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Topics /
Hardware & Electronics
The most popular blog posts about hardware & electronics on Hacker News. 78 posts.
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The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones
When was the last time you needed to buy a new PC? Two years ago? Three years ago? The last PC I built was in 2009. I had to upgrade because I pushed the previous one I built to the limit and that was
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The microhydro plant
setting up a microhydro installation
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Hard drive hack provides root access, even after reinstall
Apart from this article, I also gave a talk at OHM2013 about this subject. The video of that talk (minus the first few minutes) is now online .
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Linux on an 8-bit micro
Dmitry.GR: A successful experiment in running real Linux on an 8-bit AVR.
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How I introduced a 27-year-old computer to the web
Reviving an old computer is like restoring a classic car: there’s a thrill from bringing the ancient into the modern world. So it was with my first “real” computer, my Mac Plus, when I decided to bring it forward three decades and introduce it to the modern web.
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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…
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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
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How FPGAs work, and why you'll buy one
Today, pretty much everyone has a CPU, a DSP and a GPU, buried somewhere in their PC, phone, car, etc. Most don't know or care that they bought any of these, but they did.
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Update on Novena Open Laptop
Back in December, I posted that we’re building an open laptop . The post generated hundreds of comments, and I was surprised there was so much interest.
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Making a Physical Product
Jon Paul Wheatley makes products, software, and balls.
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Reversing Sinclair's amazing 1974 calculator hack - half the ROM of the HP-35
Register-level simulator of the Sinclair Scientific calculator
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Build your own Google TV using Raspberry Pi, Node.js and Socket.io
If you’re connecting to your rPi via SSH, you’d have to update your DISPLAY environment variables by issuing
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Hillbilly Tracking of Low Earth Orbit Satellites
An adventure of the Southern Appalachian Space Agency, by Travis Goodspeed <travis at radiantmachines.com>, as presented at Summercon 2013...
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Connecting an iPad retina LCD to a PC
Update: please read this post This project was born at the Warsaw Hackerspace , it was funded by my friend Spin, who wanted to use the d...
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We don't know why lithium batteries work
If you are a scientist, you confront ignorance as soon as you open your eyes. For example -- I am typing this post on a laptop computer that is powered by a lithium battery. No one has the slightest idea how and why it works. Metallic lithium can intercalate between the graphene sheets in graphite…
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Powerchair: A dad hacks a wheelchair for his disabled 2-year-old son
We wanted Alejandro to have a power wheelchair. We wanted him to be able to move through the world by his own volition and it’s clear that the ability to independently explore his environment is important for his cognitive development on multiple levels. We tried going through the typical process of obtaining a power…
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Storage for Photographers
There comes a time in every photographer's life when they must ask themselves what to do about all those photo RAWs filling up the tiny-compared-to-spinning-platters SSD on their primary machine.
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Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
Every day or so I read another blog post (or ranting comments) about how BlackBerry could be rehabilitated, or how Nokia could restart Maemo and build the ultimate smartphone again. Things came to a head after Jolla announced their first phone for sale. Surely this phone with an amazing user interface will vindicate…
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Seagate just reinvented the disk interface using Ethernet
There’s no doubt that cloud computing is the future of IT infrastructure. Its scalability, ease of access and capacity for analysing vast amounts of data has made it integral to how businesses, organizations, and end-users use the internet.
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64 GB Surface Pro will only have 23 GB free
A company spokesperson has confirmed to The Verge that the 64GB edition of Surface Pro will have 23GB of free storage out of the box. The 128GB model will have 83GB of free storage. It appears that the Windows 8 install, built-in apps, and a recovery partition will make up the 41GB total on the base Surface Pro model.