New Crowdfunding Campaign Offers Modular EOMA68 Computing Devices (crowdsupply.com)

Re:Won't happen by Aighearach · 2016-07-30 20:09 · Score: 2

What you don't realize is that none of that means it won't happen, it just means Joe Average User won't end up buying it.

There is lots of open, modular electronics already. Your boogeyman didn't pop out.

dumping Windows by harvey+the+nerd · 2016-07-30 20:22 · Score: 1

Any windowed equivalent since the 98SE interface, fine. The main thing is how easily it plugs into HDTVs, existing i86 machines, or any thing with power and a screen. When I travel and stay in homes or hotels, that would make life easier.

Re:dumping Windows by lkcl · 2016-07-31 02:27 · Score: 1

Any windowed equivalent since the 98SE interface, fine. The main thing is how easily it plugs into HDTVs, existing i86 machines, or any thing with power and a screen. When I travel and stay in homes or hotels, that would make life easier.
yeah by default i'm installing XFCE4 but in the future with more powerful SoCs coming out all the time the sky's the limit. ok in the future i'd really like to see schools, libraries and hotels have EOMA68-compliant HDTVs that you can pop your own computer card into. might not be a realistic vision for libraries (they might *rent* you an "approved" EOMA68 computer card though, just like a book...) or hotels (would need to become as prevalent as memory cards) but for schools, yeah it's on the scenarios in the ecocomputing whitepaper and the cost savings are enormous (no more IT staff, because the *card* is the login and file-server).
but until then, you can always use the HDMI output from the other (user-facing) end of the computer card to plug into HDTVs.
plugging into existing x86 machines though? mmm... i don't quite follow... unless you're referring to the OTG port and using that to charge up the laptop housing's battery, or do file-transfers a la "android OTG"?

Because.se one size does not fit all by zemned3000 · 2016-07-30 20:32 · Score: 4, Interesting

The reason that this isn't already a common approach in the industry is that forcing constraints on form factors for SoC devices has some intractable issues. If you have a powerful SoC it demands high power and needs to dissipate heat; so the upper bound of what you can achieve in the packaging and with the connector will be rapidly met u.nless it is massively over specified, and then it will be large and expensive. Also, display technology is not fixed in time, parallel interface signals are already quite out of date as an interface specification , although the actual limit here will probably be down to the PCMCIA connectors impedance discontinuity and consistency after numerous insertions when more modern differential display protocols are adopted. It is a laudable aim, but I doubt this will save the planet from computer waste.

Re:Because.se one size does not fit all by lkcl · 2016-07-31 01:35 · Score: 4, Interesting

The reason that this isn't already a common approach in the industry is that forcing constraints on form factors for SoC devices has some intractable issues. If you have a powerful SoC it demands high power and needs to dissipate heat; so the upper bound of what you can achieve in the packaging and with the connector will be rapidly met u.nless it is massively over specified, and then it will be large and expensive.
we're dealing with that by setting a hard limit for the [re-used, pin-incompatible] PCMCIA "Type I" and "Type II" sockets which are 3.3mm and 5.0mm respectively: the hard limit for these two thinner card types is 5.0 watts. so at around 3.0 to 3.5 watts there's still absolutely no need for fans or any kind of special thermal considerations: passive cooling is all that's needed, and the SoC happens to be in contact with the stainless steel case, which happens to be in contact with the aluminium of the keyboard (in the case of the laptop).
just over that (up to 4.0 watts) and it is possible to use exactly the same graphite paper that's been developed for mobile phones. cheap, readily-available.
at around 4.5 watts it would be necessary to seal the package and flood it with thermal gel.

Also, display technology is not fixed in time, parallel interface signals are already quite out of date as an interface specification , although the actual limit here will probably be down to the PCMCIA connectors impedance discontinuity and consistency after numerous insertions when more modern differential display protocols are adopted. .
right. i spent five years analysing this and the impedance of PCMCIA (which, again, just to emphasise, we are *NOT* electrically or electronically compatible with: EOMA68 merely REUSES the PCMCIA connectors, housings, sockets and assemblies) is 100 ohms.
the EOMA68 standard uses RGB/TTL because that allows you to go all the way from 320x240 up to 1366x768 which works out to be around 80mhz. 80mhz over 100 ohm impedance is just about acceptable: you remember those "gold shields" on PCMCIA? those were designed to reduce EMI. the cards we're using for the initial prototypes have the metal case covering the entire connector, both sides.
why use RGB/TTL? this is covered in the eco-computing white paper in detail, section on "interface selection" http://rhombus-tech.net/whitep... basically if you consider the cost of 320x240 LCDs and take a look on http://panelook.com/ they're peanuts cost and they're *all* RGB/TTL. if you added a converter IC it would be a massively-disproportionate percentage addition to the BOM. however if you go up to a 1024x600 which costs $18 approx and you add a $1 SN75LVDS83b LVDS converter IC.... that's not so bad, is it?
Re:Because.se one size does not fit all by Truekaiser · 2016-07-31 06:25 · Score: 1

Not trying to be rude.
Even with open source software, the modern desktop/laptop needs have long since surpassed those specs.
1366x768 is very much on it's way out. (THANK GOD) It's a horribly small resolution for the majority of current gui's and websites even though it's technically 720p hd. Still usable though if you force your users to run fluxbox or similar. 2gb of ram is pretty tiny, usable but tiny. 4gb SHOULD have been your MIN amount. Otherwise your system will be limited to running JUST a single modern application alone at a time. General users like having their email client AND their web browser AND their office program AND possibly a instant messaging application open at the same time.
Also 8gb storage space? Modern linux distributions take up 4 to 6gb alone. That is not a lot of space for user files. Even less if you put in a swap partition.
What you are doing here is trying to sell what a friend of mine calls 's.c.t.'s'* at a gaming laptop / macbook pro level price. I seriously doubt you are going to get enough people who care so much about possible freedom that they would torture themselves to use such a limiting system.
My advice? Ditch the laptop, focus on the wood case stand alone receptacle, bill yourself as a fully open and environmentally friendly alt to the raspberry pi and similar.
* Super Cheap/Crappy Tablet
Re:Because.se one size does not fit all by chris2net23 · 2016-07-31 07:31 · Score: 3, Informative

Your missing the point and value of this project entirely. We're giving the community and users control over the design of there computing devices. Right now we're stuck behind crappy poorly supported proprietary systems full of backdoors and malicious code. Modern Intel and AMD systems, televisions, every Android device, most Raspberry Pi-like boards, tablets, and even routers have backdoors and other malicious features.
You can't replace wifi cards in most devices these days because manufactures like Intel are integrating the chips into the boards. All modern NUCs for instance ship with proprietary intel wifi chips. Companies like Linksys are undermining our freedom and calling it "open source" trapping us into a system that ensure we won't retain control over critical aspects of the firmwares. Without access to these pieces important user contributed features including good support for mesh networking will no longer be possible. A great example of this is Atheros moving all the important bits in its 802.11ac chips into the firmware and is now refusing to release the code. Atheros *was* one of the better companies, but not because Atheros is good. But because we had multiple free software activists inside the company and because of work my company did to push things forward.
We don't need more than 2GB. We want more than 2GB. And that's fine. We can do that. But the first priority has to be to get a basic system out the door and funded. There are already efforts to get code released for more powerful SOCs. In six months you'll be able to replace that 2GB dual-core 32BIT card with a quad core card. And clearly the issue is not with the 2GB of ram. The issue is with bloated desktop environments. That's a solvable problem by simply not utilizing said desktop environments. You simply can't buy a new computer for $65- but that's exactly what you will be able to do. These aren't intended to replace your high end Intel/AMD system just yet. That's farther out.
Re:Because.se one size does not fit all by lkcl · 2016-07-31 07:46 · Score: 3, Interesting

Not trying to be rude.
no offense taken: this is the internet... it's slashdot.... what you wrote is actually really helpful as a counterpoint: chris answered i think really well https://news.slashdot.org/comm...

, bill yourself as a fully open and environmentally friendly alt to the raspberry pi and similar.
*deep, deep breath*..... AAAAAAAAAAAgh no :) *shudder* no, no, nOooo, and no.
ok to explain my reaction, there: those are all SBCs (single-board computers). after six months of supernova-style popularity, they're dead. each manufacturer of each SBC has to scramble like mad to bring out *the next* SBC using whatever processor they can get their hands on, and the next, and the next, in a desperate cat-and-dog bitch-fight of popularity and unethical abuse of the word "open". ... am i painting a broad picture here of the *really* stark contrast between the approach taken by the embedded "educational" SBC clone market and what we're doing with EOMA68?
by total contrast we're creating the beginning of a comprehensive eco-system of hardware re-use which *happens* (through direct correlation) to both save money for end-users and also reduce e-waste.
but more than that: if we took the EOMA68-A20 board and turned it into an SBC, it would *INSTANTLY* be perceived as being a tired total waste-of-time banana pi or cubieboard clone... when in fact the irony is that those products exist *because* of the reverse-engineering and persistence that i applied to Allwinner to obtain GPL compliance. the sunxi community then helped take that initiative over, they've been working non-stop now for years to pressurise allwinner, and i've been helping quietly in the background ever since.
this project has a completely different focus in other words, where it succeeds if there is a *huge* compatible eco-system (tablet, laptop, router, camera, gps, media centre, lcd tv, games console - everything you can see on here http://rhombus-tech.net/commun... and many more) and a huge compatible range of EOMA68 Computer Cards (and an FPGA card and a Pass-through Card and a DisplayLink Card) with a wide price-range and crucially a decades-long-term "just plug it in, it will work" *stable* standard. ... massive, massive difference.
Re:Because.se one size does not fit all by lkcl · 2016-07-31 14:24 · Score: 1

The high end Intel/AMD system is already sufficiently modular and far more open than SoC and other embedded hardware.
... except that for the cost of the lowest-end intel/amd *processors* we can do an entire computer - memory, storage, processor, hdmi output, usb output *and* casework.
Re:Because.se one size does not fit all by chris2net23 · 2016-07-31 15:50 · Score: 1

It's not open at all unless by open you mean there is some code, but in reality it's a proprietary minefield There is proprietary CPU microcode and backdoors in modern Intel/AMD CPUs. We actually have all sources necessary to utilize core functionality and booting of the A20 CPU/SOCs and upcoming SOCs or released SOCs that can be utilized in future EOMA68 computer cards.
What is worse is that the cost of designing and manufacturing new systems is extreme for Intel/AMD. With EOMA68 you don't need to worry about that because you only need to scale the main component (computer card) in order to make it cost effective to manufacture other types of devices at a very low (comparatively) price point.
Not to mention that Intel/AMD are moving to integrated components which drastically increases the investment cost. If I have $80,000 to invest I can't buy 80 15.6" laptops without CPU and 80 14" laptops without CPUs. Then buy multiple different CPUs as needed (so in other words I have i3, i5, and i7). Because the Intel/AMD stuff is going integrated (ie soldered on at the factory) I am not limited to one CPU for each model and in reality that $80,000 might only be enough to get *ONE* 15.6" model. And don't even get me into the integration of wifi on devices. All newer Intel NUC systems are integrated. You are literally stuck on crappy proprietary Intel wifi chips.
Re:Because.se one size does not fit all by lkcl · 2016-08-01 04:10 · Score: 1

by total contrast we're creating the beginning of a comprehensive eco-system of hardware re-use which *happens* (through direct correlation) to both save money for end-users and also reduce e-waste.
In defence of the Raspberry Pi foundation's work, the ecosystem (peripherals, software, community) is what sets it apart from the sea of samey Allwinner-based SBCs. I really hope that the ecosystem you're building is as successful!
yeah it was the price-point for the feature-set at the right time that really got people's attention, in the same way that the $9 CHIP has grabbed people's attention now... but less so *because* the pi already exists.
so that area is "sewn up" and over-saturated. that's not *the* reason why i have taken the approach that i've taken - it's a different story, tackling a much larger set of systemic and underlying problems in the way that we (world-wide) think of and "consume" our computing appliances. never liked that word "consume". like, "how's that PCB tasting, sir? need some ketchup? how about some steel-reinforced dentures?"... :)

the sunxi community then helped take that initiative over, they've been working non-stop now for years to pressurise allwinner
I hope they have more luck with that than with their software. With all due respect, the linux-sunxi tools are poo, and are (in my experience) a big part of the reason most Allwinner SBCs are found running Android.
yeah if you don't receive any funding and have to do stuff part-time... nobody's very happy with allwinner, but the price-point on their SoCs and the overwhelming marketing success in China is extremely compelling - GPL-violating or not. but, y'know what? they're getting there. oliver and the team have managed to get most of CEDARX reverse-engineered, which is deeply impressive. http://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus must add that to the TODO list...
Re:Because.se one size does not fit all by lkcl · 2016-08-01 10:54 · Score: 1

Funny, I can buy an entire tablet (it has "memory, storage, processor, hdmi output, usb output *and* casework" and also screen, battery, cameras) with a latest-generation quadcore Intel processor and more storage for the proposed price for the SBC alone (no case).
i trust you understand that that was vs a desktop PC intel processor. i've seen this next type of comparison before as well (a lot) - another mass-produced mass-volume well-established manufacturer product vs an early concept libre and privacy respecting crowd-funded one. ... doesn't really mesh, does it? :)

Perhaps you aren't aware how low the low end of the Intel processor linecard goes? In particular, see the X3-C3230 and X5-Z8300.
i wasn't! oh _good_ - the collaboration between rockchip and intel actually produced results. why the hell didn't my contact at intel get in touch?? ok *sigh* i'll speak to him and find out if they have a reference design.... that *doesn't* have the backdoor co-processor in it....
Re:Because.se one size does not fit all by lkcl · 2016-08-01 11:17 · Score: 1

Perhaps you aren't aware how low the low end of the Intel processor linecard goes? In particular, see the X3-C3230 and X5-Z8300.
i wasn't! oh _good_ - the collaboration between rockchip and intel actually produced results. why the hell didn't my contact at intel get in touch?? ok *sigh* i'll speak to him and find out if they have a reference design.... that *doesn't* have the backdoor co-processor in it....
right. interesting. the "brief" - and by brief i mean "so sparse and devoid of information it's pretty useless" - says that it was released Q1 2015. i believe it wasn't long after this that intel announced the COMPLETE TERMINATION of their involvement in the smartphone and tablet industry.
now, whether that applies to the rockchip collaboration remains to be seen. anyway, thank you for making me aware of this one, i'll keep an eye on it.
l.
Re:Because.se one size does not fit all by tlhIngan · 2016-08-02 04:11 · Score: 1

1366x768 is very much on it's way out. (THANK GOD)
No it's not, unfortunately. It's just that people stopped trying to race to the bottom and produce only sub-$500 laptops that we have more options now (i.e., try to make more than a couple of bucks on a PC).
If you hunt for cheap laptops, 1366x768 is very much a common resolution. But now you can pay a little more, like say $1000, and get a laptop with a 1080p screen.
It's just that a few years ago, $1000 laptops weren't an option because few people were making one, save Apple.

Magnavox had a concept like this MANY years ago. by Eric+Freyhart · 2016-07-30 22:05 · Score: 1

Magnavox (at least I think it was Magnavox, it could have been Zenith), a long ago TV manufacturer, came up with a modular TV set just at the time when solid state devices were starting to take hold of the market. They envisioned a TV where each separate module could be replaced when it failed (tuner,sound amplifier, etc). It was so complex that almost no one could work on it. It was easier to just throw out the TV and buy a new one. Technology seems to go from very complex and expensive to "use and throw away". Calculators and standard watches are good examples. A calculator will cost you a few bucks at Walmart and when it breaks pitch it and get a new one. Computers will eventually get this way also. Pretty soon your super powerful personal computer (which you pretty much have now but they are called cell phones) will be pretty much like cell phones.

Re:What are the success criteria? by Oligonicella · 2016-07-30 22:16 · Score: 1

The same kind of approach could be adapted to the slashdot situation, breaking features

Unfortunately, SlashDot stopped there.

Future CPU cards (different CPU architectures) by mafm · 2016-07-30 22:22 · Score: 3, Interesting

Currently the CPU in the CPU-cards available in the campaign is an ARM 32 bits ("armhf" for Debian systems).

In the future, if things go well, there are plans to launch other CPU-cards that meet requirements of low power, hw and sw freedom (not requiring proprietary firmware blobs to run), etc. Other CPUs have been already considered, including different architectures, like MIPS. The housing (laptop, micro desktop, etc.) can be reused, it's just a matter of swapping the CPU-card -- that's one of the main points of this project.

I'm hoping that there's enough interest in the project and goes ahead, that the ecosystem thrives and other CPU-cards based on free designs like OpenRISC or RISC-V will be produced in the future.

Re:Future CPU cards (different CPU architectures) by JoeMerchant · 2016-07-30 22:40 · Score: 1

...I'm hoping that there's enough interest in the project and goes ahead, that the ecosystem thrives and other CPU-cards based on free designs like OpenRISC or RISC-V will be produced in the future.
What, you don't like SoftBank's ownership of ARM?
Re:Future CPU cards (different CPU architectures) by lkcl · 2016-07-31 03:11 · Score: 2

Currently the CPU in the CPU-cards available in the campaign is an ARM 32 bits ("armhf" for Debian systems).
and a Pass-Through Card just to make sure that people don't get the impression that EOMA68 is restricted to Software Libre, ARM processors *or* processors *at all*... https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo...

In the future, if things go well, there are plans to launch other CPU-cards that meet requirements of low power, hw and sw freedom (not requiring proprietary firmware blobs to run), etc. Other CPUs have been already considered, including different architectures, like MIPS. The housing (laptop, micro desktop, etc.) can be reused, it's just a matter of swapping the CPU-card -- that's one of the main points of this project.
i did a big evaluation here - bear in mind that this evaluation process has been continuous and ongoing for *five years*: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo...

I'm hoping that there's enough interest in the project and goes ahead, that the ecosystem thrives and other CPU-cards based on free designs like OpenRISC or RISC-V will be produced in the future.
OpenRISC was not designed around a harvard architecture so is extremely unlikely to go beyond around... 500mhz, even if it was in 10nm, due to insufficient pipeline lengths. it would be ultra-ultra-ultra-ultra low-power in those geometries but would never be capable of going beyond those speeds without a total redesign.
RISC-V on the other hand has been designed from the ground up around the lessons learned from generations of RISC development.... it's just that it's going to be about 3-6 *years* before a decent SoC is made based around it... there was one that *almost* had what was needed... i think this was discussed on the mailing list... basically if it has PCIe and the expectation that the CPU can be married with a PCIe-based Graphics Card, it's already too late: that's a Desktop system, minimum power consumption 150 watts.
my preferred approach is to work with e.g. Loongson Leemote MIPS64 -that's a tried-and-tested design that has hardware-accelerated support for 200+ x86 instructions and i hear some ARM ones as well, that allows foreign instruction sets to be executed at SEVENTY PERCENT of the actual MIPS64's own clockrate. which is pretty amazing.

Re:Very modular by mafm · 2016-07-30 22:35 · Score: 1

So how exactly do I upgrade the RAM without replacing the CPU?

It's not modular down to that level, it's modular in the sense that you can upgrade the CPU-card while keeping all the housing, and reuse the CPU-card for other devices like NAS, micro-servers, routers, etc. (or sell it, if there's enough market).

For example, if such CPU-cards are marketed in the future, you can swap the current ARM-32 bits CPU-card for a future ARM-64 bits in the laptop housing that you purchase (or 3D-print) today. You can even completely change the architecture to be MIPS or Intel, if such cards are created in the future.

When one looks into devices like laptops, tablets or mobile phone available in the market today, this project clearly offers a step forward in modularity for many classes of devices.

FSF's Respects Your Freedom certification by mafm · 2016-07-30 22:42 · Score: 2

Probably interesting for many folks around here... there are plans to submit these projects for the Free Software Foundation's Respects Your Freedom program (contacts already started).

Why? Its the economy, Stupid! by Anne+Thwacks · 2016-07-30 22:46 · Score: 2

if a single Software Libre Engineer can teach themselves PCB design and bring modular computing to people on the budget available from a single company, why are there not already a huge number of companies doing modular upgradeable hardware?

Volume is king in electronics. Surely everyone knows that here! In case you had not noticed, a computer is made from -

Less than a pint of oil (two pints if the case is mostly plastic)
Less than two pints of sand (Much less if no glass in the screen)
Not enough steel to make a wing panel for a Fiat Punto
Not enough copper to make an ashtray
Just about enough aluminium to make a saucepan
A couple of kilowatts of energy
VERY EXPENSIVE machine tools
HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of HOURS of VERY EXPENSIVE engineering time
MASSIVE AMOUNTS of special purpose tooling

The last three items are one-off costs, spread over the entire production volume. If your volume is high, they are negligible, if your volume is low, you are stuffed.

PCB design is a non-issue - if you don't pay the going rate. PCB test, debugging and verification, not so much. Hint: you cannot do your own quality control - no one spots their own errors.

--
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII

Re:Why? Its the economy, Stupid! by lkcl · 2016-07-31 03:16 · Score: 1

Volume is king in electronics.
thanks anne - appreciate the informative post. amazingly the computer cards are around $35 in volumes of 250 which puts them still well within the "affordable" bracket @ a pledge level of $65. which is one key reason why i have gone with the modular strategy - to get the Computer Cards into people's hands at an early phase. it's part of the bootstrapping process to get up to those mass-volume levels where the Computer Cards would only be around $16 in 20k volumes and the Laptop Housing's BOM would be around $150 or possibly even less.
with a modular approach, many of the NREs associated with product development can be amortised over a far longer time-period or a far greater volume, depending on whether we're talking about housings or computer cards respectively. i outline this strategy in more detail in the ecocomputing whitepaper. http://rhombus-tech.net/whitep...
Re:Why? Its the economy, Stupid! by lkcl · 2016-07-31 04:33 · Score: 1

VERY EXPENSIVE machine tools
HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of HOURS of VERY EXPENSIVE engineering time
MASSIVE AMOUNTS of special purpose tooling
The last three items are one-off costs, spread over the entire production volume. If your volume is high, they are negligible, if your volume is low, you are stuffed.
sorry, forgot to say:
VERY EXPENSIVE machine tools which is why i went with re-using of legacy PCMCIA casework. why pay $250k to get tooling made up and end up having to order 1 million units when you can re-use what already exists? tools costs wiped out....
HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of HOURS of VERY EXPENSIVE engineering time - or just one person over a looong time, doing things from home, backed by small sponsors, or by working part-time, but also doing things as a modular approach so that the main bulk of the designs (the "Housings") can be EASILY UPGRADED with a MINIMUM of work instead of requiring TOTAL REDESIGNs. cool, huh?
MASSIVE AMOUNTS of special purpose tooling - that's why i'm going with laser-cut maple plywood for the desktop casework, and with 3D-printed casework and bamboo plywood panels for the laptop. no special purpose tooling required... those costs are eliminated as well. in china, mohou.cn has network-3d-printed factories where because they get PLA in such bulk quantities they can do the casework for $35 instead of $70 which everyone else charges. $35 is actually affordable and is not that far off what it would cost in injection-molding. i think i'll stick with the bamboo panels and the multi-part (repairable) design, even for mass-production, i think it's cool :)

The real burning question ... by janoc · 2016-07-30 22:55 · Score: 1

"The real burning question is: if a single Software Libre Engineer can teach themselves PCB design and bring modular computing to people on the budget available from a single company, why are there not already a huge number of companies doing modular upgradeable hardware?"

Well, because it is economical BS. 99.9% of the market doesn't give a damn about modularity (cf. scaling back of the project Ara from Google) or whether or not the device designer had to sign an NDA to get documentation for a chip or not or whether there is only libre software in it. All that only makes the hardware more complex, more difficult to produce and in the end more expensive.

The fact that they have to crowdfunding campaign (which isn't exactly going gangbusters) is the evidence.

The openness, the libre software, the modularity are things which matter to geeks but are not a sustainable business model alone. These people need to get out of their ivory tower sometime.

Re:The real burning question ... by Lumpy · 2016-07-31 01:05 · Score: 1

Yep. 99.9764% of all consumers care about "price" first and "sustainability and green-ness" absolutely dead last.
Not one consumer will pay 25% more for a computer that is compostable and will not poison the environment after it is thrown away.

--
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Re:The real burning question ... by lkcl · 2016-07-31 03:24 · Score: 1

Yep. 99.9764% of all consumers care about "price" first and "sustainability and green-ness" absolutely dead last.
Not one consumer will pay 25% more for a computer that is compostable and will not poison the environment after it is thrown away.
you will be ironically amazed to learn that "eco" correlates *directly* with "price". the more you pay, the more you empower someone to do environmental damage... somewhere and somehow on the planet.
so i've learned to simply say, "long-term this will save you money! buy a $50 computer card every year instead of a $500 laptop every year! saves you money!!! buy two housings and only one computer card and save 40%!" and many other things (without the exclamation marks...) not even *mentioning* the eco-benefits... which *i* know and am confident are automatically inherently a part of reducing the cost (i.e. the materials used).
yes i read the slashdot article a few months back about people being selfish eco-sociopaths, not giving a f*** about the environment but caring about their wallets. irony is that these two things are logically equivalent: the trick is to sell people on the modular approach so that they can save *even more* by selling the older computer cards on ebay so the cost of upgrading is even less than the price of the new computer card... thus... oh look! that older computer card stays out of landfill, how about that, isn't that a turn-up for the books, huh?

Re:hipster pi zero clone by ruir · 2016-07-30 22:55 · Score: 1

The Pi firmware is very far of an open device. It needs binary blobs to boot.

Re:no binary blobs by ruir · 2016-07-30 22:56 · Score: 1

I also am not getting that part...

Open, certified by FSF by ruir · 2016-07-30 23:01 · Score: 1

While not impossible, I find it hard to believe. I also have an A20 ARM board, a Lamobo R1 that after I cut physically the damn realtek ship is very similar in architecture to this card. Guess what...it is not open, it needs binary blobs to boot in graphic mode at least. It also quite sad there is still not a more modern ARM SoC besides the A20 that supports SATA directly connected to the CPU.

Re:Open, certified by FSF by lkcl · 2016-07-31 03:19 · Score: 1

While not impossible, I find it hard to believe. I also have an A20 ARM board, a Lamobo R1 that after I cut physically the damn realtek ship is very similar in architecture to this card. Guess what...it is not open, it needs binary blobs to boot in graphic mode at least.
i've outlined the process in some detail in other posts, as to how we manage to apply for RYF Certification. see http://slashdot.org/~lkcl and look back in the comments. you should investigate xf86-video-fbturbo - it uses G2D. you do NOT need mali.ko for standard desktop work, and in fact you may end up overloading the processor unnecessarily if you are trying to use the proprietary 3D GPU for nothing more than simple 2D GPU style tasks.

It also quite sad there is still not a more modern ARM SoC besides the A20 that supports SATA directly connected to the CPU.
i know... well the R40 is coming out soon.

Re:Magnavox had a concept like this MANY years ago by swb · 2016-07-30 23:07 · Score: 1

Wasn't there a brief modular TV trend in the early 90s where the idea was that the TV was a monitor and you bought components like a stereo, or probably more correctly, they were thought of as stereo-type components to be added to the component stereo system?

I think it was at about the peak of VHS as a technology, when TV broadcasts were in stereo and VHS had hi-fi stereo audio and better TVs had at least composite if not SVHS video.

Now most people use them that way despite the TV industry never giving up its thick feature set, tuners (which later became cable-ready, then digital capable and then worthless with digital cable boxes), and now smart features.

it's been done by dbase4 · 2016-07-30 23:12 · Score: 1

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

Re:What? by h33t+l4x0r · 2016-07-30 23:21 · Score: 1

Wow, Just a regular tech story and this nonsense gets modded up. Has /. gone over to the dark side.?

Fully open, even the laptop embedded controller by aaribaud · 2016-07-30 23:38 · Score: 1

Note that the EOMA-68's HW and SW is Open Source, which means — among others — that:

- your EOMA-68 won't sport any hidden feature which you shouldn't know about;
- your OS will not stop being maintained at some point just because "the product is not on our catalog any more";
- you can actually fix (or have a more technically inclined friend fix) OS or firmware bugs without having to wait until a company issues an update (if it ever does—see previous point);
- you have a much better chance of being able to diagnose and possibly repair (or have a friend fix) a hardware issue on your EOMA-68 or laptop housing than you have on a standard computer;
- you can actually improve and extend the SW of your EOMA-68 as you see fit.

But better yet: the laptop housing's Embedded Controller, the microprocessor which controls the keyboard, track pad, power and a few other things, is open too!

Add to this the fact that the track pad is actually a LCD and touch screen, and the possibilities are endless. You could develop new features such as:

- configuring your track pad to provide any number of buttons and scrolls and show them;
- making that track pad configuration vary depending on the context.=;
- showing and managing volume controls on the track pad;
- main screen locking/unlocking from the track pad;
- supporting your non-US keyboard layout directly out of power-on (ok, this one will be somewhat limited by the USB HID specs);
- playing console-like games directly on the track pad. :) (possibly even with the EOMA-68 card off if the game can fit in the EC entirely)
...

Re:Fully open, even the laptop embedded controller by lkcl · 2016-07-31 04:06 · Score: 1

What you really have is an overly expensive slow phone clone, with ugly ass cases.
it's not a phone, but i get your point. if you could do better, what would you do on your available personal budget that would be better?

Re:no binary blobs by maeka · 2016-07-30 23:53 · Score: 1

A20 now has open source graphics driver? is it actually usable for accelerated graphics (composition in X) ?

No, there is no open source graphics driver for the A20's MALI. However the FSF will look the other way and grant an exception if the GPU is not used and graphics are processed on the CPU. This is what they have done with the one variant of the system they are having certified. They are selling (at least) two others which are not certified.

Great for boring appliances by Idimmu+Xul · 2016-07-31 00:15 · Score: 1

This could be cool for an HTPC emulator kind of thing, there doesn't seem to be much mention of the graphics/video playback capabilities though?

--
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!

Re:no binary blobs by jonwil · 2016-07-31 00:16 · Score: 1

And of course if http://limadriver.org/ is ever advanced to the point where it is usable on whatever flavor of Mali GPU the A20 has, the whole issue will become moot and no blobs will be required anymore.

GPU? by Narishma · 2016-07-31 00:18 · Score: 1

They claim that they removed the Mali GPU from the SoC in order to be 100% free. Is that even possible? Did they get AllWinner to make them a special chip without the GPU? And how are the graphics handled if there is no GPU?

--
Mada mada dane.

Re:GPU? by lkcl · 2016-07-31 03:26 · Score: 1

They claim that they removed the Mali GPU from the SoC in order to be 100% free
no we didn't.

Is that even possible?
no it isn't

Did they get AllWinner to make them a special chip without the GPU?
no we didn't.

And how are the graphics handled if there is no GPU?
answered here https://slashdot.org/comments....
Re:GPU? by DuckDodgers · 2016-07-31 03:39 · Score: 1

The FSF-approved Linux distribution (or GNU/Linux, whatever) "Parabola" that they offer won't include the firmware for the GPU, and does all graphics processing and calculations on the CPU. So the GPU is included on the chip but it's not used.
Re:GPU? by lkcl · 2016-07-31 04:09 · Score: 1

The FSF-approved Linux distribution (or GNU/Linux, whatever) "Parabola" that they offer won't include the firmware for the GPU, and does all graphics processing and calculations on the CPU. So the GPU is included on the chip but it's not used.
... not quite: again, the phoronix thread had people explain this in some detail, it's 200 comments so i won't go looking for it, i have too much ground to cover, but the key discrepancy in what you said is that the 2D GPU is up and running: we're *not* doing "pure framebuffer". so there's far less load on the CPU than would otherwise be expected. see the very first update, in which i got xf86-video-fbturbo up and running on the Parabola-ARM Gnu/Linux-Libre card: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo...
Re:GPU? by DuckDodgers · 2016-07-31 04:25 · Score: 1

Thanks for the correction, and I apologize for spreading misinformation!
Re:GPU? by lkcl · 2016-07-31 07:18 · Score: 1

no problem d - we learn by making comparisons...

Re:Magnavox had a concept like this MANY years ago by sumdumass · 2016-07-31 00:28 · Score: 1

I don't know what brand it was but back inn the early to mid 80s, we had a TV that was ghosting the immage and the sound would cut out at times. The TV repair guy still actually came to the house back then and I watched him work on it. He replaced two modular boards which was new to me because i was use to the tubes. He said the boards would be fixed back at a shop but was in and out in about 30 minutes complete with running test patterns on the screen and some audio thing for the speakers.

I don't know if that is the same or not. I'm wanting to say it was an RCA tv but it was a console with a 32 inch screen and was more like a piece of furniture than modern sleek TVs that sits on top of furniture.

Same stupidity from the 90's by Lumpy · 2016-07-31 01:03 · Score: 1

"They envision a world where users upgrade their computers by simply popping in a new card "

Intel had the same idea... and it was a giant failure.

Unless the "card" is a whole new computer that slots into a thin plastic case, this is 100% impossible.

--
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.

Re:Same stupidity from the 90's by mafm · 2016-07-31 01:22 · Score: 1
Unless the "card" is a whole new computer that slots into a thin plastic case, this is 100% impossible.
In a way, it's basically what you say -- a "card" that slots into thin plastic case... Except:
- wooden, actually (for the current micro-desktop)
- and a laptop case which is mostly plastic, only with added components (battery, LCD, keyboard, touchpad and so on) that you don't need / want to throw away when you upgrade the heart of your computer
Re:Same stupidity from the 90's by lkcl · 2016-07-31 03:32 · Score: 1

"They envision a world where users upgrade their computers by simply popping in a new card "
Intel had the same idea... and it was a giant failure.
i'm not surprised. intel literally cannot make a low-enough processor without sacrificing their pride. they just had to abandon the entire smartphone and tablet market a few months ago because of their pride.

Unless the "card" is a whole new computer that slots into a thin plastic case, this is 100% impossible.
it's a whole new computer in credit-card-sized form-factor (5mm x 54mm x 86mm - it's PCMCIA casework after all). it's stainless steel thin casework (0.1mm thick). so... not impossible at all. in fact, so not impossible that i managed to do it on a budget of $20k (which i got down to $1800 by the 3rd revision, after teaching myself PCB CAD design).
pictures. here. http://s.4pda.to/9hDP9BsrgvB1a...
and here http://rhombus-tech.net/allwin...
and videos here https://www.youtube.com/result...
and... you get the idea. it *exists*. it's not even 100% impossible, it's actually 100% *possible* i.e. *done* already. ... which still doesn't explain why the hell no major manufacturer hasn't even tried this exact same approach.
Re:Same stupidity from the 90's by lkcl · 2016-07-31 03:33 · Score: 1

wooden, actually (for the current micro-desktop)
and a laptop case which is mostly plastic,
... don't forget *3D printed* plastic.... :) so you can repair it yourself or replace the casework parts if you want a change of scenery.... :)
Re:Same stupidity from the 90's by DuckDodgers · 2016-07-31 03:53 · Score: 1

That's the idea, actually - a whole new computer that slots into the case.

The sacrifice is performance - if you read comments by the project founder, in order to have tiny swappable cards they're targeting something like a 3.5 watt power draw. So the device is a few generations behind the latest ARM chips, and is running at smart phone power levels. So the big wins are modularity and freedom, the big loss is that your modular 2017 mini-computer or laptop has the computing power of a 2013 smart phone.

I think the inclination for most people is to stop reading there and forget about the project. And I understand that. But if a Chromebook and a smart phone is sufficient computing power for more than half the population, then this idea genuinely could have a future. The 2017 EOMA68 with 2GB of RAM and a dual core ARM processor that launched in 2013 might be a novelty for hobbyists and fanatic FSF nerds (I am one of the latter). But the 2021 EOMA68 with maybe 6GB of RAM - which you can get today in the OnePlus Three - and a hexa-core or octo-core ARM processor from 2017? That's probably fine for 90% of the computer users in the country. Software developers, graphic artists, video editors, and PC gamers wouldn't use it. Everyone else could.
Re:Same stupidity from the 90's by lkcl · 2016-07-31 04:23 · Score: 1

There is no money in it for the big players.
hoooraaay, congratulations on being the first person in this thread to notice :) profit-maximisation is achieved through *deliberate* obsolescence, and cooperation through standards compliance is viewed as "an opportunity for competitors to step in and take over the market that you created".

You do not want to sell individual components.
You want consumers to buy a whole new thing, paying for everything new, even if the old trackpad or display of the old one is still working. More money there.
in theory... yes. but the profit margins on laptops are becoming so much tighter it's becoming ridiculous. it's around 10% for the *ENTIRE CHAIN*. not 10% for the factory, 10% for the middle-man, 10% for the salesman... it's 10% *TOTAL*. no wonder they're pushing extended warranties so hard: that's the only place to actually make money.

Plus you can not push new technologies. People will stay with their old trackpad, display, cpu/mem and update only what they want. Bad for business, it slows adaptation. ...
There is absolute no market for it.
hooray. so the entire market for a modular ecocomputing approach is open to meeee, yippeee! :)
Re:Same stupidity from the 90's by lkcl · 2016-07-31 06:49 · Score: 1

A very tiny and again short lived market for you then.
This product has one selling point, modular. Which has absolutely no value. Nobody cares if their pc is modular or not, it just have to work.
It could work if like the case is 100 bucks or something in that range and looks designed, but to ask 500$ for an unassembled...
and 1200$ for... I mean, i can buy a macbook for that.
ok, so you're comparing a mass-produced product that's been refined by a billion-dollar company that has a track record of taking software libre source code and using it without actually funding or compensating the people whom their profits are critically dependent on... against a crowd-funded *prototype* project that's entirely transparent, is deliberately limiting the first prototype production run to around 250 units, where the majority of the funds goes towards NREs and to ensuring that the project can reach the next critical phase so that it can get *to* that next larger volume production run... and many many other aspects that make it a totally different proposition... ... i therefore don't really understand what you're trying to say.
Re:Same stupidity from the 90's by lkcl · 2016-07-31 14:45 · Score: 1

As a consumer, yeah! I am not a bank. And seeing your prices. pfff...
Thus basically you're asking people to fund with a zero interest loan, not only your pet project but also your eduction.
absolutely correct on both counts (despite the clear hatred, jealousy and patronising in your voice which can be detected from the use of the word "pet"). that's exactly how ethical crowd funding projects work. the unethical ones such as the pi-top and many of the china-based 3d printers that steal marlin GPL'd firmware, they teach people a hard lesson... but it's still education. as a software libre developer i will be documenting everything so that other people can learn, just as i learned from the openmoko, openpandora, ben nanonote, neo900, and many many more.

And you use words like "project that's entirely transparent", but the majority of the funds goes towards NRE (which could be anything)
What critical phase? You telling me that only 250 units will maybe be produced as prototype and then there is this magical critical phase?
How transparent are you...
Really...
Really?
i don't understand your point, i'm having difficulty interpreting the meaning, it's obscured by sarcasm. could you please clarify, perhaps by dropping the sarcasm, it's getting in the way of what you want to say.

Re:no binary blobs by maeka · 2016-07-31 01:39 · Score: 1

Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath on an under-manned RE GPU driver ever seeing the light of day.

We're beyond 4 years w/o commits.

Diverse double-compiling by tepples · 2016-07-31 01:48 · Score: 1

When is the last time you check all the code.

True, practice not meeting theory led to Heartbleed. But Heartbleed woke the industry, and now audits of free software have become somewhat more common. Audits for binary blobs aren't practical at all.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TheKenThompsonHack

Obsoleted by the David A. Wheeler defense.

This is just expensive hipster stuff with an ugly 3d printed case, no merit...

The merit is ability to show to suits that there exists a market for modular battery-powered computers with additive manufactured cases.

Wicked fast swap file by tepples · 2016-07-31 01:55 · Score: 1

By adding a RAM SSD and putting the swap file on it. Then the SOC's internal RAM becomes in effect a cache for your RAM SSD.

Re:What are the success criteria? by lkcl · 2016-07-31 02:02 · Score: 2

Sounds interesting, but I'd have to see a complete proposal before I'd chip in. I'd want to see the schedule, the budget, the resources, and the success criteria to know if the project succeeded.

most of the information you've asked for, because this is a *genuinely* open and transparent project, is on http://rhombus-tech.net/crowds... - including the BOM, a full risk analysis, and much more. having been around for a long time, long enough to have seen the openmoko fail, and the pi-top team break their promises, and the shit-storm that resulted from the purism team's deceptive marketing, and the difficulties that the openpandora team had with R.F. and firmware: if you have any specific advice, TELL ME. i WANT TO KNOW. best place to do that is the mailing list because then other people can help evaluate your proposals and questions - http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipe...

The summary sounds way too grand, so I think I'd want to see it broken down into pieces that are small enough to understand, too.

it's been five years: that's a lot of time to think, plan and get everything lined up. if you're interested in the background as to *why* i am tackling this, it may help to read the background section (first question) http://lkcl.net/articles/eoma6...

"breaking it down into small pieces" it turns out is extraordinarily difficult. the simplest i've found is, "you know like a pause memory pause card? yeah? well this is a pause computer pause card. same benefits as memory cards except now you move the *whole computer*". but even that often is not conceptually enough. after repeating things about 200 to 250 times at hope2016 (and losing my voice on the first day) there's a live video which you can find at https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo... - i managed to get it down to *only* 3 minutes, to cover *a few* of the benefits. the rest (that i have been able to think of over the past five years) are covered here in the "scenarios" section: http://rhombus-tech.net/whitep...

Also important to make sure nothing is overlooked, such as sufficient testing. Be fine if the same organization that helped check the proposal evaluated and reported on the results (perhaps holding the money, too).

well - it's just me, self-auditing with an "always transparent GENUINELY open approach learned from software libre project management of 20 years" unless other people pop up to help. so, you and everyone else on the mailing list will just have to keep an eye on me. and help out with the testing... because it's a software libre project, and i can't do everything, so *need help*. funny and really cool story: a guy called albert contacted me last month, asked if there was any plans to do a french keyboard. i went (internally), "argh, haven't got time, let's point him at the git repo and tell him about the STM32F072 nucleo boards, see what happens" and surpriiise! turns out he's an embedded hardware engineer... so guess what? he's now joined the mailing list and is helping to do french keyboard firmware and much more! https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo... and you can check the mailing list archives as well.

P.S. I think this is a solution to the general problems with all of the crowdfunding systems that I have examined. No accountability or adequate planning.

you're telling me. i spoke to a battery manufacturer last year: we had a bit of a laugh as he explained that a *FUNDED* project for a head-wearable device contacted them and asked him to violate the laws of physics. they'd used a high

Re:Won't happen by lkcl · 2016-07-31 02:17 · Score: 2

What you don't realize is that none of that means it won't happen, it just means Joe Average User won't end up buying it.

There is lots of open, modular electronics already. Your boogeyman didn't pop out.

sorry, i don't understand. could you possibly expand on this, perhaps help review the logic analysis behind the modular standards that i've reviewed over the past five years, if you feel that i've missed any or missed anything, please do let me know. the list that i maintain, including comprehensive analysis, is here: http://elinux.org/Embedded_Ope...

the issues to take into account are: it must be absolutely simple, it must absolutely work, and it must not break (due to mechanical or EMI issues). we just saw a report only last month a journalist (who was happy to say that he has "big fat fingers") trying to assemble and upgrade a Gaming PC - he just couldn't cope. and that's a "modular" design, isn't it? exposed electronics, fiddly parts - all modular mind you! - he was absolutely shit-scared of dropping screws and shorting out $1000+ worth of parts.

by total contrast, robust memory-card-form-factor casework is simple, works, and is protected mechanically and is EMI (static) shielded. if however you know of any other modular industry standards that fit these criteria, please do tell me because i will need to evaluate them and adapt accordingly.

Re:Won't happen by DuckDodgers · 2016-07-31 02:21 · Score: 1

Agreed. If computing devices running a fully FSF-approved software stack became wildly popular - 3% or more of the computing market - then the major players in proprietary computing and the surveillance industry would move to block them. Until then, we're too small to care about and the bad publicity from actively blocking us would probably help us more than hurting us.

The bigger risk is that the creator mis-estimates some of the financial or technical hurdles in the project and runs out of money before delivering most of the pledge rewards. Up until now, all of my crowd funding pledges have been for games and books.

Re:hipster pi zero clone by DuckDodgers · 2016-07-31 02:23 · Score: 1

If the device runs open source software from top to bottom, the way to escape your malicious binaries is just to recompile everything myself. Problem solved.

Re:Won't happen by lkcl · 2016-07-31 02:50 · Score: 1

Agreed. If computing devices running a fully FSF-approved software stack became wildly popular - 3% or more of the computing market - then the major players in proprietary computing and the surveillance industry would move to block them.

Until then, we're too small to care about and the bad publicity from actively blocking us would probably help us more than hurting us.

i'm counting on that :) i am sooo looking forward to the streissand effect... :)

but to clarify: it's important to emphasise that this is *NOT* restricted to FSF-approved software. it so happens that because it will be really hard for proprietary OSes to fully support all the Housings *unless* they are based around GNU/Linux driver stacks it's *really unlikely* that there will be any proprietary OSes installed on EOMA68-compliant Computer Cards, it's not totally out of the realm of possibility. but, more than that, EOMA68 is a *hardware* standard. it's perfectly possible to have an EOMA68-FPGA card, or an EOMA68 "DisplayLink" card, or a Pass-through card which i deliberately added to the list just to get this point across. boring name for a really exciting and flexible concept, but i'm a techie, what can i say? https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo...

The bigger risk is that the creator mis-estimates some of the financial or technical hurdles in the project and runs out of money before delivering most of the pledge rewards. Up until now, all of my crowd funding pledges have been for games and books.

i'm a software libre developer of over 20 years experience. i've seen open hardware projects rise up and fail. the whole project's run along fully-transparent lines because i loved that i could learn from the mistakes as well as the successes made by the openmoko, openpandora and many many more. i did a comparative analysis (of the laptop-related ones) here https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo...

now, when you know that i've held back from committing to several opportunities over the past five years, because the *standard* is more important than profit-maximisation, that i've designed the standard extremely carefully and comprenhsively and am on record as being committed to the standard's success for at least a decade, and you know that i'm a software libre developer with 20 years experience, and you know that i've evaluated a dozen different alternative standards, and decided *not* to go with kickstarter because they're not completely ethical, and many many other things, you should get the general feeling that i'll be not only making *sure* that i succeed at this, but that, thanks to the transparent way in which the project's run along TRULY software libre project management lines, i actually *want* help and for people to review what i'm doing, and to contribute in any way they feel comfortable. or uncomfortable, if it comes to it. if you feel like shouting at me with a genuine concern - something that could jeapordise the entire project - for god's sake get on the mailing list or the IRC channel #arm-netbook on freenode and do so.

regarding technical hurdles: i answered this in another comment (go to http://slashdot.org/~lkcl it's 2 back from this one) with a funny story about a successfully-funded team contacting a battery manufacturer asking them to violate the laws of physics. i've pretty much comprehensively covered all of the technical hurdles that i can think of - and documented them. and invited people to review them. because this really is an open and transparent project. do take a look: let me know if i missed anything. http://rhombus-tech.net/crowds... and google "eoma68" on youtube, review the videos.

Re:no binary blobs by lkcl · 2016-07-31 02:59 · Score: 1

A20 now has open source graphics driver? is it actually usable for accelerated graphics (composition in X) ?

No, there is no open source graphics driver for the A20's MALI. However the FSF will look the other way and grant an exception if the GPU is not used and graphics are processed on the CPU. This is what they have done with the one variant of the system they are having certified. They are selling (at least) two others which are not certified.

that's a rather.... that's a misunderstanding of how the FSF operates. i didn't fully understand the criteria until it was explained to me a few months ago by josh gay. the primary concern is, "will a non-technical user end up arbitrarily executing privacy-violating malware WITHOUT THEIR KNOWLEDGE"? so things like the Debian synaptics package manager providing a simple-to-use point-and-click option to enable the "nonfree" repository WITHOUT ANY WARNING WHATSOEVER OF THE CONSEQUENCES is one of their worst nightmares.

this really did surprise me, but in the case of the MALI GPU, because it is entirely memory-mapped, there is *literally* no way for the average end-user to even *know that it's there*. "lspci" returns nothing (because there's no PCI/PCIe bus on the A20). "lsusb" returns... USB peripherals the GUI-equivalents of these two programs would also return... nothing.

now, we may say "but... but... someone who is technically-aware or who could follow instructions could recompile the kernel and add mali.ko!!!! wtf????!!?!?!?!" and the answer is "that's not an average end-user, is it?".

there was a huge debate about this on phoronix a couple of weeks ago - i won't go through all of them, just drop you somewhere in the middle with a link - but basically xf86-video-fbturbo works really well with the libre-compliant, GPL-compliant 2D GPU (called G2D) on the A20, which, for the purposes of doing email, internet, libreoffice, image editing (gimp supports PDF, PS, PNG and many more) - 2D acceleration is actually *better* and more power-efficient than *3D* acceleration. if you ever tried running compiz on a standard intel laptop and wondered why the fan just won't stop spinning, you'll know what i'm talking about. anyway - here's the link to phoronix... https://www.phoronix.com/forum...

Re:no binary blobs by maeka · 2016-07-31 03:14 · Score: 1

I don't see anything relevant there on page 17 of the thread you linked. Was there something in specific you're you're trying to point out?

Re:Magnavox had a concept like this MANY years ago by Eric+Freyhart · 2016-07-31 03:31 · Score: 1

All TV's before around 1978 used vacuum tubes and a few discrete components mounted to boards within the cabinet that were all hard wired together. Around the early 80s they got smart and installed anything they could (sound system, receiver, etc) into plug in boards on the main board along with any vacuum tubes needed that could not be replaced with solid state devices.

Re:hipster pi zero clone by lkcl · 2016-07-31 03:37 · Score: 1

And there is still the fact that there is software which is baked in inside the hardware chips, you can not audit that. How do you want to verify and compile that? You just have to trust the manufactures of those chips and their specs, and hope they do not have hidden functions...

the advantage of the modular approach is that we can play one manufacturer off against the other: we can play "Prisoner's Dilemma" at them. not just on security features but also on pricing and on GPL compliance.

it only takes about 6-8 weeks to get an entire new Computer Card made up, on a budget. if we had a team of people and a large budget that could be cut down to a matter of 3 weeks. the "usual" lock-in associated with hermetically-sealed and single-board monolithic designs is now entirely GONE.

Re:What? by lkcl · 2016-07-31 03:43 · Score: 1

Wow, Just a regular tech story and this nonsense gets modded up. Has /. gone over to the dark side.?

dunno about /. but EOMA68 definitely has... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Very modular by lkcl · 2016-07-31 03:44 · Score: 1

somebody asked this on reddit - full answer here: https://www.reddit.com/r/frees...

Re:no binary blobs by lkcl · 2016-07-31 04:02 · Score: 1

you'll have to look around, i summarised it already, but i apologise i'm dealing with reading and responding non-stop to comments here as well as other forums and incoming campaign questions. if someone else spots the discussion i'm referring to please do link it here, many many thanks.

Re:What? by lkcl · 2016-07-31 04:04 · Score: 1

No backdoors? No spyware? No NDAs?

i know, right? such a novel concept! and we can play prisoner's dilemma with the SoC manufacturers as well, to keep them honest.

Hillary Clinton and NAWBO would never stand for that!!!

who? what? non-US citizen and geek to boot... :)

Re:Won't happen by DuckDodgers · 2016-07-31 04:28 · Score: 1

I should have worded my post differently and qualified my statements. My best guess from the sidelines is that you're approaching this from a well-informed, well-planned angle and everything I've read and watched built my trust. I pledged to support the project.

But I still think that those angles are the most likely cause of trouble. Hopefully nothing comes up or you're able to adjust for everything that does come up. I appreciate all of your free software work, by the way - I've used Samba before myself.

Re:hipster pi zero clone by DuckDodgers · 2016-07-31 04:32 · Score: 1

I misunderstood the parent post author and thought he was referring to malicious code in the compiled binaries for the EOMA68. Obviously if there is malicious code compiled into the compiler binaries, the problem is orders of magnitude harder to address. Are you suggesting we just give up on computing?

But my PC is already modular. by sbaker · 2016-07-31 04:34 · Score: 1

I have an ANCIENT (>10 years old) Dell XPS desktop machine - and last week, the motherboard failed. Went to Fry's paid $65 for a new motherboard and $120 for a new CPU (which included a new cooling fan). My RAM modules were too ancient to run in the new motherboard - so I spent another $60 for a couple of RAM modules. To my surprise, the original power supply, graphics card, hard drive, DVD drive and case all fitted perfectly - and a simple reboot got me back into Ubuntu as if nothing had happened - I was back up and running in an hour.

Sure, the CPU socket had changed - and my decade-old DDR-2 memory wouldn't work in the DDR-3/4 motherboard - but aside from that, modularity worked 100% perfectly. I could have chosen from a dozen different CPU's and a similar number of RAM suppliers and any one of a dozen motherboards - and the outcome would have been the same. None of the replacement parts were made by Dell. The screwholes for the motherboard matched up perfectly, the cutouts in the case for the connectors and graphics card lined up nicely and even the connectors for the buttons and USB ports on the front panel plugged in perfectly. The various blanking pins on the connectors prevented me from plugging in the various wires into the wrong connectors...I could have done it without the instruction books.

So the desktop PC "standard" is already an incredibly modular system. The problem is that (by modern standards) it's physically huge.

For small systems like IOT devices, the cost of "the computer" including graphics, networking, RAM, long-term-storage is down to $10 or less...so modularity at that scale is just pointless - increasing the cost by adding connectors between the parts is just silly.

For systems at the scale of a cellphone, modularity is a tough sell because the physical form-factor has to fit perfectly with the shape of the battery and screen and heat management is a big issue - so making a *usefully* modular phone is challenging.

The real issue is modular laptops. It's a real pain if you screen gets cracked or your motherboard or power supply fails. But you don't need modularity at the electronics level - it's all about modular cases and connectors. You could take pretty much any laptop design and simply declare that to be "THE STANDARD" and manufacturers could come up with replacement electronics, storage, screen and keyboard units.

It doesn't take clever design, it takes the political and commercial agreement of a gazillion manufacturers to pick a form-factor, connectors and other interfaces AND STICK TO IT for a minimum of 15 years.

Simply coming up with a new laptop design and declaring it to be "THE STANDARD" is useless unless you can get a lot of very large companies to sign up to it...and that ain't happening. This isn't a matter of technical innovation - it's all about the politics of those big businesses.

Software has been relatively "modular" for a very long time. You can buy software, download free software or write your own - and it's pretty simple to make it work on the trifecta of OSX, Windows and Linux - and trivially easy if you can make it web-based. But it's very evident that the business model of most companies these days is to lock you in to buying music/video/apps from their "app store"...that's where the $$$'s are...so expect to see more moves like MS's efforts to lock down Win-10 so you have to buy apps through their store.

--
www.sjbaker.org

Re:But my PC is already modular. by lkcl · 2016-07-31 05:23 · Score: 2

I have an ANCIENT (>10 years old) Dell XPS desktop machine - and last week, the motherboard failed. Went to Fry's paid $65 for a new motherboard and $120 for a new CPU (which included a new cooling fan). My RAM modules were too ancient to run in the new motherboard - so I spent another $60 for a couple of RAM modules. To my surprise, the original power supply, graphics card, hard drive, DVD drive and case all fitted perfectly - and a simple reboot got me back into Ubuntu as if nothing had happened - I was back up and running in an hour.
Sure, the CPU socket had changed - and my decade-old DDR-2 memory wouldn't work in the DDR-3/4 motherboard - but aside from that, modularity worked 100% perfectly. I could have chosen from a dozen different CPU's and a similar number of RAM suppliers and any one of a dozen motherboards - and the outcome would have been the same.
... you're aware that intel has moved *away* from socketed CPUs and is forcing BGA onto manufacturers, now? you're really lucky to have been able to find a motherboard that suited you which didn't have the BGA-soldered processor on it.

So the desktop PC "standard" is already an incredibly modular system. The problem is that (by modern standards) it's physically huge.
For small systems like IOT devices, the cost of "the computer" including graphics, networking, RAM, long-term-storage is down to $10 or less...so modularity at that scale is just pointless - increasing the cost by adding connectors between the parts is just silly.
... and actually causes huge reliability and manufacturing issues. yeah. you get it. which is great to see.

For systems at the scale of a cellphone, modularity is a tough sell because the physical form-factor has to fit perfectly with the shape of the battery and screen and heat management is a big issue - so making a *usefully* modular phone is challenging.
dave hakkens is *PISSED*, man. like, really *really* disappointed and betrayed by google. all that money and they *claim* open-ness but actually instead they're just strengthening the positions of the existing cartels. what a fucking waste. the sad thing is, i spotted all this years ago, but it's taken everyone else (and dave) quite a while to catch up, because most people are non-technical and do not have a reverse-engineering background https://davehakkens.nl/news/re...

The real issue is modular laptops.
that's why i'm tackling it: to make sure it's done right, and in a transparent way, with a standard that's *genuinely* open.

It's a real pain if you screen gets cracked or your motherboard or power supply fails. But you don't need modularity at the electronics level - it's all about modular cases and connectors.
and having the right *to* repair or 3d-print those modular case parts.

You can buy software, download free software or write your own - and it's pretty simple to make it work on the trifecta of OSX, Windows and Linux - and trivially easy if you can make it web-based. But it's very evident that the business model of most companies these days is to lock you in to buying music/video/apps from their "app store"...that's where the $$$'s are...so expect to see more moves like MS's efforts to lock down Win-10 so you have to buy apps through their store.
one thing that hadn't occurred to me (but i must add to the standard, to protect against), is that DRM is going to be totally ineffective in modular computing. you can't *possibly* agree a DRM standard across a truly open architecture: it just doesn't work when access to all the hardware relies critically on drivers that are released under GPLv2+ licenses.
i mean... they can _try_... but it will be a hell of a job to maintain.
so i think i'm safe in adding "hardware-level DRM simply not
Re:But my PC is already modular. by Anne+Thwacks · 2016-07-31 07:15 · Score: 1

The problem is that (by modern standards) it's physically huge
Any smaller and it would not hold a DVD drive, an LTO drive and a DAT drive, and still have somewhere to put USB sticks and SD cards, not to mention the place required for SCSI cards.
As someone who actually saw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v4Juzn10gM EDSAC working, I think the standard tower PC case is about right, and I KNOW that tape will keep my data for 30 years (I have read my own backups 30 years later), and I know DVDs won't keep my data for even six years.
I certainly don't want MY data in the cloud.

--
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Re:But my PC is already modular. by lkcl · 2016-07-31 07:33 · Score: 2

The problem is that (by modern standards) it's physically huge
Any smaller and it would not hold a DVD drive, an LTO drive and a DAT drive, and still have somewhere to put USB sticks and SD cards, not to mention the place required for SCSI cards.
yeahhh i had to make a decision whether to make the first EOMA standard for mass-volume clients or for mass-volume servers. i figured that with facebook, google and hp and others having the data centre market pretty much sewn up, and them trying to convince everyone that "cloud is good", and having poisoned the word "open" in that area with their "open compute" standard, the chances would be much better if i focussed on "the little guy"... ... that meant using hardware that was simple enough for someone like me to learn, and with a persistent and bloody-minded attitude actually gain access to Reference Designs and so on, and that in turn meant SoCs around the $2 to $8 mark that are designed for "tablets" and "smartphones", not "intel-style PCs", and _that_ in turn meant "SATA and GbE and PCIe are off the interface set". you can't get a QFP-176 SoC at $2.50 that has PCIe or SATA, basically, but you *can* get one that has HDMI, 3x SD/MMCs, 2x USB2 and several other really good interfaces that you can make a fully-functioning low-cost computer from (look up the Allwinner R8 - it's QFP176 and $2.50. absolutely amazing).

As someone who actually saw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v4Juzn10gM EDSAC working, I think the standard tower PC case is about right, and I KNOW that tape will keep my data for 30 years (I have read my own backups 30 years later),
toootally cooool! ahh... don't read them too often, the heads are abrasively-worn by the read/write cycle...

and I know DVDs won't keep my data for even six years.
*sigh* that oxygenation of the metallic compound through the edges of the disc when they thinned down the amount of varnish to save money, it's a bitch, huh? did you happen to mark the DVD with a permanent marker then close it up inside a plastic case? i know of someone who learned the hard way that the fumes from those pens migrate *into* the discs and oxidise the metal.... whoops... ... you can't use HDDs because after 5 years there's a 25% chance that just *powering them up* will cause a head-crash: thermal warping (cool-down) of the HDD when it was last shut down, combined with the bearings seizing as the oil/grease isn't being cycled round during storage.... yyyeah.
you can't use SSDs because the geometries are too small now, you get data loss over time due to quantum effects and radiation... what are we down to now... 20 atoms to store one bit of data??
we're screwed basically :)

I certainly don't want MY data in the cloud.
cloud... that's where you store your data on other people's computers, right? :)
Re:But my PC is already modular. by jedidiah · 2016-07-31 13:22 · Score: 1

> ... you're aware that intel has moved *away* from socketed CPUs and is forcing BGA onto manufacturers, now?
That's funny. Newegg is still full of them. Even if you have to go "higher end", those kinds of components are not going to disappear for the forseeable future.

--
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Re:But my PC is already modular. by lkcl · 2016-08-01 04:13 · Score: 1

there's always AMD
.... whose processors have been backdoored in exactly the same way as Intel's since 2009, except all AMD's processors are backdoored since 2013.

Re:Won't happen by lkcl · 2016-07-31 04:46 · Score: 1

I should have worded my post differently and qualified my statements.

nono, no need - it was actually really helpful that you pointed those things out

My best guess from the sidelines is that you're approaching this from a well-informed, well-planned angle and everything I've read and watched built my trust.

thanks!

I pledged to support the project.

that's really kind of you - thank you.

But I still think that those angles are the most likely cause of trouble. Hopefully nothing comes up or you're able to adjust for everything that does come up.

this is why i'm going to go over to taiwan, and from there to HK and to Shenzen. got bunnie's book already. my partner marie speaks mandarin. planning to go meet allwinner. and go *personally* to all the component suppliers to pick things up and pay by cash (which is totally normal, there). will be accompanying the finished units down to the docks and making sure they get sealed and loaded so that we don't end up receiving a container with boxes packaged nicely with 1.1kg worth of bricks... yes this really does happen, and when you complain, the customs officials go, "you no china citizen! sorry no can help!" then they go down to the docks and go "well done ripping off gwailo stupid foreigner! next time you give me cut off of what you sold their stolen goods for, okaaay?"

if you want a laugh (kinda...) read keyboard.io blog.. http://blog.keyboard.io/ - i've dealt with most of these things before and found people that i trust... took five years to find them, but i found them.

I appreciate all of your free software work, by the way - I've used Samba before myself.

:) the highlight of that work was, over a decade later, porting samba-tng to w32 and cross-compiling it using mingw32 to run... *under wine*. i still have difficulty comprehending why i even tried doing that, but it was, ultimately, in the hope that the ReactOS team gave serious consideration to doing a proper implementation of the various MSRPC services that are needed to be fully interoperable with NT, and to drop Samba TNG into place as the SMB server....

Re:Won't happen by Aighearach · 2016-07-31 05:55 · Score: 2

And by "move to block them" what do you mean, they'll dress up in a chicken suit and dance in the street? It won't work.

It is a pretty stupid conspiracy theory when all it consists of is an underpants gnome.

Maybe in your country there is some sort of process to "block" companies that anger competitors, but in most of the world it simply can't be done.

Re:Won't happen by Aighearach · 2016-07-31 06:02 · Score: 1

sorry, i don't understand. could you possibly expand on this, perhaps help review the logic analysis behind the modular standards that i've reviewed over the past five years

No. And I just wanted to say, that is a really, really weird thing to request. And I can say, I really don't care what you've reviewed. I'm not that into you, and I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about electronics.

And no, it doesn't have to be "absolutely simple," blah blah blah. Just waving your hands and saying words doesn't mean that objects in the world have to be what you want them to be. They can be what somebody else wants them to be, and still exist, and maybe I'll even like it better than if it was what you wanted. Some guy on planet Earth didn't like fiddly bits? Who cares?

Re:Won't happen by lkcl · 2016-07-31 08:50 · Score: 1

sorry, i don't understand. could you possibly expand on this, perhaps help review the logic analysis behind the modular standards that i've reviewed over the past five years

No. And I just wanted to say, that is a really, really weird thing to request.

it's not weird at all. what it's doing is demonstrating to both you and to other readers that... (if i may be completely honest with you here)... you haven't thought through what you're saying. or, more to the point, we can't *check* your conclusion, because you're not prepared to provide us with the facts or any of the logical reasoning *behind* your conclusion. thus, if you're not prepared to stand up and do the work to justify your perspective, then your points may be safely ignored. the question i asked, which is a known technique that i was advised to use throughout this campaign, is therefore a simple "double-check" of your true intent.

if however you were prepared to answer the question and engage, both of us might learn something. you might actually have a legitimate and logical point of view that is grounded in rational and reasonable evidence. but if you *can't do that*, then people will *see* that you can't do that, and will be able to safely discard what you've written.

i'd *prefer* that you answered the question, because i actually *genuinely* need people to independently verify what i'm doing, even though i've been working on it full-time for five years: i'd like to know that i've not missed something important.

Re:Won't happen by lkcl · 2016-07-31 08:51 · Score: 1

And by "move to block them" what do you mean, they'll dress up in a chicken suit and dance in the street?

... cue the "why did the man in the chicken-suit dance in the street" jokes....

Missing question in their FAQ by viperidaenz · 2016-07-31 09:08 · Score: 1

"Why are you using a shitty old processor like an A20 and exclude the only two good things it has going for it, GbE and SATA?"

Even the old Raspberry Pi 2 is much faster than the A20, being a quad core A7.
If they wanted to go cheap and Allwinner, there's the A80, H3 or A64.

Re:Missing question in their FAQ by lkcl · 2016-07-31 12:39 · Score: 1

"Why are you using a shitty old processor like an A20
answered in the update regarding processor selection - https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo...

and exclude the only two good things it has going for it, GbE and SATA?"
answered in depth on the FAQ section - look for "SATA and GbE" and a more in-depth answer on http://rhombus-tech.net/crowds... again search for the keyword "SATA".

Even the old Raspberry Pi 2 is much faster than the A20, being a quad core A7.
only available from broadcom - a hypocritical company that operates on unethical grounds and maintains cartelling business practices, ships proprietary arbitrary untrusted executables that boot the CPU *from* the GPU, and forces children to purchase licenses to watch films, for $2.50. what kind of hypocritical lesson is that, that kids may only educate themselves "so far", but beyond a certain point they can FUCK OFF. great. i think that's a great education. we should all teach kids that they are only allowed to learn up to a certain point and beynd that they're expected to be treated like cattle.

If they wanted to go cheap and Allwinner,

EOMA68 is a hardware standard. read the "processor selection" update as well as the "passthrough card" update.

there's the A80,
uses PowerVR which is known to cause enormous instability problems ever since it came out, on *every* architecture that ever uses it. why would i want to bring out something that i know for a fact would be severely problematic?

H3
not designed for low-power.

or A64.
GPL-violating SDK with a proprietary untrusted bootloader.
sorry dude - don't try to be too clever and sarcastic, and you'll get a much less curt answer. i got too much ground to cover - over 25 forums and increasing.

Re:What are the success criteria? by shanen · 2016-07-31 10:18 · Score: 1

Excellent and substantive response, though you ["ikcl", but not sure of your relationship to the project] sound a bit defensive about it. Considering the mixed success history of such projects (which both of us referenced), I certainly understand why. (However, just to refer to another, I think Diaspora may have been the best idea to die for bad planning combined with overfunding from the crowd. Not sure if it should be "literally die", because that depends on the relationship of Diaspora to the visionary's suicide.)

I followed http://rhombus-tech.net/crowds... and read some more, but it seems to me that your approach is too orthogonal to what I'm trying to describe. You have lots of detail about how you think you can deliver a certain product with certain capabilities within a certain budget. Those numbers seem too fuzzy for me to trust the totals, and I couldn't find the schedule. Other places it felt like you were diverted by details that should not be relevant at this relatively early stage.

The way I'm thinking is different. A really short capsule summary might be something like:

If funding is confirmed by September 15, then beginning on October 1, in two months we plan to design a PCB motherboard with the following interfaces. This will involve two people working full time, both of whom have committed to do the work, and who have agreed to payment of $10,000 for their time. At least 5 prototype boards will be produced for testing. The success criteria are (1) that the boards can be mass produced (lot size 100) for a cost of $15 each, and (2) the prototypes will be tested and proved to satisfy the specifications in the table below. The total project cost is estimated at $30,000, calling for 3,000 supporters at $10 each.

Once you have the first project completed, you can start the next step, but I think it's important to keep control over what you're doing at each phase. There are several mechanisms to do that, but I'm getting too long for the slashdot channel...

--
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.

Re:Won't happen by Aighearach · 2016-07-31 12:05 · Score: 1

what it's doing is demonstrating to both you and to other readers that... (if i may be completely honest with you here)...

LOL ok Mr Universe, tell us what other people can comprehend.

we can't *check* your conclusion, because you're not prepared to provide us with the facts or any of the logical reasoning *behind* your conclusion.

You just have to understand which direction proof goes when dealing with a negative. See, the claim was that we (people like me that value open systems) can't have what we want because the Big Bad Mr Big will stop us. The claim that we can't have what we want is what needs proof. If I point out we already have other things like this and nothing stops us, I don't need to present proof of those things. Proof of their existence would refute you conclusively, true, but that isn't called for. The claim that needs proof is the assertion that a problem would arise. That is on you, Mr. Mindreader.

And no, you don't "need" people to verify squat. Just like a thing existing in the world doesn't "need" to be simple. It doesn't "need" to be usable by "gamers" who are aliterate and can't read manuals. It doesn't need to be for you, and what you reviewed or didn't or verified or didn't doesn't "need" to have happened.

If you want people to answer questions, ask better questions. If the frame of reference for your question is stuff internal to you (what you've reviewed) then it isn't going to get serious consideration. Who the heck knows what you reviewed. Not me. And I don't care. Ask about a specific thing, or ask about something general. And don't make presumptions about what the goals have to be, because that just makes your question impossible and worthless.

Re:Won't happen by lkcl · 2016-07-31 12:27 · Score: 1

what it's doing is demonstrating to both you and to other readers that... (if i may be completely honest with you here)...

LOL ok Mr Universe, tell us what other people can comprehend.

that's enough. sorry, but when you start laughing at other people's expense to make yourself look better than them, that's when i know not to take you seriously, and everyone else reading this will know that too. sorry, but you've had three chances to not display yourself as a "troll", and failed each time. apologies but i can't spend any more time replying to you until you change the way that you approach other people.

Re:What are the success criteria? by lkcl · 2016-07-31 14:38 · Score: 1

Excellent and substantive response, though you ["ikcl", but not sure of your relationship to the project] sound a bit defensive about it. Considering the mixed success history of such projects (which both of us referenced), I certainly understand why.

yeah no i get it. here's the thing: i am happy to admit that i don't know what i'm doing: that's why i'm inviting people to participate and point things out. if it succeeds, it succeeds as a *group* project, and that's really valuable. the approach that i'm taking seems to be working: we got this far, y'know?

I followed http://rhombus-tech.net/crowds... and read some more, but it seems to me that your approach is too orthogonal to what I'm trying to describe. You have lots of detail about how you think you can deliver a certain product with certain capabilities within a certain budget. Those numbers seem too fuzzy for me to trust the totals, and I couldn't find the schedule. Other places it felt like you were diverted by details that should not be relevant at this relatively early stage.

i'm talking to the factory owner online, and planning to go to taiwan (and then to HK and Shenzen) in september. leading up to christmas the factories are *stupidly* busy, which is why i will go and collect components personally. the critical window of opportunity is between the two new years: that's when i'd like to get the majority of PCB manufacturing done.

but, part of the issue is: if we go beyond the capacity of the current factory, we'll actually have to find another one, and thus redo the entire schedule. i'll also be able to do injection-molding instead of 3d-printing the casework.... so i put down a best-estimate (it's on the crowd supply page at the end) and we see how it goes. i figured that people would be happy to be kept informed of what's going on.

Re:Won't happen by Aighearach · 2016-07-31 15:59 · Score: 1

Look, bub, you say that stuff about "(if i may be completely honest with you here)" and "what it's doing is demonstrating to both you and to other readers that" and "you haven't thought through what you're saying" then don't get upset when I laugh at it. And sure as fuck don't get upset that I'm laughing at you in response to you insulting me.

How about, go fuck yourself you fucking snowflake, and get off your high horse because you're a hypocrite.

Re:Won't happen by DuckDodgers · 2016-08-14 01:13 · Score: 1

Don't mess with the tinfoil hat, man. (Or woman, whatever.)

Our smart phones have software running in the wireless carrier cellular modem that end users can't access or control. Almost all recent x86 laptops and desktops have Intel's TPM which the regular users can't control. Our ISPs track the websites we visit. Our credit card and debit card companies track every purchase we make. Even our grocery stores use loyalty card programs to see what we do. And browser fingerprinting tech like the "Evercookie" mean that even if you run all of the ad-blockers you want and a VPN or Tor, some companies have a detailed profile on your browsing habits on public sites.

So yeah, if free-from-top-to-bottom computing devices and discussion forums and web stores running on top of distributed decentralized platforms like Ethereum become popular, I fully expect governments to throw up roadblocks to maintain surveillance and businesses to throw up roadblocks to maintain their advertising and tracking revenue. Maybe shipments get held up for nonsense reasons in customs, maybe the projects get buried in nonsense patent lawsuits (small companies often fold under those pressures even if the plaintiff is full of shit, because the defendant can't afford the legal fees), maybe Ecmascript 8 becomes a power-hungry monster solely so that users need to buy the latest Intel/AMD 50 watt whatever-it-is to browse a common website and the EOMA68 just can't compete no matter how efficiently it uses its 3 watt power input.

Re:Won't happen by Aighearach · 2016-08-14 05:41 · Score: 1

I fully expect governments to throw up roadblocks

Yep, that's exactly what I meant. The gubermint is going to do... what? Dress up in a chicken suit? No?

Just waving your hands and saying, "the gubermint will block... something something" doesn't even rise to the level of prognostication. "Block" as a verb has to involve some sort of blocking action. Like an import/export ban, or a prohibition on using phones while wearing chicken suits. Those would be actual attempts to block something. They could be discussed, because they would have details. Real life also has details. If you want to block something, you have to be able to say what it is you're blocking, and how. "Something something to stop the little guy" isn't anything.

You can easily detect that your idea doesn't have any ideas just by checking the specific thing you were saying in the first place. Is it specific? Is it a thing? No? Then there is no need to go into stupid horseshit like "maybe shipments get held up for nonsense reasons in customs." What percent of business shipments even get inspected by customs? And "nonsense patent lawsuits," wtf? That is so broad, you could say that as a reason why a coffee stand might have problems. It is not something specific to building devices that the FSF approves of. You even throw "maybe javascript turns into the boogeyman" at the wall. Guess what? If that happens people running Free Software will just turn it off. Solved.

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