WhatsApp, grew from 0 to 500 million users in 5 years!
WhatsApp is the world’s most widely used messaging app; the company says it has 2 billion daily users. These users send more than 100 billion messages every day in 60 languages across 180 countries. Some 400 million of those users are in India, WhatsApp’s biggest market, followed by another 120 million in Brazil.
The raspberry pi SBC (single board computer) began in England in 2012 as an idea to get a really low-cost computer into schools to teach children computer skills. “The original model became more popular than anticipated, selling outside its target market for diverse uses such as robotics, home and industrial automation, and by computer and electronic hobbyists, because of its low cost, modularity, open design, and its adoption of the HDMI and USB standards.”–wikipedia
I use Raspberry Pis for digital signage, and as a music player and as a backup server. They’re simple and low-power small deck-of-cards size computers.
I just bought a raspberry Pi zero, and hoped to use it for a kiosk in a local realtor’s office. However, the default browser, chromium, was a total pain to use–actually, it is unusable on this little computer… So I ordered a Raspy Pi 4, and a day passed, and I thought… why not look for a lightweight browser? See if that will work? And of course I got one and it’s working fine! That’s a win for patience and persistence.
Brewster Kahle’s work to archive all human knowledge and make it publically available to everyone. That’s a noble intention!
“What is best known about the Library of Alexandria, version 1, is burning. So don’t just have one copy, so in addition to SF (on the San Andreas fault line), one in Alexandria (in the middle east [perpetual war zone]), and one in Amsterdam (in a flood zone). So we’re hedging our bets here.”–Brewster Kahle
World Situation: Is this archive going to be public or private? (Corporations want to control it.) Or universal access of all knowledge for all mankind.
“Free to the People”–Inscription at the Entrance to the Carnegie Library , Pittsburgh
Ted Talk
& a 12 minute audio interview.
I like raspberry pi PCs because they (were) cheap when I bought them (around $25) and they’re the size of a deck of cards, and use little electricity. The alternatives are now a better bang for the buck since 2019 when availability went down and they started being scalped. Hopefully later this year or next year the production runs will go up and bring the prices back down.
I currently have 4 running Raspy Pis:
Here’s a short youtube video on the Raspy Pi alternatives.
A new video came out on May 18 with an Eben Upton (creator of the Pi) interview, where he says supplies will catch up in later half of 2023.