Pyra Media Coverage


maybe it is just me, but I cannot really understand these sentences from
the english quick info in the PressKit:

"Fair wages is one way of saying you are against slave labour, and it is
another way of thinking about it too.

While the price can be compared to other flagships in different markets,
you aren‘t lining the pockets of someone who isnt involved. It is very
much a smallest scale operation, which proudly can say the Pyra is
fairly priced, even though prices are higher for smaller players.

The more people join, the fairer it gets on us all."

I think they can be omitted, there is really no need to apologise, and
for sure not using such quaint phrasing...
 
It is the main part of the marketing that I do not agree with.

For me it makes sense to produce in Europe instead of China because of quality.
Not because Chinese can't produce quality products but because it is impractical due to distance and language barriers.

The slave labour and unfair wages stuff is stupid in my opinion.
Believe it or not, the Chinese will profit from that "slave labour" in the longer run.
They need to develop and strengthen their economy. Education and freedom will naturally follow from that.

If you want to enslave people then send them free stuff like we do in Africa.
That way they become totally dependent on you for their survival as the internal economy doesn't stand a chance.
 
maybe it is just me, but I cannot really understand these sentences from
the english quick info in the PressKit:

"Fair wages is one way of saying you are against slave labour, and it is
another way of thinking about it too.

While the price can be compared to other flagships in different markets,
you aren‘t lining the pockets of someone who isnt involved. It is very
much a smallest scale operation, which proudly can say the Pyra is
fairly priced, even though prices are higher for smaller players.

The more people join, the fairer it gets on us all."

I think they can be omitted, there is really no need to apologise, and
for sure not using such quaint phrasing...
Yup. It should be removed. People can always find something to hang you with when you claim ethical behaviour. Best not to have any unnecessary connotations.
 
Only if you buy into the argument that production in Germany is more slave labour than china is. Because that was the premise of the argument, before it was attempted changed.
China having a set of policies does not mean it produces better quality than Germany does.

And no, lets not look into the bigger picture and claim "Education and freedom" will naturally follow, because its patently false. China has had the biggest growth in economy since the Soviet union, yet peasant workers are being forced to join factories. Buying into that with two blind eyes means enforcing that policy.

China is being built on the backs of slave workers, and it lines the pockets of the richest people in the world.

China being preferable to imperialist behaviour in Africa, which China is into right now, does not at all take into account that it was never on the table.

There is no chance of being able to knowingly avoid slave labour in China for the Pyra, and there is a 100% certainty that it wont happen in Germany.

Production in Germany has already been tested, and as a smaller player, production in a smaller facility means they actually have to listen.

Lest we forget, custom production in China has already been tested too with the Pandora, that is how you get the Pandora case. An i'll fitting, low quality component, made with leftover material. Probably made during a ghost-run, by a night-shift that already put in a day-shift.

Its either that, or it was made during the day with no oil, so that they would have resources to put into the ghost-run.

Engineered by people who dont understand the material they are working with, or how tensile strength works.

They also operate on different holidays.

The second a bigger customer comes along, your schedule is out the window. And there has to be bigger customers, because the whole idea is economy of scale. Which in china-terms means it dwarfs the Pyra.

If anything like that happens, you get the non-communication. How are you supposed to be open about nothing? Takes away my confidence in the whole thing.

And the molds were lost.

The money you put into known to be good production you get back in that it results in a product that has a quality feeling, and one that doesn't break.

Edit: It doesn't apologize for anything, unless you have ever seen a proud apology…

So who advertises the whole picture? People who are honest, because the ones not doing so, are dishonest.

They are advertising price, not their profits, nor freedom.

Unless you think comparing prices for apples versus oranges at the expense of human life at the peril of honesty is OK.

Its perfectly OK to be against slavery, but then it cant be limited to what we called "slavery". That is the exact same stance as the ones benefiting from it.

Edit2: So what is the difference between slavery in China and slavery as a "slavery"

Constitutional rights revoked?
Inhumane working conditions?
Inability to quit?
Separation of family?
Work-hours?

That's 4/4 so far, which if you further said argument, doesn't deal with any out of the 4.

If the answer is legality, consider "slavery" was abolished.
What that argues, is slavery, in any form, is OK so long as its by the law.

And yes, that extends into someones legal status being "slave", because what difference does it make?

You can just as likely argue political revolt and revolution as a result of tragic economic development, yet it doesn't excuse anything.
 
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I was going to make the story's protagonist be a person who absolutely had no interest in politics or public service but did such a good job that nobody would vote him out of office. Unwilling to do a bad job due to some inexplicable moral code, his own attempts at campaigning to get un-elected from office continue to fail as he continues to get randomly promoted to higher positions.

you could make a movie adaptation with Russel Crowe, except instead of getting voted out of office he gets thrown into a coliseum.

I could never figure out what the antagonist would look like in that story though. It would not be much of a story if there isn't anything bad to overcome.

maybe it would be himself as his own antagonist -- he needs to discover that he's actually good at being a public servant, and could actually help people if he wasn't so focused on himself wanting out. but then there's others who will tell him to slack off at a certain point, or take advantage of others, etc. it'll be hard not to do that because of how long he has served.

or maybe he meets batman, and then has to figure out if he's the white knight this city needs.
 

Nice international representation :)

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Wow - lots of commentary there by people with limited concepts of what can be done with a Pyra or Pandora.

Remote administration.
Data copying from SD to SD (or microSD).
I used my Pandora and a USB-Ethernet adapter to install Tomato OS on my ASUS router via command line updates to the router.
Full desktop OS means full desktop web browser.

Linux gaming on ARM - as shown by the Pandora repository - is pretty vast. Throw in DosBox and/or Exagear and console emulators and there are thousands and thousands of titles to play.

So far they're not getting it. Someone with an account there - supply them a link to the ever growing Pandora optimized software list?

Someone there said that there wouldn't be any games for this Debian ARM device.

How many games can the Pandora do that are native ARM compiled? Non games?
How many games, by emulator, can each of the available emulators on the Pandora play at native speeds?

I would have thought that a site called "Gaming on Linux" would simply, grok this.
 
So much media coverage but still not a noticable impact on preorders. Is everyone outside of the community Pyra-immune? :eek:

So far they're not getting it. Someone with an account there - supply them a link to the ever growing Pandora optimized software list?
It really seems we need better marketing, some more shiny pictures maybe and some more blingbling around to really get the attention...
 
@fusion_power
Probably a lot of people have found the Pyra from news coverage. Thats how I found the pandora, and i had a GP2X…
I say probably, because luckily, its not tracked. But of the coverage, gamingonlinux is quite a thematic site. Currently over 1000 hits on that, according to their counter, and its only been up for a couple of hours.

I used to work in games news publishing. Tricks of the trade is if the readerbase shows interest in something, you can cover it more in depth.
Considering the person who wrote it, published 4 other articles that same day, its a tall order to ask for a in-depth review and analysis.

Register an account and tell them how you see it, I did, not the best marketing, but its honest. No blingblings needed, just more insight from current pandora-owners and followers.
 
Register an account and tell them how you see it, I did, not the best marketing, but its honest. No blingblings needed, just more insight from current pandora-owners and followers.
If the "article" itself didn't get my attention (and it would, but the Pyra is right for me for many reasons) comments from our members would have made me look into it some more. I think your comment was the right thing for someone like me, but everyone doesn't care about such things. While that info should still be one of the first things people read, we need to figure out what would appeal to everyone else, and talk about that.

The price doesn't help. Nothing can be done about that, so we need to show them that it has the value of a full-size laptop, but the full price of a flagship phone. Maybe that is how it needs to be stated, as it does most of what you can do with those, but with a size closer to the smartphone in a protective case, but with a physical keyboard. If that isn't enough, how about some gaming controls thrown in, and designed so that it can't be bricked, and plenty of options for storage.

There is a reason I am not a salesman.

Also, due to the price, there will be those sales trickling in from people who have to plan for such an expense, and save up. If I had to come up with the money for the preorder since it went live I wouldn't have been able to. I am one of the unconverted prepreorders because other things have priority right now. If someone in a similar situation just found out about the Pyra in the last month it will take them a bit before they can put money toward such a luxury item. The same is probably true of those that are not financially independent (this is exactly what I wanted when I was a kid...but that is also the group where the Win might hurt sales with those that don't know about the problems, as I see them, with the Win, or they just don't care (and still others will focus on "cheaper x86 vs expensive ARM...for gaming? Simple decision there")).
 
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Register an account and tell them how you see it, I did, not the best marketing, but its honest. No blingblings needed, just more insight from current pandora-owners and followers.

Does Liking the comments there push them up the list? All the positive comments (yours included) seem to be relegated to page 2 so are not immediately visible.

-Neelix
 
The "fairness" points sounds good, will be at some point a verifiable report or even a ceritificate by some organization available/provided? Alternativly, the pyra project could give himself something like the Debian's "social contract" https://www.debian.org/social_contract

There's an organization called Electronics Watch which aims to organize several administrations to buy their electronics with procurement contracts requiring suppliers to impose fair labour and appropiate inspection by independent parties. I think the idea is to influence markets, try and reach enough weight by aggregating purchasing power and recurring buyers, so that manufacturer breaches can cause future lost sales.That's why I think they focus on local councils, governments, universities (by the way I think the Pyra would be a good hardware platform to build vertical applications for staff on the go - like train ticket inspectors, emergency personnel, etc. who could use the same software and GUI at the desk than on the street- or also in classrooms, to replace electronic blackboards which require being too close to the blackboard to operate, but it is too early for that).

Not sure it fits with small scale projects, but they might have some guidelines you may want to advertise you took into account or state you comply with or whatever is convenient. May take much work for an already overworked staff and I don't know how much good it would bring but it wouldn't be bad. They did some promotion of the fairphone and from my ignorance, they look goood with press. I knew someone there and might put people in touch if needed, but maybe Nikolaus know them too?

Then there's Conflict Minerals. I listened to a talk but don't know much about them. They concentrated on the origin of minerals used to produce electronics, like wolfram (W, tungten?), gold (Au), coltan (Ta, Nb) , Tin (Sn), the wars associated with its commerce, the miners working conditions, and so on. The problem seems to be that products change of hands many times, and get transformed and minerals from bad and good origins may be mixed, and so the solution might be suppliers and suppliers of suppliers to adhere to certain policies, and since a small production project is already in a difficult bargaining position with suppliers it may not be easy. But even an statement of how much or which components are known good or bad might give some wellcome transparency for some buyers. Still much work, I guess.

Then there's FSF's respects your freedom certification but that may not apply if part of the selling point is run propietary games under emulation (and other reasons, like propietary 3D drivers or wifi firmware). Yet maybe part of those criteria might be reused or some statement made on the full free software stack which can optionally be used.

I haven't finished reading the thread about the hardware designs license. Some open hardware organization might also be able to certify or at least provide definitions the press kit could state apply.

It looks overhead for a small project, but any corporate social responsability efforts might pay off and help justifiy the alledgedly high price. They might also attract many people who don't want the device for playing, I hope this does not "distort" the community in any unwellcome way?

Edit: I'm told of two other initiatives someone might want to check. Possibly not applicable to the Pyra, but anyway, worth keeping in mind.

FENISS foundation and ISSOP stamp (Spanish only?). I'm told TUV certification juggernaut will start issuing certificates according to a criteria for sustainable innovation excempt from programmed obsolescence. But I may have misunderstood TUV ? because I don't find it online.

XCTT (Network for Sciencie, Technique and Technology) looks for sustainability and free knowledge. They have some set of criteria for classifying products according to social and environmental sustainability. I still have to investigate and understand this. Looks like work in progress.

Edit: less directly related, not providing any certification or recommendation but still might be interesting or interested in the Pyra ?

eReuse.org work with inventoring, relocating and reusing computers for the circular economy to avoid waste and resource depletion. They connect donors and receptors of old harware and provide "refurbishing" software. I'm not sure of their relation with the pyra. They could provide software to help an aftermarket, maybe?

The restart project . They promote repair instead of disposal of electronics. In as much as the pyra or any open hardware project is more open it is more repairable than some alternatives, so they might be interested in advertising it or might offer insights on how to improve it or mod it or anything. The bottom of their home page links to other project that might be worth exploring ?

Hackerspaces. Diverse and far spread, I don't think there's a single organisation or direction there, but I trust information flows among them, so maybe contacting some might get something. They might provide help for repairs or modding, making any openness in the pyra more useful. They may like the idea and spread the word...

Other: iFixit.com, Ateneus de fabricació de Barcelona, ...
 
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Being quite the newbie in this community, I look left and right, and I'm amazed - so much work, love, sweat and tears, so many personal relationships and identification points with the products, so much realized potential. Awesome. And in a way, dangerous. So this is going to be a bit of a rant from an outsiders perspective, based on experience from other industries. But if there's flame, I'm willing to accept it :)

Well, okay, the community spirit. It brings me back to a discussion I had many times, talking to former clients in the engineering business. People that were so involved and convinced with the quality of their ideas and products that their belief was summarized in that old movie quote:
If you build it, they will come.

And that, actually, simply, is not true.
The world is full of prototypes and innovations that failed, because people did not understand what they did, how they could use them, and if they were worth the money. I won't try to give you the full argument on that, there are others which have done a much better job at that - but it's a thought that keeps nagging me when I see the discussions here.

So, from my perspective: Where does the Pyra stand?
It's a great product, with a ton of versatility and flexibility, in some concepts technologically far, far advanced from the current offerings on the market. And that's it's problem. There's no single simple use case for the non-geeks, non-emulation-gamers, non-linuxites out there to make them prick up their ears. It's already there - that is good, so we don't have to go the route of the "minimum viable product" anymore, but it has cost a lot of effort, and the finished Pyra has it's price point - which currently is the main cause of hurt. If marketing gets rolling, that point has to be explained.
And no, in my opinion, marketing has not started yet. The current press kit is informative, but lacks the hook, the shiny phrase that editors look at and say: Hey, that'll catch reader traffic. What the press releases did was to tell the world, that we, umm, ahh, have a cool thingamahoochie that does, er, whatever you like, and more, especially because you can, like, change it and kit it out with parts that don't exist yet. And sorry, it's a bit pricey. But everyone that bought it's predecessor liked that one too, so it's gonna be BIG.
(By the way - everyone? This community has 22.000 members, and I read something about 6.000 Pandoras sold in all - where are all these people? Not 10% of those preordered?)

If a marketing campaign starts, it might be helpful to ask for advice, and to form some kind of strategy. Yes, we all hate those catchphrase workshops, flipchart drawing games, and boastful verbiage - but it doesn't need to be the full-blown suits-and-powerpoint-approach. Let's think about what people want, and how they understand tech. Let's not try to explain open OS's, modularity, SoC architecture, emulation and multi-interfacing - people who look for that will find the Pyra anyway. Currently, that's 3-5/day.
I like that statement rygD coined: "the value of a full-size laptop, but the price of a flagship phone".

That's a message even my dad, our neighbor's hillbilly kids, and their dawg would understand. I'd like more of that. Unless - and that is the other old idea I'll pull out of my hat as a parting gift - we fall for the second misconception in the innovation market, and decide that THOSE are not the customers we want. Not in our nice, familiar community.

Anyone who feels personally attacked now, I'm sorry: No, I don't mean you. What has been achieved here, and by you, is great. But that's no reason to not make it even greater.
 
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@Critcalmass: True.

Most people already interested in the Pyra are "above" such catchy PR-stuff but in reality we need it to keep it going, so keep posting in comments sections, send corrections of false data to the authors of the articles and summarize the use cases that are interesting to the masses in a form that is easy to digest.
 
I like that statement rygD coined: "the value of a full-size laptop, but the price of a flagship phone".
Actually, that was a fuck up on my part...It tends to happen when I post from this touchscreen only "smart"phone. I thought I fixed it, but I guess that slipped through, or I got a few idea mixed up while "typing". No clue where "full price" came from. I think it should have been "size" (???). I did want to mention that the price was comparable to a flagship phone and midrange laptop, with most of the capabilities of both...oh well, you get what you get, and now I can't remember.

(If I can get a Pyra soon this sort of thing won't happen so much.)

My message made it through, and that is what counts. Dumb it down. Even the biggest gadget geeks can be overwhelmed, and, as long as it is done in the right way, a bit of spoon feeding works with something like the Pyra.
 
Finding the right words seems like a tightrope walk to me. Statements, that are understandable and convey all the necessary information at the same time - hm...
 
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