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Time Card mini adds Pi, GPS, and OCXO to your PC

For LTX 2023, I built this:

CM4 Timecard mini GPS locked

This build centers around the Time Card mini. Typically you'd install this PCI Express card inside another computer, but in my case, I just wanted to power the board in a semi-portable way, and so I plugged it into a CM4 IO Board.

The Time Card mini is a PCIe-based carrier board for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, and by itself, it allows you to install a CM4 into a PC, and access the CM4's serial console via PCIe.

But the real power comes in 'sandwich' boards:

Clearing up FUD surrounding Red Hat's actions

As someone who champions truth, yet knows truth is bent to espouse many ideas, I realize clever phrasing often turns irrational lies into strong beliefs—especially when passion takes over.

And we in the open source community are a passionate bunch.

Red Hat on mountain, generated by Bing AI images

But to clear the air a little bit—especially as I have seen some zingers going both directions (from Red Hat employees to the community, and vice-versa):

Building a tiny 6-drive M.2 NAS with the Rock 5 model B

As promised in my video comparing SilverTip Lab's DIY Pocket NAS (express your interest here) to the ASUSTOR Flashstor 12 Pro, this blog post outlines how I built a 6-drive M.2 NAS with the Rock 5 model B.

The Rockchip RK3588 SoC on the Rock 5 packs an 8-core CPU (4x A76, 4x A55, in a 'big.LITTLE' configuration). This SoC powers a PCIe Gen 3 x4 M.2 slot on the back, which is used in this tiny 6-drive design to make a compact, but fast, all-flash NAS:

6-bay Rock 5 NAS

Ampere Altra Max - Windows, GPUs, and Gaming

Ampere Altra Developer Platform Workstation

I'm testing Adlink's Ampere Altra Developer Platform. This machine has a 96-core Arm CPU, but now they sell a 128-core version. Apple also recently released the M2 Ultra Mac Pro, so the model I'm testing isn't the "fastest in the world" like I could boast a couple months ago... but it's close, and I actually doubled my performance from last time—I'll show how later.

I was wrong

...about Red Hat's EULA and its enforceability according to the license terms of the GPLv2. (Specifically in reference to my blog post last Wednesday).

And for that, I apologize.

Basically, the GPLv2 says there can be "no restrictions" placed on any use of the source code provided to any user of the software with its license.

Red Hat's EULA says that Red Hat reserves the right to terminate your business relationship (the Red Hat Subscription) if you redistribute the source code.

This doesn't restrict your right to share the source code that has been previously provided, since you are still free to do so.

It doesn't make sense logically, and certainly not ethically (I don't think anyone could argue this is in the spirit of the GPLv2 license), but legally, logic and ethics sometimes take a back seat to interpretation.

Update: I still think a court case could go either way given enough money and good lawyers, but apparently IBM's lawyers don't, otherwise they wouldn't have written the EULA.

Self-published Ansible book – 87k copies, 300k revenue, 41 revisions

I just published the 41st revision of my self-published book Ansible for DevOps, which has sold 87,234 copies as of this writing across LeanPub, Amazon (Kindle and paperback), and iBooks.

There are multiples of that number of eBooks downloaded, as I've never DMCA'ed the sites that re-host the book illegally. I just... provide new and better versions. People who download the illegal copies know they can come to me for the best reading experience. Plus, I provide free updates forever for anyone who's purchased or gotten the book free on LeanPub.

My self-published book earned $300,000+ in revenue over the past 9 years, and still earns enough every month to pay my health insurance bill (sans deductible)—which has soared to beyond $2,000/month! (Living with a pre-existing condition in the USA is... bad.)