Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 11/02 - Raspberry Pi Launches the Raspberry Pi 400

Episode Date: November 2, 2020

Raspberry Pi launches the Raspberry Pi 400. All the big platforms’ plans for election day and beyond. Huawei is gonna make its own chips because it has to. Gaming continues to lead the way into the future in so many ways. And the Kafkaesque nightmare of Google locking you out of all your accounts. Sponsors: MintMobile.com/ride Metalab.co Links: The Raspberry Pi 400 is a compact keyboard with a built-in computer (The Verge) What to Expect From Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on Election Day (NYTimes) Huawei develops plan for chip plant to help beat US sanctions (Financial Times) Tencent claims record 100M daily users on mobile game Honor of Kings (TechCrunch) What it's like to get locked out of Google indefinitely (Business Insider) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech Meme right home for Monday, November 2, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Raspberry Pi launches the Raspberry Pi 400. All the big platforms plans for Election Day and beyond. Huawei is going to make its own chips because it has to. Gaming continues to lead the way into the future in so many ways.

And the Kafkaesque nightmare of Google locking you out of all your accounts. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Raspberry Pi has launched the Raspberry Pi 400. a compact keyboard with a built-in arm-based computer. It's available today for about 70 bucks as a standalone machine, or in a bundle with a mouse, power supply, micro-sd card, HD card, hd-migel, and user manual. That will run you $100. But also, if I showed you this new Pi-400,

you might not recognize it as a pie. You'd say that's a keyboard. Right. That's because the Pi-400 is just a compact keyboard that you're supposed to plug into any sort of screen and just go. with, you know, a computer attached, quoting the verge. The Raspberry Pi 400's Form Factor immediately brings to mine early home computers like the BBC Micro or ZX Spectrum, and that's no accident.

Although Raspberry Pi's small computers have become a popular tool for hobbyists to do everything from building inexpensive airplay receivers to automating smart homes. At their core, they're designed as accessible computers to help children learn to code. The dream always with Raspberry Pi is to lure people into buying a PC and then trick them into becoming computer programmers, Raspberry Pi's founder Ebyn Upton says, that's what happened to me. I was lured into buying a BBC micro and then suddenly I became a software engineer, end quote. Aside from its keyboard and form factor, the Raspberry Pi 400 is a very similar computer to last year's Raspberry Pi 4. It's got a slightly faster quad core 1.8 gigahertz arm cortex A72 CPU up from 1.5 gigahertz

in the Pi 4, 4 gigabytes of RAM, gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 5.0, and 802,000. 1.11 AC Wi-Fi. There are a pair of micro-hdmi ports that can each output up to 4K at 60 hertz, two USB-3 ports, and a single USB2 port. Power is provided via a USB-C port. There's a micro-sd card slot for storage, and there's a GPIO header for attaching a variety of more niche devices. It's not just children learning to code to whom the company wants to sell Pi-400s, though, quote, who's it's supposed to help? It's supposed to help anyone. who needs a computer, Upton says. Interestingly, that also includes businesses with Upton telling me that the company sees the Raspberry Pi 400 being used as a corporate desktop machine or for call center agents.

Interestingly, that's one of the reasons why the Raspberry Pi 4 and Pi 400 have two HDMI outputs because two monitors is the default for a lot of business users, end quote. Well, for four years now, all of the big tech platforms have been swearing up and down that they were going to handle this election. Day better than the one four years ago. And the New York Times has a long piece up looking at how Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, among others, planned to handle things tomorrow, and not just tomorrow, but in subsequent days. Quote, Facebook's app will look different on Tuesday. To prevent candidates from prematurely or inaccurately declaring victory, the company plans to add a notification at the top of news feeds, letting people know that no winner has been chosen until election results are verified by news outlets like Reuters and the Associated Press. Facebook also plans to deploy special tools that it is

used in at-risk countries like Myanmar, where election-related violence was a possibility. The tools, which Facebook has not described publicly, are designed to slow the spread of inflammatory posts. After the polls closed, Facebook plans to suspend all political ads from circulating on the social network and its photo-sharing site Instagram to reduce misinformation about the election's outcome. Facebook has told advertisers they can expect the ban to last for a week. the timeline isn't set in stone and the company has publicly been non-committal about the duration. In October, Twitter began experimenting with additional techniques to slow the spread of misinformation. That company added context to trending topics and limited users' ability to quickly retweet content.

The changes are temporary, though Twitter has not said when they will end. On Tuesday, Twitter's strategy is twofold. Rout false claims and networks of bots that spread such information by using both algorithms and human analysts, while another team highlights reliable information in the Explore and Trends section of its service. Twitter plans to add labels to tweets from candidates who claim victory before the election is called by authoritative sources. At least two news outlets will need to independently project the results before a candidate can use Twitter to celebrate his or her win, the company said. Twitter will eventually allow people to retweet again without prompting them to add their own

contacts, but many of the changes for the election like the ban on political ads and fact-checking labels are permanent. YouTube said it would be especially sensitive about videos that aim to challenge the election's integrity. YouTube does not allow videos that mislead voters about how to vote or the eligibility of a candidate or that incite people to interfere with the voting process. The company said it would take down such videos quickly, even if one of the speakers was a presidential candidate. As the polls close, YouTube will feature a playlist of live election results coverage from what it deems authoritative news sources. While YouTube would not provide, a full list of the sources. The company said it expected the coverage to include news videos

from the major broadcast networks as well as CNN and Fox News, end quote. FYI, while I was recording, Apple announced an event November 10th, where we expect them to unveil Apple Silicon Max. Invites were titled One More Thing. So put that on your calendar. Well, you'd be surprised if they weren't doing this. Sources are telling, the financial times that Huawei is working on plans for a dedicated chip plant in Shanghai that aims to produce 28 nanometer chips by the end of 2021 and 20 nanometer chips by late 2022. Obviously, this is so the company can create chips that do not use U.S. technology, thereby getting around any trade ban, but also note the absolute breakneck speed with which

they're trying to catch up. Industry experts said the planned local facility would be a potential news source for semiconductors after stocks of imported chips Huawei has been accumulating since last year ran out. The fabrication plant will initially experiment with making low-end 45 nanometer chips. A technology global leaders in chipmaking started using 15 years ago. But Huawei wants to make more advanced 28 nanometer chips by the end of next year, according to chip industry engineers and executives familiar with the project. Such a plan would allow Huawei to make smart TVs and other Internet of Things devices.

Huawei then aims to produce 20 nanometer chips by late 2022, which could be used, to make most of its 5G telecoms equipment and allow that business to continue even with the U.S. sanctions. Quote, the planned new production line will not help with the smartphone business since chipsets needed for smartphones need to be produced at more advanced technology nodes, said a semiconductor industry executive briefed on the plans. But if it succeeds, it can become a bridge to a sustainable future for their infrastructure business in combination with the inventory they have built and which should last for two years or so,

he said. They possibly can do it in maybe two years, said Mark. Lee, a semiconductor analyst at Bernstein in Hong Kong. He added that while the chips Huawei needed for making mobile network base stations would ideally be made on 14 nanometer or more advanced process technology, using 28 nanometer was possible. Quote, Huawei can make up for the shortcomings on the software and systems side, he said. Chinese producers could tolerate higher costs and operational inefficiencies than their offshore competitors, end quote. The chip space has obviously been so fascinating lately for all the reasons we've been discussing,

but also the game space has absolutely fascinated me this year for so many reasons. Cloud gaming on the rise, of course, the idea recently that gaming could be the thing that cracks the app store, the shift to mobile or anywhere gaming, the democratization of gaming beyond traditional hardcore gamers, but also mainly the whole idea that what we're seeing right now in gaming is the rise of a new Hollywood, a new global entertainment complex. bigger than Hollywood maybe ever was. That is fascinating to me. And if Game World is the new Hollywood, there's one other angle to this. This is another area where Asia is leading the way, setting the trends and also increasingly owning the chessboard. Name most of the major

game developers on the software side of the equation. And if they're not owned outright by Chinese companies, Chinese companies have a major stake in a lot of them. And of course, there's the traditional role of Japanese and Korean developers in gaming. So this might not seem like a big story to you. Yet another game you've probably never heard of reporting an insane user base that you wouldn't believe if I didn't tell you it was true. But it's also indicative to me as an important story if you want to be a trend watcher. Tencent claims that its mobile game, Honor of Kings, has crossed a record 100 million daily active users, and that's, of course, a big deal. But also, it's interesting because Honor of Kings seems to be unusually successful as a broadly popular game, quoting TechCrunch.

It consistently ranks among the top grossing mobile games worldwide, jostling with PUBG Mobile, made by another Tencent Studio lightspeed and quantum. Gaming has long been the Cash Cal for Tencent, better known for its WeChat Messenger, and the brains behind Honor of Kings is Timi Studios, which ramped up hiring in the U.S. this year to further global expansion. The game is credited for popularizing the multiplayer online. online battle arena, M-O-B-A category in China, using clever designs like short sessions, friendly controls, e-sports integration, and social networking leverage, as games analyst Daniel Ahmad pointed out.

Also, the title has an unusually high female player base around 50% for a genre dominated by males. Controversy has also arisen among honor of King's fervor, a state newspaper chastised it for hooking young users and misrepresenting historical events. Tonson has since tightened age verification checks for players, now standard practice in China's gaming industry. Quote, there is still plenty of room to further grow and develop the honor of King's IP in China. Li Min, the game's director and general manager of Tai Mai Studios, told TechCrunch, I want to see it take on a life of its own and continue to resonate with and thrive among players for generations to come, end quote.

Yeah, you know, an easy way to achieve incredible growth for any market, for any product has been for the last 20 years or so. hey, stake a claim in China or India or Southeast Asia, billions of users available. And the point is, with gaming, Asia is already well ahead of the West in terms of the mass popularity of gaming. But hey, nothing like expanding your market further by addressing, you know, the other half of the human population. Maybe they'll jump ahead of the West in terms of female gaming as well. And finally today, this might seem like another odd pick, but it was at the top of Hacker News for most of the weekend. So dig this. Business Insider has a story up about a rash of people recently

who have suddenly been locked out of their Google accounts, all of their Google accounts, all Google services, and increasingly they don't know why, quote, Clareoth is one of a number of people who have seen their accounts suspended in the last few days and weeks, In response to a tweet explaining his fear at being locked out of his Google account after 15 years of use, others have posted about the impact of being barred from the company that runs most of the services we use in our day-to-day lives. I've been using a Google account for personal and work purposes for years now. It had loads of various types of data in there, said Stephen Rowley, a software developer from Birkenhead, UK. One day, I went in to use it and found I couldn't log in, end quote.

Rowley checked his backup email account and found a message there informing him his main account had been terminated for violating the terms of service. It suggested I had been given a warning and I searched and searched, but I couldn't find anything, added Raleigh. I then followed the link to recover my account, but was given a message stating that my account was irrecoverable, end quote. Raleigh lost data including emails, photos, documents, and diagrams that he had developed for his work. My account and all its data is gone, he said. One Google worker posted in exasperation on October 12th that his husband's account had been locked, and he would and be able to regain access. Others professed to have been barred from using Microsoft services,

while losing access to Facebook accounts, can be equally damaging. This is just how life is when you're dealing with trillion-dollar faceless corporations, said Errol Balkin, who has long campaigned against the control of our data and lives by big tech firms. It's just one reason why it's so important that we fund and develop human-scale small tech as an alternative to the stranglehold of big tech in our lives, end quote. Yeah, that's what I want to focus on. This is not just, you know, a bash Google story. We're familiar with stories from people all the time who go all in on one platform or another, only to get screwed further down the road because they're so reliant on that one platform. Maybe you're a business that gets knee-capped

when Google does an algorithm change and suddenly no one can find your website, or maybe you're a YouTuber who has suddenly been demonetized or your advertising rates suddenly reduced. I almost did a story last week about a dude who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to go all in on Amazon fulfillment, only to lose it all when Amazon determined his goods were counterfeit and then literally destroyed the entire inventory without giving him any recourse. With stories like that, which we've been hearing for years and years, we often just tisk tisk and say, you know, that's what you get if you put all your eggs in one basket, if you rely too much on one platform for your business, et cetera. But here's the thing. As the piece notes, all of modern life is

software platformed now. How can you escape it? even if you pick one or all of them, how can any of us get out or get in if we're locked out? I'd have a hard time if I were locked out of my Google services getting into my bank account, getting into the app that unlocks my car. The piece does go into lost memories, lost actual materials, lost actual money. But here's the other thing that the piece didn't go into. The potential Kafka-esque nightmare of proving to any of these big faceless platforms that there's been a mistake. I've occasionally sort of fantasized about doing a satirical rewrite of

Franz Kafka's The Trial, where, you know, one day in the near future, someone wakes up and can't get into their house, their car, can't make a call, send an email, can't do anything because they've mysteriously been deplatformed from all of the digital everythings. Because here's the thing. There's basically no functional recourse with these platforms. There's often no even nominal appeals process. People make fun of the platforms not investing in the human resources necessary to moderate content properly, but they at least take a stab at that. Conversely, they invest not at all in, you know, customer service for the billions of humans that actually use their services. And why is that? Because we humans, of course, are not their customers. The modern tech platforms, as we understand them,

exists because, serendipitously for them, advertising can scale. But as we've said before, humanity apparently can't. Human needs and human interaction apparently don't. You, mere human, are never supposed to have any sort of serious problem with any of these major platforms. They don't expect you ever will because their bottom lines require that you never do, that they never acknowledge any problems are even possible. Something something, Amazon doesn't publish a 1-800 number to call and ask for help as to why your package never got delivered, you think the DMV is bad, you throw your hands up and bemoan bureaucracy in all its forms as being dehumanizing,

then just hope, dear listener, you never run a foul of a tech platform because the phrase you can't fight City Hall has a whole new meaning when there is no City Hall to even show up and plead your case to. Big gaming weekend for me. Check out my Twitter feed if I remember to put a screenshot up, I succeeded in turning the Kingdom of Savoy into the Empire of Burgundy in my Crusader Kings three game, which is great because now when the old king, or I guess now emperor dies, the player heir becomes the emperor, and there are three kingdoms to split among the kids, the Kingdom of Italy, Kingdom of Burgundy, and Kingdom of Savoy.

But all the kings remain vassals of the emperor, so no more succession wars, I think. And given that it's only like 1050, and the game goes on. until 1453 AD, I've got plenty of time to expand. I could end up swallowing all of Europe if I combine some smart marriages with an expansion into Eastern Europe or Spain. When I attack fellow Christians, I have to have a decent Kossus Belli. But if I attack heathens or infidels, I only need to use the ready-made Holy War sanctioned by the Pope that allows me to swell up entire swathes of territory. So silly, I know. Also, I think I told you how I've been playing Animal Crossing for the last six months just to earn bells so my kids and my wife can be creative

in their games and do whatever they want. I earn the money. They have the fun, almost the perfect metaphor for fatherhood, I guess. Well, everyone now has fully tricked out houses. I've deposited one million bells into each person's bank account. All I'm going to do now is fill out every section in the Creaturpedia and donate all the samples to blathers so that the museum is complete. And then I'm retiring. I know Animal Crossing is not a game you can technically ever win, but in my mind, if I achieve that, it'll be as close to winning as you can get. Talk to you tomorrow.