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MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia
Today marks two years since I first set up an e-ink display in my mom’s apartment to help her live on her own with amnesia.
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,044 posts.
Hardware & Electronics
Any year
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A cycling desk / Zwifting with a split keyboard
Last summer I got into cycling. I've long been a standing desk-er, and going out for long zone 2 rides and wondering what to think about made me wonder: could I work at a desk while I cycle?
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3600 MHz Raspberry Pi 5 with Liquid Nitrogen
I tried everything but couldn’t turn this Raspberry Pi 5 into the World’s Fastest Pi 5. Unfortunately, we can’t quite claim that title.
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M4 Mac mini's efficiency
I had to pause some of my work getting a current-gen AMD graphics card running on the Pi 5 and testing a 192-core AmpereOne server to quickly post on the M4's efficiency. I expected M4 to be better than M1/M2 (I haven't personally tested M3), and I hoped it would at least match the previous total-system-power…
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Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages
How we bypassed Apple's regulatory restrictions, built a Faraday cage and enabled georestricted features on the Airpods Pro 2 for our grandparents.
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Testing the Z80 Chip with a 1970s Beauty
The Fairchild Sentry 610 was optimized for engineers
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Making Electronic Calipers
Have you ever wished for a 500 Hz, millimeter-precise linear position sensing system? Well you're in luck --- all you need is some circuit board, a basic microcontroller, and a wee bit of maths!
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Tracker Beeper (2022)
A week ago, I finally got round to implementing an idea I’d been toying with for years: what if your computer made a little bit of noise every time it sent data to Google? From studying logs, I’d long known just how many sites send all your visits and clicks to (at least) Google, but a log that you have to manually…
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What Every Developer Should Know About GPU Computing (2023)
A primer on GPU architecture and computing
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Looking into the Nintendo Alarmo
While everyone was waiting on news for the successor of the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo released the Alarmo. A small plastic alarm clock that ...
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Using an 8K TV as a Monitor
TLDR: If your job is to write code all day or stare at Excel spreadsheets, buy an 8K TV instead of a multi-monitor setup. You can even use the same TV for 4K 120 Hz gaming or watching movies as a bonus!
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Hacking the T2S+ Out of Fear: Get Lock-In Thermography for Free
Hacking the T2S+ v2 to work on computers, tear it down for the first time online, and play with lock-in thermography as a bonus!
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The motor turns too much
This instalment is about the "Bench Kona" I've built in the shed. Behold its questionable integrity:
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Debugging my wife's alarm clock
My wife's alarm clock has been acting up lately. Sporadic at first but then every day, it wouldn't blare in the morning at the set time. Instead, when it was supposed to go off it would... reset itself. The time would start flashing in that "I'm confused because the power went out" sort of way.
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Deep dive: the instability of op-amps
A closer look at op-amp feedback loops and the stability criteria for circuits that use them.
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ST Book, the Notebook Atari ST
A surprisingly innovative portable ST
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RISC-V is currently slow compared to modern CPUs
RISC-V is currently quite slow compared to modern CPUs in 2024.
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Can SpaceX land a rocket with 1/2 cm accuracy?
No. But they don’t need to. In preparation for the 5th test flight of Starship, SpaceX announced that they would try to catch the booster using “Mechazilla’s chopsticks.” Later du…
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Implementing neural networks on the "3 cent" 8-bit microcontroller
Bouyed by the surprisingly good performance of neural networks with quantization aware training on the CH32V003, I wondered how far this can be pushed. How much can we compress a neural network whi…
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Qualcomm cancels Snapdragon Dev Kit, refunds all orders
This afternoon I received the following email from Arrow, regarding the Snapdragon Developer Kit for Windows: Dear Valued Customer, Please see this important message from Qualcomm: ”At Qualcomm, we are dedicated to pioneering leading technology and delivering premium experiences to our valued customers. The launch of…
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Traveling with Apple Vision Pro
The Vision Pro has quickly become an essential item that I take onto every flight. It’s a fantastic device to travel with—Be it by train or by plane, it offers an unparalleled opportunity to …
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Sound Lab – A Simple Analogue Synthesiser
Sound Lab is an analogue synthesiser, consisting of six modules that can be combined in a variety of ways. It uses a single printed circuit board that doubles as the front panel and wiring, with surface-mount components and PCB-mounted controls to make the construction as easy as possible:
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Python client for the $20 Colmi R02 smart ring
Open source python client to read your data from the Colmi R02 family of Smart Rings. 100% open source, 100% offline.
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Why does FM sound better than AM?
Frequency modulation (FM) is more robust to noise than amplitude modulation (AM) because static itself is primarily a form of amplitude modulation.
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Refurb weekend: the Symbolics MacIvory Lisp machine I have hated
Every collector has that machine, the machine they sunk so much time and, often, money into that they would have defenestrated it years ago...
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Can you get root with only a cigarette lighter?
Before you can write an exploit, you need a bug. When there are no bugs, we have to get creative—that's where Fault Injection comes in. Fault injection can take many forms, including software-controlled data corruption, power glitching, clock glitching, electromagnetic pulses, lasers, and more.
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Could we build a computer designed to last at least fifty years? (2021)
The computer built to last 50 years par Ploum - Lionel Dricot.