Notices by Graham Sutherland / Polynomial (gsuberland@chaos.social), page 3

@foone on the die? that seems entirely possible if your paste is drying up.

I swear I've seen at least a dozen people in the last month alone complain about multiple failed components and continuous hardware issues and build quality issues in framework laptops. for how much those things cost it's deeply disappointing to see.

imma be honest, seeing multiple people report failed motherboards within warranty and then the warranty replacement motherboard failing just outside warranty is not a great look

(especially when this is accompanied by complaints about other hardware issues happening at the same time, like trackpads and displays going bad)

with sincere apologies to the folks who work on this stuff who follow me - I know you do really good work - I've kinda lost a lot of confidence that this "open laptop" thing is gonna be sustainable enough to push through and grow into something more mainstream. I hope I'm wrong, but... *sigh* idk. it's just starting to seem like a lot of money for less performance and less reliability and ultimately there's still reliance on the original manufacturer for repairs most of the time anyway.

and this makes me very sad because it's such a cool concept that has the right spirit and vibe about it, but I've kinda lost faith that it can be squared with the reailities of producing good quality computing hardware with the kind of reliability and support that is warranted at a pricetag necessary to fund operation.

the super-fans who will pay a fortune to use half-broken hardware and mess with warranty replacements several times just because "open laptop" fits their general ethos can only really take you so far

I think the crux of it is that I'm sure it's possible for an organisation to exist which can build high performance open hardware laptops with excellent reliability at a moderate premium above similar spec'd closed products, with sufficiently capable production pipelines to keep on top of demand and warranty parts, but I'm no longer confident that it's possible to attain that state because you need to make so many things that don't compete first and navigate all that mess and technical debt.

organic growth means that such an endeavour takes so long that you end up burned out or swamped under technical (and possibly financial) debt.

artificial growth (like, say, some youtuber with tens of millions of subs says they're investing in your business) means the demand rockets beyond your capabilities and your supply chain is instantly backlogged for years and everything falls apart.

and at any point on this ride you can make one misstep or get tunnel vision and WOMP WOMP you're bust.

and again this isn't me trying to rag on these projects, 'cos I actually *love* the idea. I remember pulling out the manual for my dad's Amiga 500 and being amazed that it had a CIRCUIT DIAGRAM in the back. a full proper one, with all the part values! the vibe is immaculate, as the kids say.

I'm just kinda rambling about this because I feel like my dreams of returning to that state are unreachable and it has made me sad.

@bastelwombat Pi is a closed source product from a for-profit company, so not sure what you're referring to there.

@mntmn any MCA/MCE logs being generated?

@mntmn I ask because I've had three hardware issues that matched these symptoms, and each time the MCA/MCE logs generated by hardware were critical to tracking down the source.

first one was caused by PCIe ASPM; worked around by disabling ASPM, and fixed in a later BIOS.

second one was a bad DIMM with a very transient fault. ECC correction events told me which DIMM.

third case showed internal cache faults on one of the CPUs; the cause was motherboard failure.

@tthbaltazar @LunaFoxgirlVT my mum worked at two unis and her summary of it is that the whole thing is defined by perverse incentives. government programs reward a high pass rate (and high pass rates make for a good marketing line), and quality teaching is expensive, so there are lots of incentives to lower the bar. this also tends to leave academics rather bored, which is a recipe for even more asinine bureaucracy than usual, which burns everyone out. and students are the ones who lose.

@tthbaltazar @LunaFoxgirlVT by "lower the bar" I don't mean make the course/exams easy, I mean just teaching the absolute bare minimum at the slowest pace to keep the pass rate high. which is why you end up with so much uninteresting nonsense being stretched out as long as possible to fill the time.

@foone this sounds glorious

@foone no, wait, the other thing. cursed.

@foone there's already edible glitter, to ensure sparkly results at the other end.

@LunaFoxgirlVT vitamin D supplements made a fair difference for me, so might be worth a try if you're not already on them.

@mntmn what's the quiescent draw on the SK6805s when dark?

do you have a fire extinguisher in your house?

if not, I highly recommend grabbing one if you can afford it. powder is a good place to start, since it works for almost all household fire types and is safe around electricals. a brand new 1kg one is about £15 and a 2kg one is about £20.

a few years back I had an incident where having a fire extinguisher in our kitchen saved me from severe burns and limited the fire damage to stuff I could cheaply repair. coincidentally, I had bought it that day.