I'm assuming you don't have any audit requirements for this application. The stupid pricing for hardware often isn't in the hardware, it's in the compliance.

Here it might fail. If you were sufficiently motivated and controlled the software stacks on the rpi's you may be able to get data to flow in the other direction. LEDs have their voltage modulated by light. And it's possible that is the voltage on the transistor if properly modulated it may able to emit light. It's a lot of ifs and requires the adc of the rpi to be sensitive enough (and one of the pinmux options). But it's why certifying is important.

Oh, and if you controlled the software stack on the two rpi's there's a good chance there's a side channel somewhere

I reckon it is also possible to set up a second channel covertly at a higher frequency. It may also have surprising flaws. People have read network packets from router indicator LEDs lol.

Also very low sales volume.

Having just bought a Mini Cooper, I'm in the initial free-services period of the ownership and honestly, if it's the $10 a month I suspect, I'm okay with it. Primarily for the navigation...it really is superior to the Carplay experience (a square in the middle of the round screen, vs a map that takes up nearly the entirety of the screen...IIRC, traffic, Weather, remote start, and voice control come along for the ride.

I won't pay for 5g (phone does that) or Serius XM (for all the channels, I'm really not jazzed about the offerings)...but $10 for the above features seems reasonable.

> it really is superior to the Carplay experience (a square in the middle of the round screen, vs a map that takes up nearly the entirety of the screen

I haven't used CarPlay since I'm an Android user, but this reeks to me of a manufacturer developing a problem so they could seek rent for the solution.

If there were no financial incentive otherwise, they certainly would have ensured the CarPlay experience was as nice as their own solution as a selling perk.

At the time the code was/is written, I'm betting carplay offered up a square viewport. Apple's since wanted to offer up multi-display solutions to be the AV/GUI for cars...I think Aston Martin took them up on that...but a number of other manufactures are backing off on that (GM) I suspect because they want to distance themselves from a look and feel you could get in other cars.

I'm not a fan of subscriptions, but in this case, the $10 seemed like good value for features. the map is better, and it's much better integrated into the HUD.

It felt like you were getting more, unlike having buttons that don't work unless you pay...weird psycholgical difference between a subscription and being held hostage.

I have a 2016 VW Beetle (which is a pleasure to drive, the 150PS diesel), but it has buttons on the steering wheel that do absolutely nothing without me paying £200 for the privilege of VW unlocking them.

Want to press that phone button to make a call? Sorry please visit your VW dealership.

Want to have CarPlay or Android Auto? Sorry please visit your VW dealership.

Want to speak to your car to make a call? Sorry please visit your VW dealership.

I also have a 1972 VW Beetle which doesn't require any intervention from anyone else on Earth to use. Guess which is the classic between these 2 models?

No, it bloody well isn't, and I kindly request you stop with that nonsense. Remote start is a glorified CAN message paired with either a TOTP or HOTP message. That's it. There should be zero room for a manufacturer to justify inserting themselves in the middle except greed. Goddamn tired of solving problems only to see companies keeping the problem around for the sake of market segmentation.

Bundling. You get 5 things, one of which makes the other ones worthwhile. Yeah, I get it...

By the same token, all ranges of Mini Cooper now have the B48 turbo 4...the top of the list had a bigger turbo and improved intake...the bottom two I suspect are identical with differing software.

I will happily take advantage of that when the car's out of warranty. (I have the base motor)

I also got notification on my apple watch, while being away from the house, that the homepod mini heard our fire alarm going off.

A call home let us know that our son had set it off learning to reverse-sear his steak.

I live across the street from a fire station. Thank for you for diligence, little HomePod Mini, but I'm turning your notifications off now.

If the fire alarm didn't go off, you didn't sear hard enough. :)

In general, your dollar buys a _Crazy_ amount of compute...but over the last 30 years or so, RAM has spiked several times (Taiwan plant fire) and suffered from several market driven spikes (DDRx shortages, Apple's crazy pricing structure)

Raspberry Pi emulation works well, too. (and is massively fast.)

Yep was going to say for example PiMiga is an awesome project, and the maintainer puts his heart and soul and loads of time into it. Believe it works on amd64 now too (not just pi/arm).

Pull the CMOS battery. Recap before you put power to it...make sure the power supply is healthy. Do those things and it'll run 40 years from now.

I've found when you have a file with stops and starts, it's because the extraction process is not familiar with how the data is laid down on the storage media. So it sees 'I have a file'...and if it's better it sees 'the name of the file is here' and then 'it's this big' and then 'here's the linked list of clusters for that file'....or it starts at the first cluster and gets as far as it can before it runs off the tracks.

At the time, formatting a floppy disk was a single task thing.

Downloading a file via Zmodem was mostly a single task thing.

The Windows of the day could to the latter, but not the former.

OS/2 on my 8mb 386sx could do both AND have a clock up, and play solitaire, and have another terminal window open.

It took a bit to get there, and there was swapping while everything loaded, but it was true pre-emptive multitasking, while still maintaining the highly time critical I/O stuff that Windows couldn't touch.

As a career security guy, I've lost count of the battles I've lost in the race to the cloud...now it's 'we have to up the budget $250k a year to cover costs' and you just shrug.

The cost for your first on-prem datacenter server is pretty steep...the cost for the second one? Not so much.

There's a cost/value calculation that just doesn't work well...I have a Ryzen9/rtx3070 PC ($2k over time) and my M4 Mini ($450) holds it's own for most all normal user stuff...sprinting ahead for specific tasks (Video CODEC)...but the 6 year old dedicated GPU on the PC annihilates the Mini in pushing pixels...You can spec an Apple that does better for gaming, but man, are you gonna pay for it, and still not keep up with current PC GPUS.

Now...something like minecraft or SubNautica? The M4 is fine, especially if you're not pushing 4k 240hz.

Apple has been pushing the gaming experience for years (iPhone 4s?) but it never REALLY seems to land, and when someone has a great gaming seperience in a modern AAA game, they always seem to be using a $4500 Studio or similar.