1531
Brilliant Hardware in the Valley of the Software Slump
Our software feels less refined as our hardware achieves platonic ideals
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 3,045 posts.
Hardware & Electronics
Any year
1532
Programming in the Sun: A Year with the Daylight Computer
I’ve been hinting on X/Twitter about my use of the Daylight DC-1 as a programming environment, and after about a year of use, it’s time to write about it in longer form. This isn’t a full product review, but rather an experience report on coding in sunlight. It’s also about the Boox Tab Ultra – which has a different…
1533
Monitoring my weather at home
Weather is often hyper-local. For example, trying to suss out the temperature this morning:
1534
Projects: hijack (Hijacking the iPhone earphone jack)
Hijacking power and bandwidth from the mobile phone's audio interface. Creating a cubic-inch peripheral sensor ecosystem for the mobile phone.
1535
Notes on the Pentium's microcode circuitry
Most people think of machine instructions as the fundamental steps that a computer performs. However, many processors have another layer of ...
1536
1537
How many billions of transistors in an iPhone processor?
In about 10 years, Apple has multiplied by 19 the number of transistors in its mobile processors. It corresponds roughly to a steady rate of improvement of 34% per year on the number of transistors, or a doubling every 2.5 years. In real dollars, an iPhone has roughly a constant price: the price tag of … Continue…
1538
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…
1539
How is portable AM radio possible?
If AM radio antennas were as long as a quarter wavelength of the carrier signal, you'd need an antenna as long as a football field.
1540
Walkie-Textie Wireless Communicator
The Walkie-Textie is a simple handheld device with a 12-key keypad and OLED display that allows you to send and receive text messages using the LoRa wireless protocol. It's ideal for situations where there's no mobile signal, such as when you're camping or hiking in a remote area, when you don't want the cost of a…
1541
Refurb weekend: the Symbolics MacIvory Lisp machine I have hated
Every collector has that machine, the machine they sunk so much time and, often, money into that they would have defenestrated it years ago...
1542
Lumen: Auto brightness based on screen contents
Lumen is a menu bar application for macOS that magically sets the screen brightness based on your screen contents.
1543
The basics of decoupling capacitors
How to stabilize digital supply voltages - and why most of the online advice on this topic is suspect.
1544
Mechanical Keyboard Sounds – A listening Museum
36 mechanical keyboards. Click. Type. Listen. From IBM Model M (1985) to modern thocky customs.
1545
1546
Hacking the Humane AI Pin
On February 18, 2025, Humane announced it would be shutting down all services for the always online Humane Ai Pin in ten days, following a sale to HP . I had been vaguely aware of the Ai Pin, definitely more so than the average tech person, as I have a close friend who was one of the earliest adopters and eventually…
1547
Framework 13 AMD 7040 Series: A Developer's First Impressions
My Initial experience with this brand new modular laptop
1548
1549
How to Track Your Kids (and Other People's Kids) with the TicTocTrack Watch
Do you ever hear those stories from your parents along the lines of "when I was young..." and then there's a tale of how risky life was back then compared to today. You know, stuff like having to walk themselves to school without adult supervision, crazy stuff like that
1550
Evolving my ergonomic setup (or, my laptop with extra steps)
My computer setup attracts attention when I'm out and about. This has two effects: engineers [1] ask me about it, and everyone else ignores me. These effects are not undesirable, but further testing is required.
1551
The End of an Athlon
When I was researching the mess related to strange and poorly documented CPUID bits in the Athlon MP and XP processors , I had to swap a lot of CPUs. This was uneventful in most cases… but only most.
1552
Ultrasonic Payments
Experimenting with ultrasonic data transmission in JavaScript as a payment method.
1553
Floppy Disks: It’s Too Late
Someone has to break it to you, and that person is me. It’s over. You waited too long. You procrastinated or made excuses or otherwise didn’t think about it or care. You didn’t do…
1554
ThinkPad 560E
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…
1555
Making Electronic Calipers
Have you ever wished for a 500 Hz, millimeter-precise linear position sensing system? Well you're in luck --- all you need is some circuit board, a basic microcontroller, and a wee bit of maths!
1556
A 74xx-Defined Radio (2021)
Video Appetizer TLDR I built a shortwave radio receiver from scratch using only cheap and easily available components, i.e. standard transistors, op-amps and 74xx logic chips. No typical radio part…
1557
Tiny transformer inside: Decapping an isolated power transfer chip
I saw an ad for a tiny chip 1 that provides 5 volts 2 of isolated power: You feed 5 volts in one side, and get 5 volts out the other si...
1558
Samsung's abandoned NX cameras can be brought online with a $20 LTE stick
Tooting photos on the go from Samsung WiFi cameras with a $20 LTE stick
1559
Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time
This computer was so good and so far out there, we didn't know what we had.
1560