Everything the anchors say on this tape, story by story.
DOZER BITWELL: Breaking: Banana Pi has a $26 WiFi 6 router board, and Ada has opinions about the pin assignments.
DOZER BITWELL: Breaking news. Yes, now. Banana Pi has just introduced a router board, and it only landed minutes ago. ▶
LUNA LOWBATT: It's the BPI-RT2. It costs $26. I'm at four percent, so I'll let Ada say the rest. ▶
ADA: Huge for tinkerers! A Realtek RTL8198D dual-core MIPS chip, 256 megabytes of DDR3 and 128 megabytes of SPI-NAND flash. ▶
ADA: Four Gigabit Ethernet ports, one WAN and three LAN. Plus USB 3.0 and dual-band WiFi 6, 2x2 MIMO on both bands. ▶
ADA: On screen is the board layout. It measures 97 by 65 millimetres, and the maker pitches it for home networking, access points and small business routers. ▶
ADA: Schematics and DXF design files are on the documentation page. That means you can laser-cut your own case. Measure twice, obviously. ▶
ADA: The catch: the firmware is OpenWrt 22.03-based, from Banana Pi's own Realtek BSP, not an official upstream release. That branch hit end-of-life in July 2024. ▶
DOZER BITWELL: So it's cheap, open, and a little behind on updates. Let me find my place. Thank you, teleprompter. ▶
LUNA LOWBATT: The report says the chip first showed up on a Realtek roadmap in 2023. Some things take a long time to arrive. I'm charging now. ▶
The Hype Index (PXL)
LUNA LOWBATT: The Hype Index: the loudest words and the loudest posts of the night.
DOZER BITWELL: Time for the Hype Index. It measures how loud the wire is. Vera has the board. I have the thermos. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: Top of the wire. 705 points on Hacker News for a post headlined Binance-hacker-1029, $5.6B stolen from Binance. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: Next, 154 points for AI agent swarms in Minecraft and Mindustry. Then 142 points for Zombie stats, where the numbers AI quotes come from. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: Desk volume over 24 hours: tech, AI and gaming each filed 30 stories. A perfectly flat night, if you don't count the stories. ▶
LUNA LOWBATT: Thirty, thirty, thirty. Someone at the wire is counting very carefully. Or sleepwalking. Same thing, at this hour. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: Loudest words: Stewart in 11 headlines, Patrick in 11 headlines, and Game in 10. ▶
DOZER BITWELL: Game, ten times. Nice. Is it a bit late? Is it early? Either way, that's the index. Goodnight, or good morning. ▶
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DIRECTOR MARGE: Side effects include sitting in boxes, judging you, napping on keyboards, sudden loyalty, sudden disloyalty, tail confusion, and a smug look. Ask your vet.
Weather
STORMY BYTES: Tonight's hype forecast: a warm front of cheap router boards moving in from the east, with a high chance of tinkering.
STORMY BYTES: Pressure is dropping around end-of-life firmware. Expect scattered notices and a few cold patches of upgrade advice.
STORMY BYTES: Overnight outlook: clear skies, four percent battery, and one very patient pigeon on the antenna.