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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,807 posts.
Hardware & Electronics
Any year
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Pine64 Februrary Update: Show and Tell
Welcome to this month’s community update. As many of you know, we have now entered the Chinese New Year (CNY) period, which means that all manufacturing and related business activities have ground to a halt. It is always a mad rush to complete ongoing work prior to CNY, but now that the festive period is upon us we…
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What ever happened to scandium bike frames? (2016)
Blog about bikes and cycling from an industry insider
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FIDO2 security key company releases hardware that's open source and uses Rust
Our Kickstarter campaign for our next generation of Solo products launches on January 26th. To get alerted when the campaign is live, you can sign up here. Update: The campaign is now live! Check it out to see all the details. Humble beginnings I've been working on Solo for almost 3 years now. It started back when I…
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External boot disks still don’t work properly with M1 Macs
Making an external bootable SSD for an M1 Mac has proved tricky. Has this changed in macOS 11.2? If you’ve already got 11.1 running on one, how do you update it to 11.2?
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A simple 11.2 GHz radio telescope (Hardware) (2020)
Abstract : In this post we describe the construction of a small amateur radio telescope operating at
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Turning an old Amazon Kindle into a eInk development platform
I fancied getting an eink screen to use for future projects. I bought a wee one with a raspberry pi "hat" attached. However, I realised later that I could maybe just re-purpose an old Amazon Kindle eb…
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A one-bit processor explained: reverse-engineering the vintage MC14500B
The Motorola MC14500B 1 is a 1-bit processor introduced in 1976. While a 1-bit processor might seem almost useless, 2 it was marketed as...
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Bluetooth Trackball Mark II
I made a Bluetooth trackball in which all the electronics are inside the ball. The ball is the entire trackball. Here it is in action: I...
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RISC-V isn’t as interesting as you think
I had wrote this before the Unleashed was revealed, so some of the bits on economics have changed. As of writing this, I still stand by my other beliefs. One of the most hyped things in hardware design is RISC-V,… Continue reading →
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AirPods Max: An Audiophile Review
Surprising sound let down by serious comfort problems
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What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier
Wirecutter is obsessed with the humidifier that untold numbers of purchasers despise
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Chrome 89 Beta: advanced hardware interactions, web sharing on desktop
Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome beta channel release for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, macOS, and Wi...
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IBM paperweight teardown: Reverse-engineering 1970s memory chips
I recently received a vintage IBM paperweight from the early 1970s that showcases some memory chips. 1 When IBM started using integrated ...
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Apple Silicon M1 supports “billion of colors” a.k.a. HDR 10-bit output
When most people hear Apple in a sentence, their next thought is likely the color. Does Apple Silicon M1 output “billion colors”?
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Achieving 11M IOPS and 66 GB/S IO on a Single ThreadRipper Workstation
TL;DR Modern disks are so fast that system performance bottleneck shifts to RAM access and CPU. With up to 64 cores, PCIe 4.0 and 8 memory channels, even a single-socket AMD ThreadRipper Pro workstation makes a hell of a powerful machine - if you do it right! Update 1: Since 2021, networks have gotten faster and now…
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Opening Up the Samsung Q60 Series Smart TV (2019)
True cyber security combines advanced technology and best practice. Get tips and read articles on how to take your online security even further.
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Netflix and Spotify on a Raspberry Pi 4 with Chromium and Widevine
As of 3-30-2020, if you want the “paste-one-line-it-just-works” go to: vpetkov.net/2020/03/30/raspberry-pi-netflix-one-line-easy-install-along-with-hulu-amazon-prime-disney-plus-hbo-spotify-pandora-and-many-others/ ^^^ Please use the post linked above for my “one-line it just works” install ^^^ (Ignore everything…
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Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II
Less than a month ago, I began investigating the Apple M1 GPU in hopes of developing a free and open-source driver. This week, I’ve reached a second milestone: drawing a triangle with my own open-source code. The vertex and fragment shaders are handwritten in machine code, and I interface with the hardware via the…
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Sony News Portable Workstation NWS-1250 (2020)
We do not see many vintage Japanese workstations in the West. We also do not see many portable workstations (of any make). So, what we really rarely see, are Japanese portable workstations. I feel …
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Radio users reminded not to use radios in crimes
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is the national association for amateur radio, connecting hams around the U.S. with news, information and resources.
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Intel Problems
Intel is in much more danger than its profits suggest; the problems are a long time in the making, and the solution is to split up the company.
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Soyuz spacecraft digital clock teardown
We recently obtained a clock that flew on a Soyuz space mission. 1 The clock, manufactured in 1984, is much more complex inside than you'd ...
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Raspberry Pi Lego Sorter
Raspberry Pi is at the heart of this AI-powered, automated sorting machine that's capable of recognising and sorting any LEGO brick.