271
Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid
Modern cars are computers on wheels that send home nonstop telemetry about you. In this post I remove my 2024 RAV4 Hybrid's modem and GPS to prevent that :)
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,805 posts.
Hardware & Electronics
Any year
272
HDD Firmware Hacking
Do you know how a hard drive works? Come find out with me as I dump, reverse engineer, and modify the firmware on various HDDs and SSDs.
273
RTX 5090 and M4 MacBook Air: Can It Game?
What if you could strap a full desktop GPU to your MacBook Air? Turns out, you can.
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MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble
MacBook Neo processor: Apple's A18 Pro, the iPhone 16 Pro chip. Geekbench 6: 3,569 single-core, between M3 and M4. Full CPU benchmarks, thermals, and $699.
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My graduation cap runs Rust
Eric Park's website
276
Preserving Fisher-Price Pixter
Dmitry.GR: Fisher-Price Pixter: From unknown and obscure to fully documented, emulated, and preserved
277
Running local models on an M4 with 24GB memory
Experiments with getting usable outputs out of local models on a standard Macbook
278
Serving a website on a Raspberry Pi Zero running in RAM
My micro site, zero.btxx.org , is being served to the public internet from a Raspberry Pi Zero v1.3 running Alpine Linux.
279
PC Engine CPU
You are seeing this because the administrator of this website has set up Anubis to protect the server against the scourge of AI companies aggressively scraping websites. This can and does cause downtime for the websites, which makes their resources inaccessible for everyone.
280
An Introduction to Meshtastic
Discover Meshtastic: a community-driven, open-source project using LoRa radios for long-range, off-grid communication.
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The Serial TTL connector we deserve
Goodbye dangling Dupont pins, hello Julet E-Bike connector. I have them now everywhere, from my router to my servers.
283
Light without electricity? Glowing algae could make it possible
CU Boulder researchers have developed 3D-printable materials embedded with living bioluminescent algae that can produce sustained light.
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What makes a good smartphone camera?
There are lots of things that affect the quality of photographs. The biggest one is the skill of the photographer behind the camera.
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Removable batteries in smartphones will be mandatory in the EU starting in 2027
Starting in 2027, smartphone batteries will once again be replaceable in the EU. Learn all about the new regulation and what this means for users.
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Batteries Not Included, or Required, for These Smart Home Sensors
Engineering and computing researchers create simple metal tags with unique ultrasonic fingerprints to detect door openings and other movements.
289
Comparing the Z80 and 6502 to Their Relatives
Last week’s adventures with the Exidy Sorcerer led me to write a Z80 version of the LZ4 decompressor I’d previously used on the SNES, the CoCo, and the Genesis. At this point, this has …
290
Why does it take so long to release black fan versions?
Wonder why chromax.black fans take longer to launch? Black colouring additives alter how advanced polymers mould, meaning they require entirely new toolings and months of testing.
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Discovering hard disk physical geometry through microbenchmarking (2019)
Modern hard drives store an incredible amount of data in a small space, and are still the default choice for high-capacity (though not highest-performance) storage. While hard drives have been around since the 1950s, the current 3.5″ form factor (actually 4″ wide) appeared in the early 1980s. Since then, the capacity…
292
The USB Situation
I write this from the latest MacBook Pro. I've been running this as my primary machine for almost a month. When I'm not grinding out the latest soon-to-be-relea
293
I built my own hair electrolysis machine
Axiom: body hair is cringe. That's how I feel, at least. I decided to build a machine that lets me permanently remove it using electricity.
294
How I leared what a decoupling capacitor is for, the hard way
I was very excited to get the latest version of my PCB from the manufacturer.
295
USB Cheat Sheet (2022)
I spend time investigating a non-existing bug today because I misunderstood a USB term. So I made myself a cheat sheet. Maybe it will save time to someone.
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The quiet resurgence of RF engineering
I've worked in the aerospace industry for the past 8 years, and for most of that time I felt like I could confidently say that RF engineering felt like it wa...
297
Mo RAM, Mo Problems (2025)
As a retro-computer enthusiast, it seems that parts are either insanely expensive or dirt cheap. If the first case has obvious problems, the second can also lead to issues.
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New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper
For years, the best way to get 10 gigabit networking on laptops was to buy an expensive, large, and hot 10 GbE Thunderbolt adapter. With new RTL8159-based 10G USB 3.2 adapters coming onto the market, the bulky adapters might be a thing of the past. Just look at the size of the thing in comparison to my Thunderbolt…
299
My audio interface has SSH enabled by default
I bought a Rodecaster Duo to solve some audio woes, and found that it has ssh enabled by default. I captured the firmware update process and created custom firmware to enable password authentication for ssh.
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Intel Arc Pro B70 Review
How does Intel's new Arc Pro B70 32GB professional GPU stack up against the competition in media editing, rendering, AI, CAD, and BIM applications?