Re: Not surprised
I have lots of Pis here, recommend them to others, and think they're great. I don't think I hid that fact, and I'm not sure it makes me "inherently negative". I was simply making the same point you did: "Nobody expects it to do everything, it's £35 FFS."
While you object to my pointing out the negatives, I don't think they're incorrect. You've pointed out that you can plug in something else to do your ML experimentation faster, which you can also do to anything else. And you can also use the Pi to control an external server running your real computation, but the end result is that you are using some other device to do the heavy lifting. Nor did I say that you couldn't do any ML; something small can definitely be run. However, the larger models one might want to experiment with do often require more processing than the Pi can perform in a reasonable length of time. This isn't a problem; the Pi wasn't designed for lots of raw computation. I think that's important to acknowledge when people point out they have difficulties because it doesn't have enough performance.
"The original dream wasn't for a low maintenance desktop in schools. That's BS. The idea is for a device where you can switch out an SD card. It is totally successful at that."
Yes, switching out the SD card, thus easier to maintain. And they really did intend them for schools. If you look at the projects the Pi foundation was excited about in 2012, you can see the kind of thing they had in mind, and they also stated it outright. They didn't create the Pi to run digital signage, nor really for us to use it as a cheap platform for automation. Their goal was use in education, with others' benefits being a bonus. That's still their goal, and the Pi 4 is a lot more capable of the task than a Pi 1B was. Just not every educational use you could consider.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
