This problem existed before AI, but it is now just worse due to the spamming nature of these "contributors". It's another form of endless September where people unfamiliar with the norms of team software development are overwhelming existing project maintainers faster than maintainers can teach them the norms of behaviour.

In the end, some sort of gatekeeping mechanism is needed to avoid overwhelming maintainers, whether it's a reputation system, membership in an in-group, or something else.

Update from bunnie:

   In my mind, the Baochip-1x’s key differentiating feature is the inclusion of a Memory Management Unit (MMU). No other microcontroller in this performance/integration class has this feature, to the best of my knowledge. For those not versed in OS-nerd speak, the MMU is what sets the software that runs on your phone or desktop apart from the software that runs in your toaster oven. It facilitates secure, loadable apps by sticking every application in its own virtual memory space.

This talk from 3c explains the hardware and operating system side of the project.

Baochip is a license-free RISCV implementation with MMU. It is custom CPU logic hitchhiked on another company's SOC. The SOC is dual CPU like the rp2340, but with the other CPU fused off.

Xous is a an operating system that runs on the Baochip and an FPGA version of it.

Precursor is a prototype mobile hardware secrets device. It has an FPGA that runs Xous and costs around $600. One of the core goals of the project is to make inspectable hardware.

This baochip is the next step is to make prototype devices cheaper by running xous on the baochip instead of FPGA. The baochip is inspectable using a technique called IRIS.

Bunnie is leading this project.

Inkplate devices are a great entry point. They're recycled Kindle displays with an ESP32.

The two main problems I ran into were 1) software support at the application layer, and 2) video driver support. There is a herculean effort on the part of package maintainers to build software for distros, and no one has been building 32 bit version of software for years, even if it is possible to build from source. There is only a very limited set of software you can use, even CLI software because so many things are built with 64 bit dependencies. Secondly, old video card drivers are being dropped from the kernel. This means all you have is basic VGA "safe-mode" level support, which isn't even fast enough to play an MPEG2. My final try was to install Debian 5, which was period correct and had support for my hardware, but the live CDs of the the time were not hybrid so the ISO could not boot from USB. I didn't have a burner so I finally gave up.

So I think these types of projects are fun for a proof of concept, but unfortunately are never going to give life to old computers.

Chalk mark $1

Knowing where to put it $999

https://docs.postgrest.org/en/v13/

Who cares what Trump says. Responsible reporting would be getting the information from primary sources, not fettering responsibility for determining newsworthiness to whatever Trump says.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6897816