The rate at which hardware and software are produced and discarded is dizzying. People in the EU alone throws produce 5 million tonnes of e-waste annually. But as if planned obsolescence breaking devices physically wasn't annoying enough: Requirements change, compatibility is broken, and completely functional devices are rendered barely usable after increasingly short lifespans. What about the work done to mine the minerals? What about the waste, what about the emissions? It's easiest not to worry about it, to just go for the vibes of infinite cloud auto-scaling and sparkling AI buttons.

But what could it look like to take these externalities seriously? What would a computing look like that tries to keep things running instead of moving fast and breaking things?

compost.party is a web server that's pieced together from scraps, a broken phone just shy of being thrown away and a camping solar panel no longer needed by friends. It runs on solar energy alone and reuses existing infrastructure – a residential internet connection and the mobile celltower network – to host zines and personal web pages for free. It goes offline when the sun is gone and its battery is running out, and comes back when the sun does.

In this workshop we want to share knowledge about the setup, share the skills to do something similar, talk about how this all relates to permacomputing and caring, and offer spots to host personal pages and experiments on compost.party to those interested.