Compact IoT power with the Raspberry Pi Zero

The Raspberry Pi Zero was a welcome addition to the British single-board computer family when it came out in 2015. All the power and flexibility of the original Raspberry Pi in a form factor the size of a stick of gum. It's easy to see the Pi Zero merely as a low-powered device with not much to offer to IoT, but as we'll see shortly, it's all a matter of context. Look, I know these charts showing how it performs compared to the other Pi boards might not be the best advert for the Pi Zero, but stick with me until the end; knowing where the Zero fits in the range allows you to balance power against size and value. Remember all the faster machines are two to three times the price! In this article I explain how the Raspberry Pi Zero fits into the Pi Family and where it might potentially fit into your future IoT projects. Deep breath, let's get started.

Software: Storage Software, Flatpak, Checkra1n, LibreOffice 7.0 and Crust

• List Of Open Source Cloud Storage Software For Linux In 2020

  Insight: List Of Open Source Cloud Storage Software For Linux In 2020 Let’s have a look into the list of best and open-source cloud storage software for Linux in 2020. Bookmark out the post for future reference.

• Flatpak 1.6.1 Released Due To Security Issue - Special Case Of Getting Access Outside Home

  Flatpak 1.6 was an exciting update for this Linux application sandboxing/distribution tech in that it started laying the foundation to support a paid app store but elsewhere in the code-base a security issue came about.

• Checkra1n Jailbreak for Linux Nearing Completion, Could Release Soon

  Checkra1n co-developer Nikias Bassen or @pimskeks shared on Twitter the exciting news that the Linux version of the exploit is nearing completion and will be released soon rather than later. Henceforth, the jailbreak community now has something to look forward to. In addition, if you're looking to use the Checkra1n jailbreak for Linux, you will have to wait sometime before Nullcon in March.

• LibreOffice 7.0 Is The Version Now In Development With Its Skia + Vulkan Support

  LibreOffice 6.4 is set to be released in the coming days while succeeding that will now be LibreOffice 7.0. LibreOffice 6.4.0 should be out over the next week with various user-interface improvements, performance improvements within the Calc spreadsheet software, a QR code generator, faster compilation support, dropping the GTK2 VCL plug-in, various import/export filter improvements, and much more. See the in-progress 6.4 release notes for more details on this exciting update for this free software office suite.

• Crust Now Available On Univention Corporate Server

  With the addition of Crust in the Univention App Center, UCS users can easily add the entire Crust suite to their UCS instances. This includes Crust Compose for Low Code Development and End-to-End Business Automation, Crust CRM, Crust Service Cloud for Customer Support and Service Automation, Crust Enterprise Messaging, a self-hosted messenger for secure communication within your enterprise and Crust Corredor, for automating repeating tasks with End-to-End Business Automation.

Programming Leftovers

• 6 things you should be doing with Emacs

  Imagine using Python's IDLE interface to edit text. You would be able to load files into memory, edit them, and save changes. But every action you perform would be defined by a Python function. Making a word all capitals, for instance, calls upper(), opening a file calls open, and so on. Everything in your text document is a Python object and can be manipulated accordingly. From the user's perspective, it's the same experience as any text editor. For a Python developer, it's a rich Python environment that can be changed and developed with just a few custom functions in a config file. This is what Emacs does for the 1958 programming language Lisp. In Emacs, there's no separation between the Lisp engine running the application and the arbitrary text you type into it. To Emacs, everything is Lisp data, so everything can be analyzed and manipulated programmatically. That makes for a powerful user interface (UI). But if you're a casual Emacs user, you may only be scratching the surface of what it can do for you. Here are six things you may not have realized you could do with Emacs.

• Intersecting Intel & AMD Instruction Set Extensions

  In some of my projects, I’ve recently had the need to utilize FMA (fused-multiply-add) or AVX instructions. Compiling C/C++ on X86_64 will by default only activate MXX and a few of the early SSE extensions. The utilized instruction set basically predates the core2 which was introduced in 2006. Math instructions and vectorizations can greatly benefit from more modern instructions like SSE4*, FMA, AVX, AVX2, etc, but because of the way the -march compiler option works, those are not easily enabled for all CPU types of similar age.

• Intel Continues Improving Its SYCL Stack - Now Supports Ahead-Of-Time Compilation

  The Khronos SYCL standard as a single-source C++-based programming model for OpenCL is one of the exciting elements for Intel's GPU compute plans with the forthcoming Xe graphics cards and fits into their oneAPI umbrella. They just released their SYCL Compiler and Runtimes 2019-12 release with numerous updates. First up this new version of their SYCL compiler/run-time features opencl-aot as a new tool for offering ahead-of-time compilation of SYCL sources. The AoT compilation tool is geared for generating device-dependent OpenCL program binaries optimized out of SPIR-V. The optimized binaries are catered for Intel's architecture.

• Excellent Free Tutorials to Learn Fortran

  The language is designed to be simple to understand, yet retains the efficiency in execution as assembly language – about 80% as efficient as assembly/machine code. Fortran is machine independent, and a problem oriented language. It is often used in the scientific community, particularly among physicists, and is designed for scientific numerical computing. Fortran allows for high parallelization, it’s easy to optimize, and lends itself particularly well to computationally intensive fields such as finite element analysis, numerical weather prediction, computational physics, computational chemistry, and computational fluid dynamics. Fortran has evolved over time, with various standards including Fortran IV, Fortran 77, Fortran 90 and Fortran 95. More recent revisions are Fortran 2003, and Fortran 2008. Since Fortran 9x, it has many structured programming features, dynamic memory, operator overloading, and primitive objects. It is both the language of the past, the current, and the future (high-performance computing is unlikely to cast aside Fortran). Despite its age, Fortran is still very much alive and kicking. Fortran has a vast number of libraries of code.

• k-means: a brief interlude into Data Wrangling

  When last we saw our heroes, what they thought was the brink of success turned out to be the precipice of hasty interpretation and now they are dangling for dear life on the branch of normalization! how's that for tortured metaphor! If you use raw values for your k-means clustering, dimensions with large values or large ranges can swamp smaller dimensions and skew your clusters. The process of normalization tries to bring everything into the same range, usually [0,1], although your choices on how to transform the ranges are also significant. There is not always one best way to do it and, as usual, get familiar with your dataset and use your judgement.

• Paws XXXXIX (Very Close)

  Finally things were looking my way. I plowed thought the remaining CloudFront actions and got them all to work without any more changes to Paws. In the end I checked in 30+ new tests cases and over 2k of tests the other day. So I can safely say that 'CloudFront' is fully operational. That leaves only 'Route53' to look and for me this is somewhat problematic. The Route53 api deals with 'Domains', 'Checks', 'Hosts', 'Traffic' and such.

• String Formatting with Python 3's f-Strings

  Python 3.6 introduced a new way to format strings: f-Strings. It is faster than other string formatting methods in Python, and they allow us to evaluate Python expressions inside a string. In this post, we'll look at the various ways we can format strings in Python. Then we'll have a deeper look at f-Strings, looking at how we can use it when displaying different data.

• Massive change of file extension (bash)

Android Leftovers

• Close your tabs, hoarder! Chrome for Android tests suggestions to clean up stale tabs

• Don’t like Android 10 gestures? Now, you can customize them with gesturePlus

• Android 10 finally comes to the Moto G7 Plus

• Most affordable mini PC in the world runs on Android, costs $15

• Meet the cheapest PC in the world: Android goodness for less than $15

• [Update: Now available in US for $129] The Nokia 2.3 unveiled with Android One, 4000mAh battery but micro-USB

• Achievement Unlocked: Canonical Anbox Scales Android For Cloud Gaming

• Canonical offers scalable mobile Android apps in the cloud

• Canonical introduces Anbox Cloud – scalable Android™ in the cloud

• Canonical is singing cheers for the platform that puts Android in the cloud

• This Android Emulation Controller Turns Your Phone Into PS2, 3DS, Wii

• WhatsApp dark mode finally arrives on Android

• How to send money through Google Pay using your iPhone or Android

• Help Desk: How to make the most of migrating your business’ devices to Android

• Android users shouldn’t download the latest Twitter update, here’s why

• Twitter updates Android app after users report glitch

• Content://com.android.browser.home/: [Custom Page in Home Browser]

• 10 best audiobook apps for Android

• Customize Spark for Android Notifications with Lights, Sounds & Vibrations