Hundred Rabbits is a small collective exploring the failability of modern tech

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Boat‑based constraints and motivations

  • They live and work on a small 1980s sailboat with ~180W of solar and limited batteries and connectivity.
  • This drives an offline‑first, low‑power, low‑bandwidth approach; they explicitly resist the “just add more panels/batteries” mindset.
  • Some argue their power/weight/windage constraints are exaggerated and that they chose the fun solution instead of the most practical one—but many see that as valid and interesting.

Technology stack and design goals

  • They favor 9front/Plan 9, self‑contained tools, static binaries, and the Uxn/Varvara VM instead of mainstream stacks like Windows, Electron, or big IDEs.
  • Uxn/Varvara is framed as a tiny, portable “virtual computer” inspired partly by NES/6502, aiming for intelligible, self‑hostable software.
  • Debate over efficiency: some see an 8‑bit VM on 64‑bit hardware as wasteful; others share benchmarks showing it’s “less inefficient than expected” for text/editing workloads.

Resilience, permacomputing, and collapse scenarios

  • Thread connects their work to “permacomputing” and projects like CollapseOS/DuskOS: maximizing hardware lifespan, minimizing energy, planning for partial civilizational collapse.
  • Opinions split: some call collapse‑focused OS work “cosplay” or quasi‑religious asceticism; others see it as quirky but worthwhile “civilizational insurance.”
  • There’s deep discussion of microcontrollers (6502, Z80, STM32, etc.) and what’s realistically scavengable or self‑hostable.

Lifestyle, privilege, and “cult” concerns

  • Many find their sailing, minimal‑tech life romantic and inspiring; others regard their problems as self‑imposed “first‑world” constraints.
  • Several commenters describe their wider community as cult‑like, with alleged abusive moderation and driving out queer members; others express surprise and ask for more evidence.
  • Some critique the political framing (anti‑capitalist, gender‑nonconforming) as off‑putting; others see that as integral to the experiment.

Privacy, tracking, and web minimalism

  • Their site claims “no tracking,” but an embedded YouTube iframe pulls in multiple Google trackers.
  • This sparks a long subthread on how to avoid that (YouTube‑nocookie, click‑to‑embed, Peertube, self‑hosted MP4/WebM, strong CSP).
  • Some see the oversight as undermining their credibility; others call it a minor, fixable mistake.

Community impact and tools

  • Orca, their 2D music/sequencing language, is widely praised for breaking musical ruts and treating programming/composition as play. Tutorials and posts are shared.
  • Uxn/Varvara and related tools are seen as serious, coherent experiments in constrained, long‑lived computing, even by skeptics of their politics or lifestyle.