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What are malicious USB keys and how to create a realistic one?
This blog post shows how to create a reliable and realistic-looking malicious USB key that can be used in a drop attack.
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A VR Cycling Experience for $40
I’ve made an Arduino thing that can wirelessly talk to a mobile device over BLE and can now meter the revolutions of a wheel with an optical tachometer. I’m using these two hardware fea…
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Beamforming in PulseAudio
In case you missed it – we got PulseAudio 9.0 out the door , with the echo cancellation improvements that I wrote about . Now is probably a good time for me to make good on my promise to expand upon the subject of beamforming.
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The 3DS Cryptosystem
I think one of the biggest challenge for system engineers is designing security. Recently, at the 32c3 conference, plutoo, derrek, and smea presented a series of hacks that completely defeated the security of the 3DS. As a result, people have implemented boot-time unsigned code execution (called “arm9loaderhax” in the…
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Building my $1,200 Hackintosh
I’ve wanted a new Mac for awhile now. Now I have one faster than almost any Mac that Apple can sell you. Here’s how I built it.
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SSE: mind the gap
SSE and SSE2 are available in every single x86-family CPU with 64-bit support. You too can play around with SIMD, which is great fun! Unfortunately, SSE2 level in particular also happens to be what…
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Restoring YC's Xerox Alto, day 1: Power supplies and disk interface
A few days ago, I wrote about how I'm helping restore a Xerox Alto for Y Combinator. This new post describes the first day of restoration...
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I made a cheap home motion sensor and controller
After designing my first PCB , I went on a designing spree. It turns out that making PCBs (printed circuit boards, basically a piece of plastic that includes all the connections of your components in it. It helps make your project smaller and cut down on the amount of wires floating around) is so enjoyable, I’m PCBing…
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Restoring YC's Xerox Alto day 9: tracing a crash through software and hardware
Last week, after months of restoration, we finally got the vintage Xerox Alto computer to boot ( details ) and run programs. However, so...
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A world without the Mac Pro
It’s looking increasingly likely that there will never be another Mac Pro. Here’s why that would be a shame.
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The Leica Q: A six month field test
An extensive review of the Leica Q camera — taken on a six month test in the field, in multiple shooting scenarios and multiple environments.
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Cheap BlueTooth Buttons and Linux
Selfie sticks - like most modern inventions - are utter tosh. But they've rapidly brought down the price of Bluetooth buttons. So who am I to complain? Let's take the venerable AB Shutter 3 - You can find it on Amazon for around £2 including postage - or around $2 on AliExpress. Frankly, that's stupidly cheap. OK…
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How to run C programs on the BeagleBone's PRU microcontroller
This article describes how to write C programs for the BeagleBone's microcontrollers. The BeagleBone Black is an inexpensive, credit-card...
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Here's to the systems programmers – Writing Hello World on a home brew CPU
Writing Hello World on a homebrew CPU
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Restoring Y Combinator's Xerox Alto, day 2: Repairing the display
This post describes how we repaired the monitor from a Xerox Alto. The Alto was a revolutionary computer, designed in 1973 at Xerox PARC ...
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macOS Sierra Leaks Image of MacBook Pro with Magic Toolbar
Welp, it is real. These images are straight out of System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/PassKitUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources on my Mac running 10.12.1: There’s a lot to parse here. Clearly, the rumors of a Magic Toolbar are all correct, as well the inclusion of Touch ID to the right of the Toolbar. It looks like…
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One-bit Computing at 60 Hertz
an extremely simple processor design
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Practical Reverse Engineering Part 4 - Dumping the Flash
Fourth post in the series, detailing how to dump the router's flash chip directly with an SPI programmer, then split and decompress the resulting image into ...
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WLW: 700 kHz, 500 kW, 100% modulation, no limiter (2000)
Radios with cooling ponds.
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33C3 talk on dissecting cellular modems
Yesterday, together with Holger 'zecke' Freyther, I co-presented at 33C3 about Dissectiong modern (3G/4G) cellular modems. This presentation covers some of our recent explorations into a specific type
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RISC instruction sets I have known and disliked
Experienced professional software engineer based in York, UK
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Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells
The 13-inch non-Retina MacBook Pro, model MD101LL/A , was launched in 2012 for $1199 . Almost four years later, it’s still for sale , completely unchanged except for a price drop to $1099 in 2013.
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Optical Mouse Teardown: a look at the sensor
Teardown and analysis of electronics. Integrated circuit design analysis.
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That Plane Overhead: Starring Our Friends SDR, ADS-B, I2C and KLGA
You may ask yourself, “How did I get here?” - Talking Heads