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When I started writing this, I experienced a power flicker. Maybe use a battery-backed power strip so you don't get a taste of Afghanistan. Keep in mind that the shape of the official USB-C power supply is awkward and could take up more than one outlet on a strip.

Overall, Pi4 4GB with Raspbian works well as a desktop. Performance is reasonable and compares well to my 2011 laptop. RAM usage of Raspbian is very low. You may want to tweak it to use more of your RAM to reduce activity on the microSD card.

Ethernet and USB boot aren't available yet, but you don't necessarily need an SSD for boot/files. I'm using cheap 32 GB microSD cards, not the ones with A1 or A2 "Application class" IOPS, and it works great most of the time. The speed of the microSD interface was doubled, so that helps. Some things may suck. For example, I tried to download a 1 GB file from Mega, and it was in the ballpark of 100 times slower than the HDD laptop for no apparent reason. I don't know if that is a problem with sustained speeds or the browser-based encryption scheme Mega uses not being accelerated correctly.

I used the Pi4 in open air for a while, but switched to a Kodi FLIRC case. Temperatures now stay around 48-52°C during light use, or closer to 55°C under heavier use. It will never throttle in this case unless I start to look at overclocking it.

One person I gave a Pi4 to can't display video with LibreELEC even though it works fine on the displays I tested. However, LibreELEC for Pi4 is an alpha version and hasn't been updated since July 25. Kodi (Debian) within Raspbian does work, although it crashes when I exit it.

I have LibreELEC running on a Pi4 2GB and it is pretty snappy. Here is a short review of LibreELEC on Pi4. The 1GB model should be fine for LibreELEC, 2GB is regarded as a better choice than 1GB for 4K resolution, while 4GB is probably completely unnecessary.

In Chromium on Raspbian, video playback is still done using the CPU AFAIK, which will be fixed later. Aside from complaints others have had about video playback, I think I've noticed a weird lack of picture quality at 720p on YouTube, which I'm hoping will go away once hardware acceleration is switched on. I have seen some screen tearing, for which there is an explanation. I also hear weird clickiness/pops on some audio playback over headphones, but I need to pin down the cause.

I am looking into RetroPie for another user I am gifting a Pi4 to. No officially working version for Pi4 is available yet, but the expectation is that the newest consoles that Pi4 could emulate with acceptable performance are Nintendo 64, PS1, etc. N64 is probably a milestone in terms of emulation desirability. People are already testing GameCube on Pi4, but with generally bad performance. Part of the puzzle is that Pi4 supports OpenGL ES 3.0, up from 2.0 of the Pi3B+. But OpenGL ES 3.2 or Vulkan support will be needed to get performance closer to competing ARM platforms like the Nvidia Shield TV and add more graphics features that something like Dolphin would need. Improving the graphics driver is on the Pi Foundation agenda, with OpenGL ES 3.1 being worked on, but who knows when that will be done.

One interesting note is that contrary to initial announcements, Pi4 has LPDDR4-3200 SDRAM, not LPDDR4-2400. That fact was corrected on this page after yours truly pointed it out. Bragging aside, that incorrect info was copied endlessly by news outlets reporting the announcement. Wikipedia also has the incorrect speed. So yeah, that's pretty silly. The memory speed is up massively from previous gen, which was LPDDR2-800 (overclocked to 900 MHz), AFAIK.

Since the Raspberry Pi forums hates wishlists, I'll put one here for fun. My assumption is that Pi5 would come out in 2022, Pi6 in 2025:

802.11ax support: This standard offers a number of improvements over 802.11ac. I think it uses some spectrum closer to 1 GHz (an expanded 2.4 GHz band), which should improve range and wall penetration.

Better/actual Bluetooth 5 support: The Pi3B+ and Pi4B both use the same wireless chip. Bluetooth 5 "support" can be added to the older model with a firmware update. But it does not support the new BT5 modes which allow doubled speed at short range or quadrupled range at 1/8 speed. This is a problem with many more products than the Pi, because the Bluetooth SIG sucks and labels too many features as optional. It makes the USB standards look sane. They also need to adopt Opus.

Displays: Without overclocking, you are limited to a 4K display @ 60 Hz and a 4K display @ 30 Hz at the same time. Obviously, that could be improved. Given that Broadcom's SoC GPUs appear to be aimed primarily at TVs, it's inevitable that a future iteration of Pi will get the 8K display support that almost nobody needs.

Codecs: AV1 hardware decoding support would be great for the next iteration. It's unfortunate that there is basically zero support for AV1 in 2019 consumer products, but the situation could be improved by 2022. Maybe AV2 support is on the table (before Google switched to AV1, they were planning on releasing VP10 and future versions at an aggressive 18 month pace). H.266 could also be a thing at that point, although I'd rather see MPEG get brutalized in the market. There are concerns that patent trolling will slow down AV1 adoption or kill it, so expect that to happen in the worst timeline.

eMMC storage: I don't care, but a lot of people seem to. I have no problem swapping microSD cards (don't sneeze), and if I wanted better I would use an attached SSD which are getting very cheap. The Compute Module versions do have eMMC.

Memory: 4 GB is very adequate, but any desktop-oriented system could benefit from more (including to the the point of universal memory where your storage = RAM and you have hundreds of gigabytes of it). Word is that 64-bit Raspbian will likely be released before a Pi5. Pi4's SoC can technically address up to 16 GB of LPDDR4 memory. State-of-the-art is currently 12 GB LPDDR(4X|5), with 16 GB expected next year. We may finally be at a point where memory prices continue to decline instead of shooting back up. If there is any change at all from this generation, I would expect to see Pi5 with 2/4/8 GB versions. 2 GB would be adequate for many use cases, but 8 GB as a flagship would be nice. I doubt they would bother with a 6 GB model. Also, rumors of a Pi4 8GB were denied and attributed to a misprint in the user manual.

Better performance, but with lower heat: I think the Pi Foundation has heard enough complaints by now to understand that the heat issue is a bad meme for them, and there needs to be a reversal from using more power at higher heat every generation. Worst of all is that the official plastic case will cause the SoC to throttle under light/normal use. Now that Cortex-A72 cores are in use, any successor core designs used should allow higher performance with better efficiency (although they might want to skip A73: "In reviews, the Cortex-A73 showed improved integer instructions per clock (IPC), though lower floating point IPC, relative to the Cortex-A72."). There's also many nodes under "28nm". People seem to think that it will be stuck on "28nm" for a decade but I think "20nm" and "14nm" are possible (GlobalFoundries is stuck at "14nm" and a Chinese foundry is going to be at "14nm" soon, so there will be a lot of competition on that node). More efficient FinFETs could also be available.

Every iteration of Pi (2/3/4) has delivered massively improved performance over previous models. That might slow down for version 5... unless they bump up the core count. 6 or 8 cores may be coming. I'm not sure if a die shrink is needed first. I doubt that a future Pi will adopt big.LITTLE, but maybe it should. Maybe that is a way to ensure compatibility with older models, if done right.

3DSoC: This DARPA/SkyWater Technology Foundry project has the potential to increase performance to/beyond current HEDT levels while lowering power consumption back to Raspberry Pi Zero levels. It *could* revolutionize personal computing and create a situation where almost all people would be satisifed using a Pi or other single board computer at all times. While 3DSoC would be able to use larger, older nodes like "90nm", costs for "90nm" 3DSoC are projected to be comparable to conventional "7nm". If this does materialize on schedule, Pi Foundation and Broadcom will have to respond eventually or they risk being rendered utterly obsolete by faster-moving competitors. There have been plenty of Pi clones, but nothing 3+ orders of magnitude faster in the same footprint.

Kobo: Kobo debuts Libra H2O e-reader, updates software with more tools for readers

Kobo’s new Libra H20 is like a cheaper Kindle Oasis

Amazon: Amazon Kindle Oasis 2019 Review – It Could Replace Paper

Bonus thing: Acer Unveils Predator PowerGem: Claims Thermal Pad Boosts CPU Performance by Over 12%

San Francisco board labels NRA a 'domestic terrorist organization'

San Francisco's Board of Supervisors has passed a resolution declaring the National Rifle Association (NRA) a "domestic terrorist organization" following the shooting in Gilroy, Calif., where four people, including the gunman, were killed.

The resolution, which local Fox affiliate KTVU reported passed on Tuesday, declares the gun rights group to be a terrorist organization and calls on other cities and government entities to make similar declarations. The resolution itself has no legal weight.

The resolution argues that the group "musters its considerable wealth and organizational strength to promote gun ownership and incite gun owners to acts of violence."

I think I may just have earned my RYA Dinghy Sailing Level 2 badge. Can I call myself Captain now?

Update: I have in my hand a piece of paper.

Conversion therapy group founder comes out as gay, apologizes

The founder of one of the nation’s largest conversion therapy programs, who spent decades leading the organization, now says he is gay, apologizing for his role in the practice.

McKrae Game, who founded and led Hope for Wholeness in South Carolina, publicly announced he was gay in early June, more than two years after the organization’s board of directors abruptly fired him.

In a Facebook post last week, Game, 51, said he was “wrong,” adding: “Please forgive me.”

“I certainly regret where I caused harm,” he wrote. “Promoting the triadic model that blamed parents and conversion or prayer therapy, that made many people believe that their orientation was wrong, bad, sinful, evil, and worse that they could change was absolutely harmful."

Also at NBC.

I think I understand now why some people are very keen on open water swimming (wild swimming). I've just been on holiday and spent a lot of time swimming in the sea (yes, in the UK, with a wetsuit) and doing a spot of body boarding. It's very relaxing. You can spend hours in the water. It's quite fun when the waves are breaking over you, but it's also good when they're smooth and you bob over the top.

There's a bit of a knack to body boarding, catching the wave at the right point, and adjusting the attitude of the board so it stays on the leading edge of the wave for longer. I don't think I'll ever get around to trying proper surfing. I think that would take some lessons and quite a bit of time. It's fun to watch though.

Evatec’s next-generation CLUSTERLINE supporting SkyWater’s 3DSoC and carbon nanotube custom foundry programs

Evatec AG of Trübbach, Switzerland (which makes thin-film production equipment for advanced packaging, power device, MEMS, optoelectronics, wireless communication and photonics applications) has delivered the latest generation of its CLUSTERLINE thin-film deposition tool (including evaporation capability) to SkyWater of Bloomington, MN, USA – a US-owned DMEA-accredited technology foundry that manufactures integrated circuits for markets including aerospace & defense, automotive, cloud & computing, consumer, industrial, the Internet of Things (IoT) and medical.

The tool is said to bring new levels of thin-film performance, key to the production of carbon nanotubes and other emerging technologies. CLUSTERLINE is an industry-proven, high-volume single-wafer processing production solution enabling integration of PVD (physical vapor deposition), highly ionized PVD, soft etch and PECVD (plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition) process technologies, along with extensive pre- and post-treatment steps. The open system architecture allows easy tool configuration.

The latest tool from Evatec provides SkyWater new capabilities in processing of metals and dielectrics, and is important in its 3DSoC (system-on-chip) work, providing unconventional processing capabilities for a CMOS-based foundry. This new tooling supports SkyWater’s business model as a technology foundry by giving innovators additional processing options to establish manufacturable process flows for emerging technologies. This capability supports on-going process development at SkyWater not only for carbon nanotubes but also for photonics and MEMS device types as well as where conventional PVD processes do not provide flexibility or the precision that these applications require.

Previously: DARPA's 3DSoC Becoming a Reality

I have a NodeMCU v3, an ESP8266-based Arduino work-alike board with Wi-Fi, and after getting a few cheap sensors and a display, I managed to wire up together a network sensor system that can give readings of temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure that I'm feeding into an RRD to make pretty graphs. This is what it looks like as of now. I know it's on a breadboard, but I kinda suck at soldering and after burning two perfboards trying to get the circuit built I decided screw it and made the breadboard a permanent fixture. I'll have to buy another one soon. Yeah, it's hot here where I come from. 29°C and 84% relative humidity is punishing.

That 0.96" I²C SSD1306-based OLED display is very nice and clear, but it was also the very devil to interface. It took a lot of fuzzing around to get the thing to work reliably. The specs say that it ought to be compatible with both 3.3v and 5v, but I've found that it is very unreliable at 3.3v, and that the 4.7kΩ pull-up resistors that are generally required to use I²C have to then be pulled up to 5v. The rest of the components, the DHT11 temperature sensor (blue box) and the BMP 180 pressure sensor are all wired to to 3.3v for Vcc.

If you'd want to build one like it yourself, more details and code here. If you try to build upon my work I'd like to hear about it!

We are knee-deep in wharrgarrrbling white-supremacist bullshit. I don't think this site's going to last much longer as anything but Stormfront 2.0 at the rate things are going. Nevertheless, I'm the kind of person who can't just walk past a giant gibbering clusterfuck of wrong without snarking on it, so here goes.

Have you ever noticed that none of these people can give you a straight answer about what it is precisely to be "white?" I'd like to know when micks, dagos, polacks, and krauts...oops, pardon me, Irish, Italians, Poles, Germans, and basically anyone not a WASP began to qualify as "white." What caused this sudden shift in the definition of whiteness, when did it happen, and why?

Also, scratch these cowardly little whiners a bit, and something interesting emerges. It's not white skin they seem to be after so much as "white culture." This, if anything, is even more ill-defined than simple "whiteness." Requests for clarification from, as a pertinent example, our very own XivLacuna, have proven to be...less than enlightening, shall we say. Apparently "white culture" is what raises property values and is more or less synonymous with being a good neighbor? But also apparently, very poor and extremely dysfunctional areas with majority or entirely white populations are *not* examples of "white culture" despite their demography, because something something hurrrarghl Jews and liberals and banning coal?

I don't even know what the fuck. This kind of incoherent blather is par for the course from white supremacists. Bunch of idiot historically-illiterate rebels without a clue, let alone without a cause. Sounds like a load of maladaptive, resentful little manchildren who think the world owes them a living and are looking for something, or someone, to break when it doesn't fall into their laps. Boo-stupid-hoo. How about you use that supposedly superior white-with-a-capital-W intellect and pull yourselves up by your bootstraps?

I'm not even going to touch on the complete avalanche of non-sequiturs, half-truths, whataboutisms, false dichotomies, or outright *lies* these people attempt to bury opposition under. I do notice, though, that when you counter them properly, they simply stop responding to you, as if that somehow means they won. And, holy god damn, I don't think I've ever seen goalposts move that fast; I'm pretty sure some of these boys are breaking the sound barrier here!

What it all boils down to is this: white supremacists are incoherent, ignorant, cowardly whiners, scared of their own shadows for being dark. I will never comprehend how empty, how gullible, how utterly suggestible, how completely in the grip of total moral and cognitive surrender someone would have to be to fall for a supremacy movement that can't even define itself internally!

In case any of this crowd of upstanding, rational, well-spoken pillars of society (ye gods...) would like to attempt to explain their agenda so that it makes something approaching coherent sense, I'm all ears :) I'm also prepared to be completely let down on that front, though will probably at least get some cheap laughs out of it.

SpaceX's Next Starship Prototype Launch Will Be a 12-Mile-High Test Flight, Elon Musk Says

"Aiming for 20km flight in Oct & orbit attempt shortly thereafter," Musk said on Twitter before making another promise to his followers. "Starship update will be on Sept. 28th, anniversary of SpaceX reaching orbit. Starship Mk 1 will be fully assembled by that time."

[...] SpaceX's current plans for Starship call for a 100-passenger spacecraft powered by six of the company's Raptor rocket engines. Starhopper, for comparison, used a single Raptor engine, while the Mark 1 Starship will apparently use three Raptors for early tests. When Starship and the Super Heavy are on the launchpad, they'll stand 387 feet (118 meters) tall, Musk has said.

Those details may change on Sept. 28, when Musk rolls out his Starship and Super Heavy update. He has said the presentation will he held at SpaceX's Boca Chica test site in South Texas, home of the Starhopper and the first Starship prototype, the Mark 1. (A second, the Mark 2, is being built at SpaceX's facility in near Cape Canaveral, Florida.)

Starship construction in Florida is halted due to the incoming Hurricane Dorian.