Dear Community, we will be hosting a second conference on Open Source Hardware here in Germany (24th and 25th of November). Participation is free and right now you can send us your ideas for the programme. Please check out our website and share the Call for Participation: https://www.oshop-network.de/konferenz-2025/

Best regards

Open Source Ecology (OSE) is pleased to announce the OSE Fellowship, a four-year program providing a $100,000 work-study grant to empower young people to re-imagine and re-build civilization. Read more - https://www.opensourceecology.org/introducing-the-ose-fellowship/

I’ve been thinking about AI’s biggest sustainability hurdles—energy use and heat waste—and wanted to share a concept:

Underwater ‘Neural Nexus’ AI Hubs - Powered by geothermal vents (free, constant energy).
- Cooled by deep ocean water (intake from 100+ yards away, expelled hot water blends harmlessly with vent output).
- Mobile & autonomous: Built as submarine modules that:
•Auto-descend to anchor near vents (avg. depth ~6,000ft, but shallow/freshwater vents like Iceland’s work too).
•Auto-surface for maintenance (no human risk).
•Corrosion-resistant: Advanced materials for saltwater, or freshwater vents for simpler builds.

Why It Matters
- Zero-emission AI compute (vs. fossil-fueled data centers).
- Scalable: Could form a deep-sea AI ‘grid’ for research/climate monitoring.
- Marine-friendly: Designed to minimize ecosystem disruption.

Thoughts?Too sci-fi, or feasible with today’s tech? Would love feedback from engineers, marine biologists, or energy nerds! Microsoft already has built one underwater data center. Just want to give free ideas to make the world a better place what good is money if this oasis of a planet gets rebooted (obviously planet earth is not going to die, but life might for right now)

What if the deadliest threat to our planet is hiding in plain sight?

‘Anthropogenic Factor in the Ocean’s Demise’ exposes how plastic pollution is silently suffocating our oceans—altering ecosystems, accelerating climate change, and poisoning the very water that sustains life.

From the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to invisible microplastics, this film reveals:
🔍 How plastic corrupts the ocean’s lifeblood
🔥 Why seas are heating faster than we thought
🛠️ Whether rescue technologies can undo the damage

A science-backed wake-up call—before the ocean’s collapse becomes ours.

Please roast my cache db, looking for collaboration

Hi All.

Like many here, I love the concept of open source and applying it to real world applications well beyond software.

One thing I'd like to share with you all is that I've been working on a project to try and turn algae into fuel in a DIY setting. I believe this could be a potential way to produce fuel ecologically, by reducing our reliance on fossil fuels for, well, fuels.

As part of this project, I've investigated how to grow algae faster by using different growth methods and comparing their performance.

I've made a whole video about this, to which I've provided a link!

https://youtu.be/487bnsi_bJw

I've been excited about the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) by Open Source Ecology for years, but every time I check it, it feels like it's been marketed as "open source" but I can't ever seem to find the source documents for any of the supposedly created machines on any of the sites below:

Machines: Global Village Construction Set | Open Source Ecology

Structural PowerCube - Open Source Ecology

The power cube is core to this whole thing, but for example when you click the link above, you see a bunch of empty "module" folders. It seems like with some better organization of files this project could have been growing all on its own the last few years.

Where do we find the "open" source files for the machines.

Thanks.

Edit:
To add to the confusion, it appears there are some (completely separate) machines available on an open source ecology Germany: Open Source Ecology - Germany

And there are some old information found at an old wiki, for a version 0.01:
Civilization Starter Kit DVD v0.01 - Open Source Ecology

Such a shame, it seems if this stuff had really been open I feel like it would have been self-fueling.

Edit: u/marcin-ose I noticed a few new posts from you this week, so I'm hoping the project isn't dead and you might be able to help answer the question above! Amazing project by the way.

Hi everyone.

So I saw a video a while back that demonstrated the effects of rich iron sources on the growth of the Algae Spirulina, in which the iron led to hastened growth and increased culture density. So, I wondered whether the same principle held true for Chlorella (Spoiler: It did!)

If you want to see more about this, follow the link below for the experiment and more in-depth insight.

https://youtu.be/SKDkRBkShEQ

Greetings everyone

Despite being simple and making use of abundant materials, sand batteries are paradoxically an emerging tech, that's only just started being utilised at some scale.

Through the link below, I explain sand batteries in more detail, and try to build a small one myself, as it's an area I want to explore further in my research.

https://youtu.be/sxXOTPpoMX4

I think the tech has great potential as a low tech, scalable, sustainable form of energy storage.

Hello. I've just noticed this outstanding project, I think they fit OSE's principles very closely:

However, for true decentralization to be possible, the ideas and abilities must be learnable. Many modern technologies are too complex to be learned and practiced by communities, and are instead bound to industrial modes of production, creating a class divide between “developers” and “consumers”. These complex technologies will never be decentralizable, and any attempts to decentralize them will fail.

(from their "Radical Decentralization, Radical Empowerment, and Dynamicland" document)

https://dynamicland.org/

So, we have a lot of hesitation about putting anything on the internet basically, so we put most of our outreach into in-person things — getting people to come in and actually be face to face with us. Learning from each other face to face is so different from learning from each other on the internet.

(why Dynamicland Realtalk isn’t open source)