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:

1. Adorable Kid in any coun­try. The show specif­i­­cal­­ly shows what coun­try it is, and the char­ac­ters have lo­­cal­ized fea­­tures, names and dress­es.

2. Adorable Kid has a prob­lem.

3. His pred­i­ca­­ment is filmed by a ro­bot la­dy­bug, which re­­ports via a satel­lite to an un­­named or­­ga­ni­za­­­tion.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.