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WiFi: “beamforming” only begins to describe it (2014)
[Note to the impatient: to try out my beamforming simulation, which produced the above image, visit my beamlab test page - ideally in a brow...
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Yet another E-Ink weather display – but with Rust
I made one of those e-ink weather displays that you see on tech blogs and hacker news sometimes. It can display the current weather, the temperature and precipitation forecast for the rest of the week, and my current and upcoming tasks from Todoist. It's powered by a couple NiMH AA …
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Apple CPU Architecture Through the Ages
Learn how CPUs work, and discover Apple’s underrated competitive advantage.
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Framework 12th gen laptop review
anarcat
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Junk drawer phone as a music streaming server
I wanted to get a music streaming server running as I have in the past but with the scarcity of RasberryPi’s my I needed to try something new. I had a Samsung Galaxy S7 that had been taking up space in my junk drawer and this post is my journey to give it a new task.
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Analyzing the Monoprice Blackbird HDCP 2.2 to 1.4 Down Converter
I got my hands on a Monoprice Blackbird 4K Pro HDCP 2.2 to 1.4 Converter . According to the marketing copy it “is the definitive solution for playback of new 4K HDCP 2.2 encoded content on 4K displays with the old HDCP 1.4 standard.”
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The transparent chip inside a vintage Hewlett-Packard floppy drive
While repairing an eight-inch HP floppy drive, we found that the problem was a broken interface chip. Since the chip was bad, I decapped it ...
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Cyberdecks (2013)
Article about the philosophy of custom made computers without displays, usually known as decks.
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The legend of “x86 CPUs decode instructions into RISC form internally” (2020)
A dive into what x86 instruction are decoded into various processors, to determine the truth of the idea that they're just RISC-like internally.
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The cheapest flash microcontroller you can buy is actually an Arm Cortex-M0+
Puya's 10-cent PY32 series is complicating the RISC-V narrative and has me doubting I'll ever reach for an 8-bit part again.
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Hue Light Hack
In a fun-filled deep dive into a Philip's Hue Color light bulb, I disassembled, analyzed, and ultimately restored it to working order. Over the course of the hack, I dismantled the bulb’s interior,...
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Signal reflections in electronic circuits
What are "signal reflections", really? And do they matter in circuit design?
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The laptop that won't die
My $200, 12-year-old Thinkpad has outlasted two high-end Macbooks
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Monitoring my weather at home
Weather is often hyper-local. For example, trying to suss out the temperature this morning:
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How many billions of transistors in an iPhone processor?
In about 10 years, Apple has multiplied by 19 the number of transistors in its mobile processors. It corresponds roughly to a steady rate of improvement of 34% per year on the number of transistors, or a doubling every 2.5 years. In real dollars, an iPhone has roughly a constant price: the price tag of … Continue…
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The basics of decoupling capacitors
How to stabilize digital supply voltages - and why most of the online advice on this topic is suspect.
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Framework 13 AMD 7040 Series: A Developer's First Impressions
My Initial experience with this brand new modular laptop
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FPGAs and the renaissance of retro hardware
Almost every few weeks, a new and exciting retro hardware project is announced. These are truly …
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I need more USB power
Everything seems to be USB-C powered nowadays - I need more power on my workbench!
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Logic Lab
The Logic Lab provides a selection of 12 logic gates that you can interconnect with patch cables to make a variety of different logic circuits, for experimenting with and learning about logic:
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Why every microwave sucks these days
if you're lucky, you haven't. you're still using a microwave from the 1990's or something like that, and it still works just fine. after all, how can a microwave be made any better? you put stuff in, and the water in the stuff heats up. there really isn't much innovation to be done that wasn't already done half a…
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Using RP2040 PIO to drive a poorly-designed displa
Dmitry.GR: Driving a poorly-designed display and touch board using no CPU at all
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Counting the transistors in the 8086 processor: it's harder than you might think
How many transistors are in Intel's 8086 processor? This seems like a straightforward question, but it doesn't have a straightforward answ...
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The Grind a Day: thousands of Apple II floppy disks archived
4am doesn’t suffer fools, or repetition. Or mysteries. Focused out of nowhere on tinkering with an Apple II a number of years back, they re-learned the whole of how the unique floppy disk sys…
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Resetting the timer in my toothbrush
It’s still good to use, I swear
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Rust on Espressif chips – 2023 Roadmap
Scott Mabin's blog
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Reverse Engineering the DualShock 4
This year I got a very special gift for Christmas: a broken DualShock 4. :smile:You may say it’s a relatively poor gift, but the person who gave me this know...