Amped
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Review:Fun read. I suspect the whole premise is nonsense, but at least it's nonsense outside my area of expertise so I could ignore it ;-) |
![]() |
Review:Fun read. I suspect the whole premise is nonsense, but at least it's nonsense outside my area of expertise so I could ignore it ;-) |
El otro día me llegó una Mele a1000 que en unos días va a tener un review completo, creo. Pero tengo que decir esto: es tan pero tan superior a una Raspberry Pi que no tiene gracia.
Pra empezar, cuesta el doble. Eso es malo, pero aún al doble de precio, es más barata. Porque si sos una persona para quien U$S35 hace diferencia, entonces tal vez tampoco tengas una tele con HDMI. Y la Mele funciona con HDMI pero tambien con RCA y VGA, o sea que cualquier monitor o televisor fabricado en los últimos 20 años te sirve. Podés recuperar monitores antiguos (¿uno que da 1024x768 fabricado en 1996? ANDA 10 PUNTOS) y esos los encontrás en cualquier lado.
Además viene con Wifi, que la Pi no. Y por supuesto, Ethernet, que la Pi modelo A no tiene.
Trae 4GB de almacenamiento interno, y 512MB de RAM. ¿La Pi? Nada y 256MB. ¿Se vé el patrón? Pagás el doble, pero viene con más del doble de cosas adentro.
Tiene dos conectores USB, (Pi Modelo A: 1, Pi Modelo B: 2).
Una cosa importante: viene en una caja. Una caja linda, robusta y chiquita, que se puede poner en un lugar para que no se te parta el circuito en 4.
La CPU es mucho más rápida, y varias generaciones más nueva. La GPU es un poco menos potente, pero no te vas a dar cuenta, porque lo único que la Pi, con esa CPU y esa memoria, puede hacer con la GPU es decodear video por hardware. Para cualquier otra cosa remotamente interesante, vas a tener un cuello de botella.
Las dos GPUs son propietaris, pero por lo menos hay alguien trabajando en drivers abiertos para la Mali400.
La Mele es útil de entrada. Le ponés Ubuntu, o usas Android. Viene rooteada, no hay que hacer nada raro, es imposible de brickear, instalar Ubuntu es poner una SD (igual que la Pi!) pero como la CPU es mucho mejor, las cosas funcionan mejor.
¿Ya mencioné que mientras la Pi tiene un slot SD para almacenamiento, la Mele tiene 4GB de flash y un slot SD, y un slot eSata? ¿Y que si le ponés un disco está buena como fileserver?
Y lo mejor: no es una caridad. Sale U$S70 porque le estás pagando a una empresa para que cree estas cosas, y no depende de conseguir chips con descuento de Broadcom, es tan sólo un buen producto a un buen precio. Y eso está buenísimo porque significa que en dos años vamos a tener una cosa como la a1000 al precio de la Pi, y algo mucho mejor al precio de la a1000, y que eso es sostenible, porque la gente que lo diseña, lo construye, lo envía y lo vende se está ganando el puchero con esto, y le patea el traste a la caridad. Y eso es bueno. Y si querés comprar 100000 de estas, las pedís y te las mandan, en vez de pedire pre-compras, y tenerte meses esperando, y producirlas en cuentagotas.
Así que, compren esto, o algo parecido.
Además: U$S92.60 with envío gratis
Since I have a small kid, I know stuff other people don't. Specifically, I know that a surveillance state is forthcoming and that noone will care. Noone that matters that is. Because they all will have learned about it when they are three. So, by 2035, the expectation of privacy will be: None.
There is a classic south american leftist book called "To Read Donald Duck" that explains, from a marxist-theorist point of view, how Donal Duck forges the public conscience. If Dorfman saw one episode of Special Agent Oso he would have an aneurysm. Let me summarise every episode:
Adorable Kid in any country. The show specifically shows what country it is, and the characters have localized features, names and dresses.
Adorable Kid has a problem.
His predicament is filmed by a robot ladybug, which reports via a satellite to an unnamed organization.
The misterious boss called "Mr. Dos" (By the way, the chief of the argentinian secret service is called "Señor Cinco". Just saying!) assigns the mission to one of his "agents", usually our main character, Oso.
Oso uses advanced technology to find Adorable Kid, and with the guidance of his "Paw Pilot" (how dated is that?), teaches Kid the three easy steps to solve his predicament.
Oso learns a valuable lesson for his apparently endless Special Agent training program.
This is wrong at so many levels it's hard to keep track of them, but let's try anyway.
There is an unnamed organization that has the resources to know when every kid can't tie his shoes, and send an agent to help.
Every ladybug may be a robotic satellite-capable surveillance device.
This organization will send agents to get in contact with kids in any country without any adult supervision.
They have unlimited resources, including space stations, artificially intelligent bird-robocopters.
Their agents are not only good, kind and helpful, they are adorable stuffed animals.
The message is so blunt that it's not even mildly hidden to require marxist analysis, this cartoon says, loud and clear, that unnamed organizations look at everything you do, but it's for your own good, and when those organizations enter your life, it's only to help you and protect you, and in the process, these virtuous groups become even more virtuous.
Having lived in latin america in the 70s and 80s, I can say: bugger, we wished for that to be so! In reality, these things usually hire very few stuffed animals, and quite a bunch of plain old animals.
The constant surveillance is not even thought about, it's just assumed to be there, there is no consideration that kids deserve, need or even have privacy or a privacy expectation, the ladybugs routinely film the kids in their homes or even bedrooms, and send the images to a satellite for automated monitoring. Jeremy Bentham lacked the imagination and technical resources to imagine this, so he had to put his prisoners in a circle, to be watched by mere human guards.
So, what can we do? Probably nothing. I fully expect my kid to grow up with no expectation of privacy, and no concept of doing things outside the purview of a government, officially or unofficially.
Is that evil? Maybe, but it will be their normal. Just like we don't expect to have silence, or private electronic communications unless we take specific measures (you all know that, right?), and we expect all our online actions to be tracked by someone (you do expect that, right?)
My hope is a world of hypocrites, who have a public facade and a secret life. I can only hope my son will become Batman.
Version 3.0.1 of Nikola my static site generator is ready for initial user testing.
I have merged a bunch of patches from Kay Hayen and Kadefor:
disqus_developer is gone
addthis buttons are optional (controlled by a new option)
You can have more than one static files folder to be merged into output.
Image galleries support uppercase extensions.
Templates can not link to CSS that is empty/missing
Better Google Sitemaps
Preserve (some) metadata when copying files, like timestamps
Don't overwrite existing posts with doit new_post
Generate valid URLs from unicode titles
So, if you want to try it out:
https://github.com/ralsina/nikola/zipball/3.0.1
I will make it a real release if nothing bad shows up before sunday or monday.