Decent technologies should leverage the fall of intellectual "property".
CJDNS, IPFS, Dat, SSB, et. al. are paving a way to a parallel crisis for propertarians as Automation is paving one for proletarians / lumpen proletarians.
@fabianhjr how does automation create a crisis for the proletariat? automation will make the propertarians obsolete and liberate the proles!
@gc as long as they remain dispossessed of the means of production, specially including automated means of production, they would be increasingly pushed towards the lumpenproletariat.
@fabianhjr @gc Also proles kept out of the loop of finance, logistics, and everything that goes in the data centre. Which is why decentralisation is so important.
The workers may control the real economy, but they can do little with it if they don't control the means of information.
@h @fabianhjr agreed, power is logistic these days. which is why I think it's so frickin important that we own our servers, btw. if mastodon has slayed fb and birdsite and reigns supreme 20 years from now, it won't mean shit if all the instances are hosted on aws
@gc @fabianhjr Also making our own computers will become more relevant as unencumbered general purpose computing gear becomes increasingly difficult to find.
@h @fabianhjr what??? there are so so so so many unused, perfectly good general purpose computers already lying around and just going to waste that it's not even funny. most people already own several, at least in america. making our own processors is an incredibly difficult thing to do and turning an old desktop into a server is not, so let's save ourselves the trouble and worry about that once/if we run out of all the processors we already have.
@gc @fabianhjr Firstly, that's not easily reproducible for most people. Refurbishing and rehabbing a server to a reliable and useful state takes some specific know-how that is in short supply. Not everybody has the ability or desire to become a sysadmin, and that's perfectly fine, just as most people aren't car repair technicians. But everybody needs, with increasing urgency, to get their own information sorted and under control.
A computing of the people that works for the people is needed.
@h @fabianhjr I'm down, but how exactly do you plan on building this computing of the people for the people? you don't want to use what the people already have, like the countless desktops, laptops and phones lying around, as servers, bc it would be too difficult. are you proposing that we build our own processors instead? bc that's also 'not easily reproducible by most people' and definitely requires 'specific know-how that is in short supply.' like are you just gonna build a chip foundry lol
@LinuxSocist @vertigo @jjg @fabianhjr @gc
If the owners of a coop in the near future begin to produce general purpose computing, and their methods become reproducible for other coops to produce them as well, the potential existence of a cooperative market with no central points of failure emerges.
No different in that from the trust relationships that keep the Mastodon federation together.
@gc @fabianhjr @jjg @vertigo @LinuxSocist
Should a powerful adversarial actor decide to take over a tiny operation like the Raspberry Pi or others like them, the amplified damage would be vast and of repercussions impossible to predict.
The web of relationships that hold this industry together are very fragile, and it's no different from other industries where resilience and decentralisation are needed.
Aiming for anti-fragility.
@h @LinuxSocist @vertigo @jjg @fabianhjr while I absolutely agree that we should aim to develop antifragility as cooperatively as possible, we don't have time to wait 10 years to make shitty homebrew 8086s. we need to start empowering people to have more control over their own lives *now,* before shit really hits the fan, not after.
not only that, but we don't need to wait! we could have luxury communism today if we wanted. all the pieces are already there.
@gc I don't think it's shit and I don't think that approach scales, has ever scaled, or is going to scale, for reasons I have already explained. @fabianhjr @jjg @vertigo @LinuxSocist
@h @LinuxSocist @vertigo @jjg @fabianhjr so I've been heavily addicted to 3d printing and additive/digital fabrication more generally for going on 5 years now, homebrew pcb manufacturing as a technology is really starting to mature. but manufacturing cpus? lol. like, sure, maaaaybe in 15 years, but why would you want to? whether you can matters much less than whether you should. and like, it's just such a wildly inefficient way to manufacture a computer lol
@gc Glad to hear it's a lot of fun to you. #lol Have a nice one. @fabianhjr @jjg @vertigo @LinuxSocist
@gc Manufacturing your own chips is like 3d printing was before the first reprap when it was still encumbered by patents.
Someone has to start from somewhere otherwise it's never going to happen and we will remain with the likes of global foundries being the single producer of our chips rather than at least a regional silicon coop for the nm level cpu chips and small production run garages for custom MCU chips.
@LinuxSocist @vertigo @fabianhjr @gc exactly
@LinuxSocist @h @vertigo @jjg @fabianhjr @gc Not going to happen. Chip printing is clean-room only work, not something you can do on a bench top.
@Canageek @gc @fabianhjr @jjg @h @LinuxSocist False. Transistors have already been fabricated in toaster ovens. Someone posted a link on Mastodon recently about homebrew silicon lithography, with a small amplifier on the die. I'd try to look it up if I want limited to my phone.
Point being, basic research is happening right now. With time, scale will improve.
@vertigo @LinuxSocist @h @jjg @fabianhjr @gc I wish I had a quote on me on why that won't work. From someone at IBM in the 70s or 80s when they were making chips. Basically went 'A human hair falling across a CPU is equivalent to a redwood falling across a subdivision'
You can't make chips outside a clean room, as any dust, hair, etc, will destroy the chip.
@LinuxSocist @vertigo @h @jjg @fabianhjr @gc That is a heck of a lot of robotics then, which means this is NOT going to be cheap. That many high precision actuators and such are damn expensive.
@Canageek @LinuxSocist @vertigo @fabianhjr @gc you’re welcome to sweat that while the rest of us work on making it happen :)
@Canageek
This is a 50 micron process, but they have made progress since this prototype.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebLQkv1NUKI
If people gave up every time a new impossibilitarian annoyance shows up, we would still be cracking a bone on the ground like the monkey in 2001.
@h @vertigo @LinuxSocist @jjg @fabianhjr @gc Except that you can't get around physical laws like 'if you build this outside a clean room, you will succeed, then a hair will fall on it and ruin it.'
I mean, if we could fab nano-devices on that scale we wouldn't be paying the engineering department to use theirs every month, and our stuff is way simpler then a CPU, just a bunch of pegs with a mushroom cap.
@Canageek You didn't read or watch anything, right? Did you see the part where they describe the encapsulation system they came up with?
@vertigo @LinuxSocist @jjg @fabianhjr @gc
@h @vertigo @LinuxSocist @jjg @fabianhjr @gc Heading home right now, will watch it later.
@Canageek Yes, please do. Urgently.
@h @vertigo @LinuxSocist @jjg @fabianhjr @gc Watched it. They didn't go into how they are going to replicate a clean room? I mean, they said they are making it, but not what scale or how they will get it smaller. Also sounds like they are limited to sterolithography scale?
@Canageek @h @vertigo @LinuxSocist @fabianhjr @gc there’s more detail on this blog:
@h @vertigo @LinuxSocist @fabianhjr @gc @jjg I read that, and he doesn't detail how they avoid it being destroyed after creation. My understanding is that is still one of the biggest issues in industry, dealing with flawed chipsb that lower yeild.
@h @gc @fabianhjr @jjg @LinuxSocist @vertigo @Canageek "impossibilitarian annoyance"
amazing
@h @vertigo @LinuxSocist @jjg @fabianhjr @gc I really wish people would just abandon youtube for conveying information. Now I have to take two and a half minutes to read something I could in read in 30 seconds in text.
I would understand your complaint if you have a vision or audition impediment, in which case I would only be fitting that I apologise, and I will do that if this is the case, and I will do anything in my power to correct my mistake.
Barring that, we're not here to perform a service for you that you aren't entitled to, acting as your personal search engine agents.
Your two minutes are up, have a nice trip.
@vertigo @LinuxSocist @jjg @fabianhjr @gc @h I already watched it? I was just complaining about the format.
He doesn't mention anything about how they protect the chip before encapsulation, or about what the current scale they can print on is.
Which is why my current conclusion is they can get away with it at the scale they are working at, or are just accepting a large number of print runs will fail.
@h How is 1980s chip printing bleeding edge? I looked up 2 micrometer printing, that is about equal to an Intel 286.
@h @false_chicken I have a box of 286 era RAM you can buy to go with it if you want...
@h @false_chicken If I recall correctly, Linux was developed for a 386. In fact, Torvalds thought at the time it wouldn't be able to be ported to other architectures die to using all the x86 features he could.
That said, I wouldn't call that bleeding edge. It is just a fancy way of reviving obsolete technology that you can get far cheaper other ways.
@false_chicken @h Sorry. That is to say, you probably could find an old version of Linux that would run on a pirated 386. However, it would be a lot of work to design an open source CPU, even a privative one like that. Or a ton of with to use an electron microscope to clone it.
@h I have read the full thread? All of it?
@h Starting with "fabianhjr@social.coop
Decent technologies should leverage the fall of intellectual "property"." through "@LinuxSocist
@gc Manufacturing your own chips is like 3d printing was before the first reprap when it was still encumbered by patents."
@Canageek I was referring to the era when 3d printing was in the exclusive domain of the industries that could afford it and how the technology was practically non-existent to anyone else, rather than patents themselves. So what
What I'm saying is that chip production is practically non-existent outside large industry for the most part today but that might change if we work on redeveloping the production process like what was done with the first reprap to 3d printing now.
@LinuxSocist @h @gc I think you are comparing apples to oranges, and not just in terms of tech level required. All you need to keep a 3D printer running is ABS or PLA. To do chip fab you also need gold, some fairly fancy chemicals, high purity silicone crystals, etc.
Honestly, I think if you want to put chips in the hands of the people a coop approach with distributed costs and farmed out fabs would make a lot more sense. Or a university partnership, since they already have most of the stuff you need.
We get it. We ***do*** get it.
We ***do already know*** how things are traditionally done.
We ***just don't want to*** do the things the way things are traditionally done.
We. Don't. Want. To.
@LinuxSocist @h That doesn't make what you are doing *useful* or *practical*
@Canageek Frankly, you've just achieved troll status in my view. IDGAF. Good bye.
@h But I also work in a lab, and see people doing actually cutting edge research. You are trying to replace an industry that is working very hard to not stop making CPUs more powerful when they his the quantum tunnelling wall, and is currently working on 8 nm transistors, about 100x smaller then home printing.
Plus, even if you get a fab that can print at the nm scale, now you need a CPU design, which would need a linux sized or larger FOSS group behind it, and be even easier to slip backdoors into.
@h The design I could see workarounds. As you said, patents expire. So you could find chips that the patents have expired on an, toss them in an SEM then do a bunch of work cloning them. That seems possible, if crazy hard to me.
What I don't get is why you wouldn't then pool your money and hire a professional fab to make them, then distribute them yourself? You could still benefit from economy of scale then, and it isn't like there aern't lots of fab-for-money companies out there?
@h @false_chicken I have thought of one use, which would be small runs off replacement chips to repair old gaming systems, like an original NES.
Again though, you'd need an electron microscope to make it useful.
@false_chicken It's still going to take a while before we can do that, but yes, we're all for it.
@vertigo @LinuxSocist @jjg @fabianhjr @gc @h It is also possible there is a misunderstanding on my part: I'm assuming you are trying to print CPU and GPU type devices. Which means I don't see the point as you'll never catch up to industry? I'd there something useful about chips on the 286 printing scale I'm not getting?
@h @gc @fabianhjr @jjg @LinuxSocist @vertigo As in, I'm assuming that for this to be useful you have to shrink it from microscale to nanoscale, which I know needs a clean room. Is there something useful you can do with microscale chips that you can't but off the shelf?
@Canageek Read the whole thread when you have the time, if you're interested. It will save us time.
@gc I have. I'm still not getting how a 286 would help solve the problem? Limiting people to running FreeDOS while everyone else has modern operations systems isn't going to help free then from capitalism?
@Canageek wait I'm confused, did you mistag?
@gc Yes, sorry. Meant to tag someone else in the thread
@Canageek no worries, carry on
@Canageek At this stage it is just proving that 1) can produce a homebrew silicon transistor (done by Jeri Ellsworth) and 2) produce an IC (done by Sam Zoolf this year), the next stages will be to automate the production, developing a reliable clean room/environment, miniaturising the process and improving the yield.
@LinuxSocist @h @gc @fabianhjr @jjg @vertigo Wouldn't a more effective way of doing this be setting up a partnership with universities, who already have cleanrooms available for rent, and sometimes have related equipment already?
@LinuxSocist@icosahedron.websit
Jeri Elsworth's work is amazing. I'm in awe of her determination and technical ability.
e @gc @fabianhjr @jjg @vertigo @Canageek https://social.coop/media/I73ZWQaOGByjFkhzIDY
@vertigo @LinuxSocist @h @jjg @fabianhjr @gc Oh, that is how: 2μm is the smallest thing on the chip. That is huge for a chip, which might be how he is getting away with not being in a clean room.
@gc I'm not very concerned about communism and it's not my personal goal to achieve luxury communism for myself. Freeing technology for absolutely everybody is. @fabianhjr @jjg @vertigo @LinuxSocist
@h @LinuxSocist @vertigo @jjg @fabianhjr wait what? I absolutely 100% want to free technology for everyone too! ok so I think we have more views in common than first meets the eye, but the 500 character limit plus the 20 people tagged in this thread makes it hard to convey nuance. is there another communication medium that doesn't lend itself to staccato conversations and hot takes that we can talk more on?
@gc @fabianhjr @vertigo @LinuxSocist who said anything about waiting?
@gc @fabianhjr @jjg @LinuxSocist @h I agree that we should not wait to produce value cooperatively. However, I find most people with such an urgency to be quick with put-downs and reputations of the value of independent designs. It is imperative to encourage, not to discourage, independent designs, be it RISC-V or something else.
@vertigo @h @LinuxSocist @fabianhjr @gc yes, there are many paths over the mountain, and just because you’ve found one does not invalidate the others.
@h @fabianhjr @jjg @vertigo @LinuxSocist also, I'm an owner of my coop and I'm already doing this lol. I built a cluster in my bedroom using super cheap core2 era desktops I bought on ebay and I'm hosting ~15 different services for the almost 200 people that are in icc, essentially for free, at like 2% cpu util. it works and it scales! I 100% understand your skepticism, but like I wouldn't be so gungho about this if I wasn't completely sure it actually worked.
@gc It's fine that you have your goals and vision. Shortsighted as they may seem to me personally, I can accept that you are doing the best you can, and you find solace and pride in your work, which is a great thing.
My only suggestion is let other people have visions and activities of their own, and let them work on whatever they think will be best for them.
Especially since they're taking you seriously and dedicating the time to exchange their experiences with you.
@h oh fuck, sorry if it came across like I was shitting on your ideas, didnt mean that at all :( like the other toot I just posted, the medium of mastodon doesn't help, and until a couple days ago, I only know a handful of people irl who enjoy talking about coops+computers even a little, so I rarely get a chance to talk about it. rereading the thread, I miiiight have gotten a lil overly excited and a bit preachy. I'm genuinely sorry and apologize for offense I might have caused.
@h which terms? not exactly sure what you're referring to, that was a pretty wide ranging conversation
@h How does the Raspberry Pi project/platform compare with your vision. @LinuxSocist @vertigo @jjg @fabianhjr @gc
@tbeckett I don't take credit for that vision, it's something that others like the people I've mentioned in these toots have been working on for years. I'm stronger on the software side, and the vision has been emerging from discussions i've been having with them, they probably have other complementary and brilliant ideas that I'm currently unable to grasp.
@tbeckett @gc @fabianhjr @jjg @vertigo @LinuxSocist
Regarding the Raspberry Pi, I believe I can speak for many others if I say that we respect the technical prowess, the generous spirit, and the great ability the people behind the project have and we have nothing but good things to say about it.
However, the Raspberry Pi depends on proprietary corporate-produced silicon, and we have no way of knowing what's in those chips. We're in the same situation we have with Intel right now.
@h Just out of curiosity how do you feel about the current momentum behind RiscV ?
Or the EOMA68 project with Rhombus Tech set up as a Community interest company?
@satchmoz I'm happy they exist, and I think RISC-V can only e great news, and a sign of good potential. But it's going to take a lot more work to get somewhere we not only match, but surpass the computing power of corporate systems, and get affordable and unencumbered general purpose computers in the hands of most people. 40 years to roll back before we begin to make actual progress.
@h Aren’t x86 chips pretty much commodity items now? @LinuxSocist @vertigo @jjg @fabianhjr @gc
@tbeckett Everything has been made a commodity, including human beings. The whole point is that some things shouldn't be.
@h Well, generic. Commonly available and freely interchangeable. Do you want to gave bespoke processor for general computing? @LinuxSocist @vertigo @jjg @fabianhjr @gc
@tbeckett @gc @fabianhjr @vertigo @LinuxSocist for my part I need a system with no encumbrances, including IP.
Intel clearly doesn’t make that cut, and it turns out neither does ARM, which is why I’m now pursing RISC-V and other fully-open alternatives.
@tbeckett @gc @fabianhjr @jjg @LinuxSocist @h x86 chips are neither interchangeable (you're not going to use a Core2Duo in a P4 socket, despite compatible clock speeds) nor commodity. They are more properly classified as prolific. Intel has successfully terminated every competitor they had, save AMD, and that's only because AMD's pockets are as deep as Intel's when it comes to legal battles.
@tbeckett @gc @fabianhjr @jjg @LinuxSocist @h It is, unfortunately, difficult to make truly commodity (in the replaceable parts sense) hardware, since a lot of the processor's performance hinges on its front side interconnect.
This is why open instruction sets are so important, and why I chose RISC-V for my project. Folks can change what they want, as long as they remain compatible with other layers in the system.
@vertigo Fascinating. Thanks for that clarification. @h @LinuxSocist @jjg @fabianhjr @gc
@gc @fabianhjr A few people are monitoring the progress of IC fabbing, and some integrated circuits comparable to the complexity of an early 8086 processor are on the brink of becoming possible using a process similar to 3d printing, etching on silicon. Still a long way to go, but it will eventually become possible.
Additionally, people like @jjg , @vertigo , @LinuxSocist have the know-how and want to explore collaborative or coop ownership of production.