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Everything you need to know to design your own CNC router
This is the encyclopedic blog post I wish I could have read when I started designing my CNC router.
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Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy with an external monitor
TLDR: My Macbook Pro 16" is hot and noisy when connected to a 2560x1440p60 monitor, even when idle and the lid is closed. This article…
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Apple AirTag Bug Enables ‘Good Samaritan’ Attack
The new $30 AirTag tracking device from Apple has a feature that allows anyone who finds one of these tiny location beacons to scan it with a mobile phone and discover its owner’s phone number if the AirTag has been set to lost mode. But according to new research, this same feature can be abused to redirect the Good…
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Reverse Engineering an Unknown Microcontroller
Dmitry.GR: How to reverse engineer a completely undocumented microcontroller. From nothing to a full SDK in one week flat!
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Found at Goodwill: WebPad 1001 Prototype
I found this strange looking device at Goodwill yesterday. Originally, owing perhaps to the bright blue color, I thought it was some sort of educational or kids device. It had no branding on it, so…
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A Prototype Original iPod
Now, when we look back, we can pretty clearly see that the iPod was the genesis of a totally different kind of Apple — an Apple willing to enter new markets and make the best version of that new thing. Sure, Apple had made other things before ( QuickTake ! PowerCD !) but they never really felt committed to those…
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AirPods Max: An Audiophile Review
Surprising sound let down by serious comfort problems
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Blender 3.0 takes support for AMD GPUs to the next level
AMD has been working with Blender to improve support for GPU rendering in Cycles using the open source HIP API.
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Piano Practice Software Progress
First an apology. I started this project because during the first 9 months of the COVID-19 pandemic business was down to a fraction of what it was before then, and I had a lot of time on my hand. But that has changed now and there is a lot of work in my ‘day job’, so I don’t have a whole lot of time to work on the…
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The Apple M1 compiles Linux 30% faster than my Intel i9
(With a caveat: I'm compiling the ARMv8 64-bit Pi OS kernel.) It seems every week or so on Hacker News, a story hits the front page showing some new benchmark and how one of the new M1-based Macs matches or beats the higher-priced competition in some specific benchmark—be it GeekBench, X86-specific code, or building…
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Reverse-engineering a tiny 1980s chip that plays Christmas tunes
For the holidays, I decapped a chip that plays three Christmas melodies. The UM66T melody chip from the 1980s was designed for application...
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All-new iMac features the M1 chip
Apple today introduced an all-new iMac featuring an extraordinary design enabled by the M1 chip, and the best camera, mics, and speakers ever in a Mac.
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The unbearable fussiness of the smart home
As we head into another gifting season and more and more connected devices make their way onto gift guides, I want to offer a cautionary note. The smart home is like a cat — mostly self-sufficient and nice to have, but also possessing a mind of its own that can lead to frustration and confusion […]
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Mac Chimes of Death
We’re all familiar with the Mac’s startup chime. While it has changed over the years, it has greeted users with its friendly tone for decades. What you may not know is that for years, the Mac also came with a death sound, that would play when the machine was unable to properly boot. And they are glorious: Macintosh II…
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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,...
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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.
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M.2 on a Raspberry Pi – The Tofu CM4 Carrier Board
Ever since the Pi 2 model B went to a 4-core processor, disk IO has often been the primary bottleneck for my Pi projects. You can use microSD cards, which aren't horrible, but... well, nevermind, they're pretty bad as a primary disk. Or you can plug in a USB 3.0 SSD and get decent speed, but you end up with a cabling…
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SPARCbook 3000ST: The coolest 90s laptop (2019)
My personal website and blog
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Writing a firmware-only keylogger
In the previous blog post, I looked at the EC firmware in my laptop. This time I will look into the WiFi firmware of the same laptop.
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Miniature 3456 LED Cube
For some reason, I’m intrigued by LEDs. Indeed, they can be found in pretty much all of my projects. I was recently inspired by one of Greg Davill’s projects, a miniature LED cube boasting a total of 3456 LEDs . After pondering about it for a while, I decided I’d attempt building one myself. This post describes the…
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Yamaha DX7 Technical Analysis
An introductory technical analysis of the Yamaha DX7, detailing some of the known information about the synthesiser’s engineering.
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Human use of high-bandwidth wireless brain-computer interface
In an important step toward a fully implantable intracortical brain-computer interface system, BrainGate researchers demonstrated the first human use of a wireless transmitter capable of delivering high-bandwidth neural signals.
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My Life in E-Ink
Collection of odds and ends relating to e-readers including personal reminisces Background # Reading has been a huge part of my life. The written word has had arguably more of an impact on my life than anything I have experienced in person. As a kid back in early 2000’s; this meant a lot of library trips and saving…
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Don’t Let Police Arm Autonomous or Remote-Controlled Robots and Drones
Whether controlled by an artificial intelligence or a remote human operator, armed police robots and drones pose an unacceptable threat to civilians. The ongoing revolution in the field of robotics requires us to act now to prevent a new era of police violence.
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Power consumption of Game Boy flash cartridges
Flash cartridges (= "carts") are commonly used to run Game Boy ROMs, such as homebrew games or dumped officially released games, on real hardware. Different kinds of flash carts with various features and performance characteristics have been available for a long time, but flash carts have in general the reputation of…