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Fake Books
Machine-generated books are here. I bought one by accident.
Michał Zalewski (lcamtuf)
geek culture, algorithms, electronic circuit design, and chainsaw safety tips. Click to read lcamtuf’s thing, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.
- Popular posts
- 50
- Total points
- 12,801
- HN comments
- 5,474
- Rank
- #57 personal
Visit lcamtuf.substack.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Oct 2022 – Jul 2026
Hardware & Electronics 21Science & Space 20Society, Policy & Culture 12Math & Algorithms 10Life, Learning & Writing 8Tech Industry & Business 7
2
The scientific “unit” we call the decibel
Celebrating a rare dumpster fire in the kingdom of science.
3
Radios, how do they work?
A brief introduction to antennas, superheterodyne receivers, and signal modulation schemes.
4
Investigating an “evil” RJ45 dongle
Reverse-engineering hardware can be difficult -- but sometimes, all you need is a comfy armchair and some Google Translate.
5
Sir, there's a cat in your mirror dimension
Pets do the darndest things, especially if you teach them a bit of math.
6
But good sir, what is electricity?
A quick look at the physics of conductors, insulators, and electric charges.
7
Things you can do with diodes
Paying homage to the component we usually don't think about.
8
The magic of DC-DC voltage conversion (2023)
Resistor-based dividers, linear regulators, buck converters, and other ways to adjust voltages.
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10
A nicer voltmeter clock
Sometimes, electronic circuit design is mostly about wood
11
It's all a blur
Designing a slightly sneaky blur filter and then poking holes in it.
12
Conway's Game of Life, in real life
When life gives you switches...
13
Folks, we have the best π
And some novel ideas for bicycle wheel design.
14
Setting up an electronics workshop
A minimalist, non-commercial take on a handful of indispensable workshop tools.
15
A requiem for amateur chemistry
Bidding farewell to classic experiments.
16
PCBs, copper pours, ground planes, and you
A closer look at a fashion trend in printed circuit board design.
17
Hell is other people: performance management at Big Tech
The lofty theory and the sordid reality of "perf".
18
Severance
» Mark has joined the call.
19
Some notes on influenceering
The ups and downs of publishing non-commercial content on the internet.
20
Is the frequency domain a real place?
Dissing Fourier, exploring the Hadamard-Walch transform, and making square-wave spectrograms.
21
Weekend projects: getting silly with C
C is beautiful yet full of horrors. Here's to uncovering its hidden depths.
22
It's hard to build an oscillator
Especially if you want it to work.
23
Comparing Hobby PCB Vendors
An not-for-profit roundup of affordable PCB manufacturers. Originally published in 2023 and last updated January 2026.
24
UI is hell: four-function calculators
One of the simplest and best-known computing devices on the planet is a fascinating study in interface design.
25
AI children's books, body horror edition
Last week, I posted a visual demonstration of the sameness of AI-generated content.
26
Sierpiński Triangle? In My Bitwise and?
Exploring a peculiar bit-twiddling hack at the intersection of 1980s geek sensibilities.
27
Now you're thinking with relays
Tinkering with relay-based logic just for the fun of it.
28
The 100k whys of AI
One of the most painful arguments I keep having with fellow techies is the question of whether you can distinguish between human-written and AI-generated text.
29
Signal reflections in electronic circuits
What are "signal reflections", really? And do they matter in circuit design?
30
The basics of decoupling capacitors
How to stabilize digital supply voltages - and why most of the online advice on this topic is suspect.