Monday, May 18, 2015

bout time somebody open-sourced the guts of a cell phone for cheap...,


WaPo |  For $9, you will soon be able to buy an insanely cheap computer the size of a credit card that runs Linux and comes with a 1 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM, 4 GB storage, and built-in WiFi and Bluetooth. While that’s enough computing power to surf the Web, play video games, check e-mail and use word processing software, the real potential is what DIY innovators, hackers and inventors will do with this cheap computing platform once they integrate it into other projects.

The world’s first $9 computer — known as C.H.I.P. — won’t be available for shipping until early 2016. For now, it’s still only a Kickstarter project with nearly a month to go – but the promise and potential of a crazy cheap computer is so alluring that the Oakland, Calif. company behind the project – Next Thing Co. – has already raised more than $925,000 from more than 18,000 backers in just a few days, easily blowing past the $50,000 they had hoped to raise via Kickstarter.

C.H.I.P. comes from the same innovation oeuvre as the $35 Raspberry Pi — a credit-card size computer that is cheap, portable, highly programmable and highly connectable. So if Raspberry Pi has managed to attract a worldwide user community at a price point of $35, you can just imagine what the lower-cost, more powerful C.H.I.P. might be able to do once it attracts a critical mass of users.

27 comments:

Dale Asberry said...

The particular challenge are the overwhelming withdrawal symptoms you experience while voluntarily not eating. Thankfully, they are over quickly.

Constructive_Feedback said...

Since my friend who is running a tutoring business that has fallen on rough times did not take my suggestion to start a "Raspberry Pi"/"Robotics" class, upon which he should invite the local technology university to the graduation of his first class and then hand them a proposal to have the next series classes on campus ..............

I am working on linking back up with the administrators of a "Men Read To Boys" program that I used to participate in locally, seeking to gain access to the community center we used to meet in.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/kano-kickstart-a-pi-desktop-machine-in-a-box/

Uglyblackjohn said...

Mormons fast the first Sunday of every month with the money that would have been spent being put into a fund to buy food for others. The longest voluntary fast (no food nor water) I've ever gone on was for 48 hours. The first day wasn't that bad (one just goes on with his regular day and meal times are spent reading scripture) but headaches and the shakes take over at some point. The first sip after the fast (sip, don't drink) of water hurts when it hits ones stomach.

Uglyblackjohn said...

I think many people just want to be told or shown what to do. The ennui comes to those who lack the imagination or intelligence to see beyond what the media (of any type) puts out. Many people have bought what was sold and yet they still find no satisfaction. I think the dopamine (the desire for something) may be stronger than the satisfaction of having that thing. The image of the celebrity is just a tool used to get others to buy or aspire to something useless.

CNu said...

I'm thinking home automation and security. There's an urban core business in them there CHIP's

Tom said...

1. I'm lost in the supermarket! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQvvXkQcT8I



2. Personally I'd rather talk about "desire for something" than "dopamine." IMO premature reductionism is useful as something to try out, but it's a sticky trap.

Uglyblackjohn said...

1 - One of my favorites from London Calling. How did the Clash top a kick-ass double album? With the follow up triple album Sandinista.
2 - This (Subrealism) is school for me as well but because of my busy schedule of late I just seem to be auditing these classes.
I clicked the links and dopamine being the link to desires was brought up.
I assume that it is similar to the way compulsive gamblers like the feeling of the moment just before the realization of winning kicks in more than many do the feeling of actually having cash in hand. I think the DESIRE for fame, riches, or anything else is stronger than the satisfaction which comes from having these things (and way more powerful than the volition of doing the work required).

CNu said...

So, we live in a culture that closely and carefully masks the dominance aspects of its hierarchical organization, preferring instead to establish and maintain an outward facade of "prestige" rather than dominance. As far as the optimal "culture of competence"(science/personal-development) as mechanism of social cohesion goes, that's sufficiently fringe and marginal as to be a negligible influence. Prestige culture, or the peacock/peahen spectacle is fundamentally dopaminergic. It's predicated on a "keeping up with the Jones's" model of livestock management, i.e., monkey-see, monkey-want/monkey-see, monkey-do

There's sufficient history and substance in my selection of "dopamine hegemony" as substitute for "global system of white supremacy" that I'm disinclined to substitution or modification. The historical concept of "white supremacy" is in fact the more reductionist term, and, one which clouds further examination and understanding. Sugar, and the quest for sugar - is what drove european expansion into the western hemisphere. Market demand and satisfaction of the craving had MUCH more to do with the overall movement than any other factor(s).

Now that the term has been adopted into black popular argot, you'll see gossipy posers talking about "how the dopamine high" or the initial passionate attraction in a relationship fades. What better example could we cite for this than the unusual subject of little six-head Robyn Fenty? http://ultimate-rihanna.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10722/normal_06~5.jpg

Dior's Muse, exotically and expensively bejewelled, tattoo'd and accessorized - vaulted into the highest echelon of celebrideification - is given the Ridley Scott treatment as the sexiest and most desirable woman in the world. But then, we already know from the example of the broadly demonized Chris Brown that she's not all'that? Frankly, if tasked to name a single one of her songs, I'd be at a complete and total loss to do so. Jill Scott, I know, Macy Gray, I know, Sade -goes without saying. Rihanna, not so much.

The image of the celebrity is just a tool used to get others to buy or aspire to something useless.

Since it's not a question of her talents, Rihanna must be serving some other collective function. IMNSHO - she is the goddess of desire du jour..., period. http://www.egotastic.com/uploads/2014/01/31/shakira-rihanna-butts-remember-to-forget-you-01-600x450.jpg

CNu said...

I assume that it is similar to the way compulsive gamblers like the
feeling of the moment just before the realization of winning kicks in
more than many do the feeling of actually having cash in hand. I think
the DESIRE for fame, riches, or anything else is stronger than the
satisfaction which comes from having these things (and way more powerful
than the volition of doing the work required).


And the manipulation of collective desire, the way in which it is specifically inflamed, amplified, directed and sustained is a foundation stone of human livestock management. It is this fact precisely which ties it all back to the saints and their useless vocations and glorification (spiritual athletes my ass) and the pre-Christian gods - who were keeping it more celebritized and real in their various and sundry vocations and preoccupations.

Tom said...

1. I know! I couldn't really relate to Sandinista when I was 13, but I got it a couple years ago and it's incredible.
2. I should really take up "premature reductionism" with our host, yeah, you're just using the local lingo.

Tom said...

Desire stronger than the satisfactoin. Yeah. My kid taught me how shopping can be 10x more fun than buying. Lucky thing because I went indie when she was little, and shopping is what we have to work with!

Tom said...

I think you've got hold of something, and I like the idea of deprecating it by calling it an addictive loop. Degeneration of an incredible organism into a rat/pellet thing. I even like plugging in "dopamine" and trying it on for size.


My sole heartburn is hanging on to the particular label "dopamine" when we hear from the brain people that nothing is really that well known.

Tom said...

Yeah, "white supremacy" is the less flexible idea. The system can work just fine through black people. No problem.

Uglyblackjohn said...

All these things or; Dior could not afford Beyoncé.

CNu said...

Beyonce's an old married woman, not an open-ended object of desire...,

Uglyblackjohn said...

Yep, but she still may be beyond the grasp of LVMH. I'm no fan of Bey (not a hater either - she benefits me in no way) but I was weighing Beyoncé as the symbolic head of an American media empire against the weight of Arnault.

Dale Asberry said...

That comment was frequently made on the ProgStone list 15 years ago. Regardless of the specifics, the dopaminergic system still is the motivating, easily hacked, addictive system.

Tom said...

Oh well I don't want to stir up an old debate ...

CNu said...

Not only, but the serotoninergic drugs and serotonin re-uptake inhibitors have been the primary objects of prohibitionist scorn for centuries. I believe that it's because these drugs permanently alter the system of desire.

A. they provide direct and revelatory experience of the far reaches of human neuropossibility
B. they permanently alter the focus and intensity of desire

UBJ has parsimoniously conducted a master's class on this thread. The image of the celebrity is just a tool used to get others to buy or aspire to something useless.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity

Deity, sainthood, and celebrity represent a progressive reification of the function in question. The purpose of the God, the Saint, and the Celebrity is identical, as it is a tool to get these pan-troglodytic deuterostems to buy or aspire to something useless, PERIOD.

This progression is a marker on the evolutionary chart of of western human livestock management.

CNu said...

Beyonce is Hera to Rihanna's Aphrodite.

Kwestin - who is the meat and potatoes target of this campaign, men of means, women of means, wannabes?

Cause while I can find more old geriatric kneegresses sporting Beyonce's blond horse hair - and looking the plumb-damn fool in the process with their pathetic and conspicuously transparent wannabeism - I ain't see too many sisters either young or old trying to emulate Rihanna. I mean, I wouldn't put it past St. John's to up and feature some Beyonce sturdy wide-hipped church-lady looking drag. http://origincache-prn.fbcdn.net/1169702_497725563688802_1787521371_n.jpg

Hell, Beyonce's down to a swimsuit video with Nicki Minaj to try and stay relevant with her mama doing the wedding pictures that has all the Links, Deltas, and AKA's doing a simultaneous chickenhead swoon.
http://media2.popsugar-assets.com/files/2015/04/27/633/n/1922398/b4d3e509_edit_img_cover_file_15954503_1430142370_2Q_enaUWb.xxxlarge/i/Tina-Knowles-Wedding-Style.jpg

Rihanna strikes me as the cutting edge of couture and sex appeal internationally in a way that Beyonce can't even approach.

Uglyblackjohn said...

Steatopygian and calipygian are now more 'in'. Ri-Ri is a tamed version of the over-influence of Hip Hop and the video vixen body types of Kim, J-Lo and Bey. All the women of means we're losing faith in their perceived beauty because the gaze of the men of means was being lowered by the more Black phenotype. Plain Jane Beckies are becoming famous singing about Sir Mix-a-Lot's fixation. Ri-Ri was used to shift the focus back to the more European standard while still maintaining some type of street-cred.
To be honest, I have no idea of what's popular or cool these days. I'm so immersed in Pop Culture that I don't even notice it any more. To tell the truth, neither one of these women could match Beverly Johnson back in her day (as far as looks and sex appeal go).

Dale Asberry said...

Not only, but the serotoninergic drugs and serotonin re-uptake inhibitors have been the primary objects of prohibitionist scorn for centuries. I believe that it's because these drugs permanently alter the system of desire.
I actively considered making that self-same point. I want to add another point that's been nagging at my liminal perspective - I think an entity that exists beyond flatland is actively manipulating humanity through these two channels, namely activate the dopaminergic system while deactivating the serotoninergic system. No proof, just a nagging feeling that it's purposeful and that it spans multiple non-coordinated human groups.

CNu said...

Willem of Occam axed me to axe you more about this "entity". Is it human or non-human in origin? Does it have a big-assed head?

Vic78 said...

http://youtu.be/KdS6HFQ_LUc

http://youtu.be/MbtajuiuLMU


I believe it's for women in general. As long as they are buying albums and attending concerts it doesn't matter how the fans are acting. It looks like she manipulates her sex energy better than any female singer out there today.

CNu said...

What's sad and ironic is that lame-assed advert for the still lamer collaboration between Britney Spears and Iggy Azalea. Whoever even thought up that fuckery needs to be taken out behind the building and shot repeatedly until the hammer falls on an empty chamber...,.

makheru bradley said...

“peeple have replaced, recycled, and syncretized their gods and saints like they were mix-ins at a yo-yoni yogurt bar from time immemorial?” I think it’s one thing have total control of the words and images of your “gods.” It’s quite another to accept "gods" whose words and images are produced by others to serve their interests. With the former you get Heru, Jehuti, Ma’at and a civilization that lasts nearly 3,000 years., With the latter you get The Perfect Proxy pushing the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

CNu said...

Air and opportunity Bro. Makheru - why hell - I'd be first in line to attend the Greater St. Hotep Pentecostal Church of Metu Neter - but sadly, despite its 3000 year run (mebbe even longer than that?) it's more played out than an X-Clan video. Anyway, the Hon.Elijah Muhammad got to make up his own religion from soup to nuts, speaking of which he made it up for the particular and exclusive interest of serving deez!!!

Not suprisingly, despite a good thirty year run that one didn't work out too well. I'm guessing the "no god but god" fell to the New God of celebrity.

https://youtu.be/Gn3jmGB-dtk

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