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Recent Apple updates leading to WiFi issues?
Meter is currently tracking an issue that is affecting M1/M2 Macbooks and leading to slow internet connection, drops in Zoom calls, and entirely losing a Wi-Fi connection.
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What every programmer should know about solid-state drives (2014)
This is Part 6 over 6 of "Coding for SSDs". For other parts and sections, you can refer to the Table to Contents. This is a series of articles that I wrote to share what I learned while documenting myself on SSDs, and on how to make code perform well on SSDs. In this part,
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AI-designed camera only records objects of interest while being blind to others
FEATURED NEWS California NanoSystems Institute > Featured News > August 15, 2022 | AI-designed camera only records objects of interest while being blind to others AI-designed camera only records objects of interest while being blind to others To image, or not to image: Class-specific diffractive cameras with…
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Faster zlib/DEFLATE decompression on the Apple M1 (and x86)
DEFLATE is a relatively slow compression algorithm from 1991, which (along with its wrapper format, zlib) is incredibly widely used, for example in the PNG, Zip and Gzip file formats and the HTTP, …
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Sony A1 Complete Disassembly and Teardown
Sony A1 Complete Disassembly And Teardown. One year ago, Sony announced this beautiful beast, and today we’re going to take it apart!
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Power, frequency, management: how M1 E cores win
macOS manages the loading and frequency of M1 cores according to the QoS set, and rules which differ between the original M1 and the M1 Pro.
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Results of 500 MicroSD Benchmarks on SBCs
I've tested over 20 microSD cards on every Raspberry Pi model to help you find the fastest one for your Raspberry Pi Single Board Computer
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When Your Smart ID Card Reader Comes With Malware
Millions of U.S. government employees and contractors have been issued a secure smart ID card that enables physical access to buildings and controlled spaces, and provides access to government computer networks and systems at the cardholder’s appropriate security level. But many government employees aren’t issued an…
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Political Chips
Chips are the clearest example that economic efficiencies will not be the ultimate decider of technology’s end state: politics will play an important role.
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Debugging bare-metal STM32 from the seventh level of hell
Here’s a not-so-brief story about troubleshooting a problem that was at times vexing, impossible, incredibly challenging, frustrating, and all around just a terrible time with the bare-metal STM32G4 firmware for the moteus brushless motor controller. Background First, some things for context: moteus has a variety of…
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The MIPS ThinkPad, Kind Of
Pop quiz: what classic brand of laptop is this? I'll give you another hint. Bright-red TrackPoint and mouse button trim, classic keybo...
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The GPU Banana Stand
Freshly whipped WebGPU, with ice cream
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When an M1 Mac mini is faster than an M1 Pro: contention and core allocation
When running some tasks confined to E cores, the original M1 chip from 2020 completes them significantly quicker than an on an M1 Pro. Here’s the detail.
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Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?
Lately I'm paying more attention to the crypto currency and "DeFi" spaces, again. One discussion that comes up regularly: are miners to blame for the high GPU prices? To add some facts to this discussion, I’ve done a small analysis of GPU and crypto currency prices to determine if they are related.
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Connecting a gaming PC to Apple Studio Display
I'll never forget when I bought the first 5K Retina iMac. Almost as soon as I ripped it out of the box, I booted it while holding down Command-F2, assuming it…
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DIY out-of-band management: remote power button
I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to make it possible to push a PC’s power button remotely via MQTT by wiring up an ESP32 microcontroller, a MOSFET, a resistor, and a few jumper wires. While a commercial solution like IPMI offers many more features like remote serial, or remote image mounting, this DIY…
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Intel gets worse, but Power11 might get better
Just in case we needed any more reassurance we made the right move with OpenPOWER: Phoronix is reporting that Intel is about to get even ...
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Galois field instructions on 2021 CPUs
CPUs like to operate on data types such as uint8_t , uint16_t , uint32_t , and uint64_t . These data types can be viewed as integers modulo 2 8 , 2 16 , 2 32 , and 2 64 respectively. Addition and multiplication can be defined on these integers modulo 2 N in a way which is familiar to most people; for example, in…
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Verilog Is Weird
Verilog is the most commonly used language for hardware design in America (VHDL is more common in Europe). Too bad it's so baroque. If you ever browse the Verilog questions on Stack Overflow , you'll find a large number of questions, usually downvoted, asking “why doesn't my code work?”, with code that's not just a…
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Semiconductors are more than just processors and GPUs
If you ask a software developer the question 'What are some example uses of semiconductors?', they'll probably mention 'silicon chips', like the ones found in processors or graphics cards. Indeed, this is probably the answer that I would have given just a couple years ago, but I have since become enlightened as to the…
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How many computers are in your computer? (2021)
Any ‘computer’ is made up of hundreds of separate computers plugged together, any of which can be hacked. I list some of these parts.
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TI-83 Plus One More
Repair of a TI-83 Plus calculator with a non-working screen
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Reversing a 2.4GHz Remote Control
I have an old project on Github called rf-car for controlling a radio car with HackRF. A few months ago, my daughter received a new RC car made by Dickie Toys :
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New motorcycle lighting design could save lives
Motorcycle drivers are 27 times more likely to die in an accident than those in regular passenger vehicles. Night driving is especially dangerous, accounting for nearly half of all fatal crashes.
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It's dire: Raspberry Pi availability tracker
Yesterday André Costa emailed me about his new website, rpilocator. It's a website to track Raspberry Pi 4 model B, Compute Module 4, Pi Zero 2 W, and Pico availability across multiple retailers in different countries. In his own words: This database was created out of frustration trying to locate a Raspberry Pi…
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Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)
An investigation into why the new MacBook Pro XDR display is capped at 500 nits, despite being advertised as '1000 nits sustained brightness'.
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Rolling-PWN vulnerability affects all Honda vehicles
Modern vehicles are often equipped with a remote keyless entry system. These RKE systems allow unlocking or starting the vehicle remotely. The goal of our research was to evaluate the resistance of a modern-day RKE system. Our research disclosed a Rolling-PWN attack vulnerability affecting all Honda vehicles currently…
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Yamaha DX7 chip reverse-engineering, part V: the output circuitry
The Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer (1983) was the classic synthesizer in 1980s pop music. It uses a technique called FM synthesis to produ...