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The most popular blog posts about hardware & electronics on Hacker News. 3,044 posts.

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393

Setting up Starlink

In March, I got an email from SpaceX saying Starlink was available at my address, and I could pre-order. I paid $500 for the equipment, plus $25 for a Volcano Roof Mount, and $99 for the first month of service, and a few weeks later, I got the kit you see in the image above. I was a little too excited about getting…

404

On Hacking MicroSD Cards

Today at the Chaos Computer Congress ( 30C3 ), xobs and I disclosed a finding that some SD cards contain vulnerabilities that allow arbitrary code execution — on the memory card itself. On the dark side, code execution on the memory card enables a class of MITM (man-in-the-middle) attacks, where the card seems to be…

406

It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12

My nephew just graduated high school, and wants a laptop. When he decides what computer to buy, price (or more precisely, value) is the most important attribute. Apple's MacBook Neo upended the 'value laptop' equation—Apple's not supposed to be both the cheapest option and the best value... but it seems like that's…

407

Don't use Linksys routers

Back in 2012 I gave a talk at a conference titled Blended Threats and JavaScript . I demonstrated how anybody could design an internet worm that targeted common network devices like routers and turn them into a powerful botnet that is able to monitor traffic across all types of networks. For the pr

408

Cheap HDMI capture for Linux

Lately I have had the need to do real time video capture from HDMI devices as of late for a project, and while looking around the internet found that all of the capture cards that are aimed at gamers (windows / OSX support only) or full blown production capture (Very expensive, more inputs than I need). The other…

415

Tracker Beeper (2022)

A week ago, I finally got round to implementing an idea I’d been toying with for years: what if your computer made a little bit of noise every time it sent data to Google? From studying logs, I’d long known just how many sites send all your visits and clicks to (at least) Google, but a log that you have to manually…

416

Apple Vision

Apple Vision is incredibly compelling, first as a product, and second as far as potential use cases. What it says about society, though, is a bit more pessimistic.

419

The best laptop ever made

Apple has made many great laptops, but the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro (2012–2015) is the epitome of usefulness, elegance, practicality, and power for an overall package that still hasn’t been (and may never be) surpassed.