Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | Cyao's commentslogin

But you (theoretically) cannot know who mined the coin, or who is actually the holder of the coin, thus the anonymity. Though currently this is getting restricted as governments require more ID verification from businesses dealing with crypto, which links up your coin to a real person.


The correct term here is pseudonimity - you know the immutable, stable wallet id of who mined the coin, which is a pseudonym for a real person. Anonymous systems are ones in which it's impossible to associate an identity with the work item.

For example, if I send cash through the post office, and I don't sign the envelope, that is a form of anonymous payment - it's impossible to tell who sent the payment (assuming there is no footage of the post box where I deposited the envelope, and I left no DNA on it, etc). If you receive a second payment, it's impossible to tell whether it came from the same person or someone else.


How is the serial number on cash any more anonymous than bitcoin addresses?


Because it's attached to the bill itself, not the owner or the wallet.

If I give you a dollar bill with the serial number 100100, it's impossible for you to prove that bill came from me (unless you have forensic evidence of me giving it to you, of course - but that's equivalent to having photo evidence of me typing in my private key to a BTC wallet) . If you find a dollar bill on the street, it's now yours, you can't know anything about its previous owner.

In contrast, a BTC address is a unique identifier for someone who owns the BTC. The blockchain stores all addresses that it ever interacted with, so even if you create thousands of wallets, they can all be-anonymized quite easily if one is, as you can track how money was sent between them.


You don't have to transfer bitcoin. You can give someone private keys to the wallet and they can do anything they want with it. It would be exact equivalent of giving someone the bill


You do have to transact bitcoin to get bitcoin into the wallet. Plus, you can't prove to someone you haven't kept a copy of the private key, so you can't really transfer ownership of a private key, not trustlessly.


Let's assume we know a certain btc address belongs to Alice and the other one to Bob. If Alice transfers coins to Bob's address we can see that Alice transferred ownership of the coins to Bob.

But if Alice just gives private key to her address to Bob, then Bob generates new address (which we won't know is his) and transfers the coins there when we won't know for sure that the ownership of the coins changed. If we didn't see Alice passing the private key to Bob we have absolutely no reason to think that Bob owns any coins. We see that his known public address is still empty.


At some point, Bob will want to spend the coins on something that he needs. At that point, you'll be able to trace the whole chain of transactions and know that Bob got the coins from Alice. Sure, you won't know that Alice transferred the private keys to Bob, but you'll still see a chain of transactions that starts with money in a wallet associated with Alice and ends in a wallet associated with Bob. The private key transfer doesn't achieve anything at all: Bob could just as easily have opened a new wallet and asked Alice to transfer money there instead of his known wallet, nothing in the analysis would have changed.


True, but only if you monitor Bobs purchases. Funds are anonymous until you see them leave network. And that might be years or decades in the future. And one sale/purchae on uncontrolled exchange breaks the chain.


The chain is unbroken. If at any point you identify the owner of a wallet, you then find out the full transaction history of that person. That is the problem with putting all of the data in an append-only ledger that is pseudonymous.


Yeah, try to tracm down chain that went through russian crypto exchange wallet. Then Thailand then Venezuela.

Hope this doesn't end up political... Last time the entire Framework Discord's mod team went on strike because of a controversial sponsorship, and ended with the closure of the discord.


I hadn't heard about this before, so in case anyone else is also curious and wants to save some googling, it sounds like was a few months ago when they sponsored Hyprland[1]. I hadn't heard about controversy with Hyprland before, only being vaguely aware of it, but the forum thread I linked to further links to this blog post[2] with more details.

[1]: https://community.frame.work/t/framework-supporting-far-righ... [2]: https://drewdevault.com/2023/09/17/Hyprland-toxicity.html


I have more of an Issue with the Omarchy sponsorship. While i disagree with Hyprland's maintainer at least Hyprland is actually engineering something great and making it free software. Omarchy is basically just a script.


Not a fan of either but I feel obligated to point out they don't appear to be sponsoring Omarchy, they just posted about it on their social media account(s). Hyprland they actually did do a small sponsorship for.


Yeah I think there might be a mixup with Cloudflare, who are sponsoring Omarchy.


Omarchy is the passion project of a really wealthy person and is backed by his profitable business. What does ‘sponsoring Omarchy’ mean? Like.. where does that money go?


https://blog.cloudflare.com/supporting-the-future-of-the-ope...

I think it amounts to providing free premium CDN service, the stuff you'd usually have to pay for. They didn't say anything about cash money changing hands.


That’s really reasonable then (I guess apart from any disagreements with the authors views). Omarchy isn’t just a post installation script, they have the entire thing bundled as an ISO. So I can see why an in-kind sponsorship of a CDN makes sense. Although it’s still unclear to me how Omarchy specifically fits into ‘the future of the open web’ vs Ladybird


> it's just a script. ... That has brought in thousands of new users to Linux in the past couple of months.

How have your scripts done in comparison?


>ended with the closure of the discord

oh no anyways. Discord user and there mods are probably the last people anybody in the FOSS or real world should care about or associate with.


Sometimes Discord is still pretty helpful with real-time support. It indeed has its flaws, but some of the best real time help is still given there. I love the C++ discord, it's just filled with gems.


>it's just filled with gems

gems not sorted or indexed at all gated behind a account requiring personal information to just view them.


Luckily that’s a solved, or trivially-solved problem now.


how?


Select All -> Paste into local or cloud LLM -> Ask question


even if the LLM was directly trained on discord it still would not be the same and never will


The same as what?

A permalink is a permalink, whether I found it in 5 minutes to an hour,

or the robot found it in 5 seconds.


Discord is handy for real-time support as a user, but because those support questions don't become a body of searchable public knowledge over time, they are all doomed. The maintainers will burn out from the endless basic questions.


I totally see why Framework doesn't want this toxicity and flamewars.


hopefully those people already left last time


Nothing of value was lost. Discord is the worst way to engage with any kind of serious community. It's a firehose of prematurely fired off messages, badges, emojis, banners, nitro upgrades, flags. Threading sucks. Ten conversations are usually happening at once. It's like if you had a 100gig connection to the WAL of 4chan plugged directly into your brain. It's no wonder kids these days are all autistic or ADHD.


While I agree with some of the things said, the last sentence where you started to imply that neurodivergence can be caused by external factors is completely false. These are physical differences in brain's wiring.


> These are physical differences in brain's wiring.

Physical differences that no test can detect?


Not sure about autism, but ADHD is one of the most studied disorders and you can pick it up with a brain scan, like MRI and other methods (currently imaging methods aren't typically used for diagnosis but it's plausible that some day it will be)


[flagged]


As a proud ThinkPad owner I was delighted to watch Lenovo sponsor the FIFA Peace Prize yesterday.


Wow, didn't realize they were sponsoring white supremacists. I've bought a framework 13 in the past and believe in their mission, but I don't think I can continue being a customer. Oh well.


This is what the people who are against "cancel culture" are trying to say (although, a lot of those people are still wrong and suck for other reasons): you basically got brief, out of context second-hand information and immediately jumped to the conclusion to boycott this company.

I think it's worth reading what the CEO has to say about it: https://community.frame.work/t/framework-supporting-far-righ...

Personally I don't get the impression that Framework is endorsing a particular view, nor are they directly sponsoring a specific individual or their views.

It becomes even more difficult when most of these open source projects aren't a one-person endeavor, even if they happen to have a single individual at the helm.


> Personally I don't get the impression that Framework is endorsing a particular view, nor are they directly sponsoring a specific individual or their views.

I agree. However, I do think that Framework is taking a particularly cowardly stance by refusing to acknowledge community concerns, and I think that kind of behavior is exactly how far-right groups gain power in tech spaces. When one group just wants to live in peace, and another group wants to make the first group disappear, organizations that don't distinguish between the two ultimately drive out the peaceful group.


I agree that your take is a very real thing.

At the same time, I think there's a somewhat valid space for the psychology of this response.

If I use Harry Potter as an example, I think Harry Potter fans fall in a handful of camps:

1. Agrees with JK Rowling on her anti-trans rhetoric

2. Grew up loving Harry Potter and detests JK Rowling's views, possibly to the point of a boycott

3. Has never heard of any of the controversy and is blissfully ignorant

4. Is aware of the controversy but never signed up for that discussion in the first place and is just here for wizard fiction, wishes the controversy never existed.

I think the CEO of Framework is essentially going for #4 here, and I am quite mixed on whether that standpoint is enabling of problematic people or not. I can understand arguments both ways. For the role of a CEO, in this day and age, taking a polarized position does have the possibility of alienating half of your customer base, essentially a no-win scenario.

#4 is also mixed with a sprinkle of "Sometimes saying too much and engaging too much in the argument is your own undoing and digging your own grave." Often CEOs that say nothing end up with better outcomes than those who take an active stance on issues.

I can totally recognize that #4 is objectively more cowardly and less principled than #2, but I also don't know that we can expect 100% of generally good people to be freedom fighters.


Yeah, that's a good breakdown. I mean, he definitely brought this on himself by leaning so hard into Omarchy in the first place, but maybe he was just ignorant of DHH's views and thought that was a "neutral" thing to do.

In any case, I think it's important for consumers to confront companies when they pull stunts like this. Also, I'm not certain that #4-type CEOs actually have better outcomes - maybe in the short term, but when the creeping technofascism becomes more obvious, that causes real problems (see e.g. NixOS, Tesla)


JKR's views are pro-women, not anti-trans. The negative impact on women and girls is the reason why she's talking about this at all.


AH’s views are pro-Germany, not anti-Jew. The negative impact on Germany is the reason why she's talking about this at all.


I don’t have a strong position in this chat, but you should know what you did there is such a fallacy there’s a name for it.


It’s a fun one, though, because JKR’s whole life and works involve strong themes surrounding eugenics.

So it’s really not that far of a stretch to make this association in her case.

In her books the wizards fight against wizard Hitler and his eugenic holocaust. In real life, she engages in her own form of eugenic crusade where she believes the sex organs you are born with define your personality, identity, and your criminal tendencies.


JKR has never advocated violence, never denied anyone's humanity, and never called for any group to be eradicated. Hitler did all of those things on an industrial scale.

What on earth compelled you to equate the most evil mass-murderer of the 20th century with a children's author and feminist who says sex is real and matters for women's rights and safety?


Being less explicit about hate doesn’t make it not hate.

JKR doesn’t believe trans women deserve rights that normal people have, and believes that they are inherently threatening to women just by existing.

She wrote a book series about how your bloodline doesn’t define who you are as a person, and then turned around and decided that the sex organs you’re born with determine your propensity for criminality.

For some reason she scapegoats a group of people representing less than 1% of the population for crime against women and it doesn’t make any statistical or logical sense to those of us who haven’t been living in a moldy flat sleeping on a bed of cash.


JKR isn't advocating for anyone's human rights to be taken away, and she's never said anything of the sort. Her core point is that women and girls need single-sex spaces, services and other provisions because because male dominance in society, backed by violence and reproductive control, puts those who are female at a structural disadvantage, and that no matter how someone identifies, this material imbalance between the sexes hasn't gone away.

She's simply arguing that women shouldn't have to surrender the few hard-fought protections that were carved out to help level this unequal scenario in the first place.

Most people see this as basic fairness, not hate.


Yes she is. She wants it to be impossible for trans people to use the bathroom in public.

She literally wants it to be an impossible paradox.

Trans women can’t use the ladies room because they’re a “danger” to women. Trans women can’t use the men’s room because they look like women.

For people like JKR who hate trans women, trans men don’t exist, intersex people don’t exist, and non-binary people don’t exist. Trans women are just easy to hate for various psychological and political reasons.

She just wants them to be punished. That’s it. All of these other excuses that have to do with violence and crime are no different than when my MAGA relatives justify the ICE Gestapo’s illegal kidnappings by the supposed criminality of immigrants. We don’t need due process when they’re “illegals” who are “more likely to be criminals and are in gangs.” They “don’t have rights” for various stupid-ass reasons.

Again, it is a statistical and logical fallacy to consider a population so small to be a threat to women.

JKR has not proposed taking away any rights from men, only trans women.

Women aren’t surrendering anything. The list of things they’re surrendering has a length of 0.


I do wonder, have you read anything she's written on this topic? I'm intrigued as to how you've managed to misunderstand her argument so comprehensively.


Yes, I read her whole “sorry not sorry” letter where she weaves a literary spiderweb trying to justify her position and making it all about her victimhood.

It was certainly a better excuse for creative writing than Cho Chang or Seamus Finnigan but she did a very poor job of convincing me that her main focus isn’t dehumanizing trans women.


Eh, that's not really the part of her arguments I have a problem with. I think she doesn't have a sensible answer to the bathrooms question (that doesn't just punish trans people) but I'm not sure what the right answer is either. I do have a problem with her doing stuff like this:

https://www.them.us/story/barbra-banda-jk-rowling-gender-att...

She's made a pattern of this behavior, and I think it clearly reveals her transphobia. (I also am not sure what the right solution is for trans people in competitive sports! I think that's a very tricky subject. But attacking cis women for looking too masculine is certainly not part of the answer.)

Also, her twitter rants about trans people are pretty shocking.


Barbra Banda failed a sex verification check issued by Zambia's Football Association, who then preemptively withdrew Banda and others from competing in WAFCON on this basis.

One would have thought the BBC could have picked a better candidate for Women's Footballer of the Year than a player who had been withdrawn from competition for not being female. You think JKR shouldn't comment on this?


What you mean is, they decided she had too much testosterone (although apparently even the details of the test are unclear?). Lots of women have high testosterone, it's bizarre to unilaterally declare her to not be a woman on that basis alone. Sex, like gender, is a spectrum.

But sure, I guess we can consider that hormone requirement as just an extremely crude approximation. JKR's comments are still repugnant.


Athletes in the female category with male-typical testosterone levels are either female and seriously unwell, female and doping, or male.

Banda hasn't been excluded for doping and is apparently fit and healthy. Therefore the most reasonable conclusion to draw is that Banda is male.

This is almost certainly another Caster Semenya type of situation.


Your views on sex are clearly contradictory.


How so?


You're conveniently designating Banda and Semenya as male for having male-typical testosterone levels, ignoring their sex characteristics, chromosomes, other hormones, etc. You specifically refer to them as "males". So, they should use only male bathrooms, right? That's JKR's whole thing, and earlier you said:

> women and girls need single-sex spaces

It follows that you should designate a person with female-typical testosterone and estrogen levels as female, whether or not they have XY or similar chromosomes, a penis, etc. Those people should then use female bathrooms, right? Including trans women taking hormonal treatment? And those trans women should be able to compete in women's sports, since they pass your hormone test?

Or maybe, just maybe, sex is more complicated than that.

I also wonder how women with minor hormone irregularities feel when people like you dismiss them as men in denial.


Semenya took a case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and lost. The published ruling revealed that Semenya has a disorder of sex development that only affects males. Semenya later acknowledged in an interview of being "born without a uterus" and with "internal testicles". At this point, it is indisputable that Semenya is male.

Banda was withdrawn by FAZ from WAFCON because CAF had started testing athletes in the female category for male-typical levels of testosterone. Barring serious illness or doping, a failed test implies presence of testes which implies male.

Some male athletes who want to compete in the female category have suppressed their testosterone, either through pharmaceutical means or surgical excision of their testes. This doesn't mean they aren't male, nor does it remove the physical advantages conferred during male sex development. Which is, fundamentally, what the female category in sport exists to exclude.

So there is no contradiction as it all leads back to this principle.

Women with minor hormone irregularities, like PCOS for example, aren't affected by the above.


You are now jumping between at least three different definitions of "male" when convenient for your argument. This is silly.

And yes, women can have high testosterone without testes. Again, it's bizarre that you're clinging to a testosterone standard that would declare a decent percentage of healthy, normal women to actually be men. I'm sorry, but sex is more complicated than that. You're not doing anyone any favors by trying to impose neat definitions on a messy reality.


I'm not jumping between definitions, I'm using the single definition that is relevant for women's sport: anyone who went through male puberty retains an irreversible performance advantage and therefore should be excluded from the female category.

Women with PCOS or similar are highly unlikely to exceed the testosterone limits that some sporting bodies implement as proxy for detecting male advantage, and indeed are explicitly exempted in such policies and have never been barred under any DSD regulation.

The true edge cases aren't athletes like Semenya and Banda, but the very rare individuals with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS), who don't respond to testosterone at any point in their development. Most sporting bodies carve out an exemption to exclusion for them.


So they're not sponsoring Omarchy sure, but that the CEO doesn't really respond to the parts where they've advertised Omarchy repeatedly is enough for me to close my wallet going forward. For me, this is a cut and dry issue and you don't have to endorse white supremacy to make it clear you don't have many issues with engaging white supremacists.

DHH has said things beyond the pale, that go as far to say that people like me are not welcome in spaces he tours, not because of my actions but instead my skin color. Framework can flirt with his projects if they want to. I just won't buy their products going forward, and it sounds like they're fine with that. Idrc if it's seen as contributing to cancel culture.


I can appreciate that you informed yourself well on the issue and weren't just making a knee-jerk reaction like I originally suspected based on your first comment's brevity.


>DHH has said things beyond the pale

Such as? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

>that go as far to say that people like me are not welcome in spaces he tours, not because of my actions but instead my skin color.

Citation needed. Direct links to quotes where he says specific races/skin colors are not welcome.


Read "As I Remember London", and put on your reading comprehension hat. If you need help, try this article:

https://jakelazaroff.com/words/dhh-is-way-worse-than-i-thoug...

DHH is clearly talking about people of color in London, and he's clearly expressing approval for Tommy Robinson. If you won't acknowledge that, you're either oblivious or racist. I hope it's the former.


>Read "As I Remember London", and put on your reading comprehension hat.

Ironic. Your linked article wouldn't exist if the author had put on their reading comprehension hat.

>If you need help, try this article:

If you need help, try this article:

https://felipec.wordpress.com/2025/09/23/the-ruby-community-...

>DHH is clearly talking about people of color in London

"People of color" are not native to London. If you won't acknowledge that, you're either oblivious or racist (Anglophobic/anti-White). I hope it's the former.


It’s a shame the Framework founder refuses to back down on his stance of “neutrality” since the Omarchy/DHH incident.


[flagged]


But are his opinions relevant here? Do you ask the political opinions of everyone you work with?


If someone at work was writing blog posts with white-supremacist code, then yes, I would probably go to HR and they would probably get in trouble. Maybe they wouldn't be fired, but they would be placed on another team. And then the people on that team would find the blog posts, and the same thing would happen, and they would probably be let go at some point.

Because people that do that type of thing usually cannot shut up about it.


Genuine question for someone trying to follow along:

Is it white-supremecist code because of distasteful comments in the community, in the code, something specifically written in the codebase?

Or because the author is who they are?


I think you should read DHHs recent non-technical blog posts (highlights like "As I remember London") and make your own mind up about that. Me and a lot of other people on the internet want nothing to do with it.


But I haven’t.

So let’s work off of that - expecting the entire internet to read the personal blogs of open source contributors before deciding which packages or modules to run is…not really a solution to the problem you’re putting forward.

Is it?


Noam Chomsky: 'If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.'

Also, your solution doesn't solve your problem: your colleague won't stop to hold ideas that you don't like, nor his blog will disappear. If it's just a blog, he didn't harmed anybody, whereas you got him fired.


There's multiple levels of freedom of expression. You could argue, and people do, that the company has it's own right to freedom of expression, and wants to portray itself in the way it wants, and that necessarily involves deciding who they work with.

For example, if I told you that you are forced to associate yourself publicly with someone you don't like and don't want to associate with, then you might say I'm hindering your freedom of expression.

And this is missing the elephant in the room: white supremacy is fundamentally anti-free-expression. That's one of it's core tenants. So we have a little bit of tolerance paradox here.

If we allow those who oppose free expression to freely express that, then they express it by limiting free expression, then by allowing free expression we've actually suppressed free expression. So, it's tricky.


In case of a blog, it's separated from the professional life. The colleague can just behave normally and avoid political topics.

It's normal to hinder freedom of speech, up to a certain level in the context of the company: I would not like to be teached about Marxism-Leninism by the barista making my coffee.

It also allows people to separate professional and private life, just line sexuality: if you like latex parties, you can enjoy them without having to tell everyone or coming at work wearing latex. It allows collaborators of different sensibilities to work together. Your supremacist colleague may even then work with non-white people and find them nice and competent!

Last, you are projecting ideas: I'm sure that many white supremacists are pro-free speech, having experienced censorship. You clearly aren't.


> In case of a blog, it's separated from the professional life.

I mean, it might be, but a lot of bloggers don't do this.

> Your supremacist colleague may even then work with non-white people and find them nice and competent!

I feel like maybe you're not understanding what, exactly, white supremacy is.

> I'm sure that many white supremacists are pro-free speech, having experienced censorship.

Right, no, the ideology is fundamentally anti-free-speech and anti freedom in general. Believing some humans are inferior and deserve less rights just works like that.

You don't have to defend white supremacists, they're doing just fine politically and socially. Better than the people they believe inferior, I'd say.

> You clearly aren't.

Yeah yeah whatever, go explain to someone else how oppressed white supremacists are.


>Do you ask the political opinions of everyone you work with

they are the HR of IT ofc they do a ideological sniff test on anybody they even so much as talk to. Can't have anybody disagreeing in this tolerant space.


Everyone does an ideological sniff test of everyone they interact with. You don't want to be friends with wackjobs or racists or whatever, because the odds those people suck in other ways is very, very high.

I also hate the framing of "disagreeing" in these discussions. It's perfectly valid to distance yourself from people because you disagree, and this is something you yourself practice on a daily basis. That is just being human.


I worked with plenty of far-left people, some of whom justified openly during lunch a genocide against whites in South Africa. While I would have preferred not to hear this, I believe that they have the right to work in the same place as me.


Probably skip the company retreat, though, yeah?


Well there is no genocide against white people in South Africa - nice try, grok.

But even if there was - would you want to be friends with people you legitimately believe support genocide? If you say yes, you sound kind of pathetic. You don't have to do that, nobody is making you do that.


I don't want to be friends with people who cannot separate their personal opinions and friendships from their work opinions and colleagues.

Fortunately, I do not have to, because I am able to separate the two. The question you asked made sense only in your mind, because you cannot separate and compartmentalize two different things, and instead mix unmixable things together and create a complete unnecessary mess. This leads to a total mess in proposed solutions. Again, in your mind it makes sense, because a collegue's personal blogging FEELS like a betrayal of a best friend. Not good.


I mean, I would prefer not to work with crazy people, because they're usually also awful to work with.

I'm not saying they should be fired. What I AM saying is that of course people's opinion matter in your relationships. And that includes every relationship, even work ones.


Of course, in a working relationship, people's opinions on work issues matter greatly. It is weird and counter-productive to care about colleagues' personal political views while at work.

In my experience, the enjoyment of working with people and their professionalism does not depend on the awefulness of their political opinions.

Not being able to separate, to only work at work instead of pulling your personal life into it, is a sign of a bad worker.

I do speak from European (healthy work-life balance), but still pragmatic/efficient and free-speech point of view.


[flagged]


> meanwhile they will destroy your financial and private life if you so much as disagree with a made up pronounce.

No they won't. Who do you know, in your real life, that this has happened to?

Because I actually know a few different people who were fired for racist or sexist reasons. I've never met anyone who was fired because they won't use "made up pronouns"

I've seen actors and rich people claim this, but the thing is they don't just disagree with a pronoun. No, they're loud and obnoxious on Twitter and then their movie does bad and they get fired. That's different.


"I've never met anyone who was fired because they won't use "made up pronouns""

> Jordan Peterson lost his application to the Supreme Court of Canada this week for leave to appeal against the decision of the College of Psychologists of Ontario requiring him to undergo compulsory reeducation for various views expressed on social media, all of which were unrelated to the practice of psychology.

>The complaints which resulted in the college’s order were made by people who had never been his patients, and indeed, who had never met him. They were also mostly American and clearly politically motivated.

Compulsory, as in he can't refuse, otherwise they will take his license.

He raised to awareness when complaining about the compelled speech. People were saying that he misunderstood, that he is exaggerating, that there is not a totalitarian attempt to censor speech, that no such thing is going to happen, that freedom of speech is not under threat.

And what do you know, the exact thing he predicted would happen did indeed happen.


Totally agree. Even if I'm a teen myself I never post my age unless someone asks explicitly. Saying your age is just trying to find excuses to justify a sub-par software imo (Not saying this project is sub-par)


Maybe they are rightfully proud that they did this at such a young age?


After getting quite a lot of emails asking to buy one last time - I've put my Icepi onto Crowd Supply!

This is a dev board that carries an ECP5 FPGA, and has a raspberry pi zero footprint. It also has a few improvements! Notably the 2 USB-B ports are replaced with 3 USB-C ports, and it has additional indicator LED and buttons.

This board can output HDMI, read from a uSD, use a SDRAM and much more. I'm very proud the product of multiple months of work.

It is also completely open source! Check out the source on github: https://github.com/cheyao/icepi-zero


Oh that's nice, how come I never saw those!


The Gowin chips are quite interesting - they have RAM built in to the FPGA itself. It's SDRAM in the case of the Tang Nano 20k. It's a 32-bit wide RAM, but unfortunately only 8 megabytes, which is a bit limiting. The FPGA's clocking is a bit limited, too. (For that reason, there's an extra clock generator on the Tang Nano 20k.)


You stepped up to share something, we shared something back. :-)


it can! no reason why it wouldnt be


it probably can - I see that uls3x already has a few ported over cores, and they will be able to run on this fpga with little modifs


I am indeed using fully open source tooling! Check out the makefiles in the firmware directory :)


After the amount of emails i got asking if i sell the boards, I just applied to crowdsupply :P


I have no idea about this product category but am interested in learning more about FPGAs. What is the ballpark price point that something like this would be? Are we talking $100 or $1000?


Not OP, but these kind of boards are ballpark between $100-$200.

Here’s a similar board with the same FPGA: https://www.crowdsupply.com/radiona/ulx3s.


Another similar board (perhaps even more similar than the ULX3S) is the IceSugarPro - it's sub-$100 for the module and breakout board.

[I enjoy reading your blog by the way - just last week I picked up a Pano Logic G1 on EBay!]


Thanks! I'm looking forward to your Pano Logic pull requests! :-)


at bulk 40-50$! My dev batch of 5 comes out at around 70$ per board, but it has a large startup cost.


Don't offer them too cheaply. Typically you want to roughly sell for 4x your buy price. 200 seems good and there should be plenty demand at that price.

Great work. I'll look into this after my vacation as it seems quite interesting for our university courses.


Can I ask your reasoning about not selling them too cheaply? I would like to sell them cheaper then the existing boards since the price prevented me from buying one when I was 13


That's a great motivation. I just want to caution against underestimating some costs (shipping, returns) and leaving yourself a good margin of error. If your goal is to supply as cheaply as possible, you can always lower the price later. Extra profits can always go into improvement :)


And once you start taking money from people you'll have to deliver, it can alter how it feels when working on the project. It can feel a lot less fun, it needs to be worth your time.


Selling them nice and cheap is great if you're going to do one batch as a project and then move on to other things.

If you're still going to be selling them next year and the year after that, you don't want it to become a burden or a chore - it has to feel like it's worth your while to be psychologically sustainable.


What's your goal? Do you primarily want to help other people get gear cheaply or do you primarily want to be rewarded for your work?

Either is fine, but it's important to have a least a few of the latter, a person has got to eat.

Also consider that it will feel like you're doing a good thing at first, but once you have some units get lost in the mail, users try to scam you for free units, etc it will feel a lot more like a job! You will have an obligation that all of a sudden you're not being paid for at all.


That’s good advice. You need to see the costs that are not so obvious including your own time.

You might as well profit a bit in exchange of the extra work and to cover some losses as others mentioned.

Eventually if demand is sustained, you will see clones pop up on AliExpress or the likes of it very cheap anyway. The design is open source after all, and this is plenty of generosity already.

You can consider making a discount if someone ask for it with a university email or something.


$25 - $35 on Amazon, quantity 1, just search for "tang nano" or "tang primer".


This would probably fall in the $100 range if comparable to other ECP5 dev boards like OrangeCrab.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: