Which is most of the planet, including us. We are all hostile in our own way.

Realistically zero trade between nations isn't practical. Unless we all want to live in a cave wondering where our next meal is coming from.

Tue Oct 10 2023 22:45:05 EDT from msgrhys

 We shouldn't be doing business with hostile/communist nations. American industry is all but dead thanks to Bill Clinton opening up trade with China.

Im sure i bitched about it in another thread, about GoogleTV update on my tv box.  Since i dont have any stock generic android TV boxes anymore  decided to build one from one of the arm boxes i have collecting dust.( the generic boxes never get updated, so after a couple of years they are outdated and get tossed )

Couple of observations, most of which i had forgot from the last time i tried this, and why i ended up giving up and buying one.

Installing android on a ARM SBC is a real pain in the ass.  For most boards you cant just grab an image, DD it over to SD or eMMC like you can for nearly all other operating systems on them.. You have to use some freaking windows tool to write the image, and it does not work 2/3 of the time. What in the hell???

One of my board makers DO have an "auto flasher" you can just DD over to an SD card. Then when that boots it does magic and flashes the android image to internal eMMC. Why cant the rest? Lazy asses. But always preferred them over others anyway.

BUT when you do it this way, a lot of apps magically think you are on a phone and rotate the screen for you, even when the same app wont do that a dedicated TV box. I have never understood why.  You have to install a 'locker app' to prevent it as even the 'lock orientation' option in the OS wont stop it....   And several apps you have to use 3rd party stores to get them, as play store blocks generic devices for a lot of items. Neither are 'hard' to work around, just annoying.

And still hardware related, picked up a new remote control to use since what i have now is dedicated to the hardware i have now ( an xiaomi mi. Which was nice until GTV was installed )..  Fancy thing has a qwerty keyboard on the back..

( and no, i cant use kodi to avoid Android.   That was in the other thread, wherever its at. only option is android, or just a browser i guess but a lot more trouble dealing with a remote across the room )

Sort of funny, i just dropped xiaomi phones this fall.. now my TV box.   

Armbian news letter "we now support  Lenovo X13s" 

Um ok, must be something special about that one.... Go search....  oooooo ARM.. 3ghz. 512 storage.. 16g ram.. 13"    Found one at backmarket for 400 bucks.. Must... not.. hit.. order.....arrgh.  ( ill skip it i guess, i dont need another dust collector )

And related:  Qualcomms' Snapdragon X Elite that was just announced/released looks like its better ( on paper ) than Apple's just released M3.  And several companies are going to be making machines with it.. not just the one inside the walled garden. ( Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Honor, Lenovo, Microsoft Surface, Samsung, and Mi. )

Unlike apple, it wont be locked down. They wont be Chromebooks but actual laptops, running windows at first. ( and perhaps desktops )  However, you wont run 'of your choice' off the bat. will take some time for things like mainline Linux kernel to support it. 

Wed Nov 01 2023 13:43:18 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Not interested if they're locked down to the factory OS. I want to run the OS of my choice like on developer boards.

Hmm when you flash a SBC, be sure you read and use the correct image. Or you waste your time ( or, kill it, if you REALLY screw up ).

Grumble. 

Rumor there may be a Chromebook coming with the SnapdragonX chip coming in the not so distant future.   Man that will fly. it would eat my i7 pixelbook for breakfast. 

If its not too much and has enough storage space to decently run a Linux session, i may have to buy it. That would take care of any driver issues, since the ChromeOS would have those embedded. 

So i have mentioned it before, i have been collecting lenovo tiny's and replacing the I5 CPUs with a xeon to use in my server farm.

And i mentioned that i started having some weird things going on, that i attributed to power but wasn't 100% sure.  Finally found a pattern.  It seems that a couple things are going on:

Cheaper SSDs as they get larger suck more power. And at some point the power just isn't there anymore.

Things like headphones work..  and regular USB flash so i knew it wasn't a 'data bus issue'

This keyboard i bought for the one i use as a desktop, doesn't help matters any. Gamer thing, takes up 2 usb ports to run.  Really? stupid thing.  But this power suck means smaller drive limit in the desktop. ( but not servers, they can still hit 4TB if i stick with name brand )

Larger USB devices, was hit and miss, and until this last week i didnt see the pattern.  But i did finally. Only the drives with that funky 2 port USB3 cable fail. Even if they had a power pack to go with them, which made me question my suspicion.. These cables are where the 2nd little connector piece is to provide, guess what, extra power.  So, got a older USB2 micro, shove it into the larger side ( its the same pin out ) and lo and behold the drives work. Years and years ago had a Samsung note phone i used a micro cable with ( instead of carrying around a 2nd totally unique cable ), so i knew at least the concept was good at least.

Also, means i wont try to solder on m.2 sockets to add internal nvme to go along with the SATA port..  not worth the effort.  Which is too bad, would make them great CEPH boxes. A tiny m.2 to boot, and a large SSD for OSD.

Not that most of you care about the hardware here so i am mostly rambling... but figured if anyone runs across drives that dont work that use those funky usb3 cables, that might be a solution ..  I bet newer devices have even less power availble to give out to devices. 

Looks like Microsoft is soon going to be adding MS branded ARM CPUs to azure.  ( not just generic ones they started using a year or so ago )

Not sure how i feel about that.  Other than its nice to see Intel getting kicked in the crotch.