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

by Bluestein • 2 years ago

780 479 2 years 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• 2 years ago

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.

Bluestein48• 2 years ago

32-bit Forth OS mixed with C

I mean, what's not to love here? :)

Bluestein48• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

SoftTalker2• 2 years ago

It wasn't secure and it wasn't perfect but Windows 2000 Professional was my favorite version of Windows. The UI had minimal unnecessary animations and graphical effects, it felt quick and responsive, and it didn't spy on you.

pushfoo• 2 years 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

[2] https://github.com/hundredrabbits/awesome-uxn?tab=readme-ov-...

anthk5• 2 years 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.

Bluestein48• 2 years ago

The constraints under which they work are wonderful. Power included. It basically mandates excellence, efficiency.-

mephitix2• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

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

Bluestein48• 2 years 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• 2 years 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

Bluestein48• 2 years ago

The constraints" are amazing. And basically *drive* good solutions.-

mdorazio• 2 years 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.

James-Livesey• 2 years ago

When faced with a similar situation and come up with multiple potential solutions — such as settling for older Adobe software versus creating your own resource-efficient graphics application, I'd definitely take the more creative and fun solution over the quick and simple one! Interesting how people's approaches vary in this way.

(That does change somewhat when doing paid work though...)

mikejulietbravo• 2 years 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

jldugger2• 2 years 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

Bluestein48• 2 years 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.-

anthk5• 2 years ago

I think they used Krita first. But UXN isn't restricted to small res art/screens. Look at oquonie.

imp0cat• 2 years ago

    Chat rooms and bare bones text editors aren't supposed to be process-heavy, and yet the popular communication platform Slack requires outrageous amounts of ram and CPU to function. [...] Making software this way is costly to off-grid users, or those on slow connections, [...]

So true.

worldsayshi3• 2 years ago

I think you need to have the right mix of the absurd when you try to make something interesting.

Avshalom3• 2 years ago

everything about it reinforces the feeling that it's all just retroactive justification for finding a toy they made more fun than expected

ETA: to be clear there's nothing wrong with making a toy and then turning that toy into it's own all-consuming hobby (TTRPGs for example) and one of the best parts of programming is how easy it is to do just that. It's just kind of annoying watching people wax rhapsodic about nonsense instead of copping to "yeah we're having a lot of fun, i feel like a kid again"

VyseofArcadia• 2 years ago

I think the general thesis statement is, "there are very few things we do today that couldn't have been done on older hardware".

bitwize• 2 years ago

It could be worse. One word: Urbit.

What the boat couple is doing strikes me as the most romantic sort of bricolage and just gives me the warm fuzzies all over. But Urbit just pisses me off for a variety of reasons.

RyJones• 2 years ago

The Baffler was a favorite read of mine in the early 90s.

https://thebaffler.com/

hardwaresofton• 2 years ago

I’m glad I’d still around — I’m a happy subscriber

mgaunard4• 2 years ago

For me any potential technical argument and innovation is completely drowned in the needlessly pervasive anti-capitalist genderfluid digital nomad hippie talk.

yawpitch5• 2 years ago

Sorry? Couldn’t hear you over the unnecessarily-inserted alt-right knee-jerk anti-wokism.

munificent3• 2 years 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.

Bluestein48• 2 years ago

Wishing to thank you for your comment, please, do tell. Can imagine it would have been (inspiring, etc.).-

munificent3• 2 years 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.

0x3444ac532• 2 years ago

You being in awe of them is very relatable to me lol. I discovered them a few years ago and seem to be surrounded by people that just don't "get it". A lot of people think programming and/or computer science as a way to make art, as a tool.

What I think is cool about 100r is that it is not "computer generated art" or "digital art", but rather "computer science/language design/programming as art". It's like they have this respect and reverence for it that I've often felt, and I often feel isolated in feeling.

montebicyclelo• 2 years ago

Their 2d music programming language, Orca is very cool/fun. Some examples:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=MNF8SF69QvM&list=PLb1uDATFJPcEEG...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=DBI8eBMGyYs

https://youtube.com/watch?v=mxr8Dtw2R5w

https://youtube.com/watch?v=RDZiKYSGsjg

smrq• 2 years 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.

Bluestein48• 2 years ago

The best kind of tool (for creative work at least). Unpretentious "toys" that - particularly - don't "get in the way ...

metasyn2• 2 years ago

for anyone curious about learning, i made a tutorial and playground for orca:

https://metasyn.srht.site/learn-orca/

j-pb• 2 years 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!

sdenton4• 2 years ago

Orca's great!

Here's a blog post I wrote after spending a long weekend figuring out how to use it to make some procedurally generated music: https://inventingsituations.net/2021/12/26/procedural-music-...

and the screen-cap of some of the generated music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF-DD43sk2E

alexpotato• 2 years ago

The Orca language is much more like a spreadsheet than python. I

Such a great line.

wdfx• 2 years ago

See also https://midinous.com/

pyinstallwoes• 2 years ago

Wow that’s beautiful. Looks intimidating. But cool.

syncbehind• 2 years ago

Oh my.

fk-corporation• 2 years 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.

mephitix2• 2 years 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!

hosh6• 2 years ago

Have you looked into the permatech community in general?

worldsayshi3• 2 years ago

What do you mean by permatech community? When i googled it I didn't find anything that fits the context.

azthecx2• 2 years ago

What do you mean permatech?

venantius• 2 years ago

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

subpub473• 2 years ago

This is the best critique of the entire idea, clearly.

nfrmatk• 2 years 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 [2]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collectivism

blacksmith_tb• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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

sgu9993• 2 years 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.

0x3444ac532• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

UXN / Varvara (a project by these folks) is something really special 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.

metasyn2• 2 years 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/

chiffre01• 2 years 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."

ropejumper5• 2 years 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.

fngjdflmdflg4• 2 years ago

[flagged]

chambored• 2 years ago

Have you looked at their body of work? An embedded YouTube video does not negate their ethos.

Vegenoid2• 2 years 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.

subpub473• 2 years ago

I'm glad this is the best critique we can do.

mrandish• 2 years 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.

skadamat2• 2 years 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!

Bluestein48• 2 years 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?

tomooot2• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

I appreciate people who dare to experiment with their life style.

The boat idea would perhaps too lonely for most people, but it would be nice to see folks experiment with re-inventing communes/new types of forming communities.

There is strictly no reason for each person to own a TV, PC, dishwasher, washing machine, etc. - most of that could be shared so as to reduce electronic waste and increase sustainability.

The minimalism idea of their VM resonates with me and remindes me of Niklaus Wirth, who had similar values and pushed things even further (designing his whole hardware + OS + language all by himself).

shiroiushi3• 2 years ago

here is strictly no reason for each person to own a TV, PC, dishwasher, washing machine, etc. - most of that could be shared so as to reduce electronic waste and increase sustainability.

This sounds nice in theory, but doesn't work out well in practice. You get a tragedy of the commons situation where people don't take care of the equipment and it gets broken, or dies early. Also, some people are just really bad with handling and taking care of things: some people will buy some item, and then you look at it again years later and it's in pristine condition. But look at another person's identical item after that time and it's either destroyed, or looks really beat-up. Maybe they're too rough with it, maybe they never clean it, maybe they don't maintain it, but I've noticed some people just seem to destroy everything they use.

Also, trying to share many things doesn't work out in practice because people want to use them at the same time. You can see this at places like laundromats; you can't expect people to wake up at 2AM to do their laundry. People usually like to watch TV at the same time too. So you need enough equipment to handle peak times.

And sharing a PC? What do you do when someone in your commune insists on clicking on every potentially malicious attachment on your shared Windows PC?

hooverd• 2 years ago

Serious question, have you lived on a commute or community living environment that wasn't a college dorm?

CamperBob23• 2 years ago

Dishwasher and washing machine, sure.

TV? Meh. Who gets to decide what we all watch?

PC? GTFO. That's mine. Hands off. That means you, too, Satya.

skadamat2• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

it is the embedded YouTube video most likely :)

kragen19• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

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

irusensei• 2 years ago

I’d the name related to Centzon Totochtin?

entaloneralie• 2 years ago

It is! :)

axblount• 2 years ago

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

actionfromafar• 2 years ago

Hundred Rabbits is... nothing? Nirvana?

culi3• 2 years 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.

nathanfig• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

Bluestein48• 2 years ago

"The union of Luddite scientists ...

Somebody really ought to set that up, assuming it doesn't already exist in some fashion ...

rendang• 2 years ago

This page 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?

Animats2• 2 years 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.

lovethevoid• 2 years ago

The embed has to be changed to YouTube-nocookie (which is what happens when you enable privacy enhance mode when sharing embeds). But that might not entirely comply with GDPR, as Google still does attempt other measures of tracking.

So they should either introduce a cookie banner, find an alternative host that more strictly adheres to privacy concerns, or just host the video themselves in a video element.

kragen19• 2 years ago

also you could just embed a self-hosted image that links to youtube. presumably if somebody clicks on the image with the youtube logo on it they know they're going to youtube

i mean peertube is a great alternative, and nowadays browsers are pretty okay at just playing bare mp4 files if you re-encode them with ffmpeg -movflags faststart -c copy, but if for whatever reason you choose to use youtube instead there are some harm-reduction measures you can take

0x2a• 2 years ago

More info:

https://dri.es/how-to-remove-youtube-tracking

troupo• 2 years ago

Apparently there's http://youtube-nocookie.com/ that doesn't do that, but of course that's not the default.

Someone just pointed out I have the same problem on my blog and I'm very pissed. It's not enough that their embeds break every Lighthouse metric and recommendation. It's all this, too

vultour• 2 years ago

Offtopic: that website is hosted on a webserver/proxy/LB that appears to have a wildcard certificate for dozens of Google domains. Don't they use SNI and separate certs? This wouldn't fly where I work and the security team is asleep half the time.

Bluestein48• 2 years ago

If you use anything from Google, you will be tracked

Google's become a marketing-profiling engine, wrapped in ad-serving infrastructure, wrapped in the decaying remnants of a search engine.-

devjab2• 2 years ago

It’s been like that since August 2000 when they launched their premium sponsorship program, which was replaced by AdWords later that year.

I’m not sure you can fully blame Google for what the web became though. Part of the reason search engines are close to useless here 24 years later is because most of the content people produce go to SoMe sites. Sites like Hacker News, sites like Medium and so on and because of how everything became a popularity matrix people are posting soooo much useless stuff online. Where it used to be you actually had to have something to say to bother putting it online, because it took an effort, we now live in a world where 90% or the talk people do is while they’re on the shitter. Those 90% is a number I pulled out my ass, but it would be hilarious to see an actual number on just how much internet “content” gets created by people on a toilet.

It is what it is though. To make a functional search engine today which was on par with Google in 2000, you’d probably need access to browser bookmarks of the people you’ve ranked as having interesting taste in what they bookmark. Which probably isn’t really possible without breaking a lot of laws, if at all.

codazoda3• 2 years ago

I love their work. I’ve also been working on some video to teach people how to publish their own book (the first of which I’ll make available free when it’s ready).

Anyway, I’d like to NOT embed YouTube. Maybe I will anyway, but I wonder if anyone has alternatives, especially if they are scrappy, tiny alternatives like those that I imagine 100r might produce.

I’m considering MP4 or WebM in HTML and wilder ideas like an audio file and a few images that are started at the same time with JS.

Vegenoid2• 2 years ago

The simplest thing would be to simply link to a Youtube video, perhaps with a small warning that it will take them to Youtube which uses trackers. You could even make the link an image that is the thumbnail of the video.

Not the prettiest or purest solution, but very simple.

Swizec• 2 years ago

Anyway, I’d like to NOT embed YouTube. Maybe I will anyway, but I wonder if anyone has alternatives, especially if they are scrappy, tiny alternatives like those that I imagine 100r might produce.

I use lite-youtube on my site for this reason. Instead of embedding the YT player directly, it shows a thumbnail that pulls in the embed when you click to watch the video.

That way visitors aren't tracked unless they actively click the thumbnail to watch the embedded player. Iirc it also works as just a link so visitors have the option to cmd+click or right-click-copy to avoid the embed.

throwup2384• 2 years ago

Turn your videos into HLS playlists (.m3u8) or mp4 and host the individual video files behind Cloudflare. Serve them on the frontend using JW Player or some other JS video player and from the backend using a $5 DigitalOcean droplet that serves the files from block storage.

You’ll have to learn some ffmpeg incantations but the bandwidth will be free and your total costs will be the tiny VM and block storage. Might even be able to point Cloudflare at a public bucket and skip the VM.

If you need to store and serve several terabytes of content, a dedicated server instead of block storage will be your best bet (again with Cloudflare), you’ll just need to figure out offsite backup and restoration.

jrvieira• 2 years ago

why wouldn't you host your own video file? I don't understand this dependency on youtube

amy-petrik-214• 2 years ago

You should check out my book then. I realized that everyone was starting to, not write books, but that they were writing instructional books teaching about how people should write books. I said to myself, "well let's teach them how to do THAT instead". One step more metain the game. Anyway, my book is about how to make videos to teach people how to write books, things like marketing and profit-maxxing. There's a lot of great pedagogy in there.

Also what kind of name is "100 rabbits". Reminscent of "50 blessing" from hotline miami

culi3• 2 years ago

That doesn't happen until you actually attempt to play the video though, right?

tzs• 2 years ago

No, it happens when you load the page. As a test I made a simple web page that just said "This is a test" and included the Google embed and visited it in an incognito window in Chrome and looked at what happened in the inspector. I used an incognito window to ensure that I wasn't starting with any cookies already saved for Google.

Just displaying the page with the embed hits those sites. All in all there were around 20 successful network requests made to load the site. There were another 7 or so requests the Ublock Origin blocked, to play.google.com/log, and then after the page loaded it continues trying those every second or so, although it seems to have slowed down after around 19 but is still ongoing.

It leaves 5 cookies (4 persistent, 1 session) and also looks like it has something in IndexedDB.

Similar with Firefox in a private window except it stores one fewer persistent cookies.

On Safari in a private window it has similar network access, but no cookies.

darby_nine2• 2 years ago

This website has no tracking or analytics

The "\u263Eoe\u2721is\u271E" of online politics if I've ever seen. Nearly meaningless but people place great emotional and identity-based weight on it (even if they've signed away all their data via TOS, as they likely have).

Sidebar—why does hacker news fuck with arbitrary unicode codepoints? Strikes me as deeply user-hostile behavior.

samatman4• 2 years ago

This place would be utterly unbearable with emoji.

The symbols you wanted to include are in the Dingbats and Miscellaneous Symbols blocks, which I expect are all banned because they contain some emoji and this was the cheap way to be rid of those, quick test: "" "", that's a Miscellaneous Symbol and a Dingbat of no emotional valence to speak of and certainly not colourful ones.

As you can see, that's the deal: they're casualties. I wouldn't mind a more discerning filter, but then again, I wouldn't mind a dark mode, and here it is, years later.

petesergeant• 2 years ago

\u263Eoe\u2721is\u271E

This is meant to be a representation of this image https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coexist_(image) for people too lazy to copy and paste

gwern• 2 years ago

It's an unfortunate use of Youtube embeds. Aside from letting people uncharitably dunk on them, the Youtube here isn't even doing anything. The YT video in question is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1Y8PwD5XDs , which is 57s long, has 2 worthless comments, no description/metadata/playlist/closed-captions/categories, and a yt-dlp takes literally 5s for me to download the 1.5MB MP4. (Which I think may actually be about the size of the full weight of the YT embed container based on the last post I saw here whining about YT embeds...?)

This is a perfect candidate to host yourself and just slap it in some <video> tags.

slim• 2 years ago

also with <video> it does not get preloaded before you press play (in Firefox and chrome at least?

whywhywhywhy2• 2 years ago

this could honestly even be a gif if you just showed the app without the desktop background

simpaticoder2• 2 years ago

One solution is to add headers that forbid all includes (and therefore all tracking):

   Content-Security-Policy: 
     default-src 'self';
     frame-src 'self';
     script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' 'unsafe-eval';
     style-src  'self' 'unsafe-inline';
     img-src 'self' data:

donohoe• 2 years ago

Yeah, or as a META tag

jesprenj• 2 years ago

Wouldn't this break the embedded video?

raverbashing• 2 years ago

A lot of sites (that follow GDPR mostly) have a "turn on embeddings" switch so that you only see embedded content if you want

scoot2• 2 years ago

The same-origin policy prevents Google tracking in a iFrame from identifying the parent site, so technically "This website has no tracking or analytics." is correct. It does expose you to Google's analytics for the iFrame however, so it's down to how you define "this site"...

scoot2• 2 years ago

louwrentius6• 2 years ago

It makes me sad that this is the top comment for this link to Hundred Rabbits.

I feel it’s such a “I am very smart gotcha” comment that isn’t helpful in any way.

It distracts from the actual topic.

pdimitar6• 2 years ago

It calls out a bogus claim. The actual topic is diluted and deemphasized if the authors make bogus claims. So the distraction is on them, not on HN commenters.

FrustratedMonky5• 2 years ago

Curious? What is the actual topic?

ghostwords5• 2 years 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-yo...

CalRobert• 2 years ago

Thank you for developing an amazing tool!

mattlohkamp• 2 years ago

ah thanks for this! youtube embeds disabled by default is an improvement I didn't even know I was looking for!

SushiHippie3• 2 years ago

FYI I just installed Privacy Badger to test this out, but this feature does not seem to work on Firefox for Android (at least on this page)

j3s5• 2 years ago

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

apsurd• 2 years ago

I read all your poems just now. They're perfect, thank you! Just what I need. They speak to me.

j3s5• 2 years ago

you're welcome :)

latentnumber• 2 years ago

Thank you for the poems. They're weirdly soothing.

j3s5• 2 years ago

hoosieree• 2 years 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...

Bluestein48• 2 years ago

Goodness gracious. Webrings! Discoverability pre-search engines.-

sodimel2• 2 years ago

I would like to thank you, too, for your poems.

j3s5• 2 years ago

blainelewis1• 2 years 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 :(

j3s5• 2 years 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 :)

kragen19• 2 years ago

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

istrice• 2 years 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.

pmarreck6• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

The name reminds me of the fictional Twelve Monkeys.

codazoda3• 2 years 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

msephton• 2 years ago

Nicely done!

sarimkx2• 2 years ago

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.

criddell3• 2 years ago

It's been submitted many times. Sometimes people read and comment, sometimes they don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=100r.co

sarimkx2• 2 years ago

Yep...I understand.

rewgs• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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

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• 2 years 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

mgaunard4• 2 years ago

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

SoftTalker2• 2 years ago

And discovering that consumer hardware doesn't do well in a marine environment.

mazdayasna• 2 years ago

"they/them x iel/ielle" really just means "a heterosexual couple"

ropejumper5• 2 years 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.

pxmpxm• 2 years ago

Need to in group signal, especially if you're a normie.

I wonder if this actually is a meta-art project of upmarketing a high-net-worth lifestyle (look at me, I live on a boat!) to a far left wing audience. Just need a vague manifesto ala https://xkcd.com/451/ and you're halfway there.

barbs3• 2 years ago

From their mission statement (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_• 2 years ago

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....

yardie• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

"seabattical" Love it!

karaterobot• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

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

aetherspawn• 2 years 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.

pengaru• 2 years 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/vid...

akeck• 2 years ago

Rek went overboard in a Pacific storm north of Japan. ("Busy Doing Nothing" book)

SushiHippie3• 2 years 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

habosa• 2 years 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).

gmd632• 2 years 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

vinnyvichy14• 2 years ago

In this respect, their page for hacking baguettes by sun&sea is my personal favourite

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

"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!)

Bluestein48• 2 years ago

Thank you, au contraire, for that wonderful link in your comment, and that marvelous quote, and your thoughts.-

gvicino6• 2 years ago

Hello,

Thank you for the link you've shared. I read it with great interest. While I can conceive that the aforementioned areas might survive in a post-industrial civilization, it is unclear to me how the technology that 100rabbits is researching could do the same. They might use Raspberry Pis or old PCs donated by others, but:

- these are impossible to manufacture without industries, and they are limited in number

- the only means of communication they're using to share their work, the Internet, inherently requires an industrial society to exist

This seems somewhat akin to the naive reaction to the financial crises we experienced a few years ago: "Oh dear, banks and finance can be evil, let's decentralize with Bitcoin."

I believe that we cannot address the problems that technology has brought us (nuclear weapons, global warming) without resorting once again to technology and science. This technology and science must necessarily be funded by the market.

0823498723498725• 2 years 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 ):

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)

mihaaly2• 2 years ago

a growing storm of complexity that humanity increasingly depends on

Yet real engineers ought to now that “An engineer has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but nothing left to take away”. ... or they never new and yet attempting engineering anyway?

Growing portion of my life is spending time with the complexity of toolchain and work context, while my outcome diminishes in every sense, amount and importance. Pissing into the headwind and getting almost nothing to show for kind of feeling. More and more draws me towards the lifestyle of the rabbits (stopping somewhere in between though).

Btw. financial selection is the way how society work on top of finite resources since ancient times. That's part of the game. ... saying so while I ferociously avoid competition steering into directions that circumnavigate the competing crowd, taking less busy alternative route. When available.

sgu9993• 2 years ago

financial selection is the way how society work on top of finite resources since ancient times

I don't know where you get that from, but if anything it looks like there has never been a single society but many forms of organisation. I'd be even more careful with any reference to finance in that context.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything

kloop2• 2 years ago

This has been one of the reasons moving to go has been a godsend.

Don't get me wrong, the project is absolutely insane. There's an api with a gpu layer for raster transformation.

But the build process is still:

    go build [-tag {project name}] .

gmd632• 2 years ago

financial selection is the way how society work on top of finite resources since ancient times. That's part of the game.

Agreed, not saying financial signals are not valuable, just that they bring new challenges that, like most things, lead to problems when obsessed over in lieu of what matters most. You can also develop problems by moving too slowly and fixing things that do not matter.

Bluestein48• 2 years ago

amid a growing storm of complexity

I value your way of putting it. "Storm" carries with it all due nuances and, indeed, "complexity" is a touchstone.-

freethejazz2• 2 years 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

acedio• 2 years ago

The presenter, Devine, is one of the folks behind 100r :)

freethejazz2• 2 years 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 :)

mcdeltat2• 2 years 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?

ropejumper5• 2 years 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.

mcdeltat2• 2 years 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.

xiwenc• 2 years 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.

159753456• 2 years 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.

barbs3• 2 years 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

Bluestein48• 2 years ago

keep the laptops in boxes with desiccants to keep them dry

Such a simple solution. Have a special low-humidity environment.-

swiftcoder• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

doovd2• 2 years 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.

lomase7• 2 years ago

I don't think they sustain themselves with this project.

doovd2• 2 years ago

Ahh right so this is not a 365days per year thing, but they have relatively normal jobs in the industry?

copx2• 2 years 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.

Inviz2• 2 years 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.

criddell3• 2 years 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.

Inviz2• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

Bluestein48• 2 years ago

Maybe something like a somewhat upgraded Psion 5. I think much of the Psion

The Psion 5 (and 3) keep popping up (and deservedly so) all over the place. They are such great little machines. Particularly as some sort of "baseline" for computing.-

fragmede2• 2 years ago

What do you have against the Linux Kernel?

sulandor6• 2 years ago

reminds of moxxie's boat

http://vimeo.com/15351476

mihaic2• 2 years 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.

lbotos2• 2 years 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.)

mihaic2• 2 years 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.

Levitz• 2 years 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.

bArray• 2 years 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• 2 years 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

agys2• 2 years 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.

louwrentius6• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

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

Congrats on everything Aliceffekt !

heraldgeezer• 2 years 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.

FrustratedMonky5• 2 years 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?

Bluestein48• 2 years ago

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

FrustratedMonky5• 2 years 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.

badpun• 2 years ago

Most people (in rich countries) can retire early if they live frugally enough. There'd be much less workers on the market, so companies would make much less stuff - but frugal living means less consumption and much more reuse anyway, so there wouldn't be shortages or inflation. And everyone, after doing their 10-20 year stint in the industry, would be done with working and free to live. I've pursued this path myself and am happy about it, I just feel sorry for those hundreds of millions of people who are miserable in their jobs and who are waiting for their retirements at 65...

throw48472852• 2 years 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.

myaccountonhn2• 2 years 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.

FrustratedMonky5• 2 years ago

Thank you, I'll check it out.

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

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