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Hardware & Electronics

The most popular blog posts about hardware & electronics on Hacker News. 383 posts.

2020
331

TRRespass: Rowhammer against DDR4

Project Description Rowhammer haunted us for the better part of the past decade. Most DDR3 modules were found to be susceptible to this vulnerability which can compromise data directly inside the memory cells. What made it so scary was the fact that it could be exploited from software on PCs, clouds, smartphones, over…

336

Myths about USB NKRO and how USB HID works

A common myth about USB keyboards is that they can only support 6-key rollover, and not report more than 6 keys being pressed at a time. In fact, this is wholly untrue; the USB HID device class can support full N-key rollover (NKRO). While keyboards which purport to support USB NKRO are now common, some of them have…

337

Measuring keyboard-to-photon latency with a light sensor

For a long time when I’ve wanted to test the latency of computers and UIs I’ve used the Is It Snappy app with my iPhone’s high speed camera to count frames between when I press a key and when the screen changes. However the problem with that is it takes a while to find the exact frames you want, which is annoying when…

342

What is Electricity? (1996)

What is electricity? This question is impossible to answer because the word " Electricity " has several contradictory meanings. These different meanings are incompatible, and the contradictions confuse everyone. If you don't understand electricity, you're not alone. Even teachers, engineers, and scientists have a hard…

343

Xen on Raspberry Pi 4

The Xen Project is excited to share that the Xen Hypervisor now runs on Raspberry Pi. This is an exciting step for both hobbyists and industries. Read more to learn about how Xen now runs on RPi and how to get started. Written by Stefano Stabellini and Roman Shaposhnik, originally

347

Detecting a 2.4 GHz transmission for under 1 EUR

As I was debugging a wireless mouse based on a 2.4 GHz proprietary protocol, I wanted to detect the transmitted signals. Note that I purposefully wrote “detect”: It was sufficient to see how often the transmission occurred (and if at all) and whether the link was unidirectional – i.e., only the mouse transmits and the…

349

Making Playstation 1 Modchips (2018)

When I was young I owned a PlayStation 1 (PS1). It was one of the first, if not the first, game consoles I owned and it had a profound effect on my future. I can trace the history of how I got involved in computers back to playing and modding

353

Weird and Innovative Chips (2007)

The GDP was exclusively object oriented - normal linear memory access wasn't allowed, and there was hardware support for data hiding, methods, inheritance, late binding, and access protection, and it was promoted as being ideal for the Ada programming language. To enforce this, permission and type checks for every…

357

The Raspberry Pi 4 has a fan now – the Case Fan

Last year, I wrote a blog post titled The Raspberry Pi 4 needs a fan. And in a video to go along with that post, I detailed the process of drilling out a hole in the top of the official Pi 4 case and installing a 5v fan inside. But that solution wasn't great. The fan was a little loud and annoying, and would stay on…

360

New T4g EC2 Instances, Powered by AWS Graviton2

December 10, 2020 – Post updated for the extension of the T4g free-trial until March 31, 2021. During the free-trial period, customers who run a t4g.micro instance will automatically get 750 free hours per month deducted from their bill during each month. T4g free-trial will be available in addition to the existing…