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There are two aspects to off-grid computing that I see as being important, and cyberdecks play into the intersection of these two things. They are personal computing and community computing. What follows is a brain dump of my thoughts on these from my personal notebook.
+ Durable computing, e.g. the decade system.
+ What makes for durability?
+ Parts don't need to be refreshed.
+ e.g. disks wear out and die - is solid state any better?
+ e.g. batteries need to be replaced after X charge cycles.
+ how long will these components be available?
+ Parts that fail should be repairable first, and replaceable if that fails.
+ e.g. socketed ICs
+ e.g. DIP/through-hole
+ Simple soldering and electronics tools
+ Sustainable computing
+ Though maybe more of a community topic?
+ LiON/LiPO batteries are actively bad for the planet on multiple levels.
+ Solar power: encourages charging during the day
+ Swappable power packs?
+ Alternative: (bio)fuel cells?
+ Understandable systems are key
+ Full schematics
+ 80's home computer experience
+ Boot to BASIC (or...?)
+ Reset brings up a known-good environment
+ Open systems
+ ROM rewriteable by end-user
+ Good comparison to cars
+ The mechanism (ICE) and interface (steering wheel, pedal) have retained same basic design.
+ They don't go faster (for the average user) than they did 30 years ago.
+ Lots of tech improvements, not always for the better (blackbox ECU, media centres)
+ Tinkering obviously violates the principle, but a stock ROM should not behave unexpectedly.
+ Principle of least surprise.
+ Types of community computing
+ RT chat - sync, stateless
+ forums / BBS (public space)
+ library
+ async messaging (user-to-user)
+ You shouldn't have to be online 24/7 for computers to be useful.
+ Allow people to contribute back.
+ Decentralised systems.