1
The scientific “unit” we call the decibel
Celebrating a rare dumpster fire in the kingdom of science.
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.
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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
Radios, how do they work?
A brief introduction to antennas, superheterodyne receivers, and signal modulation schemes.
3
Sir, there's a cat in your mirror dimension
Pets do the darndest things, especially if you teach them a bit of math.
4
But good sir, what is electricity?
A quick look at the physics of conductors, insulators, and electric charges.
5
Things you can do with diodes
Paying homage to the component we usually don't think about.
6
The magic of DC-DC voltage conversion (2023)
Resistor-based dividers, linear regulators, buck converters, and other ways to adjust voltages.
7
It's all a blur
Designing a slightly sneaky blur filter and then poking holes in it.
8
Folks, we have the best π
And some novel ideas for bicycle wheel design.
9
A requiem for amateur chemistry
Bidding farewell to classic experiments.
10
Is the frequency domain a real place?
Dissing Fourier, exploring the Hadamard-Walch transform, and making square-wave spectrograms.
11
It's hard to build an oscillator
Especially if you want it to work.
12
Signal reflections in electronic circuits
What are "signal reflections", really? And do they matter in circuit design?
13
The basics of decoupling capacitors
How to stabilize digital supply voltages - and why most of the online advice on this topic is suspect.
14
How do transistors work, anyway?
The internet is littered with explanations of how transistors work. Most of them don't really explain anything.
15
How has mathematics gotten so abstract?
What's the meaning of "numbers" and "arithmetic operations"? We consult Georg Cantor's turtles and look at Giuseppe Peano's code.
16
The 101 of analog signal filtering (2024)
Some intuition about this topic can be developed without summoning the ghost of Pierre-Simon Laplace.
17
How many dimensions is this?
A degree in mathematics might not save you from stacking boxes for a living.
18
Not so fast, Mr. Fourier
A real explanation of discrete Fourier transform (DFT, FFT), discrete cosine transform (DCT), and their inverses.
19
Deep dive: the instability of op-amps
A closer look at op-amp feedback loops and the stability criteria for circuits that use them.
20
The marvelous disappearing capacitor
The performance of photodiode amplifiers can be improved in a clever way.