VSHN.timer #80: Hardware

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

This week we’re going to talk about a subject we have never covered before in VSHN.timer: cool new hardware for our hobbies and our work.

1. Let’s be honest. We’re all crazy about the Raspberry Pi. You know you want every one of those little boards. And of course the hottest new one in town is the Raspberry Pi Pico, costing just 4 USD, and literally available for free on the cover of this month’s issue of HackSpace Magazine – which, well, it’s already sold out. Have you got yours yet?

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-silicon-pico-now-on-sale/

2. Speaking about the Raspberry Pi, have you built your own Kubernetes cluster with it? In case you’re interested, the Turing Pi 2 has been recently announced! A compact, fast, efficient, and ready-to-use ARM cluster. Supercomputing at home, as they call it. If you can’t wait, the Turing Pi 1 is available for preorder now, with deliveries scheduled for April.

3. One of the most disruptive hardware failures is, without a shadow of a doubt, that of a hard drive. Could we use machine learning to predict those events? Rachel Wenzel from Datto explained how their team did exactly that. TL;DR: it was a fun experiment, but it didn’t quite work. Maybe you should try booting from a vinyl record if all else fails.

https://datto.engineering/post/predicting-hard-drive-failure-with-machine-learning

4. New job? Chinese New Year? Time for a new laptop. And you know that means reinstalling the world again. How can you streamline that procedure? Alabê Duarte shared a simple tip for Mac users: a Homebrew Bundle Brewfile that contains all of your applications and software, ready to be installed in one operation.

https://alabeduarte.com/new-env-setup/

5. Ah, keyboards. The most important element of any hardware setup. The most discussed, loved, hated, used, suffered, and loathed piece of any collection. These days many of us enjoy the benefits of ergonomic keyboards, and split keyboards have become quite popular at VSHN. For that reason we share with you the Awesome Split Keyboards page in GitHub. If you haven’t found the best split keyboard for your home office setup, here’s pretty much the whole market on one page. And if you don’t like split keyboards, check the System76 Launch Configurable Keyboard instead.

https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards

Did you use this monster-sized, but very comfortable, Microsoft keyboard?#FridayFlashback pic.twitter.com/twT2emJ92A

— Windows Dev Docs (@WindowsDocs) February 12, 2021

How many Raspberry Pi boards do you have at home? How do you deal with hard drive failure? Would you like to share your favorite keyboard with the community? Get in touch with us through the form at the bottom of this page, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

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