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BreadBee: A tiny alternative to the Raspberry Pi Zero that supports Linux and costs just US$10

The BreadBee is an ultra-compact board for developers. Measuring in at just 32 x 30 mm, the BreadBee is considerably smaller than other SBCs like the Raspberry Pi Zero. The BreadBee is rather tall though as developer Daniel Palmer has included an Ethernet port. The RJ45 port can transmit data at up to 100 MBit/s. The BreadBee does not support Wi-Fi, but a future model may have an Ampak Wi-Fi module in place of the Ethernet port.

The BreadBee is based on an MStar MSC313E processor, which integrates an ARM Cortex-A7 core with NEON and FPU that runs at 1.0 GHz. There is also 64 MB of DDR2 RAM and 16 MP of SPI NOR flash memory.

Additionally, Palmer has included two multi-pin headers. Specifically, there is a 24-pin dual-row header with a 2.54 mm pitch on one side, which support SPI, I2C, UART and GPIO. On the reverse, Palmer has included a 21-pin header with a 1.27 mm pitch that supports SD/SDIO, USB 2.0 and GPIO.

Also at CNX Software.

BreadBee board will soon be launched on Crowd Supply, and the cost to make the board is said to be around $10 in small quantities. I think Daniel is a regular reader and commenter on CNX Software and may be able to answer any questions here.

All the same everywhere you go

Although long suspected, it is still breathtaking to see that senior Labour figures essentially conspired to prevent a Corbyn-led government, and that they would have actually preferred the re-election of an extreme-right Tory government.

I've reached peak covid news, as I imagine many of you have, so now I'll at least start off with something completely different.

1. Easter Bunny Tales

We normally get donations of Easter chocolate after the Easter holiday, but they came in early this year as retailers couldn't open to sell them. To amuse my co-workers, I made up this little list:

In Italy, the Easter Bunny makes you an offer you can't refuse.

In Greece, the Easter Bunny makes you an offer you can't understand.

In Russia, the Easter Bunny doesn't make you any offers - it invades and takes all your Easter eggs.

The USA Easter Bunny does the same, but claims it's okay because it's "to help establish democracy".

In New York the Easter Bunny is made of white chocolate because dark Easter Bunnies are 6 times more likely to be shot by cops or catch COVID-19.

In Canada the Easter Bunny is made out of Canadian Bacon (except in Quebec, where he's molded out of mashed potatoes and melted cheese curds).

In Newfoundland the Easter Bunny is always half an hour late.

In Brazil the Easter Bunny died after shaking hands with president Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro claimed the bunny had pre-existing conditions.

In Australia, it's the Easter Kangaroo, because bunnies are for wusses.

In China the Easter Bunny hasn't been seen since entering Wuhan looking for some discounted chocolate Hallowe'en bats.

The Arctic Easter Bunny is on the endangered species list thanks to Justin Trudeau reneging on election promises to help reverse global warming.

The Ukraine Easter Bunny is on the endangered species list from the Russian Easter Bunny, because the Ukraine bunny didn't investigate Hunter Biden.

The Taiwan Easter Bunny doesn't exist because China said so.

The Palestinian Easter Bunny doesn't exist because Israel and the USA said so.

The United Kingdom Easter Bunny won't be giving out chocolate eggs next year because Brexit makes chocolate too expensive to import and "Brexit means not being subject to EU Easter Egg rules."

So next year, the Easter Bunny will be giving out Easter "eggs" made out of Marmite. Ranks right up there with warm Brit beer and boiling everything until it has no taste left.

2. Why do we work?

Thursday I remarked to one of my co-workers how strange it was that people are going nuts doing nothing when they spend their lives working so that in the end they can do nothing.

I guess it's only a vacation when it's on your terms. And then it's such a hassle to fit everything into a limited time that in the end you almost need a vacation after your vacation.

People should think of it like the "gap year" that many students take. Employ it for the same reasons - to figure out what you want to do for the next 10, 20, 50 years of your life. 24% of employees hate their jobs with a passion, 13% really enjoy their work, and 63% are "meh, it's a job ..."

If you really enjoy your work but your employer is about to (or already has) fold, maybe it's time to start planning to strike out on your own. Or maybe you have an itch you've always wanted to scratch but never had the time to.

You could always finish (or start) the "Great $NATION Novel", but don't count on it paying the bills. Average earnings of published authors has dropped like a stone over the past decade, and now are under $5k a year. And that's for published authors. 1/4 of all published authors reported $0 income last year. You'd make more money starting a vanity press to profit off the clueless who dream of fame and fortune.

So what's practical? Whatever people need, because with the economic reversal (can't call it just a downturn any more, can we?) luxury items like nail salons and gyms and cruises are dead. Same with kid's karate and judo classes, after-school hockey and football, and anything else that can be cut.

Restaurants are finding that food delivery services aren't helping them pay the bills after they take a 30% cut, so expect them to be open to the way things were done before - the casual delivery person on a bike or car making deliveries for a few bucks plus tips plus free eats. There were people who made a living out of that before Uber Eats came along (speaking of which, Uber is taking a $2 billion write-down on it's non-driving operations, because even 30% isn't enough to sustain crazy stock evaluations).

Maybe we'll see food trucks doing the same thing as ice cream trucks - going up and down streets playing music to attract attention and making sales at the curb. Cuts out the likes of Uber and you know that nobody has "sampled" your delivery. And you can't get fresher than "cooked in front of you." Bonus for being able to see they wear a mask, hair net, and gloves.

3. Most people are finding that they really can't stand their kids.

Will they remember this after the lockdown is eased (I'm not going to say "over", because even with a vaccine it will never be over, not when we (a) have anti-vaxxers, and (b) it appears that antibodies only give protection for a limited time. Think booster shots for tetanus as an example of the limitations of vaccines to protect permanently).

I expect further drops in the birth rate in developed nations, and a freaking disaster in Africa and South Asia, because all our efforts at famine or relief did ended up just increasing the population affected by the next famine or disaster.

This was offset by the "green revolution" of farming, combining higher yield crops, chemicals, pesticides, but we've come to the end of that. Crops treated with Roundup, for example, produce lower yields than non-pesticide-treated crops, but take a lot more human labour to produce, and with people crowding into urban areas in increasing numbers because of war, water shortages, famine, and increased unemployment, it's just not going to happen.

Environmental disaster, economic collapse, and a pandemic. The lowered use of fossil fuels may have bought us a year wrt the environment, but you just have to look at the bail-outs offered to the big fossil fuel consumers (the airlines) to know that's only temporary. There will be no restructuring to a green economy. Not until enough people die that no alternative is physically possible.

4 You want more and better workers, then pay more.The "shortage" is a lie.

We've been saying that in tech for a couple of decades - that there is no shortage of tech workers, just employers willing to pay what it takes. Ditch the H1Bs, which distorts the labour market.

With the deaths in care homes across the globe, governments are having to confront the fact that minimum wage doesn't cut it for orderlies and personal service workers. Especially when confronted with a disease that is causing patients to drop dead on a daily basis right in front of them.

Private care homes have been rip-offs for decades. One that billed itself as "luxury" and was charging between $3,000 and $10,000 a month for care wouldn't spring for PPE (personal protective equipment) for care-givers, and as care-givers got sick and patients died (31 in 3 weeks), they abandoned ship.

The owner is a convicted criminal with a long history (going back to the '80s) of international drug trafficking and fraud (his daughters say he was pardoned - they seem to want us to ignore that the parole board requires the person to admit guilt before they will even consider a pardon). Homes are able to claim that they're not making money by (1) having other companies that the owners or relatives control that charge all sorts of management fees, etc., that would normally be the job of the owners, (2) paying inflated rental or mortgage payments to holding companies that they lease or bought the building from, (3) lucrative do-nothing "directorships" to friends and politicians, (4), rapacious supply contracts for everything from laundry to food from non-arms-length entities that they profit from. And many more dodges.

Ironically, the same people that own 2400 Herron (and here and here) were advertising space at another of their residences, Manoir Pierrefonds, on TV last night.

You can't get a minimum wage job working in a care home if you have a criminal record, but you can own 6 care homes if you know the right people. (why yes, he was a donor to the provincial Liberal party. I'm shocked, shocked, I say - NOT).

Same as in tech, there is no shortage of workers, just a shortage of employers paying what the job is really worth. And if you're charging the fees these private places charge (higher than the public, which btw pays their care workers more while charging less), you can afford to pay for diapers for patients and PPE for workers, and more than minimum wage.

Note: I skip over replies from the messaging system from anon users, so bite me for infringing on your "right to be heard" by ignoring you. Same as I read at +2 to avoid the crap.

As for worrying about leaving shit-posts unanswered damaging my reputation, I can get 100 real people, including a bunch of charity directors, other volunteer workers, politicians, etc., to vouch for me. That beats any shit-posts from anyone, including apk. Knock yourself out - I won't see it and it can't harm me. I can't take you seriously, and neither should you.

AnandTech editor reports that Intel may be incentivizing mini PC makers to delay or not build AMD-based models

AMD was introducing its Ryzen-based mini PCs in late 2019 as alternatives for Intel’s NUC models, but most of these came powered with embedded solutions like the V1000 and R1000 CPUs, or at most Ryzen 2000 APUs. Only Zotac announced a few Ryzen 3 3200U models earlier this year and the company hinted that we could eventually see some mini PCs powered by the freshly launched Ryzen 4000 Renoir APUs later this year. Anandtech's respected reviewer Ian Cutress suggests that this might not be the case and it may take mini PC OEMs up to a year to introduce Renoir-based models, as Intel is actually incentivizing most prominent vendors to delay or not build any AMD-based mini PCs at all.

Some of the OEMs that already joined AMD’s “anti-NUC alliance” include OnLogic, EEPD, Simply NUC, Tranquil PC and ASRock. While the first four are smaller companies that do not have a highly-diversified portfolio, ASRock is already a well-established mini PC maker, and we would expect more powerful mini PC solutions, yet, as it stands, ASRock just began offering mini PC builds sporting the Ryzen 3000 Picasso APUs along with the older Raven Ridge and Bristol Bridge solutions, and that is exactly one year after the launch of the Picasso APUs, as pointed out by Ian Cutress. We are seeing either a 1-year delay for AMD-based small form-factor models, or absolutely no AMD-based mini PCs in the case of big brands like Dell, Asus or MSI, so Cutress may be onto something here.

AMD best-buds, TSMC, designed an 'enhanced' 5nm node for its future Ryzen chips

In a news story from Chainnews (via @chiakokhua), ostensibly about the cut in 5nm and 7nm production orders from Huawei, the piece also notes that TSMC isn't worried about this drop because Apple has taken up the slack. It's asking for a whole bunch of extra chip wafers, potentially competing with AMD for 5nm demand at the end of this year.

But the piece also goes on to say that: "TSMC is said to have developed a 5nm enhanced version of its process specifically for AMD, which has a capacity requirement of no less than 20,000 12-inch wafers per month."

TSMC Delays The Production Of 3nm By 6 Months Amidst Equipment Shortages In The Wake Of The Pandemic – 5nm Is Still On Schedule With Production At Full Capacity

Gaming laptops will never be the same, and it's all thanks to AMD

AMD Zen 3 Based Ryzen 4000 ‘Vermeer’ Desktop CPUs Will Be Compatible With Existing AM4 (X570, X470, B550, B450) Motherboards, Confirmed By XMG

I doubt there is much concern about this.

There are no words

Edit:

Re: your 1200 bucks,

The debt collector gets first dibs

Edit 2:

Another Biden/Trump pillow fight.

The Treasury Department has ordered President Trump’s name be printed on stimulus checks the Internal Revenue Service is rushing to send to tens of millions of Americans, a process that is expected to slow their delivery by several days, senior agency officials said.

The unprecedented decision, finalized late Monday, means that when recipients open the $1,200 paper checks the IRS is scheduled to begin sending to 70 million Americans in coming days, “President Donald J. Trump” will appear on the left side of the payment.

It will be the first time a president’s signature appears on an IRS disbursement, whether a routine refund or one of the handful of checks the government has issued to taxpayers in recent decades either to stimulate a down economy or share the dividends of a strong one.

Coming to your $1,200 relief check: Donald J. Trump’s name

We're in the midst or a world-wide health pandemic, and a global economic meltdown that may rank right up with the Great Depression. People are stressed. They are insecure. They don't know what the future holds.

And yet even in Australia people are just as happy now as they were a year ago.

I've been wondering if it's just me, but I think that people are coping by helping each other physically and emotionally, and that this is playing out in people's happiness being mostly unaffected.

I know for myself this is the 3rd spring in just over 3 years that my volunteer work has gotten me involved in some form of disaster relief, and people have a need to feel needed. So it's logical that I feel happy with things, despite being low vision, etc.

Simple lesson - it's hard to feel bad when you're making a positive difference. No wonder I feel like the time I'm on the Internet is more of a burden than anything else.

But this is not something new. We've known for years that internet usage correlates with poorer mental health and greater unhappiness.

I've seen how, with the loss of more than half our volunteers, those who are left have common cause, no slackers, no dilettantes, and oddly enough, we aren't seeing the huge disruption in our lives that people are reporting. Being part of essential services, we take all the precautions and adapt to the job at hand, and we're confident in those precautions protecting us. n95 masks, sanitizer and gloves, social distancing, and not allowing new volunteers who cannot be vouched for has left us a cohesive, dedicated team.

So, useful work, great colleagues. How can you be depressed about that?

We need to rethink our values and way of doing things so that everyone can experience the same sense of belonging, of relevance. And that starts by killing off the gig economy. Your job should be more than just a gig, where you can be replaced by another underpaid gig worker.

Sanders endorses Biden

*shamelessly stolen

From where I'm sitting, it feels increasingly clear. Unless you're lucky enough to be living in Scandinavia, rich enough to live in the middle of your own nature reserve, or suffering from some kind of psychosis, you can probably see it too if you look around and think. Humanity has failed.

In countries like the USA, the UK or Australia, democracy doesn't really exist anymore and probably hasn't for a long time. There's a false facade, just enough of a facade to keep enough of the casual thinkers believing in it to justify keeping its name and what remains of its processes in place. Azuma Hazuki recently pointed out that every president from Nixon on has had the same effect of generally increasing inequality, concentrating wealth and power with those at the top and mostly gradually eroding civil liberties for those lower down the pyramid as well. When someone like Sanders can't even get a foothold in his own party against Biden (whose apparently declining health makes one wonder how he would cope as anything more than a figurehead), with voting results presented by opaque machines, I think the time has come to face the fact that it is effectively a one party system in terms of policy and has been for a very long time. If by some miracle Bernie had got into office, don't you get the feeling certain interests would have seen to it, via some unfortunate turn of events or other, that his tenure was rather short? The story has been much the same in the UK, with an elitist establishment gradually undermining Jeremy Corbyn, both within his own party and throughout the media. Major gerrymandering, illicit overspends on campaigns and people being turned away from polling stations hint at the fact that those with power and wealth will go to just about any lengths necessary to ensure they keep all of it. Advances in technology and the decline of privacy in recent decades are making it easier and easier both for the democratic system to be manipulated and power to be exerted and maintained over citizens.

Before anyone tells me, I know just about every earlier generation (Boomers excepted, ha) has had it worse in many ways, all the more so if you start looking back a few hundred years. First, "worse" is a generalization because someone homeless and starving today might have been a serf with food and a home in the Middle Ages. Secondly, that kind of relativism doesn't help anyone. It doesn't reduce suffering. It doesn't improve the lives of the inhabitants of this planet. It just lets it keep on sinking. Which brings me on to the other thing on my mind, the planet itself and its other inhabitants. The injustices of the Middle Ages weren't destroying the climate on a global scale, weren't causing extinctions on the scale they're happening today, because industry and the human population simply weren't big enough to do this much harm. Now it's increasingly clear we're at a serious tipping point environmentally, and it just so happens that the right wing elites that are so very good at holding onto power and running industry really don't give a shit about that, beyond a few empty platitudes and inconsequential gestures for public relations exercises.

Just as Sanders and Corbyn were undermined within their own parties, it's a pity selfless, compassionate social democrats aren't managing to perform similar tricks to hollow out the right wing parties. I guess the sociopathic elites are just too well-practiced at duplicity. It doesn't come so naturally to those with more empathy. More's the pity, really.

I sometimes wonder if one of the things that's accelerated the decline of human civilization and the greedy pursuit of profit alone to the detriment of all else, is the decline of religion. I have my own morals grounded in philosophy, but most humans don't seem to have that. If they're not told to be kind to one another and not given a reason why, it doesn't seem to come naturally beyond their own demographic that they care about. Most of the religions arguably aren't perfect and they certainly got misused. With the exception of a few like Buddhism and some of the Native American religions, I think there's not enough respect for human impact on the natural world in their teachings. But when you look at what's replaced religion for much of the West, I do wonder if we'd be in a better place right now if it had stuck. In many circles now morality itself is even portrayed as a negative. Those that advocate for it are condemned as virtue-signallers or being preachy. So what? What's so bad about trying to improve things?

Humans aren't very good at trying to improve things. When they do, it's often misguided. We flail around, telling ourselves we're doing good. But we're part of a broken system and have been spoonfed lie after lie our entire lives.

In summary, I honestly don't see any of this stuff getting any better at all in my life time, or at a guess even for a century or two, at least. It's very depressing and what's more depressing is every cent I spend goes back into funding this injustice and environmental destruction. All I can do is try to consume less and give more. Try and slow down the suffering and damage locally. Unfortunately, I struggle with motivation, particularly when I'm feeling as gloomy as this and I know on balance my consumption is almost certainly doing more harm than good over the course of my life.

I try to disengage from it all. Ignorance is definitely bliss. But my mind keeps waking back up. My conscience keeps hurting me. Not that I even really care about my own pain. But I know others do, and I know that very, very many are suffering.

These subjects really deserve a lot more detail but frankly the way I feel today it's a miracle I wrote any of it down at all.

I expect khallow and Buzz will be along soon to tell me how I've got it all wrong. Go nuts guys. I probably have, but so have you.

And who recovered? No one asked.

So we roamed, with our hellish pills,

Among the valleys and the hills,

Worse than the pestilence itself we were.

I’ve poisoned a thousand: that’s quite clear:

And now from the withered old must hear

How men praise a shameless murderer.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe