Warzone 2100 (you can download for free as it is an old PC game that went GPL)

gets more on the nose by the day

That is just the gateway drug to bootstrapping.

Check out https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap

if you want the real hard stuff.

They already did: https://www.commanderx16.com/

you just probably want something better.

and that is the problem building higher performance requires more advanced lithography and that is expensive and until recently was not even an option for a hobbyist (without taking a mortgage on their house).

Given current stagnation, you need only wait about 10 years for that viable option.

rxvt-unicode with tabbedex.

I refuse to use a terminal emulator that needs more than 100MB of RAM to display 80x24 green text on a black display

checksums at the filesystem level does nothing to protect against memory corruption which can overwrite everything on your disk with null values and a matching checksum; fail to write anything to disk and/or do nothing.

But that is the gamble you take every day with every GB of RAM you have.

the correct answer is Gemini or gopher.

No ECC, absolutely worthless for a NAS if you care about your data.

Raid stopped being optimal now that btrfs and ZFS exist.

If you plan on doing matching drives ZFS is recommended

If you expect mismatched disks, btrfs will work.

If you are most worried about stability get a computer with ECC memory.

If you are most worried about performance, use SSD drives.

If you want a bunch of storage for cheap, use spinning disks (unless you exceed the 100TB capacity range)

The tools are already readily available under FSF approved licenses. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.en.html

Support the FSF if that is a legitimate concern to you

https://my.fsf.org/join

The tools are already readily available:

Relational Databases

SAT solvers

The missing bit is social action, which no amount of software can solve.

So effectively light enough that it could run on a raspberry PI 4. Well that would put you under 10W

Well the first question is what software you NEED to run, then we can figure out hardware.

Your ZFS backup strategy should be to follow one of the following rulesets:

3-2-1 [3 copies of the data at 2 different locations for the 1 purpose of preserving the data]

4-3-2-1 [4 copies of the data at 3 different locations in 2 different types of media for the 1 purpose of preserving the data]

5-4-3-2-1 [5 copies of the data at 4 different locations across 3 different continents in 2 different types of media for the 1 purpose of preserving the data]

The details of the backup is more if you have a second system to enable ZFS send/receive or if you have to transport deltas from ZFS send

Tragically, you might be right about reduction in consumption being a cultural non-starter.

As it would make many things much easier but as you pointed out, advances in battery technology can fill some of that gap.

harmonization of grid standards is more than just frequency (it is mostly policy paperwork and the replacement of non-compliant equipment or the installation of conversion equipment) but you are correct high voltage DC is used for long distance power transmission. There are also details such as who is responsible for paying for what, where things are to be connected and various other bureaucratic details.

The big companies are ignoring the sector and just plan on buying the most profitable startups that look promising.

So ignore the fortune 1000 entirely and invest in smaller companies that are hiring engineers in chemistry if your goal is to invest effectively in battery technology.

But you are missing the advances in metallurgy (superconducting metals are making great strides), mechanical engineering (flywheel technology is taking advantage of new micro-controlled magnetic bearings) and physics.

Well a superconducting loop (even with liquid nitrogen costs/inefficiencies) would enable a global grid with quite minimal energy loses and reduce the amount of energy storage needed to sustain a stable grid even in the face of failures and disruptions.

The big problem tends to do with harmonization of energy grid standards.

well as you can buy solar panels at $0.50/W so a 10W panel can be obtained for $5 and a raspberry pi4 only uses 2.7W while idle and 6.4W when under full load.

Efficient is sexy

Sounds like they didn’t consider appealing to UK government to get subsidized liquid CO2 and use the produced hydrogen to synthetically create hydrocarbons (which are much easier/cheaper to store) and win political points doing so.