Posts by James Hughes 1

Raspberry Pi OS, LMDE, Peppermint OS join the Debian 13 club

It's a time thing...

Hopefully once any kinks with Trixie are worked out, we'll have time for an x86 version. No promises, small team with lots to do.

Arduino has a new job selling chips for its new owner. Let's not pretend otherwise

1. It's not Raspberry Pi foundation, it's Raspberry Pi ltd. Foundation just own a lot of shares, but have nothing to do with product development at all.

2. The closed source firmware blob has got smaller and smaller with each generation of Pi. Nowadays on the Pi 5 it does very little. All the real work is now done in open source drivers.

3. The RP1 chip on the Pi5, which encompasses most of the Piness of the device is entirely designed and developed by Ltd, so they have complete control over it, Broadcom is irrelevant to it.

Raspberry Pi prices hiked as AI gobbles all the memory

Re: It doesn't look like the RPi's

Fingers crossed.

Wow, so much wrong in this post.

The firmware blob on the Pi5 (and now earlier models as well) does very little. Nowadays, it's really just thermal control and boot, it's there to get the system up and running, and to make sure the SoC doesn't overheat. Most of what used to be in the firmware (you know, 12 years ago) is now all open source Arm side code (3D, codec, cameras, display etc). Pi have put a lot of effort into getting as much out of the firmware and open-sourced as possible.

Because most of what used to be in the firmware is now in the kernel or userspace, that means a lot of it could be upstreamed, and has been. So the vanilla Linux will work. There are a few areas where code has not been upstreamed - anyone who has tried to upstream, knows how much of a PITA it can be - but it is still all open source in the Pi Github repo. Once Linux is booted, Linux is in control of everything except the thermal stuff. This is a good thing and means if Linux (or its own thernal control) crashes, the firmware can still stop the device overheating.

Basically your comment is about 8 years out of date and your comment on Debian, is, well, a bit weird.

What's a proprietary master OS? Pis run an almost vanilla Debian distribution of linux.

Re: It doesn't look like the RPi's

Because the fabs are all being moved to produce hbm memory instead of ddr4,which makes ddr4 prices go up as there is now a lack of supply.

FFS

1. Raspberry Pi trading diverged from the Foundation 13 years ago and has been run as a profit centre ever since. The IPO made little difference to that.

2. Freeloading? Raspberry Pi contribute a lot back to the Linux kernel, libcamera, MESA etc. If you are going to accuse people of freeloading, at least start with those who do not contribute back. Which is probably every other SBC supplier.

3. You can indeed get cheaper devices. There is a reason they are cheaper. Cheap Chinese chips, no support, crap warranty, no continuation of supply for a start. It's a long list.

Microsoft thinks cloud PCs might be overkill, starts streaming just apps under Windows 365

Re: But why?

Use typst. I've been impressed by it.

VMware's in court again. Customer relationships rarely go this wrong

I don't think the Chagos islands are quite the example you think they are.

Microsoft veteran's worst Windows bug was Pinball running at 5,000 FPS

IIRC, Commander Keen had this problem.

I would not class this as a bug - it's working as intended - just bad code.

And even that's a bit harsh. Worked fine!

Two scrubs, one Starship: Third time lucky for SpaceX?

Re: Well, the answer was 'No'

Disagree. It clearly worked. It's still a prototype, a few rough edges, but it worked. Starlink launches are going to be the bread and butter for starship. Ignore the moon shots, the real money is Starlink launches - get that working and by default you get a long way to the moon/Mars flights anyway.

Raspberry Pi RP2350 A4 update fixes old bugs and dares you to break it again

Re: Cheapskate

I can feel that burn from here.

Re: Cheapskate

"No wonder there were so many bugs in the first place."

For anyone who actually wants to know about the bugs rather than just grandstanding, all the known errata are listed in the datasheet, and this also states which have been fixed and which have been mitigated in the A4 stepping. https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rp2350/rp2350-datasheet.pdf, appendices C and E. 28 known errata on the A2, 11 full fixes in A3/A4, with a further 6 mitigated, leaving about 11, mostly very obscure but the datasheet has workarounds.

Re: There's a difference

Actually the old chips are also tolerant in the same way, Pi have just qualified that they do work. But as above, make sure things are powered up before using 5v, otherwise, phut.

Re: Cheapskate

Hands up anyone who knows how modern chip design and testing is done!

Not you elsergiovolador.

You really are showing a lack of knowledge of the domain here. Have you actually read the hacking challenge results and seen what was done to "hack" the original RP2350? It's pretty heavy duty stuff. In the same way that software, despite much testing, still has vulnerabilities, so does hardware. Hackers are clever people, especially the ones who figure out all these glitching attacks. And they also have lots of time to target very specific areas. If companies had as much time to do the same over the whole chip, they would do it, but it would take 20 years to get product out of the door and instead of 90cents, the RP2350 would cost $50. As a company, you simply cannot think of everything, or get it perfectly right all the time, and timescales limit the total testing possible. The RP2350 was designed and tested by very experienced people and went through a year of testing.

Re: Cheapskate

The reasons for the downvotes are because you clearly haven't read about the hacking challenge and the types of vulnerabilities discovered. None would be on any vendors test list.

US signals intention to rethink job H-1B lottery

I think you mean the right giving the impression they are doing more for the ordinary people. They are not, of course, but people believe them when they say they are.

Also odd that you mention media personalities on the left. The US president is the bigliest of media personalities. Bigger than anything on the left. Although he isn't hugely wealthy (because he's not a good businessman), he making sure he's getting that way.

xAI's Grok lurches into right-wing insanity, offers tips on assaulting man

Re: Once again ...

Why do you think it never will? Never is a REALLY long time.

America and Britain gear up with Project Flytrap to bring anti-drone kit to the battlefield

Re: Nothing to it

Go watch a drone race, and then say it's just clay shooting. Drones go MUCH faster than clays and swerve around just like clays don't.

Some signs of AI model collapse begin to reveal themselves

Is that most work that humans actually do?

Linus Torvalds goes back to a mechanical keyboard after making too many typos

The 400 also uses the improved keyboard.

Back online after 'catastrophic' attack, 4chan says it's too broke for good IT

Re: Explain please

Have you really never heard of 4Chan? Or used Google?

CVE program gets last-minute funding from CISA – and maybe a new home

Re: No more Euro freeloaders!

Did you miss the bit about playing devil's advocate?

Re: No more Euro freeloaders!

Interesting take. To play devil advocate, Microsoft/American SW companies in general make a lot of money out of the rest of the world, and generate many of the CVE's. Why should the rest of the world pay to track CVE for America's buggy software? Perhaps the funding should be in relation to the number of CVE based on country of origin? If US has 75% of the CVEs, then they should pay 75% of the cost? Does anyone know the percentage figures for CVE country of origin?

Bill Gates unearths Microsoft's ancient code like a proud nerd dad

Re: Lotsa lookups

Why are you incrementing the counter?

Raspberry Pi Power-over-Ethernet Injector zaps life into networks lacking spark

Re: Buy a poe splitter

Be careful with splitters, some have terrible design faults. We did some testing on one particular make and on startup it spiked at over 9v (should be maximum of 5 +-10% IIRC), which blows up the DA909x PMIC on the Pi 3/4/5.

5v5A is an optional feature on USB-PD so many PS don't support it. The latest Pi supply obviously does. And to head off the "Why not support higher voltages" question, it's a matter of board space and heat dissipation.

You need to tell the Pi it's being supplied with 5A with the appropriate config.txt entry if your PS can supply 5v5A. If its USB-PD, then check it can supply 5A at 5v, most cannot. 25W from the PoE is absolutely fine, in fact overkill for the 500 unless you have lots of high power USB devices attached.

Raspberry Pi RP2350 microcontroller now available to mere mortals

Re: OK, but what are the practical applications?

The Javascript Generation?

Re: Bargain!

It always amazes me when people complain about the prices of silicon. These are extraordinarily complex things, made in fabs that cost billions of dollars, and yet, are actually cheaper than potato crisps which are grown in a field and fried in oil.

Trump says US should kill CHIPS Act, use the cash to cut debt

Re: As Trump said there is nothing he can do to make them happy or smile.

So, Trump is also shit at business? Who knew.

Re: Sooo

I accidentally got on their mailing list, cannot remember how, and can find no way to unsubscribe (didn't look that hard, time is money and delete button is quick). Some of the far right nonsense they send out is sickening.

Re: still blaming Biden

His brain will already have forgotten Obama.

Raspberry Pi launches CM4 variant that laughs in the face of frostbite

Re: Extended temperature

I've run the CM4 to 85 ambient, run `stress` on all four cores, and the CPU get to about 100degC, so has to throttle but still keeps going nicely.

Re: I wonder if...

I'd be interested to know how you got that information. Pi hasn't tested the devices to launch levels of vibration but have tested to railway level requirements, where they passed fine.

US Dept of Housing screens sabotaged to show deepfake of Trump sucking Elon's toes

I'd like you to provide a source too.

I want to know where all these millions of jobs are going to come from. Please note, they need to be roughly equivalent to the current pay levels of any sacked employees in order for the tax receipts to be roughly the same. i.e Not just jobs that miraculously appeared once you throw out all the illegal immigrants.

Why do younger coders struggle to break through the FOSS graybeard barrier?

I think we may have discovered why you have such a strange attitude. Microcontrollers are a multi billion dollar area, and if you don't know that, what do you know?

Trump tells Musk to 'go get' Starliner astronauts

Re: And here we go..

Then they see a Starship launch, and realise that a company isn't just its head, but a huge number of other people, actually run by someone who isn't Musk, and realise it ain't too bad.

SpaceX are a great company, with a head who has gone a bit off the rails. But it's still a great company doing great things irrespective of the guy in charge.

White House asks millions of govt workers if they would be so kind as to fork right off

Re: X barely breaking even

People have been saying its going to crash for years. Why hasn't it already done so?

The UK had Austerity, which is similar. And that has proven to be disastrous, with the government now trying to recover from years of underinvestment in the NHS, roads, and many other other public services. And there is no money to actually fix it.

DeepSeek isn't done yet with OpenAI – image-maker Janus Pro is gunning for DALL-E 3

Re: It's still all theft-based

Quite. These things learn (AIUI - could be completely wrong) in a similar way to humans - lots of repetition and lots of source data. Just faster. So the results are similar to what you might be from an average human trained on the same data. Do we accuse humans of theft when they draw a picture that looks a bit like someone else's picture? No, but copyright maybe infringed.

Same with text, there are only (according to Booker) 7 plot lines - so all books have their basis in those 7 plotlines, or are derivatives of those plotlines. Writers take those plotlines and build around them in their own style. Is it any different with AI?

Dunno, but it's all quite interesting.

DeepSeek limits new accounts amid cyberattack

The weakest model can run on a Raspberry Pi, apparently 200 tokens/sec.

How to leave the submarine cable cutters all at sea – go Swedish

Re: What a load of bollocks

Anyone with the handle "VoiceOfTruth" is certainly behaving in the exact opposite way, and has a massive dose of overexaggerated self importance.

The ultimate Pi 5 arrives carrying 16GB ... and a price to match

Re: What's wrong with RAM slots?

Cost of the connector, and memory interface on the SoC.

Raspberry Pi 500 and monitor arrive in time for Christmas

Re: Junk

Not sure why you got downvoted for this, it's completely correct.

The additional cost for the NVME components is actually fairly high. Its not just the board components, but a new casing with hatch, because splitting the case to fit the drive is a no-no for a consumer product.

Of course, there is no need for the NVME drive for many many use cases, the faster SD card capabilities of the 2712 SoC when combined with command queueing means that even with an SD card the device is very useable, and for most people good enough.

Re: re: I suspect that last one isn't particularly profitable....

Linux is literally the homebrew software holy grail, so I really don't understand what you are getting at there. You can write in whatever software you want, in whatever language you prefer, all for free.

Its not a touchscreen, although some people think that is a shame!

Using the CM5 makes the internals MUCH more expensive. A custom board is many many dollars cheaper, and this really counts at prices like this. Irrespective, this is clearly a major upgrade. 2 to 3 times performance is the real improvement.