Rising SBC Prices Amid Shortage

Haha, that's crazy that you didn't know of Jeff Geerling. He's been in the SBC/Electronics scene for a while now on YouTube. I guess that's more my thing.

I don't think the second-hand market will rise too much until things truly get scarce, which will likely take some time. I'm not that concerned yet, but if we see COVID levels of scarcity, I might invest in a few extra boards or mini-PCs

As Jeff mentioned, if you need a low-end SBC, the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W is an excellent SBC and should continue to be sold at a lower price. We can cross our fingers that one day we'll see ARCx support for Linux-based SBCs, the low-end Raspberry Pi, Radxa, and Orange Pi SBCs would be great candidates for affordable robot brains.

Thing is - low-end SBC is less than a phone CPU, so ARC on Linux won't be a pleasant experience lol. I still believe the way to go is with the Nx mini pcs, like the older editions are still great!  Totally, if you can get Win10 on them.

.....yeah we are in a weird place right now. So many struggles with RAM and other prices climbing...everything is costing more...we will eventually have an issue with expendable income vs rising costs. People will have to start cutting things like sports and hobbies to pay the bills. We all know wages are not matching the rising costs of everything and companies like Oracle letting 30,000 employees and many other companies following suit with AI replacements.

Lets hope the VRAM issues gets solved soon. Nvidia I'm looking at you.

1. Windows 11 is making hardware slower - and that's a HUGE problem. I'm still running Win10 on my personal machines because I can't stand Win11's laggy performance and terrible UI. Win11 looks blurry, and they've purposely removed UI features that make ppl less productive. Like, I can't just see all my programs on the taskbar anymore because they're grouped. I'm at 2-3 clicks instead of 1 to switch between programs. That's a 200-300 % increase in time and cognitive load. It adds up. But regarding RAM and computers, Win11's speed requirements are making fast computers slow.

On that note, even Linux has been extra bloated lately. I think Linux distro managers are realizing that, to compete with Windows' usability, they need a Windows-sized operating system. Also, they are realizing that Linux never optimized its desktop experience, which was built on an 800-year-old X11 technology. Now they have Wayland, which is supposed to be better optimized, but at the cost of stability and incompatibilities.

2. Every time there's a huge layoff in tech, there's always one company that initiates it. They become the bad guy to customers and, at the same time, the good guy to shareholders. It's never the same company twice in a row. I think they meet together, discuss who's next and how it benefits, and the tech giant leaders decide on who's going to be first for the layoff season. Sometimes it's Facebook, sometimes it's Amazon, today it's Oracle.

3. Cost of living is getting ridiculous. And up here in Canada, it's even worse. The news about Canada being the most miserable and most expensive country for the middle class is very true. It's because a divide is pushing through the middle class, splitting everyone into either the lower or upper class. The middle class is mostly gone. And that is caused by a few things, notably that 25+% of our population is now immigrants from countries that have very little. So native-born Canadians are lowering their expectations and lifestyles to compete with people accustomed to a significantly different way of life. The increase in scams and the communication challenges have created a social divide between "us" and "them". So being Canadian has now become "competing with Indians", which means not owning a home without having 10 other families share it (because real estate has tripled), not having careers (because a government subsidized immigrant will take over your job), and workmanship at an all-time low (quality of work matches low-skilled labor). The biggest issue is that we lost our Canadian identity, and it's difficult for anyone to explain "what being Canadian" actually means now.

1. I have one machine on win 11...hate it. All others still on win 10 even with no support any longer. At least there are virus updates!

I've just played with Linux a bit, its a great idea for an OS but if its become bloated then its no different than the other OS's I mean that was the point of it staying small and tidy.

2. Yup they are all doing what they can to save and pass on profits to shareholders. Many states are starting to clamp down on big corps and their tax breaks. Many like Washington state and here in Oregon are raising tax rates for big companies which then decide to leave to another lower tax state leaving a massive job loss in those areas, creating massive unemployment in those regions.

3. I had no idea its gotten so bad up there...we are in the dark here, the press covers what its told to cover and international is not one of them. I think the last time I was in BC was about 2012. Housing market was insane then, so I can't imagine now. The pressure cooker is about to explode all over the world. People cannot sustain all the things we talked about rising food, gas, rent or mortgage costs, lower wages, AI replacing jobs. There is a disappearing middle and lower class here. Only the rich will be left. Interested to see whose going to cut their grass...oh yeah Elons robots.

There's actually a way to continue getting Win10 updates for the next 2 years (I think it's 2 years). When you're on the Check For Updates page in Win10, there's a button on the far right labeled "Extend Updates". I did it to all my Win10 machines, and it works well

This guy talks a lot but its the shortest of the other videos i found where someone explains it.

Awesomeness! Thanks for that!

I'll add a few things here:

I definitely agree with DJ, the Canadian middle class is being hollowed out, all the wealth in the middle class has been spent on inflating costs in every area, along with losing income during covid. The majority of middle class Canadians are in pretty big debt, and food bank usage is now a commonly accepted service to use. I also hate that Canadian identity is being erased, we have our old Prime Minister to thank for that. He said that "There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada," and that he saw Canada as "the first post-national state." I really think we was quite off the mark, and ideologically driven. From a baseline standpoint, this is still part of our identity:

Late last year I moved over to Windows 11. I started by changing the taskbar to mimic Windows 10 by changing the settings to left align the taskbar and that one change has really helped me with adoption. On my new laptop I also have a Co-pilot button on the keyboard that has made it very easy for me to have instant AI access, which I find very convenient (even though ChatGPT is still my main). The start menu is pretty bad because you can't find things at a glance anymore, so I just use search now to find my applications that I don't have on my taskbar. I don't know why I didn't do this years ago but I finally wised up and placed a shortcut to the device manager on my taskbar, it has been so handy to always have it at my fingertips for troubleshooting.

The extended Windows 10 updates are only for a year I'm pretty sure. As the video title shows it's only until Oct 2026 and that's what I experienced when I did that change to my older Windows 10 Laptop.