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Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year

(skyfall.dev)
1502 points JustSkyfall | 10 comments | 18 Sep 25 01:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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fn-mote ◴[18 Sep 25 02:24 UTC] No.45284378[source]▶
I was ready to be unsympathetic - too bad for the company - but then I read TFA and it's a rug pull on a nonprofit teaching coding to kids....

https://hackclub.com/

(They do help clubs sell things, taking "7% of income", so they do have a revenue stream, but the money that Slack wants would pay a veritable army of student interns.)

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chrisasquith ◴[18 Sep 25 05:14 UTC] No.45285698[source]▶
Hi! Ty! And Hack club is totally free to teens and we provide travel stipends, hardware, electronics and more. (We don’t charge 7 percent to clubs to sell things :)) hack club run a fiscal sponsorship and adult-orgs using it pay us 7percent- which we use to make more things free to teens. - hack club cofounder here
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commandersaki ◴[18 Sep 25 06:07 UTC] No.45286044[source]▶
I don't know if it's still the case, but a young developer in Bangladesh has been making pretty cool neovim plugins on a mobile phone. Hack club is (or was?) collecting donations to get him a macbook laptop to hopefully reduce the pain points: https://hcb.hackclub.com/oxy2dev-laptop/transactions
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squigz ◴[18 Sep 25 07:09 UTC] No.45286500[source]▶
On the one hand, that's awesome. On the other hand, I do wish open source people would have opted to get him something more free than a MacBook.
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1. Sayrus ◴[18 Sep 25 07:47 UTC] No.45286788[source]▶
He choose the laptop for durability because he can't get it repaired in Bangladesh. People didn't pick a non-free laptop without consulting him.
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2. KronisLV ◴[18 Sep 25 08:16 UTC] No.45286963[source]▶
A ThinkPad might have also been an excellent choice, but hope the MacBook serves him well!

Note: this isn't a critique of his choice, just a mention of something others might find useful.

Source: I had a T480, P51, X1 Carbon and now P1 Gen 6, they're pretty good. Also have a MacBook M1 Air for note taking and stuff.

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3. wltr ◴[18 Sep 25 08:46 UTC] No.45287200[source]▶
Please don’t downvote this advice into oblivion. As a person who owns MacBooks all his life, I do want something more open now, and honestly, I have no idea what else I can buy. Any polite input into this conversation is actually valuable.
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4. FirmwareBurner ◴[18 Sep 25 09:02 UTC] No.45287316{3}[source]▶
Framework?
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5. scyzoryk_xyz ◴[18 Sep 25 09:06 UTC] No.45287340{3}[source]▶
Would make sense if this thread was about laptop purchasing choices.

Surely, there are other places on the internet where NGO's are politely criticized for getting kids the wrong free laptops - those likely contain valuable advice on what brand of computer you can buy

6. Ray20 ◴[18 Sep 25 09:19 UTC] No.45287448[source]▶
>he can't get it repaired in Bangladesh

Sounds untrustworthy. Bangladesh's standard of living is roughly on par with India's, so cheap Chinese laptops should be fairly common there, and repairs for such laptops should be pretty available.

So, instead of one MacBook, you could buy about 10 laptops for 10 Bangladeshi kids, and developing on them would be about as comfortable as on a MacBook.

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7. srik ◴[18 Sep 25 09:59 UTC] No.45287719[source]▶
This case was different from hackclub’s usual donations. Someone spotted OXY2DEV, a prolific Neovim plugin dev, coding on his phone and shared it with the community. People rallied to raise money specifically for him, and hackclub stepped in to facilitate. The drive ended with a small surplus, and since the funds were raised only for him, they let him decide how to use it. Smart choice because in South Asia chasing service centers is such a hassle and Apple’s service process is a dream in comparison.
8. spoctrial ◴[18 Sep 25 10:00 UTC] No.45287727[source]▶
Why don't you start a non-profit that gives laptop to kids so you can decide over the kind of machine to procure. These constant opinions on other peoples decisions where you have no insight to the whys is very ego-centric in a i-know-best kind of way.
9. Fade_Dance ◴[18 Sep 25 10:32 UTC] No.45287941{4}[source]▶
Framework 12 is well aligned with this use case. Hackable, durable/utilitarian design, lower priced, aimed for youth and education markets (has a bit of the EeePC spirit). Well, those were the initial design goals of the concept, but then they sort of made a more general purpose laptop that everyone at the company fell in love with, which led to it actually going to production.

12" is on the smaller side, but it's also a 2in1 that can be used in a desk setup as an extra monitor. I'd ship them a cheap lightning portable monitor, simple keyboard+mouse pack, and for $100 more they have a durable portable laptop and a simple two monitor desk setup for dev.

10. meindnoch ◴[18 Sep 25 11:27 UTC] No.45288298[source]▶
Bro. Just let the kid have his MacBook.