Posts by James Hughes 1

Wayland takes the wheel as Red Hat bids farewell to X.org

Re: But can you tunnel wayland over ssh

Yes. Waypipe.

The Raspberry Pi 5 is now available ... if you pre-ordered

Re: To learn from me...

Nah, don't think I'll bother.

Re: This may disgust many of you....

Not true. The Pi 5 will run fine from a Pi 4 5v3A supply. It will limit downstream USB current to 600mA, but you can override that if you want, there is headroom there. The 5V5A supply would be needed if you were pulling a lot of current from the USB ports AND running all the Arms at full tilt.

Putting the extra components on the board to handle higher voltages was considered, but the problems of the heat dissipation and board real estate meant 5v in was a better option.

Raspberry Pi 5 revealed, and it should satisfy your need for speed

Re: HW Video Decoding

Not many, perhaps some. The software encoder is higher quality and can handle higher resolutions, the HW decoder was also limited to 1080p, the software one not so.

Re: HW Video Decoding

? It has supported HW decoding of H264 and H265 for quite some time.

Note, the Pi5 has done away with the H264 decoder - it's now all done in SW on the ARMs

Largest local government body in Europe goes under amid Oracle disaster

Correct.

First of Tesla's 'bulletproof' Cybertrucks clunks off production line

Going against the grain here, clearly a lot of Anti-Musks in the comments, but I'd have a Cybertruck!

I suspect it will sell relatively well, it will be cheap to run, be fairly indestructible and it won't rust away (it's stamped/bent stainless, hence the straight lines). Looks weird, but so did the Ford Sierra when it first came out, and that sold well. Problems are its size and no RHD variant. I reckon it will work well as a pickup for the majority of tasks pickup owners use them for.

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

Re: Repair shop?

So, you've been suckered into the replace often to keep our profits up cycle. Well done.

Debian 12 'Bookworm' is the excitement-free Linux you've been waiting for

WHY do they keep using names with the same first letter, that's now three in a row, Bullseye, Bookworm and Buster. Or is it Buster, Bookworm now Bullsyeye?

It is just confusing.

SpaceX's second attempt at orbital Starship launch ends in fireball

Re: Starship hasn't had the most successful history?

Actually the engines are ridiculously cheap, as are the hulls. I think less than $0.5M each, and the aim is for $250k each. The hulls are just a bunch of stainless steel, so again, pretty cheap.

SpaceX tries to de-orbit Amazon's request for a satellite broadband shortcut

Re: Good, very good!

Hmm, satellite constellation have the chance of improving the lives (via broadband) of a huge number of people all around the world. Is that a worthwhile tradeoff for the occasional light trail affecting a tiny number of people? I think it is.

Re: Me frist!

The Vegas Loop was built/bored by the Boring company, so your statement of "fuck all" is incorrect.

Microsoft is checking everyone's bags for unsupported Office installs

Re: "Malicious software removal tool"

"To be honest, I can't understand why anyone would have hours of unsaved work on a computer, especially one running Windows. It's only a matter of time before it crashes / reboots / does something else annoying. Always best to assume the worst will happen with Windows, then when it does (when, not if!) you won't get caught out."

I run Linux in a VM, where I do most of my work TBH. I often leave stuff open in code editors etc, but occasionally Windows reboots itself for updates, doesn't check there is a VM running, so that get splatted without saving first. It's a PIT fecking A with no obvious way to turn it off

Windows itself, not had a crash in that for years. However, when I no longer need Windows (that day must be quite soon), I'll go bare metal Linux. Maybe run Windows in a VM...hmmm...

Don’t expect a Raspberry Pi 5 in 2023, says Raspboss Eben Upton

Re: I wish the Pi universe was a bit more cooperative and played well with others.

1. We've been putting a lot of effort (and money) in to upstreaming as much as we can. Hence we now have open source graphics (DRM, Mesa etc), a standard camera interface, libcamera, and now use V4L2 rather than openMax to get access to the codecs etc. There is some stuff that would never be accepted upstream though.

2. HAT's are a Raspberry Pi design/invention, I guess if other people want to use them, then they simply have to adhere to the spec?

3. What wrong with Raspberry Pi OS?

I agree with the comments about SBCs from China and Armbian. They are certainly not a panacea.

Re: Priorities

You cannot run a company like RPI just by "hoping for the best" They seem to be pretty confident that by h2 next years things will have dramatically improved, which lines up with predictions from other companies and analysts.

Re: Profits

There already is an installed base of many many millions to sell those bits and bobs to.

Re: Priorities

How do you propose increasing production when you cannot get the parts? This is not a production capacity problem. Its a supply chain problem.

This supply situation has affected EVERYONE who sell in quantity. Yes, it affects Pi customers, which is a horrible situation to be in, and if anyone has an actual workable suggestion to fix the worldwide silicon supply chain problem I am sure there are many many companies out there, not just Pi, who would love to hear it.

Re: Bye bye Pi

The makers of those SoC's (which do indeed have decent performance) have zero interest in the hobby market, and their software support sucks big time. Very few contributions to upstream, which means support and new features are generally done by third parties, who have to guess half the time on how the HW works. If you want Android, probably OK, but as SBC's running Linux you will always be struggling to get all the chip features properly integrated.

Also worth noting that one of the reason these boards are available now is their sales are so much lower than the Pi's. If they got to similar volumes, they are likely also to have supply problems. Low sales volumes mean less money to spend on software support. It's a spiral that Pi broke out of very early on.

There is no "instead". Pi4 were sold to students and hobbyist throughout, just in lower percentages. But why do you think Pi are supposed to only serve them? Industry has been buying Pi since the first model, and those sales have bootstrapped the company, enabled to build better products, and keep the prices low for everyone else.

Re: Bye bye Pi

Not concentrating on CMs at all, all models are still in production, we just need to spread the available chips over all that production so it tends to be batchy. Lots of Pi3 and similar hitting shelves right now for example. Making lots of Pi4 as well.

Raspberry Pi supply chain loosens just in time for the holiday season

Re: A drop in the ocean

How so? Raspberry Pi charge the same for devices whether individual or industrial. The reasons for prioritising industrial are not money related, as has been stated elsewhere.

Re: Whales

Most industrial customers are actually pretty small businesses (a few hundred a year). We actively try and ensure they do get product to survive, email [e-mail] with your use case.

Re: And the 8 GB model I've been waiting for?

Big customers rarely use the 8GB model. Having that much memory is a waste for most industrial/commercial applications. Outside of industrial, most people find the 4GB model perfectly suitable for the vast majority of tasks.

Tesla reports two more fatal Autopilot accidents to the NHTSA

Re: Wrong question

"If I get myself in a situation where an AI with faster than human recognition of the problem and ability to change lanes, correct a skid, slam on brakes, etc. could save me from something that would have otherwise killed me due to my puny human reflexes, but the price is that it might do something stupid I would never do myself like just drive straight into a stopped vehicle without even slowing down then I will take the first option every time."

Last big accident I witnessed a bloke drove straight in to the back of a stationary car without slowing down.

Elon Musk issues ultimatum to Twitter staff: Go hardcore or go home

Re: This won't backfire at all

Given all the big places that pay well are all shedding employees, where will all those talented employees go?

Linus Torvalds to kernel devs: Grow up and stop pulling all-nighters just before deadline

Please read up on Linux kernel development, your questions will all be answered.

Re: Err

Bad management practices. That's funny.

Linux being one of, if not the, most successful software projects ever, and Torvalds having been in charge of it from day one. That's over 30 years of project management.

SpaceX reportedly fed up with providing free Starlink to Ukraine

Re: He's clearly ambivalent at best about Ukraine

If Musk was solely motivated by money (he isn't) then he would not have started SpaceX or Starlink. There are much easier ways of making money than the ones he chose.

Removing an obsolete AMD fix makes Linux kernel 6 quicker

Re: The older the OS...

Sire.

Here's how 5 mobile banking apps put 300,000 users' digital fingerprints at risk

Re: Surely the Best Practice for Mobile Banking Apps is ...

Good luck with that. All the banks are shut around here.

Raspberry Pi 4 takes a trip to Vulkan, sharpens 3D vision

Re: Availability

We are actively trying to prevent scalping, so I suspect most are just second hand.

Well, that was a tedious read. I wish when people try to tell us how to run a business, they could at least get the name of the company right. It does make you wonder if they can get something so simple so wrong, then what else is wrong in their post.

AIUI, you just want us to try and stop scalpers by putting our prices up?

Not going to happen. We have a price, we stick to it. We are not in it to make ridiculous profits (which we could if we wanted), we are not an energy producer. What we do is actively try and prevent scalping - our commercial team work very hard on that, along with trying top spread the production over as many companies and resellers as possible.

It may come as some surprise, but we are making between 400 and 450k units a month at the moment, but demand is exceptionally high, and supply problems (you know, the ones everyone is seeing) mean we cannot make as many as we would want. We have the capacity, but not the parts.

Get over it: Microsoft is a Linux and open source company these days

Re: FOSS is a cash cow

And what is wrong with the above? Perfectly legal according to the FOSS licences. Both MS and Google both contribute lots back to OSS. So why is this "bare faced cheek"?

Re: Optimist or pessimist... what am I supposed to be

No, not as far as I am aware.

Misguided call for a 7-Zip boycott brings attention to FOSS archiving tools

Re: I like 7Zip.

Strawman arguments, the last resort of the imbecile.

And he was in Finland I presume.

SpaceX staff condemn Musk's behavior in open letter

Re: Who FORCED you to work for Elon?

What does this actually mean? Trigger? Do you have anything useful to say?

The writers of the letter just got sacked btw. Not to anyone's surprise.

And.....sacked

Look like the letter writers have been shown the door.

I am not surprised.

Had I written something like this, I suspect for ANY of the companies at which I have worked (big, small, in the middle), I would also have been sacked. You don't write open letters like this and think you can get away with it.

Re: Who FORCED you to work for Elon?

Actually, I think you 'll find that to all intents and purposes, the man is the company, and the company would certainly not be where it is without the man.

Musk owns the majority SpaceX, it's his company. I suspect that without his drive and dictatorial leadership, its would never have survived its early days, and certainly would not be where it is right now. Musk is the chief technical guy, so he tells them what to make, and they make it. The decisions are his.

If people want to change that, they are shooting themselves in the foot.

Re: March

TBH, it's quite a big rocket.

Clustered Pi Picos made to run original Transputer code

UEA?

Wasn't Roy Dowsing at UEA? I vaguely remember the name...and I vaguely remember delivery of a transputer based device to the graphics department, would have been 88/89 I guess..

Twitter faces existential threat from world's richest techbro

When you have errors in the first few lines of an article...

He doesn't have $200B in his back pockets. That implies cash. It's all paper money, tied up in shares. This is such a common mistake, but even for an opinion piece on El Reg, one would hope that the writer would understand this.

French court pulls SpaceX's Starlink license

Re: re: decent broadband internet access at a decent price

And if people still buy at those prices, he has made exactly the right commercial decision.

If they don't he did the wrong thing.

So far, it's the former.

Re: French court freezes out non-French competition

You clearly know nothing at all about it. Just look at the costs of laying fibre/copper, compared with satellite. Satellites are WAY cheaper in remote areas. They also don't suffer from people digging up cables and selling them....Also more environmental friendly. A few satellite launches, vs digging up hundreds of thousands of of miles of trenches with oil driven excavators.

Put it like this. Musk is not stupid. He is not going to be doing this unless he knows it's going to make money when compared with all the other systems available.

As for "sky pollution", AIUI, these satellites are not visible to the naked eye once at altitude, or at least, very faint.

Alphabet's Wing drone unit inks supermarket delivery deal

Re: "the next evolution in delivery technology"

Without some energy use figures, that you have failed to supply, how do you know these drones are "worse" that whatever you were comparing them against?

Out of beta and ready for data: 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS is here

Re: I just wish they hadn't renamed it.

We gave the rename a hell of a lot of thought. But it's not easy find a suitable name, so we ended up with Raspberry Pi OS. Or PiOS for short. Does exactly what it says on the tin.

And by we, I mean Raspberry Pi Ltd, not the Foundation.

One decade, 46 million units: Happy birthday, Raspberry Pi

Re: Where are they?

Is that the same supply chain problems that have affected the rest of the world in exactly the same way?

Really odd how people think that Raspberry Pi should be immune to the supply woes out there.

Read the article, we are making 500k a month.

Re: Interesting.

You don't NEED cooling of any type. You can add it if your particular workload causes thermal throttling but the latest DVFS firmware does a great job of keeping things cool.

Passive cases work fine, we sell a case fan if you want one. But it's not essential. I never use any extra cooling.

Re: "I can't go out today and license a RISC-V core,"

Wrong conclusion. We ARE interested in open source, which is why so much of the latest software has replaced the proprietary firmware blob with open source alternatives. KMS, DRM, libcamera, V4L2 etc. It just takes time to make this transition, and make that transition easy for users - we like backwards compatibility.

With regard to RISC-V there clearly is not a core available that is better than that in the Pi4, never mind the more recent Arm architectures.

Indian government tells Starlink to refund pre-orders placed before licences approved

Once again, the Musk hate appears. He's rich, got there by his own efforts, get over it.

Re: The problem with ... most American companies is they see the world as their "market"

The next gen Starlink satellites are much larger, so that will increase capacity. But I agree that their market is NOT cities - fibre will always be faster/cheaper. But not all the world is cities, and Starlink works on planes and boats...

Where I live, in Sunny Fenland, within commuting distance to Cambridge, tech capital of the UK (my opinion!), broadband is really patchy, so for many people around here it would be a godsend. And its not like the UK is a third world country. Apparently.