The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,805 posts.
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…
The first "pro" ST
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.
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…
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.
The bizarre story of how taking flash photos could instantly crash the Raspberry Pi 2, the community detective work that solved it, and why this strange bug revealed fundamental flaws in modern chip design.
Hitting 2 petawatts, the NSF-funded ZEUS facility at U-M enables research that could improve medicine, national security, materials science and more.
Well it happened. PG&E has dropped the facade of necessary rate increases because of system upgrades, and they have come out and said what…
In the spirit of my thermostat and dishwasher controller , I managed to cobble together a decent blinds opener in a short weekend almost entirely from spare parts on hand. This design is very much what I could do quickly with what I had, so probably not worth copying, but perhaps it can be an inspiration.
If you look for information about the Macintosh Plus and its ROM, you’ll usually find that the ROM has a capacity of 128 KB and that it exists in three revisions . But that’s incorrect: there’s a fourth ROM, 256 KB in size, which includes fonts for kanji (Japanese characters). And I found (and preserved) this ROM. I’m…
In this post, I’ll explain how I compiled an OCaml program to run on a TI-84+ CE calculator. 🐪
Simple tools for smart, attractive people like you
It's not you. HDR confuses tons of people. In this post, we finally explain what HDR actually means, the problem it presents, and three ways to solve it.
Branch Privilege Injection ( CVE-2024-45332 ) brings back the full might of branch target injection attacks (Spectre-BTI) on Intel. Intel’s hardware mitigations against these types of attacks have held their ground for almost 6 years. In our work, we demonstrate how these mitigations can be broken due to a race…
I often get distracted. I obviously don’t like it. So I decided to turn my computer’s clock into a constant reminder to help me focus. Implementation This hack requires: Ubuntu with GNOME desktop environment The Panel Date Format extension A simple bash script 1. Install the Panel Date Format extension # If you don't…
In 1985, Intel introduced the groundbreaking 386 processor, the first 32-bit processor in the x86 architecture. To improve performance, the ...
One of my longest-running projects has been an open hardware Ethernet switch. This has been one of the key driving forces behind many of my other projects, such as ngscopeclient and the high speed probes. It was also the project that got me into high speed digital design.
I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go to space. —— Stephen Hawking Starlink is a low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet service provided by SpaceX. Users connect to near-Earth orbit satellites through a user terminal, which then connects to the internet via ground gateways. Basic Starlink network…
It began with a spark—a dormant passion reignited after many years away from motorcycling. Life had steered me in different directions, away from the saddle, but something deep inside pulled me back to the thrill and freedom that only riding offers. Returning to motorcycling after such an extended hiatus was daunting…
I have a Tektronix TDS 684B oscilloscope that I bought cheaply at an auction. It has 4 channels, 1 GHz of BW and a sample rate of 5 Gsps. Those are respectable numbers even by today’s standards. It’s also the main reason why I have it: compared to modern oscilloscopes, the other features aren’t nearly as impressive…
One of my favorite joys is exploring a city late at night on rollerblades. I’ve been doing it fairly regularly for about 10 years now, first in Boston and then in NYC. Every time day turns to night and back again a city takes a breath. At night people flow out or huddle up in buildings, leaving the streets clear for…
Deep dive into mechanical design that is optimized for 3d-printing.
(Hat tip to the late Bill Strauss and The Capitol Steps' Lirty Dies.) A few moons ago I was thinking of ways to take my Palm OS Fossil Wr...
A place to play around with technology and make it easy and fun
You might think that Apple, Commodore or perhaps Radio Shack made the first personal computer, but you’d be wrong.
Today, we are glad to announce that ESP32-C5 is now in mass production.
Jailbreaking an old Kindle and turning it into a school dashboard using Cloudflare Workers, Puppeteer, and image processing.
Breakthrough material could transform aerospace, defense and industrial applications.
How I built a simple portable audio player for my boy, summoning the spirit of the Gameboy
