CODE

How to Build a Raspberry Pi Pico-Powered Stream Deck Keypad

No matter how many keys your keyboard has, you can always use a dedicated keypad with buttons for executing macros, launching your favorite apps or, if you’re a streamer, initiating functions in OBS. Many users swear by the Elgato Stream Deck lineup of macro keypads, but these devices are expensive. With Raspberry Pi Pico, some… Read more

AMD’s Zen 3 CPUs Are Susceptible To Spectre-Like Vulnerability

AMD has published a whitepaper on a potential security vulnerability that affects the company’s latest Zen 3 processors. The side-channel exploit is similar to Spectre that affected a plethora of Intel processors three years ago. With Zen 3, AMD introduced a new technology called Predictive Store Forwarding (PSF), which helps improve code execution performance by… Read more

How To Emulate An Apple II On Your PC

The Apple II released in June 1977 was one of the first successful mass-produced computers and Apple’s first personal computer aimed squarely at the consumer market. The hardware was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak and the case by Steve Jobs, who we both know as the founders of Apple. In 1977, there were three machines… Read more

Let the Dogs Out! How to Make a Raspberry Pi Pet Detector

Working from home gives you more opportunities to spend time with your family – pets included. My office is upstairs and occasionally my dog wants to go outside. I could put a bell on the door that she could ring, but why waste the opportunity to build an over-engineered solution. This project uses a field… Read more

Microsoft Build will take place May 25th–27th

Microsoft has updated its events website to reveal the dates of Microsoft Build 2021. Per the new listing, the annual conference will take place from May 25th–27th this year. It will also be held virtually, along with many of Microsoft’s 2021 events. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the dates to The Verge. “Please stay tuned for… Read more

Sealed Super Mario Bros. sells for $660,000, shattering record for most expensive game ever

A sealed copy of the NES classic Super Mario Bros. sold for an incredible $660,000 at Heritage Auctions on Friday, more than quadrupling the previous record for the most expensive game ever. This isn’t the first time Super Mario Bros. has held the record: a mint copy of the US version of the game sold… Read more

Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 2 foldable phone just got $200 cheaper

Samsung is dropping the price of its ultra-premium Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G by $200, bringing the foldable smartphone down to $1,799.99 compared to its initial $1,999.99 launch MRSP. Even after the price cut, the Z Fold 2 5G will still cost you more than flagships from pretty much all of Samsung’s competitors, but it’s… Read more

Draw on This Raspberry Pi Matrix in Real-Time

Home News (Image credit: Neythen Treloar) Customizing a matrix with a Raspberry Pi can be tricky, but Neythen Treloar’s project changes that by making it possible to paint an image onto a matrix in real-time from any browser. This isn’t the first time we’ve shared Neythen’s work, we previously showcased his matrix-based video game project…. Read more

Raspberry Pi Gets 5.25-inch Floppy Drive Support

Home News (Image credit: Dr. Scott M. Baker) Long gone are the days of limiting your Raspberry Pi with large-capacity microSD cards and SSDs. Thanks to Dr. Scott Baker’s latest project, makers are finally free to use 360K floppy disks for all their legacy storage needs! The best Raspberry Pi projects are made from scratch… Read more

Ubiquiti is accused of covering up a ‘catastrophic’ data breach — and it’s not denying it

Ubiquiti, a company whose prosumer-grade routers have become synonymous with security and manageability, is being accused of covering up a “catastrophic” security breach — and after 24 hours of silence, the company has now issued a statement that doesn’t deny any of the whistleblower’s claims. Originally, Ubiquiti emailed its customers about a supposedly minor security… Read more

Arm Unveils Armv9 Instruction Set Architecture

Home News (Image credit: Qualcomm) Arm this week announced Armv9, its latest instruction set architecture that will power a broad range of processors and system-on-chips that will be launched in the coming years. The new ISA promises to enable designers to build SoCs with multiple special-purpose accelerators for artificial intelligence (AI), machine leading, digital signal processing (DSP),… Read more

Privacy and ads in Chrome are about to become FLoCing complicated

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is forging ahead with its third-party cookie replacement technology Repent, o ye ad trackers, for the cookiepocalypse is nigh! If Google sticks to its roadmap, by this time next year Chrome will no longer allow websites to use third-party cookies, which are cookies that come from outside… Read more

Arm’s first new architecture in a decade is designed for security and AI

Chip designer Arm has announced Armv9, its first new chip architecture in a decade following Armv8 way back in 2011. According to Arm, Armv9 offers three major improvements over the previous architecture: security, better AI performance, and faster performance in general. These benefits should eventually trickle down to devices with processors based on Arm’s designs…. Read more

Adafruit Demos Tiny RP2040 Board Ahead of Release

Home News (Image credit: Adafruit) Adafruit’s smallest RP2040 board is still coming soon, but in a recent video, Adafruit founder Limor “Ladyada” Fried demonstrated the QT Py 2040, a tiny board powered by the same chip as a Raspberry Pi Pico, using a community Arduino core that enables any RP2040 board to be used with… Read more

How to Use CircuitPython With GPIO Pins on a PC

Thanks to the Raspberry Pi and Arduino, we are familiar with the GPIO (general purpose input/output) that enable these boards to interface with real-world electronic devices. PCs are devoid of a GPIO but boards such as Adafruit’s FT232H are available that provide that functionality via a USB port. CircuitPython Installation We’ll be using Python to… Read more