8 ms·

If "our global supply chain [will] collapse before we reach 2030," why is having a some type of computer a priority? I feel these kinds of projects may be fun,

If "our global supply chain [will] collapse before we reach 2030," why is having a some type of computer a priority? I feel these kinds of projects may be fun, but they're essentially just LARPing. Though this one seems to have a more reasonable concept than most (e.g. "My raspbery pi-based "cyberdeck" with offline wikipedia will help!" No, you need a fucking farming manual on paper.).

stevenAthompson 2y ago
Some people are afraid the world will end, others are afraid it won't. The latter type actively enjoy thinking about this sort of thing. I think we'll see more of it as the boomers continue to age. Some folks mistake their own looming end for the end of all things.
- nomel 2y ago
  Doom is useful. The reason you stockpile food or grow a crop in spring is to avoid the doom that would come winter, if you didn't. Fearing a possible bad future is fairly fundamental for survival. I assume there's some significant hard-wiring for this type of emotion, with some people having a different baseline for their sensitivity to it. I also suspect the environment might push regional genetic population to have different sensitivities, depending on how harsh/unstable the environment is. I say "unstable" because I see doom as anxiety about the possibility. For example, in a region with a consistent harsh winter, doom has less use because piling food up is just routine, everyone does it, it's obvious. But, in an unstable environment, with a winter that's only sometimes harsh, you need to fear that possibility of a harsh winter. You're driven by the anxiety of what might be. You stockpile food even though you don't need it now: you're irrational in the instantaneous context, but rational for the long term context. It's a neat future looking emotion that probably evolved closely with intelligence.
saturn8601 2y ago
Did you read the entire post? >Some people doubt that computers will stay relevant after a civilizational collapse. I mostly agree. The drastic simplification of our society will mean that we have a lot less information to manage. We'll be a lot more busy with more pressing activities than processing data. >However, the goal of Collapse OS is not to save computing, but electronics. Managing electricity will stay immensely useful. I think thats a notable goal. We will conduct business with pen and paper but given that even in a collapse scenario there will be lots of remnants of the current era lying around might as well try and make use of it. Its one of the reason I really don't like the people collecting e-waste in bulk and then melting down the chips for tiny scraps of gold. So much effort went into making those chips there has got to be a better way to preserve these things for usage later.
- ewzimm 2y ago
  Civilization doesn't even have to collapse for a project like this to be useful. Like you said, there's lots of e-waste. If you happened to live in a place that ended up with a lot of this stuff but didn't have a lot of infrastructure, you could possibly build up some convenient services with something like this. I like the idea of building software to make hardware less reliant on external resources in general. Over time, it could be useful to have more resilient electronics, because we seem to be designing machines to be more reliant on specific networked infrastructure every year.
  - nradov 2y ago
    What services? For most modern services the big cost inputs are things like human labor, utilities, and real estate. Reusing obsolete hardware doesn't gain anything. It's likely to be a net negative if it takes up more space, uses more electricity, and requires more maintenance.
    - ewzimm 2y ago
      A lot of functions of electronics don't require tons of processing power or efficiency. Microcontrollers can be used for just about anything. General purpose computing can be put to whatever purpose you can image. Things supported by this OS like the Z80, 8086, 6502 etc. use around 5-10W. Using simple parts to control complicated machines is a standard operation, and even advanced electronics tend to use a lot of parts using older manufacturing techniques because it's more efficient to keep the old processes running. Here's a fun article with some context about old processors like this still in production: https://hackaday.com/2022/12/01/ask-hackaday-when-it-comes-to-processors-how-far-back-can-you-go/ https://hackaday.com/2022/12/01/ask-hackaday-when-it-comes-t...
      - kragen 2y ago
        If you're running a tractor, sure, 5 watts is not a big deal. But there are a lot of hypothetical post-collapse circumstances where such a high power usage would be prohibitive. Consider, for example, the kinds of radio stations you'd need for the kinds of weather and telecommunications uses I discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43484415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43484415, which benefit from being placed on inaccessible mountaintops and running unattended for years on end. 5 watts will drain a 100-amp-hour car battery in 10 days and is basically infeasible to get from improvised batteries made with common solid metals. Current mainstream microcontrollers like an ATSAMD20 are not only much nicer to program but can use under 20 μW, twenty thousand times less. A CR2032 coin cell (220mAh, 3V) can provide 20 μW for about 4 years. But the most the coin cell can provide at all is about 500 μW, so to run a 5-watt computer you'd need 10,000 coin cells. Totally impractical. And batteries are a huge source of unreliability. What if you make your computing device more reliable by eliminating the battery? Then you need a way to power it, perhaps winding a watchspring or charging a supercapacitor. Consider winding up such a device by pulling a cord like the one you'd use to start a chainsaw. That's about 100 newtons over about a meter, so 100 joules. That energy will run a 5W Z80 machine for 20 seconds, so you have to yank the cord three times a minute, or more because of friction. That yank will run a 20 μW microcontroller for two months.
pjc50 2y ago
Whenever I read these kinds of collapse posts I wonder: where do the bodies go in this scenario? Because if that kind of collapse happens the management of seven billion corpses becomes pressing.
- all2 2y ago
  Depending on the source of their un-aliveness you have a few options: 1. they rot on the face of the ground and the carrion eaters will take care of it 2. they are already cinder/charcoal and the plants will take care of it
- vdupras 2y ago
  For french speaking people, I recommend "Ravage" by Barjavel. It's not realistic by any means, but it's a nice take on this very issue :) The serious take: live in the countryside. This is an urban problem.
- WesolyKubeczek 2y ago
  I’m most likely going to be one of the corpses, so not my problem.
- kragen 2y ago
  Given a land area of 510 million km², in the worst case, that's a sudden event producing 14 bodies per km², about 25 meters from one body to the next. If I were one of a small number of survivors in that situation, I'd dig a mass grave, dump 14 bodies into it, and enjoy my nice, sanitary square kilometer all by myself. Probably boil the water from the well. Until I die of starvation because I don't know how to hunt, or from an infected wound, or something. In more plausible cases, we're talking about a population collapse where the deaths are either concentrated in cities, spread out over several years, or both. If they're concentrated in cities, maybe avoid the cities for three to six months until they finish rotting. If they're spread out over several years, those who die later will be able to bury those who die earlier; it only takes a few man-hours of labor to dig a grave.
  - Jtsummers 2y ago
redkoala 2y ago
Solar powered micro-controllers might be the way to go that could hook up to crude automated farm machines. Depending on the life span of batteries, solar powered ebook readers to store those farming manuals and other guides, solar powered computers for spreadsheets and planning software, and solar powered cb ham radios for communications with built in encryption keys.
- palmotea 2y ago
  In a societal collapse, the only thing that you list that I think would be worth the effort would be "solar powered cb ham radios for communications." Crude automated [solar powered] farm machines - would probably be useless. Animal power is probably the way to go. Or steam. Go to a threshing bee sometime: I've seen a tractor that runs on wood. Solar powered ebook readers to store those farming manuals and other guides - the life span of batteries would be short, get that shit on paper fast. Solar powered computers for spreadsheets and planning software - plan in your head or use a paper spreadsheet. Computers might be everywhere today, and you personally might not know how to do anything without a computer, but practically no one had a computer 40-45 years ago, and literally no one had a computer when society was last at a "collapse" level of technology. COMPUTERS ARE NOT NECESSARY.
  - vdupras 2y ago
    I 100% agree that computers are not necessary. But regardless of that, the ability to program microcontrollers is still a superpower and if you can have it, you have a hell of an edge.
    - palmotea 2y ago
      > But regardless of that, the ability to program microcontrollers is still a superpower and if you can have it, you have a hell of an edge. I really disagree with that. It will give practically no edge. It's a specialist skill that's only really useful in the context of an already computerized society for mass production or big one-offs. If you have a collapse, I think the assumption is there would little to no mass production of advanced goods (hence, the scavenging concept). Then you're left with big one-offs, which are things large organizations like governments build and not all the time.
0hijinks 2y ago
Beyond LARPing the feasibility of building new computers post societal collapse, the website's proposal for collapse being so imminent is... weakly justified? I'm not an optimist in today's societal climate, but the rationale [1] stems from peak oil and cultural bankruptcy. Peak oil is (was?) the concern of limited oil production in the face of static or increasing demand. The 2019 peak from big oil wasn't about declining production, but declining demand [2]. Which is good, if the ideal is long-lasting migration to renewables. I won't try to predict the future w/r/t what current societal trends mean for the long-term success of global supply chains, but I would be greatly surprised if cultural bankruptcy alone causes the complete collapse of society in the next 5-10 years. [1] http://collapseos.org/civ.html http://collapseos.org/civ.html [2] https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/energy-outlook/bp-energy-outlook-2023.pdf https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/c...
- er4hn 2y ago
  I think full scale collapse is unlikely. I'd rate balkanization / large scale internet disruptions as pretty likely to happen within the next few years due to a combination of: - lightly protected and globally reachable attack surface - increasing geopolitical tensions - the bizarre tendency to put everything possible online, i.e. IoT devices that always need internet, resources that rely on CDNs to function, other weird dependencies.
schiffern 2y ago
>you need a fucking farming manual on paper. With an adjustable hole punch, prong fasteners, (optionally) duct tape for the spine, and (optionally) sheet protectors for the front and back covers, you can crank out a survival library of (open-source) books as fast as pages come out your Brother laser. I never bothered with fancy acid-free paper. Modern paper has good longevity, but to be safe I use non-recycled, non-whitened (91 brightness) paper. Guide with prong fasteners (I prefer white tape, full-size pages, double/triple`inside a sheet protector as covers): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVnpnHWcE04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVnpnHWcE04 A different technique with brad fasteners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD3vWZ0I85g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD3vWZ0I85g Lots of fancy book-binding tutorials out there, but I suspect most people don't realize how simple a paperback can actually be.
- kylebenzle 2y ago
  I'm still WAY better off with my solar panels and ALL the books on an external hard drive. I can't think of ANY situation where a print out of Wikipedia would be better than a digital version.
  - schiffern 2y ago
    Wikipedia is an extreme example, since it's highly impractical to print the whole thing. OTOH printing your "Top 20" survival books is quick and affords a nice measure of system-level dissimilar redundancy (not to mention valuable barter goods :D).
  - echoangle 2y ago
    > I can't think of ANY situation where a print out of Wikipedia would be better than a digital version. An EMP destroys your electronics and makes accessing the digital version impossible?
    - kylebenzle 2y ago
      In this scenario we have the print version AND the digital version. You could also say in the middle of a house file with the paper on fire the digital version would be better but it's pointless to invent around the assumptions.
kylebenzle 2y ago
I have a small farm, solar, a pond and a ton of farming/gardening books. I for one would LOVE a PipBoy-like cyberdeck with a snapshot of the internet from 2025 when I' hunkered down with my dogs, sheep and goats.
cowfarts 2y ago
[dead]
trod1234 2y ago
> why is having some type of computer a priority. Mechanization and Automation. It creates time you would normally have to spend actively on labor. Age of energy and all. The main inputs for this though would be quite difficult to bootstrap. I'm talking about magnet wire enamel and electrical isolation. You need that to make motors and actuators. You need computers for the control systems.
nfriedly 2y ago
I read the book "The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch", and to some extent that also felt like LARPing, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It also left me wanting more. It has pretty extensive references at the end, I wonder if anyone's put together a collection of all the referenced materials?
tengwar2 2y ago
You're thinking of a PC. This project doesn't address that type of computer at all. 8-bit computers programmed in Forth suggests very strongly that this is aimed at control engineering, and area where having a few computers makes a big difference to what you can do in an industrial process. It might also be useful for simple radio communication.
- kjs3 2y ago
  In addition to a controller, being able to do non-trivial calculations will always be useful.

stevenAthompson 2y ago

Some people are afraid the world will end, others are afraid it won't. The latter type actively enjoy thinking about this sort of thing. I think we'll see more of it as the boomers continue to age. Some folks mistake their own looming end for the end of all things.

nomel 2y ago
Doom is useful. The reason you stockpile food or grow a crop in spring is to avoid the doom that would come winter, if you didn't. Fearing a possible bad future is fairly fundamental for survival. I assume there's some significant hard-wiring for this type of emotion, with some people having a different baseline for their sensitivity to it. I also suspect the environment might push regional genetic population to have different sensitivities, depending on how harsh/unstable the environment is. I say "unstable" because I see doom as anxiety about the possibility. For example, in a region with a consistent harsh winter, doom has less use because piling food up is just routine, everyone does it, it's obvious. But, in an unstable environment, with a winter that's only sometimes harsh, you need to fear that possibility of a harsh winter. You're driven by the anxiety of what might be. You stockpile food even though you don't need it now: you're irrational in the instantaneous context, but rational for the long term context. It's a neat future looking emotion that probably evolved closely with intelligence.

saturn8601 2y ago

Did you read the entire post? >Some people doubt that computers will stay relevant after a civilizational collapse. I mostly agree. The drastic simplification of our society will mean that we have a lot less information to manage. We'll be a lot more busy with more pressing activities than processing data. >However, the goal of Collapse OS is not to save computing, but electronics. Managing electricity will stay immensely useful. I think thats a notable goal. We will conduct business with pen and paper but given that even in a collapse scenario there will be lots of remnants of the current era lying around might as well try and make use of it. Its one of the reason I really don't like the people collecting e-waste in bulk and then melting down the chips for tiny scraps of gold. So much effort went into making those chips there has got to be a better way to preserve these things for usage later.

ewzimm 2y ago
Civilization doesn't even have to collapse for a project like this to be useful. Like you said, there's lots of e-waste. If you happened to live in a place that ended up with a lot of this stuff but didn't have a lot of infrastructure, you could possibly build up some convenient services with something like this. I like the idea of building software to make hardware less reliant on external resources in general. Over time, it could be useful to have more resilient electronics, because we seem to be designing machines to be more reliant on specific networked infrastructure every year.
- nradov 2y ago
  What services? For most modern services the big cost inputs are things like human labor, utilities, and real estate. Reusing obsolete hardware doesn't gain anything. It's likely to be a net negative if it takes up more space, uses more electricity, and requires more maintenance.
  - ewzimm 2y ago
    A lot of functions of electronics don't require tons of processing power or efficiency. Microcontrollers can be used for just about anything. General purpose computing can be put to whatever purpose you can image. Things supported by this OS like the Z80, 8086, 6502 etc. use around 5-10W. Using simple parts to control complicated machines is a standard operation, and even advanced electronics tend to use a lot of parts using older manufacturing techniques because it's more efficient to keep the old processes running. Here's a fun article with some context about old processors like this still in production: https://hackaday.com/2022/12/01/ask-hackaday-when-it-comes-to-processors-how-far-back-can-you-go/ https://hackaday.com/2022/12/01/ask-hackaday-when-it-comes-t...
    - kragen 2y ago
      If you're running a tractor, sure, 5 watts is not a big deal. But there are a lot of hypothetical post-collapse circumstances where such a high power usage would be prohibitive. Consider, for example, the kinds of radio stations you'd need for the kinds of weather and telecommunications uses I discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43484415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43484415, which benefit from being placed on inaccessible mountaintops and running unattended for years on end. 5 watts will drain a 100-amp-hour car battery in 10 days and is basically infeasible to get from improvised batteries made with common solid metals. Current mainstream microcontrollers like an ATSAMD20 are not only much nicer to program but can use under 20 μW, twenty thousand times less. A CR2032 coin cell (220mAh, 3V) can provide 20 μW for about 4 years. But the most the coin cell can provide at all is about 500 μW, so to run a 5-watt computer you'd need 10,000 coin cells. Totally impractical. And batteries are a huge source of unreliability. What if you make your computing device more reliable by eliminating the battery? Then you need a way to power it, perhaps winding a watchspring or charging a supercapacitor. Consider winding up such a device by pulling a cord like the one you'd use to start a chainsaw. That's about 100 newtons over about a meter, so 100 joules. That energy will run a 5W Z80 machine for 20 seconds, so you have to yank the cord three times a minute, or more because of friction. That yank will run a 20 μW microcontroller for two months.

pjc50 2y ago

Whenever I read these kinds of collapse posts I wonder: where do the bodies go in this scenario? Because if that kind of collapse happens the management of seven billion corpses becomes pressing.

all2 2y ago
Depending on the source of their un-aliveness you have a few options: 1. they rot on the face of the ground and the carrion eaters will take care of it 2. they are already cinder/charcoal and the plants will take care of it
vdupras 2y ago
For french speaking people, I recommend "Ravage" by Barjavel. It's not realistic by any means, but it's a nice take on this very issue :) The serious take: live in the countryside. This is an urban problem.
WesolyKubeczek 2y ago
I’m most likely going to be one of the corpses, so not my problem.
kragen 2y ago
Given a land area of 510 million km², in the worst case, that's a sudden event producing 14 bodies per km², about 25 meters from one body to the next. If I were one of a small number of survivors in that situation, I'd dig a mass grave, dump 14 bodies into it, and enjoy my nice, sanitary square kilometer all by myself. Probably boil the water from the well. Until I die of starvation because I don't know how to hunt, or from an infected wound, or something. In more plausible cases, we're talking about a population collapse where the deaths are either concentrated in cities, spread out over several years, or both. If they're concentrated in cities, maybe avoid the cities for three to six months until they finish rotting. If they're spread out over several years, those who die later will be able to bury those who die earlier; it only takes a few man-hours of labor to dig a grave.
- Jtsummers 2y ago

redkoala 2y ago

Solar powered micro-controllers might be the way to go that could hook up to crude automated farm machines. Depending on the life span of batteries, solar powered ebook readers to store those farming manuals and other guides, solar powered computers for spreadsheets and planning software, and solar powered cb ham radios for communications with built in encryption keys.

palmotea 2y ago
In a societal collapse, the only thing that you list that I think would be worth the effort would be "solar powered cb ham radios for communications." Crude automated [solar powered] farm machines - would probably be useless. Animal power is probably the way to go. Or steam. Go to a threshing bee sometime: I've seen a tractor that runs on wood. Solar powered ebook readers to store those farming manuals and other guides - the life span of batteries would be short, get that shit on paper fast. Solar powered computers for spreadsheets and planning software - plan in your head or use a paper spreadsheet. Computers might be everywhere today, and you personally might not know how to do anything without a computer, but practically no one had a computer 40-45 years ago, and literally no one had a computer when society was last at a "collapse" level of technology. COMPUTERS ARE NOT NECESSARY.
- vdupras 2y ago
  I 100% agree that computers are not necessary. But regardless of that, the ability to program microcontrollers is still a superpower and if you can have it, you have a hell of an edge.
  - palmotea 2y ago
    > But regardless of that, the ability to program microcontrollers is still a superpower and if you can have it, you have a hell of an edge. I really disagree with that. It will give practically no edge. It's a specialist skill that's only really useful in the context of an already computerized society for mass production or big one-offs. If you have a collapse, I think the assumption is there would little to no mass production of advanced goods (hence, the scavenging concept). Then you're left with big one-offs, which are things large organizations like governments build and not all the time.

0hijinks 2y ago

Beyond LARPing the feasibility of building new computers post societal collapse, the website's proposal for collapse being so imminent is... weakly justified? I'm not an optimist in today's societal climate, but the rationale [1] stems from peak oil and cultural bankruptcy. Peak oil is (was?) the concern of limited oil production in the face of static or increasing demand. The 2019 peak from big oil wasn't about declining production, but declining demand [2]. Which is good, if the ideal is long-lasting migration to renewables. I won't try to predict the future w/r/t what current societal trends mean for the long-term success of global supply chains, but I would be greatly surprised if cultural bankruptcy alone causes the complete collapse of society in the next 5-10 years. [1] http://collapseos.org/civ.html http://collapseos.org/civ.html [2] https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/energy-outlook/bp-energy-outlook-2023.pdf https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/c...

er4hn 2y ago
I think full scale collapse is unlikely. I'd rate balkanization / large scale internet disruptions as pretty likely to happen within the next few years due to a combination of: - lightly protected and globally reachable attack surface - increasing geopolitical tensions - the bizarre tendency to put everything possible online, i.e. IoT devices that always need internet, resources that rely on CDNs to function, other weird dependencies.

schiffern 2y ago

>you need a fucking farming manual on paper. With an adjustable hole punch, prong fasteners, (optionally) duct tape for the spine, and (optionally) sheet protectors for the front and back covers, you can crank out a survival library of (open-source) books as fast as pages come out your Brother laser. I never bothered with fancy acid-free paper. Modern paper has good longevity, but to be safe I use non-recycled, non-whitened (91 brightness) paper. Guide with prong fasteners (I prefer white tape, full-size pages, double/triple`inside a sheet protector as covers): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVnpnHWcE04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVnpnHWcE04 A different technique with brad fasteners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD3vWZ0I85g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD3vWZ0I85g Lots of fancy book-binding tutorials out there, but I suspect most people don't realize how simple a paperback can actually be.

kylebenzle 2y ago
I'm still WAY better off with my solar panels and ALL the books on an external hard drive. I can't think of ANY situation where a print out of Wikipedia would be better than a digital version.
- schiffern 2y ago
  Wikipedia is an extreme example, since it's highly impractical to print the whole thing. OTOH printing your "Top 20" survival books is quick and affords a nice measure of system-level dissimilar redundancy (not to mention valuable barter goods :D).
- echoangle 2y ago
  > I can't think of ANY situation where a print out of Wikipedia would be better than a digital version. An EMP destroys your electronics and makes accessing the digital version impossible?
  - kylebenzle 2y ago
    In this scenario we have the print version AND the digital version. You could also say in the middle of a house file with the paper on fire the digital version would be better but it's pointless to invent around the assumptions.

kylebenzle 2y ago

I have a small farm, solar, a pond and a ton of farming/gardening books. I for one would LOVE a PipBoy-like cyberdeck with a snapshot of the internet from 2025 when I' hunkered down with my dogs, sheep and goats.

cowfarts 2y ago

[dead]

trod1234 2y ago

> why is having some type of computer a priority. Mechanization and Automation. It creates time you would normally have to spend actively on labor. Age of energy and all. The main inputs for this though would be quite difficult to bootstrap. I'm talking about magnet wire enamel and electrical isolation. You need that to make motors and actuators. You need computers for the control systems.

nfriedly 2y ago

I read the book "The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch", and to some extent that also felt like LARPing, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It also left me wanting more. It has pretty extensive references at the end, I wonder if anyone's put together a collection of all the referenced materials?

tengwar2 2y ago

You're thinking of a PC. This project doesn't address that type of computer at all. 8-bit computers programmed in Forth suggests very strongly that this is aimed at control engineering, and area where having a few computers makes a big difference to what you can do in an industrial process. It might also be useful for simple radio communication.

kjs3 2y ago
In addition to a controller, being able to do non-trivial calculations will always be useful.