"Qualcomm-owned #Arduino quietly pushed a sweeping rewrite of its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and the changes mark a clear break from the open-hardware ethos that built the platform."
(source: Adafruit https://www.linkedin.com/posts/adafruit_opensource-privacy-techpolicy-activity-7396903362237054976-r14H)
Oh boy, that was fast! Somehow we need to find more future-proof models for open-source hardware. Letting the market do its thing is showing its true colors once again. Pure evil! đź‘ż
A (horrible) alternate reality, inspired by yesterday.
peak aliexpress fashion
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809831418805.html
did you know that you can find free Cortex M0 development boards at the side of the road? folks call them disposable vapes but they're hackable, and i've reverse engineered a bunch of them! see https://github.com/schlae/VapeRE/
Steam Hardware Thoughts
I know a lot of folks have been going on about it, but Steam's latest hardware announcement has been utterly insane for the day and age in which we live.
Consider that they didn't hype it up with a launch event. They didn't sell a bunch of hype and buzzwords. All they did was release a ~6 minute video that effectively described the hardware and what it would provide, and had a webpage with *actual specs on it*.
They invited a bunch of tech reporters/YouTubers to their HQ, but they let them talk to *engineers*, not marketing people. The discussions focused on real capabilities of the hardware, and actual demonstrations. No vapor and promises. Not glitz and glam.
They made it clear this is all SteamOS driven, and that they have a focus of getting *existing x86 Windows software* running not only on Linux, but on ARM and in VR!!
They aren't pitching a closed ecosystem. They said, outright, "This is your hardware, you can do whatever you want with it".
THEY DIDN'T MENTION AI ONCE.
And they're _already_ making a bigger splash than any competitor ever did, even though those competitors have gobs more money they've thrown at this stuff, and tremendously more staff.
It's flabbergasting. I hope they make enough of an impact with all this that people sit up and take notice.
It's becoming increasingly clear to me that Reflect Orbital's fucking stupid giant mirror satellite, with absolutely NOTHING useful to offer, which will cause countless safety issues, ecological disasters, and destroy the night sky, is going to launch.
A bunch of astronomers and I have sent out a fact sheet about them to a bunch of journalists, but very few are going to write about this. So, let me try posting it all here.
Here's what I know about Reflect Orbital and all the downsides: