Intel Has A New Driver For Linux 5.12: Reporting Your Laptop's Hinge/Keyboard Angle

Intel's latest open-source Linux driver contribution is a hinge driver that is set to debut with Linux 5.12. The "hid-sensor-custom-intel-hinge" driver is for supporting a hinge sensor found in many modern Intel laptops. This sensor is able to calculate the angle of the laptop's hinge, the screen angle, and the keyboard angle relative to the horizon/ground. I hadn't realized this sensor was all that common these days but apparently so and enough interest to Intel that they have now provided a Linux driver for exposing this hinge / keyboard / screen angle data. Also: Learn To Get Involved In Linux Kernel Development This Spring

Android Leftovers

• Android's consistency crisis

• Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite gets a new update in its twilight bringing the latest Android security patch

• Android vs iPhone: what's the difference, and which is best for you?

• Best betting apps UK for iOS and Android on mobile

• Best FaceTime alternatives for Android

• Can't Save Images from Google Chrome on Android? Here's the Fix – Gadgets To Use

• Android 12 could finally bring the double tap on the back gesture

• The Poco X2 receives the stable Android 11 update as an early build hits the Redmi Note 9 4G

• Google Dio will stop working on some Android smartphones

• Google Photos for Android gets tablet-optimized interface

How open source is helping solve the plastic pollution problem

In my work life, I often deal with geospatial data. This data not only carries the customary sorts of attributes we see every day but also geographic attributes, like points, lines, enclosed areas, polygons, and surfaces. This data is typically projected from latitude, longitude, and sea-level-elevation data to other coordinate systems to facilitate analysis and viewing. One of the things I find odd about dealing with geospatial data is how much it is monetized and bound up in restrictive license agreements. If you search for "geospatial data" using your favorite search engine, you'll probably see several pages of links to organizations that sell data or create and sell geospatial analysis and visualization software, all under restrictive licensing. But if you dig deeper, you'll find some wonderful open data and open source software.

today's leftovers

• Running MS OFFICE on Linux - Is it enough to justify paying for Wine?

• FOSS Projects Live Off Community Support

  If there's a project you like you don't just have to be a developer to help support and help that project grow, there are plenty of other ways in which a regular person can help out a FOSS project.

• Routing and Firewalling VLANS with FreeBSD

  When first experimenting, it is important to start with something simple. It can sometimes be far too easy to model very complex setups and then have to spend a lot of time debugging to understand what is not configured correctly.

  These example networks offer both an introduction on how to set up VNET jails with VLANs and show some of the power of their use. A production network built from this would want to give each jail its own file system, this step was skipped to make it easier to follow along.

  The BSD Router project has an example VLAN and VNET multi-tennant set up on their website that includes multiple different virtual machine frameworks. This example is well worth study and this article has hopefully provided the background to help you understand how this network is set up.

• [Old] FreeBSD On A Raspberry Pi 4 With 4GB Of RAM

  This is the story of how I managed to get FreeBSD running on a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB of RAM, though I think the setup story is pretty similar for those with 2GB and 8GB.1

  I also managed to get Rust built from source, (kind of) which is nice because the default Rust installer doesn’t seem to work for FreeBSD running on a Raspberry Pi.

  If there’s anything awry with these steps, please contact me so I can fix it.

• GNU Linux – how to mount single disk failed RAID1

• Sylvain Beucler: Android Emulator Rebuild

  Android Rebuilds provides freely-licensed builds of Android development tools from a Mountain View-based company. The Emulator package moved to a separate component and build system.

• The Surprising Power of Business Experimentation

  We’ve long associated innovation breakthroughs with science and technology coming out of R&D labs, e.g., the transistor, penicillin, DNA sequencing, TCP/IP protocols, and so on. Such major lab-based breakthroughs are at one end of the innovation spectrum. At the other end are market-facing innovations, whose purpose is to create appealing and intuitive user experiences, new business models, and compelling market-based strategies. Lab-based innovations were generally born when scientists, mathematicians or engineers developed new theories, technologies, algorithms or programs in an R&D lab. Over time, often years, the innovations found their way to the marketplace. Since technology and markets advanced at a relatively slow pace, there was little pressure to reduce the transition times from lab to market. This was the prevailing innovation model through most of the 20th century. It all started to change in the 1980s as the rate and pace of technology advances significantly accelerated. The hand-offs and elapsed times to take an innovation from lab to market were no longer competitive, especially with products based on fast changing digital technologies. Start-up companies significantly shortened the time-to-market for new products and services, putting huge pressure on companies still operating under the old rules. These competitive pressures, were further exacerbated by the explosive growth of the Internet in the 1990s, as I personally learned when becoming general manager of the newly established IBM Internet Division in December of 1995. A lot was starting to happen around the Internet, but it was not clear where things were heading, and in particular what the implications would be to the world of business. With the Internet, there was no one technology or product you could work on in the labs that would make you a success in the marketplace. This time around, the strategy itself had to come from the marketplace, not the labs.

• SeaMonkey on Pi4 no longer freezes

  Ans now SM is behaving nicely, no appreciable freezing. I am testing version 2.6.1, and playing around on youtube.com do get a segmentation fault sometimes. I can live with that, better than freezing. Running SM 2.53.5.1. One other thing: The SM cache is in /root/.mozilla, not happy with this, as always trying to reduce writes to the drive. So have changed it to /tmp. SM creates a folder named /tmp/Cache2. In EasyOS, /tmp is a tmpfs, in RAM. The downside of this is the cache will be lost at shutdown. Probably an upside is a possible security benefit.

• Cameron Kaiser: TenFourFox FPR30 SPR1 available

  With the Quad G5 now back in working order after the Floodgap Power Supply Kablooey of 2020, TenFourFox Feature Parity Release "30.1" (SPR 1) is now available for testing (downloads, hashes, release notes).