Nine requirements 9 of 9

Digital and connectivity

Three threads, named in one sentence: the privacy full stack, regenerative mines on the consumption side, and reusing old laptops on the reuse side.

Compiled 4 September 2026.

Access to communication and information infrastructure, hardware and software alike. Sovereign, privacy-first and universally available rather than rented from elsewhere.

This is the only one of the five where the instruction names three separate things, and they sit in different columns of the matrix. The privacy full stack is production. Regenerative mines are the consumption side, the question of what the device is made of and at whose cost. Reusing old laptops is reuse. All three are covered below, and each is followed by what was actually found when it was checked, including where the answer was that little exists yet.

Jakob's position, in his own words

For internet and so on it is the privacy full stack, and regenerative mines for the consumption part, and reusing old laptops and so on.

Jakob Possert-Bienzle, 4 September 2026, lightly repunctuated from the original

How this page reads that

Three threads, and the ordering is informative. The privacy full stack is his own concept and comes first. The other two are named but not elaborated anywhere in the notes, which the sections below record rather than paper over.

Which of the four modes apply

Read from the matrix on the nine requirements page, not restated. The wording below is the wording in the grid.

Sharing somebody else made it

A community mesh network: neighbours put antennas on roofs and carry each other's traffic, so the connection is jointly held rather than resold separately to each household.

Funkfeuer [C]weakly supportedFreifunk [C]weakly supported
Ideal consumption somebody else made it

Choosing where a service is hosted and under whose jurisdiction, and buying a device against its repairability class rather than its spec sheet.

EUR-Lex, European Commission [A]
Reuse somebody else made it

Refurbished devices, and buying the devices that are designed to stay supported long enough for refurbishing them to be worth somebody's while.

Fairphone [C]
Cosmolocal production you make it

Free software is the purest cosmolocal case in existence: the design is a global commons, the running instance is yours and local, and the copy you run needs no permission from whoever wrote it.

Thread one: the privacy full stack

This is Jakob's own term, and the notes carry a one line definition of it: hardware, software and infrastructure that is by default not surveilled and out of reach of AI models. Two components are named under it, the Web of Trust and private devices.

The definition is worth reading slowly, because it is stronger than the usual privacy claim. Not encrypted in transit, not covered by a policy, but not surveilled by default and out of reach, across all three layers at once. That is a production requirement rather than a purchasing one, which is why it sits in the fourth column.

Free software is the purest cosmolocal case that already exists: the design is a global commons, the running instance is yours and local, and the copy you run needs nobody's permission. The pieces below are the parts of this thread that are actually built.

Web of Trust live Named in the notes as a component of the stack. Live, and the piece the notes elsewhere call the first build priority, ahead of the rest of the stack.
Kidur live The binding and governance layer underneath, live, with an event log backing it.
Sovereign Takeout in design One button export of your own data out of the large platforms, with a gated deletion stage. Built and in beta as a local-first tool that runs on your own machine rather than as a hosted service, so there is no public instance of it to link. The project site is the link here, not the app.

A finding about the privacy full stack

The note for this concept carries a field named Published, and a trail underneath headed Published here. Neither resolves to anything outside the notes. The Published field is empty, and the Published here trail terminates in another internal note repeating the same one line definition. Two further entries with this title, made the day before the instruction, are titles with nothing under them.

So: the privacy full stack is not published anywhere findable. It has been mentioned to Brewster Kahle and drew a response from Day Waterbury, both recorded, and it exists as a definition and a two item component list. Confidence in that negative is about 0.85, since not every raw dictation fragment was read word for word.

This is recorded rather than smoothed over because the gap is small and closable. There is a good one line definition and no page carrying it, which is a writing task rather than a research task.

Thread two: regenerative mines, the consumption side

A device is a pile of mined material before it is anything else, and that is the part of this requirement that consumer choice actually touches. Regenerative mines now has a definition it can be held to, given on 6 September 2026: extraction sites where restoration of the site is committed and then actually carried out afterwards. That is checkable, where the bare term was not, and it moves the question from what a company calls itself to whether the restoration happened. What follows surveys the ground against that definition.

The honest finding first. Nothing that could be checked meets the description. Certification schemes in this field are harm reduction and due diligence: they reduce damage and trace origin. Mining removes material that does not come back, so regeneration would be a claim that needs demonstrating rather than a category that exists. Treat the phrase as naming an aspiration.

What does exist, and is worth knowing, is below. The one local anchor: Fairphone buys its tungsten through an Austrian smelter.

Fairmined live Certifies gold and silver from artisanal and small scale mines against environmental, labour and community standards, run by the Alliance for Responsible Mining and independently audited. The phrase regenerative mining does not appear on their own site.
EU Conflict Minerals Regulation 2017/821 live The legal floor. Obliges EU importers of tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold to run supply chain due diligence, in force since 1 January 2021.
EU Critical Raw Materials Act live The direction of travel, and notable for including a recycling target: 25 per cent of consumption from recycling by 2030, alongside extraction and processing targets and a cap on dependence on any one third country.
Responsible Minerals Initiative live Audits smelters and refiners. Industry self governance run by a trade association, not an independent regulator, and worth reading as such.
Fairphone, materials sourcing live The one attempt at doing this end to end in a consumer device. Company claims, corroborated by trade press, not independently audited here.

Thread three: reusing old laptops, the reuse side

Two notes carry this thread and both are titles with nothing under them, so again this is a survey rather than an elaboration. It is also the thread with the most working prior art of the three, and the one where a household can act this week.

The timing matters. Windows 10 reached end of support in October 2025, and the Windows 11 hardware floor excludes a large installed base of machines that work perfectly well. The circulating figures for how many are advocacy estimates rather than an official count, so no number is printed here. The mechanism is not in doubt even where the magnitude is: a support deadline turns working hardware into waste, and a Linux install or a refurbisher turns it back.

The regulatory side has moved in the same direction. Since June 2025 the EU has required a repairability class from A to E on smartphones and tablets, with seven years of spare parts and five years of software updates.

AfB live The strongest instance in the set. Europe's largest nonprofit IT refurbisher, run as a social enterprise employing a large proportion of people with disabilities, operating in Austria and four other countries since 2004.
Labdoo live A volunteer network that refurbishes donated laptops and loads them with offline educational content for schools that have no reliable connection.
refurbed live Vienna founded marketplace for refurbished electronics. A commercial marketplace rather than a commons, listed because it is the route most people will actually use.
The Restart Project live Community repair events and right to repair campaigning, the organised end of the repair cafe movement.
Wiener Reparaturbon ended Half of a repair bill up to 100 euro. Listed with a warning: the 2026 funding was exhausted on 20 May 2026, so vouchers already issued are valid but the scheme is not open to new applicants right now.
End of 10 live The campaign putting Linux on machines the Windows 11 requirements exclude. The family of distributions built for older hardware is well established; per project minimum specifications were not verified here, so none are printed.

The part none of the three threads reaches

Connectivity itself. The matrix already records community mesh networks as the sharing mechanism for this requirement, where neighbours put antennas on roofs and carry each other's traffic, and it records honestly that the evidence for how healthy those networks currently are is thin.

The portfolio builds on top of the network and takes the network as given, which is the same move it criticises elsewhere. None of the three threads in the instruction changes that.

Where this leaves it

The most developed of the five, and the one with the clearest next action. The privacy full stack has a good definition, a component list and no published page, and writing that page is a smaller job than any research it would need.

The other two threads are named aspirations with real prior art behind them and no position written yet. Regenerative mining in particular should either be defined properly or dropped, because as it stands the phrase claims more than any existing scheme delivers.

Recorded as missing on the matrix Connectivity as infrastructure is untouched. The portfolio builds on top of the network and takes the network itself as given, which is the same move it criticises elsewhere.

Sources

Tier A is a legal, governmental or scientific primary source, B is journalism or trade press, C is a community, project or company describing itself. Confidence below 0.7 is flagged and carries a stated reason. Where a figure could not be established it is named as unestablished rather than replaced with a plausible one.

Claim	Publisher	Date	Tier	Confidence
Fairmined certifies gold and silver from artisanal and small-scale mines against environmental, labour and community standards, run by the Alliance for Responsible Mining and audited by SCS Global Services	Alliance for Responsible Mining	accessed 4 September 2026	[C]	Weakly supported: 0.65 The scheme is real and independently audited, which is why it is here. The confidence is held below the floor for a narrower reason: the phrase regenerative mining appears nowhere on this certifier own site, and one verification pass found no certified category by that name anywhere, which is a failed search rather than a proven absence.
EU Regulation 2017/821 obliges EU importers of tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold to run supply chain due diligence for conflict-affected and high-risk areas, in force since 1 January 2021	EUR-Lex, European Union	17 May 2017, applicable 1 January 2021	[A]	0.85
The EU Critical Raw Materials Act sets 2030 benchmarks of at least 10 per cent of annual consumption from EU extraction, 40 per cent from EU processing and 25 per cent from recycling, with no more than 65 per cent of any strategic raw material from a single third country	European Commission	Regulation (EU) 2024/1252, adopted 2024	[A]	0.75 The benchmarks are confirmed from the Commission own page. The exact entry into force date was not pinned in this pass, so the year is printed and the day is not.
The Responsible Minerals Initiative runs an assurance process auditing smelters and refiners for tin, tantalum, tungsten, gold and cobalt	Responsible Minerals Initiative, Responsible Business Alliance	accessed 4 September 2026	[C]	0.7 Industry self-governance. The Responsible Business Alliance is a trade association auditing its own sector, not an independent regulator, and this page does not present it as one.
Fairphone sources tin and tantalum from validated mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and buys tungsten through the Austrian smelter Wolfram Bergbau und Huetten AG, and was the first consumer electronics maker to integrate Fairtrade certified gold	Fairphone	2021 programme statements, accessed 4 September 2026	[C]	0.7 Company claims about its own supply chain, corroborated by trade press and not independently audited in this pass. Included because the Austrian smelter link is the one concrete local anchor in this material.
EU Regulation 2023/1670 and the paired energy label applied from 20 June 2025, scoring repairability A to E and requiring spare parts for seven years and software updates for five	EUR-Lex, European Commission	20 June 2025	[A]	0.9
Fairphone 6 launched in June 2025 with at least seven Android upgrades promised and support running into 2033	Fairphone	accessed 4 September 2026	[C]	0.8 Company claims about its own support window, corroborated by press but not audited.
AfB is a nonprofit IT refurbisher operating as a social enterprise across Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland and Slovakia since 2004, with roughly half of about 700 staff being people with disabilities	AfB gemeinnuetzige GmbH	accessed 4 September 2026	[B]	0.8 Staff and location figures are the company own reporting, corroborated by press coverage.
Labdoo runs a volunteer network of hubs that refurbish donated laptops and load them with offline educational content for schools, with active hubs in Germany, Switzerland and Spain	Labdoo	accessed 4 September 2026	[C]	0.7 Hub and country counts are the project own self-reporting.
refurbed is a Vienna founded marketplace for refurbished electronics, started 2017 and active in twelve European countries	refurbed	accessed 4 September 2026	[B]	0.75 A commercial marketplace rather than a commons. Trading volume figures are company reported and are not printed here.
The Restart Project runs community repair events and campaigns for a right to repair, and works with the wider European right to repair coalition	The Restart Project	accessed 4 September 2026	[B]	0.75
The Vienna Reparaturbon covers 50 per cent of a repair up to 100 euro; the 2026 round opened on 22 April 2026 and its funding was exhausted on 20 May 2026	Stadt Wien	2026 round, exhausted 20 May 2026	[A]	0.85 Vouchers already issued stay valid. The scheme is not currently open to new applicants, so it is listed as a real mechanism that is closed rather than as an option available today.
Windows 10 reached end of support on 14 October 2025, and the Windows 11 hardware floor of TPM 2.0, Secure Boot and a supported processor excludes a large installed base of working machines	End of 10, corroborated by Microsoft lifecycle documentation	14 October 2025	[B]	0.75 The date and the hardware requirements are solid. The circulating figures for how many devices this affects, commonly given as 200 to 400 million, are advocacy estimates rather than an official count, so no number is printed here.
Funkfeuer Wien, an OLSR community mesh founded in 2003, shows node-database activity as recently as May 2026	Funkfeuer	node data 12 May 2026	[C]	Weakly supported: 0.65 Activity is evidenced only by a timestamp. Current node count and network health could not be established.
Freifunk self-reports around 400 communities and 41,000 access points, while its own forum discusses a decline in active communities	Freifunk	undated, accessed 4 September 2026	[C]	Weakly supported: 0.6 Treated as stale. The movement is real, the figures are not verified 2026 counts, and the decline thread argues against reading them as current.

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