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Bunnie Huang's Novena Open Source Laptop Launches Via Crowd Supply
First time accepted submitter ogcricket (3557713) writes with news about a new laptop designed by Andrew Huang and Sean Cross. "Earlier this year, the two Singapore-based engineers fashioned a laptop made almost entirely from open source hardware, hardware whose designs are freely available to the world at large. They called it Project Novena. Anyone could review the designs, looking for bugs and security flaws, and at least in theory, that meant you could be confident the machine was secure from top to bottom, something that’s more desirable than ever in the post-Edward Snowden age....The original idea was simply to encourage others to build their own open source laptops at home. But now the pair are taking the project a step further. Starting today, you can order your own pre-built Novena laptop through the crowd-funding site Crowd Supply, and it will ship out in the coming weeks. Much like Kickstarter, Crowd Supply is place where you can put up money to help fund a company and then get a product in exchange."
I am working on Fedora builds for it -- pics of it on my bench here and here.
$1,995 for a laptop??
How does an open-source machine cost so much more than a closed, proprietary one sold by a for-profit corporation?
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XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
At the prices they're asking for one of these things, I really don't understand why anyone would buy one. You might as well buy a Raspberry Pi and PAY SOMEONE to make a fancy case and interface an LCD panel and battery to it. Geez. What were they thinking? I'm sure the ARM chip in this is better than a RasPi, but $1000 better? No freaking way.
Because this one is hand built by 2 guys, rather than manufactured by a combination of robots and Chinese teenagers that get pushed off a roof if they're not productive enough? (only the teenagers, they'd never push a robot off the roof)
Shouldn't that read "the post-NSA age"? Or do we still blame the messenger?
Free as in a 200 year old single malt scotch. Beer just doesn't cut it at these prices.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
But just the MB is $500 - there's not much done by hand on one of those. And it has 5-10 year old technology like USB 2.0 and SATA 2 (and it sounds like there's only a single one of those ports!).
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I hear you about the price, and merely being open source and secure is not what makes this laptop awesome.
This isn't just a laptop, it's a hacktop. It's the equivalent of a portable electronics lab. It has GPIO headers and an integrated FPGA. There are no laptops in existence with these kind of features.
Bunnie started out just building the laptop for himself, as it's OBVIOUSLY not the most price efficient way to do things, but builders, engineers, and hackers wanted this. They know what they're getting.
Because those huge evil for-profit corporations actually understand how to make a consumer product.
These guys...not so much.
Don't be so sure. Bunny was the guy behind the Chumby (and related Insignia Infocast and Sony Dash devices), which was mildly successful for a while (the hardware was relatively inexpensive, but the service costs were apparently unsustainable).
What consumer products constitute your bona fides?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
How does an open-source machine cost so much more than a closed, proprietary one sold by a for-profit corporation?
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OK: HOW DOES AN OPEN-SOURCE MACHINE COST SO MUCH MORE..
"Even Prophets don't know everything"
Fixed costs matter less per unit as you make more, so you can charge less per unit and make the same profit. Buying a $20,000 laser cutter will matter a lot more to your pricing if you are only going to use it to cut 10 sheets of metal rather than 10,000 sheets. It also takes less manhours to do administrative things like accounting when you already have a system in place and are able to simply add additional items rather than doing the entire process again. Not to mention everyone being new to the hardware manufacturing business, which leads to all sorts of inefficiencies.
OK: HOW DOES AN OPEN-SOURCE MACHINE COST SO MUCH MORE..
It doesn't. If you buy 1000000 units you will be able to negotiate a price from a manufacturer that is competitive to other laptops that are produced in equivalent amounts. Assuming that you can fork out the money on delivery.
“The motherboard, battery board, and display adapter board are designs from whole cloth,” Huang told us. “Every trace on those PCBs was placed by my hand.”
Let us hope he means the third definition rather than the second from http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/...
2. (figuratively, used attributively or preceded by various prepositions) The fictitious material from which complete fabrications, lies with no basis in truth, are made.
3. Something made completely new, with no history, and not based on anything else.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.