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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.
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 459 posts.
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The FPGA turns 40
This year marks the 40th anniversary of one of the most exciting and interesting aspects of electronic engineering: the FPGA. The first commercially viable FPGA introduced in 1985 was the Xilinx XC2064, which provided developers with 64 configurable logic blocks, each with a three-input look-up tables. From tiny…
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TI to invest $60B to manufacture foundational semiconductors in the U.S.
Leading U.S. companies Apple, Ford, Medtronic, NVIDIA and SpaceX strengthen partnerships with TI to unleash the next era of American innovation
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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…
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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.
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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…
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Honda conducts successful launch and landing of experimental reusable rocket
Honda Global | Honda R&D Co., Ltd., a research and development subsidiary of Honda Motor Co., Ltd., today conducted a launch and landing test of an experimental reusable rocket*1 (6.3 m in length, 85 cm in diameter, 900 kg dry weight/1,312 kg wet weight) developed independently by Honda. The test was completed…
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KiCad and Wayland Support
The KiCad development team frequently receives questions about our support for Wayland. Given that Fedora and Ubuntu are both planning to drop X11 support from their main desktop environments in the near future, we want to provide clear, transparent guidance to our users about the current state of Wayland support in…
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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)
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Real-time CO2 monitoring without batteries or external power
< (From left) Master's Student Gyurim Jang, Professor Kyeongha Kwon > KAIST (President Kwang ...
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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…
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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…
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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.
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AMD's AI Future Is Rack Scale 'Helios'
Key Announcements from AMD Advancing AI 2025
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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 ...
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First 2D, non-silicon computer developed
In a world first, a team led by researchers at Penn State used two-dimensional materials, which are only an atom thick and retain their properties at that scale, unlike silicon, to develop a computer capable of simple operations. The advancement, published in Nature, represents a major leap toward the realization of…
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Why does my ripped CD have messed up track names? And why is one track missing?
A delve into CD ripping and metadata
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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
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Why Android can't use CDC Ethernet (2023)
A detective story with a silly ending
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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
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The iPhone 15 Pro’s Depth Maps
Benchmarks & Tips for Big Data, Hadoop, AWS, Google Cloud, PostgreSQL, Spark, Python & More...
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The Right to Repair Is Law in Washington State
Thanks in part to your support, the right to repair is now law in Washington.Gov. Bob Ferguson signed two bills guaranteeing Washingtonians' right to access tools, parts, and information so they can fix personal electronics, appliances, and wheelchairs. This is the epitome of common-sense...
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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…
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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…
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Atari Means Business with the Mega ST
The first "pro" ST
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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.
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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…
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Worlds first petahertz transistor at ambient conditions
In a groundbreaking international effort, researchers demonstrated a way to to manipulate electrons using pulses of light that last less than a trillionth of a second to record electrons bypassing a physical barrier almost instantaneously.