You don't need to be a software engineer to join! We welcome anyone who would like to come and share ideas :)
To quote the wiki:
Permacomputing can take many forms, and every context and situation is different, but even without a one-size-fits-all solution, we can share knowledge and resources that could be useful.
For someone, getting started with permacomputing may be:
helping a school to work with recycled computers
learning how to repair and replace components in computing hardware
discussing the use and impact of smartphones in the household, or data centers in the workplace
working with local farms and collectives to develop low energy weather prediction
researching how to provide less resource-intensive tools and systems for their lab or workspace
getting involved with initiatives to create energy efficient and accessible local libraries of information
engaging with politics and policy making to advance tech and enviromental regulation in their institution, town, or region
helping artists interested to engage with ecological topics using tools and media in line with this intention
writing their own FORTH for a chip reclaimed from e-waste
I love the concept for this. Syncthing is pretty good but it is annoying to have it running all the time on Android.
I'd love to use something like this to sync my Obsidian md files between computer and phone just when needed. I suspect this could be baked into to an Obsidian plugin to make it pretty seemless for folks.
Speaking of laptops. I've been kicking around this idea for almost a year now. I wanna make a tool that takes ebay listings for ThinkPads and basically shows them on a table that's super easy to filter and includes benchmark scores. Kinda like what lab gopher used to be. Lots of people want a good deal on ThinkPads but ebay search for them can be rough because of the fuzzy search. Like if I just want the best deal on a Thinkpad from the past 3 years that's not easy to search for on ebay. Main thing stopping me is ebay API requires an application and I'm sure they block scrapers to some extent.
F-droid is working great. Hard to say this vs a linux setup. It's not super lightweight but more than a laptop for sure if that matters for you. The 14 inch one seems pretty monster so at that point maybe a laptop is worth it.
So I've gotten to use the tablet a bit now and I would say it's fine. I might expect a bit more for $170 but because it's so big I can excuse it. Um, it's a little laggy, um, just out of the box. It doesn't have much bloatware, maybe two or three manufacturer apps, but not like Candy Crush and all that junk. My very basic research tells me it's not rootable. I'm really not sure if there is actually a special technology to the screen or it's just like a matte screen protector but I sat in the park in full sunlight and was able to read a book perfectly well not quite as good as a paperwhite but pretty close so overall it's decent and the pen works pretty well for writing and drawing. Compared to how much an iPad costs, I think the quality is fairly close.
You don't even need a zipcode if you use https://silent.link/ then you can pay with whatever crypto and have an esim where the balance never expires and it works in most of the world. I've used it a few months and it's pretty good if you don't need a phone number.
Does the pocketbook app/device let you annotate books? It seems quite interesting but not generally available in the US. Read era does look interesting though.
I posted the nitter link because it's where they're announcing iOS is available. The blog post you referred to is older and just says iOS support coming soon.
Obviously, I am not a lawyer, but I believe that part of having a trademark is that you have to defend it and show that it's just yours. So I don't think having a trademark and then just saying everyone can use it would really work.
In the US the whole idea of owning a house as your "nest egg" that keeps growing forever in a way that you can retire with is so toxic. And then there's also the retirement funds demanding huge returns on real estate.
Looks pretty great and I applaud the efforts. We need more services like this in the space! Pricing is hard but purelymail.com pricing really makes sense and works for me. You pay based on how much you use it and it lets you add unlimited domains. I'm sure it's not a great fit for everyone but for light users the pricing is wonderful. If you come up with something similar I'd try your service.
Have you all tried running them against any open source software you use?
You don't need to be a software engineer to join! We welcome anyone who would like to come and share ideas :)
To quote the wiki:
https://permacomputing.net/permacomputing/
What is Sidekick Pro?
I love the concept for this. Syncthing is pretty good but it is annoying to have it running all the time on Android.
I'd love to use something like this to sync my Obsidian md files between computer and phone just when needed. I suspect this could be baked into to an Obsidian plugin to make it pretty seemless for folks.
Speaking of laptops. I've been kicking around this idea for almost a year now. I wanna make a tool that takes ebay listings for ThinkPads and basically shows them on a table that's super easy to filter and includes benchmark scores. Kinda like what lab gopher used to be. Lots of people want a good deal on ThinkPads but ebay search for them can be rough because of the fuzzy search. Like if I just want the best deal on a Thinkpad from the past 3 years that's not easy to search for on ebay. Main thing stopping me is ebay API requires an application and I'm sure they block scrapers to some extent.
F-droid is working great. Hard to say this vs a linux setup. It's not super lightweight but more than a laptop for sure if that matters for you. The 14 inch one seems pretty monster so at that point maybe a laptop is worth it.
So I've gotten to use the tablet a bit now and I would say it's fine. I might expect a bit more for $170 but because it's so big I can excuse it. Um, it's a little laggy, um, just out of the box. It doesn't have much bloatware, maybe two or three manufacturer apps, but not like Candy Crush and all that junk. My very basic research tells me it's not rootable. I'm really not sure if there is actually a special technology to the screen or it's just like a matte screen protector but I sat in the park in full sunlight and was able to read a book perfectly well not quite as good as a paperwhite but pretty close so overall it's decent and the pen works pretty well for writing and drawing. Compared to how much an iPad costs, I think the quality is fairly close.
This, and because there's no number it's easier for them to not have KYC.
You don't even need a zipcode if you use https://silent.link/ then you can pay with whatever crypto and have an esim where the balance never expires and it works in most of the world. I've used it a few months and it's pretty good if you don't need a phone number.
Do you have it setup to sync highlights/annotations? how does that work for you?
https://github.com/readest/readest is looking quite promising
I'm not that techy on the screens front but it's not totally a regular lcd but not as good as e-ink either. It's kinda something in between. I've only gotten to play with it a for a few minutes so far but it's hard to describe. These pictures do it some justice though: https://www.androidcentral.com/tablets/tcl-nxtpaper-4-fixes-one-of-the-technologys-biggest-hidden-issues
Does the pocketbook app/device let you annotate books? It seems quite interesting but not generally available in the US. Read era does look interesting though.
I posted the nitter link because it's where they're announcing iOS is available. The blog post you referred to is older and just says iOS support coming soon.
Appreciate the positive feedback! If you have any cool stories to share that you think would fit please send them my way!
Obviously, I am not a lawyer, but I believe that part of having a trademark is that you have to defend it and show that it's just yours. So I don't think having a trademark and then just saying everyone can use it would really work.
I think it's supposed to pretty easy if you know what you want to make. You can try it here https://mapcomplete.org/studio.html
In the US the whole idea of owning a house as your "nest egg" that keeps growing forever in a way that you can retire with is so toxic. And then there's also the retirement funds demanding huge returns on real estate.
Really impressive to roll your own mail servers and clients! Do you use AI much to help with development?
Looks pretty great and I applaud the efforts. We need more services like this in the space! Pricing is hard but purelymail.com pricing really makes sense and works for me. You pay based on how much you use it and it lets you add unlimited domains. I'm sure it's not a great fit for everyone but for light users the pricing is wonderful. If you come up with something similar I'd try your service.