Jason Voorhees
Say cheese
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- May 15, 2020
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I read about this story today and it is too funny. This is the OLPC XO which was meant to turn African kids into coders
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) where they dumped these cheap green bricks in Nigeria, Kenya in 2006 thinking they'd become the next Zuckerberg and in insane turn of events instead of coding prodigies it birthed a savage black market for stripped parts. Jfl.
So this is The XO model. It was rugged, solar powered, mesh networking came with Sugar OS which was basically baby mode Linux for learning to code. They shipped millions to Africa hyping it as the great equalizer.
Brutal reality check these niggas didn't give a fuck about Python or Scratch all they saw was free hardware and went full savage mode.
Kids or their uncles quickly realized the little green laptops were worth more in pieces than as learning tools. Screens sold to phone repair guys, batteries to solar tinkerers RAM and WiFi cards to the local Chinese traders within months entire shipments were stolen and vanished from schools in Nigeria, Rwanda, and Kenya
By 2010 markets in Lagos and Addis were flooded with stripped XO motherboards going for $5-10 each.
The irony is that the few who did understand and mess with the open source Sugar OS mostly used it to bypass every lock the company has built in, then bricked the machines while trying to install pirated Windows and used it for streaming porn and even there they got caught.
Instead of raising the next generation of programmers, the project accidentally trained a continent of 12 year olds in hardware stripping and black market logistics. So the company inevitably had to shut down their operations and never tried this stunt again.
TLDR: Company decided to give free laptops in Africa. Kids ignored coding, stripped them for parts, flooded black markets with screens & boards, and used the few that survived for pirated Windows porn.
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) where they dumped these cheap green bricks in Nigeria, Kenya in 2006 thinking they'd become the next Zuckerberg and in insane turn of events instead of coding prodigies it birthed a savage black market for stripped parts. Jfl.
So this is The XO model. It was rugged, solar powered, mesh networking came with Sugar OS which was basically baby mode Linux for learning to code. They shipped millions to Africa hyping it as the great equalizer.
Brutal reality check these niggas didn't give a fuck about Python or Scratch all they saw was free hardware and went full savage mode.
Kids or their uncles quickly realized the little green laptops were worth more in pieces than as learning tools. Screens sold to phone repair guys, batteries to solar tinkerers RAM and WiFi cards to the local Chinese traders within months entire shipments were stolen and vanished from schools in Nigeria, Rwanda, and Kenya
By 2010 markets in Lagos and Addis were flooded with stripped XO motherboards going for $5-10 each.
The irony is that the few who did understand and mess with the open source Sugar OS mostly used it to bypass every lock the company has built in, then bricked the machines while trying to install pirated Windows and used it for streaming porn and even there they got caught.
Instead of raising the next generation of programmers, the project accidentally trained a continent of 12 year olds in hardware stripping and black market logistics. So the company inevitably had to shut down their operations and never tried this stunt again.
TLDR: Company decided to give free laptops in Africa. Kids ignored coding, stripped them for parts, flooded black markets with screens & boards, and used the few that survived for pirated Windows porn.
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