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I would be suspicious of this. It's not just one alarm bell ringing. - The website. Jesus. With all the templates and content management you can pluck out of t

I would be suspicious of this. It's not just one alarm bell ringing. - The website. Jesus. With all the templates and content management you can pluck out of thin air, the result is very shoddy. Apparently that isn't a warning sign enough for some people. - No corporate history. The company has another site but their blog there is empty. No news. Dodgy RSS listings. The whole thing is even shoddier than the product site. - The payment is through Paypal. Address was visible yesterday (now encrypted) as mr.hipboy@gmail.com. lolwut? What a handle. Very professional. Real name appears to be Luffy Wang of Hesseney Road, Hubei 150, HK. (hipboi@qq.com) This guy really likes hips. - The product is $49. Less than the price (delivered) of two Raspis with a SATA controller and port. This was what made my eyes light up. The phrase "too good to be true" exists for a reason. - And while I'm talking about specs, why do the pictures and words disagree so much? How many card readers are there? Are they SD or MMC? - Oh and it's available almost without delay. Despite that there are no reviews, no tester units in the wild. No videos of on working. Not even the hint of a fart from a prototype. + There is a GitHub page: https://github.com/cubie-tech https://github.com/cubie-tech This is probably a detail I wouldn't have bothered with if I were running this scam. Yesterday my acquaintances on G+ and I decided that this is most likely a scam. I really hope it's not and I'll be the first in line for the second batch, but please be careful.

cantankerous 14y ago
I'm a bit suspicious, too. Googling the name of the board turns up maybe 10 results all in the same domain. Immediately following are things not related to the Cubieboard. I'm probably gonna sit this one out for now. EDIT: Using some different terms brings up a ton of articles about the board from popular sources, yet they're all new within the past few days. I dunno, it might actually be real, but it me a bit uncomfortable, but that may just be me.
- oliwarner 14y ago
  This is typical of the technology-journalist-circle-jerk you see when a new product is announced but nobody has hands on yet. No news older than a few days old. Same photos over and over again.
  - ktizo 14y ago
    How can you have a technology-journalist-circle-jerk without anybody having hands on?
steevdave 14y ago
Wow. As someone who is actually active in the A10 community, I know Tom and this is not a scam. Some people focus more on developing cool shit than on their website.
- oliwarner 14y ago
  Well if people want to sell their cool shit, they probably aught to spend 20 minutes making sure all the media around their product doesn't look like a giant con. Seriously other than the handle hipboi/hipboy in an email address that was removed from the site yesterday, there's nothing definitively linking Cubietech/Cubieboard to Tom Cubie. And I can't see anything about the Cubieboard on Tom Cubie's Facebook or G+. That also strikes me a little odd.
  - steevdave 14y ago
    Mostly because he hasn't actually announced it yet. The website is still in process and cnx-soft found it recently. Thus all the hubbub. He has shared the info with people who are friends on G+. But ripping in to someone for their choice of nickname? Seriously? I've seen many worse nicknames by people in this so called startup community that seems to be more and more filled with cynicism and negativity. Apparently if you don't use a Mac/rails/js it isn't worth looking in to.
    - jamesaguilar 14y ago
      Don't see anyone ripping into him for his nickname. You seem to be overreacting . . . a lot.
      - ANTSANTS 14y ago
        > Address was visible yesterday (now encrypted) as mr.hipboy@gmail.com. lolwut? What a handle. Very professional. ...This guy really likes hips.
        dman 14y ago
napierzaza 14y ago
The Rasp Pis are not particularly special. Things like the BeagleBoard etc existed before it and it was mostly the promise of a cheap board that was somewhat powerful (albeit with a bunch of GPIO caveats and a closed-source Broadcom chipset). But the price was always a lie, if you are in Canada the cost of a Rasp Pi approaches 80$. Not so exciting when the actually manufacturers put their extra costs over top of the "35$ cheap" original price. But I guess the 35$ price tag for the RaspPi didn't include manufacturing or shipping.
wissler 14y ago
They are probably just small, idealistic, and prioritize producing actually working hardware over producing marketing fluff.
rektide 14y ago
This is, foremost, not at all too good to be true. The Mele A1000 http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/hacking_the_mele_a1000/ http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/hacking_the_mele_a1000... is $70, a mere $20 more: it's 2x the board real-estate, another $4 in connectors, it has a case, and it's been around for ~1 year now. What's interesting is how lagged the development world is from the consumer electronics world. If you want an Allwinner A10, or a Marvell Kirkwood/ ARMADA 300 piece of kit, and you want it at the best possible price, possibly before dev kits show up, you need to scope out consumer electronics, not dev boards. The Mele was a product, this lack's the consumer experience of a product, is just a platform, and it, like many dev kits, show lag v.s. what the consumer boys are up to. This is simply a small board exposing a very cheap ARM A8 SoC that does everything (just add ram+flash): hold on to your fucking pants and get used to the future. Course, may not materialize. My OpenPandora hasn't. ;)
- primitur 14y ago
  I have two Open Pandoras that say you Just Need To Wait A Little More (tm). ;) And yeah, seems like every few years we get more and more college grads who seem to be surprised that there is, in fact, a lot of very cheap hardware out there to be had. I've been running and using micro-scale Linux hardware like these new-gen things for decades. Gumstix, BananaBoard, et al. Okay, the <$50 pricing is pretty nice, but not entirely unexpected given the trend over the last 10 years of having these things get cookie-cut around. The whole point of ARM in the first place was to get to this position ..
  - rektide 14y ago
    Dev hardware, *board, is for suckers: cheap hardware now a days is consumer gear.
HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
I don't know anything about these guys, but I don't think it's too good to be true. Ever since the Raspberry pi shipped, credit-card sized computers have been coming out the woodwork. As expected, now there are projects on vWorker (ex RentACoder) asking for engineers to design such computers with state of the art specs with a maximum bid of $499. I can't make this shit up! $499! At least toss us a bone and add a zero so we don't laugh quite so hard! Anyway, aside from that rant, this is a Great Thing. I predict an array of products that are now possible due to a flood of dirt cheap, physically small computers that can run Linux. One off industrial controllers that would have taken a week of development time can now be pushed out in a day, etc.
- joezydeco 14y ago
  "Ever since the Raspberry pi shipped, credit-card sized computers have been coming out the woodwork" No, they've been here all along in the SBC and industrial spaces. They're just on your radar now because they're cheap. Is Gumstix a line of "one-off industrial computers"? http://www.gumstix.com/ http://www.gumstix.com/
  - HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
    Having lived in the SBC and industrial space my entire career I'd probably take issue with that statement if I could be bothered to. I'll amend it to "cheap credit-card sized computers" if it makes you feel better. Gumstix have been around for what, about 10 years IIRC? They are more expensive than what I'm talking about. The point I'm making is that CPU boards on the level to run flavors of Linux easily are approaching "jellybean" component status and that will enable applications that simply weren't feasible before.
- salem 14y ago
  I agree, this is fantastic price point and an awesome trend. Try hitting this price point with a COTS Arduno + ethernet shield!
  - HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
forgotusername 14y ago
You do realize basically all these rules applied to the ras. pi when it was first announced too? Considering that was over a year ago, and comparable parts have been regularly available from China (e.g. Allwinner A10) for many months, it's quite hard to find any surprise in this project at all.
neurotech1 14y ago
Olimex is working on an A10 design, and is already shipping A13 based board. This would be quite doable for another small team. http://olimex.wordpress.com/ http://olimex.wordpress.com/ or http://goo.gl/5v26a http://goo.gl/5v26a to the post. Allwinner will reduce minimum shipping quantities for open hardware projects. Closed development OEMs have a 100k minimum order quantity.
Datonomics 14y ago
"more" link goes to an incomplete page.
grannyg00se 14y ago
The main homepage doesn't look all that bad, does it? A nice product shot, some specs, and a buy button. Clicking on things gives varied results though. For example clicking the buy button brings you to a page that indicates you can't actually buy it yet.
ww520 14y ago
They look like a hardware company, not a web design company. Why do you care about their-not-the-latest-hip-web-theme website? I rather they save the web design money to deliver a lower priced product. Every company starts with no corporate history. You are welcomed to buy from Intel if so choose. Hardware price drops all the times. The price point is not too far off. HN has been big on launch early and get feedback. How shallow it is to have negative feedback based on look. Let's wait and see how the product turns out, rather than commenting on their web design.
whalesalad 14y ago
You obviously have absolutely no idea what a true startup is. Do you understand the concept of most viable product? How long did you spend collecting all this information? Are you a disgruntled competitor with a bit of jealousy perhaps? The guy is working on physical hardware. Do you know how difficult that is? To ship a device like this? A lot of the issues you mentioned are the last of his worries.

cantankerous 14y ago

I'm a bit suspicious, too. Googling the name of the board turns up maybe 10 results all in the same domain. Immediately following are things not related to the Cubieboard. I'm probably gonna sit this one out for now. EDIT: Using some different terms brings up a ton of articles about the board from popular sources, yet they're all new within the past few days. I dunno, it might actually be real, but it me a bit uncomfortable, but that may just be me.

oliwarner 14y ago
This is typical of the technology-journalist-circle-jerk you see when a new product is announced but nobody has hands on yet. No news older than a few days old. Same photos over and over again.
- ktizo 14y ago
  How can you have a technology-journalist-circle-jerk without anybody having hands on?

steevdave 14y ago

Wow. As someone who is actually active in the A10 community, I know Tom and this is not a scam. Some people focus more on developing cool shit than on their website.

oliwarner 14y ago
Well if people want to sell their cool shit, they probably aught to spend 20 minutes making sure all the media around their product doesn't look like a giant con. Seriously other than the handle hipboi/hipboy in an email address that was removed from the site yesterday, there's nothing definitively linking Cubietech/Cubieboard to Tom Cubie. And I can't see anything about the Cubieboard on Tom Cubie's Facebook or G+. That also strikes me a little odd.
- steevdave 14y ago
  Mostly because he hasn't actually announced it yet. The website is still in process and cnx-soft found it recently. Thus all the hubbub. He has shared the info with people who are friends on G+. But ripping in to someone for their choice of nickname? Seriously? I've seen many worse nicknames by people in this so called startup community that seems to be more and more filled with cynicism and negativity. Apparently if you don't use a Mac/rails/js it isn't worth looking in to.
  - jamesaguilar 14y ago
    Don't see anyone ripping into him for his nickname. You seem to be overreacting . . . a lot.
    - ANTSANTS 14y ago
      > Address was visible yesterday (now encrypted) as mr.hipboy@gmail.com. lolwut? What a handle. Very professional. ...This guy really likes hips.
      - dman 14y ago

napierzaza 14y ago

The Rasp Pis are not particularly special. Things like the BeagleBoard etc existed before it and it was mostly the promise of a cheap board that was somewhat powerful (albeit with a bunch of GPIO caveats and a closed-source Broadcom chipset). But the price was always a lie, if you are in Canada the cost of a Rasp Pi approaches 80$. Not so exciting when the actually manufacturers put their extra costs over top of the "35$ cheap" original price. But I guess the 35$ price tag for the RaspPi didn't include manufacturing or shipping.

wissler 14y ago

They are probably just small, idealistic, and prioritize producing actually working hardware over producing marketing fluff.

rektide 14y ago

This is, foremost, not at all too good to be true. The Mele A1000 http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/hacking_the_mele_a1000/ http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/hacking_the_mele_a1000... is $70, a mere $20 more: it's 2x the board real-estate, another $4 in connectors, it has a case, and it's been around for ~1 year now. What's interesting is how lagged the development world is from the consumer electronics world. If you want an Allwinner A10, or a Marvell Kirkwood/ ARMADA 300 piece of kit, and you want it at the best possible price, possibly before dev kits show up, you need to scope out consumer electronics, not dev boards. The Mele was a product, this lack's the consumer experience of a product, is just a platform, and it, like many dev kits, show lag v.s. what the consumer boys are up to. This is simply a small board exposing a very cheap ARM A8 SoC that does everything (just add ram+flash): hold on to your fucking pants and get used to the future. Course, may not materialize. My OpenPandora hasn't. ;)

primitur 14y ago
I have two Open Pandoras that say you Just Need To Wait A Little More (tm). ;) And yeah, seems like every few years we get more and more college grads who seem to be surprised that there is, in fact, a lot of very cheap hardware out there to be had. I've been running and using micro-scale Linux hardware like these new-gen things for decades. Gumstix, BananaBoard, et al. Okay, the <$50 pricing is pretty nice, but not entirely unexpected given the trend over the last 10 years of having these things get cookie-cut around. The whole point of ARM in the first place was to get to this position ..
- rektide 14y ago
  Dev hardware, *board, is for suckers: cheap hardware now a days is consumer gear.

HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago

I don't know anything about these guys, but I don't think it's too good to be true. Ever since the Raspberry pi shipped, credit-card sized computers have been coming out the woodwork. As expected, now there are projects on vWorker (ex RentACoder) asking for engineers to design such computers with state of the art specs with a maximum bid of $499. I can't make this shit up! $499! At least toss us a bone and add a zero so we don't laugh quite so hard! Anyway, aside from that rant, this is a Great Thing. I predict an array of products that are now possible due to a flood of dirt cheap, physically small computers that can run Linux. One off industrial controllers that would have taken a week of development time can now be pushed out in a day, etc.

joezydeco 14y ago
"Ever since the Raspberry pi shipped, credit-card sized computers have been coming out the woodwork" No, they've been here all along in the SBC and industrial spaces. They're just on your radar now because they're cheap. Is Gumstix a line of "one-off industrial computers"? http://www.gumstix.com/ http://www.gumstix.com/
- HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
  Having lived in the SBC and industrial space my entire career I'd probably take issue with that statement if I could be bothered to. I'll amend it to "cheap credit-card sized computers" if it makes you feel better. Gumstix have been around for what, about 10 years IIRC? They are more expensive than what I'm talking about. The point I'm making is that CPU boards on the level to run flavors of Linux easily are approaching "jellybean" component status and that will enable applications that simply weren't feasible before.
salem 14y ago
I agree, this is fantastic price point and an awesome trend. Try hitting this price point with a COTS Arduno + ethernet shield!
- HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago

forgotusername 14y ago

You do realize basically all these rules applied to the ras. pi when it was first announced too? Considering that was over a year ago, and comparable parts have been regularly available from China (e.g. Allwinner A10) for many months, it's quite hard to find any surprise in this project at all.

neurotech1 14y ago

Olimex is working on an A10 design, and is already shipping A13 based board. This would be quite doable for another small team. http://olimex.wordpress.com/ http://olimex.wordpress.com/ or http://goo.gl/5v26a http://goo.gl/5v26a to the post. Allwinner will reduce minimum shipping quantities for open hardware projects. Closed development OEMs have a 100k minimum order quantity.

Datonomics 14y ago

"more" link goes to an incomplete page.

grannyg00se 14y ago

The main homepage doesn't look all that bad, does it? A nice product shot, some specs, and a buy button. Clicking on things gives varied results though. For example clicking the buy button brings you to a page that indicates you can't actually buy it yet.

ww520 14y ago

They look like a hardware company, not a web design company. Why do you care about their-not-the-latest-hip-web-theme website? I rather they save the web design money to deliver a lower priced product. Every company starts with no corporate history. You are welcomed to buy from Intel if so choose. Hardware price drops all the times. The price point is not too far off. HN has been big on launch early and get feedback. How shallow it is to have negative feedback based on look. Let's wait and see how the product turns out, rather than commenting on their web design.

whalesalad 14y ago

You obviously have absolutely no idea what a true startup is. Do you understand the concept of most viable product? How long did you spend collecting all this information? Are you a disgruntled competitor with a bit of jealousy perhaps? The guy is working on physical hardware. Do you know how difficult that is? To ship a device like this? A lot of the issues you mentioned are the last of his worries.