481
Bought myself an Ampere Altra system
There are tools and there are toys. I bought myself a tool.
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,044 posts.
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482
Transmitting data via ultrasound without any special equipment
There are secret messages flying all around you all the time, being transmitted via, most of the time, electromagnetic waves going from antenna to antenna. ELOs “Secret Messages” is a song about posting conspiracy theories via WiFi. But what if you need to get a few bytes from device A to device B (one of the hard…
483
Reading NFC Passport Chips in Linux
For boring and totally not nefarious reasons, I want to read all the data contained in my passport's NFC chip using Linux. After a long and annoying search, I settled on roeften's pypassport. I can now read all the passport information, including biometrics. Table of ContentsBackgroundRecreating the MRZPython code to…
484
Finding a 27-year-old easter egg in the Power Mac G3 ROM
I was recently poking around inside the original Power Macintosh G3’s ROM and accidentally discovered an easter egg that nobody has documented until now.
485
Basic Facts about GPUs
Making sure I don’t forget what I read.
486
Using an $8 smart outlet to avoid brainrot
I wrote a small script that runs in the background, polling for the state of an $8 smart plug .
487
TPU Deep Dive
I've been working with TPUs a lot recently and it's fun to see how they had such different design philosophies compared to GPUs.
488
PWM flicker: Invisible light that's harming our health?
I recently spent a few weeks running a conference for a community of researchers and writers in a historic chateau in the French…
489
My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server
How I turned an old iPhone 8 into a solar-powered OCR server using Apple's Vision framework. Running 24/7 off-grid, processing thousands of images.
490
From SDR to 'Fake HDR': Mario Kart World on Switch 2
Nintendo's Switch 2, launched with Mario Kart World, suffers from inadequate HDR implementation despite industry standards. The game qualifies "fake HDR," using SDR-first methods that limit color and dynamic range. Developers must prioritize HDR from the outset to truly leverage its potential and enhance visual…
491
A brief, incomplete, and mostly wrong history of robotics
(An homage to one of my favorite pieces on the internet: A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages)
492
Modifying an HDMI dummy plug's EDID using a Raspberry Pi
I recently found myself needing to change the monitor that a cheap HDMI “dummy plug” pretended to be. It was a random one I had bought on Amazon several years ago that acted as a 4K monitor, and I needed it to be something simpler that didn’t support a 4K resolution. The story behind why is a long one that I’m still…
493
How to modify Starlink Mini to run without the built-in WiFi router
The Starlink Mini terminal is designed as a compact, all-in-one solution with an integrated Wi-Fi router. While this design is ideal for typical consumer use, certain applications—such as custom networking setups, embedded installations, or power-constrained environments—may benefit from removing the internal router…
494
Infinite Grid of Resistors
There is a well-known puzzle based on the premise of an �infinite� grid of resistors connecting adjacent nodes of a square lattice. A small portion of such a grid is illustrated below.
495
AMD's AI Future Is Rack Scale 'Helios'
Key Announcements from AMD Advancing AI 2025
496
Inside the Apollo “8-Ball” FDAI (Flight Director / Attitude Indicator)
During the Apollo flights to the Moon, the astronauts observed the spacecraft's orientation on a special instrument called the FDAI (Flight ...
497
Why does my ripped CD have messed up track names? And why is one track missing?
A delve into CD ripping and metadata
498
Cray versus Raspberry Pi
Content copyright © 1995 - 2025 to Bruce Simpson (aka Aardvark), the logo was kindly created for Aardvark Daily by the folks at aardvark.co.uk
499
Why Android can't use CDC Ethernet (2023)
A detective story with a silly ending
500
What you need to know about EMP weapons
Content copyright © 1995 - 2025 to Bruce Simpson (aka Aardvark), the logo was kindly created for Aardvark Daily by the folks at aardvark.co.uk
501
502
The iPhone 15 Pro’s Depth Maps
Benchmarks & Tips for Big Data, Hadoop, AWS, Google Cloud, PostgreSQL, Spark, Python & More...
503
Whatever happened to cheap eReaders?
Way back in 2012, The Guardian reviewed an eInk reader which cost a mere £8. The txtr beagle was designed to be a stripped-down and simplified eReader. As far as I can tell, it never shipped. There were a few review units sent out but I can't find any evidence of consumers getting their hands on one. Also, that £8…
504
Root shell on a credit card terminal
In this project, I started to reverse engineer payment card terminals because they seemed to be an interesting target for security research, given the high stakes involved. Although I initially didn’t know much about this industry, I did expect a ton of security features and a very security-hardened device. And to…
505
Atari Means Business with the Mega ST
The first "pro" ST
506
Negotiating PoE+ Power in the Pre‑Boot Environment
Solving a boot-time power challenge on PoE+ x86 systems by creating our own UEFI app to handle LLDP power negotiation at the firmware level, allowing our machines to request higher power from network switches before the OS loads.
507
Why the original Macintosh had a screen resolution of 512×324
Many classic Macs came with — or supported — displays running at 512x384 pixels, but many compact Macs, ranging from the original 1984 machine up through 1991’s Macintosh Classic II had built-in CRTs running at 512x342 pixels. That covers all black-and-white compact Macs with a 9-inch screen. The later Color Classic…
508
The Xenon Death Flash: How a Camera Nearly Killed the Raspberry Pi 2
The bizarre story of how taking flash photos could instantly crash the Raspberry Pi 2, the community detective work that solved it, and why this strange bug revealed fundamental flaws in modern chip design.
509
Building my own solar power system
Well it happened. PG&E has dropped the facade of necessary rate increases because of system upgrades, and they have come out and said what…
510
$30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)
In the spirit of my thermostat and dishwasher controller , I managed to cobble together a decent blinds opener in a short weekend almost entirely from spare parts on hand. This design is very much what I could do quickly with what I had, so probably not worth copying, but perhaps it can be an inspiration.