An essay on AI, programming, and anarchist theory

Becoming Hypertext is a workshop on poetic and experimental ways of creating and reading the site, browser, and the desktop.

“It’s kind of quirky,” said one person — in an age of hype around how endlessly bigger and faster and smarter tech can be, they thought this event felt surprisingly quaint and charming. We were talking about tech, sure, and it was a group of people who were interested in tech, in general, but we were there intentionally to look through the lens of a technology and medium that can feel almost retro.

A beginner's guide to making a hand-crafted personal or hobby website.

smolweb.org promotes simple unbloated web. It provides resources to actors who want to participate.

a manually curated collection of neat indie websites :)

This community catalogs and experiments with malleable software and systems that reset the balance of power via several essential principles:

1. Software must be as easy to change as it is to use it
2. All layers, from the user interface through functionality to the data within, must support arbitrary recombination and reuse in new environments
3. Tools should strive to be easy to begin working with but still have lots of open-ended potential
4. People of all experience levels must be able to retain ownership and control
5. Recombined workflows and experiences must be freely sharable with others
6. Modifying a system should happen in the context of use, rather than through some separate development toolchain and skill set
7. Computing should be a thoughtfully crafted, fun, and empowering experience

Kari Love, David Rios, Shuang Cai, and Becky Stern will go over practical steps required to repurpose disposable vape batteries, as well as the economic and political history responsible for the proliferation of these “disposable” devices. Then we will share one example project, an electronic wind instrument Vape Synth, inspired by both the salvaged parts and the form of a discarded vape.

Video from the 2024 Open Hardware Summit, held in Montreal on May 3rd. More information about the Summit is available at https://2024.oshwa.org/

To the casual observer, the data industry can seem incorporeal, its products conjured out of weightless bits. But as I stand beside the busy construction site for DataBank’s ATL4, what impresses me most is the gargantuan amount of material—mostly concrete—that gives shape to the goliath that will house, secure, power, and cool the hardware of AI. Big data is big concrete.

PlantStudio Botanical Illustration Software is a tool for creating 3D plant models and 2D illustrations. PlantStudio simulates herbaceous (non-woody) plants like wildflowers and cut flowers, vegetables, weeds, grasses, and herbs using a parameter-driven simulation of plant growth and structure.

A blog post by https://kopiti.am/@nondescryptid detailing how they set up postmarketOS on their own phone:

I’ve got a Samsung Galaxy S II (i9100) lying around, and decided to try seeing if I can repurpose it and get it to host a blog. I was inspired by compost.party – a very cool server running off a Xiaomi Poco F1 using postmarketOS and a solar panel for charging.
The physical nature of computing is usually not a concern, as things are sufficiently abstracted for me to not have to care too much about it. But trying to revive this phone from 2011 was a reminder that when we talk about compute, we are ultimately dealing with physical resources – tiny towns with blocks of silicon, lithium, etc etc.

A smol web server by https://indieweb.social/@nonnullish running on a 2.4 gram micro controller

This handbook provides a brief overview of environmental harm driven by software, and how the Blue Angel ecolabel—the official environmental label of the German government—provides a benchmark for sustainable software design.

We are humans and might as well get used to it. So far, remotely done power and glory—as via government, big business, formal education, church—has succeeded to the point where gross profits obscure actual loss. In response to this dilemma and to these losses a realm of intimate, community power is developing—power of communities to conduct their own education, find their own inspiration, shape their own environment, and share their knowledge with others. Practices that aid this process are sought and promoted by the DAMAGED EARTH CATALOG.

I always loved the visual aesthetic of dithering but never knew how it’s done. So I did some research. This article may contain traces of nostalgia and none of Lena.

The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. But we can revitalize it using lessons learned by ecologists.

Around 80 per cent of the carbon footprint of a smartphone occurs during the manufacturing process, with 16 per cent down to consumer use and 3 per cent accounted for by transport. And as demand for smartphones rises, the lifespan of devices shrinks.

Aiming for a 10 year life-cycle for smartphones

Permacomputing is both a concept and a community of practice oriented around issues of resilience and regenerativity in computer and network technology inspired by permaculture.

In a time where computing epitomizes industrial waste, permacomputing encourages the maximizing of hardware lifespans, minimizing energy use and focusing on the use of already available computational resources.

On the need for low-carbon and sustainable computing and the path towards zero-carbon computing.

Wim Vanderbauwhede takes a look at the environmental cost of computing and argues that it must change radically if we don't want it to further fuel the climate crisis.