this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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It was nice knowing Raspberry Pi while they lasted. Going to suck losing something that has changed the homegrown embedded system hobby forever.

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[–] [email protected] 311 points 4 months ago (32 children)

Sooner or later capitalism ruins everything.

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[–] [email protected] 195 points 4 months ago (1 children)

And so begins "Line must go up" and the inevitable enshittification .

[–] [email protected] 59 points 4 months ago (3 children)

That began in 2020 for them.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago

It's how you get to the IPO .. so yeah

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[–] [email protected] 101 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm willing to bet they'll start adding telemetry features in RPiOS for "quality purposes" a few years from now.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They already have that proprietary and opaque GPU that has full memory access akin to the Intel ME, and its programming is very difficult to audit. There has been something quite fishy about them ever since they left their educational mission behind after the Pi 1 and went for-profit.

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[–] [email protected] 96 points 4 months ago (1 children)

AI nonsense privacy disrespecting "feature" coming next week

[–] [email protected] 39 points 4 months ago

Announcing: Raspberry pi recall

[–] [email protected] 89 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, expect nothing more than enshitification. That way, if they don't enshitify like every company does, then we'll be pleasantly surprised.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The nice thing about being a pessimist is that you are always either right, or pleasantly surprised.

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 4 months ago

Tech companies as soon as they are publicly traded:

[–] [email protected] 78 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Let the enshitification begin!

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[–] [email protected] 74 points 4 months ago

They've crossed the event horizon of enshitification.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I picked up a radxa zero last year and have been quite enjoying it. the hardware is better than a pi zero but costs less. same with a lot of other SBCs

but raspberry pi has a lot of inertia behind it, a lot of software and hardware support. people will keep using them, just like they keep using Ubuntu, even though it's a soulless corporate husk of what it one was

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 4 months ago (18 children)

N100 mini PCs are where it's at these days anyways. Unless you need the GPIO pins or are running some weird niche configuration, you're better off grabbing any N100, they're cheaper too.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I look for broken but working sff/tiny deals. Scored a sweet i5 7500 /16gb system for $100CAD. Just had a broken audio port I was never going to use.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 4 months ago (5 children)

The fool you will be revealed to be once I complete my Ethernet Over Audio implementation.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 4 months ago

Raspberry Pi has been over priced for a long time. I'm not saying they've been a net positive or negative, but if you think this will make them a bad company then I think they've been pretty bad for a bit.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 4 months ago (14 children)

Everyone here seems pretty negative on this news. Any particular reason?

[–] [email protected] 224 points 4 months ago

Going publicly traded fucks every company up with nextquarter-itis.

[–] [email protected] 163 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Mostly that IPOs put companies into 'infinite growth mode' which is obviously impossible, so their product just degrades over time. They can't just do 'good enough' anymore.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 4 months ago (10 children)

Also the reason why every company that is consistently 'good' is run privately. If you answer to nobody but yourself you have a lot more room for long term plans

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

The real sad thing is that you and the person you replied to are talking like "publicly traded" and "private" are the only two options, because worker cooperatives are so rare everybody forgets about them.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 4 months ago (1 children)

For me anything "private" just means you can't buy shares publicly. Worker cooperatives would be included in that (since you need to be a worker to own a "share")

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Raspberry pi foundation was launched as a charity, and the end goal was to produce a ton of very cheap computers to help children learn about programming. Since then, it has been soo ubiquitous for embedded stuff that for the last couple of years they have basically become unaffordable for the very audience they were intended for. Now they are seeking an ipo because they are used in everything, except as cheap computers for children.

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Every time a company goes public, they become more and more profitable until the only way to continue on that trajectory is to worsen their own product.

Think they'll still be selling the Pico for $4 or the Zero for $15 after they're reporting to shareholders?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Big pharma companies jack up the prices of life saving medicine that's been affordable for decades and don't lose a bit of sleep. You bet your ass a hobby electronics company will jack up prices as far as they think they can.

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 4 months ago

Going public introduces shareholders that prioritizes return on investment as opposed to making technology and knowledge about technology accessible for many.

It doesn't always end this way but often enough to worry about it...

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Because the more commercial they get, the more they stray from their original purpose as a charity to provide low-cost machines for kids to learn about computer science.

First there was the Dynabook, then OLPC, then Raspberry Pi, and now we've basically got to start over yet again because enshittification is imminent.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago

In Tech, an IPO means the business is market ready to be sold off in pieces, ie stocks. The people who buy the product don't care what it does, they use the product maker as a vehicle to more growth and profit. Typically that means the people who now own the business make poor choices about cost cutting, like off shoring support and removing unuseful documentation while removing people with critical tribal knowledge about processes. Each step the new owner takes will be to make the business more profitable, and in the world of business, the only thing they care about are the numbers and not the environment or people that created those numbers.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 4 months ago (1 children)

When a company takes on shareholders, whatever goals, mission, or ethos they had is erased. They now exist as a vehicle to make as much money as possible at literally any cost. That's it. Was nice while it lasted.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 months ago (13 children)

So, what are the alternatives?

[–] [email protected] 67 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 months ago

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

There's tons of similar SBC's out there from Chinese manufacturers, like Orange Pi, Banana Pi, etc; usually using mediatek RISC-V or rockchip ARM processors. They're all poorly supported on the software and documentation side though and take more work to get going, which has always been where Raspberry shined- nobody else has made embedded computing so easily accessible with click and go OS options and continuous kernel maintenance.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago (6 children)

This is the key point for alternatives. None seem to have the community and support (docs, s/w quality etc) that is remotely close to that of the Raspberry Pi.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I got a 'LePotato' a few years back when Pi had stock issues, and it worked quite well as a Pi 4 clone.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago

Oh jees... welp it was great while it lasted.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago

Welp. Fuck Raspberry Pi. The entire stock market is one big scam.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago (12 children)

Got my last Pi (RBP5) to try to set up a simple TV player under linux... unfortunately the performance was shit... had to go with Android and it's barely OK (bang for buck)

With the IPO I expect RBP are going to become more expensive and significantly enshitified... so that's that

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