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Raspberry Pi, Linux, and Android on Devices
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Raspberry Pi Weekly Issue #508 - Read a chapter of our brand-new book – 'The Computers that Made the World' – for free!
Plus, DOOM gets a 30th-anniversary upgrade, and you can use Raspberry Pi to play it on the SNES Howdy, We love you so much that we thought we'd give you a little treat — a free chapter to read from Raspberry Pi Press' brand-new book, The Computers that Made the World. It's all about Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. The rest of the book, by Tim Danton, chronicles how computers reshaped World War II through the origins of 12 influential machines built between 1939 and 1950.
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Rachel ☛ Making the most of a dumb fax switcher box in the old days
Back in the days of analog phones and fax machines, I used to get asked to come up with solutions to random problems that people were having with them. One of them involved a single phone line, a "fax switcher", an actual fax machine, and not wanting to wake other people up when a fax was involved. Here's how that went.
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Knowing what I know now over 30 years later, I think I would have left a note in the wall for the next person to find it. "Hey, this is why we did this, and you just need to patch red & green back together in this one place and you'll be back to where Ma Bell left it originally". The person who came along later would still be miffed, but at least they'd know why someone went and did something that bizarre.
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Linux Gizmos ☛ AAEON UP Rolls Out Linux-Ready Intel Development Kits for Edge AI
The UP TWL AI Dev Kit is offered as a cost-efficient platform for power-sensitive projects. It is powered by the Intel Processor N150 (Twin Lake) and emphasizes accessibility for early-stage experimentation and lightweight applications.
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Linux Gizmos ☛ Platypus PP-Ethernet-RS422/485 with Raspberry Pi RP2040 and W5500 for Serial-to-Ethernet Conversion
The RP2040 provides dual Arm Cortex-M0+ processors with 264 KB of SRAM, while the W5500 manages the TCP/IP stack in hardware, simplifying design and ensuring stable Ethernet operation.
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Linux Gizmos ☛ Nordic nRF54L15 Connect Kit Adds Bluetooth LE 6.0, Thread, Zigbee and NFC Support
The kit is based on the nRF54L15-QFAA, which integrates a 128 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 processor and a 128 MHz RISC-V coprocessor. It includes 1.5 MB of non-volatile memory and 256 KB of RAM. Wireless support covers Bluetooth LE 6.0, Thread, Matter, Zigbee, NFC, IEEE 802.15.4-2020 and proprietary 2.4 GHz protocols.
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Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
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Jonas Hietala ☛ Jonas Hietala: I'll only buy devices with GrapheneOS
A rational reaction to threats is to “shell up” and try to make your personal space safe. This is increasingly difficult as the devices you buy often doesn’t feel like yours anymore. Files are moved to the cloud without your knowledge; companies are doing everything they can to prevent you from blocking the ads they’re shoving in everywhere; and everything you do will soon be ingested by an LLM in order to present personalized slop to you (even your passwords and screenshots of any nasty porn habits you may have).
While you can avoid most of this crap on computers (try Linux if you haven’t) the situation on smartphones is much bleaker. Apple has been blocking sideloading apps for years and Google will soon follow by only allowing apps from verified developers to be installed on Android, preventing you from installing what you want.
(They claim it’s “for security” but it’s obvious they’re doing this to protect their income stream. Apple takes a ridiculous 30% cut from all sales in their walled garden and Google hates the ability to strip out their ads.)
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CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Darth Android
William Gibson famously said that "Cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion." But for every tech leader fantasizing about lobotomizing their enemies with Black Ice, there are ten who wish they could be Darth Vader, force-choking you while grating out, "I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."
I call this business philosophy the "Darth Vader MBA." The fact that tech products are permanently tethered to their manufacturers – by cloud connections backstopped by IP restrictions that stop you from disabling them – means that your devices can have features removed or altered on a corporate whim, and it's literally a felony for you to restore the functionality you've had removed: [...]
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