notanapple

Unfortunately it seems to be a completely proprietary kernel. I did find a paper on it (presented by Huawei in a conference): https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi24/presentation/chen-haibo

The first line of the abstract reads

This paper presents the design and implementation of HongMeng kernel (HM), a commercialized general-purpose microkernel that preserves most of the virtues of microkernels while addressing the above challenges.

Another interesting tidbit from the paper:

We started the HongMeng kernel (HM) project over 7 years ago to re-examine and retrofit the microkernel into a general OS kernel for emerging scenarios. To be practical for production deployment, HM achieves full Linux API/ABI compatibility and is capable of reusing the Linux applications and driver ecosystems such that it can run complex frameworks like AOSP [42] and OpenHarmony [35] with rich peripherals.

thats a very fair point, I had not seen anyone else make this one But the problem is that in this case, this functionality was entirely undocumented. I dont think it was intended for programmers.

Now if the firmware was open source, people would have gotten to know about this much sooner even if not documented. Also such functionality should ideally be gated somehow through some auth mechanism.

Also just like how the linux kernel allows decades old devices to be at the very least patched for security risks, open firmware would allow users of this chip to patch it themselves for bugs, security issues.

It was a skin, now its a completely different OS. The initial version, HarmonyOS, was based on Android/Linux, the new HarmonyOS Next, is a proprietary version (or successor) of HarmonyOS based on an open source project/OS, OpenHarmony. It uses a new microkernel instead of the linux kernel.

OpenHarmony is essentially an open source base for making an operating system on top. Its not like the Linux kernel, in the sense that its not just a kernel (in fact you can use the linux kernel with it), but rather a bunch of components people can build upon. And since it uses a permissive license, you can build a proprietary OS on top of it (like the HarmonyOS Next).

Huawei actually launched OpenHarmony many years back but it was not ready for phone usage yet. It was only with the launch of the 5th version that Huawei was confident enough in it to start using it on their own phones.

We really should be pushing for fully open source stack (firmware, os) in all iot devices. They are not very complicated so this should be entirely possible. Probably will need a EU law though.

aha thanks! i was wondering how ppl do this yeah but tbf discord has a lot of features

depending on which client you use, the ui can be very discord-like (this is cinny): https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cinnyapp/cinny-site/main/assets/preview2-light.png

Also matrix has calls (at least element does), though not sure about screen share. And since when was discord e2e?

I ll admit matrix was for a long time really slow but matrix 2.0 largely solves this and other usability issues. Calls and screen share are still not standardized but its all being worked on.

With matrix, its not just about building one app, its about building a decentralized ecosystem all connected by the matrix protocol. So things tend to take more time.

but it can look similar to discord: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cinnyapp/cinny-site/main/assets/preview2-light.png

why dont you make something like r/SubredditSimulator? It would be cool to see what modern llms can do in this respect.

Is waterfox independent of system1 now?

ETA: they are apparently: www.farside.link/reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/14phsyl/a_new_chapter_for_waterfox/

They will become cheaper over time. In the future buying robots like these could be like buying a new car i.e. expensive but still reachable for most and for others they might be able to buy used ones.

But I dont have much faith in modern tech companies to not fumble this really badly. Will probably end up like the IoT stuff nowadays which have potential but are handicapped by cloud BS and enshittification.