Summary of hashing function security in bits, for convenience:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Hash_Algorithms

Since collision resistance is roughly half the number of bits, it seems unconscionable to me that anything below 256 bit hashes even exist, because 64 bits is crackable but 128 bits effectively never will be. This was well-understood even in the 90s when MD5 and SHA were first published.

Just thinking about this for the first time, I don't buy any argument about storage or performance, since those become less important as time goes on. It feels like Linus made a mistake here, and offloaded the inevitable work of upgrading repositories onto the general public (socialized the cost) which is something that all programmers should work harder to avoid.

Said as an armchair warrior who has never accomplished anything of any importance, I realize.