The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 383 posts.
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.
You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace , the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately you're using a browser version that my anti-crawler precautions consider suspicious, most often because it's too old (most often this applies to versions…
One of the three basic circuit elements just got a lot smaller for the very first time, in what promises to be a trillion-dollar…
Short, medium, and long form tech projects. Detailed photos and build logs with benefits for paid subscribers.
Maker Harry was inspired by Handle, Boston Dynamics' research robot, yo build his own mini version named MABEL.
The Open 7400 Logic Competition is a crowd-sourced contest with a simple but broad criteria for entry: build something interesting out of discrete logic chips. It's now in its second year, and this time around I was inspired to enter it.
The Intel 8086 processor was introduced in 1978, setting the course of modern computing. While the x86 processor family has supported 64-b...
Since the Raspberry Pi 4 came out last year, we now have an excellent candidate to base the mini server on. The faster processor and option for up to 8GB of RAM opens up more possibilities for what you can do with it, including now being more than capable as a general Linux desktop system, so with all that in mind…
This page discusses how I added a microSD card to my reMarkable tablet . I did this because I want to develop software for my rM without wearing out the internal eMMC. I chose an external card because I want to be able to swap them easily; it also makes backups faster.
This post is a companion to the DEF CON 28 video available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLe-xW-Ws4c Breaking the Firmware of Samsung’s NFC Chips Recently I have been looking into how to push the capabilities of my old smartphones beyond what you could traditionally do just by rooting it. Smartphones contain…
Examining the extent of AVX related downclocking on Intel’s Ice Lake CPU
With recent chipsets, Intel offers a mechanism called Active Management Technology (Intel AMT, part of the “vPro”* featureset, specifically the Intel Management Engine) which, Intel says,“allows IT or managed service providers to better discover, repair, and protect their networked computing assets”. This means…
One under-appreciated characteristic of early microprocessors is the difficulty of distributing power inside the integrated circuit. While...
How to connect a 68k Mac to the internet without an ethernet card!
EDIT 2022-07-22: With the shutdown (or imminent shutdown) of the 2G/EDGE/3G network in the US I'm now switching to a BlackBerry Q10, which supports LTE and is able to run ConnectBot.
I built a 28-core gigabit cluster, Kraken, consisting of 7 Raspberry Pi 3 Model Bs.
Over 400 vulnerabilities on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip threaten mobile phones’ usability worldwide With over 3 billion users globally, smartphones are an %
Original Nanoprocessor prototypes from 1974-75. Note hand written wafer number, open die cover and early part number (94332)
Some years ago I decided to install a server at home for use as a NAS (network-attached storage) in my home network, and for an Internet-facing server. I live in a place where blackouts are very in…
Motivation Despite using a FTTH internet connection since 2014, aside from the one fiber uplink, I had always used network gear with 1 Gbit/s links over regular old rj45 cat5(e) cables. I liked the simplicity and uniformity of that setup, but decided it’s time to add at least one fiber connection, to get rid of a…
I’ve been idly looking for one of the mid-90s ThinkPads known to have perfect OpenStep/Rhapsody support for years as a fun collector piece, but been unwilling to pay eBay prices. The other week I scored a pristine IBM ThinkPad 560E for $20 in a Shopgoodwill auction, below is notes on getting it up and running, plus…
The Intel 8086 microprocessor is one of the most influential chips ever created; it led to the x86 architecture that dominates desktop an...
The keyboard is done! This is basically the result of what I've been working on for the past 2 months, which has involved 3 iterations of testing machines, over 100 printed switches, and now finally a keyboard that I can type on. Unfortunately it is not a very good keyboard, but you can't win them all.
Here's another iteration on the Zero Terminal projects I've been working on for a few years. For those of you who haven't seen them, I've been trying to design the most usable all in one Pi Zero computer out there.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the open RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) is the vector extension (RISC-V "V"). In contrast to the average single-instruction multipe-data (SIMD) instruction set, RISC-V vector instructions are vector length agnostic (VLA). Thus, a RISC-V "V" CPU is flexible in choosing a…
