Once I used an old MIPS debian in qemu to test big endian. I thought since LoongArch has its root in MIPS it may be big endian. It turns out "LoongArch bit designations are always little-endian".
One reason is to use the Linux page cache instead of dedicating RAM to ZFS, given how expensive memory is now. I am very happy with MGLRU and won't miss ZFS's ARC.
> to make this in an area with less infrastructure you might use a template and carbide gas torch to cut
Metal work seems very expensive in some places. In a 2025 paper [1], a cooking pot looks like several aluminium rings welded together, about 50 cm tall and 70 cm in diameter, is 416 USD in Ghana, which is one of the destinations of this hand-crank washing machine.
Sticking head into a barbecue oven for 10 minutes might get rid of lice, but expecting cooking smoke kill bugs is absurd. People use the three stone and hearth fire not because they want the smoke, but because they do not know better. Combustion is a complicated process, it generates CO2, H20, CO, H2, CH4. The higher the temperature, the more thorough the burning. It requires the right amount of air, enough to burn all the biomass, but not too much that carries heat away thus lowers the temperature. Higher temperature also transfer heat more efficiently to the cookware. Only a well designed stove can do that. These are not things that can be figured by meditating in front of an open fire.
Saving fuel is a matter of life and death in the ancient world. Winter is brutal to the poor largely because gathering fuel is difficult, especially in areas that have supported large population for centuries.
I am interested in unit cost for mass production. It needs to be significantly cheaper than an old style top-loading washing machine to be affordable. The design of old style washing machine is mature and priced at around $100 for 8kg model. I suspect it can be stripped down further, remove water pump, remove program controlled inlet valve et al. to reduce the cost to below $50. Granted, washing machine like that needs electricity, but solar panel may be cheap enough.
One more thing, the water is not always easy to get in poor places. It is often much easier to carry laundry to a well, creak, or river than transport water to home. The path to the water sources may be a narrow trail often going up and down hills, so even with wheels on the machine, it is impractical to drag the machine to the water.
Extremely simple washing machines already exist, and I suspect on the order of 30-40 dollars. They are top-loading. No pumps. Turn one dial to let water in through the inlet. Turn another dial to let water out through the outlet valve. All manual, no pumps. Then flip switch to start spinning with electric motor, flip it back to stop spinning (no timers).
What you do is fill it with water. Add soap. Then put in first load of clothes and run it for 15 minutes. Then take out the clothes and put them in a tub. Repeat with second load of clothes in same soapy water. Once, all loads are done, then put in fresh water. Run all loads through it to get the soap out. You are done.
(Relatively) richer people might have another machine that acts as a spinner. Otherwise, you just hang up the wet clothes outside.
Of the stuff I've repaired recently it's been mechanical switches that have caused problems, where a microcontroller and bloody great MOSFET would have kept on forever.
There are much lover cost washing machines with electricity. This one for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eo4CIHpp28 . It's just a motor, you just need a big bucket or a tub to fill it with water and detergent. Let it turn the clithes in water for half an hour and rinse. It's also handy during rinsing.
Growing up in a developing country in 90s we used to use this type of machine for bigger loads because our normal front loader machine was only 6kg capacity. This + a bathtub was the way to go for washing the blankets, bedsheets etc. It costs now sth like 20-30 usd.
> the worst case is that we would have to ditch the space station (which is already planned in a few years)
There is more than one Space Station up there. "Tianhe space station module conducted preventive collision avoidance due to close approaches by the Starlink-1095 (2020-001BK) and Starlink-2305 (2021-024N) satellites on July 1 and Oct. 21 respectively." [1]. Wikipedia also has a long list of planned and proposed space stations.
My apologies for the digression. But it reminds me a post I saw long time ago when a guy installed all the antivirus/antimalware software he could find on a Windows machine. It started an antivirus civil war and the Windows fell into a coma within seconds.
I haven't admined windows for 16 years, but I had this conspiracy theory back in the days that when you install an anti virus A, you'd find some viruses, and then you'd install anti virus B, you'd find some more, but then when you went back to anti virus A, you'd find a couple more - that the free versions were installing their own viruses. It might just have been because I was using bootleg copies.
I'd love to know more about Unicycling. Is it just my browser, or is anyone else seeing the huge black Q letter or magnifying glass icon that occupies 2/3 of the screen?
Ionizing (or ionising) radiation is particle or photon that has enough energy to detaching electron from atoms or molecules. It includes all the usual high energy radiations such as Gamma, X-rays, high energy UV, alpha, beta, neutron et al. HN high energy physicists can correct me, sounds like it is not any particular category of the harmful radiation from a nuclear disaster, it is all of them.
