The term "thunder well" has just become permanently established in my long-term memory, right next to where I keep my gibbering fear of forces I cannot comprehend.
I'm looking for something like the pi, basically a fully populated board requiring power supply, but with a real ethernet subsystem (not a USB-hub mediated mechanism) and a SATA (III, II, I in that order of preference) interface. I've seen multiple failures with the little memory cards, and would like to use actual drives instead from boot on up - without USB or memory cards being involved.
Faster, more cores, and more RAM is better, and price anywhere up to $100 would be fine. I do need the HDMI, USB for keyboard and mouse, and very much appreciate any other I/O, which is why I describe what I'm looking for as "like the pi."
The way it is right now Trump will be the next Pres. I'm as sure of it as I was that Obama would be the next one in 2008.
I'm just as sure he won't. Trump is making his way forward in the Republican process with a small number of passionate supporters. Here are the numbers for eligible voters that have voted Trump:
o IA: 2.0% o NH: 9.7% o SC: 6.5% o NV: 1.8%
That's not a set of numbers that points towards electability.
My guess is that it will be Clinton, because she has the big money people behind her, while Sanders does not. Although there is an outside change that Sanders might get it -- he's doing amazingly well, considering how off the US's historical political path his ideas are. The only way a Dem win might not come about, as I see it, is if the Republicans can field a reasonable candidate -- and all indications at this point is that they are not able to do so.
As for Dem following Dem, Obama has overseen a great deal of good, and if one closes one's eyes to the screaming of the crazies, it's pretty obvious. And he pushed for these things, and saw them happen, in the face of incredibly obstinate and poorly thought-out opposition from congress. From cracking down on the credit card companies to seeing some of the batshit religious prejudices against gays finally legally excised to bringing healthcare to millions and millions of those who were previously locked out of the system, the upshot is that for most people, he's been Dear Leader during a period when things have gotten better -- after Bush and his cronies shat all over everything, nearly destroying our economy.
Obama's been there through, and in some cases been the cause of, some awful things as well; but this is true of all presidents so far, and probably will remain so. For most constitutional issues, he's been poor-to-terrible in what he has said and what he has encouraged; he's still having us make war that benefits no one that isn't a recipient of the monies funneled to the MIC; and he is definitely guilty of "being president while black", something that drives many of the most idiotic US citizens right over the edge (and many of those are Trump supporters.)
For many of the biggest issues - the economic recovery, medical care, improvement of conditions for the majority... those are places where his presidency looks very good to anyone who actually understands what has occurred. So my thinking here is that he's paved the way reasonably well for a Dem succession. Well enough. Whereas Bush left a mess that has yet to be really cleaned up, congress in its Republican guise has been both obstructionist and foolish (and currently suffers some of the lowest approval ratings ever), and Trump is a moronic clown, pulling moronic citizens to his banner - and no one else. It only takes a couple of listens to what he is saying to realize he is speaking nonsense. Anyone who is a fan after listening more than once is truly stupid. And you see, that's not how the Gaussian falls out. Nor do the numbers supporting Trump point towards any possible victory. This trifecta of Republican fail combines to create a very low probability that they can take the presidency.
Smart. But you are (and I am) the exception. People are ignorant and gullible and dishonest marketing is a complementary protein for that particular receptor.
And it is completely, absolutely, 100% unnecessary.
o Plug in not-yet configured device.
o Shortly thereafter, it accepts DHCP configuration. Now it has an IP.
o Then it vomits out a tiny UDP (broadcast) packet every 60 seconds or so that says "I'm a WackyWidget and my IP is Yad.daY.yad.daY"
o You start app, it listens for the UDP packet, when it hears it, it begins comm via TCP at the IP identified in the UDP broadcast. UDP broadcasts then cease until, or unless, the TCP (and possibly the DHCP) connection is dropped, in which case, begin again at whatever step is needed.
That's it. That's ALL of it. You need nothing more for an IP camera, a smart power plug, a smart lightbulb, an aquarium controller, the garage door opener, etc., etc., ad infinitum.
If you THEN want to expose WackyWidget to the WAN, you could enable that separately.
If you were out of your damned mind.
If you haven't yet figured out that "the cloud" is nothing but a way to take/get things from you -- money, data, ownership of media, etc. -- then you really need to look at all this harder.
Many types of change are stressful, dangerous, etc. That doesn't mean a change shouldn't happen. Sometimes, as I assert is the case with menial labor, the status quo has no particular merit. The sooner we get to an economy of plenty, the better off humanity will be. Yes, the 1% will likely do their very best to stand in the way, but it is my hope that change simply steamrollers them.
As long as the vehicle can recharge overnight in the garage, on the driveway or at the curb, recharge time is practical for must users. And we're already there. We've been there for some time.
It's not about recharge time. There are two remaining factors that limit market share, and only two:
o total energy storage o price
Right now, in both areas, IC beats batteries, and batteries beat ultracaps (aka supercaps in the case of D.C. comics fans.)
Were that to change, that's when EVs will break into the market in a competitive manner, barring actual use of force by governments.
It can change five ways:
o Oil prices could rise o battery prices could fall o ultracap prices could fall o battery storage could exceed oil o ultracap storage could exceed oil
He is pulling the uninformed and clueless portion of the republican polity. Solidly, reliably. The others are split on other candidates or not participating at all.
US presidential elections go about 50/50 with a small margin deciding the winner (that's why the usual concentration on only what are called the "swing" states.
But in this case, Trump can't pull sane republicans; and he can't pull democrats either. Swing voters are, by and large, the thinkers (few enough) among the voting public, and those also will not go for him.
Our next president, if Trump manages to continue to crash the republican nomination process, will be a democrat. Probably by the largest margin seen in many years.
Either the republicans get a sane, reasonable person representative of actual republican values in there instead of Trump, or they are finished this time around.
If you understand how the US government is structured, all you have to do is listen to Trump to realize that he does not understand how the US government is structured. He's riding a wave of drooling reality-TV fans in the primaries; no more than that.
Considering what you get for your money it's actually pretty good.
My experience has not led me to that conclusion.
I have three of them. all bought at different times, using different drive cards. B+ units. One was set up as a console-centric machine, no desktop. One with a desktop, but it ended up being used as a console machine as well. The other was set up as a desktop, and used that way (my SO plays with it from time to time.)
Her Pi, which isn't powered up all that often, is still working.
The others, which were in always-on service, are not.
Both worked for several months, and then the drive cards failed (I think.) If the Pis are powered down and up, you can see some activity on the drive LED for about three seconds, then it stops, and nothing goes any further. Both machines are backed up on my desktop, and I may see if they'll come up with new cards, but I'm not really motivated because it's just so disappointing that they both failed.
That's not all. One was set up to drive some hardware on one of my aquariums. I wanted to see if I could set up timers for aeration and so forth. I got that all going, very useful because when I feed them, I want the aeration off so the food isn't churned by the motion on the surface of the water. So once a day I would log in via console and turn off the aeration, and then feed them, then the aeration would automatically come back on 15 minutes later without further action from me. In addition, various other things got switched on and off. Lighting, etc. It seemed like a great use for a Pi. I used a Python script that ran from cron every few minutes. Nothing fancy.
But.
About half the time I tried to log in to that Pi, there would be no network connection, and I'd have to try over and over again to get it to work. Eventually it would. If I left it connected with a shell window open here on my desktop, I would go to do something and find the shell not connected. Nothing else on my network drops connections. Either the Pi has a lousy networking interface, or the Pi networking software is teh suck. Either way, it's annoying and doesn't lead me to "ooo, a new pi, lemme try that out!" I tried switching network cables and ports on the main network switch here - didn't help.
The whole business with the failure and subsequent refusal to boot... that's really off-putting.
My feeling is that for a small machine, it's just not reliable enough. Better to spend a little, put a small computer with an actual drive and a real networking interface in place, and have something that will can stay in service for more than a couple of months.
It's anecdotal -- just my experience, not in any way a blanket condemnation in the sense of advice to others -- I'd be interested in input from those who have Pi units in always-on service. Drive reliability? Networking reliability?
You want megastructures primarily to get large amounts of energy and to do heavy computations which require a lot of mass and energy.
You have no idea how much energy would be required by others to do "heavy computations." Nor have you demonstrated any need to do "heavy computations" in the first place. Nor have you established that the timescales we consider significant, would be significant, or even relevant, to others. Nor have you established any necessary connection between a "megastructure" and energy production / capture. Nor have you established that what we know about physics as of today is in any way definitive of what other methods and mechanisms may be possible.
Not only that, but the life here may not in any way resemble life somewhere else.
Carbon based life is one thing we know of. There may well be other organics that will work. And we're just about to add machine life to the mix. There are also extremophiles here, such as the life around sulfur vents in the deep ocean, that show that the conditions that we consider suitable for life extend considerably past the environment that we can tolerate.
Indeed. Every day I go to sleep with many things I would like to have accomplished still lying in front of me. Though I readily admit none of those things are "indulge in superstition."
I have yet to visit a paid (or free) mainstream media news site that had anything -- and I do mean anything -- on it that was worth the time it took to read it.
What you get from these organizations is prop and, in some cases, agitprop. Often with an obvious left wing or right wing or other wing (as with reason.com) bias driving the whole mess. Not to mention (he mentioned) the business with... So, science says this, let's "balance" it with some bewildered superstitious malfuckery...
We have had decades of drug war propaganda, save the children propaganda, terrorist propaganda, outright censorship, FCC keeping the airwaves completely out of the people's hands, superstitious pandering... and for this, they think they've done something deserving of my earning them money. Fuck the lot of them.
Is it so bad if you fund your blog out of your pocket? I do it. It's not all that horrific an expense. Of course, I don't load my pages down with flash and videos and deeply multi-linked ads (or hardly any ads for that matter) and other crap; it's basically HTML and CSS and so my bandwidth usage is rational. I offer tshirts on the sidebar. They don't jump around, they don't suck content from anywhere but my domain, and if you don't actually click on them, they do nothing but sit there. I sell a few. Enough to fund the blog, anyway.
I'm not going to make any real money from it, but so what? I have an actual occupation, you know, something that produces social value (which, I seriously assert, is NOT something news outlets do, nor advertisers.)
Seriously, there's no more a guarantee, nor should there be, for advertising driven web pages than there was for buggy whip manufacturers.
We have widespread communications now. We -- well, at least I -- don't need some talking head to tell me what to think.
Yes, and if Google died a horrible death tomorrow? I'd just have to change my email around a bit. Mediocre search results designed to appeal to the average-and-lower user; search ranking by popularity. That essentially means that Google's search results are the Kardassians and Donald Trumps of content. Like it? More like "run screaming from it."
Links get around without the need for search engines. I can't help it if the special butterflies don't know how to do that. They can learn. A nice web directory beats the hell out of a search engine any day, anyway. Curated links.
So to return to my original thesis, I have no obligation to tolerate anyone's advertising. Period. You don't want to provide (whatever), then don't. I will not miss you. Not even a little bit. Likewise, no one has to come to my websites. Fine. Perfect, in fact.
If I want to buy something, I go to the actual source and I look around there. I do not now, and will never again, click on web page ads. Those people have abused the privilege of consuming my computer's CPU cycles and monitor pixels and network bandwidth far too often and far too egregiously. Word of mouth (and its net equivalent, word-of-keyboard) is more trustworthy anyway.
Anyone else remember Google's text ads? You know, back when Google was actually responsible about advertising? Before they changed from "never do evil" to "never not be greedy fucks and btw here's this huge animated twitchy pile of shite for you to enjoy"?
The whole idea that the money-for-propaganda news model is sacred is repellent to me; you must eat the advertising because we're a big money operation thing... just as bad.
Maybe the day of the advertiser and the news organization is over. It certainly should be over, as far as I'm concerned.
I don't give a microfuck about what happens to them. Because they never gave a microfuck what happened to me and mine. And they lie and distort and lead the gullible around by the nose. Let them hide behind their paywalls. Let them suffocate and die there, too./rant
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You're such a card.
Someone mod this up to 11, please.
The term "thunder well" has just become permanently established in my long-term memory, right next to where I keep my gibbering fear of forces I cannot comprehend.
Just what I was looking for. Thank you. Nice little computers! There are i5 and even i7 versions; lots and lots of horsepower (for a small system.)
okay, I'll take a look over there. Thank you.
What's your angle, buddy?
I'm looking for something like the pi, basically a fully populated board requiring power supply, but with a real ethernet subsystem (not a USB-hub mediated mechanism) and a SATA (III, II, I in that order of preference) interface. I've seen multiple failures with the little memory cards, and would like to use actual drives instead from boot on up - without USB or memory cards being involved.
Faster, more cores, and more RAM is better, and price anywhere up to $100 would be fine. I do need the HDMI, USB for keyboard and mouse, and very much appreciate any other I/O, which is why I describe what I'm looking for as "like the pi."
Thanks for any ideas along these lines.
I'm just as sure he won't. Trump is making his way forward in the Republican process with a small number of passionate supporters. Here are the numbers for eligible voters that have voted Trump:
o IA: 2.0%
o NH: 9.7%
o SC: 6.5%
o NV: 1.8%
That's not a set of numbers that points towards electability.
My guess is that it will be Clinton, because she has the big money people behind her, while Sanders does not. Although there is an outside change that Sanders might get it -- he's doing amazingly well, considering how off the US's historical political path his ideas are. The only way a Dem win might not come about, as I see it, is if the Republicans can field a reasonable candidate -- and all indications at this point is that they are not able to do so.
As for Dem following Dem, Obama has overseen a great deal of good, and if one closes one's eyes to the screaming of the crazies, it's pretty obvious. And he pushed for these things, and saw them happen, in the face of incredibly obstinate and poorly thought-out opposition from congress. From cracking down on the credit card companies to seeing some of the batshit religious prejudices against gays finally legally excised to bringing healthcare to millions and millions of those who were previously locked out of the system, the upshot is that for most people, he's been Dear Leader during a period when things have gotten better -- after Bush and his cronies shat all over everything, nearly destroying our economy.
Obama's been there through, and in some cases been the cause of, some awful things as well; but this is true of all presidents so far, and probably will remain so. For most constitutional issues, he's been poor-to-terrible in what he has said and what he has encouraged; he's still having us make war that benefits no one that isn't a recipient of the monies funneled to the MIC; and he is definitely guilty of "being president while black", something that drives many of the most idiotic US citizens right over the edge (and many of those are Trump supporters.)
For many of the biggest issues - the economic recovery, medical care, improvement of conditions for the majority... those are places where his presidency looks very good to anyone who actually understands what has occurred. So my thinking here is that he's paved the way reasonably well for a Dem succession. Well enough. Whereas Bush left a mess that has yet to be really cleaned up, congress in its Republican guise has been both obstructionist and foolish (and currently suffers some of the lowest approval ratings ever), and Trump is a moronic clown, pulling moronic citizens to his banner - and no one else. It only takes a couple of listens to what he is saying to realize he is speaking nonsense. Anyone who is a fan after listening more than once is truly stupid. And you see, that's not how the Gaussian falls out. Nor do the numbers supporting Trump point towards any possible victory. This trifecta of Republican fail combines to create a very low probability that they can take the presidency.
But again, IMHO. We will see.
Smart. But you are (and I am) the exception. People are ignorant and gullible and dishonest marketing is a complementary protein for that particular receptor.
If you want to connect to something at home from outside your home network, it's trivial. It does NOT require "the cloud" or "a cloud." Period.
As for it being "a lot of work", that's a matter of the support software, and/or the most trivial of step-by-step tutorials.
Wrong.
And it is completely, absolutely, 100% unnecessary.
o Plug in not-yet configured device.
o Shortly thereafter, it accepts DHCP configuration. Now it has an IP.
o Then it vomits out a tiny UDP (broadcast) packet every 60 seconds or so that says "I'm a WackyWidget and my IP is Yad.daY.yad.daY"
o You start app, it listens for the UDP packet, when it hears it, it begins comm via TCP at the IP identified in the UDP broadcast. UDP broadcasts then cease until, or unless, the TCP (and possibly the DHCP) connection is dropped, in which case, begin again at whatever step is needed.
That's it. That's ALL of it. You need nothing more for an IP camera, a smart power plug, a smart lightbulb, an aquarium controller, the garage door opener, etc., etc., ad infinitum.
If you THEN want to expose WackyWidget to the WAN, you could enable that separately.
If you were out of your damned mind.
If you haven't yet figured out that "the cloud" is nothing but a way to take/get things from you -- money, data, ownership of media, etc. -- then you really need to look at all this harder.
You're on slashdot.
No, no need to thank me. I'm into public service.
Many types of change are stressful, dangerous, etc. That doesn't mean a change shouldn't happen. Sometimes, as I assert is the case with menial labor, the status quo has no particular merit. The sooner we get to an economy of plenty, the better off humanity will be. Yes, the 1% will likely do their very best to stand in the way, but it is my hope that change simply steamrollers them.
I have extremely high confidence in the constant and dependable level of apathy demonstrated by (the) hoi polloi. :)
But we will see. This is (obviously I hope) just my opinion.
As long as the vehicle can recharge overnight in the garage, on the driveway or at the curb, recharge time is practical for must users. And we're already there. We've been there for some time.
It's not about recharge time. There are two remaining factors that limit market share, and only two:
o total energy storage
o price
Right now, in both areas, IC beats batteries, and batteries beat ultracaps (aka supercaps in the case of D.C. comics fans.)
Were that to change, that's when EVs will break into the market in a competitive manner, barring actual use of force by governments.
It can change five ways:
o Oil prices could rise
o battery prices could fall
o ultracap prices could fall
o battery storage could exceed oil
o ultracap storage could exceed oil
Trump has absolutely no chance of becoming POTUS.
He is pulling the uninformed and clueless portion of the republican polity. Solidly, reliably. The others are split on other candidates or not participating at all.
US presidential elections go about 50/50 with a small margin deciding the winner (that's why the usual concentration on only what are called the "swing" states.
But in this case, Trump can't pull sane republicans; and he can't pull democrats either. Swing voters are, by and large, the thinkers (few enough) among the voting public, and those also will not go for him.
Our next president, if Trump manages to continue to crash the republican nomination process, will be a democrat. Probably by the largest margin seen in many years.
Either the republicans get a sane, reasonable person representative of actual republican values in there instead of Trump, or they are finished this time around.
If you understand how the US government is structured, all you have to do is listen to Trump to realize that he does not understand how the US government is structured. He's riding a wave of drooling reality-TV fans in the primaries; no more than that.
Thanks for that.
Perhaps I'll grab one of the new 4-cores and try again.
irrelevant.
Yes, all the outputs are optically isolated.
From the other replies, it appears that outright failure isn't the norm, so perhaps it's just the storage cards.
My experience has not led me to that conclusion.
I have three of them. all bought at different times, using different drive cards. B+ units. One was set up as a console-centric machine, no desktop. One with a desktop, but it ended up being used as a console machine as well. The other was set up as a desktop, and used that way (my SO plays with it from time to time.)
Her Pi, which isn't powered up all that often, is still working.
The others, which were in always-on service, are not.
Both worked for several months, and then the drive cards failed (I think.) If the Pis are powered down and up, you can see some activity on the drive LED for about three seconds, then it stops, and nothing goes any further. Both machines are backed up on my desktop, and I may see if they'll come up with new cards, but I'm not really motivated because it's just so disappointing that they both failed.
That's not all. One was set up to drive some hardware on one of my aquariums. I wanted to see if I could set up timers for aeration and so forth. I got that all going, very useful because when I feed them, I want the aeration off so the food isn't churned by the motion on the surface of the water. So once a day I would log in via console and turn off the aeration, and then feed them, then the aeration would automatically come back on 15 minutes later without further action from me. In addition, various other things got switched on and off. Lighting, etc. It seemed like a great use for a Pi. I used a Python script that ran from cron every few minutes. Nothing fancy.
But.
About half the time I tried to log in to that Pi, there would be no network connection, and I'd have to try over and over again to get it to work. Eventually it would. If I left it connected with a shell window open here on my desktop, I would go to do something and find the shell not connected. Nothing else on my network drops connections. Either the Pi has a lousy networking interface, or the Pi networking software is teh suck. Either way, it's annoying and doesn't lead me to "ooo, a new pi, lemme try that out!" I tried switching network cables and ports on the main network switch here - didn't help.
The whole business with the failure and subsequent refusal to boot... that's really off-putting.
My feeling is that for a small machine, it's just not reliable enough. Better to spend a little, put a small computer with an actual drive and a real networking interface in place, and have something that will can stay in service for more than a couple of months.
It's anecdotal -- just my experience, not in any way a blanket condemnation in the sense of advice to others -- I'd be interested in input from those who have Pi units in always-on service. Drive reliability? Networking reliability?
You have no idea how much energy would be required by others to do "heavy computations." Nor have you demonstrated any need to do "heavy computations" in the first place. Nor have you established that the timescales we consider significant, would be significant, or even relevant, to others. Nor have you established any necessary connection between a "megastructure" and energy production / capture. Nor have you established that what we know about physics as of today is in any way definitive of what other methods and mechanisms may be possible.
Not only that, but the life here may not in any way resemble life somewhere else.
Carbon based life is one thing we know of. There may well be other organics that will work. And we're just about to add machine life to the mix. There are also extremophiles here, such as the life around sulfur vents in the deep ocean, that show that the conditions that we consider suitable for life extend considerably past the environment that we can tolerate.
I am not saying pink unicorns made out of intelligent (but pink) french fires do not exist.
Oh. Wait.
Yes, I am saying that.
Proper science does not deal in utterly baseless assertion.
Indeed. Every day I go to sleep with many things I would like to have accomplished still lying in front of me. Though I readily admit none of those things are "indulge in superstition."
I have yet to visit a paid (or free) mainstream media news site that had anything -- and I do mean anything -- on it that was worth the time it took to read it.
What you get from these organizations is prop and, in some cases, agitprop. Often with an obvious left wing or right wing or other wing (as with reason.com) bias driving the whole mess. Not to mention (he mentioned) the business with... So, science says this, let's "balance" it with some bewildered superstitious malfuckery...
We have had decades of drug war propaganda, save the children propaganda, terrorist propaganda, outright censorship, FCC keeping the airwaves completely out of the people's hands, superstitious pandering... and for this, they think they've done something deserving of my earning them money. Fuck the lot of them.
Is it so bad if you fund your blog out of your pocket? I do it. It's not all that horrific an expense. Of course, I don't load my pages down with flash and videos and deeply multi-linked ads (or hardly any ads for that matter) and other crap; it's basically HTML and CSS and so my bandwidth usage is rational. I offer tshirts on the sidebar. They don't jump around, they don't suck content from anywhere but my domain, and if you don't actually click on them, they do nothing but sit there. I sell a few. Enough to fund the blog, anyway.
I'm not going to make any real money from it, but so what? I have an actual occupation, you know, something that produces social value (which, I seriously assert, is NOT something news outlets do, nor advertisers.)
Seriously, there's no more a guarantee, nor should there be, for advertising driven web pages than there was for buggy whip manufacturers.
We have widespread communications now. We -- well, at least I -- don't need some talking head to tell me what to think.
Yes, and if Google died a horrible death tomorrow? I'd just have to change my email around a bit. Mediocre search results designed to appeal to the average-and-lower user; search ranking by popularity. That essentially means that Google's search results are the Kardassians and Donald Trumps of content. Like it? More like "run screaming from it."
Links get around without the need for search engines. I can't help it if the special butterflies don't know how to do that. They can learn. A nice web directory beats the hell out of a search engine any day, anyway. Curated links.
So to return to my original thesis, I have no obligation to tolerate anyone's advertising. Period. You don't want to provide (whatever), then don't. I will not miss you. Not even a little bit. Likewise, no one has to come to my websites. Fine. Perfect, in fact.
If I want to buy something, I go to the actual source and I look around there. I do not now, and will never again, click on web page ads. Those people have abused the privilege of consuming my computer's CPU cycles and monitor pixels and network bandwidth far too often and far too egregiously. Word of mouth (and its net equivalent, word-of-keyboard) is more trustworthy anyway.
Anyone else remember Google's text ads? You know, back when Google was actually responsible about advertising? Before they changed from "never do evil" to "never not be greedy fucks and btw here's this huge animated twitchy pile of shite for you to enjoy"?
The whole idea that the money-for-propaganda news model is sacred is repellent to me; you must eat the advertising because we're a big money operation thing... just as bad.
Maybe the day of the advertiser and the news organization is over. It certainly should be over, as far as I'm concerned.
I don't give a microfuck about what happens to them. Because they never gave a microfuck what happened to me and mine. And they lie and distort and lead the gullible around by the nose. Let them hide behind their paywalls. Let them suffocate and die there, too. /rant