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There was a time I'd look at a board like the Radxa Dragon Q8B (at left, above) and be like, "there's no way I'd spend $209 on an SBC with 8 gigs of RAM". But we're in 2026, and seeing the 8 gig Raspberry Pi 5 going for almost the same amount, I figured I'd give it a shot. On paper, the Q8B beats the Pi 5 in pretty much every way. A lot of that is thanks to this Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chip, which is the same chip I tested on Microsoft's Windows Dev Kit 2023.
In June I purchased this TrueTime XL-AK time server, so I could learn more of the history of GPS-based time. I received it on June 22, and just 16 days later a similar GPS time server took down Australia's cell service for 12 hours! I made a short video about it but put off digging into the TrueTime... until now. Over the past couple weeks, I've 'restomodded' this device with a Raspberry Pi, to build a stratum 1 NTP Time server, which I'd like to eventually add to the NTP Pool. I found a way to drop in a Pi 5 and GNSS HAT, display the time and GPS status on the built-in 16x2 LCD, show the status on the bicolor LED, and make this box useful again.
Proxmox today announced their Proxmox Virtual Environment is now available for 64-bit ARM. I tested it on my Ampere Altra Dev Platform—the same machine on which I've booted Windows on Arm the first time, messed with multiple GPUs, and most recently tested Houdini's native arm64 support. Install was easy, as the Ampere Altra uses UEFI / ACPI for its hardware, meaning Proxmox didn't have to tailor it's ISO to specific platforms, like you have to do with Raspberry Pis and most SBCs using a Device Tree setup.
Since the PiKVM came out in 2017, there's been an explosion of IP KVMs. I've tested almost every one. But what are they good for? You can use Remote Desktop, Screen Sharing, or VNC to remote control a computer from anywhere on a LAN. And if you don't have a private VPN, you could use RealVNC, Raspberry Pi Connect, or wire up Tailscale or Pangolin for fully remote access. Those solutions are great, and so is SSH if you don't need a full desktop.
More in technology
I’ve been getting back into the politics fandom this past month.
A few weeks ago I was up late in my kitchen. I've always been a bad sleeper, starting from when I was 10 and would spend whole nights reading books and watching the clock slowly wind it way to when I had to get up and go to
The resiliency startup has slashed the amount it spends on AI; down from $4,500 per dev, per month, in August, to $1,600 now.
Nathaniel Christopher has a lovely recap of his time at WordCamp Canada. Very cool that the dashboard widget helped connect him to the local community. Hat tip: Anne.
