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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 msgrhysWe shouldn't be doing business with hostile/communist nations. American industry is all but dead thanks to Bill Clinton opening up trade with China.
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.
Agreed. Note however, that the best chips come from Taiwan. If the mainland chicoms make themselves enough of a nuisance, Taiwan could probably take their whole economy out of commission simply by bombing a few dams.
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one of the arm boxes i have collecting dust.( the generic boxes never get updated, so after a couple of years they are outdated and get tossed )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 FoobarNot 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.
Microsoft branding its own ARM CPU is about the same as if it branded its own Linux. They don't own it, they don't have enough clout to E-E-E it, and it's no different than any other ARM anywhere else.
Hopefully, ARM is not the end stage, but a step towards something even more open (perhaps RISC-V). Whatever it takes to get out of the Intel/AMD64 monoculture is a good thing.
I do believe RISC-V conceptually is the future. The risk ( that im predicting.. have been ) is that since there is no "base level enforcement body" like with ARM, everone will end up with their own version, and have special bits no one else has. Fracturing the market. The big players will have no incentive to be compatible with others. OSS is a double edge sword at times.
Mon Dec 04 2023 18:17:49 EST from IGnatius T FoobarARM is a step up. Really, anything other than Intel/AMD64 is a step up. The fact that ARM stays out of the hardware business and licenses its IP to many different manufacturers is nice.
Microsoft branding its own ARM CPU is about the same as if it branded its own Linux. They don't own it, they don't have enough clout to E-E-E it, and it's no different than any other ARM anywhere else.
Hopefully, ARM is not the end stage, but a step towards something even more open (perhaps RISC-V). Whatever it takes to get out of the Intel/AMD64 monoculture is a good thing.
One thing I don't like about ARM is the lack of a standard firmware and standard system architecture. Anykitty can make (or port) an OS to any x86/amd64 box because the firmware and system architecture is known. This isn't true for ARM. There's over 2 dozen firmwares for ARM boards, device/memory/bus connection are always different, it's a mess! Sure ARM is a great contender to beat out the x86/amd64, but the lack of a standard firmware and standard architecture is a big contributor to why desktop/laptop ARM hasn't exploded in popufurity. You can see the results of this problem by looking at the FreeBSD images - so many images for different ARM boards, and some of those boards even have the same CPU!
Now if NVIDIA and/or AMD would port their drivers to ARM so we could have open-source graphics, that would be great!
Mon Dec 04 2023 18:17:49 EST from IGnatius T FoobarARM is a step up. Really, anything other than Intel/AMD64 is a step up. The fact that ARM stays out of the hardware business and licenses its IP to many different manufacturers is nice.
Microsoft branding its own ARM CPU is about the same as if it branded its own Linux. They don't own it, they don't have enough clout to E-E-E it, and it's no different than any other ARM anywhere else.
Hopefully, ARM is not the end stage, but a step towards something even more open (perhaps RISC-V). Whatever it takes to get out of the Intel/AMD64 monoculture is a good thing.
Yes device trees are a pain in the butt. But, its not as bad as it used to be. And most manufactures do release their DTBs to the world.
GPU drivers for 'generic' ARM have come a long way, and most of them are opensource now.
Well, perhaps NVIDIA has seen the light..
Being locked into ubuncrap is one reason i ditched Jetson.. ( well unless you didnt want GPU, which is the entire point of those things )
Announced this afternoon:
"With JetPack 6, you can now bring your own Linux kernel to the Jetson platform, enjoy a broader selection of Linux distribution choices, and upgrade your compute stack independently of the L4T BSP. These capabilities greatly enhance the flexibility and speed of development on the platform"
One thing I don't like about ARM is the lack of a standard firmware
and standard system architecture.
That was true for the 8086 when it came out, too. Eventually everyone standardized on IBM's architecture.
It was also true for the 8080 when it came out before that. Eventually everyone standardized on Altair's architecture.
Give it time.
"compatibles" i still have nightmares from those days...
Sat Dec 09 2023 10:38:41 EST from IGnatius T FoobarThat was true for the 8086 when it came out, too. Eventually everyone standardized on IBM's architecture.
and of course it wont support the ones i have... grrr
Soooo they still dont get to see the light of day. I need to sell them.
Thu Dec 07 2023 16:14:43 EST from Nurb432Well, perhaps NVIDIA has seen the light..
Hopefully, ARM is not the end stage, but a step towards something even
more open (perhaps RISC-V). Whatever it takes to get out of the
Intel/AMD64 monoculture is a good thing.
The fund who owns the ARM license tried to sell ARM to Nvidia, then was denied due to anti-trust concerns. Next thing they did was to announce and IPO and take a loan using 75% of ARM as collateral.
If you don't know what this means, I will translate: They sold 10% in auction to the stock markets and then 75% of the firm at a known price to a Swiss bank which they might or might not rebuy.
It does not look like the owning fund gives a damn about ARM anymore.