Tag Archives: kids

Alex’s quick and easy digital making Easter egg hunt

2018-03-28 Alex Bate

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/alexs-easter-egg-hunt/

Looking to incorporate some digital making into your Easter weekend? You’ve come to the right place! With a Raspberry Pi, a few wires, and some simple code, you can take your festivities to the next level — here’s how!

If you logged in to watch our Instagram live-stream yesterday, you’ll have seen me put together a simple egg carton and some wires to create circuits. These circuits, when closed by way of a foil-wrapped chocolate egg, instruct a Raspberry Pi to reveal the whereabouts of a larger chocolate egg!

Make it

You’ll need an egg carton, two male-to-female jumper wire, and two crocodile leads for each egg you use.

Connect your leads together in pairs: one end of a crocodile lead to the male end of one jumper wire. Attach the free crocodile clips of two leads to each corner of the egg carton (as shown up top). Then hook up the female ends to GPIO pins: one numbered pin and one ground pin per egg. I recommend pins 3, 4, 18 and 24, as they all have adjacent GND pins.

Your foil-wrapped Easter egg will complete the circuit — make sure it’s touching both the GPIO- and GND-connected clips when resting in the carton.

Wrap it

For your convenience (and our sweet tooth), we tested several foil-wrapped eggs (Easter and otherwise) to see which are conductive.

Raspberry Pi on Twitter

We’re egg-sperimenting with Easter deliciousness to find which treat is the most conductive. Why? All will be revealed in our Instagram Easter live-stream tomorrow.

The result? None of them are! But if you unwrap an egg and rewrap it with the non-decorative foil side outward, this tends to work. You could also use aluminium foil or copper tape to create a conductive layer.

Code it

Next, you’ll need to create the code for your hunt. The script below contains the bare bones needed to make the project work — you can embellish it however you wish using GUIs, flashing LEDs, music, etc.

Open Thonny or IDLE on Raspbian and create a new file called egghunt.py. Then enter the following code:

We’re using ButtonBoard from the gpiozero library. This allows us to link several buttons together as an object and set an action for when any number of the buttons are pressed. Here, the script waits for all four circuits to be completed before printing the location of the prize in the Python shell.

Your turn

And that’s it! Now you just need to hide your small foil eggs around the house and challenge your kids/friends/neighbours to find them. Then, once every circuit is completed with an egg, the great prize will be revealed.

Give it a go this weekend! And if you do, be sure to let us know on social media.

(Thank you to Lauren Hyams for suggesting we “do something for Easter” and Ben ‘gpiozero’ Nuttall for introducing me to ButtonBoard.)

The post Alex’s quick and easy digital making Easter egg hunt appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Welcome Billy – Senior Systems Administrator

2018-03-25 Yev

Post Syndicated from Yev original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/welcome-billy-senior-systems-administrator/

The data center keeps growing, with well over 500 Petabytes of data under management we needed more systems administrators to help us keep track of all the systems as our operation expands. Our latest systems administrator is Billy! Let’s learn a bit more about him shall we?

What is your Backblaze Title?
Sr. Systems Administrator

Where are you originally from?
Boston, MA

What attracted you to Backblaze?
I’ve read the hard drive articles that were published and was excited to be a part of the company that took the time to do that kind of analysis and share it with the world.

What do you expect to learn while being at Backblaze?
I expect that I’ll learn about the problems that arise from a larger scale operation and how to solve them. I’m very curious to find out what they are.

Where else have you worked?
I’ve worked for the MIT Math Dept, Google, a social network owned by AOL called Bebo, Evernote, a contractor recommendation site owned by The Home Depot called RedBeacon, and a few others that weren’t as interesting.

Where did you go to school?
I started college at The Cooper Union, discovered that Electrical Engineering wasn’t my thing, then graduated from the Computer Science program at Northeastern.

What’s your dream job?
Is couch potato a job? I like to solve puzzles and play with toys, which is why I really enjoy being a sysadmin. My dream job is to do pretty much what I do now, but not have to participate in on-call.

Favorite place you’ve traveled?
We did a 2 week tour through Europe on our honeymoon. I’d go back to any place there.

Favorite hobby?
Reading and listening to music. I spent a stupid amount of money on a stereo, so I make sure it gets plenty of use. I spent much less money on my library card, but I try to utilize it quite a bit as well.

Of what achievement are you most proud?
I designed a built a set of shelves for the closet in my kids’ room. Built with hand tools. The only electricity I used was the lights to see what I was doing.

Star Trek or Star Wars?
Star Trek: The Next Generation

Coke or Pepsi?
Coke!

Favorite food?
Pesto. Usually on angel hair, but it also works well on bread, or steak, or a spoon.

Why do you like certain things?
I like things that are a little outside the norm, like musical covers and mashups, or things that look like 1 thing but are really something else. Secret compartments are also fun.

Anything else you’d like you’d like to tell us?
I’m full of anecdotes and lines from songs and movies and tv shows.

Pesto is delicious! Welcome to the systems administrator team Billy, we’ll keep the fridge stocked with Coke for you!

The post Welcome Billy – Senior Systems Administrator appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

HackSpace magazine 5: Inside Adafruit

2018-03-22 Andrew Gregory

Post Syndicated from Andrew Gregory original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/hackspace-5/

There’s a new issue of HackSpace magazine on the shelves today, and as usual it’s full of things to make and do!

Adafruit

We love making hardware, and we’d also love to turn this hobby into a way to make a living. So in the hope of picking up a few tips, we spoke to the woman behind Adafruit: Limor Fried, aka Ladyada.

Adafruit has played a massive part in bringing the maker movement into homes and schools, so we’re chuffed to have Limor’s words of wisdom in the magazine.

Raspberry Pi 3B+

As you may have heard, there’s a new Pi in town, and that can only mean one thing for HackSpace magazine: let’s test it to its limits!

The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ is faster, better, and stronger, but what does that mean in practical terms for your projects?

Toys

Kids are amazing! Their curious minds, untouched by mundane adulthood, come up with crazy stuff that no sensible grown-up would think to build. No sensible grown-up, that is, apart from the engineers behind Kids Invent Stuff, the brilliant YouTube channel that takes children’s inventions and makes them real.

So what is Kids Invent Stuff?!

Kids Invent Stuff is the YouTube channel where kids’ invention ideas get made into real working inventions. Learn more about Kids Invent Stuff at www.kidsinventstuff.com Have you seen Connor’s Crazy Car invention? https://youtu.be/4_sF6ZFNzrg Have you seen our Flamethrowing piano?

We spoke to Ruth Amos, entrepreneur, engineer, and one half of the Kids Invent Stuff team.

Buggy!

It shouldn’t just be kids who get to play with fun stuff! This month, in the name of research, we’ve brought a Stirling engine–powered buggy from Shenzhen.

This ingenious mechanical engine is the closest you’ll get to owning a home-brew steam engine without running the risk of having a boiler explode in your face.

Tutorials

In this issue, turn a Dremel multitool into a workbench saw with some wood, perspex, and a bit of laser cutting; make a Starfleet com-badge and pretend you’re Captain Jean-Luc Picard (shaving your hair off not compulsory); add intelligence to builds the easy way with Node-RED; and get stuck into Cheerlights, one of the world’s biggest IoT project.

All this, plus your ultimate guide to blinkenlights, and the only knot you’ll ever need, in HackSpace magazine issue 5.

Subscribe, save, and get free stuff

Save up to 35% on the retail price by signing up to HackSpace magazine today. When you take out a 12-month subscription, you’ll also get a free Adafruit Circuit Playground Express!

Individual copies of HackSpace magazine are available in selected stockists across the UK, including Tesco, WHSmith, and Sainsbury’s. They’ll also be making their way across the globe to USA, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Belgium in the coming weeks, so ask your local retailer whether they’re getting a delivery.

You can also purchase your copy on the Raspberry Pi Press website, and browse our complete collection of other Raspberry Pi publications, such as The MagPi, Hello World, and Raspberry Pi Projects Books.

The post HackSpace magazine 5: Inside Adafruit appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

How we reduce complexity and rapidly iterate on Amazon GuardDuty: twelve new detections added

2018-03-14 Michael Fuller

Post Syndicated from Michael Fuller original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/why-we-reduce-complexity-and-rapidly-iterate-on-amazon-guardduty-twelve-new-detections-added/

We’re relentlessly innovating on your behalf at AWS, especially when it comes to security. Last November, we launched Amazon GuardDuty, a continuous security monitoring and threat detection service that incorporates threat intelligence, anomaly detection, and machine learning to help protect your AWS resources, including your AWS accounts. Many large customers, including General Electric, Autodesk, and MapBox, discovered these benefits and have quickly adopted the service for its ease of use and improved threat detection. In this post, I want to show you how easy it is for everyone to get started—large and small—and discuss our rapid iteration on the service.

After more than seven years at AWS, I still find myself staying up at night obsessing about unnecessary complexity. Sounds fun, right? Well, I don’t have to tell you that there’s a lot of unnecessary complexity and undifferentiated heavy lifting in security. Most security tooling requires significant care and feeding by humans. It’s often difficult to configure and manage, it’s hard to know if it’s working properly, and it’s costly to procure and run. As a result, it’s not accessible to all customers, and for those that do get their hands on it, they spend a lot of highly-skilled resources trying to keep it operating at its potential.

Even for the most skilled security teams, it can be a struggle to ensure that all resources are covered, especially in the age of virtualization, where new accounts, new resources, and new users can come and go across your organization at a rapid pace. Furthermore, attackers have come up with ingenious ways of giving you the impression your security solution is working when, in fact, it has been completely disabled.

I’ve spent a lot of time obsessing about these problems. How can we use the Cloud to not just innovate in security, but also make it easier, more affordable, and more accessible to all? Our ultimate goal is to help you better protect your AWS resources, while also freeing you up to focus on the next big project.

With GuardDuty, we really turned the screws on unnecessary complexity, distilling continuous security monitoring and threat detection down to a binary decision—it’s either on or off. That’s it. There’s no software, virtual appliances, or agents to deploy, no data sources to enable, and no complex permissions to create. You don’t have to write custom rules or become an expert at machine learning. All we ask of you is to simply turn the service on with a single-click or API call.

GuardDuty operates completely on our infrastructure, so there’s no risk of disrupting your workloads. By providing a hard hypervisor boundary between the code running in your AWS accounts and the code running in GuardDuty, we can help ensure full coverage while making it harder for a misconfiguration or an ingenious attacker to change that. When we detect something interesting, we generate a security finding and deliver it to you through the GuardDuty console and AWS CloudWatch Events. This makes it possible to simply view findings in GuardDuty or push them to an existing SIEM or workflow system. We’ve already seen customers take it a step further using AWS Lambda to automate actions such as changing security groups, isolating instances, or rotating credentials.

Now… are you ready to get started? It’s this simple:

So, you’ve got it enabled, now what can GuardDuty detect?

As soon as you enable the service, it immediately starts consuming multiple metadata streams at scale, including AWS CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, and DNS logs. It compares what it finds to fully managed threat intelligence feeds containing the latest malicious IPs and domains. In parallel, GuardDuty profiles all activity in your account, which allows it to learn the behavior of your resources so it can identify highly suspicious activity that suggests a threat.

The threat-intelligence-based detections can identify activity such as an EC2 instance being probed or brute-forced by an attacker. If an instance is compromised, it can detect attempts at lateral movement, communication with a known malware or command-and-control server, crypto-currency mining, or an attempt to exfiltrate data through DNS.

Where it gets more interesting is the ability to detect AWS account-focused threats. For example, if an attacker gets a hold of your AWS account credentials—say, one of your developers exposes credentials on GitHub—GuardDuty will identify unusual account behavior. For example, an unusual instance type being deployed in a region that has never been used, suspicious attempts to inventory your resources by calling unusual patterns of list APIs or describe APIs, or an effort to obscure user activity by disabling CloudTrail logging.

Our obsession with removing complexity meant making these detections fully-managed. We take on all the heavy lifting of building, maintaining, measuring, and improving the detections so that you can focus on what to do when an event does occur.

What’s new?

When we launched at the end of November, we had thirty-four distinct detections in GuardDuty, but we weren’t stopping there. Many of these detections are already on their second or third continuous improvement iteration. In less than three months, we’ve also added twelve more, including nine CloudTrail-based anomaly detections that identify highly suspicious activity in your accounts. These new detections intelligently catch changes to, or reconnaissance of, network, resource, user permissions, and anomalous activity in EC2, CloudTrail, and AWS console log-ins. These are detections we’ve built based on what we’ve learned from observed attack patterns across the scale of AWS.

The intelligence in these detections is built around the identification of highly sensitive AWS API calls that are invoked under one or more highly suspicious circumstances. The combination of “highly sensitive” and “highly suspicious” is important. Highly sensitive APIs are those that either change the security posture of an account by adding or elevating users, user policies, roles, or account-key IDs (AKIDs). Highly suspicious circumstances are determined from underlying models profiled at the API level by GuardDuty. The result is the ability to catch real threats, while decreasing false positives, limiting false negatives, and reducing alert-noise.

It’s still day one

As we like to say in Amazon, it’s still day one. I’m excited about what we’ve built with GuardDuty, but we’re not going to stop improving, even if you’re already happy with what we’ve built. Check out the list of new detections below and all of the GuardDuty detections in our online documentation. Keep the feedback coming as it’s what powers us at AWS.

Now, I have to stop writing because my wife tells me I have some unnecessary complexity to remove from our closet.

New GuardDuty CloudTrail-based anomaly detections

Recon:IAMUser/NetworkPermissions
Situation: An IAM user invoked an API commonly used to discover the network access permissions of existing security groups, ACLs, and routes in your AWS account.
Description: This finding is triggered when network configuration settings in your AWS environment are probed under suspicious circumstances. For example, if an IAM user in your AWS environment invoked the DescribeSecurityGroups API with no prior history of doing so. An attacker might use stolen credentials to perform this reconnaissance of network configuration settings before executing the next stage of their attack, which might include changing network permissions or making use of existing openings in the network configuration.
Recon:IAMUser/ResourcePermissions
Situation: An IAM user invoked an API commonly used to discover the permissions associated with various resources in your AWS account.
Description: This finding is triggered when resource access permissions in your AWS account are probed under suspicious circumstances. For example, if an IAM user with no prior history of doing so, invoked the DescribeInstances API. An attacker might use stolen credentials to perform this reconnaissance of your AWS resources in order to find valuable information or determine the capabilities of the credentials they already have.
Recon:IAMUser/UserPermissions
Situation: An IAM user invoked an API commonly used to discover the users, groups, policies, and permissions in your AWS account.
Description: This finding is triggered when user permissions in your AWS environment are probed under suspicious circumstances. For example, if an IAM user invoked the ListInstanceProfilesForRole API with no prior history of doing so. An attacker might use stolen credentials to perform this reconnaissance of your IAM users and roles to determine the capabilities of the credentials they already have or to find more permissive credentials that are vulnerable to lateral movement.
Persistence:IAMUser/NetworkPermissions
Situation: An IAM user invoked an API commonly used to change the network access permissions for security groups, routes, and ACLs in your AWS account.
Description: This finding is triggered when network configuration settings are changed under suspicious circumstances. For example, if an IAM user in your AWS environment invoked the CreateSecurityGroup API with no prior history of doing so. Attackers often attempt to change security groups, allowing certain inbound traffic on various ports to improve their ability to access the bot they might have planted on your EC2 instance.
Persistence:IAMUser/ResourcePermissions
Situation: An IAM user invoked an API commonly used to change the security access policies of various resources in your AWS account.
Description: This finding is triggered when a change is detected to policies or permissions attached to AWS resources. For example, if an IAM user in your AWS environment invoked the PutBucketPolicy API with no prior history of doing so. Some services, such as Amazon S3, support resource-attached permissions that grant one or more IAM principals access to the resource. With stolen credentials, attackers can change the policies attached to a resource, granting themselves future access to that resource.
Persistence:IAMUser/UserPermissions
Situation: An IAM user invoked an API commonly used to add, modify, or delete IAM users, groups, or policies in your AWS account.
Description: This finding is triggered by suspicious changes to the user-related permissions in your AWS environment. For example, if an IAM user in your AWS environment invoked the AttachUserPolicy API with no prior history of doing so. In an effort to maximize their ability to access the account even after they’ve been discovered, attackers can use stolen credentials to create new users, add access policies to existing users, create access keys, and so on. The owner of the account might notice that a particular IAM user or password was stolen and delete it from the account, but might not delete other users that were created by the fraudulently created admin IAM user, leaving their AWS account still accessible to the attacker.
ResourceConsumption:IAMUser/ComputeResources
Situation: An IAM user invoked an API commonly used to launch compute resources like EC2 Instances.
Description: This finding is triggered when EC2 instances in your AWS environment are launched under suspicious circumstances. For example, if an IAM user invoked the RunInstances API with no prior history of doing so. This might be an indication of an attacker using stolen credentials to access compute time (possibly for cryptocurrency mining or password cracking). It can also be an indication of an attacker using an EC2 instance in your AWS environment and its credentials to maintain access to your account.
Stealth:IAMUser/LoggingConfigurationModified
Situation: An IAM user invoked an API commonly used to stop CloudTrail logging, delete existing logs, and otherwise eliminate traces of activity in your AWS account.
Description: This finding is triggered when the logging configuration in your AWS account is modified under suspicious circumstances. For example, if an IAM user invoked the StopLogging API with no prior history of doing so. This can be an indication of an attacker trying to cover their tracks by eliminating any trace of their activity.
UnauthorizedAccess:IAMUser/ConsoleLogin
Situation: An unusual console login by an IAM user in your AWS account was observed.
Description: This finding is triggered when a console login is detected under suspicious circumstances. For example, if an IAM user invoked the ConsoleLogin API from a never-before- used client or an unusual location. This could be an indication of stolen credentials being used to gain access to your AWS account, or a valid user accessing the account in an invalid or less secure manner (for example, not over an approved VPN).

New GuardDuty threat intelligence based detections

Trojan:EC2/PhishingDomainRequest!DNS
This detection occurs when an EC2 instance queries domains involved in phishing attacks.
Trojan:EC2/BlackholeTraffic!DNS
This detection occurs when an EC2 instance connects to a black hole domain. Black holes refer to places in the network where incoming or outgoing traffic is silently discarded without informing the source that the data didn’t reach its intended recipient.
Trojan:EC2/DGADomainRequest.C!DNS
This detection occurs when an EC2 instance queries algorithmically generated domains. Such domains are commonly used by malware and could be an indication of a compromised EC2 instance.

If you have feedback about this blog post, submit comments in the “Comments” section below. If you have questions about this blog post, start a new thread on the Amazon GuardDuty forum or contact AWS Support.

Raspberry Jam Big Birthday Weekend 2018 roundup

2018-03-13 Ben Nuttall

Post Syndicated from Ben Nuttall original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/big-birthday-weekend-2018-roundup/

A couple of weekends ago, we celebrated our sixth birthday by coordinating more than 100 simultaneous Raspberry Jam events around the world. The Big Birthday Weekend was a huge success: our fantastic community organised Jams in 40 countries, covering six continents!

We sent the Jams special birthday kits to help them celebrate in style, and a video message featuring a thank you from Philip and Eben:

Raspberry Jam Big Birthday Weekend 2018

To celebrate the Raspberry Pi’s sixth birthday, we coordinated Raspberry Jams all over the world to take place over the Raspberry Jam Big Birthday Weekend, 3-4 March 2018. A massive thank you to everyone who ran an event and attended.

The Raspberry Jam photo booth

I put together code for a Pi-powered photo booth which overlaid the Big Birthday Weekend logo onto photos and (optionally) tweeted them. We included an arcade button in the Jam kits so they could build one — and it seemed to be quite popular. Some Jams put great effort into housing their photo booth:

Here are some of my favourite photo booth tweets:

RGVSA on Twitter

PiParty photo booth @RGVSA & @ @Nerdvana_io #Rjam

Denis Stretton on Twitter

The @SouthendRPIJams #PiParty photo booth

rpijamtokyo on Twitter

PiParty photo booth

Preston Raspberry Jam on Twitter

Preston Raspberry Jam Photobooth #RJam #PiParty

If you want to try out the photo booth software yourself, find the code on GitHub.

The great Raspberry Jam bake-off

Traditionally, in the UK, people have a cake on their birthday. And we had a few! We saw (and tasted) a great selection of Pi-themed cakes and other baked goods throughout the weekend:

Raspberry Jams everywhere

We always say that every Jam is different, but there’s a common and recognisable theme amongst them. It was great to see so many different venues around the world filling up with like-minded Pi enthusiasts, Raspberry Jam–branded banners, and Raspberry Pi balloons!

Europe

Sergio Martinez on Twitter

Thank you so much to all the attendees of the Ikana Jam in Krakow past Saturday! We shared fun experiences, some of them… also painful 😉 A big thank you to @Raspberry_Pi for these global celebrations! And a big thank you to @hubraum for their hospitality! #PiParty #rjam

NI Raspberry Jam on Twitter

We also had a super successful set of wearables workshops using @adafruit Circuit Playground Express boards and conductive thread at today’s @Raspberry_Pi Jam! Very popular! #PiParty

Suzystar on Twitter

My SenseHAT workshop, going well! @SouthendRPiJams #PiParty

Worksop College Raspberry Jam on Twitter

Learning how to scare the zombies in case of an apocalypse- it worked on our young learners #PiParty @worksopcollege @Raspberry_Pi https://t.co/pntEm57TJl

Africa

Rita on Twitter

Being one of the two places in Kenya where the #PiParty took place, it was an amazing time spending the day with this team and getting to learn and have fun. @TaitaTavetaUni and @Raspberry_Pi thank you for your support. @TTUTechlady @mictecttu ch

GABRIEL ONIFADE on Twitter

@TheMagP1

GABRIEL ONIFADE on Twitter

@GABONIAVERACITY #PiParty Lagos Raspberry Jam 2018 Special International Celebration – 6th Raspberry-Pi Big Birthday! Lagos Nigeria @Raspberry_Pi @ben_nuttall #RJam #RaspberryJam #raspberrypi #physicalcomputing #robotics #edtech #coding #programming #edTechAfrica #veracityhouse https://t.co/V7yLxaYGNx

North America

Heidi Baynes on Twitter

The Riverside Raspberry Jam @Vocademy is underway! #piparty

Brad Derstine on Twitter

The Philly & Pi #PiParty event with @Bresslergroup and @TechGirlzorg was awesome! The Scratch and Pi workshop was amazing! It was overall a great day of fun and tech!!! Thank you everyone who came out!

Houston Raspi on Twitter

Thanks everyone who came out to the @Raspberry_Pi Big Birthday Jam! Special thanks to @PBFerrell @estefanniegg @pcsforme @pandafulmanda @colnels @bquentin3 couldn’t’ve put on this amazing community event without you guys!

Merge Robotics 2706 on Twitter

We are back at @SciTechMuseum for the second day of @OttawaPiJam! Our robot Mergius loves playing catch with the kids! #pijam #piparty #omgrobots

South America

Javier Garzón on Twitter

Así terminamos el #Raspberry Jam Big Birthday Weekend #Bogota 2018 #PiParty de #RaspberryJamBogota 2018 @Raspberry_Pi Nos vemos el 7 de marzo en #ArduinoDayBogota 2018 y #RaspberryJamBogota 2018

Asia

Fablab UP Cebu on Twitter

Happy 6th birthday, @Raspberry_Pi! Greetings all the way from CEBU,PH! #PiParty #IoTCebu Thanks @CebuXGeeks X Ramos for these awesome pics. #Fablab #UPCebu

福野泰介 on Twitter

ラズパイ、6才のお誕生日会スタート in Tokyo PCNブースで、いろいろ展示とhttps://t.co/L6E7KgyNHFとIchigoJamつないだ、こどもIoTハッカソンmini体験やってます at 東京蒲田駅近 https://t.co/yHEuqXHvqe #piparty #pipartytokyo #rjam #opendataday

Ren Camp on Twitter

Happy birthday @Raspberry_Pi! #piparty #iotcebu @coolnumber9 https://t.co/2ESVjfRJ2d

Oceania

Glenunga Raspberry Pi Club on Twitter

PiParty photo booth

Personally, I managed to get to three Jams over the weekend: two run by the same people who put on the first two Jams to ever take place, and also one brand-new one! The Preston Raspberry Jam team, who usually run their event on a Monday evening, wanted to do something extra special for the birthday, so they came up with the idea of putting on a Raspberry Jam Sandwich — on the Friday and Monday around the weekend! This meant I was able to visit them on Friday, then attend the Manchester Raspberry Jam on Saturday, and finally drop by the new Jam at Worksop College on my way home on Sunday.

Ben Nuttall on Twitter

I’m at my first Raspberry Jam #PiParty event of the big birthday weekend! @PrestonRJam has been running for nearly 6 years and is a great place to start the celebrations!

Ben Nuttall on Twitter

Back at @McrRaspJam at @DigInnMMU for #PiParty

Ben Nuttall on Twitter

Great to see mine & @Frans_facts Balloon Pi-Tay popper project in action at @worksopjam #rjam #PiParty https://t.co/GswFm0UuPg

Various members of the Foundation team attended Jams around the UK and US, and James from the Code Club International team visited AmsterJam.

hackerfemo on Twitter

Thanks to everyone who came to our Jam and everyone who helped out. @phoenixtogether thanks for amazing cake & hosting. Ademir you’re so cool. It was awesome to meet Craig Morley from @Raspberry_Pi too. #PiParty

Stuart Fox on Twitter

Great #PiParty today at the @cotswoldjam with bloody delicious cake and lots of raspberry goodness. Great to see @ClareSutcliffe @martinohanlon playing on my new pi powered arcade build:-)

Clare Sutcliffe on Twitter

Happy 6th Birthday @Raspberry_Pi from everyone at the #PiParty at #cotswoldjam in Cheltenham!

Code Club on Twitter

It’s @Raspberry_Pi 6th birthday and we’re celebrating by taking part in @amsterjam__! Happy Birthday Raspberry Pi, we’re so happy to be a part of the family! #PiParty

For more Jammy birthday goodness, check out the PiParty hashtag on Twitter!

The Jam makers!

A lot of preparation went into each Jam, and we really appreciate all the hard work the Jam makers put in to making these events happen, on the Big Birthday Weekend and all year round. Thanks also to all the teams that sent us a group photo:

Lots of the Jams that took place were brand-new events, so we hope to see them continue throughout 2018 and beyond, growing the Raspberry Pi community around the world and giving more people, particularly youths, the opportunity to learn digital making skills.

Philip Colligan on Twitter

So many wonderful people in the @Raspberry_Pi community. Thanks to everyone at #PottonPiAndPints for a great afternoon and for everything you do to help young people learn digital making. #PiParty

Special thanks to ModMyPi for shipping the special Raspberry Jam kits all over the world!

Don’t forget to check out our Jam page to find an event near you! This is also where you can find free resources to help you get a new Jam started, and download free starter projects made especially for Jam activities. These projects are available in English, Français, Français Canadien, Nederlands, Deutsch, Italiano, and 日本語. If you’d like to help us translate more content into these and other languages, please get in touch!

PS Some of the UK Jams were postponed due to heavy snowfall, so you may find there’s a belated sixth-birthday Jam coming up where you live!

S Organ on Twitter

@TheMagP1 Ours was rescheduled until later in the Spring due to the snow but here is Babbage enjoying the snow!

The post Raspberry Jam Big Birthday Weekend 2018 roundup appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

qrocodile: the kid-friendly Sonos system

2018-02-21 Alex Bate

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/qrocodile-kid-friendly-sonos-system/

Chris Campbell’s qrocodile uses a Raspberry Pi, a camera, and QR codes to allow Chris’s children to take full control of the Sonos home sound system. And we love it!

qrocodile

Introducing qrocodile, a kid-friendly system for controlling your Sonos with QR codes. Source code is available at: https://github.com/chrispcampbell/qrocodile Learn more at: http://labonnesoupe.org https://twitter.com/chrscmpbll

Sonos

SONOS is SONOS backwards. It’s also SONOS upside down, and SONOS upside down and backwards. I just learnt that this means SONOS is an ambigram. Hurray for learning!

Sonos (the product, not the ambigram) is a multi-room speaker system controlled by an app. Speakers in different rooms can play different tracks or join forces to play one track for a smooth musical atmosphere throughout your home.

If you have a Sonos system in your home, I would highly recommend accessing to it from outside your home and set it to play the Imperial March as you walk through the front door. Why wouldn’t you?

qrocodile

One day, Chris’s young children wanted to play an album while eating dinner. By this one request, he was inspired to create qrocodile, a musical jukebox enabling his children to control the songs Sonos plays, and where it plays them, via QR codes.

It all started one night at the dinner table over winter break. The kids wanted to put an album on the turntable (hooked up to the line-in on a Sonos PLAY:5 in the dining room). They’re perfectly capable of putting vinyl on the turntable all by themselves, but using the Sonos app to switch over to play from the line-in is a different story.

The QR codes represent commands (such as Play in the living room, Use the turntable, or Build a song list) and artists (such as my current musical crush Courtney Barnett or the Ramones).

A camera attached to a Raspberry Pi 3 feeds the Pi the QR code that’s presented, and the Pi runs a script that recognises the code and sends instructions to Sonos accordingly.

Chris used a costum version of the Sonos HTTP API created by Jimmy Shimizu to gain access to Sonos from his Raspberry Pi. To build the QR codes, he wrote a script that utilises the Spotify API via the Spotipy library.

His children are now able to present recognisable album art to the camera in order to play their desired track.

It’s been interesting seeing the kids putting the thing through its paces during their frequent “dance parties”, queuing up their favorite songs and uncovering new ones. I really like that they can use tangible objects to discover music in much the same way I did when I was their age, looking through my parents records, seeing which ones had interesting artwork or reading the song titles on the back, listening and exploring.

Chris has provided all the scripts for the project, along with a tutorial of how to set it up, on his GitHub — have a look if you want to recreate it or learn more about his code. Also check out Chris’ website for more on qrocodile and to see some of his other creations.

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The Early Days of Mass Internet Piracy Were Awesome Yet Awful

2018-02-11 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/the-early-days-of-mass-internet-piracy-were-awesome-yet-awful-180211/

While Napster certainly put the digital cats among the pigeons in 1999, the organized chaos of mass Internet file-sharing couldn’t be truly appreciated until the advent of decentralized P2P networks a year or so later.

In the blink of an eye, everyone with a “shared folder” client became both a consumer and publisher, sucking in files from strangers and sharing them with like-minded individuals all around the planet. While today’s piracy narrative is all about theft and danger, in the early 2000s the sharing community felt more like distant friends who hadn’t met, quietly trading cards together.

Satisfying to millions, those who really engaged found shared folder sharing a real adrenaline buzz, as English comedian Seann Walsh noted on Conan this week.

“Click. 20th Century Fox comes up. No pixels. No shaky cam. No silhouettes of heads at the bottom of the screen, people coming in five minutes late. None of that,” Walsh said, recalling his experience of downloading X-Men 2 (X2) from LimeWire.

“We thought: ‘We’ve done it!!’ This was incredible! We were going to have to go to the cinema. We weren’t going to have to wait for the film to come out on video. We weren’t going to have to WALK to blockbuster!”

But while the nostalgia has an air of magic about it, Walsh’s take on the piracy experience is bittersweet. While obtaining X2 without having to trudge to a video store was a revelation, there were plenty of drawbacks too.

Downloading the pirate copy took a week, which pre-BitTorrent wasn’t a completely bad result but still a considerable commitment. There were also serious problems with quality control.

“20th Century fades, X Men 2 comes up. We’ve done it! We’re not taking it for granted – we’re actually hugging. Yes! Yes! We’ve done it! This is the future! We look at the screen, Wolverine turns round…,” …..and Walsh launches into a broadside of pseudo-German babble, mimicking the unexpectedly-dubbed superhero.

After a week of downloading and getting a quality picture on launch, that is a punch in the gut, to say the least. Arguably no less than a pirate deserves, some will argue, but a fat lip nonetheless, and one many a pirate has suffered over the years. Nevertheless, as Walsh notes, it’s a pain that kids in 2018 simply cannot comprehend.

“Children today are living the childhood I dreamed of. If they want to hear a song – touch – they stream it. They’ve got it now. Bang. Instantly. They don’t know the pain of LimeWire.

“Start downloading a song, go to school, come back. HOPE that it’d finished! That download bar messing with you. Four minutes left…..nine HOURS and 28 minutes left? Thirty seconds left…..52 hours and 38 minutes left? JUST TELL ME THE TRUTH!!!!!” Walsh pleaded.

While this might sound comical now, this was the reality of people downloading from clients such as LimeWire and Kazaa. While X2 in German would’ve been torture for a non-German speaker, the misery of watching an English language copy of 28 Days Later somehow crammed into a 30Mb file is right up there too.

Mislabeled music with microscopic bitrates? That was pretty much standard.

But against the odds, these frankly second-rate experiences still managed to capture the hearts and minds of the digitally minded. People were prepared to put up with nonsense and regular disappointment in order to consume content in a way fit for the 21st century. Yet somehow the combined might of the entertainment industries couldn’t come up with anything substantially better for a number of years.

Of course, broadband availability and penetration played its part but looking back, something could have been done. Not only didn’t the Internet’s popularity come as a surprise, people’s expectations were dramatically lower than they are today too. In any event, beating the pirates should have been child’s play. After all, it was just regular people sharing files in a Windows folder.

Any fool could do it – and millions did. Surprisingly, they have proven unstoppable.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons

Anti-Piracy Video Scares Kids With ‘Fake’ Malware Info

2018-02-06 Ernesto

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-video-scares-kids-with-fake-malware-info-180206/

Today is Safer Internet Day, a global awareness campaign to educate the public on all sorts of threats that people face online.

It is a laudable initiative supported by the Industry Trust for IP Awareness which, together with the children’s charity Into Film, has released an informative video and associated course materials.

The organizations have created a British version of an animation previously released as part of the Australian “Price of Piracy” campaign. While the video includes an informative description of the various types of malware, there appears to be a secondary agenda.

Strangely enough, the video itself contains no advice on how to avoid malware at all, other than to avoid pirate sites. In that sense, it looks more like an indirect anti-piracy ad.

While there’s no denying that kids might run into malware if they randomly click on pirate site ads, this problem is certainly not exclusive to these sites. Email and social media are frequently used to link to malware too, and YouTube comments can pose the same risk. The problem is everywhere.

What really caught our eye, however, is the statement that pirate sites are the most used propagation method for malware. “Did you know, the number one way we infect your device is via illegal pirate sites,” an animated piece of malware claims in the video.

Forget about email attachments, spam links, compromised servers, or even network attacks. Pirate sites are the number one spot through which malware spreads. According to the video at least. But where do they get this knowledge?

Meet the malwares

When we asked the Industry Trust for IP Awareness for further details, the organization checked with their Australian colleagues, who pointed us to a working paper (pdf) from 2014. This paper includes the following line: “Illegal streaming websites are now the number one propagation mechanism for malicious software as 97% of them contain malware.”

Unfortunately, there’s a lot wrong with this claim.

Through another citation, the 97% figure points to this unpublished study of which only the highlights were shared. This “malware” research looked at the prevalence of malware and other unwanted software linked to pirate sites. Not just streaming sites as the other paper said, but let’s ignore that last bit.

What the study actually found is that of the 30 researched pirate sites, “90% contained malware or other ‘Potentially Unwanted Programmes’.” Note that this is not the earlier mentioned 97%, and that this broad category not only includes malware but also popup ads, which were most popular. This means that the percentage of actual malware on these sites can be anywhere from 0.1% to 90%.

Importantly, none of the malware found in this research was installed without an action performed by the user, such as clicking on a flashy download button or installing a mysterious .exe file.

Aside from clearly erroneous references, the more worrying issue is that even the original incorrect statement that “97% of all pirate sites contain malware” provides no evidence for the claim in the video that pirate sites are “the number one way” through which malware spreads.

Even if 100% of all pirate sites link to malware, that’s no proof that it’s the most used propagation method.

The malware issue has been a popular talking point for a while, but after searching for answers for days, we couldn’t find a grain of evidence. There are a lot of malware propagation methods, including email, which traditionally is a very popular choice.

Even more confusingly, the same paper that was cited as a source for the pirate site malware claim notes that 80% of all web-based malware is hosted on “innocent” but compromised websites.

As the provided evidence gave no answers, we asked the experts to chime in. Luckily, security company Malwarebytes was willing to share its assessment. As leaders in the anti-malware industry, they should know better than researchers who have their numbers and terminology mixed up.

“These days, most common infections come from malicious spam campaigns and drive-by exploit attacks,” Adam Kujawa, Director of Malware Intelligence at Malwarebytes informs us.

“Torrent sites are still frequently used by criminals to host malware disguised as something the user wants, like an application, movie, etc. However they are really only a threat to people who use torrent sites regularly and those people have likely learned how to avoid malicious torrents,” he adds.

In other words, most people who regularly visit pirate sites know how to avoid these dangers. That doesn’t mean that they are not a threat to unsuspecting kids who visit them for the first time of course.

“Now, if users who were not familiar with torrent and pirate sites started using these services, there is a high probability that they could encounter some kind of malware. However, many of these sites have user review processes to let other users know if a particular torrent or download is likely malicious.

“So, unless a user is completely new to this process and ignores all the warning signs, they could walk away from a pirate site without getting infected,” Kujawa says.

Overall, the experts at Malwarebytes see no evidence for the claim that pirate sites are the number one propagation method for malware.

“So in summary, I don’t think the claim that ‘pirate sites’ are the number one way to infect users is accurate at all,” Kujawa concludes.

While it’s always a good idea to avoid places that can have a high prevalence of malware, including pirate sites, the claims in the video are not backed up by real evidence. There are tens of thousands of non-pirate sites that pose similar or worse risks, so it’s always a good idea to have anti-malware and virus software installed.

The organizations and people involved in the British “Meet the Malwares” video might not have been aware of the doubtful claims, but it’s unfortunate that they didn’t opt for a broader campaign instead of the focused anti-piracy message.

Finally, since it’s still Safer Internet Day, we encourage kids to take a close look at the various guides on how to avoid “fake news” while engaging in critical thinking.

Be safe!

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons

Four days of STEAM at Bett 2018

2018-02-02 Dan Fisher

Post Syndicated from Dan Fisher original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/bett-2018/

If you’re an educator from the UK, chances are you’ve heard of Bett. For everyone else: Bett stands for British Education Technology Tradeshow. It’s the El Dorado of edtech, where every street is adorned with interactive whiteboards, VR headsets, and new technologies for the classroom. Every year since 2014, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has been going to the event hosted in the ExCeL London to chat to thousands of lovely educators about our free programmes and resources.

On a mission

Our setup this year consisted of four pods (imagine tables on steroids) in the STEAM village, and the mission of our highly trained team of education agents was to establish a new world record for Highest number of teachers talked to in a four-day period. I’m only half-joking.

Educators with a mission

Meeting educators

The best thing about being at Bett is meeting the educators who use our free content and training materials. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the everyday tasks of the office without stopping to ask: “Hey, have we asked our users what they want recently?” Events like Bett help us to connect with our audience, creating some lovely moments for both sides. We had plenty of Hello World authors visit us, including Gary Stager, co-author of Invent to Learn, a must-read for any computing educator. More than 700 people signed up for a digital subscription, we had numerous lovely conversations about our content and about ideas for new articles, and we met many new authors expressing an interest in writing for us in the future.

We also talked to lots of Raspberry Pi Certified Educators who we’d trained in our free Picademy programme — new dates in Belfast and Dublin now! — and who are now doing exciting and innovative things in their local areas. For example, Chris Snowden came to tell us about the great digital making outreach work he has been doing with the Eureka! museum in Yorkshire.

Raspberry Pi Certified Educator Chris Snowden

Digital making for kids

The other best thing about being at Bett is running workshops for young learners and seeing the delight on their faces when they accomplish something they believed to be impossible only five minutes ago. On the Saturday, we ran a massive Raspberry Jam/Code Club where over 250 children, parents, and curious onlookers got stuck into some of our computing activities. We were super happy to find out that we’d won the Bett Kids’ Choice Award for Best Hands-on Experience — a fantastic end to a busy four days. With Bett over for another year, our tired and happy ‘rebel alliance’ from across the Foundation still had the energy to pose for a group photo.

Celebrating our ‘Best Hands-on Experience’ award

More events

You can find out more about starting a Code Club here, and if you’re running a Jam, why not get involved with our global Raspberry Jam Big Birthday Weekend celebrations in March?

We’ll be at quite a few events in 2018, including the Big Bang Fair in March — do come and say hi.

The post Four days of STEAM at Bett 2018 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

e-paper pocket money tracker using Monzo pots

2018-01-19 Alex Bate

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/monzo-money-tracker/

Jason Barnett used the pots feature of the Monzo banking API to create a simple e-paper display so that his kids can keep track of their pocket money.

Monzo

For those outside the UK: Monzo is a smartphone-based bank that allows costumers to manage their money and payment cards via an app, removing the bank clerk middleman.

In the Monzo banking app, users can set up pots, which allow them to organise their money into various, you guessed it, pots. You want to put aside holiday funds, budget your food shopping, or, like Jason, manage your kids’ pocket money? Using pots is an easy way to do it.

Jason’s Monzo Pot ePaper tracker

After failed attempts at keeping track of his sons’ pocket money via a scrap of paper stuck to the fridge, Jason decided to try a new approach.

He started his build by installing Stretch Lite to the SD card of his Raspberry Pi Zero W. “The Pi will be running headless (without screen, mouse or keyboard)”, he explains on his blog, “so there is no need for a full-fat Raspbian image.” While Stretch Lite was downloading, he set up the Waveshare ePaper HAT on his Zero W. He notes that Pimoroni’s “Inky pHAT would be easiest,” but his tutorial is specific to the Waveshare device.

Before ejecting the SD card, Jason updated the boot partition to allow him to access the Pi via SSH. He talks makers through that process here.

Among the libraries he installed for the project is pyMonzo, a Python wrapper for the Monzo API created by Paweł Adamczak. Monzo is still in its infancy, and the API is partly under construction. Until it’s completed, Paweł’s wrapper offers a more stable way to use it.

After installing the software, it was time to set up the e-paper screen for the tracker. Jason adjusted the code for the API so that the screen reloads information every 15 minutes, displaying the up-to-date amount of pocket money in both kids’ pots.

Here is how Jason describes going to the supermarket with his sons, now that he has completed the tracker:

“Daddy, I want (insert first thing picked up here), I’ve always wanted one of these my whole life!” […] Even though you have never seen that (insert thing here) before, I can quickly open my Monzo app, flick to Account, and say “You have £3.50 in your money box”. If my boy wants it, a 2-second withdrawal is made whilst queueing, and done — he walks away with a new (again, insert whatever he wanted his whole life here) and is happy!

Jason’s blog offers a full breakdown of his project, including all necessary code and the specs for the physical build. Be sure to head over and check it out.

Have you used an API in your projects? What would you build with one?

The post e-paper pocket money tracker using Monzo pots appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

UK Government Teaches 7-Year-Olds That Piracy is Stealing

2018-01-18 Ernesto

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/uk-government-teaches-7-year-olds-that-piracy-is-stealing-180118/

In 2014, Mike Weatherley, the UK Government’s top IP advisor at the time, offered a recommendation that copyright education should be added to the school curriculum, starting with the youngest kids in primary school.

New generations should learn copyright moral and ethics, the idea was, and a few months later the first version of the new “Cracking Ideas” curriculum was made public.

In the years that followed new course material was added, published by the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) with support from the local copyright industry. The teaching material is aimed at a variety of ages, including those who have just started primary school.

Part of the education features a fictitious cartoon band called Nancy and the Meerkats. With help from their manager, they learn key copyright insights and this week several new videos were published, BBC points out.

The videos try to explain concepts including copyright, trademarks, and how people can protect the things they’ve created. Interestingly, the videos themselves use names of existing musicians, with puns such as Ed Shealing, Justin Beaver, and the evil Kitty Perry. Even Nancy and the Meerkats appears to be a play on the classic 1970s cartoon series Josie and the Pussycats, featuring a pop band of the same name.

The play on Ed Sheeran’s name is interesting, to say the least. While he’s one of the most popular artists today, he also mentioned in the past that file-sharing made his career.

“…illegal fire sharing was what made me. It was students in England going to university, sharing my songs with each other,” Sheeran said in an interview with CBS last year.

But that didn’t stop the IPO from using his likeness for their anti-file-sharing campaign. According to Catherine Davies of IPO’s education outreach department, knowledge about key intellectual property issues is a “life skill” nowadays.

“In today’s digital environment, even very young people are IP consumers, accessing online digital content independently and regularly,” she tells the BBC. “A basic understanding of IP and a respect for others’ IP rights is therefore a key life skill.”

While we doubt that these concepts will appeal to the average five-year-old, the course material does it best to simplify complex copyright issues. Perhaps that’s also where the danger lies.

The program is in part backed by copyright-reliant industries, who have a different view on the matter than many others. For example, a previously published video of Nancy and the Meerkats deals with the topic of file-sharing.

After the Meerkats found out that people were downloading their tracks from pirate sites and became outraged, their manager Big Joe explained that file-sharing is just the same as stealing a CD from a physical store.

“In a way, all those people who downloaded free copies are doing the same thing as walking out of the shop with a CD and forgetting to go the till,” he says.

“What these sites are doing is sometimes called piracy. It not only affects music but also videos, books, and movies.If someone owns the copyright to something, well, it is stealing. Simple as that,” Big Joe adds.

The Pirates of the Internet!

While we won’t go into the copying vs. stealing debate, it’s interesting that there is no mention of more liberal copyright licenses. There are thousands of artists who freely share their work after all, by adopting Creative Commons licenses for example. Downloading these tracks is certainly not stealing.

Jim Killock, director of the Open Rights Group, notes that the campaign is a bit extreme at points.

“Infringing copyright is a bad thing, but it is not the same as physical theft. Many children will guess that making a copy is not the same as making off with the local store’s chocolate bars,” he says.

“Children aren’t born bureaucrats, and they are surrounded by stupid rules made by stupid adults. Presumably, the IPO doesn’t want children to conclude that copyright is just another one, so they should be a bit more careful with how they explain things.”

Killock also stresses that children copy a lot of things in school, which would normally violate copyright. However, thanks to the educational exceptions they’re not getting in trouble. The IPO could pay more attention to these going forward.

Perhaps Nancy and the Meerkats could decide to release a free to share track in a future episode, for example, and encourage kids to use it for their own remixes, or other creative projects. Creativity and copyright are not all about restrictions, after all.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons

“Where to Invade Next” Popular Among North Korean Pirates

2018-01-14 Ernesto

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/where-to-invade-next-popular-among-north-korean-pirates-180114/

Due to the public nature of BitTorrent transfers, it’s easy to see what a person behind a certain IP-address is downloading.

There are even entire sites dedicated to making this information public. This includes the ‘I Know What You Download‘ service we’ve covered in the past.

While the data are not complete or perfect, looking at the larger numbers provides some interesting insights. The site recently released its overview of the most downloaded titles in various categories per country, for example.

What stands out is that there’s a lot of overlap between countries that seem vastly different.

Game of Thrones is the most downloaded TV show in America, but also in Iran, Mongolia, Uruguay, and Zambia. Other popular TV-shows in 2017, such as The Flash, The Big Bang Theory, and The Walking Dead also appear in the top ten in all these countries.

On the movie side, a similar picture emerges. Titles such as Wonder Woman, The Fate of the Furious, and Logan appear in many of the top tens. In fact, browsing through the result for various countries there are surprisingly little outliers.

The movie Prityazhenie does well in Russia and in India, Dangal is among the most pirated titles, but most titles appear globally. Even in North Korea, where Internet access is extremely limited, Game of Thrones is listed as the most downloaded TV-show.

However, North Korea also shows some odd results, perhaps because there are only a few downloads per day on average.

Browsing through the most downloaded movies we see that there are a lot of kids’ movies in the top ten, with ‘Despicable Me’ as the top result, followed by ‘Moana’ and ‘Minions’. The Hobbit trilogy also made it into the top ten.

12 most pirated movies in North Korea (2017)

The most eye-catching result, however, is the Michael Moore documentary ‘Where to Invade Next.’ While the title may suggest something more malicious, in this travelogue Moore ‘invades’ countries around the world to see in what areas the US can improve itself.

It’s unclear why North Koreans are so interested in this progressive film. Perhaps they are trying to pick up a few tips as well. This could also explain why good old MacGyver is listed among the most downloaded TV-series.

The annual overview of ‘I Know What You Download’ is available here, for those who are interested in more country statistics.

Finally, we have to note that North Korean IP-ranges have been vulnerable to hijacks in the past so you’re never 100% sure who might be using them. It might be the Russians…

^{Image credit: KNCA}

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons

Combine Transactional and Analytical Data Using Amazon Aurora and Amazon Redshift

2018-01-06 Re Alvarez-Parmar

Post Syndicated from Re Alvarez-Parmar original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/combine-transactional-and-analytical-data-using-amazon-aurora-and-amazon-redshift/

A few months ago, we published a blog post about capturing data changes in an Amazon Aurora database and sending it to Amazon Athena and Amazon QuickSight for fast analysis and visualization. In this post, I want to demonstrate how easy it can be to take the data in Aurora and combine it with data in Amazon Redshift using Amazon Redshift Spectrum.

With Amazon Redshift, you can build petabyte-scale data warehouses that unify data from a variety of internal and external sources. Because Amazon Redshift is optimized for complex queries (often involving multiple joins) across large tables, it can handle large volumes of retail, inventory, and financial data without breaking a sweat.

In this post, we describe how to combine data in Aurora in Amazon Redshift. Here’s an overview of the solution:

Use AWS Lambda functions with Amazon Aurora to capture data changes in a table.
Save data in an Amazon S3
Query data using Amazon Redshift Spectrum.

We use the following services:

Amazon Aurora
AWS Lambda
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
Amazon S3
Amazon Redshift

Serverless architecture for capturing and analyzing Aurora data changes

Consider a scenario in which an e-commerce web application uses Amazon Aurora for a transactional database layer. The company has a sales table that captures every single sale, along with a few corresponding data items. This information is stored as immutable data in a table. Business users want to monitor the sales data and then analyze and visualize it.

In this example, you take the changes in data in an Aurora database table and save it in Amazon S3. After the data is captured in Amazon S3, you combine it with data in your existing Amazon Redshift cluster for analysis.

By the end of this post, you will understand how to capture data events in an Aurora table and push them out to other AWS services using AWS Lambda.

The following diagram shows the flow of data as it occurs in this tutorial:

The starting point in this architecture is a database insert operation in Amazon Aurora. When the insert statement is executed, a custom trigger calls a Lambda function and forwards the inserted data. Lambda writes the data that it received from Amazon Aurora to a Kinesis data delivery stream. Kinesis Data Firehose writes the data to an Amazon S3 bucket. Once the data is in an Amazon S3 bucket, it is queried in place using Amazon Redshift Spectrum.

Creating an Aurora database

First, create a database by following these steps in the Amazon RDS console:

Sign in to the AWS Management Console, and open the Amazon RDS console.
Choose Launch a DB instance, and choose Next.
For Engine, choose Amazon Aurora.
Choose a DB instance class. This example uses a small, since this is not a production database.
In Multi-AZ deployment, choose No.
Configure DB instance identifier, Master username, and Master password.
Launch the DB instance.

After you create the database, use MySQL Workbench to connect to the database using the CNAME from the console. For information about connecting to an Aurora database, see Connecting to an Amazon Aurora DB Cluster.

The following screenshot shows the MySQL Workbench configuration:

Next, create a table in the database by running the following SQL statement:

Create Table
CREATE TABLE Sales (
InvoiceID int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
ItemID int NOT NULL,
Category varchar(255),
Price double(10,2), 
Quantity int not NULL,
OrderDate timestamp,
DestinationState varchar(2),
ShippingType varchar(255),
Referral varchar(255),
PRIMARY KEY (InvoiceID)
)

You can now populate the table with some sample data. To generate sample data in your table, copy and run the following script. Ensure that the highlighted (bold) variables are replaced with appropriate values.

#!/usr/bin/python
import MySQLdb
import random
import datetime

db = MySQLdb.connect(host="AURORA_CNAME",
                     user="DBUSER",
                     passwd="DBPASSWORD",
                     db="DB")

states = ("AL","AK","AZ","AR","CA","CO","CT","DE","FL","GA","HI","ID","IL","IN",
"IA","KS","KY","LA","ME","MD","MA","MI","MN","MS","MO","MT","NE","NV","NH","NJ",
"NM","NY","NC","ND","OH","OK","OR","PA","RI","SC","SD","TN","TX","UT","VT","VA",
"WA","WV","WI","WY")

shipping_types = ("Free", "3-Day", "2-Day")

product_categories = ("Garden", "Kitchen", "Office", "Household")
referrals = ("Other", "Friend/Colleague", "Repeat Customer", "Online Ad")

for i in range(0,10):
    item_id = random.randint(1,100)
    state = states[random.randint(0,len(states)-1)]
    shipping_type = shipping_types[random.randint(0,len(shipping_types)-1)]
    product_category = product_categories[random.randint(0,len(product_categories)-1)]
    quantity = random.randint(1,4)
    referral = referrals[random.randint(0,len(referrals)-1)]
    price = random.randint(1,100)
    order_date = datetime.date(2016,random.randint(1,12),random.randint(1,30)).isoformat()

    data_order = (item_id, product_category, price, quantity, order_date, state,
    shipping_type, referral)

    add_order = ("INSERT INTO Sales "
                   "(ItemID, Category, Price, Quantity, OrderDate, DestinationState, \
                   ShippingType, Referral) "
                   "VALUES (%s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s)")

    cursor = db.cursor()
    cursor.execute(add_order, data_order)

    db.commit()

cursor.close()
db.close()

The following screenshot shows how the table appears with the sample data:

Sending data from Amazon Aurora to Amazon S3

There are two methods available to send data from Amazon Aurora to Amazon S3:

Using a Lambda function
Using SELECT INTO OUTFILE S3

To demonstrate the ease of setting up integration between multiple AWS services, we use a Lambda function to send data to Amazon S3 using Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose.

Alternatively, you can use a SELECT INTO OUTFILE S3 statement to query data from an Amazon Aurora DB cluster and save it directly in text files that are stored in an Amazon S3 bucket. However, with this method, there is a delay between the time that the database transaction occurs and the time that the data is exported to Amazon S3 because the default file size threshold is 6 GB.

Creating a Kinesis data delivery stream

The next step is to create a Kinesis data delivery stream, since it’s a dependency of the Lambda function.

To create a delivery stream:

Open the Kinesis Data Firehose console
Choose Create delivery stream.
For Delivery stream name, type AuroraChangesToS3.
For Source, choose Direct PUT.
For Record transformation, choose Disabled.
For Destination, choose Amazon S3.
In the S3 bucket drop-down list, choose an existing bucket, or create a new one.
Enter a prefix if needed, and choose Next.
For Data compression, choose GZIP.
In IAM role, choose either an existing role that has access to write to Amazon S3, or choose to generate one automatically. Choose Next.
Review all the details on the screen, and choose Create delivery stream when you’re finished.

Creating a Lambda function

Now you can create a Lambda function that is called every time there is a change that needs to be tracked in the database table. This Lambda function passes the data to the Kinesis data delivery stream that you created earlier.

To create the Lambda function:

Open the AWS Lambda console.
Ensure that you are in the AWS Region where your Amazon Aurora database is located.
If you have no Lambda functions yet, choose Get started now. Otherwise, choose Create function.
Choose Author from scratch.
Give your function a name and select Python 3.6 for Runtime
Choose and existing or create a new Role, the role would need to have access to call firehose:PutRecord
Choose Next on the trigger selection screen.
Paste the following code in the code window. Change the stream_name variable to the Kinesis data delivery stream that you created in the previous step.
Choose File -> Save in the code editor and then choose Save.

import boto3
import json

firehose = boto3.client('firehose')
stream_name = ‘AuroraChangesToS3’


def Kinesis_publish_message(event, context):
    
    firehose_data = (("%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s\n") %(event['ItemID'], 
    event['Category'], event['Price'], event['Quantity'],
    event['OrderDate'], event['DestinationState'], event['ShippingType'], 
    event['Referral']))
    
    firehose_data = {'Data': str(firehose_data)}
    print(firehose_data)
    
    firehose.put_record(DeliveryStreamName=stream_name,
    Record=firehose_data)

Note the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of this Lambda function.

Giving Aurora permissions to invoke a Lambda function

To give Amazon Aurora permissions to invoke a Lambda function, you must attach an IAM role with appropriate permissions to the cluster. For more information, see Invoking a Lambda Function from an Amazon Aurora DB Cluster.

Once you are finished, the Amazon Aurora database has access to invoke a Lambda function.

Creating a stored procedure and a trigger in Amazon Aurora

Now, go back to MySQL Workbench, and run the following command to create a new stored procedure. When this stored procedure is called, it invokes the Lambda function you created. Change the ARN in the following code to your Lambda function’s ARN.

DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS CDC_TO_FIREHOSE;
DELIMITER ;;
CREATE PROCEDURE CDC_TO_FIREHOSE (IN ItemID VARCHAR(255), 
									IN Category varchar(255), 
									IN Price double(10,2),
                                    IN Quantity int(11),
                                    IN OrderDate timestamp,
                                    IN DestinationState varchar(2),
                                    IN ShippingType varchar(255),
                                    IN Referral  varchar(255)) LANGUAGE SQL 
BEGIN
  CALL mysql.lambda_async('arn:aws:lambda:us-east-1:XXXXXXXXXXXXX:function:CDCFromAuroraToKinesis', 
     CONCAT('{ "ItemID" : "', ItemID, 
            '", "Category" : "', Category,
            '", "Price" : "', Price,
            '", "Quantity" : "', Quantity, 
            '", "OrderDate" : "', OrderDate, 
            '", "DestinationState" : "', DestinationState, 
            '", "ShippingType" : "', ShippingType, 
            '", "Referral" : "', Referral, '"}')
     );
END
;;
DELIMITER ;

Create a trigger TR_Sales_CDC on the Sales table. When a new record is inserted, this trigger calls the CDC_TO_FIREHOSE stored procedure.

DROP TRIGGER IF EXISTS TR_Sales_CDC;
 
DELIMITER ;;
CREATE TRIGGER TR_Sales_CDC
  AFTER INSERT ON Sales
  FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
  SELECT  NEW.ItemID , NEW.Category, New.Price, New.Quantity, New.OrderDate
  , New.DestinationState, New.ShippingType, New.Referral
  INTO @ItemID , @Category, @Price, @Quantity, @OrderDate
  , @DestinationState, @ShippingType, @Referral;
  CALL  CDC_TO_FIREHOSE(@ItemID , @Category, @Price, @Quantity, @OrderDate
  , @DestinationState, @ShippingType, @Referral);
END
;;
DELIMITER ;

If a new row is inserted in the Sales table, the Lambda function that is mentioned in the stored procedure is invoked.

Verify that data is being sent from the Lambda function to Kinesis Data Firehose to Amazon S3 successfully. You might have to insert a few records, depending on the size of your data, before new records appear in Amazon S3. This is due to Kinesis Data Firehose buffering. To learn more about Kinesis Data Firehose buffering, see the “Amazon S3” section in Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose Data Delivery.

Every time a new record is inserted in the sales table, a stored procedure is called, and it updates data in Amazon S3.

Querying data in Amazon Redshift

In this section, you use the data you produced from Amazon Aurora and consume it as-is in Amazon Redshift. In order to allow you to process your data as-is, where it is, while taking advantage of the power and flexibility of Amazon Redshift, you use Amazon Redshift Spectrum. You can use Redshift Spectrum to run complex queries on data stored in Amazon S3, with no need for loading or other data prep.

Just create a data source and issue your queries to your Amazon Redshift cluster as usual. Behind the scenes, Redshift Spectrum scales to thousands of instances on a per-query basis, ensuring that you get fast, consistent performance even as your dataset grows to beyond an exabyte! Being able to query data that is stored in Amazon S3 means that you can scale your compute and your storage independently. You have the full power of the Amazon Redshift query model and all the reporting and business intelligence tools at your disposal. Your queries can reference any combination of data stored in Amazon Redshift tables and in Amazon S3.

Redshift Spectrum supports open, common data types, including CSV/TSV, Apache Parquet, SequenceFile, and RCFile. Files can be compressed using gzip or Snappy, with other data types and compression methods in the works.

First, create an Amazon Redshift cluster. Follow the steps in Launch a Sample Amazon Redshift Cluster.

Next, create an IAM role that has access to Amazon S3 and Athena. By default, Amazon Redshift Spectrum uses the Amazon Athena data catalog. Your cluster needs authorization to access your external data catalog in AWS Glue or Athena and your data files in Amazon S3.

In the demo setup, I attached AmazonS3FullAccess and AmazonAthenaFullAccess. In a production environment, the IAM roles should follow the standard security of granting least privilege. For more information, see IAM Policies for Amazon Redshift Spectrum.

Attach the newly created role to the Amazon Redshift cluster. For more information, see Associate the IAM Role with Your Cluster.

Next, connect to the Amazon Redshift cluster, and create an external schema and database:

create external schema if not exists spectrum_schema
from data catalog 
database 'spectrum_db' 
region 'us-east-1'
IAM_ROLE 'arn:aws:iam::XXXXXXXXXXXX:role/RedshiftSpectrumRole'
create external database if not exists;

Don’t forget to replace the IAM role in the statement.

Then create an external table within the database:

 CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE IF NOT EXISTS spectrum_schema.ecommerce_sales(
  ItemID int,
  Category varchar,
  Price DOUBLE PRECISION,
  Quantity int,
  OrderDate TIMESTAMP,
  DestinationState varchar,
  ShippingType varchar,
  Referral varchar)
ROW FORMAT DELIMITED
      FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'
LOCATION 's3://{BUCKET_NAME}/CDC/'

Query the table, and it should contain data. This is a fact table.

select top 10 * from spectrum_schema.ecommerce_sales

Next, create a dimension table. For this example, we create a date/time dimension table. Create the table:

CREATE TABLE date_dimension (
  d_datekey           integer       not null sortkey,
  d_dayofmonth        integer       not null,
  d_monthnum          integer       not null,
  d_dayofweek                varchar(10)   not null,
  d_prettydate        date       not null,
  d_quarter           integer       not null,
  d_half              integer       not null,
  d_year              integer       not null,
  d_season            varchar(10)   not null,
  d_fiscalyear        integer       not null)
diststyle all;

Populate the table with data:

copy date_dimension from 's3://reparmar-lab/2016dates' 
iam_role 'arn:aws:iam::XXXXXXXXXXXX:role/redshiftspectrum'
DELIMITER ','
dateformat 'auto';

The date dimension table should look like the following:

Querying data in local and external tables using Amazon Redshift

Now that you have the fact and dimension table populated with data, you can combine the two and run analysis. For example, if you want to query the total sales amount by weekday, you can run the following:

select sum(quantity*price) as total_sales, date_dimension.d_season
from spectrum_schema.ecommerce_sales 
join date_dimension on spectrum_schema.ecommerce_sales.orderdate = date_dimension.d_prettydate 
group by date_dimension.d_season

You get the following results:

Similarly, you can replace d_season with d_dayofweek to get sales figures by weekday:

With Amazon Redshift Spectrum, you pay only for the queries you run against the data that you actually scan. We encourage you to use file partitioning, columnar data formats, and data compression to significantly minimize the amount of data scanned in Amazon S3. This is important for data warehousing because it dramatically improves query performance and reduces cost.

Partitioning your data in Amazon S3 by date, time, or any other custom keys enables Amazon Redshift Spectrum to dynamically prune nonrelevant partitions to minimize the amount of data processed. If you store data in a columnar format, such as Parquet, Amazon Redshift Spectrum scans only the columns needed by your query, rather than processing entire rows. Similarly, if you compress your data using one of the supported compression algorithms in Amazon Redshift Spectrum, less data is scanned.

Analyzing and visualizing Amazon Redshift data in Amazon QuickSight

Modify the Amazon Redshift security group to allow an Amazon QuickSight connection. For more information, see Authorizing Connections from Amazon QuickSight to Amazon Redshift Clusters.

After modifying the Amazon Redshift security group, go to Amazon QuickSight. Create a new analysis, and choose Amazon Redshift as the data source.

Enter the database connection details, validate the connection, and create the data source.

Choose the schema to be analyzed. In this case, choose spectrum_schema, and then choose the ecommerce_sales table.

Next, we add a custom field for Total Sales = Price*Quantity. In the drop-down list for the ecommerce_sales table, choose Edit analysis data sets.

On the next screen, choose Edit.

In the data prep screen, choose New Field. Add a new calculated field Total Sales $, which is the product of the Price*Quantity fields. Then choose Create. Save and visualize it.

Next, to visualize total sales figures by month, create a graph with Total Sales on the x-axis and Order Data formatted as month on the y-axis.

After you’ve finished, you can use Amazon QuickSight to add different columns from your Amazon Redshift tables and perform different types of visualizations. You can build operational dashboards that continuously monitor your transactional and analytical data. You can publish these dashboards and share them with others.

Final notes

Amazon QuickSight can also read data in Amazon S3 directly. However, with the method demonstrated in this post, you have the option to manipulate, filter, and combine data from multiple sources or Amazon Redshift tables before visualizing it in Amazon QuickSight.

In this example, we dealt with data being inserted, but triggers can be activated in response to an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE trigger.

Keep the following in mind:

Be careful when invoking a Lambda function from triggers on tables that experience high write traffic. This would result in a large number of calls to your Lambda function. Although calls to the lambda_async procedure are asynchronous, triggers are synchronous.
A statement that results in a large number of trigger activations does not wait for the call to the AWS Lambda function to complete. But it does wait for the triggers to complete before returning control to the client.
Similarly, you must account for Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose limits. By default, Kinesis Data Firehose is limited to a maximum of 5,000 records/second. For more information, see Monitoring Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose.

In certain cases, it may be optimal to use AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) to capture data changes in Aurora and use Amazon S3 as a target. For example, AWS DMS might be a good option if you don’t need to transform data from Amazon Aurora. The method used in this post gives you the flexibility to transform data from Aurora using Lambda before sending it to Amazon S3. Additionally, the architecture has the benefits of being serverless, whereas AWS DMS requires an Amazon EC2 instance for replication.

For design considerations while using Redshift Spectrum, see Using Amazon Redshift Spectrum to Query External Data.

If you have questions or suggestions, please comment below.

Additional Reading

If you found this post useful, be sure to check out Capturing Data Changes in Amazon Aurora Using AWS Lambda and 10 Best Practices for Amazon Redshift Spectrum

About the Authors

Re Alvarez-Parmar is a solutions architect for Amazon Web Services. He helps enterprises achieve success through technical guidance and thought leadership. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his two kids and exploring outdoors.

Fake Santa Surveillance Camera

2018-01-02 Bruce Schneier

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/01/fake_santa_surv.html

Reka makes a “decorative Santa cam,” meaning that it’s not a real camera. Instead, it just gets children used to being under constant surveillance.

Our Santa Cam has a cute Father Christmas and mistletoe design, and a red, flashing LED light which will make the most logical kids suspend their disbelief and start to believe!

CrimeStoppers Campaign Targets Pirate Set-Top Boxes & Their Users

2017-12-09 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/crimestoppers-campaign-targets-pirate-set-top-boxes-their-users-171209/

While many people might believe CrimeStoppers to be an official extension of the police in the UK, the truth is a little more subtle.

CrimeStoppers is a charity that operates a service through which members of the public can report crime anonymously, either using a dedicated phone line or via a website. Callers are not required to give their name, meaning that for those concerned about reprisals or becoming involved in a case for other sensitive reasons, it’s the perfect buffer between them and the authorities.

The people at CrimeStoppers deal with all kinds of crime but perhaps a little surprisingly, they’ve just got involved in the set-top box controversy in the UK.

“Advances in technology have allowed us to enjoy on-screen entertainment in more ways than ever before, with ever increasing amounts of exciting and original content,” the CrimeStoppers campaign begins.

“However, some people are avoiding paying for this content by using modified streaming hardware devices, like a set-top box or stick, in conjunction with software such as illegal apps or add-ons, or illegal mobile apps which allow them to watch new movie releases, TV that hasn’t yet aired, and subscription sports channels for free.”

The campaign has been launched in partnership with the Intellectual Property Office and unnamed “industry partners”. Who these companies are isn’t revealed but given the standard messages being portrayed by the likes of ACE, Premier League and Federation Against Copyright Theft lately, it wouldn’t be a surprise if some or all of them were involved.

Those messages are revealed in a series of four video ads, each taking a different approach towards discouraging the public from using devices loaded with pirate software.

The first video clearly targets the consumer, dispelling the myth that watching pirate video isn’t against the law. It is, that’s not in any doubt, but from the constant tone of the video, one could be forgiven that it’s an extremely serious crime rather than something which is likely to be a civil matter, if anything at all.

It also warns people who are configuring and selling pirate devices that they are breaking the law. Again, this is absolutely true but this activity is clearly several magnitudes more serious than simply viewing. The video blurs the boundaries for what appears to be dramatic effect, however.

Selling and watching is illegal

The second video is all about demonizing the people and groups who may offer set-top boxes to the public.

Instead of portraying the hundreds of “cottage industry” suppliers behind many set-top box sales in the UK, the CrimeStoppers video paints a picture of dark organized crime being the main driver. By buying from these people, the charity warns, criminals are being welcomed in.

“It is illegal. You could also be helping to fund organized crime and bringing it into your community,” the video warns.

Are you funding organized crime?

The third video takes another approach, warning that set-top boxes have few if any parental controls. This could lead to children being exposed to inappropriate content, the charity warns.

“What are your children watching. Does it worry you?” the video asks.

Of course, the same can be said about the Internet, period. Web browsers don’t filter what content children have access to unless parents take pro-active steps to configure special services or software for the purpose.

There’s always the option to supervise children, of course, but Netflix is probably a safer option for those with a preference to stand off. It’s also considerably more expensive, a fact that won’t have escaped users of these devices.

Got kids? Take care….

Finally, video four picks up a theme that’s becoming increasingly common in anti-piracy campaigns – malware and identity theft.

“Why risk having your identity stolen or your bank account or home network hacked. If you access entertainment or sports using dodgy streaming devices or apps, or illegal addons for Kodi, you are increasing the risks,” the ad warns.

Danger….Danger….

Perhaps of most interest is that this entire campaign, which almost certainly has Big Media behind the scenes in advisory and financial capacities, barely mentions the entertainment industries at all.

Indeed, the success of the whole campaign hinges on people worrying about the supposed ill effects of illicit streaming on them personally and then feeling persuaded to inform on suppliers and others involved in the chain.

“Know of someone supplying or promoting these dodgy devices or software? It is illegal. Call us now and help stop crime in your community,” the videos warn.

That CrimeStoppers has taken on this campaign at all is a bit of a head-scratcher, given the bigger crime picture. Struggling with severe budget cuts, police in the UK are already de-prioritizing a number of crimes, leading to something called “screening out”, a process through which victims are given a crime number but no investigation is carried out.

This means that in 2016, 45% of all reported crimes in Greater Manchester weren’t investigated and a staggering 57% of all recorded domestic burglaries weren’t followed up by the police. But it gets worse.

“More than 62pc of criminal damage and arson offenses were not investigated, along with one in three reported shoplifting incidents,” MEN reports.

Given this backdrop, how will police suddenly find the resources to follow up lots of leads from the public and then subsequently prosecute people who sell pirate boxes? Even if they do, will that be at the expense of yet more “screening out” of other public-focused offenses?

No one is saying that selling pirate devices isn’t a crime or at least worthy of being followed up, but is this niche likely to be important to the public when they’re being told that nothing will be done when their homes are emptied by intruders? “NO” says a comment on one of the CrimeStoppers videos on YouTube.

“This crime affects multi-million dollar corporations, I’d rather see tax payers money invested on videos raising awareness of crimes committed against the people rather than the 0.001%,” it concludes.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons

The Raspberry Pi Christmas shopping list 2017

2017-12-07 Alex Bate

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/christmas-shopping-list-2017/

Looking for the perfect Christmas gift for a beloved maker in your life? Maybe you’d like to give a relative or friend a taste of the world of coding and Raspberry Pi? Whatever you’re looking for, the Raspberry Pi Christmas shopping list will point you in the right direction.

For those getting started

Thinking about introducing someone special to the wonders of Raspberry Pi during the holidays? Although you can set up your Pi with peripherals from around your home, such as a mobile phone charger, your PC’s keyboard, and the old mouse dwelling in an office drawer, a starter kit is a nice all-in-one package for the budding coder.

Check out the starter kits from Raspberry Pi Approved Resellers such as Pimoroni, The Pi Hut, ModMyPi, Adafruit, CanaKit…the list is pretty long. Our products page will direct you to your closest reseller, or you can head to element14 to pick up the official Raspberry Pi Starter Kit.

You can also buy the Raspberry Pi Press’s brand-new Raspberry Pi Beginners Book, which includes a Raspberry Pi Zero W, a case, a ready-made SD card, and adapter cables.

Once you’ve presented a lucky person with their first Raspberry Pi, it’s time for them to spread their maker wings and learn some new skills.

To help them along, you could pick your favourite from among the Official Projects Book volume 3, The MagPi Essentials guides, and the brand-new third edition of Carrie Anne Philbin’s Adventures in Raspberry Pi. (She is super excited about this new edition!)

And you can always add a link to our free resources on the gift tag.

For the maker in your life

If you’re looking for something for a confident digital maker, you can’t go wrong with adding to their arsenal of electric and electronic bits and bobs that are no doubt cluttering drawers and boxes throughout their house.

Components such as servomotors, displays, and sensors are staples of the maker world. And when it comes to jumper wires, buttons, and LEDs, one can never have enough.

You could also consider getting your person a soldering iron, some helpings hands, or small tools such as a Dremel or screwdriver set.

And to make their life a little less messy, pop it all inside a Really Useful Box…because they’re really useful.

For kit makers

While some people like to dive into making head-first and to build whatever comes to mind, others enjoy working with kits.

The Naturebytes kit allows you to record the animal visitors of your garden with the help of a camera and a motion sensor. Footage of your local badgers, birds, deer, and more will be saved to an SD card, or tweeted or emailed to you if it’s in range of WiFi.

Coretec’s Tiny 4WD is a kit for assembling a Pi Zero–powered remote-controlled robot at home. Not only is the robot adorable, building it also a great introduction to motors and wireless control.

Bare Conductive’s Touch Board Pro Kit offers everything you need to create interactive electronics projects using conductive paint.

Finally, why not help your favourite maker create their own gaming arcade using the Arcade Building Kit from The Pi Hut?

For the reader

For those who like to curl up with a good read, or spend too much of their day on public transport, a book or magazine subscription is the perfect treat.

For makers, hackers, and those interested in new technologies, our brand-new HackSpace magazine and the ever popular community magazine The MagPi are ideal. Both are available via a physical or digital subscription, and new subscribers to The MagPi also receive a free Raspberry Pi Zero W plus case.

You can also check out other publications from the Raspberry Pi family, including CoderDojo’s new CoderDojo Nano: Make Your Own Game, Eben Upton and Gareth Halfacree’s Raspberry Pi User Guide, and Marc Scott’s A Beginner’s Guide to Coding. And have I mentioned Carrie Anne’s Adventures in Raspberry Pi yet?

Stocking fillers for everyone

Looking for something small to keep your loved ones occupied on Christmas morning? Or do you have to buy a Secret Santa gift for the office tech? Here are some wonderful stocking fillers to fill your boots with this season.

The Pi Hut 3D Xmas Tree: available as both a pre-soldered and a DIY version, this gadget will work with any 40-pin Raspberry Pi and allows you to create your own mini light show.

Google AIY Voice kit: build your own home assistant using a Raspberry Pi, the MagPi Essentials guide, and this brand-new kit. “Google, play Mariah Carey again…”

Pimoroni’s Raspberry Pi Zero W Project Kits offer everything you need, including the Pi, to make your own time-lapse cameras, music players, and more.

The official Raspberry Pi Sense HAT, Camera Module, and cases for the Pi 3 and Pi Zero will complete the collection of any Raspberry Pi owner, while also opening up exciting project opportunities.

STEAM gifts that everyone will love

Awesome Astronauts | Building LEGO’s Women of NASA!

LEGO Idea’s bought out this amazing ‘Women of NASA’ set, and I thought it would be fun to build, play and learn from these inspiring women! First up, let’s discover a little more about Sally Ride and Mae Jemison, two AWESOME ASTRONAUTS!

Treat the kids, and big kids, in your life to the newest LEGO Ideas set, the Women of NASA — starring Nancy Grace Roman, Margaret Hamilton, Sally Ride, and Mae Jemison!

Explore the world of wearables with Pimoroni’s sewable, hackable, wearable, adorable Bearables kits.

Add lights and motors to paper creations with the Activating Origami Kit, available from The Pi Hut.

We all loved Hidden Figures, and the STEAM enthusiast you know will do too. The film’s available on DVD, and you can also buy the original book, along with other fascinating non-fiction such as Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rachel Ignotofsky’s Women in Science, and Sydney Padua’s (mostly true) The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage.

Have we missed anything?

With so many amazing kits, HATs, and books available from members of the Raspberry Pi community, it’s hard to only pick a few. Have you found something splendid for the maker in your life? Maybe you’ve created your own kit that uses the Raspberry Pi? Share your favourites with us in the comments below or via our social media accounts.

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Marvellous retrofitted home assistants

2017-12-06 Alex Bate

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/retrofitted-home-assistants/

As more and more digital home assistants are appearing on the consumer market, it’s not uncommon to see the towering Amazon Echo or sleek Google Home when visiting friends or family. But we, the maker community, are rarely happy unless our tech stands out from the rest. So without further ado, here’s a roundup of some fantastic retrofitted home assistant projects you can recreate and give pride of place in your kitchen, on your bookshelf, or wherever else you’d like to talk to your virtual, disembodied PA.

Google AIY Robot Conversion

Turned an 80s Tomy Mr Money into a little Google AIY / Raspberry Pi based assistant.

Matt ‘Circuitbeard’ Brailsford’s Tomy Mr Money Google AIY Assistant is just one of many home-brew home assistants makers have built since the release of APIs for Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Here are some more…

Teddy Ruxpin

Oh Teddy, how exciting and mysterious you were when I unwrapped you back in the mideighties. With your awkwardly moving lips and twitching eyelids, you were the cream of the crop of robotic toys! How was I to know that during my thirties, you would become augmented with home assistant software and suddenly instil within me a fear unlike any I’d felt before? (Save for my lifelong horror of ET…)

Alexa Ruxpin – Raspberry Pi & Alexa Powered Teddy Bear

Please watch: “DIY Fidget LED Display – Part 1” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAZIc82Duzk -~-~~-~~~-~~-~- There are tons of virtual assistants out on the market: Siri, Ok Google, Alexa, etc. I had this crazy idea…what if I made the virtual assistant real…kinda. I decided to take an old animatronic teddy bear and hack it so that it ran Amazon Alexa.

Several makers around the world have performed surgery on Teddy to install a Raspberry Pi within his stomach and integrate him with Amazon Alexa Voice or Google’s AIY Projects Voice kit. And because these makers are talented, they’ve also managed to hijack Teddy’s wiring to make his lips move in time with his responses to your commands. Freaky…

Speaking of freaky: check out Zack’s Furlexa — an Amazon Alexa Furby that will haunt your nightmares.

Give old tech new life

Devices that were the height of technology when you purchased them may now be languishing in your attic collecting dust. With new and improved versions of gadgets and gizmos being released almost constantly, it is likely that your household harbours a spare whosit or whatsit which you can dismantle and give a new Raspberry Pi heart and purpose.

Take, for example, Martin Mander’s Google Pi intercom. By gutting and thoroughly cleaning a vintage intercom, Martin fashioned a suitable housing the Google AIY Projects Voice kit to create a new home assistant for his house:

1986 Google Pi Intercom

This is a 1986 Radio Shack Intercom that I’ve converted into a Google Home style device using a Raspberry Pi and the Google AIY (Artificial Intelligence Yourself) kit that came free with the MagPi magazine (issue 57). It uses the Google Assistant to answer questions and perform actions, using IFTTT to integrate with smart home accessories and other web services.

Not only does this build look fantastic, it’s also a great conversation starter for any visitors who had a similar device during the eighties.

Also take a look at Martin’s 1970s Amazon Alexa phone for more nostalgic splendour.

Put it in a box

…and then I’ll put that box inside of another box, and then I’ll mail that box to myself, and when it arrives…

A GIF from the emperors new groove - Raspberry Pi Home Assistant

A GIF. A harmless, little GIF…and proof of the comms team’s obsession with The Emperor’s New Groove.

You don’t have to be fancy when it comes to housing your home assistant. And often, especially if you’re working with the smaller people in your household, the results of a simple homespun approach are just as delightful.

Here are Hannah and her dad Tom, explaining how they built a home assistant together and fit it inside an old cigar box:

Raspberry Pi 3 Amazon Echo – The Alexa Kids Build!

My 7 year old daughter and I decided to play around with the Raspberry Pi and build ourselves an Amazon Echo (Alexa). The video tells you about what we did and the links below will take you to all the sites we used to get this up and running.

Also see the Google AIY Projects Voice kit — the cardboard box-est of home assistant boxes.

Make your own home assistant

And now it’s your turn! I challenge you all (and also myself) to create a home assistant using the Raspberry Pi. Whether you decide to fit Amazon Alexa inside an old shoebox or Google Home inside your sister’s Barbie, I’d love to see what you create using the free home assistant software available online.

Check out these other home assistants for Raspberry Pi, and keep an eye on our blog to see what I manage to create as part of the challenge.

Ten virtual house points for everyone who shares their build with us online, either in the comments below or by tagging us on your social media account.

The post Marvellous retrofitted home assistants appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

MagPi 64: get started with electronics

2017-11-30 Rob Zwetsloot

Post Syndicated from Rob Zwetsloot original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/magpi-64/

Hey folks, Rob here again! You get a double dose of me this month, as today marks the release of The MagPi 64. In this issue we give you a complete electronics starter guide to help you learn how to make circuits that connect to your Raspberry Pi!

MAGPI SIXTY-FOOUUUR!

Wires, wires everywhere!

In the electronics feature, we’ll teach you how to identify different components in circuit diagrams, we’ll explain what they do, and we’ll give you some basic wiring instructions so you can take your first steps. The feature also includes step-by-step tutorials on how to make a digital radio and a range-finder, meaning you can test out your new electronics skills immediately!

Christmas tutorials

Electronics are cool, but what else is in this issue? Well, we have exciting news about the next Google AIY Projects Vision kit, which forgoes audio for images, allowing you to build a smart camera with your Raspberry Pi.

We’ve also included guides on how to create your own text-based adventure game and a kaleidoscope camera. And, just in time for the festive season, there’s a tutorial for making a 3D-printed Pi-powered Christmas tree star. All this in The MagPi 64, along with project showcases, reviews, and much more!

Kaleido Cam

Using a normal web cam or the Raspberry Pi camera produce real time live kaleidoscope effects with the Raspberry Pi. This video shows the normal mode, along with an auto pre-rotate, and a horizontal and vertical flip.

Get The MagPi 64

Issue 64 is available today from WHSmith, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Asda. If you live in the US, head over to your local Barnes & Noble or Micro Center in the next few days. You can also get the new issue online from our store, or digitally via our Android and iOS apps. And don’t forget, there’s always the free PDF as well.

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Want to support the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the magazine, and get some cool free stuff? If you take out a twelve-month print subscription to The MagPi, you’ll get a Pi Zero W, Pi Zero case, and adapter cables absolutely free! This offer does not currently have an end date.

We hope you enjoy this issue!

Nintendo Sixty-FOOOOOOOOOOUR

Brandon gets an n64 for christmas 1998 and gets way too excited inquiries about usage / questions / comments? [email protected] © n64kids.com

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Raspberry Pi clusters come of age

2017-11-28 Alex Bate

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-clusters-come-of-age/

In today’s guest post, Bruce Tulloch, CEO and Managing Director of BitScope Designs, discusses the uses of cluster computing with the Raspberry Pi, and the recent pilot of the Los Alamos National Laboratory 3000-Pi cluster built with the BitScope Blade.

High-performance computing and Raspberry Pi are not normally uttered in the same breath, but Los Alamos National Laboratory is building a Raspberry Pi cluster with 3000 cores as a pilot before scaling up to 40 000 cores or more next year.

That’s amazing, but why?

I was asked this question more than any other at The International Conference for High-Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis in Denver last week, where one of the Los Alamos Raspberry Pi Cluster Modules was on display at the University of New Mexico’s Center for Advanced Research Computing booth.

The short answer to this question is: the Raspberry Pi cluster enables Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to conduct exascale computing R&D.

The Pi cluster breadboard

Exascale refers to computing systems at least 50 times faster than the most powerful supercomputers in use today. The problem faced by LANL and similar labs building these things is one of scale. To get the required performance, you need a lot of nodes, and to make it work, you need a lot of R&D.

However, there’s a catch-22: how do you write the operating systems, networks stacks, launch and boot systems for such large computers without having one on which to test it all? Use an existing supercomputer? No — the existing large clusters are fully booked 24/7 doing science, they cost millions of dollars per year to run, and they may not have the architecture you need for your next-generation machine anyway. Older machines retired from science may be available, but at this scale they cost far too much to use and are usually very hard to maintain.

The Los Alamos solution? Build a “model supercomputer” with Raspberry Pi!

Think of it as a “cluster development breadboard”.

The idea is to design, develop, debug, and test new network architectures and systems software on the “breadboard”, but at a scale equivalent to the production machines you’re currently building. Raspberry Pi may be a small computer, but it can run most of the system software stacks that production machines use, and the ratios of its CPU speed, local memory, and network bandwidth scale proportionately to the big machines, much like an architect’s model does when building a new house. To learn more about the project, see the news conference and this interview with insideHPC at SC17.

Traditional Raspberry Pi clusters

Like most people, we love a good cluster! People have been building them with Raspberry Pi since the beginning, because it’s inexpensive, educational, and fun. They’ve been built with the original Pi, Pi 2, Pi 3, and even the Pi Zero, but none of these clusters have proven to be particularly practical.

That’s not stopped them being useful though! I saw quite a few Raspberry Pi clusters at the conference last week.

One tiny one that caught my eye was from the people at openio.io, who used a small Raspberry Pi Zero W cluster to demonstrate their scalable software-defined object storage platform, which on big machines is used to manage petabytes of data, but which is so lightweight that it runs just fine on this:

There was another appealing example at the ARM booth, where the Berkeley Labs’ singularity container platform was demonstrated running very effectively on a small cluster built with Raspberry Pi 3s.

My show favourite was from the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Center (EPCC): Nick Brown used a cluster of Pi 3s to explain supercomputers to kids with an engaging interactive application. The idea was that visitors to the stand design an aircraft wing, simulate it across the cluster, and work out whether an aircraft that uses the new wing could fly from Edinburgh to New York on a full tank of fuel. Mine made it, fortunately!

Next-generation Raspberry Pi clusters

We’ve been building small-scale industrial-strength Raspberry Pi clusters for a while now with BitScope Blade.

When Los Alamos National Laboratory approached us via HPC provider SICORP with a request to build a cluster comprising many thousands of nodes, we considered all the options very carefully. It needed to be dense, reliable, low-power, and easy to configure and to build. It did not need to “do science”, but it did need to work in almost every other way as a full-scale HPC cluster would.

Some people argue Compute Module 3 is the ideal cluster building block. It’s very small and just as powerful as Raspberry Pi 3, so one could, in theory, pack a lot of them into a very small space. However, there are very good reasons no one has ever successfully done this. For a start, you need to build your own network fabric and I/O, and cooling the CM3s, especially when densely packed in a cluster, is tricky given their tiny size. There’s very little room for heatsinks, and the tiny PCBs dissipate very little excess heat.

Instead, we saw the potential for Raspberry Pi 3 itself to be used to build “industrial-strength clusters” with BitScope Blade. It works best when the Pis are properly mounted, powered reliably, and cooled effectively. It’s important to avoid using micro SD cards and to connect the nodes using wired networks. It has the added benefit of coming with lots of “free” USB I/O, and the Pi 3 PCB, when mounted with the correct air-flow, is a remarkably good heatsink.

When Gordon announced netboot support, we became convinced the Raspberry Pi 3 was the ideal candidate when used with standard switches. We’d been making smaller clusters for a while, but netboot made larger ones practical. Assembling them all into compact units that fit into existing racks with multiple 10 Gb uplinks is the solution that meets LANL’s needs. This is a 60-node cluster pack with a pair of managed switches by Ubiquiti in testing in the BitScope Lab:

Two of these packs, built with Blade Quattro, and one smaller one comprising 30 nodes, built with Blade Duo, are the components of the Cluster Module we exhibited at the show. Five of these modules are going into Los Alamos National Laboratory for their pilot as I write this.

It’s not only research clusters like this for which Raspberry Pi is well suited. You can build very reliable local cloud computing and data centre solutions for research, education, and even some industrial applications. You’re not going to get much heavy-duty science, big data analytics, AI, or serious number crunching done on one of these, but it is quite amazing to see just how useful Raspberry Pi clusters can be for other purposes, whether it’s software-defined networks, lightweight MaaS, SaaS, PaaS, or FaaS solutions, distributed storage, edge computing, industrial IoT, and of course, education in all things cluster and parallel computing. For one live example, check out Mythic Beasts’ educational compute cloud, built with Raspberry Pi 3.

For more information about Raspberry Pi clusters, drop by BitScope Clusters.

I’ll read and respond to your thoughts in the comments below this post too.

Editor’s note:

Here is a photo of Bruce wearing a jetpack. Cool, right?!

The post Raspberry Pi clusters come of age appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

What We’re Thankful For

2017-11-21 Roderick Bauer

Post Syndicated from Roderick Bauer original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-were-thankful-for/

All of us at Backblaze hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and that you can enjoy it with family and friends. We asked everyone at Backblaze to express what they are thankful for. Here are their responses.

What We’re Thankful For

Aside from friends, family, hobbies, health, etc. I’m thankful for my home. It’s not much, but it’s mine, and allows me to indulge in everything listed above. Or not, if I so choose. And coffee.

— Tony

I’m thankful for my wife Jen, and my other friends. I’m thankful that I like my coworkers and can call them friends too. I’m thankful for my health. I’m thankful that I was born into a middle class family in the US and that I have been very, very lucky because of that.

— Adam

Besides the most important things which are being thankful for my family, my health and my friends, I am very thankful for Backblaze. This is the first job I’ve ever had where I truly feel like I have a great work/life balance. With having 3 kids ages 8, 6 and 4, a husband that works crazy hours and my tennis career on the rise (kidding but I am on 4 teams) it’s really nice to feel like I have balance in my life. So cheers to Backblaze – where a girl can have it all!

— Shelby

I am thankful to work at a high-tech company that recognizes the contributions of engineers in their 40s and 50s.

— Jeannine

I am thankful for the music, the songs I’m singing. Thankful for all the joy they’re bringing. Who can live without it, I ask in all honesty? What would life be? Without a song or a dance what are we? So I say thank you for the music. For giving it to me!

— Yev

I’m thankful that I don’t look anything like the portrait my son draws of me…seriously.

— Natalie

I am thankful to work for a company that puts its people and product ahead of profits.

— James

I am thankful that even in the middle of disasters, turmoil, and violence, there are always people who commit amazing acts of generosity, courage, and kindness that restore my faith in mankind.

— Roderick

The future.

— Ahin

I am thankful for the current state of modern inexpensive broadband networking that allows me to stay in touch with friends and family that are far away, allows Backblaze to exist and pay my salary so I can live comfortably, and allows me to watch cat videos for free. The internet makes this an amazing time to be alive.

— Brian

Other than being thankful for family & good health, I’m quite thankful through the years I’ve avoided losing any of my 12+TB photo archive. 20 years of photoshoots, family photos and cell phone photos kept safe through changing storage media (floppy drives, flopticals, ZIP, JAZ, DVD-RAM, CD, DVD and hard drives), not to mention various technology/software solutions. It’s a data minefield out there, especially in the long run with changing media formats.

— Jim

I am thankful for non-profit organizations and their volunteers, such as IMAlive. Possibly the greatest gift you can give someone is empowerment, and an opportunity for them to recognize their own resilience and strength.

— Emily

I am thankful for my loving family, friends who make me laugh, a cool company to work for, talented co-workers who make me a better engineer, and beautiful Fall days in Wisconsin!

— Marjorie

I’m thankful for preschool drawings about thankfulness.

— Adam

I am thankful for new friends and working for a company that allows us to be ourselves.

— Annalisa

I’m thankful for my dog as I always find a reason to smile at him everyday. Yes, he still smells from his skunkin’ last week and he tracks mud in my house, but he came from the San Quentin puppy-prisoner program and I’m thankful I found him and that he found me! My vet is thankful as well.

— Terry

I’m thankful that my colleagues are also my friends outside of the office and that the rain season has started in California.

— Aaron

I’m thankful for family, friends, and beer. Mostly for family and friends, but beer is really nice too!

— Ken

There are so many amazing blessings that make up my daily life that I thank God for, so here I go – my basic needs of food, water and shelter, my husband and 2 daughters and the rest of the family (here and abroad) — their love, support, health, and safety, waking up to a new day every day, friends, music, my job, funny things, hugs and more hugs (who does not like hugs?).

— Cecilia

I am thankful to be blessed with a close-knit extended family, and for everything they do for my new, growing family. With a toddler and a second child on the way, it helps having so many extra sets of hands around to help with the kids!

— Zack

I’m thankful for family and friends, the opportunities my parents gave me by moving the U.S., and that all of us together at Backblaze have built a place to be proud of.

— Gleb

Aside for being thankful for family and friends, I am also thankful I live in a place with such natural beauty. Being so close to mountains and the ocean, and everything in between, is something that I don’t take for granted!

— Sona

I’m thankful for my wonderful wife, family, friends, and co-workers. I’m thankful for having a happy and healthy son, and the chance to watch him grow on a daily basis.

— Ariel

I am thankful for a dog-friendly workplace.

— LeAnn

I’m thankful for my amazing new wife and that she’s as much of a nerd as I am.

— Troy

I am thankful for every reunion with my siblings and families.

— Cecilia

I am thankful for my funny, strong-willed, happy daughter, my awesome husband, my family, and amazing friends. I am also thankful for the USA and all the opportunities that come with living here. Finally, I am thankful for Backblaze, a truly great place to work and for all of my co-workers/friends here.

— Natasha

I am thankful that I do not need to hunt and gather everyday to put food on the table but at the same time I feel that I don’t appreciate the food the sits before me as much as I should. So I use Thanksgiving to think about the people and the animals that put food on my family’s table.

— KC

I am thankful for my cat, Catnip. She’s been with me for 18 years and seen me through so many ups and downs. She’s been along my side through two long-term relationships, several moves, and one marriage. I know we don’t have much time together and feel blessed every day she’s here.

— JC

I am thankful for imperfection and misshapen candies. The imperceptible romance of sunsets through bus windows. The dream that family, friends, co-workers, and strangers are connected by love. I am thankful to my ancestors for enduring so much hardship so that I could be here enjoying Bay Area burritos.

— Damon

The post What We’re Thankful For appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

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