We live in a Sad World – Purism Anti-Interdiction Services are (Somewhat) Popular

A few years ago, we learned the NSA may intercept networking gear during shipping in order to modify it to provide backdoor access to the hardware, and it’s likely other national security agencies around the world also modify hardware on transit for spying purposes. I’d think most people would not really care, and only high-profile business and governmental targets may take preventive measures, but according to a recent post from Purism, their Anti-interdiction services are fairly popular among their customers. Wait… What? What is “anti-interdiction”. The only definition I know of is: “the action of prohibiting or forbidding something”. But it turns out there’s another definition that applies here: the action of intercepting and preventing the movement of a prohibited commodity or person. Purism laptops are not exactly prohibited, but you get the point, and the anti-interdiction services are meant, not to prevent, but detect interdiction of laptops or other […]

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Released – What’s New?

Ubuntu 18.04 “Bionic Beaver”  was released nearly exactly two years ago, and that means it’s time for another LTS (Long Term Support) release with Canonical officially releasing Ubuntu 20.04 “Focal Fossa” today. There are a few changes to the graphical user interface, Amazon Icon is now gone, a recent Linux 5.4 kernel is used by default with Wireguard VPN backport, and snap becomes a first citizen in Ubuntu 20.04. This is also the first LTS version of Ubuntu that does not provide 32-bit x86 images. Ubuntu 20.04 ISO files will soon be found on Ubuntu website, and if you already a machine with Ubuntu 18.04 or 19.10, you should be able to upgrade with the following commands:

It’s possible the release has not been pushed to your mirror, so you may need to wait for a little while, or use the command to install the development release :

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Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC

YARC Case Can House a Raspberry Pi Board with one HAT Expansion Board and Up to 3 Hard Drives (Crowdfunding)

There are plenty of enclosures for Raspberry Pi board and other compact x86 or Arm Linux SBCs, but many projects require expansion boards and it’s not always possible to use an off-the-shelf case. That’s with that in mind that Stefano Zorzi and other enthusiasts have created YARC (Yes, Another Raspberry Case), a hexagonal case that supports the most popular single board computers, even when an add-on board – such as a Raspberry Pi HAT – is attached to the board. There’s enough space for up to three 2.5″ hard drives. Those are the boards officially supported (tested?) with the case: Raspberry Pi B +, 2B, 3B, 3B +, 4B, A +, 3A + Hardkernel ODROID C1, C2 AAEON Up Board Asus Tinker board and Tinker board S Radxa Rock Pi 4 Orange Pi PC, Pi PC2, Pi PC Plus Basically any board with compatible mounting holes can be installed in […]

This is what HoneyComb LX2K 16-core Arm Workstation Looks Like (Video)

Back in February 2019, while referring to Arm server, Linus Torvalds famously said: I can pretty much guarantee that as long as everybody does cross-development, the platform won’t be all that stable. Or successful. … If you develop on x86, then you’re going to want to deploy on x86, because you’ll be able to run what you test “at home” (and by “at home” I don’t mean literally in your home, but in your work environment). … Which in turn means that cloud providers will end up making more money from their x86 side, which means that they’ll prioritize it, and any ARM offerings will be secondary and probably relegated to the mindless dregs (maybe front-end, maybe just static html, that kind of stuff). SolidRun had already worked on products with NXP LX2160A 16-core Arm Cortex A72 processor and found out it could be a match to make a powerful […]

Electrolama to Launch 802.15.4/Zigbee USB Dongle and Raspberry Pi “HAT”

Electrolama (@omerk and friends) has been working on two open-source hardware 802.15.4/Zigbee projects with “zig-a-zig-ah” (aka “zzh”) USB stick based on Texas Instruments CC2652R SimpleLink multi-standard wireless MCU and Zoe (Zigbee + Poe) development board based on Raspberry Pi HAT form factor and powered by TI CC2530 SimpleLink 2.4 GHz SoC alongside CC2592 range extender. Both boards are released under an Apache-based Solderpad Hardware License 2.0, and target users of the Zigbee2MQTT project.  The boards could soon also get native support in Home Assistant via the “zigpy-cc” library which adds support in ZHA (Zigbee Home Automation) integration component. Zig-a-zig-ah USB Stick Preliminary specifications: WiSoC – Texas Instruments CC2652R SimpleLink multi-standard wireless MCU with support for Thread, Zigbee, Bluetooth 5 Low Energy, IEEE 802.15.4g, 6LoWPAN, and proprietary systems. (Note: CC2652RB is also considered as it does not require an external crystal oscillator) Host Interface – USB via CH340 USB-UART bridge Misc […]

What’s the Cheapest Android Phone with NFC Support?

I have an Octopus payment card from Hong Kong using NFC technology, and I’d like to check its status, and if needed top it up to keep it valid. One way to do so is to install the Android app on an NFC enabled smartphone. However, none of my phones, including my current Xiaomi Mi A2 smartphone, support NFC. So I’d decided to look for the cheapest Android phone with NFC support that I could find since that’s the only feature I need, and the app is compatible with Android 4.0 or greater for now. Wileyfox Swift 2X – $75.90 I first went to GearBest to check out for NFC phones, as the cheapest one of the lot is Wileyfox Swift 2X going for $75.90 shipped. The phone runs Android 8.1 on a Snapdragon 430 processor coupled with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage. It is equipped with a 5.2″ Full […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

Bluetera II is a motion-enabled IoT development board that supports protocol buffers (Crowdfunding)

Tensor Iotera Group (TIG), an Israeli based technology company, has launched a powerful IoT development board featuring motion sensing called Bluetera II and supporting Google Protocol buffers. Bluetera II came from the idea that developing an IoT application shouldn’t be complicated. Hardware is hard, and scaling for manufacturing might also be more daunting than initially anticipated. So instead of going through those troubles, why don’t you go the route of something that works, and most importantly, is scalable, as TIG is advocating with their Bluetera IoT development platform. Bluetera II is the 2nd generation of this IoT platform. The Bluetera II board is equipped with a 9-axis motion sensor, Bluetooth 5 enabled Nordic nRF52840 SoC core, which features an Arm Cortex-M4 FPU, with 1MB of Flash, 256KB of RAM, and lastly, an SDK based on Google’s Protocol Buffer (protobuf) technology. The device can function as a BLE Central (Master) and […]

Google Releases Android 11 Developer Preview – What’s New?

I’ve only just upgraded my Xiaomi Mi A2 phone to Android 10 earlier this week, but Google is already preparing for the next version of the mobile operating system, and the company has already released the first developer preview for Android 11 OS. Enhancements for foldables and 5G, call-screening APIs, new media & camera capabilities, and machine learning are some of the improvements brought to Android 11 so far.   Some of Android 11 highlights include: Updates of existing connectivity APIs to take advantage of improved 5G speeds. Dynamic meteredness API to check whether the connection is unmetered in order to offer higher resolution or quality for users who don’t need to pay extra for data Bandwidth estimator API to check the downstream/upstream bandwidth without having to poll the network. Pinhole and waterfall screen support –  Pinhole screens are the ones with a round opening for the camera, and waterfall […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC