571
Turning my ESP32 into a DNS sinkhole to fight doomscrolling
A fun project that I learned a lot from.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,044 posts.
Hardware & Electronics
Any year
572
iMac G4(K)
A year ago I tried using an M1 iMac for work duty but its 21" screen took up too much room on my desk. After seeing Sean's video on Action Retro about putting an M4 Mac Mini inside an iMac G4 , I thought I'd give it a try.
573
Defragging my old Dell's UEFI NVRAM
I’m setting up an old Dell box (2011-era tech). I was migrating to some new boot drives and setting up grub on them again. Got to the point of deleting the old boot entries and adding new ones, and got an error like Could not prepare boot variable: No space left on device. Weird, because there weren’t that many EFI…
574
But good sir, what is electricity?
A quick look at the physics of conductors, insulators, and electric charges.
575
FAQ on Microsoft's topological qubit thing
Q1. Did you see Microsoft’s announcement?A. Yes, thanks, you can stop emailing to ask! Microsoft’s Chetan Nayak was even kind enough to give me a personal briefing a few weeks ago. Yest…
576
Thoughts on Daylight Computer
on the Amtrak from Denver to Sacramento When I get to write or read on a screen that’s reflecting the sun back at me instead of needing to be shielded from it, I get a dose of this feeling that this is what all computing could feel like. I want so much more of this in my life. This is a piece of hardware that makes me…
577
A vending machine, on the internet
These days, every new business seems to be a SaaS. I remember when software worked differently: you bought it, installed it, and used it without having to create an account, remember a password, or even connect to the internet. Your data lived on your C drive, and you were in control. Software was a tool, like a…
578
Sony FX-300 Jackal: A technological marvel of the late 70s (2021)
I’m a child of the 1970s and I’m glad I never knew about the Sony FX-300 “Jackal 300.” It would have been the ultimate unobtainable machine of my dreams…this, even des…
579
Surface-Stable Fractal Dither on Playdate
Rune Skovbo Johansen has a really sweet Surface-Stable Fractal Dithering technique, where the dither dots “stick” to 3D surfaces, yet the dot density adapts to the view distance and zoom level.
580
Homemade polarimetric synthetic aperture radar drone
Designing a cheap synthetic aperture radar mounted on FPV drone.
581
The 8-Bit Era's Weird Uncle: The TI-99/4A
It’s been awhile since I’ve looked at an architecture that’s completely new to me, and I haven’t done any since creating my new scheme for dedicated platform guides. I’…
582
TSMC faces tough choices amid rumors for Intel foundry collaboration
Following a routine board meeting that did not present any surprises to the market, TSMC executives, alongside Taiwan’s Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs, are set to engage in negotiations with the U.S.
583
The subtle art of designing physical controls for cars
Prototyping a concept for simpler, physical climate controls
584
Building a personal, private AI computer on a budget
As everyone is well aware, the world is still going nuts trying to develop more, newer and better AI tools. Mostly by throwing absurd amounts of money at the problem. Many of those billions go towards building cheap or free services that operate at a significant loss. The tech giants that run them all are hoping to…
585
Bad Smart Watch Authentication
IDO based smart watches are a security nightmare, and there's likely millions of them out there
586
Reverse-engineering and analysis of SanDisk High Endurance microSDXC card (2020)
As seen on Hackaday! TL;DR – The SanDisk High Endurance cards use SanDisk/Toshiba 3D TLC Flash. It took way, way more work than it should have to figure this out (thanks for nothing, SanDisk!…
587
YouTube audio quality – How good does it get? (2022)
You Tube is clearly used by a very large number of people. In general, they will be interested in watching videos of various types of content. One specific purpose is that it gets used to distribute, and make people aware of, audio recordings. A conversation on the “Pink Fish” webforum devoted to music and audio set…
588
PCBs, copper pours, ground planes, and you
A closer look at a fashion trend in printed circuit board design.
589
A story about restoring and upgrading a Commodore Amiga 1000
This is a story about restoring and upgrading a Commodore Amiga 1000, the first model of the Amiga series. Many of you might be familiar with the popular Amiga 500 or later models, but the Commodore Amiga 1000 was actually the first model of the Amiga series produced. I consider the A1000 a significant piece of home…
590
Enhancing your MIDI devices with Perl
This post also appeared on perl.com.
591
Building a T1D smartwatch for my son from scratch
The software from this project has been ported to the new Pebble watch here . Source code for the Pebble watchface is available here .
592
The Taylorator – All Your Frequencies Are Belong to Us
For the past two weeks or so, I've been working on constructing the Taylorator. The Taylorator is a piece of software which allows me to flood the FM broadcast band with Taylor Swift's music. No matter where you tune your radio, you will only be able to listen to her!
593
Reviving a Dead Audio Format: The Return of ZZM
Long-time readers will know that my first video game love was the text-mode video game slash creation studio ZZT. One feature of this game is the ability to ...
594
Proper decoupling capacitor practices, and why you should leave 100nF behind
Ever wondered why 100nF is a go-to value for decoupling capacitors? This number has pervaded in datasheets and electronics advice going back to the 1980s, and is still widely present in the datashe…
595
Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port
Brick your Steam Deck - one way or another…
596
An invalid 68030 instruction accidentally allowed the Mac Classic II to boot
This is the story of how Apple made a mistake in the ROM of the Macintosh Classic II that probably should have prevented it from booting, but instead, miraculously, its Motorola MC68030 CPU accidentally prevented a crash and saved the day by executing an undefined instruction.
597
Using eSIMs with devices that only have a physical SIM slot via a 9eSIM SIM car
Do you have a phone, tablet, or laptop (or, well, any device…) which will only take a physical SIM, but with which you’d like to use eSIMs?
598
UK's hardware talent is being wasted
Imperial, Oxford, and Cambridge produce world-class engineers. Yet post-graduation, their trajectory is an economic tragedy - and a hidden arbitrage opportunity.
599
600
Hacking the Yamaha DX9 to Turn It into a DX7 (2023)
A brief account of hacking the Yamaha DX9's firmware ROM to make its functionality more closely match the DX7.