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> The district couldn't secure all of the necessary Chrome Books, and some students have been left attempting remote learning via their parent's phone, or simpl

by cactus2093 6y ago

> The district couldn't secure all of the necessary Chrome Books, and some students have been left attempting remote learning via their parent's phone, or simply left behind. A cheap mass market device has some truly amazing potential to fill in these gaps at the same time that it enables more advanced S(T)EM learning than you could get with a typical cheap Chrome Book. How many households in this situation have an extra monitor lying around to plug this into, or even a proper desk to have a desktop computer set up on? Plus they'll need a separate webcam (and I'm guessing finding one that just works out of the box on Raspbian without fiddling around with drivers and such could be non-trivial). This new Pi form factor is kinda clever but surely a $200-$300 chromebook or tablet is still significantly more accessible. And how does a desktop enable more advanced STEM learning than a laptop?

jvanderbot 6y ago
Oh, I don't know if it takes a lot of imagination to see how a desktop like this one enables more advanced stem learning. The I/O ports, low form factor for portability, the raspbian ecosystem and so on.
sbuk 6y ago
I'd assert that TV's are commonplace. This, just like the BBC Micro, ZX80/1 and C64, can easily be used with a TV.
- leoc 6y ago
  The reason that the old '80s microcomputers were often plugged into TVs was that monitors were too expensive. Sharing the TV with every other device and person in the house was a necessary evil. TV-hogging is probably about as problematic now as it was then, while displays are much less expensive. So including a screen makes much more sense for a low-cost access-to-computing device these days.
  - rini17 6y ago
    It's not so problematic today, there are multiple TVs in most families now. And old functioning, like, 1280*1024 LCD monitors can be had for free.
    - 867-5309 6y ago
      it's more likely an old keyboard is lying around. a Pi4 and cheap enclosure could then be picked up for half this price
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - thinkmassive 6y ago
        That's a pretty big exaggeration considering the 4GB Raspberry Pi 4B typically sells for $55-60. This adds a keyboard and case for $10-15 on top of that.
        867-5309 6y ago
        > $55-60 let's allow a more realistic $80 delivered yes, it's a great price for a great piece of kit, don't get me wrong. but if the price is still an issue (as implied by free monitor), it shouldn't be a big exaggeration to expect to find a second hand Pi4 for $40-50
        thinkmassive 6y ago
        Adafruit $55 + $4.55 shipping Amazon.com $59.43 + free shipping (1-day w/Prime) PiShop.us $55 + $7.95 shipping ...so $60 seems very fair including shipping, not to mention this larger keyboard model will cost at least as much to ship.
      - ineedasername 6y ago
        An 8 year old kid with non-technical parents is not going to have an easy time of it compared to what is essentially a plug-and-play solution. And I'm talking about households that literally do not have computers. There is no old hardware lying around, much less not just a keyboard & mouse, but the HDMI adapter, SD card, ability to apply the Raspbian OS image to the SD card, etc. Sure, search craigslist or similar, ask friends/family, you might get by. That's not a scalable solution for 1,000 kids in my school district that lack resources, much less the thousands more in surrounding districts. As with many technical problems, scaling is a challenge, not the single one-off solution.
  - kevinpet 6y ago
    You're replying to a comment about kids trying to distance learning on their parents phone or without a desk. You're missing the point.
    - leoc 6y ago
      I am not. In the developed world there's comparatively little chance that a school district or national education system could afford about $100 per head for a rollout of RPi 400s but not the say $240 or so per head (being pretty conservative) for a rollout of clamshell devices instead. Especially since you'll make some of that $140 back just by avoiding the technical support costs of helping families get the computers working with a zoo of BYOD HDMI TVs. Meanwhile in the developing world the assumption that everyone has at least one HDMI HDTV at home goes out the window. The original comment mentioned a supply issue with Chromebooks, but it seems unlikely that something like the RPi 400 is going to be much more secure against supply disruptions than a clamshell laptop.
  - bee_rider 6y ago
    In this particular moment, it might not be so bad for many use cases -- school hours are usually times when people are working anyway, so it isn't as if parents will be sitting around watching TV. Plus, it isn't like the goal here is just to goof off and play games, the kid is 1) learning 2) distracted. Seems like a pretty good tradeoff.
  - samatman 6y ago
    Monitors last much longer than their desirability these days, there are hundreds of thousands of old clunky Dells just sitting around. It does call for a bit of scrounging, but an acceptable used monitor should be twenty bucks or free. Including a screen is optimizing for pessimism: the best you could do is something useless for the majority, and only as good/cheap as the minority could get a new one for.
- TimTheTinker 6y ago
  In developed nations, I think families in poverty usually have a TV. The brilliance here is that a kid in a poor family can get started with just a single piece of hardware that's available cheaply.
  - chmod775 6y ago
    >In developed nations, I think families in poverty usually have a TV. That was a fair assertion 1997. Nowadays you will easily find a bunch of computers too. >The brilliance here is that a kid in a poor family can get started with just a single piece of hardware that's available cheaply. $100 isn't cheap when you're poor. A poor family that has any sense certainly won't buy brand-new hardware. When you have to save money, you buy second-hand, which will allow you to buy a fairly modern PC with a magnitude more power than that raspberry PI at half the price. For instance I could pick this computer up for 1 euro simply because someone wants to get rid of it: https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/pc-computer-acer/1559639278-228-4884 https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/pc-computer-acer... You can find tons of offers like these if you'd browse your local ebay/craigslist/whatever listings. Why would someone spend 100 bucks on a new machine?
    - ddingus 6y ago
      Because it comes with community, is relevant, etc... Sure, smarter people can literally dumpster dive and get going. I literally did that as a kid. N9 big deal. Tons of people will buy this and get a lot out of it.
      - core-questions 6y ago
        > I literally did that as a kid. Wicked, would love to hear the story.
        hexadec 6y ago
        No the parent, but I did this a bunch as we grew up poor. I got an oooooold IBM PS2 notebook with 6 Windows 3.1.2 floppies from the school IT discard pile. My friends and I also created the cheapest PC we could. It was a cardboard box with a small box fan and then all the Pentium 4 guts duct taped inside.
- Florin_Andrei 6y ago
  I looked at it and immediately went "ZX Spectrum reborn". :)
  - ddingus 6y ago
    That's the Next, but yes. Your parallel holds. I agree, only would say Apple 2 or C64, Atari...
  - bigiain 6y ago
    I thought "BBC Micro". (We had two of them at school when I was about 12. The 4 AppleIIs were always in demand with a queue of people waiting to play games, there was almost _always_ one of the BBC Micros to play with if you wanted to type in Basic code...)
    - lvturner 6y ago
      I thought Amiga A500... Especially with the name and form factor ;-)
- dzhiurgis 6y ago
  I thought new trend is getting rid of TV's until so many visitors asked us "where's your tv!?".
  - Firehawke 6y ago
    Broadcast TV-watching may be going down to a large extent (and even Cable TV), but even some of the poorer families can get their hands on an old Wii, Xbox 360, or the like from a Goodwill.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    You're talking about an entirely different group of people. Performative minimalism is not widely practiced among the groups werte discussing here.
gameswithgo 6y ago
if anyone needs a free monitor let me know, I got some spares.
- Kevin_S 6y ago
  Do you live in/near a rural area? Schools around me (Alabama) are hurting badly for equipment to facilitate remote learning.
- mrtweetyhack 6y ago
  seriously, I see people tossing LCD monitors and TV left and right
citrusybread 6y ago
a pi running linux enables more advanced STEM than a laptop running a locked-down chrome environment. you could just use the pi camera for a webcam, since the port is still there?
- brians 6y ago
  I'm told the camera port is not there; you have to use USB.
centimeter 6y ago
Having a flatscreen TV is a very high priority for poor people in the US.
- CositaS 6y ago
  A flatscreen? as opposed to a CRT?
  - thescriptkiddie 6y ago
    Love to watch Cops on my $30k CRT reference monitor.
  - Nition 6y ago
    I had a Trinitron CRT with a flat screen...
  - jodrellblank 6y ago
    "Flatscreen" as a right-wing racist dogwhistle term https://old.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/jjlvz0/hell_yeah_mark/gae3pkq/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/jjlvz0...
    - soupbowl 6y ago
      I hope you are trolling because this dogwhistle nonsense is getting out of hand.
      - jodrellblank 6y ago
        You have an objection to the content, instead of an ad-hom attack on me? "Having a flatscreen TV is a very high priority for poor people in the US". 1) TV is comparatively cheap entertainment. 2) Flatscreens are the only kind of TV produced in years. 3) Is that objectively "a very high priority" for "poor people"? Citation needed. 4) Being poor sucks, and things which make life more pleasant would be a completely understandable high priority. 5) Obtaining things which make life better is a very high priority in all stratas of American life. And yet the comment ""Having a flatscreen TV is a very high priority for poor people in the US" doesn't sound filled with empathy, understanding, approval, celebration that even poor people can afford material goods in America, does it? Instead, somehow, it sounds judgemental, critical, accusatory. In the middle of a thread about a Raspberry Pi which was designed and made to be cheap so that poor kids have a chance of computing access, with the context "even poor people have TVs" who would throw in that comment and why? From an opinion piece[1]: "The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. [...] Regardless of how they were intended, poor people and minorities sense that with those comments Gingrich is winking — some call it “dog whistling” — at certain white audiences by intimating that black people are lazy, happy to live off the government and lacking any intellect." That's obviously what happened here. The comment "Having a flatscreen TV is a very high priority for poor people in the US" does not say "poor people value education and it's a good thing even poor people have access to a TV where they could plug in a Raspberry Pi", it says "of course poor people will have a TV, they're lazy and watch TV all day and feel entitled to the luxury of a flatscreen, right guys?" wink wink, allowing the poster to deny any responsibility because "many poor people own televisions". The Center for American Progress paper "Moving away from Racial Stereotypes"[2] says "The notion that poor people, particularly poor people of color, are lazy is the most significant and persistent stereotype affecting efforts to address poverty in our country." and "It’s notable that labels suggesting laziness or lack of effort that have been used to describe African Americans are also applied to poor people more generally." and "Getting tough on poor people is a way to try to win votes during elections, derail legislation, or distract attention from positions that would otherwise be unpopular. Given modern-day sensibilities, however, very few single out groups directly—instead of using words like “black” or “Hispanic,” they raise stereotypes and employ code words that let audiences know exactly which groups they are actually talking about without actually saying so" and "Over the years, progressives have contributed to the continued association of African Americans and Hispanics with poverty" That is, there's a certain demographic characterised roughly by older, white, 1950s, Republican, Fox-News watching, to whom "poor" means "black" and "TV" means "lazy", "flatscreen" means "entitled luxury" and "high priority TV" means "irresponsible" or "stupid", and the whole sentence is completely innocently deniable because everyone has a TV so it's just plain fact and completely innocent. The only hint is that if it were a completely innocent observation, there would be no need to say it at all, no need to single out the poor, no need to mention "high priority", no need to mention "flatscreen". You'd just say "people who can afford a Raspberry Pi 400 probably have a TV, which is nice". And that was already said one comment before in the chain. [1] https://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/207295-2012-racial-code-words-obscure-real-issue https://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/207295-... [2] https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2012/02/pdf/race_stereotypes.pdf https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2...
moron4hire 6y ago
Hopefully, people will figure out that a lot of 2nd hand stores have a lot of used monitors for sale that just sit around forever.
- bob29 6y ago
  Small scale solutions would only create jobs for individuals and small enterprise, not corporate profits. Alternatives to consumerism is NOT welcome on hacker news.
JohnBooty 6y ago
How many households in this situation have an extra monitor lying around to plug this into You just need a television. In a single household it wouldn't even necessarily need to be an extra television, unless it's some kind of truly abusive household where the kid's not allowed to pre-empt the family TV to attend school. Of course, in a multi-kid household, yes - one screen per kid would be needed. plus they'll need a separate webcam Yes. Though, I'd be shocked if drivers were much of a hassle. This new Pi form factor is kinda clever but surely a $200-$300 chromebook or tablet is still significantly more accessible. Surely, but is the extra money more accessible? And how does a desktop enable more advanced STEM learning than a laptop? It's not the form factor. It's the OS. A fully-open OS, versus a locked-down OS. Of course, whether or not this matters depends on the kid and the curriculum. If all the kid's doing is some web-based online curriculum whose needs are perfectly serviced by a Chromebook, then yeah - an RPi device isn't magically going to grant them magical STEM learning powers by osmosis.
- cabalamat 6y ago
  > It's not the form factor. It's the OS. A fully-open OS, versus a locked-down OS. Raspberry Pi 400 is what ChromeOS/Chromebooks could have been if Google cared about making computing empower people, rather than seeing it as a tool to manipulate them through adverts.
  - jolux 6y ago
    The locked down nature of the Chromebook is also (if not primarily) about security too.
- AstroJetson 6y ago
  Oddly I was at Goodwill and picked up a RCA tv with an HDMI input for $20. It is only 18", but will do for the Pi 400 I grabbed today. Cheap used and still useful monitors are out there.
code4tee 6y ago
Most people’s TVs at this point are basically a 1080 monitor hooked up to a computer (cable box) so I don’t see this as a big challenge. If a monitor is needed they are quite inexpensive at this point compared to what they used to cost.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  Is cable that common? Assuming you mean cable tv, it seems that at peak it was only just over half of all homes that subscribed and is falling. Presumably this is due to Netflix et al. However wiki numbers stop a few years back. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_Unit...
  - faceplanted 6y ago
    Even without cable boxes, basically every TV has an input you can plug something into, even if you've got one of the extremely old ones you can get an adapter.
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    The point about it being hooked up to a cable box isn't particularly relevant unless you're only watching OTA digital TV all your media comes from what can be roughly described as a computer attached to a monitor. And even if you are just watching digital OTA TV any relatively modern TV will have an HDMI port.
- ascagnel_ 6y ago
  The issue is that the Pi uses a relatively uncommon port (mini-HDMI) for their devices, and while the “Christmas Morning” kit that they’re selling includes the correct cable, it would’ve been nice if this larger device upgraded to use the far more common full-sized HDMI port. This way, they could’ve used a cable they likely already had available instead of needing something special or keeping track of a new cable.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
ineedasername 6y ago
1) You can hook this up to a TV. 2) Webcam isn't strictly necessary: You'll be able to "see" your teacher, type in chat, virtually raise your hand, etc. 3) This enables more advanced STEM (The "T" portion, really) not because it's a desktop but because of the built-in 40-pin connector opening it up to the massive catalog of projects that exist for the Pi platform already. 4) Perfect is the enemy of the good: You're complaining this isn't a perfect solution for those lacking resources. It's not. But it is significantly better than nothing, or a phone with a 5" screen and no keyboard.
- ddingus 6y ago
  That 40 pin connector is a big STEM deal. First peripheral I would sell is an add on breadboard station with lots of good sensors, lights, input controls, motor drivers and such that is buffered to prevent damage and start producing education kits.
  - marmaduke 6y ago
    > That 40 pin connector is a big STEM deal. yes really, this is nearly spectrum-opposite of a chromebook (desgined to keep you in a prebuilt ecosystem)
    - jayd16 6y ago
      If you can write code to drive hardware from pinouts I think you can click a button to enable Linux apps.
      - ddingus 6y ago
        Writing code means not requiring Linux apps.
        ben_w 6y ago
        Pis don’t require Linux, they support Linux. If you want to teach kids on RISC OS like I was in the late 90s, there isn’t anything stopping you.
teh_infallible 6y ago
The pi lets you work without google spying on you. That’s why I want this as an alternative to a Chromebook. My kids can learn computing without feeding data to google.
- open-source-ux 6y ago
  I also really hope the Pi desktop PC succeeds as an alternative to ChromeOS. I've been appalled by wide adoption among schoolkids of Chromebooks. Google promises not to build profiles of kids, but they are still capturing all their online and OS behaviour. The volumes of data captured are unimaginably large. Pushback and scrutiny of ChromeOS is practically zero in tech circles. In fact it's quite the opposite, as discussed by some in this thread: there's excitement about the thought of porting ChromeOS to Pi.
- bergstromm466 6y ago
  "Does the sub-licensed Intel Management Engine on the Broadcom CPU in the Raspberry Pi 400 call home to Intel servers?" Tomorrow's headline?
sergeykish 6y ago
Or used notebook, 6 years old Dell Latitude E7440 costs $230. It is built like tank. Price of the latest model starts from $1600. https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/cty/pdp/spd/latitude-14-7410-2-in-1-laptop https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/cty/pdp/spd/latitude-14...
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Think about scalability. We need a solution for more than just one person. We need a solution for 1,000 kids in my town, 5,000 in surrounding districts, and I have no idea how many state-wide. How many such laptops can you find? How much effort will it take to source a dozen here, and dozen there, from hundreds of different sources? Repurposing old hardware only works at a small scale. If there were 50 kids in the school district, the district could put out calls to other families who might have old hardware. That doesn't scale to thousands of students. These are resources restricted households as well: $200-$250 represents a significant increase over $100.
  - sergeykish 6y ago
    That was an example. $1600 ultrabook costs $230 after 6 years. It includes display and there are cheaper models. Computing power has not changed much in the last ten years (just stay away from Intel Atom), maybe add some RAM and good to go. Bonus point — compatibility with x86 and x64 software, SATA. Raspberry Pi 400 is fine, but it is not cheapest.
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      Opening a brand new Pi and building up the environment is part of the attraction. An old machine that doesn’t support new features seems somehow inferior to a new machine that doesn’t support some stuff. The satisfaction in making a tiny little computer board go is very apparent when you see a kid do it, even if it’s just to make some lights flash or boot into a Nintendo 64 emulator via a console. It all feels very close to the metal but without a great risk of damage.
asdfman123 6y ago
They're poor, not desert nomads. Monitors and desks can easily be found for reasonable prices. Lots of people have random desks and old computer monitors sitting around.
jeffxtreme 6y ago
Even for non-STEM students, the Pi setup seems fairly accessible. From a quick online search, I could find monitors for $30 - $50 and webcams $20 - $30 which is pretty price competitive with a $200 - $300 Chromebook. The Pi community would help with any driver installation issues, and the Pi setup seems powered up enough to run Zoom with no issues. Though I do see even cheaper Chromebooks in the same price range, so I wonder why / how districts are not able to provide these to students.
- my123 6y ago
  Chromebooks right now are in a quite huge shortage: https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20201029PD205.html https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20201029PD205.html > Component shortages continue to disrupt Acer's Chromebook shipments, which can fulfill only 30% of customer orders, with shipments for the remainders having to be deferred, according to the company.
  - jeffxtreme 6y ago
    Ah still? Interesting. Maybe supply is geographically dependent, as I'm seeing Chromebook availability in Walmart / Amazon / directly from Acer. The sub-$200 laptops are mostly used or renewed though, so maybe school districts are more hesitant to purchase those.
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      They're available around me like that too, but not in sufficient quantities. If my district tried to buy 1,000 from Walmart, they wouldn't be able to. They're trickling in from suppliers slowly. It's also difficult to do a dozen of one type, 50 of another model, etc. The district needs to support these, and the more models there are the bigger the burden of support, different OS versions and levels of support/updates from the manufacturer. So, not a first choice, but it's still better than nothing. If they managed to get 200 more kids learning then it would be worth it.
ponker 6y ago
You're focusing on the wrong stuff like the monitor and the webcam. This is a completely open computing platform... a Chromebook is a thin client for Google services. They couldn't be more different.
dzhiurgis 6y ago
My biggest beef with RPI is how much effort it takes it set it up as headless machine. Expectation was just plug USB-C cable and shell away. Nope. Connect to Wifi first. Then to use it's serial ports there's ton of conflicting info that I've gave up after spending days on it. Finally no way to run headless if you wan't 64bit OS. It's good computer for r/iamverysmart type of people, but not to be actually productive hacker.
- muds 6y ago
  > no way to run headless if you wan't 64bit OS. Could you expand on that a bit more? I'm currently running a Pi3B+ 64bit Raspbian headless and have had no problems so far. Does the Pi4 not allow 64bit headless?
  - dzhiurgis 6y ago
    Raspbian 64bit seems recent and still in beta. I think I’ve tried to get Ubuntu and failed to find manual how to get it connect to my wifi with ssh enabled. I don’t have keyboard, monitor and hdmi adapters for this nonsense.
socialdemocrat 6y ago
My impression of a lot of poor areas, is that one of the first things they invest in is a TV. So they likely have a TV already. Switching between different usages of the TV they have is probably doable. Use the computer connected during day time for work, and use the TV functionality in the evenings for recreation. I agree tablets and laptops are more accessible. But I think when it comes to really learning how to use a computer and realize its full potential you want a proper desktop computer with mouse, keyboard, connection ports. I think it is useful to learn how to plug in different USB devices, monitors etc. Unlike a Chrome book or Tablet, a "real" computer give you a chance to learn about how a file system works, organizing files into folders. Using multiple programs to work on a collection of files. The single task orientation of tablets make them very user friendly and low threshold but that also limit you in how far you can go. My kids started out on tablets but now I try to push them more onto using a regular computer.
- cactus2093 6y ago
  Sorry but this is just silly. There's nothing more real about plugging in usb devices or dragging around files on a system file browser, it's just what seems normal to you. It would be just like telling kids in the early nineties "this GUI stuff is great and all, but the real way to interact with computers is the command line". Or even longer ago, telling kids "this terminal is nice and all, but the real way to use computers is punch cards". I also don't think the idea that ChromeOS is too locked down to be a real learning environment for kids really holds up. If anything, it's too open. There are billions of websites out there, and thousands or however many that might be excellent learning resources or sandboxes for kids, it can just be hard to know about them/find them all. But the abstractions are just shifting around, there are plenty of full development environments on the web where you can program and host entire apps. Or you can tinker with IFTTT or Zapier to connect different hosted services and hack them to do different things you make up. There's still a lot of room for creatively using technology, I certainly wouldn't sweat pushing kids onto "regular" computers instead of chrome books or tablets (beyond just a basic introduction to broaden their horizons and let them at least understand that this other paradigm exists).
macjohnmcc 6y ago
Yeah Chromebook has more but cost 2-3 times as much and also the quote indicates that they couldn't get the chromebooks.

jvanderbot 6y ago

Oh, I don't know if it takes a lot of imagination to see how a desktop like this one enables more advanced stem learning. The I/O ports, low form factor for portability, the raspbian ecosystem and so on.

sbuk 6y ago

I'd assert that TV's are commonplace. This, just like the BBC Micro, ZX80/1 and C64, can easily be used with a TV.

leoc 6y ago
The reason that the old '80s microcomputers were often plugged into TVs was that monitors were too expensive. Sharing the TV with every other device and person in the house was a necessary evil. TV-hogging is probably about as problematic now as it was then, while displays are much less expensive. So including a screen makes much more sense for a low-cost access-to-computing device these days.
- rini17 6y ago
  It's not so problematic today, there are multiple TVs in most families now. And old functioning, like, 1280*1024 LCD monitors can be had for free.
  - 867-5309 6y ago
    it's more likely an old keyboard is lying around. a Pi4 and cheap enclosure could then be picked up for half this price
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - thinkmassive 6y ago
      That's a pretty big exaggeration considering the 4GB Raspberry Pi 4B typically sells for $55-60. This adds a keyboard and case for $10-15 on top of that.
      - 867-5309 6y ago
        > $55-60 let's allow a more realistic $80 delivered yes, it's a great price for a great piece of kit, don't get me wrong. but if the price is still an issue (as implied by free monitor), it shouldn't be a big exaggeration to expect to find a second hand Pi4 for $40-50
        thinkmassive 6y ago
        Adafruit $55 + $4.55 shipping Amazon.com $59.43 + free shipping (1-day w/Prime) PiShop.us $55 + $7.95 shipping ...so $60 seems very fair including shipping, not to mention this larger keyboard model will cost at least as much to ship.
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      An 8 year old kid with non-technical parents is not going to have an easy time of it compared to what is essentially a plug-and-play solution. And I'm talking about households that literally do not have computers. There is no old hardware lying around, much less not just a keyboard & mouse, but the HDMI adapter, SD card, ability to apply the Raspbian OS image to the SD card, etc. Sure, search craigslist or similar, ask friends/family, you might get by. That's not a scalable solution for 1,000 kids in my school district that lack resources, much less the thousands more in surrounding districts. As with many technical problems, scaling is a challenge, not the single one-off solution.
- kevinpet 6y ago
  You're replying to a comment about kids trying to distance learning on their parents phone or without a desk. You're missing the point.
  - leoc 6y ago
    I am not. In the developed world there's comparatively little chance that a school district or national education system could afford about $100 per head for a rollout of RPi 400s but not the say $240 or so per head (being pretty conservative) for a rollout of clamshell devices instead. Especially since you'll make some of that $140 back just by avoiding the technical support costs of helping families get the computers working with a zoo of BYOD HDMI TVs. Meanwhile in the developing world the assumption that everyone has at least one HDMI HDTV at home goes out the window. The original comment mentioned a supply issue with Chromebooks, but it seems unlikely that something like the RPi 400 is going to be much more secure against supply disruptions than a clamshell laptop.
- bee_rider 6y ago
  In this particular moment, it might not be so bad for many use cases -- school hours are usually times when people are working anyway, so it isn't as if parents will be sitting around watching TV. Plus, it isn't like the goal here is just to goof off and play games, the kid is 1) learning 2) distracted. Seems like a pretty good tradeoff.
- samatman 6y ago
  Monitors last much longer than their desirability these days, there are hundreds of thousands of old clunky Dells just sitting around. It does call for a bit of scrounging, but an acceptable used monitor should be twenty bucks or free. Including a screen is optimizing for pessimism: the best you could do is something useless for the majority, and only as good/cheap as the minority could get a new one for.
TimTheTinker 6y ago
In developed nations, I think families in poverty usually have a TV. The brilliance here is that a kid in a poor family can get started with just a single piece of hardware that's available cheaply.
- chmod775 6y ago
  >In developed nations, I think families in poverty usually have a TV. That was a fair assertion 1997. Nowadays you will easily find a bunch of computers too. >The brilliance here is that a kid in a poor family can get started with just a single piece of hardware that's available cheaply. $100 isn't cheap when you're poor. A poor family that has any sense certainly won't buy brand-new hardware. When you have to save money, you buy second-hand, which will allow you to buy a fairly modern PC with a magnitude more power than that raspberry PI at half the price. For instance I could pick this computer up for 1 euro simply because someone wants to get rid of it: https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/pc-computer-acer/1559639278-228-4884 https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/pc-computer-acer... You can find tons of offers like these if you'd browse your local ebay/craigslist/whatever listings. Why would someone spend 100 bucks on a new machine?
  - ddingus 6y ago
    Because it comes with community, is relevant, etc... Sure, smarter people can literally dumpster dive and get going. I literally did that as a kid. N9 big deal. Tons of people will buy this and get a lot out of it.
    - core-questions 6y ago
      > I literally did that as a kid. Wicked, would love to hear the story.
      - hexadec 6y ago
        No the parent, but I did this a bunch as we grew up poor. I got an oooooold IBM PS2 notebook with 6 Windows 3.1.2 floppies from the school IT discard pile. My friends and I also created the cheapest PC we could. It was a cardboard box with a small box fan and then all the Pentium 4 guts duct taped inside.
Florin_Andrei 6y ago
I looked at it and immediately went "ZX Spectrum reborn". :)
- ddingus 6y ago
  That's the Next, but yes. Your parallel holds. I agree, only would say Apple 2 or C64, Atari...
- bigiain 6y ago
  I thought "BBC Micro". (We had two of them at school when I was about 12. The 4 AppleIIs were always in demand with a queue of people waiting to play games, there was almost _always_ one of the BBC Micros to play with if you wanted to type in Basic code...)
  - lvturner 6y ago
    I thought Amiga A500... Especially with the name and form factor ;-)
dzhiurgis 6y ago
I thought new trend is getting rid of TV's until so many visitors asked us "where's your tv!?".
- Firehawke 6y ago
  Broadcast TV-watching may be going down to a large extent (and even Cable TV), but even some of the poorer families can get their hands on an old Wii, Xbox 360, or the like from a Goodwill.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  You're talking about an entirely different group of people. Performative minimalism is not widely practiced among the groups werte discussing here.

gameswithgo 6y ago

if anyone needs a free monitor let me know, I got some spares.

Kevin_S 6y ago
Do you live in/near a rural area? Schools around me (Alabama) are hurting badly for equipment to facilitate remote learning.
mrtweetyhack 6y ago
seriously, I see people tossing LCD monitors and TV left and right

citrusybread 6y ago

a pi running linux enables more advanced STEM than a laptop running a locked-down chrome environment. you could just use the pi camera for a webcam, since the port is still there?

brians 6y ago
I'm told the camera port is not there; you have to use USB.

centimeter 6y ago

Having a flatscreen TV is a very high priority for poor people in the US.

CositaS 6y ago
A flatscreen? as opposed to a CRT?
- thescriptkiddie 6y ago
  Love to watch Cops on my $30k CRT reference monitor.
- Nition 6y ago
  I had a Trinitron CRT with a flat screen...
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  "Flatscreen" as a right-wing racist dogwhistle term https://old.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/jjlvz0/hell_yeah_mark/gae3pkq/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/jjlvz0...
  - soupbowl 6y ago
    I hope you are trolling because this dogwhistle nonsense is getting out of hand.
    - jodrellblank 6y ago
      You have an objection to the content, instead of an ad-hom attack on me? "Having a flatscreen TV is a very high priority for poor people in the US". 1) TV is comparatively cheap entertainment. 2) Flatscreens are the only kind of TV produced in years. 3) Is that objectively "a very high priority" for "poor people"? Citation needed. 4) Being poor sucks, and things which make life more pleasant would be a completely understandable high priority. 5) Obtaining things which make life better is a very high priority in all stratas of American life. And yet the comment ""Having a flatscreen TV is a very high priority for poor people in the US" doesn't sound filled with empathy, understanding, approval, celebration that even poor people can afford material goods in America, does it? Instead, somehow, it sounds judgemental, critical, accusatory. In the middle of a thread about a Raspberry Pi which was designed and made to be cheap so that poor kids have a chance of computing access, with the context "even poor people have TVs" who would throw in that comment and why? From an opinion piece[1]: "The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. [...] Regardless of how they were intended, poor people and minorities sense that with those comments Gingrich is winking — some call it “dog whistling” — at certain white audiences by intimating that black people are lazy, happy to live off the government and lacking any intellect." That's obviously what happened here. The comment "Having a flatscreen TV is a very high priority for poor people in the US" does not say "poor people value education and it's a good thing even poor people have access to a TV where they could plug in a Raspberry Pi", it says "of course poor people will have a TV, they're lazy and watch TV all day and feel entitled to the luxury of a flatscreen, right guys?" wink wink, allowing the poster to deny any responsibility because "many poor people own televisions". The Center for American Progress paper "Moving away from Racial Stereotypes"[2] says "The notion that poor people, particularly poor people of color, are lazy is the most significant and persistent stereotype affecting efforts to address poverty in our country." and "It’s notable that labels suggesting laziness or lack of effort that have been used to describe African Americans are also applied to poor people more generally." and "Getting tough on poor people is a way to try to win votes during elections, derail legislation, or distract attention from positions that would otherwise be unpopular. Given modern-day sensibilities, however, very few single out groups directly—instead of using words like “black” or “Hispanic,” they raise stereotypes and employ code words that let audiences know exactly which groups they are actually talking about without actually saying so" and "Over the years, progressives have contributed to the continued association of African Americans and Hispanics with poverty" That is, there's a certain demographic characterised roughly by older, white, 1950s, Republican, Fox-News watching, to whom "poor" means "black" and "TV" means "lazy", "flatscreen" means "entitled luxury" and "high priority TV" means "irresponsible" or "stupid", and the whole sentence is completely innocently deniable because everyone has a TV so it's just plain fact and completely innocent. The only hint is that if it were a completely innocent observation, there would be no need to say it at all, no need to single out the poor, no need to mention "high priority", no need to mention "flatscreen". You'd just say "people who can afford a Raspberry Pi 400 probably have a TV, which is nice". And that was already said one comment before in the chain. [1] https://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/207295-2012-racial-code-words-obscure-real-issue https://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/207295-... [2] https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2012/02/pdf/race_stereotypes.pdf https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2...

moron4hire 6y ago

Hopefully, people will figure out that a lot of 2nd hand stores have a lot of used monitors for sale that just sit around forever.

bob29 6y ago
Small scale solutions would only create jobs for individuals and small enterprise, not corporate profits. Alternatives to consumerism is NOT welcome on hacker news.

JohnBooty 6y ago

How many households in this situation have an extra monitor lying around to plug this into You just need a television. In a single household it wouldn't even necessarily need to be an extra television, unless it's some kind of truly abusive household where the kid's not allowed to pre-empt the family TV to attend school. Of course, in a multi-kid household, yes - one screen per kid would be needed. plus they'll need a separate webcam Yes. Though, I'd be shocked if drivers were much of a hassle. This new Pi form factor is kinda clever but surely a $200-$300 chromebook or tablet is still significantly more accessible. Surely, but is the extra money more accessible? And how does a desktop enable more advanced STEM learning than a laptop? It's not the form factor. It's the OS. A fully-open OS, versus a locked-down OS. Of course, whether or not this matters depends on the kid and the curriculum. If all the kid's doing is some web-based online curriculum whose needs are perfectly serviced by a Chromebook, then yeah - an RPi device isn't magically going to grant them magical STEM learning powers by osmosis.

cabalamat 6y ago
> It's not the form factor. It's the OS. A fully-open OS, versus a locked-down OS. Raspberry Pi 400 is what ChromeOS/Chromebooks could have been if Google cared about making computing empower people, rather than seeing it as a tool to manipulate them through adverts.
- jolux 6y ago
  The locked down nature of the Chromebook is also (if not primarily) about security too.
AstroJetson 6y ago
Oddly I was at Goodwill and picked up a RCA tv with an HDMI input for $20. It is only 18", but will do for the Pi 400 I grabbed today. Cheap used and still useful monitors are out there.

code4tee 6y ago

Most people’s TVs at this point are basically a 1080 monitor hooked up to a computer (cable box) so I don’t see this as a big challenge. If a monitor is needed they are quite inexpensive at this point compared to what they used to cost.

lostlogin 6y ago
Is cable that common? Assuming you mean cable tv, it seems that at peak it was only just over half of all homes that subscribed and is falling. Presumably this is due to Netflix et al. However wiki numbers stop a few years back. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_Unit...
- faceplanted 6y ago
  Even without cable boxes, basically every TV has an input you can plug something into, even if you've got one of the extremely old ones you can get an adapter.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  The point about it being hooked up to a cable box isn't particularly relevant unless you're only watching OTA digital TV all your media comes from what can be roughly described as a computer attached to a monitor. And even if you are just watching digital OTA TV any relatively modern TV will have an HDMI port.
ascagnel_ 6y ago
The issue is that the Pi uses a relatively uncommon port (mini-HDMI) for their devices, and while the “Christmas Morning” kit that they’re selling includes the correct cable, it would’ve been nice if this larger device upgraded to use the far more common full-sized HDMI port. This way, they could’ve used a cable they likely already had available instead of needing something special or keeping track of a new cable.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

ineedasername 6y ago

1) You can hook this up to a TV. 2) Webcam isn't strictly necessary: You'll be able to "see" your teacher, type in chat, virtually raise your hand, etc. 3) This enables more advanced STEM (The "T" portion, really) not because it's a desktop but because of the built-in 40-pin connector opening it up to the massive catalog of projects that exist for the Pi platform already. 4) Perfect is the enemy of the good: You're complaining this isn't a perfect solution for those lacking resources. It's not. But it is significantly better than nothing, or a phone with a 5" screen and no keyboard.

ddingus 6y ago
That 40 pin connector is a big STEM deal. First peripheral I would sell is an add on breadboard station with lots of good sensors, lights, input controls, motor drivers and such that is buffered to prevent damage and start producing education kits.
- marmaduke 6y ago
  > That 40 pin connector is a big STEM deal. yes really, this is nearly spectrum-opposite of a chromebook (desgined to keep you in a prebuilt ecosystem)
  - jayd16 6y ago
    If you can write code to drive hardware from pinouts I think you can click a button to enable Linux apps.
    - ddingus 6y ago
      Writing code means not requiring Linux apps.
      - ben_w 6y ago
        Pis don’t require Linux, they support Linux. If you want to teach kids on RISC OS like I was in the late 90s, there isn’t anything stopping you.

teh_infallible 6y ago

The pi lets you work without google spying on you. That’s why I want this as an alternative to a Chromebook. My kids can learn computing without feeding data to google.

open-source-ux 6y ago
I also really hope the Pi desktop PC succeeds as an alternative to ChromeOS. I've been appalled by wide adoption among schoolkids of Chromebooks. Google promises not to build profiles of kids, but they are still capturing all their online and OS behaviour. The volumes of data captured are unimaginably large. Pushback and scrutiny of ChromeOS is practically zero in tech circles. In fact it's quite the opposite, as discussed by some in this thread: there's excitement about the thought of porting ChromeOS to Pi.
bergstromm466 6y ago
"Does the sub-licensed Intel Management Engine on the Broadcom CPU in the Raspberry Pi 400 call home to Intel servers?" Tomorrow's headline?

sergeykish 6y ago

Or used notebook, 6 years old Dell Latitude E7440 costs $230. It is built like tank. Price of the latest model starts from $1600. https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/cty/pdp/spd/latitude-14-7410-2-in-1-laptop https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/cty/pdp/spd/latitude-14...

ineedasername 6y ago
Think about scalability. We need a solution for more than just one person. We need a solution for 1,000 kids in my town, 5,000 in surrounding districts, and I have no idea how many state-wide. How many such laptops can you find? How much effort will it take to source a dozen here, and dozen there, from hundreds of different sources? Repurposing old hardware only works at a small scale. If there were 50 kids in the school district, the district could put out calls to other families who might have old hardware. That doesn't scale to thousands of students. These are resources restricted households as well: $200-$250 represents a significant increase over $100.
- sergeykish 6y ago
  That was an example. $1600 ultrabook costs $230 after 6 years. It includes display and there are cheaper models. Computing power has not changed much in the last ten years (just stay away from Intel Atom), maybe add some RAM and good to go. Bonus point — compatibility with x86 and x64 software, SATA. Raspberry Pi 400 is fine, but it is not cheapest.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    Opening a brand new Pi and building up the environment is part of the attraction. An old machine that doesn’t support new features seems somehow inferior to a new machine that doesn’t support some stuff. The satisfaction in making a tiny little computer board go is very apparent when you see a kid do it, even if it’s just to make some lights flash or boot into a Nintendo 64 emulator via a console. It all feels very close to the metal but without a great risk of damage.

asdfman123 6y ago

They're poor, not desert nomads. Monitors and desks can easily be found for reasonable prices. Lots of people have random desks and old computer monitors sitting around.

jeffxtreme 6y ago

Even for non-STEM students, the Pi setup seems fairly accessible. From a quick online search, I could find monitors for $30 - $50 and webcams $20 - $30 which is pretty price competitive with a $200 - $300 Chromebook. The Pi community would help with any driver installation issues, and the Pi setup seems powered up enough to run Zoom with no issues. Though I do see even cheaper Chromebooks in the same price range, so I wonder why / how districts are not able to provide these to students.

my123 6y ago
Chromebooks right now are in a quite huge shortage: https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20201029PD205.html https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20201029PD205.html > Component shortages continue to disrupt Acer's Chromebook shipments, which can fulfill only 30% of customer orders, with shipments for the remainders having to be deferred, according to the company.
- jeffxtreme 6y ago
  Ah still? Interesting. Maybe supply is geographically dependent, as I'm seeing Chromebook availability in Walmart / Amazon / directly from Acer. The sub-$200 laptops are mostly used or renewed though, so maybe school districts are more hesitant to purchase those.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    They're available around me like that too, but not in sufficient quantities. If my district tried to buy 1,000 from Walmart, they wouldn't be able to. They're trickling in from suppliers slowly. It's also difficult to do a dozen of one type, 50 of another model, etc. The district needs to support these, and the more models there are the bigger the burden of support, different OS versions and levels of support/updates from the manufacturer. So, not a first choice, but it's still better than nothing. If they managed to get 200 more kids learning then it would be worth it.

ponker 6y ago

You're focusing on the wrong stuff like the monitor and the webcam. This is a completely open computing platform... a Chromebook is a thin client for Google services. They couldn't be more different.

dzhiurgis 6y ago

My biggest beef with RPI is how much effort it takes it set it up as headless machine. Expectation was just plug USB-C cable and shell away. Nope. Connect to Wifi first. Then to use it's serial ports there's ton of conflicting info that I've gave up after spending days on it. Finally no way to run headless if you wan't 64bit OS. It's good computer for r/iamverysmart type of people, but not to be actually productive hacker.

muds 6y ago
> no way to run headless if you wan't 64bit OS. Could you expand on that a bit more? I'm currently running a Pi3B+ 64bit Raspbian headless and have had no problems so far. Does the Pi4 not allow 64bit headless?
- dzhiurgis 6y ago
  Raspbian 64bit seems recent and still in beta. I think I’ve tried to get Ubuntu and failed to find manual how to get it connect to my wifi with ssh enabled. I don’t have keyboard, monitor and hdmi adapters for this nonsense.

socialdemocrat 6y ago

My impression of a lot of poor areas, is that one of the first things they invest in is a TV. So they likely have a TV already. Switching between different usages of the TV they have is probably doable. Use the computer connected during day time for work, and use the TV functionality in the evenings for recreation. I agree tablets and laptops are more accessible. But I think when it comes to really learning how to use a computer and realize its full potential you want a proper desktop computer with mouse, keyboard, connection ports. I think it is useful to learn how to plug in different USB devices, monitors etc. Unlike a Chrome book or Tablet, a "real" computer give you a chance to learn about how a file system works, organizing files into folders. Using multiple programs to work on a collection of files. The single task orientation of tablets make them very user friendly and low threshold but that also limit you in how far you can go. My kids started out on tablets but now I try to push them more onto using a regular computer.

cactus2093 6y ago
Sorry but this is just silly. There's nothing more real about plugging in usb devices or dragging around files on a system file browser, it's just what seems normal to you. It would be just like telling kids in the early nineties "this GUI stuff is great and all, but the real way to interact with computers is the command line". Or even longer ago, telling kids "this terminal is nice and all, but the real way to use computers is punch cards". I also don't think the idea that ChromeOS is too locked down to be a real learning environment for kids really holds up. If anything, it's too open. There are billions of websites out there, and thousands or however many that might be excellent learning resources or sandboxes for kids, it can just be hard to know about them/find them all. But the abstractions are just shifting around, there are plenty of full development environments on the web where you can program and host entire apps. Or you can tinker with IFTTT or Zapier to connect different hosted services and hack them to do different things you make up. There's still a lot of room for creatively using technology, I certainly wouldn't sweat pushing kids onto "regular" computers instead of chrome books or tablets (beyond just a basic introduction to broaden their horizons and let them at least understand that this other paradigm exists).

macjohnmcc 6y ago

Yeah Chromebook has more but cost 2-3 times as much and also the quote indicates that they couldn't get the chromebooks.