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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 421 posts.
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A guide to getting started with embedded systems
In this article, I share a beginner friendly guide to learning the basics of embedded systems and how they work. I talk about micontrollers, electronics, and software. I also share my motivation for working on embedded systems.
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Cameras and Open Source Smartphones: It’s Complicated
Purism makes premium phones, laptops, mini PCs and servers running free software on PureOS. Purism products respect people's privacy and freedom while protecting their security.
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Why do USB-C hubs still have USB 2.0 ports? (2021)
[If USB2.0 is too boring, learn about the details of 50 different Thunderbolt-4 docks – yep you read that right, there are 50 different models – find out which ones are identical inside…
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Can a laptop from 2012 be a viable home server?
I took a spare ThinkPad T430 and put all my home server workloads on it. Here's how it went.
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Oxygen Candles: Providing Emergency Air
Oxygen candles are used as a backup source of breathable air inside refuge chambers, making them ideal for emergency situations underground.
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The Beautiful Diablo 2 Resurrected Machine
The last game I played extensively was "Diablo 2" during the year 2000 when Internet finally became affordable in France. I loved that it was a difficult game to master, I loved the mandatory grinding which made accomplishments meaningful. I loved to trade and the economy players invented.
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Tidbyt hardware display device: a review
A tabletop LED display for quiet data
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Home Made TPM2.0 Module
Introduction With the recent launch of Windows 11 Microsoft also made having a hardware TPM module mandatory. Although this technology is not new (it was introduced in Windows 10 and Windows Server…
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The PalmOS powered wristwatch from Fossil
Imagine a smartwatch you could load any PalmOS app you wanted onto. We had that... about 20 years ago.
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How do you power a rocket engine?
This article discusses different types of rocket engine cycles, from pressure-fed through gas generator, to full-flow staged combustion.
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I built an open-source, AI-powered solar panel that's 95% optimal
This research demonstrates a model-free approach to optimize the energy produced by a dual-axis solar panel using reinforcement learning. Specifically, a softmax actor-critic agent optimizes energy production in a simulated, dynamic lighting environment which is generated from real power data. All s
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E Ink Gallery 3
E Ink Holdings Inc. (8069.TWO), based on technology from MIT’s Media Lab, is an ideal display medium for applications spanning eReaders and eNotes, retail, home, hospital, transportation and more, enabling customers to put displays in locations previously impossible. E Ink’s electrophoretic display products make it…
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No, you can’t save £30 per year by switching off your “standby” devices
Every few years, a dodgy stat does the rounds claiming you can save £££ if you switch off all your gadgets at the wall. The standby mode of your TV is bleeding you dry!!! Energy Saving Trust@EnergySvgTrustA quick way to #saveenergy at home is to turn off tablets, laptops and consoles as soon as you stop using them…
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MIT researchers develop a paper thin loudspeaker
MIT researchers created an ultrathin loudspeaker that can turn any rigid surface into a high-quality, active audio source. The fabrication process can enable the thin-film devices to be produced at scale.
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Reversing a 2.4GHz Remote Control
I have an old project on Github called rf-car for controlling a radio car with HackRF. A few months ago, my daughter received a new RC car made by Dickie Toys :
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High-Security Mechanical Locks (2020)
Outside of a very few specialized fields high-security locks are almost totally unknown. Even in the field of locksmithing where high-security locks are known, they are often misunderstood. Today I am going to offer you a primer on the fascinating world of high-security mechanical locks, the securit
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How macOS manages M1 CPU cores
From the 8 cores of the original M1 chip to the M1 Ultra’s 20, this is how macOS manages threads from apps, services and other code.
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Patching an embedded synthesiser OS from 1996 with Ghidra
For reasons I won't get into, I've been working on a tricky reverse engineering puzzle recently: how to patch the operating system of a 26-year-old synthesizer. To be specific, the Kurzweil K2500, a...
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The digital ranging system that measured the distance to the Apollo spacecraft
During the Apollo missions to the Moon, a critical task for NASA was determining the spacecraft's position. To accomplish this, they devel...
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My upgrade to 25 Gbit/s Fiber To The Home
My favorite internet service provider, init7, is rolling out faster speeds with their infrastructure upgrade. Last week, the point of presence (POP) that my apartment’s fiber connection terminates in was upgraded, so now I am enjoying a 25 Gbit/s fiber internet connection!
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Home lab beginners guide (2021)
My home lab in a 12U rack as of March 2026. What is a Home Lab? Think of a home lab as a place where you can fail in the privacy of your own home. As
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M1 Thunderbolt ports don’t fully support USB 3.1 Gen 2
It’s limited to 5 Gb/s, giving read rates of about 400 MB/s and writes at about 430 MB/s. Fine for Time Machine backups, but bad with NVMe drives.
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Intel deprecates SGX on Core series processors
A newer version of this document is available. Customers should click here to go to the newest version.
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How is the free firmware for the Raspberry progressing?
Raspberry Pi computers require a piece of non-free software to boot — the infamous raspi-firmware package. But for almost as long as there has been a Raspberry Pi to talk of (this year it turns 10 years old!), there have been efforts to get it to boot using only free software. How is it progressing?
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The Apple-1's shift-register memory
Apple's first product was the Apple-1 computer, introduced exactly 46 years ago, on April 11, 1976. This early microcomputer used an unus...