That medium.com post is brilliant, and correct. Unfortunately it starts with a disclaimer: "Anyone can publish on Medium per our Policies, but we don’t fact-check every story. For more info about the coronavirus, see cdc.gov"; and the CDC has been ripped to shreds by the Trump administration. For more info about the coronavirus, see anywhere but the CDC.

By the way, I'm in New Zealand, and yes our example gets tired. We aren't getting infected by the coronavirus, but the economic effects of the global pandemic are definitely being felt and there is plenty of pain. That won't get fixed until the whole world beats this thing... and the example of the U.S. doesn't inspire confidence that that will happen soon.

What's next?

- 95% of geek news site are TERRIFIED about this new innovation!
- EditorDavid thought he'd posted a non-dupe... until he saw THIS

I have a Zuk Z2, it's been doing this for over a year now. Zuk is a small phone company that got eaten by Lenovo. Poor quality software but the Z2 is a great hardware platform and the custom ROMs are in great shape.

Apart from physical size, the Mi Box has this thing beat. Same price, 4K + HDR, Google Cast, but it's also an Android TV box with support for running apps, games etc. Any ideas?

Boards in that sort of arrangement are common as muck and have been for a long time. Then when you want to use it, first you need a baseboard which is beyond the construction capabilities of most hackers (Variscite don't show you the back of the board which will have several specialised, very fine-pitch header connectors) and once you break out the "real-world" connectors, you've got a much larger beast.
If you want something to hack around with, go for a SOM like an RPi, or a Wandboard, or an ODroid, or a BeagleBone, or a Cubieboard, or an OLinuXino, or any of a huge number of other products.

Haven't you heard that Windows Explorer is getting a ribbon? I call that trash.

So you wrote code with only zeroes?

This is like the smart-phone chicken-and-egg from a few years ago. When most smartphones ran WinCE, the smartphone market was small because WinCE was crap. Then Blackberry and Apple made devices that people wanted to use, and created the smartphone mass market.

Java ME is crippled by the carriers. The requirement to shag about with carrier approvals to get access to the network, or Bluetooth, or the local filesystem means that it's nigh on impossible to create useful, widely-used applets- about the only thing you can do is games. Imagine re-submitting your approval to basically every carrier on the planet, for every little revision you make: it only makes sense for specific vertical applications. Java ME can't recover from this, it's never going to be more than a niche solution even though it was intended to be the One Platform For All.

With Apple you have to jump through hoops to get into the MFi program and pay them a tithe for the privilege, but at least once you're there you know your product will work, and continue to work, without carriers getting in the way.

I'm still waiting to see how this will play out on Android, and hoping that the carriers don't screw it up. Now Oracle is throwing a spanner in the works as well and it's not looking too good. But if Android fails to establish an unfettered platform for useful apps, then we're back to Java ME (which is nowhere)... I'm actually casting an eye sideways at WP7, and the temperature in hell is rapidly decreasing.

That Roving Networks product only gives you firmware to cover the Apple devices' "unique discovery and pairing sequence" - you still need to join the Made For iPod program to be allowed to buy authentication co-processors.

Personally I think that if you're smart enough to make a device that does something useful and communicates over Bluetooth, then you're smart enough to handle the Apple authentication sequence. I've done it, which proves that you don't need to be very smart at all!

I guess that this product might be for people who don't want to communicate over Bluetooth, but if they join the MFi program, then they can use serial or USB as they see fit.

So I vote a fail for Roving Networks - I just don't see who that product could be useful for.