As soon as you get to the part about what it is missing (ports, memory, etc), and the fact that it is useless without a carrier board, it is pretty much a CPU b

As soon as you get to the part about what it is missing (ports, memory, etc), and the fact that it is useless without a carrier board, it is pretty much a CPU by itself on a board, and absolutely nowhere near as exciting as the headline they created makes it sound. It would be a closer fit to compare it to the Pico, which tit for tat, blows it away. The hybrid RP2040 boards are reasonably similar in size and can actually do things right out of the box. They don't need a carrier board, etc. And they only cost a few dollars. This is exactly like a couple years back when boards were advertising that they were twice as powerful as the Raspberry Pi while omitting to mention they also cost more than double the price of a Pi. Pretending they are similar when they aren't means these comparisons are utterly useless.