alt.hn

4/8/2026 at 9:13:17 AM

Mario and Earendil

 https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/4/8/mario-and-earendil/

by doppp

4/8/2026 at 2:48:09 PM

I see a Tolkien name on a tech company, I assume the founders deeply misunderstood Tolkien and probably are pretty gross. I haven't been wrong yet.

by ahhhhnoooo

4/8/2026 at 4:35:21 PM

Armin is pretty well-known in the tech space. He has contributed a ton to open source and generally seems like a fairly principled person. I think this may be the first case where you turn out to be wrong :)

by egonschiele

4/8/2026 at 6:20:22 PM

Here's hoping!

by ahhhhnoooo

4/8/2026 at 7:31:25 PM

Why should we cede Tolkien to those villians?

by tietjens

4/8/2026 at 4:20:50 PM

> First things first: I think you should read Mario’s post.

And from that:

> Despite its Tolkien-inspired name, Earendil is not a tech company with fascist tendencies. Quite the opposite. They are basically well-meaning hippies in my book, who think software, and specifically AI, should serve humans, not the other way around.

So, somewhat hopeful? I'm not sure I can take any more of this grossness.

by incanus77

4/8/2026 at 5:17:37 PM

I know nothing about Earendil and this is not meant to take away from them, but half of Alexander Karp's (Palantir CEO) book was "We are basically well-meaning hippies in my book, who think software, and specifically AI, should serve humans, not the other way around."

by dpoloncsak

4/8/2026 at 6:08:57 PM

Right. And now he brags about being part of an automated kill chain and being proud that he kills his enemies.

Words carry no weight in a world where every person in power weaponizes lying.

by popalchemist

4/8/2026 at 8:42:48 PM

Fair.

by incanus77

4/8/2026 at 6:07:59 PM

The right wing completely misunderstands Tolkien and/or is deliberately co-opting it in an attempt to gaslight the world about their nature/motives.

by popalchemist

4/8/2026 at 3:27:06 PM

My very first real tech job in the bay, my new boss recommended I study up on Armin's open source code in order to get better as an engineer. It's been very interesting following his work over the years. I'm extremely curious to see how Earendil goes — no surprise if it's a success.

Congratulations Armin, and Mario, and good luck.

Dug up the email, here's what my boss said directly:

In terms of tech to keep up on, it might be worth while to play around with node.js a bit as we've been doing a few small projects using the Express MVC framework. A great reference for js, (which I remember chatting with you briefly about) is Javascript the Good Parts (Douglas Crockford). You may also consider seeking enlightenment on Armin Ronacher's github page (he's a python master, leader of flask, genshi, pocoo, long time python contributor) https://github.com/mitsuhiko. His code is pretty top notch. I follow Kenneth Reitz quite a bit too (Armin and he often work on projects together). Kenneth is know for le*git and python's request library.

by peterldowns

4/8/2026 at 6:53:05 PM

I was hoping for a piece on how Tolkien and Nintendo secretly interacted.

by niemandhier

4/8/2026 at 7:10:36 PM

That would have been the love hotel/pachinko era, no?

by projektfu

4/8/2026 at 1:55:20 PM

Gotta admit, I’m a sucker for a well-dressed mysterious preview. Really excited to see what Lefos is all about.

by moffers

4/8/2026 at 5:09:18 PM

The first one I remember was the old whatisthematrix.com. Seems to be updated now unfortunately.

by dgb23

4/8/2026 at 11:42:35 AM

Oh… not what I expected this to be about.

by aikinai

4/8/2026 at 2:08:06 PM

I unironically thought that it was going to be an essay on naming characters in fiction. Like simplicity vs. self-imposed complexity.

Ah, anyway, what's clear enough is that Earendil is a tragically bad name for a company.

by A_D_E_P_T

4/8/2026 at 2:13:23 PM

I thought it was going to be an essay on the hero archetype from Earendil to Mario lol.

by cm2012

4/8/2026 at 5:22:41 PM

I thought it would be a team-up between two. Presumably the elf would help fight turtles and donkey kong, since what good is a plumber in a world without plumbing?

by gweinberg

4/8/2026 at 2:36:39 PM

> Trademarks: our main mechanism of protection is trademark enforcement. When you see pi, it’s a product of Earendil, with Mario, the creator of Pi, at the helm.

Interesting, considering I doubt I will ever see Pi in the context of computing and not immediately think of Raspberry Pi first.

I realize that legally speaking they can hold a distinct trademark for software when the other Pi is hardware but it just seems odd to me to lean so heavily on the trademarking of a commonly overloaded two letter name.

by georgemcbay

4/8/2026 at 5:42:56 PM

Yeah.

This was terrible branding, and is terrible branding.

The clash between "Earendil" and "Pi" is so overdetermined it might have required earnest effort.

by aaroninsf

4/8/2026 at 4:00:10 PM

Someone convince me that "machine entity" is not an odd phrase.

by tolerance

4/8/2026 at 6:43:16 PM

Good luck Mario! Just don't tarry there in errantry

by vingilot

4/8/2026 at 11:47:30 AM

From browsing the Earendil website, I'm honestly not sure if this is a software startup or a cult...

by swiftcoder

4/8/2026 at 12:26:18 PM

There seems to be a pattern associated with grabbing names from Tolkien.

by jfengel

4/8/2026 at 2:14:21 PM

There's a dark irony in start-ups appropriating names from the work of a devout catholic attached to beautiful, old modes of life.

by lordleft

4/8/2026 at 12:51:40 PM

Palantir, Anduril...

The Dark Lord minions are really busy lately.

by bossyTeacher

4/8/2026 at 12:29:21 PM

So, is Earendil, just Pi?

by FrustratedMonky

4/8/2026 at 1:54:37 PM

They also have an AI mailbox service called Lefos.

by bossyTeacher

4/8/2026 at 3:02:13 PM

I thought this was going to be a comparison between the archetypal features of the Tolkien Legendarium and that of Nintendo games' lore, but no.

by bitwize

4/8/2026 at 4:32:46 PM

Who even are these people? I thought it was going to be about Nintendo...

by dude250711