20 random bookmarks

post-growth, sustainability, computing & kin.

2025-06-15

53.

farphone

far.computer

farphone is a website running on a repurposed smartphone

2025-05-24

51.

Repairing Our Way out of Commodity Fetishism

wether.smol.pub/repairing-our-way-out-of-commodity-fetishism

2025-05-15

49.

About smolweb

smolweb.org

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

47.

smallweb

smallweb.cc?sort=random

a manually curated collection of neat indie websites :)

2024-12-09

40.

What the hell is Forth?

blog.information-superhighway.net/what-the-hell-is-forth

Forth is perhaps the tiniest possible useful interactive programming language.
It is a language that makes complexity painful, but which reveals that a surprising amount can be accomplished without introducing any. Forth is the opposite of “bloat”. If you've ever been like “Oh my God this Electron-based chat app is taking up 10% of my CPU at idle, what the HELL is it DOING, modern computing has gone MAD”, Forth is there to tell you that computing went mad decades ago, and that programs could be doing SO MUCH MORE with SO MUCH LESS.

2024-11-25

38.

Hallucinating Data Factories - Papertrail

papertrail.world/blog/hallucinatingfactories

With pairs of comically oversized exhaust pipes pointing towards the sky and enormous stacks of grey cooling aggregates flanking its sides, AMS09 resembles a child's drawing of an exaggerated, imaginary factory. Despite being painted in a variation of “Go Away Green”, a colour engineered by Disney to draw visitors’ gazes away from technical facilities across its amusement parks, the building miserably fails to blend in with its surroundings.

37.

Mapping the ionosphere with millions of phones - Nature

www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08072-x

Networks of high-quality ground-based GNSS stations provide maps of ionospheric total electron content to correct these errors, but large spatiotemporal gaps in data from these stations mean that these maps may contain errors. Here we demonstrate that a distributed network of noisy sensors—in the form of millions of Android phones—can fill in many of these gaps and double the measurement coverage, providing an accurate picture of the ionosphere in areas of the world underserved by conventional infrastructure. […] This work demonstrates the potential of using a large distributed network of smartphones as a powerful scientific instrument for monitoring Earth.

2024-11-05

35.

The AI Boom Rests on Billions of Tonnes of Concrete

spectrum.ieee.org/green-concrete

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.

2024-09-14

31.

nika: "here’s my web server inspired by compost.party (@…" - Indieweb.Social

indieweb.social/@nonnullish/113136959490155095

2024-09-10

30.

Handbook

eco.kde.org/handbook

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.

2024-08-15

28.

Damaged Earth Catalog

damaged.bleu255.com

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.

2024-08-07

25.

Ditherpunk — The article I wish I had about monochrome image dithering — surma.dev

surma.dev/things/ditherpunk

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.

2024-07-04

21.

Why your website should be under 14kB in size | endtimes.dev

endtimes.dev/why-your-website-should-be-under-14kb-in-size

A 14kB page can load much faster than a 15kB page — maybe 612ms faster — while the difference between a 15kB and a 16kB page is trivial.

This is because of the TCP slow start algorithm. This article will cover what that is, how it works, and why you should care. But first we'll quickly go over some of the basics.

2024-06-21

17.

The Delusion of “Advanced” Plastic Recycling

www.propublica.org/article/delusion-advanced-chemical-plastic-recycling-pyrolysis

The plastics industry has heralded a type of chemical recycling it claims could replace new shopping bags and candy wrappers with old ones — but not much is being recycled at all, and this method won’t curb the crisis.

2024-06-16

15.

Media Search - Macaulay Library and eBird

search.macaulaylibrary.org/catalog

Explore millions of photos, audio recordings, and videos of birds and other animals; powered by Macaulay Library and eBird. The Macaulay Library collects, archives, and distributes wildlife media for research, education, and conservation.

2024-06-09

14.

postmarketOS // real Linux distribution for phones

postmarketos.org

Aiming for a 10 year life-cycle for smartphones

13.

How to Build a Small Solar Power System

solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/12/how-to-build-a-small-solar-power-system

This guide explains everything you need to know to build stand-alone photovoltaic systems that can power almost anything you want.

2024-05-26

10.

A Feminist Server Manifesto - SystersWiki

hub.xpub.nl/systers/mediawiki/index.php?title=A_Feminist_Server_Manifesto

2024-05-13

8.

Sun Thinking

solarprotocol.net/sunthinking/index.html

Sun Thinking is a group exhibition that brings together artists, writers, and researchers to explore the qualities and logics of solar power and solar powered computing networks. It presents a collection of network-based artworks, games, texts, and interviews and is the first exhibition project to be hosted on the Solar Protocol network.

2024-04-11

5.

Oil in the Cloud

www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/oil-in-the-cloud

How Tech Companies are Helping Big Oil Profit from Climate Destruction

The world's biggest cloud providers and the world's biggest oil and gas companies are deeply interwoven, and machine learning algorithms and computational resources are accelerating extractivist capitalism.