Camera, code, coffee

While you can power a Raspberry Pi through the dedicated USB port, it's not always practical. In certain situations, drawing power from a small and thin lithium-polymer (LiPo) battery makes better sense. This is especially true for projects based on Raspberry Pi Zero, because of the board's modest power requirements. The good news is that powering the Raspberry Pi Zero using a regular 3.7V LiPo battery is cheap and relatively straightforward (some soldering is required, though).

Incorrect wiring or wrong output voltage can damage the Raspberry Pi or the battery. Working with LiPo batteries can be dangerous. MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING, AND PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!

• The free dogs of India (Krithika Srinivasan, Aeon)
• 'iPhones are made in hell': 3 months inside China's iPhone city (Viola Zhou, Rest of the World)
• The First Social-Media Babies Are Growing Up—And They’re Horrified (Kate Lindsay, The Atlantic)

This clever tip was shared by Paul Marfell on the digiKam Users mailing list. To keep things tidy, digiKam makes it possible to stack related JPEG and RAW files on top of each other. Doing this manually is not that difficult, but if you have to do it dozens or even hundreds of times, that can quickly become a time-consuming and laborious endeavor.

Theoretically, the app from your camera manufacturer is supposed to transform your mobile device into a versatile camera companion. In reality, most apps developed by camera makers are too limited and frustrating to be of practical use. Take SnapBridge from Nikon, for example. Geotagging, when it works, is slow at best. The file transfer functionality looks great on paper, but it supports JPEG files only. Worse yet, the app reduces the resolution of transferred photos to 2MP — most likely because transferring full-resolution JPEG or RAW files wirelessly would be excruciatingly slow. The app's only saving grace is the support for remote camera control (assuming you can even make it work reliably). But how often do you actually need this functionality? But if not the camera app, then what?

• The Spine Colector (Reeves Wiedeman and Lila Shapiro, Vulture)
• On the trail of the Dark Avenger: the most dangerous virus writer in the world (Scott J Shapiro, The Guardian)
• The Untold Story of the Boldest Supply-Chain Hack Ever (Kim Zetter, Wired)
• Noam Chomsky’s Radical Approach to Language (Luke Dunne, The Collector)