💾 Archived View for midnight.pub › replies › 4974 captured on 2023-07-10 at 15:28:56. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

< Any retro devices for browsing the smolweb?

~tetris

I once tried to hack a kindle to repurpose it as an online web-pulled/dashboard type thing. The problem was, the kernel that Amazon used was very very old and I couldn't get any modern version gnu-tls to build on it without going through dependency hell. A surprisingly large number of websites that refuse pure http requests these days.

Write a reply

Replies

~superfxchip wrote (thread):

This all sounds very complicated to get running. It's definitely pesky finding ways to retrofit gradually obsolete technology especially given for archival purposes.

Even peskier trying to update software over potentially brickable hardware, making it all that much harder to try and preserve an older device. It's too bad there aren't a common amount of mobile version sites with support for older HTML like there used to be.

~aftergibson wrote (thread):

So actually I have a very old Nook, that I’ve got running Android 2 I think. It’s currently an E-ink dashboard I’ve stuck to the wall that shows the upcoming weather forecast (and high/low tides near me). It doesn’t support any sort of https, so I have it just connecting to a local server running a Python script printing the dashboard, I wonder if I added some interactivity could it be used to browse the smolweb? (Over http of course…)