It's somewhat strange to me that their tech journey is so narrative and ends up with a VM stack, rather than any kind of salvaged / repurposed hard tech. But then again, I'm probably on the forth side of the spectrum.
I love reading the Hundred Rabbits blog but I view it as sort of an artistic endeavor in addition to pure tech. Indeed, my idea of "low tech" would be 16-bit systems or early 32-bit stuff like 386 and 486 PCs, etc. These machines are surprisingly capable even in 2025 with the right applications. They can be repaired seemingly indefinitely with a soldering iron and spare caps.
- HN can be read at gopher://hngopher.com
- irc -> bitlbee.org to chat with anyone, even IRC with TLS itself. Kirc will run on any potato.
- a high end 486 it's needed to play MP3's. Either that or burn your favourites into CD's.
- sc-im+gnuplot/emacs' ses+gnulot
- srln+slrnpull
- telescope/sacc can do gopher fine. gemini can be stalled.
- sfeed+links to read news. Altough gmane.io and gwene.io can relay mail lists and RSS feeds as NNTP groups and then your might slrn will just read all news happily in a 486 (or less).
- translate -> simply translate
- Reuters -> http://neuters.de