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Reverse-engineering an airspeed/Mach indicator from 1977
How does a vintage airspeed indicator work? CuriousMarc picked one up for a project, but it didn't have any documentation, so I reverse-en...
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,807 posts.
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1832
Grayscale on 1-bit LCDs (2022)
Note: this post is also available in video format on YouTube . Some demo/ difference would be more obvious in video.
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How many AMD RX 7900 XTX's are defective?
I'm working on a project—a very dumb project, mind you—and I was trying to acquire the two current-gen flagship GPUs: an Nvidia RTX 4090, and an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX. In some weird stroke of luck (it has been difficult to find either in stock), I was able to get one of each this week. (lol at the size difference...)
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8086 Processor's microcode pipeline from die analysis
Intel introduced the 8086 microprocessor in 1978, and its influence still remains through the popular x86 architecture. The 8086 was a fai...
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Taking over a Dead IoT Company
5 years after NYCTrainSign collapsed, I investigate why the company failed and end up writing an exploit to take over their fleet.
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Raspberry Pi's Camera Module 3 adds autofocus and new Sony sensor
Raspberry Pi just announced their new Camera Module 3, which comes in four variations (standard and wide angle, normal and NoIR for infrared use), and costs $25 for the standard versions, and $35 for wide angle. That's a step up from the older Camera Module 2, which cost $25 and only came in a 'standard' focal length…
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Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 released
Time and CMOS image sensor technology has marched on since 2013. So today, we’re happy to announce the launch of Camera Module 3.
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Roland’s 50th Anniversary Concept Piano
Stunning and adventurous, Roland's 50th Anniversary Concept Piano combines sound, design, and connectivity into an instrument of the future.
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ESP32-P4: High-performance MCU with IO-connectivity and security features
Espressif is expanding its current portfolio to address the high-performance computation needs of IO-Rich, HMI, and AIoT applications.
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Caltech to launch space solar power technology demo into orbit
The launch represents the first in-situ test of the technology to harvest solar energy in space and transmit it to Earth.
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The (Almost) Definitive 486DX/50 Article
(Source: Infoworld, 25th May 1992, p56) We need to start at the beginning, because understanding the timeline of the 486 - Intel's 4th gener...
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Reverse Engineering the DualShock 4
This year I got a very special gift for Christmas: a broken DualShock 4. :smile:You may say it’s a relatively poor gift, but the person who gave me this know...
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Meta Quest Pro – Bad AR Passthrough
Introduction I have been taking pictures and making short video clips to demonstrate different aspects of the displays and optics of the Meta Quest Pro (MQP) for over a month. It was a bit of an on…
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Inside the 8086 processor's instruction prefetch circuitry
The groundbreaking 8086 microprocessor was introduced by Intel in 1978 and led to the x86 architecture that still dominates desktop and se...
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Building a Frankenstein 64
👶 From when Mosaic took over Gopher. 🏢 VP of Engineering @ Cloudflare 🕹️ Slightly addicted to retrocomputing 🔍 Hit Ctrl-K to Search
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Modeling my Grandpa with 3D Photogrammetry (2021)
Today I released a video about how—and why—I 3D Printed my Grandpa and put him on my bottle of ketchup. Watch it here. I sculpted a bust of my Grandpa in high school, gave it to my grandparents, got it back after he died and my Grandma moved out of her house (I wrote a tribute to my 'Grandpa Charlie'), and I kept on…
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USB-C done cheap: when 2 ports become 1 (2020)
How PC hardware is implementing USB-C in a way that may or may not violate standards.
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Raspberry Pi security alarm – the basics
In November last year — I started building a DIY security alarm system, using a Raspberry Pi as the controller. My plan was to make a self-sustained system, using proper alarm hardware — like PIR sensors and sirens. Integration with Home Assistant would be an add-on, not a requirement. I wanted the system to be as…
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What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition
Over at MacRumors, Hartley Charlton pointed out something that hadn’t crossed my mind: Historically, Apple released at least one new Mac model every year in the fourth quarter that runs between October and December, starting in 2001 with the launch of the iBook G3. This means that there has been a new Mac toward the…
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An M1 for Curl
A generous member of the wider curl community stepped up and donated an unused Mac mini m1 model to me to be used for curl development. Today it arrived at my home. An 8C CPU/16GB/1TB/8C GPU/1GbE model as per the sticker on the box. The m1 mac mini, still wrapped in plastic. Apple is not … Continue reading An m1 for…
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Installing an Ethernet card and video card and other upgrades for a Mac SE/30
But there’s only one slot, you say? It’s all a matter of using a clever part to adapt a pass-through.
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Accelerating zk-SNARKs - MSM and NTT algorithms on FPGAs with Hardcaml
In 2022 a consortium of companies ran an international competition, called the ZPrize, to advance the state of the art in “zero-knowledge” cryptography. We d...
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The 5GHz “Problem” for Wi-Fi Networks: DFS (2018)
Wi-Fi networking provides us with 2 bands for the operation of wireless LAN networks: the 2.4Ghz band and the 5GHz band. The 2.4GHz band has...
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Holography without Lasers: Hand-drawn Holograms (1999)
I've stumbled across a technique for drawing holograms directly upon a plastic plate by hand. It sounds impossible, but I've been sitting on the livingroom sofa making holographic images of floating polyhedra, words, 3D starfields, opaque objects, etc. No laser, no isolation table, no darkroom, no expensive film…