A Mini PC with an N100 (exact same performance as the microprocessor in the Pi5 according to this) and 8GB RAM will cost you around $140, which per what a previous poster dug out is exactly the same price as a Pi4 with only 4GB if we’re talking about something with the equivalent kit (i.e. with box, dissipators, power supply and HDMI cable)

Funny enough I recently bought an N100 Mini-PC with 8GB (as a Christmas present to replace somebody’s aged Windows 8 PC) for just a bit over $140 (more precisely €123, so $143 at today’s exchange rate).

According to this the performance of the microprocessor on the Pi5 is at the same level as that of the N100.

So basically if you buy a Mini PC with an N100 and 8GB memory you can roughly get the performance of the Pi5 at the price of a Pi4 with only 4GB.

I think the point of the previous poster that “this is wild” is exactly right.

Unless you actually need the actual pins with I/O ports, I2C, SPI or such for controlling some electronics, you’re better of with the Mini PC and even if you do, you’re probably better of with a Banana Pi or an Orange Pi.

You almost certainly could do it with an ESP32 (a microcontroller with Arduino support and which supports WiFi and bluetooth).

An ESP32 Super Mini board costs about $5.

Of course, forget about an UI other than web-based for the ESP32 or proper OS (like Linux) support, as that stuff is on the embedded systems side of things (though kinda powerful for one) rather than the Single Board Computer side.

I did not know that.

Took them two decades but better late than never!

Lets put things this way: nations which hold Universal Humanist Principles will always treat their citizens well (or at least as well as they can), but nations which treat their citizens well don’t necessarily hold Universal Humanist Principles.

As for the rest, it’s just circling back to my original point that few or no nations are civilized, but the citizens in some nations are civilized whilst the elites holding power are not.

Good to know Denmark has changed its position in the Genocide. When are the sanctions on Israel starting?!

I also noticed you didn’t address my point on Denmark’s government push for broad civil society surveillance for all of the EU with Chat Control, something which in my view is the very opposite of “civilized” in the modern era.

I think we differ mainly in that I think that in this era Civilization must be broader than just “Doing what’s better for us”.

So in that sense the Scandinavian model of governance by itself (absent all else), whilst more civilized than most others, isn’t enough for Civilization - there needs to be some kind of broad holding of Universal Humanist Principles rather than merelly just the nation treating its own citizens well.

By that metric and looking at the awful position of Denmark in regards to the Israeli Genocide and even in things like pushing for broad civil society surveillance at the EU level in the form of Chat Control, Denmark is NOT a civilized country, even if it’s better for its own citizens than the vast majority of countries are for theirs.

I totally agreed with that: their Server OS is superior to their Desktop OS.

I just think it’s mainly because their Desktop OS has fast enshittified after Windows 7 rather than because Windows server is actually all that great as a server OS.

In fact, thinking about it, one might even say that Windows Server is better than the Desktop version because it’s to a very great extent a Desktop OS (in terms of having things like having an a complex UI layer and set of support applications integrated) the very thing which is actually a large part of the reason why its an inferior server OS for typical server-side scenarios because there what you most value is maximum computing resources made available to the server applications (which tend to be heavy users of computing, memory, networking or a combination of those) and an integrated UI layer actually uses more of those just for the OS (both directly for its own work and indirectly from the added complexity of a bulkier OS resulting in less streamlined execution paths) making fewer resources available for the same hardware.

If you look at the Linux distros and distro variants for server deployment they are actually vastly inferior to the Windows OS Desktop - for starters because they’re command-line only, though nowadays there’s often web-based management interfaces which are still a much lighter option than a directly integrated UI layer - exactly because absent an intergrated UI layer, not adding the UI support on top via something like XWindows or Wyland on a server Linux distro actually makes them better for server tasks.

Sure, my country too had a revolution and overthrew a Fascist dictatorship. That doesn’t make it a measure of civilization though.

I’ve lived in several countries of Europe and the web controlling Brits is exceptional in its breadth and depth and quite subtle: for example watch the BBC and look for language that subtly classifies different people as having different implicity trustworthiness, for example how they will report Israeli authorities as “saying” or “stating” things whilst Palestinian authorities “claim” things - this kind of technique is not just used for the Israeli Genocide, it’s used for everything and pretty hard to internally compensate for even if you’re aware of it because it mainly affects you at a subconscious level. Brits are constantly being indoctrinated and manipulated, all done with way more subtlety than run of the mill dictatorships.

Or look at how their level of civil society surveillance as shown by the Snowden Revelations was even worse than the US.

Further, do you know they have a Press censorship scheme called D-Notices? Most Britons don’t even know this.

In many ways Britain is a lot more like an Authoritarian Regime with a bit of performative voting (think Russia) than a Democratic country, only it’s all done way more subtly with far more advanced manipulation techniques as the structures supporting it have been developed over, literally, centuries.

(That’s why I said that I left the country thinking it was basically the closest to Fascism we have in Europe, just disguised as posh)

Yet plenty of people over there still have very strong principles to the point that 1.5% of the population went out and demonstrated purely for their principles and not at all their own personal good and people are still going out and risking being arrested by the government as “terrorist supporters” for demonstrating against a Genocide that doesn’t actually affect them personally.

Granted, at the same time there is also a large fraction of the population who are complete cunts, from Financiers in the City and the Political class, to Racist Nationalists.

Don’t get me wrong: British Society itself is quite backwards as European nations go in many things, it’s just that a significant fraction of the population do hold personal humanist values and are willing to at least go out and demonstrate and even face the authorities for them. I compare it with my own country - Portugal - whose society isn’t quite as ill (it has its problems, mainly different ones) but activism for actual principle around here is almost non-existent (sure, people will demonstrate and even strike for their own personal good, but for example a far smaller fraction of people was demonstrating against the Israeli Genocide here than in Britain) and don’t get me started on just hugely unlikely people around here are to do thinks like avoiding having a car for Ecological reasons.

PS: In fact, now that I think about it, a lot of the reason why I think that Revolutionary Capability is not the same as Civilization is the observation on my own country of how people can be perfectly capable of fighting for themselves to the point of overthrowing a dictatorship and yet won’t at all fight for others. In my view, “civilization” must include fighting against certain things happenning to anybody and only just fighting against those things happenning to oneself is merely Survival.

We’re talking about Britain, not the US.

Britain doesn’t even have a written constitution.

Ah, yes, Windows NT.

I remember how this little operating system with a kernel invented by a Finnish dude and with no real corporate back almost completelly ate their market share in the server space back in the day (not that they’ve had a significant server market for long in between the end of the era of corporate Unixes like SunOS and the beginning of the era of Linux).

I actual did server-side development and just about every company I worked for in 2 decades and 3 countries had masses of Linux servers and if that much a handful of Windows servers, and that included all sized of company, from small ones to massive corporate behemoths - Linux was simple the best way to get the most use and performance out of your server hardware.

Whilst I haven’t been doing server side stuff for a few years, I’m actually surprised they still have any server market at all, since the only upside their server solutions have over Linux is perfect integration with their Desktop OS whilst all the rest are downsides.

I guess that they have some market share because basically their servers serve as glue between instances of to their Desktop OS in a network because of using closed protocols (i.e. a forced dependency on the desktop market rather than superior quality) whilst for any kind of generic computing they’re an inferior solution to even a free OS.

Again, your entire point is around them not having succeeded in overthrowing a massive, complex, centuries old, highly resilient power structure which amongst other things indoctrinates them from an early age into compliance and even pride in it.

Things over there are massivelly rigged exactly to stop such a change, an many levels, from the First Past The Post voting system and a Press incredibly consolidated and either in the hands of either billionaires or controlled by the upper class boards, to the whole Public School -> Oxbridge -> Top Level Corporate/Legal/Public Service Position pathway that that makes sure the scions of the elites always end up in control of the rest.

Further, in many ways that structure has been cracking due to internal pressure, though as shown the last time it was really under pressure (following WWII and the return of large numbers of working class people with military trainin) it showed massive flexibility which is how Brits got the NHS, Social Security and even a Gilded Age in the Arts (from all the working class kids that flooded into Music and Theatre) during the 60s and 70s, though all those gains have been slowly been undone, especially since Thatcher got into power.

So you’re basically saying that when peasants don’t assault the fortress they’re uncivilized a logic which ultimately (considering that there is always room for improvement) boils down to “Only Violent Revolution is Civilization”

Lets agree to disagree on that.

First I mainly agree with you: I lived in Britain as in immigrant for a decade, which was preceded by a decade living in The Netherlands, and my opinion of Britons (especially the English, more so their upper middle class and above) is very negative by comparison with my opinion of the Dutch in general and my impression of British society by the time I left was basically “The country of Europe closest to Fascism, only it’s disguised with posh bollocks from posh people with a posh accent”.

However this shit the current government is doing there of arresting people demonstrating against the Genocide as “terrorist supporters” doesn’t have the support of most of the population. Further, 1.5% of the people of a country coming out in a demonstration for the benefit of completely different people and in no way whatsoever for their own personal benefit shows that at last that many people over there have incredibly strong principles.

It doesn’t prove that most people are quite that good people, but it still seems to me that most aren’t quite as bad as being deemed uncivilized.

As I see it, the point you’re making is really that pretty much the entirety of the non-elites there lack a spine, both as people and as a group - hence not doing much to overthrow the power structures of that country - which is not the same as not being civilized people, though as we can see both path lead to similar outcomes in situations like this one.

Frankly, I couldn’t agree more with that view! Countless experiences I’ve had over there speak of subservience towards the upper classes and even towards society in general (the level of concern with “what will other people think of me” there, especially amongst Middle Class women, is quite extreme when compared with, for example, the Dutch) and maybe explains why they’re so good at Theatre: a lot of people over there spend their lives behind a thick complex façade so it’s unsurprising when so many make a hobby and even a profession from it.

Further, they’re relentlessly indoctrinated with both Nationalism and Respect For Authority (in other words, for the elite dynasties) by the local Press, which is maybe why the Brits are actually the least trusting in the local Press of all of Europe.

However, lack of a spine - which in my opinion is mainly a learned trait from growing up in such a society - though not exactly positive in Psychological and Freedom terms, isn’t the same as being uncivilized.

Yeah, well, look at Britain which had a massive demonstration of half a million people against the Genocide in Gaza and yet their supposedly “leftwing” “moderate” government is arresting people for “terrorism support” when they demonstrate against it.

The people ARE civilized, it’s their elites (political or otherwise) which are unreformed barbarians by comparison, especially in those countries were the structures of power mean such people have been an entrenched and unchallenged elite for generations.

So I would say that the countries are CIVILIZED, however they’re controlled by elites whose minset is still the same as the ancient monsters from the past (hence why, for example, British governments and Press have a mindset of colonialism towards the outside and “born to rule” towards their own citizens whilst German governments and Press support the Genocide of a “lesser people by a greater people” and both deploy authoritarian means to suppress dissent even tough they’re supposedly Democracies).

This is also why I expect plenty of members of those elites will have broken the ultimate tabu of our era - they have the same principles of the ruling elites of centuries past, feel themselves above the law and firmly believe everybody else are nothing more than tools for their own personal upsides - including pleasure - and for many that would include children.

PS: As I see it, the solution for the problems in Democracies is MORE Democracy (more transparency, more accountability, more independent oversight, more variety and change) but we’re going in the opposite direction and the actions of the ruling elites in the US and the support from the political elites in certain countries for that all matches with the moving away from Democracy towards Might Is Right and Authoritarianism

Yeah, well, Spain is also one of the few European countries that are very openly against the Genocide in Gaza.

Meanwhile the “party of the pre-revolution Fascists that decided the pass themselves as ‘democrats’” government of the disgrace of a country right next door - Portugal - which sadly is my homeland, makes non-comittal noises. I trully hail from a nation of spinless subservient boot-licking provincials (an impression I’ve had since I went to live abroad), especially the sold-out political class which are very corrupt by European standards.

Anyways, congrats Spain and the Spanish for once again going against the tide of political and societal enshittification in Europe.

In my experience one needs to be a senior developer with at least some experience with their own code having gone through a full project lifecycle (most importantly, including Support, Maintenance and even Expansion stages) to really, not just intellectually know but even feel in your bones, the massive importance in reducing lifetime maintenance costs of the very kind of practices in making code that LLMs (even with code reviews and fixes) don’t clone (even when cloning only “good” code they can’t do things like for example consistency, especially at the design level).

• Inexperienced devs just count the time cost of LLM generation and think AI really speeds up coding.
• Somewhat experienced devs count that plus code review costs and think it can sometimes make coding a bit faster
• Very experience devs looks at the inconsistent multiple-style disconnected mess (even after code review) when all those generated snippets get integrated and add the costs of maintaining and expanding that codebase to the rest, concluding that “even in the best case in six months this shit will already have cost me more time in overall even if I refactor it, than it would cost for me doing it properly myself in the first place”.

It’s very much the same problem with having junior developers do part of the coding, only worse because at least junior devs are consistent and hence predictable in how they fuck up so you know what to look for and once you find it you know to look for more of the same, and you can actually teach junior developers so they get better over time and especially focus on teaching them not to make the worst mistakes they make, whilst LLMs are unteachable and will never get better plus they’re mistakes are pretty much randomly distributed in the error space.

You give coding tasks in a controlled way to junior devs whilst handling the impact of their mistakes because you’re investing in them, whilst doing the same to an LLM has an higher chance of returning high impact mistakes and yields you no such “investment” returns at all.

Encouraging more democratic leaning voters would’ve made a difference however, you don’t have to assume linear proportional effect

Which is exactly the job of the Democrat Party leaders, which is done via amongst other things offering potential voters the things they desire and assuaging their concerns, things which are clearly not “Unwavering support of Israel and its Genocide”, “Do whatever is good for Finance and Tech-bros” or “Supporting the Cheney family, legacy and political ideology”.

The people with by far the most power to convince leftwing leaning non-voters to vote for the Democrat Party were the Democrat Party leaders and they, with all that power they had, actually did the very opposite of trying to cater to the desires and concerns of such non-voters.

Yet around here whenever american politics pops up as a subject we get a rabid pack of mindless useful idiots blaming non-voters literally for not convincing themselves to vote for a party whose leaders activelly tried to reject them, never blaming those fucking leaders for activelly rejecting said potential voters.

Fuck the subservient, bootlicking Democrat Party tribalists who keep on excusing the profound incompetence and greed of their tribe’s “chiefs” and parroting the DNC propaganda line that pushes the blame to non-voters rather than accept that the blame for a fucking monster like Trump having been elected a second time is overwhelmingly of the DNC and the rest of the Democrat Party leadership who once again chose to “stay pretty close but just below” in the Evil scales from the Republicans

Maybe it’s not so obvious for those living inside America and its Politics, but from the outside it’s obvious that both of Trump’s presidential election victories are the end product of decades of the Democrat Party leadership getting away with representing ever fewer people whilst relying on a “vote lesser evil” strategy, all of which supported by the very same useful idiots who now, once again, come out relentlessly parroting the “everybody but ourselves is to blame” mindless bullshit that only an acephalic tribalist muppet would believe.

It is fucking obvious for anybody who knows just a bit of World History that Trump or somebody like him was bound to be elected sooner or later in the US when the strategy of the competing political force there was nothing more than invariably sidding with the handful of moneyed elites just limited by the need to stay just one step below in the Ladder of Evil from the other political force.

So enjoy the Fall Of The Empire you created for yourselves (by supporting a “Greater Evil” vs “Lesser evil” political power structure) and for the other 340 million people over there, whilst the rest of us batters the hatches and endures the side effects of the “Empire overextending itself militarily whilst the homeland becomes ever empoverished and authoritarian” phase of such Fall until America fizzles in power (if you’re lucky) or breaks up.

I doubt it’s just the Israelis who have compromision photos of top European politicians fucking little kids that they got using operations like Epstein’s.

Being older than 18 means Maduro is way too old for Trump to do that to him.

A fucking rock would be better.

Or just leaving the post unoccupied.

A good woman would be better, but so would a good man. It’s the “good” (person) part that guarantees it would better, not the gender.

Two words: “Margaret Thatcher”

The idea that a woman president is bound to be better just because of being a female is ridiculous.