1111
Recovering “lost” treasure-filled floppy discs with an oscilloscope
There are many good, modern solutions for reading data off old floppy discs and drives. Perhaps the best is the Greaseweazle : it's capable,...
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 4,805 posts.
Hardware & Electronics
Any year
1112
What's New in CPUs Since the 80s and How Does It Affect Programmers?
My mental model of CPUs is stuck in the 1980s: basically boxes that do arithmetic, logic, bit twiddling and shifting, and loading and storing things in memory. I'm vaguely aware of various newer developments like vector instructions (SIMD) and the idea that newer CPUs have support for virtualization (though I have no…
1113
Compute Card, a Credit Card-Sized Compute Platform
Intel Newsroom delivers the latest news, announcements, and updates. Stay informed on Intel innovations.
1114
Manufacturing the Librem 5 USA Phone in the US
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.
1115
1116
iPad Pro M2
The new iPad Pro features superfast Wi-Fi 6E, ProRes video capture, a next-level Apple Pencil hover experience, and powerful features in iPadOS 16.
1117
1118
An invalid 68030 instruction accidentally allowed the Mac Classic II to boot
This is the story of how Apple made a mistake in the ROM of the Macintosh Classic II that probably should have prevented it from booting, but instead, miraculously, its Motorola MC68030 CPU accidentally prevented a crash and saved the day by executing an undefined instruction.
1119
1120
Is an Intel N100 or N150 a better value than a Raspberry Pi?
tl;dr: it depends. About one year ago, I bought an Intel N100 mini PC (specifically the GMKtec N100 NucBox G3) and compared it to the Raspberry Pi 5 8GB. A year later, and we have a newer $159 16GB version of that mini PC with a slightly-faster Intel N150, and a new 16GB Raspberry Pi 5. I re-ran all my benchmarks, and…
1121
Helix: A vision-language-action model for generalist humanoid control
Figure was founded with the ambition to change the world.
1122
Reversing Sinclair's amazing 1974 calculator hack - half the ROM of the HP-35
Register-level simulator of the Sinclair Scientific calculator
1123
1124
Samsung Family Hub for 2025 Update Elevates the Smart Home Ecosystem
The software update includes a more unified user experience across connected devices, enhancements to AI Vision Inside™, expanded Knox Security and more
1125
iPhone 12 withdrawn from French market for non-compliance with EU regulation
As market surveillance authority for radio equipment and responsible for controlling public exposure to electromagnetic fields, the ANFR runs inspections on mobile phones placed on the French market. 141 mobile phones, including Apple’s iPhone 12, have recently been tested to check compliance with limit SAR values…
1126
Picking up free lithium cells off the street and making them safe for use
This blog post reveals how you can salvage lithium cells from the many discarded, disposable vape devices that get littered in our towns and cities. With a pair of pliers and some bravery, I manage...
1127
When Solid State Drives Are Not That Solid
One night, one of the servers of our search API stopped processing indexing jobs for an unknown reason. See Algolia's process of diagnosing the problem.
1128
How to Read a Schematic
Schematics are our map to designing, building, and troubleshooting circuits. Understanding how to read and follow schematics is an important skill for any electronics engineer.
1129
Weird Al had 100 gigs of RAM
So many lines in that song have been surpassed, but RAM sticks out as something that hasn’t.
1130
How AlphaChip transformed computer chip design
Our AI method has accelerated and optimized chip design, and its superhuman chip layouts are used in hardware around the world. AlphaChip was one of the first reinforcement learning approaches used to solve a real-world engineering problem. It generates superhuman or comparable chip layouts in hours, rather than weeks…
1131
Body Hacking: Thoughts Regarding My Magnet Implant
I've had a magnet implanted in my finger for about three years. Here are some thoughts about having the implant and feeling a whole new world.
1132
Modifying an HDMI dummy plug's EDID using a Raspberry Pi
I recently found myself needing to change the monitor that a cheap HDMI “dummy plug” pretended to be. It was a random one I had bought on Amazon several years ago that acted as a 4K monitor, and I needed it to be something simpler that didn’t support a 4K resolution. The story behind why is a long one that I’m still…
1133
Should I buy ECC memory? (2015)
Jeff Atwood, perhaps the most widely read programming blogger, has a post that makes a case against using ECC memory . My read is that his major points are:
1134
Intel x86 documentation has more pages than the 6502 has transistors
Microprocessors have become immensely more complex thanks to Moore's Law, but one thing that has been lost is the ability to fully understan...
1135
A nearly perfect USB cable tester
Your USB cables may lie to your PC. Let me show you how to catch those.
1136
Chasing RFI Waves – Part Seven
Here is part seven (the final part) of my non-fiction work about the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia. You can also read parts one, two, three, four, five an…
1137
Y Combinator's Xerox Alto: restoring the legendary 1970s GUI computer
Alan Kay recently gave his 1970's Xerox Alto to Y Combinator and I'm helping with the restoration of this legendary system. The Alto was t...
1138
1139
How to build a windmill
Windmills have always fascinated me and for a long time I was dreaming of one day building my own. Where I live there are still machines from the 1600’s that are just as magnificent today as when they were first built. When you see one standing in a field rotating and converting passing air into usable energy they…
1140
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...