nexthash

Of all languages to implement the XS toolchain in... why did you choose C?

Afaic this is DOA, there is no excuse in implementing the core toolchain of a new language in a memory-unsafe manner in 2026.

Is this a joke? How could you possibly believe in this delusion, when these apps have been shown over and over again to be gaslighting vulnerable people into divulging sensitive information about themselves to a VC-backed ad pipeline. Have you seen BetterHelp's ads on YouTube? Pure manipulation of people who are suffering.

I am taking a class in my college on environmental literature. One thing I learned is how environmental issues are consistently swept under the rug and underreported (like in this article, written by a former chemical & engineering news reporter) in society's discourse on cancer. All the blame for cancer is put on you and your habits, whether smoking or red meat. Big perps of this information campaign include the American Cancer Society. But as really good books like Silent Spring and When Smoke Ran Like Water show, environmental pollution and pesticides consistently correlate with rising cancer rates in modern society. It is ludicrous that one of two men and one of three women will be stricken with the disease in their lifetimes. Why is such a massive factor being hidden from the public? All this noise and focus on treatment... yet no focus on prevention. Because that would require economic changes that put a burden on corporations.

Not the first time, won't be the last. Google is an egocentric company with a nihilistic and destructive indifference towards its customers. Fortunately people are learning to avoid Google products, as seen with Stadia's demise. Here are some other instances of Google's negligence:

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124324

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19432702

3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30855065

4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23193857

5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32547912

Yes, it is called the gentrification of minority neighborhoods.

Manjaro is #4 on Distrowatch as of this comment, while Arch is #27. Not saying that popularity is all that matters in a distro, but widespread adoption is really important in getting non-technical benefits such as funding, clout, and people willing to devote time to the project.

About the shadiness: every project takes or is inspired by other projects, none have come up in a vacuum. Even with the sketchy reputation, Manjaro seems to have the support needed to actually turn into a Linux winner in the long-term.

I would like to disagree with your characterization. I use Linux distros regularly at work (Amazon Linux), in school (Rocky Linux, currently studying), and at home (Ubuntu) when hacking together various projects. I've seen firsthand the issues that come with trying to get a distro to interop with Bluetooth, sound, and software not quite designed for it.

This is not a zero sum game: I believe we can have both an OSS approach to Linux while at the same time having a channel of commercial development that brings more adoption (and fun, hackable devices!). This "one holy way" and the multitude of community-based distros can coexist, in the same way that commercial software companies and OSS communities have already learned to.

I guess it comes down to that: will Pine64 take an OSS development approach or a commercial development approach? I've been swimming on the question of why Linux isn't more accessible to more people for a while, and have come to believe that a commercial approach is the only way Linux can achieve the work-out-of-the-box dream.

Commercial development allows you to afford to control the hardware, make deals with other companies, and pay people to build compatibility with your system (i.e. Nvidia), which is what Microsoft and Apple did to keep their position. Server distros like Debian, Ubuntu, and Redhat already have deep foundational and corporate backing, and are a joy to use.

There are definitely drawbacks such as vendor lock-in and all the issues that come with corporate vs community control of the software. However, I believe having a single center of development and revenue (to pay for the development), while at the same time having fully open source software and hardware is possible and would have a huge impact.

My guess is that OS hackers could be considered as one niche, while hackers and builders who prefer not going through a custom Linux install/config for their project (i.e., a weather station or a mobile smart home dashboard) could be a larger one. Definitely not "mass market" or replacing Android levels, but at the same time a significantly larger portion of revenue for Pine64. The switch to Manjaro would provide them with a key backer that allows them to unlock this market. People have been discussing the software quality of Manjaro, so maybe it has a good foundation or connections?

Also: I've seen some hidden costs of supporting custom OS installs being discussed, i.e. procuring extra chips to allow open boot. This may have factored into Pine64's decision.

Pine64 is making enthusiast products for hackers, not mass-market devices for non-hackers. Non-hackers have access to plenty of phones which just werk. Part of the promise of Pine's platform and the appeal to the target audience is the commitment to community.

Sounds like either Pine64 has grown past this and decided to pivot, or has been losing revenue due to a lack of customers from this niche market. Personally, as a hacker I love playing with different OSes. However, if I was to use any open source device like a PinePhone or Pine64 board to build something, I'd prefer a stable environment backed by an established foundation. Environment setup is hell, and figuring out which open-source OS works best, if it will be supported in the future, and how to install it would slow me down immensely.

You come up on your niche, and then when you have access to the broader market, you pivot to the group that will help you grow market power [1]. Similar dynamics exist in a lot of different ecosystems, and Pine seems to be responding to the challenges that have come with becoming big. It's sad that they won't be supporting OS hackers anymore, but they have to pivot if they want to bring onboard more customers (which seems to be the goal behind this decision).

[1] https://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/rules-for-rulers

I think this is the inevitable outcome of any movement of Linux to the mainstream (Purism has done something similar). As Martijn said in the article, PinePhone devices were operable with 25 different projects. That's 25 different variations of Linux fighting over market share. As Pine enters a growth phase for their business, the consequences of this are going to manifest as paralysis.

Improvements and advancements would stagnate due to the 25x duplicated effort, and resources would be lost in keeping those projects happy. Also, any potential user looking to switch would be deluged with options, which is what crippled desktop Linux.

While I do not understand enough about Pine to know why they specifically made the business decision to gut their dev community and go with Manjaro Linux, my guess would be something along the lines of Manjaro's widespread dominance as a top Linux distro backed by a powerful foundation. Pine is pivoting to what they have decided is their future: a full-stack hardware to software open source offering that in their eyes would have a better shot at cracking open the phone market.

They probably were aware of the consequences, but have bet on making it big and creating a new, streamlined ecosystem after extinguishing this one. It remains to be seen if they will succeed.

It seems building "smart cities" is a trend now... Saudi Arabia started one, Elon Musk wants to build something like that on Mars, and there's all these ideas of floating cities being passed around. I don't know much about Akon's entrepreneurial record but "smart futuristic city powered by a blockchain in Africa" seems like a huge and mostly imaginary leap from "local solar company". You'd be hard-pressed to come up with the cash to build this in America, so doing it in Africa feels like an unrealistic utopian dream disguising a ploy for money.

This is so detached from reality I don't even know where to start... A Grammy-nominated singer comes out of nowhere, and decides he will go to an African country to make a futuristic revolutionary city out of nothing powered by... crypto? I seriously can't believe this story has actual traction on here, this is peak crypto, head-in-the-clouds futurism, utopia mentality, and of course complete absurdity. Do people have no sense anymore?

The only philanthropy stories I am interested in are the ones where dedicated people of character start from the ground, consider the needs of actual human beings, and work with their representative governments to bring change. Not this technology-will-fix-everything glitzy renders cryptocurrency-upgrades-society hubristic bullshit. People give that crap way too much airtime. Plus, the singer involved seems to have a sketchy history, which makes his intent here even more dubious (probably not doing this out of the kindness of his heart...)

I think that's the point - we are surrounded by devices that are always watching and listening. If they looked like eyes and ears, maybe we would think twice about how and where we use them.

I can't believe you are being serious - why are you comparing a shell script to a million-line piece of production software? Apples to oranges. This was written as a joke to make fun of a common gripe against Kubernetes - its complexity. Seems like the Kubernetes community has a bit of a thin skin.

Seems like both parts of the quote are valid.

That's actually what Edison's original DC power network was designed around. DC power lines, and a coal chugging power station every mile. Turns out that all the extra pollution and expense is a bad idea, so AC won out. It's been working just fine for over 100 years. Read more here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_currents

I would disagree - the Web hasn't strayed, it's just gotten bigger. A lot more people on for a variety of reasons. If you look closely, you can still find creativity. For example, search up "digital gardens"

Doesn't this kind of law violate the Constitution in some way? This seems more like censorship hidden behind "think of the children".

I'd say it is the responsibility of parents and users of digital services to protect themselves, not the government's. When the government imposes such a rule on everything unilaterally, there are two consequences:

1. It sets a precedent for future "regulatory creep": if we can force tech companies to filter porn, why not filter other things? Who will stop us?

2. When the government makes a law, it impacts everything. There is no discretion, because everyone is under equal risk of liability if the law is violated. What would the consequences of this be for modelling, legitimate sexual services, and other fields? Would the damage this does be amplified by how it meshes with other laws? There is so much ambiguity that making such a sweeping and damaging action will have reverberative consequences everywhere that nobody thought of beforehand.

I mean... what do you expect from Google, or any internet advertiser for that matter? If 90% of your revenue comes from advertising, getting rid of tracking is like pulling the chair out from under your bum. Having a committee of advertisers sitting on a board governing advertising & tracking in the W3C is going to go about as well as you expect. Conflict of interest: massive.

Their only concern is maximizing their revenue in any way possible, because otherwise they will cease being competitive and go out of business. Ergo this lovely new "Privacy Sandbox" that provides advertisers with a standardized, direct way to get to you. As long as Google or any other advertiser has sway over Internet standards, there will be a fox guarding the henhouse type situation. Moral of the story: don't use Chrome.

This is a wonderful development! Learning about far-out advances in physics is amazing, but they sometimes feel like they are too removed from everyday reality beyond helping us understand some semantic piece of how the Universe works. Does anybody know if time crystals have any practical uses?

I think you are the one with your head firmly shoved in the sand. Bitcoin has enormous problems with legality, energy usage, lack of trust, hacking, and slow, expensive transactions that make it a really shitty alternative to fiat. Bitcoin isn't just a gamble - its sole use as of now is as a pump and dump scam. There is no earthly reason why a digital token should be worth $50k a pop. Bitcoin is a shitty bet, and I'd take USD and a bank account any day over it.

I've come to believe that it's very difficult to operate a business relying on paid access over the Internet. Since consumers are already paying Internet providers $60 / month for this privilege, your customers will balk unless you do something different and better. This explains the non-straightforward ways Internet companies operate and why some make such absurd amounts of money.

Some are very niche paid businesses like SaaS or privacy-focused mail that provide very specific and uniquely tailored services to a small set of clients. These are probably the easiest to understand, as at their core is a simple, logical transaction. However, they don't defeat companies like Google at scale due to the fact that not many people want to pay for bits that they already pay their Internet provider to deliver, and the fact that accommodating everyone's needs in such a business is overly costly.

All the gargantuan scalable platforms are not really selling a technology - technology is the vehicle connecting customers to their service. Their real money maker lies outside the Internet, whether it is shipping and merchandise (Amazon), or selling an audience (Google/Facebook). I find it to be a similar scenario to McDonalds's famous franchise business model of owning the land the burger is made on, while not selling the burger itself. If you want real customer service, you need to find the local restaurant in your area and pay more (Plausible/Fathom, Hey.com, Fastmail).

A common trend in response to this kind of environment has been to offer some services for free and drive users to pay more for specific use cases if they need to (especially power users and enterprises). However, doing this kind of monetization wrong can easily lobotomize your business and push users away, as seen with the ongoing news media crisis and paywalls. And it also turns out that companies used to one kind of business model find it difficult to pivot to others, for example with Google's continual failure to make paid services.

In all cases, when looking at the Internet you need to examine your customers (or your needs) and focus on accessing them, even if that means tearing down any conventions you already have. This can apply to anything from the news media looking to fully digitize, or independent bloggers looking for analytics that serves them.

Identity politics and corporate posturing are two separate things. Everybody is trying to get an edge, including corporations trying to keep themselves prosperous. Identity politics is an idea about your identity playing into how you perceive politics. How this idea is used by different players is a whole different ballgame.

For context about "experimental polities" like the failed Toronto SideWalk labs [1], I've linked an article below [2].

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/07/sidewalk-labs-shuts-down-t...

[2] https://theconversation.com/will-silicon-valleys-new-company...

Seems to me like a approximation of the technology adoption cycle - innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards [1]. This process has been embodied in the modern entrepreneurial philosophy of design thinking - consisting of 5 steps including ideation and iteration for innovators/early adopters and testing as the idea gains traction [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle

[2] https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/what-i...

Website is broken on Firefox: I was stuck on a blinking eye icon and could not advance to the article.

ROS stands for Robotic Operating System. It is a framework of different tools such as an abstraction layer, libraries, and a package manager that makes it easier to program/interface with different robotic systems/components. It basically simplifies a lot of work that you would be doing on your own. While it is extremely useful, it also has some flaws. For example, it is bloated, can be tricky to configure, and can be sometimes difficult in making it do what you want it to.