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[mirror] blog and personal website of Drew DeVault git clone https://hacktivis.me/git/mirror/drewdevault.com.git

ideas.md (3372B)

    

  1. ---
  2. layout: page
  3. title: List of ideas
  4. ---
  6. This is a list of ideas that I don't have time to work on right now, but I might
  7. work on later or contribute to if someone else started up the project.
  8. Naturally, all of these assume that the result is based on free and open-source
  9. software, uses open standards and protocols, leverages federation if
  10. appropriate, etc. Shoot me a message on [Mastodon](https://cmpwn.com/@sir) if
  11. you want to pick my brain on any of these ideas, or to let me know they exist.
  13. A **social networking site** which is designed to enrich IRL relationships.
  14. Your instance would probably be run by someone in your neighborhood, and if you
  15. wanted to hang out it'd match you up with people with similar interests and help
  16. you hang out together IRL, be it having drinks at a bar or playing video games
  17. or board games for an evening, or whatever else. Instead of "social networking"
  18. sites which try to keep you stuck staring at their pages for as long as
  19. possible, the prime directive of this site would be to quickly get you off of
  20. your phone and into IRL face-time with other people.
  22. A marriage of **git and bittorrent**, for the purpose of tracking large blobs.
  23. Like git-lfs, but decentralized. Instead of storing the URL to fetch files from
  24. like git-lfs does, it stores the infohash. git push should block until 100% of
  25. the changes are replicated in the swarm.
  27. A **vector graphics display** with open hardware, an open standard for driving
  28. it from a PC, and upstream kernel drivers implementing that interface. Could be
  29. CRT-style or a laser+mirror+projector kind of system, or both. Kernel interface
  30. should be fairly general to encourage manufacturers to write drivers for it, and
  31. should be paired with a nice userspace library for driving the ioctls, like DRM
  32. but for vector graphics. Relevant resources:
  33. [Hackaday](https://hackaday.com/2011/11/10/rgb-laser-projector-is-a-jaw-dropping-build/),
  34. [Arduino RTOS](https://github.com/greiman/ChRt).
  36. A **Wayland port of xscreensaver** based on layer-shell.
  38. A **web browser engine** which flagrantly disregards modern web standards,
  39. written in C or Rust. No JavaScript, limited CSS. Designed as a library which
  40. others can make GUIs et al out of. Like Servo if they gave a shit about making
  41. anything other than a testbed for rewriting Firefox.
  43. A new **kernel for z80 calculators**. [KnightOS](https://knightos.org) is far
  44. from the mark in terms of POSIX support and general Unixisms, but it'd probably
  45. be a good start. There's no reason a POSIX-compatible operating system wouldn't
  46. work on these devices. Particularly egregious failures in KnightOS include the
  47. file descriptor design and the lack of a TTY subsystem, though depending on who
  48. you ask that last one isn't so bad.
  50. A simple replacement for **gas/nasm and binutils**, with less GNU and more
  51. modularity. Ideally should pair well with
  52. [cproc](https://git.sr.ht/~mcf/cproc)/qbe.
  54. An **ethical engineering index** which defines a set of criteria by which tech
  55. companies are evaluated for ethics and assigns each a score. Factors include
  56. their approach to military contracting, their treatment of their employees,
  57. attitude towards open source, etc. Above a certain rating, companies would be
  58. allowed to post job listings for free (under that level they wouldn't be allowed
  59. to post at all). There's no business model here, ping me for free hosting.