Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: rbowman Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: WiFi range ... Date: 6 Aug 2026 19:56:38 GMT Lines: 23 Message-ID: References: <10vj17r$1vjje$1@dont-email.me> <114j9ep$34k3s$5@dont-email.me> <1464km-tao.ln1@robpc4.robk-home.org> <1ludnfSqm7ypiO33nZ2dnZfqn_idnZ2d@giganews.com> <114ptkr$17u49$4@dont-email.me> <114sfd7$21l1h$7@dont-email.me> <114v9ro$2v0oq$2@dont-email.me> <1151t29$3p218$15@dont-email.me> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net MV34VDIlZzYMpjcEYrtAdAXxOOOAAhJXb4IKylFJA9mmeRJgx5 Cancel-Lock: sha1:6QeveSSXn+u/336iZTcCFY/sBss= sha256:17XlRHeo8blhAeYc3MedIpANnSEA/1XuN5HV4tz2fEc= User-Agent: Pan/0.165 (Kostiantynivka) Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.misc:89650 On Thu, 6 Aug 2026 13:01:13 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote: > I bough ten 2040 based modules fro alixepress for about $10 > > Essentially pi Pico with no wireless and less pins > > https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006024307280.html They're about $10 apiece on Amazon. AliExpress go hit by the US de minimis ruling. Even before that I didn't use them. I briefly sniffed at STM32 and many people reported AliExpress 'Black Pill' boards definitely were black pills. Not boards, but I'd ordered Photon Micro Lights from Amazon. Some were very crude Chinese knockoffs. Even the Phillip screw heads looked like they'd been chewed in by a gerbil. When I contacted Amazon they reversed the charges and said to not bother returning the product. That vendor vanished. I imaging AliExpress's response would be 'Not our problem.' It has been a mystery to me. China can obviously do excellent work but some Chinese knockoffs have the appearance of the product they are imitating but are crap. At what point does the manufacturing cost of crap versus doing a little better job make sense?