Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 4,807 posts.
Hardware & Electronics
Any year
A “perfect coronal mass ejection” could be a nightmare
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is the national association for amateur radio, connecting hams around the U.S. with news, information and resources.
How Ebooks Have Poisoned Electronic Ink
It is the best of times for electronic ink but it is the worst of times for actually reading eBooks.
Non-PC compatible x86 computers (2007)
This is, so far, the only article of mine that's been completely deleted from Wikipedia. I've salvaged a copy of it from Search.com , since it's gone from the site's history now, and am putting it here until I decide what else to do with it. Non-PC compatible x86 computers For much of the time that…
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.
MakerBot Is Outsourcing Its Brooklyn Manufacturing Jobs to China
Discover MakerBot's classroom solutions: 3D printers, software, and certification that help teachers pioneer 3D printing in education.
48x32: A 1536 LED Game Computer
My children are hopelessly addicted to their gaming devices. This is a problem, but not one that I can directly solve because the school mandates that they have both an Android smartphone and a Windows laptop. Rather than to meet the problem head on I figured the better way to address it is to replace consumption with…
Macs with T2, M1 chips cannot be restored to factory state without Apple
Modern Apple computers can no longer be fully used and maintained in 100% offline environments, or in ways that will reasonably ensure that the computer is…
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...
Review of Linux on Minisforum V3 AMD Ryzen Tablet
Update: I have created an awesome-minisforum-v3 GitHub repository to list information for Minisforum V3 users, including some workarounds for the issues mentioned in this review. Quest for the Ideal
The inner beauty of a Tesla Stropkov DS 3600 telephone from the early 1980s
This is a DS 3600 analog telephone made by Tesla Stropkov in about 1982. It's still functional and to my mind it's absolutely beautiful. Bu...
Lisp Machine Inc. K-machine (2001)
Lisp Machine Inc. K-machine architecture
What makes a good smartphone camera?
There are lots of things that affect the quality of photographs. The biggest one is the skill of the photographer behind the camera.
Why aren't there any Open Source laser printers?
WordPress.com is the best place for your personal blog or business site.
Modeling the Magic Leap One Experience
Introduction In my last post, I discussed the process of building my Magic Leap One (ML1) view simulator model (hereafter referred to as “model”), and now I would like to show you what the view of …
ASRock BC-250: Building the Budget Steam Machine
My complete guide for setting up the ASRock BC-250. You can’t beat its price for performance, and it’s perfect for those who love tinkering with projects.
Wireless system can power devices inside the body
MIT researchers have developed a new way to power and communicate with devices implanted deep within the human body. Such devices could be used to deliver drugs, monitor conditions inside the body, or treat disease by stimulating the brain with electricity or light.
Magic Leap is a Tragic Heap
The title of this review was carefully chosen, not glibly. I want what is best for VR and all other technologies on the Reality–Virtuality Continuum, Magic Leap included. Unfortunately, their cur…
A giant 360 LED clock
A 360 leds clock on the wall
A PCIe Coral TPU Finally Works on Raspberry Pi 5
Coral.ai TPUs are AI accelerators used for tasks like machine vision and audio processing. Raspberry Pis are often integrated into small robotics and IoT products—or used to analyze live video feeds with Frigate. Until today, nobody I know of has been able to get a PCI Express Coral TPU working on the Raspberry Pi…
Patching the Wii News Channel to serve local news (2025)
In keeping with my passion (?) for displaying local news articles in unexpected places , I figured it would be a fun project to try and see what it would take to display current local news on the Nintendo Wii console’s News Channel .
The Factory Floor, Part 1 of 4: The Quotation (or, How to Make a BOM)
This month, I will be teaching a few MIT Media Lab graduate students and doing a bit of a “geek tour” of Shenzhen – we will visit several factories and live among the electronic markets to facilitate new directions and expand horizons in the students’ hardware-oriented research projects.
Amiga 2000 – Codename: Tesseract (2021)
Amiga 2000 - codename Tesseract - the first part of a series of posts about building an Amiga 2000 from scratch and adding mods to it.
A database of SMS cards: The technology inside IBM's 1960s mainframes
IBM's mainframes of the 1960s are based on an interesting technology - Standard Modular System cards or SMS cards. These cards, created in ...
86Box v4.0
Release for August 2023.
The unusual bootstrap drivers inside the 8086 microprocessor chip
The 8086 microprocessor is one of the most important chips ever created; it started the x86 architecture that still dominates desktop and ...
I didn't return my Apple Studio Display
The Apple Studio Display is, unquestionably, a very good monitor. But the real question is, should you pay €1,800+ for it? I have been asking that question myself for the past ten days. Today I decided that while I can't recommend it, I wil