arm-netbook

arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk

1082 discussions

Questioning The Holy War
by Christopher Havel 09 Dec '18

09 Dec '18

Okay. Forgive me, Luke, for inciting what will inevitably be a stake-burning that will be of such grand proportion as to be visible in space... ...but... ...I have to admit that I just don't "get it". When I write, I save my documents in Word 97-2003 *.doc format. Sometimes I even make a PDF copy. When I listen to music, it's inevitably an MP3. When I go shopping, I like to sit in the Subway at the local Walmart and mooch off the wifi- to the point that, specifically because it has no wifi, I won't go to the Wendy's across the parking lot even though I like their food better. And not having access to Flash is always an annoyance when it occurs. Even my phone is a Samsung Galaxy S7 - not exactly flying the flag of happy freedom-ness. All the stuff I do and rely on daily in my computer is closed-source. I prefer Linux as an operating system primarily because (a) it is a standalone setup which does not require third-party applications for ordinary daily operation, the way Windows does, (b) it's incredibly modular, (c) it doesn't think I'm stupid (much), and (d) I can't beat the price. In using both Linux and Windows (and, to a somewhat lesser extent, DOS and whatever's in a Commodore 64) over the roughly two-and-a-half decades of my life in which I've had my own computer, the only applications I've ever had that actually shot the cat (metaphorically) were applications designed for that purpose, i.e. malware - and in all instances, that was on Windows. (There is one exception that was me being a dummy and turning off a vital system component and then rebooting, the result of which was an unavoidable reinstall -- but that was quite early on and something far more along the lines of a moderately entertaining learning experience than anything else.) ...and that's kind of where I usually draw the line. If a guven application doesn't 'shoot the cat' -- cause obvious system instability or exhibit other overtly malicious activity during use -- and it performs the task(s) it was designed for, it seems to me it ought to be considered just fine, at least for the most part. Yet, almost every message on this list seems to carry with it the implication -- if not express statement -- that if a given application can't be openly audited on a remarkably low level by a random layperson at a random time and place -- leaving alone the fact that most ordinary individuals severely lack the knowledge and education required for that task -- it must therefore be evil and untrustworthy and oh god we can't have any of that sort of thing around here, shoo shoo... Maybe I'm just too ordinary (although that's one thing I've never been accused of!) but I just don't understand. If a program demonstrably does its job, keeps its pants up, and doesn't 'shoot the cat', at least in everyday use, it's got to be, at worst -- as Douglas Adams would say -- "mostly harmless "... right...?

11 15

libre-riscv, first update
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 05 Dec '18

05 Dec '18

https://www.crowdsupply.com/libre-risc-v/m-class/updates/why-make-a-quad-co… in case anyone's interested, do subscribe to updates. i'll post links here anyway. l.

3 3

I just had a great idea,
by zap 27 Nov '18

27 Nov '18

Luke have you ever considered making a libre earth friendly server? Tell me if you like this idea... :)

2 2

tricky conundrum for the upcoming libre-riscv soc crowdsupply page: image needed
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 12 Nov '18

12 Nov '18

ok so to start the new campaign, an image is needed. not a logo, an *image*. something that "represents" a chip and its potential uses and usefulness in a real and concrete way. the problem is: this is a fabless semi-conductor design... there *is* no chip, there *is* nothing to put out there, and because it's just one component that goes *into* products, there *is* no frickin product either! a confusing jumbled utterly boring montage of hypothetical products would be needed. even more of a conundrum: even putting up a picture of some BGA or QFP packaging isn't ok either, because depending on the final pincount, *AND* on large customer orders, the chip will be *custom packaged* and tailored to their needs (i.e. the same die will have far more interfaces added than there are actual pins, and the die re-packaged to suit the customer's needs, leaving many of the pads disconnected internally or connected internally to other dies). if you look at every single campaign there is a nice "image". it's either the first frame of the video, or it's a really cool-looking shot of a PCB, or a 1in cubic robot: https://www.crowdsupply.com/william-weiler-engineering/skoobot logos are out, although not completely ruled out. if anyone would like to convert the attached to PNG (with a variant placing a circle behind the square) that would be really helpful. so this is the challenge: come up with a suitable place-holder image. l.

5 20

libre-riscv shakti m-class talk
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 02 Nov '18

02 Nov '18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojeHX33MPSc cool! i didn't realise this was up, until someone kindly pointed it out, today.

1 0

Should we support libre.computer's efforts at promoting lima?
by David Niklas 02 Nov '18

02 Nov '18

Are they even talking about lima? Or are they giving us the wool-over-eyes treatment? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/librecomputer/la-frite-open-source-fri… Searching.... Nope, I can't find anything for or against lima. Can anyone else find out? I'm going to try and ask them directly, but evidence would be better. Thanks!

6 20

Re: [Arm-netbook] [Campaign Question] USB-C is used more and more...
by lkcl 15 Oct '18

15 Oct '18

[cc'ing arm-netbooks as this question is best answered there, so that other people benefit from it] On Sat, Oct 13, 2018 at 11:32 PM Crowd Supply <orders(a)crowdsupply.com> wrote: > > bonzify(a)airmail.cc submitted a question about your project, "Earth-friendly > EOMA68 Computing Devices": > > USB-C is used more and more often in a day to day basis.Thunderbolt-3, HDMI > ports and new tecnologies are frequently being used more often in the > mainstream market. USB C can intagrate these technologies and also repace the > charging port entirely. How come you didn't use USB C for the EOMA68? there is no such thing as a physical item named "an EOMA68", as it is a standard. the *option* to use USB-3 *is* actually on the EOMA68 standard. USB C is NOT part of the EOMA68 standard, because it would be inappropriate to do so. HOWEVER. implementors of base boards are ENTIRELY AT LIBERTY to add a USB C socket on the base board. AND implementors of Cards are ENTIRELY AT LIBERTY to add a USB C socket on the user-facing end of the Card. the reason why USB C was not included in the EOMA68-A20 - the first in a SERIES of Cards is: massive redesign costs would be required to do so. if you have around USD $20,000 spare, anywhere, i am happy to do another SoC Card, one that uses a PMIC that supports USB-C. l.

8 10

Schedule Updates?
by Paul Boddie 09 Oct '18

09 Oct '18

Hello, I was reviewing the last update on Crowd Supply for the EOMA68 campaign [1], and taking information from that and from discussions on this list, it seems that the following timeline was being followed: 15th June: Crowd Supply update, prototype tested, DRAM tested and ordered, HDMI not tested Late July: DRAM manufactured ("about a month to have the 8 Gbit 1600 MHz DDR3 x8 RAM ICs manufactured"), assembly begins (working from "three months after getting the cards back from assembly before shipping begins") Late October: "delivery of the first units" (presumably "delivery" is the same as "shipping", meaning "dispatch" from Crowd Supply) I hope that things have been proceeding as anticipated. August was a quiet month on this list, and I imagine that Luke has been very busy with all his projects, but I wonder if there is any news about whether the DRAM manufacturer came through, whether assembly could start, whether testing might have begun (and was hopefully a success), and so on. I imagine that there is also the awkward matter of getting the boards from China to the US, related bureaucracy, and other complicating factors. Anyway, I hope everything is going well, that Luke isn't overworked, and that I didn't miss something that would have made the current state of the schedule a bit clearer. Paul [1] https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/2-7-5-samples-rece…

3 4

apple "security" prevents and prohibits repair...
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 05 Oct '18

05 Oct '18

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/10/05/0142226/apples-new-proprietary… *sigh* and tim cook bless him is talking about privacy... it's as if noone listens to him, even inside apple itself...

3 2

Wikipedia policy change, list might care about
by Jean Flamelle 29 Sep '18

29 Sep '18

I wrote a proposal for a major policy change, which establishes conditions for acceptable conditions to cite a primary or biased secondary source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Wikipedia,…. Once in the past, Luke had trouble with a wikipedia article on EOMA that got user-ified, because rigorous news coverage for eoma lacked. Luke definitely noted a little known hypocrisy on wikipedia, which stems from the official policy lagging with the convention on wikipedia on general exceptions to reliability. Since Luke came off as a special interest, perhaps undue scrutiny came about and the rulebook got thrown around a bit. I didn't read to deeply into the conversations back then and I got inspired to write this proposal from my experience learning wikipedia by reading the rules first before editing, noticing many potential caveats, and arguing around the rules too effectively and realizing I would only need to push criticisms and loopholes for probably about a month of pointless back-and-forth on already made points before letting it sink in that otherwise unreliable sources give credible information in this case, for transparent or inferrable reasons. -- CC0

5 8

Jump to page:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

arm-netbook