But how much of that is paying for the case and power supply?
Didn't get what you meant there.
NUCs usually come with a case and a power supply.
I bought one a couple of months and it came with those, as well as RAM.
It didn't have any storage though, because it was from a corporation, and didn't want to risk selling SSDs with data on them.
Raspberry Pi's are the right fit in specific cases.
For example, you need to interface the GPIO pins to some devices.
But there are issues with it in other cases.
For example, the cost rises as you include accessories, such as a case, fan, various hats, and so on.
If you just need a low(er) power x86 platform to run a stock Linux distro, then plain mini PCs or older models of Intel/ASUS NUCs will fit the bill nicely.
You can get a 2018 NUC for ~ $100 or so.
They already come with M.2 slots, and some have SATA connectors.
They have SODIMM slots so you can upgrade RAM later if you want.
Running Xubuntu or Ubuntu Server is a breeze.
Some background from personal use of Astral's products
Astral makes a tool called uv, for Python.
It offers one solution to an important problem in the Python ecosystem.
Certain projects require certain versions of Python.
You may end up with two projects that you need on the same machine, but with different Python versions.
For example, you want to run Home Assistant and AppDaemon.
Using uv, you can have two separate virtual environments (venv) each with its own version of Python.
It is also lightning speed for pip.
So it replaces venv and pip in one go.
Home Assistant recently dropped regular user support for it being run from PIP or uv, so I moved to Home Assistant under docker.
But for developers, doing a git clone, then using uv is still very helpful.
In the eighties, fourth generation languages or 4GLs were going to spell the end of programming. Business people would design and implement the systems.
Well, that was the theory, or scaremongering, anyway.
Add to that the hyperbole around some technologies that were pushed to end users, rather than a developer tool.
Examples:
- COBOL was supposed to be a language for managers so they don't have to ask a programmer to write a report for them.
- SQL was supposed to be the same, managers can query databases directly without the need for a programmer
- As you stated: 4GL was supposed to relieve programmers of the tedious work of coding
None of that came true,
Is anyone else puzzled about the logic behind hitting him now? Sure, there's some amount of supremacy nerd 'noone is beyond our reach' wank value to targeting someone through the CCTV system; but why hand a fairly unpopular theocrat who is already old enough that succession planning is an urgent problem basically the most PR-friendly death imaginable at the same time as you provide his government with a plausible argument along the usual 'need to take necessary measures during the current crisis' lines?
That's a more or less instant upgrade from 'increasingly pathetic reactionary with questionable public support' to 'martyred by jews and international zionism' for a guy who was otherwise not long on options for shoring up his popularity.
Because Israel said so. That's all you need to know. Now Israel can play victim when someone does something to them, completely ignoring they're the one who's been attacking its neighbors for decades.
In addition to that, there is probably the Venezuela scenario.
When you have incompetent people heading critical departments, such as Hegseth and Gabbard, they see "decapitating the regime" causing it to fall in-line with the USA. You capture/kill the head of the regime, and the rest of the country will magically bend to the will of the USA.
You even see Hegseth saying this is not Iraq, this is not eternal war.
Wishful thinking all the way, caused by hubris and incompetence.
Multilateral agreements, be they about peace or trade, are dead, even if a sane guy gets in the white house in a few years. No one wants to take the risk of signing something with the US only to have it be torn up when the next crazy guy gets elected.
It is worse than that.
The idiot re-negotiated the North American Free Treaty (NAFTA) during his first term, and became USMCA/CUSMA.
Then in his 2nd term he himself is violating it all by imposing tariffs on anything and everything on Canada and Mexico. In other words, he himself is shredding his own agreement.
There are no rules, no laws, no agreements, no trust
Even if the American vote in a sane guy the next time, what guarantee does the rest of the world have they will elect someone who is smarter and more evil the elections after that?
We are starting a post world order era, with no rules or decency of any kind, when it comes to dealing with other countries.
First, phase 3 studies are by definition not safety studies, but efficacy studies on a large number of test subjects. Safety studies are phase 1.
Second, ethics guidelines stipulate that you must provide state of the art care for those subjects which do not get the new vaccine, with very tight exceptions. For flu shots, it means that everyone gets a shot, either with a traditional vaccine or the new one, since it is universally accepted outside the new FDA that a classical shot is better than placebo.
And of course you can compare the outcomes. Comparing the new vaccine to an established one wrt efficacy and side effects is actually more informative than comparing against placebo.
And that is exactly what JFK Jr has been harping about in his insane rants, before he was appointed by Trump.
He wants every new study to be compared to a placebo.
But, it is unethical to deny someone a treatment that works.
Imagine patients of a certain type of cancer, and a new treatment.
Should we leave the control group without treatment? Or give them whatever is the standard of car for that type of cancer (e.g. radiation, chemo,
You know what?
Let us just not do that because a senile lawyer thinks that medical experts are crooks.
Oh, and JFK Jr scared Samoan parents, and kids died because of his anti-vaxx agenda.
There's a lot of hyperbole (imo) about Trump and adjacent stuff.
But this one strikes me as particularly Orwellian / post-truth / straight out of Idiocracy etc
The government running public disinformation campaigns against individual defendants
... and modifying pictures... idk.
It is just the natural progression from putting up easily falsified lies, then defending those lies as "alternative facts".
Don't forget Spicer and Kellyanne Conway.
Yet, people fell for Trump again and gave him another term
I will just leave this here: Kessler syndrome.
They have no legal right to coerce a corporation to act on their behalf in doing so, absent a law being passed by Congress, which they have not done.
But
Recent example: The Ellison owned CBS cancelled the airing of an investigative report on treatment of immigrant detainees.
And the Congress has a majority that acquiesce to the executive branch
Sad, but that is where the US is now
As usual, in a gold rush, it is the guys selling shovels and donkeys that make the money
In the current AI rush, it is the GPU and RAM manufacturers
Lately, HA has focused on voice control, and there seem to be a strong push that yielded some tangible results.
I don't use it myself, so I don't have first hand experience.
But the web site now has a section on voice control.
And there was blog post on it too.
If you search Youtube, you will find people implementing the above too.
I am a Home Assistant user for at least 8 years.
Initially, it was for automating a few things, including existing door/window sensors from a legacy alarm manufacturer. Using RTL-SDR and rtl_433 I was able to intercept the messages, have them decoded, and into Home Assistant over MQTT.
Then it started to be essential for things like: if you leave a door or window open for more than x minutes, it will complain, unless you turn off that automation temporarily.
Now it does many things: Outdoor temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, and rainfall. Indoor temperature, humidity, Volatile Organic Compounds, CO2, Radon.
It also emails me a weather forecast in the morning and evening. The contents are aggregated from the weather station, and two different sources for the forecasts (Environment Canada, and Met.no [Norway's weather service which covers the globe]).
It also runs my humidifier in winter, factoring in the values for indoor humidity as well as outdoor temperature (to reduce condensation on the windows).
And it interfaces to my Ecobee thermostat, via HomeKit, so it is cloud-free (not depending on an internet connection at all).
Overall, it is a nifty project. Very useful, very customizable.
My only gripe is that they discontinued support for running from a Python venv. I had to move to a Docker container instead. That made certain things that I have been using for years not work anymore (e.g. voice alerts, sending emails from shell scripts). I created workarounds for those, and they work well.
I wouldn't hold my breath
My view is: that battle has been lost, for a long time now
Bloat is here to stay
Don't get me wrong, I wish you were right though.
Thank you.
Always informative to hear from specialists.
"Show business is just like high school, except you get paid." - Martin Mull
