for months on four AA batteries. Maybe something like a somewhat upgraded Psion 5. I think much of the Psion software is available so maybe it's actually a possibility.
- Inviz 2y ago
  In my opinion mid-level STM32F4 or high level STM34H7 would be pretty great machines for people who'd like to self-constrain themselves. Very capable, and with a lot of freedom to improvise unorthodox solutions. There're so many modes of operations, sub-systems (i.e. creative use of DMA to emulate extra UARTs), ability to drive LCD if needed, all the GPIOs, ability to add external RAM, etc. In fact i've been working on and off on implementing operating system that uses CANOpen framework (a higher-level system based on CAN bus) for super-reliable wired networking. I want to follow similar path of travelling on expedition truck and doing programming for the truck sub-systems on the go.
- ndiddy 2y ago
  The AlphaSmart Dana has a similar form factor to the TRS-80 Model 100. It runs Palm OS and can easily be converted to run off of standard rechargeable AA batteries. The downside is that the batteries only last for 20-25 hours of screen on time.

sulandor 2y ago

reminds of moxxie's boat http://vimeo.com/15351476 http://vimeo.com/15351476

mihaic 2y ago

I'm always a bit conflicted when I see these kinds of stories, due to the message they send. I remember vising the Seychelles a few years ago, and finding it an earthly paradise, the kind that everyone should experience at least once. Yet it's a tiny nation state that can only properly handle a limited amount of tourists. In essence, I've started believing that all these "digital nomads" that work remotely in one of these places are simply abusing their quota of earthly paradise, which really is in a fixed supply. I'm not really blaming them, but let's not glamourize this.

lbotos 2y ago
Uh, 100R live on a boat? Like, sure, we can call them digital nomads but they are very much different from the “startup that has no office we have a travel stipend and work from anywhere” crowd. (I’ve been that person before. That’s easy mode compared to how 100R live.)
- Levitz 2y ago
  How many people can afford to live on a boat, sailing between countries, building and designing like they do? The motivations beat those of the average digital nomad by a mile, and I applaud them, but this is still squarely into "rich people" stuff.
  - lbotos 2y ago
    Why do you have "rich people" in quotes? They live in a 1982 sailboat as their primary residence. They use older hardware and are trying to be sustainable. Does this look like "rich people" to you? https://100r.co/media/content/travel/hathayim14.jpg https://100r.co/media/content/travel/hathayim14.jpg There are definitely rich people that live on $500,000 boats and sail the world. 100R doesn't appear to be that? I'm pretty sure they've actually decided "not to make a lot of money" and are rich in experiences from going all in on this lifestyle.
- mihaic 2y ago
  You're right, it's a totally different thing that they're doing. That's why I'm conflicted, since I'm openly against digital nomads. It's still glamourizing a lifestyle that I can't see working on a larger scale, and which doesn't contribute to the infrastructure that enables it.

bArray 2y ago

A "small collective" is two people in this case? I think they are at risk of becoming exactly what they hate, with a convoluted build stack that outside people struggle to use. Why was 6502 decided on instead of Java for example, which is relatively platform agnostic?

rkachowski 2y ago
Java is seemingly the first thing they considered[1], but it was too fragmented and complicated for their purely pragmatic usecase. [1] https://100r.co/site/weathering_software_winter.html https://100r.co/site/weathering_software_winter.html

agys 2y ago

These two precious human beings are an inspiration for me since very long. Their radical life choices are a teaching for me; the most important part being that it all happens incrementally: tooth paste can be replaced with something that has less chemicals, no packaging, cheaper (and that doesn’t clog the pipes of the boat… a “fix” that came later) and likewise many other things in our daily lives.

louwrentius 2y ago

I have so much more interest in people behind Hundred Rabbits and how they try to live than all of the modern world that makes people miserable for shareholder value.

durpleDrank 2y ago

Before his pivot to programmer sailor he helped start the Montreal chiptune scene under the name of http://toycompany.cc/ http://toycompany.cc/ Congrats on everything Aliceffekt !

deleted 2y ago

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heraldgeezer 2y ago

Why such old computers? I get linux and open source, but you can use new stuff. The keyboard error specifically. Also maybe then have a spare usb one. Laptops in general are bad.

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

I couldn't find it anywhere, how many people are living on this boat? Do they have financial support from someone on land? It is a collective, do people swap in/out of living on the boat?

Bluestein 2y ago
As I understand it, it's just two people on the boat, with - of course - a pet rabbit.-

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

I want to get on board with these groups, would really want to be in one. Can't all society be cool and live like this? But. I keep coming back around to, where are they getting all this stuff. Everything that keeps them going has to be made somewhere, by working stiffs with day jobs. There is no escaping Moloch. These groups are the odd random cast off, and I really want to be them, but everyone can't be them, or their wouldn't be any of the things that keep them going. They are living on the cast offs of the rest of us still in the machine.

throw4847285 2y ago
Have you seen the movie My Dinner with Andre? At its core is a debate over whether or not people need to get to the top of Mount Everest (metaphorically) to have a transcendent experience, and if so, what do you do for the people who can't afford to get to the top of Everest? I've seen the movie several times and I always leave conflicted. I find these kinds of radical departures from "normal life" to be thrilling, even just vicariously. And modern life is constructed in such a way that it's extremely hard to break free from "the machine" (as you call it) without something radical, which is usually inaccessible. I often settle on a more optimistic note, wherein the people living on boats in the ocean are setting some kind of example that even if it can't be followed directly, maybe it can give a little jolt, shocking you out of complacency.
- myaccountonhn 2y ago
  Woah, one of my favorite movies is referenced here. That’s cool to see. I really like your takeaway. It’s very important to have ideas of what life could be, so we have something to work towards as individuals and society. I read a book a while back, passions and the interests, which talks about the philosophical underpinnings of capitalism. It’s interesting to think that capitalism as it was originally conceived was meant to lower our passions in favor of commerce, since it was considered the most tamable vice. No wonder we feel inspired when people choose to try something different.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  Thank you, I'll check it out.