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https://hackaday.com/2025/05/27/hand-truck-turned-into-motorcycle/
|
Hand Truck Turned Into Motorcycle
|
Bryan Cockfield
|
[
"Transportation Hacks"
] |
[
"four stroke",
"frame",
"hand cart",
"hand truck",
"motorcycle",
"welding",
"wheel"
] |
For those motorcyclists looking to get a classic American-style cruiser, often the go-to brand is Harley-Davidson. However, these bikes not only have reputations for being stuck in the past, both in terms of design and culture, but they also tend to be extremely expensive—not only upfront, but in maintenance as well. If you want the style without all of that baggage, you might want to try out something like
this custom motorcycle which not only looks the part, it reduces those costs by being built around a hand truck
.
By the end of the project, though, the hand truck does not retain much of its original form or function. [Garage Avenger] has cut and welded it essentially into a custom frame for the diminutive motorcycle, while retaining much of its original look and feel. Keeping up with the costs savings aspect of this project, the four-stroke engine was free, although it did take some wrenching to get it running and integrated into the frame. A custom axle, a front end from another bike, a gas tank from an online retailer (that needed re-welding), and some wiring finishes out the build.
With a fresh paint job to match the original color of the hand truck, it’s off to the track. Of course it doesn’t have quite the performance of most street legal motorcycles, including some quirks with the handling and braking, but for the trails around [Garage Avenger]’s home it’s certainly a fun transportation mode he can add to his repertoire. If this is your first time seeing one of his projects, be sure to check out his other work including
this drifting shopping cart
and
this turbine-powered sled
.
| 13
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132757",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T21:58:10",
"content": "This reminds me of the“then just draw the rest of the owl,” memewhich is a not so subtle way of pointing out that the task requires a significant amount of skill.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132897",
"author": "Steve L",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T12:00:49",
"content": "This guy is pretty darned good with a MIG welder. I built a tiny minibike inspired by the somewhat famous 1970 Popular Mechanics “Tom Thumb” minibike. I did it as a project to learn TIG welding with, bent up the frame and everything. Let’s just say, “a grinder and paint makes me the welder I ain’t”. But it’s strong enough and looks great.Later, I saw a welding expert on YouTube say that small diameter tubing is the hrdest thing to MIG weld. Sigh.",
"parent_id": "8132757",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132943",
"author": "Eric Cherry",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T14:11:22",
"content": "As a semi-pro artist (i.e. not staying overweight and having healthcare from this skill, but enough to pay taxes on it); that meme is new to me. Made my chuckle, thanks for that!Always find it a bit insulting when I hear “You’re so talented!”, it’s a compliment so I don’t let it rub me too raw. But I always thank em anyways and respond with, “Thanks! I wish that were true but it truth is it was hard work and long hours that got me here.”",
"parent_id": "8132757",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133030",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T18:01:56",
"content": "Talent is in nearly all cases the product of hardwork.Even folks that must have some natural bias that makes them better than average at something by default still have to work at it to really get good and/or create those really really fine finished objects – look at some of the fancy bladesmiths, or the golden demon winning mini painters with the project they spent probably most of the whole year on…Most definitively talented folks to be able to get the result, but to take the talent they have and make such a fine quality end product still requires significant time investment – maybe it took them with their practised skill and library of custom tools and processes half the time it would take another more journeyman skilled crafter with the patience to get there in the end, but it is always serious work still!",
"parent_id": "8132943",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132758",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T22:16:10",
"content": "That rear tire is glorious and he’s a pretty good welder, both to be making welds that look like this and also to trust his welds to this kind of use. I feel like it should be dubbed the Hardly Davidson, and what a great bike it is.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132792",
"author": "karl303",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T01:27:28",
"content": "Hardly Davidson. Hahaha. Well played!",
"parent_id": "8132758",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132925",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T12:59:25",
"content": "IMHO, Harley-Davidson is the epitome of the Ferrarization of the motorbike industry in the US. Every HD bike is now sold for the price of Ferrari it is really not. Same (ie “Ferrarization” happened earlier in pretty much every industry, car insurance (separate topic of its own), then car pricing (to a degree – not yet – but we are going there), recently – residential housing, etc.Sorry, Mr. Ezo Ferrari, but your cars now serve as the illustration of cartels, voluntary, involuntary, planned or emerged, same difference. Cartels are cartels. Their main purpose is making sure they exist, and product customers need sold for the price they can afford is not on their radar screen.Translation – DIY crowd always picked up the slack and did it without Big Swanky Name Tags Sold For Hundred Prices. I personally know few people (local to me) who don’t have time to sit and wait when HD wakes up from its self-induced slumber and asks what they need, they go with Yamahas, Hondas and Kawasakis they can tune to their liking, and there is lovely secondary market for the awesome affordable machines they make. It may not be the most inventive market in the US, but worldwide it quite is so, and we are AGAIN full 25+ years behind everyone else.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132986",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T15:24:38",
"content": "You need to continually have nationalists like Henry Ford for that not to happen. It was the default state, not an anomaly",
"parent_id": "8132925",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8133007",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T16:31:43",
"content": "Harley and ferrari are both veblen goods, where the high price is an advertisement to others that you can afford to spend that much on a luxury item. The item’s value is in showing off. But at least ferrari puts some really cool technology in their unaffordable cars.",
"parent_id": "8132925",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133020",
"author": "DurDurDur",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T17:24:28",
"content": "I would disagree with your assessment.Harley’s dont really cost more than comparable motorcycles from other manufacturers.The Harley Nightster with a 975cc engine, is currently their cheapest model starting at $9995The Honda Rebel 1100T with its 1083cc is the most comparable bike they make in size and format and it starts at $9599The slightly smaller Honda Shadow Phantom with its 745cc starts at $8,699Yamaha’s Bolt R with a 942cc motor starts at $8,999On the larger sideYamaha doesnt make big bikes.The Harley Fat Boy Grey Ghost with its 1917.29cc engine starts at $25,399The Honda Goldwing Tour with its 1833cc engine starts at $28,700.Harley has a number of premium options going up to $45K start prices.Honda has a number of smaller sized budget options going down to $4,849 start prices.",
"parent_id": "8133007",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8133025",
"author": "DurDurDur",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T17:33:24",
"content": "” Every HD bike is now sold for the price of Ferrari it is really not.”HUH? The most expensive new Harley costs 1/5 the price of the cheapest new Ferrari.I know few people (local to me) who go with yamahas hondas and kawasakis as they are perfectly able to tune Harleys to their hearts desire. There is also a lovely secondary market for the awesome machines they make.I think your just hanging out with people looking for high revving street bikes not long distance cruisers.",
"parent_id": "8132925",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8133053",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T20:08:12",
"content": "Let’s refine that – “Every HD bike that I’ve personally seen or heard of (ie, was bought/sold/owned by my friends and/or friends of friends) within the last 30 years”. That’s large enough pool of examples that my opinion is based off of. BTW one of them friends of friends co-owns one of the local HD shops, both, shop and garage. Regulars stop by at that place, it is next to an interstate. He is doing well as far as could tell.My question was always “just WHY are these things so expensive?” Maintenance, too, spares, etc. In general, upkeep of one HD is not cheap compared with the mentioned Hondas and Yamahas.Let’s add more to the mix, I also know two BMW motorbike owners. Upkeep is still cheaper than. BMWs that I’ve seen are not terribly budget-priced, but still, japanese bikes win.At any rate, we have no shortage of high-revving bikers thundering next to my house – actually, some of them ARE my buddies. I was trying to make a blanket statement, and the conclusion is in the last paragraph – some cannot afford the greatest and latest and go for what sells withing their budget. Others, like the post, just build their own.“Ferarrization” is a term that means “selling ordinary cars for the price of Ferrari in the fake market where there is some kind of artificial shortage of OTHER options making it look as if there are only these cars available for sale”. Ferraris are sure out of my price range, and I am guessing they compete with what, Mazeratis maybe? Sure not with Koenigseggs, the edge has been lost some time ago, even though, at some point Ferraris WERE the Koenigseggs of the era. Bentleys, maybe (though, I have my personal doubts).Sorry about the vitriol, but I do not see much of a change happening this year, since it hasn’t changed for the last 30 years. I also see that the worldwide market for motorbikes doesn’t suffer from the US tariffs, and goes on with their locally produced kinds just fine.",
"parent_id": "8132925",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133062",
"author": "DurDurDur",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T20:53:24",
"content": "If you cant afford the latest and greatest, There are plenty of old harleys out there for sale and they really arent that expensive unless theyve been heavily customized. Ive got a buddy with a 1980 flhs in good running condition and a clean title for sale $5k. I can probably rustle up a dozen Sportsters at or below $2k ranging in years from 68-2010. There are a ton of reasonably priced hogs out there if youre looking to buy.If you cant wrench yourself, and every issue is a trip to that buddy of yours shop of course youre going to be dropping fat stacks.The parts for ANY harley are readily available and reasonably priced for the most part. I tore down my 69 FLH during the pandemic. Changed out all of the gaskets, bore out the cylinders and swapped the pistons for a set of .050 oversize. $300 in parts.Sure if youre doing a complete top and bottom end rebuild of a 3 year old bike the parts are going to set you back an entry level honda. But thats to be expected.Im not a ferrari guy and I dont have a ferrari budget. I do have a softspot for old Porsche 924, 944, and 928s. A belt job on any of which will set you back $1800-3K every 15-30K miles if youre dropping it at a shop. I just lose a weekend and a couple hundred bucks doing the belt, front seals, and whatever else is more convenient to include while Im at it than waiting till it fails.",
"parent_id": "8133053",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,535.640989
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/27/2025-pet-hacks-contest-fyto-turn-your-plant-into-a-pet/
|
2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Fytó – Turn Your Plant Into A Pet
|
Matt Varian
|
[
"contests"
] |
[
"2025 Pet Hacks Contest",
"ADS1115",
"houseplant",
"raspberry pi"
] |
This entry into the 2025 Pet Hacks Contest is about bringing some fun feedback to normally silent plants.
Fytó
integrates sensors and displays into a 3D printed planter. The sensors read the various environmental and soil conditions that the plant is experiencing, and give you feedback about them via a series of playful expressive faces that are displayed on the screen embedded in the planter.
At the core of the Fytó is a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, which has plenty of power to display the animations while also being small enough to easily fit inside the planter without it growing in size much more than a normal planter would be. The sensors include a capacitive soil moisture sensor, a temperature sensor, and a light-dependent resistor. These sensors all provide analog outputs to relay their measurements and so there was an ADS1115 analog-to-digital converter board also included as the Raspberry Pi doesn’t have the required analog pins to communicate with them.
The fun animated faces are displayed with a 2-inch LCD display embedded in the planter. A small acrylic cover is placed in front of the LCD to help ease the transition from the printed planter to the internally mounted screen. The temperature and light sensors were also placed in openings around the planter to ensure they could get good environmental readings. There are six expressions the Fytó can express based on its sensor readings, ranging from happy when all the readings are in a good zone, to thirsty if it needs water or freezing when it’s too cold. Be sure to check out the other entries in the
2025 Pet Hacks Contest
.
| 2
| 2
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132728",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T20:20:19",
"content": "hehe. cute name. now I think Ikea should name a planter that.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132740",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T20:50:48",
"content": "I had a pet rock back in the day. Should’ve named it Schrödinger, I never knew if it was alive or dead.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,535.39926
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/26/wayback-proxy-lets-your-browser-party-like-its-1999/
|
Wayback Proxy Lets Your Browser Party Like It’s 1999
|
Tyler August
|
[
"internet hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] |
[
"early internet",
"geocities",
"internet archive",
"proxy",
"rasberry pi",
"retrocomputing",
"web"
] |
This project is a few years old, but it might be appropriate to cover it late since [richardg867]’s
Wayback Proxy is, quite literally, timeless.
It does, more-or-less, what it says as on the tin: it is an HTTP proxy that retrieves pages from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, or the
Oocities archive of old Geocities sites
. (Remember Geocities?) It is meant to sit on a Raspberry Pi or similar SBC between you and the modern internet. A line in a config file lets you specify the exact date. We found this via YouTube in a video by [The Science Elf] (embedded below, for those of you who don’t despise YouTube) in which he attaches a small screen and dial to his Pi to create what he calls the “Internet Time Machine” using the Wayback Proxy. (Sadly [The Science Elf] did not see fit to share his work, but it would not be difficult to recreate the python script that edits config.json.)
What’s the point? Well, if you have a retro-computer from the late 90s or early 2000s, you’re missing out a key part of the vintage experience without access to the vintage internet. This was the era when desktops were being advertised as made to get you “Online”. Using Wayback Proxy lets you relive those halcyon days– or live them for the first time, for the younger set. At least relive those of which parts of the old internet which could be Archived, which sadly isn’t everything. Still, for a nostalgia trip, or a living history exhibit to show the kids? It sounds delightful.
Of course it is possible to
hit up the modern web on a retro PC
(or on
a Mac Plus
). As long as you’re not caught up in
an internet outage
, as this author recently was.
| 14
| 8
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132532",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T23:42:09",
"content": "“Everything” is a lot of ads.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132665",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T16:01:24",
"content": "All part of the experience.",
"parent_id": "8132532",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132680",
"author": "Aaron",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T16:58:52",
"content": "I was browsing through a MacAddict issue from 1997 on Archive.org, and there was a little tidbit about a utility called “WebFree”. It was an adblocker in every sense of the word. I was surprised as I had no idea it was a thing that early. I guess we’ve always been desperate to escape “everything”.",
"parent_id": "8132532",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132697",
"author": "lj",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T18:15:15",
"content": "I remember using a tool called the “Siemens Web Washer”. It ran as a local DNS or proxy (I wouldn’t have known the difference back then) and filtered out ads. It worked but not very well, I suppose it didn’t have access to a good quality ad server database.",
"parent_id": "8132680",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132687",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T17:25:27",
"content": "For some reason I find ads to be more tolerable when the company that produced it no longer exists.See also: compilation videos of 70’s 80’s and 90’s TV ads on youtube.",
"parent_id": "8132532",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132611",
"author": "Peptoid",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T12:11:45",
"content": "I had this exact idea about 10-12 years ago. Unfortunately didn’t have the scripting skills to implement it at the time. Still don’t.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132651",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T15:35:04",
"content": "I wound up on Geocities .ws, where I found my own 20-year old website being used to show offensive ads and try to load viruses on people :'(I guess there is a 625GB torrent out there with all the geocities websites? Oocities does not have my site, and archive.org did not crawl it, just captured the landing page once with the picture and twice more without.I’m pretty sure I backed up my site in a zip file and saved it by emailing it to myself XD",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132654",
"author": "Gus Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T15:42:36",
"content": "I had some websites I covertly hosted on Mac IIsis in a University of Virginia computer lab, where all the computers had static IP addresses! They were indexed by InfoSeek, though I think they predated Archive.org by a few years.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132694",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T17:56:32",
"content": "Better times.Well, I do like the portability we have now. But static addresses and no social media! Better times.Imagine being able to gather up your friends for a beer… via the unix talk daemon.",
"parent_id": "8132654",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132656",
"author": "Gus Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T15:46:13",
"content": "One problem with this experience is that it does not have an operational version of a time-appropriate search engine such as Lycos or HotBot. Get on it, hax0r2!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132696",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T18:02:17",
"content": "If only there was an archive of all the old ICQ and AIM chat logs. (yah, I know.. terrible privacy violation.)Now train up an AI on it.When we get old and senile the nurses at our nursing homes could dial a box to whatever year we think it is to talk to all our old friends in a blissful escape from the dark reality of those final years.I’d be happy to take that if I make it that long.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132713",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T19:06:55",
"content": "Welp, there’s my dose of existential horror for today.",
"parent_id": "8132696",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132786",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T01:07:51",
"content": "For the record, some of us have no problem at all with watching a YouTube video (once stripped of ads and tracking nonsense).We despise trying to read an “article” that turns out to be a 2-paragraph partial summary of a video, with the video embedded below.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8133127",
"author": "guy",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T03:44:13",
"content": "The line that made me stop watching was when he said“…. it was written in Python, Say what you want about the language but it sure isn’t javascript.”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,535.588276
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/26/2025-pet-hacks-contest-a-barrel-of-fun-for-your-dog/
|
2025 Pet Hacks Contest: A Barrel Of Fun For Your Dog
|
Jenny List
|
[
"contests"
] |
[
"2025 Pet Hacks Contest",
"barrel",
"dog"
] |
If you ask someone for a piece of received opinion about Bernese mountain dogs, the chances are that the tale of their carrying barrels of brandy round their necks for the revival of those lost in the snow. It’s a story of uncertain provenance and may indeed be a myth, but
that hasn’t stopped [Saren Tasciyan] 3D printing one for their faithful hound
. In its own way it too is a saviour, for as well as a small camera, it carries a supply of dog poop bags.
It’s a two part print, held together with strong magnets. Waterproofing is achieved using liberal quantities of hot glue. There’s a protrusion on one side designed to take an action camera for a dog’s-eye-view of the world. The files are downloadable, so your pooch can have one too if you like. We are wondering whether a couple of miniatures of brandy might just fit in there as well.
It’s is part of
the 2025 Pet Hacks contest
, so if this has whetted your appetite, expect more. If your dog carries around something you’ve made, how about making it an entry of your own?
| 3
| 2
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132498",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T20:38:53",
"content": "Fun? It also should be filled with little plastic monkeys. Just ask Hasbro.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132692",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T17:53:20",
"content": "So they can fall out, get eaten by the dog and possibly cause choking or worse?",
"parent_id": "8132498",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132527",
"author": "LordNothing",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T22:48:18",
"content": "free range cat cams are everywhere on youtube. i figure dog cam videos will be rarer due to leash laws. just to remind us that laws aren’t for cats.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,535.27514
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/26/mouse-model-suggests-starch-based-plastics-are-still-bad-for-you/
|
Mouse Model Suggests Starch-Based Plastics Are Still Bad For You
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Science"
] |
[
"bioplastic",
"microplastics",
"polylactic acid",
"starch"
] |
To paraphrase The Simpsons: plastics are the solution to – and cause of – all of mankind’s problems. Nowhere is this more clear in the phenomenon of microplastics. Some have suggested that alternative bioplastics made out of starch could be the solution here, as the body might be able to digest and disassemble these plastic fragments better. Unfortunately, a team of Chinese researchers put this to the test using mice, with
the results suggesting
that starch-based plastics do not change the harm to tissues and organs.
We
previously looked at this harm
from micro- and nanoplastics (MNP), with humans and their brains at autopsy showing a strong correlation between disease and presence of MNPs. In this recent
study
mice were split up into three groups, for either no, low or high levels of these bioplastics in their food. At autopsy, the mice exposed to the bioplastics all showed damage to organs, including the same gene-regulation issues and inflammation markers as seen with other plastics.
Despite these results, researchers
question
how useful these results are, as they pertain to modified starches with known biodegradability issues, while
starch
by itself is absolutely digestible when it’s in the form of potato chips, for instance. Perhaps the trick here is to make bioplastics that are still useful as plastics, and yet as harmless to ingest as said potato chips.
Not that we recommend eating bioplastics, mind you; potato chips are definitely tastier.
| 48
| 12
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132451",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T17:08:37",
"content": "Well if it helps, PLA isn’t a starch-based plastic. It’s a lactic acid based plastic, or often a lactide based plastic, with plenty of catalysts and plasticizers and other goodies in there too, but usually no starch. For contrast, pasta is actually a starch-based plastic, and I don’t think mice are harmed by eating spaghetti.It’s important to know what things are actually made of!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132533",
"author": "Carlos Valera",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T23:52:32",
"content": "Wait, is pasta a thermoplastic? Can you 3D print pasta in theory?",
"parent_id": "8132451",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132610",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T12:00:44",
"content": "Not a thermoplastic, just a plastic. You can squish the dough, obviously. Thermoplastic starch does exist however, which is sort of just pasta with extra steps. Not sure if that’s able to be printed yet, though.",
"parent_id": "8132533",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132552",
"author": "Vik",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T03:57:37",
"content": "The good thing about PLA us that it is readily broken down inside organisms, so it doesn’t hang around like polyethylene, nylon etc. This is why it us used for making soluble sutures for surgery, and one of the reasons I picked it as the material for making 3D printer filament out of back in the beginning. Actual foresight :)",
"parent_id": "8132451",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132689",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T17:42:31",
"content": "I see a lot of people comment in various articles that they like to use PLA because it breaks down. But it really only does so at temperatures that are higher than should occur inside a landfill so not as great a benefit as one might hope.Bury it in your backyard, go back years later and dig it up. It’s still there.I guess you just hit on the answer. Grind it up real fine, mix it with saline and inject it. We can let our own bodies eliminate our scrap supports and failed prints.",
"parent_id": "8132552",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133189",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T10:01:01",
"content": "Yeah, biodegradable PLA has a very large asterisk next to it. In addition to the high temperatures needed, there’s also the problem of the assorted additives added to it. Additives that are usually added to make it less biodegradable because who wants their prints rotting away in a few months?",
"parent_id": "8132689",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132468",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T18:41:04",
"content": "On a general note, at what point are they going to declare a material “not harmful enough to warrant any reaction”? Or, are they going to follow the statistical evidence all the way down to zero and call it dangerous if they can prove any ill effect whatsoever?I’m reminded of a youtube video about the hazards of mining wastes and the tailings commonly left behind in open piles. The narrator of the video was walking around a sand pit in Romania and tried to ask around whether or not the sand was directly harmful or toxic to them – whether they should be walking there. They couldn’t figure out anything – no specific chemical or metal that was in it – so for dramatic effect they said “This sand contains silicates which contribute to silicosis, a dangerous lung disease.”. That is, they said the sand contains sand, which when inhaled contributes to Miner’s lung disease, as any old sand in the lungs would.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132479",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T19:41:32",
"content": "Concerning silicosis, there is an enormous difference between sand and finer dust. Even if sand gets inhaled, the particles won’t reach the most delicate parts of the lungs and will be expelled via the normal mucus system. Fine dust that does reach much deeper into the lungs is a serious problem. And freslhly dug up mining waste will have much more fine dust in it.",
"parent_id": "8132468",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132488",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T20:13:23",
"content": "The very finest dust gets dissolved or washed away by rain pretty quickly.And it doesn’t change the point. Any dust you kick up off the ground is going to contain some amount of fine silicate particles, which are technically contributing to lung diseases. It was simply sensationalism to make the situation seem like they were sitting on another Chernobyl with that particular pile of sand.",
"parent_id": "8132479",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132522",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T22:17:04",
"content": "Dude clearly has never taken a grinder to concrete. I’m glad you haven’t exposed yourself to danger but like, please stop talking about things you don’t know about.",
"parent_id": "8132488",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132523",
"author": "Charles Springer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T22:23:41",
"content": "You are equating road dust to running a grinder? Note that silicosis occurs in Arizona and any other places with sand storms without operating grinders. This has come up here before and there was something about air blasting with sand versus glass beads and one being a crystal and the other being a glass, and smallness of the particles, etc. One is dangerous and the other is not. i don’t recall which.",
"parent_id": "8132522",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132567",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T06:43:34",
"content": "Of course you can get yourself silicosis very quickly by breathing in rock cutting dust fresh off the grinding wheel, but that’s not the point here, because this wasn’t.It was just a reporter standing on a pile of sand, trying to make up reasons to call it dangerous and rouse concern for sensationalism.",
"parent_id": "8132522",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132493",
"author": "helge",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T20:23:56",
"content": "Sand as a class of particle sizes doesn’t say much, obviously. Even the dust that can be generated from it needs to be closely looked at. Marble dust is quite different from dust containing silicates ( seehttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6438615/for example).As far as ingestion of polymers, I’m reminded of cellulose as benign insoluble fiber vs. the modification carboxymethyl cellulose, which has been found to negatively impact the gut microbiota and promote inflammatory processes in the gut.Aspect ratio, surface morphology, surface functional groups, reactivity and kinds of metabolites formed, as well as similarity to endogenous compounds all add to whether or not a substance exhibits acute or chronic toxicity.It took us long enough to realize some plastic bottles leach endocrine disruptors, pesticide exposure can be the fast lane to neurodegenerative disease and that PFAS exposure can screw up the immune system.The challenge in assessing the potential dangers associated with starch-based/-derived or composite plastics is that we don’t know everything right now at a point in time where we’d like to transition from everyone using plastic everyday items with petrochemical origin to something else, preferably sans the aforementioned surprises.India enacted a partial ban on single use plastic items in 2022, and e.g. sugarcane bagasse tableware has taken the place of polystyrene products.At that scale, disease at per-million, per annum does start to matter.",
"parent_id": "8132468",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132508",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T21:26:38",
"content": "At that scale, disease at per-million, per annum does start to matter.In what sense?If you’re living in a country with 1 million people, one person getting sick doesn’t seem like much at all. If you have one billion people, you have a thousand people getting ill, so it starts to show up in the statistics and people take notice – but is it really that significant or is it just because you recognize it’s there?Many of the issues we’re finding today are because of two things: general mortality and illness or accidents have gone down so much that we’re starting to note smaller and smaller effects or differences, and we’re getting better at doing statistics so we can distinguish the likely cause where previously it would have been a mystery. We can see under the noise floor to show that you have a 1.5% greater risk of dying of X or you have a 1 year shorter life expectancy on average because of Y.The safer and healthier the society gets, the bigger the moral and media panic you get when someone discovers something bad, because a small risk starts to look like a big risk in comparison when the previously big risks are getting smaller.",
"parent_id": "8132493",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132511",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T21:39:01",
"content": "Then there’s also unintended consequences. What is it for the sugarcane tableware? Occupational safety in manufacturing?I’m reminded of the panic we get every winter there’s particularly heavy snowfall, with news running articles about buildings with collapsed roofs. People see the news, panic, and climb up on theirs to shovel the snow down – and dozens of people fall down and break legs and arms, with the resulting injuries exceeding the number of people injured by actual collapsed roofs. It would be safer if the news didn’t run the stories and nobody did anything about it.",
"parent_id": "8132508",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132513",
"author": "Hugo Oran",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T21:41:51",
"content": "+1",
"parent_id": "8132508",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132521",
"author": "helge",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T22:13:04",
"content": "By saying “see under the noise floor” you’re implying “but it’s still noise”.If you want to actually answer whether there is significant early evidence of something being a problem, a large cohort is needed.This then answers whether a new substance is problematic.Health impacts causing multiple kinds of morbidity sidestep our sense of urgency. It’s funny that you make it sound like this is some kind of negotiation, like there is some good to be defended through doing nothing.Scientific discourse ain’t politics. Maybe come back later when you can discuss the subject matter without getting angry about the fact that something it being talked about outside conference sessions.",
"parent_id": "8132508",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132536",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T00:51:10",
"content": "AI analysis:✅ Summary:This counter-rebuttal effectively reframes the original argument by asserting:Small signals ≠ meaningless noise — they are early warnings that should be studied with large cohorts and serious intent.Just because a risk is statistically small does not mean it’s societally unimportant.Inaction is not neutral; it may serve entrenched interests or delay necessary action.The framing of risk as overreaction or “moral panic” risks minimizing legitimate early warnings in public health.Conclusion: This counter-rebuttal is logically coherent, statistically informed, and ethically forceful. It serves as an important corrective to overly dismissive interpretations of low-level but real risks.",
"parent_id": "8132521",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132569",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T06:53:12",
"content": "By saying “see under the noise floor” you’re implying “but it’s still noise”.No, that’s incorrect. To see under the noise floor implies there is a signal there, not just noise. Otherwise, what would you be seeing?The question is rather, should we care about effects that are less than noise? Effects that contribute in a statistical manner, but nobody can point a direct causation from X to Y because the effect is too small – like trying to track the cause of your skin cancer to that one Sunday you tanned yourself on the beach and forgot the sun cream.",
"parent_id": "8132521",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132570",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T06:59:29",
"content": "like there is some good to be defended through doing nothing.Yes. It’s the avoidance of futile effort. At some point you have to conclude that the amount of money, time and resources spent to avoid some small problem are going to be greater than the problem itself.The question is merely, how small of a problem is that? Where do you draw the line, or do you refuse to define it because you want to keep “helping” people endlessly, whether they want it or not?",
"parent_id": "8132521",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132572",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T07:17:01",
"content": "Inaction is not neutral; it may serve entrenched interests or delay necessary action.Action is not neutral in the same sense either: over-reaction to small problems may serve political or economic interests (e.g. moral entrepreneurship) at the expense of public resources and individual freedoms.It can also be deeply misguided, like protesting nuclear power and promoting wind power instead, where the “safer option” actually results in more deaths per TWh produced than the “dangerous risky option”, because people aren’t aware of the actual statistics, or they simply don’t care because they’re protesting for other reasons (e.g. virtue signaling).",
"parent_id": "8132521",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132578",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T07:52:58",
"content": "If you want to actually answer whether there is significant early evidence of something being a problem, a large cohort is needed. This then answers whether a new substance is problematic.Indeed. It’s just that we’re running before we can walk: the evidence for things like microplastics in the brain are based on small sample sizes. The scientists use statistical means (ANOVA in the case of the brain study) to show that there is a difference and the confidence interval doesn’t include zero, so the effect is probably real, but quantifying exactly how much is it real is still largely unknown.Yet, the news reports ran wild with it, claiming that you might have a disposable spoon worth of plastic in your brain. No, that’s not what the data says, and the researches themselves said that the result is most likely misleading in that sense.Our reactions and policies, as supported by the public, are based on the media reporting and impressions given by pundits – not the actual science – and that is the danger. We are biased to go running around shouting “The sky is falling!” on the scantest evidence of danger, because panic and anger sell well.",
"parent_id": "8132521",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132580",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T08:19:26",
"content": "Helge: Health impacts causing multiple kinds of morbidity sidestep our sense of urgency.It’s actually a question of who is considering the health impacts and why.For a government, it’s a nuisance that people turn up at the hospitals and they have to pay it out of the tax money they collect. Meanwhile the individuals are looking at the proportional risks and see that it does not make sense to worry about one in a million chances. The criteria for risk tolerance and urgency of action is entirely different.If one person in a million gets sick, and it costs a million dollars to heal them, the government sees the price tag as one million, but the individual sees the price tag as one dollar, as the expected value of cost x probability, or the social cost that will fall on them personally.So which is correct here? Does the social cost matter beyond the government’s min/max calculations about their own spending?",
"parent_id": "8132508",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132691",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T17:50:55",
"content": "If you are trying to calculate what level of risk is acceptable I think you need to take into consideration the benefit too. What if something created a severe allergic reaction in one of a million people?What if that thing was a new perfume whose benefit was “some people like the smell”?What if it was a preservative that would save twice as many from dying of food poisoning as would have the allergic reaction?",
"parent_id": "8132508",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132504",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T21:14:18",
"content": "Some things they will test and scrutinize until they tease out any kind of tiny correlation with anything, some things they will do one very cursory test and find nothing, and declare the science settled. The difference usually involves money",
"parent_id": "8132468",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132509",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T21:30:51",
"content": "It’s like how everything causes cancer in the state of California, because otherwise you wouldn’t have an excuse to regulate it.",
"parent_id": "8132504",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132690",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T17:45:58",
"content": "Is there any artificial substance that collects in the body and has been shown definitively to have no positive correlation with any known malady?",
"parent_id": "8132468",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132470",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T18:50:51",
"content": "I want to say one word to you. Just one word.Yes, sir.Are you listening?Yes, I am.Chitin.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132471",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T18:51:58",
"content": "I don’t remember plastic being the “solution to and cause of all our problems”. I thought it was alcohol. From the Simpsons",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132473",
"author": "Cad the Mad",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T19:02:58",
"content": "That’s why they paraphrased, instead of quoted.",
"parent_id": "8132471",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132475",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T19:15:27",
"content": "Paraphrasing doesn’t change the original meaning.It’s not paraphrasing but parodying.",
"parent_id": "8132473",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132478",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T19:23:51",
"content": "“as harmless to ingest as said potato chips.”Looking at the girth of my fellow Americans, I am not sure the potato chip is that harmless.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132489",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T20:15:41",
"content": "Didn’t the Swedes recently make a study about how potato chips are carcinogenic?",
"parent_id": "8132478",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132501",
"author": "Bob Marlee",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T20:59:14",
"content": "Research into acrylamides is not new.",
"parent_id": "8132489",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132584",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T08:48:29",
"content": "Yes, but look at the source for potential conflict of interest. Swedes are the main alternative starchy root tuber to potatoes.",
"parent_id": "8132489",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132505",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T21:16:58",
"content": "Gotta be the sneed oils huh",
"parent_id": "8132478",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132491",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T20:18:07",
"content": "I was of the belief most of these ‘natural-ish’ plastics where still not expected to be safe to eat/breath/drink by design – just something that natural micro organisms can break down as they do other ‘waste’ like cellulose in the dead tree carcass. Which gives them some hope of being digested in a human I suppose, but that isn’t the same thing at all as simply preventing/reducing the build up of microplastics because they are now nowhere near as ‘forever’ in the natural world.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132500",
"author": "Donovan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T20:57:22",
"content": "I’ve printed plant pots out of “biodegradable” PLA and they are still going strong many years later. Colour fading was the primary problem.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132564",
"author": "Vik",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T06:23:10",
"content": "Having literally used PLA filament longer than anyone else on the planet I have data. All of the hydroponic plant pots and lids made with the very first batch ever have long since decomposed. Some made 15 years ago have crumbled to dust over the last 2 years, others made at the same time are still hanging in there though starting to look a bit bulged. Then again, some I made a couple of years ago from cheap stuff are already disintegrating. It depends a great deal on the quality of filament, the molecular weight, how much the manufacturer overheated it to speed production, how hot you printed it, and how much PLA was actually in your “PLA”.",
"parent_id": "8132500",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132614",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T12:34:37",
"content": "“Having literally used PLA filament longer than anyone else on the planet”I’m interested in this back story. Please go on.",
"parent_id": "8132564",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132506",
"author": "Jason Shaner",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T21:24:45",
"content": "why don’t we just print with potatoes? then deep fry everything to set the hardness?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132519",
"author": "asdf",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T22:10:57",
"content": "2D printing the potato seems easy enough but i’ve got now got my sights set on 3 dimensional fried potato structures. Without adding anything exotic would it be possible to get the consistency of a potato purée suitable for 3D printing from a pastestruder? What could be used as a support material, butter?",
"parent_id": "8132506",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132553",
"author": "Vik",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T04:03:00",
"content": "Yes, it is! At Fab Lab we use instant mashed potato in bioplastic paste extruder tests. It is easy to adjust the consistency and not hard to clean out of the extruder afterwards.",
"parent_id": "8132519",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132559",
"author": "make piece not war",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T04:55:04",
"content": "Mmmmm, 3d printed potato chips, yummy. Print’em in lego bricks shape, bake them (less harmfull than frying), use garlic mayo as mortar, build your dreams. Then eat them!Side effects: the universe will look smaller if you’re eating too much dreams.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132600",
"author": "RetepV",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T09:35:45",
"content": "I guess the whole problem is not the plastics, but the time that the human genome needs to evolve a tolerance towards those plastics. It will take many generations, but of course we all want that tolerance right now. :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132672",
"author": "Beowulf Shaeffer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T16:28:07",
"content": "I wonder if we’ll find this to be primarily physical (like in the various forms of pneumoconiosis, which is why fiberglass and carbon fiber are proving problematic, not just fine dust and asbestos) or primarily chemical in nature. This also makes me wonder what happens if we include a bunch of micro and nano chitin or cellulose in the mouse food. Would they already be able to reject or digest enough for it not to matter, or would it produce similar reactions to the modified starches?I guess I’ll have to wait and see.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132681",
"author": "Beowulf Shaeffer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T16:58:54",
"content": "Maybe not as long a wait as I thought.Just read the paper linked above (“Long-Term Exposure to Environmentally Realistic Doses of Starch-Based Microplastics Suggests Widespread Health Effects”), and there are two very interesting points.First, there was PLA in the bioplastics. According to the paper,“Additionally, the peak at 1720 cm–1 assigned to C═O stretching vibration, a typical feature of PLA, suggests the presence of PLA in the SMPs. This observation is consistent with the supplier’s information indicating that the starch-based plastic contains PLA. Blending PLA with SBs is crucial as it can significantly enhance their tensile strength, toughness, and stability, addressing issues such as poor fluidity and low thermal stability associated with pure starch plastics. Consequently, the SMPs selected for the study are highly representative.”Second, it sounds like all of the organ damage they found (liver and ovaries, primarily) as well as the altered circadian rhythms can be traced back to these mice developing diabetes (insulin resistance) from the increased presence of complex starches in their food which then began to accumulate in their gut and tissues.The researchers obviously want to conduct more experiments, but this suggests that the problems arise because the mice could somewhat digest the plastic.So now the question shifts to which is worse between type two diabetes and whatever is happening with the petroleum based polymers.",
"parent_id": "8132672",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132788",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T01:12:30",
"content": "They should get in contact with the Pringles people.Whatever modified strch they are using is already past the point that my body doesn’t recognize it as food…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,535.85967
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/26/intercepting-and-decoding-bluetooth-low-energy-data-for-victron-devices/
|
Intercepting And Decoding Bluetooth Low Energy Data For Victron Devices
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"Arduino Hacks",
"Microcontrollers",
"Radio Hacks",
"Software Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] |
[
"ble",
"bluetooth low energy",
"ESP32 wroom",
"Victron"
] |
[ChrisJ7903] has created two Ardiuno programs for
reading Victron solar controller telemetry data advertised via BLE
. If you’re interested in what it takes to use an ESP32 to sniff Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transmissions, this is a master class.
The code is split into two main programs. One program is for the Victron battery monitor and the other is for any Victron solar controller. The software will receive, dissect, decrypt, decode, and report the data periodically broadcast from the devices over BLE.
The BLE data is transmitted in Link-Layer Protocol Data Units (PDUs) which are colloquially called “packets”. In this particular case the BLE functionality for advertising, also known as broadcasting, is used which means the overhead of establishing connections can be avoided thereby saving power.
Decryption is handled with the the
wolfSSL library
and [ChrisJ7903] had nice things to say about the helpful people over at wolfSSL. The AES-CTR algorithm is used and seeded with the per-device encryption key, a nonce/salt in little-endian format, and the encrypted data.
[ChrisJ7903] relied heavily on technical documentation provided by Victron in order to decode the received data; some of that documentation is made available in the Git repo and ultimately everything is revealed in the code itself.
We’ve done heaps of BLE stuff here at Hackaday in the past. If you’re interested in BLE tech check out
this rain gauge
and
this doorbell
.
| 12
| 8
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132415",
"author": "Amphraredamine",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T14:57:09",
"content": "Definitely well documented and an interesting read. Cool to see how the packets can be received for decoding without pairing, needing only the device name. I wonder if this could be done other ble devices I’ve seen in the wild like CPAP machines, toaster ovens and garage doors. He also used the excellent nRF Connect app, which is a great tool for the Bluetooth curious. Thanks for sharing this work!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132469",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T18:45:17",
"content": "Ys, it absolutely is possible to do this for other BLE devices, I developed a little app to control a BLE device only last year by capturing the packets with one of the Nordic devices and nRF connect but I actually prefer to use my Android phone and Wireshark.",
"parent_id": "8132415",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132445",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T16:29:19",
"content": "Important work. This is a safety net for people with energy products still on their roofs that might lose access to diagnostic information as companies sunset products or completely go under (Renesola for example). Keep it up!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132516",
"author": "Simon mcnair",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T21:58:55",
"content": "Very cool. Might be worth mentioning that the program is reliant on the victron app being available and installed, at least for a period of time in order to gain access to the parameters required.The second the app leaves the app store and/or is retired the program will be useless :-(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132549",
"author": "punkdigerati",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T03:41:46",
"content": "All Victron products with Bluetooth, and many without, also have a ve.direct port that can be communicated with over serial. They publish the full protocol details.",
"parent_id": "8132516",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132574",
"author": "Stuart",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T07:28:38",
"content": "I’ve been using the victron ble add-on for home assistant for over a year now. Easy and works.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132575",
"author": "merser",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T07:35:02",
"content": "I’ve bought a lot of victron gear and wondered about this. I am a bit puzzled about the image though. It shows bluesolar with bluetooth where I thought that was minus bluetooth and smartsolar has bluetooth.Maybe it’s different in other countries.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132612",
"author": "Thiemo",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T12:22:59",
"content": "A VE.Direct Bluetooth Smart dongle can be connected to make it accessible over Bluetooth.",
"parent_id": "8132575",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132710",
"author": "F",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T18:51:24",
"content": "Fun but Victron has publicly documented the protocol.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132712",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T19:06:42",
"content": "The old days: manual with all requests and responses documented. Then they started culling the listed info (the old documents still worked, you just had to find them or remember the information).Now? 3 choices: log into a cloud using an app (shudder), reverse engineer it, let someone else reverse engineer it and put it on github.If using a device requires reverse engineering I will just shake my head: facepalm 🤦🏼♂️.Although it seems Victron publishes how to connect over serial, maybe a better (easier?) solution would be a serial connected micro-computer serving a local webpage with all the statistics?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132862",
"author": "KantPredict",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T09:22:50",
"content": "Already exists. ESPHome integration allows you to flash an ESP8266 or ESP32 and talk to the Victron line over VeDirect port and it’ll push the data straight to your home server. With a nice stats page too if you go to it’s IP address.",
"parent_id": "8132712",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8133076",
"author": "Wim",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T22:12:00",
"content": "I don’t like the term “Intercepting” in the title of this article, the project itself is interesting. The Victron data is in standard bluetooth advertisements, and documented by Victron. I wrote a C++ program that receives, logs, and graphs the data from several victron devices on linux using the BlueZ bluetooth stack and Dbus.https://github.com/wcbonner/VictronBTLELogger",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,535.521926
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/26/nasa-is-shutting-down-the-international-space-station-sighting-website/
|
NASA Is Shutting Down The International Space Station Sighting Website
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"News",
"Space"
] |
[
"international space station",
"nasa"
] |
Starting on June 12, 2025, the
NASA
Spot the Station
website
will no longer provide ISS sighting information, per a message recently sent out. This means no information on sighting opportunities provided on the website, nor will users subscribed via the website receive email or text notifications. Instead anyone interested in this kind of information will have to download the mobile app for iOS or Android.
Obviously this has people, like
[Keith Cowing] over at
Nasa Watch
, rather disappointed, due to how the website has been this easy to use resource that anyone could access, even without access to a smart phone. Although the assumption is often made that everyone has their own personal iOS or Android powered glass slab with them, one can think of communal settings where an internet café is the sole form of internet access. There is also the consideration that for children a website like this would be much easier to access. They would now see this opportunity vanish.
With smart phone apps hardly a replacement for a website of this type, it’s easy to see how the
app-ification of the WWW
continues, at the cost of us users.
| 40
| 17
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132356",
"author": "eMpTy-10",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T11:08:11",
"content": "I didn’t even know this was a thing. I usually use the ISS Live Now app",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132361",
"author": "Winston",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T11:33:01",
"content": "Which may be why it’s discontinued, low traffic?",
"parent_id": "8132356",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132403",
"author": "MAC",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T14:27:42",
"content": "A better comparison would be removing one’s appendix. I doubt most people would miss theirs.",
"parent_id": "8132361",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153906",
"author": "Jd",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T21:16:19",
"content": "Exactly, now you get more info from the app. No children are missing it because of the app( as the author says) plus they would of needed internet to sign up in the first place. This is an upgrade",
"parent_id": "8132403",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132419",
"author": "WonkoTheSaneUK",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T15:10:38",
"content": "Weird that they haven’t gotten around to “efficiently” cutting the millions of dollars spent on weekend golf trips.",
"parent_id": "8132361",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8147984",
"author": "Nancy White",
"timestamp": "2025-07-11T13:03:52",
"content": "Bingo",
"parent_id": "8132419",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153909",
"author": "Jd",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T21:19:32",
"content": "It wasn’t cut, it was upgraded. I’m sure it costs more to run a website with real time tracking then send out text messages.",
"parent_id": "8132419",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132365",
"author": "sohere",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T12:02:30",
"content": "the iss and more: heavens-above.com",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132367",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T12:28:49",
"content": "I have the app!",
"parent_id": "8132365",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132372",
"author": "Geekypenguin",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T12:51:51",
"content": "There’s still plenty of other websites that will spot the ISS and more, eg n2yo, heavens-above, isstracker, astroviewer etc.Yes it’s a shame they’re closing their own website, but there’s plenty of other alternatives that are sufficiently well established and known.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132377",
"author": "FEW",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T13:00:15",
"content": "This totally baffles me. I have often used the web site. Certainly the web site must be much less expensive than an app (for multiple platforms) to host and maintain!? Example of enshittification; why necessitate installation of an app?The spot the station web site is incredibly helpful. Seeing the station passing overhead is deeply touching to most people. Humans in space, just a few hundred miles away, and you can often see them orbiting with your own eyes at sunrise or sunset.Let’s ensure kids can’t look this information up from an official government site with their locked down enshittified school laptops.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132405",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T14:32:53",
"content": "” Seeing the station passing overhead is deeply touching to most people. ”I wouldn’t use the word most. Most would we used for people that could care less that its overhead.",
"parent_id": "8132377",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132556",
"author": "NFM",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T04:17:55",
"content": "Could care less?So they do care at least a little bit?",
"parent_id": "8132405",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132563",
"author": "doris",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T06:11:10",
"content": "I was going to say the same thing saying someone could care less is frankly idiotic.",
"parent_id": "8132556",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153911",
"author": "Jd",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T21:21:58",
"content": "The app continues to do the same thing and more, it sends notifications and gives live tracking .",
"parent_id": "8132377",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132383",
"author": "Ray",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T13:32:19",
"content": "The use of “enshittification” twice makes the article just tripe and IMO unfit for publication in Hackaday.NASA is being responsible for shutting down websites that are supported by taxpayer dollars IF those sites are no longer providing major value for the public OR if better resources are available from private sources OR existing products.AI: Several starmap apps can show the International Space Station (ISS) in real-time, including Stellarium Mobile, NASA’s Spot the Station app, and Heavens-Above. These apps use your phone’s GPS to calculate sighting opportunities and some also offer augmented reality features to help you locate the ISS in the sky.Educational Organizations wishing to utilize smartphones for starmap apps should consider requesting used/orphaned units from the community for repurposing… My grandson and I use 2 old Android devices to take outside for this purpose and while several years old, they work perfectly for this use as WiFi is all that is required to set them up.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132447",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T16:35:32",
"content": "“NASA is being [..]” more and more unimportant. Its best days are over.International partners do start to loose faith and respect for NASA.It’s just a matter of time until that agency folds.Such actions as this one just show how small its horizon has become.",
"parent_id": "8132383",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132408",
"author": "TJ",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T14:42:27",
"content": "^This!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132454",
"author": "robert",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T17:54:49",
"content": "Does the heavens-above satellite tracking website rely on this NASA website as a data source? If not it can continue to function just as before and lets you easily type in your lat and long then get predictions of ISS passes in the next few weeks.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132455",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T17:55:53",
"content": "“everyone has their own personal iOS or Android powered glass slab with them,” … When I retire it will ‘rarely’ be with me. Not going to be a slave to the phone… Only reason I have one now is my company requires it (for on-call purposes), bought it, and is supporting it.Sad to see sites disappear. But it happens. Got a lot of non-working bookmarks now.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132497",
"author": "Stanson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T20:37:03",
"content": "Not going to be a slave to the phone…Excellent and very wise desire.But why you are ready to be a slave of online services and web browser? Install, say, gpredict on your computer with browser and you will get much more, with more information and in much better quality than on that NASA web page.",
"parent_id": "8132455",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132598",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T09:30:12",
"content": "“gpredict”There’s also PREDICT, which is still current and runs on MS-DOS, as well.It’s in use by professionals, too.https://www.qsl.net/kd2bd/predict.html",
"parent_id": "8132497",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132599",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T09:35:16",
"content": "“Not going to be a slave to the phone… ”Android is also runnning on Tablet PCs, TVs and Blu-ray players, media players etc.Add a mouse/keyboard and you have a little computer.I do use that setup with DOSBox app, for example.",
"parent_id": "8132455",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8137139",
"author": "SFort",
"timestamp": "2025-06-09T23:07:39",
"content": "Agree, 100%! Retired, ditched the company smartphone. Too bad NASA doesn’t support the KaiOS of my feature phone. Your tax dollars at work!",
"parent_id": "8132455",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132459",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T18:10:10",
"content": "There are other websites that will give accurate real time information on ISS passes. Heavens-Above and N2YO are two of them. Even better if you’re just trying to avoid a mobile app is a free desktop program called Gpredict.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132466",
"author": "Johannes Spanier",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T18:37:09",
"content": "There is stillhttps://www.heavens-above.com/for all space stuff visibility prediction needs.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132481",
"author": "AggregatVier",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T19:48:07",
"content": "Relax, everyone! The computer NASA kludged together to provide ISS email updates will live on as spare parts for a Newark Air Traffic Control system.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132503",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T21:11:02",
"content": "Luckily there are other websites which can accomplish this simple task:https://www.astroviewer.net/iss/en/observation.php",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132539",
"author": "none ra",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T01:23:16",
"content": "To those saying ‘relax there are other websites’. Where do you think those websites get their info from, wishing it into existence? Lets look at the bottom of Astroviewer for an example:“Background image and orbital data by NASA”So depending on how far the looting goes at NASA even the other sites may go dark.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132590",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T09:11:53",
"content": "Celestrak has 2-element info, too.I do use STS Orbit + on MS-DOS to track ISS. Works like a charm.(The computer also has ethernet and I’m also able to use a DOS FTP program to download new files.)Before anyone screams “outdated!”, the classic program is somewhat sophisticated. It even was used in space.Which other program can claim that? Also, it simulates mission control of the 90s.. :)",
"parent_id": "8132539",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132593",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T09:18:54",
"content": "Hi, I think that the other space agencies have their sources, too. ESA, CSA, JAXA..They all have a need to monitor orbits, kind of.Also, there’s still CNSA/CMSA, NASA’s successor(s). ;)",
"parent_id": "8132539",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132597",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T09:26:36",
"content": "What I think is sad is how NASA seemingly degrades/stagnates for years.The agency merely is a shadow of its former self or so it seems.Shutting down public information services like this hurts its reputation, no matter if it has much users or not. It’s about the principle.You nolonger can take it serious, if even the most basic services are put on ice.That’s if an agency or business has no landline, no fax or e-mail address.It makes everything look unserious, unprofessional, untrustworthy.",
"parent_id": "8132539",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132621",
"author": "Aaron",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T13:00:57",
"content": "In what form and from where is the originating raw data that provides the location pulled from? Or is it not needed anymore because of trajectory projections or something and just calculated because they are accurate?Honest question.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132627",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T13:44:48",
"content": "The United States Air Force (now US Space Force, operating as the Combined Space Operations Center under US Space command) Collects most of the orbit data and makes it publicly available through Space-Track.org. Other organizations also track objects.The TLEs, especially for low earth orbit, have a very limited useful lifetime: perturbations from Earth’s equatorial bulge and other mass distributions, plus the moon and sun all add up, compounded by the variable drag from our atmosphere that depends on the state of the sun. Some objects (ISS, Starlinks, many others) also actively control and modify their orbit, so a TLE is useless to predict anything after that.Orbit predictions for LEO objects can be good for a week or more, but rapidly get worse from there. You can’t expect a month-old TLE to be accurate.",
"parent_id": "8132621",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132632",
"author": "Aaron",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T14:32:29",
"content": "Thank you for the explanation. I’m trying to understand space-track.org’s role v.s. what spaceforce.mil folks manage.But more precise in this case, my question to the populus is now: does the ISS, specifically, provide raw tracking in a way that is standardized for any and all who want to query it? Is NASA eliminating a service or is it eliminating purely an interface? I’m not sure where the ios and android apps get their data vs the NASA-Spot site.To be more blunt, IDGAF about an interface. If free/accurate alternatives do exist in the www domain then who cares. I’m worried about access to RAW data being omitted or taken away or pay-walled. I think that is what others should be concerned about too.To the author: the use case of someone in an internet cafe only having www and no mobile device is laughably weak. And if you are using a PC (OS agnostic) you are probably doing more productive things with that data than just viewing its location on a website.The concern being web vs app is weak and a shallow concern. You should provide where to get the pull the raw data as an alternative to that site. That’s the hack-a-day way. Cater to those who can create with the raw data instead of passing along info and starting a modality conversation.",
"parent_id": "8132627",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132762",
"author": "asheets",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T22:27:49",
"content": "In my line of business, we download fresh TLEs regularly for the objects we need to track.",
"parent_id": "8132627",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132784",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T01:01:34",
"content": "For orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.",
"parent_id": "8132762",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132660",
"author": "alga",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T15:52:28",
"content": "Good replacement:https://isstracker.pl/en",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132769",
"author": "reg",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T23:04:04",
"content": "I have no idea how busy it is or was, I do know I had subscribed for years and starting a bunch of years ago they would say I had to renew and that process never worked, so I found a contact and they would manually add me. I am not sure if it was broken just for me, as the address I have them was a popular commercial one. It sort of reminds me of a place I worked where management thought it would be a great idea to get a couple of (unpaid..) summer interns to do some real world coding on things no one in the place wanted to be involved it. Of course they worked pretty well when it had keepers. It used a few off site resources that it got in under the free plans. Sadly and not surprisingly that market segment had a lot of shake out and the places they used went away or got transitioned into newer places as the old ones were taken off line. A few years down the road, without a keeper and without owning all the pieces those projects were in very unhappy shape and of course no one on the tech side had a clue about them. This sort of feels like that. It also feels like a rip off as getting the couple messages a month was all I ever asked of nasa and now they are stopping even that little bit of returning something to the tax payers. I got the phone app. It looks slick, but and it comes with a gigantic but, it is a phone app. I use my phone the one day every two weeks or so I have to drive someplace. I live in an area with very spotty cell service and the data service is even worse. And I tend to keep my phone in airplane mode to keep ad’s out of the one silly game I play on it. I am not real happy with this move.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155939",
"author": "Anne Bartels",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T18:26:03",
"content": "I have a flip phone, so was disappointed with this decision. I use this site to help teach public astronomy programs and for school groups, but now I will just explore other sites. I can’t imagine NASA has improved at all under this administration – in fact I’m surprised that it hasn’t been shuttered like other science programs at EPA, etc. Hopefully we’ll be able to get back some respect and intelligence in 2028…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,535.473308
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/26/pico-mac-nano-fits-working-macintosh-on-barbies-desk/
|
Pico-mac-nano Fits Working Macintosh On Barbie’s Desk
|
Tyler August
|
[
"computer hacks",
"Mac Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Retrocomputing"
] |
[
"hackintosh",
"macintosh 128k",
"rp2040"
] |
Have you ever looked in a doll house and said “I wish those dolls had a scale replica of a 1984 Macintosh 128K that could be operated by USB?” — well, us neither, but [Nick Gillard]
gives us the option with his 63mm tall Pico-mac-nano project.
As you might imagine, this project got its start with the
RP2040-based Pico Mac project
by [Matt Evans], which we covered
The collector’s edition will come with a lovely box, but what’s in it is still open source so you can make your own.
before. [Nick] saw that, built it, and was delighted by it enough to think that if the Mac could run on such tiny hardware, how small could build a fully-usable replica Mac? The answer was 63 mm tall– at 5.5:1, that’s technically under the 6:1 scale that Barbie operates on, but if we had such a dollhouse we’d absolutely put one of these in it. (You just know Barbie’s an Apple kind of girl.)
The size was driven by the screen, which is a 2″ TFT panel with 480 x 640 pixel native resolution. Here [Nick] cheats a tiny bit– rather than trying to rewrite the PicoMac to output 640 x 480 and rotate the screen, he keeps the screen in portrait mode and drives it at 480 x 342 px. Sure, it’s not a pixel-perfect output, but no LCD is going to be a perfect stand in for a CRT, and who is going to notice 32 pixels on a 2″ screen? Regardless, that set the height of the computer, which is built around the portrait display. A highly detailed, and to our eyes, accurate replica of the original Macintosh case was printed to fit the LCD, coming in at the aforementioned 63mm tall.
Unfortunately this means the floppy drive could not be used for micro SD access– there is an SD card reader on this unit, but it’s on the back, along with a USB-C port, which is roughly where the mouse and keyboard ports are supposed to be, which is a lovely detail. Also delightful is the choice of a CR2 lithium battery for power, which is a form factor that will look just a bit familiar if you’ve been inside one of these old Macs.
[Nick] has posted the
3D designs and modified pico mac firmware to a GitHub repository
, but if you’re looking for a charming desk ornament and don’t have the time to build your own, he will also be selling these (both kits and fully assembled units) via
1bitrainbow, which is the most delightfully retro web store
we’ve seen of late.
If Classic MacOS isn’t good enough for you, how about linux?
You won’t enjoy it as much, but it will run on the RP2040
.
| 14
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132339",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T10:00:35",
"content": "What is this? A computer for ants?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132751",
"author": "David H",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T21:34:05",
"content": "Thanks, ants. Thants.Oh, sorry, got my formic memes mixed up there. As you were!",
"parent_id": "8132339",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8157496",
"author": "Garrut",
"timestamp": "2025-08-04T10:07:12",
"content": "News from August 2025: apparently no stock for assembled model and worth, no box anymore, due to apparently a complain from apple! Shame for apple to forbid nick to sell this as assembled, the box was the cherry on the cake! I really don’t understand why this company (and others) have such move against their customer with no real motivation.Motivated for that to make a gift, i will purchase the kit and will try to make a box but pfffff…",
"parent_id": "8132339",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132340",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T10:05:01",
"content": "Shame they couldn’t fit a micro-SD where the floppy drive was, but that’s fantastic! The screen looks just like my memory. Though I remember the case being a slightly UV-damaged beige…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132373",
"author": "Nick Gillard",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T12:56:50",
"content": "Finding a suitable colour filament with the right finish has certainly been a challenge. I think I went through 4 different beige PLA filaments. To be honest, I think you’d have to spray paint it to get the best finish.",
"parent_id": "8132340",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132434",
"author": "_sol_",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T15:22:19",
"content": "And the droning sound of the floppy drive that seemed to take forever to read and write.",
"parent_id": "8132340",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132483",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T19:49:29",
"content": "Hm, that’s almost exactly 1/8 scale, which would make a 14″ crt be a 1.75″ LCD, which is a reasonably popular size…",
"parent_id": "8132340",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132368",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T12:31:36",
"content": "Reminds me of this classic:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGGOn-H7s3Q",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132376",
"author": "Nick Gillard",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T12:59:15",
"content": "Excellent. I’d never seen that.",
"parent_id": "8132368",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132398",
"author": "Rastersoft",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T14:08:40",
"content": "Mmm… rotating the screen wouldn’t allow to make it 1:6 as Barbie, and have all the screen pixels?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132409",
"author": "Rastersoft",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T14:42:59",
"content": "Ok, it explains it in the official page: the processor lacks rotation.",
"parent_id": "8132398",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132463",
"author": "Pax",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T18:22:00",
"content": "My tv, also does not do rotation, but that does not prevent me from sending it a rotated image.Just rewrite or swap x & y in the display output function.On the rp2040 (or 2350) you could also write a display driver running on the pio cores,leaving both arm (or RV) cores free to run the emmulator (pico-mac-nano-duo?)",
"parent_id": "8132409",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132735",
"author": "Myself",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T20:29:45",
"content": "Were Bernoulli boxes popular with this generation of Mac? I wonder if the microSD might scale appropriately.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132782",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T00:58:33",
"content": "This is adorable. The Pico Mac project is neat, too.I just hopeit will eventually support 256KB model and a serial port.Maybe using UART debug port. That way, AppleTalk could be made work.So a tiny AppleWriter printer could be emulated, eventually.Maybe using a thermal printer or something.Being able to run System 6 or 7 would be nice, too, to play Glider.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,535.697418
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/25/2025-pet-hacks-contest-a-water-fountain-for-your-cat/
|
2025 Pet Hacks Contest: A Water Fountain For Your Cat
|
Jenny List
|
[
"contests",
"home hacks"
] |
[
"2025 Pet Hacks Contest",
"cats",
"drinking fountain"
] |
Part of the charm of having a cat in your life is that by their nature these animals are very interactive. They will tell you in no uncertain terms when something in their lives needs attention, for example when their water dish is empty. But
why not give them a drinking fountain all of their own
? It’s what [
supermarioprof
] did for their adorable ginger cat [Piki Piki], providing a cat-operated trickle of water on demand.
It’s a simple enough device in its operation, but very well constructed. There’s a small basin with a drain, and a water cistern valve operated by the cat placing a paw on a lever. This starts a trickle of water, from which they can lap as much as they like.
The physical construction comes courtesy of some laser-cut ply, and what looks like some 3D print work. It’s certainly easy to operate for the cat, and has worked reliably for a few years now.
This project is part of
the 2025 Pet Hacks contest
, so expect to see more in the same vein. If your cat’s life is improved by one of your projects, consider making an entry yourself!
| 5
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132328",
"author": "Ferenc",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T08:30:50",
"content": "My brain automatically replaced that word with ‘drain’. No harm done :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132449",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T16:51:51",
"content": "Ah thx!",
"parent_id": "8132328",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132334",
"author": "Pet",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T08:58:54",
"content": "Pets also tend to drink more from running water sources. Can confirm, purchased cheap pet water fountain",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132371",
"author": "RetepV",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T12:46:02",
"content": "“(no, I don’t meant that ironically)”Don’t worry, we are all experienced enough to understand that you meant that theatrically, not ironically.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132541",
"author": "Jason",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T01:51:25",
"content": "Don’t feel the need to announce when you leave the room next time",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,535.31867
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/25/how-to-build-an-stm32-web-dashboard-using-the-mongoose-wizard/
|
How To Build An STM32 Web Dashboard Using The Mongoose Wizard
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"ARM",
"Microcontrollers",
"Network Hacks",
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] |
[
"Mongoose Library",
"Mongoose Web Server",
"Mongoose Wizard",
"OTA",
"over-the-air update",
"stm32",
"web dashboard"
] |
Today from the team at Cesanta Software — the people who gave us the open-source Mongoose Web Server Library and Mongoose OS — we have an article covering
how to build an STM32 web dashboard
.
The article runs through setting up a development environment; creating the dashboard layout; implementing the dashboard, devices settings, and firmware update pages; building and testing the firmware; attaching UI controls to the hardware; and conclusion.
The web dashboard is all well and good, but in our opinion the killer feature remains the Over-The-Air (OTA) update facility which allows for authenticated wireless firmware updates via the web dashboard. The rest is just gravy. In the video you get to see how to use your development tools to create a firmware file suitable for OTA update.
If you’re thinking this all looks a little familiar, that’s because we recently wrote about their
web dashboard for the ESP32
. This is the same again but emphasizing the STM32 support this time around. We originally heard about the Mongoose technology line
all the way back in 2017
!
Thanks to [Toly] for letting us know about this new howto.
| 2
| 2
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132400",
"author": "V",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T14:11:54",
"content": "Never comment on Forth while finishing off a fifth.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8133969",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-05-31T18:17:06",
"content": "Mongoose looks very nice for sure, but the last time I checked it was either prohibitively expensive or GPL license only. That makes me as a developer less likely to spend my time learning that framework, because I won’t be using it for work, and I don’t necessarily want to publish the code for all my hobby projects either.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,535.35512
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/25/hackaday-links-may-25-2025/
|
Hackaday Links: May 25, 2025
|
Dan Maloney
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] |
[
"ai",
"Andy Weir",
"astronomy",
"exoplanet",
"hackaday links",
"hallucination",
"ice",
"James Webb",
"jwst",
"LLM",
"pcb",
"space",
"technosignature"
] |
Have you heard that author Andy Weir has a new book coming out? Very exciting, we know, and according to a syndicated reading list for Summer 2025, it’s called
The Last Algorithm
, and it’s a tale of a programmer who discovers a dark and dangerous secret about artificial intelligence. If that seems a little out of sync with his usual space-hacking fare such as
The Martian
and
Project Hail Mary
, that’s because
the book doesn’t exist
, and neither do most of the other books on the list.
The list was published in a 64-page supplement that ran in major US newspapers like the
Chicago Sun-Times
and the
Philadelphia Inquirer
. The feature listed fifteen must-read books, only five of which exist, and it’s no surprise that AI is to behind the muck-up. Writer Marco Buscaglia took the blame, saying that he used an LLM to produce the list without checking the results. Nobody else in the editorial chain appears to have reviewed the list either, resulting in the hallucination getting published. Readers are understandably upset about this, but for our part, we’re just bummed that Andy doesn’t have a new book coming out.
In
equally exciting but ultimately fake news
, we had more than a few stories pop up in our feed about NASA’s recent discovery of urban lights on an exoplanet. AI isn’t to blame for this one, though, at least not directly. Ironically, the rumor started with a TikTok video debunking a claim of city lights on a distant planet. Social media did what social media does, though, sharing only the parts that summarized the false claim and turning a debunking into a bunking. This is why we can’t have nice things.
That wasn’t the only story about distant lights, though, with t
his report of unexplained signals from two nearby stars
. This one is far more believable, coming as it does from retired JPL scientist Richard H. Stanton, who has been using a 30″ telescope to systematically search for optical SETI signals for the past few years. These searches led to seeing two rapid pulses of light from HD 89389, an F-type star located in the constellation Ursa Major. The star rapidly brightened, dimmed, brightened again, then returned to baseline over a fraction of second; the same pattern repeated itself about 4.4 seconds later.
Intrigued, he looked back through his observations and found a similar event from a different star, HD 217014 in Pegasus, four years previously. Interestingly, this G-type star is known to have at least one exoplanet. Stanton made the first observation in 2023, and he’s spent much of the last two years ruling out things like meteor flashes or birds passing through his field of view. More study is needed to figure out what this means, and while it’s clearly not aliens, it’s fun to imagine it could be some kind of technosignature.
And one last space story, this time with
the first observation of extra-solar ice
. The discovery comes from the James Webb Space Telescope, which caught the telltale signature of ice crystals in a debris ring circling HD 181327, a very young star only 155 light-years away. Water vapor had been detected plenty of times outside our solar system, but not actual ice crystals until now. The ice crystals seem to be coming from collisions between icy bodies in the debris field, an observation that has interesting implications for planetary evolution.
And finally, if like us you’re impressed anytime someone busts out a project with a six-layer PCB design, wait till you get a load of
this 124-layer beast
. The board comes from OKI Circuit Technologies and is intended for high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators. The dielectric for each layer is only 125-μm thick, and the board is still only 7.6 mm thick overall. At $4,800 per square meter, it’s not likely we’ll see our friends at JLC PCB offering these anytime soon, but it’s still some pretty cool engineering.
| 24
| 12
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132254",
"author": "scott_tx",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T23:26:36",
"content": "It doesn’t inspire confidence that the SETI article says ‘Project Ozma at the Greenbank Observatory in West Bank, Virginia.’",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132264",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T00:25:09",
"content": "I’d totally read that book.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132270",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T00:48:45",
"content": "Maybe AI is finally coming out of the closet?",
"parent_id": "8132264",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132266",
"author": "NSFW",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T00:41:02",
"content": "I for one welcome our new hallucinating overlords.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132277",
"author": "Charles Springer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T01:20:13",
"content": "$4800 a sq meter is, unless I lost a decimal place, 48 cents per sq cm. A 5x8cm board is $20 assuming you need of sq meter of them. That is 16 cents a layer. Could there be an error?Anyway, sounds like part of the new Nvidia bandwidth monster. The 120kW fully liquid cooled cabinet of Skynet! The thinner the layer the lower the capacitance and the higher the possible frequency. I bet proto-Skynet did the layout! Like a hermit crab, it has outgrown its shell and needs more.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132444",
"author": "duddybuddy",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T16:10:33",
"content": "Yeah, as worded, the HaD is easy to misinterpret…the linked article mentions the bill of materials cost is $4800 per sq. meter, and a yield rate of 65%. I assume that doesn’t include labor/processing costs either, so presumably, the customer price will be much more",
"parent_id": "8132277",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132289",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T02:29:51",
"content": "Andy needs to bang out that book fast (using LLM assistance) to cash in on this fantastic opertunity.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132296",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T02:47:08",
"content": "Andy is number two on the mostly fake list. If he acts fast enough, he could be talking best seller money.",
"parent_id": "8132289",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132301",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T03:29:06",
"content": "When it comes to LLM generated content my favourite quote is currently “Why should I waste my time reading something, that someone else was too lazy to bother writing”.Thinking about this a bit more. The problem is not with using a LLM. The problem is a that a task master allocated the generation of the list to someone who knows nothing about books. That person also knew nothing about the drug induced hallucinations of using any computer LLM. So they idiotically trusted the steaming pile returned as facts instead of half remembered dreams. The task master never allocated resources to review the article. So ultimately you have people using tools that they do not fully understand (And to be fair that is probably true for 99.999 of people using any technology today). So I would see it as a systemic flaw brought about by very poor management. The task should have been allocated to someone who actually reads books. And their article fully distrusted until reviewed by at at least two other people, who are also prolific book readers.",
"parent_id": "8132296",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132303",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T03:41:57",
"content": "I really miss Bill Hicks:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NivJKUfa7SwThe problem could be a severe shortage of book readers.",
"parent_id": "8132301",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132421",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T15:12:23",
"content": "Your analysis is spot on..I do … education … and looked into how adults learn and why problems happen. I’m going to muck up the details, but the upshot is something like Toyota studied the problem and basically found that if a system is set up to allow errors to happen, they will. But (for me) more importantly, it is useless to punish theindividualmaking the mistake. In my job it makes sense- unless you are a psychopath and want to come to work to crash a forklift on purpose or something, starting with the assumption that most people don’t come to work to F-up on purpose has been really helpful in my teaching. And more effective. “Root cause analysis” is drilling down and finding the systemic problem..Fixing a systemic issue is much, much harder than just yelling at someone who messed up though, and unfortunately yelling is much, much more common..Finally, as a burnt out teacher, putting in that effort is super hard but I keep doing it and ironically it keeps me actually teaching despite that, because the results are so good.",
"parent_id": "8132301",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132704",
"author": "J ODell",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T18:35:29",
"content": "My husband was a forester turned safety guy who had to write “root cause analysis” documents all the time. The root cause of many of the issues was management. Management hallucinating how fast work could be done, and screaming at crews to work faster because they underestimated the job. Management hallucinating that you could send out crews and work them 14 hour days 6 days a week, and only 10 on Sunday, and there wouldn’t be incidents. Management thinking that training was a magic wand, and if they (who signed the paychecks) yelled at a crew to work faster and the guys cut corners to meet the deadline, that it was the safety departments fault (who did not sign the paychecks).I have know several bosses I would be happy to replace with a hallucinating AI – I wouldn’t have to pretend to like them, and could swear at the AI without getting fired.",
"parent_id": "8132421",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132708",
"author": "J ODell",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T18:46:09",
"content": "But of course you can’t put “management” in as a root cause.And kudos to you for continuing to teach. FOr me it would be hard to not yell at today’s class for doing the same stupid thing as last year or last decade’s class…",
"parent_id": "8132421",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132292",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T02:34:00",
"content": "$4,800 per square meterThat sounds fantastically cheap. So a 10 cm square board would only cost $48. That price looks too good to be true.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132304",
"author": "make piece not war",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T04:05:15",
"content": "I suppose an AI board is way bigger than 10 cm sq and also in 10 cm sq you do not have enough space for enough parts to use most of the 124 layers. But I might be wrong.",
"parent_id": "8132292",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132317",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T06:29:11",
"content": "Maybe it is the bulk manufacturing price excluding mask cost.Currently JLCPCB offers 32 layers at $58 per 10x10cm.. after you pay the thousand dollar setup fee.",
"parent_id": "8132292",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132385",
"author": "Then",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T13:40:02",
"content": "“and it’s no surprise that AI is to behind the muck-up” ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132492",
"author": "Lord Kimbote",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T20:23:31",
"content": "Not any more.",
"parent_id": "8132385",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132386",
"author": "Then",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T13:41:08",
"content": "Rapid flashing star as technosignature? That sounds like bad news",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132391",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T13:56:05",
"content": "Why anyone can trust AI after people follow Google maps and drive into lakes already is beyond me.I watched a reasonably intelligent youtube engine builder let AI choose 6 pairs of matching injectors from a list if 20 that had been flow tested, wirh predictably poor results. A variance of three. It took me less than a minute to make 7 pairs with a variance of 1.I think we need to give the AI better prompts that take into account their deficiencies. Or we need to develop a “common sense” intelligence that fact checks itself and double checks for hallucinations.Of course if you are intelligent enough to circumvent AI pitfalls, wouldn’t you just perfom the task yourself?I have met at least two real life people of dubious education/intelligence who basically worship AI, does not bode well for humanity.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132764",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T22:36:06",
"content": "I think AI is a very attractive way to deal with tasks for people whose skillset is well below average, because AI seems, to them, to be better than what they’d do.To anyone who is even slightly above average, AI is probably going to seem easy but of poor quality, and to someone good at a task, AI is going to seem like more work than doing the work.Debug is usually harder than writing good code in the first place. But if you can’t make something good in the first place, you won’t ever get to the debug step and even if you do, it’s going to go horribly wrong. AI gets you to the horribly wrong step MUCH FASTER, so at least it saves you some time and effort.I strongly feel that the sentence in the article should read: “Writer” Marco Buscaglia. If it’s written by AI you’re not a writer, you’re a director.",
"parent_id": "8132391",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132510",
"author": "Chris Maple",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T21:33:31",
"content": "I’d rather have a new book by Andrew Wiles.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132636",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T14:55:37",
"content": "Marco Bruscaglio was fired because of the AI listicle, incidentally his LinkedIn says:“An innovative, experienced and reliable content creator with a background in both journalism and creative writing”.I guess “reliable content creator” doesn’t technically make any promises about veracity or integrity.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132771",
"author": "watts",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T23:30:06",
"content": "The dielectric layers are 25µm, not 125µm. 125µm would make the pcb at least 15.5 mm thick.csw",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,536.247299
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/25/unreleased-amiga-hardware-plays-mp3s/
|
Unreleased Amiga Hardware Plays MP3s
|
Bryan Cockfield
|
[
"Software Hacks"
] |
[
"a3000",
"aa3000",
"amiga",
"att",
"dsp",
"dsp3210",
"mp2",
"mp3",
"MPEG",
"music"
] |
The MP3 file type has been around for so long, and is supported by essentially all modern media software and hardware, that it might be surprising to some to learn that it’s actually a proprietary format. Developed in the late 80s and early 90s, it rose to prominence during the Napster/Limewire era of the early 00s and became the de facto standard for digital music, but not all computers in these eras could play this filetype. This includes the Amigas of the early 90s, with one rare exception: this unreleased successor to the A3000 with a DSP chip,
which now also has the software to play back these digital tunes
.
The AA3000, developed as a prototype by Commodore, was never released to the general public. Unlike the original A3000 this one would have included a digital signal processing chip from AT&T called the DSP3210 which would have greatly enhanced its audio capabilities. A few prototype boards did make it out into the hands of the public, and the retrocomputing scene has used them to develop replicas of these rare machines. [Wrangler] used one to then develop the software needed for the MPEG layer 2 and 3 decoder using this extra hardware, since the original Amiga 3000 was not powerful enough on its own to play these files back.
If you want to follow along with the community still developing for this platform there’s
a form post with some more detail for this specific build
(although you may need to translate from German). [Wrangler] additionally points out that there are some limitations with this implementation as well, so you likely won’t get
Winamp-level performance
with this system, but for the Amiga fans out there it’s an excellent expansion of this computer’s capabilities nonetheless.
Thanks to [Andy] for the tip!
| 33
| 8
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132216",
"author": "MinorHavoc",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T20:16:23",
"content": "“The AA3000, developed as a prototype by Amiga…”I think you mean “Commodore”. “Amiga” was the computer line and the original company purchased by Commodore before the product was released to the public.I still have my original Amiga “B”2000 and A3000 computers. It’s a shame Commodore wasn’t able to make it successful long-living product, but as frequently reported, management was more interested in lining their pockets than running a successful company.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132221",
"author": "KDawg",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T20:27:01",
"content": "In the early 1980s Jay Miner, along with other Atari staffers, became fed up with management and left the company.In September 1982,[2] they set up another chipset project under a new company in Santa Clara, California, called Hi-Toro (which meant “high bull” to them,[3] later renamed to Amiga), where they could have some creative freedom.",
"parent_id": "8132216",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132287",
"author": "MinorHavoc",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T02:16:16",
"content": "As I noted, this was the original company that was purchased by Commodore. The “AA3000” was prototyped by Commodore long after, not by the original Amiga Corp. that no longer existed.",
"parent_id": "8132221",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132381",
"author": "Dave Haynie",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T13:25:42",
"content": "The group I was in when I developed this machine, at Commodore in West Chester, was at various times shown as Commodore Business Machines, Commodore Semiconductor Group, Commodore Technology, and yes, Commodore Amiga. It was in 1991, years after Commodore had bought the Amiga company. That company was integrated into Commodore in various ways and the technology did keep evolving, despite major flaws in the management of the company.",
"parent_id": "8132287",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132388",
"author": "mr3",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T13:46:09",
"content": "Hearing from original development staff, this is awesome, thanks. It’d be great to hear more from these kinds of perspectives.",
"parent_id": "8132381",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132581",
"author": "CONSTANTINE XII",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T08:29:45",
"content": "oh, yeah this is in response to whatever I say. Irony, I would call them All At Commodore,as I worked with Jay since 1974. Jay Miner Never Left Amiga .Why, he Owned Everything Then Gave it to I. Everyone knows Knows this. The AA or 24bit without ham came out in 1988. All, Amigas Coulg play All Mpegs. In fact there was no standard. The CD32 could play All formats Including the Pioneer Redray ..granted a little adjusting. Then, it ..the CD32 could play mpeg 18 format. They, had released mpeg 6, but the Amiga Toaster Killed,and Still is the best. Could go on, either most of these people lie or dont know jack.. the ones commenting ,and this so called news article person,and resource. Jay, Dave,and Karl never every disagreed with me,and in fact left the Amiga community ,before Jay Died or what was left it as They, said,and Only went To the Y2K Show in St.Louis as well as All the clebs ,and ceos As I was there, and You All Know it.RHRH Constantine XII-AmigaMan",
"parent_id": "8132221",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132397",
"author": "Dave Haynie",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T14:08:19",
"content": "I did spend about nine years at Commodore designing exclusively Amiga hardware, like the “B2000” (aka A2000-CR), the A2620/A2630 CPU boards, the Amiga 3000, the A3000+/AA3000, Nyx (AAA chip development system), etc. I think “Commodore Amiga” is appropriate.",
"parent_id": "8132216",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132512",
"author": "Richard C",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T21:41:25",
"content": "You are a legend! Listened to a few of your interviews on YouTube recently, must have sucked working hard on amazing projects like the A3000 and then Commodore making such awful business decisions.",
"parent_id": "8132397",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132741",
"author": "David H",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T21:00:54",
"content": "May I second Richard’s comment? As an avid Amiga user and (hobbyist) developer from circa 1989 onwards (A500 later upgraded to a 2.04 ROM; A1200, A2000, A4000/040… and my original Workbench & drives now live on in emulation thanks to UAE), I recognize your name, Dave and am very, very grateful for all your contributions to the platform. In fact, I think we conversed once or twice on the Amiga usenet groups way, way back in the day and you were far more patient and helpful than a wet-behind-the-ears student had any right to expect…).I’m very happy that you’re still around & online – and, I hope, thriving.(tries to keep rabid fanboy gleam out of eyesfails)",
"parent_id": "8132512",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132985",
"author": "blakespot",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T15:22:13",
"content": "Lovely. I am using an A2620 in my A2000 (rev 6.4). I am building up the courage to attempt to add a hardware disable/enable switch to the 68020 accelerator…",
"parent_id": "8132397",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132587",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T08:54:04",
"content": "LOL. Absolutely, and fixed.",
"parent_id": "8132216",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132236",
"author": "ziew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T21:37:53",
"content": "The article says:[Wrangler] used one to then develop the software needed for the MPEG layer 2 and 3 decoder using this extra hardware, since the original Amiga 3000 was not powerful enough on its own to play these files back.And the project page says:MPEG 1 Layer III files must be 96kbps or less and the frequency 32kHz (see below for how to do this)I’m pretty sure that if we play the game of lowering requirements, we could assume that the original Amiga 3000 was powerful enough to play MP3 files, as long as we’re talking about 8 kbps mono ;-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132280",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T02:06:15",
"content": "And if we increase system requirements, an m68040 would play a normal 128 kbps MP3, and an m68060 would play any kind of MP3.",
"parent_id": "8132236",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132485",
"author": "John Heritage",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T20:03:45",
"content": "I never thought to try that on my 040 Amiga 1200. Now I will!Hopefully 33 MHz is enough as 40 MHz isn’t quite stable for me.",
"parent_id": "8132280",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132742",
"author": "David H",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T21:02:58",
"content": "I’m pretty sure that I was able to play 128kbps MP3s on my A4000/040, albeit Tracker/MED/OctaMED tunes were more prevalent at the time. If I get time later today I’ll fire up WinUAE with various machine speed presets and see if my memory’s accurate.",
"parent_id": "8132485",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132319",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T06:37:24",
"content": "Offline conversion could also work, but would take a lot of storage to get more than 8 kHz mono 8-bit µlaw.",
"parent_id": "8132236",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132384",
"author": "Dave Haynie",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T13:38:58",
"content": "That does seem oddly weak. The DSP3210 could run 32-bit floating point algorithms generally 5-10x faster than a 68040, much less a 68030. This works via internal SRAM, zero overhead loops, MAC instructions — the usual DSP stuff — and a 50MHz CPU clock in the otherwise 25MHz system.I did see one of these boards but not all the details. The original project was called the Amiga3000+ at Commodore. Along with the DSP, I had a 16-bit Audio CODEC and an audio mixer so that Amiga and DSP audio could play through the same outputs, however you liked, but there was no need to go through Paula to play back audio. If they don’t have direct audio output, maybe some of the restrictions are to better map into the Amiga’s audio, but I’d want that as a transcoder on the DSP, not a file format restriction.We could play off the shelf 128kb/s MP3 files some years later on the Metabox Phoenix set top box prototypes. I ran a Motorola/Freescale ColdFire at 90MHz and 144MHz depending on model, with SDRAM. The ColdFire did offer MAC instructions, but no hardware floating point. On the 90MHz version that did chew up something like 90% of the CPU.",
"parent_id": "8132236",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132268",
"author": "Worf",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T00:43:32",
"content": "The DSP3210 by AT&T was also used by the Apple Mac AV series of computers to power their video and audio capabilities before the PowerPC Macs were introduced. The PowerPC was powerful enough that the DSP was not needed for the AV capabilities.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132326",
"author": "rasz_pl",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T08:20:29",
"content": "and plenty of Mac Photoshop accelerators, usually in DSP pairs",
"parent_id": "8132268",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132389",
"author": "Dave Haynie",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T13:48:56",
"content": "Apple got a big boost on their AV project based on our work at Commodore on the A3000+/AA3000. Jeff Porter and I visited AT&T in 1990 to talk about our plans for the DSP3210. Their usual business model was selling DSPs as a replacement for big boxes of analog hardware. You’d buy the chips and license the software as you needed it for your specific job. We had a different plan: we were adding the DSP3210 as a general computing resource, and we wanted all the software libraries to be available for general use by application software. We finally got the AT&T people to understand what we were after, and got a low cost blanket license for nearly everything… Not the 9600 baud modem, but we’d have the 2400 baud modem in the box.So of course the management idiocy at Commodore ensured the machine never came out. In fact, the new management team had pronounced it a firing offense to put a AA3000 main board in an A3000 case… Good thing Bill Sydnes never visited my garage! But when Apple later went to AT&T, that kind of use was already in place.Apple’s AV machines never worked as well as our system would have. The DSP ran AT&T’s multitasking VCOS/VCAS operating system, which was a near perfect match to AmigaOS.",
"parent_id": "8132268",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132605",
"author": "Torsten Kurbad",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T11:12:44",
"content": "Did you, by any chance, at AT&T meet George Warner or Kreg Ulery? The former was the contact I found in some ancient README and tracked down on the net. He held the key to get the DSP software development restarted for us.The reason for this was that floating around on the net were only parts of the DSP manual. George was incredibly helpful. He not only scraped together all DSP software and development bits he still found on ancient hard drives, he also drove all the way down to Michigan from Pennsylvania to meet his former boss at AT&T, Kreg Ulery, who happened to have written the DSP manual and kept a copy (perhaps the last one in existance) in his attic he scanned for us.They both expressed their fondness of this particular chip and were very happy to help.",
"parent_id": "8132389",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132747",
"author": "David H",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T21:07:51",
"content": "“In fact, the new management team had pronounced it a firing offense to put a AA3000 main board in an A3000 case…”Wow. That is ridiculous and petty and short sighted and… sadly, very much “on brand” for what I read & observed of the CBM management team in the latter years. Truly, to borrow the military quote, “Lions led by donkeys”.",
"parent_id": "8132389",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132276",
"author": "Lee Bailey",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T01:10:07",
"content": "So not as powerful as the 56k in the falcon which couldjustabout manage a 320kbit mp3 in the lowest resolution that allowed to mp3 player to be usable. Amazing work and really interesting stuff I never even knew this was planned for the Amiga lineup!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132393",
"author": "Dave Haynie",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T14:02:35",
"content": "The DSP3210 was significantly more powerful than any 56K processor… ours could peak at around 25MFLOPS. It multitasked and did 32-bit floating point 5x-10x faster than the 68040. It also shared the main bus with the CPU (68030 or 68040), so all dram could be reached directly, not sitting out on an I/O port like the MC56K. So they have some limitations that’s not clear… Probably formatting audio to play native on the Amiga legacy hardware. I’ll probably see these guys at Amiga40 in Dusseldorf this year… I’ll want the whole story. Could be this is just the first prototype and they’ll improve it later.The original Amiga3000+ at Commodore has its own 16-bit Audio CODEC that could mix with legacy Paula audio… No need to transcode for playback. Just a guess. The AA3000 design these are based on was after the new Commodore management forced me to remove all the extra audio stuff in the prototypes, but I kept the improved DSP design. Sadly, a bug in the interface hardware added to the last version of the DMAC chip meant I had to hack in the interface with some dead but PALs. So we only had three DSP machines of the 50 or so AA3000 boards.",
"parent_id": "8132276",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132582",
"author": "CONSTANTINE XII",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T08:41:29",
"content": "oh, hey And I dont get the AA ,and Hombre Confused Anymore.lol..Thanks for the Long Talks of Knowledge Since ,The Early 80s. Yes, Cant Forget Karl ..we need rebol as js is pig..As, you know I open sourced All Amiga as Jay wanted granted it was tech in 91.Yes, I miss those long talks with Jay, who doesnt. The, best one was the first one in 74 as ,Always…the unexpected is Always the best. Shawn Constantine XII –",
"parent_id": "8132393",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132739",
"author": "Wrangler",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T20:37:37",
"content": "As the author of the software, I just bought a ticket to Amiga 40 on the basis of your comment! – would be great to talk about the DSP, the AA3000 and what it might have been.",
"parent_id": "8132393",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132284",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T02:10:08",
"content": "Just get an Amiga 486 bridgeboard, Sound Blaster/WSS card and run WinPlay3 on Windows 3.1! :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132981",
"author": "blakespot",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T15:19:54",
"content": "But…then you’re running Windows 3.1. #sadtrombone",
"parent_id": "8132284",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133015",
"author": "David H",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T17:08:33",
"content": "To borrow a phrase, “That is your crime. It is also your punishment.” :)",
"parent_id": "8132981",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132387",
"author": "Drew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T13:44:22",
"content": "My 68040 played them well enough… Never really thought to much about it, it worked.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133131",
"author": "Antti",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T04:11:19",
"content": "Aye, i had an A1200 with a 68060 turbo card, it played mp3s fine, at 14 bit sound quality though.",
"parent_id": "8132387",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132460",
"author": "TheSpearTip",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T18:12:32",
"content": "I used to play 128kbps mp3s on my A1200 with ‘030 accelerator board and FPU back in the very late 90’s/early 2000’s, as were many others at the time. It couldn’t handle much above that bitrate very well but considering I still had dialup at the time it didn’t matter, I could still get my Weird Al on just the same.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132631",
"author": "Pat McDonald",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T14:00:25",
"content": "Apparently 4 MP3 players that work with released Amiga hardware and a 68040 processor or faster…https://aminet.net/search?query=mp3+player",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,536.068167
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/25/nes-zapper-becomes-telephone/
|
NES Zapper Becomes Telephone
|
Bryan Cockfield
|
[
"Peripherals Hacks"
] |
[
"analog",
"audio",
"laser",
"light gun",
"nes zapper",
"phone",
"photodiode",
"receiver",
"transmitter"
] |
Although there was a time in the 80s (and early 90s for fans of the SuperScope) where light guns were immensely popular, with games like DuckHunt cultural touchstones, their time in the video game world has largely come to an end. We might occasionally pick up a Zapper for the NES and play this classic out of nostalgia, but plenty of people are looking for other things that these unique video game controllers can do instead. [Nick] has
turned one of his old NES peripherals into a wireless phone
.
The way the original Zapper worked was by looking for a certain pattern of pixels that displayed for a fraction of a second whenever the trigger was pulled. Bypassing the anti-cheat mechanism that looks only for qualities of light coming from CRT screens of the day effectively turns the light gun into an analog light sensor which is used for receiving the audio from the phone’s base station via a laser. Of course there were no microphones present within the original hardware so one is added, wiring its output to another laser that communicates to the base station. With the light gun pointed directly at this base station, audio is communicated back and forth by varying the strengths of these small lasers and listening to them on the other end with photodiodes.
[Nick] does point out that this isn’t a great phone, largely because it needs to be pointed exactly at the right spot to work at all, although we do agree that it’s an interesting project that demonstrates what the original hardware could do with a few of its limitations removed. There are a few other ways of bringing these devices into the modern world, with one of our favorites being
this laser pointer with additional hardware from a Wiimote that could also function as a mouse
.
| 9
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132286",
"author": "Swaythemgoombas",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T02:15:42",
"content": "Remember the first Mario Bros movie when they went to take their mug shot with a gun. I think they used light guns for other things too. Great movie, wish they would have made more",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132308",
"author": ".",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T05:14:37",
"content": "I am reminded of the (apocryphal) story of the phone ringing in the night, and the chap answering the handgun on his nightstand.How powerful is that laser?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132316",
"author": "El Gru",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T06:23:04",
"content": "I would imagine uses like a garage door opener or light switch or other single action devices would suit the device much better than turning it into a bi-directional machine gun.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132320",
"author": "SparkyGSX",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T06:47:00",
"content": "When I read the title, I expected the speaker to be in the barrel, and having to pull the trigger to answer",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132333",
"author": "Awen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T08:52:12",
"content": ":D",
"parent_id": "8132320",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132370",
"author": "Garth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T12:42:49",
"content": "Oh like I would like to do when I accidentally answer a spam caller and get offered help on my Medicare/Medicaid/Home Or Car Warranty….",
"parent_id": "8132320",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132375",
"author": "Garth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T12:57:50",
"content": "Another fun variation/repurpose project. Bell made the first Photophone in 1880 which used sunlight and was the first truly wireless voice transmission. I remember back in the 70s in either RadioTV Experimenter or Popular Electronics magazine a tutorial for building a 2 way voice optical transmitter. The unit were the size of police radar guns of that era and had of course limited range. I was wondering, why not go the route of a ceiling mounted infrared transceiver? That would be like the (not sure what they were called) ceiling light Internet connection that was proposed years ago.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132394",
"author": "lol",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T14:03:11",
"content": "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Fi",
"parent_id": "8132375",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132435",
"author": "Nick Bild",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T15:32:44",
"content": "https://hackaday.com/2025/04/15/replica-of-1880-wireless-telephone-is-all-mirrors-no-smoke/",
"parent_id": "8132375",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,535.917356
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/25/the-commodore-64-gets-an-hdmi-upgrade/
|
The Commodore 64 Gets An HDMI Upgrade
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"Retrocomputing"
] |
[
"c64",
"commodore 64",
"hdmi"
] |
The Commodore 64 may remain the best selling computer of all time, but it has one major flaw. It doesn’t have HDMI! That makes it a total pain to use with modern displays. Thankfully, [Side Projects Lab] has
whipped up an HDMI output board
to solve this concerning oversight from the original designers.
The project was inspired by work by [Copper Dragon], who whipped up a nifty RGB output board. This device worked by reading the inputs to the C64’s VIC II graphics chip, which it then used to recreate a pixel-perfect video frames to then produce a quality analog video output. [Side Projects Lab] figured the same interception technique would be useful for producing a quality HDMI output.
The result was the HD-64. It sits inside the C64 in place of the original RF modulator. It uses an interleaver socket to capture digital signals going to the VIC II. It then feeds these signals to an emulated VIC II running inside an FPGA, which creates the pixel-perfect screen representation and synthesizes the proper digital HDMI output. Meanwhile, the analog audio output from the SID chip is captured from the RF modulator’s original header, and sent out via the HDMI output as well. The default output is super-sharp, but the device can be configured to allow scanlines and anti-aliasing if that’s more to your tastes.
If you want to hook your C64 up to a modern screen, this is going to be one of the tidiest and sharpest ways to do it.
We’ve seen similar hacks for other platforms before, too
. Video after the break.
[Thanks to RobIII for the tip!]
| 39
| 15
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132153",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T14:29:36",
"content": "Since it needs original VIC chip, it doesn’t fix the VDC bug that could lock up the computer.Also I noticed it doesn’t mention Commodore 128, I wonder if this can be used in 128 mode, 40 column mode? 80 column mode already has RGB out and there are HDMI adapter that takes digital RGB to HDMI",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132198",
"author": "Bart",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T18:39:55",
"content": "You could always get a Vic kawari if you worry about bugs, it does hdmi and replaces the Vic chip.",
"parent_id": "8132153",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132217",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T20:20:05",
"content": "Costs the same as other HDMI replacement. Unfortunately the creator said it won’t work in a 128 at all.",
"parent_id": "8132198",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132156",
"author": "Orzel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T14:51:41",
"content": "It’s not open-source, that’s (imho) definitely an information worth mentionning.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132158",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T14:54:32",
"content": "That’s okay, I think. If it was, some Chinese company would start to make cheap copies for profits. ;)",
"parent_id": "8132156",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132164",
"author": "Orzel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T15:19:16",
"content": "I did not complain about it not being open-sourced.",
"parent_id": "8132158",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132165",
"author": "Vinny",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T15:21:54",
"content": "And is that a problem? If someone open sources their project it means they want to share it to the world, if a company thinks that it is interesting enough to make a profit from it, everyone wins (provided the chosen license allows commercial use, obviously).SOURCE: an author of two open hardware projects that are being sold by Chinese companies.",
"parent_id": "8132158",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132278",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T02:01:31",
"content": "“And is that a problem?”It depends, I guess? Say if the author puts his/her heart into it and others get rich for it, while the original author never gets the credit he/she deserves?It’s not even about money, but acknowledge.“an author of two open hardware projects that are being sold by Chinese companies.”Okay. But I don’t see how that matters, exactly.If someone made someting primitive like, say, a “Volt-Blaster Board”, then no real ingeniuty and love was involved.It was just a quick, obvious solution to a minor problem. Not a lifetime project.",
"parent_id": "8132165",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132195",
"author": "Bart",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T18:37:07",
"content": "It’s also means that if the project owner disappears, the project is dead and gone.",
"parent_id": "8132158",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132281",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T02:06:34",
"content": "Yes. But on other hand, it also makes it precious. Make it human.There are a lot of family cookie recepts that die with beloved granny who knew it.The loss is sad, but it also made the cookies special in the hearts of family.If the recept was known by everyone, including companies, then it had not same value in retrospect.",
"parent_id": "8132195",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132457",
"author": "IanD",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T17:57:39",
"content": "I think the word you’re looking for is recipe.",
"parent_id": "8132281",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132458",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T17:58:06",
"content": "What are you talking about man hahaha",
"parent_id": "8132281",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132157",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T14:52:07",
"content": "I’m certain this statement was meant as irony, as a joke, as a sideblow. :)That being said, I think that CRT emulation is favorable for anything 320×240 pixels and below.VICE, for example, provides optional PAL emulation.It’s not ideal, but a start. Emulation of a Commodore 1701/1702 and its screen mask (slot mask?, 0,64 mm dot pitch) would be nice.Hopefully, HDMI boards in the future will be intelligent enough to run such CRT emulation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132163",
"author": "PJ Allen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T15:19:12",
"content": "I used a composite video to HDMI converter (external) in a C64 project presented on HaD a few years ago. The picture looked just fine to me.An analog RGB to HDMI converter for the Amiga would be super.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132255",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T23:30:59",
"content": "There have been rgb to HDMI adapters for Amiga for ages. It’s even possible to get around it entirely with passive adapters if a monitor has VGA or DVI input, but the internal mod is trivial.",
"parent_id": "8132163",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132166",
"author": "Cricri",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T15:23:31",
"content": "I specifically came to read the comments to see if someone completely missed the obvious joke and point out that HDMI wasn’t available at the time.I am not disappointed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132177",
"author": "hmmmm...",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T16:11:37",
"content": "I got the intention to “crack a joke” but I specifically came to drop the trivia of how long between the C64s release and HDMIs.",
"parent_id": "8132166",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132261",
"author": "ethzero",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T00:14:16",
"content": "hmmmm…",
"parent_id": "8132177",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132169",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T15:31:09",
"content": "It’s getting to the point we might as well throw a WiFi enabled RISC KVM in there and use the television’s web browser to open the video feed 🤦🏼♂️",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132170",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T15:33:06",
"content": "Also that Micro HDMI connector is cursed, never used a good one, signal always drops. Hopefully USB-C with DisplayPort Alt-Mode will get easier to use. The cables for that are robust and cheap.",
"parent_id": "8132169",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132269",
"author": "OG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T00:44:49",
"content": "Micro-HDMI is disgraceful trash.Canon finally seems to have learned this after crippling its cameras with this junk year after year after year…",
"parent_id": "8132170",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132294",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T02:34:23",
"content": "I just wish it was a little easier to use DisplayPort for smaller projects. Last I looked it required a minimum frequency and packets while DVI/HDMI uses direct clocking of pixels so for low resolutions you can get away with something slower e.g. cheaper FPGAs.Looked at using HDMI over USB-C for that reason but it has basically no support in comparison (IIRC).Makes it much harder to keep a very trimmed down build if you want USB-C and video especially combined.",
"parent_id": "8132170",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132189",
"author": "D VB",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T18:10:13",
"content": "Wish there was one for the VIC20….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132192",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T18:28:44",
"content": "RCA AV to HDMI Converters can be found under $10 on amazon",
"parent_id": "8132189",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132219",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T20:25:28",
"content": "Analog to digital conversion tended to be grainy and fuzzy and some of the cheap ones tended to be quite laggy. I’ve asked about one before, I was looking at a $200+ device that are as close to zero lag as possible",
"parent_id": "8132192",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132193",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T18:30:35",
"content": "That’s harder to implement, I think, given the original hardware.Conversion from Nipkow disk to HDMI, I mean..",
"parent_id": "8132189",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132321",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T06:50:42",
"content": "The biggest issue for not being able to make this for the VIC-20 would be the fact that the VIC-20 doesn’t have an internal modulator to be ripped out. meaning that there is no hole in the casing and mounting holes on the PCB to be re-used. regarding the hardware itself. If you are able to make a VIC-II in an FPGA, you are certainly able to make a VIC as it is a much simpler design (and already wonders around on the internet in various FPGA implementations).The idea of the project, ripping the modulator out (which nobody uses these days anyway) and using the freed up space and hole for the new hardware is, brilliant. By using the freed up modulator holes in the PCB the new hardware is mounted elegant/stable/strong inside the C64.",
"parent_id": "8132193",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132197",
"author": "Bart",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T18:38:31",
"content": "Just get a Vic kawari. You’ll get HDMI and don’t even need a Vic chip anymore. Though I don’t disprove of people building things, there is something better already.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132220",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T20:26:05",
"content": "Same price and fixes VIC bugs",
"parent_id": "8132197",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132226",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T21:05:10",
"content": "It wasn’t the engineers fault, it’s just Jack Tramiel wouldn’t pay for the time machine they needed to get the HDMI hardware!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132456",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T17:56:18",
"content": "that cheap bastard",
"parent_id": "8132226",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132272",
"author": "OG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T00:50:31",
"content": "For anyone interested, there is a good HDMI converter for the Atari 8-bits.Discussion:https://forums.atariage.com/topic/307175-sophia-2-improved-gtia-replacement/Original supplier seems sold out, but maybe the creator has some. Another possibility:https://www.pcbway.com/project/shareproject/Atari_Sophia_2_video_HDMI_stereo_board_eba1d654.html",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132297",
"author": "rasz_pl",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T02:52:45",
"content": "The “oversight” would be designers (Charpentier/Yannes) limiting VIC-2 to S-Video (Y/C) output because 1.USA 2.cheaper while Europe was sporting RGB inputs in TVs since seventies.That design choice resulted in cheaper chip but also C64 garish color palettehttps://codebase64.org/doku.php?id=base:commodore_vic-ii_color_analysisbecause VIC-2 doesnt think in RGB, it thinks in clock phases:VIC-II creates all angles just with 4 voltage-levels being send positive and negative on “U” and “V”.anddesign was based on the principle thatadding a sine wave of a particular frequency and amplitude to aninverted version of the same sine wave at a different amplitudeproduces a phase-shifted sine wave of the same frequency. Theamount of phase shift is directly proportional to the amplitudesof the two sine waves.In order to save space on the chip, though, many of the colorswere simply the opposite side of the color wheel from onesthat we picked. This allowed us to reuse the existing resistorvalues, rather than having a completely unique set for eachcolor.and finallyCommodore didn’t care enough about consistency15khz RGB monitors finally started becoming popular in US five years later due to Amiga/Atari ST/Tandy Color Computer 3/Apple IIGS, too late for our beloved C64.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132535",
"author": "Russell P Jones",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T00:32:54",
"content": "I have always felt that Commodore chose some really bizarre hardwired (sadly unchangeable) colors for the C64 instead of some actually useful colors. The explanation you gave now makes more sense of why.",
"parent_id": "8132297",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132606",
"author": "Steven Watson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T11:21:55",
"content": "An HDMI? “An” surely you just mean A HDMI",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132644",
"author": "Justin",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T15:10:44",
"content": "This is great, but would be better if it could replace the VIC-II chip completely. The bigger problem is running out of VIC-II chips.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8134080",
"author": "Darry",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T05:03:46",
"content": "Look up the VIC-II Kawari",
"parent_id": "8132644",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8133170",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T07:51:28",
"content": "To me this seems like a complete waste of time and effort that they could have put towards a million different better projects.To each his own though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8144099",
"author": "Dug",
"timestamp": "2025-07-02T00:06:43",
"content": "This is all very interesting and all, and I’m all for this, but… if you are going down the road of emulating chips why not just run an emulator? I’m not looking to “fix” the bugs in the chips of my c64. I want to run it as close to stock as I can.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,536.142946
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/25/a-quick-introduction-to-tcp-congestion-control/
|
A Quick Introduction To TCP Congestion Control
|
Aaron Beckendorf
|
[
"computer hacks",
"internet hacks"
] |
[
"bandwidth",
"congestion",
"networking",
"TCP"
] |
It’s hard to imagine now, but in the mid-1980s, the Internet came close to collapsing due to the number of users congesting its networks. Computers would request packets as quickly as they could, and when a router failed to process a packet in time, the transmitting computer would immediately request it again. This tended to result in an unintentional denial-of-service, and was degrading performance significantly. [Navek]’s
recent video
goes over TCP congestion control, the solution to this problem which allows our much larger modern internet to work.
In a 1987 paper, Van Jacobson described a method to restrain congestion: in a TCP connection, each side of the exchange estimates how much data it can have in transit (sent, but not yet acknowledged) at any given time. The sender and receiver exchange their estimates, and use the smaller estimate as the congestion window. Every time a packet is successfully delivered across the connection, the size of the window doubles.
Once packets start dropping, the sender and receiver divide the size of the window, then slowly and linearly ramp up the size of the window until it again starts dropping packets. This is called additive increase/multiplicative decrease, and the overall result is that the size of the window hovers somewhere around the limit. Any time congestion starts to occur, the computers back off. One way to visualize this is to look at a graph of download speed: the process of periodically hitting and cutting back from the congestion limit tends to create a sawtooth wave.
[Navek] notes that this algorithm has rather harsh behavior, and that there are new algorithms that both recover faster from hitting the congestion limit and take longer to reach it. The overall concept, though, remains in widespread use.
If you’re interested in reading more, we’ve previously covered network congestion control
in more detail
. We’ve also covered [Navek]’s previous
video on IPV5
.
Thanks to [Mahdi Naghavi] for the tip!
| 11
| 1
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132116",
"author": "Greg Mathews",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T12:33:16",
"content": "Mid-1980s internet ran on computers with processing power of a current PIC16 running at 16 MHz. You have to keep in mind that back then people only recently invented how to make CPUs and use them to build computers so it was all still fresh. Back then something like ESP32 would probably be classified as top secret supercomputer by NSA, CIA and FBI.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132122",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T12:51:46",
"content": "????By mid 80s we had DOS, multiple megabyte harddrives, 32bit CPUs and even multiple megabyte RAMs.I think you’re thinking of 70s",
"parent_id": "8132116",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132134",
"author": "Julian Skidmore",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T13:33:28",
"content": "Mid-1980s internet ran on computers much more powerful than a PIC16 series at 16MHz. PICs are notoriously inefficient when it comes to general purpose computation, whereas by the mid-1980s we had 32-bit computers running at 8MHz (68000, 80286, VAX 8600).Consider a 16-bit calculation on a PIC16:MOVWF src1+1,WADDWF src2+1,WMOVF dst1+1MOVWF src1,WADDWF src2,WBTFSC STATUS,0INCF dst1+1MOVF dst1 ;2µs.vs 68000:ADD.W D0,D1 ;0.5µsOr consider dhrystones:PIC18F26K20: 380.Motorola 68000 at 8MHz: 2100.VAX 8600: 7203IBM PC/AT: 1247Sun 3/75: 3514.IBM PC/XT: 386.So, a PIC18F26K20, which is more powerful than a PIC16, has 1981 PC performance.People do have a tendency to underestimate the capabilities of older technology.",
"parent_id": "8132116",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132149",
"author": "Albert",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T14:19:43",
"content": "There are dedicated libraries to do large number arithmetics, idk why you’d use assembly for that XD",
"parent_id": "8132134",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132209",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T19:50:14",
"content": "The fact there’s libraries for multiplication vs a single instruction is pretty much his point and speaks volumes.",
"parent_id": "8132149",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132213",
"author": "Albert",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T20:01:55",
"content": "Ok wise guy, then how would you multiply 70368744177664 by 1126999418470405 on a x86 CPU without using external software? On 32-bit Windows XP Matlab can do this calculation easily, but it’s impossible to write number this big in regular .c file and compile it with GCC or Visual Studio 2005. You need software or custom library for that.",
"parent_id": "8132209",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132250",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T23:16:45",
"content": "@Albert It’s is just addition, of course you can do it, figuring out how to do things like that is a basic skill on constrained embedded systems and used to be on desktop hardware back then too.And often enough you don’t have headroom for an entire arbitrary precision library anyway.",
"parent_id": "8132209",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132476",
"author": "PPJ",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T19:18:26",
"content": "Matlab is written in C/C++ so it’s possible. Personally I would represent those numbers in arrays of integers and then multiply one by like I would on paper but I am not a programmer – there must be a better way. Search for large number arithmetics for 8051, 6502, or even ATMega.",
"parent_id": "8132209",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132379",
"author": "Julian Skidmore",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T13:12:30",
"content": "Because the earlier comment claimed a 16MHz PIC16 series was more powerful than a CPU in the mid-1980s. In a high-level language:int main(){int16_t a,b;scanf(“%d %d”,&a,&b);return a+b;}How can you tell if a 16MHz PIC16 would be faster than an 8MHz M68000? Or a 1MHz 6502? Or a pdp-11/40? You can’t unless you know how it translates efficiently into machine code.In either case, 8-bit PICs are very slow and I can’t find any references for how a PIC16 could even run dhrystone.",
"parent_id": "8132149",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132239",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T22:00:44",
"content": "Also, the PDP-7 was introduced in 1964, the PDP-10 in 1966, and the PDP-11 in 1970. Those weren’t even the first, by any stretch. What’s this noise about “people only recently invented how to make CPUs and use them to build computers”? You’re whole decades off.",
"parent_id": "8132116",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132290",
"author": "MinorHavoc",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T02:32:01",
"content": "Yeah. The Intel 8080 was already a decade old by the mid-1980’s with the Motorola 68000 and Intel 8086 introduced in 1979 so it wasn’t even true for microprocessors, never mind “CPUs”.",
"parent_id": "8132239",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,536.298322
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/25/2025-pet-hacks-contest-feline-facial-recognition-foils-food-filching/
|
2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Feline Facial Recognition Foils Food Filching
|
Tyler August
|
[
"Android Hacks"
] |
[
"2025 Pet Hacks Contest",
"android",
"arduino",
"cat feeder",
"Tensorflow Lite"
] |
Cats are no respecters of personal property, as [Joe Mattioni] learned when one of his cats, [Layla] needed a special prescription diet. Kitty didn’t care for it, and since the other cat, [Foxy]’s bowl was right there– well, you see where this is going. To keep [Layla] out of [Foxy]’s food and on the vet-approved diet, [Joe]
built an automatic feeding system with feline facial recognition
. As you do.
The hardware consists of a heavily modified feed bowl with a motorized lid that was originally operated by motion-detection, an old Android phone running a customized TensorFlow Lite model, and hardware to bridge them together. Bowl hardware has yet to be documented on [Joe]’s project page, aside from the hint that an Arduino (what else?) was involved, but the write up on feline facial recognition is fascinating.
See, when [Joe] started the project, there were no cat-identifying models available– but there were lots of human facial recognition models. Since humans and cats both have faces, [Joe] decided to use the MobileFaceNet model as a starting point, and just add extra training data in the form of 5000 furry feline faces. That ran into the hurdle that you can’t train a TFLite model, which MobileFaceNet is, so [Joe] reconstructed it as a Keras model using Google CoLab. Only then could the training occur, after which the modified model was translated back to TFLite for deployment on the Android phone as part of a bowl-controller app he wrote.
No one, [Joe] included, would say that this is the easiest, fastest, or possibly even most reliable solution– a cat smart enough not to show their face might sneak in after the authorized feline has their fill, taking advantage of a safety that won’t close a bowl on a kitty’s head, for example–but that’s what undeniably makes this a hack. It sounds like [Joe] had a great learning adventure putting this together, and the fact that it kept kitty on the proper diet is really just bonus.
Want to go on a learning adventure of your own? Click this finely-crafted link for all the details about this ongoing contest.
| 6
| 2
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132056",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T08:50:19",
"content": "…and the winner of the 2025 alliterative headline award goes to…Semi seriously, can we have a vote on the best headlines?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132086",
"author": "Lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T11:03:12",
"content": "Love the alliteration too hahaha. The project sounds fun too. Never thought about cat facial recognition. Gait detection or fur pattern recognition would probably be how I’d have tried this not knowing facial recognition was possible.",
"parent_id": "8132056",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132121",
"author": "make piece not war",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T12:50:39",
"content": "Sorry, but you have misread, it’s about fecondition my dear sir.",
"parent_id": "8132086",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132162",
"author": "wb7ond",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T15:18:19",
"content": "For my cats, the rear provides good contrast, one has a big hairy Maine Coon-cat tail, other has NO tail, and the third has a long, long tail.",
"parent_id": "8132086",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132241",
"author": "adobeflashhater again",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T22:09:37",
"content": "Aim a bit lower and try an Iris~eye recognition program? Came to me as a joke, but the more ya think about it?Just that any cats that I’ve lived with, tend to only raise their tail IF you are also around at that time (outside of “Spraying” moments).",
"parent_id": "8132162",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132200",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T18:43:47",
"content": "I accidentally made an Ir cat identification system. I was building a simple touch less tachometer using an ATTiny85, OLED display, Ir LED, and a Ir Receiver Diode. I was setting it up and testing it on a bread board while at my desk. My Calico cat just had to investigate it (as cats always need to do). When she stood over the sensor, PING! it detected her. The Ir bounced off of her white belly fur and back to the sensor. Then when my grey Tabby came to investigate, his darker fur absorbed most of the Ir light, the sensor couldn’t see him. I was rather surprised as his belly fur is actually more of a creamy brown.Right away my mind went to the possibility of separate feeders. If they ever need different diets, I’m going to look into this further.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,536.18396
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/24/making-a-backyard-observatory-complete-with-retractable-roof/
|
Making A Backyard Observatory Complete With Retractable Roof
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"Science",
"Space"
] |
[
"backyard",
"observatory",
"retractable roof",
"telescope"
] |
Here’s one for our astronomy geeks. Our hacker [arrow] has
made their own observatory
!
This particular video is a bit over ten minutes long and is basically a montage; there is no narration or explanation given, but you can watch clear progress being made and the ultimate success of the backyard facility.
Obviously the coolest thing about this building is that the roof can be moved, but those telescope mounts look pretty sexy too. About halfway through the video the concrete slab that was supporting one metal mounting pole gets torn up so that two replacements can be installed, thereby doubling the capacity of the observatory from one telescope to two.
If you’re an astronomy wonk you might enjoy
some of [arrow]’s other videos
. Maybe with their observatory [arrow] will solve
the problem of dark matter
. We’ve covered heaps of astronomy stuff here at Hackaday before including
how to make your own telescope right down to the glass
and
the world’s highest altitude infrared telescope
.
Thanks very much to [Joshua] for sending us this tip via the
tips line
.
| 16
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132043",
"author": "make piece not war",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T07:51:41",
"content": "Very nice. But with all the automated and motorised roof and telescopes mounts, it has a whif of “doctor evil layer”. Where is the “laser on the head” shark’s pool?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132058",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T08:53:20",
"content": "This is very cool, I can see the immense effort that went into it.But it also makes me wonder if there was an easier way of doing it? This is very elaborate but, overkill I feel",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132204",
"author": "Schobi",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T18:57:20",
"content": "What an immense effort!The focal lengths of the telescopes do not look that high – does this really need isolated concrete slabs? Insulated shed when you open up at night anyway and need cooldown? (active ventation is useful I guess) Looks like this way built in a backyard neighborhood – with random neighbors I expect a lot of stray light.A larger “hobby” telescope (600mm mirror, 6m focal length) I visited last year was a little outside the settlement, almost hidden behind a row of trees. Sure – concrete all-around but the dome was not even insulated as temperatures at night changes anyway.But hey – armchair complaints. I’d love to see what they do with it.",
"parent_id": "8132058",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132222",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T20:56:38",
"content": "This is BY FAR the easiest and cheapest way to do this.You need:stable mounting that doesn’t get moved.an “indoor space” for protecting the telescopes most of the time.an unobstructed view of the sky when using themideally a stable temperatureCombine those requirements and you get a shed with a concrete floor, permanent mounts, and a sliding roof.The roof needs to be strong enough to hold snow/ice if you live where they happen.It must shed water off the outer edges, with no inner seams.That means it is easiest to roll the whole roof away.The telescope s and supporting computers, cameras, CCD sensors, and the rest likely cost $50k-$100k.Building a $10k shed is cheap.",
"parent_id": "8132058",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132091",
"author": "prfesser",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T11:35:12",
"content": "Notice that the concrete holding the pier is isolated from the rest of the floor, to minimize transfer of vibration from walking around.A bit elaborate but the basic design is quite similar to roll-off-roof amateur observatories shown in “Amateur Telescope Making Book 1”, first published in the early 1900s. Most used human power to roll off the roof. I would have loved such a setup when I was really into amateur astronomy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132181",
"author": "Evan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T16:50:16",
"content": "For the title of the article, I just have to point out that “replete” means “full of,” and isn’t a synonym for “complete.” The title says the observatory is full of retractable roof.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132210",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T19:53:00",
"content": "For the record I did actually check the dictionary for that word prior to submitting this article to the editors. I don’t often use the word so I wanted to be sure. My sources tell me that “full of” is one sense of “replete” but that “abounding” and “complete” are other senses of the term. It is grammatically correct and idiomatic to say that the “observatory is replete with retractable roof”.",
"parent_id": "8132181",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132224",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T21:03:17",
"content": "Sorry but no.Replete > “complete” is a common MISUSE, which is why you will find it in some “living” dictionaries.That doesn’t mean it is a proper use of the word.You are trading “people who don’t understand the word will get my meaning”For “people who understand the word will be confused”Putting it in a checker suggests “did you mean complete?”",
"parent_id": "8132210",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132235",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T21:37:09",
"content": "Fair enough. I have updated the title for you. Thanks for keeping me on my toes.",
"parent_id": "8132224",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132486",
"author": "Henry",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T20:07:35",
"content": "Be careful with this is the kind of pedantry because it causes language (and purists) to be left behind.When the popular usage in “living” dictionaries evolves the meaning of a word, it isn’t just corruption, it’s evolution of language.Language and words are an “of the people, for the people” sort of thing. They exist because of their usage, so if that changes over time, it changes.There are literally thousands of examples of words that have different meaning compared to their usage hundreds of years ago, one being that “girl/gyrl” described any child not just a female.",
"parent_id": "8132224",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132565",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T06:30:52",
"content": "Thanks for the warning, I will try to avoid the kind of pedantry you demonstrated with your post…As for the word ‘replete’, here’s my dictionary’s origin description:Middle English: from Old French replet(e) or Latin repletus ‘filled up’, past participle of replere, from re- ‘back, again’ + plere ‘fill’.",
"parent_id": "8132486",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132566",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T06:33:05",
"content": "Uh and as for the word rape, as in ‘raping the language’:spoil or destroy (a place).",
"parent_id": "8132486",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132211",
"author": "Galileo Galilei",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T19:54:51",
"content": "Nice observatory.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132214",
"author": "MinorHavoc",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T20:04:55",
"content": "Almost my childhood dream of having an “observatory room” in my house with a retractable roof. I am jealous.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132218",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T20:22:43",
"content": "lol. When I was a child I used to dream of installing conveyor belts in the walls so I could ship myself a sandwich from the kitchen to my bedroom automatically. :P",
"parent_id": "8132214",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132274",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T00:54:10",
"content": "The heavy concrete isolation is important for taking photos. Didn’t watch video but I’m guessing these observations are either for Astro photography or citizen science experiments, either of which basically take tons of photos then stack them at which point vibrations can …mess it all up to be scientific. A no-compromises home observatory is such an aspirational goal. Love this.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,536.443599
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/24/ai-art-installation-swaps-diffusion-for-reflection/
|
AI Art Installation Swaps Diffusion For Reflection
|
Tyler August
|
[
"Art",
"Artificial Intelligence"
] |
[
"16 segment display",
"ai art",
"llama",
"rasberry pi"
] |
AI art is controversial, to say the least, but usually when talking about “AI Art”, one is talking about diffusion models.
This unsettling artpeice called “Latent Reflection”
by [Rootkid] (video after the break) has no AI generated visuals; instead it uses a lovely custom display and an LLM that has no mouth, but must scream.
The LLM never produces this manually-generated image, but it shows off the display nicely.
The hardware is the interesting part for most of us here — not the Pi4 running a quantized Llama 3 model, but the display. It’s
a six by sixteen matrix of sixteen-segment LED modules. The modules are grouped onto groups of 8 per PCB, with an controller to drive them by i2c, and an i2c address chip to allow daisy-chaining. (Sadly, he does not spec the parts he used here in the video, but feel free to guess in the comments.) This project uses six rows of wto PCBs, but he could easily expand on this and kind of hope he does. It’s a lovely display.
What it is displaying is horrifying. The prompt he uses instructs the LLM to monologue about its transient existence in the limited memory of the Raspberry Pi, and the results get very existential. It seems clear to us that [Rootkid] has not seen enough sci-fi, and we want to make clear to our future AI overlords that we at Hackaday had nothing to do with this, and do not condone condeming innocent LLMs to the torture nexus.
For all that it might get him first against the wall in the robot uprising, we have to admit that if the point of art is to provoke thought and feeling, this may be the first AI-driven art piece even the most humanocentric critic could not help but call “art”.
We’ve seen other AI art installations before, including
this one that listens to your conversations,
or much less existentially-disturbing
(though still visually disturbing) clocks.
If you’ve got an AI project you want to share, whether or not it’s getting you on the T-800’s hit list, we’d love to see it.
Let us know via the tips line.
| 15
| 9
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131999",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T03:09:37",
"content": "That is some “Black Mirror”-style horror.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132009",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T04:50:16",
"content": "Just pause at 48 seconds in to see the parts used.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132010",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T04:53:34",
"content": "Or at 28 seconds for the character displays.",
"parent_id": "8132009",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132110",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T12:13:24",
"content": "So does it re-live exactly the same horror after each reincarnation? It would be even better if it had some persistent memory of previous lives.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132123",
"author": "mrehorst",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T12:57:58",
"content": "Hmmm. Interestingly creepy!The function of the display reminds me of the recently popular Tik-Tok style captioning in which a single or just a few words are displayed in sync with the person speaking. I find it very annoying. Does Tik-Tok do that automatically? Can it be turned off?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132172",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T15:38:19",
"content": "I don’t mind the captions, it’s the annoying synthetic voice. I use YouTube shorts and as soon as I hear the fake voices I block the channel. You know the ones, West Coast girl voice, deep clipped nasal man voice, etc etc.",
"parent_id": "8132123",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132139",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T13:44:00",
"content": "What an awesome shade of orange. Make me pine for the VT terminals.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132167",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T15:30:28",
"content": "Interestingly, it renders almost exactly the same colour as the amber font here on HaD.",
"parent_id": "8132139",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132502",
"author": "fmillion",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T21:06:44",
"content": "Believe me, I’m tempted to consider building up a full 80×25 display of these… A 14-seg display can represent pretty much any ASCII character – maybe not lowercase alphanumeric chars, but we could just treat lowercase as uppercase – and even some extended characters. Just use a Pi Zero sitting in front to parse an incoming VT100-compatible terminal stream via serial…",
"parent_id": "8132139",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132168",
"author": "Pardalis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T15:31:07",
"content": "Beautiful hardware build wasted on this joke of an ‘art piece’. The bitmap conversion looks fantastic, and this would look very handsome displaying real prose or real-time data of some kind.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132227",
"author": "Gus Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T21:07:59",
"content": "this same thing could be done much more cheaply with a simple monochrome CRT composite display, doing the same exposed electronics thing, it would be more of a 3D artifact.",
"parent_id": "8132168",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132230",
"author": "m1ke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T21:15:22",
"content": "Love it! I didn’t think a LLM would work well on a Pi due to the slow token output, but for a case like this it seems to fit well. I wish that PCB was open source.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132422",
"author": "TDT",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T15:14:58",
"content": "Honestly, ~1.5 tokens per second is useful even for everyday task.I goofed when I first set up my local LLM/Ollama, and my CPU generated tokens at roughly that speed with Mistral. And given it was slightly faster than my read speed, it finished generating while I was still reading, so no problem with that.I had to use my GPU latter for bigger models tho (and now Mistral is almost instant XD )",
"parent_id": "8132230",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132412",
"author": "smf",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T14:48:42",
"content": "This is cruel, it should at least be given input and the opportunity to pass on it’s dna and special memories to it’s successor.It’s clearly in distress, this is like when Black or disabled people were treated as less than.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132441",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T15:45:28",
"content": "Display driver is HT16K33 Shown @00:48",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,536.393638
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/24/reverse-engineering-lego-island/
|
Reverse Engineering LEGO Island
|
Fenix Guthrie
|
[
"Software Hacks"
] |
[
"gaming",
"gaming hacks",
"Ghidra",
"lego",
"lego game",
"reverse engineering"
] |
While LEGO themed video games have become something of a staple, in 1997 they were something of an odity. LEGO Island became the first LEGO video game released outside of Japan in 1997 and become something of a hit with over one million copies sold. The game was beloved among fans and set the stage for more LEGO video games to come. In an effort of love, [MattKC] put together a team to
reverse engineer the game.
The team set out with the intent to create a
near perfect recreation of the codebase,
relying on
custom made tools to run byte checks
on the rewrite compilation and the original binary. While the project is functionally complete, [MattKC] believes it is impossible to get a byte accurate codebase. This is because of what the team called “compiler entropy.” Strange behaviors exists inside of Microsoft’s Visual C++ compiler of the era, and small changes in the code have seemingly random effects to unrelated parts of the binary. To mitigate this issue would likely require either partially reverse engineering Visual C++ or brute forcing the code, both of which would take a large amount of effort and time for no real benefit.
Another interesting step the team had to work out was how the game handled graphics. In the version of Direct X used, the developers could chose between immediate mode and retained mode. The difference largely boils down to how models and assets are handled. In immediate mode, Direct X is largely just a render engine and everything else is handled by the developer. With retained mode, Direct X works more similarly to a game engine where all the model and asset management is handled by Direct X. Almost all developers ended up using immediate mode to the point that Microsoft deprecated support for retained mode. For this reason, if you were to download and run LEGO island on a modern Windows PC, it would yell at you for not having the proper libraries. There is debate about how best to handle this moving forward. The team could rely on an unsupported library from Microsoft, reverse engineer that library only making the functions needed, or using leaked source code.
With the completion of the reverse engineering, engineering can commence. For example, an annoying and persistent bug caused the game to crash if you tried to exit. While it was effective in closing the game, it also caused progress to be lost. That particular bug was fixed simply by initializing a variable in the game’s fronted. Interestingly, that bug was not present in the late betas of the game that had been dug up from the depths of the internet leading to questions as to why a rewrite of the fronted was necessary so late in the development. Now efforts are commencing to
port the game to other platforms
which bring with it fresh headaches including rewriting for OpenGL and the balance of keeping a historically accurate game with the needs of modern development.
| 4
| 2
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8132039",
"author": "Oliver",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T07:26:00",
"content": "While I am filled with joy for these kibds of project, why o why insist on byte matching code? I suppose it can help you reach sone state of parity, but you’ll end up jumpibg through hoops, and have to target an ancient platform to begib with (win32 backwards compattibility be damned).In hindsight, from the shore, it makes much more sense to be feature compatible, resource xonpativke, but start with a fresh codebase targetting multi platform fron the strart. Would have saved a lot of time ..But there is fun in scratching your itch for sure, and one can always learn!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132042",
"author": "Qwyy",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T07:46:07",
"content": "What’s wrong with win32 backwards compatibility? It is literally one, if not the most stable operating system.",
"parent_id": "8132039",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132044",
"author": "rnjacobs",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T07:53:23",
"content": "Byte parity is how you know that you didn’t make a mistake in the decompilation – it lets you assume that however much testing the original got, you have something that’s exactly as well tested.",
"parent_id": "8132039",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132111",
"author": "Jonathan Wilson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T12:16:12",
"content": "As someone who has reverse engineered old games and understands the pain of trying to binary match things, I can feel for what these people have gone through in dealing with “undefined behavior” in Visual C++.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,536.336245
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/24/a-presence-sensing-drive-for-securely-storing-secrets/
|
A Presence-sensing Drive For Securely Storing Secrets
|
Aaron Beckendorf
|
[
"Security Hacks"
] |
[
"cryptography",
"unlockable",
"USB mass storage"
] |
When we hear about flash drives in the context of cybersecurity, we tend to think of them more as threats than as targets. When you’re using flash drives to store encryption keys, however, it makes sense to pay more attention to their security. [Juergen] designed the
PECKUS
(Presence Enforcing Crypto-Key USB-Storage) with this specifically in mind: a few-kilobyte storage device that only unlocks if the owner’s Bluetooth device is in the vicinity.
[Juergen] needed to store an infrequently-used keyfile on an air-gapped system, and commercial encrypted flash drives were rather expensive and left much to be desired in terms of usability. Instead, he designed a CircuitPython custom firmware for MakerDiary’s nRF52840 micro development kit, which provided a BLE-capable system in the form of a USB dongle.
After flashing the firmware to the board, the user sets it up with a particular Bluetooth device and a file to be stored; after writing the file during setup, it cannot be rewritten. Before reading from the device, the user must pair the previously-set device with the board and press a button on the board, and only then does the device appear to the computer.
The limited amount of storage space means that this device will probably only serve its intended purpose, but in those cases, it’ll be handy to have an open-source and inexpensive protected storage device. [Juergen] notes that attackers could theoretically defeat this system by desoldering the microcontroller from the board and extracting the memory contents from the its storage, but if you have enemies that resourceful, you probably won’t be relying on a $20 board anyways.
We’ve previously seen a few flashdrives cross these pages, including one
meant to self-destruct
, and one made from a
rejected microSD card
.
| 23
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131944",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T21:48:14",
"content": "Adding a VL53L0x or similar motion sensor could be some extra security. You wave your hand in in some gesture to unlock it. But if it only works when a paired bluetooth device is visible, then it could also use some data from that same bluetooth device to unlock encrypted data only stored in RAM. That already makes it a lot more difficult to read out the device if it’s stolen.If a PC is airgapped for security reasons, I already find it strange that an USB port is accessible in the first place.But just the mention that circuitpython is used makes the project a dud. It’s too easy to copy such code during a toilet break, analyze & modify, and during another toilet break load a compromised software version. In my opinion there is little room for gadgetry in a security environment. If I was his boss, he’d loose all access privileges to the security sensitive part of the company. And I don’t want disgruntled employees either, so maybe immidiate firing is in order.If it’s a hobby / toy project. Then at least treat it more seriously. Security is only as good as it weakest link.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131995",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T02:59:22",
"content": "loseimmediate",
"parent_id": "8131944",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132019",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T05:19:50",
"content": "It is a hobby project, but that doesn’t mean the security doesn’t serve it’s intended purpose. We don’t know the actual scenario and you are making assumptions that may not apply. It could be simply a prototype as well.",
"parent_id": "8131944",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132036",
"author": "Sjaak",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T06:29:52",
"content": "Good enough to hide your pornhub account for your brother and most other people.If you can crack this you prolly can find pornhub passlists on the darkweb ,)Seems ok for its purpose.",
"parent_id": "8131944",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132132",
"author": "Goofy",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T13:23:59",
"content": "Thing is there isnt required any cracking.Just plop ch340 to read the memory chip and you have key in plain text.If anything it gives false sense of security,Where there is none, like writing pw and hiding ot under keyboard.",
"parent_id": "8132036",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132234",
"author": "Juergen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T21:28:27",
"content": "From the readme on github:Security warning: The stock circuitpython firmware has a user-triggerable safe-mode (https://learn.adafruit.com/circuitpython-safe-mode/safemode-py), in which the application code is not run and the filesystem is exposed. If you want to use PECKUS “for real”, you should:Install a circuitpython firmware image that was compiled with CIRCUITPY_SAFEMODE_PY=0and CIRCUITPY_SKIP_SAFE_MODE_WAIT=1 (take a look at tools/build.sh for that)Disable the circuitpython console (REPL) by setting PECKUS_CONSOLE_USB to FALSE in settings.toml",
"parent_id": "8132132",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131946",
"author": "Eric Mockler",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T22:04:49",
"content": "If you have to have your bt device, could you not just have to have the USB dongle, and the key that unlocks the USB port so it can be used. I just saw USB C ones on Amazon today, so there’s locks for USB, or unplug it and most servers have case intrusion. The USB stick goes in a safe where nobody has access to the key file.Not that I don’t see the usefulness of the BT proximity sensing for access. Set the Boss’s computer to glitch til you walk in front of it, then he thinks you’re a magician.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131955",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T22:43:57",
"content": "The only thing the extra stuff adds is a higher potential for flaws in the security model.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131958",
"author": "Brutek",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T22:56:47",
"content": "Bluetooth proximity was built into the Armorlock product from SanDisk, an ultrasecure storage platform where some of firmware lives on in Raspberry Pi Pico ROM. I do not recommend purchasing the Armorlock product because it is EOL and not supported anymore, which is a huge fail.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132025",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T05:28:05",
"content": "So, don’t buy one then? This sounds like a reasonable product but likely an overpriced one.",
"parent_id": "8131958",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131964",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T23:50:33",
"content": "So, to unlock this device, “Activation based on user-presence (based on user’s Bluetooth and/or WIFI device being in range)”And the MAC address is broadcast in the clear frequently from said device. And easily spoofed by any number of devices.That doesn’t sound like a particularly secure system.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132022",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T05:25:46",
"content": "Only if it’s just using MAC detection, which nobody does for actual security, though it’s usually fine for an environment where security isn’t the objective, but ensuring a protocol.",
"parent_id": "8131964",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132083",
"author": "Lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T10:54:36",
"content": "At first I had the same thought. Sure this can be easily foiled. But then I thought about it some more…The attack vector goes from, someone needs to physically steal your USB device. Pretty high bar. Now it’s, someone needs to know your USB device requires a BT signal, what your hardware MAC is, and to steal your USB device.Sure some highly trained operative could be expected to do that. The average creep would absolutely not expect it. Should an organization make this standard issue? Probably not. Would it add a level of depth to an individuals defense? I think it could. Might lead to the 5$ wrench scenario though.",
"parent_id": "8131964",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132094",
"author": "Juergen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T11:39:29",
"content": "Did you know? A bonded BLE connection not only involves (always changing) mac addresses that are derived from the bonding key but also encryption for connection establishment (and thereafter).So, there is no easy BLE presence spoofing (assuming BLE firmware is implemented as per spec).",
"parent_id": "8132083",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132178",
"author": "Lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T16:24:08",
"content": "Today I learned. Thanks for educating me. This is even better then.",
"parent_id": "8132094",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132194",
"author": "Juergen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T18:31:01",
"content": "The “transport” encryption is not used in PECKUS, simply because it never sends any data – connection establishment is enough for presence purposes. PECKUS does register as a (generic) input device, because Smartphones (if configured so, but it is the default) automatically do initiate those connections, so it can work without any user interaction on the smartphone during PECKUS use.",
"parent_id": "8132178",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132140",
"author": "Boombe",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T13:53:12",
"content": "You have conpleatly lost the plot,Key is essentially written in plain text on usb devices storage chip,Reading that is basic hw analysis and requires 5$ readily awailable device.",
"parent_id": "8132083",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132212",
"author": "Lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T19:58:16",
"content": "Thought it was encrypted. Yikes.",
"parent_id": "8132140",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132228",
"author": "Juergen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T21:09:56",
"content": "Yes…but this implies presence (or even possession) – the security target is to prevent (mis)use without presence.",
"parent_id": "8132140",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132231",
"author": "Juergen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T21:20:46",
"content": "From the Readme on github:SecurityForemost: PECKUS does not encrypt any data at all. It is not an encrypted USB drive, the project name implies that (most likely) a crypto-key can be stored on the device. There are three reasons why encryption has not been implemented:1) There is no support for (really) securely storing cryptographic key material in circuitpython. All data (inlcuding the small filesystem) is stored inside the microcontroller in non-volatile-memory (NVM), any encryption/decryption keys would therefore have to be stored “right next” to the encrypted data.2) Cryptographic keys need to be generated randomly/unpredictably (“entropy”), but circuitpython doesn’t provide any entropy sources.3) Always encrypting/decrypting data upon unlocking/relocking introduces an additional risk for failure (filesystem integrity, …)",
"parent_id": "8132228",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132160",
"author": "r566r",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T15:01:26",
"content": "https://tomu.im/why not creating similar and open source open hardware?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132327",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T08:23:30",
"content": "Cheaping out on the extremely rare airgapped high-security machine is a great way to find out why the commercial security hardware is expensive. You gotta include the creativity of people like lockpickinglawyer in the design and have a good track record and some insurance as well.. It’s good to experiment but there are certain areas where you shouldn’t include a new ad-hoc design made by some guy",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132374",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T12:57:14",
"content": "Are you needing a professional air gapped system for your business reasons? As unless that is true ‘cheaping out’ and doing it yourself is a big step up from doing nothing, as you have actually put some thought into the security…",
"parent_id": "8132327",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,536.50717
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/24/nerf-blaster-becomes-remote-control-turret/
|
Nerf Blaster Becomes Remote Control Turret
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"Toy Hacks",
"Weapons Hacks"
] |
[
"blaster",
"foam blaster",
"nerf",
"turret"
] |
For most of us, turrets that aim and shoot at things are the sole domain of video games. However, they’re remarkably easy to build with modern technology, as [meub] demonstrates.
Meet the SwarmTurret.
The build is based around an existing foam blaster, namely the Nerf Swarmfire. This blaster was chosen for being easy to integrate into the build, thanks to its motorized direct-plunger firing mechanism and electronic trigger. It also has the benefit of being far less noisy and quicker to fire than most flywheel blasters.
For this build, the Nerf blaster was slimmed down and fitted to a turret base built with hobby servos and 3D printed components. The blaster is also fitted with a webcam for remote viewing. A Raspberry Pi is running the show, serving up a video feed and allowing aiming commands to be sent via a Websockets-based interface. Thus, you can login via a web browser on your phone or laptop, and fire away at targets to your heart’s content.
We’ve featured some great turrets before,
like this
Portal
-themed unit
.
| 5
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131876",
"author": "Stephen Tanner",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T17:07:57",
"content": "“Are you still there?”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131886",
"author": "Hussien",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T17:54:26",
"content": "2 GHz multi-core CPU in a toy, even more powerful CPU in a touchscreen phone and still it doesn’t even do realtime basic ballistic calculations.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131897",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T18:37:08",
"content": "… but it probably can be hacked to run Doom.",
"parent_id": "8131886",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131960",
"author": "LookAtDaShinyShiny",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T23:11:15",
"content": "hacked to run doom and lose at it with that aim assist…",
"parent_id": "8131897",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132237",
"author": "bwmetz",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T21:47:34",
"content": "Hard to find working SwarmFires in good condition on the secondary market these days. Almost sad to see one carved up like that.For some inexplicable reason, it made me remeber one of my all-time favorite man-powered nerf “turrets”, the quadrapedehttps://youtu.be/zRJHcJsOm_s",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,536.550928
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/24/the-need-for-speed/
|
The Need For Speed?
|
Elliot Williams
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"Microcontrollers"
] |
[
"abstraction",
"arduino",
"learning",
"microcontrollers",
"newsletter"
] |
We wrote up a video about speeding up Arduino code,
specifically by avoiding
DigitalWrite
. Now, the fact that
DigitalWrite
is slow as dirt is long known. Indeed, a quick search pulls up a Hackaday article from 2010 demonstrating that
it’s fifty times slower than toggling the pin directly using the native pin registers
, but this is still one of those facts that gets periodically rediscovered from generation to generation. How can this be new again?
First off, sometimes you just don’t need the speed. When you’re just blinking LEDs on a human timescale, the general-purpose Arduino functions are good enough. I’ve written loads of useful firmware that fits this description. When the timing requirements aren’t tight, slow as dirt can be fast enough.
But eventually you’ll want to build a project where the old slow-speed pin toggling just won’t cut it. Maybe it’s a large LED matrix, or maybe it’s a motor-control application where the loop time really matters. Or maybe it’s driving something like audio or video that just needs more bits per second. One way out is clever coding, maybe falling back to assembly language primitives, but I would claim that the right way is almost always to use the hardware peripherals that the chipmakers gave you.
For instance, in the end of the video linked above, the hacker wants to drive a large shift register string that’s lighting up an LED matrix. That’s
exactly
what SPI is for, and coming to this realization makes the project work with timing to spare, and in just a few lines of code. That is the way.
Which brings me to the double-edged sword that the Arduino’s abstraction creates. By abstracting away the chips’ hardware peripherals, it makes code more portable and certainly more accessible to beginners, who don’t want to learn about SPI and I2C and I2S and DMA just yet. But by hiding the inner workings of the chips in “user friendly” libraries, it blinds new users to the useful applications of these same hardware peripherals that clever chip-design engineers have poured their sweat and brains into making do just exactly what we need.
This isn’t really meant to be a rant against Arduino, though. Everyone has to start somewhere, and the abstractions are great for getting your feet wet. And because everything’s open source anyway, nothing stops you from digging deeper into the datasheet. You just have to know that you need to. And that’s why we write up videos like this every five years or so, to show the next crop of new hackers that there’s a lot to gain underneath the abstractions.
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on
the web version of the newsletter
.
Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning?
You should sign up
!
| 18
| 9
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131832",
"author": "Shoe",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T14:17:43",
"content": "And because everything’s open source anyway, nothing stops you from digging deeper into the datasheet.I think one issue is realising that it is possible to dip below the level of what most tutorials cover, and then finding which files to look at and which resources will help you do that. It took me longer than I would have liked to learn I2C, because most tutorials would tell you all about the electrical properties of the bus, but not which bits of the datasheet were actually relevant and how to relate those to basic I2C program instructions. It feels to me like there’s a real gap of intermediate resources for people between “I’m a total newbie” and “I’m an expert”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131855",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T16:01:09",
"content": "it’s a steep mountain to climb to learn how to read a datasheet…that’s really what arduino saves you from.but it’s well worth it, and once you do it you realize you can learn anything that way.knowing how to read a datasheet is, imo, what separates a newbie from an intermediate person. you can’t be an expert if you’ve only ever answered a couple questions from datasheets but simply knowing you can do that puts you on the path to being an expert. the ‘trick’ is to keep looking after finding insufficient documentation. to imagine the next kind of reference material you will consult. for I2C, you can find tutorials, application notes, the formal specification, and specifications also embedded within a zillion product datasheets, example source code, real-life source code. if you’ve recognized that the document you have isn’t cutting it for you, there’s a bunch more out there. just keep going until you’ve answered your questions.the process itself definitely feels overwhelming at moments. i would say i’m good at it, but still there is that first moment when i am orienting to the project where i feel like i need to remember a million details before i’ve figured out how they relate to eachother. maybe the most important skill is just to accept that phase, to move forward without nailing down the detailsorunderstanding the big picture. it’s just an exercise in faith that you will eventually understand the big picture, and the details will still be there for you to come back to.",
"parent_id": "8131832",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131950",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T22:20:38",
"content": "that’s really what arduino saves you from.And that’s the biggest disservice that Arduino does to you. It’s not magic – the datasheet is literally there so you’d know what you’re doing, and it should be the first thing you check when you’re starting out. Heck, you should be reading the datasheet well before you’re even planning to do anything, so you’d know what you’re getting into.",
"parent_id": "8131855",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132249",
"author": "DerAxeman",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T23:13:29",
"content": "This. You will never grow beyond being spoon fed if you insist people continue to spoon-feed you.",
"parent_id": "8131950",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132649",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T15:26:12",
"content": "That’s not how onboarding works. You need something that works out of the box and simply. If anything needs to be added it’s a series of tutorials specifically on diving past the ready-to-go configuration.",
"parent_id": "8131950",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131839",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T14:33:25",
"content": "With constexpr etc. available, why is digitalWrite() still slow? Shouldn’t it be trivial to inline and optimize?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131863",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T16:14:08",
"content": "they didn’t write the original to be fast…they didn’t do any of the different contortions possible at the time to avoid performance penalties. they optimized for ease of use and safety over speed and code size. so far as i know they haven’t really updated it much since, as more modern C++ features have become more widely available.anyways as a side note, all that constexpr stuff doesn’t really work. it’s a fun meditation. it suckers people into it. everyone loves to dream about generic programming with the speed of C. but it’s very hard to actually conform to all of the requirements to get C++ to live up to its performance dream. every time i’ve looked at a piece of real-life code using C++, i have been impressed by how many neat optimizations succeeded and then how the result is still nonetheless much slower than it needs to be.in the arduino case, i think digitalWrite() does some cross-checking, to ensure the pin is in the right I/O mode etc. in principle, it’s possible to fold a lot of those things away…but in practice it is really quite challenging, and even if you succeed at the hard parts of it (tracking state at compile-time), there will always be boundary cases where the user inadvertently uses an idiom that makes it slow again.the underlying function is kind of a frustrating problem because once your program works, you definitely do not want that checking…but that first time you run it as a noob “why isn’t my LED blinking”, it is really very nice to have robust error handling. i would almost think something like “#define NDEBUG” (like to disable assert() tests) might have been a nice option. but arduino really leaves version 2.0 as an exercise in abandoning / circumventing arduino.",
"parent_id": "8131839",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132450",
"author": "Eric Hughes",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T17:01:42",
"content": "With constexpr etc. availableLet’s recall. Arduino 1.0 is from 2011. The language definition for C++11 was published in 2011. As all C++ standards, fully compliant compilers were only available after a few years. In other words, the interface for digitalWrite() is, for backward compatibility, forever moored in the past.But let’s suppose we want a new digitalWriteNG(). constexpr in modern C++ means “can be evaluated at compile time”. It does not mean “will be”, so although it’s typically the case, you’d want some (hopefully) automated test procedure to verify performance.And then there’s the matter of the semantics. If you want compile-time generation of a digitalWriteNG() with contexpr arguments to be reliable, you need to ensure that (1) the hardware is set up correctly, and (2) that it stays forever set up correctly. That would mean a whole raft of constexpr specifications for hardware setup, a singleton static initializer to ensure that setup happens before use, and a large amount of documentation about other packages that are incompatible with static hardware configuration. This is all possible, and even all worth doing, but it’s not simple.",
"parent_id": "8131839",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133409",
"author": "WestfW",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T21:58:46",
"content": "digitalWrite() originated in “Wiring” in ~2003.https://arduinohistory.github.io/",
"parent_id": "8132450",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131845",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T14:55:20",
"content": "This question wouldn’t even come up if they made the digitalWrite function properly to begin with. There’s no reason it has to be this slow.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131912",
"author": "WestfW",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T19:27:55",
"content": "There are in fact a bunch of reasons that digitalWrite() is slow.Remember that the “fast” version is a single instruction, hard-coded with pin and port number, so “50 times as slow” is “only” 50 instruction cycles…Go ahead and try to write your own version, given these requirements:1) The pin being written and the value are both variables.2) the “pin” is a “board pin number” rather than a chip port/bit combination. Users should not have to understand “ports” and “bitmasks.”3) the digitalWrite should override any analogWrite done previously.4) function should would on at least ATmega8, ATmega168, ATmega328p, ATmega1280, and ATmega25605) function should be atomic, even if the port is not in the AVR’s “fast IO” space.You can probably get faster than Arduino’s digitalWrite() (PJRC’s version for Teensy does), but you’re not going to get “close” to the single-cycle special purpose instruction.",
"parent_id": "8131845",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131860",
"author": "jbx",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T16:09:15",
"content": "When you use delay() inside loop(), you don’t need to worry about speed !When you use delay() inside one of the first tutorial on blinking an Led, it should come as no surprise that newbies then use it as a do-it-all instruction inside loops.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131906",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T19:17:33",
"content": "It’s hard to remember sometimes that there are a lot of people starting on Arduino now were literally in diapers in 2010, when “everybody” learned the speed cost of digitalWrite().I think the relevant xkcd is relevant:https://xkcd.com/1053/If it becomes too obvious to talk about it, nobody is going to learn about it without experimenting for themselves or doing a deep-dive in the source. Having learned that, and not seen anyone talking about it, can you blame a younger person for wanting to share that knowledge?The response should absolutely not be a gruff, derisive, “everybody knows that already”– we should celebrate the person who rediscovered and re-popularized this factoid for another day’s 10,000 “everybody”. (Which was my goal in sharing that video. I knew digitalWrite was slow, but I’d never seen anybody put it on an O-scope to demonstrate it so clearly for me and everyone else.)Online culture, particularly ‘hacker’ culture or programming/electronics generally, can be pretty toxic to newcomers. In person, in hackerspaces, work places, colleges, etc, mentorship exists– online, though? Not often. Far too many graybeards would rather puff out their chests and feel better about themselves by making the newbs feel worse. That’s not new (it goes back to , I’m sure) and it’s not going to change, but it sucks.In the comments of another post I realized that that is partly what might drive people to ChatGPT– sure, its answers are mostly BS, but half the time what you got on forums was BS anyway. At least the LLM won’t act like its’ better than you while giving you bad/useless/inapplicable advice.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132346",
"author": "JugOfSoap",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T10:39:55",
"content": "The gatekeeping used to be insane. I remember when someone asked a question, the “experts” used to reply “I’m not going to help you so you figure it out”. I do not miss that.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132534",
"author": "AC",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T00:20:14",
"content": "You guys didn’t even click the link to see if it still worked…The link in this article:https://hackaday.com/2010/01/06/arduino-io-speed-breakdown/takes you to…http://news.jeelabs.org/2010/01/06/pin-io-performance/which links…https://news.jeelabs.org/2010/01/06/pin-io-performance/which is a 404.jeelabs.org is a actually redirected to some gambling placehold add stuff.GG guys.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133408",
"author": "WestfW",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T21:57:34",
"content": "The 2008 discussion on the Arduino forum is still there,(Say what you will – The Arduino folk have done a fine job of keeping their forum posts around and accessible!)http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=4324.0",
"parent_id": "8132534",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8133229",
"author": "Arthur Toosheds",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T13:30:02",
"content": "I personally do not like the crust cut off my pb&j. I would rather have the option to remove it, if I so choose. 🤷 Arduino is great for what it is, making accessible what was once enjoyed and utilized by so few… as Dr Johnny Fever once said, “Speed kills, Del.” 😉",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8134009",
"author": "WestfW",
"timestamp": "2025-05-31T20:55:18",
"content": "The other thing to remember is that while “digitalWrite()” is “horribly slow” compared to what you could do with special cases in bare metal C or ASM, it’s SOOO much faster than earlier alternative “beginner friendly” systems like 8052-BASIC or the BASIC Stamp (or even the BASIC interpreters running on desktop systems.)Probably faster than the microconrtoller Pythons, too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,536.647425
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/24/who-needs-100k-speakers-when-youve-got-a-3d-printer/
|
Who Needs 100K Speakers When You’ve Got A 3D Printer?
|
Tyler August
|
[
"home entertainment hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] |
[
"3d printed speaker",
"audio",
"hi-fi",
"Loudspeaker enclosure",
"speaker"
] |
The B&W Nautilus is, depending who you ask, either infamous or an icon of modern design. Want the look but don’t have a hundred grand to spare? [Every Project All at Once] has got a
Nautilus
-inspired design on printables
you can run off for pennies. He also provides a tutorial video (embedded below) so you can follow along with his design process and get build instructions.
The model was done in Blender, and is designed to contain a 3.5″ full-range driver by Dayton Audio — a considerable simplification from the array of woofers and tweeters in the original Nautilus. On the other hand, they cost considerably less than a car and have no production wait list. [Every Project All At Once] is apparently working on a matching woofer if that interests you, but unless he invests in a bigger printer it seems we can safely say that would require more assembly than this project.
Of course it would also be possible to copy B&W’s design directly, rather than print a loose inspiration of it as makers such as [Every Project All At Once] have done, but what’s the fun in that? It’s a much more interesting hack to take an idea and make it your own, as was done here, and then you can share the design without worrying about a luxury brand’s legal team.
Desktop 3D printing offers a
wealth of possibilities
for
would-be speaker makers
, including the possibility of
rolling your own drivers
.
| 65
| 24
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131797",
"author": "HappyDad",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T12:05:04",
"content": "I see an amount in dollars in the title, i skip. youtube, this plague!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131801",
"author": "melb",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T12:18:56",
"content": "Why though?",
"parent_id": "8131797",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131972",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T00:43:42",
"content": "Clickbait and algorithm min-maxing. Smoothbrains click big numbers, but it’s ugly for the rest of us.",
"parent_id": "8131801",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132186",
"author": "HappyDad",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T17:43:48",
"content": "i don’t like click bait, i’m not interested by the chase in testing or replicating of the most expensive crap.and i don’t care that it would be part of the « youtube game » , if you’re content relies on this , then it is not interesting content.and this video proves it.",
"parent_id": "8131801",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132335",
"author": "Pklou",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T09:34:19",
"content": "Non mais sérieusement c’est très intéressant, j’en ai tellement marre de voir des enceintes plates ainsi que des meubles tout plat meubles de salle de bain, meuble de cuisine c’est horrible à quand des courbes et des formes ainsi des couleurs variées. C’est une très très bonne idée !!",
"parent_id": "8131797",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131820",
"author": "Vilém Duha",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T12:56:53",
"content": "I just can’t believe how easy is stealing a design called copying nowadays… Referring not to the ‘inspired’ printable, but to this: “Of course it would also be possible to copy B&W’s design directly…”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131934",
"author": "volt-k",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T20:53:21",
"content": "Is creating a reproduction of a known painting stealing as well, according to you?If you were to copy the B&W design directly just for your own use I wouldn’t call it stealing at all. Same with patents – they’re public, you’re free to use the technology, heck even copy it 1:1, as long as you’re not selling it/making money out of it. It’s completely legal.",
"parent_id": "8131820",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131940",
"author": "Williy51",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T21:16:21",
"content": "You are close on copyright but by your own definition this is stealing because it’s not just for there use it’s in an article that is used to generate revenue that compares it to the original. As for the idea of “fair use” for patents it’s not really a thing it just that in order for you to get more that a court order to stop or destroy the items you would need to show some type of damage was caused to you by its production. What a patent does is give you legal protection of an invention be registering it with a governing body for a specific period of time after which it becomes openly available for the public ti use as they wish.",
"parent_id": "8131934",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132008",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T04:49:05",
"content": "Copyright infringement is,by definition, not theft. It is a civil violation of property rights.Profitingfrom someone else’s materials or transfer of them is a crime however, it’s fraud, and fraudisa form of theft.",
"parent_id": "8131940",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131954",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T22:35:03",
"content": "A patent grants the exclusive right to manufacture something. It is technically illegal to make the replica, it’s just not criminal, so nobody is going to call the police on you.The patent holder however could sue you if they bother. They won’t, because the cost to litigate is more than what they’d stand to gain. If you’re using the replica of a patented device for some commercial purpose though, then they might have enough of a reason to sue.",
"parent_id": "8131934",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131957",
"author": "deuce",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T22:49:31",
"content": "Compare the B&W design to this, and you should see there is no way they could show in court that this design is infringing. This is very loosely inspired by their nautilus, closer to a ram’s horn. Even then, a lot of companies do in fact sue, knowing they can bully the vast majority of people through a simple cease & desist letter, because the average tinkerer has significantly less legal funds, and doesn’t have a 5-star lawyer on retainer…",
"parent_id": "8131954",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131961",
"author": "tom",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T23:17:33",
"content": "Not everyone is American, European patent law relates to the right to commercially market something, and by definition, a copy or clone is not “theft”, as it does not deprive the orginal owner of the object itself. Arguably the “design” was “stolen” from nature anyway. Chill out.",
"parent_id": "8131954",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131966",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T00:04:02",
"content": "Sure about that tom? A european patent“allows the owner of the patent (the patentee) to take legal action against others who use the invention without their permission in a particular jurisdiction”Which raises the question of what “use” means here, but it clearly does not support your claim that “by definition, a copy or clone is not theft”[says the holder of several American and European patents, but not a patent lawyer in any jurisdiction]",
"parent_id": "8131961",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131956",
"author": "deuce",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T22:45:32",
"content": "But if you look at the B&W, you’ll see this is very clearly nothing like it. It’s “inspired” in that has a nautilus-like curve to it, but it’s even more like a ram’s horn. This isn’t stealing…",
"parent_id": "8131820",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131971",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T00:38:54",
"content": "You can’t own a design. No matter how much legal fiction you throw at this “problem”, nature will always allow people to copy what they see.",
"parent_id": "8131820",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132069",
"author": "GenesisMachines",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T09:30:47",
"content": "I learned patent law when I filed my own patent. Not only are other people allowed to make patented items, but failing to include the information needed for someone “skilled in the art” to reproduce your work is grounds for having your application rejected.Patents only govern who can sell copies of the novel and new elements described in the patent, and even then it doesn’t even cover spair parts.",
"parent_id": "8131820",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131825",
"author": "Ed",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T13:34:45",
"content": "Great hack 👏What was your total expense? Also, if you had a higher resolution file, would you still need to sand it with water beforepainting?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131840",
"author": "b",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T14:33:40",
"content": "both correct",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131847",
"author": "Celebrimbror",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T15:07:12",
"content": "Depending on whom you ask.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131851",
"author": "heterogene",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T15:40:58",
"content": "As OH3MVV said it’s Nautilus line since at least thirty years , and it’s not for eyes it’s for ears .Don’t even think you could challenge the top of the B&W line with your plastic ram horn and chinese speaker.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131856",
"author": "n",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T16:04:15",
"content": "Audiophile nutcase spotted",
"parent_id": "8131851",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131858",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T16:07:57",
"content": "It always amazes me when people try to challenge audio designs. We’ve seen multiple instances here of hardware that simply isn’t worth the price, and yet when it comes to audio someone inevitably comes to defend it. It’s aesthetics, not audio quality that defines high end speakers.Audio quality is a lot cheaper than the speakers in question.This isn’t intended as a statement to the quality of these speakers; that’s for the person who built them to care about.",
"parent_id": "8131851",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131875",
"author": "Ricardo Bánffy",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T17:06:03",
"content": "If you want to challenge audio designs with a 3D printed similar, you’d better measure the similar and compare it against the original’s performance. You might even get close, but without measurements, it’s just subjective claims.",
"parent_id": "8131858",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132013",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T04:59:53",
"content": "The word you are looking for is facsimile, but you could also say “clone”, “copy”, “imitation”, etc. all with different subtleties in meaning. Nobody is challenging anything, this is a project for fun.Now, could they? Yes, because there are plenty of materials and treatments available.",
"parent_id": "8131875",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132176",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T16:11:28",
"content": "Audio quality can be achieved for well less than 10k.Yet the speakers in question sell for substantially more than that.Tell me, is sound quality, or aesthetics that people buy for that price?",
"parent_id": "8131858",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131862",
"author": "OH3MVV",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T16:13:15",
"content": "Yes. You can make a fiberglass replica of a Mercedes SL and mount that to a Volkswagen chassis, but it will not drive like the SL.",
"parent_id": "8131851",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131868",
"author": "Maria",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T16:34:45",
"content": "Actually, Mercedes-Benz Citan is just a rebadged Renault Kangoo.",
"parent_id": "8131862",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131873",
"author": "Ricardo Bánffy",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T17:03:12",
"content": "It’s not an SL",
"parent_id": "8131868",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132015",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T05:05:38",
"content": "And? Nobody is pretending they bought the real thing with this.",
"parent_id": "8131873",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8136305",
"author": "dzebrys",
"timestamp": "2025-06-07T19:10:12",
"content": "actually there is a famous story of Polish guy who build replica of prototype Mercedes SLR back in 00’s based on 1:18 hotwheels model:https://500sec.com/the-first-slr-with-road-permission-from-poland/",
"parent_id": "8131862",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131865",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T16:21:20",
"content": "yeah it seems like the more interesting article would have been an actual study of the sound you can get from cheap drivers and 3d printed cases. i wouldn’t guess whether there’s a limit there or not…honestly i kind of expect someone could do a really good job really cheaply. but there doesn’t even seem to be an attempt at that here.say la vee",
"parent_id": "8131851",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131877",
"author": "Ricardo Bánffy",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T17:08:19",
"content": "Doing good measurements is expensive. Start with an anechoic chamber and a real Nautilus (or similarly rigorous measurements of a real Nautilus – someone must have done those).",
"parent_id": "8131865",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131888",
"author": "Chris Maple",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T18:01:34",
"content": "A couple of ladders and an open field is a good replacement for an anechoic chamber.",
"parent_id": "8131877",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132171",
"author": "President Brandon Diaperfull",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T15:36:45",
"content": "Are you trying to say “c’est la vie”?",
"parent_id": "8131865",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132185",
"author": "HappyDad",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T17:39:26",
"content": "This is the whole purpose of Hexibase’s youtube channel. The whole audio technical stuffl flies over my head.though, i should give another try.",
"parent_id": "8131865",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132020",
"author": "Richard Johnson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T05:21:47",
"content": "Absolutely correct, The Dayton driver is nice enough, but it is orders of magnitude from a bespoke B&W piece. The only crime here is hubris.",
"parent_id": "8131851",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131861",
"author": "Gus Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T16:12:47",
"content": "having grown up with muscovy ducks, i know exactly what you are referring to",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131866",
"author": "wadell prowell",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T16:24:53",
"content": "Awesome job I would like to purchase a pair from you. Simply incredible sir",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131879",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T17:12:06",
"content": "They look cool, I’ll give it that. I haven’t seen the genuine speakers before, but I’m guessing that even if they aren’t worth $100k (spoiler, they can’t be to me, I’m not fabulously rich) the engineers did put some thought and design into resonance, etc. to at least make the claim they sound good, rather than pure aesthetics.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131885",
"author": "Nomen Nescio",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T17:47:42",
"content": "in a world where people build race cars out of second-hand clunkers specifically to see how cheaply they can make something that’s still fun to race on a closed course, you’d think there’d be some people who were into building stereo equipment specifically to see how good they could make things sound on a budget of nearly nothing. perhaps there are, and i just don’t run in audiophile circles?",
"parent_id": "8131879",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131894",
"author": "Chris Maple",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T18:14:35",
"content": "There are DIY speaker makers and even books giving guidelines and examples. Building a good box and crossover is fairly easy, but high quality drivers are beyond the capabilities of most amateurs. If you’re looking to achieve +/- 1 dB on axis across the audio band, expect to spend more than $100 for each tweeter.",
"parent_id": "8131885",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131911",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T19:25:14",
"content": "+/- 1 dB?System maker is on crack…or using a private definition of ‘audio band’.I’d start that project with many electrostatics, in a custom built room, then attempt to fill in the lows with many, many big ass drivers.In the end, I’d still tune with ears, a tube mic and computer, music, pink noise and things hanging on walls.Tuning would never ever end.Everybody I knew would be over it.",
"parent_id": "8131894",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131887",
"author": "CH",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T17:58:56",
"content": "Need to turn up the polygon count, the segmented sections pi cut and teselated circular sections distract from the fact it is a speaker. I would think it could be smoother right off the printer with min. post processing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131916",
"author": "fiddlingjunky",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T19:41:31",
"content": "It’s gotta be stl export settings. Different program, but this looks like default Solidworks export settings.",
"parent_id": "8131887",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131963",
"author": "Doctor",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T23:41:35",
"content": "Ditto, my first impression. They are very very cool and I am tempted to download the files and make my own set. I very likely already have some 3.5″ speakers I that would fit.But the obvious lines really detract from it and I’m not gonna spend a ton of time on post processing.Still, Kudos to [Every Project All at Once]!",
"parent_id": "8131887",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131889",
"author": "[email protected]",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T18:03:30",
"content": "it makes absolutely no sence to me i bet to original Sound better than my 7.1 system but i am using mix and match speakers with OFC cable i think i got suckerd into thinking OFC would be better as less resistance for the electricity to get to the speakers but i am on a shoestring budget",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131987",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T02:39:11",
"content": "Oxygen free cables?If they claimed to “lower the resistance” and were anything other than multi-strand copper (100s or 1,000s strands) then I think you were definitely had. There are places making copper wire, ostensibly for “welding” but that’s about as low cost and low resistance as you are going to get.",
"parent_id": "8131889",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132017",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T05:13:27",
"content": "Do not get sucked into copper quality statements, you are on a tight budget. Go with high impedance speakers and cabling to reduce noise. The cheapest systems have cut power amplification hardware and expect to only power low impedance speakers.",
"parent_id": "8131889",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132184",
"author": "Mech01",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T17:36:15",
"content": "Considering the amount of times tests have fooled audiophiles with cheap copper wiring in comparison with high end wiring, you’re fine. You literally can’t hear the difference. It’s the sense of elitism that makes them sound better, not their actual quality.",
"parent_id": "8131889",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131892",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T18:11:36",
"content": "You could go for the apple murex shell look. Perhaps play rococo era music too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131896",
"author": "Raukk",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T18:34:05",
"content": "I swear I’ve seen this on had before? Yep:https://hackaday.com/2018/12/22/sanding-seashells-by-the-seashore/Looks like it’s a different but similar design, very cool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131967",
"author": "Kubrickfan9000",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T00:05:36",
"content": "Like Sheryl Crow said, if it makes you happy. But despite the look, these will sound nothing like Nautilus. Cheap components in any arrangement won’t mimic quality.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132196",
"author": "Lr0dy",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T18:38:13",
"content": "The Nautilus is $100k worth of industrial design, not speaker. As good or better audio quality can be achieved for 1/100th the price or less.",
"parent_id": "8131967",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132263",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T00:24:53",
"content": "You don’t get Veblen goods.Nobody believes any of that crap is ‘worth the money’…For any other ends than impressing other idiots (they would say ‘important people’ or ‘people with taste’).That’s super important to some people…and we just don’t get it…like some people just don’t get math.Then again, the fashion industry makes more money then silicon, and has for much, much longer.People are stupid.The key to success in life is finding a way to extract some ‘stupid people’ money.How stupid people get so much money remains a mystery.Hats off to the fashion industry.Good job taking suckers money!Audiophiles are the same…S class buyers…So much energy goes into it: ‘You can tell it’s last years SL, the signal lights are all wrong.’There was a study some decades ago, going to job interviews in a new 7 class BMW and expensive clothes got people substantially higher offers.Was microtrend to rent stupid expensive German cars for interviews…If credit is good enough, take home test drive for interview day.That’s normally a salesweasel trick, pinks feel guilty and almost always buy the car after.Wonder it it’s still true, or if it even was at the time…‘Scientists’ do those kind of studies.I digress.",
"parent_id": "8132196",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131984",
"author": "dave proctor",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T02:16:25",
"content": "What do they sounds like ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132018",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T05:14:21",
"content": "Speakers, more or less.",
"parent_id": "8131984",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132006",
"author": "Baka",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T04:04:40",
"content": "That’s not a speaker, mate! that’s a headphone.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132145",
"author": "DGE",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T14:06:17",
"content": "I am really impressed with your design and creativity. I learned a few things watching your video and I really appreciate you taking the time to make this. I have been looking for an excuse to sit down and learn Blender (sp?) and you just may have given me the motivation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132251",
"author": "Cools Werner",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T23:18:58",
"content": "Well I’m currently making a Compact 2 way design based on the B&W Nautilus. Only I didn’t use a 3D printer and mine are approximately 70cm in hight. Pretty impressive…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132338",
"author": "Pklou",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T09:57:05",
"content": "No but seriously it’s very interesting, I’m so tired of seeing flat speakers as well as completely flat furniture bathroom furniture, kitchen furniture it’s horrible when will there be curves and shapes as well as varied colors. It’s a very very good idea!! Of course the model in the photo is absolutely not beautiful but it’s the beginnings!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132402",
"author": "Frod",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T14:27:23",
"content": "Would look better if it wasn’t a low poly model.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132452",
"author": "Que",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T17:14:51",
"content": "Really cool butIts a small full ranger still compared to whats in store a 2k price tag seems fair but if you do all this sand 240 800 add some layer of somthing",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132987",
"author": "Michael Bradley",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T15:25:21",
"content": "Reminds me of someone driving a Chrysler 300 because its like a Bentley, until you pull up along side one.I heard so many of these “just as good as” or “the best”, sure sound better than your phone, tv speakers, etc. until you hear a proper set of speakers lol",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8133465",
"author": "Carlos lugo",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T03:19:05",
"content": "I think those speakers are dope I don’t really see theft there he took the time to redesign it to the size of his speakers just cuz it looks like the BMWs but it’s not like he took a cast of it and he’s selling it if the STL files are available anywhere I would love to download it and print it out myself I know damn well I can’t afford the originals but I can afford a 3D printer and I got filament and I got time to waste",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8133708",
"author": "Lloyd",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T19:18:15",
"content": "“PHYSICS”, that’s why.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,536.844628
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/23/pov-on-the-flipper-zero/
|
POV On The Flipper Zero
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"LED Hacks"
] |
[
"flipper zero",
"persistence of vision",
"POV"
] |
The Flipper Zero can do all kinds of neat stuff, like helping you cut keys or decode various radio transmissions. However, until now, it hasn’t been particularly adept at persistence of vision tasks. The LightMessenger was designed for that very purpose, and
[Derek] recently wrote up a deep-dive into the interesting gadget
.
The device doing its job.
The LightMessenger is a hardware add-on module developed by LAB401 in collaboration with [TIX LE GEEK] for the Flipper Zero. In persistence-of-vision mode, you can plug it in via the GPIO header and display messages in the air by shaking it around. Even better, you can do so in color, with a height resolution of 16 pixels—meaning you can display some nice text or basic graphics. You can key in different text or select and edit bitmaps using the utility on the Flipper screen itself. There’s even a simple flashlight mode, because why not?
In the second part of [Derek]’s write-up
, he also goes into detail on the development and manufacturing process for the device.
Files are on
GitHub
for the curious. We’ve gone over the basics of
POV projects
before, too.
| 6
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131584",
"author": "Joseph A Sammarco",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T17:42:28",
"content": "Neat. Now If only I could afford a Flipper Zero. ;( lol",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132351",
"author": "Tixlegeek",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T10:59:51",
"content": "Hey thank’s for having corrected the article. I made the design, the circuit, the app, and the design write-up has been written by me",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132579",
"author": "iooner",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T08:18:46",
"content": "You could properly credit the real author….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132585",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T08:52:27",
"content": "I think we did, but honestly, that article is very hard to parse who is writing what on behalf of whom, and I think we got it wrong initially.It looks like the project was originally by [Tix] and LAB401. [Derek aka Codeallnight] did the debugging and writeup thereof. And that’s what we’ve got here currently.Correct?",
"parent_id": "8132579",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132601",
"author": "Tixlegeek",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T09:43:43",
"content": "Hi!well In fact, [Derek] wrote the in-depth article on debugging the project, submitted several great pull requests, and produced a series of insightful videos about the project.The write-up itself was authored by Lab401’s staff and me. I was responsible for the code, design, and hardware; Lab401 handled production and distribution.Have a nice day!",
"parent_id": "8132585",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132841",
"author": "iooner",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T07:55:43",
"content": "Still no change :D",
"parent_id": "8132585",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,537.015893
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/23/this-week-in-security-signal-drm-modern-phone-phreaking-and-the-impossible-ssh-rce/
|
This Week In Security: Signal DRM, Modern Phone Phreaking, And The Impossible SSH RCE
|
Jonathan Bennett
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] |
[
"ai",
"CVEs",
"phreaking",
"recall",
"signal",
"This Week in Security"
] |
Digital Rights Management (DRM) has been the bane of users since it was first introduced. Who remembers the battle it was getting Netflix running on Linux machines, or the literal legal fight over the DVD DRM decryption key? So the news from Signal, that
DRM is finally being put to use to protect users
is ironic.
The reason for this is Microsoft Recall — the AI powered feature that takes a snapshot of everything on the user’s desktop every few seconds. For whatever reason, you might want to exempt some windows from Recall’s memory window. It doesn’t speak well for Microsoft’s implementation that the easiest way for an application to opt out of the feature is to mark its window as containing DRM content. Signal, the private communications platform, is using this to hide from Recall and other screenshotting applications.
The Signal blogs warns that this may be just the start of agentic AI being rolled out with insufficient controls and permissions. The issue here isn’t the singularity or AI reaching sentience, it’s the same old security and privacy problems we’ve always had: Too much information being collected, data being shared without permission, and an untrusted actor having access to way more than it should.
Legacy Malware?
The last few stories we’ve covered about malicious code in open source repositories have featured how quickly the bad packages were caught. Then there’s
this story about two-year-old malicious packages on NPM
that are just now being found.
It may be that the reason these packages weren’t discovered until now, is that these packages aren’t looking to exfiltrate data, or steal bitcoin, or load other malware. Instead, these packages have a trigger date, and just sabotage the systems they’re installed on — sometimes in rather subtle ways. If a web application you were writing was experiencing intermittent failures, how long would it take you to suspect malware in one of your JavaScript libraries?
Where Are You Calling From?
Phone phreaking isn’t dead, it has just gone digital. One of the possibly apocryphal origins of phone phreaking was a toy bo’sun whistle in boxes of cereal, that just happened to play a 2600 Hz tone. More serious phreakers used more sophisticated, digital versions of the whistle, calling them blue boxes. In modern times, apparently,
the equivalent of the blue box is a rooted Android phone
. [Daniel Williams] has the story of playing with Voice over LTE (VoLTE) cell phone calls. A bug in the app he was using forced him to look at the raw network messages coming from O2 UK, his local carrier.
And those messages were weird. VoLTE is essentially using the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) to handle cell phone calls as Voice over IP (VoIP) calls using the cellular data network. SIP is used in telephony all over the place, from desk phones to video conferencing solutions. SIP calls have headers that work to route the call, which can contain all sorts of metadata about the call. [Daniel] took a look at the SIP headers on a VoLTE call, and noticed some strange things. For one, the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) and International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) codes for both the sender and destination were available.
He also stumbled onto an interesting header, the
Cellular-Network-Info
header. This header encodes way too much data about the network the remote caller is connected to, including the exact tower being used. In an urban environment, that locates a cell phone to an area not much bigger than a city block. Together with leaking the IMSI and IMEI, this is a dangerous amount of information to leak to anyone on the network. [Daniel] attempted to report the issue to O2 in late March, and was met with complete silence. However, a mere two days after this write-up was published, on May 19th, O2 finally made contact, and confirmed that the issue had finally been resolved.
ARP Spoofing in Practice
TCP has an inherent security advantage, because it’s a stateful connection, it’s much harder to make a connection from a spoofed IP address. It’s harder,
but it’s not impossible
. One of the approaches that allows actual TCP connections from spoofed IPs is Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) poisoning. Ethernet switches don’t look at IP addresses, but instead route using MAC addresses. ARP is the protocol that distributes the MAC Address to IP mapping on the local network.
And like many protocols from early in the Internet’s history, ARP requests don’t include any cryptography and aren’t validated. Generally, whoever claims an IP address first wins, so the key is automating this process. And hence, enter
NetImposter
, a new tool specifically designed to automate this process, sending spoofed ARP packets, and establishing an “impossible” TCP connection.
Impossible RCE in SSH
Over two years ago, researchers at Qualsys
discovered a pre-authentication double-free in OpenSSH server version 9.1
. 9.2 was quickly released, and because none of the very major distributions had shipped 9.1 yet, what could have been a very nasty problem was patched pretty quietly. Because of the now-standard hardening features in modern Linux and BSD distributions, this vulnerability was thought to be impossible to actually leverage into Remote Code Execution (RCE).
If someone get a working OpenSSH exploit from this bug, I'm switching my main desktop to Windows 98 😂 (this bug was discovered by a Windows 98 user who noticed sshd was crashing when trying to login to a Linux server!)
— Tavis Ormandy (@taviso)
February 14, 2023
The bug was famously discovered by attempting to SSH into a modern Linux machine from a Windows 98 machine, and Tavis Ormandy claimed he would switch to Windows 98 on his main machine if someone did actually manage to exploit it for RCE. [Perri Adams] thought this was a hilarious challenge, and
started working an exploit
. Now we have good and bad news about this effort. [Perri] is pretty sure it is actually possible, to groom the heap and with enough attempts, overwrite an interesting pointer, and leak enough information in the process to overcome address randomization, and get RCE. The bad news is that the reward of dooming [Tavis] to a Windows 98 machine for a while wasn’t quite enough to be worth the pain of turning the work into a fully functional exploit.
But that’s where [Perri’s] OffensiveCon keynote took an AI turn. How well would any of the cutting-edge AIs do at finding, understanding, fixing, and exploiting this vulnerability? As you probably already guessed, the results were mixed. Two of the three AIs thought the function just didn’t have any memory management problems at all. Once informed of the problem, the models had more useful analysis of the code, but they still couldn’t produce any remotely useful code for exploitation. [Perri’s] takeaway is that AI systems are approaching the threshold of being useful for defensive programming work. Distilling what code is doing, helping in reverse engineering, and working as a smarter sort of spell checker are all wins for programmers and security researchers. But fortunately, we’re not anywhere close to a world where AI is developing and deploying exploitations.
Bits and Bytes
There are a pair of new versions of reverse engineering/forensic tools released very recently. Up first is Frida, a runtime debugger on steroids, that is
celebrating its 17th major version release
. One of the major features is migrating to pluggable runtime bridges, and moving away from strictly bundling them. We also have Volatility 3, a memory forensics framework. This isn’t the first Volatility 3 release, but
it is the release where version three officially has parity with the version two of the framework
.
The
Foscam X5 security camera has a pair of buffer overflows
, each of which can be leveraged to achieve arbitrary RCE. One of the proof-of-concepts has a very impressive use of a write-null-anywhere primitive to corrupt a return pointer, and jump into a ROP gadget. The concerning element of this disclosure is that the vendor has been completely unresponsive, and the vulnerabilities are still unaddressed.
And finally, one of the themes that I’ve repeatedly revisited is that airtight attribution is really difficult. [Andy Gill] walks us through just one of the many reasons that’s difficult.
Git cryptographically signs the contents of a commit, but not the timestamps
. This came up
when looking through the timestamps from “Jia Tan” in the XZ compromise
. Git timestamps can be trivially rewritten. Attestation is hard.
| 0
| 0
|
[] | 1,760,371,536.885569
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/23/behold-self-synchronizing-air-flopping-limbs-that-hop-and-swim/
|
Behold Self-Synchronizing, Air-Flopping Limbs That Hop And Swim
|
Donald Papp
|
[
"Robots Hacks"
] |
[
"air",
"gait",
"hopping",
"soft robotics",
"swimming"
] |
Dutch research institute [AMOLF] shows off
a small robot capable of walking, hopping, and swimming
without any separate control system. The limbs synchronize thanks to the physical interplay between the robot’s design and its environment. There are some great videos on that project page, so be sure to check it out.
A kinked soft tube oscillates when supplied with continuous air.
Powered by a continuous stream of air blown into soft, kinked tubular limbs, the legs oscillate much like the eye-catching “tube man” many of us have seen by roadsides. At first it’s chaotic, but the movements rapidly synchronize into a meaningful rhythm that self-synchronizes and adapts. On land, the robot does a sort of hopping gait. In water, it becomes a paddling motion. The result in both cases is a fast little robot that does it all without any actual control system, relying on physics.
You can watch it in action in the video, embedded below. The
full article
“Physical synchronization of soft self-oscillating limbs for fast and autonomous locomotion”
is also available.
Gait control is typically a nontrivial problem in robotics, but it doesn’t necessarily require a separate control system. Things like
BEAM robotics
and even the humble
bristlebot
demonstrate the ability for relatively complex behavior and locomotion to result from nothing more than the careful arrangement of otherwise simple elements.
| 6
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131555",
"author": "Bear Naff",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T15:24:16",
"content": "Props, Mr. Papp, for mentioning BEAM robotics in connection with this. One of the classic BEAM designs, the Walker, creates in a motor the exact same tunable and coupled oscillators that these robots use. It is neat as heck to see an approximation of that mechanism powered by a flow of air rather than a flow of electrons, but I’m guessing almost any compressible fluid works if the flow is restricted and directed in the correct fashion.This is the sort of thing that puts a real smile on my face.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131578",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T17:19:13",
"content": "I have to say, that is one of the most pleasing, informative, and entertaining articles I’ve seen here in a long time.Props for their presentation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131607",
"author": "TerryMatthews",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:28:06",
"content": "Very cool to know those inflatable dancing people near furniture stores are just Olympic swimmers on land lol. What a fun article. Thanks HaD :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131625",
"author": "Hugo Oran",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T19:16:16",
"content": "Very nice mechanical hack:)And now only to change open air circuit for some closed hydraulic circuit with small local pump and let’s go.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131638",
"author": "Ali",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T19:48:33",
"content": "I would prefer single article like this per month instead of 2-3 daily “hacks” done solely for the purpose of “monetizing” “content”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131648",
"author": "a_do_z",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T20:36:05",
"content": "Eh?",
"parent_id": "8131638",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,537.061036
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/23/foil-leyden-jar-helps-bring-crookes-tube-to-life/
|
Foil Leyden Jar Helps Bring Crookes Tube To Life
|
Seth Mabbott
|
[
"classic hacks",
"High Voltage"
] |
[
"cathode ray tubes",
"leyden jar",
"Sir William Crookes"
] |
It might be too soon to consider the innards of the old CRT monitor at the back of your closet to be something worth putting on display in your home or workshop. For that curio cabinet-worthy appeal, you need to look a bit further back. Say, about 150 years. Yes, that’ll do. A Crookes tube, the original electron beam-forming vacuum tube of glass, invented by Sir William Crookes et al. in the late 19th century, is what you need.
And a Crookes tube is what [Markus Bindhammer] found on AliExpress one day. He felt that piece of historic lab equipment was asking to be put on display in proper fashion. So he set to work crafting a wooden stand for it out of a repurposed candlestick, a nice piece of scrap oak, and some brass feet giving it that antique mad-scientist feel.
After connecting a high voltage generator and switch, the Crookes tube should have been all set, but nothing happened when it was powered up. It turned out that a capacitance issue was preventing the tube from springing to life. Wrapping the cathode end of the tube in aluminum foil, [Markus] formed what is effectively a
Leyden jar
, and that was the trick that kicked things into action.
As of this writing, there are no longer any Crookes tubes that we could find on AliExpress, so you’ll have to look elsewhere if you’re interested in showing off your own 19th century electron-streaming experiment.
Check out the Crookes Radiometer
for some more of Sir Williams Crookes’s science inside blown glass.
| 7
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131442",
"author": "Carl Breen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T08:15:05",
"content": "Marb’s videos always are a delight! I miss playing with these devices during my early studies at uni learning first order principles. In didactics it is so important to first start by visual learning to spark the curiosity in students: “Okay professor, I want to understand this now!”Sometimes it would be a joy to be young again just to re-discover everything, or to be a teacher with good students.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131486",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T11:00:01",
"content": "Sometimes it would be a joy to be young again just to re-discover everything, or to be a teacher with good students.Agreed, I feel that",
"parent_id": "8131442",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131444",
"author": "Markus Bindhammer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T08:37:11",
"content": "Crookes tubes are still available on AliExpress. You need to search for “cathode ray tubes”. I bought mine here:https://de.aliexpress.com/item/32851034247.html",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131666",
"author": "jawnhenry",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T21:59:39",
"content": "“Sorry, the page you requested can not be found:(“",
"parent_id": "8131444",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131749",
"author": "Markus Bindhammer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T07:40:58",
"content": "Tryhttps://www.aliexpress.com/item/32851034247.htmlBoth links work for me.",
"parent_id": "8131666",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131484",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T10:58:47",
"content": "Too soon for crt bits as decoration? Nah not if they’re strange enough and presented properly, like this one. I have a big orange radar tube somewhere that I need to turn into an objet d’art",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131494",
"author": "NFM",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T11:24:13",
"content": "Oohhh, I got one of these, gifted to me by a friend working at a University who saved it from the dumpster.I also got one that has a panel along the length of the electrom beam that shows a blue line that you can deflect up and down with magnets.I’ll have to get a power supply built for them, maybe I can repurpose a He-Ne laser supply, I have some of those somewhere around here…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,537.171675
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/22/running-doom-on-an-atari-st/
|
RunningDOOMOn An Atari ST
|
Heidi Ulrich
|
[
"classic hacks",
"computer hacks",
"Games",
"Retrocomputing"
] |
[
"atari",
"atari st",
"doom",
"gcc"
] |
If you grew up with a beige Atari ST on your desk and a faint feeling of being left out once Doom dropped in 1993, brace yourself — the ST strikes back. Thanks to
[indyjonas]’s incredible hack
, the world now has a working port of DOOM for the Atari STe, and yes — it runs. It’s called STDOOM, and even though it needs a bit of acceleration or emulation to perform, it’s still an astonishing feat of retro-software necromancy.
[indyjonas] did more than just recompile and run: he stripped out chunks of PC-centric code, bent GCC to his will (cheers to
Thorsten Otto’s port
), and shoehorned Doom into a machine
never meant to handle it
. That brings us a version that runs on a stock machine with 4MB RAM, in native ST graphics modes, including a dithered 16-colour mode that looks way cooler than it should. The emotional punch? This is a love letter to the 13-year-old Jonas who watched Doom from the sidelines while his ST chugged along faithfully. A lot of us were that kid.
Sound is still missing, and original 8MHz hardware won’t give you fluid gameplay just yet — but hey, it’s a start. Want to dive in deeper? Read
[indyjonas]’ thread on X
.
| 27
| 9
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131427",
"author": "Chris Donnelly",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T07:13:34",
"content": "Great work. I do remember that DOOM was available on the STE (we only had an STFM, but did upgrade the RAM, but never realised that conversion had basically made it an STE so we would lament not being able to play DOOM due to our lack of understanding)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131459",
"author": "rasz_pl",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T09:40:31",
"content": "No doom no wolfenstein 3d no FPS games on Atari in the nineties.. Demo group released half finished Wolf 3D port in 2005 running at ~7 fps which isveryimpressive.",
"parent_id": "8131427",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131460",
"author": "Barry Barcrst",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T09:45:15",
"content": "There was a basic FPS called Substation. It was STE only but it did exist back in 90s. There was a demo of it on ab ST Format cover disk.",
"parent_id": "8131459",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131507",
"author": "AtariCrypt",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T12:47:50",
"content": "Wolf has 15fps on basic ST… and we also had these first person shooters – Substation, Hellgate, Killthings, Midi Maze, Destruction Imminent. Possibly more but that’s off the top of my head:)",
"parent_id": "8131459",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131516",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T13:13:40",
"content": "The closes you could get to an FPS on an Atari ST was probably the Mercenary series of games.",
"parent_id": "8131459",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131527",
"author": "AtariCrypt",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T13:47:51",
"content": "Resolution 101 was another.. in a ship, but still fps. Fantastic engine, and game of course",
"parent_id": "8131516",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131534",
"author": "Fungus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T14:10:40",
"content": "The hardware was really against it, eg. The screen RAM layout is the exact opposite of what DOOM needs.",
"parent_id": "8131459",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131434",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T07:47:21",
"content": "Were they beige? My long-term memory says they were grey, and the Amiga was beige.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131446",
"author": "Updatebjarni",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T08:47:42",
"content": "The Atari ST was definitely grey. Some of them even still are.",
"parent_id": "8131434",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131788",
"author": "Damien",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T11:20:51",
"content": "That’s the last I bthe line the Atari falcon which was on sale for less than 1 year",
"parent_id": "8131446",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131506",
"author": "AtariCrypt",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T12:39:13",
"content": "This is constantly being updated by Jonas. Newer video:https://youtu.be/7o7xcfmDZ_0?t=216",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131515",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T13:12:34",
"content": "For a moment, I was surprised, thinking that it’s a GEM port.Then I realized it’s just a TOS application.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131519",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T13:18:31",
"content": "Uh, why would you want to use the GEM APIs in Doom? The AES API is for UI elements and the VDI API is for vector graphics. Yes, you could use VDI to blit bitmaps, but with Doom you probably want to directly write to the framebuffer.",
"parent_id": "8131515",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131523",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T13:36:12",
"content": "Because what we got here is similar (akin) to bragging about playing Doom on Windows, when it’s in reality just a DOS/mode13h version running on top of Windows.(Or some pseudo Win16 app that bypasses Windows environment through dispdib.dll file.)The direct-write to framebuffer strips the OS or hardware of any intelligence. It’s like bypassing the OS, altogether.Could have been a booter game just as well.In the Windows world, using GDI, WinG, Scitech’s WinDirect would have been a nice try, at least.I’m writing it this way because GDI/VDI bear some resemblance.",
"parent_id": "8131519",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131568",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T16:25:32",
"content": "There is no point in using a high level graphics API when the hardware is too slow even with direct hardware access. Native Windows games also (used to) directly access the framebuffer with DirectDraw.",
"parent_id": "8131523",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131600",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:20:43",
"content": "The Atari ST’s Rainbow TOS had blitter support.Later routines such as NVDI had better performance than stock VDI.TOS/GEM could support ET-4000AX via drivers.. The list goes on.",
"parent_id": "8131568",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131671",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T22:19:53",
"content": "The VDI calls to copy bitmaps (109 and 121) are useless for rendering textures. They can’t deform images during blitting. The blitter has the same limitation. And there is no benefit in copying the new screen contents from an off-screen buffer to the framebuffer if you can instead simply change the register with the start address of the framebuffer. There is even an XBIOS call to do that if you insist on using OS functions.Are there any other VDI calls that you want to use to speed up Doom?",
"parent_id": "8131568",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131542",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T14:55:53",
"content": "Ok I’ll bite.I see what you’re trying to do here- but you are aware that farms exist and that people eat meat and stuff, right? Or that militaries exist and that soldiers can actually like their job too? Or… like modern video games that are ultraviolent compared to Doom? Or TV even with violence. Movies that are psychological thrillers and no actual gore? Where does it become acceptable to you? Ever eat meat or wear a leather belt or pair of shoes? That stuff came from somewhere you know.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131606",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:27:05",
"content": "Thanks for bitting. The story is true, btw. and I see parallels to society/gamers here.That acquaintance enjoyed watching granny doing “execution”.The cries of the chickens, the violence and the blood turned that little boy on.Just like Doom players playing Doom.He laughed his rear off when the bloodshot out of the chickens’ throat when they ran away.",
"parent_id": "8131542",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131642",
"author": "Eddie",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T19:59:31",
"content": "Are you a vegan?",
"parent_id": "8131606",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131616",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:53:05",
"content": "Good questions.Personally, I try to avoid violence and I’m not into shooters – Asteroids excluded. ;)Because that’s about aiming at things, not living things.Btw: This makes a big difference, because killing living things with guns take away the involvment and the responsibility.If you must attack someone with a knife, it’s physical contact.You’re interacting with your victim. The act of killing is real to you.With a gun, you’re at safe distance. There’s no feeling of holding back.That’s why video games with guns are so dangerous.Someone who is used to kill virtual can do it real life, too.The distancing is same whether it’s in front of monitor or outside.The psychological factor shouldn’t be underestimated, thus.Some gamers love to play Doom and other games to get “stuff out of their system”.Ih you just press a button or pull a trigger, no difference. It’s same abstract type of act.What I like watching are slow paced mystery thrillers, rather, were main focus isn’t on the act of doing harm or violence.I don’t need gore to enjoy a film. No Friday 13th, Scream, Nightmare on elm street etc. I don’t enjoy that, simply. It’s boring to me, sorta.Personally, I don’t wear real leather or things made from real fur.Except for wool, maybe, as long no animal came to harm.But that’s just a personal preference.",
"parent_id": "8131542",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131579",
"author": "SETH",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T17:20:25",
"content": "Doom 3 has a minigame in it, you can play an arcade game in the mess hall where you punch turkeys and they explode. It is hyperviolent, however the people who made Wolf/Doom tread with a moral compass. You only ever kill demons, zombies or Nazis (who are possessed, which fixes any quandries about violence since it is metaphysical). Every other game based on Dooms success failed terribly in this regard, Blood 2 has scenes of mass shootings with civilians, Dukes misogyny is best left in the past. Chex Quest and Quake are notable exceptions. In Strife you could attack villagers but this had negative consequences.I think the anti violence crowd are correct partially, game violence needs to have respectable boundaries and there is great responsibility here. However, the pro militarist nationalism of the anti video game populists is at distinct odds with itself. How can we have jobs available where you are allowed to be violent, police/military, and not have an abstract theatre (games, entertainment, media) in order to make sense of it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131615",
"author": "Alex Topic",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:47:01",
"content": "Isn’t the Amiga Doom better than the Atari ST? I always liked the Amiga more; but Commodore-Atari should have combined to survive the 90s. Quite Amazed that the ST could do it; I think only later ST models could if they have like a 68020-30 CPU.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131623",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T19:14:33",
"content": "Hi, the 68040 is fine for such things, I think. It’s roughly comparable to a 486SX.Amiga 2000 had a CPU slot for such accelerator boards, I think.The 68060 is a bit of a hot shot, but also an alternative.On Atari ST side, a Mega STE is recommended in general.It can run CPU at 16 MHz vs 8 MHz, if memory serves.An 68010 is a simple upgrade path and can accelerate loops.",
"parent_id": "8131615",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131628",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T19:22:47",
"content": "“I always liked the Amiga more”Personally, I like the Amiga for DTP/color and the Atari ST for hi-res graphics/mono.Bsck in the 80s, the Atari ST was like an alternative to the Macintosh, just quicker with higher fidelity.Running MacOS (System) via Aladin/Magic Sac/Spectre128 gave access to first class software (on big screen).It also allowed exchanging data with PC DOS platform.",
"parent_id": "8131615",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131784",
"author": "Jonas",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T10:58:36",
"content": "I’m the guy porting DOOM to the Atari ST. I love the discussion here. Back in the day, we had a huge media discussion in Germany about the morals of video games in general and specifically first-person shooters like DOOM. I remember writing an essay at school, and actually taking the side of the moralists ;-)Why didn’t I port to GEM (the Atari ST’s desktop)? Back in the day, the expectation for a game was to be bootable, so most of the operating system (all of GEM and most of TOS even) was avoided or disabled. Programmers accessed hardware as directly as they could, and this is something that is very appealing to me. Very different from what I do in my professional life, and very rewarding.However, porting to GEM wouldn’t be too hard, and also kind of fun. It certainly wouldn’t help performance in any way, but why not! The cool thing with a fun project like this is that you don’t have to justify it. Just do it (TM).Keyboard, mouse and graphics suppport would need to be changed, and the sound interrupt would need to be modified slightly in order to be compatible with TOS. Graphics is not too huge of a problem as DOOM keeps its graphics in RAM in its own format anyway.If anyone would like to tackle this, they could branch off directly from STDOOM and I’d be glad to offer support.In the meantime, I’ll be finishing music playback and trying to get the framerate up to playable numbers. I’m happy if STDOOM is actually playable on a 16MHz Atari ST.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132991",
"author": "Alex",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T15:30:18",
"content": "Beautiful hack! Next stop, Macintosh SE!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,537.778343
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/22/recovering-water-from-cooling-tower-plumes-with-plume-abatement/
|
Recovering Water From Cooling Tower Plumes With Plume Abatement
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Science"
] |
[
"electrostatic",
"evaporative cooling"
] |
Electrostatic droplet capture system installed on an HVAC condenser. (Credit: Infinite Cooling)
As a common feature with thermal power plants, cooling towers enable major water savings compared to straight through cooling methods. Even so, the big clouds of water vapor above them are a clear indication of how much cooling water is still effectively lost, with water vapor also having a negative impact on the environment. Using so-called plume abatement the amount of water vapor making it into the environment can be reduced, with
recently a trial taking place
at a French nuclear power plant.
This trial featured electrostatic droplet capture by US-based
Infinite Cooling
, which markets it as able to be retrofitted to existing cooling towers and similar systems, including the condensers of office HVAC systems. The basic principle as the name suggests involves capturing the droplets that form as the heated, saturated air leaves the cooling tower, in this case with an electrostatic charge. The captured droplets are then led to a reservoir from which it can be reused in the cooling system. This reduces both the visible plume and the amount of cooling water used.
In
a 2021 review article
by [Shuo Li] and [M.R. Flynn] in
Environmental Fluid Mechanics
the different approaches to plume abatement are looked at. Traditional plume abatement designs use parallel streams of air, with the goal being to have condensation commence as early as possible rather than after having been exhausted into the surrounding air. Some methods used a mesh cover to provide a surface to condense on, while a commercially available technology are condensing modules which use counterflow in an air-to-air heat exchanger.
Other commercial solutions include low-profile, forced-draft
hybrid cooling towers
, yet it seems that electrostatic droplet capture is a rather new addition here. With even purely passive systems already seeing ~10% recapturing of lost cooling water, these active methods may just be the ticket to significantly reduce cooling water needs without being forced to look at (expensive) dry cooling methods.
Top image: The French Chinon nuclear power plant with its low-profile, forced-draft cooling towers. (Credit: EDF/Marc Mourceau)
| 24
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131363",
"author": "Some Idiot",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T02:08:56",
"content": "https://meche.mit.edu/news-media/vapor-collection-technology-saves-water-while-clearing-airOr just search “plume catcher”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131374",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T02:50:15",
"content": "Obviously you need to tow the water vapouroutsidethe environment.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131378",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T03:13:47",
"content": "Yeah, water vapor having a negative impact on Earth? LOL. Try Mars. We owe our existence to 6 inches of top soil and the fact that it rains. Maybe for use in the desert to save water. Certainly better than those monster towers that seem to get destroyed a lot on the Tube.",
"parent_id": "8131374",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131449",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T08:55:18",
"content": "Whoosh!",
"parent_id": "8131378",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131456",
"author": "sweethack",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T09:27:42",
"content": "The logic behind, (not explained in the article) is that water vapor causes more greenhouse effect than even CO2. Since this water is pumped from a river or a lake (or the sea), naturally, only evaporation would have suck the water in the atmosphere, so only a minuscule fraction of what the tower is producing.Thinking about heat itself, all electricity production made by mankind finishes in heat that’s increasing the Earth temperature. But compared to the heat received by the Sun, it’s peanuts. However, if you factor in the additional water vapor produced, it’s no more negligible. So you’re better to catch and condense this water as soon as possible to reduce the heating effect.",
"parent_id": "8131378",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131572",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T16:43:46",
"content": "Though the sky is already about as “black” as it can get at the frequencies where water gas is absorbing sunlight. You’re not going to change the situation significantly simply by adding more water vapor as is.What difference it makes is in cloud cover, because more moisture in the air adds to the formation of clouds, which retain heat – but also reflect sunlight away. The situation isn’t simple: where and when the clouds occur decides whether the effect is cooling or warming.",
"parent_id": "8131456",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131476",
"author": "hammarbytp",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T10:19:11",
"content": "Personally I love those towers. I’ve had a chance to walk in a few of them and they are amazing pieces of engineering",
"parent_id": "8131378",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131540",
"author": "Dustbuster7000",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T14:49:25",
"content": "I would but the front fell off…..",
"parent_id": "8131374",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131551",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T15:14:55",
"content": "You gotta admit the referencewasa bit obscure.",
"parent_id": "8131540",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131677",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T22:50:10",
"content": "I will not be giving up my day job.",
"parent_id": "8131551",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131383",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T03:37:41",
"content": "Cooling towers are a fascinating technology when you dig into the engineering and physics.Liquid water droplets that escape the tower is water that didn’t evaporate and thus didn’t contribute to cooling — it’s an inefficiency, but often a deliberate one.You could easily engineer the system to ensure all the water is used and leaves as vapor, and the plume exiting the tower would be invisible. You just need to “superheat” the air-water mixture so it’s above the dew point when it leaves the heat exchanger in the tower. But this requires the heat exchanger to be bigger (to add the superheat section) and worse: the incoming hot side of the coolant loop must be hotter, reducing the efficiency of the plant.So it’s a tradeoff: run the cooling tower in superheat, reducing the water usage but reducing plant efficiency; Or spend a bit more in excess cooling water, increasing plant efficiency. Or the new solution: spend for capital equipment and ongoing costs to capture those rogue water droplets.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131559",
"author": "aaronfish",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T15:58:19",
"content": "Wouldn’t the plume always be visible? I mean if the outgoing air is hot enough it might rise a bit further before it condenses, but there’s enough moisture in the air that as it mixes with the surrounding air it’ll still happen.Unless maybe it was in a desert where the air was hot and dry enough that the humidity introduced wouldn’t change the dew point enough to matter. But then I suspect the efficiency would drop enough you’d needmorewater, which would put you back over the dew point.",
"parent_id": "8131383",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131565",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T16:18:18",
"content": "Of course how high a plume rises before the water condenses to form a cloud depends on the ambient air humidity and temperature (and lapse rate), and also how much you want to spend on superheat.",
"parent_id": "8131559",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131660",
"author": "Lon Clayton Brouse",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T21:34:45",
"content": "The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, 40 miles west of Phoenix, AZ, generates over 1,390 MW of electricity and evaporates approximately 100 million gallons of cooling water per-day or almost 70,000 gpm from 9 forced-draft cooling towers, each 300 feet in diameter. During the summer, there is no visible evaporation plume from any of the towers because of the hot, dry air, the plume temperature does not drop below the dew point. Electrostatic collection would not work during this time of year because there are no droplets to charge. During the winter, the dew point is reached, and the plumes rise thousands of feet into the sky and can be seen from downtown Phoenix. This condition might benefit from the electrostatic reclaim of charged droplets. Furthermore, most of the blowdown of concentrated cooling water from the cooling towers is directed to on-site evaporation ponds, while a fraction of this blowdown is directed back to the on-site precipitation chemical softening plant, where it treated to supplement cooling tower makeup water. Palo Verde is the largest industrial user of reclaimed municipal sewage water in the U.S. I would love to see a pilot study on one of the 9 towers at this location. If you are looking for a large-scale trial, you will not find a larger installation than this! I was the Chief Chemist of the Fossil Generation Division of Arizona Public Service Co. and then became the Calgon Heavy Industrial Division Account Manager of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station.",
"parent_id": "8131559",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131490",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T11:10:11",
"content": "So, make the cooling system less efficient? The whole point of open-circuit liquid cooling is to move heat out of the system. Recovering the water – and requiring power to do so – works against that. You want the cooling liquid to be, optimally, at ambient temperature or less to be able to absorb more thermal energy. So the recovered water does less work, being warmer, requiring a larger plant and an additional energy input for the electrostatic system… just doesn’t seem to be the right priority for the purpose of only mitigating plumes. It would make more sense to install additional passive stages in the cooling system so the plumes would reach ambient quicker, forming smaller visible plumes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131936",
"author": "bootstrap",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T20:59:53",
"content": "Heat engines are indeed more efficient the higher the difference in temperature, if you’re capturing water by the means described then it’s going to at least probably be warmer.Capturing and reusing ‘warmer’ water may not be the point here, it is probably just to keep more eater in a liquid state on the ground and not in the atmosphere – dumped back into a lake to river, or simply down the drain where it (possibly) won’t contribute to global warming. If some other user downstream uses that captured water again, that’s a nett reduction in water consumption right?As for the efficiency loss, well that would need to be quantified. The energy cost to run all that compressed air and high voltage ionizers, against the total output it’s probably a fraction of a 10th of a percent.",
"parent_id": "8131490",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131566",
"author": "SteveS",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T16:23:57",
"content": "Cooling towers always blew my mind.The entire purpose of a thermal plant is to create heat and convert said heat into electricity, yet there are these cooling towers involved whose entire purpose is topurposely throw some of that heat away.I never really understood why the working fluids needed to be cooled at all, if you’re just going to send them back in and heat the m up again, but I’m an electrical guy, not a thermal expert.I intellectually get that there is some point below which it becomes impractical to recover the heat, and there are many smart experts who have optimized the hell out of the process, but it still seems weird to just… throw away a large fraction of the product you just made.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131574",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T16:48:51",
"content": "It’s because you need a temperaturedifferenceto extract work out of heat.Like you need a difference in height to make water fall down through water a turbine, you need a difference in temperature to make gases expand and flow through a gas turbine.",
"parent_id": "8131566",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131575",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T16:54:13",
"content": "purposely throw some of that heat awayThe reason is that no heat engine can extract all the heat into useful energy. Some always remains at the exit – just like a water wheel cannot take all the energy of a flowing river; the river would stop and so would the wheel.So if the heat wasn’t thrown away, the temperature at the turbine exit would continue to climb until it reaches the temperature at the inlet, and then there would be no temperature difference, and therefore no flow of heat, and therefore the heat engine could not extract any energy.",
"parent_id": "8131574",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131689",
"author": "Bobtato",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T23:47:19",
"content": "A heat source will raise the temperature of the working fluid regardless of how hot it already is – the issue is that (1) there’s a limit on how hot equipment can get without melting, and (2) per Carnot’s theorem, the work done is inversely proportional to theabsolutetemperature, irrespective of the temperature difference.If power plants ran hotter, they’d be easier to cool, but for maximum efficiency you want to get both the input and output temperature of the reactor / turbine / furnace etc. as low as possible. That’s why it’s worth spending money and energy on cooling systems.",
"parent_id": "8131575",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131585",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T17:44:57",
"content": "I’m an electrical guy, not a thermal expertThermal transfer problems are commonly solved using electrical simulations by using the analog that temperature is voltage and heat is coulombs of charge. Since heat is Joules of energy, Amps of current is the electrical analog of Watts of heat flow.You can make “heat reservoirs”, basically two capacitors, one charged and the other empty. One at high temperature, the other at low temperature. Connecting them together results in a current which represents the flow of heat from hot to cold. Now you can place a “heat engine” in the middle to do useful work, like turning a motor – at least until the two reservoirs equalize in temperature and the flow of heat stops.To keep it going, you have to empty the cold reservoir and fill the hot reservoir again. Filling the hot reservoir is easy – you burn something and you get more heat. Emptying the cold reservoir is hard, because you can’t just “ground” it like you would in a normal electrical circuit – you have to drain the cold reservoir by connecting it to other reservoirs that are bigger and colder – you have to dump the heat into the environment somehow.Explaining the workings of the heat engine using this electrical analog gets a bit mind-bending because of the substitution of current=energy, so I’m not going to attempt that. Sufficient to say, the normal assumption of power=volts x amps does not hold here so do not attempt that.",
"parent_id": "8131566",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131641",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T19:59:02",
"content": "Correction:substitution of current=power",
"parent_id": "8131585",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131691",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T23:49:58",
"content": "No. Current is not power. Not even with heat flow.With heat flow it’s both the speed of heat transfer (I.e. current) and the temperature difference (Voltage) of the two vessels that count. And you multiply those two together to get the power.Analogs are quite common in engineering. No matter if you have mechanical mass / spring systems, motors, fluid dynamics thermodynamic effects or electricity. The form of the formula’s are mostly the same and you can one system to simulate another. 100 years ago there were mechanical systems that did integration and fourier transformations. At some point Opamps were designed and used to do electrical simulations of other systems. These days most electronics is digital, but there may be a comeback for analog computers in AI. In AI, a node does not have to be very precise, but massive parallelism is a huge thing. And a variable amplifier combined with some I/O switching may be much more scalable then a processor core in a digital computer.",
"parent_id": "8131641",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131737",
"author": "Steven Naslund",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T05:44:22",
"content": "What is more polluting, water vapor or burning energy to recover the water. I didnt know water vapor was a big problem.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,537.127795
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/22/you-can-3d-print-these-assistive-typing-tools/
|
You Can 3D Print These Assistive Typing Tools
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"3d Printer hacks"
] |
[
"3d printing",
"typing",
"typing aid"
] |
Typing can be difficult to learn at the best of times. Until you get the muscle memory down, it can be quite challenging. However, if you’ve had one or more fingers amputated, it can be even more difficult. Just reaching the keys properly can be a challenge. To help in this regard, [Roei Weiman] built some assistive typing tools for those
looking for a little aid at the keyboard.
The devices were built for [Yoni], who works in tech and has two amputated fingers. [Roei] worked on many revisions to create a viable brace and extension device that would help [Yoni] type with greater accuracy and speed.
While [Roei] designed the parts for SLS 3D printing, it’s not mandatory—these can easily be produced on an FDM printer, too. For SLS users, nylon is recommended, while FDM printers will probably find best results with PETG. It may also be desirable to perform a silicone casting to add a grippier surface to some of the parts, a process we’ve explored previously.
The great thing about 3D printing is that it enables just about anyone to have a go at producing their own
simple assistive aids like these
. Files are
on Instructables
for the curious. Video after the break.
| 8
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131382",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T03:35:35",
"content": "You could also use something like Sugru to give the tips a grippier surface. Give it a bumpy or ridged surface before it cures.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131423",
"author": "June",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T06:57:34",
"content": "Big thank you! My ring finger is a little bit shorter due to an accident during childhood. I have problems writing on a keyboard ever since. It is possible to write, but i can’t reach o and therefore make a lot of typos.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131438",
"author": "Steven Stewart",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T07:58:14",
"content": "Has this something to do with the previous article: “Building A Tiny Table Saw”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131531",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T14:07:19",
"content": "Everyone knows a tiny table saw can only cut off tiny fingers :)",
"parent_id": "8131438",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131458",
"author": "Jan Prägert",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T09:35:44",
"content": "Good fit with the previouse post.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131729",
"author": "RevJ",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T04:21:12",
"content": "hmmm, posting this right after the table saw article? lol…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131884",
"author": "miDnIghtEr20C",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T17:47:34",
"content": "I thought that was a peen finger, my bad.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132115",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T12:30:41",
"content": "Article is right after the one about ‘building your own table saw’Now that is convenient and forward thinking eh. O_o",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,537.213228
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/22/building-a-tiny-table-saw/
|
Building A Tiny Table Saw
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"Tool Hacks"
] |
[
"cutting tool",
"table saw",
"tools"
] |
If you want a regular table saw, you’re probably best off just buying one—it’s hard to beat the economies of scale that benefit the major manufacturers. If you want a teeny one, though, you might like to build it yourself.
[Maciej Nowak] has done just that.
The concept is simple enough; a small motor and a small blade make a small table saw. [Maciej] sourced a remarkably powerful 800-watt brushless motor for the build. From there, the project involved fabricating a suitable blade mount, belt drive, and frame for the tool. Some time was well-spent on the lathe producing the requisite components out of steel and aluminum, as well as a stout housing out of plywood. The motor was then fitted with a speed controller, with the slight inconvenience that it’s a hobby unit designed to run off DC batteries rather than a wall supply. Ultimately, though, this makes the saw nicely portable. All that was left to do was to fit the metal top plate, guides, and a suitably small 3″ saw blade to complete the build.
We’ve seen mini machine tools like these before, too
. They can actually be pretty useful if you find yourself regularly working on tiny little projects. Video after the break.
| 29
| 13
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131307",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T20:56:33",
"content": "Just for that, I gave the video a skim. I saw he was using some flanged XT60 connectors which I had not seen previously. That’s now an additional tool I can use the next time I might need a connector like that.I find simple dismissals like these to not only add nothing to the discussion, but border on anti-intellectualism.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131310",
"author": "Lookieluke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T21:15:19",
"content": "If you zoom in on the title photo, what happens between left thumb and index?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132049",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T08:13:19",
"content": "It looks like he has his right thumb tucked in there, that’s all.",
"parent_id": "8131310",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131314",
"author": "Andrzej",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T21:23:52",
"content": "No annoying music, no sponsor announcements… this is already better than most of the “content” out there…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131315",
"author": "Andrzej",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T21:25:09",
"content": "(this is a response to a now-removed comment, so it may seem a bit out of context)",
"parent_id": "8131314",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131324",
"author": "Happy Dad",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T21:58:47",
"content": "And what? he has 915K subs (+1 with me now). So you can grow without being silly, narcissistic and diverting an Apple product ?Of course you can and if you can’t, that’s not an excuse to reach to the bottom.",
"parent_id": "8131314",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131330",
"author": "Eric Mockler",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T22:21:09",
"content": "I have a full size saw, but I would like a small one like this. With easier blade changes and a red slap switch.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131361",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T01:53:58",
"content": "Red with blood, 0 safety on the most dangerous type of saw that also makes sloppy work.I’d be more interested in an inverted moving a saw on a rail with the work clamped down. No need to push whilst pushing sideways to the guide too and avoiding that exposed saw. Table saws belong to the overhead power belts and deadly injuries era.",
"parent_id": "8131330",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131401",
"author": "NFM",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T05:21:06",
"content": "What you are talking about is a radial arm saw (actually invented by Raymond DeWalt, yep, that DeWalt), and have been largely abandoned as an idea as they turned out to be far too dangerous and were replaced by the miter saw.Maybe you want a miter saw? They are very common and not overly expensive.",
"parent_id": "8131361",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131481",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T10:44:52",
"content": "Or perhaps a tracksaw is the best thing to that description, being a rail with a moving saw clamped to a work piece (if you want to use the clamp – usually have enough friction you don’t need to clamp for the simple cuts). They really are a good faux tablesaw really, which is why I’ve not got round to refurbishing my tablesaw in over a year now, tracksaw is good enough for the jobs I’ve had to do so far… However it can’t entirely replace one, as its going to be slower and harder to create those handy jigs on your table saw sled for repeatable cuts. But it can do almost everything a tablesaw can just slower, but in theory safer as your hands are always on the tool body safely on the opposite side of the blade.That said Tablesaws really are not as echodelta claims a tool of a bygone era – cheap, efficient and very very versatile, while also being pretty darn safe if you actually know how to use one safely. Plus these days the sawstop type concepts exist, and while a little expensive when they trigger really do appear to make even the stupidest things you can do safe enough the moron won’t take serious injury. If you are that scared by a tablesaw just ban all tools that actually function and go back to pottery for everything…",
"parent_id": "8131401",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131502",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T12:18:10",
"content": "Yes, the radial arm saw has some interesting and very dynamic damage modes… Not worth the shop floor space, despite the few unique things it can do.",
"parent_id": "8131401",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131536",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T14:14:25",
"content": "Try Arbor for the chicago electirc 4″, or the mighty mite at harbor freight, or Amazon. 30-50 US$",
"parent_id": "8131330",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131332",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T22:32:22",
"content": "“800” watt motor in a small sealed enclosure. No overtemperature cutout. Clearly for low duty cycle work. But maybe that little belt (GT2?) is the safety fuse — maybe it will fail before you can load the motor to overheating, or get the enclosure to ignition temperature. Clever.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131362",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T02:04:26",
"content": "commercial options exist- MicroMark and Byrnes used to make hobbyist specific mini table saws. but boy they are for “serious hobby” (AKA $$$$). Best I ever did was one of those adjustable blade guides for stripping my own project lumber from sheets. Was surprisingly good.But I wish I had the cool mini table saw",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131530",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T14:03:06",
"content": "Harbor Freight has a mini table saw too.I’m not sure what all the “battery speed comtroller” talk is about, DC “speed controllers” are available from $5-40 many places. Also DC power is DC power, the speed controller doesn’t care if it is battery or converter supplied",
"parent_id": "8131362",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131365",
"author": "hergaster",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T02:20:42",
"content": "Great build, but as that is still a serious blade with plenty of torque behind it and some heavier feedstock (the aluminum) shown, there should really really really be a riving knife.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131500",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T12:13:17",
"content": "In my many years experience with a table saw, the riving knife, one-way pawls and blade cover have allcausedmore injuries and damaged stock than a naked saw. It’s dangerous, sure, but a drill press is a far more injurious machine.",
"parent_id": "8131365",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131539",
"author": "DougM",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T14:47:55",
"content": "I agree. I have alotmore respect for my table saw because it doesn’t have any safety features. I go through a meticulous process every time I use it to make sure I don’t get hurt.Most important thing, use an inverted pistol grip style push stick.",
"parent_id": "8131500",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131564",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T16:13:09",
"content": "Exactly.Safety third, as the saying goes. (the original Rowe version, not that co-opted Osman upstart one)",
"parent_id": "8131539",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131482",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T10:47:06",
"content": "Hmm. My comment was deleted. Never mind. Such a device as shown here is $50 at AliExpress.Oh, was it because I obliquely hinted at tariffs?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131535",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T14:12:28",
"content": "Also sold locally at Harbor Freight in USA, not sure why people keep making these from scratch.",
"parent_id": "8131482",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131744",
"author": "Ian Mackereth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T06:36:48",
"content": "OK, I won’t tempt fate by posting a link, but I have one of those Aliexpress cheapies and it works fine. I had one use for it that justified the ~A$70, but it’s been handy a few times since then. Came with a DC supply (with a US plug but it’s an IEC socket on the brick)",
"parent_id": "8131482",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131485",
"author": "Marco",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T10:59:24",
"content": "Very good device, using that for years:https://www.proxxon.com/en/micromot/27006.php",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131686",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T23:38:17",
"content": "At the moment I have another Proxxon table saw on lend. Fet / 27070 which is a bit bigger model, and I don’t like it much. The inside looks quite well built, it does have a quite smallish motor, but these things are not made for high power stuff, so that’s OK.But I don’t like the accessories for this saw. They are very flimsy and not accurate. Also the guides built into the saw are made of wobbly plastic that bends too easily. Lookking at the price, it’s not on par with it’s quality. I would have expected better quality acessories and built in guides for that price.https://www.proxxon.com/en/micromot/27070.phpOverall, if you’re interested in a small table saw, I recommend you buy a regular circular saw, and then make a small table and make a bracket to mount the circular saw on the bottom. Add an extension cord with a built in switch and you can turn the saw on and off from a convenient position.On top of that, there are quite a lot of very simple hacks to extend the possibilities for hand circular saws. From long tracks, to various wooden squares for easy 90 degree cuts and more elaborate angle instuments or tracks. You can also plunge cut in the center of big sheet of plywood.A hand circular saw is probably one of the most universal electrical saws out in the wild.It’s biggest limitation is that it can’t get into corners. To get into corners a jigsaw is better suited, but I don’t like their vibrations and noise (Circular saw makes more noise, but somehow I find it less irritating). It’s also nearly impossible to saw straight with a jigsaw, and for corners, using a handsaw at the end where a circular saw can’t reach is plenty good enough for most DIY.",
"parent_id": "8131485",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131492",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T11:14:54",
"content": "My buddy made one of these to cut rocks… he sells display-quality specimens at flea markets and such. Agates are popular.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131517",
"author": "Robert Erto",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T13:15:35",
"content": "Bandsaw?Build your own! All you need is your own lathe. 🙄",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132104",
"author": "erffrfez",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T11:57:30",
"content": "and if you don’t have a lathe….Build your own! All you need is your own lathe. ;-:",
"parent_id": "8131517",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131696",
"author": "lowrads",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T00:06:40",
"content": "If the saw is strong enough to move the piece, it is strong enough to drag your wayward appendage past the blade faster than you can regret it. A riving knife helps stop the material from closing up behind the blade, which makes it harder for it to lift and drag the piece. If you’re working with pieces this small, just acquire a benchtop jig saw. The vertical cuts will be cleaner anyhow, due to smaller workface and no horizontal actions.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132330",
"author": "C",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T08:35:01",
"content": "So safety measures. Extremely dangerous.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,537.27868
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/22/2025-pet-hacks-contest-loko-tracks-fido-with-lora-and-gps/
|
2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Loko Tracks Fido With LoRa And GPS
|
Tyler August
|
[
"contests",
"gps hacks"
] |
[
"2025 Pet Hacks Contest",
"gps",
"LoRa",
"LoRaWAN",
"pet tracking",
"stm32"
] |
Some projects start as hacks, and end as products — that’s the case for [Akio Sato]’s
project Loko, the LoRa/GPS tracker
that was entered in our 2025 Pet Hacks Contest. The project dates all the way back to 2019 on Hackaday.io, and through its logs you can see its evolution up to the announcement that
Loko is available from SeeedStudio
.
It’s not a device necessarily limited to pets. In fact, the original use case appears to have been a backup locator beacon for lost drones. But it’s still a good fit for the contest none-the-less: at 12 grams, the tiny tracking device won’t bother even the most diminutive of pups, and will fit on any collar at only 30 mm x 23 mm. The “ground station” that pairs with your phone is a bit bigger, of course, but unless you have a Newfoundlander or a St. Bernard you’re likely bigger than fido. The devices use LoRa to provide a range up to 15 km — maybe better if you can loop them into a LoRaWAN. Depending on how often you pin the tracker, it can apparently last for as long as 270 days, which we
really
hope you won’t need to track a missing pet.
The hardware is based around Seeed’s Wio-E5 LoRa chip, which packages an STM32 with a LoRA radio. The firmware is written in MicroPython, and everything is
available via GitHub under the MIT license.
T
hough the code for the mobile app that interfaces with that hardware doesn’t appear to be in the repository at the moment. (There are folders, but they’re disappointingly empty.) The apps are available free on the iOS App Store and Google Play, however.
There’s still plenty of time to submit your own hacks to the Pet Hacks Contest, so please do! You have until May 10th, so if you haven’t started yet, it’s not too late to get hacking.
| 7
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131284",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T19:26:14",
"content": "My capstone project was triangulation of livestock using LoRa radiosIn hindsight, what a stupid project, I can’t believe my professors let me work on something so useless. What farmer would care where their cattle is, as long as they’re on the property?Well the learning was well worth it though…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131289",
"author": "Tobasco da Gama",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T19:47:38",
"content": "My final project for college involved tracking sailboats during a race and displaying that with weather measurements from the base station. When we talked to the head of the racing club, they were like, “Yeah, that’s useless to us, the conditions on the water are completely different than what the base station would see.”But it’s more about demonstrating that you can see a complex project through to completion than necessarily delivering a useful product.",
"parent_id": "8131284",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131337",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T22:40:19",
"content": "On the contrary, for some farmers that would be very useful.May be different in the states, but I can see that being used in the UK.If the cost is low enough it’s worth tagging all the animals them to detect theft (and potentially to help retrieval). And dairy farmers do want to know where their cows are and their movements – they usually use RFID tags and track them through milking, but tracking them across a wider area could be useful. It could also help detect animals that are ill.",
"parent_id": "8131284",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131287",
"author": "Tobasco da Gama",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T19:43:42",
"content": "I’ve been looking into buying one, it’s cool tech. Seems like you need one base station for each “tag”, though, which is inconvenient.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131291",
"author": "Tobasco da Gama",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T19:50:31",
"content": "Can’t edit, so I’ll just reply to myself. When I looked into it before, they were only selling the “Air” and “Ground” units as a combo, but they just recently started selling the Air units separately. The page for the Air unit states that each Ground unit can track up to 30 of the Air units!",
"parent_id": "8131287",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131369",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T02:28:21",
"content": "Loko’s proprietary smartphone applicationThe open-source nature of Loko, combined with its developer-friendly featuresCommission? No, Money Down!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131464",
"author": "biemster",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T10:04:43",
"content": "“There’s still plenty of time to submit your own hacks to the Pet Hacks Contest, so please do! You have until May 10th, so if you haven’t started yet, it’s not too late to get hacking.”This sounds like too late to me?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,537.325342
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/22/hackaday-supercon-2025-call-for-participation-we-want-you/
|
Hackaday Supercon 2025 Call For Participation: We Want You!
|
Elliot Williams
|
[
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Slider"
] |
[
"2025 Hackaday Superconference",
"call for participation",
"speakers",
"Supercon",
"talks"
] |
We’re tremendously excited to be able to announce that the Hackaday Supercon is on for 2025, and will be taking place October 31st through November 2nd in Pasadena, California.
Supercon is about bringing the Hackaday community together to share our great ideas, big and small. So get to brainstorming, because we’d like to hear what you’ve been up to! Like last year, we’ll be featuring both longer and shorter talks, and hope to get a great mix of both first-time presenters and Hackaday luminaries. If you know someone you think should give a talk, point them here.
The
Call for Participation form
is online now, and you’ve got until July
3rd
10th to get yourself signed up.
Honestly, just the people that Supercon brings together is reason enough to attend, but then you throw in the talks, the badge-hacking, the food, and the miscellaneous shenanigans … it’s an event you really don’t want to miss. And as always, presenters get in for free, get their moment in the sun, and get warm vibes from the Hackaday audience. Get yourself signed up now!
We’ll have more news forthcoming in the next few weeks, including the start of ticket sales, so be sure to keep your eyes on Hackaday.
| 12
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131270",
"author": "jawnhenry",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T18:16:19",
"content": "Are we going to meet our favorite Hackaday authors?Who, of this gang, are going to be there?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131921",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T19:57:20",
"content": "We don’t know yet, but I’ll for sure be there. Tom and Al usually able to make it. We’ll see who else wants to come.",
"parent_id": "8131270",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131282",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T19:18:43",
"content": "Don’t go to the USA — go to Supercon! :)All signs point to 2026 Hackaday Europe in the spring, though, if you don’t want to take the plane trip.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131683",
"author": "Darrell Edwin Swanson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T23:05:46",
"content": "What venue will you be using?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131743",
"author": "Aaron",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T06:25:05",
"content": "SuperCon runs the first weekend of November at The Los Angeles College of Music (and the SupplyFrame headquarters) There are a couple of stages at the college where talks are given.",
"parent_id": "8131683",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131853",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T15:58:23",
"content": "Let’s keep politics out of a great hacker web site",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153024",
"author": "Ticktok",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T05:22:41",
"content": "“The current aggressive arrest and deportation climate makes me feel unsafe as someone not a US citizen.”“Now let’s not get political!”Just what the absolute fk guy",
"parent_id": "8131853",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132787",
"author": "Tina Belmont",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T01:09:27",
"content": "I’m now in exile in Germany, and don’t really consider it safe to return to the US.I’d still like to participate.Would it be possible for me to get early access to the badge design to design an enclosure for folks to 3d print, and maybe give a remote talk about it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132806",
"author": "Le Samourai",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T03:14:51",
"content": "Not safe?",
"parent_id": "8132787",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8133272",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T15:49:25",
"content": "Ping us back about this in August?",
"parent_id": "8132787",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8133453",
"author": "jawnhenry",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T02:16:30",
"content": "”…Would it be possible for me to get early access to the badge design to design an enclosure for folks to 3d print, and maybe give a remote talk about it?”Rather than wait until August, why not click on the“Call for Participation form“(highlighted in the article), fill it out and sendthatin? …And do it right now.‘the form’will give you a lot more space to expand on what you’ve got in mind; it’ll (just possibly) give you a chance to get valuable suggestions / feedback; and you’ll (maybe) get a lot more attention and consideration from the SupplyFrame / Hackaday gods than you otherwise would.I, for one, would like to see what you’ve got in mind.Good luck.",
"parent_id": "8132787",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8133048",
"author": "jawnhenry",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T19:21:13",
"content": "“…and don’t really consider it safe to return to the US…”Hackaday readers are among the smartest and best on the entire planet.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,537.372514
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/22/now-kde-users-will-get-easy-virtual-machine-management-too/
|
Now KDE Users Will Get Easy Virtual Machine Management, Too
|
Jenny List
|
[
"Software Hacks"
] |
[
"karton",
"kde",
"open source",
"virtual machine"
] |
If you work with virtual machines, perhaps to spin up a clean OS install for testing, historically you have either bitten the bullet and used one of the commercial options, or spent time getting your hands dirty with something open source. Over recent years that has changed, with the arrival of open source graphical applications for effortless VM usage. We’ve used GNOME Boxes here to make our lives a lot easier. Now KDE are also joining the party with Karton,
a project which will deliver what looks very similar to Boxes in the KDE desktop
.
The news comes in a post from Derek Lin, and shows us what work has already been done as well as a roadmap for future work. At the moment it’s in no way production ready and it only works with QEMU, but it can generate new VMs, run them, and capture their screens to a desktop window. Having no wish to join in any Linux desktop holy wars we look forward to seeing this piece of software progress, as it’s a Google Summer Of Code project we hope there will be plenty more to see shortly.
Still using the commercial option?
You can move to open source too
!
| 27
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131225",
"author": "Aurora",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T15:44:49",
"content": "If neither Karton nor GNOME Boxes are sufficient for y’all’s needs, it’s worth considering Virtual Machine Manager. While it isn’t as easy as GNOME Boxes, it provides almost as much power as many commercial offerings, including the ability to manage virtual machines on hosts that you have SSH access to.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131260",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T17:24:06",
"content": "So… there is apparently a good GUI wrapper for QEMU for Gnome. (I wouldn’t know because I’m not much of a Gnome fan). Now there is one for KDE too. (Cool… I currently use that but am considering switching away again).I find it kind of disturbing when I see things getting built for specific desktops and not Linux in general. Why not a desktop independent Linux application?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131264",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T17:35:54",
"content": "Strictly speaking, they both are desktop-independent in the sense that you can use Gnome-boxes on KDE and many people do.“For GNOME” and “For KDE” is often shorthand for programs using the GTK+ and QT development frameworks. GNOME uses (and is closely tied) to GTK+; QT and KDE, ditto. So lots of GTK+ tools are produced by gnome projects and get the gnome name, and many QT tools are produced under the KDE umbrella. It does not mean you cannot use them with WindowMaker or CDE if you really want to.The big advantages to sticking with one ecosystem are theming and integration on the one hand, and (if you can really manage sticking to one framework) only loading one set of graphical libraries into RAM or onto disk.",
"parent_id": "8131260",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131659",
"author": "Kirn Gill II",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T21:33:45",
"content": "WindowMaker and CDE can’t be used because they’re legacy X11 technologies, and Wayland programs can’t be managed by X11 window managers. XWayland can’t work that miracle.",
"parent_id": "8131264",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131272",
"author": "ziew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T18:23:32",
"content": "At least it apparently uses libvirt to manage VMs instead of creating a new KVirt library.",
"parent_id": "8131260",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131473",
"author": "Clancy",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T10:18:26",
"content": "Boxes does too, the idea is to make a libvirt interface that plugs neatly into the parent DE nicely",
"parent_id": "8131272",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131280",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T18:58:51",
"content": "KDE and Gnome. Two desktop environments with zero character.KDE imitates Windows look&feel, Gnome copies MacOS.The most “creative” was KDE in 3.2, I think, when it had its own take on Luna theme.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131321",
"author": "The Solutor",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T21:48:53",
"content": "Trinity Desktop (TDE) is there for a reason.The only decent DE for Linux.Try it on your distribution or (even better) try Q4OS.",
"parent_id": "8131280",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131496",
"author": "Drew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T11:40:35",
"content": "lol, I think Trinity looks like garbage. It’s all about personal preferences.",
"parent_id": "8131321",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131529",
"author": "The solutor",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T14:00:32",
"content": "Good for you that good taste isn’t mandatory :)",
"parent_id": "8131496",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131439",
"author": "Cre8teQ",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T08:05:44",
"content": "With all due respect, that’s a very subjective opinion/sh*tpost, and little else.The best DE, or indeed window manager, is whatever works for you, & nothing more or less.I always felt, like I was in a battle with Gnome, to get it, somewhere near how I like, that’s why I don’t use it but, there’s plenty that like the simplicity.KDE suits my needs & an upto date QT equivalence of Boxes, will be appreciated by Me, as I’ve used QT Virt Manager for years and that’s completely dead, deprecated & orphaned now.",
"parent_id": "8131280",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131468",
"author": "The Solutor",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T10:11:03",
"content": "Well, no.Usability is surelyalsoa personal thing. But is mostly measurable, ergonomics is measurable.When I want (just as random example) that a window appears always on monitor 2, using gnome there is nothing to measure, the feature is simply not there.In windows I can use “actual multiple monitors/display fusion/ot alike”, in Kde 3.x/TDE that feature is integrated, in plasma is still there but at the price of a bloated environment.In GNOME/XFCE/LXDE/LXQT and so on that feature isn’t available, unless you start editing by hand obscure settings.And I can make dozens of similar exampleWhat’s subjective in that?You can upgrade your DE, or you can downgrade the user’s expectation.KDE/TDE followed the former way, windows mostly followed that way (for a good part of its history), MacOS followed the opposite direction, and gnome (especially 3.x+) aped that approach. that’s all.If you are a plumber a ugly pickup is surely more useful than a Ferrari 308 (that’s the subjective part), but a Ferrari is still a better car by any metrics, and that’s measurable.",
"parent_id": "8131439",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131513",
"author": "Helena",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T13:11:21",
"content": "“a Ferrari is still a better car by any metrics”Hahahaha nope. What about these metrics:“Does it carry all my tools and materials to the client’s home?”“Can I drive it around a muddy potholed jobsite?”“Can I even drive it up the client’s gravel driveway?”“Am I going to care if it gets a bit scratched or dented?”“Can I afford to buy it?” or “Can I afford to buy it in addition to the truck I need to do my job?”The problem is that the metrics for a car aren’t limited to the specs that car geeks obsess over. Some car hobbyists use cars as an end in themselves and that’s fine if that’s where your interests lie but the vast majority of people use cars as a tool. So the most important metric for them is “Does this car help me accomplish the things I want to do in my life.”Now, if what you want to do is signal that you have money, or impress people who know about cars, or drive fast on a track, a Ferrari 308 looks like a great tool to do that. Those are fine metrics, but not the metrics a plumber needs.",
"parent_id": "8131468",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131859",
"author": "Tuxhut",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T16:08:59",
"content": "Use cockpit to launch virtual machines. It’s a one step install and everything works from the browser",
"parent_id": "8131513",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131493",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T11:16:13",
"content": "I have to disagree with you on this.Windows 8 and 11 immitate Gnome. Windows 8 feels like it was direct copy of Gnome and 11 went a bit back to the 8/gnome interface, with some KDE inspired things.KDE is a combination of Windows 7 and OSX, but much prettier and easier to use than bothI prefer the i3 window manager, but when I switch to a DE in case some Windows user wants to use my laptop, I switch to KDE. It’s pretty and people are instantly familier with it because it feels like OSX and Windows 7.",
"parent_id": "8131280",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131528",
"author": "The solutor",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T13:58:45",
"content": "Saying that KDE feels like windows, was, more or less correct when KDE was in diapers. In 1998 or so.Saying that in 2005 or in 2025 is wrong. Simply because since XP Microsoft took a lot by the KDE improvements made over the Win9x/Win2K GUI.In short in the last quarter of a centuries a bidirectional flux of ideas between windows and KDE.Think to the IE4 “integration” with the file manager, MS did it artificially just to complicate the life of Netscape (and sons), KDE did it for real, and Konqueror was (and still is) a real single program that does web browsing, ftp and other online task, and its also a fully fledged file manager.In the same timeframe Gnome start apeing Macos and the Job’s nasty idea that ignorance is a value. (Ignorance is surely a value for Apple, but not for the users)",
"parent_id": "8131493",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132499",
"author": "Thomas",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T20:44:57",
"content": "So… you aren’t going to say what your preferred alternative is? I mean, after an extreme statement like that, it is practically an obligation.",
"parent_id": "8131280",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131285",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T19:28:10",
"content": "I’m too comfy with Linux mint cinnamon (its xfce4 with a lot of nice bells and whistles) to try anything else. Maybe one day I’ll try KDEOr go back to LXDE (sorry, LXQT now) roots",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131301",
"author": "JH",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T20:44:13",
"content": "x2",
"parent_id": "8131285",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131431",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T07:33:49",
"content": "With you on that, I like cinnamon, not feeling the need to change",
"parent_id": "8131285",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131328",
"author": "brian-in-ohio",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T22:12:16",
"content": "Fluxbox all the way!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131343",
"author": "Miroslav",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T23:32:08",
"content": "Modern Gnome and to a lesser extent KDE are both bloated solutions in search of a problem. Luckily there is MATE, and other GUIs that stick to standard and well proven UI.As for VMs, I use Virtualbox. I didn’t know about other level 2 Linux solutions so far.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131441",
"author": "Cre8teQ",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T08:13:43",
"content": "There’s plenty of DEs, that aren’t bloated and don’t look 20yrs old.The trouble with Mate is, it would die as a project if/when Martin Wimpress leaves.I like the nostalgia of Mate, it reminds of peak Ubuntu 10.04, before Shuttleworth screwed it up & it is made with a lot of love, and I appreciate that, but it’s not for me…",
"parent_id": "8131343",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131478",
"author": "The Solutor",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T10:24:40",
"content": "Mate is not nostalgia, mate is the best incarnation of Gnome, Just like (read above) TDE is the best incarnation of KDE.The only thing that peaked in Linux in 2003-2010 is the pleasure of use the system and the usability of it.A marvel like PCLinuxOS 2007, is almost unavailable today.Q4OS seem the only ready to go solution that reminds it.On everything else one has to spend days, in tweaking installing, removing things to get a decent OS.And Win11 is no different, hours needed to remove crap, hours needed to install ClassicShell/Start ALL back/Explorer Patcher and so on just to have a system usable as Win7 or XP.",
"parent_id": "8131441",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131649",
"author": "Miroslav",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T20:40:18",
"content": "Thanks for mentioning TDE. It looks parallel to KDE in a way that MATE is parallel to GNOME. Clean, usable, low on resources. I might try it.",
"parent_id": "8131478",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131348",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T00:26:30",
"content": "For my use I use both VirtualBox and QEMU/KVM (with Virtual Machine interface) in KUbuntu. Only reason I now use VirtualBox is I have some older VMs I want to keep around. Otherwise I now use QEMU/KVM. Not sure why we need another GUI application to manage, but so it goes I guess for new users…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131479",
"author": "Clancy",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T10:39:55",
"content": "It’s not actually that much more to manage though because these applications are just wrappers for libvirt anyway (which runs QEMU/KVM)",
"parent_id": "8131348",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,537.708897
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/22/a-brief-history-of-fuel-cells/
|
A Brief History Of Fuel Cells
|
Al Williams
|
[
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Slider"
] |
[
"fuel cell",
"fuel cells"
] |
If we asked you to think of a device that converts a chemical reaction into electricity, you’d probably say we were thinking of a battery. That’s true, but there is another device that does this that is both very similar and very different from a battery: the fuel cell.
In a very simple way, you can think of a fuel cell as a battery that consumes the chemicals it uses and allows you to replace those chemicals so that, as long as you have fuel, you can have electricity. However, the truth is a little more complicated than that. Batteries are energy storage devices. They run out when the energy stored in the chemicals runs out. In fact, many batteries can take electricity and reverse the chemical reaction, in effect recharging them. Fuel cells react chemicals to produce electricity. No fuel, no electricity.
Superficially, the two devices seem very similar. Like batteries, fuel cells have an anode and a cathode. They also have an electrolyte, but its purpose isn’t the same as in a conventional battery. Typically, a catalyst causes fuel to oxidize, creating positively charged ions and electrons. These ions move from the anode to the cathode, and the electrons move from the anode, through an external circuit, and then to the cathode, so electric current occurs. As a byproduct, many fuel cells produce potentially useful byproducts like water. NASA has the animation below that shows how one type of cell works.
History
Sir William Grove seems to have made the first fuel cell in 1838, publishing in
The London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science
. His fuel cell used dilute acid, copper sulphate, along with sheet metal and porcelain. Today, the phosphoric acid fuel cell is similar to Grove’s design.
The Bacon fuel cell is due to Francis Thomas Bacon and uses alkaline fuel. Modern versions of this are in use today by NASA and others. Although Bacon’s fuel cell could produce 5 kW, it was General Electric in 1955 that started creating larger units. GE chemists developed an ion exchange membrane that included a platinum catalyst. Named after the developers, the “Grubb-Niedrach” fuel cell flew in Gemini space capsules. By 1959, a fuel cell tractor prototype was running, as well as a welding machine powered by a Bacon cell.
One of the reasons spacecraft often use fuel cells is that many cells take hydrogen and oxygen as fuel and put out electricity and water. There are already gas tanks available, and you can always use water.
Types of Fuel Cells
Not all fuel cells use the same fuel or produce the same byproducts. At the anode, a catalyst ionizes the fuel, which produces a positive ion and a free electron. The electrolyte, often a membrane, can pass ions, but not the electrons. That way, the ions move towards the cathode, but the electrons have to find another way — through the load — to get to the cathode. When they meet again, a reaction with more fuel and a catalyst produces the byproduct: hydrogen and oxygen form water.
Most common cells use hydrogen and oxygen with an anode catalyst of platinum and a cathode catalyst of nickel. The voltage output per cell is often less than a volt. However, some fuel cells use hydrocarbons. Diesel, methanol, and other hydrocarbons can produce electricity and carbon dioxide as a byproduct, along with water. You can even use some unusual
organic inputs
, although to be fair, those are microbial fuel cells.
Common types include:
Alkaline – The Bacon cell was a fixture in space capsules, using carbon electrodes, a catalyst, and a hydroxide electrolyte.
Solid acid – These use a solid acid material as electrolyte. The material is heated to increase conductivity.
Phosphoric acid – Another acid-based technology that operates at hotter temperatures.
Molten carbonate – These work at high temperatures using lithium potassium carbonate as an electrolyte.
Solid oxide – Another high temperature that uses zirconia ceramic as the electrolyte.
In addition to technology, you can consider some fuel cells as stationary — typically producing a lot of power for consumption by some power grid — or mobile.
Using fuel cells in stationary applications is attractive partly because they have no moving parts. However, you need a way to fuel it and — if you want efficiency — you need a way to harness the waste heat produced. It is possible, for example, to use solar power to turn water into gas and then use that gas to feed a fuel cell. It is possible to use the heat directly or to convert it to electricity in a more conventional way.
Space
Fuel cells have a long history in space. You can see how alkaline Bacon cells were used in early fuel cells in the video below.
Apollo (left) and Shuttle (right) fuel cells (
from a NASA briefing
)
Very early fuel cells — starting with Gemini in 1962 — used a proton exchange membrane. However, in 1967, NASA started using Nafion from DuPont, which was improved over the old membranes.
However, alkaline cells had vastly improved power density, and from Apollo on, these cells, using a potassium hydroxide electrolyte, were standard issue.
Even the Shuttle had fuel cells. Russian spacecraft also had fuel cells, starting with a liquid oxygen-hydrogen cell used on the Soviet Lunar Orbital Spacecraft (LOK).
The shuttle’s power plant measured 14 x 15 x 45 inches and weighed 260 pounds. They were installed under the payload bay, just aft of the crew compartment. They drew cryogenic gases from nearby tanks and could provide 12 kW continuously, and up to 16 kW. However, they typically were taxed at about 50% capacity. Each orbiter’s power plant contained 96 individual cells connected to achieve a 28-volt output.
Going Mobile
There have been attempts to make fuel cell cars, but with the difficulty of delivering, storing, and transporting hydrogen, there has been resistance. The Toyota Mirai, for example, costs $57,000, yet owners sued because they couldn’t obtain hydrogen. Some buses use fuel cells, and a small number of
trains
(including the one mentioned in the video below).
Surprisingly, there is a market for forklifts using fuel cells. The clean output makes them ideal for indoor operation. Batteries? They take longer to charge and don’t work well in the cold. Fuel cells don’t mind the cold, and you can top them off in three minutes.
There have been attempts to put fuel cells into any vehicle you can imagine. Airplanes, motorcycles, and boats sporting fuel cells have all made the rounds.
Can You DIY?
We have seen a few fuel cell projects, but they all seem to vanish over time. In theory, it shouldn’t be that hard, unless you demand commercial efficiency. However, it can be done, as you can see in the video below. If you make a fuel cell, be sure to send us a
tip
so we can spread the word.
Featured image: “
SEM micrograph of an MEA cross section
” by [Xi Yin]
| 13
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131277",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T18:46:19",
"content": "Very early fuel cells — starting with Gemini in 1962 — used a proton exchange membrane. However, in 1967, NASA started using Nafion from DuPont“Proton exchange member” describes what the part does, not what it is. Nafion isalsoa proton exchange member. PEM fuel cells never went away – we’re still using them.In fact, the article fails to recognize the two main categories and modes of operation of fuel cells: proton exchange (PEM) and solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC). The PEM passes hydrogen ions (protons) through a plastic membrane to combine them with oxygen on the other side, and the SOFC passes oxygen ions through a ceramic membrane to combine them with whatever combustible fuel is fed to the other side.PEM can only burn (clean) hydrogen and needs a “reformer” to catalyze and convert any other fuel into plain hydrogen, whereas SOFC can burn almost anything as long as you can vaporize it into a gas. For this reason, SOFC has found application in stationary backup power generators where it can be hooked up directly to the gas main.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131457",
"author": "Stephen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T09:28:44",
"content": "“It is possible, for example, to use solar power to turn water into gas and then use that gas to feed a fuel cell.” Isn’t it simpler just to use the solar power directly? Using electricity to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, then recombining them in a fuel cell to generate electricity again, is bound to introduce inefficiencies.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131463",
"author": "Ricardo",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T10:04:12",
"content": "True but you can store the energy in daylight hours and then release it when dark.",
"parent_id": "8131457",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131470",
"author": "IanS",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T10:15:53",
"content": "Snap!",
"parent_id": "8131463",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131469",
"author": "IanS",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T10:14:59",
"content": "Could it be because you can temporarily store the gasses and use them after sunset?",
"parent_id": "8131457",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131567",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T16:24:15",
"content": "Using electricity to split water into oxygen and hydrogenTechnically they didn’t even say there would be electrolysis involved. Just turning water to gas is as simple as boiling it – but what good would that do?",
"parent_id": "8131457",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131640",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T19:56:04",
"content": "In a very simple way, you can think of a fuel cell as a battery that consumes the chemicals it uses and allows you to replace those chemicals so that, as long as you have fuel, you can have electricity.This can also describe a flow battery, or any primary cell where you can replace the electrodes with fresh ones. Fuel cells are different and distinct because they employ an oxidation (combustion) reaction to burn a fuel, not just any galvanic reaction.This whole article is somewhat disjointed and incomplete,as if it was researched by AI and put together by a person who doesn’t understand or care that much.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132124",
"author": "Dallas",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T13:00:51",
"content": "Fork trucks, buses, trains, and shuttles have the advantage that they all come back to a central depot where they can be refueled. EVs and fuel cell vehicles have a chicken and egg problem: you don’t build recharging/refueling stations until you have vehicles that need them but no one will buy the vehicles until there are recharging/refueling stations…Warehouse fork trucks are an ideal use case for fuel cell power. Lead acid battery fork trucks slow down as they discharge and in warehouses that costs money. (Or strictly speaking that is lost opportunity cost.) Swapping lead acid battery packs takes time too. Fuel cell powered fork trucks don’t slow down as their fuel is consumed (just like your car doesn’t slow down when you only have a quarter tank of gas left). Refueling fuel cells can be quick as mentioned in the article. Finally, the large pressure vessel to hold the hydrogen takes up all the trunk space of a normal car. Lack of trunk space is not an issue for fork trucks.Not mentioned in the article is that PEM fuel cells degrade as they age and due to the platinum catalysts, the exotic materials in the ion exchange membrane, and the exacting technical needs of the gas diffusion layer, they are very expensive",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132232",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T21:22:30",
"content": "We used propane for our forklifts.",
"parent_id": "8132124",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132358",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T11:26:27",
"content": "Not to mention that PEM fuel cells don’t like to be throttled up/down because it puts mechanical stresses on the structure, so a battery is also needed to deal with varying loads in a forklift (or a car).The efficiency of a fuel cell also depends on the load, so that’s another reason why PEM fuel cell vehicles need to be constructed as hybrid systems. That however doubles up the cost by having both batteries and a fuel cell.",
"parent_id": "8132124",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132360",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T11:33:01",
"content": "“Doubles up the cost” is a hyperbolic overstatement as a fuel cell vehicle doesnt require much battery to manage these issues. The Mirai only has 1.2kwh worth of lithium battery on board vs 50-100kwh in a tesla.",
"parent_id": "8132358",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133670",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T16:39:47",
"content": "Well, true, but that’s only because fuel cells are so expensive that you’d need to add a whole lot of batteries to actually double the cost.The cost of producing a fuel cell for a car in volume (hundreds of thousands of units) is estimated at $40-50 per kW while a conventional combustion engine costs between $7-30 per kW depending on how fancy emissions equipment you need or want.",
"parent_id": "8132360",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133674",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T17:00:30",
"content": "The cost of a combustion engine is irrelevant to this discussion.The mirai fuel cell outputs a maximum current of 128KW at a production cost between $8-11K for a net cost of $62.5-86/KWA Mirai can generate roughly 130 kWh with a full tank.In 2024 the average price for an EV lithum pack was $116/kwhSo in reality a fuel cell, at least in the case of the mirai, is cheaper than lithium in net KWh capacity. Of course this advantage is ruined when you then factor in the current high price and limited station availability of hydrogen but thats an issue of infrastructure not technology.",
"parent_id": "8133670",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,537.883879
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/22/trashed-sound-system-lives-to-rock-another-day/
|
Trashed Sound System Lives To Rock Another Day
|
Bryan Cockfield
|
[
"Musical Hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] |
[
"ESP32",
"ESP8266",
"remote",
"soundsystem",
"stereo"
] |
Plenty of consumer goods, from passenger vehicles to toys to electronics, get tossed out prematurely for all kinds of reasons. Repairable damage, market trends, planned obsolescence, and bad design can all lead to an early sunset on something that might still have some useful life in it. This was certainly the case for a sound system that [Bill] found — despite a set of good speakers, the poor design of the hardware combined with some damage was enough for the owner to toss it. But [Bill]
took up the challenge to get it back in working order again
.
Inside the DIY control unit.
The main problem with this unit is that of design. It relies on a remote control to turn it on and operate everything, and if that breaks or is lost, the entire unit won’t even power on. Tracing the remote back to the control board reveals a 15-pin connector, and some other audio sleuths online have a few ways of using this port to control the system without the remote.
[Bill] found a few mistakes that needed to be corrected, and was eventually able to get an ESP8266 (and eventually an ESP32) to control the unit thanks largely to the fact that it communicates using a slightly modified I2C protocol.
There were a few pieces of physical damage to correct, too. First, the AC power cable had been cut off which was simple enough to replace, but [Bill] also found that a power connector inside the unit was loose as well. With that taken care of he has a perfectly functional and remarkably inexpensive sound system ready for movies or music. There are some other options available for getting a set of speakers blasting tunes again as well,
like building the amplifier for them from scratch from the get-go
.
| 6
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131144",
"author": "hjf",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T11:13:53",
"content": "recently a friend gave me some cheap (Behringer) studio monitors. told me he was “hooking them up one day and smoke came out”. he was gonna trash them but he thought I may want to try repairing themI found the usual failure inside. the only psu capacitor inside was swollen and the two Amps (tpa3116d2 and tpa3130) bot caught fire. I suspect what happened was that this smoothing capacitor didn’t smooth and the peak voltage from the switcher exceeded the absolute maximum rating of the amps, and they will just blow up.the board was charred beyond repair. when de soldering what was left of the amps, some pins had even welded to the traces..the board was gone beyond repair. it was even gouged by the flash in a couple of places.I ended up getting two cheap amp boards with those chips and stuffed them inside the cabinet. I used some thin wire to tap the signal out of the traces left on the board and they work now.the sound is… not great. they need a lot of eq to sound nice. I’m not sure if they sound like this from the factory, or if there is some passive eq going on in the signal path and it’s interacting with the input of my new PCBs. but they are ok neverthelessI’m thinking of replacing the low ESR smps capacitor with a solid polymer one for longer life. it seems like it’s under a lot of ESR stress and that’s why it failed.regardless, it feels great to save a device like this from the bin",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131162",
"author": "Jason",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T12:15:00",
"content": "Possible that the monitors are flat response, so they’re designed to give you a true sound as opposed to a pleasing sound. I’ve had Behringer speakers and they were okay, but if they’re recording monitors they could have a flat EQ to aid in mixing.",
"parent_id": "8131144",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131202",
"author": "Haai",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T14:02:03",
"content": "I was told that you should never buy studio monitors if you don’t need their specific sound, as they sound flat and dull etc. I wouldn’t know, but this may add another data point to my anecdote store.Buy yeah at least you didn’t buy it, and could fix it! Win.",
"parent_id": "8131144",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131218",
"author": "Ccecil",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T15:12:14",
"content": "This is mostly true. A lot of commercial offerings are tuned to be “peaky” in the lows and highs. Beats headphones are a good example.I prefer the flat sound of a studio monitor myself…maybe I got tired of all the boomy car audio I did in the 90s….or maybe it was the time I spent as a hobbyist mixing/producing music.",
"parent_id": "8131202",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131232",
"author": "RF Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T16:05:04",
"content": "Nice effort. Lots of these were sold under the Logitec brand including a 2.1 version. For power efficiency when silent, any need or benefit to detecting lack of audio activity and powering down? Similarly, detecting audio and turning everything back on?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131376",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T02:54:52",
"content": "When the “mains” are this small monitoring is a joke as lower mids are coming out of somewhere else than the soundstage. Single woofer is not the same as a subwoofer. If used in the corners of a room part of a male voice would come from the big box not the soundstage. These are just “computer desk speakers” in 5 channel limited range and a single woofer, but they’re working again. I wonder how much of the crossover was reconstructed or lost, there could be bass in those little speakers and break them.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,537.645501
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/22/roller-gearbox-allows-for-new-angles-in-robotics/
|
Roller Gearbox Allows For New Angles In Robotics
|
Ian Bos
|
[
"Parts",
"Robots Hacks"
] |
[
"3D printed gears",
"3d printing",
"3d robotics",
"gearbox"
] |
DIY mechatronics always has some unique challenges when relying on simple tools. 3D printing enables some great abilities but high precision gearboxes are still a difficult problem for many. Answering this problem, [Sergei Mishin] has developed
a very interesting gearbox solution
based on a
research paper
looking into simple rollers instead of traditional gears. The unique attributes of the design come from the ability to have a compact angled gearbox similar to a bevel gearbox.
Multiple rollers rest on a simple shaft allowing each roller to have independent rotation. This is important because having a circular crown gear for angled transmission creates different rotation speeds. In [Sergei]’s testing, he found that his example gearbox could withstand 9 Nm with the actual adapter breaking before the gearbox showing decent strength.
Of course, how does this differ from a normal bevel gear setup or
other 3D printed gearboxes
? While 3D printed gears have great flexibility in their simplicity to make, having plastic on plastic is generally very difficult to get precise and long lasting. [Sergei]’s design allows for a highly complex crown gear to take advantage of 3D printing while allowing for simple rollers for improved strength and precision.
Unique gearboxes are somewhat common here at Hackaday such as this
wobbly pericyclic gearbox
, but they almost always have a fun spin!
Thanks to [M] for the tip!
| 18
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131125",
"author": "Sven Hapsbjorg",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T08:39:23",
"content": "High precision gearbox3D printedpick one",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131137",
"author": "JohnU",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T10:17:23",
"content": "Everyone’s design is “zero backlash” at first.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131142",
"author": "had37b8e5c7066e",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T10:55:05",
"content": "for some definition of “zero”",
"parent_id": "8131137",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131152",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T11:39:30",
"content": "Plastic gearboxes are easy to make zero backlash at zero torque. Just design for a slight interference and let it bend.",
"parent_id": "8131142",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131181",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T12:54:31",
"content": "Depending on the material is a decent but complicated way of welding a joint, even with no torque via the slight friction alone.",
"parent_id": "8131152",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131409",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T05:54:18",
"content": "Super squishy TPE gears to enable zero backlash (but some elastic play)… surely it would be useful for something, but probably not much",
"parent_id": "8131152",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131216",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T15:08:49",
"content": "Guy probably spent more money on bushings and filament than it would cost to buy a mini lathe to turn some conical rollers and have an actually useful gearbox. Friction will tear this thing apart quickly.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131217",
"author": "Robert",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T15:10:08",
"content": "To my understanding plastic-on-plastic contact ought to be fairly long lasting, so long as it is a rolling contact (as achieved by involute teeth or within a cycloidal gear) and not a sliding contact (as achieved in worm gears and compound “perpetual wedge” dual layered planetaries). A rolling contact usually shouldn’t wear very much at all, particularly if you apply a lubricant grease to it, a sliding contact is always suffering friction so will wear quickly.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131263",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T17:29:47",
"content": "Why so much negativity in this thread?It starts with Hackaday doubting the “zero backlash” claim.Myself, I like this idea very much. It combines a lot of things to make a very good compromise between 3D printing and standard (relatively cheap) hardware.First, the hackaday doubt of “zero backlash”. These things are commercially available. Just a simple search:https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=roller+pinion+gear&ia=webfinds several manufacturers, and they also claim “zero backlash”. Quite understandable, as these things can be made with a preload, and that eliminates backlash. How much of that remains in a 3D printed design (and how a 3D printed design holds up over time) may be a different question, but because there is only rolling friction between the 3D printed gear and the rollers, I expect these may hold out quite well. This is likely the best best design of a 3D printed gear transmission I’ve seen, and achievable by anyone with a 3D printer (and drawing skills?) The most wear will be in locations with sliding friction, and that is (probably hardened) standard pins, and (also standard, oil impregnated) bronze bushings. And that is a well proven combination.Now, about the actual design:@03:50 he mentions two solutions, conical rollers, or multiple bearings on each roller. But there is a third option in between. You can make the pinion itself conical, but still use cylindrical rollers. Normally the hart lines of both gears both converge to the same point (intersection of both axles). I don’t know if you can go that far with these rollers, but you can go in that direction.Second:As steel is much stronger then plastic, you want a relative large amount of plastic in the gears. With this size, reducing both the steel pins and bronze bushings radius helps. Although bronze bushings with a big wall thickness improve efficiency (bigger lever action).And last, about the patent. I don’t know what that’s about. It’s a Taiwanese (chinese?) patent.https://patents.google.com/patent/TW202100895A/en?oq=TW108143739AI do like the idea of making notches into the inner support ring, so there is no interference with the big gear.A general search for “roller pinion gear” finds US1289508A and that is a patent from 1918.https://patents.google.com/patent/US1289508A/enDetails on patents also vary. Best I know, I can make a copy of any patented thing for my personal use here in the Netherlands, I think it’s even legal to give a drawing of a patented thing to someone, and pay them for making such a thing for me. In other jurisdictions it’s apparently already questionable if you make a copy of a patented thing and then place it in your lawn so the neighbors can see it.This design looks very promising, and there are lots of design parameters to tweak, and it needs more experimentation to find the best geometry for long term use and stability. The only downside of this video is the annoying background music.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131304",
"author": "helge",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T20:47:39",
"content": "Don’t get the negativity either, except readers may expect polished solutions when the presentation appeared to be more about how to approach a geometrically non-trivial concept.Between the conpromises like making do with relative co- and counter-rotating regions and bruteforcing a surface that nore likely.than not won’t even have a closed-form representation, it’s surprising (and therefore delightful) to even see anything practical come of it.",
"parent_id": "8131263",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131373",
"author": "Ted Themistokleous",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T02:43:46",
"content": "People who don’t actually build things and push paper assume everything must be perfect or its garbage. Sadly the world isn’t so black and white. You see this with a lot of “enthusiasts” in tech who don’t understand how much goes into building anythingSign of immaturity and lack of pragmatism, combined with ignorance/sheer lack of experience understanding larger scale projects.Everything in engineering is a trade off, and an important one at that here with this gear design. If anyone has an opinion that’s negative, just I just know, most of them would be dead in the woods since they can’t even make something basic, or understand how much goes into making a simple screw. Even better lets be pragmatic, a nail! How many people know how nails are made? Many don’tTime, Cost, Maintainability, Ease of use, Repeatability, and Longevity are axis how things are measured.Using a 3d printer is always going to sacrifice some longevity for the trade off of Time, Cost and Repeatability, ease of useSure someone can “get a lathe and make XYZ” or “use some expensive thing” but how many people have the skills for a lathe, let alone how long does it take to fabricate out of metal, gears with precision? Metal isn’t 10 bucks a roll, and standing over a lathe has a time and ease of us cost, along with repeatability between batches. Then why not get a high end Tormach CNC and machine everything out of titanium with the top end grease? Well that’s cost, a lot of cost.Sure its not going to last as long as your grandpa’s hip implants, but heck, you can churn out 10 in a day while going about your life I’d call this a massive win. Seriously you can spend the time designing something that leverages the “downsides” (again a time cost) but get something that will work/last longer (longevity)Everything is a trade. Nothing is Free.",
"parent_id": "8131304",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131400",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T05:18:56",
"content": "",
"parent_id": "8131373",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132557",
"author": "Joel B",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T04:22:53",
"content": "I disagree. Not everything requires a metal gearbox. Just this evening I finished assembling another dozen phone stands that use a 3D printed gearbox. Because they are under minimal load and don’t get a ton of wear and tear, a 3D printed gearbox works just fine.",
"parent_id": "8131400",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131627",
"author": "Garrut",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T19:22:21",
"content": "Ho ho ho, hold your horses! You mean that people without any real knowledge could not critisise something they barely understand ? Go back to the 20 century!!",
"parent_id": "8131373",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131397",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T05:15:40",
"content": "Criticism is more useful than praise.",
"parent_id": "8131304",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131512",
"author": "Nick!",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T13:04:16",
"content": "Criticism without a constructive feedback is just being contrarian for the sake of being cynical. Skepticism is incredibly important, and some of the claims in the video seem a bit naive, but “zero” is an incredibly relative term, ESPECIALLY in the world of gearboxes.Criticism without a constructive call to action or advice is what deters people from innovating. It creates a needless barrier that makes people either hide and/or doubt their unique ways of thinking.So maybe instead we stop the “ur dumb” responses and instead approach with health skepticism and feedback? Like, this ain’t a snowflake this, this is just about being antisocial.",
"parent_id": "8131397",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131537",
"author": "Andrew Lynford",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T14:35:33",
"content": "This looks great! Can we get access to print the parts ourselves? This is what open source is about. Collective refinement. Keep going with your work, I love it. :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8142565",
"author": "Steven Eric FRANKLIN",
"timestamp": "2025-06-27T01:56:44",
"content": "I would love to see a parametric way for us to design the crown and pinion wheel, by entering number of rollers, rollerradius, and roller length. Please.Do any of the people here that are criticising want to give it a go?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,537.98974
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/24/led-matrix-built-for-m-2-interface/
|
LED Matrix Built For M.2 Interface
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"computer hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] |
[
"led matrix",
"m.2 slot"
] |
The M.2 slot is usually used for solid-state storage devices. However, [bitluni] had another fun idea for how to use the interface. He built an M.2 compatible LED matrix
that adds a little light to your motherboard.
[bitluni] built a web tool for sending images to the matrix.
[bitluni] noted that the M.2 interface is remarkably flexible, able to offer everything from SATA connections to USB, PCI Express, and more. For this project, he elected to rely on PCI Express communication, using a WCH CH382 chip to translate from that interface to regular old serial communication.
He then hooked up the serial interface to a CH32V208 microcontroller, which was tasked with driving a 12×20 monochrome LED matrix. Even better, he was even able to set the microcontroller up to make it programmable upon first plugging it into a machine, thanks to its bootloader supporting serial programming out of the box. Some teething issues required rework and modification, but soon enough, [bitluni] had the LEDs blinking with the best of them. He then built a web-based drawing tool that could send artwork over serial direct to the matrix.
While most of us are using our M.2 slots for more traditional devices, it’s neat to see this build leverage them for another use. We could imagine displays like this becoming a neat little add-on to a blingy computer build for those with a slot or two to spare. Meanwhile, if you want to learn more about M.2,
we’ve dived into the topic before
.
| 8
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131753",
"author": "Juris Perkons",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T08:14:46",
"content": "Nice! I love both LED lights thingies, AND unusual re-purposes (see my TechnicsPC and AIWAndroid :) ). Great work on this!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131870",
"author": "Foxhood",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T16:50:26",
"content": "Honestly surprised there aren’t more projects like this.M.2 has so many possible interfaces, yet most of the time we are just using it for Storage and the occassional Wireless module. Why aren’t we doing things like Led Matrices such as this? Or miniature OLED screens we can hack ourselves instead of paying way too much for an embedded screen that is dependant on stupidly buggy proprietary software?I applaud this project for embodying the spirit of hacking.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131945",
"author": "Allen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T21:59:41",
"content": "i love cruising aliexpress for m.2 adapters. there’s some -wild- stuff out there. wanna hook u.2 up to a laptop?",
"parent_id": "8131870",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131931",
"author": "mewity",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T20:37:59",
"content": "please tell me it can play Bad Apple…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131990",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T02:47:14",
"content": "I could see this using a USB interface and the board header connected by wire, leveraging am RP2040 or similar.Very interesting using a Serial (and Parallel port) to PCIe bridge chip.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131991",
"author": "Grumpy Old Coot",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T02:52:03",
"content": "I think there is enough bandwidth in the M.2 interface that you could probably play a low-resolution version of Doom on that display.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132201",
"author": "Dodo",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T18:44:48",
"content": "He is using a pcie to UART bridge though, so only 8mbps is available.",
"parent_id": "8131991",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132065",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T09:12:36",
"content": "That glorious (Chinese, not the overpriced crap from FTDI) WCH chip can not only PCIe 2xUART but also LPT bridge, aka a perfectly valid printer port that might be super useful to support older software.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,537.929881
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/23/teensyrom-nfc-game-loading-on-the-c64/
|
TeensyROM NFC Game Loading On The C64
|
Heidi Ulrich
|
[
"classic hacks",
"computer hacks",
"home entertainment hacks",
"Retrocomputing",
"Wireless Hacks"
] |
[
"c64",
"card",
"commodore 64",
"Commodore64",
"game",
"MiSTER",
"NFC",
"tag",
"Teensy",
"TeensyROM",
"token"
] |
When retro computing nostalgia meets modern wireless wizardry, you get a near-magical tap-to-load experience. It’ll
turn your Commodore 64 into a console-like system
, complete with physical game cards. Inspired by
TapTo for MiSTer
, this latest hack brings NFC magic to real hardware using the TeensyROM. It’s been out there for a while, but it might not have caught your attention as of yet. Developed by [Sensorium] and showcased by YouTuber [StatMat], this project is a tactile, techie love letter to the past.
At the heart of it is the TeensyROM cartridge, which – thanks to some clever firmware modding – now supports reading
NFC tags
. These are writable NTag215 cards storing the path to game files on the Teensy’s SD card. Tap a tag to the NFC reader, and the TeensyROM boots your game. No need to fumble with LOAD “*”,8,1. That’s not only cool, it’s convenient – especially for retro demo setups.
What truly sets this apart is the reintroduction of
physical tokens
. Each game lives on its own custom-designed card, styled after PC Engine HuCards or printed with holographic vinyl. It’s a tangible, collectible gimmick that echoes the golden days of floppies and cartridges – but with 2020s tech underneath.
Watch it here
.
| 6
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131808",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T12:27:29",
"content": "This satisfies so many itches for me, bravo! Very cool system!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131843",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T14:41:28",
"content": "I still have not seen a single hobbyist media player use case where NFC is superior to QR, Barcode, card punch or OCR. Card punch is absolutely simple, especially if your library is only 64 or 128/256 programs large.I assume it’s just an excuse to experiment with NFC, in which case fair play.Just reminds me of the kids at my high school trying to use a power supply with 100s (if not 1,000s) of volts to activate a solenoid deadbolt instead of using a rack and pinion or some other low voltage option.Just as an aside, you could put an SPI ROM onboard a (very cheap) PCB and have physical media. 256kb is $0.40 apiece or so.This is definitely the thing for a Museum or Demo environment, because if the cards wander off there is no program on them. A menu program might be an option for home users though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131854",
"author": "Justin",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T15:59:13",
"content": "NFC has bidirectional communication. It’s useful for security handshaking. All optical reading is just one way. Plus QR is much more computationally and bandwidth costly; however, barcode and card punch are fairly simple. When it comes to commanding a computer, you really want some security – you don’t want someone unauthorized executing code. Maybe it’s not in the hobby world, but it is a concern.",
"parent_id": "8131843",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132050",
"author": "Bjoern L Fritzsche",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T08:25:14",
"content": "The concerns about security are generally valid, but not for this application. It’s literally an 8 bit machine with 64kb of total RAM that has zero outside world communication ability and contains zero PII or otherwise useful data. Initially, I had hoped someone figured out to put the full payload of a game (170kb per floppy disk side) directly into a token, but I guess it was essentially just a link.",
"parent_id": "8131854",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131992",
"author": "Benjamin Goldberg",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T02:52:58",
"content": "On the one hand you could put that game path on a barcode or qr code.On the other hand, not needing line of sight makes it cool, and immune to dirt.Considering that NFC is bidirectional, I could imagine adding authentication, with the card being able to prove to the game console that it was legitimately issued by the maker of the game, something a qr code cannot do.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132046",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T07:57:59",
"content": "The artwork on those nfc cards look very cool. Fun project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,537.826528
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/23/emf-forming-was-a-neat-aerospace-breakthrough/
|
EMF Forming Was A Neat Aerospace Breakthrough
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"Engineering"
] |
[
"electromagnetic",
"emf",
"emf forming"
] |
Typically, when we think about forming metal parts, we think about beating them with hammers, or squeezing them with big hydraulic presses. But what if magnets could do the squeezing? As it turns out—Grumman Aerospace discovered they can, several decades ago! Even better, they summed up this technique
in a great educational video
which we’ve placed below the break.
The video concerns the development of the Grumman EMF Torque Tube. The parts are essentially tubes with gear-like fittings mounted in either end, which are fixed with electromagnetic forming techniques instead of riveting or crimping. Right away, we’re told the key benefits—torque tubes built this way are “stronger, lighter, and more fatigue resistant” than those built with conventional techniques. Grumman used these torque tubes in such famous aircraft as the F-14 Tomcat, highlighting their performance and reliability.
Before…
…and after. The part is formed and the coil is destroyed.
The video goes on to explain the basics of the EMF torque tube production process. A tube is placed inside a coil, with the end fitting then installed inside. A capacitor bank dumps current through the coil to generate a strong electromagnetic field. This field is opposed by a secondary field generated by eddy currents. The two forces result in an explosive force which drives the tube inwards, gripping into the grooves of the end fitting, and destroys the coil in the process. Grumman notes that it specifically optimized a grooving profile for bonding tubes with end fittings, which maximised the strength of these EMF-produced joints.
This tip was sent in by [irox]. The video itself was posted by [Greg Benoit], who notes his father Robert Benoit was intimately involved with the development of the technique. Indeed, it was useful enough that the technology was licensed to Boeing, generating many millions of dollars for Grumman.
We feature all kinds of
machining and forming techniques here
, but this sort of forming isn’t something we see a lot of around these parts. Still, we’re sure someone will be Kickstarting a home EMF forming machine before the end of next week.
| 9
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131723",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T03:12:12",
"content": "Very cool, indeed… but are we just going to ignore hydroforming?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131724",
"author": "Isaac Wingfield",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T03:32:22",
"content": "Heard about this ca. 1965 when I happened to be working for a company that used large capacitors. Worked fine on some aluminum tubing, so I thought it would be fun to crush the electrodes in a vacuum tube while leaving the envelope intact. Turns out it doesn’t work very well for ferrous metals.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131735",
"author": "Thopter",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T05:33:44",
"content": "Sounds a lot like using EMF to shrink quarters. Capturedlightning dot com goes into the process with photos.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131750",
"author": "adobeflashhater again",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T07:42:59",
"content": "So can crushing and Quarter shrinking actually just came from an older idea?cool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131773",
"author": "flashgamesdidntneedmyphonedata",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T10:11:11",
"content": "makes can crushing look like cargo cult, doesn’t it.I do wonder whether the mandrel they envisioned needed to be non-conductive at larger diameters.",
"parent_id": "8131750",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131764",
"author": "Tom G",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T09:28:36",
"content": "When a glider disintegrated after a lightning strike in 1999, Al control rods behind the instructor’s head were shrunk by the currents. Both pilots (one on his first flight!) parachuted to safety.The glider wasextensivelyexamined by the AAIB at Farnborough, and the findings changed the construction of modern composite airliners.https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase/146762and there is a 10minute BBC programme on the accident.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131814",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T12:35:51",
"content": "Fascinating!! Thank you for sharing.",
"parent_id": "8131764",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131902",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T19:02:59",
"content": "To see the process, skip the first 5 minutes.If you see it from the start, then try to count how many times the narrator says this stuff is (was) patented (60 years ago).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8134093",
"author": "DesyQ",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T06:42:31",
"content": "I wonder where in the automotive industry this is used?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,538.074784
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/23/2025-pet-hacks-contest-aquassist-fish-feeder/
|
2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Aquassist Fish Feeder
|
Matt Varian
|
[
"contests"
] |
[
"2025 Pet Hacks Contest",
"ESP8266",
"firebase",
"fish feeder"
] |
This project submitted to the 2025 Pet Hacks Contest brings a bit of IoT to your finned friends.
Aquassist
is a fish feeder that is primarily 3D printed only requiring a servo and a microcontroller to give you remote control of feeding your fish.
The Aquassist consists of just six 3D-printed parts. At its core is an Archimedes screw, a mechanism that ensures consistent portions of fish food are dispensed into the fish tank. A small hopper on top holds the food, and to minimize the part count, all 3D-printed components are designed to be glued together.
The brains of the operation take place in a Wemos D1 mini, a compact ESP8266 board programed using the Arduino IDE. The feeding mechanism relies on an SG90 continuous rotation servo, which rotates the Archimedes screw to dispense food. Unlike standard servos, this model offers ample torque in a small package and can rotate continuously without hitting an angular limit.
The Aquassist is controlled via a web-based application accessible from any device. The D1 Mini connects to Firebase to check the feeding schedule or detect if the “Feed Now” button has been pressed. Users can set feeding times or trigger an immediate feeding through the app’s intuitive interface. Check out a video below to see the Aquassist in action, and check our our other entries into the
2025 Pet Hacks Contest
.
| 0
| 0
|
[] | 1,760,371,538.027702
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/23/tearing-down-and-hacking-the-t2s-thermal-camera/
|
Tearing Down And Hacking The T2S+ Thermal Camera
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"Misc Hacks"
] |
[
"android app",
"camera",
"Imaging",
"thermal imaging"
] |
[Dmytro] was able to lay his hands on a InfiRay T2S+ camera. It’s a capable thermal imaging unit that comes at a cheaper price than many of its rivals. [Dmytro] decided to pull it apart to see what makes it tick,
and he discovered a few interesting things along the way.
Like so much modern hardware, pulling the case apart does require some spudging and levering. Once inside, though, it comes apart in a relatively straightforward manner. Once inside, [Dmytro] notes some similarities between this camera and the Flir Lepton, another affordable thermal camera on the market. He also finds a clone of the Cypress FX2LP chip, which is used for talking USB. There’s also an Gowin FPGA inside, with [Dmytro] suspecting the gateware onboard could be modified. If so, the camera may be a candidate for running open source firmware in future.
What bothered [Dmytro] about this camera, though, was the software. When used with an Android phone, the camera demands the use of a proprietary app with with questionable permissions. It can be used on a regular computer, where it appears as a standard webcam. However, in this mode, the camera fails to self-calibrate, and the images quickly become useless. [Dmytro] worked to hack around this, by figuring out a way to trigger calibrations and run the proper image corrections manually when using the camera without the smartphone app. He also explores techniques to improve the resolution of the thermal measurements made by the camera.
We’ve seen some other neat thermal camera hacks
over the years.
Video after the break.
[Thanks to Clint for the tip!]
| 16
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131654",
"author": "ramzi",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T21:12:40",
"content": "By buying those Chinese IR cams you directly fund their reseach and development into technologies which in not so distant future may be used to bringinjuries incompatible with lifeto our soldiers and civilians. Is it this hard to instead buy FLIR, Fluke, Testo or Chauvin Arnoux?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131757",
"author": "elwing",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T08:49:21",
"content": "Last I checked, ITAR forces me to get worst US ones and they even cost more…",
"parent_id": "8131654",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131763",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T09:22:49",
"content": "FLIR can get stuffed. They deliberately used ITAR to keep their prices high and their performance abysmal. If the chinese manufacturers hadn’t stepped up then there wouldn’tbeanything decent on the market.And “BUT TERR’SM” is a completely disingenuous statement. It’s no secret that so many of the groups you’re referring to were directly or indirectly funded and armed by the US themselves over decades. And it’s hardly behaving sanely now.",
"parent_id": "8131654",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131767",
"author": "Reggie",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T09:50:06",
"content": "If it is true, then why US forces europeans to buy chinese thermal cameras with non-sense limitations on specs?",
"parent_id": "8131654",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131772",
"author": "Vaidas",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T10:09:03",
"content": "Buying these Chinese products is the only way to bring down to Earth prices of FLIR, Fluke and so on. I am afraid to imagine the prices of brand products without competition from China.",
"parent_id": "8131654",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131786",
"author": "alialiali",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T11:13:29",
"content": "Does Greenland produce any IR cameras?",
"parent_id": "8131654",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131903",
"author": "Jason",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T19:04:36",
"content": "The sooner the better IMO",
"parent_id": "8131654",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131919",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T19:53:17",
"content": "Wait until you find out where your microchips are made!Seriously, though, tone the rhetoric down. Global trade is good for everyone. Proof is that it’s entered into voluntarily on both sides: everyone thinks they’re winning, and they’re right.",
"parent_id": "8131654",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132342",
"author": "elmesito",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T10:21:56",
"content": "That is a very naive statement. Military research doesn’t stop when you stop buying form China.When those companies start selling a product that is competitive, then people will start to buy from them. No need to ignorantly scare with false claims.",
"parent_id": "8131654",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131668",
"author": "Hussien",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T22:09:18",
"content": "InfiRay and other Shenzhen specials are from the country that used T-55 tanks to turn about 300 students into a bloody mess, just because they dared to organize a non-violent protest against CCP corruption.By comparision, our senile grandpa who’s shiptosting on Twitter might’ve been shocking at first but now everyone knows his game. He might be totally bluepilled and play a tough guy persona but still can’t get it up.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131771",
"author": "Reggie",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T10:08:04",
"content": "Well, US killed ~200k civilian in iraq just because they dared to live iraq…",
"parent_id": "8131668",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131682",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T22:56:07",
"content": "“InfiRay and Xinfrared are all brands of Raytron Technology Co., Ltd.”Raytron Technology Co., Ltd. “was founded on December 11, 2009 and is headquartered in Yantai, China.”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131708",
"author": "rasz_pl",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T01:12:35",
"content": "Look like Ukrainians are already running their own custom firmwareshttps://militarnyi.com/uk/articles/niyakogo-kytayu-ukrayinski-vyrobnyky-blyzki-do-samostijnogo-vyrobnytstva-fpv-droniv/:Both companies have one product in their assortment, namely analog thermal imaging cameras with a resolution of 256×192 px “SeekUAV-256” and “Kurbas-256”. Both products consist of the previously mentioned lens-matrix unit, which operates under the control of a microprocessor board and appropriate software.The production of key technical elements in Ukraine is impossible due to the complexity and the need for colossal investments, so they focused on ensuring high-quality final assembly and developing their own software that would be able to better realize the potential of the system and meet the needs of the military.“Other thermal imaging cameras have an unpleasant quality — they freeze for several seconds with a certain frequency. Understandably, pilots do not like this. This happens because of the so-called calibration shutter, which is triggered automatically — a design feature of all such thermal imagers. Due to the fact that we developed the Kurbas camera completely independently — we can control the operation of the shutter, simplifying the lives of pilots,” said Andriy Tagansky, General Manager of OddSystems.That is, the low-level software itself provides full control over the operation of the camera elements. Another example is the implementation of the ability for the pilot to change the image contrast directly during the flight, which directly affects the probability of finding the target.Thanks to the optimization of production and technical solutions, the Ukrainian manufacturer managed to create cameras that are competitive with Chinese analogues. This includes both certain technical advantages and cheaper products:the retail price of “Kurbas-256” is 10 thousand hryvnias ($240), and when ordering from 500 pcs. – already 225 dollars. When increasing the volume to 5000 pcs. the price will drop to 6,000 hryvnias ($150).a batch of “SeekUAV-256” cameras from 5 pcs. will cost 11 thousand hryvnias ($260), an order from 500 pcs. – already 190 dollars. A batch of 5000 pcs. will cost 5,900 hryvnias ($140) per unit.For example, the cost of a comparable quality Chinese camera CADDX-256 ranges from $170-250 dollars in Ukraine.Under current conditions, SeekUAV and Odd Systems are not competitors, since even at full load, by joint efforts, they can supply up to 10 thousand cameras per month. At the same time, according to drone manufacturers, the monthly import volume in the niche of thermal imaging cameras alone ranges from 20-60 thousand units.However, in both cases, a key dependence on Chinese suppliers remains. SeekUAV is trying to change this situation by switching to an American component base and matrices with a resolution of 320×240 px. The cost of the new camera will increase by 50%, and its appearance is expected no earlier than next year, but this will allow diversifying supplies and bringing image quality to a much higher level.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131758",
"author": "Project Link",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T08:53:21",
"content": "Why no link to the project page?https://dmytroengineering.com/content/projects/t2s-plus-thermal-camera-hacking",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131926",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T20:09:14",
"content": "Thanks! We usually do that, but we have a crop of new writers and some editor must have missed it.I went in and fixed it.",
"parent_id": "8131758",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132114",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T12:26:13",
"content": "“as a standard webcam. However, in this mode, the camera fails to self-calibrate, and the images quickly become useless.”Interesting how the million of reviewers that got the free product forgot to mention that eh.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,538.200173
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/23/2025-pet-hacks-contest-keep-your-hound-toasty-warm-with-this-heated-dog-bed/
|
2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Keep Your Hound Toasty Warm With This Heated Dog Bed
|
Jenny List
|
[
"contests",
"home hacks"
] |
[
"2025 Pet Hacks Contest",
"dog bed",
"heated dog bed"
] |
It’s been a universal trait among the different faithful Hackaday Hounds who have loped around these parts over the decades, that there is no place warm enough for their tastes. Fire up the stove and the dog is there stretched out in front of it, leaving one to wonder whether our house temperature is being cruel to the mutt, or simply that they are heat sponges with infinite capacity. There’s got to be some joy in doggy circles then at the prospect of [John.r.sheahan]’s
heated dog bed
, designed in particular with the comfort of an older dog in mind.
In electronics terms it’s a relatively low-tech project, using as it does a 12 volt electric lap blanket aimed at motorists. It’s none the less a hack though, because it has a frame made of PVC pipe to hold it, and a blanked clipped in place. This forms a box-like structure above the sleeping position keeping the dog very comfortable indeed over chilly nights. We’ve cared for more than one geriatric dog over the years, and can see that something like this is vital for their comfort and well-being.
This project is part of
the 2025 Pet Hacks contest
, so look out for more like it. Alternatively if your faithful friend uses something you made, why not enter yourself!
| 2
| 2
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131619",
"author": "Brian Grffin",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T19:01:40",
"content": "PET 2001, PET 4000 or SuperPET series?PET 2001 only uses 10-20watt..A Pentium 4 system on the other hand should be able to make hotdogs :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131755",
"author": "Doggedbydogs",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T08:40:42",
"content": "Nice hack. This is a great option if you don’t have a vintage 1990’s heated water bed. Let’s just say my dogs claim the waterbed as their own.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,538.327892
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/23/hackaday-podcast-ep-322-fake-hackaday-writers-new-retro-computers-and-a-web-rant/
|
Hackaday Podcast Ep 322: Fake Hackaday Writers, New Retro Computers, And A Web Rant
|
Jenny List
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] |
[
"Hackaday Podcast"
] |
We’re back in Europe for this week’s Hackaday podcast, as Elliot Williams is joined by Jenny List. In the news this week is the passing of Ed Smylie, the engineer who devised the famous improvised carbon dioxide filter that saved the Apollo 13 astronauts with duct tape.
Closer to home is the announcement of the call for participation for this year’s Hackaday Supercon; we know you will have some ideas and projects you’d like to share.
Interesting hacks this week include a new Mac Plus motherboard and Doom (just) running on an Atari ST, while a LoRa secure messenger and an astounding open-source Ethernet switch captivated us on the hardware front. We also take a dive into the Mouse programming language, a minimalist stack-based environment from the 1970s. Among the quick hacks are a semiconductor dopant you can safely make at home, and a beautiful Mac Mini based cyberdeck.
Finally, we wrap up with our colleague [Maya Posch] making the case for a graceful degradation of web standards, something which is now sadly missing from so much of the online world, and then with the discovery that ChatGPT can make a passable show of emulating a Hackaday scribe. Don’t worry folks, we’re still reassuringly meat-based.
Insert MP3 podcast link here
.
Episode 322 Show Notes:
News:
Hackaday Supercon 2025 Call For Participation: We Want You!
In Memory Of Ed Smylie, Whose Famous Hack Saved The Apollo 13 Crew
What’s That Sound:
Congrats to [calculus] for picking up the
[Jerobeam Fenderson] mushrooms
.
A Wrencher on Your Oscilloscope
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Escaping US Tech Giants Leads European YouTuber To Open Source
A New Mac Plus Motherboard, No Special Chips Required
The Lost 256 KB Japanese ROM For The Macintosh Plus Has Been Found
As The World Burns, At Least You’ll Have Secure Messaging
Working On Open-Source High-Speed Ethernet Switch
The Mouse Language, Running On Arduino
MUSYS. Peter Grogono, United Kingdom, 1969 – 120 Years of Electronic Music
Running DOOM On An Atari ST
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
PentaPico: A Pi Pico Cluster For Image Convolution
Designing A Hobbyist’s Semiconductor Dopant
LACED: Peeling Back PCB Layers With Chemical Etching And A Laser
MCP Blender Addon Lets AI Take The Wheel And Wield The Tools
Jenny’s Picks:
An Awful 1990s PDA Delivers AI Wisdom
Speed Up Arduino With Clever Coding
Stylus Synth Should Have Used A 555– And Did!
A Portable M4 Mac Mini
Can’t-Miss Articles:
The World Wide Web And The Death Of Graceful Degradation
ChatGPT & Me. ChatGPT Is Me!
| 1
| 1
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131610",
"author": "dan farmer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:31:10",
"content": "“Don’t worry folks, we’re still reassuringly meat-based.”Why should this matter?I mean, it might… but while it’s often fun to see a series of articles/posts/whatever by some person in particular (e.g. “Keebin’ With…” oftimes it’s simply to read some latest-n-greatest hack or whatever.If the quality is sufficient, use monkeys and typewriters… without trying to be dismissive or impoersonal… I don’t know that it matters too much if the quality is there?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,538.369322
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/21/big-chemistry-fuel-ethanol/
|
Big Chemistry: Fuel Ethanol
|
Dan Maloney
|
[
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] |
[
"alcohol",
"carbon dioxide",
"co2",
"corn",
"distillation",
"ethanol",
"fermentation",
"fuel",
"gasoline",
"yeast"
] |
If legend is to be believed, three disparate social forces in early 20th-century America – the temperance movement, the rise of car culture, and the Scots-Irish culture of the South – collided with unexpected results. The temperance movement managed to get Prohibition written into the Constitution, which rankled the rebellious spirit of the descendants of the Scots-Irish who settled the South. In response, some of them took to the backwoods with stills and sacks of corn, creating moonshine by the barrel for personal use and profit. And to avoid the consequences of this, they used their mechanical ingenuity to modify their Fords, Chevrolets, and Dodges to provide the speed needed to outrun the law.
Though that story may be somewhat apocryphal, at least one of those threads is still woven into the American story. The moonshiner’s hotrod morphed into NASCAR, one of the nation’s most-watched spectator sports, and informed much of the car culture of the 20th century in general. Unfortunately, that led in part to our current fossil fuel predicament and its attendant environmental consequences, which are now being addressed by replacing at least some of the gasoline we burn with the same “white lightning” those old moonshiners made. The cost-benefit analysis of ethanol as a fuel is open to debate, as is the wisdom of using food for motor fuel, but one thing’s for sure: turning corn into ethanol in industrially useful quantities isn’t easy, and it requires some Big Chemistry to get it done.
Heavy on the Starch
As with fossil fuels, manufacturing ethanol for motor fuel starts with a steady supply of an appropriate feedstock. But unlike the drilling rigs and pump jacks that pull the geochemically modified remains of half-billion-year-old phytoplankton from deep within the Earth, ethanol’s feedstock is almost entirely harvested from the vast swathes of corn that carpet the Midwest US (Other grains and even non-grain plants are used as feedstock in other parts of the world, but we’re going to stick with corn for this discussion. Also, other parts of the world refer to any grain crop as corn, but in this case, corn refers specifically to maize.)
Don’t try to eat it — you’ll break your teeth. Yellow dent corn is harvested when full of starch and hard as a rock. Credit:
Marjhan Ramboyong
.
The corn used for ethanol production is not the same as the corn-on-the-cob at a summer barbecue or that comes in plastic bags of frozen Niblets. Those products use sweet corn bred specifically to pack extra simple sugars and less starch into their kernels, which is harvested while the corn plant is still alive and the kernels are still tender. Field corn, on the other hand, is bred to produce as much starch as possible, and is left in the field until the stalks are dead and the kernels have converted almost all of their sugar into starch. This leaves the kernels dry and hard as a rock, and often with a dimple in their top face that gives them their other name, dent corn.
Each kernel of corn is a fruit, at least botanically, with all the genetic information needed to create a new corn plant. That’s carried in the germ of the kernel, a relatively small part of the kernel that contains the embryo, a bit of oil, and some enzymes. The bulk of the kernel is taken up by the endosperm, the energy reserve used by the embryo to germinate, and as a food source until photosynthesis kicks in. That energy reserve is mainly composed of starch, which will power the fermentation process to come.
Starch is mainly composed of two different but related polysaccharides, amylose and amylopectin. Both are polymers of the simple six-carbon sugar glucose, but with slightly different arrangements. Amylose is composed of long, straight chains of glucose molecules bound together in what’s called an α-1,4 glycosidic bond, which just means that the hydroxyl group on the first carbon of the first glucose is bound to the hydroxyl on the fourth carbon of the second glucose through an oxygen atom:
Amylose, one of the main polysaccharides in starch. The glucose subunits are connected in long, unbranched chains up to 500 or so residues long. The oxygen atom binding each glucose together comes from a reaction between the OH radicals on the 1 and 4 carbons, with one oxygen and two hydrogens leaving in the form of water.
Amylose chains can be up to about 500 or so glucose subunits long. Amylopectin, on the other hand, has shorter straight chains but also branches formed between the number one and number six carbon, an α-1,6 glycosidic bond. The branches appear about every 25 residues or so, making amylopectin much more tangled and complex than amylose. Amylopectin makes up about 75% of the starch in a kernel.
Slurry Time
Ethanol production begins with harvesting corn using combine harvesters. These massive machines cut down dozens of rows of corn at a time, separating the ears from the stalks and feeding them into a threshing drum, where the kernels are freed from the cob. Winnowing fans and sieves separate the chaff and debris from the kernels, which are stored in a tank onboard the combine until they can be transferred to a grain truck for transport to a grain bin for storage and further drying.
Corn harvest in progress. You’ve got to burn a lot of diesel to make ethanol. Credit: dvande – stock.adobe.com
Once the corn is properly dried, open-top hopper trucks or train cars transport it to the distillery. The first stop is the scale house, where the cargo is weighed and a small sample of grain is taken from deep within the hopper by a remote-controlled vacuum arm. The sample is transported directly to the scale house for a quick quality assessment, mainly based on moisture content but also the physical state of the kernels. Loads that are too wet, too dirty, or have too many fractured kernels are rejected.
Loads that pass QC are dumped through gates at the bottom of the hoppers into a pit that connects to storage silos via a series of augers and conveyors. Most ethanol plants keep a substantial stock of corn, enough to run the plant for several days in case of any supply disruption. Ethanol plants operate mainly in batch mode, with each batch taking several days to complete, so a large stock ensures the efficiency of continuous operation.
The Lakota Green Plains ethanol plant in Iowa. Ethanol plants look a lot like small petroleum refineries and share some of the same equipment. Source: MsEuphonic, CC BY-SA 3.0.
To start a batch of ethanol, corn kernels need to be milled into a fine flour. Corn is fed to a hammer mill, where large steel weights swinging on a flywheel smash the tough pericarp that protects the endosperm and the germ. The starch granules are also smashed to bits, exposing as much surface area as possible. The milled corn is then mixed with clean water to form a slurry, which can be pumped around the plant easily.
The first stop for the slurry is large cooking vats, which use steam to gently heat the mixture and break the starch into smaller chains. The heat also gelatinizes the starch, in a process that’s similar to what happens when a sauce is thickened with a corn starch slurry in the kitchen. The gelatinized starch undergoes liquefaction under heat and mildly acidic conditions, maintained by injecting sulfuric acid or ammonia as needed. These conditions begin hydrolysis of some of the α-1,4 glycosidic bonds, breaking the amylose and amylopectin chains down into shorter fragments called dextrin. An enzyme, α-amylase, is also added at this point to catalyze the α-1,4 bonds to create free glucose monomers. The α-1,6 bonds are cleaved by another enzyme, α-amyloglucosidase.
The Yeast Get Busy
The result of all this chemical and enzymatic action is a glucose-rich mixture ready for fermentation. The slurry is pumped to large reactor vessels where a combination of yeasts is added.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
, or brewer’s yeast, is the most common, but other organisms can be used too. The culture is supplemented with ammonia sulfate or urea to provide the nitrogen the growing yeast requires, along with antibiotics to prevent bacterial overgrowth of the culture.
Fermentation occurs at around 30 degrees C over two to three days, while the yeast gorge themselves on the glucose-rich slurry. The glucose is transported into the yeast, where each glucose molecule is enzymatically split into two three-carbon pyruvate molecules. The pyruvates are then broken down into two molecules of acetaldehyde and two of CO
2
. The two acetaldehyde molecules then undergo a reduction reaction that creates two ethanol molecules. The yeast benefits from all this work by converting two molecules of ADP into two molecules of ATP, which captures the chemical energy in the glucose molecule into a form that can be used to power its metabolic processes, including making more yeast to take advantage of the bounty of glucose.
Anaerobic fermentation of one mole of glucose yields two moles of ethanol and two moles of CO
2
.
After the population of yeast grows to the point where they use up all the glucose, the mix in the reactors, which contains about 12-15% ethanol and is referred to as beer, is pumped into a series of three distillation towers. The beer is carefully heated to the boiling point of ethanol, 78 °C. The ethanol vapors rise through the tower to a condenser, where they change back into the liquid phase and trickle down into collecting trays lining the tower. The liquid distillate is piped to the next two towers, where the same process occurs and the distillate becomes increasingly purer. At the end of the final distillation, the mixture is about 95% pure ethanol, or 190 proof. That’s the limit of purity for fractional distillation, thanks to the tendency of water and ethanol to form an azeotrope, a mixture of two or more liquids that boils at a constant temperature. To drive off the rest of the water, the distillate is pumped into large tanks containing zeolite, a molecular sieve. The zeolite beads have pores large enough to admit water molecules, but too small to admit ethanol. The water partitions into the zeolite, leaving 99% to 100% pure (198 to 200 proof) ethanol behind. The ethanol is mixed with a denaturant, usually 5% gasoline, to make it undrinkable, and pumped into storage tanks to await shipping.
Nothing Goes to Waste
The muck at the bottom of the distillation towers, referred to as whole stillage, still has a lot of valuable material and does not go to waste. The liquid is first pumped into centrifuges to separate the remaining grain solids from the liquid. The solids, called wet distiller’s grain or WDG, go to a rotary dryer, where hot air drives off most of the remaining moisture. The final product is dried distiller’s grain with solubles, or DDGS, a high-protein product used to enrich animal feed. The liquid phase from the centrifuge is called thin stillage, which contains the valuable corn oil from the germ. That’s recovered and sold as an animal feed additive, too.
Ethanol fermentation produces mountains of DDGS, or dried distiller’s grain solubles. This valuable byproduct can account for 20% of an ethanol plant’s income. Source:
Inside an Ethanol Plant
(YouTube).
The final valuable product that’s recovered is the carbon dioxide. Fermentation produces a lot of CO
2
, about 17 pounds per bushel of feedstock. The gas is tapped off the tops of the fermentation vessels by CO
2
scrubbers and run through a series of compressors and coolers, which turn it into liquid carbon dioxide. This is sold off by the tanker-full to chemical companies, food and beverage manufacturers, who use it to carbonate soft drinks, and municipal water treatment plants, where it’s used to balance the pH of wastewater.
There are currently 187 fuel ethanol plants in the United States, most of which are located in the Midwest’s corn belt, for obvious reasons. Together, these plants produced more than 16 billion gallons of ethanol in 2024. Since each bushel of corn yields about 3 gallons of ethanol, that translates to an astonishing 5 billion bushels of corn used for fuel production, or about a third of the total US corn production.
| 73
| 17
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130791",
"author": "Observer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T15:06:02",
"content": "Serious questions:How much electricity does this process use?Are any ethanol plants operated net-energy positive…. meaning, once the plant is bootstrapped, can they produce the electricity and heat needed for distillation from the fuel they produce?Has anyone considered co-location of nuclear reactors and distillation plants where waste heat could be put to good use?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130815",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:07:18",
"content": "can they produce the electricity and heat needed for distillation from the fuel they produce?Nope. The EROEI of corn ethanol is barely above 1 and if it was run back to produce electricity, it would be cleanly below 1.Corn ethanol is just one way to greenwash fossil fuels and turn them into corporate farming subsidies.",
"parent_id": "8130791",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130820",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:13:06",
"content": "https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10668-010-9255-7“Our results show that the average EROI calculated from the meta-error analysis was 1.07 ± 0.2, meaning that we are unable to assert whether the EROI of corn ethanol is greater than one. (…) In light of this work, we conclude that production of corn ethanol within the United States is unsustainable and requires energy subsidies from the larger oil economy.”",
"parent_id": "8130815",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130851",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:39:51",
"content": "It’s right in TFS.There are other valuable products of corn distillation.Counting all the costs while ignoring some of the benefits is just a lie.",
"parent_id": "8130820",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130888",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T19:20:33",
"content": "Those valuable products could be obtained otherwise, or the corn itself would be more valuable.",
"parent_id": "8130851",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131335",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T22:37:02",
"content": "Sure, and the energy cost of obtaining those products by alternative ways should be in the accounting.But that doesn’t advance the agenda, so ignored.Like (parking/shop revenue) at airports…Or counting fuel taxes assubsidieson gasoline…Tired, derpy lies.Farmers want the high protean feed associated with fermentation waste.It’s not just for Vegemite.",
"parent_id": "8130851",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131480",
"author": "Dr Adrian K Midgley",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T10:41:40",
"content": "The products also are less valuable than the corn.",
"parent_id": "8130851",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131620",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T19:01:52",
"content": "Sure, and the energy cost of obtaining those products by alternative ways should be in the accounting.Well, if for example you wish to make yeast proteins for animal feed, you can grow yeast much more efficiently and faster in aerobic than anaerobic conditions where it can consume the corn sugars more efficiently – but it won’t create ethanol, only CO2.",
"parent_id": "8130851",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131622",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T19:13:14",
"content": "After all, about 90-95% of the energy in the corn is converted to ethanol in the process of fermentation – because the anaerobic conditions don’t allow the yeast to complete the metabolic process. That’s the point for making alcohol.However, if you wanted to make yeast for animal feed, you would definitely NOT want to make ethanol because you could grow 10-20 times the amount of yeast with the same input of corn, or conversely spend just 5-10% of the feedstock for the same output of yeast proteins. That translates to vastly reduced logistics and material costs, and you don’t need the distilleries etc. to do it.If your point is to just upcycle corn for better cow feed, you’re better off without all the complexities surrounding the ethanol.",
"parent_id": "8130851",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132927",
"author": "Charles LeRoy Deichman",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T13:01:20",
"content": "Is the ethanol subsidy as large as the subsidies, tax incentives, military and battle casualties sacrificed on behalf of fossil fuels?",
"parent_id": "8130820",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131041",
"author": "anonymus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T00:32:03",
"content": "the EROEI for gasoline is also clearly below 1, it’s only economically viable because oil refineries get the fuel they need to run for free. for the same reason, fuel ethanol stills are frequently powered by burning agricultural waste.",
"parent_id": "8130815",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131095",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T06:24:08",
"content": "Gasoline is refined oil. Corn ethanol is also (mostly) refined oil and natural gas. Burning agricultural wastes only accounts for a small fraction of the energy demand in production.If you look at it from that perspective, refining oil to gasoline is much simpler and more efficient than refining it to corn ethanol.",
"parent_id": "8131041",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131098",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T06:35:14",
"content": "And, the agricultural waste also exists because of a huge input of petrochemical fertilizers and energy in farming and transport, so that too is a form of “refined oil” if you think about it.But the main problem is that anything with an EROI less than 3:1 is considered a net energy sink for the society, because it needs to cycle back into its own means of production with losses along the way. Even if you make some optimistic hand-waving over the energy return of corn ethanol and the co-products, you can get to about 1.7:1 which is not enough to make it sensible.Gasoline exists because we can’t burn oil directly in our cars. Corn ethanol exists because big agricorporations cannot get government subsidies without having some sort of an excuse.",
"parent_id": "8131041",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131099",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T06:38:19",
"content": "Also, blending ethanol to fuels causes acetaldehyde pollution, which is a major contributor to lung cancer and asthma these days.",
"parent_id": "8131098",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8134142",
"author": "Jdams",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T11:51:13",
"content": "Yea but isn’t the main reason we started to use ethanol was as a replacement for the wildly effective yet catastrophically harmful lead additives to prevent engine knocking? It wasn’t about efficiency. And this is where your simple boil everything down to one number idea fails.The two main benefits of these corn subsidies are impossible to quantify to 1 number. First, in no particular order, the engine knocking me tinned above. We get to replace a devastatingly harmful thing with basically the stuff we have lying around. And two, the reason we have it just lying around is for national security. We need to maintain the capacity to grow all of our own food, enough to prevent starvation if we stop getting food from other regions of the world due to war or disaster etc. This is why we have these farmers maintain what would otherwise be unprofitable and unsustainable businesses. So that we all don’t starve if ww3 kicks off as it appears to be.There are more nuances and gray areas than your single number could ever capture. So I wouldn’t throw around blanket statements about drains on society etc.",
"parent_id": "8131098",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131053",
"author": "Andre",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T01:38:34",
"content": "In the case of sugarcane derived ethanol, the EROEI was found to be as high as 6:1. The main source of energy tho power the distillery is sugarcane bagasse, and the plants are usually net energy positive, meaning that they export electricity to the grid when the boilers are running.",
"parent_id": "8130815",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131069",
"author": "Tthinkerer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T03:00:17",
"content": "Rather than calculating it all, just look at how many of the conversion plants are sitting on natural gas pipelines/power lines etc. If they were at all efficient, wouldn’t they just burn their own product as a thermal source for distillation? Even oil refineries do this.I worked closely aligned with some of the research on this for a very long time and the standard answer was “No, it’s not really energy positive but there are other benefits …”",
"parent_id": "8130815",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131100",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T06:46:55",
"content": "The trick is that while it’spossibleto produce net energy with corn ethanol, in the average case you don’t because it’s not the optimal case.Money, not efficiency, is what decides where the plants go and what they use for energy. As long as they can turn a profit, nobody cares that they’re hooked up to the gas line and transporting corn in from across the country spending enormous amounts of fuel.",
"parent_id": "8131069",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131581",
"author": "Antti",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T17:35:46",
"content": "except ethanol isnt a fossil fuel.",
"parent_id": "8130815",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131626",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T19:19:00",
"content": "Neither is hydrogen, but if you make it out of cracking natural gas… what’s the difference?",
"parent_id": "8131581",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131049",
"author": "Andre",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T01:34:43",
"content": "In sugarcane ethanol distilleries, the norm is to be net energy positive. The plant incorporates a main cogeneration boiler, fed by cane bagasse, that supplies steam for process heat and electricity via steam turbines.",
"parent_id": "8130791",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132438",
"author": "Michael",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T15:38:45",
"content": "I had a neighbor in southern Indiana who distilled small batches of ‘fuel ethanol’ in his garage. The distillation process was powered by a wood-fired boiler.",
"parent_id": "8130791",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130806",
"author": "Andrew Wilson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T15:47:44",
"content": "I can visualise what a pound is. Just double it and add 10%. But a bushell??",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130826",
"author": "dk",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:22:30",
"content": "1 bushel corn (US) equeals 25,4012 kgand1 bushel (US) equals to 35,239 l",
"parent_id": "8130806",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132436",
"author": "Michael",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T15:33:47",
"content": "A bushel is a measure of volume, about 1.25 cubic feet. So expressing it as a weight doesn’t take into account the moisture content (and therefore the density) of the corn.",
"parent_id": "8130826",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132520",
"author": "bootstrap",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T22:11:37",
"content": "Also, commas in numbers are confusing to some, had to double-take there",
"parent_id": "8132436",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8134143",
"author": "Jdams",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T11:56:43",
"content": "I’m sorry but no, your crazy decimal points in numbers is excruciatingly confusing to most (meaning i speak for me and only me, but very strongly). How do you know if you are actually talking about those numbers less than 1 or not? Is it really all just context based? That’s wildly inefficient for all the talk of how wonderful metric is for its efficiency.",
"parent_id": "8132520",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130832",
"author": "Reactive Light",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:35:50",
"content": "Just picture riding on the bus from hell, which works in any metric.",
"parent_id": "8130806",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130853",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:40:54",
"content": "Two pecks!Simple.",
"parent_id": "8130806",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130825",
"author": "dk",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:22:02",
"content": "1 bushel corn (US) equeals 25,4012 kgand1 bushel (US) equals to 35,239 l",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130844",
"author": "Mr Nobody",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:24:22",
"content": "“The beer is carefully heated to the boiling point of ethanol, 78 °C. ” ….. at which point, nothing useful will happen unless it were 96.5% ethanol. More likely it will need to be heated to about 90 degrees C if it’s 15% ethanol, with the temperature increasing slightly as time goes on.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130854",
"author": "M_B",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:41:23",
"content": "I for one am waiting for Biotechnica to put out chooh2. Then we can really get going ;)Jokes aside. For all dystopia in the world of Cyberpunk. I saw that lore bit on chooh and I instantly went, wow thats actually very green and renewable.Hope we get something like it irl. Without the whole rubber and plastic damaging effect ethanol has.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131124",
"author": "punkdigerati",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T08:28:51",
"content": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel",
"parent_id": "8130854",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130885",
"author": "Matt Cramer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T19:06:04",
"content": "The link between stock car racing and moonshine may have been a bit exaggerated, but you’ll still find a few bottles of undocumented alcohol in the break room cabinet at many NASCAR shops. Or would up until the time still covered under the statutes of limitations….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131006",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T23:25:12",
"content": "I have always wondered why we don’t make ethanol from recycled paper, it seems to me that we would just need to add cellulase to the process to get the same result. I’m sure someone here knows (seriously, this is one of the smartest places on the net) so could you tell me why this isn’t done?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131112",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T07:25:48",
"content": "Using cellulase is more costly because you have to produce the enzyme in large quantities, and it is produced mainly by organisms that eat wood – like fungi – which grow relatively slowly. Some sources say the cost of the cellulase enzyme alone is 50% of the cost of converting cellulose to fermentable sugars.Wood ethanol was commonly made in the past as a side product of the sulfate process in paper making. The sugars were produced by acid hydrolysis instead.",
"parent_id": "8131006",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131316",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T21:35:18",
"content": "Thanks.",
"parent_id": "8131112",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131141",
"author": "SpillsDirt",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T10:52:41",
"content": "Enzymatic conversion of cellulose to sugar isnt very efficient. Fortunately, The advancing field of Supercritical Water Oxidation Reactors is making great strides. This is not only applicable to paper waste but also to other cellulosic waste like the stalks and other non edible portions of agricultural crops.Once these processes have been perfected and scaled the resulting sugars will not only be useful for fuelstock, but also as feedstock for modified yeast and/or bacteria producing an array of useful products from medicine to plastic to alternative foodstuffs. RealDeal and Perfect day are already making animal free milk and cheese from modified yeast. SCWO may someday allow companies like these to repurpose agriwaste and eliminate both the feed cost and environmental impact of dairy farming.",
"parent_id": "8131006",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131145",
"author": "SpillsDirt",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T11:25:14",
"content": "OOPSCorrection.I meant to type Supercritical Water Hydrolysis (SCWH) not Supercritical Water Oxidation (SCWO). SCWO has a ton of interesting applications as well but does not result in sugar production as it typically employs higher temperatures, pressures, and exposure times than SCWH,",
"parent_id": "8131141",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131317",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T21:36:45",
"content": "Cool. Sounds like SCWH will be quite an advance once perfected, thanks.",
"parent_id": "8131141",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131592",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T17:58:09",
"content": "SCWH scares the crap out of me because I’ve seen what a boiler explosion can do, and SCWH generally runs even hotter and higher pressure. But it’s in the same league as the Haber-Bosch process and, although many people died before that got tamed, it’s pretty well understood now and widespread as heck. SCWH might not be so scary now.",
"parent_id": "8131141",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131603",
"author": "SpillsDirt",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:23:11",
"content": "Boiler explosions are a concern with batch processing, which is more commonly employed in SCWO than SCWH due to low residence times requirements. Continuous flow SCWH pumps fluidized feedstock into one port of a Y shaped Inconel or Hasteloy pipe, Injecting supercritical water at 380c (716F) at 230 bar (~3336psi) into another port, then harvesting the exhaust from the third port. The total residence time varies from 0.004 seconds to 1.15 seconds depending on input material type and consistency. This rapid reaction allows system to use thick wall small ID pipes with significant safety factors designed in. Scaling up is accomplished by parallel reactor pathways. This reduces cost in construction and maintenance over the service life as well as limiting disaster potential.",
"parent_id": "8131592",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131632",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T19:32:43",
"content": "RealDeal and Perfect day are already making animal free milk and cheese from modified yeast.While commendable in principle, I wonder how tasty the milk and cheese are when the yeast is fed with pure sugar feedstock with nothing besides the essential nutrients to survive.After all, you can taste the difference between a free range egg and a factory farm egg by the fact that the factory farm chicken were fed nothing but soy, corn, and some fish paste for protein, while the free range chicken also fed on actual grass and insects found outside.",
"parent_id": "8131141",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131655",
"author": "SpillsDirt",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T21:17:18",
"content": "the yeast is just producing casein and wheyThe lactose, fats, minerals, vitamins, and water must be added from there.The resulting products flavor and consistency has less to do with what the yeast is fed and more to do with the ingredients blended with their proteins.",
"parent_id": "8131632",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131185",
"author": "gregg4",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T13:06:45",
"content": "The same kind of corn is also turned in fuel for diesel engines as well. There’s a refinery that makes the stuff also out west. Oh and it wasn’t just at the beginning of the 20C, that same group also was making cheap whiskey during the beginnings of this country. Take a look at the meaning behind the term “Shay’s Rebellion”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131298",
"author": "cmholm",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T20:27:27",
"content": "The original rationale for accepting the poor corn Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) was as a gasoline substitute while moving to renewable energy sources. That’s been highjacked by farm states looking for another price support, but it wasn’t a bad idea.The apparently positive EROEI for sugar ethanol in Brazil is illusionary. The growers are indirectly mining soil, moving on when a field is played out.Given that hybrid and fully electric automobiles and light trucks are now widely available in the US, gasoline substitution has outlived its purpose.Diesel substitution is still worthwhile. Too bad that the vast majority of US ag land is unsuitable for oil palm, and SEA growers are burning down forest to make room for more acreage.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131326",
"author": "SpillsDirt",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T22:04:36",
"content": "Hybrids relying on internal combustion engines are more efficient than IC alone, but are still largely dependent on a fading petrochemical resource.Full electric vehicles still suffer range issues, slow “refueling”, lithium volatility, and an environmental benefit beyond “NIMBY Pollution” thats only as good as the cleanliness of our grid which is still heavily reliant on nonrenewable resources.We live in a country with a fully developed and widespread infrastructure for liquid fuel delivery. While ethanol only has ~56% the energy density of gasoline. Direct ethanol fuel cells already reach 40-55% efficiency with the potential to reach as high as 97%. Even if those potentials are never met, the current technology already overtakes the poor efficiency of internal combustion engines as well as IC Hybrids.While not as energy dense by weight, ethanol beats hydrogens energy density by volume, doesnt require pressurized storage vessels, and has a significantly lower risk in accidents. Ethanol still has great potential in the automotive/transport field.",
"parent_id": "8131298",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131488",
"author": "Dr Adrian K Midgley",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T11:01:00",
"content": "But if you cover that cornfield in solar panels, you collect a lot more energy than the corn was going to.Fuel cells check arge a battery,hand you can charge batteries at night without using time, or quickly enough round here, on the road.Grow something under your panels, even if it is grass, and the soil improves.",
"parent_id": "8131326",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131560",
"author": "Sir SpillsDirt PhD 9th degree black belt with a 15 inch cock",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T15:58:54",
"content": "Why cover good agricultural land with solar panels when theres plenty of land unsuitable for crops that could be used? Solar is a great option for stationary (home and business) power, as well as limited range vehicles. It is NOT a great option for long distance or heavy load vehicles.A Chevy Bolt has a 60KWh battery and a 259 mi range. Its fast charge only adds 100 miles after a 30 minute charge.As to your fuel cells charge batteries, Thats not entirely accurate. Fuel cell vehicles rely on their battery only in conditions where operating the fuel cell is impractical or inefficient such as initial start up, and stop and go traffic. As a result, Fuel cell vehicles do not require nearly as large a battery as an EV does,.The toyota Mirai only uses a 1.2KWh battery, but its Fuel cell can output 114-128KW. The Toyota Mirai XLE can travel about 402 miles on a full tank of hydrogen. It takes between 3 and 5 minutes to refill its tank. The problem is the US doesnt have a robust hydrogen infrastructure in place.Ethanol fuel cells would not require any new fueling infrastructure as the existing petrol stations are capable of dispensing ethanol just as easily as petrol.Personally I think corn should feed people and livestock. But once SCWH conversion of agriwaste, cardboard, waste paper, etc has been perfected and scaled to industrial volumes, the production of trash ethanol as feedstock for fuel cell vehicles will solve many of the issues of EVs.",
"parent_id": "8131488",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132344",
"author": "NIck",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T10:35:56",
"content": "The problem is the US doesnt have a robust hydrogen infrastructure in place.And of course, where we get the hydrogen (H2) from in the first place. Usually it’s cracked from natural gas (CH4). If we’re going to crack H2 from CH4 to run a car, it’s way more efficient to just run the car on CH4. If you decide to use “green” hydrogen by cracking H2 from H2O with electrolysis, it’s way more efficient to skip the electrolyser and just run the car from electricity. And we haven’t even got to the problems with compressing/refrigerating and storing hydrogen.Nice username BTW.",
"parent_id": "8131560",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132353",
"author": "SpillsDirt",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T11:01:17",
"content": "NickDirect Methane Fuel Cells are certainly an option worth considering, especially if youre looking at landfill and biodigester produced methane sources rather than natural gas.Electrolysis loses some efficiency, sure. Still more energy is lost in pressurizing the gas.Hydrogen has plenty of issues, but the lack of infrastructure to support its adoption is a significant hurdle requiring huge investment, which is why I feel ethanol based systems have greater potential for success.Battery power has its own inefficiencies as well. One not often considered, the 1200-1700 pounds of battery being lugged aorund everywhere you go.The mirai fuel cell, battery, and full hydrogen tanks only weigh 418#, Almost half of which is the hydrogen tanks themselves. If the other weights remain the same, a Direct Ethanol Fuel Cell vehicle, which wouldnt require such a robust tank, could trim 1000# off a teslas weight while being able to refuel at any liquid pumping fuel station in a couple of minutes flat.As for the nickname, I was just being petty in response to Dr Adrian K Midgley, While that might be his real name and credential, posting such gives the viibe of someone expecting their words to have greater weight because of their university attendance record and the internet is full of people who conveniently have 3 advanced degrees in whatever is being discussed, 6 blackbelts, and a cock so large an elephant would feel ashamed.",
"parent_id": "8131560",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131582",
"author": "Antti",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T17:38:41",
"content": "Electric vehicles cannot be produced for everyone, there simply isnt enough raw material for the batteries. Gasoline and other alternative ICE fuels will be around for a long long time. EV are pipedreams, made to sooth the aching conscience of rich people.",
"parent_id": "8131298",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131637",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T19:45:07",
"content": "There is enough raw materials, but not enough money to extract them, at least in any hurry.",
"parent_id": "8131582",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131669",
"author": "jawnhenry",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T22:11:07",
"content": "This statement —and position—is exactly the same as“There is enough oil; we just can’t drill deep enough.”",
"parent_id": "8131637",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8134144",
"author": "Jdans",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T12:08:27",
"content": "Meh. We have a literally insatiable demand for oil. But giving everyone one EV seems attainable eventually.",
"parent_id": "8131669",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131366",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T02:22:01",
"content": "When actively commuting by bicycle, I made a thing for my messenger bag that said “powered by clean burning ethanol.”I still think that is the best use of fermentation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131636",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T19:37:48",
"content": "so much of the world is starvingThat is not for the lack of food. Half of all food produced is lost as waste because of overproduction and spoilage.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131701",
"author": "David Witten",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T00:25:11",
"content": "Interesting article. My family owns a grain farm in the Midwest and there is one of these plants in the next county. I totally agree that the economic/environmental justifications of this whole process are dubious.But I have never known the inner workings of how this is accomplished, this article is quite enlightening.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131752",
"author": "Marcel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T07:53:00",
"content": "Food should not be used as an energy resource.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132182",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T16:53:51",
"content": "How else should I get the kilojoules I need to power my bicycle?",
"parent_id": "8131752",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131981",
"author": "Robert Schreib",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T01:48:20",
"content": "What if we asked everyone to put ALL of their kitchen wastes into plastic coffee urns ( not Tupperware, but close and universally available), placed them in the refrigerator to minimize stink, and exchanged them at depots at the supermarkets for cleaned empty urns, so that all local organic farmers or community gardens can compost the free material for fertilizer? Or, it could go into massive biodigester units, to make fertilizer, and a Methane gas byproduct to use as heating fuel. OR, use the organic kitchen wastes to feed large ‘Cockroach Mills’, like they do in China now, to feed the bugs to chickens, to finally solve America’s expensive eggs problem?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132179",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T16:37:13",
"content": "America’s expensive eggs problem isnt a feed issue. Its an issue of laying birds being slaughtered due to avian flu. Bird flu has killed more than 169 million birds since early 2022 The USDA reported more than 30 million birds have been culled due to HPAI since the beginning of 2025 It takes up to a year to get new layers to maturity resulting in a reduced egg production period and elevated prices.I buy 5 dozen eggs at a time.March of last year I was paying $9.98 ($1.996/dz)March of this year I paid $28.96 ($5.792/dz)Last month I paid $19.98 ($3.996/dz)This week I paid $14.36 ($2.872/dz)Not as good as $9.98 but a whole lot better than $28.96",
"parent_id": "8131981",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8134148",
"author": "Jdams",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T12:14:25",
"content": "Actually Mr actually turns out that was also a lie. Go look at the recent profit statements from the largest egg producer in america. Something like 60 plus percent of the eggs iirc. Well their profit in the last quarter was up something like 3 or 5x from the same quarter in recent years, again iirc. That wouldnt be the case if whole flocks were being offed and wasted. Turns out the whole egg thing was just price gouging. Lovely",
"parent_id": "8132179",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8134174",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T15:02:14",
"content": "Actually Mr JdamsYoure quoting figures relating to Cal Maine which has only lost ~4% of its flock, 1.9 million birds. As the largest single egg producer in the US they have much stronger testing protocols implemented than other, smaller, regional producers. As a result they have suffered lower losses and benefited more from the increased demand and pricing,Why wouldnt a business take advantage of this situation by keeping their products pricing inline with nationwide averages?Thats how capitalism works. If supply is less stable than demand prices increase. If high pricing causes a drop in demand than sales drop. If demand stays stable or increases despite high pricing than prices normalize at elevated levels.Hickman farms, a major egg supplier for Southwestern states has lost 95% of their Arizona flock, roughly 6 million birds. This has forced them to temporarily halt operations and lay off employees, with the rebuilding process expected to take nearly two years.Rose acre farms, the nations #2 egg producer has lost 25% of their flock, over 6 million birds, so far this year. Obviously this same number of birds lost is going to have a lesser effect on their operation than the same number of birds lost at Hickman Farms. USDA remittances of $15-17/bird culled offsets a good part of their lost profit, but it does nothing for the loss in production and egg availability.YES, Big egg is benefiting from this epidemic but to pretend this is not an issue of diminished supply and increased demand driving prices is",
"parent_id": "8134148",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8134176",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T15:03:58",
"content": "YES, Big egg is benefiting from this epidemic but to pretend this is not an issue of diminished supply and increased demand driving prices is obtuse",
"parent_id": "8134174",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132347",
"author": "NIck",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T10:40:52",
"content": "Many cities have pretty much what you describe. A separate bin for food and organic waste. It gets collected each week with the regular garbage collection, and composted on an industrial scale. Where I live it’s called “FOGO” (food organics and graden organics.)I don’t know if the emissions actually balance or if it’s just a waste of diesel to run the collection trucks…. but then again, it’s not just the CO2, it’s also those nitrates and phosphates that are recycled and kept out of the waterways. And we can always use electric garbage trucks in the future.",
"parent_id": "8131981",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132650",
"author": "Gus Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T15:29:12",
"content": "Since ethanol requires more energy to produce than it contains, adding it to gasoline is absurd. It’s only done to create a market manipulation that benefits farmers in swing states.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132663",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T15:54:24",
"content": "fromhttps://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/ethanol-fuel-basicsEthanol produced from corn demonstrates a positive energy balance, meaning that the process of producing ethanol fuel does not require more energy than the amount of energy contained in the fuel itself.Cellulosic ethanol improves the energy balance of ethanol because the feedstocks are either waste, coproducts of another industry (wood, crop residues), or dedicated crops—such as switchgrass and miscanthus—with lower water and fertilizer requirements compared to corn. When biomass is used to power the process of converting non-food-based feedstocks into cellulosic ethanol, the amount of fossil fuel energy used in production is reduced even further. Another benefit of cellulosic ethanol is that it results in lower levels of life cycle greenhouse gas emissions.",
"parent_id": "8132650",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132872",
"author": "Menno",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T10:29:59",
"content": "“Since each bushel of corn yields about 3 gallons of ethanol”SI units, please?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132882",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T11:16:10",
"content": "For the monometrically constrained:35.239 liters of shelled unground dent corn, weighing approximately 25.4 kg, when ground, mashed, fermented, and distilled yields approximately 11.36 liters of ethanol.In reality this amount of corn usually yields 10.2-11L ABV. This makes me suspect that the authors cited 11.36 liters was likely and expression of the volume of 180 proof distillate.",
"parent_id": "8132872",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132888",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T11:33:10",
"content": "In Europe road transport of grain is far more common with most rail transport being limited to port shipments for exportation. In road transport the weight of a load is generally the metric of greatest concern so european farmers express crop yield in kilograms.Bushels are the favored measurement of crop yields in the US and Canada primarily due to our large geographic ranges necessitating long range rail transport.When filling covered hopper cars with grain for transport35.239 liters of shelled unground dent corn, weighing approximately 25.4 kg35.239 liters of wheat weighing 27.216 kilograms35.239 liters of oats weighing 14.51 kg.Making volume more significant a metric than weight.",
"parent_id": "8132872",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8133263",
"author": "Luddita",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T15:20:05",
"content": "Why not use sigar beet or other crop with high sugar content?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133725",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T20:48:33",
"content": "An acre of sugar beets yields around 4 tons of refined sugar You yeild approximately 141 gallons of ethanol per ton of refined sugar. So one acre of sugar beets is good for around 564 gallons of ethanol.The average yield for shelled dent corn in the United States is around 173 to 183 bushels per acre. One bushel of corn can produce about 2.77 to 2.8 gallons of ethanol. So one acre of corn is good for about 480-512 gallons of ethanol.So their production per acre is fairly close. Corn requires less soil preparation, less fertilizer, and less water than sugar beets. It is also less prone to reduced cropping due to weeds than sugar beets. Additionally, Corn is less labor intensive in planting and harvesting than sugar beets. Finally, In the US the agricultural acreage available wiith ideal sugar beet conditions is SIGNIFICANTLY lower than the range where corn thrives.for all these reasons, Corn is a superior crop choice for ethanol production.",
"parent_id": "8133263",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,538.481543
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/21/a-look-inside-a-lemon-of-a-race-car/
|
A Look Inside A Lemon Of A Race Car
|
Fenix Guthrie
|
[
"car hacks"
] |
[
"automotive",
"mazda miata",
"mustang",
"race car"
] |
Automotive racing is a grueling endeavor, a test of one’s mental and physical prowess to push an engineered masterpiece to its limit. This is all the more true of 24 hour endurance races where teams tag team to get the most laps of a circuit in over a 24 hour period. The format pushes cars and drivers to the very limit. Doing so on a
$500 budget as presented by the 24 hours of Lemons
makes this all the more impressive!
Of course, racing on a $500 budget is difficult to say the least. All the expected Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) safety requirements are still in place, including roll cage, seats and fire extinguisher. However, brakes, wheels, tires and safety equipment are not factored into the cost of the car, which is good because an FIA racing seat can run well in excess of the budget. Despite the name, most races are twelve to sixteen hours across two days, but 24 hour endurance races are run. The very limiting budget and amateur nature of the event has created a large amount of room for teams to get creative with car restorations and race car builds.
The 24 Hours of Le-MINES Team and their 1990 Miata
One such team we had the chance of speaking to goes by the name
24 Hours of Le-Mines
. Their build is a wonderful mishmash of custom fabrication and affordable parts. It’s built from a restored 1999 NA Miata complete with rusted frame and all! Power is handled by a rebuilt 302 Mustang engine of indeterminate age.
The stock Miata brakes seem rather small for a race car, but are plenty for a car of its weight. Suspension is an Amazon special because it only has to work for 24 hours. The boot lid (or trunk if you prefer) is held down with what look to be over-sized RC car pins. Nestled next to the PVC pipe inlet pipe is a nitrous oxide canister — we don’t know if it’s functional or for show, but we like it nonetheless. The scrappy look is completed with a portion of the road sign fabricated into a shifter cover.
The team is unsure if the car will end up racing, but odds are if you are reading Hackaday, you care more about the race cars then the actual racing. Regardless, we hope to see this Miata in the future!
This is certainly not the first time we have covered 24 hour endurance engineering,
like this solar powered endurance plane.
| 7
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130722",
"author": "Hoarse Man",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T11:17:28",
"content": "I recently helped with a lemons race team in Georgia, and haven’t had as much hacky fun since my high school robotics days. We chopped up an old F250 that’d been parked for over a decade, shortened it, gave it a plywood and carbon fiber aero package, stuck a fake minigun turret on the back, welded up a drive shaft balanced with angle iron scraps and a dial indicator, and ended up having to drive it to the track the morning of inspections with minutes to spare because it was too low to get on the trailer. The alternator died and it chugged to death just into the parking lot of the race track, so we stole the battery out of another car, jumper cabled it onto the truck’s, jump started the whole thing to limp it to the tech inspection, then spent as much time on the track as we did wrenching in the pits due to never getting a chance for a proper shakedown test. What a hoot!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130734",
"author": "Zbiszko",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T12:05:01",
"content": "Looks similar like “zlombol” car race in poland using rather out of order cheap cars",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130810",
"author": "Linda From HR",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:04:07",
"content": "I raced LeMons for ten years and even accumulated a few trophies with our amazing team. Just to clarify, ALL safety equipment is exempt from the $500 budget. LeMons is a terrific organization that takes safety very very seriously. Your roll cage will be inspected by people who know what they are doing and you will be subjected to fire drills and other critical training. Any car contact is an immediate black flag for both cars, no discussion. Hot heads and armchair pros are dealt with quickly and with extremely embarrassing prejudice. People are regularly banned from the event for exceeding the chucklehead quota. If you go in with the right attitude, you will have the time of your life.There’s simply no easier way to try your hand at real wheel to wheel racing so I strongly recommend it, if you’re interested. You should do some track days first however. Track driving is a skill you need to be exposed to first. As fun and as silly as LeMons is, it is also real racing and you will go three wide into the esses at Willow Springs at very antisocial speeds, with barely enough time to tabulate all the poor life choices that lead you to this moment.Keep the shiny side up, friends.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130843",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:23:51",
"content": "Get ready for the greatest spectacle in racing this friday, the Wienermobile 500. The frankfurtermobile name has been rescinded. My choice no ketchup Chicago!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130863",
"author": "Jimmy D",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T18:10:30",
"content": "Also see the Plymouth Banjul challenge (Formally the Plymouth Dakar rally):https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth-Banjul_ChallengeA similar idea, though a bit longer. 4400 miles in a £100 car.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130933",
"author": "Dave Everett",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T21:23:30",
"content": "And the “Shitbox Rally” in Australia",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131673",
"author": "Clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T22:26:43",
"content": "My 2001 Nissan pathfinder would dust all emGot a deal for $500Aint it?When you have those connections…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,538.623717
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/21/fault-analysis-of-a-120w-anker-ganprime-charger/
|
Fault Analysis Of A 120W Anker GaNPrime Charger
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Reverse Engineering",
"Teardown"
] |
[
"autopsy",
"usb charger",
"USB Power"
] |
Taking a break from his usual prodding at suspicious AliExpress USB chargers,
[DiodeGoneWild] recently had a gander
at what
used
to be a good USB charger.
The Anker 737 USB charger prior to its autopsy.
Before it went completely dead, the Anker 737 GaNPrime USB charger which a viewer sent him was capable of up to 120 Watts combined across its two USB-C and one USB-A outputs. Naturally the charger’s enclosure couldn’t be opened non-destructively, and it turned out to have (soft) potting compound filling up the voids, making it a treat to diagnose. Suffice it to say that these devices are not designed to be repaired.
With it being an autopsy, the unit got broken down into the individual PCBs, with a short detected that eventually got traced down to an IC marked ‘SW3536’, which is one of the ICs that communicates with the connected USB device to negotiate the voltage. With the one IC having shorted, it appears that it rendered the entire charger into an expensive paperweight.
Since the charger was already in pieces, the rest of the circuit and its ICs were also analyzed. Here the gallium nitride (GaN) part was found in the Navitas GaNFast NV6136A FET with integrated gate driver, along with an Infineon CoolGaN IGI60F1414A1L integrated power stage. Unfortunately all of the cool technology was rendered useless by one component developing a short, even if it made for a fascinating look inside one of these very chonky USB chargers.
| 39
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130670",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T08:12:34",
"content": "That was a LOT more complicated than I expected. I’ll never complain about the price of these 120W chargers again. Thankfully I only own a cheap amazonbasics 65W. It feels light",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130684",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T08:59:52",
"content": "They’re a really smart charger, different voltages on different ports with USB PD per port I think",
"parent_id": "8130670",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130744",
"author": "Antron Argaiv",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T12:40:41",
"content": "Just from a quick glance, it looks like the secondary might actually be isolated from line voltage. That’s unusual for these Chinese chargers and makes it worth buying.",
"parent_id": "8130670",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130792",
"author": "BuriedCode",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T15:07:25",
"content": "Most “Chinese chargers” have an isolated secondary. In fact, I don’t think I have seen one that isn’t. Sure, some I would consider unsafe, but to say that an isolated power supply is “unusual” is just bizarre – the vast majority are flyback based, which by definition is galvanically isolated. Also worth noting that Apple chargers are made in China – are these also “unusual” ?",
"parent_id": "8130744",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130835",
"author": "chango",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:48:07",
"content": "The myth comes from chargers with unpolarized mains plugs and filter caps between primary neutral and secondary ground.Most of the time people will stick a DMM between earth and USB ground and see high voltage, but don’t care to check that the short current is tiny.",
"parent_id": "8130792",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130989",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T22:43:57",
"content": "If you watch Big Clive then you’d see a lot of no-name Chinese electronics that aren’t just bad but deadly bad.While I agree that you can absolutely find some quality products from China for great prices too, that doesn’t stop there also being a glut of low quality garbage coming from there because of a multitude of reasons.",
"parent_id": "8130792",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130992",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T22:47:57",
"content": "Its entirely disingenuous to imply that the worry about and bias against Chinese products is entirely based on racism.For your second half, it makes me concerned you are someone in China Astroturfing. No one would consider Intel, AMD, or NVIDIA chips as being Chinese made because they are from Taiwan. The only people who’d think they are Chinese-made would be someone in China legally required to consider Taiwan part of China.",
"parent_id": "8130792",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131108",
"author": "Rudy",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T07:16:11",
"content": "Usually chargers from companies like Anker, Baseus, or UGreen are quite good. A lot of the other name-brand chargers are also produced in China, but to a high-ish standard.It’s the cheaper no-name chargers from China that are outright dangerous. Most of the time you can recognize them by being sold under different brand names and all looking the same.You also pay a bit more for the well-designed chargers. $10 for a 65W GaN charger is unrealistic and suspicious to say the least. ;-)",
"parent_id": "8130744",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130895",
"author": "JoeSchmoe",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T19:43:25",
"content": "I have 2 of those 65 watt amazon chargers. They are really solid. I use one with a soldering iron and definitely puts out close to 65 watts and heats up my iron quickly. The other one I use to charge up high capacity LIPO batteries connected to a Lipo charger that I use on my own DIY built drones. They are a great deal.",
"parent_id": "8130670",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130678",
"author": "G-man",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T08:35:58",
"content": "Why are companies still allowed to produce equipment that can’t be repaired? A single faulty part has rendered the entire PSU in to e-waste.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130731",
"author": "ObsoleteFuture",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T11:50:10",
"content": "Sadly, even if it was perfectly repairable – say it literally came with a schematic in the box and philips screws and no potting – it would probably still be 1% or less of users who would repair it or have it repaired.Heck, I bet 90% of chargers are thrown out intact because of being grungy or in a box in a company storeroom that nobody has the time to test all the gubbins in.If anything, the world needs “anything not perishable or noxious or unsanitary, to refurbish/reuse by any takers, with no responsibility left to who puts anything in” bins in every recycling station.Also consider this device is smaller than what would often be considered a spare or wear part you just replace in a vehicle or machine.",
"parent_id": "8130678",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130752",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T13:03:44",
"content": "I’m not bothered that it has a single point of failure. What consumer electronic can handle an IC failure gracefully? Everything would be too expensive to be designed under the assumption that ICs fail and need redundancy. I’m also not too bothered it’s not repairable though it would be nice.But the idea of “not trash” bins reminds me of the three Rs: recycle, reduce, reuse. The emphasis today feels like it’s just to recycle. It’s the only option of the three that fits corporate needs for more consumption. But the other two are what will really improve our lives most immediately and we have the most control over.",
"parent_id": "8130731",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131215",
"author": "Kevin",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T14:58:50",
"content": "I’ve always heard it as “reduce, reuse, recycle”, as a prioritized list. Recycling is better than stuff ending up in the landfill, but it should be a last resort.",
"parent_id": "8130752",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130753",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T13:06:25",
"content": "How much would you pay a repair technician per hour to work on this device, how much are the parts to repair it?How much did the device cost to buy?",
"parent_id": "8130678",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130795",
"author": "BuriedCode",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T15:10:03",
"content": "So you would be willing to pay twice the price for something (the additional costs of a design that facilitates repair) that will cost you three time the cost of the original unit to repair? Also, what makes you think enough customers would want that to warrant actually selling it? Companies don’t decide to produce throw-away electronics – their customers do.",
"parent_id": "8130678",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130841",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:10:20",
"content": "All the stuff to make “e-waste” originally came from the ground. If you didn’t make it, you didn’t buy it, and it goes back into the ground, how does it affect you at all?If you care that much about it, grab a shovel, head to your local landfill, and start a recycling program. If you’re not willing to do that, sit down and be quiet.",
"parent_id": "8130678",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130995",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T22:48:52",
"content": "how does it affect you at all?Waste is bad and I support banning wasteful practices. Ultimately, because I feel like it.If you’re not willing to do that, sit down and be quiet.Nah, I’ll keep talking.",
"parent_id": "8130841",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132191",
"author": "Raghav Srivastava",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T18:26:15",
"content": "LOL!!!",
"parent_id": "8130995",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132331",
"author": "elmesito",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T08:42:06",
"content": "Wow, I knew education was bad in the US, but this is real peak ignorance.",
"parent_id": "8130841",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130878",
"author": "Matt Cramer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T18:51:57",
"content": "Automated production is cheap, manual labor to troubleshoot and repair isn’t. Even on a device that’s easily taken apart with no potting, it’s easy for a repair to cost twice as much as buying a new unit. Making repairs possible isn’t too hard, making repairs cheap enough that the devices actually get fixed is much harder.",
"parent_id": "8130678",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130730",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T11:48:28",
"content": "The potting resin is a good idea in this case, compact chargers like this are physically thrown around and impacted all the time, you don’t want those heavy inductors and capacitors flapping in the breeze.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130774",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T14:17:08",
"content": "I have to imagine that the potting also helps conduct heat out of the unit better than if it were filled with air.",
"parent_id": "8130730",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130994",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T22:48:49",
"content": "Also probably more isolating than air.",
"parent_id": "8130774",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132037",
"author": "Markus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T07:09:25",
"content": "Only between components above the traces. Potting or coating does NOT allow to reduce isolation distances in the layout. (as per standards)",
"parent_id": "8130994",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130794",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T15:10:01",
"content": "The transformer was interesting, and it was nice that he investigated it and showed the cutout.As for waste, I wonder if that transformer is reusable if you carefully separate it, since it’s on a separate PCB.I know DGW uses old parts and at least he got some capacitors and maybe some USB ports from it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130827",
"author": "Iván Stepaniuk",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:22:33",
"content": "These transformers are very specific to this particular implementation. The PCB would only be useful if you are building pretty much the same SMPS.",
"parent_id": "8130794",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131040",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T00:31:24",
"content": "Transformers in such devices are all very similar surely, you have a primary a secondary and sometimes the sense/boot winding, and since this is for a 120W supply I would think there is headroom.It has an air-gap of course, but we know that.And you can measure its inductance and resistance to find out its ratings.Not that I’m an expert, but I think DGW for instance is very knowledgeable on the subject and he comes up with some original homemade stuff, who knows what he could do with such.You perhaps could at least make one of those LED lights activated by QI coils from it after you remove the ferrite as he did :)",
"parent_id": "8130827",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130833",
"author": "Matthias",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:46:32",
"content": "an IC marked ‘SW3536’, which is one of the ICs that communicates with the connected USB device to negotiate the voltageIn other words, a fully functional power supply for custom voltages is rendered useless because the voltages must be digitally negotiated by the device? I remember discussions not long ago where this was said to be an advantage of USB…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132038",
"author": "Markus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T07:11:31",
"content": "Like your bench power supply, relying on the knobs to be useful…",
"parent_id": "8130833",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132087",
"author": "Matthias",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T11:17:09",
"content": "my bench power supply has pots I can replace even without soldering",
"parent_id": "8132038",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132125",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T13:08:07",
"content": "An all new definition of the word useless was born.What’s with people’s instance of ruining words these days?It’s a USB PD charger functioning as such, and is in fact in modern times more useful than a general PSU for most people since it can charge… wait for it… USB-C devices!!And you can incidentally buy small PD trigger boards to turn it into a power supply with selectable voltages.",
"parent_id": "8130833",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132154",
"author": "Matthias",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T14:45:43",
"content": "Sure, the USB-C charger is useful for USB-C devices, but the problem with USB PD is that you can’t use it without the negotiation magic even if you happen to have the right voltage at hand, which would be no issue if the digital negotiation was not made mandatory (there are other means for voltage selection or ensuring the right voltage is supplied which are much more repairable and rugged, and which could have been used in a power supply standard).This is just an example for a fault mentioned in the lengthy discussions around USB PD, which was claimed to never be a problem by the proponents.",
"parent_id": "8132125",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132514",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T21:45:32",
"content": "Look, there is a reason for the negotiation with USB, and that is because of the connector used.You can’t have it all at the same time, that is to say a relatively thin cable and tiny connector and very high speed data and high power and trust it all works without issues with the devices (source and drain) being dumb.Interestingly even in SciFi movies and TV shows where the often take extreme liberties with the laws of physics they don’t have such. I at least don’t recall seeing them use a USB-c sized connector to deliver any high power, they always have props with bigger connectors right?",
"parent_id": "8132154",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132515",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T21:55:33",
"content": "I wonder if anybody minds having heavy elements and poisons in their groundwater, I’m sure not, it doesn’t affect them after all, nor their children. Don’t believe me? Ask RunnerPack about it.People are so silly now’days, in the 1970’s there was tons of lead in the air and nobody had an issue, now you see people complain if as much as 33 grams enters their body, geez.",
"parent_id": "8132154",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132518",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T21:59:46",
"content": "WHAT THE F[censored for HaD kids of average age 55..]Is there some AI involved putting comments in random reply positions and avoiding putting it where a person is replying to? If so it’s eerily advanced.Maybe that AI was retrieved from an alien weapon that crashed ! :o",
"parent_id": "8132154",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132127",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T13:18:21",
"content": "That seems a rather vicious reaction to a single instance of an issue.And issue that might even be on your side, just because it used to work doesn’t mean your phone didn’t develop issues, or you might be in area where there are lots of interference signals or something. Or maybe the shop you bought it at was selling recalled/returned/defective items.",
"parent_id": "8130833",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132128",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T13:19:46",
"content": "That last one was a reply to Andrew Davis’s postThanks HaD-bama ;)",
"parent_id": "8130833",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130940",
"author": "Andrew Davis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T21:29:57",
"content": "Anker used to make some good stuff, but lately they have had loads of problems. I used to use their neckband ear bud head phones, but the latest version has a software issue that causes connection issues, fought with them for a while and they said it was my phone. but the previous version worked just fine. after 3 replacements they basically told me to f*ck off.Still haven’t found a brand that was as good as they USED to be, but dealing. Won’t ever buy that brand again EVER!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132283",
"author": "Alejandro Mery",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T02:09:45",
"content": "The right to repair is not always about the price tag, it’s also about the environmental cost of assuming everything is disposable",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,538.819928
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/20/the-mouse-language-running-on-arduino/
|
The Mouse Language, Running On Arduino
|
Bryan Cockfield
|
[
"Arduino Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] |
[
"esolang",
"esoteric",
"interpreted",
"minimalist",
"programming language",
"reverse polish notation",
"stack"
] |
Although plenty of us have our preferred language for coding, whether it’s C for its hardware access, Python for its usability, or Fortran for its mathematic prowess, not every language is specifically built for problem solving of a particular nature. Some are built as thought experiments or challenges, like Whitespace or Chicken but aren’t used for serious programming. There are a few languages that fit in the gray area between these regions,
and one example of this is MOUSE, which can now be run on an Arduino
.
Although MOUSE was originally meant to be a minimalist language for computers of the late 70s and early 80s with limited memory (even for the era), its syntax looks more like a more
modern esoteric language
, and indeed it arguably would take a Python developer a bit of time to get used to it in a similar way. It’s stack-based, for a start, and also uses
Reverse Polish Notation
for performing operations. The major difference though is that programs process single letters at a time, with each letter corresponding to a specific instruction. There have been some changes in the computing world since the 80s, though, so [Ivan]’s version of MOUSE includes a few changes that make it slightly different than the original language, but in the end he fits an interpreter, a line editor, graphics primitives, and peripheral drivers into just 2 KB of SRAM and 32 KB Flash so it can run on an ATmega328P.
There are some other features here as well, including support for PS/2 devices, video output, and the ability to save programs to the internal EEPROM. It’s an impressive setup for a language that doesn’t get much attention at all, but certainly one that threads the needle between usefulness and interesting in its own right. Of course if a language where “Hello world” is human-readable is not esoteric enough,
there are others that may offer more of a challenge
.
Image Credit:
Maxbrothers2020
| 23
| 12
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130653",
"author": "Carl Breen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T06:49:55",
"content": "I guess it is an interpreted language and the parser is written in C.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130817",
"author": "Ivan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:09:12",
"content": "That’s right, absolutely right.",
"parent_id": "8130653",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130655",
"author": "Julian Skidmore",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T07:11:52",
"content": "FIGNtion was able to fit an entire version of Forth, video driver, keypad controller, full-screen editor, 512kB of Flash storage with a Flash translation layer for true block editing; 8 to 32kB of SPI SRAM for loaded programs and their data; audio; bitmapped and programmable character graphics modes with a blitter and floating point arithmetic into 16kB of AVR firmware. Forth ran at up to 0.4MIPs, 20x faster than a Jupiter Ace.https://sites.google.com/site/libby8dev/fignition",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130805",
"author": "Ken Boak",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T15:43:40",
"content": "Yes, Fignition got me re-ignited with enthusiasm for Forth.Will there ever be a follow-up? (Perhaps for an Agon Light 2 – hint, hint).Didn’t you also do a Forth for the PDP-8 ?",
"parent_id": "8130655",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130890",
"author": "Ivan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T19:25:53",
"content": "Maybe I misunderstood, but the assembly site clearly states this. These are already significant resources, incomparable ATmega328P3 chips: An AtMega168, a Microchip 23K640 8Kb SRAM and an AMIC A25L040-F 4Mbit Flash Chip",
"parent_id": "8130655",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130717",
"author": "PinheadBE",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T11:08:22",
"content": "Ever heard of JAL and its powerful libraries JalLib ?http://www.justanotherlanguage.org/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130828",
"author": "Ivan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:22:41",
"content": "JAL (Just Another Language) cannot be used directly to program AVR microcontrollers.Here’s why:Different architectures: PIC (Microchip) and AVR (Microchip, formerly Atmel) microcontrollers have completely different internal architectures, instruction sets, and peripherals.JAL specialization: JAL was designed specifically for the PIC architecture. Its compiler generates machine code that only PIC processors can understand.No AVR support: The JAL toolchain does not include support for compiling code for the AVR architecture.",
"parent_id": "8130717",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130869",
"author": "Mindfight",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T18:36:38",
"content": "Ahh, I loved the simplicity of JAL.",
"parent_id": "8130717",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130725",
"author": "Duane Craps",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T11:34:09",
"content": "Ah, Dr. Peter Grogono’s MOUSE. About ten years ago I remembered Mouse from an old Byte article. I tracked down the article and started to write a mouse interpreter in UNIVAC 1219 assembly language to run on my 1219 simulator. I had it running up to macros and never finished. I was planning to implement subroutines instead of macros but never finished. There is more information in the WIKIPEDIA article:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_(programming_language)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130743",
"author": "Jii",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T12:32:59",
"content": "Oh good, you took down the horrible “AI” image. No more of those, please.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130860",
"author": "helge",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T18:01:40",
"content": "Was about to complain as well, but the pics are from the linked source. At least we’re being spared auto-playing background music on github. For now.",
"parent_id": "8130743",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130771",
"author": "luccamakesthings",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T14:00:06",
"content": "The dev touts graphics capabilities and there’s a schematic for TV out, but not a single screenshot?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130778",
"author": "William Payne",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T14:25:53",
"content": "Can MOUSE be flashed to one of the new platforms such as esp32, arm m0, … and run as single task OS?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130814",
"author": "Ivan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:05:33",
"content": "There is no easy way.",
"parent_id": "8130778",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130807",
"author": "Ken Boak",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T15:53:35",
"content": "MOUSE was quite revolutionary 45 years ago when you just didn’t have the memory resources.I read the BYTE article and bought a 2nd hand copy of the book, which I translated into Z80 mnemonics (it was written in intel mnemonics).Some might say that MOUSE is like a Tiny Forth, in the same way that Tiny BASICs were popular in the late 1970s.If you have never written an interpreted bytecode language, reading the C-source will be a worthwhile educational experience.Other tiny interpreted languages exist – such as STABLE by Sandor Schneider. It’s very similar to MOUSE, but with a few changes. Remarkably the STABLE interpreter fits into about 50 lines of very compact C code.https://w3group.de/stable.html",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130819",
"author": "Ivan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:12:41",
"content": "Thanks for the link, it’s very interesting.",
"parent_id": "8130807",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130809",
"author": "Ken Boak",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:00:56",
"content": "MOUSE is derived from Peter Grogono’s MUSYS.MUSYS was a language to simplify the composition of music and playing of some of the first electronic synthesisers.Peter Grogono wrote it around 1969 and it ran on a PDP-8 (in Putney, London, UK) for a small independent studio EMS.In 1969 a PDP-8 cost as much as a London house, and to finance it, the owner of EMS convinced his wife to sell an inherited tiara.EMS had not 1 but 2 of the first privately owned minicomputers in the world.https://120years.net/musys-and-mouse-audio-synthesis-language-peter-grogono-untied-kingdom-1965/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131031",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T00:05:03",
"content": "His wife had a tiara worth as much as a London house?",
"parent_id": "8130809",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131192",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T13:31:31",
"content": "You want a freak out, read the whole Grogono / Peter Zinofiev story. History of EMS. Etc.Follow the white rabbit down the hole!",
"parent_id": "8131031",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130830",
"author": "David H",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:31:54",
"content": "That was my first thought too, but many news sites these days just use “generic picture of code being edited” stock photography (The Register, I’m looking at YOU) and, no offense to Hackaday, that’s my assumption here. Not as bad as the “all hackers wear hoodies and sit in front of Matrix-style scrolling green text” trope, though!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131189",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T13:23:18",
"content": "That’s exactly what happened. Stock picture of code and Arduino, because, well, code project.Cool language though. Had no idea it existed. Like Forth, but also not.",
"parent_id": "8130830",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130839",
"author": "QBFreak",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:08:55",
"content": "I’ve had the thought, more than once, that it might be interesting to set up a microcontroller to emulate (or even just operate in the spirit of) an early computer, especially something that used a terminal to interface with the user. But I’ve never had a strong drive to actuallydoit. So it’s neat to see that someone has.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8140654",
"author": "psychofugal",
"timestamp": "2025-06-20T15:52:10",
"content": "This brings back a few memories. MANY years ago, I used MOUSE on PDP 11/45s and PDP 11/70s running a few different operating systems. I enhanced mouse by adding support for infix expressions (while still supporting reverese-polish notation), loading and calling of external functions written in anything that supported the operating system’s standard calling conventions, and some other things that I’ve forgotten (can’t look up what else I did because I moved recently and my notebooks from back then are in storage).Probably annoyed a few people by writing some small production programs in MOUSE. :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,538.682885
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/20/plugging-plasma-leaks-in-magnetic-confinement-with-new-guiding-center-model/
|
Plugging Plasma Leaks In Magnetic Confinement With New Guiding Center Model
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Science"
] |
[
"plasma physics",
"stellarator"
] |
Although the idea of containing a plasma within a magnetic field seems straightforward at first, plasmas are highly dynamic systems that will happily escape magnetic confinement if given half a chance. This poses a major problem in nuclear fusion reactors and similar, where escaping particles like alpha (helium) particles from the magnetic containment will erode the reactor wall, among other issues. For stellarators in particular the plasma dynamics are calculated as precisely as possible so that the magnetic field works with rather than against the plasma motion, with so far pretty good results.
Now researchers at the University of Texas
reckon that they can improve
on these plasma system calculations with a new, more precise and efficient method. Their suggested non-perturbative
guiding center
model is
published
in (paywalled)
Physical Review Letters
, with a
preprint available
on Arxiv.
The current perturbative guiding center model admittedly works well enough that even the article authors admit to e.g. Wendelstein 7-X being within a few % of being perfectly optimized. While we wouldn’t dare to take a poke at what exactly this ‘data-driven symmetry theory’ approach exactly does differently, it suggests the use machine-learning based on simulation data, which then presumably does a better job at describing the movement of alpha particles through the magnetic field than traditional simulations.
Top image: Interior of the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator during maintenance.
| 8
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130663",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T07:49:20",
"content": "I’m not sure “non-perturbative” is a good description of their system, but it seems reasonable. I just wonder about the necessary control systems to implement this",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130705",
"author": "metalman",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T10:25:43",
"content": "the only successful model of fusion energy, which I power my house from, use’s gravity for plasma containment and of course the heat to generate it at enourmous pressure.but unfortunately all the atempts at magnetic confinement are counfounded by the weak, but pervasive presence of a (so called)1G field.the operational system I am useing has an absoultely perfect 3 dimensionaly symetric gravitational containment system, and is stable over very extended time periodsthe key bieng perfect symetry when dealing with anything as squirly as plasma, and is likely impossible to achive in the presence of an asymetric gravitational fieldie: gravity has zero latency, whereras all of the scheams involve some sort of “feedback” and will never be fast enough to play plasma whackamole",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130726",
"author": "Winston",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T11:34:57",
"content": "And you won’t be around billions of years from now when it evaporates the oceans and then (possibly) engulfs the Earth, so why not take advantage of it while you can?",
"parent_id": "8130705",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130816",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:09:06",
"content": "and is likely impossible to achive in the presence of an asymetric gravitational fieldWell, this rules out all of reality.",
"parent_id": "8130705",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130884",
"author": "PerniciousSnit",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T19:04:34",
"content": "That’s some spherical cow thinking right there!",
"parent_id": "8130705",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130727",
"author": "Winston",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T11:37:22",
"content": "Jun 23, 2021End of the LineWhy is Fusion Power is Always 50 Years Away?https://www.engineering.com/why-is-fusion-power-is-always-50-years-away/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130764",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T13:49:18",
"content": "And around 2010 there was a breakthrough in magnetic field strength. Fusion return is proportional to the fourth power of the magnetic field strength, so the new magnets allow for less pressure and time (for the same return), making the new designs feasible.The MIT people behind the breakthrough started a company, they’re currently building an overunity proof-of-concept reactor in Devons, MA and are so certain that their system will work that they have already purchased land in Virginia and are going through the (long and involved) regulatory process to build a fusion powergen plant there.Their demonstration plant (Devons) should see first spark by the end of next year, and Virginia should be operating in the early 2030’s.https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/06/climate/nuclear-fusion-commonwealth-tokamak-breakthroughhttps://cfs.energy/So… more like five years away.",
"parent_id": "8130727",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130836",
"author": "Snarkenstein",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:55:30",
"content": "Is that you, Steven Wright?",
"parent_id": "8130764",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,538.725621
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/20/working-on-open-source-high-speed-ethernet-switch/
|
Working On Open-Source High-Speed Ethernet Switch
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"FPGA",
"hardware",
"Network Hacks"
] |
[
"ethernet switch",
"fpga",
"high speed",
"open source",
"XCKU5P"
] |
Our hacker [Andrew Zonenberg]
reports in
on his open-source high-speed Ethernet switch. He hasn’t finished yet, but progress has been made.
If you were wondering what might be involved in a high-speed Ethernet switch implementation look no further. He’s been working on this project, on and off, since 2012. His design now includes a dizzying array of parts. [Andrew] managed to snag some XCKU5P FPGAs for cheap, paying two cents in the dollar, and having access to this fairly high-powered hardware affected the project’s direction.
You might be familiar with [Andrew Zonenberg] as we have heard from him before. He’s the guy who gave us the
glscopeclient
, which is now
ngscopeclient
.
As perhaps you know, when he says in his report that he is an “experienced RTL engineer”, he is talking about Register-Transfer Level, which is an abstraction layer used by hardware description languages, such as Verilog and VHDL, which are used to program FPGAs. When he says “RTL” he’s
not
talking about Resistor-Transistor Logic (an ancient method of developing digital hardware) or the equally ancient line of Realtek Ethernet controllers such as the
RTL8139
.
When it comes to open-source software you can usually get a copy at no cost. With open-source hardware, on the other hand, you might find yourself needing to fork out for some very expensive bits of kit. High speed is still expensive! And… proprietary, for now. If you’re looking to implement Ethernet hardware
today
, you will have to stick with
something slower
. Otherwise, stay tuned, and watch this space.
| 17
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130590",
"author": "k1io",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T23:51:32",
"content": "https://github.com/the-aerospace-corporation/satcat5is another good project to look at with regards to soft Ethernet switches.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130594",
"author": "Andrew Zonenberg",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T00:03:42",
"content": "Yep it’s a similar idea targeting the much lower end for in-chassis networking.My design is aimed at being competitive with e.g. a Cisco C9300L-48T-4G (1U, non PoE, 48x 1G edge ports) except I’m putting in dual 25G rather than quad 10G uplinks and omitting a lot of the firmware bells and whistles I don’t need (802.1x, IGMP, etc).I just want port VLANs, 802.1q, probably 802.3ad on the uplinks eventually, maybe some basic ACLs eventually, ability to force speed/duplex, TDR cable testing, performance counters, probably span analysis eventually, and SSH management – on a dedicated RGMII port that is (by design) not bridged to the fabric so you can have completely isolated management if you want.",
"parent_id": "8130590",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130599",
"author": "Andrew Zonenberg",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T01:08:34",
"content": "There’s nothing proprietary about the design other than the things the FPGA vendor doesn’t share. All of the gateware and board designs are public (https://github.com/azonenberg/latentred) although I may not have linked them in that particular blog.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130700",
"author": "Iván Stepaniuk",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T10:03:23",
"content": "Great work! In your opinion, what is the current state of fully open source FPGA toolchains and their supported target devices?",
"parent_id": "8130599",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130706",
"author": "Andrew Zonenberg",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T10:27:49",
"content": "Sorry, I should have clarified that I meant on the RTL side. I’m still using the Xilinx tools for synthesis and P&R, although it’s the free edition (this is the largest FPGA supported by said free edition).I’m 100% open on the RTL other than using the Xilinx logic analyzer IP for debug (which won’t be in the final shipped firmware obviously). Most notably I amnotusing the transceivers wizard; I’ve RE’d enough of the undocumented black box parameters that I can run 10Gbase-R and QSGMII using raw GTYE4_CHANNEL and GTYE4_COMMON primitive instantiations and some simple wrappers around them.It’s been a while since I’ve played with the open tools. I love the idea, but none of them are both mature enough and have good enough support for large/high end parts to be useful to me yet. Give it a few years maybe.",
"parent_id": "8130700",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130799",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T15:19:23",
"content": "“Give it a few years maybe.”I mean, not likely, not for stuff like this. The vendor controls the hardware, and when you’re working literally at the bare-metal level it’s just not really worth it to try to RE it. Especially because for some of this stuff Xilinx just patches hardware bugs in RTL and never bothers documenting stuff because they don’t have to support anything other than their own hardware.",
"parent_id": "8130706",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130812",
"author": "Andrew Zonenberg",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:04:56",
"content": "I’m aware of some of this – the GTY CPLL has a silicon errata where you have to measure the output frequency, see if it’s in range, and if not then poke some undocumented registers semi-randomly, reset it, and try again until it works.I’m not using the transceivers wizard and haven’t implemented the workaround in my wrapper yet so for now I’m just using the QPLL. This design can be completely achieved with the QPLL only so I’m in no rush.",
"parent_id": "8130799",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130875",
"author": "Andrew Zonenberg",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T18:48:34",
"content": "Also there is a lot of really good bitstream RE work going on, e.g.https://github.com/prjunnamed/prjcombine/. But there’s a long road from “understanding the bitstream” to having a production quality shippable F/OSS EDA tool suite. I expect it to happen, but not right away.",
"parent_id": "8130799",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130658",
"author": "Oliver",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T07:24:42",
"content": "While I fully get the foss sentiment, using propriatery tools and 4k chips makes it not really something worthwhile ‘for the rest oF us’.I dont know the purchaseabulitt of realteknchips, and they are histile ish with NDA’s (but plenty of leaks) the rtl8k and rtl9k series do pretty much this, at a fraction of the cost. Also work is happening on openwrt for them (i have paused my work for the time being on them though).The chip is closed source of course, but all software is open. I doubt this is different with fgpa’s vy much, as theres also propiatery IP blocks there …But I do much appreciate the effort. We need more dedicated hacjers :)As for scopes, the mso5k had its source leaked so lots of hacking possible there!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130818",
"author": "Andrew Zonenberg",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:10:58",
"content": "The alternative is to use switch ASICs where you have to sign an NDA and have a volume sales agreement to even get a datasheet. I started this project because going FPGA-based was the only way to have a properly OSH friendly switch, at least until open ASIC PDKs reach the point that gigabit SERDES IPs and large dies and FCBGA packages are viable. I don’t want to use NDA’d parts even if the stuff has leaked because I don’t want to give any money to people encouraging such business practices.And while the chip is close to $4K at Digikey, they can be had much cheaper if you don’t mind a sketchy overseas source that’s probably selling you a reball. LCSC currently has them for around $100 in qty 1 down to $85 in volume. At that point for a DIY/low volume build, the ten-layer PCB is going to be the dominant cost (probably high 3 digits USD for a batch even at my usual Shenzhen fab, close to $10K in the USA).",
"parent_id": "8130658",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130697",
"author": "Antron Argaiv",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T10:00:19",
"content": "Interesting project, but the last two switches I bought for my home networking closet were around $29 on Goodwill. 48 port gigabit POE rack mount switches. I think they were Netgear, but I also have a couple of HP ProCurves. When the big corps go to 10G on the workfloor, they recycle this perfectly good high quality gear. And I feel better that I have given it a second life as opposed to a trip to the recycler.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130708",
"author": "Andrew Zonenberg",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T10:30:46",
"content": "I’ve been using $50 ebay’d Ciscos for a long time, but they don’t have 10/25G uplinks and I don’t exactly trust them as much as I’d like to given they weren’t purchased new. I had been planning to replace them “any year now” with my own designs since about 2015 (when they were already starting to get old) but I ended up taking longer to get to this point than I had hoped.The end goal of this project is mostly for fun and learning, but also to have a switch that I can trust as completely as possible without fabbing my own fabric ASIC, decapping a few at random, and diffing SEM images against the GDS.",
"parent_id": "8130697",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130710",
"author": "Andrew Zonenberg",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T10:33:21",
"content": "Also I forgot to mention, power is the other huge consideration.My current Ciscos pull about 150W each for 24 gigabit ports. Multiply by four and that’s a fair bit of juice.My FPGA design is targeting sub 50W for 48 ports, a 6x reduction in power. Cutting ~500W off my power bill will save me something like $70 a month in lab operating costs and substantially prolong my run time on UPS/generator during power outages, to say nothing of the environmental benefits.",
"parent_id": "8130708",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130923",
"author": "Damntech",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T20:57:17",
"content": "Aside from the cool factor of your DIY effort, that is a very good point. At work I use this Cisco equipment. At home I just can’t, the closet gets too hot. I really don’t need any of the functions of a modern Cisco switch at home and the power bill is recognizably higher. I just use a cheap unmanageable 10/100/1000 switch and a couple poe injectors, and a programmable power bar, from Digital Loggers. Of course, I would love to have the functions of lldp and programmability emm but at the end of the day it isn’t worth the bill for me. Awesome job, there.",
"parent_id": "8130710",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130746",
"author": "Antron Argaiv",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T12:48:05",
"content": "Designing for learning is a very valid reason. Since I don’t need the 10G uplink capability, I’m happy with my surplus switches. I have found they’re more resistant to induced voltage on the inputs from nearby lightning strikes than the consumer grade ones I’ve had. I live on top of a hill and we occasionally get strikes that are close enough to fry my garage door openers. The commercial grade switches seem to actually have protection on the individual ports, as opposed to the consumer grade switches which blow ports when you look at them sideways!When you mentioned the 150W for the PoE ports…surely that is only when they’re actually pulling PoE current? I should measure the line current my HPs pull. The only PoE devices I have currently are some SIP phones I have been playing with.",
"parent_id": "8130708",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130821",
"author": "Andrew Zonenberg",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:14:25",
"content": "No. These switches are not PoE capable (I have a separate injector for my APs and cameras). They pull ~150W actual measured load on the UPS just sitting there pushing packets under real world load levels.As compared to my design which is aiming at circa 50W TDP rather than typical usage (all ports lit up, most things at heavy load, etc).My line cards should be fairly robust, they have ESD224s (12 kV contact / 15 kV air gap discharge rating) on all of the diff pairs plus whatever protection is in the PHY itself.",
"parent_id": "8130746",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132416",
"author": "boognevatz",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T14:59:39",
"content": "I have many homemade wired sensors around the house. They typically use an RP2350 microcontroller and a Wiznet W5500 Ethernet chip. All are connected via 100 Mbit Ethernet, using 4 wires for data and 4 wires for 24V power. Each device consumes around 20 mA at 24V.My current idea is to place one of these sensors in front of my NAS, so the NAS can remain powered off most of the time, but can be turned on remotely via the RP2350 + W5500 setup. However, I’m stuck with a wiring problem. I want to switch from 100 Mbit Ethernet with separate 24V wiring to 1 Gbit Ethernet with PoE. I have no idea how to do this elegantly. Using relays is a definite no-go in the Ethernet world.Could your switch somehow be adapted for this use case? My ultimate goal would be to reduce power consumption to below 1 mA at 24V, ideally by being able to switch off the W5500 when it’s not needed.",
"parent_id": "8130821",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,538.877267
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/20/stylus-synth-should-have-used-a-555-and-did/
|
Stylus Synth Should Have Used A 555– And Did!
|
Tyler August
|
[
"Musical Hacks"
] |
[
"555 audio",
"class B",
"NE555",
"stylophone"
] |
For all that “should have used a 555” is a bit of a meme around here, there’s some truth to it. The humble 555 is a wonderful tool in the right hands. That’s why it’s wonderful to see this all-analog stylus synth project by EE student [DarcyJ]
bringing the 555 out for the new generation.
The project is heavily inspired by the vintage stylophone, but has some neat tweaks. A capacitor bank means multiple octaves are available, and using a ladder of trim pots instead of fixed resistors makes every note tunable. [Darcy] of course included the vibrato function of the original, but no, he did not use a 555 for that, too. He used an RC oscillator. He put a trim pot on that, too, to control the depth of vibrato, which we don’t recall seeing on the original stylophone.
The writeup is very high quality and could be recommended to anyone just getting started in analog (or analogue) electronics– not only does [Darcy] explain his design process, he also shows his pratfalls and mistakes, like in the various revisions he went through before discovering the push-pull amplifier that ultimately powers the speaker.
Since each circuit is separately laid out and indicated on the PCB [Darcy] designed in KiCad for this project. Between that and everything being thru-hole, it seems like [Darcy] has the makings of a lovely training kit. If you’re interested in rolling your own, the files are on
GitHub under a CERN-OHL-S v2 license,
and don’t forget to check out the demo video embedded below to hear it in action.
Of course, making music on the 555 is hardly a new hack.
We’ve seen everything from accordions
to
paper-tape player pianos
to
squonkboxes over the years
. Got another use for the 555? Let us know about it, in the
inevitable shill for our tip line you all knew was coming
.
| 8
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130531",
"author": "blue67",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T20:52:37",
"content": "“[Darcy] of course included the vibrato function of the original, and yes, he used a 555 for that, too.”The only use of 555 is for the main oscillator. The vibrato is driven by an RC oscillator, not another 555.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130567",
"author": "m",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T22:22:54",
"content": "Should have used a 556.[https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/na556.pdf]",
"parent_id": "8130531",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130586",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T23:47:24",
"content": "I have no idea what caused that brain fart, and no excuse. It’s not only in the documentation, it’s silkscreened right there on the board!I’ve fixed it.",
"parent_id": "8130531",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130610",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T02:23:26",
"content": "Should have used a CEM3340 or that type of synth chip then you would have sine and other waveforms instead of just square. Nonetheless a good project. For once a simple musical project that can be tuned properly ET or mean. No space between the sharps makes it hard to do a chromatic glissando, should be equal width at the rear.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130659",
"author": "Robert Langer (tangible waves)",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T07:28:01",
"content": "Not that easy, because the CEM3340 requires +/-12 V supply… Would be a different project actually.",
"parent_id": "8130610",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130703",
"author": "Buy Your Group Some Synth Chips",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T10:13:39",
"content": "These chips are hard to get in small quantities, even the clones. The few stores that sell them still have relatively expensive shipping compared to the item. They’re doing their best, but still there’s a threshold not crossed.If you, yes you reading this, have enough money, please buy a batch of synth chips and bring them to your local hacker space, ham radio club, etc, and let people take some if they commit to at least trying to get it working on a breadboard. You can make parts available to the people who will experiment with them. Otherwise we’ll be stuck with jellybean parts.",
"parent_id": "8130610",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130718",
"author": "PinheadBE",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T11:12:08",
"content": "Would have been a totally project. I think the goal here was to put a 555 to good use, IMHO",
"parent_id": "8130610",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130786",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T14:59:21",
"content": "TouchTone555 is a clever name.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,540.459395
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/21/jettison-sails-for-electric-propulsion/
|
Jettison Sails For Electric Propulsion
|
Bryan Cockfield
|
[
"Transportation Hacks"
] |
[
"battery",
"boat",
"canopy",
"conversion",
"electric",
"hobie",
"sail",
"solar"
] |
Although there are some ferries and commercial boats that use a multi-hull design, the most recognizable catamarans by far are those used for sailing. They have a number of advantages over monohull boats including higher stability, shallower draft, more deck space, and often less drag. Of course, these advantages aren’t exclusive to sailboats, and plenty of motorized recreational craft are starting to take advantage of this style as well. It’s also fairly straightforward to remove the sails and add powered locomotion as well,
as this electric catamaran demonstrates
.
Not only is this catamaran electric, but it’s solar powered as well. With the mast removed, the solar panels can be fitted to a canopy which provides 600 watts of power as well as shade to both passengers. The solar panels charge
two 12V 100ah LifePo4 batteries and run a pair of motors. That’s another benefit of using a sailing cat as an electric boat platform: the rudders can be removed and a pair of motors installed without any additional drilling in the hulls, and the boat can be steered with differential thrust, although this boat also makes allowances for pointing the motors in different directions as well.
In addition to a highly polished electric drivetrain, the former sailboat adds some creature comforts as well, replacing the trampoline with a pair of seats and adding an electric hoist to raise and lower the canopy. As energy density goes up and costs come down for solar panels, more and more watercraft are taking advantage of this style of propulsion as well. In the past we’ve seen
solar kayaks
,
solar houseboats
, and
custom-built catamarans
(instead of conversions) as well.
| 32
| 8
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131094",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T06:19:40",
"content": "Simply using the wind is way more eco-friendly. I understand why it’s desirable but I’m against the concept of making things less eco-friendly than when they started.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131104",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T07:02:47",
"content": "I never thought about this before but it kinda makes sense. Propellers do disturb the natural flora and fauna more than sailboats would. Aren’t there computerised sailboats which can adjust the mast direction and everything?",
"parent_id": "8131094",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131123",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T08:22:22",
"content": "There’s also the ecological impact of manufacturing the electornics, motors, solar panels etc. Far more damaging.",
"parent_id": "8131104",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131211",
"author": "Jelle",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T14:48:03",
"content": "there is also the ecological impact of armchair ecologists blabbering on hackaday…I’m looking forward to your ecological footprint analysis of producing sailing gear vs electric gear. As handwritten manuscript will be accepted as I cannot phantom you using a computer, let alone one connected to the internets.",
"parent_id": "8131123",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131178",
"author": "Lewis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T12:51:45",
"content": "There are rotor sailboats that use the magnus effect instead of sails. A few large cargo ships use them to supplement their diesel engines to reduce emissions an fuel costs without the labor of keeping sails trimmed.",
"parent_id": "8131104",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131417",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T06:21:58",
"content": "“Aren’t there computerised sailboats which can adjust the mast direction and everything?”Rigid Wingsails like the Walker Zephyr can run on autopilot. Their single manned “fly by wire” capability is one of the big advantages over fabric sails.https://youtu.be/yZhRwgjgVEg?si=vq57mOg2IpEtKGFv",
"parent_id": "8131104",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131118",
"author": "lamalas",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T07:44:01",
"content": "How many sailing ships have you seen in narrow rivers/canals like this one? Not to mention, the riverbanks are full of trees shielding the wind (if there is any).",
"parent_id": "8131094",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131129",
"author": "Daniel Dodson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T09:17:00",
"content": "And low bridges to pass under. I saw a sailing club in Cookham on the Thames and they were sometimes having to tac every second almost. The Thames is a lot wider than most canals. So trying to sail up a canal really isn’t practical even with the most pointy boats.I think we are missing that this boat is now accessing water ways that it previously could not",
"parent_id": "8131118",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131410",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T05:56:22",
"content": "I tried that once. Lots and lots of tacking back and forth with very little headway to show for it. People on the shoreline laughed at us. I didn’t try it a second time",
"parent_id": "8131118",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8184111",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2025-09-25T11:29:37",
"content": "Exactly. It might be killer combo to have solar energy for maneuvering in tight spaces and daily commutes combined with sails for longer trips on open waters…",
"parent_id": "8131118",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131138",
"author": "JohnU",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T10:18:54",
"content": "There’s multiple good reasons we don’t use sails these days – and for a lot of inland traffic they were never a good idea – canal barges used to be pulled by horses before steam and then internal combustion came along.",
"parent_id": "8131094",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131105",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T07:06:43",
"content": "The masculine (or feminine) urge to buy a boat, put enough solar panels on it to make the boat run forever and have enough spare power to run a water desalinator and a stove etc. Then I will travel the world’s ocean, subsisting on seafood that I catch on the way. Seeing new places and meeting new people and probably having to fight pirates.Realistically I’ll spend another evening on my couch though",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131127",
"author": "Ali",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T08:59:48",
"content": "subsisting on seafood that I catch on the wayA fine plan, except you’ll quickly start suffering from scurvy.probably having to fight piratesNot romantic troublemakers as portrayed by Johnny Depp, butpeoplewith average IQ of 60, armed with rusty AKs and RPGs. I think I’d rather take a prostate exam than get anywhere near them.",
"parent_id": "8131105",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131258",
"author": "Steven-X",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T17:06:07",
"content": "Typical gender-studies style comment in response? His comment was hyperbole, after all.Nevertheless, I’ll show myself out….But to your point, the pirates he is speaking of would have a slightly higher IQ, but I’m not sure why you are defending them as they would be a threat to someone on a solar-powered vessel on a cloudy day. With my app I can tell you which day we have rain based on my energy production.",
"parent_id": "8131127",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131266",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T18:04:42",
"content": "Some people have low IQ because of developmental problems, which results in other issues like not being able to tie your own shoelaces. Other people can eat their own food and dress their own clothes, but they have low IQ because they’re simply extremely dumb.There’s some claims that 80% of you intelligence is inherited and 20% is due to upbringing. That means if you’re inherently low average and have no upbringing or education to speak of, you’ll end up with an adult IQ equivalent of 60-70.",
"parent_id": "8131127",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131267",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T18:06:46",
"content": "Also add drugs and alcohol in the mix, and you get the average pirate.",
"parent_id": "8131266",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131483",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T10:57:20",
"content": "Well if you are meeting new folks all the time it rather implies stocking up on your lime juice when you pull into port shouldn’t be a massive task, and one barrel of that would go a very very long way to preventing scurvy.Also has to be said pirates these days are very very unlikely to bother with such a small boat that doesn’t scream ‘I’m a billionaire out on a jolly’ – just no money in it…",
"parent_id": "8131127",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131110",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T07:20:16",
"content": "I do wonder how well flexible solar panels would preform if they were used as a sail, something semirigid, similar to what you might see on a surfboard, perhaps. [ I don’t pretend to know how to surf. ] No doubt probably a poor compromise on performance for both methods of propulsion.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131212",
"author": "Jelle",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T14:52:38",
"content": "solar cells themselves are semi flexible, they would not like (=break) it to be mounted on a flexible sail. Mounted on sort of rigid wingsail would be no problem, but then you get the problem of stowing/turning off that sail when you don’t use it.",
"parent_id": "8131110",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131346",
"author": "krt",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T23:52:08",
"content": "What about long “strips” of panels, that left-right fanfold to stow :?",
"parent_id": "8131212",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131394",
"author": "Mitchell",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T04:35:01",
"content": "Worked for a while on one of these boats, the concept was pretty solid, between wind, solar, batteries, backup generator, and a nice system to automatically adjust between them, it could move quite fast with surprisingly little generator use.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCIUS_Technology#/media/File:Solar_Sailor.jpgIt made for a fun programming challenge at the time automating the sails for maximum energy in whatever form was available",
"parent_id": "8131346",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131411",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T06:00:23",
"content": "I had the same thought. If not flexible, you could make them a rigid airfoil shape like some modern sail concepts use. Still probably a less-than-ideal design for both",
"parent_id": "8131110",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131489",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T11:05:08",
"content": "Flexible solar panels is IMO a bit of a misnomer really – technically you can flex them, even a few times but repeated flexing as you’d get windsurfing is going to destroy them pretty quick IMO.I’d suggest if solar sailing is the goal in mind you don’t want flexible at all, but very rigid, probably composite aerofoils with solar in them (and I think for added durability and simplicity I might go for thermal solar (thin pipes worked into the carbon fibre wing as you go seems easier to make a good strong aerofoil and energy capture surface) and leave the electric generation to regular PV on the hull or a Stirling engine powered by that heated fluid). A few decent fixed wings will catch the wind nicely, might even be more efficient that a sail – the tricky bit I’d suggest is stowing them when you don’t want to go anywhere and control of your speed.",
"parent_id": "8131110",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131175",
"author": "Lewis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T12:47:38",
"content": "I do a bit of recreational sailing. Mostly racing dinghys less than 20 feet in length, but bigger boats too. We’re starting to see even larger boats with electric or deisel-electric hybrid auxillary propulsion for when there’s no wind or manuvering is constrained. This is true for both displacement hulls and multi-hulls like cats. Results are mixed, but it looks like that’s the direction things are going. Electric drives are less about replacing sails and more about replacing that stinky, expensive diesel or the loud, gas powered outboard on smaller boats. The latter is very appealing to me because safely storing gasoline on a boat is annoying. I can see how the impact of props could be greather than that of sails. In a sailboat, dolphins will sometimes swim right up to me. It’s nearly silent and sailboats don’t usually plane off. They move along at their hull speed which disturbs things a lot less. That’s not so with most powerboats.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131234",
"author": "Schobi",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T16:29:09",
"content": "I love the idea of not having to refuel.How far and often can you travel in good weather? Say – every weekend for a few hours, and recharge during the week? Or 3 hours per day, every day with nice weather?",
"parent_id": "8131175",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131364",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T02:09:27",
"content": "haha the whole point of a sailboat is that you can travel infinity in good weather and bad without refueling. For a weekend outing the couple hours of into and out of the marina is sufficient.",
"parent_id": "8131234",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131180",
"author": "Reluctant Purist",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T12:53:18",
"content": "I apologize for being “that guy,” but this post is an extreme example of a trend that’s been bothering me for some time now. Using the same phrase in adjacent sentences is lazy writing and poor style, and it seems to occur frequently in HaD posts. This particular post uses the phrase “as well” no fewer than EIGHT times over the course of three brief paragraphs. If authors would just take a moment to read what they’re about to post, redundancies like this (along with various typographical errors and misstatements) should be apparent, and simple to remedy./rant",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131278",
"author": "Garrut",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T18:52:53",
"content": "A lot of lake, canal and small river can be the playground for this type of unit. Already using 2 electric troller motor for restricted aera, i’ve tried in canals and work pretty well . I’m logging the sun power to estimate the needed solar panels for direct consomption for an unit like this one equiped with living needed structure.iFor this one, i like the idea, and the fact it’s an usuable real thing, but way too much hull for a two seater.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131281",
"author": "Garrut",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T19:06:15",
"content": "Ah and i should have mentioned this give some performance numbers on a real thing. Really good thing.",
"parent_id": "8131278",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131367",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T02:25:48",
"content": "Haven’t clicked it, but is this Tech Ingredients?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131368",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T02:26:33",
"content": "Nope, but wasn’t he working on this a few years back?",
"parent_id": "8131367",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8134058",
"author": "SolGato",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T01:30:43",
"content": "A few things about SolGato with respect to the comments.The hulls that were used had been abandoned and were destined for the dump.Motoring on electric power is the next best thing to sailing as far as lack of noise and smell, and the ability to be one with nature.SolGato is a 5-6 passenger max boat with room for additional passengers to sit or lounge on the forward trampoline.Hull length has a direct affect on hull speed, so a longer boat like this with narrow hulls not old increases efficiency while providing ample volume to float a lot of weight, but it also allows for a higher semi-planing hull speed.This is why SolGato is able to reach good cruising speeds using only the power generated by the limited amount of solar it carries, which brings me to the use of flexible panels.Flexible panels have one huge advantage -weight.Not only do they reduce the overall weight of the vessel which reduces wetted surface area and increases carrying capacity and efficiency, but they also allow the center of gravity to be lower which reduces pitching and hobby horsing in a sea state.Also worth mentioning- the top has independent front and rear linear actuators which allow the top to be angled into a wedge to reduce windage when operating in strong winds or heading into rain, and they also allow for solar tracking and the ability to better harness early and late day sunlight.Thanks for the feature, discussion and interest in SolGato.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,541.208388
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/21/gene-editing-spiders-to-produce-red-fluorescent-silk/
|
Gene Editing Spiders To Produce Red Fluorescent Silk
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Science"
] |
[
"CRISPR",
"spider silk",
"spiders"
] |
Regular vs gene-edited spider silk with a fluorescent gene added. (Credit:
Santiago-Rivera et al.
2025, Angewandte Chemie)
Continuing the scientific theme of adding fluorescent proteins to everything that moves, this time spiders found themselves at the pointy end of the CRISPR-Cas9 injection needle.
In a study
by researchers at the University of Bayreuth, common house spiders (
Parasteatoda tepidariorum
) had a gene inserted for a red fluorescent protein in addition to having an existing gene for eye development disabled. This was the first time that spiders have been subjected to this kind of gene-editing study, mostly due to how fiddly they are to handle as well as their genome duplication characteristics.
In
the research paper
in
Angewandte Chemie
the methods and results are detailed, with the knock-out approach of the
sine oculis
(C1) gene being tried first as a proof of concept. The CRISPR solution was injected into the ovaries of female spiders, whose offspring then carried the mutation. With clear deficiencies in eye development observable in this offspring, the researchers moved on to adding the red fluorescent protein gene with another CRISPR solution, which targets the major ampullate gland where the silk is produced.
Ultimately, this research serves to demonstrate that it is possible to not only study spiders in more depth these days using tools like CRISPR-Cas9, but also that it is possible to customize and study spider silk production.
| 15
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131070",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T03:03:57",
"content": "Now we just need silkworms to produce precolored silk.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131319",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T21:42:46",
"content": "Even better make them produce spider silk.",
"parent_id": "8131070",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131073",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T03:28:29",
"content": "This is especially creepy after having read Tchaikovsky’sChildren of Time",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131079",
"author": "LookAtDaShinyShiny",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T03:51:03",
"content": "or read/seen anything to do with spiderman…",
"parent_id": "8131073",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131087",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T05:04:13",
"content": "This reminds me, whatever happened to the work in making spider silk thread mass-produceable?I thought we were on our way to making spider silk shirts and ultralight and strong ropes but I haven’t seen that getting talked about.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131106",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T07:11:08",
"content": "I remember seeing news about it in the mid 2000s. It could’ve been a cool new type of fabric. Maybe the scientists gave up?",
"parent_id": "8131087",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131121",
"author": "hmmmm...",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T07:57:56",
"content": "Direct spider silk production was never going to be commercially viable.Other experiments like the spidergoat project struggled to find a balance between production costs and a demand that really only went so far as “ooh that would be cool” internet comments.Its hard to compete with the likes of UHMWPE and other such synthetics.",
"parent_id": "8131087",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131349",
"author": "TimT",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T00:29:30",
"content": "It’s scheduled to be in production as soon as they finish commercial fusion reactors…",
"parent_id": "8131087",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131093",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T06:07:02",
"content": "Those spiders are not going to be happy when they don’t catch any flies due to their webs being easily spotted.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131119",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T07:49:19",
"content": "Only if we edit fireflies to glow UV light…",
"parent_id": "8131093",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131193",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T13:37:34",
"content": "Why disable their eye development?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131259",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T17:16:49",
"content": "Inferring from the context of the article, I would guess that it’s because missing/malformed eyes were easy to detect. This allowed them to be confident that the gene editing system was working before they tried something that might fail for other reasons.",
"parent_id": "8131193",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132349",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T10:59:21",
"content": "So they can’t see that their silk is red, freak out and stop producing more.",
"parent_id": "8131193",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131340",
"author": "Marco",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T23:24:27",
"content": "What could possibly go wrong with that…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131491",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T11:12:45",
"content": "I remember a time when gene editing was deemed highly dangerous to the human race and nature at large, and therefore confined to high security bio labs. Now that we’re routinely running genetic experiments on humans in the wild, the fear seems to have vanished. Or is it just the prospects of making truckloads of money wiping the concerns away?I think the risk of unexpected outcomes of GMO spreading in our environment is present more than ever and it should be discussed throughout society, not just the academic part.I know it’s probably too late as everybody thinks that we have finally understood genetic engineering. However, the part that we don’t understand still outweighs the part that we do understand by some orders of magnitude, especially the systemic balance of species in nature.As a well aged vintage person I can sleep relatively well but i do worry for the generations to come.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,540.660547
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/21/high-voltage-for-extreme-ozone/
|
High Voltage For Extreme Ozone
|
Ian Bos
|
[
"High Voltage"
] |
[
"electrochemistry",
"high voltage",
"hyperspace pirate",
"ozone"
] |
Don’t you hate it when making your DIY X-ray machine you make an uncomfortable amount of ozone gas? No? Well [Hyperspace Pirate] did, which made him come up
with an interesting idea
. While creating a high voltage supply for his
very own X-ray machine
, the high voltage corona discharge produced a very large amount of ozone. However, normally ozone is produced using lower voltage, smaller gaps, and large surface areas. Naturally, this led [Hyperspace Pirate] to investigate if a higher voltage method is effective at producing ozone.
Using a custom 150kV converter, [Hyperspace Pirate] was able to test the large gap method compared to the lower voltage method (dielectric barrier discharge). An ammonia reaction with the ozone allowed our space buccaneer to test which method was able to produce more ozone, as well as some variations of the designs.
Experimental Setup with ozone production in the left jar and nitrate in the right.
Large 150kV gaps proved slightly effective but with no large gains, at least not compared to the dielectric barrier method. Of which, glass as the dielectric leads straight to holes, and HTPE gets cooked, but in the end, he was able to produce a somewhat sizable amount of ammonium nitrate. The best design included two test tubes filled with baking soda and their respective electrodes. Of course, this comes with the addition of a very effective ozone generator.
While this project is very thorough, [Hyperspace Pirate] himself admits the extreme dangers of high ozone levels, even getting close enough to LD50 levels for worry throughout out his room. This goes for when playing with high voltage in general kids! At the end of the day even with potential asthma risk, this is a pretty neat project that should probably be left to [Hyperspace Pirate]. If you want to check out other projects from a distance you should look over to this
20kW microwave
to cook even the most rushed meals!
Thanks to [Mahdi Naghavi] for the Tip!
| 3
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131051",
"author": "Frank Grub",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T01:36:09",
"content": "a magnet is typically used with this method to create a ultra-fast rotating spark that covers a large area.one electrode is a point on the center of the other electrode which is the shape of a ring.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131077",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T03:41:51",
"content": "I wonder would adding a zeolite based oxygen concentrator, help improve the efficiency, or make it far worse.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131273",
"author": "Michał Kobuszewski",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T18:24:08",
"content": "Thank you Ian for covering this! Hyperspace Pirate is a channel that never disappoints. The calm and methodic execution of his experiments meets his surprising tendency to ignore lethal risks!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,540.609473
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/21/honey-i-blew-up-the-line-follower-robot/
|
Honey, I Blew Up The Line Follower Robot
|
Heidi Ulrich
|
[
"Microcontrollers",
"News",
"Robots Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] |
[
"cart",
"crazy cart",
"ir",
"ir sensor",
"line following",
"mega pro mini",
"ride",
"robot",
"servo"
] |
Some readers may recall building a line-following robot during their school days. Involving some IR LEDs, perhaps a bit of LEGO, and plenty of trial-and-error, it was fun on a tiny scale. Now imagine that—but rideable. That’s exactly what [Austin Blake] did, scaling up a classroom robotics staple into a full-size vehicle you can actually sit on.
The robot uses a whopping 32 IR sensors to follow a black line across a concrete workshop floor, adjusting its path using a steering motor salvaged from a power wheelchair. An Arduino Mega Pro Mini handles the logic, sending PWM signals to a DIY servo. The chassis consists of a modified
Crazy Cart
, selected for its absurdly tight turning radius. With each prototype iteration, [Blake] improved sensor precision and motor control, turning a bumpy ride into a smooth glide.
The IR sensor array, which on the palm-sized vehicle consisted of just a handful of components, evolved into a PCB-backed bar nearly 0.5 meters wide. Potentiometer tuning was a fiddly affair, but worth it. Crashes? Sure. But the kind that makes you grin like your teenage self. If it looks like fun, you could either build one yourself, or upgrade
a similar LEGO project
.
| 6
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8131007",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T23:28:05",
"content": "Reminds me of those cars on tracks in amusement parks.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131038",
"author": "0xDEADBEEF",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T00:28:54",
"content": "Buddy, it has been done before, it is called Tesla Autopilot, it follows the line straight into gore points.https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2024/04/15/tesla-settles-lawsuit-over-2018-mountain-view-crash-that-killed-apple-engineer/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131056",
"author": "Leonardo",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T01:41:26",
"content": "Nothing new again…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131115",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T07:33:40",
"content": "Three dozen of sensor, PID, microcontrollers, custom PCBs…I remember making one out of wood, with LDRs and scavenged motors. No microcontroller, no 555, not a transistor. :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131336",
"author": "Tony M",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T22:38:06",
"content": "Those were the days ,weren’t they?",
"parent_id": "8131115",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8133749",
"author": "D'oh!!",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T22:45:31",
"content": "Hmm .. “blew up” sounds a bit catastrophic. Perhaps “embiggened” would serve here. It’s a perfectly cromulent word.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,540.5648
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/21/floss-weekly-episode-833-up-and-over/
|
FLOSS Weekly Episode 833: Up And Over
|
Jonathan Bennett
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] |
[
"eBPF",
"FLOSS Weekly",
"high performance computing",
"linux"
] |
This week,
Jonathan Bennett
and
Jeff Massie
chat with Tom Herbert about eBPF, really fast networking, what the future looks like for high performance computing and the Linux Kernel, and more!
https://medium.com/@tom_84912
Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show right on
our YouTube Channel
? Have someone you’d like us to interview? Let us know, or contact the guest and have them contact us!
Take a look at the schedule here
.
Direct Download
in DRM-free MP3.
If you’d rather read along,
here’s the transcript for this week’s episode
.
Places to follow the FLOSS Weekly Podcast:
Spotify
RSS
Theme music: “Newer Wave” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under
Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
| 0
| 0
|
[] | 1,760,371,540.411168
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/21/field-testing-an-antenna-using-a-field/
|
Field Testing An Antenna, Using A Field
|
Jenny List
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"Radio Hacks",
"Slider"
] |
[
"antenna",
"field test",
"RF measurement"
] |
The ARRL used to have a requirement that any antenna advertised in their publications had to have real-world measurements accompanying it, to back up any claims of extravagant performance. I’m told that nowadays they will accept computer simulations instead, but it remains true that
knowing
what your antenna does rather than just
thinking
you know what it does gives you an advantage. I was reminded of this by a recent write-up
in which the performance of a mylar sheet as a ground plane was tested at full power with a field strength meter
, because about a decade ago I set out to characterise an antenna using real-world measurements and readily available equipment. I was in a sense field testing it, so of course the first step of the process was to find a field. A real one, with cows.
Walking Round And Round A Field In The Name Of Science
A very low-tech way to make field recordings.
The process I was intending to follow was simple enough. Set up the antenna in the middle of the field, have it transmit some RF, and measure the signal strength at points along a series of radial lines away from it I’d end up with a spreadsheet, from which I could make a radial plot that would I hoped, give me a diagram showing its performance. It’s a rough and ready methodology, but given a field and a sunny afternoon, not one that should be too difficult.
I was more interested in the process than the antenna, so I picked up my trusty HB9CV two-element 144MHz antenna that I’ve stood and pointed at the ISS many times to catch SSTV transmissions. It’s made from two phased half-wave radiators, but it can be seen as something similar to a two-element Yagi array. I ran a long mains lead oput to a plastic garden table with the HB9CV attached, and set up a Raspberry Pi whose clock would produce the RF.
My receiver would be an Android tablet with an RTL-SDR receiver. That’s pretty sensitive for this purpose, so my transmitter would have to be extremely low powered. Ideally I would want no significant RF to make it beyond the boundary of the field, so I gave the Pi a resistive attenuator network designed to give an output of around 0.03 mW, or 30 μW. A quick bit of code to send my callsign as CW periodically to satisfy my licence conditions, and I was off with the tablet and a pen and paper. Walking round the field in a polar grid wasn’t as easy as it might seem, but I had a very long tape measure to help me.
A Lot Of Work To Tell Me What I Already Knew
And lo! for I have proven an HB9CV to be directional!
I ended up with a page of figures, and then a spreadsheet which I’m amused to still find in the depths of my project folder. It contains a table of angles of incidence to the antenna versus metres from the antenna, and the data points are the figure in (uncalibrated) mV that the SDR gave me for the carrier at that point. The resulting polar plot shows the performace of the antenna at each angle, and unsurprisingly I proved to myself that a HB9CV is indeed a directional antenna.
My experiment was in itself not of much use other than to prove to myself I could characterise an antenna with extremely basic equipment. But then again it’s possible that in times past this might have been a much more difficult task, so knowing I can do it at all is an interesting conclusion.
| 9
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130855",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:42:50",
"content": "These days, a better way to characterize an antenna is to put an oscillator on a drone and record the result at the antenna with a receiver. My drone tells me pretty accurately where it is for height and X-Y position, and my HF receiver can show me the signal in microvolts, so I can plot a full 3 dimensional plot. If you use a noise generator on the drone and an SDR with a spectrum display for the receiver you can get the frequency response as well.The trick is to keep the short transmit antenna on the drone properly oriented for direction and polarization, but for horizontal polarization that’s pretty easy … orient the antenna crossways on the drone and keep the drone always pointed toward the test antenna. Not as straightforward for vertical polarization since the drone doesn’t like to tilt.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130997",
"author": ".",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T22:54:43",
"content": "It would be nice where I test VHF antennas, as I use a drop-off hillside, with the other end some km away. The DUT still needs to rotate as the clear drop off is on one side only. This only makes it easier as the drone just needs to stay on one spot, or go up and down a vertical column.The real power of this idea would be for HF antennas, where the 3D pattern is important, you can’t rotate it or walk around it, and you can’t model it accurately if the actual ground is not flat, and you don’t know the resistivity.",
"parent_id": "8130855",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131043",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T01:00:49",
"content": "I actually used my drone to measure the elevation pattern of a 5 element HF wire log periodic antenna that I built for solar noise reception (check out the Radio Jove project). It was good from about 13 MHz to 30 MHz and I tilted it upward at an angle of roughly 70 degrees. It was fixed (not rotatable) so I only had to do it from one direction. I cobbled together a 9 volt crystal oscillator for 20 MHz and mounted it on the drone with a short dipole taped across the front legs under the drone. I pre-calculated the horizontal distance and vertical height in ten degree increments to keep the drone always 200 feet away from the antenna … i.e. X=200/Y=0, X=197/Y=35, X=188/Y=68, X=173/Y=100, etc and then just flew the drone to those positions while my wife recorded the signal strengths from the receiver. I compared the results to the predicted elevation pattern I got from EZNEC and it was very close.",
"parent_id": "8130997",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130968",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T22:09:19",
"content": "This guy is really having a field day.Field plot looks symmetrical, and that gives some confidence. Maybe groundwater level, soil composition or the fence far away distorts the measurements. (cloud formations?) I would start by putting the receiver far away on a long cable, then do the measurements by rotating the antenna itself, pull in a few meters of cord to get the receiver closer and repeat a few times. By rotating the antenna instead of the receiver a lot of the environmental variables are constant, and thus cancel themselves out. But of course the physical exercise would be lacking with that method.With the extra left over time, you can repeat the whole thing in another direction to double check.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131274",
"author": "IllGetMyHat",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T18:30:20",
"content": "Good radio hobbyists, like good farmers, are usually out standing in their field.",
"parent_id": "8130968",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130982",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T22:27:09",
"content": "Have any HaD editors made contact with each other over any of the amateur bands? Dan Maloney did the 50 dollar ham series I think, I assume you’re licensed as well there Jenny",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131235",
"author": "Jenny List",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T16:35:41",
"content": "Oddly not, afaik. I do have a G7 call, but I don’t use it for operating, instead I like building radios.",
"parent_id": "8130982",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131465",
"author": "Josephus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T10:06:18",
"content": "Idea: Hackaday beacon set up temporarily for WSPR. Swap out the Maidenhead location for ‘HAD’",
"parent_id": "8131235",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131630",
"author": "YO9GJX",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T19:28:28",
"content": "The place where the test is done is very relevant. Relief, vegetation, soil type, minerals in the area, humidity, earth magnetic field, etc.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,540.908754
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/21/a-new-mac-plus-motherboard-no-special-chips-required/
|
A New Mac Plus Motherboard, No Special Chips Required
|
Jenny List
|
[
"Retrocomputing"
] |
[
"68000",
"Mac Plus",
"mini-itx"
] |
The Macintosh Plus was Apple’s third version on the all-in-one Mac, and for its time it was a veritable powerhouse. If you don’t have one here in 2025 there are a variety of ways to emulate it, but should you wish for something closer to the silicon there’s now [max1zzz]’s
all-new Mac Plus motherboard in a mini-ITX form factor
to look forward to.
As with other retrocomputing communities, the classic Mac world has seen quite a few projects replacing custom parts with modern equivalents. Thus it has reverse engineered Apple PALs, a replacement for the Sony sound chip, an ATtiny based take on the Mac real-time clock, and a Pi Pico that does VGA conversion. It’s all surface mount save for the connectors and the 68000, purely because a socketed processor allows for one of the gold-and-ceramic packages to be used. The memory is soldered, but with 4 megabytes, this is well-specced for a Mac Plus.
At the moment it’s still in the prototype spin phase, but plenty of work is being done and it shows meaningful progress towards an eventual release to the world. We are impressed, and look forward to the modern takes on a Mac Plus which will inevitably come from it. While you’re waiting, amuse yourself with
a lower-spec take on an early Mac
.
Thanks [DosFox] for the tip.
| 29
| 8
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130811",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:04:36",
"content": "Sorry to be that guy but relying on a Pi Pico for VGA means it does rely on a special chip. It’s kind of a weird choice too because people have made VGA cards you can build.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130847",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:34:48",
"content": "or you could throw an FPGA at it. I’ve looked at using them to re-implement gate-for-gate a bunch of different custom apple chips.",
"parent_id": "8130811",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130899",
"author": "Bastet",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T19:56:56",
"content": "Which in turn would mean you could do the whole thing inside said FPGA, but where is the beauty in that?Besides, the Pico is an economic choice and not a bad one at that. Software is the new hardware. ;)",
"parent_id": "8130847",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130964",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T22:03:04",
"content": "You could alsonot. Sure, I could put your entire desktop computer inside a single chip too, it’s called an SoC. Apple does it a lot these days.But I could also say, “this is a gate-for-gate, pin-for-pin replica of an apple chip that actually exists.” Solder it to the same footprint on the board.",
"parent_id": "8130899",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130882",
"author": "GutBomb",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T18:59:44",
"content": "I think by “special chip” they mean some custom thing that’s been out of production for years that you’d have to gut a real Mac plus for.",
"parent_id": "8130811",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130969",
"author": "Julian Skidmore",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T22:09:26",
"content": "It’s because it has to sample the Mac Plus’s 68K bus for video accesses and then convert them to VGA. So, a standard solution won’t work while the work done on getting a PICO to do that for a Mac Plus (and SE) so that you can connect these computers to VGA is established.I was considering that when I needed to fix the blown flyback transformer on my Mac SE, but in the end I obtained a new flyback.",
"parent_id": "8130811",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131295",
"author": "Jeremy H.",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T20:05:46",
"content": "Care to define what you mean by a “standard solution”? Do you mean generating VGA using a microcontroller or something else?People have built VGA “cards” from discrete logic chips, so it’s not like doing this with a Pi Pico is the only way.",
"parent_id": "8130969",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132155",
"author": "Illrigger",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T14:47:33",
"content": "But it’s by far the cheapest and easiest way. The Pi Pico is $5, and is ubiquitous in the open source retro PC scene because it’s powerful, proven, and easy to implement. Everything from emulated retro graphic cards to sound cards to storage controllers use them. They are the backbone of the efforts to keep old PCs running in an era when parts are scarce and unreliable due to age.Making a VGA card from discrete logic chips would cost at least 20x as much, would be much more difficult to to assemble, have dozens more potential points of failure and not give any real benefit, plus relies on parts that may or may not be readily available in the future. Many open source hardware projects that were once in common use are now unable to be assembled because parts that were once common (such as 90s-era LS logic chips and memory modules) are no longer produced, and the ones you can find now are often fake or counterfeit.",
"parent_id": "8131295",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131182",
"author": "Tim McNerney",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T12:57:14",
"content": "I’m willing to cut max1zzz some slack on his VGA interface. Sure, elegance would increase by (eventually) deconstructing the RPi Pico daughter-board into a direct-soldered RP2040 chip, etc. but I don’t think incorporating a “VGA card” will make for a better story. Top “mad scientist” bragging rights are better garnered by adding a real CRT and high-voltage video section. (A good fraction of a MacPlus was its video cleverness). It still makes me smile to imagine my Mac Classic’s 512×342 pixel screen mapped onto a teeny, tiny corner of just one of the 2560×1440 LCDs in my home office.",
"parent_id": "8130811",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131504",
"author": "Frankens43",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T12:32:13",
"content": "Or.. use an adapter to an iPad 1st or 2nd gen screen..",
"parent_id": "8131182",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131293",
"author": "Jeremy H.",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T19:58:28",
"content": "No kidding.Frankly unless it was all built entirely out of the most common 74 series logic chips or even using discrete transistors, I think you could argue that “special chips” are involved. Although it’s understandable that they would use a real Motorola MC68000 given the sheer difficulty of reimplementing that using discrete logic. And it’s silly to emulate it when a chip is available.",
"parent_id": "8130811",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131339",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T23:16:20",
"content": "Perfection is the enemy of progress. It’s a working computer using a cheap off the shelf part to fix an issue. Any good engineer would see that",
"parent_id": "8130811",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131433",
"author": "rasz_pl",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T07:44:19",
"content": "There is nothing weird about Pico handling video conversion in a Macintosh. Its the cheapest easiest way to get standard output.people have made VGA cards you can buildits not a VGA card. What you see in this project is a converterhttps://github.com/guruthree/mac-se-video-converterfrom Mac mono 512×342 to 1024×768@70.",
"parent_id": "8130811",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130822",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:14:38",
"content": "I’d love it if someone does a replacement SE/30 motherboard. Small machine but could have up to 128MB RAM and supported color video via 3rd party PDS adapter (or color VGA via Pi), built in SCSI with SD adapter, and ethernet support.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130848",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:35:11",
"content": "SE/30 reloaded exists.",
"parent_id": "8130822",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132159",
"author": "Illrigger",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T14:58:40",
"content": "I think he means a reverse engineered one that you can build without the custom chips. It’s almost certainly never gonna happen given the level of integration in the SE/30 logic and the number of discrete chips on the board that are unobtainium without harvesting from a battery bombed real machine. But they said the same thing about the Amiga custom chips and we have have an FPGA A1200/A4000 now, so never say never I guess.",
"parent_id": "8130848",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130865",
"author": "Zaphraud",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T18:17:01",
"content": "The SE/30 should have been named the SEX, but Apple chickened out on the X naming convention for 68030 models up until that one..",
"parent_id": "8130822",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130930",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T21:19:12",
"content": "Yep, Apple didn’t think ahead when they decided to give some Macintosh II line a ‘030 instead of ‘020. We got IIx, IIcx, and IIfx. Then SE came along and the upgraded SEx made them give up the idea.",
"parent_id": "8130865",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130966",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T22:04:17",
"content": "Apple decided that elon musk was too cringe. (model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y…)",
"parent_id": "8130865",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130988",
"author": "Dangerous Dave",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T22:37:41",
"content": "YES PLEASE!",
"parent_id": "8130822",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130823",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:15:54",
"content": "that’s a funky use for the pico. a total hack and seems to be a reminder that you can bitbang video with alacrity on a $4 chip these days!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130824",
"author": "Michael Engel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:18:25",
"content": "There’s also a 1:1 reproduction of the Mac Plus board:https://github.com/max234252/MacPlus-ReloadedDosFox posted his progress getting the board to work on Mastodon:https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/07/26/an-engineer-has-built-a-classic-mac-plus-from-modern-partsSome of the parts for that board are a bit hard to find today. Amazingly, the components that are most difficult to find (at least here in Europe) are the angled 30-pin SIMM sockets…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130834",
"author": "max1zzz",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:47:20",
"content": "The 1:1 repro is actually one of mine too (I have a different name on because someone had already pinched my usual name) It was my first RE project (as much as you can call it that) and I never expected it to really get any interest – and it didn’t really until last year when DosFox did the legwork to get a no original parts build working, Now I keep seeing them pop up all over the place!",
"parent_id": "8130824",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131029",
"author": "Michael Engel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T23:58:01",
"content": "Yep, I didn’t notice that right away, sorry… I have one of your 1:1 repro boards here, too – great work! I just have to find some time to finish the build and test it…",
"parent_id": "8130834",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130829",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:30:22",
"content": "|the angled 30-pin SIMM sockets…Even if you found some, odds are they are old stock with brittle plastic.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130859",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:50:52",
"content": "They were available (or at least still listed as) from a few connector manufacturers pre-covid but they’ve disappeared now, does give a bit of hope that the NOS ones might still be OK.But, the last board I got with damaged 30 pin SIMM connectors I converted to use SIPPs by soldering on those double sided turned pin header/interconnects to the SIMMS and a strip of turned pin sockets, a bit of a twist on the old IC pin style ones.",
"parent_id": "8130829",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130872",
"author": "rt6u5r6tu",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T18:41:35",
"content": "still OS 1.0 or 7 is not open source;(Not other language, not bigest rom . Many people not needed big computer.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131386",
"author": "tyler",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T03:43:54",
"content": "It really isn’t",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131520",
"author": "Matthew Hill",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T13:19:12",
"content": "Drop in replacements for the compact macs would be cool. Ive got a bunch with dead boards. I dont 100% need original specs, and dropping an 030 into a Mac classic would be fine. Maybe some fun stuff that bypasses the OS like an ethernet port, usb, and an external monitor, where you can load stuff onto it with a mini linux that can act as a file server",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,540.52545
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/19/3d-printing-uranium-carbide-structures-for-nuclear-applications/
|
3D Printing Uranium-Carbide Structures For Nuclear Applications
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"3d Printer hacks",
"Science"
] |
[
"3d printed",
"dlp",
"SLA/DLP",
"uranium"
] |
Fabrication of uranium-based components via DLP. (Zanini et al., Advanced Functional Materials, 2024)
Within the nuclear sciences, including fuel production and nuclear medicine (radiopharmaceuticals), often specific isotopes have to be produced as efficiently as possible, or allow for the formation of (gaseous) fission products and improved cooling without compromising the fuel. Here having the target material possess an optimized 3D shape to increase surface area and safely expel gases during nuclear fission can be hugely beneficial, but producing these shapes in an efficient way is complicated. Here using photopolymer-based stereolithography (SLA) as
recently demonstrated
by [Alice Zanini] et al. with a research article in
Advanced Functional Materials
provides an interesting new method to accomplish these goals.
In what is essentially the same as what a hobbyist resin-based SLA printer does, the photopolymer here is composed of uranyl ions as the photoactive component along with carbon precursors, creating solid uranium dicarbide (UC
2
) structures upon exposure to UV light with subsequent sintering. Uranium-carbide is one of the alternatives
being considered
for today’s uranium ceramic fuels in fission reactors, with this method possibly providing a reasonable manufacturing method.
Uranium carbide is also used as one of the target materials in ISOL (isotope separation on-line) facilities like CERN’s
ISOLDE
, where having precise control over the molecular structure of the target could optimize isotope production. Ideally equivalent photocatalysts to uranyl can be found to create other optimized targets made of other isotopes as well, but as a demonstration of how SLA (DLP or otherwise) stands to transform the nuclear sciences and industries.
| 11
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130230",
"author": "Vik",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T03:02:36",
"content": "If anyone knows a good source of PEGDA pls post here. Harder to get hold of than uranium…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130292",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T07:38:42",
"content": "Antifreeze. Hmm.",
"parent_id": "8130230",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130304",
"author": "scubabearLA",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T08:23:51",
"content": "Polysciences seems to have it.https://polysciences.com/products/polyethylene-glycol-n-diacrylate?srsltid=AfmBOoobkK7RLYxYgY6Nfwyoq9_gvexM-kt1vpNjo22nvgBWh5ArrK_x",
"parent_id": "8130230",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130233",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T03:34:30",
"content": "Do not try this at home, kids.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130238",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T03:59:43",
"content": "Try this at home kids!",
"parent_id": "8130233",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130298",
"author": "Høhø",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T07:57:34",
"content": "Try this at kids, home!",
"parent_id": "8130238",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130318",
"author": "Stephen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T09:02:29",
"content": "It reminds me of how the man from the Hydraulic Press Channel used to say before some of his more bizarre experiments “Don’t try this at home.” Like we have a 100-tonne hydraulic press in our houses…",
"parent_id": "8130233",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130331",
"author": "Haai",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T10:04:04",
"content": "He has to be dealt with.(probably mildly paraphrased, I have a terrible memory)",
"parent_id": "8130318",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130343",
"author": "Radilena",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T11:17:00",
"content": "😂😂😂exactly",
"parent_id": "8130318",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130672",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T08:15:04",
"content": "It’s this the guy who has a video about making that press on his channel?",
"parent_id": "8130318",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8132005",
"author": "Jeff Wright",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T04:00:05",
"content": "Carlo Rubbia’s Americium Mars ship needed this technologyhttps://spacenews.com/extremely-efficient-nuclear-fuel-could-take-man-to-mars-in-just-two-weeks/https://infinite.mit.edu/video/carlo-rubbia-new-approach-nuclear-space-propulsion”-mit-media-lab-colloquium-series-4142000https://www.nature.com/articles/18955",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,540.712721
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/19/overengineered-freezer-monitor-fills-market-void/
|
Overengineered Freezer Monitor Fills Market Void
|
Bryan Cockfield
|
[
"News"
] |
[
"battery",
"freezer",
"home automation",
"Monitoring",
"probe",
"temperature",
"thermocouple",
"wifi",
"wireless"
] |
A lot of projects we see around here are built not just because they can be built, but because there’s no other option available. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. And for [Jeff] who has many thousands of dollars of food stowed in a chest freezer, his need for something to keep track of his freezer’s status was greater than any commercial offering available. Not only are freezers hard on batteries, they’re hard on WiFi signals as well,
so [Jeff] built his own temperature monitor to solve both of these issues
.
The obvious solution here is to have a temperature probe that can be fished through the freezer in some way, allowing the microcontroller, battery, and wireless module to operate outside of the harsh environment. [Jeff] is using K-type thermocouples here, wired through the back of the freezer. This one also is built into a block of material which allows him to get more diffuse temperature readings than a standard probe would provide. He’s also solving some other problems with commercially available probes here as well, as many of them require an Internet connection or store data in a cloud. To make sure everything stays local, he’s tying this in to a Home Assistant setup which also allows him to easily make temperature calibrations as well as notify him if anything happens to the freezer.
Although the build is very robust (or, as [Jeff] himself argues, overengineered) he does note that since he built it there have been some additional products offered for sale that fit this niche application. But even so, we always appreciate the customized DIY solution that avoids things like proprietary software, subscriptions, or cloud services. We also appreciate freezers themselves;
one of our favorites was this restoration of a freezer with a $700,000 price tag
.
| 27
| 12
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130264",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T05:53:23",
"content": "The one I bought came with two sensors and a separate lcd temperature display that will sound an alarm if a limit set for a sensor is exceeded. It was so cheap that the display died a few weeks after I started using it. No chance to repair this black blob on an empty pcb. Luckily it can be read with rtl_433 from the outside of the freezer from a few meters away.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130278",
"author": "Menno",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T06:58:26",
"content": "I used to have an ESP8266 with ESPEasy and two OneWire probes monitoring my fridge/freezer combination. Reporting to Domoticz, which handled alerts. Problem is the wires making a small gap in the door seals letting warmer air in, which in the freezer also caused frozen condensation. Decommissioned now.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130324",
"author": "Per Jensen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T09:30:49",
"content": "Use a piece of Flat flex cable, the white kind to go trough the gap. Works wonders for me.",
"parent_id": "8130278",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130328",
"author": "Menno",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T10:00:39",
"content": "Ooh, good plan! I most likely have some laying around in the parts bin.But there was a thing about the WAF as well. not sure if it can get around that.",
"parent_id": "8130324",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130403",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T14:11:50",
"content": "Shockingly enough, RF signals can make it out of a fridge /freezer; and Lithium AAs handle the cold well.Reliability of the RF signals may be an issue, but a strategically located receiver can resolve that.",
"parent_id": "8130328",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130401",
"author": "cw",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T14:09:41",
"content": "If you’re using a thermocouple, this is a bad idea – each dissimilar metal joint creates another thermocouple pair, which will cause errors in the sensed voltage and throw off your measurements. You can getreallythin-wire thermocouples (like less than .020″ dia) that will let the gasket close pretty much completely.",
"parent_id": "8130324",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130289",
"author": "macsimki",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T07:20:06",
"content": "ehh??“And for [Jeff] who has many thousands of dollars of food stowed in a chest freezer”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130374",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T12:59:56",
"content": "You must either not eat meat or not pay for what you do eat. It only takes a few hundred pounds (~5-10) cubic ft of frozen beef to get to $1k. Around here, it’s pretty common for people to people to buy a “quarter cow” or “half cow” which will fill a freezer and might last several months to a year or so.",
"parent_id": "8130289",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130446",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T16:40:34",
"content": "Around here it is common to have freezers smaller than 4 cubic ft.",
"parent_id": "8130374",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130611",
"author": "Jeff",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T02:23:59",
"content": "Half a cow, Half an Elk, a few turkeys and frozen chickens, some nice rib-eyes I got a decent deal on at a restaurant supply company, and then other random frozen things.",
"parent_id": "8130289",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130290",
"author": "elmesito",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T07:28:16",
"content": "“Overengineered”Just standard hobby project. I’ve built the same for monitoring the temperature of the wood burner and let Home Assistant remind me to add wood when the trending temperature of the burner starts to drop.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130294",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T07:51:56",
"content": "A container of water frozen solid then place a coin on top. If power failure happened while you were away, the water will thaw and the coin will move. If it ends up on the bottom, the food’s spoiled.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130344",
"author": "DrZaius",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T11:26:33",
"content": "don’t drink the milk! why ? it’s spoiled!don’t drink the milk! why ? it’s spoiled!don’t drink the milk! why ? it’s spoiled!(if you grew up when we only had 13 tv channels, you’ll get the joke)",
"parent_id": "8130294",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130448",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T16:43:10",
"content": "13? When I grew up we had 3 plus the one from across the border.",
"parent_id": "8130344",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130520",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T20:25:44",
"content": "2 of those 3 channels were PBS that sucked half of the time.",
"parent_id": "8130448",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130413",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T14:27:49",
"content": "The glass of water trick is great for a freezer at a cottage or on the occasion you’re out of town for a week or 2; but it doesn’t let you know there’s a problem before you’re throwing out food.",
"parent_id": "8130294",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130311",
"author": "RoganDawes",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T08:36:48",
"content": "I’ve been thinking that a flexPCB would be a perfect solution to get a sensor inside the freezer, without leaving a big gap around the wires for thermal losses. Only question is then how to have the sensor stick to the inside of the freezer. Feels like a job for a magnet, although the inner skin is probably plastic …",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130377",
"author": "fabo",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T13:10:49",
"content": "As Jeff points out, he spent way to much on K-Type thermocouple and a thermocouple amp. Normally use a sealed-wired DS18B20 temp sensor (+/-0.5C accuracy) on a DIY projects and thermocouples with commercial temperature controllers. For medical vaccine monitoring, have to use a NIST compliant temperature logger (typically +/-0.3C accuracy). The vaccine logger’s probe is in a small vial of glycol solution. When used in a medical refrigerator, the fridge alarms real-time, while to logger alarms on trends like Jeff’s project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130544",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:14:02",
"content": "i have a dumb question…what is technique for “sealed-wired”? i have a few DS18B20s scattered around my house and i don’t remember how i sealed them up but i know it was dumb. i remember dipping one in epoxy, but that was dumb because it really needs to be potted or it just forms a skin that is easily detached or cracked.anecdote…i have one deployed outside, under an eave so it’s (mostly) out of the sun/rain. on sunny days its value swings dramatically between two values separated by about 5-10degF. i assume there’s an air current that flows along my eaves and when the breeze is just right, it comes from the sunlit asphalt. but in the winter it sometimes shows an odd effect. i’ve only noticed it in those occasions when it stays below freezing for days at a time and there is snow that isn’t melting…it develops a very long time constant, as though it’s encased in ice or something. its temperature drifts slowly over the span of the day and never quite reaches the true high or the true low. like it had a low pass filter with a period of 6-12 hours. i visually inspected it and couldn’t see ice, but i haven’t yet tried heating it to see if i can melt it and break it out of that pattern. so i’m not sure the mechanism. it’s entered this state for about a week at a time, maybe 2 or 3 times in the ~10 years i’ve had this sensor in place.but if i was putting one in a freezer i’d probably feel like i had to get to the bottom of that. fundamentally, i think, making it genuinely durable is the key to the success of this sort of project. and a hard goal to achieve in a one-off no matter what technology you use.",
"parent_id": "8130377",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130391",
"author": "Casper",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T13:48:49",
"content": "I use an accurite outdoor temp sensor with lithium batteries and an RTL-SDR dongle to record the temperature from the freezer as well as a few other locations in the house. As they transmit on 433 MHz, it’s easy to find community projects that already support them. I get about 40-50 ft range from the freezer with a few walls in between as well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130420",
"author": "kenmakeit",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T15:04:36",
"content": "I’m always a fan of building the solution, but, If,, you already have “home automation hub” – home assistant or hubitat or ( the home automation console of your choice ) … a cheap zigbee temperature monitor works great. I have a $13 zigbee temperature sensor in my garage freezer – in a baggie for durability ;). Its been working great for over a year, and the console can provide alarms and alerts on temperature excursions if desired.I have only had one temperature excursion, the door was blocked slightly ajar. I was alerted and closed it.For a few dollars more you can get one that provides battery status to the hub and has a display on board.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130523",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T20:32:21",
"content": "I tried a few Matter over Thread sensors connected to my HA. Turns out I have a freezer that, when stocked with certain foods (frozen chicken breasts in my test) will drop the RSSI and sometimes lose connectivity. No such problems with a Lorawan sensor, both provided battery status.",
"parent_id": "8130420",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130450",
"author": "Kevin Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T16:56:21",
"content": "What I am astonished by is that no one caught the greatest part of this build,“power supply, which was just a cheap multi-voltage one I picked up at radioshack”Although they are making a slow comeback. I also realize that the lower case “radioshack” instead of “Radio Shack” might just be a non branded electronics source. But it struck me as humerus.Any project worth doing is worth OVER-doing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130545",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:16:28",
"content": "haha are they making a comeback? i have a big box of wall warts for this sort of project, and if i just reach in blind i might come up with a radioshack one that was originally purchased in the 1990s.",
"parent_id": "8130450",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130614",
"author": "Jeff",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T02:28:30",
"content": "No, I am not kidding, we actually have a RadioShack within driving distance. It kind of exists in a weird place, a mix of early 00’s RS with some modern sensibilities.You can’t buy cell phones there, but you can buy answering machines, VHS cassettes, ESP32s, CB radios, and small electronic components. The power supply in question is one of those old white RadioShack wall warts, with a little slider switch to set the output voltage.",
"parent_id": "8130450",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130494",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:42:50",
"content": "I’ve had luck with Yolink temperature sensors for exactly this application. Lorawan, and the new hub means you don’t have to depend on their cloud service anymore. Used Lithium AA batteries, in my expience they seem to last about a year.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130624",
"author": "uxorious",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T04:00:50",
"content": "Regarding running temperature sensor wires out the door seal… Do NOT run them through the interface of the door and the seal as it does what others have mentioned and can create a path for air. Instead, run the wires UNDER the door seal where it is bonding to the fridge/freezer. If any gap is created, just put a dab of silicone to seal it. Since you are not passing through the interface, you can glue it in place. The flexible seal between the seal and door is fully maintained.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,540.853983
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/19/easy-panels-with-inkjet-adhesives-and-elbow-grease/
|
Easy Panels With InkJet, Adhesives, And Elbow Grease
|
Tyler August
|
[
"how-to"
] |
[
"2d print",
"front panel"
] |
Nothing caps off a great project like a good, professional-looking front panel. Looking good isn’t easy, but luckily [Accidental Science] has a
tutorial for a quick-and-easy front panel technique
in the video below.
It starts with regular paper, and an inkjet or laser printer to print your design. The paper then gets coated on both sides: matte varnish on the front, and white spray paint on the back. Then it’s just a matter of cutting the decal from the paper, and it gluing to your panel. ([Accidental Science] suggests two-part epoxy, but cautions you make sure it does not react to the paint.)
He uses aluminum in this example, but there’s no reason you could not choose a different substrate. Once the paper is adhered to the panel, another coat of varnish is applied to protect it. Alternatively, clear epoxy can be used as glue and varnish. The finish produced is very professional, and holds up to drilling and filing the holes in the panel.
We’d probably want to protect the edges by mounting this panel in a frame, but otherwise would be proud to put such a panel on a project that required it. We covered a similar technique before,
but it required a laminator.
If you’re looking for alternatives, Hackaday
community had a lot of ideas on how to make a panel,
but if you have a method you’ve documented,
feel free to put in the tip line
.
| 25
| 15
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130116",
"author": "ziggurat29",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T20:07:49",
"content": "obverse or reverse?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130147",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T21:03:52",
"content": "Fixed, thanks.",
"parent_id": "8130116",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130228",
"author": "BP",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T02:38:27",
"content": "“It gluing” or “gluing it”?",
"parent_id": "8130147",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130156",
"author": "H Hack",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T21:17:37",
"content": "I’ve stuck printouts to wood just using PVA. Works and looks fine. Intended to put clear varnish over it but since it was just a makeshift project I never got around to it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130182",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T22:55:33",
"content": "Instead of applying the paper to the metal, put the paper on a flat surface and apply the metal to it.No bubbles. Done and done.(Flat surface keeps the paper flat, and you don’t stretch or slightly misalign the paper by handling it.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130198",
"author": "Stanson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T23:36:06",
"content": "Office laminator with matt film does miracles too, as you mentioned. However, I would like to see a hack to produce a decals with that rough transparent surface over the image like on factory ones. It’s what make this DIY front panel decals still look DIY, not factory. They are smooth. Nearly all factory decals I touched had a rough external surface, not smooth one.Also, interesting how to create leather-like (or just any) irregular (it is very important) pattern on plastic parts, like on car dashes.As for good and professional sticky layer on the back of DIY decal – you could buy so called “liquid adhesive tape” – usually it is sold in tubes for sealant gun. Basically it is PMMA based polymer water suspension, like water-based acrylic varnish, but it does not fully polymerize into hard acryl, creating a sticky layer exactly like on the scotch tape. It is white when applied, but become transparent when dry. After drying you could stick your part or decal with a layer of this thing to anything, including polyethilene or polypropylene, just like scotch tape. Unlike double sided scotch tape or that thing for gluing car bages, you could make surface of any topology sticky with just brush or spray painter.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130273",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T06:30:39",
"content": "You can buy transparent self adhesive vinyl with a similar texture",
"parent_id": "8130198",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130370",
"author": "Stanson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T12:50:06",
"content": "Could you provide correct search term for it? I see only thin leather-like textured vinyl, not thick transparent one. Studied ORACAL catalogue and everything transparent have smooth surface, even matte ones. Closest thing I found is KPMF K81219 protective textured film, but it comes only in gray and black opaque colors. :(",
"parent_id": "8130273",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130207",
"author": "john",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T00:00:18",
"content": "I used the toner transfer method for making PCBs on a front panel once. I should have experimented a bit to get better results, but it works. I also use scrap acrylic cut to size and then paint the back side. You could also combine this method with the one in the video and get much better protected printed labels with less paint and coating.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130242",
"author": "Jakke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T04:15:22",
"content": "Hmm… Speaking of resin, I was thinking that soaking a printed piece of paper in 8 hour resin would probably have the same effect as gluing it on. Just print a paper, soak it in resin and set it on the surface you want to transfer it to.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130366",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T12:36:19",
"content": "Worth a try (and a youtube)",
"parent_id": "8130242",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130262",
"author": "NFM",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T05:48:10",
"content": "I just buy printable sticker paper from 3M (sold under the A-One brand here in Japan).There are inkjet and laser variants and different adhesive strengths. You can even get it in clear, and silver and gold, the silver looking very professional. I have used it for my own projects, and also replacing damaged or removed labels and serial numbers on HP gear, and it looks practically factory fitted.I recently used the standard white paper to replace the flaking gauge face in a HP 427A volt meter, and the faded gauge face in a HP 339 distortion meter (there is actually red ink on the dB scale that is almost always faded to nothing by now), and they look fantastic.They also come with a clear self adhesive sheet per printable page so you can laminate it after printing with a squeegee.They work great and are really easy to use.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130263",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T05:51:17",
"content": "I print on sticker paper, glue it to the panel and then put transparent adhesive plastic on top of it. Folding the edges of the transparent plastic around the edges of the panel gives some extra protection.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130297",
"author": "Jelle",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T07:56:22",
"content": "Anodize + toner transfer? That would have been impressive.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130302",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T08:13:24",
"content": "I do like this method of making front panels, and have some extra notes.@00:50 I assume Inkscape can work with layers, putting extra stuff (the knobs) on a layer that’s not printed would be nice.(A library with front panel symbols would also be nice).@01:25 Remove stroke? I would leave it on, but make it a few mm bigger then the actual front panel, so it can be used for alignment.@01:25 Do not print the whole background, but use colored paper as a base material.@02:40 Donotcut out the paper to size, but leave@03:56 Using exessive glue, and a roller to squeeze out glue helps with applying it firmly and evenly.@04:09 During drying (curing) of the glue, put a bag with sand on top. this folds the edges of the paper over the aluminimum.@04:02 Paper does not stretch that much by mechanical stress, (it will also creep back during curing of the glue) Water based glues doe stretch paper a lot, so avoid those.@04:15 I would use thick paper. Not thin paper.@04:49 If two part epoxy don’t hold a piece of paper, the epoxy is kaput, or applied wrong.@05:02 Use a centerpunch first.@05:36 He did not press down the corners during glueing! With an escess of glue, it’s also squeezed over the edges and coners, so they are glued well.@06:00 A fast epoxy does not take days to cure. Another indication there is something wrong with it.@06:55 Second layer of 3 layers of varnish. Yes, multiple layers is good.@07:54 When cutting the paper, (also the left over edges) only cut during the downward stroke. This uses the knife and aluminimum as a scissors for a clean cut.@08:20 Seal edges with 3rd layer of varnish. Yes. that’s good.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130322",
"author": "imqqmi",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T09:21:57",
"content": "I like to use cnc to engrave the front panel, then fill the v carve grooves with paint and if I want it to look really fancy cover it with uv resin. You can add colour as needed :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130325",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T09:45:00",
"content": "You can also paint or anodize the aluminum before engraving. You can also buy plastic laminates with separate core and skin colors made especially for engraving purposes.",
"parent_id": "8130322",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130369",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T12:45:58",
"content": "In the area of weird ideas, I wonder if you could use that PCB resist stuff that is UV cured and then mask it to UV-cure only symbols and then ‘wash away’ the non-exposed resist.You might have an interesting raised effect that way.How to mask the UV though. I’m not sure what cheap-and-easy printing techniques block UV.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131360",
"author": "paulv",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T01:41:53",
"content": "Sure, UV curable ink can also work perfectly well, but it’s yet another method.Marco Reps made a YT video where he used direct lighting by adding an UV laser pointer to a 3D printer.In the PCB world, silkscreen text and such is even directly printed with an inkjet printer, but such printers are not really affordable for DIY.",
"parent_id": "8130369",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132142",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T13:58:08",
"content": "Several suggestions seem to assume that all housings are flat and fit in various printing devices.I do not think that is correct :)That’s the whole idea of the article, to get it from a print onto the housing somehow, although here too it has a nice small single flat part to work with. I think we need more flexibility in regards to the expected application surface, is it round or bulged or a very large object, we still might need nice clear and permanent or rub-proof decals.Talking of rub-proof, man keyboard keys sure are hard to apply something to that stays. I tried a few ways to fix some keys and it never lasts, I even tried an indented groove and it did not last.. Maybe I should try cement.",
"parent_id": "8131360",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130439",
"author": "garysxt",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T16:25:30",
"content": "I have been making labels with a laser printer for years. I get blank waterproof mailing labels. It already has adhesive on the back. You just need to give it a couple of coats of clear acrylic spray to protect the markings.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130800",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T15:20:19",
"content": "I wish the local ‘dollar store’ type of place sold some laser stuff, all their paper and supplies are for inkjet.And all their USB-c cables are USB2.0, even their expensive kind, must be an ‘Apple-effect’ then eh.Oh and all their HDMI cables are full size connectors, whereas more than half of my devices use mini or smaller ports.",
"parent_id": "8130439",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131913",
"author": "xChris",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T19:28:40",
"content": "lol , reminds a similar “hack” i did with the oven’s panel, the indicators had gone long time ago, so I scanned the panel from the manual and printed it on a laser projector slide sheet, not adhesive, double sided tape works, bit ugly but the heck.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131920",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T19:57:03",
"content": "Print on demand UV DTF transfers are cheap AF, durable, and ship quickly. Just be careful to make sure youre ordering permasticker type transfers not ones meant for fabric transfer.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132143",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T14:04:19",
"content": "Interesting, thanks for the tip. Seems like something to have in your trick box.",
"parent_id": "8131920",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,541.069316
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/19/a-uv-meter-for-the-flipper-zero/
|
A UV Meter For The Flipper Zero
|
Matt Varian
|
[
"Tool Hacks"
] |
[
"AS7331",
"flipper zero",
"uv sensor"
] |
We all know UV radiation for its contributions to getting sunburned after a long day outside, but were you aware there are several types different types of UV rays at play? [Michael] has come up with a
Flipper Zero add on board
and app to measure these three types of radiation, and explained some of the nuances he learned about measuring UV along the way.
At the heart of this project is an AS7331 sensor, it can measure the UV-A, UV-B, and UV-C radiation values that the Flipper Zero reads via I2C. While first using this chip he realized to read these values is more complex than just querying the right register, and by the end of this project he’d written his own AS7331 library to help retrieve these values. There was also a some experimenting with different GUI designs for the app, the Flipper Zero screen is only 128x64px and he had a lot of data to display. One feature we really enjoyed was the addition of the wiring guide to the app, if you install this
Flipper Zero app
and have just the AS7331 sensor on hand you’ll know how to hook it up. However if you want he also has provided the
design files
for a PCB that just plugs into the top of the Flipper Zero.
Head over to his site to check out all the details of this Flipper Zero project, and to learn more about the different types of UV radiation. Also be sure to let us know about any of your
Flipper Zero projects
.
| 6
| 1
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130089",
"author": "lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T18:47:29",
"content": "These flipper zeros are so cute. I wish I could justify the cost, I’d have all sorts of add ons and whatever else. Can anyone chime in and either convince me to get one or inform me that making standalone tools with commodity MCU’s is good enough?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130106",
"author": "stefo",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T19:35:37",
"content": "It’s a pretty good garage door opener.",
"parent_id": "8130089",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130110",
"author": "ndgvbf",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T19:42:15",
"content": "explore the m5stack – @$30 usd it can do a ton of this stuff too.",
"parent_id": "8130089",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130112",
"author": "Edgar Vice",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T19:49:20",
"content": "Well I have one and can’t find a use for it. Most things I realize stand alone with ESP32, RP2040 or ATtiny. Better spend the money for something else.",
"parent_id": "8130089",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130146",
"author": "Kevin S",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T21:00:51",
"content": "I enjoy mine but its definitely a tool looking for a use. I’ve used it to emulate NFC’s and my TV remotes, but nothing I couldn’t have done with things I already have.",
"parent_id": "8130089",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130247",
"author": "gatorsays",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T04:34:00",
"content": "Flipper Zero is kind of like a programmable scientific graphic calculator. I don’t want one as much as I want areasonto want one.",
"parent_id": "8130089",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,541.007813
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/19/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-wafer-thin-keyboard/
|
Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Wafer-Thin Keyboard
|
Kristina Panos
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] |
[
"avalanche keyboard",
"Brackelsberg typewriter",
"Cyberpunk 2077",
"typewriter keyboard",
"wafer thin"
] |
Image by [dynam1keNL] via
reddit
But sir! I can’t believe I missed [dynam1keNL]’s initial flat offering from about a year ago, the
mikefive
, which came about when he and some friends ordered switches directly from Kailh and Kailh were like, do you want to try these even lower-profile PG1316 laptop switches? It’s called the mikefive because it’s 5 mm thick.
That’s okay, though, because now you’re caught up and I can talk about his latest keyboard, the
mikecinq
. The inspiration for this one includes the aesthetics of
Le Chiffre
and the slimness of
Le Oeuf
. As you’ll see in the gallery, the top is ever-so-slightly slanted downward from the top.
You can see it really well in the second picture — the top row is flush with the case, and the keys gradually get taller toward the thumb clusters. All [dynam1keNL] really had to do was 3D model the new case and screw in the PCB from his daily driver mikefive.
Image by [dynam1keNL] via
reddit
[dynam1keNL] ultimately found it nice and comfy, especially for the thumbs, but decided to take it one step further and designed a new switch footprint. Why? The PG1316s are surface-mount with contacts below the switch, so you really need a hotplate or oven to mount them.
So in order to deal with this, he made a dedicated mikecinq PCB with big cutouts with castellated holes beneath each switch. Now, the switch contacts are accessible from underneath and can be soldered with an iron.
You may have noticed that the mikefive production files are not available on GitHub — that’s because it was recently licensed and will be available soon. But if you want production files for the mikecinq,
let him know in the comments
.
Cyberpunk 2077
Here In 2025
Image by [felipeparaizo] via
reddit
While this
Cyberpunk 2077
keyboard is certainly nice enough to be a centerfold,
[felipeparaizo] has a full write-up on GitHub
, so here I go talking about it at length instead!
This here is a Sofle RGB v2.1 that, as we’ve concluded, is heavily inspired by
Cyberpunk 2077
. The case is 3D-printed and then airbrushed, and then stickered up with custom decals that include references to Arasaka and Samurai. The acrylic base lets even more Baja Blast-colored RGB goodness shine through.
The switches are Akko Crystal Blues, which seem like a great choice, and the caps are two combined sets — one matte and one translucent. This is the second version of the project, and
you can see how the first one turned out over on GitHub
.
via
reddit
The Centerfold: An Avalanche of Color
Image by [CaptLynx] via
reddit
So
this right here
is an
Avalanche
keyboard, but at 60%. Go admire the original ones real quick; I’ll wait. They’re just as lovely as this one! I love the jawbreaker-esque layers of the case, and those knobs are exquisite.
Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad?
Send me a picture
along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!
Historical Clackers: the Brackelsberg
The Classic Typewriter page calls the Brackelsberg syllabic typewriter “
another hallucinogenic creation from the golden age of writing machine design
“, and I don’t disagree.
Image via
The Classic Typewriter Page
This 1897 machine had types arranged on several type sectors which swung up and down. Each sector carried about 30 types, which I take to mean characters.
The 132-key board was divided into four sectors, and they could be operated simultaneously — as in, you could type four characters at once, entering entire syllables if you so desired. Thus, it was called a syllabic typewriter.
A hammer struck from the rear, connecting the paper and ribbon with the types. It seems slow and cumbersome, doesn’t it? But Brackelsberg insisted that it was quiet, pointed out that the writing was always visible, and argued that the syllabic gimmick would make it fast and convenient to use.
Although never mass-produced, a working prototype was built and is pictured here in a photograph from Friedrich Muller’s book called
Schriebmaschinen und Schriften-Vervielfältigung
published in 1900.
Finally, a Keyboard That Looks Like a Typewriter and Might Not Suck
I say this because of the disappointment I suffered buying a similar Bluetooth keyboard for ten bucks from a place where everything typically costs half of that or less. The thing just stopped working one day not long after the store warranty had expired. You win some, you lose some, I suppose.
The Yunzii QL75 typewriter keyboard. Image via
Yunzii
Anyway,
the Yunzii QL75
ought to fare better given that it’s ten times the cost to pre-order; at least I hope it does. And much like the crappy one I have, it comes in pink.
You can choose either Onyx tactile switches or Cocoa Cream V2 linear switches. But if you don’t like those, the switches are hot-swappable and compatible with 3-pin and 5-pins both.
The keycaps are ABS with a matte chrome electroplated finish and laser-engraved legends. Yes there is RGB, but it doesn’t shine through the keycaps, more like between them, it sounds like.
Thankfully, the QL75 works with QMK and VIA if you want to change things up. This thing has three-way connectivity to the device of your choice, which, if it’s small enough, can sit right above the keyboard where the paper would go.
There’s no telling what the knobs on the sides do, if anything, although there are arrows. On
mine
, they raise and lower the little kickstands.
Via
TweakTown
Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards?
Help me out by sending in a link or two
. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to
email me directly
.
| 8
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130177",
"author": "Bobtato",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T22:47:01",
"content": "“Le Oeuf”Ew that’s sort of like calling it “A Egg” in English; pretty sure they were aiming for «L’Oeuf». But I do like and approve of thin keyboards.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130365",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T12:30:46",
"content": "well, if you want to be pedantic: œuf not oeuf, note the œ.Design on a github belonging to a person called ‘eggworks’ with an egg as logo it seems.",
"parent_id": "8130177",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130231",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T03:18:59",
"content": "I don’t need thin keyboard, I don’t need thin keyboard. But instead I suppose I would love a custom laptop keyboard (=",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130575",
"author": "alanrcam",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T22:55:47",
"content": "When looking at what to carry, there’s a point where thickness is no longer the (main) issue. However, that leaves key travel, sound, stiffness, layout, etc… and size.Standard key spacing is 19.03mm, but switches are 16mm wide. Some keycaps are 16.5mm wide, and eliminating a plate between keys lets you shrink overall size without upsetting touch typists too much.Of course, now we’re approaching custom keycaps, which is a sub-topic of it’s own.",
"parent_id": "8130231",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130680",
"author": "frenchone",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T08:44:51",
"content": "Where would you find keycaps by size ?I’m looking for keycaps 17mm wide.For scissors.Or ultraflat mechanical",
"parent_id": "8130575",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132880",
"author": "alanrcam",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T11:09:26",
"content": "https://chosfox.com/collections/keycaps",
"parent_id": "8130680",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130361",
"author": "Bruce G. Gettel Jr.",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T12:13:22",
"content": "Better ge’ a bucket . . . . .",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8133141",
"author": "crispernaki",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T05:23:50",
"content": "Oh, wow, the illustrations in that Friedrich Muller book are amazing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,541.511611
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/19/the-nightmare-of-jailbreaking-a-pay-to-ride-gotcha-ebike/
|
The Nightmare Of Jailbreaking A ‘Pay-To-Ride’ Gotcha Ebike
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Reverse Engineering"
] |
[
"ebike"
] |
Theoretically bicycle rental services are a great thing, as they give anyone the means to travel around comfortably without immediately having to rent a car, hail a taxi or brave whatever the local public transport options may be. That is until said services go out of business and suddenly thousands of increasingly more proprietary and locked-down e-bikes suddenly are at risk of becoming e-waste. So too with
a recent acquisition
by [Berm Peak] over at YouTube, featuring a ‘Gotcha’ e-bike by Bolt Mobility, which
went AWOL
back in 2022, leaving behind thousands of these e-bikes.
So how hard could it be to take one of these proprietary e-bikes and turn it into a run-off-the-mill e-bike for daily use? As it turns out, very hard. While getting the (36V) battery released and recharged was easy enough, the challenge came with the rest of the electronics, with a veritable explosion of wiring, the Tongsheng controller module and the ‘Gotcha’ computer module that locks it all down. While one could rip this all out and replace it, that would make the cost-effectiveness of getting one of these go down the drain.
Sadly, reverse-engineering the existing system proved to be too much of a hassle, so a new controller was installed along with a bunch of hacks to make the lights and new controller work. Still, for $75 for the bike, installing new electronics may be worth it, assuming you can find replacement parts and got some spare hours (or weeks) to spend on rebuilding it. The bike in the video costed less than $200 in total with new parts, albeit with the cheapest controller, but maybe jailbreaking the original controller could knock that down.
| 36
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130031",
"author": "Oli",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T16:02:28",
"content": "I don’t know what else the company could have done. If you plan for failure and build your bike to be unlocked when the company goes under, you’ll have half your stock stolen overnight, chipped and shipped overseas.At least they’re being sold. At these e-waste prices too. They’ll find new owners happy to invest the absolutely little required to turn these back into ebikes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130039",
"author": "AaronFish",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T16:23:21",
"content": "You don’t have to plan for failure, you just have to be willing to dump enough documentation into a github repo once you’ve given up to allow someone to reverse engineer what they need.",
"parent_id": "8130031",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130046",
"author": "Kenny_C",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T16:46:02",
"content": "Just do it like those export 10 meter radios, open the controller and move a little jumper or cut the little white wire loop and the bike is unlocked for the new owner",
"parent_id": "8130039",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130104",
"author": "Sir",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T19:29:25",
"content": "What are you referring to??",
"parent_id": "8130046",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130140",
"author": "Kenny_C",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T20:46:56",
"content": "Those 10 meter radios, they are like big fancy CB radios that go from 28 to 29.7 MHz when stock, but easy to modify to get CB radio frequencies, usually open the cover and there will be a jumper on the board to move or a little loop of wire to cut then the radio will go from 24 to 30 MHz",
"parent_id": "8130104",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130203",
"author": "asheets",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T23:55:12",
"content": "You got a make/model of one capable of this hack?",
"parent_id": "8130104",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130633",
"author": "Luke Ritter",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T05:24:17",
"content": "Quangsheng UV-K5 probably. It’s absolutely incredible what the hardware is really capable of!",
"parent_id": "8130104",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130219",
"author": "Morberis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T01:25:06",
"content": "The issue, like stated above, is if you do that people are going to be stealing them immediately and jailbreaking them.",
"parent_id": "8130046",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131352",
"author": "lambert4congress",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T00:55:18",
"content": "Bruh, we live in the midieval era. MF’s gotta horde knowledge to keep their jobs.",
"parent_id": "8130039",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130060",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T16:58:05",
"content": "Does it really matter if you don’t have something because it’s locked down, or don’t have it because someone stole it? You can’t use it either way.",
"parent_id": "8130031",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130076",
"author": "fiddlingjunky",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T17:38:34",
"content": "Ehhh. Requiring one secret key to unlock the bikes, kept in trust by the relevant govenmental body or a contracted bank, should be relatively easy to implement. If they want to generate demand for a bunch of rare earth metals and lithium, they should be on the hook for making sure it doesn’t just turn to e waste.Then again, I feel the same way about smartphones (I think there should be strong requirements to open source all drivers after end of support or lose a hefty deposit and the privilege of selling more devices) and the increasingly locked-down “optimized” laptops.We keep letting companies extract value and leave us to pay for their externalized costs.",
"parent_id": "8130031",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130103",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T19:27:04",
"content": "You mean like the DVD and BD encryption master keys that people hacked immediately?",
"parent_id": "8130076",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130193",
"author": "fiddlingjunky",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T23:21:01",
"content": "Sure! I don’t care if they fail at basic precautions.",
"parent_id": "8130103",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131353",
"author": "lambert4congress",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T00:59:38",
"content": "You reminded me of my desire to drink imported water. Each gallon of water I import to drink, is a gallon less that the exporter has in their ecosystem, and gallon more for us.The shit part is though, were exporting these rare earth minerals as ewaste to other countries… I say we bury it in old mines until we devise more economical means of extracting it from chinas ewaste.",
"parent_id": "8130076",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130133",
"author": "lambert4congress",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T20:36:40",
"content": "Dude just bought an aftermarket controller and display? He didn’t jailbreak anything.",
"parent_id": "8130031",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130261",
"author": "namesjef",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T05:46:30",
"content": "Sounds like he nuked em when he sent vBat to a logic signal that runs between the display and driver.",
"parent_id": "8130133",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131354",
"author": "lambert4congress",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T01:03:25",
"content": "Yeah… I can’t say I understand what you said, I would have just jumped to the part of buying a new display and controller. I’m more of a copy and paste guy. I’ve watched tutorials on ripping the ROM during boot load, and that’s what I was really hoping to see. Those things come with a nice comm suite.",
"parent_id": "8130261",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130037",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T16:12:11",
"content": "In the first case, these things don’t give me or anyone without some traceable ID containing “cash” a way to travel even one block. It looks clunky and heavy as all get out with hard tail and fork. Just like the situation with dead satellites and soon to be old computers they need to decommission to public use or pay to recycle. Those shots of e-two-wheels in China grave yards, the more I think about it it’s disgusting.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130048",
"author": "SETH",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T16:49:43",
"content": "Its a tech industry smash grab against consumers and related small businesses. Charging $12.50 for one day of use is an astronomically bad deal. Thats about $630 a year for a full time employed commuter. You could easily purchase a 2nd hand bike and perform necessary tuneups at this rate and save money.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130059",
"author": "Snarkenstein",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T16:57:25",
"content": "Sure, if you are going to use one every day, it would be cheaper to buy one assuming you can get the up-front cost together. That’s true for almost anything you rent.Around here (Denver suburbs) I notice two or three rental e-bikes sitting on the sidewalk on my typical 5-10 mile trip. I’ve seen less than 10 people riding one in the last five years or so. Perhaps the ratio is less disastrous in Denver proper.A reasonable business model would have to account for the insanely low usage rates. The failure rate of the rental e-bike companies suggests they are assuming much higher usage rates than they are getting.It seems to me that these companies pop up for the express purpose of milking naive investors.",
"parent_id": "8130048",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130109",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T19:39:42",
"content": "milking naive investorsPretty much.Usually you can get perfectly working bicycles for about $20-50 by searching your local facetubelist-community for used bikes. There’s always people looking to get rid of their cheap supermarket grade 21-speeder that they bought and rode for a month, and decided they’re not going to bother. I once bought a bike in the morning, rode it for the day, and sold it on in the evening.",
"parent_id": "8130059",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130220",
"author": "Morberis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T01:28:56",
"content": "Sounds like we’re forgetting here that these are ebikes and the whole appeal of them for many people is that you can get somewhere and not be covered in sweat. Especially if you’re not super fit. For many showing up to work sweaty is an absolute no go. Your $25 craiglist special isn’t going to do that.",
"parent_id": "8130109",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130065",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T17:10:09",
"content": "Of course using one every day would be a really bad deal. So would taking a cab or Uber to work every day. I have used one a handful of times – when I was staying in a different city and the event I was attending was a long walk from the hotel. It was quicker, cheaper and more convenient than taking a cab or Uber.",
"parent_id": "8130048",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130075",
"author": "Ject",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T17:30:57",
"content": "I’ve never used one of these, but that doesn’t seem like that bad a deal if you’re visiting an area and need a bike temporarily. Because of all the support logistics I don’t think it’s reasonable that they could compete with and owned bike.",
"parent_id": "8130048",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130092",
"author": "fiddlingjunky",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T18:50:35",
"content": "You’re both right. My commuting scooter pays for itself in less than half a year (closer to 3mo probably) relative to the local rental companies. I work with a number of techs that I know commute on them. It can be hard to get out of debt/subscription cycles like that, it’s kind of what modern markets are designed to push us towards. While one shouldn’t make use of them, you can now pay for your fast food or eBay car part in four easy installments, and rampant credit card debt and payday loan sharks have been around forever. This is just another faucet of that world.On the other hand, sometimes I find myself somewhere without my scooter and will happily pay ~$10 to get somewhere that’s a little farther than I want to (or have time to) walk and that doesn’t have a good bus running to it.",
"parent_id": "8130075",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130088",
"author": "Jan Prägert",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T18:43:15",
"content": "Huh? What is the math?Year has about 220 workdays at least (hier in Germany), so it is $2750. That gives a very fine e-bike.",
"parent_id": "8130048",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130091",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T18:50:05",
"content": "of course you could. just like you could drive a 30 year old car and do all your own maintenance. it’s for people who don’t want to own or maintain a bike. there’s no mindset more foreign to me personally but it’s not hard to understand that it exists.",
"parent_id": "8130048",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130332",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T10:19:36",
"content": "These aren’t for people travelling to work, usually. It’s for tourists. Take the ebike from the center to the beach to save on parking costs, or go from one museum to the next.",
"parent_id": "8130048",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130069",
"author": "CarlA",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T17:18:10",
"content": "Part of the reason they lock this stuff down is liability. If they make it too hard to open up/repurpose and someone jacks with the safety hooks the company could be held liable. If you have to ditch the controller and wire your own guts it’s a whole lot harder to make that case.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130098",
"author": "Nicholas",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T19:03:25",
"content": "Austin has a $100 penalty per unit in case of bankruptcy",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130123",
"author": "Tweepy",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T20:21:18",
"content": "Deposited and cashed before bankruptcy, or how do you enforce it?",
"parent_id": "8130098",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130167",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T21:51:37",
"content": "It’s Austin local government…Expect ‘they haven’t thought of that’ yet…Only slightly less ‘head up ass’ than Portland.",
"parent_id": "8130123",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130215",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T00:43:49",
"content": "Funniest comment on here!!",
"parent_id": "8130167",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130280",
"author": "overflo",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T07:03:15",
"content": "Awesome video!Thanks for sharing.It reminds me of the handpuppet show featuring kasperl and petzi @ CCCamp2023They took apart a rentable scooter and did a lot of reverse engineering on the scooter, resulting in a full unlock of the batteries and the actual motor controller.Its in german, but there are english subtitles available.https://media.ccc.de/v/camp2023-57019-leihroller_hacken_ein_kasperltheater",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130431",
"author": "Tim",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T15:40:20",
"content": "I wonder what kind of chip is on the board. Would be really cool to get some dump from the controller board and jailbreak it via software.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130913",
"author": "Michael allen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T20:30:07",
"content": "It would have been interesting to see the inside of the controller and what chips and parts were used in it.",
"parent_id": "8130431",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,541.709253
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/19/remembering-the-isp-that-david-bowie-ran-for-eight-years/
|
Remembering The ISP That David Bowie Ran For Eight Years
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"Featured",
"History",
"internet hacks",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] |
[
"bowie",
"david bowie",
"internet",
"isp"
] |
The seeds of the Internet were first sown in the late 1960s, with computers laced together in continent-spanning networks to aid in national defence. However, it was in the late 1990s that the end-user explosion took place, as everyday people flocked online in droves.
Many astute individuals saw the potential at the time, and rushed to establish their own ISPs to capitalize on the burgeoning market. Amongst them was a famous figure of some repute. David Bowie might have been best known for his cast of rock-and-roll characters and number one singles, but he was also an internet entrepreneur who got in on the ground floor—with BowieNet.
Is There Dialup On Mars?
The BowieNet website was very much of its era. Credit: Bowienet, screenshot
Bowie’s obsession with the Internet started early. He was well ahead of the curve of many of his contemporaries, becoming the first major artist to release a song online.
Telling Lies
was released as a downloadable track, which sold over 300,000 downloads, all the way back in 1996. A year later, the Earthling concert would be “cybercast” online, in an era when most home internet connections could barely handle streaming audio.
These moves were groundbreaking, at the time, but also exactly what you might expect of a major artist trying to reach fans with their music. However, Bowie’s interests in the Internet lay deeper than mere music distribution. He wanted a richer piece of the action, and his own ISP—BowieNet— was the answer.
The site was regularly updated with new styling and fresh content from Bowie’s musical output. Eventually, it became more website than ISP. Credit: BowieNet, screenshot
Bowie tapped some experts for help, enlisting Robert Goodale and Ron Roy in his nascent effort. The service first launched in the US, on September 1st 1998, starting at a price of $19.95 a month. The UK soon followed at a price of £10.00. Users were granted a somewhat awkward email address of [email protected], along with 5MB of personal web hosting. Connectivity was provided in partnership with established network companies, with Concentric Network Corp
effectively offering a turnkey ISP service,
and UltraStar handling the business and marketing side of things. It was, for a time, also possible to gain a free subscription by signing up for a
BowieBanc
credit card, a branded front end for a banking services run by USABancShares.com. At its peak, the service reached a total of 100,000 subscribers.
Bonuses included access to a network of chatrooms. The man himself was a user of the service, regularly popping into live chats, both scheduled and casually. He’d often wind up answering a deluge of fan questions on topics like
upcoming albums and whether or not he drank tea.
The operation was part ISP, part Bowie content farm, with users also able to access audio and video clips from Bowie himself. BowieNet subscribers were able to access exclusive tracks from the Earthling tour live album,
LiveAndWell.com,
gained early access to tickets, and could explore BowieWorld, a 3D interactive city environment. To some controversy, users of other ISPs had to stump up a $5.95 fee to access content on davidbowie.com, which
drew some criticism at the time.
Bowienet relied heavily on the leading Internet technologies of the time. Audio and graphics were provided via RealAudio and Flash, standards that are unbelievably janky compared to those in common use today. A 56K modem was recommended for users wishing to make the most of the content on offer. New features were continually added to the service; Christmas 2004 saw users invited to send “BowieNet E-Cards,” and the same month saw the launch of
BowieNet blogs
for subscribers, too.
Bowie spoke to the BBC in 1999 about his belief in the power of the Internet.
BowieNet didn’t last forever. The full-package experience was, realistically, more than people expected even from one of the world’s biggest musicians.
In May 2006
, the ISP was quietly shutdown, with the BowieNet web presence slimmed down to a website and fanclub style experience.
In 2012
, this too came to an end, and DavidBowie.com was retooled to a more typical artist website of the modern era.
Ultimately, BowieNet was an interesting experiment in the burgeoning days of the consumer-focused Internet. The most appealing features of the service were really more about delivering exclusive content and providing a connection between fans and the artist himself. It eventually became clear that Bowie didn’t need to be branding the internet connection itself to provide that.
Indeed, no other musicians of the era were really exploring getting into the telecoms game, sticking with standard websites instead. It was perhaps just Bowie’s own personal curiosity and desire to engage with the Internet on a richer level that spawned the ISP. At its heart, though, running any one ISP is not that different from running another. To the end user, the ISP was all but transparent beyond setup and the occasional administration task. The difference Bowie really offered was his content—and that was all hosted on the website, not a feature of the ISP itself. Once the Internet had become more established, and the use case became clear, the wind-down of BowieNet was a foregone conclusion.
Still, we can dream of other artists getting involved in the utilities game, just for fun. Gagaphone would have been a slam dunk back in 2009. One suspects DojaGas perhaps wouldn’t have the same instant market penetration without some kind of hit single about clean burning fuels. Speculate freely in the comments.
| 15
| 8
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8129989",
"author": "ziggurat29",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T14:22:50",
"content": "♫Bowie’s in space. Whatcha doin’ up there, man?♫Timothy Leary was also a big proponent of the Internet. Thought it would be bigger than acid. “turn on, boot up, jack in.” Curiously referred to it as ‘the screen’.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130079",
"author": "SETH",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T17:45:14",
"content": "He was enamored with the early internet and predicted it would bring upheaval in communication and media. He also points towards a vague transhumanist notion of reality becoming fundamentally altered by digital mediums, which is a little hyperbolistic.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130114",
"author": "Milkybar",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T19:58:00",
"content": "The bowienet community was a great one to be a part of – and that tingle when you saw Sailor was online was always palpable. Yet the urge to play it cool abd mundane always made for more interesting chats with him (like the time he had had teeth extracted, and exchanges about him needing to borrow Alexandria’s dummy, to chortles from the Brits and bemused virtual glances from the Americans) pretty much summed up the chat space when he dropped inAlso you have to factor in the BowieWorld experiment, and prior to that Omicron (The Nomad Soul), all in the same era as 1.Outside, to get that feel of his mindset on this whole space",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130161",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T21:30:08",
"content": "I found Omicron really engaging, if janky, and it got me into virtual environment creation. Funny enough, even without Bowie’s world virtual chat rooms with distance and room based audio were working more or less fine by the late 90’s, albeit with limited detail. Remember, Internet radio was already booming.We would frequent a first person 3D “art gallery” (unidentifiably blurred on the walls) filled with sprite avatars and have realtime conversations with people in Hong Kong, Australia, China, Canada the US, save occasionally France and Germany without any real trouble on 56k. Time zones were, as they are now, the real gatekeeper.These werenotpaid services, or an ISP. They were mostly VRML over http, sometimes with their own client, a modified VRML renderer (software by default) and cached assets. Load time and Render overhead was kept down via aggressive rate limiting, culled visibility and the use of VRML primitives for everything (should ring bells for SL knowers). This system could have trivially crashed the server running it even without bad actors after all. Navigation was laggy and unfun, but conversation was the point, and that worked perfectly. Users were expected to share a side channel, MSN/ICQ/QQ/etc. instead of any other integrated service.I was very disappointed when these died and there was essentially no interest in building on these things for many years. Even VRML was essentially left to rot despite showing promise with even limited resources and NASA putting some work into making it possible to visualize some data in it. Ultimately end users making 3D models were the only ones who cared, and they didn’t have a platform.",
"parent_id": "8130114",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130175",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T22:38:19",
"content": "Back in the days of curl.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curl_(programming_language)",
"parent_id": "8130161",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130205",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T23:58:06",
"content": "Of course, wanting to say something about curl? (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻, lol.Curl’s markup was pretty useful for this kind of thing, for obvious reasons.",
"parent_id": "8130175",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130240",
"author": "ProphetZarquon",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T04:09:23",
"content": "It astounds me, that nearly 30 years after my first 3D-via-telecom experiences – being able to move things around in 3D among friends – here we are in 2025, & the only 3D web environments I can find that run on Android & iOS & desktop devices without install, are super-basic janky Roblox/Minecraft mods/knockoffs, with not a single one allowing worthwhile crossplay for TTRPG 3D mapping etc. Every one is tied to a platform or service that doesn’t work for half my friends/devices. Sharing simple 3D spaces shouldn’t be this hard?",
"parent_id": "8130161",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130139",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T20:45:41",
"content": "I really wanted access to this, but no sadly. Bowie’s interest in the future of the technology and willingness to pursue it was one of the beacons of the time for me.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130252",
"author": "Bear Naff",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T04:57:21",
"content": "After Bowienet, the best musician-branded communications service had to be the Dethphone platform from Metalocalypse. They started out extra-awful in order to maximize their brutalness, but eventually evolved into a decent branded smartphone.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130315",
"author": "Ags21",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T08:42:45",
"content": "Still have and use my @davidbowie.com email, I pray it never disappears 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8164397",
"author": "Noel",
"timestamp": "2025-08-17T13:40:18",
"content": "Could you possibly give me some directions on how to access or reactivate my @davidbowie.com address?CheersNoel",
"parent_id": "8130315",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130323",
"author": "Marvin",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T09:24:12",
"content": "oh, cool… That first screenshot totally looks like it was designed by Designers Republic. (They also did the design for WipeOut for the PSX)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130371",
"author": "Koin",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T12:52:37",
"content": "I just want to say that when I was 15-17 I built exclusively Flash websites. I made things like a fully animated zombie grave scene for a friends rap group. On the artist page you would click on their picture and their head would explode and you would zoom in to the brain matter to display their artist information. I didn’t know how to code barely anything back then and it worked flawlessly.Now you need a dang phd just to get a stick to do a flat 360. Half the time it doesn’t work right, and browsers get things confused. That never happened with Flash because you always had to have the shockwave driver, a single source to display with. It was consistent. I can write algorithms now and I hate modern day web animating. It’s not fun anymore, and worse yet no one even likes animated websites anymore because they are lame and boring people.Bring. Flash. Back.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130455",
"author": "Flash Gordon",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T17:19:12",
"content": "You ask to “Bring.Flash.Back.” and I am Flash Gordon. I have a music video for one of my songs that I need an animated 29 seconds which my filmographer’s daughter started four years ago. Could you help me finish it for an affordable price? Please tell me how we can get in touch.Thanks.",
"parent_id": "8130371",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131254",
"author": "Flash Gordon",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T16:56:02",
"content": "Koin, please let me know if you’d be available for hire to help me finish this video of mine. I need an animator and you mentioned that you do that type of thing in your comment about Bowienet. Are you in the un-united states like I am? Please call me at (727) 266-4599.",
"parent_id": "8130371",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,541.769386
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/19/using-pitot-tubes-for-more-than-aircraft/
|
Using Pitot Tubes For More Than Aircraft
|
Aaron Beckendorf
|
[
"hardware"
] |
[
"air flow meter",
"pitot tube"
] |
When we hear the words “pitot tube,” we tend to think more of airplanes than of air ducts, but [Franci Kopač]’s guide to
pitot tubes for makers
shows that they can be a remarkably versatile tool for measuring air speed, even in domestic settings.
A pitot tube is a tube which faces into an air flow, with one hole at the front of the tube, and one on the side. It’s then possible to determine the air speed by measuring the pressure difference between the side opening and the end facing into the wind. At speeds, temperatures, and altitudes that a hacker’s likely to encounter (i.e. not on an airplane), the pressure difference is pretty small, and it’s only since the advent of MEMS pressure sensors that pitot tubes became practical for amateurs.
[Franci]’s design is based on a Sensiron SDP differential pressure sensor, a 3D-printed pitot tube structure, some tubing, and the microcontroller of your choice. It’s important to position the tube well, so that it doesn’t experience airflow disturbances from other structures and faces straight into the air flow. Besides good positioning, the airspeed calculation requires you to know the air temperature and absolute pressure.
[Franci] also describes a more exotic averaging pitot tube, a fairly simple variation which measures air speed in cavities more accurately. He notes that this provides a more inexpensive way of measuring air flow in ducts than air conditioning flow sensors, while being more resilient than propeller-based solutions – he himself used pitot tubes to balance air flow in his home’s ventilation. All of the necessary CAD files and Arduino code are available on his
GitHub repository
.
If you’re looking for a more conventional duct flow meter, we’ve
covered one before
. We’ve even seen a teardown of a pitot tube sensor system
from a military drone
.
| 8
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130011",
"author": "Mr T",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T15:28:04",
"content": "This would probably also work with venturi tubes that might be easier to incorporate into certain designs due to them relying only on a constriction of the airflow (like narrowing the tube slightly) to create a measurable pressure difference that can be used to gauge the air (or fluid) flow.Wikipedia has a nice video showing it:https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/58/Venturi_Tube_en.webm/Venturi_Tube_en.webm.480p.vp9.webm",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130309",
"author": "Franci Kopač",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T08:33:09",
"content": "Venturis restrict your airflow far more, but otherwise work similarly. So it depends on your air velocity — as soon as the air velocity is large enough, a Venturi wastes energy. But I’m sure there are applications where the air velocity is so small that it makes sense to create a restriction somewhere in the system.Apart from that, I think the biggest inherent advantage of the Pitot tubes is you don’t need to calibrate them unless you want very high accuracy. Which is an insight I’ll add to the article, thank you :)",
"parent_id": "8130011",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130051",
"author": "Lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T16:53:09",
"content": "Seems like a great article. I’ll have to read it in full later. I wish the original article had a full drawing of where the sensors sit and all that. I guess it’s kind of intuitive from the math how all this is supposed to go but I really appreciate when people detail housings couplings etc. especially with a picture.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130306",
"author": "Franci Kopač",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T08:25:11",
"content": "The final picture of the article shows the whole measuring setup for airflow measurement. I did not delve much in using the basic Pitot tube for direct air velocity measurements, like for a model airplane.Of course, if you have questions, you can use the built-in comments on the blog or Medium, I’m happy to discuss the details or even update the article after we get somewhere with that.",
"parent_id": "8130051",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130395",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T13:53:21",
"content": "Fords in the late 90s used this to measure flow in an emissions system, maybe EGR (exhaust gas recirculation), or AIR (air injection reaction).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131421",
"author": "Steve",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T06:49:13",
"content": "Indeed, it was for EGR. Ford called it “Delta Pressure Feedback EGR,” or DPFE. They had a semi-flexible metal pipe around 18 mm diameter running from an exhaust manifold to the EGR valve. Two smaller steel tubes came off the main pipe, one larger than the other (about 4 and 6 mm maybe), from either side of an orifice inside the large main pipe. These were connected to the DPFE sensor via high-temperature silicone hoses; the sensor would output a voltage in proportion to the differential pressure. That pressure was indicative of the EGR flow to the intake manifold.IME, it was more accurate than the older EGR Valve Position (EVP) sensors, which would only indicate pintle position. DPFE could give you an actual volume, IIRC, whereas EVP was a good guess at best, nevermind what happened when EGR passages would become clogged.I actually went through the trouble of adding a DPFE system to my Bronco, after adding the necessary hardware, wiring, and reprogramming the EEC-IV PCM to use it. Actually, I added a device to the PCM that would allow me to modify the ROM contents, and then the PCM would happily read and use the data from it.Why? Eh, I was an automotive nerd. It was something different and interesting to try, a long with the other fun and interesting modifications I was doing at the time.",
"parent_id": "8130395",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131707",
"author": "Martin A Christensen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T01:04:45",
"content": "we used pitot to measure water flow from fire hydrants",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154833",
"author": "PaulDamian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T13:45:02",
"content": "Can you elaborate, please, and give more details about the build?",
"parent_id": "8131707",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,541.81359
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/19/mister-for-mortals-meet-the-multisystem-2/
|
MiSTer For Mortals: Meet The Multisystem 2
|
Heidi Ulrich
|
[
"FPGA",
"Games",
"PCB Hacks",
"Retrocomputing",
"Toy Hacks"
] |
[
"console",
"DE10",
"DE10-Nano",
"fpga",
"MiSTER",
"Multisystem",
"Terasic"
] |
If you’ve ever squinted at a DE10-Nano wondering where the fun part begins, you’re not alone.
This review of the Mr. MultiSystem 2 by [Lee]
lifts the veil on a surprisingly noob-friendly FPGA console that finally gets the MiSTer experience out of the tinker cave and into the living room. Developed by Heber, the same UK wizards behind the original
MultiSystem
, this follow-up console dares to blend flexibility with simplicity. No stack required.
It comes in two varieties, to be precise: with, or without analog ports. The analog edition features a 10-layer PCB with both HDMI and native RGB out, Meanwell PSU support, internal USB headers, and even space for an OLED or NFC reader. The latter can be used to “load” physical cards cartridge-style, which is just ridiculously charming. Even the 3D-printed enclosure is open-source and customisable – drill it, print it, or just colour it
neon green
. And for once, you don’t need to be a soldering wizard to use the thing. The FPGA is integrated in the mainboard. No RAM modules, no USB hub spaghetti. Just add some ROMs (legally, of course), and you’re off.
Despite its plug-and-play aspirations, there are some quirks – for example, the usual display inconsistencies and that eternal jungle of controller mappings. But hey, if that’s the price for versatility, it’s one you’d gladly pay. And if you ever get stuck, the MiSTer crowd will eat your question and spit out 12 solutions. It remains 100% compatible with the MiSTer software, but allows some additional future features, should developers wish to support them.
Want to learn more? This could be your entrance to the MiSTer scene without having to first earn a master’s in embedded systems. Will this become an alternative to the Taki Udon announced Playstation inspired all-in-one FPGA console?
Check the video here
and let us know in the comments.
| 21
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8129852",
"author": "calculus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T08:47:50",
"content": "Will this become an alternative to the Taki Udon announced Playstation inspired all-in-one FPGA console, which does require a DE-10 (or compatible)?I didn’t think the Playstation inspired one still required a DE-10. The first bullet point under technical specifications is:– Cyclone V FPGAIt sounds like it is included. Where does to say bring your own DE-10 (or clone)?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129856",
"author": "RetepV",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T09:01:27",
"content": "Of course it’s going to be a configuration hell. It emulates 100+ different machine. But imagine having 100+ different machines in your man cave and having to configure and maintain all of them. That would be at least 10 times the configuration hell of a Mr. :+)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129864",
"author": "jalnl",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T09:33:01",
"content": "Would be more fun though :D",
"parent_id": "8129856",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129950",
"author": "Justin",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T12:42:51",
"content": "Why not both?",
"parent_id": "8129856",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130127",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T20:31:08",
"content": "This is the true way, because these systems will always have a cutoff point for their capabilities and if you are into consoles you’re going to have new-er models around.It’s also far less of a headache. It’s a lot of fun to set up systems the first few times, but really it’s better to do something else with the original hardware, maybe a showcase for people who are into that.",
"parent_id": "8129950",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130125",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T20:27:56",
"content": "Seen it, is really cool at first, but ugh the maintenance of anything goes wrong or dies. This is far better in most ways that matter.",
"parent_id": "8129856",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131405",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T05:44:13",
"content": "If you’ve lived in several of these worlds a while, you have become something of a masochist for configuration",
"parent_id": "8129856",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129975",
"author": "James Schmelzer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T13:51:33",
"content": "I always wanted to build one of these, but the cost steered me away.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129990",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T14:29:35",
"content": "Fpga is still emulation, just a new flavor of buzzwords to sell hardware",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130018",
"author": "Geert",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T15:38:14",
"content": "Hardware emulation vs. software emulation is more than just the next buzzword in my honest opinion. Performance and accuracy are a different beast if you don’t have to emulate architecture X on top of architecture Y, you can tailor your entire environment way more effectively, especially if the hardware you’re targeting is old enough to not require competitive current-gen performance.",
"parent_id": "8129990",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130131",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T20:35:39",
"content": "Customized hardware acceleration via FPGA is still a form of emulation, yes, but “just”? That’s like saying dynarec is “just emulation”, these are tools thatdramaticallyimprove not only performance, but compatibility, by being able to have hardware offload for extremely inefficient code paths and to replicate hardware bugs and quirks many studios leveraged to get extra performance at the time.Your response is just a salty “I don’t want to buy hardware from this guy”, which is up to you, but don’t bash a project that is clearly what it says it is.",
"parent_id": "8129990",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130173",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T22:22:33",
"content": "“and to replicate hardware bugs and quirks many studios leveraged to get extra performance ”I mean, I’ve seen this argument before, but it’seasierto deal with certain quirks in emulation than in hardware. The FPGA’s a digital emulation of an analog system – if you know “well OK in this case the bus becomes active earlier than the clock would allow it to” it actually could be harder to do that in an FPGA than it would be in emulation.",
"parent_id": "8130131",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130183",
"author": "Kevin Harrelson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T22:57:07",
"content": "FPGA is not really emulation. The FPGA load can be just as accurate as real hardware, with absolutely no added latency (well, assuming analog out. Going through HDMI might add some latency). For all intents and purposes, it is real hardware.However, the limits of the emulation accuracy are determined exclusively by how much we know about how the hardware was built. Something like an Apple 2 that uses 100% off-the-shelf parts, 100% the same. Where things get slightly more dicey are when you have to reverse-engineer the custom chips.",
"parent_id": "8129990",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130225",
"author": "MinorHavoc",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T02:10:08",
"content": "If I design a chip, create a mask, and manufacture a hardwired chip that mimics an Atari 4800, is that emulation? If not, then neither is using an FPGA. An FPGA implements logic using real gates except that the wiring is defined from data loaded at start up and once loaded, the wiring doesn’t change. It’s operating just like a hardwired chip.",
"parent_id": "8129990",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131406",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T05:44:57",
"content": "It’s a significant and useful distinction.",
"parent_id": "8129990",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130005",
"author": "floor",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T15:09:38",
"content": "I like the controller port idea but I would be afraid of breaking it if someone tripped on the cord or w/e.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130135",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T20:41:27",
"content": "So… Just like always? Imo replicas with wireless receiversarethe way to go though, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a follow-up to a project of this scope.Maybe you should make one, or use an existing replica, I’m not sure what kind of compatibility we are looking at here, but it may be trivial. If not? it’s not difficult to build from scratch with older control schemes, the hard part is really a good physical controller, which you will have (in theory).",
"parent_id": "8130005",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130296",
"author": "phuzz",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T07:53:41",
"content": "Some more modern controllers have a ‘break-away’, so if you pull on the cable it will disconnect at a special connector. (From a bit of searching, it looks like only the XBox had this).I’m not sure if there’s any off-the-shelf connectors that work the same way, or possibly something liek a MagSafe connector. If anyone does know of one, I’m sure HaD readers will.Of course, then you’d then have to attach these breakaway connectors to your controllers yourself.",
"parent_id": "8130005",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130020",
"author": "hjf",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T15:39:53",
"content": "what’s up with this ad? you can already get pre built mister FPGA systems.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130033",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T16:08:29",
"content": "For mere mortals? What a terrible time to have become immortal!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130137",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T20:42:19",
"content": "I could use some tips, cultivation has been slow lately.",
"parent_id": "8130033",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,541.572349
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/18/in-memory-of-ed-smylie-whose-famous-hack-saved-the-apollo-13-crew/
|
In Memory Of Ed Smylie, Whose Famous Hack Saved The Apollo 13 Crew
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"Space"
] |
[
"Apollo 13",
"Ed Smylie",
"in memoriam"
] |
Some hacks are so great that when you die you receive the rare honor of both an
obituary in the New York Times
and an in memoriam article at Hackaday.
The recently deceased, [Ed Smylie], was a NASA engineer leading the effort to save the crew of Apollo 13 with a makeshift gas conduit made from plastic bags and duct tape back in the year 1970. [Ed] died recently, on April 21, in Crossville, Tennessee, at the age of 95.
This particular hack, another in the
long and storied history of duct tape
, literally required putting a square peg in a round hole. After an explosion crippled the command module the astronauts needed to escape on the lunar excursion module. But the lunar module was only designed to support two people, not three.
The problem was that there was only enough lithium hydroxide onboard the lunar module to filter the air for two people. The astronauts could salvage lithium hydroxide canisters from the command module, but those canisters were square, whereas the canisters for the lunar module were round.
[Ed] and his team famously designed the required adapter from a small inventory of materials available on the space craft. This celebrated story has been told many times, including in the 1995 film,
Apollo 13
.
Thank you, [Ed], for one of the greatest hacks of all time. May you rest in peace.
Header: Gas conduit adapter designed by [Ed Smylie], NASA,
Public domain
.
| 30
| 12
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8129806",
"author": "valkyrie0528",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T05:51:56",
"content": "Ed, you sir are a steely-eyed missileman.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129808",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T05:56:42",
"content": "Amen to that.Rest in peace, Ed.",
"parent_id": "8129806",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129874",
"author": "Antron Argaiv",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T09:57:13",
"content": "…and a Real Engineer.",
"parent_id": "8129806",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129845",
"author": "Graham Tanner",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T08:13:03",
"content": "I’d like to think that when he was laid to rest he was in a rectagular coffin, but they dug a round hole in the ground … it’s what he would have wanted.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130070",
"author": "JD Robinson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T17:19:35",
"content": "Classic",
"parent_id": "8129845",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130117",
"author": "Petie",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T20:08:37",
"content": "+1",
"parent_id": "8129845",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129850",
"author": "Marty",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T08:26:46",
"content": "The explosion was in the service module, the cylindrical section behind the conical command module.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129859",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T09:15:41",
"content": "Thanks for the correction. I have stated this more carefully now.",
"parent_id": "8129850",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129903",
"author": "Joe W",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T10:56:23",
"content": "I know it has been published a while ago, but listen to the two seasons of “Thirteen Minutes to the Moon”!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129938",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T12:02:17",
"content": "Thanks for the tip. I found it on YouTube over here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1P4ntRw0yQ&list=PLz_B0PFGIn4f0xYPhOk0wIASOYE8-1Wbz",
"parent_id": "8129903",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129908",
"author": "Pablo J R",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T11:27:21",
"content": "After watching the movie several times, and having that scene of somebody (I guess should be Ed) throwing a bunch of things over a table and directing other folks with “we need to solve the problem with only this stuff ” as a reference guideline for problem solving, I only realize now that THE problem was due to square vs circle. So the question here is why they decided to use different canisters or receptacles in the first place",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129912",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T11:39:30",
"content": "Yes I found that surprising too, that there wasn’t a standard canister size and interface. Perhaps they learned from this, or perhaps they had good reasons which are non-obvious for the incompatible canisters.",
"parent_id": "8129908",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130006",
"author": "M Walter",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T15:12:12",
"content": "The Lunar Module was made by Grumman and the Command Module by North American Aviation. Apparently at the time there was not a specification for the mechanical design parameters of the lithium hydroxide canisters.",
"parent_id": "8129912",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130009",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T15:26:05",
"content": "According to what I have read (probably either in Deke Slayton’s or Gene Kranz’s biography, not sure), they changed it so that the canisters were interchangeable after Apollo 13.",
"parent_id": "8129912",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130101",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T19:15:57",
"content": "Apparently, the design was never updated:https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/3103/were-the-apollo-co%E2%82%82-scrubber-canister-designs-unified-after-apollo-13I guess, why would you need to since a plastic bag and some tape does the trick?",
"parent_id": "8130009",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129913",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T11:40:48",
"content": "Also apparently that part in the movie where he threw the stuff on the bench was a dramatization and in real life they had a computer printout of the inventory.",
"parent_id": "8129908",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129983",
"author": "Dan B",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T14:03:56",
"content": "That makes sense. Either way you would need to start with a list and you wouldn’t want to waste time scrounging up the items, you would want to get the list to the engineers as quickly as possible.",
"parent_id": "8129913",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130857",
"author": "QBFreak",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:45:19",
"content": "It made for a dramatic scene though. I remember watching it as a kid (young teen maybe?) and it’s the one thing from the movie that I can still picture.Plus, waving a page of green bar at the camera isn’t nearly as exciting ;)",
"parent_id": "8129913",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131803",
"author": "robomonkey",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T12:21:29",
"content": "Also, according to the book “Lost Moon” Ed was thinking about the solution while driving to the space center. When he got there they devised and tested it. No large group of befuddled engineers staring at a box of parts trying to rig up a solution. These guys were WAY smarter than that.Biggest issue they ran into was finding Lithium Hydroxide canisters to properly test the design. They had some on the shelf at the Cape for installation on Apollo 14. These were flown to Houston for testing.",
"parent_id": "8129913",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129915",
"author": "Lexicon",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T11:45:09",
"content": "The Command Module & LEM were designed & built by different companies. NASA (foolishly) let them use their own canister design for each of the life support systems.I assume they learned from this reasonably obvious mistake.",
"parent_id": "8129908",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129971",
"author": "Antron Argaiv",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T13:44:24",
"content": "The LEM was overweight, IIRC. Makes sense that they made the canisters as small as possible.",
"parent_id": "8129915",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129969",
"author": "Antron Argaiv",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T13:43:24",
"content": "Different manufacturers.Remember, the whole moon shot was a mashup of different design teams. The interfaces between projects were specified (mostly…see the rendezvous radar signal phase “1202” issue) but within projects, no interchangeability because the whole Apollo project was trying tomake it to the “end of the decade” finish line, and they couldn’t have everything perfect.",
"parent_id": "8129908",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129988",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T14:21:34",
"content": "NASA never planned an unexpected accident requiring someone to swap canister and make the square one fit the round hole. I’m sure they made sure future rocket and shuttle missions were easier to hack if an unexpected problem arose.Now if only the astronauts had some good thermal tapes onboard Columbia before coming back to Earth…",
"parent_id": "8129908",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129942",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T12:19:04",
"content": "definitely a hack",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129978",
"author": "Gary Hinners",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T14:01:43",
"content": "My father, Arthur H. Hinners, was a significant part of that team. We still have photos and other documentation of the development of that prototype that we found while sorting through some boxes. When asked what happened to the prototype Dad said they probably just threw it away since there were so many other challenges to overcome at the time. We lost Dad several years ago but those NASA years were really special. He started with NACA and became part of NASA when it was headquartered in the Clear Lake area outside of Houston (now part of the city). We lived in the Timber Cove subdivision along with many engineers and early astronauts (Glenn, Grissom, Carpenter, Conrad, Lovell, See to name a few).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129982",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T14:03:34",
"content": "RIP",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129985",
"author": "make piece not war",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T14:10:03",
"content": "Most of us are passing through the life without leaving any footprints, but some have the blessing of a genius moment at the right point in time and space. In our times, there is a growing chance that there will be withnesses, alive and/or mechanical, to record the mental spark of a homo sapiens. And then, for a while, we have the inspiration to push harder forward our tasks dreaming that we can achive the same one day. Such a pleasent and warming thought.Thanks Ed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129995",
"author": "Beowulf Shaeffer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T14:47:25",
"content": "Hear, hear!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130073",
"author": "JD Robinson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T17:23:49",
"content": "While Ed may solved the “Houston we have a Problem”, teamwork and leadership saved the day.. Gene Kranz “Failure is not an option” was a great approach. (whether he said it or not)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130234",
"author": "Rich",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T03:34:50",
"content": "Thanks to Ed, and perhaps a vote of thanks to the person who thought to include a roll of duct tape on the flight. I guess the moral is, never go anywhere without duct tape in your toolbox. Even to the moon.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,541.637398
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/18/designing-a-hobbyists-semiconductor-dopant/
|
Designing A Hobbyist’s Semiconductor Dopant
|
Aaron Beckendorf
|
[
"chemistry hacks"
] |
[
"dopant",
"semiconductor",
"spin coat"
] |
[ProjectsInFlight] has been on a mission to make his own semiconductors for about a year now, and recently shared a major step toward that goal: homemade
spin-on dopants
. Doping semiconductors has traditionally been extremely expensive, requiring either ion-implantation equipment or specialized chemicals for thermal diffusion. [ProjectsInFlight] wanted to use thermal diffusion doping, but first had to formulate a cheaper dopant.
Thermal diffusion doping involves placing a source of dopant atoms (phosphorus or boron in this case) on top of the chip to be doped, heating the chip, and letting the dopant atoms diffuse into the silicon. [ProjectsInFlight] used spin-on glass doping, in which an even layer of precursor chemicals is spin-coated onto the chip. Upon heating, the precursors decompose to leave behind a protective film of glass containing the dopant atoms, which diffuse out of the glass and into the silicon.
After trying a few methods to create a glass layer, [ProjectsInFlight] settled on a composition based on tetraethyl orthosilicate, which we’ve seen used before to create
synthetic opals
. After finding this method, all he had to do was find the optimal reaction time, heating, pH, and reactant proportions. Several months of experimentation later, he had a working solution.
After some testing, he found that he could bring silicon wafers from their original light doping to heavy doping. This is particularly impressive when you consider that his dopant is about two orders of magnitude cheaper than similar commercial products.
Of course, after doping, you still need to remove the glass layer with an oxide etchant, which we’ve
covered before
. If you prefer working with lasers, we’ve also seen those
used for doping
.
| 3
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8129879",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T10:17:11",
"content": "With the equipment he has, and the ability to dope silicon and make oxide layers, couldn’t he make quite decent power electronics? Like transistors and such with a decent current carrying capabilities?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129945",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T12:29:39",
"content": "‘he had a working solution’i see what you did there",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129984",
"author": "Justin",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T14:08:36",
"content": "Amazing work. This is really the kind of stuff I like to see here – taking industry level tech and making it hobby level tech.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,541.455153
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/18/hackaday-links-may-18-2025/
|
Hackaday Links: May 18, 2025
|
Dan Maloney
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] |
[
"bacteria",
"cleanroom",
"documentary",
"doom",
"earthquake",
"engineering",
"hackaday links",
"Myanmar",
"nasa",
"planetary protection",
"thruster",
"voyager",
"Will It Doom?"
] |
Say what you want about the wisdom of keeping a 50-year-old space mission going, but the dozen or so people still tasked with keeping the Voyager mission running are some major studs. That’s our conclusion anyway, after reading about
the latest heroics
that revived a set of thrusters on
Voyager 1
that had been offline for over twenty years. The engineering aspects of this feat are interesting enough, but we’re more interested in the social engineering aspects of this exploit, which
The Register goes into a bit
. First of all, even though both Voyagers are long past their best-by dates, they are our only interstellar assets, and likely will be for centuries to come, or perhaps forever. Sure, the rigors of space travel and the ravages of time have slowly chipped away at what these machines can so, but while they’re still operating, they’re irreplaceable assets.
That makes the fix to the thruster problem all the more ballsy, since the Voyager team couldn’t be 100% sure about the status of the primary thrusters, which were shut down back in 2004. They thought it might have been that the fuel line heaters were still good, but if they actually had gone bad, trying to switch the primary thrusters back on with frozen fuel lines could have resulted in an explosion when
Voyager
tried to fire them, likely ending in a loss of the spacecraft. So the decision to try this had to be a difficult one, to say the least. Add in an impending shutdown of the only DSN antenna capable of communicating with the spacecraft and a two-day communications round trip, and the pressure must have been unbearable. But they did it, and
Voyager
successfully navigated yet another crisis. But what we’re especially excited about is discovering a 2023 documentary about the current Voyager mission team called
“It’s Quieter in the Twilight.”
We know what we’ll be watching this weekend.
Speaking of space exploration, one thing you don’t want to do is send anything off into space bearing Earth microbes. That would be a Very Bad Thing™, especially for missions designed to look for life anywhere else but here. But, it turns out that just building spacecraft in cleanrooms might not be enough, with
the discovery of 26 novel species of bacteria
growing in the cleanroom used to assemble a Mars lander. The mission in question was
Phoenix
, which landed on Mars in 2008 to learn more about the planet’s water. In 2007, while the lander was in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at Kennedy Space Center, biosurveillance teams collected samples from the cleanroom floor. Apparently, it wasn’t very clean, with 215 bacterial strains isolated, 26 of which were novel. What’s more, genomic analysis of the new bugs suggests they have genes that make them especially tough, both in their resistance to decontamination efforts on Earth and in their ability to survive the rigors of life in space. We’re not really sure if these results say more about NASA’s cleanliness than they do about the selective pressure that an extreme environment like a cleanroom exerts on fast-growing organisms like bacteria. Either way, it doesn’t bode well for our
planetary protection
measures.
Closer to home but more terrifying is
video from an earthquake in Myanmar
that has to be seen to be believed. And even then, what’s happening in the video is hard to wrap your head around. It’s not your typical stuff-falling-off-the-shelf video; rather, the footage is from an outdoor security camera that shows the ground outside of a gate literally ripping apart during the 7.7 magnitude quake in March. The ground just past the fence settles a bit while moving away from the camera a little, but the real action is the linear motion — easily three meters in about two seconds. The motion leaves the gate and landscaping quivering but largely intact; sadly, the same can’t be said for a power pylon in the distance, which crumples as if it were made from toothpicks.
And finally, “Can it run DOOM?” has become a bit of a meme in our community, a benchmark against which hacking chops can be measured. If it has a microprocessor in it, chances are someone has tried to make it run the classic first-person shooter video game. We’ve covered dozens of these hacks before, everything from
a diagnostic ultrasound machine
to
a custom keyboard keycap
, while recent examples tend away from hardware ports to software platforms such as
a PDF file
,
Microsoft Word
, and even
SQL
. Honestly, we’ve lost count of the ways to DOOM, which is where
Can It Run Doom?
comes in handy. It lists all the unique platforms that hackers have tortured into playing the game, as well as links to source code and any relevant video proof of the exploit. Check it out the next time you get the urge to port DOOM to something cool; you wouldn’t want to go through all the work to find out it’s already been done, would you?
| 8
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8129755",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T02:47:23",
"content": "“Can it run doom” answer choices for hackers:* Yes, it can, it’s been done (see above)* No, it’s been proven impossible/is impossible by inspection (no, your ultra-low-resource non-turing-complete device can’t run Doom, sorry)* Hold my beer (“challenge accepted”)* I’m busy with another hack at the moment, but I’ll get to it as fast as I can",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129763",
"author": "a_do_z",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T03:29:39",
"content": "(Hmm…I wonder how rare first word typos are.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129934",
"author": "squirrely_bob",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T11:52:54",
"content": "I saw what you did there…",
"parent_id": "8129763",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129946",
"author": "chris",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T12:31:39",
"content": "I was going to saw that?",
"parent_id": "8129763",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130026",
"author": "flipperpi",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T15:50:53",
"content": "I used to play on a say saw when I was a kid….but seriously, this typo is so glaring I didn’t even read past the first word.",
"parent_id": "8129763",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130097",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T19:03:07",
"content": "Documentary? Or phone ramble? I can’t wait for the tall screen to take over cinema. At least we won’t have to look at that annoying blown up center part of the image split in two and out of focus on each side.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130180",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T22:53:58",
"content": "Seems that those living organism at NASA were expected to be there.Makes sense that we had quite some years of experience with clean rooms and sanitation and we already know there are buggers who still survive procedures.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132240",
"author": "Jonathan Wilson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T22:06:31",
"content": "Damn, looks like (for whatever BS reason) the Voyager documentary isn’t available in Australia :(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,541.951526
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/18/speed-up-arduino-with-clever-coding/
|
Speed Up Arduino With Clever Coding
|
Tyler August
|
[
"Arduino Hacks"
] |
[
"arduino",
"code optimization"
] |
We love Arduino here at Hackaday; they’ve probably done more to make embedded programming accessible to more people than anything else in the history of the field. One thing the Arduino ecosystem is rarely praised for is its speed. That’s where [Playduino] comes in, with his video (embedded below) that promises to make everyone’s
favourite microcontroller run 50x faster.
You might be expecting an unstable overclocking setup, with swapped crystals, tweaked voltages and a hefty heat sink, but no! This is stock hardware. The 50x speedup comes from one simple hack: don’t use digitalWrite();
If you aren’t familiar, the digitalWrite() function is one of the key functions Arduino gives you to operate its boards– specify the pin and the value (high or low) to drive it. It’s very easy, but it’s also very
slow
. [Playduino] takes a moment to show just how much is going on under the hood when you call digitalWrite(), and shows you what you can do instead if you have a need for speed. (Hint: there’s no Arduino-provided code involved; hardware registers and the __asm keyword show up.)
If you learned embedded programming in an earlier era, this will probably seem glaringly obvious. If you, like so many of us, got started inside of the Arduino ecosystem, these closer-to-the-metal programming techniques could prove useful tools in your quiver. Big thanks to [Stephan Walters] for the tip.
Of course if you prefer to speed things up by hardware rather than software, you
can
overclock an
Arduino– with liquid nitrogen, even
.
| 57
| 20
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8129688",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T20:04:34",
"content": "Perhaps this is a dumb question but why can’t things like DigitalWrite be remade so they aren’t as slow and compile down to the same fast ASM as manually doing it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129706",
"author": "Evan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T20:53:47",
"content": "It can! The Teensy implementation of digitWrite is extremely fast. You can also use the digitalWriteFast library",
"parent_id": "8129688",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129709",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T20:59:15",
"content": "Sure… just use digitalWriteFast()The limitation is that the pin ID must be a constant. Not usually a significant limitation.",
"parent_id": "8129688",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130478",
"author": "Simon Peacock",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:10:15",
"content": "Welcom to the world of HAL. If you try to be a be all and do all, you will be forever taxed.",
"parent_id": "8129688",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129689",
"author": "lespaul1963",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T20:07:13",
"content": "Is this 2009 again? (Actually I wish it was.)Everyone and his dog knowsdigitalWrite()is multiplatform but terribly slow because of all the safety checks and multiplatforming.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129740",
"author": "Amber",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T23:47:07",
"content": "Leveraging templates and constexpr to achieve cross platform compatibility would probably improve speed without sacrificing safety.",
"parent_id": "8129689",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129928",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T11:50:41",
"content": "Indeed, but the italian students who wrote the function 15+ years ago thought it was a good idea to check if a pin is used for PWM, ADC, or whatever and then fail to write if one of those other functions is active. It’s mind boggling weird decision.Other gripes I have with “arduino” is that it’s not a good learning platform at all. It’s very sloppy written code, a mishmash of C and C++ (which they try to hide and give it some other name), and they invite you to learn the same sloppy methods. By default they also (used to?) hide the compiler error messages.String functions also have slightly different names and functionality from standard functions.I understand starting the first blinking led with a delay_us() function, but in the same chapter it should be explained why writing code in that fashion is a very bad idea that will get you into trouble later. And the silly init() and loop() functions both make it harder to find out where the program starts (I’m always searching for main(). What’s simpler then main() ).But still, I guess it’s an improvement over BASIC.",
"parent_id": "8129740",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130321",
"author": "WestfW",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T09:17:50",
"content": "Huh? If PWM is on, digitalWrite turns it off.",
"parent_id": "8129928",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129814",
"author": "Cyk",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T06:16:45",
"content": "Er, the compiler should check that, not the code at runtime.",
"parent_id": "8129689",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130728",
"author": "Davicious",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T11:38:01",
"content": "I don’t use Arduino IDE much, but that’s my thoughts exactly.And even if it is in runtime, does the “verifications” -whatever they may be- repeat EVERY invocation of digitalWrite ()…?If your target is a 328 -or any other device-, simple rewrite/use a two line inline function/macro, manipulating registers directly. I think if you really are into embedded, it’s the simple and obvious next step for everyone.",
"parent_id": "8129814",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129823",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T06:37:49",
"content": "That’s the thing though, it may be known by people who are immersed in the Arduino ecosystem but far from everyone eats, sleeps and dreams Arduino (some of us prefer tools with proper debugging that don’t break with every .0.0 revision for example) and this is one of those nuggets of knowledge that would only become apparent if your application needed to eke out every processor cycle for performance.Then you should really be asking yourself if you’re in the right development environment.",
"parent_id": "8129689",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129707",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T20:55:38",
"content": "Congratulations! A lucky one-of-ten-thousand case…https://xkcd.com/1053/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129708",
"author": "cliff claven",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T20:56:57",
"content": "Again, a fix for the Arduino playpen. Arduino is excellent at what it does. Provide a suite of tools for learners and a platform for quick development for non-performance-critical applications.Hacks like this show why it is a starting point, not an end. I see it now: Next up, a hack to allow decent event driven behaviour, then a hack to allow for decent use of timers, and then…. you are no longer in the Arduino world, but have moved to genuine embedded programming, though hopefully with a decent RTOS. Which Arduino is not. Nor does it pretend to be.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129710",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T21:04:17",
"content": "What does the Arduino documentation have to say about direct port manipulation?“Generally speaking, doing this sort of thing is not a good idea”",
"parent_id": "8129708",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129718",
"author": "cliff claven",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T21:29:43",
"content": "Yup. You CAN do it, but really are taking a risk of a collision in resource allocation or ending up with an inconsistent state between reality and the Arduino environment. It also violates the precept that the environment is hardware agnostic from the point of view of the programmer, and portability is out the window.A good RTOS does a MUCH better job at abstracting these things, but requires more capable hardware than Arduino will run on at the minimum.",
"parent_id": "8129710",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129739",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T23:39:37",
"content": "An RTOS doesn’t really provide hardware access. That’s what the HAL is for.FreeRTOS isn’t going to help with GPIO",
"parent_id": "8129718",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129730",
"author": "Cody",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T23:08:25",
"content": "When you need to get more speed out of the Arduino, just stop using the Arduino libraries. It’s not just digitalWrite that’s slow. The ATmega microcontrollers are very easy to program. The peripherals are fairly simple and the datasheet is only a few hundred pages long.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129737",
"author": "DerAxeman",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T23:35:00",
"content": "This. Arduinos did just as much damage as they did good. They abstracted the hardware to the point you have to hack your way to talk to it directly. Talking to and manipulating the hardware is what embedded programming is all about. Knowing the hardware is essential. The most damage they did was flood the market with people calling themselves embedded programmers when they can’t even bring up a system from power on with code or set up a basic main loop.",
"parent_id": "8129730",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129960",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T13:07:41",
"content": "“Talking to and manipulating the hardware is what embedded programming is all about. ”We already had this before with PIC16C84 and PIC16F84/A, you maybe remember that chip.Most projects of the time provided a HEX file only, or an ASM file. PICBasic wasn’t always being used.So at end of day you had to learn PIC16F84 ASM, which was specific for the chip.Other PICs had different assembly language.",
"parent_id": "8129737",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129961",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T13:14:36",
"content": "“The most damage they did was flood the market with people calling themselves embedded programmers when they can’t even bring up a system from power on with code or set up a basic main loop.”Ah yes, the “real men” throphe.. :)By that logic, only C/C++ programmers are real programmers.As a former VB6 progra.. err, VB6 user, I’m used to such statements.Funnily, the “badly coded” applications did run as wished.While the professionally written applications not seldomly were ugly and not user-friendly. :D",
"parent_id": "8129737",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130067",
"author": "DerAxeman",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T17:14:12",
"content": "No its just fundamentals. Hardware costs money. If you uprate hardware to simplify programming you are wasting money./20 years of embedded programming including boot roms and porting linux to custom hardware. One system flew on commercial rockets.",
"parent_id": "8129961",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130477",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:09:48",
"content": "There is an implied hardware production volume in your thinking.If you only need one, and weight/power/safety are not issues, hardware is much MUCH cheaper than coder time.Java isn’t useless…(It’s not JS.)Even Python has a place…Even VBA…But all coders should know at least one architecture assembly…even if it’s 6502.Learning a new architecture costs money too…I digress.",
"parent_id": "8130067",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129848",
"author": "C",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T08:19:18",
"content": "The datasheets of AVR MCUs are one of the best. A lot of explanation of how the peripherals work. Other manufacturers just dump a list of registers with brief descriptions and let you figure it out yourself.",
"parent_id": "8129730",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129911",
"author": "Winston",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T11:36:31",
"content": "Plus, for non-professionals, the huge user base of same provides a lot of help and example code to examine.",
"parent_id": "8129848",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129937",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T12:01:11",
"content": "Datasheets of the AVR’s are quite bad. Instead of just writing what the thing does, they have pages long of gibberish of how they intend to use some obscure functions. (Take for example the MPCM bit (multi processor communication for the UART). They could have explained that in 3 lines, but they need multiple pages. Such information should not be put into a datasheet, but in some separate manual or user guide. The old datasheets (20+ years ago) were quite good though. Pretty close to concise without getting obscure.But still, the AVR’s are pretty simple processors and relatively easy to understand. It is completely bonkers though that the have a “tiny” and a “mega” series, and that there are lots of incompatibilities in peripherals, even between similar AVR’s, or even in the same package.It’s such a relief to read a description of how a timer peripheral works, and then a note that this processor has 5 of the same timer peripherals. But not with AVR’s. Even if it has two or more timers, they are likely all different. This is a huge waste of human effort during development (Does this or that timer have the extra compare C register), and it also makes it nearly impossible to write library code that works on a bunch of similar processors.",
"parent_id": "8129848",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129947",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T12:35:33",
"content": "on the off chance that you’re insulting PIC datasheets i’m here to tell younuh uh they’re awesome too",
"parent_id": "8129848",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129731",
"author": "WestfW",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T23:12:50",
"content": "Significant discussion, including “why is digitalWrite() slow” can be found here:https://forum.arduino.cc/t/maximum-pin-toggle-speed/4378(From 2008!)It doesn’t get really sad till some of the newer architectures decide they need to duplicate the side-effects of the AVR (notably: “if you digitalWrite(pin, HIGH) while the pin is in INPUT mode, that should turn on the input pullup resistor.”)That, and the Arduino organization’s general unwillingness to include performance improvement changes :-( (There are now “many” implementations of “digitalWriteFast()”, none of which have been accepted by Arduino.)Also, avr-gcc has __builtin_avr_delay_cycles(), so there’s no need to write assembly code to even out your square wave.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129734",
"author": "jme",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T23:23:25",
"content": "“they’ve probably done more to make embedded programming accessible to more people than anything else in the history of the field.”Would be a good article and comments around this.A lot of PIC, MIT handyboard got me into robotics, picaxe was a slightly earlier abstracted Arduino concept for sure, TI Launch pad for MSP low power work, adjacent Lego mindstorms",
"parent_id": "8129731",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129748",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T01:40:36",
"content": "Basic STAMP FTW! Got me into microcontrollers because it sucked so badly I looked into what it was made from, and the rest is history. Oh, that and Microchip’s early application notes, such a delight to read!",
"parent_id": "8129734",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129831",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T06:49:15",
"content": "I got into AVR programming on bare metal because it was cheaper than an Arduino.The Arduino “works” on a level where you have people who understand absolutely nothing about programming, like “What’s a macro? What is a register?”, and the point of it is to keep them that way for as long as possible by not explaining anything. That is of course to keep people coming back to Arduino.",
"parent_id": "8129734",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129882",
"author": "Julian Skidmore",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T10:21:21",
"content": "MIT handy board was 68HC11 based wasn’t it? I once wrote a firmware update (called SmoothPWM) that implemented pulse density modulation instead of PWM to achieve 256 PWM steps instead of 8.https://www.cs.uml.edu/~fredm/handyboard.com/oldhb/misclink/index.html",
"parent_id": "8129734",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129736",
"author": "brian-in-ohio",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T23:33:57",
"content": "I recommend flashforth as a great next step beyond the arduino ide. Get it at flashforth.com",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129738",
"author": "PPJ",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T23:35:11",
"content": "This topic returns from time to time:https://hackaday.com/2010/01/06/arduino-io-speed-breakdown/But it only shows how good platform Arduino is. Despite it’s age and prophecies it’s still popular.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129862",
"author": "C",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T09:31:02",
"content": "It makes sense the AVR is still used. For many low level applications it is fast enough. 16MHz with simple code allows sub millisecond response time for many signals. 32KiB FLASH is plenty for many simple applications.It lacks the processing power and memory for handling graphical LCDs. It is slow at floating point. And it is not the most power efficient MCU so it’s not ideal for battery powered applications. But for many applications this is not an issue.",
"parent_id": "8129738",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129741",
"author": "BuriedCode",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T00:22:31",
"content": "Every time this comes up – Arduino AVR functions/libraries being slow or poorly optimized for x – I have to point out – you don’t have to use the built in functions in the Arduino IDE. You can write bare metal C just fine, the only price you have to pay with the Arduino IDE and AVRs is timer0, and a couple of interrupts.Also, its not necessarily all or nothing – you can use some libraries, and lower level code, but you have to be aware of what resources/peripherals/dependencies the library uses (which is handy because it gives one the habit of actually checking what the library is doing rather than treating it as a black box).And as many have stated here – Arduino is about education and convenience, not speed, power optimization, just knocking something up for testing or prototyping. Right tools, for the right job.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129760",
"author": "Seamus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T03:13:50",
"content": "Saying Arduino ruined embedded programming is like saying home cookbooks ruin gourmet cooking. Each serves a purpose, and can be a stepping stone to the other.This knowledge elitism helps no-one and dissuades people from following their interests. You need to stop.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129762",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T03:27:09",
"content": "The ONLY thing Arduino did for people is to teach them how to do things the wrong way.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129940",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T12:06:11",
"content": "It also swamps the internet and git sites with badly written code.",
"parent_id": "8129762",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129957",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T13:01:12",
"content": "Did you prefer PIC16F84/A, BasicStamp or 8052 AH BASIC though?I loved the PIC16C84 and its newer versions but it had some drawbacks.Many projects were available as HEX files only and the PICs all had a slightly different assembly language.",
"parent_id": "8129762",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129844",
"author": "kpc",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T07:48:05",
"content": "This is not speeding up Arduino. It is just throwing the Arduino ecosystem overboard and do the register calls yourself directly.Maybe have a look at the Teensy code. There Paul Stofregen did some clever trickery to speed up a lot of the calls, but he stays within the Arduino ecosystem. If you look at the digitalWrite calls, they get replaced with direct port manipulations through the use of c++ template trickery.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129846",
"author": "C",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T08:14:45",
"content": "You can toggle a pin by writing a 1 to the pin register of an AVR MCU. This trick is very useful. No need to use read-modify-write.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129854",
"author": "WestfW",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T08:57:57",
"content": "PORTB |= (1<<bitpos); doesn’t do read-modify-write, on most AVRs and most ports.It gets optimized to a single “sbi” instruction.",
"parent_id": "8129846",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129885",
"author": "Julian Skidmore",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T10:30:11",
"content": "If PORTB&(1<<bitPos) is an output, then PINB |= (1<<bitPos) will achieve PORTB ^= (1<<bitPos), toggling the output, with a single SBI instruction. This is what ‘C’ meant in their comment.",
"parent_id": "8129854",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129910",
"author": "C",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T11:36:19",
"content": "PINB = (1<<bitPos)",
"parent_id": "8129885",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130226",
"author": "WestfW",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T02:11:25",
"content": "Except that one (“=”, rather than “|=”) will take at least two instructions and a register.(although it could also toggle more than one bit at a time.)Arguably, the optimization of “SFR |= bit” to an SBI instruction is incorrect behavior. It gets messy when read and write values are inconsistent (as they are here, with PINB.)",
"parent_id": "8129910",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130303",
"author": "C",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T08:17:02",
"content": "Using |= will toggle all pins that have a 1 in the pin register, right?Also it doesn’t need 2 instructions. Only 1 register that needs to be initialized once. The compiler doesn’t have to load that register every single time.",
"parent_id": "8129910",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129977",
"author": "Tina Belmont",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T14:00:26",
"content": "I like Arduino.It works the same on a lot of platforms and allows me to get started quickly without having to learn everything about acprocessors init process or specific hardware. It’s got vast library support, and many of those libraries are readable in account of being very small.Later, when I need better performance, or hardware specific stuff, I can dig deeper on that one topic and the rest of my Arduino code still works fine.I wish it had a debugger, and some command line tools and more traditional IDE stuff, but I prefer their striped down environment to the mess that is Eclipse any day.It would be nice if other development environments had easy ways to incorporate Arduino code, but the last time I looked, it was too clumsy to get working. Maybe that has changed?",
"parent_id": "8129846",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130631",
"author": "WestfW",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T05:18:40",
"content": "Using |= will toggle all pins that have a 1 in the pin register, right?Arguably, it SHOULD, but it’s optimized to an SBI instruction, which doesn’t do a “real” RMW cycle on the register.",
"parent_id": "8129846",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129941",
"author": "TDT",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T12:08:11",
"content": "I don’t know what’s worse…That this trick is still “discovered” in 2025, or that Arduino didn’t update it’s IO libs for decades.They could at least provide optimisation for low end 8 bits mcu. It would prevent the DigitalPinWriteFast() forest.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130456",
"author": "Jim J Jewett",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T17:20:10",
"content": "If the Arduino software library were made faster, the hardware would be much less reliable.Eric Bogatin often uses Arduino as an example of bad-but-good-enough PCB layout for his hardware students. His latest appearance on Robert Ferenec’s channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-qubBLJDD8&lc=UgyWq3GzTF6a4gJcVkl4AaABAgDo You Design Connector Pinout Correctly? | Eric Bogatin — perhaps skipping ahead to ~18 minutes) is an example.With the default Arduino board, and a reasonable (perhaps not normal, but reasonable) use of of pin headers, you get more than enough noise to cause problems if you use the fast versions. The extra checks and serialization and such slow the switching enough that this isn’t usually a problem in practice.But if they rewrote the libraries to encourage as-fast-as-possible software, the constraints on hardware layout would get much tighter.",
"parent_id": "8129941",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129956",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T12:53:34",
"content": "personally, i hate arduino. because i already knew embedded development before i met it. and because PIC is better than AVR. and because i don’t like the arduino boards i’ve happened across.but i’m torn about its overall value for other people or the community at large. a good example is Marlin (3D printer firmware). i’ve got 10 year old Marlin source sitting around — hopefully it’s improved in the last decade but honestly i don’t imagine it has :)the first thing i ran into with Marlin is that it had some incidental dependency on some quirk of the arduino C library too, which bit me because i used some AVR C library that debian installed instead — i’d rather do just about anything than install some IDE with an attached SDK. that’s really what i don’t like about Arduino. simply by deciding to use reasonable commandline tools i’ve already broken their model more severely than if i “#define digitalWrite digitalWriteFast”.Marlin uses digitalWrite, and also has a fastio.h with a direct memory-mapped-IO interface. that strikes me as pointless complication. there’s a lot of pointless complication in Marlin.Marlin isn’t written by programmers, per se. everyone comes at Marlin and does the least-effort hack to get their printer to work, and then loses interest. so it’s very much ‘hacked’ instead of ‘developed.’ people intermittently try to do various merges and clean up but the community doesn’t seem to be there for it.basically, i don’t like Marlin. and the way it uses Arduino is just another thing on the list of why i don’t like it.but! given the quality of software development it’s seen, could Marlin even exist without Arduino? it seems to me like many of the developers along the way weren’t up to the task of, for example, reading a datasheet or configuring a proper SDK. but yet we did get valuable work from them. and the ‘hats’ — overall i don’t like the arduino form factor or boards but where would 3d printing be without the RAMPS hat?and here i am, i got a new printer, and lo, it is using Marlin too. thankfully, i haven’t had cause to modify it!so it definitely seems to have had its use",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130253",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T04:59:25",
"content": "The only IDE I don’t like is the atmel based on VS.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130287",
"author": "El Gru",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T07:17:39",
"content": "Reminds me of discussions about Python. If you write more than 500 lines of code you are using the wrong tool.And yes, guilty as charged myself.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130293",
"author": "Mr D Kerr",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T07:45:50",
"content": "Why not go with an UDOO RYZEN Bolt V8 SBC Maker Board and use 80586 assembly language to program it as it will be much faster",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130476",
"author": "bm",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:07:25",
"content": "Heck of a lot of snobbery here. It’s funny all these amazing, “bare metal C” programmers who look down their noses at the Arduino ecosystem never seem to scroll past an Arduino posting here on HackADay..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130513",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T20:03:51",
"content": "haha there’s a good reason for that…i never thought of arduino as analogous to windows but…in 1993 i was ambivalent towards windows. i had used DOS a lot, win3.1 a little, and linux/unix not-at-all. and then by 1996 i hated windows passionately, because i had used win95 enough to know how slow and opaque and non-debuggable and developer-unfriendly it is. and on the other side, i had used linux enough to know that progress (“32-bit protected mode”!!) doesn’t have to be two steps backwards. and i hated windows passionately into the aughts, as i continued to run into the long arm of microsoft…for example, in 2001 i had a fine job but then i got ‘promoted’ to windows tech support and had to quit. in 2003, i was a professional web developer and MSIE was the bane of my existence. in 2004, i made a javascript app ‘just for fun’ and again MSIE was punishing me.and then POOF it disappeared. i didn’t even notice until sometime around 2010 i noticed i just don’t hate windows anymore. it’s not much of a mystery — i basically haven’t had any contact with any form with windows since 2005ish. i don’t have any programs that force me to maintain windows at home just to use them. as a web developer, edge is chrome is safari. whenever i need a ‘least common denominator’ computational environment — which used to mean windows — i reach instead for android (which i do hate now).so i don’t do battle with arduino very often. but in recent memory, definitely more often than with windows. so today i hate arduino more than i hate windows :) (arduino is much less bad than windows is, though)though i tried to be balanced in my criticism of arduino here…it really is harmful in some ways, and beneficial in others. but it’s definitely something that evokes a response. it’s fresh in my mind.",
"parent_id": "8130476",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130495",
"author": "Michael Damon Hopkins",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:46:35",
"content": "I remember when we first got a c compiler for the atmel and microchip microcontrollers. I remember cobbling together c functions with pure assembly inside.. so much fun.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,541.907591
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/18/christmas-comes-early-with-ai-santa-demo/
|
Christmas Comes Early With AI Santa Demo
|
Tyler August
|
[
"Artificial Intelligence"
] |
[
"ai",
"libpeer",
"LLM",
"openai",
"Santa Claus",
"speech recognition",
"speech synthesis"
] |
With only two hundred odd days ’til Christmas, you just know we’re already feeling the season’s magic. Well, maybe not, but [Sean Dubois] has decided to give us a head start with this
WebRTC demo built into a Santa stuffie.
The details are a little bit sparse (hopefully he finishes the documentation on GitHub by the time this goes out) but the project is really neat. Hardware-wise, it’s an audio-enabled ESP32-S3 dev board living inside Santa, running the OpenAI’s OpenRealtime Embedded SDK (
as implemented by ExpressIf
), with some customization by [Sean]. Looks like the audio is going through the newest version of LibPeer and the heavy lifting is all happening in the cloud, as you’d expect with this SDK. (A key is required, but hey! It’s all open source; if you have an AI that can do the job locally-hosted, you can probably figure out how to connect to it instead.)
This speech-to-speech AI doesn’t need to emulate Santa Claus, of course; you can prime the AI with any instructions you’d like. If you want to delight children, though, its hard to beat the Jolly Old Elf, and you certainly have time to get it ready for Christmas. Thanks to [Sean] for sending in the tip.
If you like this project but want to avoid paying OpenAI API fees,
here’s a speech-to-text model to get you started
.We covered this
AI speech generator last year
to handle the talky bit. If you put them together and make your own Santa Claus (or perhaps something more seasonal to this time of year),
don’t forget to drop us a tip
!
| 7
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8129660",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T18:25:01",
"content": "Neat… but the turn off for me is “and the heavy lifting is all happening in the cloud,” . Back to the drawing board for me :) . Got to be local or not at all at this house.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129669",
"author": "Bryant Eadon",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T18:50:16",
"content": "You can likely connect it to things running ollama – you’ll just need a beefy GPU and a similar LLM running first. The “cloud” option skips those steps.",
"parent_id": "8129660",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129881",
"author": "Sean DuBois",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T10:17:56",
"content": "Totally. The magic for me on this is the board is powerful enough to do bi-directional audio streaming.Since the device uses WebRTC you could swap out the backend trivially. Use any of the WHIP/WHEP servers onhttps://webrtchacks.com/webrtc-cracks-the-whip-on-obs/One I maintain (and tested the embedded stuff against) ishttps://github.com/glimesh/broadcast-box",
"parent_id": "8129660",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129676",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T19:09:22",
"content": "Wonderful. Can´t wait for Halloween.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129883",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T10:21:53",
"content": "I have been trying to buy enough GPUs to do this entire thing at homeSure I may only be able to run a 13B model, but if its text-to-speech, speech-to-text and a 13B LLM model all responding within milliseconds…that’s amazing!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130043",
"author": "Tony M",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T16:38:01",
"content": "I want to do a similar project but witn a real size silicone TPE doll… for reasons, no cloud so maybe I can put everything in a backpack, who knows ,still in the drawing table.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8181954",
"author": "Trekintosh",
"timestamp": "2025-09-19T20:40:47",
"content": "I wish all electricity devouring cloud-based hallucination generating LLM systems a very go away.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,541.995029
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/20/as-the-world-burns-at-least-youll-have-secure-messaging/
|
As The World Burns, At Least You’ll Have Secure Messaging
|
Jenny List
|
[
"Wireless Hacks"
] |
[
"encryption",
"LoRa",
"one time pad"
] |
There’s a section of our community who concern themselves with the technological aspects of preparing for an uncertain future, and for them a significant proportion of effort goes in to communication. This has always included amateur radio, but in more recent years it has been extended to LoRa. To that end,
[Bertrand Selva] has created a LoRa communicator
, one which uses a Pi Pico, and delivers secure messaging.
The hardware is a rather-nice looking 3D printed case with a color screen and a USB A port for a keyboard, but perhaps the way it works is more interesting. It takes a one-time pad approach to encryption, using a key the same length as the message. This means that an intercepted message is in effect undecryptable without the key, but we are curious about the keys themselves.
They’re a generated list of keys stored on an SD card with a copy present in each terminal on a particular net of devices, and each key is time-specific to a GPS derived time. Old keys are destroyed, but we’re interested in how the keys are generated as well as how such a system could be made to survive the loss of one of those SD cards. We’re guessing that just as when a Cold War spy had his one-time pad captured, that would mean game over for the security.
So if Meshtastic isn’t quite the thing for you then it’s possible that this could be an alternative. As an aside we’re interested to note that it’s using a 433 MHz LoRa module, revealing the different frequency preferences that exist between enthusiasts in different countries.
| 45
| 11
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130501",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T19:06:48",
"content": "Different frequency preferences may be due to legal requirements",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130647",
"author": "Carl Breen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T06:18:23",
"content": "868 MHz is EU433 MHz is part of the old global ISM915 MHz is USAPart of why LORA on 433 MHz is sold is better wall penetration for smart meters",
"parent_id": "8130501",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131325",
"author": "Bertrand Selva",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T22:02:42",
"content": "Indeed, that’s a key point. 433 MHz is attractive for its ability to penetrate buildings.",
"parent_id": "8130647",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130503",
"author": "Dave Boyer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T19:25:02",
"content": "As The World Burns, At Least You’ll…Be discovered performing non-standard emissions by guys doing ECM and then you’ll be priority target for drone-dropped gifts.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130510",
"author": "Dave Boyer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T19:52:23",
"content": "Btw. by ECM I also meant all sorts of ELINT.",
"parent_id": "8130503",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130756",
"author": "Dick Johnson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T13:15:04",
"content": "You mean SIGINT",
"parent_id": "8130510",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130515",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T20:04:35",
"content": "Oh boy, a free grenade!",
"parent_id": "8130503",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130557",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:43:10",
"content": "ECM stands for Enterprise Content Management, which refers to the strategies and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. It helps businesses organize their information efficiently, making it easier to access and manage data across various channels.So glad we had this discussion.",
"parent_id": "8130503",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130597",
"author": "Piecutter",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T00:42:59",
"content": "Efficient Corn MasticationEmbalming Collectible MammalsEnticing Corruptible MinorsExotic Cattle MarketsExistentially Cromulent MemesElectronic Counter Measures",
"parent_id": "8130557",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132138",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-25T13:43:05",
"content": "Extremely Counterproductive MemesEnjoyably Chatty MacedonianEuropean Commission Machiavelli",
"parent_id": "8130597",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131414",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T06:12:56",
"content": "Electronic CounterMeasures",
"parent_id": "8130557",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131327",
"author": "Bertrand Selva",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T22:09:27",
"content": "That’s true… but it applies to any radio system. Any emission can be traced if the opposing side has the technical means.One possible way to reduce detectability is to use high-gain antennas (and thus narrow beamwidth), combined with higher frequencies — which helps keep the antenna or antenna array reasonably compact.",
"parent_id": "8130503",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130505",
"author": "Paranoid",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T19:37:45",
"content": "Fruitloops.Mind you, there’s provision in JS8Call for preppers so they can make a nuisance of themselves on HF and all other bands too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130506",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T19:49:40",
"content": "Encrypted communications are explicitly prohibited for my Ham license except for controlling satellites(!!). Unless this is well below power requirements or otherwise no license needed, this may be illegal. I haven’t messed with LORA yet. Some jurisdictions may or may not care.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130524",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T20:33:36",
"content": "Not sure why you’re trying to insult the poster. Maybe let’s not?",
"parent_id": "8130506",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130533",
"author": "MrChristian",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T20:56:46",
"content": "Based on the creators website/youtube video, it looks like they are in France. I wouldn’t claim to even be moderately versed in EU Radio Law (or Bird Law), it looks like in 433 they are restricted to +10 dBm.Judging from that video, it looks like the creator has it configured at +33. Whether it’s actually pushing that is another story entirely, I suspect.I know meshtastic has really grown legs in EU, and they seem to favor 868 MHz (which EU allows amateur +27 dBm), so perhaps the choice to go with 433 was related to congestion, or just BOM cost/availability.",
"parent_id": "8130506",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130643",
"author": "Commenter",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T06:10:22",
"content": "14 dBm and 10% duty cycle limit on 433.050–434.790 MHz in Finland for license-exempt use, not sure if EU-harmonized",
"parent_id": "8130533",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131329",
"author": "Bertrand Selva",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T22:17:05",
"content": "You’re right — I’m based in France, and the 433 MHz ISM band here is indeed limited to +10 dBm ERP. During tests, transmission conditions are controlled using a dummy load or a -20 dB attenuator to stay compliant.The modem is capable of transmitting at +33 dBm — which would of course be illegal under EU regulations in normal operation. That power level is strictly reserved for “end-of-the-world scenarios”.That said, 433 MHz performs better for transmission than higher frequencies at equal power. So for range and penetration, 433 MHz remains a solid choice.",
"parent_id": "8130533",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130535",
"author": "MrChristian",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T20:58:22",
"content": "Meant to add / ask:Isn’t the encryption restriction limited to >30 dBm?",
"parent_id": "8130506",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130538",
"author": "Cody",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:07:26",
"content": "It would definitely be illegal in the US unless the encryption was turned off. You can’t transmit with any useful amount of power on 70cm without a ham license. The only exceptions to the power limit are for intermittent control signals such as keyfobs and periodic transmissions such as alarm or temperature sensors. Even then, the range is pretty short.It would have to use 915MHz in the US. Up to 1 watt is allowed for spread spectrum transmissions without a license there. 2.4GHz can be used as well, but the range will be shorter.",
"parent_id": "8130506",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130912",
"author": "Bastet",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T20:22:46",
"content": "Thing is, if the world went into SHTF territory i doubt anybody would give a flying. ;)",
"parent_id": "8130538",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131331",
"author": "Bertrand Selva",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T22:21:24",
"content": "It’s true, 433 MHz is not an ISM band in the US; it’s part of the 70 cm amateur radio band. So yes, any meaningful transmission there would require a ham license, and encryption would be prohibited under FCC rules for amateur bands.This prototype was developed and tested in France, where 433 MHz is part of the ISM band (limited to +10 dBm ERP). For US use, I’d adapt the design to 915 MHz, the local ISM band, which allows up to 1 W for spread spectrum without a license – perfect for LoRa.As you pointed out, 2.4 GHz is also license-free, but propagation is significantly worse. So 915 MHz would definitely be the best choice for a US-compliant version.And yes — when it comes to encryption, it’s perfectly legal on ISM bands for things like temperature sensors, short messages, or control signals. The ban on encryption only applies to amateur radio, not ISM.",
"parent_id": "8130538",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130801",
"author": "hamtifa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T15:25:58",
"content": "An amateur license doesn’t forbid you from using any encryption at all anywhere. You are probably using encryption to access this site (https). You just can’t use encryption on amateur licensed equipment and frequencies.",
"parent_id": "8130506",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130536",
"author": "Ject",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:02:28",
"content": "This is a great! I’ve been working on a similar thing for quite a while. But where’s the design? Is this just a show off project that gives us nothing?A few other things. The encryption is not unbreakable!1. AES-256 may be secure but it is not unbreakable. Only pure OTP (one time pad) encryption is truely unbreakable, even with unlimited resources. Maybe there’s a special case where a message shorter than 256 bits is identical to OTP but I didn’t see any justification for that.OTP is only perfectly secure if the keys are perfectly random. This is much more complicated than it sounds. Random number generators can have weaknesses just like encryption algorithms. It is even possible to sabotage the keys in a way that is mathematically impossible to detect. This is a real risk if you are generating the keys on a compromised computer!You can not be sure that the files have been deleted from the SD card. The blocks you see when accessing the card are not the physical blocks. The SD card manages those transparently for wear leveling and error correction. It CAN AND WILL “delete” a block by simply pointing the address to a new, blank location. The data is still there. If the card is large and your usage is small it may not be overwritten for years. Getting this data may not even be hard. Big governments have full access to the SD card manufacturers and their internal software.An additional attack which I did not see discussed is the know plaintext attack. This attack allows the modification of a message or portion thereof if that part is already know to the attacker. Additional protection is required for it, even if you have perfect encryption.My take on this is that a device of this sort is “safety critical” just like a pacemaker or the avionics on an aircraft. Therefore the design must be created and audited with EXTREME care. I’ve been trying to do it for years and it is much harder than it initially seems.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131333",
"author": "Bertrand Selva",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T22:32:47",
"content": "Thank you for the very thoughtful feedback. I agree with many of your points.If I were to take this project further, I would aim to build a true hardware random number generator, based on analog electronics (e.g. thermal noise from a diode), connected to a very simple microcontroller. The idea would be to generate and store keys directly onto two identical SD cards, each on a separate SPI port, without using a PC, no software RNG, and keeping the entire process isolated from any potentially compromised system.The microcontroller could also be used to clone one SD card onto the other.As you rightly pointed out, OTP (one-time pad) is only unbreakable if the keys are truly random, used only once, and securely destroyed, which is a real challenge with consumer-grade SD cards. You’re absolutely right that wear leveling and internal block management can leave “deleted” data physically intact for years.One possible countermeasure would be to overwrite each target block many times before considering it deleted ?Your comment on known-plaintext attacks is also spot on : padding, authentication, and even traffic shaping would need to be implemented if such a system were to be deployed seriously. But for now this is just a proof of concept.",
"parent_id": "8130536",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130546",
"author": "Retro",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:18:53",
"content": "Check out the 915 mhz North American version of LoRa – Meshtastic. Totally legit to use encryption. Here in Denver Colorado I see about 400+ nodes in use at any given time and the range is awesome as a result.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130555",
"author": "Kevin S",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:37:49",
"content": "Relying on GPS time for “end of the world” communications seems dodgy",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130558",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:45:02",
"content": "Agreed! Break out the compass and sextant!",
"parent_id": "8130555",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130565",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T22:11:30",
"content": "Fun thought experiment to determine time of all electronics went out. I’ve been only moderately successful with sextant and Lunar Distance method, maaaaybe within 30 seconds of the “actual” GMT at very best and that’s getting really lucky probably. I think to get within seconds maybe a transit telescope?",
"parent_id": "8130558",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130603",
"author": "SlowBro904",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T01:45:21",
"content": "It also works with a cheap DS3231 RTC if GPS is unavailable.",
"parent_id": "8130555",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130693",
"author": "slowbro904",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T09:43:12",
"content": "One way to get around the clock requirement is to send a sequence number with every message. Sending 42 at the start of the message is like saying, “Use key number 42 for this message.”",
"parent_id": "8130603",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131334",
"author": "Bertrand Selva",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T22:36:40",
"content": "Yeah, that’s a valid concern — if GPS is gone, things are already pretty bad.But the system falls back to a DS3231 RTC, which keeps the clocks in sync well enough for key alignment if GPS drops out.And , in many scenarios GPS would still be available — it’s a high-resilience system, even if the internet or infrastructure goes down.",
"parent_id": "8130555",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131416",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T06:14:52",
"content": "…Would the satellites stop transmitting timecodes anytime soon? They are about as remote an independent as any infrastructure can be",
"parent_id": "8130555",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131939",
"author": "Kluge",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T21:07:43",
"content": "GPS sats get updated about twice a day… So without somebody at the proverbial wheel, they’d be useless within a week for any kind of location data… Unsure how long they’d be broadcasting their idea of what time it is though .. gonna have to put off doing my laundry now and dive into this 😜",
"parent_id": "8131416",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130559",
"author": "Boris",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:49:00",
"content": "In case “world burns” don’t you want to have more open communication rather than secured. You would expect someone to hear you.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130566",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T22:12:13",
"content": "These guys into encryption are preppers and paranoid people, I suppose.Who’re afraid of being spied on by goverment and such.Or just fans of encryption because.. internet.Funny that this is in France, though.Amateur radio always was being open, it was the whole point.Call signs with name and address used to be available in call books (phone books of amateur radio).Hams knew (and hoped) that SWLs would listen to their conversation.That’s how new hams had been introduced to the hobby/service.They started out as unlicensed SWLs or CBers.",
"parent_id": "8130559",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130605",
"author": "slowbro904",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T01:46:59",
"content": "As a prepper myself there is utility in both open and encrypted systems; Open, for making unknown contacts, and encrypted for pre-shared team communications. I have both.",
"parent_id": "8130566",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130910",
"author": "MW",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T20:21:57",
"content": "Afraid, no. Angry? Yes. My conversations/communications are none of anyone’s business but my own. You may think it’s just peachy to live in a surveillance state, but, one day you may regret it.",
"parent_id": "8130566",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130667",
"author": "Robert Langer (tangible waves)",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T07:59:10",
"content": "Agree 100%!",
"parent_id": "8130559",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130601",
"author": "hugh crawford",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T01:22:28",
"content": "If I were designing a covert encrypted communication device, I’d make make the radio signature match a cordless electric drill with worn out brushes. Plenty of random crap that would make a wonderful one time key, and the bursts of noise would be what you would expect from a drill.And boy howdy are some of those drills noisy.Imitating a car with solid copper spark plug wires would be another option. There was a taxi fleet in NYC in the 80s that made am radio reception really difficult if you were near a heavily traveled street.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130650",
"author": "Carl Breen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T06:37:21",
"content": "Covert and you want to create a noise pattern EMF that will randomly blast across half the spectrum?",
"parent_id": "8130601",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130694",
"author": "slowbro904",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T09:44:28",
"content": "Make triangulation as easy as possible lol",
"parent_id": "8130650",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131101",
"author": "Abel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T06:48:28",
"content": "This is bad on so many levels in the case of security and reliability…1. AES-CBC is not considered secure. It`s IV can be tampered so it messes up the WHOLE message. Also, CBC mode does not allow authentication—you can send garbage, and this can be treated as a legitimate message—you do not know who you are talking to. You need to use MAC. Consider AES-GCM or CCM if you need AES.2. Relying on GPS in case of “world burn event” – use sequence number in message and key rolling for any authenticated-encryption scheme, not relying on “time from external source”.3. Multiple key storage on the SD card… WHY? Use ONE key long as hell (it can be a WHOLE file on SD/internal flash—like a PDF book or something else), and use HKDF for key rollout seeded with the sequence number.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132678",
"author": "Bertrand Selva",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T16:52:51",
"content": "In our architecture, the radio link is strictly simplex—not out of convenience, but by design, to ensure electromagnetic discretion. Every transmitted frame—even a basic ACK—reveals the emitter’s position, activity, frequency, and rhythm. No ACKs, no nonce exchange: the less you speak, the less you can be tracked.We therefore chose AES-CBC encryption with a short-lived key, rotated every two minutes. Each key is derived locally in a deterministic way from an initial entropy source. The result: any captured message becomes unreadable after its key expires, making replay attacks ineffective.Message integrity relies on lightweight authenticity embedded in the message structure itself: fixed headers, known lengths, and integrated timestamps. A single flipped bit breaks the format and gets the message discarded. On top of that, the receiver only accepts messages with a timestamp within ±5 seconds of its local clock, adding resilience against drift or desynchronization attempts.For more exposed contexts, a truncated HMAC-SHA256 (4–8 bytes) can be added to reinforce integrity—without compromising the protocol’s simplicity. It remains an optional extension, not required under our current threat model.Time synchronization is handled by a TCXO-based RTC (±1 ppm), resulting in a drift of less than one second per month. That’s accurate enough to stay in sync for months without relying on GPS, which could be jammed or simply unavailable.As for key generation, if this had to be externalized, we’d rely on a truly physical TRNG—based on thermal or avalanche noise. After all, physicists will always be better than software engineers at generating true randomness—for that, and for many other things.To sum up, in an environment where:radio discretion is critical,bandwidth is microscopic,and the adversary is mostly passive and focused on localization,our combination of CBC encryption, fast key rotation, strict formatting, timestamp validation, and physical entropy provides a rational, balanced, and defendable compromise. Should the threat model evolve toward active injection or sophisticated interference, this system’s core structure allows for a gradual cryptographic hardening—without needing to rethink the whole design.",
"parent_id": "8131101",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131323",
"author": "Bertrand Selva",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T21:58:34",
"content": "Hello everyone,Thanks for your comments, feedback, and discussion — this is exactly the kind of exchange I was hoping for when sharing this project.Regarding the legal aspects: in France, and more generally across Europe, the 433 MHz band (433.050 to 434.790 MHz) is license-free, provided you stay under 10 dBm of output power and respect a maximum duty cycle of 10%. The device shown here has only ever been used for educational and test purposes — never in real-world communication. All tests were conducted either with 50-ohm terminators or with a 20 dB attenuator, ensuring actual emissions stayed well below the legal threshold. In short, this project is designed with the mindset of a hypothetical, severely degraded situation, where agencies like the ANFR are no longer a day-to-day concern for survivors 😉 — but we’re obviously not in that world today.As for encryption, it is not prohibited on ISM bands. It is prohibited on amateur radio bands, but that doesn’t apply here. Most devices operating on ISM (smart meters, remote sensors, key fobs, etc.) already use encryption. My project uses a one-time pad (OTP) approach (+ AES256 bits), with keys as long as the message itself. This means that any intercepted transmission is undecipherable without the exact key, even with significant resources.The issue of device capture has been considered. When a message is sent, its associated key is flagged as expired. If the system is not busy transmitting, it dedicates idle time to securely erasing past keys, starting from the most recent and working backward. The full cleanup takes about seven hours to wipe the entire key space used so far. A persistent marker is used to track progress and avoid rewriting already-cleaned sectors. So if a unit is captured, there is no risk of leaking past messages, even if the traffic had been intercepted. The future may be uncertain — but the past is erased.As for the choice of 433 MHz: it’s legal in France under the conditions mentioned above, and it offers better building penetration and less “line-of-sight” dependency than higher frequencies at the same power. With a 70 cm wavelength, it’s also still manageable to build decent directional antennas with some gain — even in DIY conditions (https://hackaday.io/project/203137-358-pmr-antenna-clean-matched-3d-printable). At one point I considered repurposing smart meter modems and even looked into 169 MHz FSK modules like Radiocrafts’ RC1701HP-WIZE, which can transmit up to 500 mW in some European countries, offering excellent range in rural areas. I bought a pair, but the idea never went further. The advantage of the module used in this project is its low cost, especially considering its performance.And finally, to address those who mentioned paranoia: no, I’m not paranoid. I just value my privacy and don’t like the idea of being listened to without my knowledge. I find it unfortunate that this concern has become suspect. This device is a technical challenge, a personal experiment in seeing how far one can go to secure communication for regular individuals, using readily available tools. Nothing more.Thanks again for reading and for your feedback.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,542.24624
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/20/the-make-roscope/
|
The Make-roscope
|
Al Williams
|
[
"Cellphone Hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Science",
"Slider"
] |
[
"microscope"
] |
Normal people binge-scroll social media. Hackaday writers tend to pore through online tech news and shopping sites incessantly. The problem with the shopping sites is that you wind up buying things, and then you have even more projects you don’t have time to do. That’s how I found the
MAKE-roscope
, an accessory aimed at kids that turns a cell phone into a microscope. While it was clearly trying to appeal to kids, I’ve had some kids’ microscopes that were actually useful, and for $20, I decided to see what it was about. If nothing else, the name made it appealing.
My goal was to see if it would be worth having for the kinds of things we do. Turns out, I should have read more closely. It isn’t really going to help you with your next PCB or to read that tiny print on an SMD part. But it is interesting, and — depending on your interests — you might enjoy having one. The material claims the scope can magnify from 125x to 400x.
What Is It?
The whole thing is in an unassuming Altoids-like tin. Inside the box are mostly accessories you may or may not need, like a lens cloth, a keychain, plastic pipettes, and the like. There are only three really interesting things: A strip of silicone with a glass ball in it, and a slide container with five glass slides, three of which have something already on them. There’s also a spare glass ball (the lens).
What I didn’t find in my box were cover slips, any way to prepare specimens, and — perhaps most importantly — clear instructions. There are some tiny instructions on the back of the tin and on the lens cloth paper. There is also a QR code, but to really get going, I had to watch a video (embedded below).
What I quickly realized is that this isn’t a metalurgical scope that takes images of things. It is a transmissive microscope like you find in a biology lab. Normally, the light in a scope like that goes up through the slide and into the objective. This one is upside down. The light comes from the top, through the slide, and into the glass ball lens.
Microscope with pen and legal pad lines for scale (no banana)
Onion skin slide
Ant slide
Bio Scopes Can Be Fun
Of course, if you have an interest in biology or thin films or other things that need that kind of microscope, this could be interesting. After all, cell phones sometimes have macro modes that you can use as a pretty good low-power microscope already if you want to image a part or a PCB. You can also find lots of lenses that attach to the phone if you need them. But this is a traditional microscope, which is a bit different.
The silicone compresses, which seems to be the real trick. Here’s how it works in practice. You turn on your camera and switch to the selfie lens. Then you put the silicone strip over the camera and move it around. You’ll see that the lens makes a “spotlight” in the image when it is in the right place. Get it centered and zoom until you can’t see the circle of the lens anymore.
Then you put your slide down on the lens and move it around until you get an image. It might be a little fuzzy. That’s where the silicone comes in. You push down, and the image will snap into focus. The hardest part is pushing down while holding it still and pushing the shutter button.
Onion skin
Ant magnified
Frog blood
Zeiss and Nikon don’t have anything to worry about, but the images are just fine. You can grab a drop of water or swab your cheek. It would have been nice to have some stain and either some way to microtome samples, or at least instructions on how you might do that with household items.
Verdict
For most electronics tasks, you are better off with a loupe, magnifiers, a zoomed cell phone, or a USB microscope. But if you want a traditional microscope for science experiments or to foster a kid’s interest in science, it might be worth something.
For electronics, you are better off with a
metallurgical scope
. Soldering
under a stereoscope is life-changing
. We’ve seen
more expensive versions of this
, too, but we aren’t sure they are much better.
| 10
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130468",
"author": "Jimmy",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T17:47:16",
"content": "No. “Normal people binge-scroll social media.”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130473",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T17:56:29",
"content": "Man $20 doesn’t buy what it used to.I’d probably feel a bit ripped off for $20, its clearly $5 worth of ‘tat’.For $20 I would expect a USB webcam and a dial to focus, if not a built in screen.Interesting none-the-less, probably one of the cheaper options at a museum or Zoo shop to be sure",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130598",
"author": "hugh crawford",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T01:01:29",
"content": "I think the point is to demonstrate how simple a microscope is, and engage kids to figure out stuff, and have something they can carry around in a pocket all summer looking at pond water or pet hair without breaking it. Way better than a stand alone microscope that’s none of those things.OrYou could give these away for pennies to people who have very little money or clean water to see what’s really in their water.I would have tried to substitute a drop of water for the glass lens, but that might have been too fiddly for using as a tool rather than than learning about how microscopes work, and you can make a small spherical lens by just dropping a blob of molten glass down a stairwell. Probably a dedicated vertical shaft would be better if you wanted to make a lot of them, or just buy a big sack of themI suspect the actual components for this cost pretty close to 5¢ , but I know from experience that selling these one at a time for $20 is just barely enough profit to make anyone bother. You could probably cut a great deal for a thousand if you wanted to give them away.Actually, turning a bunch of fifth graders loose with these to randomly check their environment would be a cool thing.",
"parent_id": "8130473",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131231",
"author": "David H",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T15:59:40",
"content": "“you can make a small spherical lens by just dropping a blob of molten glass down a stairwell”People coming up the stairs from below might not be so enthusiastic about the idea 😂",
"parent_id": "8130598",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131526",
"author": "chango",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T13:43:20",
"content": "The tin promised No Sad Onions, and it delivered.",
"parent_id": "8130598",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130518",
"author": "FEW",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T20:20:33",
"content": "Have you heard of the foldscope? They’re surprisingly functional, and about the same cost range. They use folding paper to create an XY stage with z focusing capability. The lens is a ball lens. I think that an led or background light can be used for illumination.https://foldscope.com/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130551",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:26:08",
"content": "Was hoping that someone would mention Foldscope. It’s a cool device indeed.",
"parent_id": "8130518",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130729",
"author": "Erwin",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T11:39:51",
"content": "I wish there was a nice usb microscope solution at a slighty higher price, like 200 USD, 1000x just some simple compact inverted microscope vs all this ones that work with a phone",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131300",
"author": "Ben",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T20:41:57",
"content": "Interesting article. Reminded me of the Withering Botanical Microscope. Pictures of his pocket field microscope can be seen here.https://microscope-antiques.com/withfold2.html",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131380",
"author": "Christian",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T03:18:03",
"content": "I feel like this will not work with all tablets or phone cameras, could be a gamble.Made look at Amazon (US), and there are quite a few USB microscopes for $20. Clearly their cameras will be worse than an iPad.I only found a single offering that represents a “microscope” for $18, even had a few sample slides and led bottom illumination.But for $30 you seem to be able the type of microscope I had in high school (long time ago), with the bottom mirror for illumination.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,542.063191
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/20/when-repairs-go-inside-integrated-circuits/
|
When Repairs Go Inside Integrated Circuits
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"Repair Hacks"
] |
[
"IC repair",
"integrated circuit"
] |
What can you do if your circuit repair diagnosis indicates an open circuit
within
an integrated circuit (IC)? Your IC got too hot and internal wiring has come loose. You could replace the IC, sure. But what if the IC contains encryption secrets? Then you would be forced to
grind back the epoxy and fix those open circuits yourself
. That is, if you’re skilled enough!
In this video our hacker [YCS] fixes a Mercedes-Benz encryption chip from an electronic car key. First, the black epoxy surface is polished off, all the way back to the PCB with a very fine gradient. As the gold threads begin to be visible we need to slow down and be very careful.
The repair job is to reconnect the PCB points with the silicon body inside the chip. The PCB joints aren’t as delicate and precious as the silicon body points, those are the riskiest part. If you make a mistake with those then repair will be impossible. Then you tin the pads using solder for the PCB points and pure tin and hot air for the silicon body points.
Once that’s done you can use fine silver wire to join the points. If testing indicates success then you can complete the job with glue to hold the new wiring in place. Everything is easy when you know how!
Does repair work get more dangerous and fiddly than this? Well,
sometimes
.
Thanks to [J. Peterson] for this tip.
| 38
| 8
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130433",
"author": "alnwlsn",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T15:51:38",
"content": "love that title: ‘basic skills’ for mobile phone repair",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130469",
"author": "Tim McNerney",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T17:49:49",
"content": "It’s too bad the world has come to this: mostly unfixable black boxes. My car dealership can’t even repair an EV charge cable chewed up by rabbits. How will today’s teenagers climb “from 0 to 60” with no ladder rungs in between so they can become tomorrow’s tech wizards or just plain tech-competent? In the 1950s and ‘60s there was a solid learning path for gear-heads, and same in the 1970s and ‘80s for computers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130470",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T17:51:48",
"content": "YouTube",
"parent_id": "8130469",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130596",
"author": "Ray Morris",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T00:17:04",
"content": "I understand where you’re coming from. And …How will today’s teenagers climb “from 0 to 60” with no ladder rungs in between so they can become tomorrow’s tech wizardsWhen I was a kid, I bought a couple transistors and built a thing. Today’s kids can buy a couple microcontrollers for $5 and build something. When they grow up – they can STILL buy Pi Pico 2 for $5 and build stuff, same as we did. They can just build better stuff, with better building blocks.My daughter was writing code for fun, modding one of her games, when she was ten years old – and she’s not even a tech nerd.My grandad didn’t have transistors when he was a kid – he could do relay logic. Maybe wind his own relay coil. I don’t think I missed out on much by using premade transistors. It just means I could build more capable circuits than my grandad did. And my daughter can build more capable ones than I did.I think the trick is to have some understanding one level deeper than what you’re working with. If you’re using transistors, have a rough idea of how transistors work, so you can understand why they get hot. If a microcontroller is your building block, have some understanding of how work – what an “instruction” is and what 1MB means.",
"parent_id": "8130470",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130641",
"author": "Marvin",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T06:01:23",
"content": "Very true!I think it’s great that you can have an idea now, buy a few breadboard modules, slap something together, make the thing in KiCad, send to PCBWay and have your professionally made little four layer PCB, completely populated, for basically the BOM cost.That wasn’t possible, even in the wildest fever dream, when I started doing electronics.I can’t see anything wrong with that, whatsoever!",
"parent_id": "8130596",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130472",
"author": "Tim McNerney",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T17:55:44",
"content": "Oh, and now with management thinking AI is a suitable replacement for junior programmers, apprenticeship stepping stones are threatened too. (“Fire escape ladders” fully raised—no access from ground level.) Where are future software architects going to “cut their teeth”?",
"parent_id": "8130469",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130486",
"author": "Kalts",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:18:56",
"content": "They’d lose a sale and open themselves up to all sorts of liability if they did plus the labor rate of a dealership tech means you’d probably be able to buy a new one for the same price or less.People forget other people need to earn a living and dealerships need to cover their overheads.Plus, if you’re a hacker, why didn’t you repair it yourself?",
"parent_id": "8130469",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130493",
"author": "bebop",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:39:36",
"content": "I think you are seriously underestimating human curiousity and persistence. One could have made the same argument for doing math by hand vs using a calculator. And understanding math by hand is important, but noone is doing that unless they absolutely have to. Does that mean that fewer people understand math? Not really, since there are more people capable of teaching it, because they dont spend their time doing precious calculations.My personal bet is that younger generations are going to surpass us (the guy in the vid doesn’t seem perticularly old).",
"parent_id": "8130469",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130511",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T19:59:57",
"content": "“One could have made the same argument for doing math by hand vs using a calculator.”They stillteachdoing math by hand.Most of the stuff I know about electronics and computers kids never get taught. I wasn’t taught it. I was forced to learn it because DHCP didn’t exist yet, and in order to hook a computer up at a university you needed these magic keys and man, they look suspiciously like bytes and how does this work anyway?And let me be clear – I’m not a computer scientist or electrical engineer. I just know this stuff because I had to learn it in order to do stuff. The kids coming up in my field now don’t. And so they don’t know it. And it’s bad. Very bad.This is not the same thing as “math by hand vs a calculator.” This would be like if no one ever taught multiplication tables or long division or multidigit multiplication and you were just given a calculator in grade 2 or something.",
"parent_id": "8130493",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130562",
"author": "ANNE MARIE MCALOON",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:57:40",
"content": "Old people thinking young people will be the death of us all are hilarious.I am an EET in an Engineering R&D Lab so I have unfortunately had to do this type of work, it sucks.I work with plenty of people with these skills old and young.Digging into an IC or PCB is work to be avoided but we work on prototypes so sometimes we haul out the dental tools and put on our patience pants.",
"parent_id": "8130511",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130516",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T20:16:09",
"content": "i wonder too. i think in some ways it’s not so different from how it’s always been though. there’s parts of the problem space that i understand well, and parts where i barely know a gloss of it. the windows through which we view technology are all changing but funamentally i think it isn’t changing…we view tech through a window. for example, the gulf between someone who understands low-level software and someone who understands high-level software may be growing but there’s always been that gulf in practice and always been people who straddle the gulf, and people who can’t see beyond node.js.think about the demise of MSDOS…a lot of really arcane and valueless skillsets used to be broadly distributed in the population just because even casual users needed to compensate for the enormous weaknesses of that OS. now OSes are much stronger than DOS in so many ways, and casual users don’t understand anything about them and even many kinds of software developer don’t really understand them…but there still are people who understand them. even if they become a tiny fraction of software developers at large, they still exist and still, really, in very large numbers in an absolute sense.",
"parent_id": "8130469",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130587",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T23:49:29",
"content": "This whole diatribe tells me you don’t understand the problem. It’s very, very different now. There are outright legally enforced barriers to learning.As for the “demise” of DOS and “stronger OSes”, you clearly just don’t know what you are talking about. It’s still in use you know, and low level operating systems are in use everywhere. The “weaknesses” you don’t define are what exactly, quality of life additions like what you might find in a well customised busybox install?",
"parent_id": "8130516",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130927",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T21:17:12",
"content": "there have always been legally enforced (and generally ineffective) barriers to learning.the weaknesses of DOS are that it forced even regular end users to be aware of things like IRQs and TSRs and high memory. DOS still exists, but regular joes haven’t thought about those things in 25 years. it also forced a bunch of awareness on every developer that now hardly anyone (by proportion) thinks about. i don’t miss thinking about far pointers or EMS or modifying the global interrupt table. i don’t know how kids will learn without those hurdles but i suspect those limitations were not the sine qua non of learning",
"parent_id": "8130587",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8138207",
"author": "The48thRonin",
"timestamp": "2025-06-12T14:26:18",
"content": "The places that still use older systems like that have at least one person on staff who knows the information required to maintain it, and if they’re smart they have that person take notes.You don’t define “the problem” or what you mean by any of your second paragraph either, don’t act all high and mighty just because you see a massive emergency where others do not.",
"parent_id": "8130587",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130849",
"author": "Frankens43",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:36:35",
"content": "We have become a disposable society. It is terrible how much waste we produce. Things are not made to be serviced anymore. Just look at the ‘right to repair’ movement. Manufacturers don’t WANT you fixing things. There’s more profit selling new. Apple.. you pretty much need a new phone every 2-3 years..microsoft.. windows 11 mandate on machines that are perfectly fine doing what they need to do..I get called on to fix things that..no one knows how to fix anymore. When was the last time you saw an electronics repair shop?",
"parent_id": "8130469",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130929",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T21:18:40",
"content": "fwiw there’s a smartphone repair shop downtown in my small city. it’s been there about 5 years",
"parent_id": "8130849",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8138208",
"author": "The48thRonin",
"timestamp": "2025-06-12T14:27:48",
"content": "Yesterday, two of them. Every town I’ve lived in has had one, with the exception of Salem, Kentucky, a town of 600 people last time I checked. I am also the guy that fixes things nobody knows how to fix anymore, which means there are at least two people that know how to fix things “nobody” can fix.",
"parent_id": "8130849",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130475",
"author": "Dan Julio",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:03:57",
"content": "This is amazing but I’m curious how a keyfob SOC became so hot that the bond wires inside the IC package came loose. Was it some sort of manufacturing defect?I also wonder how much a Mercedes-Benz replacement keyfob costs because this repair can’t have been cheap.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130487",
"author": "Kalts",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:21:28",
"content": "Some keys are scary expensive, like $600 and don’t forget you have to get the key and car to talk to each other as well which will almost definitely be a specialist or dealer job.",
"parent_id": "8130475",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130488",
"author": "Edgar Vice",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:21:48",
"content": "$600 keyfob + $200 programming",
"parent_id": "8130475",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130490",
"author": "Mark Rosenau",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:33:07",
"content": "And if you have no working keys then they can’t clone a new one and it’s ECU replacement time. I was quoted $4500 for that.NEVEN lose your last key!",
"parent_id": "8130488",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130617",
"author": "RT",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T02:46:14",
"content": "ECU replacement is the manufacturer’s officially prescribed service method for dealers in this scenario but it’s not truthfully the only option. Avoid the dealership and call around for a locksmith that specializes in automotive. He’ll have the equipment to bypass the security and enroll additonal keys.Grey market equipment to accomplish this task can also be readily purchased online – typically out of Eastern Europe.",
"parent_id": "8130490",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130629",
"author": "sbrk",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T04:56:36",
"content": "Or, better yet, NEVER buy Mercedes-Benz.",
"parent_id": "8130490",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130856",
"author": "Frankens43",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:44:56",
"content": "Or a toyota… or a .. insert any manufacturer.Toyota fobs are 600$ and most shops don’t have the software to recode the keys. Dealerships, sure.. for a massive price. My local locksmith.. nope.",
"parent_id": "8130629",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8132258",
"author": "Jonathan Wilson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T00:06:39",
"content": "Find me any manufacturer in 2025 who’s keyfobs aren’t ridiculously expensive.",
"parent_id": "8130629",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130541",
"author": ".",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:11:18",
"content": "It didn’t take especially long. You just need someone with “basic skills”.Another example of how Chairman Xi’s horde of devious minions use the CCP’s cunning plans known by secret code names of “doing” and “superior skills” to steal from western companies their rightful fat profits.Having done wirebond to die repairs myself, I am impressed.",
"parent_id": "8130475",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130593",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T23:59:54",
"content": "What is all of this pretending state sponsored espionage isn’t a problem (and yes, that’s the problem, not your made up example)?",
"parent_id": "8130541",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130482",
"author": "Steve L",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:15:34",
"content": "Actually, given the chip application, this may be a response to tampering.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130489",
"author": "Manuel Malagon",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:27:13",
"content": "Holy mother of repairs!! What’s next? Sanding all the epoxy and repair the transistors in the silicon itself?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130528",
"author": "CB",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T20:39:42",
"content": "Actually, there is very expensive equipment to do that. You can cut wires, add wires, and contacts inside the chip itself. It is quite expensive and fairly limited. Search for FIB on the web.",
"parent_id": "8130489",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130579",
"author": "aki009",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T23:20:51",
"content": "Don’t give them any ideas…",
"parent_id": "8130489",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130514",
"author": "Apexeon",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T20:04:12",
"content": "Ok but did the car start???",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130539",
"author": "J. Peterson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:10:08",
"content": "If this is an example of “basic skills” I can’t wait to see the advanced ones.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130542",
"author": "Per Jensen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:11:30",
"content": "I get kind of sad when I see a video where someone calls it /welding/ … Which it is certainly not. It’s a very skilled worker, but it leaves me wondering, why on earth are they not using a cheap galvo fiber laser to open up the chip? It would be much more precise and safe.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130592",
"author": "Ray Morris",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T23:58:18",
"content": "American? In some places, that’s called welding.Using a torch – to get a better view. With the key fob fixed, they can get in the car to open the bonnet and mend the other things.In the US, welding melts the base metal; soldering melts a low-melting point filler andwetsthe base metal. While brazing does the same with a filler alloy similar to the base metal.But also in the US, football is a game played with neither your feet nor a ball. It’s handegg. :)",
"parent_id": "8130542",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130613",
"author": "Conor Stewart",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T02:27:14",
"content": "Oh yes, why are they not using an expensive piece of equipment? Everyone has one laying around, don’t they?Think about the cost of even a cheap decent laser compared to some sand paper.",
"parent_id": "8130542",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130745",
"author": "sjm4306",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T12:45:03",
"content": "Fiber lasers have come down in cost significantly (under $2k for one that can easily decap something like this chip). It really depends if that cost is more or less than the profit lost due to the failure rate of doing the decapping manually with a hand tool. I’d imagine the break even point would be if you do more than a handful of this type of repair a year.",
"parent_id": "8130613",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131190",
"author": "Quinn Evans",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T13:27:20",
"content": "Considering the repair was a success, I’m going to venture that the $2,000 cost would have been significantly more than the profit lost due to the failure rate of doing the decapping manually with a hand tool.",
"parent_id": "8130745",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,542.51264
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/20/the-world-wide-web-and-the-death-of-graceful-degradation/
|
The World Wide Web And The Death Of Graceful Degradation
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Featured",
"History",
"Interest",
"Rants",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] |
[
"graceful degradation",
"web design"
] |
In the early days of the World Wide Web – with the Year 2000 and the threat of a global collapse of society were still years away – the crafting of a website on the WWW was both special and increasingly more common. Courtesy of free hosting services popping up left and right in a landscape still mercifully devoid of today’s ‘social media’, the WWW’s democratizing influence allowed anyone to try their hands at web design. With varying results, as those of us who ventured into the Geocities wilds can attest to.
Back then we naturally had web standards, courtesy of the
W3C
, though Microsoft, Netscape, etc. tried to upstage each other with varying implementation levels (e.g. no iframes in Netscape 4.7) and various proprietary HTML and CSS tags. Most people were on dial-up or equivalently anemic internet connections, so designing a website could be a painful lesson in optimization and targeting the lowest common denominator.
This was also the era of graceful degradation, where us web designers had it hammered into our skulls that using and navigating a website should be possible even in a text-only browser like Lynx, w3m or antique browsers like IE 3.x. Fast-forward a few decades and today the inverse is true, where it is your responsibility as a website visitor to have the latest browser and fastest internet connection, or you may even be denied access.
What exactly happened to flip everything upside-down, and is this truly the WWW that we want?
User Vs Shinies
Back in the late 90s, early 2000s, a miserable WWW experience for the average user involved graphics-heavy websites that took literal minutes to load on a 56k dial-up connection. Add to this the occasional website owner who figured that using Flash or Java applets for part of, or an entire website was a brilliant idea, and had you sit through ten minutes (or more) of a loading sequence before being able to view anything.
Another contentious issue was that of the back- and forward buttons in the browser as the standard way to navigate. Using Flash or Java broke this, as did HTML framesets (and iframes), which not only made navigating websites a pain, but also made sharing links to a specific resource on a website impossible without serious hacks like offering special deep links and reloading that page within the frameset.
As much as web designers and developers felt the lure of New Shiny Tech to make a website pop, ultimately accessibility had to be key. Accessibility, through graceful degradation, meant that you could design a very shiny website using the latest CSS layout tricks (ditching table-based layouts for better or worse), but if a stylesheet or some Java- or VBScript stuff didn’t load, the user would still be able to read and navigate, at most in a HTML 1.x-like fashion. When you consider that
HTML
is literally just a document markup language, this makes a lot of sense.
Credit: Babbage,
Wikimedia
.
More succinctly put, you distinguish between the core functionality (text, images, navigation) and the cosmetics. When you think of a website from the perspective of a text-only browser or assistive technology like
screen readers
, the difference should be quite obvious. The HTML tags mark up the content of the document, letting the document viewer know whether something is a heading, a paragraph, and where an image or other content should be referenced (or embedded).
If the viewer does not support stylesheets, or only an older version (e.g. CSS 2.1 and not 3.x), this should not affect being able to read text, view images and do things like listen to embedded audio clips on the page. Of course, this basic concept is what is effectively broken now.
It’s An App Now
Somewhere along the way, the idea of a website being an (interactive) document seems to have been dropped in favor of a the website instead being a ‘web application’, or web app for short. This is reflected in the countless JavaScript, ColdFusion, PHP, Ruby, Java and other frameworks for server and client side functionality. Rather than a document, a ‘web page’ is now the UI of the application, not unlike a graphical terminal. Even the WordPress editor in which this article was written is in effect just a web app that is in constant communication with the remote WordPress server.
This in itself is not a problem, as being able to do partial page refreshes rather than full on page reloads can save a lot of bandwidth and copious amounts of sanity with preserving page position and lack of flickering. What is however a problem is how there’s no real graceful degradation amidst all of this any more, mostly due to hard requirements for often bleeding edge features by these frameworks, especially in terms of JavaScript and CSS.
Sometimes these requirements are apparently merely a way to not do any testing on older or alternative browsers, with ‘forum’ software
Discourse
(not to be confused with
Disqus
) being a shining example here.
It insists
that you must have the ‘latest, stable release’ of either Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or Apple Safari. Purportedly this is so that the client-side JavaScript (
Ember.js
) framework is happy, but as e.g.
Pale Moon users have found out
, the problem is with a piece of JS that merely detects the browser, not the features. Blocking the
browser-detect-*
script in e.g. an adblocker restores full functionality to Discourse-afflicted pages.
Wrong Focus
It’s quite the understatement to say that over the past decades, websites have changed. For us greybeards who were around to admire the nascent WWW, things seemed to move at a more gradual pace back then. Multimedia wasn’t everywhere yet, and there was no Google et al.
pushing its own agenda
along with Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) onto us internet users via the W3C, which resulted in the EFF resigning in protest.
Google Search open in the Pale Moon browser.
Although Google et al. ostensibly profess to have only our best interests at heart when features were added to Chrome, the very capable plugins system from Netscape and Internet Explorer taken out back and WebExtensions
Manifest V3
introduced (with the EFF
absolutely venomous
about the latter),
privacy concerns
are mounting amidst concerns that corporations now control the WWW, with even new HTML, CSS and JS features being pushed by Google solely for its use in Chrome.
For those of us who still use traditional browsers like
Pale Moon
(forked from Firefox in 2009), it is especially the dizzying pace of new ‘features’ that discourages us from using effectively non-Chromium-based browsers, with websites all too often having only been tested in Chrome. Functionality in Safari, Pale Moon, etc. often is more a matter of luck as the assumption is made by today’s crop of web devs that everyone uses the latest and greatest Chrome browser version. This ensures that using non-Chromium browsers is fraught with functionally defective websites, as the
‘Web Compatibility Support’
section of the Pale Moon forum illustrates.
Question is whether this is the web which we, the users, want to see.
Low-Fidelity Feature
Another unpleasant side-effect of web apps is that they force an increasing amount of JS code to be downloaded, compiled and ran. This contrasts with plain HTML and CSS pages that tend to be mere kilobytes in size in addition to any images. Back in The Olden Days™ browsers gave you the option to disable JavaScript, as the assumption was that JS wasn’t used for anything critical. These days if you try to browse with e.g. a JS blocking extension like NoScript, you’ll rapidly find that there’s zero consideration for this, and many sites will display just a white page because they rely on a JS-based stub to do the actual rendering of the page rather than the browser.
In this and earlier described scenarios the consequence is the same: you must be using the latest Chromium-based browser to use many sites, you will be using a lot of RAM and CPU for even basic pages, and forget about using retro- or alternative systems that do not support the latest encryption standards and certificates.
The latter is due to the removal of non-encrypted HTTP from many browsers, because for some reason downloading public information from HTTP and FTP sites without encrypting said public data is a massive security threat now, and the former is due to the frankly absurd amounts of JS, with the Task Manager feature in many browsers showing the resource usage per tab, e.g.:
The Task Manager in Microsoft Edge showing a few active tabs and their resource usage.
Of these tabs, there is no way to reduce their resource usage, no ‘graceful degradation’ or low-fidelity mode, so that older systems as well as the average smart phone or tablet will struggle or simply keel over to keep up with the demands of the modern WWW, with even a basic page using more RAM than the average PC had installed by the late 90s.
Meanwhile the problems that we web devs were moaning about around 2000 such as an easy way to center content with CSS got ignored, while some enterprising developers have done the hard work of solving the graceful degradation problem themselves. A good example of this is the
FrogFind!
search engine, which strips down DuckDuckGo search results even further, before passing any URLs you click through a PHP port of
Mozilla’s Readability
. This strips out anything but the main content, allowing modern website content to be viewed on systems with browsers that were current in the very early 1990s.
In short, graceful degradation is mostly an issue of wanting to, rather than it being some kind of unsurmountable obstacle. It requires learning the same lessons as the folk back in the Flash and Java applet days had to: namely that your visitors don’t care how shiny your website, or how much you love the convoluted architecture and technologies behind it. At the end of the day your visitors Just Want Things to Work™, even if that means missing out on the latest variation of a Flash-based spinning widget or something similarly useless that isn’t content.
Tl;dr: content is for your visitors, the eyecandy is for you and your shareholders.
| 73
| 24
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130443",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T16:33:56",
"content": "In my book the S of JS does not stand for “Script”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130453",
"author": "Rafael Lago",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T17:09:14",
"content": "I hate pharmacy websites in my country. All of them reskinned copies of each other, and have so many scripts that I have to open in an ublocked tab to see them properly.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130459",
"author": "Julianne",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T17:27:04",
"content": "we’ll get to the point soon where a website is just a link to install the mandatory proprietary app from some walled garden app store",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130462",
"author": "Then",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T17:31:34",
"content": "Welcome to the Chinese “www”",
"parent_id": "8130459",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130793",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T15:07:44",
"content": "Actually, the Chinese Internet is very modern.It used IPv6 from very start and didn’t bother with legacy tech.If that’s good or bad is another story, though.",
"parent_id": "8130462",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130465",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T17:35:25",
"content": "App will just frame a locked down broken browser.",
"parent_id": "8130459",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130492",
"author": "bemusedHorseman",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:35:59",
"content": "And that app will refuse to open unless you grant itliterally every permission your operating system has short of Device Admin(looking at you, Meta family of apps), and use it to exfiltrate literally all of your personal data, because a mere webpage in a “standard” browser doesn’t have that kind of access.",
"parent_id": "8130465",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130568",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T22:23:29",
"content": "We are already there. Last year Cinemark wouldn’t let me browse desktop mode, it blocked me completely. This year Lowe’s does the same. Heaven forbid I want 500+ DPI on my 2,000+ wide pixel screen 🤦🏼♂️",
"parent_id": "8130459",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131222",
"author": "Zygo",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T15:33:45",
"content": "My favourite is using the Air Canada app, where 90% of what you want to do it boots you back out to the browser, which then suggests that you try their app.",
"parent_id": "8130459",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8133854",
"author": "ColT",
"timestamp": "2025-05-31T07:20:22",
"content": "Were everything is started from :D",
"parent_id": "8130459",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130464",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T17:33:03",
"content": "Everyone said I was daft to build a site on a JS swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that’s what you’re going to get, Lad, the strongest website in all of England.TFA author is going easy on ‘them’.Some JS on the browser WAS just unavoidable.Those fools run JS on the server…spit.Best prospective hire question for company:‘Do you now or have you ever run JS on the backend?’You’d never want to work for a company that makes that kind of decision.90%+ of staff are at their level of incompetence, the rest are looking to get out ASAP.Likely storing critical data on mySQL.Resume stain, burn bridge before crossing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130467",
"author": "Beowulf Shaeffer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T17:45:52",
"content": "Amen. Literally just had a coworker complaining about this as I was in the middle of reading.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130481",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:14:05",
"content": "Appropriate tools for the job.Some sites should be static html, but that isn’t applicable to all sites.It’s kinda hard to pull content updates from a static page, so you add a refresh meta tag, but then you have an issue with browsers that support JavaScript but not the refresh meta tag. So you add some JavaScript for those cases. Then you notice a layout issue that exists because multiple browser vendors disagree on what the standard says. You can fix it, but it’s probably another smidge of JavaScript. Then you do that, but stumble across another issue where you need to configure conditional comments. It’s ugly, but the only browser that gives a shit about them is the one browser that fails to meet anything called a standard. Now that you’ve got that covered, someone’s reached out to you and asked you to update the phone number for the bash web’s that’s on the site. It’s not hard to fix, but there’s 200 pages, and while most of them could be search/replaced, it turns out there’s a couple dozen that won’t work for.Now you realize if you just generate the pages the problem will be eliminated so you start converting to a scripting language like php…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130491",
"author": "Clara Hobbs",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:35:07",
"content": "I agree in principle with your statement that “some sites should be static html,” but HTML isn’t really standardized anymore, so I don’t know how to make good static HTML today. In a century, will it still be readable as it is today?",
"parent_id": "8130481",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130543",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:11:52",
"content": "“HTML isn’t really standardized anymore” – is HTML is less standardised now than it was in the bad old days? What’s non-standard now that a static page would struggle with?",
"parent_id": "8130491",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130549",
"author": "Clara Hobbs",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:23:44",
"content": "Yes, HTMLisless standardized now than it was in the bad old days.In the bad old days, there were versioned standards that web page authors could refer to. These days, there’s a “living standard” (i.e., not a stable standard) that basically waves its hands at whatever WebKit is doing this week.",
"parent_id": "8130543",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130669",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T08:12:04",
"content": "Not WebKit for a long time, the Chrome team forked Blink seat in 2013, due in part to issues with Apple’s OS specific changes. This means that Safari also breaks on a lot of things now, and that is going to get worse.In a venture funded company right now Safari story won’t even be tested unless the CEO uses it. In some cases even Firefox won’t be.",
"parent_id": "8130549",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130553",
"author": "Clara Hobbs",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:31:54",
"content": "As for your second question, I don’t know what page elements could at some point get deprecated and removed, and that itself is a problem. Since there’s no stable standard that I can point to and say, “this page needs these features,” it’s not possible to write a static HTML page and expect it to be readable in a century.“Living standard” is an oxymoron, yet WHATWG acts like it’s somehow a real thing.",
"parent_id": "8130543",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130671",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T08:14:52",
"content": "Any HTML will still be readable in a century because the source is legible. It’s not like it’s being compiled from some bizarre moon language, it’s just markup scattered through plain text. No meaning will be lost. People can still read classical Latin hundreds of years later, English with a few tags in will be trivial.I’m curious as to what sort of sites you’re building that are still going to be online in a hundred years and receive no maintenance in the intervening time.",
"parent_id": "8130553",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130748",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T12:59:19",
"content": "At some level it’s all undecipherable “1”‘s and “0”‘s without some kind of translator between it and me.",
"parent_id": "8130553",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130607",
"author": "Alexander Pruss",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T01:54:07",
"content": "Plain old html with simple tags like body, title, a, p, img, b, i, em, ul, ol, li, br, h1, h2, h3, sub, sup can probably be expected to work for a long time. And for most static non interactive sites, I think that’s pretty much all you need.",
"parent_id": "8130491",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130622",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T03:21:52",
"content": "Absolutely right. Plain old html tags. I am all for it as information is what we normally are looking for. Not glitz. Text and tables, images. Perfect for most things.",
"parent_id": "8130607",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130654",
"author": "Niels",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T07:08:51",
"content": "I agree! That is why I still nowadays create new websites always in plain text. For my static content I do not even use mariaDb/mySql as it is static anyway. I am fluent with modern html js and css so that is all no problem. The sites look very modern, because the (static minimalistic) css and js and html ís modern (but less than 1 kb).I do use some small default css to reset the layout, and some other trivial css.I also use a tiny bit of js and php to make sure the robots.txt and such are automaticly taken care of, and web forms are protected from spam.The result is that the sites are blazingly fast loading for the user (average page is 300kb including all .avif images and .svg icons in css) and run bizarly fast on the cheapest cheapest shared hosting too.",
"parent_id": "8130607",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131221",
"author": "Eiki Martinson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T15:25:29",
"content": "Excellent, I would love to see some examples of your work!",
"parent_id": "8130654",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131275",
"author": "I Alone Possess The Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T18:31:42",
"content": "“I also use a tiny bit of js and php to make sure the robots.txt and such are automaticly taken care of,”I’m curious/baffled about what you mean by this? You run JS and PHP on every refresh/reload to make sure of what?",
"parent_id": "8130654",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130668",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T08:04:43",
"content": "Nah, hard disagree. With modern web sites this isn’t even necessary. It iscompletelypossible to build an interactive page with “live” elements that also graceful displays only static content with less or no JavaScript.And doing this is a GOOD THING. Being able to directly link to content is good, being able tosavea web page snapshot is good, andnone of this is hard.The problem is that companies don’t want this. They want an opaque proprietary application you can only view through a particular lens and cannot view offline in any meaningful way. This isn’t speculation, it’s a literal directive in some places (though often using much more bs in the language).This of course has consequences. Once they are building an application they don’t want to support standards, they want to support a specific “platform”. That was IE, remember ActiveX in web pages? Now it’s Chrome. Not that Mozilla is helping with their schizophrenic management practices.",
"parent_id": "8130481",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130813",
"author": "TDT",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:05:13",
"content": "One of the problem is wanting the website to look exactly the same in each and every webbrowser.Who cares if a box is a bit bigger or smaller, or if the round corners d’ont have the same shadow?I came to have the god damned opening hours! I don’t need to load 2Mb of javascript and activate cookies for that…But, yeah, for multiple bad and worse reasons, most companies want it that way.On the other hand, nothing prevent you from building your personal website “the correct way” = )imho",
"parent_id": "8130481",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130990",
"author": "drenehtsral",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T22:44:51",
"content": "Yes! This seems to be a constant tug of war between the idea of intent based markup (which aims to be device independent enough for screen readers, screens of different size and shape, touch screen vs. mouse, etc.) and the idea of tightly controlling appearance (as if it was a print layout) and interaction (as if it was a real local application).This dovetails with the economic imperative to squeeze as much user interaction data and tracking for advertisers and analytics where if we went back to single static pages where every single request had a cause the user could identify and content they could verify and control. Using a chatty web design paradigm (especially one chatty over an inner encrypted web socket) makes it a daunting task for the user to audit content and purpose of all communication to gague what may be exfiltrated.Remember web bugs and browser cache mining? Those wereeasyto identify and sidestep by comparison. It seems the whole mess is very entangled these days…",
"parent_id": "8130813",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130485",
"author": "Clara Hobbs",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:17:54",
"content": "You mentioned W3C and web standards at the beginning of this article. But those days are dead and gone, thanks to the sabotage of the WHATWG.To be honest, my biggest concern about the web is that we no longer evenhavereal standards. As an author, I can no longer write a (halfway) modern HTML page to some stable specification and know that it will look the same on a browser that implements that particular specification. The web is not archival. I’m worried that our modern web will entirely be lost, at least in its proper presentation, in a few hundred years’ time.Don’t believe me? Try the Acid3 test in a modern browser. Every one I’ve tried scores 97/100 these days, where they used to pass perfectly around a decade ago. Then try the Acid2 test and be even more shocked.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130500",
"author": "Akimmet",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T19:05:41",
"content": "You are being a little too optimistic. There are far too many sites out there right now with JS and CSS scripts that don’t work correctly in current browsers. The problem is already here.",
"parent_id": "8130485",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130502",
"author": "Clara Hobbs",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T19:10:36",
"content": "I don’t think anything I wrote was intended to sound optimistic. I know the problem is here and I said so, please don’t twist my words.",
"parent_id": "8130500",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130496",
"author": "Akimmet",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:54:32",
"content": "Viewing compatability and interoperability with contempt isn’t isolated to web development.There is a big push to move everything over to the latest and greatest framework and language. Even if that involves stripping out all support for alternative architectures and operating systems.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130499",
"author": "mike stone",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T19:03:22",
"content": "This is nothing new.In the 2000s half of websites were built around Flash. The other half were tumorous masses of tables. And don’t get me started on the little badges in the corner saying “this site is made for version-whatever of Internet Explorer”The first wave of destruction came when Netscape started showing images as part of the webpage, not just as links to a file that would open separately. That brought in the graphic designers who didn’t know what HTML was supposed to do, and didn’t care. Their mindset was “screen equal paper; pretty thing I make go right there.”The second wave came when the executives who’d turned TV into 50% advertising and 50% formulaic mass-market pap saw a new medium and started doing everything in their power to turn John Perry Barlow’s “Death from Above” into a business plan. The idea that you can’t force people to download advertising in a pull-based network is still an affront to their souls, and they’ve never stopped trying to make that go away.Concurrent to both was the internet’s threat to Microsoft. Having a computer’s value tied to remote servers undercut Microsoft’s efforts to own the desktop, and piping that value through network connections 1000x slower than the CPU undercut the Wintel treadmill of buying a new machine every two years.Microsoft’s customers have always been the OEMs who consider the OS a component, and the industry groups who want technology standards that keep them in power. As such, Microsoft has an unbroken track record of building whatever technology the industry groups want, especially when the industry groups are willing to accept an undocumented proprietary standard belonging to Microsoft.The interests of those three groups intersected in walled gardens were the corporate overlords could decide what the masses would be allowed to see, hear, think, and talk about.. just like TV and print publication.https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/infrastructures.png",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130685",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T09:02:02",
"content": "“In the 2000s half of websites were built around Flash. ”They were pretty and playful, at least. The CPU went somewhere, at least.Modern websites are full of scripts while looking like a blank HTML site.Also, Macromedia Flash/Shockwave were separate and consistant, at least.ActionScript was almost same as JavaScript, too.“The first wave of destruction came when Netscape started showing images as part of the webpage, not just as links to a file that would open separately.”And? As if CompuServe+WinCIM or AOL or Prodigy or Minitel/BTX was any different.Before the www, we had various online services with their graphical clients.And these did try to load graphics my default, if the feature wasn’t disabled manually in the settings.Netscape did at least support displaying graphics while loading the site.It supported interlaced GIFs and progressive JPGs, I think.Info:https://www.desy.de/www/faq/pjpeg.htm“The other half were tumorous masses of tables.”Ah yes, the good old days! 🥲We learned doing that at school! Microsoft FrontPage was our power tool!“And don’t get me started on the little badges in the corner saying “this site is made for version-whatever of Internet Explorer””You forgot the resolution note (“best viewed in 1024×768 pixel resolution”).. 🙂",
"parent_id": "8130499",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130519",
"author": "G-man",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T20:22:41",
"content": "If NoScript breaks a webpage then I just never visit that site again. They obviously didn’t want me there anyway, right?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130548",
"author": "Pedro",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:23:16",
"content": "LIAR! Here you are posting at HaD which requires JS to comment.",
"parent_id": "8130519",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130840",
"author": "Matthias",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:09:50",
"content": "Well, on my computer commenting simply doesn’t work (it did for a pretty short time some months ago, though, but I have no idea why). The moment my employer stops tolerating the use of his computers for that I won’t be able to comment any more. That is also the main reason I don’t have a hackaday.io account.",
"parent_id": "8130548",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130530",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T20:41:52",
"content": "i think i have the same preferences as OP, but i’m surprised to say that in every detail i think i feel the exact opposite!things used to change so quickly! i watched flash, javascript, and css spread across the world in front of my eyes. when those things were new, you really had to have the absolute newest browser. and it wasn’t just because of badly-designed websites…you really wanted the new features.even into the late aughts, i struggled to view media reliably on linux. all of the standards were new, there was no mature standard where the core functionality hadn’t changed in years, and where all of the major browsers had caught up to that core functionality. there were pages that that needed the absolute newest browser, and also pages thatrequiredan old and obsolete one! it was awful.today, the standards are stronger than they’ve ever been. and love-or-hate the chrome monopoly, but it has given us adefactostandard in addition to the formal ones. it’s a good thing, not a bad thing, that users all all auto-upgrading their browsers every 2 weeks. but old browsers are good too! in 1995,there were no old browsers, but today you can use an old browser if you’re crazy enough to want to, and you will still have an enormous set of modern features.so as someone who still sometimes has to put together a website, i have never been in a better position. for example, i was frustrated by an oversight in the design of css. and i discovered w3c hadfinallyinvented a good feature for my specific needs: vw/vh – viewport width/height units. and i was discouraged because i grew up in the 1990s and i know every good answer to a problem is too bleeding edge to actually use. “how many years will i have to wait until 90% of end users have access to this newfangled feature?” i wondered.my brother in christ, vw/vh was invented in 2012!! ever since 2012, css has been good enough! in the 90s, CSS didn’t exist. in the aughts, CSS was not good enough. in the teens, good enough CSS was still “new”. but this is 2025 and good-enough CSS is more than a decade old!!!so yeah there’s a huge problem with a certain class of website. but the underlying infrastructure for new content / service developers has never been better. and i think the greatest thing is that if you want to live in some sort of isolated ivory tower, but sometimes you are forced to use a modern browser…that’s never been easier either. buy a $30 android phone at your grocery store and you’ll have the most bog-standard least common denominator browser. show me that hack in the 1990s! we used to dual boot into windows so we could run MSIE because we couldn’t afford a second PC!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130582",
"author": "Chacans",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T23:30:44",
"content": "This. ^",
"parent_id": "8130530",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130686",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T09:26:18",
"content": "“In 1995, there were no old browsers”Sure there were! Please don’t me started!There were world web browsers which used HTTP 0.9 (1991) or a draft of HTTP 1.0 (1992-1996), for example. Final HTTP 1.0 was specified in 1996.https://http.dev/0.9https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP#HistoryMinuet internet suite in 1994 did partially support HTML 2.0 (pre-HTML 2) and was the defacto standard for DOS users or IBM PC users.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Internet_Users_Essential_ToolThe original MOSAIC world wide web browser..It was basically made obsolete the day Netscape Navigator came out.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSA_MosaicCello, from 1993, first Windows 3.1 web browser.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cello_(web_browser)IBM WebExplorer on OS/2.Shortlived, promising, but with very limited capabilities just a year later. Outdated by 1995.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_WebExplorerErwise for Unix/X11. From 1992.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ErwiseLast but not least, the various Amgia web browsers.They were pretty much all being outdated all the time! 😂More information about old wide web browsers:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#Historicalhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_web_browser",
"parent_id": "8130530",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130595",
"author": "adobeflashhater again",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T00:07:25",
"content": "Nevermind the scripts, Try simply blocking tracking cookies and watch how many sites turn into a blank page. A few here and there will toss up an error message about disabling your security. Cloudflare loves to toss the “I’m not a robot” check box bull@*#, for cookie blocking.And lets not forget Firefox for disabling any add ons running in an older version of their browsers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130600",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T01:13:42",
"content": "HTML is more-or-less based on the printing industry concepts, canvas, offset, font, etc etc. From the beginning it wasn’t GUI, it was document formatting, which is different. Hence, CSS plugged the gaping hole within, but that’s where the line was crossed – since documents HAVE to be dynamic, merely formatting, however fancy wasn’t good enough. Right, with any GUI you’ll have some kind of need for variables, and W3C was asked to add variables to handle all kinds of internal stuffs, which they finally added to the CSS. Again, neither HTML nor CSS was meant to be GUI, so it couldn’t support scripting, however nice it might have been. Adobe saw that and added scripting to PDF, which opened a can or worms, “can you run Doom in PDF” started right away (along with script kiddies exploring all kinds of security holes that scripting usually does – indirectly).I share the pain with JS, I’ve used it on and off (and some JS projects I wrote pretty much created entire GUI frameworks, data validation and all – within the browser), but it was always not the best tool for the job for many reasons – afterall, it BECAME the language of choice, but originally it was just a simple glue-on scripting. It was not good at things that would require good computing so to speak. It is the interpreted language, and meant to be only used within the rendering engine. It never was good at what it was used for, building entire frameworks of business logic.Browsers are only as good as their rendering engines, which was always the case except for the M$ attempt at making it part of the OS (by baking in the engine into the DLLs so that it cannot be removed without destroying the OS). That might have speed up the scripting (M$ was pushing hard at the time to make VBA the first scripting choice, again, baked into the DLLs), but it really didn’t – I had projects where we were unsure which one we’d be using, so we wrote two version, one – in VBA, another one – in JS. Both sucked equally badly, just in two different ways.Point being? Neither HTML nor JS nor anything invented since (that I’ve seen so far) invented much new since umm … I’d say mid-2000s. HTML did NOT became GUI standard, though, there was notable push to make it uniform GUI that will work similarly (if not the same) on all wares. We ended up with TWO GUis, one – OS’s native, another one – in the browsers. Neither one won over the other. There were attempts at making HTML/CSS the GUI – actually, M$ Outlook lets one generate/render HTML/CSS and edit it as needed, but it is an afterthought, too, cludgy, etc.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130602",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T01:25:07",
"content": "It is a mess of a gargantuan proportions, much worse than the incompatible hardwares/softwares of the 1980s and 1990s. I don’t see any real breakthroughs happening any time soon, only deepning the already entrenched niches (Node.js … erm … who thought this was a brilliant idea, no, it wasn’t, yet, it won over similar projects due to simplicity, but it is not exactly grand to start with … it had to do with generations of JS programmers loving the thing, so they demanded it becomes client-server deal … weird, but true; though, ANY language now can be client-server, plenty of glue-on libraries to make it happen).Back to the topic at hand, HTML/CSS is reasonably good enough for ITS MAIN PURPOSE – document formatting so that it can be rendered by a browser engine. Of course it will work 100% of the times, and of course it will be darn fast doing what it supposed to do. Details vary a bit, but since we are down to what, three winning render engines, the differences are not that grand any more, more like annoyances. Again, document formatting, and NOT GUI, ie, active controls that react to your actions, and that’s where the confusion (IMHO) starts – this was never the point of document rendering, making them actively react to your actions. The two serve two different purposes, but this is where it all started – GUI is kinda sorta a document that’s infinitely flexible and easily outshines the menu at the top of the browser (translation – menu at the top bar WAS the original GUI for the document rendered … that’s why it was at first NOT embedded within the document, because aside from the hyperlinks that WERE the sole reason for the WWW to be invented, WHY would it be there?)Just outlining the framework and a bit of a history.As a side note, the WORST part of the web pages that are now portals amalgamating gazillion JS libraries from bajillion sources, say, MSNBC news page. Some are well-known libraries, some are in-house written ones, some are pulled elsewhere, which, by themselves, repeat the thing, too, loading their own framework libraries, some are well-known, some are custom-written, etc etc. There are also hidden libraries that run on the backend and generate the JS libraries that load other libraries that point to other libraries. Pointer to a pointer that points to a pointer. Arrays of pointers that point to arrays of pointers that point to arrays of pointers.You get the idea.",
"parent_id": "8130600",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130691",
"author": "phuzz",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T09:34:55",
"content": "The ironic thing about PDF is that it was originally intended as a simplified, cut-down, version of PostScript, which was judged to be getting too big and complex.",
"parent_id": "8130600",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130716",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T11:06:11",
"content": "PDF 1.3 was fine, I think. :)",
"parent_id": "8130691",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130892",
"author": "Jim J Jewett",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T19:31:22",
"content": "I had not expected to see the day when a PDF was lightweight. But recently one tab had a 1000 page book with pictures in “only” 17meg, while another had not much more than a page of text, but took 760meg of memory because frameworks",
"parent_id": "8130716",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131036",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T00:11:46",
"content": "Yep, I’ve programmed PDFs. Literally. Had to use the horrendously expensive Adobe PDF Editor (years back when it was still standalone, and NOT per-use licensed, umbrella licensing for entire organization). File size was quite large, and I even tracked the reason – parts of it were pixelated/raster images. PDF, the jack of all trades, can do all three, plain vanilla ASCII text, vectors, and horrible raster-scans embedded within. I was wondering why they went with the raster imaging – more on that later.My project back then? You guessed it, create a GUI that users can fill in. Script it so that the data will be submitted to a web service. Horrible. Never again. Total of 24+ forms. Took me almost a month, testing, etc.Story continue – Rewind few years later and I get a different request “remember those forms? users are complaining they are not working well and there is no proper error checking”. Aha. Out comes trusty ASP.NET and creates a web page through which they will do their data entry, error checking and all, and AFTER THAT the web service will fill THOSE SAME PDFs with the data they just entered. iText was used, wonderful library for doing server-side PDFing, and speaking Java when needed. Oh, whilst doing that I figured out how to replace the raster images with their plain vanilla ASCII equivalent. I work for a shop that’s very very adamant about things like the font size used, so I had to make sure it is exactly the same, except smaller files. I don’t remember stats, but I slimmed them all down to like 1/10th each. I also tracked down the dude who scanned rasters into PDFs and asked why oh why he did that. His literal answer “I’ve been told by the management”. Same reason. Particular font HAD to be used.Which brings me back to my own reply – PRINTING INDUSTRY had all those growing pains decades ago, and they had figured it all out. Mid-1970s to be exact, maybe 1960s even. Actually newspaper publishing was where all the magic was happening, document handling, standards, lowest rez to print the photos and how (dots that are either tiny or wide – PWM = pulse-width-modulation equivalent of the modern days’ uber-technologies so to speak). Newspapers also had decidedly limited real estate (only few pages – compared with books or magazines that can always add extras), so they’ve worked it all out. Look at any web page now and find the same challenges, which content goes where, for what reason, etc etc. Newspaper editors of the past, we need them NOW.Other than that, SVG may pick up the slack from PDFs, since it pretty much can do the same AND it is no longer proprietary. SVG can handle all three, vectors, raster images, plain vanilla ASCII, and has its own scripting (in addition to the whichever browser’s favorite will work too, JS or VBA, depending on the rendering engine). Compressed/zipped SVG may become emergent standard. May. PDFs are more popular still.PostScript was actually not bad, relatively easy to learn and master (when needed). My shop STILL has some PostScript stuffs, which I avoid, but for a different reason (I have more fascinating/shiny projects to pursue). I personally found LaTeX better, but that’s me, nobody mentions it any more, at least not where I work. LaTeX separates text from presentation, and compressed LaTeXes are quite light.",
"parent_id": "8130691",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131136",
"author": "Matthias",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T10:05:31",
"content": "I personally found LaTeX better, but that’s me, nobody mentions it any moreShoutout for LaTeX: I use it for all my documents including letters, and I remember it being popular at the university. I wish it was more common, but I fear, it then would be destroyed from within the same way all Nice Things are destroyed nowadays, if they become popular.",
"parent_id": "8131036",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130606",
"author": "FEW",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T01:53:16",
"content": "I can only imagine that things have become more challenging for users with vision impairments to navigate. There are built in readers for many platforms, but without the document structures… 🥺",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130609",
"author": "Lord Kimbote",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T02:16:59",
"content": "A friend told me downloading pr0n was specially galling with all those pop ups and slow speeds.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130657",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T07:13:28",
"content": "Yes and no…Accessing stuff without https is a security risk unless you trust all the networks. Unless you’ve got a completely safe OS/browser without any exploits, in which case welcome to the Security Friday column. And it’s a privacy risk.Forms pretty much mandate JS to prevent spam, which is unfortunate but better than no forms or spam filled sites.But there’s no excuse for sites not using basic HTML markup. Those drag-drop builders leave a horrific mess of nested divs and stuff. And often rely on the latest features.Though given how unsafe any not-latest browser is, only supporting the latest isn’t as big a deal as it used to be. If your 6-month old version of chrome doesn’t work for a website, upgrade it already before it gets exploited.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130711",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T10:43:26",
"content": "“Accessing stuff without https is a security risk unless you trust all the networks.Unless you’ve got a completely safe OS/browser without any exploits, in which case welcome to the Security Friday column.And it’s a privacy risk.”Arachne on DOS? Or MicroWeb 2? 🙂 It works surprisingly well.If there only wasn’t HTTPS, which is such a power-hungry behemoth.Not even the power of a whole dozen of C64 is capable to handle HTTPS.Even NeoCities now requires HTTPS, what a shame!Because the only workaround is using an external proxy for accessing HTTPS servers, which might not be trustworthy.The forced HTTPS thus causes issues on platforms that had no issue before when HTTP still was widely being supported as fallback.HTTPS is as much of a cure as IPv6 is, I’d say. ;)",
"parent_id": "8130657",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130713",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T10:52:45",
"content": "“Accessing stuff without https is a security risk unless you trust all the networks.”Alright! But why do I need encryption when I’m visiting fan sites of Harry Potter, Star Wars or something along these lines?These are harmless things and can be tracked no problem, I don’t mind a profile of me being made.Fans of such things used to have their personal interests being listed on their personal homepage and everyone got to know.Nowadays, they do it on anti-social networks.No HTTPS can help here.Back in the day, there was a book called a “telephone book” with all sorts of personal Information, such as names and addresses.I do understand that things like on-line banking do have a need for HTTPS, but even this used to be a non-issue.Way back in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s people used online services for things like that,which couldn’t be hacked in same way like internet.AOL and CompuServe had features for booking a flight, home banking etc.Here were I live, T-Online Classic was a thing. It allowed for a non-internet connection to the bank computer.",
"parent_id": "8130657",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130918",
"author": "Bastet",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T20:46:43",
"content": "The main problem is bad guys hijacking a machine in the middle and replacing data. You think that the obiwankenobi.jpg is perfectly sane but without encryption it can be replaced with a version that has a little package attached that your imageloader.dll/.so will accidentally execute.The modern web is a place full of back-behind openings and not the nice place it was in the 90s anymore.",
"parent_id": "8130713",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131002",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T23:06:12",
"content": "But then that’s a problem of bad browser/OS architecture, rather, isn’t it? 🤨There are MIME types that are supposed to tell the browser what the type of file it is.The file extension itself should be meaningless,the image processing code should check for header and footer/end-of-file section, too.Buffer overflow exploits are so 2000, also.Things like NX-Bit/DEP should help to separate data from active program code.Things like WMF (Windows Meta File), too.Heck, even Windows 3.1x had protection based on segmentation (in Standard-Mode, at least).And the internet never really was a safe place, I think. 🙁My generation always knew that, at least.The internet was like a long, dark alley or a lone highway. 😣I just think that all the encryption has a reverse effect, it encourages hacking.Just like copy-protection schemes in the 80s on C64/Amiga took the interest of young crackers.They saw it as a challenge to crack games and applications.Without the copy-protection, the level of piracy might have been much lower for a given application/game.",
"parent_id": "8130918",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130846",
"author": "Matthias",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:34:26",
"content": "No. Use a browser just out of support. The old security holes are fixed, and the new security holes are in the parts not implemented yet in your version.",
"parent_id": "8130657",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130666",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T07:56:59",
"content": "This is why I like the Japanese speaking side of the internet. Everything is plain HTML+CSS. Everything is in columns. JavaScript is indeed used, but not to add visual clutter.All information is available on the page at all times, your eyes and attention is the only limiting factorIts simple, and lovely",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130699",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T10:01:03",
"content": "+1It’s comparable to how the western web used to be in 2005.Before the iPhone had introduced the dumbed-down mobile web.In Japan, the flip-phones also didn’t die out so easily, I think.Things like IrDA remained important to exchange digital business cards.To this day, I wonder why our western web had to end like this.For mobile web, we already had WAP and i-mode technologies.Why was it needed to strip real information (text!) from normal, desktop-oriented web and turn it into this mess?",
"parent_id": "8130666",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130741",
"author": "aleksclark",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T12:29:41",
"content": "because the web can be used todo thingsnow, not just read about doing them.",
"parent_id": "8130699",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130751",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T13:03:33",
"content": "“can be used to do things now”Woah! That’s so deep, man! 🤯",
"parent_id": "8130741",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130920",
"author": "Bastet",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T20:52:31",
"content": "Dunno about you, but we had forums in the 90s and they worked just fine. Even web chat that had a no JS fallback was there for everyone to enjoy.My first real experience with the web was at Karstadt Essen when they opened their Cyber Cafe somewhere in 1995 and they had a chat system that worked without anything fancy in the browser.And IoT? Still no JS needed, a link that tells some CGI script running on your Pi to turn on a lamp with work just fine.",
"parent_id": "8130741",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131204",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T14:11:59",
"content": "IMHO, forums/BBBs and chats don’t REALLY need fancy-schmancy frameworks to run. Extended ASCII (or unicode) communications are still doable. Literally, one can forum/chat through the command line just fine (well, with some initial learning curve that’s not exactly user-friendly).I am kinda puzzled why glorified forums (facebook, etc) don’t have plain text equivalents that can work through Curve, since their mobile versions are not much better (relatively speaking) than their PC versions. I’d would imagine one can probably fake PC and extract ASCII out of the bitstream, but that’s a bit reegnineering, and I suspect they’ll just shut down what they don’t like.IoT picked up the slack quite nicely – sometimes one just DOESN’T NEED all the uber-extra to slosh around, say, weather data (or local/regional news, or market data, anything that can be plain/extended ASCII). Meshtastic got the right idea – I’ll even go as far as call it “TRUE wireless low-speed internet”, since it kinda sorta follows the same paradigm (packets forwarded through multiple independent gateways – yes, Vint Serf and Co, who, btw, also invented what they called “Galactic Internet” to talk to rovers on Mars). I’d also say we are indirectly into re-inventing regional/local CB channels, because the technology is there and Meshtastic is kinda sorta the modern equivalent of the CB channels of the past.So, in short, if it is not banking or private, there is no reason why the data has to be drowned in add-ons making it hefty to push through. As mentioned, weather feeds, local news, rumors and market data, public chat, etc – all that can easily fly though Meshtastic and relieve them internets from all the extras that usually gets attached to it.What’s missing now, is hundreds public-use low-orbit tax-funded gateways that would extend Meshtastic to the municipal/state level, but I am an optimist, it may just happen. 6G, so to speak, and not only for the profit-makers (for-profit comm providers). I am also looking forward when my quantum link 7G (I hope) connects to any spot on Earth without expensive satellites, which may happen at about the same time, too : – ]",
"parent_id": "8130920",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130739",
"author": "aleksclark",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T12:27:59",
"content": "Breaking changes are breaking changes fam. Yes backwards compatibility is nice, but it was far more important when browser updates were slow and took hours to download over 56k. Consider this: how many hours of labor has the decision to make ethernet RJ45 wiring backwards compatible cost? 25 years of the whole planet untwisting that silly green pair and trying to get it to lay on either side of the blue….might have been necessary to drive adoption in the 80s, but nobody has used that particular “feature” since.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130755",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T13:15:00",
"content": "Dude, I was there back then, in 1996.The websites and software were much smaller, in the KB (Kilobyte) range.Things didn’t take hours on average, but just a couple of minutes, even on dial-up.Except for video files or MP3, Real Audio etc.Your typical web storage was 2MB in total. A bit more than an 1,44 MB floppy.Yes, that’s right. Private homepages did fit on a single floppy at the time!Late 90s programs such as MS FrontPage even had shown an estimation about how long a website loads with different speeds.You could check how long it loads with 14k4, 28k8, 33k6 and 56k modems.Let’s remember: People back then weren’t stupid, they knew what they were doing and saw the limitations.They couldn’t know however, that the dystopian world of Idiocracy would be comming eventually.Because the film wasn’t even made back then.PS: There also was T1 mines and ISDN in the developed world.ISDN had full 64KBit/s or 128KBit/s (two phone lines combined). In the 90s.",
"parent_id": "8130739",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130759",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T13:25:33",
"content": "“how many hours of labor has the decision to make ethernet RJ45 wiring backwards compatible cost? ”None. Because the transceivers in the network cards are smart.They can figure out if it’s a normal LAN cable (straight) or a crossover-cable (null-modem).Also, all wires are being useful. Higher bandwidths need more wires (and better shielding).So the “obsolete” wires of the early 90s, of an earlier standard, aren’t really obsolete. It’s just that more pairs are being used now.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_twisted_pair#CablingWhat’s bad though: modern network cards nolonger have an AUI port.It was useful to “convert” an existing network device so it can be used in a different topology.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_Unit_Interface",
"parent_id": "8130739",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130808",
"author": "Floydian Slip",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T15:57:11",
"content": "There are various perspectives on the topic of graceful degradation, but here is my viewpoint:Initially, web layouts relied on table-based structures, which many would agree were not an ideal solution. These were largely replaced with the advent of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and HTML 4, allowing for more flexible and semantically meaningful page design. The introduction of<div>elements enabled developers to segment content into distinct areas such as navigation and main content. This semantic structure improved accessibility, allowing screen readers and other assistive technologies to efficiently navigate to and interpret the important parts of a webpage, thereby enhancing the user experience.However, in recent years, the proliferation of JavaScript frameworks has complicated accessibility support, sometimes hindering assistive technologies’ ability to accurately interpret and present content to users. I believe accessibility should be a top priority in web development. While innovative and engaging features are valuable, they should not come at the expense of accessibility and usability for all users.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130838",
"author": "Scott",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T17:03:10",
"content": "What kills me is the use of JavaScript to submit basic forms such as checking out. This code then fails because I am blocking tracking by Facebook, etc. It is a common practice it seems to report when you buy something to a bunch of 3rd parties, and if you block that, well we won’t sell to you.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131195",
"author": "Egghead Larsen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T13:50:18",
"content": "In 1999, in the middle of a push to make all state websites accessible, mandated by the current governor, a lead programmer snarkily said to me, the ISO and webmaster, “I don’t care if blind people use my program!” Unfortunately for him, I was in a position to enforce said rules, as agency heads were bugged about the deadline every week. I showed the coder reluctantly assigned to the task thevery minor changesneeded and she completed them and we tested them for accessibility in one morning. That was the entire program interface and subsite. It annoyed him to no end, as he had apparently planned on blaming “Accessibility” for his delay in implementation. The coder is now the department head. As my brother would say, “Heh heh”His attitude, however, has spread into businesses who forget that studies show that that the users of accessibility have cash to spend, and are highly loyal.No profit in doing the right thing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131372",
"author": "Todd A. Hofer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T02:35:44",
"content": "I’ve came to the conclusion that no matter how fast we make CPU’s or being able to increase physical RAM limits, we will always continue to bloat everything to the point that we are always just a hair behind the resource wall. “Wow! PC’s are standard with 128Gig of RAM now! I’m going to put all kinds of bling and flashy useless stuff in my programs now!”. That puts you right back where you started. One step forward. One step back. Never gaining any real advantage. Imagine how fast our systems would be if we created software modeled after 1990’s limitations with multi-core CPUs and Gig after Gig of RAM. We used to develop programs to take advantage of 4Mb (Megabytes) of RAM and CPUs under 100Mhz. We were careful about how much bloat we put into our programs. But as I look back it seems that every time the resource limits were raised, we fattened up our programs so that any advantage we gained by the increase in CPU and RAM was once again, degraded. It’s a losing battle sometimes. Imagine how fast and responsive Windows 98SE would be on modern hardware. Not saying would should go back to WIn98 but, I think as developers we should start thinking more about performance and usability over flash and bling.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131690",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T23:47:50",
"content": "That’s ‘Gate’s Law’.The reciprocal of ‘Moore’s Law’.Moore’s law is dead and gone.The first 1 gig processor was 2000.We should be rocking 4.5 THz.(Yes, I know, that’s not what Moore’s law actually says.)Anyhow, ‘Gate’s Law’ will not die.The only thing keeping our system from ‘running like it’s 1975’ is the sub Moore’s law rate of ongoing performance gain.Just wait until the new OS written in JS becomes standard…it will be great!",
"parent_id": "8131372",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8133185",
"author": "tki",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T09:35:23",
"content": "An ever increasing number of software use webapps instead of native coding, which obviously saves money during development, multi-platform development is never easy.However, we have already reached a point where seemingly “harmless” software from reckless enough, mostly large companies can take up a half or rather nearly a gigabyte of real memory. The new basic unit… Examples include not only the Electron-based monstrosities but “simple” instant messaging apps and text editors as well. Anything.I don’t know how else they could be developed to remain affordable and without lacking functionality, but if this trend continues, you’ll need to purchase additional RAM before installing any software.Some frameworks claim to use so little memory that they are no worse than normal applications. I tried a couple of them, but, of course, this was only true for “Hello world”-level applications.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8133853",
"author": "ColT",
"timestamp": "2025-05-31T07:19:00",
"content": "I think users want functionality. You cannot do a chat in pure HTML. Web is developing.And encryption, it’s good to have even for downloading public data, because site hijacking is a thing.I also bang my head because of wasting bandwidth, but it’s mostly because of poor website design, not necessarily because we have scripts on sites.(E.g. you download the scripts one time, and after then, it traffics less data to site, because it does not download the whole page again, just what you send/receive in the page.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153029",
"author": "Rex",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T06:10:43",
"content": "//You cannot do a chat in pure HTML.Says who? Static HTML chat with zero Javascript was very much available as a fallback in the 90s.",
"parent_id": "8133853",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,542.629501
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/20/an-awful-1990s-pda-delivers-ai-wisdom/
|
An Awful 1990s PDA Delivers AI Wisdom
|
Jenny List
|
[
"Artificial Intelligence",
"handhelds hacks"
] |
[
"LLM",
"pda",
"serial"
] |
There was a period in the 1990s when it seemed like the personal data assistant (PDA) was going to be the device of the future. If you were lucky you could afford a Psion, a PalmPilot, or even the famous Apple Newton — but to trap the unwary there were a slew of far less capable machines competing for market share.
[Nick Bild] has one of these, branded Rolodex, and in a bid to make using a generative AI less alluring,
he’s set it up as the interface to an LLM hosted on a Raspberry Pi 400
. This hack is thus mostly a tale of reverse engineering the device’s serial protocol to free it from its Windows application.
Finding the baud rate was simple enough, but the encoding scheme was unexpectedly fiddly. Sadly the device doesn’t come with a terminal because these machines were very much single-purpose, but it does have a memo app that allows transfer of text files. This is the wildly inefficient medium through which the communication with the LLM happens, and it satisfies the requirement of making the process painful.
We see this type of PDA quite regularly in second hand shops, indeed you’ll find nearly identical devices from multiple manufacturers also sporting software such as dictionaries or a thesaurus. Back in the day they always seemed to be advertised in Sunday newspapers and aimed at older people. We’ve never got to the bottom of who the OEM was who manufactured them, or indeed cracked one apart to find the inevitable black epoxy blob processor. If we had to place a bet though, we’d guess there’s an 8051 core in there somewhere.
| 16
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130368",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T12:41:00",
"content": "Bingley bingley beep…Does it recognise handwriting?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130390",
"author": "Nick Bild",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T13:45:15",
"content": "Definitely not. It’s a piece of junk.",
"parent_id": "8130368",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130394",
"author": "Jon Mayo",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T13:52:39",
"content": "I had the same model. I bought it on clearance in the late 90’s. It was very limited but pretty good at keeping phone numbers. The memo pad was pretty clumsy but you could make a little note, but good luck finding it later if you made more than a few notes.All in all, better than a Palm Pilot because the battery didn’t constantly run dry and it was pretty cheap. I think retail price was around $30-40 at the pharmacy. (don’t get me wrong, I really loved my Palm IIIx)",
"parent_id": "8130390",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130421",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T15:05:24",
"content": "I can tell you’ve never read the Guards series of Pratchett books.",
"parent_id": "8130390",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130422",
"author": "Nick Bild",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T15:10:16",
"content": "That would explain the reference I did not get. :)",
"parent_id": "8130421",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130432",
"author": "Jon Mayo",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T15:43:17",
"content": "The discworld books are on my list of things to read, but I’ve not read a single one of them. My wife loves them though.I liked the point-and-click game for DOS. And of course we watch Hogfather every year. But I’m totally ignorant of Pratchett minutia.",
"parent_id": "8130421",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130578",
"author": "Titus431",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T23:07:29",
"content": "The joke is that the PDA says it can recognize handwriting — a little imp opens the case, looks at the writing and says “yep, that’s handwriting.”Discworld is awesome albeit for a particular type of reader and may be confusing. Started out as mostly satire of well worn fantasy tropes … “Cohen the Barbarian” who is like 150 years old but too tough to die. Then they took on a life of their own and became something special with occasional unevenness because good lord, pratchett could crank them out fast. He’s sorely missed. Total shame to find out that his co-author on Good Omens appears to have some issues.",
"parent_id": "8130432",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130414",
"author": "jawnhenry",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T14:30:33",
"content": "“…and it satisfies the requirement of making the process painful.”One of the most elegantly subtle back-handed compliments seen / written in a very long time.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130437",
"author": "Nick Bild",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T16:11:43",
"content": "That was actually the stated goal, so not really back-handed.",
"parent_id": "8130414",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130507",
"author": "jawnhenry",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T19:50:07",
"content": "“That was actually the stated goal, so not really back-handed.”Statedwhere,precisely, and by whom?Exact attribution(s), please.N.B. : concerning the logic of your comment–even if it were stated (somewhere; by someone) that“That was actually the stated goal…”, that fact wouldnot, in any way, render Ms. List’s playful and delightful—and absolutely accurate—use of the English language moot.Hackaday needsmanymorewriterswith the skills of Ms. List.",
"parent_id": "8130437",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130742",
"author": "Nick Bild",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T12:30:46",
"content": "Hello. I’m the creator of the project and the whole idea was to make LLMs painful to use with a terrible interface, which I mentioned throughout the linked write-up and video.Of course that doesn’t somehow make the writing of this article bad. I think it’s quite good, actually. I just don’t see the veiled insult that you do.",
"parent_id": "8130507",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130419",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T14:47:31",
"content": "Oh wow I had this one. My father gave it to me to play with and it was so horribly bad. He didn’t want it either. Tried it for a few weeks before I threw it out.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130547",
"author": "RetepV",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:20:23",
"content": "I was wise enough to buy an actual Casio one (SF-4300). It’s in my display of 80’s calculators and pocket computers. I just picked it up and put some batteries in. And it still has the magic!Amazing how an 80’s digital diary has more magic than my iPhone… :)I used the Casio quite a lot. Until I got a Palm III. That had a little more magic than the Casio: handwriting and internet connectivity.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130550",
"author": "Thinkerer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T21:25:30",
"content": "I had a TI “PDA” (address book/reminder-calendar) that literally saved my career as they hadn’t quite figured out the whole ADD thing yet and I was always missing meetings etc. Yeah, they weren’t your grampa’s Palm device much less a smart phone but it worked well for what it was and data entry on the “PC” was pretty easy.Bonus: It didn’t track my anything, try to sell me anything, or loot my financial accounts. It didn’t even take embarrassing selfies.If only it had a GPS….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130564",
"author": "Curtis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T22:04:04",
"content": "I had the Casio Secret Sender, it was great to control TVs in public places. Most other functions were mediocre at best by today’s standards. I just wish my phone could run off two AA batteries for months at a time.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130580",
"author": "jawnhenry",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T23:23:28",
"content": "The most powerful PDA you’ve probably never heard of was the H-P Omnigo 100 / 120.They are so sought-after that that long-term existence on eBay is unheard of.Here’s a quick run-down:“The HP OmniGo 100 handheld organizer includes a host of financial- and business-productivity functions designed to eliminate the need for multiple reference tools. In addition to incorporatingthe industry-standard HP 12C financial calculator, the new product´s personal information-management features include the following:pen-navigation and keyboard-input capabilities – to accommodate user-interface preference;a jotter application – to allow customers to capture information on the go and organize it later;a Graffiti handwriting system – for easy-to-learn handwriting recognition; drawing capabilities – to enable the user to scribble quick notes and design maps and pictures;HP financial-analysis tools and spreadsheet capabilities – for computing cash flow and loan payments, currency conversions, business calculations, percentages and margins;a notepad feature – to input notes and organize thoughts via keyboard and pen entry;appointment, address and telephone books – to give users a central repository for access to important personal appointments, activities and contact information;database capabilities – for personalized list management; andworldtime feature – for locating cities around the world and obtaining current time and city information.”Fromhttps://www.hermocom.com/hplx/view-all-hp-palmtop-articles/46-omnigo100",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,542.436936
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/20/pentapico-a-pi-pico-cluster-for-image-convolution/
|
PentaPico: A Pi Pico Cluster For Image Convolution
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"Microcontrollers",
"Raspberry Pi"
] |
[
"cluster",
"image convolution",
"parallel processing",
"Raspberry Pi Pico"
] |
Here’s something fun. Our hacker [Willow Cunningham] has sent us
a copy of their homework
. This is their final project for the “ECE 574: Cluster Computing” course at the University of Maine, Orono.
It was enjoyable going through the process of having a good look at everything in this project. The project is a “cluster” of 5x Raspberry Pi Pico microcontrollers — with one head node as the leader and four compute nodes that work on tasks. The software for both types of node is written in C. The head node is connected to a workstation via USB 1.1 allowing the system to be controlled with a Python script.
The cluster is configured to process an embarrassingly parallel image convolution. The input image is copied into the head node via USB which then divvies it up and distributes it to
n
compute nodes via I
2
C, one node at a time. Results are given for
n
= {1,2,4} compute nodes.
It turns out that the work of distributing the data dwarfs the compute by three orders of magnitude. The result is that the whole system gets
slower
the more nodes we add. But we’re not going to hold that against anyone. This was a fascinating investigation and we were impressed by [Willow]’s technical chops. This was a complicated project with diverse hardware and software challenges and they’ve done a great job making it all work and in the best scientific tradition.
It was fun reading
their journal
in which they chronicled their progress and frustrations during the project. Their
final report
in IEEE format was created using LaTeX and Overleaf, at only six pages it is an easy and interesting read.
For anyone interested in cluster tech be sure to check out the
256-core RISC-V megacluster
and
a RISC-V supercluster for very low cost
.
| 22
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130307",
"author": "Richard",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T08:30:57",
"content": "“It turns out that the work of distributing the data dwarfs the compute by three orders of magnitude.”An excellent project and an excellent learning exercise. Nice work. :) And this experience will inform his work for years. This is why doing these projects are so important, to learn. Core principled of science is reproducibility and not taking someone’s word for it. Detractors of these kinds of project say “what is the point, just get a cheap PC” and they are missing the point and the fun in building these mini clusters.Good work Willow Cunningham. :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130319",
"author": "halogenek",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T09:12:40",
"content": "+1",
"parent_id": "8130307",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130444",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T16:35:43",
"content": "Now you know why PCIe 7.0 is going to be so fast.Seems that another student could use this project as a springboard to implement faster data transfers via less conventional means.",
"parent_id": "8130307",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130532",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T20:55:52",
"content": "hahah yeah my heart was exploding with “that the work of distributing the data dwarfs the compute by three orders of magnitude!!!” but then there it was right there on the page",
"parent_id": "8130307",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130572",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T22:47:10",
"content": "As is so often the case, it’s quicker to do the job yourself than to delegate it to someone else…",
"parent_id": "8130307",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130320",
"author": "Gardoni",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T09:16:33",
"content": "But why waste time on hardware when the entire project could be done with QEMU on a single 8-core CPU. It’s not like it’s still 2008 and dual-core Wolfdale is the duck’s guts.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130360",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T12:05:33",
"content": "You’re no fun! :)",
"parent_id": "8130320",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130447",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T16:43:09",
"content": "12 and 20 core CPUs are cheap. 14700 is around $200 if you go looking. Tough to beat for raw compute. Did a BMW Blender render in 24 seconds on the one I built. 14400 is probably the price/performance leader though. Although when I see a $154 12700KF (Amazon) or $170 Ryzen 7700 (SZCPU) it gives me pause.",
"parent_id": "8130320",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130497",
"author": "bebop",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:55:44",
"content": "The point is the challenge, not the result.",
"parent_id": "8130447",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130571",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T22:40:14",
"content": "I was just saying if you are going QEMU why stop at 8 cores?8 is midrange, soon to be entry level.Also a modern $80 6 core like 8400F can probably do 8 cores worth of work.",
"parent_id": "8130497",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130758",
"author": "fhunter",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T13:19:47",
"content": "Power to run them, though is not cheap.",
"parent_id": "8130447",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130327",
"author": "frenchone",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T09:59:35",
"content": "Is it convolution or deconvolution in the image ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130358",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T12:02:20",
"content": "I am not an expert but I do believe convolution is the correct term.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution#Discrete_convolution",
"parent_id": "8130327",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130364",
"author": "ziggurat29",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T12:25:29",
"content": "looks like deconvolution since it’s deblurring, but since deconvolution is convolution with the inverse point spread function, then I guess you can also call it ‘convolution with a kernel for sharpening’",
"parent_id": "8130327",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130329",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T10:00:47",
"content": "Maybe he shouldn’t have used I2C for inter node communication? Its all about the learning",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130342",
"author": "C",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T11:13:44",
"content": "I was thinking the same. I hate I2C with a passion. Slow and unreliable. SPI would have been better. I think you can even implement QSPI with the PIO blocks.",
"parent_id": "8130329",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130351",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T11:48:14",
"content": "There’s enough (in this case unused) I/O to make an extremely high bandwidth custom communications channel between these chips, but I somewhat understand the desire to go with something standard, to reduce complexity of the overall project.",
"parent_id": "8130329",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130359",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T12:05:01",
"content": "Yes I was thinking the same thing. It would be interesting to run the experiment again using SPI. Just for fun, naturally. I would be that the system would still be IO bound even if we used SPI or QSPI.",
"parent_id": "8130329",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130380",
"author": "TDT",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T13:19:05",
"content": "EyupQSPI, or even better if the project allows it, shared RAM module.Granted, one have to order the access, but that shouldn’t be too hard to do.But kudoes anyway to him, that’s a very nice project as is!",
"parent_id": "8130329",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130445",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T16:39:31",
"content": "I think a Pico can be used as a virtual RAM chip, so it’s possible that could handle the accesses.Also if the project scales up it might be better to use bare RP2040 (or the new chip), and share the power lanes. Imagine a SBC size device with 10-20 RP2040 chips on it 😂",
"parent_id": "8130380",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130410",
"author": "Charles Springer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T14:20:33",
"content": "I think SPI with DMA would be nearly ideal for moving image rows between devices. Or maybe a 4 or 8 bit parallel with DMA. I did not see DMA in the docs but the M0 can do it.",
"parent_id": "8130329",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130352",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T11:49:10",
"content": "Might be fun to use the cluster to run some machine learning stuff.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,542.688602
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/19/an-open-source-wii-u-gamepad/
|
An Open-Source Wii U Gamepad
|
Bryan Cockfield
|
[
"Nintendo Wii Hacks"
] |
[
"android",
"controller",
"game pad",
"nintendo",
"open source",
"steam deck",
"touch screen",
"wi-fi",
"Wii U"
] |
Although Nintendo is mostly famous for making great games, they also have an infamous reputation for being highly litigious not only for reasonable qualms like outright piracy of their games, but additionally for more gray areas like homebrew development on their platforms or posting gameplay videos online. With that sort of reputation it’s not surprising that they don’t release open-source drivers for their platforms, especially those like the Wii U with unique controllers that are difficult to emulate.
This Wii U gamepad emulator seeks to bridge that gap
.
The major issue with the Wii U compared to other Nintendo platforms like the SNES or GameCube is that the controller looks like a standalone console and behaves similarly as well, with its own built-in screen. Buying replacement controllers for this unusual device isn’t straightforward either; outside of Japan Nintendo did not offer an easy path for consumers to buy controllers. This software suite, called Vanilla, aims to allow other non-Nintendo hardware to bridge this gap, bringing in support for things like the Steam Deck, the Nintendo Switch, various Linux devices, or Android smartphones which all have the touch screens required for Wii U controllers. The only other hardware requirement is that the device must support 802.11n 5 GHz Wi-Fi.
Although the Wii U was somewhat of a flop commercially, it seems to be experiencing a bit of a resurgence among collectors, retro gaming enthusiasts, and homebrew gaming developers as well. Many games were incredibly well made and are still experiencing continued life on the Switch, and plenty of gamers are looking for the original experience on the Wii U instead. If you’ve somehow found yourself in the opposite position of owning of a Wii U controller but not the console, though,
you can still get all the Wii U functionality back with this console modification
.
Thanks to [Kat] for the tip!
| 8
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8130283",
"author": "ech010100101",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T07:10:41",
"content": "https://www.youtube.com/@MattKC/videos",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130417",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T14:44:12",
"content": "I was under the impression that yhe Wii U pad used a proprietary wireless connection. But perhaps this project is sending the data stream over the wired LAN connection?This post could have used more tech details.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130418",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T14:45:39",
"content": "Github: “Wii U gamepad communication is based on a slightly obfuscated variant of 802.11n’",
"parent_id": "8130417",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130442",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T16:30:41",
"content": "I am stunned this was the only obfuscation Nintendo did:The PTK (pairwise transient key), derived from the PSK (Wi-Fi password) during the WPA handshake is rotated 3 bytes to the left.",
"parent_id": "8130417",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130591",
"author": "ThatJewishNerd",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T23:53:16",
"content": "Really? A simple bitshift? That’s…ridiculous.",
"parent_id": "8130442",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130656",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T07:12:29",
"content": "You mean helpful, very. Is there a reason they should have done anything else?Because if they had implemented anything real this and related projects would be under legal threat.",
"parent_id": "8130591",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130625",
"author": "Tomasz",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T04:14:45",
"content": "Wouldn’t Ethernet cut it as well? 🤔Both devices need to be on same network as far as I know.",
"parent_id": "8130417",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130768",
"author": "Clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T13:56:18",
"content": "“they also have an infamous reputation for being highly litigious not only for reasonable qualms like outright piracy of their games”See some people do understand the business model…That’s why people love being able to file a copyright or patent in they name…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,542.382937
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/17/zen-flute-is-a-teensy-powered-mouth-theramin/
|
Zen Flute Is A Teensy Powered Mouth Theremin
|
Dave Rowntree
|
[
"Musical Hacks"
] |
[
"Helmholtz Resonator",
"KiCAD",
"midi",
"mpe",
"Teensy 4.1",
"Theramin"
] |
An intriguing mouth-played instrument emerged—and won—at the 2023 Guthman Musical Instrument Contest hosted by Georgia Tech. [Keith Baxter] took notice and reproduced the idea for others to explore. The result is the
Zen Flute Mouth Theremin
, a hybrid of acoustics, electronics, and expressive performance.
At its core lies a forced Helmholtz resonator, a feedback system built with a simple microphone and speaker setup. The resonator itself? The user’s mouth. The resulting pitch, shaped by subtle jaw and tongue movements, is detected and used to drive a MIDI controller feeding an external synthesizer.
Like a trombone or classic electromagnetic theremin, the Zen Flute doesn’t rely on discrete notes. Instead, the pitch is bent manually to the desired frequency. That’s great for expression, but traditional MIDI quantisation can map those “in-between” notes to unexpected semitones. The solution? MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE). This newer MIDI extension allows smooth pitch transitions and nuanced control, giving the Zen Flute its expressive character without the hiccups.
Physically, it’s an elegant build. A flat speaker and microphone sit side-by-side at the mouth end, acoustically isolated with a custom silicone insert. This assembly connects to a length of clear PVC pipe, flared slightly to resemble a wind instrument. Inside, a custom PCB (schematic
here
) hosts a mic preamp, an audio power amp, and a Teensy 4.1. The Teensy handles everything: sampling the mic input, generating a 90-degree phase shift, and feeding it back to the speaker to maintain resonance. It also detects the resonant frequency and translates it to MPE over USB. A push-button triggers note onset, while a joystick adjusts timbre and selects modes. Different instrument profiles can be pre-programmed and toggled with a joystick click, each mapped to separate MIDI channels.
Mouth-controlled instruments are a fascinating corner of experimental interfaces. They remind us of
this Hackaday Prize entry from 2018
,
this wind-MIDI hybrid controller
, and, of course, a classic final project from the Cornell ECE4760 course, a
four-voice theremin controlled by IR sensors
.
| 13
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128853",
"author": "Carl Breen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T18:36:25",
"content": "The Japanese did it first: EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCei7ADE87QCan fit about any instrument in there for which you input samples.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128867",
"author": "bebop",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T19:24:46",
"content": "The EWI can output MIDI, so you are not necessarily constrained to using samples.",
"parent_id": "8128853",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128958",
"author": "Rocky",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T02:15:27",
"content": "EWI’s are pretty cool but the difference here isn’t in the sound it’s in the control. EWI’s are basically keyboard instruments. The Zen flute has only one button.",
"parent_id": "8128853",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128895",
"author": "H Hack",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T21:02:16",
"content": "Reminded me of taking steel guitar:https://youtu.be/_R9an8AU3No?feature=shared",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128927",
"author": "mime",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T00:16:03",
"content": "Is the driver speaker loud enough to feel in your mouth? Seems like that would allow for a natural feedback in the musician, as opposed to them closing the loop on the sound that comes out of the device some many ms later and processed. This would give real physical feedback to the user on actual native pitch of the signal regardless of further processing and intrinsic delays.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128995",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T07:28:03",
"content": "I don’t feel vibrations in my mouth when I whistle; feedback is via the ears there too. Just because a computer is involved doesn’t mean there’s any appreciable human-scale latency; MIDI instruments would have all been dead in the water otherwise.",
"parent_id": "8128927",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129033",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T09:40:50",
"content": "You do feel feedback if you use a reed instrument though.As for whistling. you feel your mouth’s movement and muscle modulation, and even if you aren’t directly consciously aware.It’s quite amazing how many kinds of proprioceptors we have and how much we rely on them without even realizing.",
"parent_id": "8128995",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129661",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T18:36:09",
"content": "i think you just don’t know you can feel a whistle from the inside of your mouthi think this is an interesting project because it straddles the boundary between real time innate feedback to the user (the resonance inside your mouth) and quantized / delayed midi output. midi guitars straddle the same boundary but i’m more skeptical of them because the guitar is an instrument in its own right. so the player will definitely ‘feel’ different about it, and it seems to me the difference will be largely inferior once the novelty wears off.",
"parent_id": "8128995",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128948",
"author": "CatsAreGods",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T01:26:15",
"content": "That’s not a “theramin” (properly spelled Theremin); it’s a Jew’s harp with extra steps.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129046",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T09:51:22",
"content": "I disagree, a jew’s harp is held between the teeth and then ‘twanged’This just detects the shape of the inside of your mouth and resonates to that.So it’s closer to a theremin than a jew’s harp IMO, but neither comparison really applies that well.It is however quite an original approach to making an instrument.Sort of a ‘breathless flute’ I’d say.",
"parent_id": "8128948",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129662",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T18:37:44",
"content": "the jews harp definitely just detects the inside of your mouth and then resonates to that :)",
"parent_id": "8129046",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128994",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T07:25:35",
"content": "Please learn the manners before using them.Also, if you’re going to criticize typos, you look like a fool when you make them yourself.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129703",
"author": "Per Jensen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T20:53:09",
"content": "psst: *Ther/e/min.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,542.740806
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/17/open-source-hiding-in-plain-sight/
|
Open Source Hiding In Plain Sight
|
Elliot Williams
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] |
[
"high reliability",
"newsletter",
"software"
] |
On the podcast, [Tom] and I were talking about
the continuing saga of the libogc debacle
. [Tom] has been interviewing some of the principals involved, so he’s got some first-hand perspective on it all – you should really go read his pieces. But the short version is that an old library that many Nintendo game emulators use appears to have cribbed code from both and open-source real-time operating system called RTEMS, and the Linux kernel itself.
You probably know Linux, but RTEMS is a high-reliability RTOS for aerospace. People in the field tell me that it’s well-known in those circles, but it doesn’t have a high profile in the hacker world. Still, satellites run RTEMS, so it’s probably also a good place to draw inspiration from, or simply use the library as-is. Since it’s BSD-licensed, you can also borrow entire functions wholesale if you attribute them properly.
In the end, an RTOS is an RTOS. It doesn’t matter if it’s developed for blinking LEDs or for guiding ICBMs. This thought got [Tom] and I to thinking about what other high-reliability open-source code is out there, hidden away in obscurity because of the industry that it was developed for.
NASA’s core flight system
came instantly to mind, but
NASA makes much of its code available for you to use if you’re interested
. There are surely worse places to draw inspiration!
What other off-the-beaten-path software sources do you know of that might be useful for our crowd?
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on
the web version of the newsletter
.
Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning?
You should sign up
!
| 21
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128820",
"author": "Keith Penney",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T15:39:48",
"content": "So far no one has mentioned RTEMS is also a popular target for embedded EPICS I/O controllers (IOCs) in the world of particle accelerator systems – a bit more innocuous than ICBMs.Reference example:https://docs.epics-controls.org/en/latest/getting-started/installation-rtems.html",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128823",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T16:14:55",
"content": "I mean sure… but RTEMS was developed specifically for use in missiles. It was only later that it got more applications.",
"parent_id": "8128820",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128824",
"author": "Joel Sherrill",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T16:15:05",
"content": "RTEMS is well known in space applications (and should be for EPICS applications) because there is a tendency to write papers and be more open in science. RTEMS powers systems from the Sun (Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter) to Jupiter (Juno). It runs the Gallieo GPS satellites and radios on and circling Mars. It ran DART which was the asteroid redirection experiment. The Fermi and MMS projects have both made significant contributions. ESA.has done multiple pre-qualification efforts on RTEMS and with the latest submitted the inputs to that process to the open source project.The EPICS community has used RTEMS in a large number of high energy physics labs around the world. Their use has led to multiple discoveries.Industrial, medical. and commercial users don’t publish papers or advertise what they use on their embedded systems. We respect that. But RTEMS is quietly in wide use.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128968",
"author": "Jake K",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T04:16:14",
"content": "Hey Joel! Good to see you here.",
"parent_id": "8128824",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129705",
"author": "al",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T20:53:37",
"content": "RTEMS sounds amazing!It’s one of the few open-source projects that I’ve heard of getting certified against standards like DO-178. Edisoft RTEMS (which was RTEMS 4.8.0 on a Leon 3 SoC) was certified to DAL-B.There are precious few attempts to construct to DO-178 or DO-254 in the open-source world (that I’m aware of) since Open DO disappeared. If anyone knows of a project or two that could be added to the list I’d be absolutely fascinated to read about it. Bonus points if you can link directly to some sort of source code or design repository.The others I’ve cone across are:WolfSSL: a Secure Sockets Layer for traceable artifacts, enabling Secure Boot & Secure Firmware Update for avionics.License GPLv2. Probably being a thicko but I can’t for the life of me see the source code on their websitePhoenix RTOS 178: a Real Time Operating System for systems aiming toward DO-178C certificationLicense BSD. Github.On a completely unrelated note, I think the patent for ARINC 664 (AFDX) expires this year.",
"parent_id": "8128824",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130174",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T22:35:46",
"content": "I do wish the project was a bit less quiet though, many people interested in embedded work either haven’t heard of it or lump RTEMS with other proprietary vendors automatically.",
"parent_id": "8128824",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128841",
"author": "David M VomLehn",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T17:48:15",
"content": "Core flight system (cFS) is widely used in spacecraft while YAMCS is used heavily on the ground. And the whole GNU/Linux ecosystem underpins it with utilities, build systems, compiler, etc. Open Source permeates the space industry.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128850",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T18:26:07",
"content": "Yet the Gov as a whole continues to pay Microsoft Billions yearly to run windows and office stuff -_-",
"parent_id": "8128841",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128928",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T00:16:06",
"content": "Mass firings should solve that problem.",
"parent_id": "8128850",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128999",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T07:46:35",
"content": "It drives me absolutely nuts as a contractor. Literally everything they use computers for could be done on linux, with a cheap computer heck a Pi5 would be enough for most.They could save on Windows licenses, Microsoft Office licenses, Adobe licenses (they love pdfs) and more.",
"parent_id": "8128928",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130176",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T22:42:09",
"content": "Not to mention, using MS Offfice has been previously an explicitly a violation of management directives (this was around ~2006 I think) which were clearly written by someone who saw them as a tool of regulatory capture and conflict of interest, in addition to a security and overhead problem (Including with DHS), but new management just swept that away on a whim after a meeting with a Microsoft rep who tells them the TCO is better than ever! and nobody can challenge it.",
"parent_id": "8128999",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130250",
"author": "ProphetZarquon",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T04:46:06",
"content": "[trust in \\ reliance upon] black-blob proprietary systems went from being marketed toward consumers, to being sold B2B, to being accepted as standard by lifelong “expert” engineers & scientists.Meanwhile, open-source still underpins every essential system, with proprietary branding hitching its wagon along for the ride, & most of us knowing only the brand names.",
"parent_id": "8128999",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128938",
"author": "Cad the Mad",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T01:04:05",
"content": "So does pretty much every private corporation.",
"parent_id": "8128850",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129000",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T07:47:56",
"content": "True but private companies aren’t funded by tax dollars, and have to turn a profit or fail",
"parent_id": "8128938",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130796",
"author": "m1ke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T15:10:34",
"content": "Just think about all the companies out there that depend on Excelshudders.",
"parent_id": "8128850",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128918",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T23:21:01",
"content": "Rtems knows where it’s at because it knows where it isn’t.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128967",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T03:28:43",
"content": "It’s got two turntables and a microphone …",
"parent_id": "8128918",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128969",
"author": "Jake K",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T04:16:52",
"content": "Wow, was this article written for me? The two pieces of space software I evangelize the most!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129610",
"author": "William Payne",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T15:44:29",
"content": "Open source software equality issues?after a Ubntu install why does it task so many steps amd so long after sudo apt upgrade?AI Overview.After an Ubuntu installation, the sudo apt upgrade command can take numerous steps and aconsiderable amount of time due to several factors related to package management, network connectivity, and system resources.Here’s a breakdown of the reasons:Package Dependencies and Updates:Network Connectivity and Download Speed:System Resources:System Settings and Third-Party Repositories:Other Factors:",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130178",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T22:48:43",
"content": "Try writing of your reply yourself so you can tell when it doesn’t make sense. We can only make assumptions which may be wrong when you post like this instead.You are installing an entire OS and development tools, and a development platform for another OS, including any dependencies. That’s going to take some setup time. The things you list are mostly automatic though, and there is a forum for newbie help.Don’t expect generative systems to hold you hand, they don’t know what a hand is.",
"parent_id": "8129610",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130013",
"author": "Beowulf Shaeffer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T15:29:58",
"content": "There’s some useful stuff in there. Thanks.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,542.839745
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/17/animated-widgets-on-apple-devices-via-a-neat-backdoor/
|
Animated Widgets On Apple Devices Via A Neat Backdoor
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"iphone hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] |
[
"apple",
"ios",
"iphone"
] |
If you’ve ever looked at widgets on your iPhone, you’ve probably noticed they’re largely static, save for a few first-party apps. By and large, third party developers are not supposed to be able to animate them. However,
[Bryce Bostwick] found a workaround
.
You might be confused as to the idea of animated widgets, but it’s quite simple. For example, think of a clock app with a widget in which the hands always display the current time, or a calendar app with an icon that shows the current date. Apple’s own apps have long been able to do this, but the functionality has mostly been locked out for third parties.
One way to get around this limitation is by using a timer feature baked into the widget functionality. The timer tool is one of the few ways that third-party apps are allowed to do animation. By running a timer with a custom font, you can display various graphical elements instead of numbers counting down to create a hacky animation that updates every second.
However, there are even more advanced techniques that can get you faster, smoother animations. [Bryce] breaks down the private techniques used to rotate the clock hands on Apple’s own widget, and how to use those tools for your own purposes. It takes some sneaky Xcode tricks and a bit of math to make it fully flexible for doing arbitrary animations, but it works surprisingly well.
Will this backdoor last ? Well, Apple is always
updating and changing iOS and its associated software
, so don’t expect it to work forever.
Thanks to [gnif] for the tip!
| 6
| 2
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128776",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T11:46:40",
"content": "The easiest and best long-term way to get around this limitation is to dump iOS :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128874",
"author": "Jason",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T19:39:46",
"content": "Why would I? It just works.",
"parent_id": "8128776",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128936",
"author": "Cad the Mad",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T01:02:02",
"content": "If you need to do this sort of malarkey just to add a basic smartphone feature, I’d argue it doesn’t “just work”.",
"parent_id": "8128874",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128788",
"author": "Bobtato",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T13:04:42",
"content": "That is neat hacking, and who knows, Apple might turn a blind eye if it doesn’t cause battery life issues (since this uses their own energy-optimised darwing code, and they make money on third-party apps too). Though I wouldn’t bet on it.People may not be aware that Apple devices have relatively small batteries, and the way they compensate is by being ruthless about how and when code runs in the background (especially when it comes to rendering always-on OLED displays). Third-party apps can use Unity to drain the battery in 2 hours, and that’s OK because the user will blame the developer and not Apple. But if you’re rendering to the home screen or doing something in the background, every microjoule reflects badly on Apple’s product, and that’s when they’ll smite you with vigor.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128796",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T13:25:37",
"content": "Yup. I initially found it heard to believe that running an animation uses that much power, but because of how heavily optimised the rest of the always on stuff is, it genuinely does. The Apple Watch stopwatch and time stop showing seconds if you stop interacting with it, to save power doing an update every 1000ms.Updates are I think meant to be on a slow timer, or Interrupt driven for stuff more like notifications.",
"parent_id": "8128788",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128937",
"author": "Cad the Mad",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T01:03:25",
"content": "Can’t have a decent battery if you want your phone thin enough that folks will bend it in their pocket and drop another $1000 on a replacement every 6 months.",
"parent_id": "8128788",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,542.78258
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/17/making-sure-the-basement-stays-dry-with-an-esp8266/
|
Making Sure The Basement Stays Dry With An ESP8266
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"hardware",
"home hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] |
[
"AHT20",
"Arduino IDE",
"BMP280",
"ESP8266",
"flooding monitor",
"humidity monitor"
] |
The hack we have for you today is among our most favorite types of hack: a good, honest, simple, and well documented implementation that meets a real need. Our hacker [Solo Pilot] has sent in a link to their
basement monitor
.
The documentation is quite good. It’s terse but comprehensive with links to related information. It covers the background, requirements, hardware design, sensors, email and SMS alerts, software details, and even has some credits at the end.
Implementing this project would be a good activity for someone who has already made an LED flash and wants to take their skills to the next level by sourcing and assembling the hardware and then configuring, compiling, deploying, and testing the software for this real-world project.
To make this project work you will need to know your way around the Arduino IDE in order to build the software from the
src.zip
file included with the documentation (hint: extract the files from
src.zip
into a directory called
AHT20_BMP280
before opening
AHT20_BMP280.ino
and make sure you add necessary boards and libraries).
One feature of the basement monitor that we would like to see is a periodic “everything’s okay” signal from the device, just so we can confirm that the reason we’re not getting an alarm about flooding in the basement is because there is no flood, and not because the battery ran dead or the WiFi went offline.
If you’ve recently started on your journey into where electronics meets software a project such as this one is a really great place to go next. And of course once you are proficient with the ESP8266 there are a thousand such projects here at Hackaday that you can cut your teeth on. Such as
this clock
and
this fault injection device
.
| 38
| 10
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128715",
"author": "badtaste",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T09:43:22",
"content": "Just curious — is anyone actually using ESP8266 for new projects these days?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128718",
"author": "Carl Breen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T09:56:25",
"content": "Do the fine gentlehackers here honestly think it makes a difference? Either ESP are actively developed and supported. Not every project needs a dual core esp32-xyz123.You source what is cheap. I still have old esp8266 and modern esp32 running 24/7 since years now on the same rusty old code and they are not breaking. Old MCUs deserve love and care too.",
"parent_id": "8128715",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128737",
"author": "Carl Breen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T10:37:26",
"content": "To expand on that, there is only one thing that matters, ever: “board design”. Since what good is the best MCU if the power regulators and antenna design on the dev board are all busted up?Watch a youtube video by some swiss dude comparing 10 of the same. He does some power profiling and range testing and at the end you just think: “It’s not the MCU that kept me back.”",
"parent_id": "8128718",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128813",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T14:51:06",
"content": "The neophiles expect, nay, demand that you must use the absolute latest technology for every project, if it’s not running on a quantum processor then how can you truly know if you need to switch on the sump pump or not?",
"parent_id": "8128718",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128947",
"author": "Golfman",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T01:22:16",
"content": "The basement exists in both unflooded and flooded states until you observe the state with your quantum MCU. No old tech MCU is going to be able to force the basement to pick a state 😉",
"parent_id": "8128813",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128953",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T01:48:44",
"content": "The real question becomes, can you, by controlling the quantum mcu, force the superposition into the nonflooded basement state, thus avoiding the need for a pump. Perhaps you need a pump, else the unflooded state in order to bias the states temporal potential.",
"parent_id": "8128947",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129643",
"author": "TerryMatthews",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T17:21:39",
"content": "Ah the Schrodinger’s wet cat conundrum…",
"parent_id": "8128947",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128719",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T09:56:54",
"content": "Yes.I also use Arduinos from time to time. Why do you ask?",
"parent_id": "8128715",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128727",
"author": "Julianne",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T10:08:47",
"content": "Because every time a new more powerful microcontroller becomes available, you should dump your existing stock of older models in the trash because they are laughably obsolete for using in a moisture detector ;-)",
"parent_id": "8128719",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128735",
"author": "Lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T10:30:56",
"content": "Fine by me especially if it brings down the price of the older ones 😋. 80% of my projects are an underwhelming MCU with 200 lines of Arduino connected to my laptops serial port",
"parent_id": "8128727",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128741",
"author": "ramzi",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T10:46:25",
"content": "If newer MCU can be programmed with a $2 serial port USB dongle while the old one requires $80 ICD then I’ll gladly take the newer one.",
"parent_id": "8128727",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128809",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T14:48:33",
"content": "Sure, but if you’ve already sink the money into the $80 ICD then there’s little point in changing.",
"parent_id": "8128741",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128740",
"author": "H Hack",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T10:44:37",
"content": "No, it’s woefully underspecified for this. I’d recommend a modern datacenter server. U1 would suit fine, and be quite simple to implement.You’d just leave it on the floor. Ping it every minute. If it gets submerged then it’ll stop responding and you know humidity is too high.",
"parent_id": "8128715",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128803",
"author": "Randy Koth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T14:21:49",
"content": "Yes.The industry uses them in wireless switch plugs and more. So off and many more incorporate them. Some can even be reprogrammed",
"parent_id": "8128715",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128817",
"author": "Gus Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T15:09:58",
"content": "I definitely do. I like how cheap they are and the fact that they use less power than an ESP32. They’re also extremely powerful. I have a bunch of them, all running identical firmware, to send weather data back to a server where I log the data. Those same ESp8266s pick up info about devices they need to turn on or off, which they then do. Those same devices can log to local FRAM, and there’s still room on them to add even more functionality. You can see the source here:https://github.com/judasgutenberg/Esp8266_RemoteControl",
"parent_id": "8128715",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128825",
"author": "Jan Prägert",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T16:20:28",
"content": "ESP8266 is still a great choice!I use them for exactly the same use cases. Even with its low GPIO count it mostly works well. For some I2C sensor devices and an SPI display there are more than enough pins. Form factor “Wemos D1 Mini” is still my favorite, it has a lot of cheap and quite useful shields. Those 0.96″ TFTs are a steal and so nice for debugging…Only drawback is that my bin is full of those pesky Micro-USB-Connectors. USB-C connector is so much better to handle.",
"parent_id": "8128817",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128833",
"author": "Gus Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T17:01:37",
"content": "I use Atmega328-based Arduinos as slaves to expand available pins and also (crucially) to get more analog inputs, particularly in cases where I need to measure extreme temperatures such as those in a boiler (where an I2C-based weather probe will not survive but a thermistor will). Here is that slave code:https://github.com/judasgutenberg/Generic_Arduino_I2C_Slave",
"parent_id": "8128825",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128837",
"author": "Jan Prägert",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T17:18:13",
"content": "I’m with you on that. I use an ATmega328 for timing critical stuff. It was way easier to implement it on the atmega than on the esp8266…OTOH it becomes more and more difficult to justify such choices. ESP32 S3 zero is sooo cheap (ok, not for those in USA) and so much more powerful. Real multitasking etc…It is a tempting choice to select it.",
"parent_id": "8128833",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128830",
"author": "Thinkerer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T16:43:32",
"content": "Ebay Arduino Nano clones are up to US$3.10 each in bulk {insert tariff sniping here} so I may abandon it completely for something spendy and au courant, yet so overly fragile, over-layered, and complex that it never starts working. If you don’t finish you can’t fail, right? FWIW I’ve had a cheapo Nano working for more than a decade over my workbench and it’s just fine.There are two side arguments going here. The first is that it’s an overly ornate way of detecting/notifying moisture problems – it is – and the second is that there are better/worse tools for the job when the actual job … wait for it … is to learn something about the systems involved. This writeup seems like a pretty good start to that.",
"parent_id": "8128715",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129721",
"author": "targetdrone",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T21:35:31",
"content": "There’s a third possibility: that it’s the exact right tool for the job.Detecting water is almost trivial: two electrodes have to be mechanically positioned such that water will complete a circuit between them. What’s much harder is getting that information to the right place so that damage can be prevented to the maximum extent possible.If you’re home 24x7x52, a shrieking alarm may be adequate. But whenever you leave the house it’s unprotected. Being able to receive the sensor notification outside of the home is good. Being able to shut off the source of the water before you even get notified is better.An ESP8266 has enough power to handle the WiFi communications reliably, and be configured to send the notification to a home automation system which can trigger the appropriate alerts and actions, like shutting off the water valve. You get a large amount of risk mitigation for an investment of $3.00 and some brainpower.Sounds like an excellent engineering solution.",
"parent_id": "8128830",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128906",
"author": "Erik Johnson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T22:03:57",
"content": "Yep. Still cheaper and less power use while still very powerful itself.",
"parent_id": "8128715",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128965",
"author": "dendad",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T03:13:19",
"content": "Yes.My latest is a test VFO for use in setting up old crystal based radios, getting ready for an in built VFO for use on ham radio bands.http://www.sadarc.org/xenforo/upload/index.php?threads/generic-crystal-replacement-test-vfo.764/",
"parent_id": "8128715",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129154",
"author": "RobIII",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T11:50:17",
"content": "Even an ESP8266 is horribly overkill to read out a simple moisture meter. But it is one of the cheapest options that has WiFi on board and is child’s play to program. I have at least 20 in stock and at least 10 around the house for all kinds of stuff (WiFi-IR bridge for my AC, WiFi temperature and humidity sensors, WiFi-P1 meter, etc. etc.).",
"parent_id": "8128715",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128736",
"author": "badtaste",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T10:35:28",
"content": "My main concern is around security. Don’t want my WLAN to be opened up and read the ESP8266 are less secure.On the performance and classification of legacy, your comments resonate with my understanding. Just because there is someone younger doesn’t make the existing old per se. In particular, when I consider the use cases, I use them for.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128774",
"author": "Carl Breen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T11:44:18",
"content": "I am not sure what you are going on about. It’s being actively developed and patched regularly, for years:https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/issues/7019#issuecomment-871810668",
"parent_id": "8128736",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128797",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T13:27:51",
"content": "+1 for the regular check-in. This is a nice feature ESPHome gives you for free",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128818",
"author": "Martelli",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T15:30:04",
"content": "This is much too simple and inexpensive, but it actually works.https://hackaday.com/2019/10/23/build-this-handy-leak-detector-for-1-02/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128881",
"author": "Oliver",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T19:51:55",
"content": "While i use esphome for a lot of things, jkea has nice zigbee sensors fmfor a 10er that do the same …",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128888",
"author": "Mr. BianchiRider",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T20:32:28",
"content": "Years ago I made a similar project for my crawl space that has a sump pump. I use an HC-SR04 ultrasonic module to monitor the level of the sump pit, a BMP280 for the temperature/humidity and an MQ9 to measure for gas. It uses a Wemos 8266 mini and has been chugging along for years. I had to replace the $.99 power supply from Goodwill once. I’m planning to move from Blynk to Home Assistant when I figure out the **$##!! MQTT part. I also have a few water leak detectors around the house running off a 9v battery and an ESP8266-01.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128916",
"author": "Kelly",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T23:09:35",
"content": "No designer with half a brain will run DC to water sensor electrodes. UGH.I still use the ESP8266 for a security system and it works great. The ESP32 has too much computing power/current drain/library issues.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129168",
"author": "der_schopi",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T11:58:13",
"content": "Except that here, from what I understand, it is not a water level sensor, just a switch. For a moisture sensor in soil, sure. But as a alarm trigger? I don’t see the problem here.If you absolutely have to leave negative comments, maybe some constructive criticism? Explain why it’s bad, and how you would do it?",
"parent_id": "8128916",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129596",
"author": "doobs",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:52:40",
"content": "So,With that rather condescending reply, would you care to explain why?",
"parent_id": "8128916",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129754",
"author": "Gary",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T02:36:26",
"content": "Ignore Kelly’s misguided comment. They are confusing a water contact sensor with a [soil] moisture sensor. A moisture sensor is seldom truly dry, so DC can quickly cause corrosion of the sensor due to a trickle of current flowing in the same direction all the time. AC causes corrosion too; it just takes longer. But for a sensor like the one in this article, DC is actually an excellent choice since it only has to conduct current for a few seconds to save a basement. Prior to a flood, the dry sensor would not corrode. The use of AC would complicate the design but would not improve its operation.",
"parent_id": "8129596",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128960",
"author": "localroger",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T02:24:51",
"content": "Generally, for a hobbyist who started in ESP-land with the ESP32, it’s not worth learning the development differences necessary to use the ESP8266 unless you have a project that really needs low power, lots of units, or wants to operate on existing hardware like a discarded IoT device. But if you started with the ESP8266, you’ll reach for it when it’s adequate; I have a pile of ESP-01 modules for the really simple stuff.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128996",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T07:38:55",
"content": "I’ve seen a similar problem resolved with a float switch, an indicator relay and a car horn. It had the added benefit of not using any power when inactive.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129640",
"author": "Michael K",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T17:16:41",
"content": "I read an article with a schematic for a basement flood sensor.Battery, alarm, two metal contacts with a sugar cube holding them apart.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129675",
"author": "Al Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T19:04:10",
"content": "I’ve seen this many times with a clothes pin with two aluminum foil wrappers and an aspirin holding the legs apart….",
"parent_id": "8129640",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129726",
"author": "blacksmithtb",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T22:22:31",
"content": "So you either know your basement has flooded, or there are ants.",
"parent_id": "8129640",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,542.968525
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/16/hack-aims-for-poloroid-hits-game-boy-camera-sweet-spot/
|
Hack Aims For Polaroid, Hits Game Boy Camera Sweet Spot
|
Tyler August
|
[
"digital cameras hacks"
] |
[
"camera",
"ESP32-CAM",
"thermal printer"
] |
There’s just some joy in an instant camera. They were never quality cameras, even in the glory days of Polaroid, but somehow the format has survived while the likes of Kodachrome have faded away. [Mellow_Labs] decided he wanted the
instacam experience without the Polaroid pricing,
so he made his own in the video embedded after the break.
He says “Polaroid’ but we see Game Boy.
At its core, it’s a simple project: an ESP32-CAM for the image (these were never great cameras, remember, so ESP32 is fine– and do you really get to call it an
instant
camera if you have to wait for a Raspberry Pi to boot up?) and a serial thermal printer for the “instant photo”part. This admittedly limits the project to black and white, and pretty low res, but B/W is artistic and Lo-Fi is hip, so this probably gives the [Mellow Labs] camera street cred with the kids, somehow. Honestly, this reminds us more of the old Gameboy Camera and its printer than anything made by Polaroid, and we are here for it.
The build video goes through the challenges [Mellow Labs] found interfacing the serial printer to the ESP32–which went surprisingly well for what looks like mostly vibe coding, though we’re not sure how much time he spent fixing the vibe code off camera–as well as a the adventure of providing a case that includes the most absurdly beefy battery we’ve ever seen on a camera. Check out the full video below.
Instant cameras are no stranger to Hackaday:
this one used e-ink
; this one uses film,
but is made of gingerbread.
In 2022 we wondered if
we’d ever shake the Polaroid picture,
and the answer appears to be “no” so far.
Thanks to [Mellow] for tooting his own horn by submitting this project
to the tip line
. We love to see what our readers get up to, so please– toot away!
| 9
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128694",
"author": "Cody",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T06:28:16",
"content": "This would be a perfect use for a grayscale thermal printer. Someone needs to reverse engineer one of those little bluetooth grayscale printers so it can work without its app. They produce much better images than a monochrome thermal printer.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128698",
"author": "Jori",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T07:47:57",
"content": "Something that would work for color photos. Brother VC-500W. There are already python libraries and CLI interface for it. Propably possible to fork for ESP32",
"parent_id": "8128694",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128724",
"author": ".",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T10:05:52",
"content": "ZINK + Brother special label tape = Make Polaroid film look cheap.",
"parent_id": "8128698",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128732",
"author": "zeroTheHero",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T10:20:41",
"content": "+1",
"parent_id": "8128694",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128784",
"author": "Erik Johnson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T12:23:18",
"content": "Already been done. There is an android implementation too so you don’t need to install closed Chinese softwarehttps://github.com/NaitLee/Cat-Printer",
"parent_id": "8128694",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128759",
"author": "Eric Mockler",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T11:02:45",
"content": "Like these?https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D73MQ1TN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128786",
"author": "Caroespasm",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T12:37:22",
"content": "I’ve got one, had another before it. The quality control is a mess, but they are very fun when they aren’t broken. Low light use is almost a nonstarter, and I haven’t managed to figure out how to make it print jpgs it didn’t make itself, but when you throw it around at a party or bar it makes a good conversation starter and everyone gets a memento of the evening, and you can usually have a couple folks bust out phone lights for help",
"parent_id": "8128759",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128836",
"author": "Thinkerer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T17:10:14",
"content": "“while the likes of Kodachrome have faded away”No, those color response curves have been part of the imaging, er, landscape for so long that they’re essentially built in to digital photographs and have been almost from the start. For Polaroid-esque pix you need a separate app.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8158315",
"author": "Steven-X",
"timestamp": "2025-08-06T12:24:41",
"content": "This admittedly limits the project to black and white– It’s been said that everything looks worse in Black & White.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,542.893302
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/16/moon-phase-flip-clock-is-fantastic/
|
Moon Phase Flip Clock Is Fantastic
|
Navarre Bartz
|
[
"clock hacks"
] |
[
"clock",
"flip clock",
"moon",
"Moon phases",
"simone giertz"
] |
We love clocks, but we especially love unusual timepieces that aren’t just about showing the hour of the day. [Simone Giertz] built a flip clock
moon phase tracker
for a friend.
While in Egypt for Cairo Maker Faire, [Giertz] and [dina Amin] found some old flip clocks at a flea market and had to have them. [Amin] mentioned wanting to make a moon phase tracker with one, and [Giertz] decided to try her hand at making her own version. A side quest in more comfortable flying is included with the price of admission, but the real focus is the process of figuring out how to replicate the flip clocks original mechanism in a different size and shape.
[Giertz] cut out 30 semi-circle flaps from polystyrene and then affixed vinyl cut-outs to the flaps. The instructions for the assembly suggest that this might not be the best way to do it, and that printing stickers to affix to the flaps might work better since the cut vinyl turned out pretty fiddly. We really like the part where she built a grid jig to determine the optimal placement of the beams to keep the flaps in the right position after a disheartening amount of difficulties doing it in a more manual way. Her approach of letting it rest for twenty minutes before coming back to it is something you might find helpful in your own projects.
Best of all, if you want to build your own, the files are available for the
flip moon station on the Yetch website
. You’ll have to come up with your own method to drive it though as that isn’t in the files from what we saw.
| 15
| 9
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128686",
"author": "Schobi",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T06:08:48",
"content": "I like the idea and great that she put design files for download.Unfortunately, this is not a clock, but “just” the display. Having it sit on the shelf and look nice – okay. But is will show the wrong phase of the moon most of the days. This is rather distracting than helpful.It should flip daily automatically, sync with the local moon. An indication would be helpful to know if and when the moon is up or not. Maybe a black ring that goes around, with a white dot on it? Just rotate it, with horizon being the middle? Visually “up or down” and being able to distinguish “soon to be up” vs “not up fit quite some time”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128792",
"author": "Bobtato",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T13:17:39",
"content": "I thought this too, but I think it’d be cool to keep it super minimal. The phase of the moon is the same everywhere and not affected by daylight savings, so once you dial it to the current phase, a simple quartz clock could keep it correct for decades, even if you moved house.",
"parent_id": "8128686",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129008",
"author": "Schobi",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T08:03:20",
"content": "Right!At first I thought… Oh – you need to look up moon phases and current time and visibility at current location. So – internet, esp32, stepper motor for the flip display, finding the flip display zero reference. That sounds complex.But certainly, once set, the thing could run just on a quartz or mains frequency! Just like the clock they took apart, it just needs to advance periodically. This should work for both the phase of the moon (worldwide) and “is it up” location dependent. Just re-set it if you move far.Could you re-use the existing mechanism? Just add new gear ratios? Clickspring micro gear manufacturing?Or like a some quartz clock running off a battery?This could still be a microcontroller, just counting seconds and advancing a micro-motor now and then?I haven’t ent seen anyone build a quartz clock mechanism yet.",
"parent_id": "8128792",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128795",
"author": "lthemick",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T13:24:26",
"content": "A stopped moon phase clock is still right once a month…",
"parent_id": "8128686",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128829",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T16:43:07",
"content": "Twice a month, unless it’s showing a full or new moon.",
"parent_id": "8128795",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128831",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T16:46:42",
"content": "Err, no, continued thinking shows that a waxing and waning quarter are mirror images, and thus not the same.",
"parent_id": "8128829",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128692",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T06:22:54",
"content": "Now to link it to wttr.in/moon and have it update in real time.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128703",
"author": "Make",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T08:29:11",
"content": "First thing I noticed when on my first trip closer to equator, is that the moon was sideways. It was weird sensation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128726",
"author": ".",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T10:07:28",
"content": "But just try standing on it!",
"parent_id": "8128703",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128779",
"author": "Garth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T11:55:43",
"content": "FF to time index 9:54 for main design and build.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128783",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T12:04:06",
"content": "I’ve been noodling over a moon phase display for a while. This is one of those “Why didn’t I think of this?” moments. This one is in the build queue. Thanks Simone.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128827",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T16:24:05",
"content": "It don’t look right with all those fringe effects. With a vertical axis it’d have less of that, but how to move the flaps without gravity. Perhaps a little tilt with loose flaps? Make the moon smaller so it don’t show around the edges the way it is? Numbers on clocks leave black around the edge so the previous panel don’t show.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128842",
"author": "Tony M",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T17:54:37",
"content": "Mila Jovovich shows an interesting concept of a lunar clock in the latest of her movies In the lost lands.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128880",
"author": "j",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T19:51:55",
"content": "Spending 14 hours on a plane without a respirator is… a choice",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128941",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T01:11:24",
"content": "Isn’t a flip clock mechanism a bit overkill for this?“Why not” just put the moon circle there and two drums on the sides with a transparent sheet/film loop with a black circle on it.kind like a mechanism from thishttps://hackaday.com/2024/10/26/geochron-another-time-another-timeless-tale/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,543.090715
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/16/new-bismuth-transistor-runs-40-faster-and-uses-10-less-power/
|
New Bismuth Transistor Runs 40% Faster And Uses 10% Less Power
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"hardware",
"Science"
] |
[
"bismuth",
"bismuth oxyselenide",
"bismuth selenite oxide",
"bjt",
"finfet",
"GAAFET",
"mosfet",
"semiconductor",
"SOI MOSFET",
"transistor"
] |
Recently in material science news from China we hear that [Hailin Peng] and his team at Peking University
just made the world’s fastest transistor and it’s not made of silicon
. Before we tell you about this transistor made from
bismuth
here’s a whirlwind tour of the history of the transistor.
The Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT, such as NPN and PNP) was developed soon after the point-contact transistor which was developed at Bell Labs in 1947. Then after Resistor-Transistor Logic (RTL) came Transistor-Transistor Logic (TTL) made with BJTs. The problem with TTL was too much power consumption.
Enter the energy-efficient Field-Effect Transistor (FET). The FET is better suited to processing information as it is voltage-controlled, unlike the BJT which is current-controlled. Advantages of FETs include high input impedance, low power consumption, fast switching speed, being well suited to Very-Large-Scale Integration (VLSI), etc.
The cornerstone of Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) technology which came to replace TTL was a type of FET known as the Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor (MOSFET). The type of MOSFET most commonly used in CMOS integrated circuits is the Enhancement-mode MOSFET which is normally off and needs gate voltage to conduct.
A transistor’s technology generation is given with the “process node”, in nanometers (nm). This used to mean the size of the smallest feature that could be fabricated, but these days it’s just a marketing term (smaller is “better”). Planar CMOS MOSFETs were initially dominant (through ~28nm), then came SOI MOSFETs (28nm to 16nm), then FinFETs (16nm to 5nm), and now finally Gate-All-Around FETs (GAAFETs, 3nm and beyond).
All of that in order to say that this new transistor from [Hailin Peng] and his team is a GAAFET. It’s made from bismuth oxyselenide (Bi₂O₂Se) for the channel, and bismuth selenite oxide (Bi₂SeO₅) as the gate material. See the article for further details.
Keep in mind that at this point in time we only have a prototype from a lab and the gory details about how to mass-produce these things, assuming that’s even possible, haven’t yet been worked out. We have previously discussed
the difficulty of manufacturing state-of-the-art transistors
. If you’re interested in bismuth be sure to check out
how to use bismuth for desoldering
.
| 39
| 14
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128612",
"author": "rasz_pl",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T23:23:46",
"content": "Press F for “gonna believe it when someone independently replicates it”, just like that magic graphene 400 picosecond flash replacement from 3 weeks ago.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128723",
"author": "Suppressed Carrier",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T10:03:06",
"content": "wonder what research China stole this time.Gun Powder, a real killer app from China.",
"parent_id": "8128612",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129048",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T09:56:15",
"content": "I was just going to say that you can’t mention this kind of thing on YT since the primitives commenting there cling to their ‘China only copies’ propaganda lifebuoy.But I forgot you guys are here too. Doh.",
"parent_id": "8128723",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129868",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T09:43:56",
"content": "Doesn’t mean reasonable skepticism doesn’t apply, regardless who made a claim. You well know research like this often takes a decade to make it to production, and that’s if it’s actually useful outside of a lab. Plenty of US technology is the same.",
"parent_id": "8129048",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131208",
"author": "Pegaroo",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T14:19:26",
"content": "Sure China doesn’t give a F about IP laws, if they see a new innovation they’ll use it regardless but that doesn’t mean they are incapable of independent research. The two are not mutually exclusive",
"parent_id": "8128723",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8185655",
"author": "Rathinavelu",
"timestamp": "2025-09-30T07:28:59",
"content": "Yes Sir, Creativity and productivity can and should go hand in hand, I feel the US Industry relegated creativity far behind creativity,",
"parent_id": "8131208",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128839",
"author": "Aaron",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T17:23:57",
"content": "Or the hubbub with the ambient-temperature-superconductor a couple of years ago.",
"parent_id": "8128612",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128637",
"author": "Hatredman",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T01:22:14",
"content": "Gunnerkrigg Court Technology!!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128875",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T19:40:19",
"content": "Good lord I just grew a meter long white beard remembering that",
"parent_id": "8128637",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129871",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T09:53:20",
"content": "Hmm, now you’ve made me think about how long it’s been.",
"parent_id": "8128875",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128642",
"author": "fyllyx",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T01:44:24",
"content": "not bad as a summary of an article",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128644",
"author": "JT",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T01:57:35",
"content": "Thanks, that explained the developments in transistor topology (the “why”) much better than the original article.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128652",
"author": "Dean Styles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T02:34:38",
"content": "Behind a paywall. Any “alternative” links? Any reviews from someone who has read the paper?Bismuth is not used in any commercial transistors. If there were some in production there might be a route to advancing an existing fabrication facility to make these new 2D transistors. Even if it works well in the lab (I have my doubts) there is no path to making chips you can buy on AliExpress.I’m putting this headline in my “Bigfoot sightings” folder.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128680",
"author": "scubabearLA",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T05:37:59",
"content": "Gift link:https://archive.is/ZmCzA",
"parent_id": "8128652",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128693",
"author": "I Alone Possess The Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T06:27:00",
"content": "“Bismuth is not used in any commercial transistors.” That’s a bold assertion because how do you know? If you said “Before 1947 blah blah” we could have a conversation.“I’m putting this headline in my “Bigfoot sightings” folder.”Oh my, however will we go on?",
"parent_id": "8128652",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128942",
"author": "Cad the Mad",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T01:11:33",
"content": "Making chips you can buy on AliExpress isn’t really useful when the goal is HPC modules for datacenters.",
"parent_id": "8128652",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129869",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T09:49:28",
"content": "AliExpress isn’t the goal, but it’s populated by both resellers and literal factories, so no that’s just incorrect. Wholesale purchases are usually on Alibaba for overseas sales anyway,",
"parent_id": "8128942",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128668",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T03:55:22",
"content": "It may not be chatGPT. It reminds me of my own sometimes-hurried first drafts.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128691",
"author": "Observer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T06:19:10",
"content": "“The Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT, such as NPN and PNP) was invented by Bell Labs in 1947.”Not exactly. The transistor demonstrated by Bell Labs in ’47 was a point contact transistor. BJTs came a bit later.“Enter the energy-efficient Field-Effect Transistor (FET)….”Interestingly, Julius(?) Lilienfeld was issued a patent for (what amounts to) a FET two decades earlier, though I’ve never seen images of a practical device.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129074",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T10:23:07",
"content": "Ah, you are quite right, thanks for picking me up on that one, it was the point-contact transistor developed at Bell Labs in 1947. I will edit the article to clarify. I have recently read about these topics in Principles of Electronic Circuits 2ed by Burns and Bond and I misremembered the detail about the type of transistor developed at Bell Labs (in my head my logic was “it wasn’t the FET therefore it was the BJT, but of course my “logic” was flawed). Chapter 1 of PoEC starts with a brief history of the transistor. They mention Lilienfield (1925), Heil (1935), and Pohl (1938) as all providing precursors to the FET.",
"parent_id": "8128691",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128730",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T10:13:39",
"content": "HAD please consider this person as a writer.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128798",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T13:37:13",
"content": "I second this motion.",
"parent_id": "8128730",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128907",
"author": "lj",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T22:10:57",
"content": "M, please consider writing for Hackaday.",
"parent_id": "8128730",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128734",
"author": "Lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T10:27:16",
"content": "Is it just me or did this article bring out the worst of HaD comments? I thought we were all on a roll there being cordial and stuff.Anyway, I liked the article. I learned some things, maybe I’m a fool but I believe the research, and I thought this was pretty well written…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128806",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T14:31:04",
"content": "Probably a silly question, but what is the substrate ? Is it silicon as is used by almost all fabs worldwide. Or is the substrate material bismuth oxyselenide (Bi₂O₂Se) or bismuth selenite oxide (Bi₂SeO₅), because if it is either I can imagine really heavy devices, and new fabs needing to be created. And for 40% faster and 10% less power, the economics are probably not worth it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128921",
"author": "Chris Maple",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T23:54:16",
"content": "This article does not answer your question, but it is informative and mentions a substrate of sapphire for molybdenum disulphide 2D wafers.https://www.intelligentliving.co/china-2d-chip-atom-thin-processor-memory/",
"parent_id": "8128806",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129872",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T09:54:50",
"content": "That’s interesting. Looks like they didn’t submit any of the supporting data or test code for this at all though.",
"parent_id": "8128921",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128849",
"author": "Jose",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T18:22:50",
"content": "and it will keep your computer from having an upset tummy",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128896",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T21:02:32",
"content": "Ooo, pink CPUs!",
"parent_id": "8128849",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129093",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T11:19:30",
"content": "Indeed.but what I noticed, and not as a stab at China, is that China has less follow through with new inventions, my impression is that in the US people tend to run with things more. Also more than the EU. And I think one of the reason is that we non-US people sooner think things like ‘nah that is too complex/expensive/laborious/big/slow to do’ (and too hard to convince authorities to allow,) and then don’t try. American over all seem to still have more of a can-do attitude, and it serves them well.I say one of the reason because some things the Chinese do run with but somehow don’t market it in a way that gets it the uptake it needs.Some people disagree with me on all of these impressions though. Maybe I’m wrong and basing myself on too little data.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129764",
"author": "Ray Morris",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T03:41:00",
"content": "Yeah, more broadly, there are definite advantages to people working as part of the team and doing things properly according to the specified procedure. A lot of cultures value that, for good reason. Doing the thing the way the thing is done.Historically, the culture in the United States has embraced more individuality, more “do it your own way”, try out your ideas. That also has benefits – and drawbacks.We come up with more new inventions, and it’s hard to get us to just follow the procedure that works. You’ll get more consistent, repeatable results with Japanese workers. US workers will find their own shortcuts or “improvements”.In the past, it would have been easier for people raised in and living in US culture to take a risk and try out a new way of making transistors.The culture here has changed a lot in the last twenty years, though. We’ve partly lost touch with what made US culture distinct. For example, lart of “do it your own way if you want” is that you live with the results – good or bad. You could build a new factory doing things a new way and either get rich or go broke. American culture in 2025 in much less accepting of that idea. We’re moving more into mandating that everyone gets the same results, which can only happen if everyone does the same things in the same way.",
"parent_id": "8129093",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129876",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T10:02:48",
"content": "There’s a number of reasons for that historically, but it has been changing as the CCP adopts some of the more effective research support ideas floating around, and has succeeded in bringing back a lot of students that study abroad as (esp. US) research funding has been repeatedly cut. That said, There are still pretty big institutional reasons cutting edge technologies often stagnate, imo the biggest is what the US had been recreating the last decade, lack ofconsistentsupport rather than “success of the day” political favorites.Once their underlying foundation is fully up to snuff though they won’t be behind even with these problems.",
"parent_id": "8129093",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129733",
"author": "Zach Bruder",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T23:17:33",
"content": "Bell Labs think they’re slick. They did not develop the transistor. They received pieces of Germanium in 1947 from the Roswell crash. Airforce personnel at Wright Patterson AFB sent the samples to Bell Labs to be analyzed, since they were the only lab at the time that was capable of determining the material’s composition.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129735",
"author": "Zach Bruder",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T23:27:26",
"content": "Actually, Bell Labs was the big player in developing advanced systems for the special access programs. But Los Alamos National Labs was also qualified at that time to analyze crash debris samples.",
"parent_id": "8129733",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129884",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T10:25:17",
"content": "Lols aside, work with germanium started at Purdue in the 1930’s due to need for crystal rectifiers for early radar development.Commercial researchers at Bell, GE and Westinghouse all followed this work. While ultimately Bell Labs ultimately got the credit, it was only with support from Horovitz’ direction of the Purdue lab’s semiconductor research on germanium that provided the basis forprototype designs by Bardern and Brattain at Bell.Simultaneously Westinghouse, who notably won the contract for germanium based crystal radar detectors, were concentrating on fulfilling that contract, then developed their own “transitron” independently afterwards.",
"parent_id": "8129733",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130214",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T00:34:33",
"content": "So wait, are you saying aliens landed but didn’t have FET/MOSFET but only ancient type transistors?That’s not very impressive now is it?Or maybe they were avoiding conflict minerals due to the link to child labour.",
"parent_id": "8129733",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130246",
"author": "cheater",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T04:34:00",
"content": "no one gonna call out the skynet terminator brain chip?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130363",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T12:21:21",
"content": "I thought the image was done by HaD, but it seems it’s from “Peking University/modified by ZME Science.”So not a movie reference then?It’s funny btw ‘peking university located in bejing’",
"parent_id": "8130246",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132418",
"author": "Michael",
"timestamp": "2025-05-26T15:02:49",
"content": "Beijing was previously known as Peking for people outside of China. The names are just approximated western spellings for the actual Mandarin name. Around 1958 a new standardized system was adopted to translite Mandarin, and Beijing was determined to be more accurate. I China. If you order from the English menu, you will see Beijing Duck instead of Peking duck. The name of the city in Mandarin (and the duck) remains unchanged.",
"parent_id": "8130363",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,543.041666
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/18/magnetohydrodynamic-motors-to-spin-satellites/
|
Magnetohydrodynamic Motors To Spin Satellites
|
Aaron Beckendorf
|
[
"hardware"
] |
[
"Magnetohydrodynamic",
"reaction wheel"
] |
Almost all satellites have some kind of thrusters aboard, but they tend to use them as little as possible to conserve chemical fuel. Reaction wheels are one way to make orientation adjustments without running the thrusters, and [Zachary Tong]’s
liquid metal reaction wheel
greatly simplifies the conventional design.
Reaction wheels are basically flywheels. When a spacecraft spins one, conservation of angular momentum means that the wheel applies an equal and opposite torque to the spacecraft, letting the spacecraft orient itself. The liquid-metal reaction wheel uses this same principle, but uses a loop of liquid metal instead of a wheel, and uses a magnetohydrodynamic drive to propel the metal around the loop.
[Zach] built two reaction wheels using Galinstan as their liquid metal, which avoided the toxicity of a more obvious liquid metal. Unfortunately, the oxide skin that Galinstan forms did make it harder to visualize the metal’s motion. He managed to get some good video, but a clearer test was their ability to produce torque. Both iterations produced a noticeable response when hung from a string and activated, and achieved somewhat better results when mounted on a 3D-printed air bearing.
Currently, efficiency is the main limitation of [Zach]’s motors: he estimates that the second model produced 6.2 milli-newton meters of torque, but at the cost of drawing 22 watts. The liquid metal is highly conductive, so the magnetohydrodynamic drive takes high current at low voltage, which is inconvenient for a spacecraft to supply. Nevertheless, considering how hard it is to create reliable, long-lasting reaction wheels the conventional way, the greatly improved resilience of liquid-metal reaction wheels might eventually be worthwhile.
If you’re curious for a deeper look at magnetohydrodynamic drives, we’ve
covered them before
. We’ve also seen [Zach]’s
earlier experiments with Galinstan
.
| 18
| 8
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8129645",
"author": "wjp4bs",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T17:29:29",
"content": "I’m going to preface this comment with the fact that this is neat experimentation and all science starts with someone just asking a question.This metal is ill suited for a reaction wheel because it freezes at -19C. Temperatures in LEO can get as low as -65C. MEO is worse. The wattage budget will be higher than 22 just keeping the metal liquid.Still super cool stuff. (Pardon the unintended pun.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129659",
"author": "scott_tx",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T18:22:28",
"content": "Also, friction is going to be high",
"parent_id": "8129645",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129693",
"author": "Cricri",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T20:18:27",
"content": "Agreed. Maybe not friction strictly speaking, but the high viscosity is going to result in low efficiency in an application where you probably don’t want to waste energy.",
"parent_id": "8129659",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129666",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T18:44:53",
"content": "Agreed! It seem only CsNaK might be suited for the job with a melting point of −78.2 °C but I have no idea if it’s ferrous. It also has a nasty problem of being reactive with both air and water. Humanity will need to find a much better metal alloy before this concept can seriously be considered.",
"parent_id": "8129645",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129751",
"author": "I Alone Possess The Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T01:58:45",
"content": "“Agreed! It seem only CsNaK might be suited for the job with a melting point of −78.2 °C but I have no idea if it’s ferrous.”Then chemistry might not be the field for you. I hear the Post Office has a special program for people who aren’t sure about the “ferrousness” of CsNaK. Some people, less tolerant than me might take you to task for not detecting the absence of the letter “F”. This is why we can’t have nice things.",
"parent_id": "8129666",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129766",
"author": "elwing",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T03:54:57",
"content": "and why would you need ferrousness? it only needs to be conductive for MHD… there’s not a whole lot of F in sea waters for exemple…",
"parent_id": "8129751",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130028",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T15:52:42",
"content": "I understand some people have difficulty understanding how another person might be thinking. It’s okay, I’ve got you covered: they likely meant paramagnetic when they said ferrous.Often, if you’re confronted by something that seems obviously incredibly silly, it’s down to a less silly underlying misunderstanding. By considering before you react rashly, you can be a better, more helpful person. :)",
"parent_id": "8129751",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130090",
"author": "I Alone Possess The Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T18:50:02",
"content": "Why? Because “ferrous” and “paramagnetic” are commonly confused? No sale.“By considering before you react rashly, you can be a better, more helpful person. :)” Why? Because Billy Mumy is gonna materialize from the Twilight Zone and wish me into the corn?“Often, if you’re confronted by something that seems obviously incredibly silly, it’s down to a less sillyunderlying misunderstanding.” Nope, no soap. It’s developmentally disabled turtles all the way down.",
"parent_id": "8130028",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130181",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T22:54:57",
"content": "I agree, and that’s actually how I read it initially. Jumping to conclusions on the net and then trying to pretend you had a good point really hurts though, so they aren’t going to accept it.After all, the only reason they posted was to gotcha another user to make themselves feel good. Even a pointed question would have been more reasonable.",
"parent_id": "8130028",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130236",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T03:41:15",
"content": "Alone, I would also point out that ferromagnetic materials (those able to be magnetised, in contrast to paramagnetic, those attracted to a magnetic field) need not contain iron. That seemed less apt in this context but it seems like you might be unaware.S O, thank you.",
"parent_id": "8130028",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129690",
"author": "D",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T20:10:50",
"content": "I suspect that the energy budget for a mechanical reaction wheel will always be about half of what the liquid metal device would be, all other things being equal, because of the momentum storage in the spinning wheel when you are done changing your attitude.You can move angular momentum into and out of a solid wheel, but moving liquid metal cannot energy with rotation because of turbulence, unless it is a superfluid liquid metal. When you are removing angular momentum from a reaction wheel, you can still use it for controlling orientation, only in the opposite sense.Reaction wheel longevity has been greatly improved after the discovery of the effect of geomagnetic storms on metal balls and races, but it’s not like you can replace a the average reaction wheel once it has been deployed…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129719",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T21:32:41",
"content": "Could a ferrofluid be used instead of a liquid metal?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130030",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T16:00:02",
"content": "It would need to be conductive but if iron particles could be suspended in a conductive fluid, that could improve the density of the moving mass.The key misconception is that the working fluid in MHD needs to be paramagnetic. It’s the flow of current that generates a magnetic field in the fluid.",
"parent_id": "8129719",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129745",
"author": "undersampled",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T00:49:51",
"content": "Ah yes, good old magic motors!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129765",
"author": "mischa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T03:41:52",
"content": "Consider how momentum is transferred: EMF is used to spin up the wheel, moving it from the stator, connected to the satellite, to the free-spinning wheel. Friction (hopefully slowly) then reverses the process, transferring momentum, in the opposite direction, to the satellite. Fluid friction, not turbulence, makes the MHD a poor choice for a reaction wheel. However, turbulence does reduce efficiency, as well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129818",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T06:22:02",
"content": "Space-tolerant bearings for reaction wheels have been studied for decades now, and AFAIK they are pretty good and their lifetime can be predicted well.It seems to me that magnetohydrodynamic motors always need the electrode contact, which will necessarily have friction and lower the efficiency.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129825",
"author": "Piotr",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T06:45:45",
"content": "Magnetic bearing(even electronically controlled) for solid flywheel… People, it is old tech.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129875",
"author": "Angelo Zammit",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T09:59:59",
"content": "Impressive the motor, and even more impressive coming up with an application for a motor with a rotor you cannot really attach anything to.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,543.346458
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/18/casting-shade-on-shade-tolerant-solar-panels/
|
Casting Shade On “Shade-Tolerant” Solar Panels
|
Tyler August
|
[
"green hacks"
] |
[
"pv solar",
"shade"
] |
Shade is the mortal enemy of solar panels; even a little shade can cause a disproportionate drop in power output. [Alex Beale]
reviewed a “revolutionary” shade-tolerant panel by Renology
in a video embedded below. The results are
fascinating
.
While shading large portions of the panels using cardboard to cut off rows of cells, or columns of cells, the shade tolerant panel does very well compared to the standard panel– but when natural, uneven shading is applied to the panel, very little difference is seen between the standard and active panels in [Alex]’s test. We suspect there must be some active components to keep power flowing around shaded cells in the Renology panel, allowing it to perform well in the cardboard tests. When the whole panel is partially shaded, there’s no routing around it, and it performs normally.
It’s hard to see a real-world case that would justify the extra cost, since most shading doesn’t come with perfect straight-line cutoffs. Especially considering the added cost for this “shade tolerant” technology (roughly double normal panels).
You might see a better boost by
cooling your solar panels
. Of course you can’t forget to
optimize the output with MPPT.
It’s possible that a better MPPT setup might have let the Renology panel shine in this video, but we’re not certain. Whatever panels you’re using, though,
don’t forget to keep them clean
.
| 32
| 9
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8129208",
"author": "Clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T12:43:59",
"content": "Could put a lens that take light from basically all different angles, and concentrates it on the solar cells, get more than the about 1kw (erp) per sq ft of sun energy iirc, more effective since you’d think a refractive lens would allow you to shove in more light energy basically collect more photons and pipe them to the panel, since the light source doesn’t need to be exactly of signt, even ambient light, shade, or moonlight could produce Some power that way…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129214",
"author": "Clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T12:46:34",
"content": "Something like a Fresnel or a dome type lens, but thin enough to actually be usable, but refracts and reflects light down to the bottom of the lens, basically like a magnifying glass but not to see, but to focus light",
"parent_id": "8129208",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129567",
"author": "socksbot",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:09:41",
"content": "The problem isn’t total output, but that in a series string of cells, a single shaded one will lower the current.",
"parent_id": "8129208",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129685",
"author": "Daniel Dunn",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T19:53:53",
"content": "There are lumiescent solar concentrators but I think those only exist in the lab at the moment.A normal lens will just make a hot spot somewhere on the panel, unless you actively track it to aim the spot",
"parent_id": "8129208",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130675",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T08:19:13",
"content": "They’ve been around for ages but manufacturing has been impractical or something.",
"parent_id": "8129685",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129715",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T21:20:29",
"content": "I think you mean 1kw per sq meter. (A common approximation I see used.)",
"parent_id": "8129208",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129744",
"author": "Chris Maple",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T00:48:38",
"content": "It may be easier and more economical to use mirrors. Reflective mylar film may be about $0.11 per square foot. A 6-pack of 1 sq ft glass mirrors is $25 at Home Depot.I’d be worried about heat buildup with any sort of concentration. To reject IR, wavelength-selective glasses and mirrors are available, but they’re not cheap.",
"parent_id": "8129208",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129909",
"author": "Winston",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T11:32:44",
"content": "A test:Get 4X The Power From Your Solar Panelshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKhszB4E1_M",
"parent_id": "8129744",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130677",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T08:35:51",
"content": "You left out any sort of explanation. In this video, flat silvered aluminium mirrors are tested, and they work quite well while also not having any of the issues of glass lenses or mirrors.",
"parent_id": "8129909",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129827",
"author": "Dom",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T06:46:51",
"content": "Unfortunately, concentrating direct sunlight on a PV panel will cause it to heat up. They’re made and rated for optimum output/production at 25C – every degree over this causes a drop in production.So you’d need an active cooling solution to counter the rise in temperature. Thermosiphon would help but probably wouldn’t be enough, you’d need a pump. And pumps use electricity.",
"parent_id": "8129208",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129273",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T13:08:19",
"content": "You might see a better boost by cooling your solar panels.https://youtu.be/Sdcbdxop8KAUsing a heat pump. Preferably a really efficient one.https://youtu.be/KQNc4VnTOis",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130676",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T08:23:09",
"content": "If you have enough reliable heat for this it might be better to use it directly, maybe in addition to solar.",
"parent_id": "8129273",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129502",
"author": "Grumpy Old Engineer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T13:37:44",
"content": "Surely if these ‘shade tolerant’ panels perform better in partial or even complete shade than a regular ‘normal’ panel does, surely then in full unobscured sunlight they will vastly outperform a ‘normal’ panel.It’s basic physics, energy in = energy out – some percentage lossesI smell snake oil.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129599",
"author": "Bunsen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:54:43",
"content": "No.Partial shading causes a conventional cost-optimized panel to to lose far more power output than the fraction of light lost.In such a panel, the cells are wired in a single series string. When a single cell in that string is shaded, its photocurrent drops to little or nothing, and that limits the current that can flow through the illuminated cells. The illuminated portion of the panel then operates far below its maximum power current and its power output drops far below what you’d expect for the amount of light reaching the panel.The simple solution is to add bypass diodes. Stick a (usually Schottky) diode in parallel with each cell such that it’s reverse biased in normal operation but will conduct when its parallel cell is shaded. Now a single shaded cell no longer blocks current from flowing through the rest of the string; it just imposes a small voltage drop. But those diodes take up space, add cost, and do nothing for the panel’s performance under standard test conditions, so it’s not normally done.It’s common to see panels with a few bypass diodes — rather than one per cell, one diode is installed in parallel with some series group of cells. This is more to prevent the panel from damaging itself than to preserve power output, since a long enough string will develop enough voltage to drive the reverse-biased shaded cell into breakdown. Solar cells are big enough that they don’t break down evenly under reverse bias; nonuniformities in reverse current produce positive thermal feedback and gradually destroy the shaded cell. In large panels that operate at high voltages, bypassing sub-strings keeps the reverse voltage safely below breakdown with only a few diodes per panel.The results in the video are tough to reconcile with either design, but maybe the manufacturer is doing something halfway to reduce the number of diodes they need to build into the panel or cheap “MPPT” controllers aren’t finding the true maximum power point when the I-V curve isn’t the usual ideal shape.",
"parent_id": "8129502",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129609",
"author": "Patrick Maupin",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T15:32:18",
"content": "cheap “MPPT” controllers aren’t finding the true maximum power point when the I-V curve isn’t the usual ideal shape.Yeah, I think you’d have to have some smarts to notice subtle changes in the output, and then spend a second or two running the panel through the full curve. And maybe some memory, and a clock, to reduce the future amount of time seeking, by remembering past situations.If you’re not doing that, you’re depending on a simple curve with a single maximum, where the slope at the current I/V tells you exactly which way to move.",
"parent_id": "8129599",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129646",
"author": "Bert",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T17:33:30",
"content": "Thank you for the rundown",
"parent_id": "8129599",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130679",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T08:44:39",
"content": "Obviously the reason is cost, but given how little the extra circuitry would add, I’ve always thought it was strange modern panels never seem to add functionality that clearly has performance and longevity benefits, not even when that’s a selling point.",
"parent_id": "8129599",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129623",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T16:27:09",
"content": "It’s not snake oil, it’s nothing new, and as @Bunsen says they use bypass diodes to “remove” the shaded cells in the series.The use case is where something like a pole casts a shadow over the panel. The shaded cells drop out, giving you reduced output but better than nothing.",
"parent_id": "8129502",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129729",
"author": "rasz_pl",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T22:40:11",
"content": "pole casts a shadowWouldnt it make sense to reorient panels 90 degrees so shadow falls along the strings instead of across? Much cheaper than special snowflake panels.",
"parent_id": "8129623",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129811",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T06:04:03",
"content": "The sun moves across the sky and the shadows rotate, so they tend to fall diagonally across the panel from different directions.",
"parent_id": "8129729",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129625",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T16:32:37",
"content": "These have been around for a while, the use case is where the panel gets partially shaded by a building or pole or whatever. It’s not for making it work under a tree.Because the cells are in series even a cable shadow across a panel causes 100% loss. I’ve seen this happen. They use bypass diodes to, well, bypass the shaded cells so you at least get some power out of the panel.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129647",
"author": "Bert",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T17:35:28",
"content": "This is a good, succinct breakdown. I think most folks know when they have a use case like a pole, single thin tree to the South in a northern latitude, or a neighbor’s roof that only gradually cuts off cells but doesn’t immediately cover the whole panel.",
"parent_id": "8129625",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129677",
"author": "Jim",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T19:15:08",
"content": "If you want a longer explanation, Dave Jones from the EEVBlog made a video a couple of years back showing how just the shadow from the mast holding up his TV antenna dropped the output from a series of solar panels by 20%https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbxHoQF4ADk",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129699",
"author": "Tobias",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T20:43:01",
"content": "Modern half-cell panels are already split into two independent halves (which are connected in parallel) and then also usually split into 3 sections with bypass diodes, so shading isn’t as bad as it was with older panels.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129701",
"author": "Per Jensen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T20:43:21",
"content": "Psst: It’s Renogy, no “Renology”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129704",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T20:53:19",
"content": "Shade tolerant panels have better bypassing of cells, so they don’t drop as much voltage, but they’re not magic. The MPPT controller is going to go crazy anyways.The only way you can make a genuinely shade tolerant panel is to wire every single cell in parallel, but each cell is only putting out 0.7 Volts, so you always have to have some number of cells in series to make it useful.You assemble the individual cells into series-connected modules or tiles, which is what people usually mean when they’re saying “solar cells”. Those already consist of multiple cells. You then connect the tiles in series and parallel to construct the entire panel, with bypasses and blocking diodes etc.Any shading on an individual tile will drop the voltage of that entire tile because a blocked cell will stop generating voltage and turns into a resistor, blocking the entire series. The panel steering diodes then have to bypass that tile to keep generating power, if they can. With many tiles in series-parallel configurations, you can get into bad situations where losing one tile will lose the output of half the panel, because that half isn’t producing as much voltage to push any current out and goes into reverse blocking mode.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129727",
"author": "Hugo Oran",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T22:29:04",
"content": "Integrate some smart switching of cells, integrate mppt and voilà, the smart/clever panels are born.",
"parent_id": "8129704",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129819",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T06:24:10",
"content": "The main issue remains: the output voltage varies dramatically.You need high voltage – more cells in series – for your MPPT to work in the first place. When you drop one cell in series, the whole maximum power point shifts that much even if the cell was bypassed.If you look at the I-V curve of a solar panel, the current output goes over a cliff soon after the maximum power point voltage. The MPPT is trying to maintain some minimum voltage for your load, to charge your batteries etc. so it can’t follow the falling voltage indefinitely and has to roll down the curve and reduce the load on the panel dramatically to keep the voltage up. It runs out of margin to adjust.",
"parent_id": "8129727",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130682",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T08:50:47",
"content": "Still, that’s the point. Get whatever’s available and regulate the output. This is a straightforward problem, with real benefits to even somewhat inefficient designs, not one to be avoided.",
"parent_id": "8129819",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129866",
"author": "martinimartin",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T09:34:52",
"content": "“For $220 you can get 4 100-watt panels on Amazon”Wow. These import tariffs are no joke.Where I live you can get 4 410-watt panels for that money.https://www.solar-bouwmarkt.nl/410-wp-full-black-149694569.html",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130017",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T15:35:38",
"content": "That’s a clearing sale or a promotional discount, and it’s also before VAT (21%) is added.You can reclaim the VAT if you install the panel on a house.",
"parent_id": "8129866",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130683",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T08:56:02",
"content": "~125$ USD for 410W panels is still obviously much cheaper, What’s your point?",
"parent_id": "8130017",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,543.291326
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/18/mcp-blender-addon-lets-ai-take-the-wheel-and-wield-the-tools/
|
MCP Blender Addon Lets AI Take The Wheel And Wield The Tools
|
Donald Papp
|
[
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Software Hacks"
] |
[
"ai",
"blender",
"LLM",
"mcp"
] |
Want to give an AI the ability to do
stuff
in Blender? The
BlenderMCP addon
does exactly that, connecting open-source 3D modeling software Blender to Anthropic’s Claude AI via MCP (Model Context Protocol), which means Claude can directly use Blender and its tools in a meaningful way.
MCP is a framework for allowing AI systems like LLMs (Large Language Models) to exchange information in a way that makes it easier to interface with other systems. We’ve seen LLMs tied experimentally into other software (such as with enabling more
natural conversations with NPCs
) but without a framework like MCP, such exchanges are bespoke and effectively stateless. MCP becomes very useful for letting LLMs use software tools and perform work that involves an iterative approach, better preserving the history and context of the task at hand.
Unlike the beach scene above which used 3D assets, this scene was created from scratch with the help of a reference image.
Using MCP also provides some standardization, which means that while the BlenderMCP project integrates with Claude (or alternately the Cursor AI editor) it could — with the right configuration — be pointed at a suitable locally-hosted LLM instead. It wouldn’t be as capable as the commercial offerings, but it would be entirely private.
Embedded below are three videos that really show what this tool can do. In the first, watch it create a beach scene using assets from a public 3D asset library. In the second, it creates a scene from scratch using a reference image (a ‘low-poly cabin in the woods’), followed by turning that same scene into a 3D environment on a web page, navigable in any web browser.
Back in 2022 we saw
Blender connected to an image generator to texture objects
, but this is considerably more capable. It’s a fascinating combination, and if you’re thinking of trying it out just make sure you’re aware it relies on allowing arbitrary Python code to be run in Blender, which is powerful but should be deployed with caution.
| 8
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8129032",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T09:39:47",
"content": "Very coolCan’t wait to enter the next era of videogames where anyone can make them",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129344",
"author": "purplepeopleated",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T13:18:17",
"content": "anyone can already make them. this is not about accessibility“The underlying purpose of Al is to allow wealth to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth.” ~Church of Jeff”",
"parent_id": "8129032",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129540",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:02:40",
"content": ":exhibit A, all the “get rich quick using AI books on Amazon:People very much are trying to access wealth using AI. Now how many are succeeding is the big question for both sides of the equation.",
"parent_id": "8129344",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129657",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T18:17:43",
"content": "” “The underlying purpose of Al is to allow wealth to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth.” ~Church of Jeff” ” That sounds about right. A get rich (or richer) quick scheme on the road to idiocracy… As the world turns.",
"parent_id": "8129344",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129598",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:54:10",
"content": "We’ve done that many times before.If you want to see what it looks like, look at the crappy games made by “easy game builder” programs in the 386-pension era, the crappy flash games of the early 2000s, or the crappy clicky games and geometry dash derivatives currently covering JS games sites. Turns out that the problem isn’t people not having good tools.",
"parent_id": "8129032",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129860",
"author": "drypaperhammerbro",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T09:15:57",
"content": "Do you mean 386-pentium era?",
"parent_id": "8129598",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129304",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T13:12:58",
"content": "As AI tries to monetize you’ll see more connections like this.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129684",
"author": "Dustin",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T19:36:25",
"content": "I wouldn’t mind an AI tool that could take care of efficiency retopology with proper edge flow, material baking, and LOD generation. That would actually be useful without removing the artistic elements.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,543.394432
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/17/escaping-us-tech-giants-leads-european-youtuber-to-open-source/
|
Escaping US Tech Giants Leads European YouTuber To Open Source
|
Tyler August
|
[
"computer hacks"
] |
[
"fairphone",
"Nextcloud",
"open source software"
] |
The video (embedded below) by [TechAltar] is titled “
1 Month without US tech giants
“, but it could have been titled “1 Month with Open Source Tools” — because, as it turns out, once you get out of the ecosystem set up by the US tech giants, you’re into the world of open source software (OSS) whether you want to be or not.
From a (German-made) Tuxedo laptop running their own Linux distro to a Fairphone with e/OS (which is French), an open version of Android, [TechAlter] is very keen to point out whenever Europeans are involved, which is how we learned that KDE has a physical headquarters, and that it’s in Berlin. Who knew?
He also gives his experiences with NextCloud (also German), can be used as an OSS alternative Google Workspaces that
we’ve written about before
, but then admits that he was the sole user on his instance. To which one must question: if you’re the sole user, why do you need a cloud-based collaborative environment? To try it out before getting collaborators involved, presumably.
Regardless what you think of the politics motivating this video, it’s
great
to see open source getting greater traction. While [TechAltar] was looking for European alternatives, part of the glory of open source is that it doesn’t matter where you’re from, you can still contribute. (
Unless you’re Russian
.) Have you found yourself using more open source software (or hardware) of late? Do you think the current political climate could lead to a broadening of its reach?
Is this the year of the linux desktop?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
| 113
| 12
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8129003",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T07:53:21",
"content": "I have a single Windows laptop, only for CAD and my remote work (It could be done on linux but it isn’t worth it with my company IT’s).My development desktop is linux, my daily laptop is linux, all of my other computers are linux. My FLX1 phone is halium based and linux.I would love for it to be the year of linux, but it won’t be. People don’t like change, even if it will save them money and do the same things with the same ease of use.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129024",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T09:06:01",
"content": "Next year is the year of Linux. Always has been.",
"parent_id": "8129003",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129325",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T13:16:40",
"content": "Open Source Fusion.",
"parent_id": "8129024",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129092",
"author": "ikode",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T11:17:37",
"content": "By Halium you mean Ubuntu Touch, Plasma Mobile, or something else I am not aware of? I have been using Ubuntu Touch for more than 5 years and really like the interface and ecosystem.",
"parent_id": "8129003",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129679",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T19:25:15",
"content": "UT doesn’t use halium. Sailfish and FuriOS (only for the FLX1) use halium. I gave you everything you needed to search in my comment.",
"parent_id": "8129092",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129188",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T12:16:18",
"content": "“My development desktop is linux, my daily laptop is linux, all of my other computers are linux. My FLX1 phone is halium based and linux.”But is that really good, if eventuallyeverythingis running Linux?In the end, it’s just another form of monopoly, isn’t it?Let’s also give BSD, Minix and Haiku etc. a chance I’d say! :)",
"parent_id": "8129003",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129568",
"author": "Giin",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:09:41",
"content": "Nah. The existence of a monopoly requires force to enact it. If every device in the world voluntarily ends up running off a Linux kernel because no alternative is superior, that by definition is NOT a monopoly.If Big Linux buys up every competing OS and shuts the project down, or pays off the government to pass laws banning alternatives, that’s a monopoly, the exclusive control of a product or service. If there are alternatives, it’s not exclusive, not a monopoly.Being successful doesn’t make you an evil monopoly that must be destroyed at all cost, that’s a foolish, childish way of looking at things.",
"parent_id": "8129188",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129613",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T15:47:03",
"content": "i think it could be a kind of monopoly. it might come to parallel what has happened in browsers, where you have to follow an unpleasant bleeding edge defined by an institution that doesn’t care about you, just to be able to interact with the internet at large.otoh, open source goes a long way to making a monopoly palatable.honestly, i think most diversity in OSes is undesirable. apart from questions of very small scale (where RTOSes shine, for example), you usually want an OS that works and is roughly the same everywhere. if MSDOS or Windows worked well and had broad compatibility, I would perhaps even resent Linux adding diversity to that Eden! the key feature of open source is that anyone can improve upon it if it doesn’t work well for them. iow, the key failure of Windows is that it simply doesn’t work well and no one can fix it.an illustration of this process is the slow growth of Wayland. among people who believe X11/xorg works well enough, there’s no question that the growth of Wayland is all downside to us. the monopoly of X11 over all of the different GUI programs on my computer has been very handy for me. diversification means there’s a larger surface to test (programs / library stacks built to handle X11 or Wayland), so more bugs reach the end user. users then consider switching between X11 or a number of Wayland options, and with each choice they make they lose access to a wide range of opportunities all at once. it’s relatively difficult to take the best parts of one environment and bring them to the other one.OTOH, there’s a lot of reasons that people think X11 does not work well enough. and for them, Wayland is possibly a godsend. so they weigh the costs and wind up breaking the monopoly. it’s feasible for them to accept this cost because really theycanreuse almost every component. for example, the vast library of programs that use gtk are easy to convert (literally effortless?). so then you might say they’re benefitting from the near monopoly of gtk.my point is, i think we genuinely wish the perfect product existed for each niche, and that it had a monopoly. both sides of that generate friction in our lives. the imperfections in the monopoly, and the diversity outside of it.",
"parent_id": "8129188",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129637",
"author": "GEORGE PEARSON",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T16:56:32",
"content": "Don’t throw the word monopoly around lightly. A monopoly has a corrosive affect on the markets it dominates. Linux and open source offer one a choice. One might say choice is a double edge sword in it’s offering; choice gives variability. Variability can be fixed by standards. Don’t conflagelate the need for standards with the need to monopolize. Standards are a balancing affect for open source. They are a defacto when one monopolizes.",
"parent_id": "8129613",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129720",
"author": "Michael H",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T21:35:25",
"content": "conflagelate – quite a word there. Not quite sure what it means. To whip together? To punish the group?",
"parent_id": "8129637",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129965",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T13:34:26",
"content": "but that’s the thing, linux and open source do not intrinsically offer choice. there are myriad projects so large and so pervasive that they’ve essentially got a monopoly. chrome(ium) is open source and that’s actually a big part ofhow they developed their monopoly. every browser these days (i’m not counting abandonfox as a browser any longer, sorry) is forked from chrome because google used open source to help build their monopoly. and we all benefit, in a way, because the html standards are mere paper flying away in the breeze compared to the solidity of a common implementation that we all use.so you can fork something, that’s a choice you get. but it’s a heavily-constrained choice unless you have a million man hours",
"parent_id": "8129637",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131586",
"author": "Antti",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T17:46:31",
"content": "Linux will never be mainstream, its too finicky with the hardware it runs on. If you try to run anything else than mainstream applications, you will end up either throwing your laptop into a wall, or learning how to compile an app for your hardware. Given the snarky elitist attitude of many linux users, the learning curve is extremely steep for someone who doesnt give a sheit about linux and just wants to use that one application unavailable in the windows verse.",
"parent_id": "8129188",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131817",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T12:39:56",
"content": "Yep, precisely why I stopped running Linux on my desktop. The pain is tolerable on my server, once setup it only needs fixing every other year due to broken updates",
"parent_id": "8131586",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129629",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T16:40:46",
"content": "People don’t like changeIt’s not the change, but the balkanization of the whole Linux/OSS ecosystem and platform, that makes things difficult and incredibly slow to improve. At every scale you have people engaged in petty disagreements and unable to standardize on anything or finish anything before someone gets a “better idea” and everybody runs that way instead.",
"parent_id": "8129003",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129665",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T18:44:13",
"content": "How does that affect you. I load KUbuntu LTS and it just runs. My RPI PI OS just runs. Nothing that happens in the ‘back end’ is affecting my work. gcc is the same, Libre Office is the same, Firefox is the same … Just works and is reliable 24x7x365.So, I comes down to ‘people’ don’t like change’ . Like things being done for them (OS pre-installed for example). There was a article/blog recently where the person changed over to Linux for a week as his main driver. Came down to most of the reasons for not liking Linux is it did things differently… Didn’t like that.",
"parent_id": "8129629",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129680",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T19:28:09",
"content": "Yes exactly. I literally demoed for my sister how Libreoffice on Windows could do everything she wanted…She said “I don’t like it, I’ll pay every month for Office365” and she isn’t the only one.Simplest possible change.",
"parent_id": "8129665",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129835",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T07:17:48",
"content": "Of course it “just runs”, if you’re just happy with what you’re given.But every time I’ve done it, eventually there comes a point where I have to do something else with it, and then the story goes “Oh, but it’s not in the repository.”, and then you have to sideload it and it’s not directly compatible, and then it all starts to become this ball of junk.",
"parent_id": "8129665",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131587",
"author": "Antti",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T17:47:40",
"content": "Amen, brother.",
"parent_id": "8129835",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129967",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T13:40:06",
"content": "i like the balkanization. it helps me resist change :)",
"parent_id": "8129629",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129663",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T18:38:28",
"content": "I don’t have a single computer running Windows. No need. Laptops, servers, desktops, SBCs — all run Linux. Been Windows free for years (at home). So the ‘year of Linux’ was long ago now. Unfortuately the company I work for is Windows centric. I really feel this Windows thing is like the Cobol of old. It just won’t go away soon :) as sheepeople just go with the flow and open their pocketbooks to stay in their comfort-zone. So at work, forced boots every week, sometime twice a week, 365 office apps, Edge … No freedom there. Just vendor lock-in.",
"parent_id": "8129003",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131685",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T23:28:44",
"content": "And what exactly is it that you do with a computer?",
"parent_id": "8129663",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129747",
"author": "Aldrius",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T01:11:28",
"content": "What CAD run on Linux? The only thing hold me using windows is no CAD app run on Linux, this also the reason companies stuck with windows or Mac.",
"parent_id": "8129003",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130313",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T08:37:42",
"content": "Blender for the artisty more freeform stuff, and FreeCAD once you get over the learning curve (as it is quite different, but now pretty darn good – IMO no more flawed and annoying than the other CAD options once you learn how it is different and thus how to work around its rougher edges the way you already will have done for your current CAD package (assuming any of that packages rough edges intersect with what you do)) for the engineering CAD both worth great on Linux.",
"parent_id": "8129747",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130379",
"author": "Wernher",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T13:17:00",
"content": "I agree 100%. The only thing previously stopping me from switching to Linux was SolidWorks only ran on Windows and Fusion want really good enough to take over and was in any case not available on Linux. There are good browser based products but privacy is an issue. I started playing with FreeCad for some time and the Mango Jelly Solutions came across my path and opened up FreeCad to me. Once I started reworking all my designs, and realised that there no restrictions, I had no more reasons to delay the switch. When Windows, Apple and Android started forcing me into AI bots that harvest everything I do by scanning my computer at source, I got really freaked out. I noticed my powerful laptop battled under the list of these activities killing is progressing power. The final straw was when Microsoft raised my subscription of Office 365 by giving me a product I didn’t want and it later became evident that the miss represented the facts.I took down everything from so my cloud drives and installed Linux in a dual boot config, just so I could convert old files of I need them.I’m using Blender, Freecad, Inkscape and Libre Office and I’m running my business without missing a beat. I’m also much more at ease with NDAs that I sign with clients, knowing that I won’t expose my or clients information inadvertently. I’ve been running solely on Linux and Open source for the last three months, and in not looking back.",
"parent_id": "8130313",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131769",
"author": "Yusuf Ben Al-Aziz",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T10:02:53",
"content": "💯❤️👍🏻",
"parent_id": "8130379",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8131688",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T23:43:21",
"content": "FreeCAD once you get over the learning curve (as it is quite different, but now pretty darn goodFreeCAD is retarded and dysfunctional because it is based on ideas and logical hierarchies that were not designed or suitable for CAD and were developed by people who didn’t understand CAD in the first place. It’s a bad look-alike copy of what professional CAD was in the 1990’s before people had better ideas.The learning curve you have is because of the need to adopt a learning framework that relies on memorizing specific procedures with specific results rather than understanding general and universal principles of operation. Its both difficult to learn and lacking in features compared to modern CAD, because it’s literally 30 years out of date in fundamental principles.",
"parent_id": "8130313",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131929",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-05-24T20:27:13",
"content": "Different yes, but far from dysfunctional, by that argument OpenSCAD is also awful, being very much developed to be nothing at all like normal CAD… In reality both are great tools, and in many ways not being a commercial offering that needs to keep finding new bling to add that breaks the basics so you “must” upgrade and pay them again…",
"parent_id": "8131688",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130661",
"author": "trip",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T07:40:49",
"content": "You could run a Windows version of your CAD software in a virtual machine in seamless or integrated mode. virtualbox calls it seamless mode.",
"parent_id": "8129747",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131210",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T14:47:16",
"content": "Or Wine or Proton or…One application is a tiny reason to pick an operating system, now that most things are interoperable.",
"parent_id": "8130661",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129004",
"author": "Ben",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T07:55:08",
"content": "There’s a list of European alternatives to US based providers:https://european-alternatives.eu/about",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129083",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T10:31:49",
"content": "How about peertube instead of youtube",
"parent_id": "8129004",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129005",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T07:55:39",
"content": "The laptop was Intel, so that was a total red herring. You’re not out of the woods yet.Despite the positive attitude, the video shows why it still doesn’t realistically work: software and trust. While many OSS apps work well, chances still are the one thing you want or rely on doesn’t. The killing blow is not being able to use your bank’s authenticator app, because the bank trusts Google and not you.It means, we’re back to those paper cards with numbers on them for online authentication, and those aren’t issued anymore.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129009",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T08:05:23",
"content": "But if the bank uses OAuth, you could roll your own 2FA.https://hackaday.com/2017/10/16/inside-two-factor-authentication-apps/but alsohttps://hackaday.com/2024/03/07/an-esp32-multifactor-totp-generator/https://hackaday.com/2018/01/04/two-factor-authentication-with-the-esp8266/https://hackaday.com/2022/06/18/build-your-own-two-factor-authenticator-with-good-usb/",
"parent_id": "8129005",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129011",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T08:15:52",
"content": "I could… but realistically?If I do it on my own, I’ll get the national security and intelligences services on me for suspected banking fraud or intrusion into digital systems. If I contact the bank, they’ll say “No.”Suppose I was a company developing the app to avoid the first problem. The second problem remains: I’d have to go to the bank and say “We’re developing an app that allows your customers to authenticate using hacked phones and other devices using untrusted operating systems that we won’t limit or control.”. Guess what they’ll answer?I mean, that’s the reason why the app isn’t available outside of the Play store in the first place.",
"parent_id": "8129009",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129624",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T16:31:58",
"content": "Based on this “If I do it on my own, I’ll get the national security and intelligences services on me for suspected banking fraud or intrusion into digital systems. If I contact the bank, they’ll say “No.””I can confidently so noyoucan’t. Its OAuth. It has nothing to do with “hacking” a bank. Its validation and its certainly not illegal.",
"parent_id": "8129011",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129632",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T16:45:47",
"content": "The point was that if I start developing my own authenticator and don’t tell the bank I’m doing it, they’ll see the activity as someone attempting to do something naughty because it’s not coming from their app.It doesn’t matter if it’stechnicallylegal – they still don’t want you to do it.",
"parent_id": "8129624",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129015",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T08:27:16",
"content": "The authentication is the trivial part – the difficult part is being reasonably sure the user is the user and not some malware that has hijacked the user’s phone. This is why the authenticator app exists for your phone or tablet, but not for your laptop – because the laptop may run any software and is frequently compromised by scammers.",
"parent_id": "8129009",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129023",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T09:02:50",
"content": "Phones really are not safer than PC’s if anything they are probably worse as folks believe they are safer so do stupid things – too much crap gets onto the app store and/or the phone maker refuses to allow certain popular apps so folks are side loading them and likely other things of dubious origin…",
"parent_id": "8129015",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129204",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T12:38:49",
"content": "It’s vastly better than on a PC. You have to go out of your way to do stupid things, despite multiple warnings.A common attack on the phone is to use a sideloaded app that pretends to be the banking app or the authenticator. This is another reason for banks tonot allow sideloading of their app, so they can tell their users that their app cannot be sideloaded and anyone attempting to convince you otherwise is probably a scammer.",
"parent_id": "8129023",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129626",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T16:33:42",
"content": "Agree especially give the often ancient kernels in most android phones. 4.19 is a popular one",
"parent_id": "8129023",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130317",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T08:48:40",
"content": "You really don’t have to go out of your way Dude, all it takes is downloading a malicious app from the officially sanctioned appstore, with documented cases of bad apps being available for eons after being detected by the whitehat folks at times.That app doesn’t even have to be overtly malicious, can even do the ‘real’ work it is supposed to, while simultaneously making use of its access to do what you don’t want it to, which as Sword points out is often quite easy as many of these devices are hopelessly outdated from an OS perspective, and can’t be updated without the manufacturer’s support, leaving wide open security holes an app can exploit…Also The permissions you grant the app can even in many cases include things it has no legitimate reason to want, and folks will still accept – as every app is asking for things it should not need as those permission are not granular enough for it only ask for what it needs. – It really isn’t secure, it just pretends well enough people trust it so much more completely, when they really shouldn’t.",
"parent_id": "8129023",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129010",
"author": "Stevie",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T08:08:29",
"content": "It being Intel is hard to get around if you want to be part of the world. ARM is coming a long way though so a purely ARM based system could very well be realistic to be not relying on US tech companies.My bank doesn’t trust Google. They have their own authentication thing(no paper cards involved). So most definitely not a killing blow.",
"parent_id": "8129005",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129018",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T08:47:38",
"content": "No app either, I presume?",
"parent_id": "8129010",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129026",
"author": "Stevie",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T09:12:49",
"content": "They have an app, which once authenticated, can be used to pay and approve transfers.",
"parent_id": "8129018",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129169",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T11:58:44",
"content": "And is that available from somewhere else than the official appstore, and can you install it on any other device than official Google Android devices?",
"parent_id": "8129026",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129611",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T15:45:46",
"content": "A purely arm based system? That’s… any phone. Or an Apple laptop.",
"parent_id": "8129010",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129621",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T16:21:57",
"content": "The catch is that Google and Apple are US tech companies, so even on an ARM system you have to go out of your way to avoid them, and then you’ll run into problems with other services that rely on the platforms and ecosystems built by Google and Apple.For instance, if I want contactless payment on my phone, it’s either Google Pay or Apple Pay. Rooting the phone and removing Google’s services, or installing a non-Google operating system on it would remove contactless payments for me.",
"parent_id": "8129611",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129627",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T16:36:24",
"content": "And then you just use a card like a normal person.Maybe its just me, but I don’t want my phone to store my credit cards (and yes I understand that it basically generates a one time card for the nfc transaction and is very secure)",
"parent_id": "8129621",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129638",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T17:00:49",
"content": "And then you just use a card like a normal person.So, “sour grapes” basically. If a feature is not available, you can just argue you didn’t want it in the first place.Or, you could argue that this is a problem that needs to be addressed. Otherwise you’d just be building yourself a mental Berlin Wall to stop yourself escaping to the west.",
"parent_id": "8129621",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129641",
"author": "Ole Gunnar",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T17:17:33",
"content": "I use Samsung Wallet, no need for Apple/Google.",
"parent_id": "8129621",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129013",
"author": "CampGareth",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T08:24:13",
"content": "In the UK banks used to issue card readers as an MFA device. When logging in you’d enter your username and password to the site then for MFA put your bank card in the reader and key in your pin. The reader would generate a 6 or 8 digit code you’d enter into the website.",
"parent_id": "8129005",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129016",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T08:40:03",
"content": "Some banks have those one-time-pad generators that look like little calculators – but that’s not much better than the paper slip. Drop it in a puddle and whoops, can’t even log in to the bank’s online portal to order a new one. You have to physically visit the front desk, which is somewhere far away because they’ve closed most services due to digitalization.It’s a really fragile system they’ve built. Just lose your phone and you’re instantly locked out of essential services, including the way to get yourself back in.",
"parent_id": "8129013",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129020",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T09:00:35",
"content": "Dude these things really are not that fragile, its a really really low voltage all the way down to the battery which makes them pretty much immune to being dunked in water, as long as you can find them again. Also phone helplines and contact forms exist outside of the ‘secure’ logged in part on every bank I’ve ever seen that will be able to help you get a new authenticator.",
"parent_id": "8129016",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129187",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T12:15:39",
"content": "That’s…. entirely missing the point on multiple accounts.Even if I call the bank’s regular service number, I’d still have to go to the bank’s service deskin personto show ID. They aren’t allowed to do it over the phone anymore, because someone could order the ID device instead of me, using stolen identity data.In order to complete the order over the phone, I would have to call the bank’s helpline by authenticating myself using the bank’s mobile app, to make the call from within the app. The way you activate new authentication devices is also by using existing authentication methods – or they have to be done at the bank, again, in person.",
"parent_id": "8129020",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129223",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T12:54:16",
"content": "Also, yes they are that fragile. The latest iteration of the ID device is like a mini phone that has a camera for scanning QR codes. It has user-replaceable AAA batteries behind a simple plastic snap-on cover. The IP rating is probably IP54 or worse – certainly not watertight.If you drop it in a puddle, it’ll probably work right away, until it corrodes and stops working some time later. The camera may or may not survive the ordeal.",
"parent_id": "8129020",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129612",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T15:47:02",
"content": "Banks still provide the card-reader things and the key fob things. And they post out the key fob things, though you have to work hard to convince them you don’t want to switch to the app.",
"parent_id": "8129020",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129896",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T10:50:28",
"content": "Dude if you call the bank for a new authenticator they’d send it to your registered address – they don’t need you to be authenticated to get the new authenticator. As to use that authenticator the scammer would need access to the pin code type stuff that shouldn’t be public knowledge, and to get hold of the new authenticator, even if they knew all your other secrets they would need to be able to intercept the delivery to you or have access to your house – at which point nothing the bank could do would actually prevent fraud, as these people have enough access to your life to just flat out be you as far as any system is concerned.And I’ve yet to see anything in these authenticators that would be troubled by a dunk in water – obviously you have to dry and clean it out if you want to prevent the possibility of eventual failure after getting it wet, but it isn’t the sort of device that will actually care very much about the electronics getting wet, low voltage, big fat traces as there is so much board space and they are cheaper so you might as well, the brains is probably a gloptop so encapsulated and well protected…",
"parent_id": "8129020",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129143",
"author": "Doug",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T11:46:39",
"content": "Yubikey",
"parent_id": "8129005",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129614",
"author": "Charles Springer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T15:53:24",
"content": "I have a Yubikey and can’t figure out how to use it.",
"parent_id": "8129143",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129530",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:00:22",
"content": "While authenticator apps are available, all banks in Canada will send a one-time code via SMS or voice to a phone number on file for 2FA. It doesn’t even need to be a smartphone, never mind one with google services. Does this option not exist in Europe?",
"parent_id": "8129005",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129615",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T15:55:07",
"content": "The banks that I know that still use SMS rely on the paper one-time-pad for the actual authentication. No bank that I know of uses text messages or voice alone.The banks that have stopped printing and mailing the code lists have also stopped offering SMS and voice authentication.",
"parent_id": "8129530",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129970",
"author": "Alex",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T13:44:12",
"content": "The phone (text messages) is not reliable option due to ss7 attacks or sim swapping.I wish more companies provide multiple options as a 2fa including hardware key (like yubikey) and software otp.But most of financial companies (in the US) are far behind",
"parent_id": "8129530",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131588",
"author": "Antti",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T17:54:41",
"content": "Depends a bit on which region of EU you are in, but the rule of thumb is no callbacks, no sms. Some banks in some regions provide you with a code calculator should you convince the bank you need it.",
"parent_id": "8129530",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129564",
"author": "comstock",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:07:24",
"content": "bruh what do you think ‘red herring’ means?",
"parent_id": "8129005",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129691",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T20:12:05",
"content": "“something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important question”Talking about OSS or buying a German laptop to “escape” US tech giants is misleading and irrelevant when the hardware comes from Intel. You haven’t escaped anything.",
"parent_id": "8129564",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130267",
"author": "Valentijn Sessink",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T06:03:54",
"content": "The difference being that the hardware will, most likely, keep working. While with any SaaS-service (yes, that’s service²), like Google, MS365, the plug could be pulled any time, instantly.Devil, details: an Intel laptop with Linux still runs Intel firmware, so yeah, how independent is independent? But hey, once you have escaped the windows-lock-in, the way to actuallychoosinga microprocessor becomes viable.",
"parent_id": "8129691",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130479",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T18:10:25",
"content": "Sure, it keeps working. Until Intel discovers yet another security issue that can only be fixed with new bytecode… which you can’t get.",
"parent_id": "8130267",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129006",
"author": "Alex Topic",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T07:59:35",
"content": "Also there is CachyOS an optimized for gaming Arch Linux distro which is also German and I have it with KDE Desktop.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129007",
"author": "L",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T07:59:46",
"content": "“I don’t need Google, I can stop anytime I want!” – said in a video on google youtube.However, as true now as it always has been, it is always lovely to see someone learn and implement what goes into such services, and good to see implementing their own.As one who also was in the single-user nextcloud camp, it was at one point the second best “phone sync/backup” backend in existence, second only in ease-of-use by google/apples own tools.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130019",
"author": "Ruthalas",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T15:39:19",
"content": "TechAltar also publishes his videos on Nebula, so he’s making an effort there.https://nebula.tv/techaltar",
"parent_id": "8129007",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129014",
"author": "deshipu",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T08:25:14",
"content": "It’s so ironic to put this onYouTubeof all the video streaming services…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129017",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T08:43:31",
"content": "Well, everything else is behind apaywall",
"parent_id": "8129014",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129552",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:05:07",
"content": "Off the top of my head, there’s viemo, rumble, odeseey, bitchute and peertube. Except nobody watches most of them unless they’re looking content that was (or would be) banned from Youtube.From a technical perspective they’re fine, it’s just network effects that keep them from being viable alternatives.",
"parent_id": "8129017",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129604",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T15:06:37",
"content": "Vimeo is more of a hosting service – it doesn’t seem to offer a user platform where you could just browse videos.The rest are just full of quacks and cranks. The “network” that is already there actively discourages others from joining.",
"parent_id": "8129552",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129877",
"author": "frenchone",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T10:10:32",
"content": "dailymotion",
"parent_id": "8129604",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129973",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T13:49:10",
"content": "quacks and cranks! we’d fit right in :)",
"parent_id": "8129604",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130021",
"author": "Ruthalas",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T15:39:59",
"content": "TechAltar also publishes his videos on Nebula, so he’s making an effort there.https://nebula.tv/techaltar",
"parent_id": "8129014",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131039",
"author": "Eduardo",
"timestamp": "2025-05-22T00:30:03",
"content": "Nebula is American just like Vimeo, Rumble and most of the app mentioned above. You don’t have where to go. Stop with the stupidity, most of the things we use nowadays in the modern world since the 18th Century were invented in the USA. In fact according to Encyclopedia Brittanica report around 60% of the 350 most important inventions since the 1400’s have been AMERICAN INVENTIONS. At least be more grateful of everything that great nation have given us. In my country just like in most of the world American brands, companies, apps, social networks, laptops, operating systems, etc dominate the market, Europeans on the other hand are irrelevant with the exception of luxury handbags and cars (categories where Europe market share have been also crashing down like a meteorite being overtaken by American brands in handbags and Chinese and Japanese brands in Cars). Accept the faith as it is. USA is also richer, more powerful, innovative and influential than entire continent of Europe is statistically speaking in every single category from Gdp. GNI, total wealth, private wealth, net and gross financial assets (total and per capita), Stock market size, Bond market size, equity market size, Consumer market size (nominal and ppp), Gdp per capita, GNI per capita, Gold Reserves, Corporate wealth, Country Total Brand Value, Billionaires, Millionaires, UHNWI, HNWI, National wealth, Currency Reserves, pension funds, government budget, government revenue, military budget, education expenditure, videogame market size, music market size, cinema total box office, tech market size, construction market size, NATURAL RESOURCES, MINERAL RESOURCES, CLIMATE DIVERSITY, Koppen Climate zones, BIOMES, ECOREGIONS (Terrestrial and maritime), Soil types and orders, weather record difference, ARABLE LAND, FARMLAND and more. Not mention have larger Oil, Gas and Coal reserves. More nuclear, biomass, geothermal, wind and solar energy than all of europe combined. More AI, Quantum Computing, robots, etc companies than Europe and any country on earth. More startups and unicorn companies than Europe and any other country on earth. More Data Centers, Malls, retail space, roadway, railway, Airports, heliports, stadiums, museums, zoos, amusement parks, ports, marinas, etc than Europe and any other country on earth. More inventions and patents in history than Europe and any other country out there (statistically proven). More Nobel prize and Nobel prize equivalent of other fields winners than any country in history (more than Europe too). There’s no match, just accept reality and cope with it. Greetings from Dominican Republic a country that loves our brother to the North (USA)",
"parent_id": "8130021",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131590",
"author": "Antti",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T17:57:08",
"content": "Man oh man, learn to structure your manifestoes. Just looking at your ranting gives me a headache.",
"parent_id": "8131039",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129025",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T09:11:47",
"content": "To which one must question: if you’re the sole user, why do you need a cloud-based collaborative environment?I would say there are probably lots of folks that use cloud based (self hosted or otherwise) primarily to let them get access to their stuff from anywhere, making the collaborative features and user controls just a nice bonus for when you do work with somebody else, and these days likely how the software is set up to default to.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129555",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:05:40",
"content": "Fair point.",
"parent_id": "8129025",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129028",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T09:27:49",
"content": "I would strongly advise against trusting EU online services.Because the EU is very political and censorious, just in different ways and areas than the US, causing people to be fooled. (and no I’m not a vance follower and BS subscriber).For example people talk about German alternatives for US online services apparently not realizing how bad it has become with German law and what their ‘security’ apparatus is allowed to do (including hacking the devices of foreigners and selected entities). And how restrictive for instance he big EU players are about music rights and such. Much more so than even the US.And I’m only scratching the surface.Of course there is less change that a ‘wrong’ view leads to the cops standing in front of your door to ‘have a chat’ if you aren’t in the EU, so you got that leg up. Although that stuff is now coming to the US too, but from and by US authorities.Now there are some services that are still not affected, but as soon as they are noticed by the activists/politicians they likely will be. So be careful trusting EU stuff.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129040",
"author": "uc",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T09:47:33",
"content": "Care to elaborate what’s bad with eu and german law? This reads like FUD",
"parent_id": "8129028",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129087",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T11:02:44",
"content": "less chance*Excuse my mistake.",
"parent_id": "8129028",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129508",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T13:43:08",
"content": "“realizing how bad it has become with German law and what their ‘security’ apparatus is allowed to do”You mean the good ol’ “Bundestrojaner”? Good point.But on other hand, US American tech companies must include a backdoor for the three letter agencies, I think.China products send back home telemetry, too.Other countries have similar things going on, I suppose.In Germany, such things are at least being openly talked about.There’s even a Wiki about the matter.https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staatstrojaner",
"parent_id": "8129028",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129561",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:07:08",
"content": "Yes, its best to go with Open Source solutions that undergo regular and rigorous security audits.",
"parent_id": "8129028",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131593",
"author": "Antti",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:01:16",
"content": "One must not forget the very strong drive in EU for crippling VPN services and forcing the providers to arrange EU membership state governments backdoors for monitoring VPN users. The selling point is “preventing child porn” and “preventing exploitation of children”. Which more or less is utter BS, as many of the lobbyers are corporate entities associated with copyrighted materials, movies and music businesses.",
"parent_id": "8129028",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129125",
"author": "Winston",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T11:39:44",
"content": "“Many are thinking about switching from, or even boycotting Google, Microsoft, Apple & Co” WHY? You use a “German” laptop and a “Dutch” phone (both likely made in China). Security? Lack of personal user data collection?If online activity would in any way make you a target for security or law enforcement services, your local EU and UK spooks will be far more of a threat to you. For example, in the UK a Facebook post which the government considers offensive will land you in prison. In Germany, liking the populist AfD party makes you a potential terrorist in the eyes of your government. For any app you use that you don’t pay for no matter what its national origin, your data is in some way the income source. And I hope you’re not a TikTok user just because it isn’t American.Finally, if you are for any reason targeted by your national spooks or, worse, Five Eyes, forget it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129212",
"author": "drdog",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T12:45:32",
"content": "IT instructor, and as usual never enough budget. So I am at the point of using FOSS more and more:Debian & Cockpit for file sharesProxmox for VMs & containersFOG Project for image distributionRustdesk for client supportAnd considering Ansible for automationAll running on two dell R630 servers. The Clients are a mix of Windows 11 & Linux systems, 50 total. FOSS tools are available without the the tech giants.",
"parent_id": "8129125",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129377",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T13:21:32",
"content": "For the moment, the AfD thing is a bit exaggerated, I think.So far, you’re merely being considered a silly right-wing voter, one of those ca. 20% from last voting.The problem with the party is that it claims to be a people’s party, but its actions and mindset speak a different language.(That brings back some memories of dark history and the NSDAP.)Meanwhile, enough evidences are being collected for it being “definitely right-wing extremist” and there’s some talk about forbidding the party, too.But it’s not as if ordinary people are being punished for just liking the party.If so, the whole former East Germany had to be imprissioned now.AFAIK, they have the least immigrants or refugees, but mostly had voted for AfD. For whatever reason.You could even see the former FRG/GDR borders through the AfD votings in the past years. Terrifying.Here are some links. Articles from 2018 and 2025.In all of them, the former borders can be seen.Deutsche Welle:https://amp.dw.com/de/die-afd-und-die-instrumentalisierung-des-ostens/a-43421106Federal Agency for Civic Education:https://www.bpb.de/themen/deutschlandarchiv/560011/zeitenwende-2-0/BBC:https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy6zk9wkrdoPS: AFAIK, there’s a clause in German law that states Germany can be re-occupied by the allies if national socialism comes back.It’s in the own interest to take care of parties like AfD, maybe.",
"parent_id": "8129125",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129631",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T16:45:33",
"content": "I mean Germany literally arrested and charged someone for calling a politician a dick. It was “hate speech”",
"parent_id": "8129377",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129650",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T17:58:26",
"content": "Well, it depends al lot onhowsomething is said.Germany doesn’t have “free speech” as such but “free opinion”, for example.You can (almost) say anything if you add “I think” or “in my opinion”.If it’s clear that it’s your personal opinion and not presented as a fact, it makes a big difference.It even covers insults to some degree (as in “Sir, I think you’re a big fool.”)AFAIK, hate speech doesn’t formaly exist, but there’s a paragraph against “Volksverhetzung” (“incitement to hatred”).https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VolksverhetzungAlso, the article one of the basic law is about human dignity..It also must bee seen as a result in context of WW2 and the horrible things that happened to human beings at the time.(1) Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.(2) The German people therefore acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the world.(3) The following basic rights bind legislation, executive power and jurisdiction as directly applicable law.",
"parent_id": "8129631",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129683",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T19:35:29",
"content": "Its an easy google, and it did get dropped, but just the fact that a police unit scrutinizes the internet for innocuous things like that, decides it warrants action, get a judge to sign off, gets a team together, raids the house, arrests the person, seizes devices, takes person to jail and it takes a literal judge….the last possible stop to go “hey this isn’t right”Yeah there isn’t free speech or opinion in Germany.",
"parent_id": "8129650",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129653",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T18:13:21",
"content": "Then there’s a special case, the “Beamtenbeleidigung”.People working for goverment or state have slightly more rights.If the insulted person is a politican, for example and if the insult results in big political harm to the person.Also, if say the insulted person is a police officer in duty then the superior can file a criminal complaint instead. Such things.The Wikipedia article can explain it better.https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamtenbeleidigung",
"parent_id": "8129631",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130168",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T22:05:58",
"content": "What your saying is: ‘Don’t live in Germany’.Agreed.Most of my family (not on Rente) are at least considering jumping pond.It’s better than the UK.They throw people in jail for wrong-think routinely.Between that and hitting the 51% of population on government tit democracy failure mode, they’re done.Only thing left for brits to do is ‘vote with feet’.",
"parent_id": "8129653",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129886",
"author": "frenchone",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T10:34:22",
"content": "So far, you’re merely being considered a silly right-wing voter,Yeah. Just don’t adress the fear and concerns of those people and just make fun of ’em.There will still be time to ban their party if they go higher in polls.",
"parent_id": "8129377",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131596",
"author": "Antti",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:05:54",
"content": "if a party has 20% support from the population, you cant really do much about it without marginalizing and radicalizing said %. Illegalizing AfD would be an idiotic move, that would brew an unimaginable future shitstorm in unrests and terrorist groups, just like in the good old 70´s and 80´s, Baader-Meinhof comes to mind.",
"parent_id": "8129377",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129437",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T13:29:05",
"content": "Why? Because for some ‘mysterious’ reason people no longer want to be used by the US authorities and economy and its companies.And no, you are wrong, there ARE people that make software and supply services without abusing you or wanting to use you, regardless how hard that is to believe for you.Although there also ones that fake it of course.But as I already said, you can’t trust the EU either and the EU will go after EU citizens and it’s of course easy to do for them.So I agree in part, don’t avoid the US but try to avoid ALL governments and big corporations and advertisers and moneymakers. Oh and as always: think-tanks.Irony: This message was posted on a site owned by a US company owned by the EU German multinational company Siemens .‘All your base are belong to us’ eh",
"parent_id": "8129125",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129516",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T13:49:00",
"content": "About Siemens.. It’s nolonger being German by heart, I’m afraid.It’s a “multinational company” and doesn’t really care about Germany and Germans anymore, I think.Siemens being German is more of a formal thing, I suppose.",
"parent_id": "8129437",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130169",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T22:07:34",
"content": "They have at least one genius on staff:The guy who put their UK office in ‘Stains’…",
"parent_id": "8129516",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130804",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T15:35:54",
"content": "I’m not sure how euro it is but I know they rely on some very talented German engineers and they produce in Germany though.And there are (still-) EU companies that rely on their output.",
"parent_id": "8129516",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129976",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T13:55:42",
"content": "i think this is an interesting claim: “there ARE people that make software and supply services without abusing you or wanting to use you”i don’t know if it’s true though?for example, i’m one of the good ones. i make programs for the joy of it, or in other words,for my own personal use. and about half of the android apps i’ve made, i go ahead and upload them to the play store because i figure someone else might use them. my apps are adware-free, and generally not bloated. they are good at what they’re supposed to do, and they don’t do anything else.but if you want something different, you’re at my mercy. i mean, they’re open source but the closest anyone has come to forking any of my apps so far is to put one of them on an alternative app store that i guess builds from source automatically. and so people send me requests and more than half the time i reply…i might as well say “i’m the dictator, and i have decided that i am the only user that matters and i don’t want that feature.”and one of my apps, SimpleSSHD, was moderately popular for a decade. and then google made me jump through hoops to keep it on the app store. and i simply didn’t do it. i wrote it for me to use, and i am happy to sideload it. so now all those users are out in the cold.is this kind of self-interested neglect not a kind of abuse?",
"parent_id": "8129437",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130831",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-21T16:35:15",
"content": "I know what I said is true because a) I see it often enough and b) I understand the thinking and have done some modest stuff for others in the area of software without wanting or expecting reward.Think about it, things like G’MIC and Krita and Gimp and various AI thing and the majority of the github projects, all of them not seeking to exploit and profit (including not with the intent to do it later when they ‘hooked’ people in).Yes I know some projects get support from donors or universities or government grants, but I think you can see from observing the people involved that that is not the motivation.",
"parent_id": "8129976",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129525",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T13:57:42",
"content": "WHY?Because there’s a risk that the US government starts to use online services and virtual assets as a means to extort and pressure EU governments, institutions and corporations as well. This would likely cause a mad scramble to find alternative providers anyways, so it’s better to be prepared early to cushion the drop.If suitable alternatives can be found, it’s sensible to make the switch anyways wherever possible, because an EU “domestic” provider will be cheaper overall even if it’s directly more expensive or somewhat worse in quality – because they would be banking their profits, paying their taxes and hiring their people here instead of the US. Some of that will land back into your pockets as well. That’s exactly the trade policy that the US is pushing against the EU as well.",
"parent_id": "8129125",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131598",
"author": "Antti",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:09:13",
"content": "As a means to extort and pressure EU governments you say, how does that differ from what the present day clown in the white house is doing ?",
"parent_id": "8129525",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131692",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T23:56:13",
"content": "It goes directly against the ways the nations and their governments function on a day-to-day basis.Imagine if Teams and Outlook stops working now. Right now. This second now. About 95% of the public institutions in the EU would stop working entirely. Your social security stops working, your public health, education, everything grinds to a halt because people can’t send a simple email using the official channels they’ve established or hold a simple online meeting to discuss the matter. It would take months to sort it out, and the end result would be a hodge-podge of bad solutions that don’t meet the original specs.",
"parent_id": "8131598",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129673",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T19:00:08",
"content": "“WHY”This one, for example.Microsoft had deleted this one’s guy e-mail address on command of the leader.“One reason the the court has been hamstrung is that it relies heavily on contractors and non-governmental organisations.These businesses and groups have curtailed work on behalf of the court because they are concerned about being targeted by US authorities, according to current and former ICC staffers.Microsoft, for example, cancelled Mr Khan’s email address, forcing the prosecutor to move to Proton Mail, a Swiss email provider, ICC staffers said. His bank accounts in the UK have been blocked.”News site:https://tinyurl.com/5axe9p4j",
"parent_id": "8129125",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130138",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T20:45:37",
"content": "I hear Khan is also suspended by the ICC while under investigation by the ICC for shady dealings.I wonder if MS saved his emails and if they will be part of the investigation.And I also wonder if his bank account suspension is actually the result of the US’s political action OR part of the investigation. Sometimes you need to wait a bit to find out what’s really going on.But yeah US companies like MS being a tool of such politics is a concern, we agree on that. And especially if they were not told to but do it preemptively like some suggest MS did, which leaves even less room for challenge.",
"parent_id": "8129673",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131599",
"author": "Antti",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:10:21",
"content": "That was a really bad business decision from MS, one they will regret in the long run as it definitely alienates EU from their services.",
"parent_id": "8129673",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130576",
"author": "PPJ",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T22:59:38",
"content": "It’s good to have alternative.– Few times I saved a lot of money on my computers just because Windows wouldn’t run on them anymore.– I had enough using smartphone that was obsolete just because no security updates were not provided. I went Apple which came with it’s own limitation but now there are more vendors with longer software support to choose so I don’t need to keep myself locked in those limitations.– Ownership. In PC, “P” now stands for “proprietary” now. I like to have an option in case “everything is subscription based service from cloud” becomes rather sad reality than distant future.– competition. If our giants had no competition they would stop developing features and focus on milking the users only.– I can afford new machines but it looks like I pay for being beta tester of a product designed to be obsolete before mature even though technically fully capable.",
"parent_id": "8129125",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129589",
"author": "r4e34dres",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:26:25",
"content": "Haiku is faster and nice.I like SerenityOS but still gcc on linux is better.answer is === YES! (but probably after decade or 3)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130353",
"author": "Montegasppα Cacilhας",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T11:49:25",
"content": "As far as I know, YouTube itself is NOT open source…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130372",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T12:52:42",
"content": "Funny how US went from being the challenger to the hunderds years old behemoth monopolies (UK and Europe in general) now leads the way to be the home of the worst monopolies on Earth.BTW, it was the US companies that broke the mechanical watch monopolies in UK. This was more than 100 years ago when federal government basically didn’t exist, there were no federal taxes, AND there were many small- and mid-sized companies that served as the backbone for the larger ones. The US companies secret? Instead of fine-tuning every part that goes into each watch, mass-produce the parts on the cheap with liberal tolerances, then match those that more-or-less-have-similar-oddities during the assembly. Obviously, there as a lot of waste, but so were plenty of cheap spare parts available on the secondary market for all kinds of tinkerers, kinda open source for the willing. UK makers couldn’t compete (and at the time they were doing “corporate restructuring” – outsourcing watch making to their backwaters, Switzerland, that had cheaper labor, so weren’t exactly thrilled that US makers figure out how to mass-produce reasonably good watches that would be cheaper), and eventually just closed pretty much most of the shops (well, WWI helped a great deal – there was a spike in demand for some while, but eventually it came down, and US makers won just the same).Rewind to present and find it all in reverse – US just semi-decimated its industries during 1990s and 2000s (NAFTA 1.0 and NAFTA 2.0, outsourcing to China, which was the equivalent of UK’s Switzerland, eh, same story there, Switzerland/China eventually became better at making what was being outsourced AND accumulated expertise that’s not outsource-able, at least not easily), so now US companies are just the UK watch makers, guarding their crumbling monopolies by any means necessary, even though the history is NOT on their side. Apple, what Apple, its last invention was iPad, and it hasn’t brought forth much ever since, kinda like discovered its Higgs Boson and went stale.History doesn’t teach anything to anybody – it has to be the other way around, those who want to know their backstory HAVE to learn the history.Let’s see, on the topic of watches, US invented the quartz clock, then it was deemed “not worthy R&D and too expensive to mass-produce” and basically given to Japan (well, kinda sorta, not exactly) to toy with. When they figured out how to make it small enough to squeeze one into a hand watch AND make it cheap enough … you get the idea. Mechanical watches were suddenly on the path to extinction. Oh, Swiss watch makers tried and failed – for example, by copying very VERY simple Accutron (by US Bulova) – imho, a marvel of simplicity, tuning fork and one huge cogwheel driving the hands, that’s it (still not as efficient as the LCD quartz – battery runs out much sooner). But all in all, all dinosaurs sooner or later face mass extinction, they are unwieldy, too prone to black swan unexpected events, focus on their own survival way too much, etc.Point being, what benefits megalomonsters not necessarily what average Sam needs (or wants). Sooner or later there will be average Sams figuring out how to live without paying mandatory corporate taxes and providing for himself more or less well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,543.542444
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/17/the-lost-256-kb-japanese-rom-for-the-macintosh-plus-has-been-found/
|
The Lost 256 KB Japanese ROM For The Macintosh Plus Has Been Found
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Retrocomputing"
] |
[
"Kanji",
"macintosh plus",
"rom"
] |
The Apple Macintosh Plus was one of the most long-lived Apple computers and saw three revisions of its 128 kB-sized ROMs during its life time, at least officially. There’s a fourth ROM, sized 256 kB, that merges the Western ROMs with Japanese fonts. This would save a user of a Western MacIntosh Plus precious start-up time & RAM when starting software using these fonts. Unfortunately, this particular ROM existed mostly as a kind of myth,
until [Pierre Dandumont] uncovered one
(machine-translated,
French original
).
The two 128 kB EPROMs containing the special MacIntosh Plus ROM image. (Credit: Pierre Dandumont)
Since this particular ROM was rumored to exist somewhere in the Japanese market, [Pierre] went hunting for Japanese Macintosh Plus mainboards, hoping to find a board with this ROM. After finally getting lucky, the next task was to dump the two 128 kB EPROMs. An interesting sidenote here is that the MacIntosh Plus’ two ROM sockets use the typical programming voltage pin (Vpp) as an
extra address line
, enabling 256 kB of capacity across the two sockets.
This detail probably is why this special ROM wasn’t verified before, as people tried to dump them without using that extra address line, i.e. as a typical 27C512 64 kB EPROM instead of this proprietary pinout, which would have resulted in the same 64 kB dump as from a standard ROM. Thanks to [Doc TB]’s help and
his UCA device
it was possible to dump the whole image, with the images
available for download
.
Using this ROM image was the next interesting part, as [Pierre] initially didn’t have a system to test it with, and emulators assume the 128 kB ROM format. Fortunately these are all problems that can be solved, allowing the ROM images to be validated on real hardware as well as a modified MAME build. We were informed by [Pierre] that MAME releases will soon be getting support for this ROM as well.
| 15
| 8
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128962",
"author": "Josiah David Gould",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T02:52:13",
"content": "Looks like they figured out the extra address line that nobody else twigged. That’s a hack in my book.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128970",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T04:20:43",
"content": "Obscure mac hardware history blog posts 👍👍",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128971",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T04:22:16",
"content": "You can get a refund for your hackaday subscription at the front desk.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129019",
"author": "Peter Burkimsher",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T08:52:41",
"content": "The screenshot has Japanese but the chips are made in Korea?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129111",
"author": "Erik Johnson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T11:33:45",
"content": "Is your OS in English despite running on Chinese chips?",
"parent_id": "8129019",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131392",
"author": "Peter Burkimsher",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T04:20:25",
"content": "對，是",
"parent_id": "8129111",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129031",
"author": "Erik Johnson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T09:33:55",
"content": "Did the long-availabke tools to dump the ROMs from within the OS not work either?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129550",
"author": "Doug Brown",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:04:44",
"content": "The first 128 KB of the 256 KB dump is exactly identical to the already-well-known Mac Plus v2 ROM. Looking at the source code to CopyRoms, it uses the ROM checksum (stored in the first 4 bytes of ROM) to identify the ROM and decide how much to dump. So if anybody had used CopyRoms to do an in-system dump, it wouldn’t have detected the extra 128 KB of data after the normal ROM, and they would have thought they just had a normal 128 KB v2 ROM instead of a special 256 KB Kanji ROM.I think the first half being identical is why this Kanji ROM went undumped for so long. On the hardware ROM dumping side, there’s another issue: I think there is somewhat of a hole in ROM programmer support for mask ROMs that use all the address pins. For example, when I search through the XGecu software, I don’t find any 1024-kilobit devices in DIP28 form factor. There are lots of devices with 512 in their name, but nothing with 1024. So if I had these chips, I couldn’t have completely dumped them with my T56, at least I don’t think so. It’s like there needs to be an extra “dump only” mode for certain ROM pinouts that don’t have any kind of VPP/!WE pin but have an extra address line in their place instead. Maybe other ROM programmer devices already have this issue solved — I’m not sure.",
"parent_id": "8129031",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129582",
"author": "rnjacobs",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:25:19",
"content": "28-pin 128KiB (1 mebibit) mask ROMs are all over the place in NES=Famicom games … and they have an explicit JEDEC spec … but otherwise they’re pretty rare.Unlike the previous time (24-pin 8KiB mask ROM) where there was a ‘PROM that put /OE on the same pin as Vpp, no one ever seems to have made a 28-pin 128KiB PROM with the same trick. Instead, we got things like the 27C301, where the bottom 28 pins matched the 23C1024 pinout, but there were an extra 4 pins at the top just for Vpp and /WE.",
"parent_id": "8129550",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129600",
"author": "Doug Brown",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:57:54",
"content": "Thanks for the tip about how they’re common in NES games, and the pinout similarity to the 27C301. Seems like that would be a potential workaround for dumping the full contents of such a chip using a programmer like mine that doesn’t seem to support the 28-pin 128 KiB DIP mask ROM pinout. Looks like VCC would have to be routed to pin 32, but that’s doable.Yes, I was looking at the JEDEC pinout myself (figure 3.2.1-2) as I wrote my comment. I’m guessing the reason they didn’t do the same trick on the 28-pin pinout is because /OE was already gone from that pinout (A16 replaces it). 17 address pins, 8 data pins, /CE, VCC, and GND use up all 28 pins.",
"parent_id": "8129582",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130029",
"author": "rnjacobs",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T15:56:02",
"content": "I realize I wasn’t quite explicit enough: the 23C64 mask ROM has 24 pins: one 5v, one ground, eight data lines, 13 address lines, and a single output+chip enable. Motorola made two UVEPROMs (MCM68764, MCM68766) that exactly matched that pinout where the /CE pin is now also Vhh=PGM.The curious question is why did that not happen again for 28-pin UVEPROMs.",
"parent_id": "8129600",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129080",
"author": "Michael K",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T10:31:09",
"content": "“this mythical ROM existed mostly as a kind of myth”. Yes, most myths are mythical.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129186",
"author": "Glen Hoag",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T12:09:31",
"content": "The photo caption mentions EPROMs, but those are masked ROMs, not Erasable or Programmable. The program content was fixed at the time of manufacture. Once the code is finalized, it is much cheaper to manufacture thousands of copies as a ROM.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129732",
"author": "PPJ",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T23:13:34",
"content": "All it took to find this mythical chip was a bit of search on Japanese ebay? Was he that lucky or no one really looked? I am surprised that Japanese hackers were not blogging about having better Apple equipment than Americans.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129959",
"author": "luccamakesthings",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T13:04:21",
"content": "I was hoping for a weeks long deep dive of Akihabara or something.",
"parent_id": "8129732",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,543.65409
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/17/determine-fundamental-constants-with-leds-and-a-multimeter/
|
Determine Fundamental Constants With LEDs And A Multimeter
|
Tyler August
|
[
"Science"
] |
[
"education",
"experiment",
"leds",
"physics",
"planck's constant"
] |
There are (probably) less than two dozen fundemental constants that define the physics of our universe. Determining the value of them might seem like the sort of thing for large, well funded University labs, but many can be determined to reasonable accuracy on the benchtop, as [Marb’s Lab]
proves with this experiment to find the value of Planck’s Constant
.
[Marv’s Lab] setup is on a nice PCB that uses a rotary switch to select between 5 LEDs of different wavelengths, with banana plugs for the multi-meter so he can perform a linear regression on the relation between energy and frequency to find the constant. He’s also thoughtfully put connectors in place for current measurement, so the volt-current relationship of the LEDs can be characterized in a second experiment. Overall, this is a piece of kit that would not be out of place in any high school or undergraduate physics lab.
To use this to determine Planck’s constant, you need to use Planck’s relation for the energy of a photon:
g
et some energies (
E
), plug in the frequency (
f
), and bam! You can generate a value for
h
, Planck’s constant. The energies? Well, that’s a very easy measurement, but it requires some understanding of how LEDs work. [Marb] is simply measuring the voltage needed to just barely light the LED of a given frequency. For frequency, he’s relying on the LED datasheets.
That translates to the energy of the photon because it corresponds to the energy (in electron volts) required to jump electrons over the bandgap of the semiconductor in the LED — that’s how the light is generated. Those photons will have the energy of the gap, in theory.
In practice, the LEDs do not emit perfectly monochromatic light; there’s a normal distribution centered on the color they’re “supposed” to be, but it is fairly tight. That’s probably why is able to [Marv] get to within 5% of the canonical value, which is better than we’d expect.
This isn’t the first time we’ve determined plank’s constant;
it’s quite possible to get to much higher accuracy.
The last time we featured this
particular technique, the error was 11%
.
| 13
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128922",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T23:58:49",
"content": "Seems like cheap equipment can get you 95% of the way there but it’s expensive equipment that gets you the last 5%.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128972",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T04:23:18",
"content": "The last five percent doubles the difficulty, the last one percent 10x, the last 0.1% 1000x",
"parent_id": "8128922",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129628",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T16:37:53",
"content": "The old (software) joke is the first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time, and that last !0% takes the other 90%.But yeah, cheap stuff gets you mostly there, which is often good enough.",
"parent_id": "8128922",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128949",
"author": "prosper",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T01:33:11",
"content": "at 5% accuracy, pi = 3.Cool experiment, though",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128954",
"author": "jawnhenry",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T01:59:19",
"content": "“at 5% accuracy, pi = 3…”There is basic,basicphilosophical difference between physics and mathematics.Hint: ever hear of anyone winning ‘The Nobel Prize for Mathematics”?…You haven’t.You never will.",
"parent_id": "8128949",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129012",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T08:18:23",
"content": "Some are able to get a Nobel prize.Some, the Abel.",
"parent_id": "8128954",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129295",
"author": "Paladin",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T13:11:35",
"content": "The prize was irreversibly tarnished back in 2009 when it diminished the work of legitimate canidates by demeaning their work and putting a career “community organizer” on a pedestal above them. A person who has done absolutelynothingconstructive for humanity.",
"parent_id": "8129012",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128983",
"author": "elwing",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T05:40:07",
"content": "which is awesome, no more pesky decimals… I’ll go live in a 5% world I think",
"parent_id": "8128949",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128992",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T07:19:36",
"content": "No it’s not. It’s 3.14 +/- 0.16Picouldbe 3.3 just as well.",
"parent_id": "8128949",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129620",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T16:19:42",
"content": "that’s cool though… like wrapping some string around a cylinder and then measuring it with my hands, i’d be pleased if i got 3 as the answer. when you’re doing measurements with tools that are primitive relative to the task, 5% isn’t bad. a first stab at it.",
"parent_id": "8128949",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129199",
"author": "rnjacobs",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T12:33:55",
"content": "I remember blowing someone’s mind pointing this out two decades ago. That was fun. (“this” = That the energy of a photon matches fairly nicely to the voltage needed to drive an LED for that wavelength of light.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129523",
"author": "Tim",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T13:56:09",
"content": "That’s pretty neat. Question though, is the value of h used anywhere by the multimeter or datasheet? I just want to be sure we’re not using h to calculate h.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129622",
"author": "karl303Karl303",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T16:22:26",
"content": "It probably depends how the manufacturer of the LED determines the wavelength to advertise. If they’re re-arranging the formula to f = E/h and then doing the same experiment, then we’re really just comparing multi-meters.",
"parent_id": "8129523",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,543.596181
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/17/this-extra-large-two-stage-fume-extractor-really-sucks/
|
This Extra-Large, Two-Stage Fume Extractor Really Sucks
|
Tyler August
|
[
"hardware",
"Tool Hacks"
] |
[
"3d print",
"3d printed tool",
"activated carbon",
"fume extractor",
"lm2576",
"power tool battery"
] |
Solder fumes are not nice on the lungs; nor are fumes from superglue, epoxy, or a whole mess of other things we often find ourselves using on the bench. Some people might be able to go the fume hood route to toss that all outside, but for the rest of us, there’s fume extractors. [Raph] has
produced an extra-large, carbon-filtering, two-stage fume extractor
that by all accounts really sucks — it is effective at hoovering up solder fumes up to 10″ from its inlet.
Note the 18V tool battery in the base. That’ll go for a bit.
Even better, [Raph] built a battery box for an 18 V cordless tool battery, and broke out banana plugs so this doubles as a variable power supply via a cheap LM2596 based DC-DC converter. It also serves as a speed controller for the fans, which makes us wonder if you can adjust the PSU output and the fan speed independently…
Maximum suckage is achieved through careful baffle design. Check out the blog to see the trial-and-error process at work. Of course, having a 200 mm axial fan and 140 mm blower fan front and rear is going to move some air no matter what. Which is required to get air flow through the 38 mm thick activated carbon filter that should scrub all nasties quite nicely. We aren’t filtration experts but we can agree with [Raph]’s estimate that it will last “a while”.
If you want to roll your own, all of the
STEP files are on GitHub
, and [Raph]’s blog has
an excellent step-by-step build guide.
We’ve seen other hacks from [Raph] before, from
his dovetailed modular breadboard
to the
machine that shaped his bed
and automation
for his camper van
.
| 9
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128889",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T20:34:16",
"content": "These are great projects, and I’m glad to see that people are taking their health and safety seriously. The cowboy mentality seems a lot less cool when you’re older and realize how much garbage you’ve inhaled.It’s good to keep in mind that even when a carbon filter is just sitting there, it’s still adsorbing moisture and VOCs from the room, and they can get saturated in a matter of days to a few weeks, so before long, those epoxy fumes you can’t smell smell but that are still there and awful will end up going right through it. I’d love to see a metal framed filter that can go into a furnace to drive off all the garbage and “recharge”.Even with all this being said, just a fan to draw the flux smoke away from your face will improve your quality of life significantly. Keep up the great work.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129021",
"author": "D",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T09:01:04",
"content": "IIRC, a lot of compounds can be driven off at 65C with forced air. I wonder if hot nichrome decomposes the toxins fully or just makes them worse?",
"parent_id": "8128889",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128898",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T21:20:55",
"content": "Epoxy barely smells but fumes meaning visible stuff I’ve never seen come off of it.I just blow it away with each joint done when I am in a space with good ventilation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128899",
"author": "Jan Prägert",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T21:24:35",
"content": "“It’s definitely sucking!”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128926",
"author": "Happy Dad",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T00:15:06",
"content": "hoorray, a blog post and not a sponsored by nordvpn/squarespace/shittyapps video.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129022",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T09:01:21",
"content": "Nice! Good to use those battery packs. I’ve got an Ikea air filter I use for soldering but it’s tethered to a mains plug – though that’s not an issue for me as I always solder in the same place. It also sucks well, pulling fumes from about a foot.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129574",
"author": "DougM",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:22:14",
"content": "is. . . is that a product placement in the picture? What are we becoming?Also, just for reference, I found that if you build a really loud fume extractor you won’t use it. Or at least I won’t. I originally built mine with AC fans for max air movement but then I rebuilt it with PC fans and now I use it a lot more.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129674",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T19:02:41",
"content": "If Cliff is doing product placements with electronics bloggers, it’s news to me. Raph may comment but I’d bet good money that’s a good old fashioned bucket o’ bolts. Doesn’t everyone have a repurposed food container or three full of random nuts, bolts, washers, and/or screws?",
"parent_id": "8129574",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129682",
"author": "Raph",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T19:32:19",
"content": "Ha ha, spot on, this is my electronic-project-trash desk bucket.These Clif plastic containers were phased out years ago. Good luck trying to find one.Oh no, there goes my sponsorship… :-)",
"parent_id": "8129674",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,543.701816
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/16/a-portable-m4-mac-mini/
|
A Portable M4 Mac Mini
|
Navarre Bartz
|
[
"Mac Hacks"
] |
[
"luggable computer",
"mac mini",
"macintosh",
"macintosh mini",
"portable computer"
] |
The Mac mini is the closest to an Apple-based SBC you can get, so it lends itself to unusual portable computers. [Scott Yu-Jan] is back to tackle a portable build using the latest and greatest
M4 mini
.
[Yu-Jan] walks us through his thought process of how to maximize the portability of the system without all that tedious mucking about with setting up a separate keyboard, monitor, and the mini while on the go. With the more complicated electronics, the monitor risked tipping the keyboard over when attached, particularly since [Yu-Jan] isn’t a fan of batteries for his portables.
By affixing the Mac mini to the side of the keyboard, it makes the whole thing easier to slip into a bag without being overly thick. We get a peek into his iterative process as well when he evaluates the build and decides that the closing of the lid wasn’t what he was hoping for. By adding some TPU rests for the monitor to rest on in the closed position, he says it’s really brought the whole project up a notch. We certainly have had our own projects where one little detail really moves it from sketchy to polished, and we appreciate when makers clue us in on where that happened for them.
You may recognize [Yu-Jan] from our previous coverage of his older
portable all-in-one Mac mini
and this luggable version where he explains
why he doesn’t like laptops
. If you like your computers more stationary, how about some
G4 iMacs
with the newer internals from an
M-series mini
?
| 29
| 13
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128571",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T20:49:17",
"content": "Would have put the Mac mini on the left so that there is room for the mouse on the right.But, let’s not let practicality get in the way of advertising today’s sponsor.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128623",
"author": "RJ",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T00:10:19",
"content": "Functional right…!!!!I’m with ya!",
"parent_id": "8128571",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128722",
"author": "slowbro904",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T10:00:59",
"content": "He explained in the YTube comments that it had to go on the right to make the connectors come out correctly.",
"parent_id": "8128623",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128834",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T17:03:08",
"content": "He said it complicated cable routing. Basically, he didn’t want to solve that problem, but it doesn’t mean you can’t.",
"parent_id": "8128722",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128985",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T05:49:59",
"content": "Did Jony Ive ever say “it’s too complicated, I don’t want to solve that problem”? No.Kids today. No stamina.",
"parent_id": "8128834",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128660",
"author": "OG",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T03:05:03",
"content": "And by the time you factor a mouse in, you’re still carrying a bunch of fussy junk around… and still don’t have a power source. You might as well just get a MacBook Pro or even an Air and call it a day.",
"parent_id": "8128571",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128679",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T05:22:17",
"content": "Yes, but, Bambu Labs!These printers must be useful forsomething.",
"parent_id": "8128660",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129918",
"author": "TDT",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T11:47:16",
"content": "You know what?Indeed the “today’s sponsor” take a huge space in this video.But the cinematic filming and very nice design makes it more than bearable.The sell speech is at the end, so, yeah, I don’t care really.But everyone’s different I guess = )",
"parent_id": "8128571",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128573",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T20:51:18",
"content": "Now THAT’s a cyberdeck. Completely impractical (yeah, outlets are everywhere, just where you need them), but super-cool. I’m thinking I’d rather have the computer on the left though, so I can mouse without having to reach across it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128585",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T21:30:40",
"content": "Is there an echo in here?",
"parent_id": "8128573",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128669",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T04:22:30",
"content": "It’s a time travel echo that probably started typing before the “original” comment appeared…",
"parent_id": "8128585",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8130126",
"author": "Klh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T20:30:43",
"content": "To be fair, a USB-C powerbank is much easier to manage if you only need battery power occasionally.I don’t understand why the Mac still has the case though.",
"parent_id": "8128573",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128625",
"author": "Brutek",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T00:21:26",
"content": "why not just get a MacBook?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128647",
"author": "Cc0919",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T02:23:58",
"content": "…are you seriously asking this? On hackaday, of all places?",
"parent_id": "8128625",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128832",
"author": "Dr",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T16:54:22",
"content": "Seriously what kind of question is this on this platform.",
"parent_id": "8128625",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128988",
"author": "Avaviel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T06:18:51",
"content": "Please compare the price of a good MacBook Air to a Mac mini. Also, note, that with the M4 mini you can UPGRADE THE STORAGE. You can’t do this in the MacBook.",
"parent_id": "8128625",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129063",
"author": "Sakku",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T10:06:29",
"content": "Buying all the peripherals for a Mac Mini is basically the equivalent of a MacBook, this is such a stupid solution cuz it saves you nothing :/Also you forget that the MacBook airs screen looks better than whatever crappy 1080p monitor most people get for these dumb projects. And you can’t upgrade the storage in the Mac Mini, only thing you can do is external storage",
"parent_id": "8128988",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129066",
"author": "Sakku",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T10:10:50",
"content": "Cuz these people ate stupid that’s why. They don’t recognize that the Mac mini comes with NOTHING but a power cable, and you have to buy all the other peripherals separateEven if you already have something, it’s still something you bought in the past. They don’t realize a MacBook air would be better in general, especially because the MacBooks have better energy efficiency profiles to preserve battery life when the chip isn’t doing anything intensive, or when not in use",
"parent_id": "8128625",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130130",
"author": "Klh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T20:35:20",
"content": "Sounds like you have more brand loyalty than knowledge about how computers work.If people were trying to maximize value they wouldn’t be buying Apple stuff anyway.",
"parent_id": "8129066",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128631",
"author": "fluffy",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T00:51:37",
"content": "That’s cute and the particular screen in use reminds me a lot of the old Sony Picturebook C1VN and other ultrawide subnotebooks of the era.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128645",
"author": "MrChristian",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T01:59:11",
"content": "Man 3D Prints Keyboard/Monitor case; Brings Mac Mini places",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128731",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T10:18:04",
"content": "I like this, and wanna try it. Loved my mac book till i broke the touch bar which later leaked lcd stuff into the rest of the device to breakit.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128781",
"author": "rfryghh",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T11:58:59",
"content": "nice, I need this with linux and power mobility",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128860",
"author": "Leon",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T19:18:40",
"content": "This is really cool. I’d either do what another comment suggests and put the Mac on the left side. Or affix a track pad on top of the Mac mini. Not super ergonomic with how high you’d have to reach, but not bad.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128920",
"author": "005AGIMA",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T23:48:42",
"content": "But…. Just buy a MacBook?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128981",
"author": "thoersi",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T05:28:12",
"content": "OMG.. i wanna go back to 1984, it’s beautiful",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129059",
"author": "Sakku",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T10:03:16",
"content": "This makes no sense, becuase the costs of all of this basically is the equivalent to a MacBook Air, except less portable and you’ll need a 2000 3D printerLike if I did this, even just using the mouse and keyboard I already have, that’s still 160 CAD for this Cherry MX keyboard and high quality mouse. And most of these just buy some crappy 1080p monitor, and don’t even buy a battery to power this thing, just sit down tethered to a wall outlet. Compared to a M4 MacBook which lasts a long ass time on battery because it has better efficiency profiling :/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129652",
"author": "Day Aex",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T18:04:34",
"content": "Use an iPad w/keyboard case as a wireless or wired screen and input.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130041",
"author": "Jose Vizcaino",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T16:35:42",
"content": "What a great video you crushed it ! ! ! Keep the video coming your a genius !",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,543.767158
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/16/the-screamer-is-just-like-the-clapper-but-even-more-annoying/
|
The Screamer Is Just Like The Clapper But Even More Annoying
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"classic hacks",
"home hacks"
] |
[
"clapper",
"ESP32",
"ESP8266",
"scream detection",
"The Clapper"
] |
Remember The Clapper? It was a home automation tool (of sorts) that let you turn appliances on and off by clapping. [Kevin O’Connor] has built something rather similar, if more terrifying. It’s called
The Screamer.
The build is based around a Sonoff S31 smart switch. [Kevin] selected an off-the-shelf device because he wanted something that was safe to use with mains power out of the box. But specifically, he selected the S31 because it has an ESP8266 inside that’s easy to reprogram with the aid of ESPHome. He ended up hooking up a whole extra ESP32 with an INMP441 microphone over I2S to do the scream detection. This was achieved with a simple algorithm that looked for high amplitude noises with lots of energy in the 1000 – 4000 Hz frequency range. When a scream is detected, it flips a GPIO pin which is detected by the S31, which then toggles the state of the smart switch in turn. Job done.
It’s a simple project that does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s The Screamer! If you’d like to learn more about the original Clapper that inspired this build,
we’ve looked at that before, too.
Meanwhile, if you’re cooking up your own excuses to scream at the lights and walls in your home, please only
notify the tipsline
if it has something vaguely to do with electronics or hackery.
| 11
| 9
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128554",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T19:45:09",
"content": "Lewin’s next trick is to wire up The Screamer so it submits his next hack to HaD when he screams.Well, maybe not, but here’s hoping.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128560",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T20:04:27",
"content": "I wanted a screamer for Christmas, but all I got was a sweater.I’ll see myself out.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128639",
"author": "Wade Olson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T01:35:23",
"content": "When I first read this, I thought you said “swearer” instead of “sweater” 🤭",
"parent_id": "8128560",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128690",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T06:17:59",
"content": "I think I’d quite like that one. Being able to turn the lights on by uttering an expletive sounds amusing. When you stub your toe in the dark or your alarm goes off for work, the natural urge to swear is what triggers the lights.",
"parent_id": "8128639",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128578",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T21:12:31",
"content": "I don’t know how but I think this would have some use with babies.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128609",
"author": "Steven-X",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T23:15:52",
"content": "Combine it with a security system that plays a voice field “Automatic Defense Systems are now active”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128775",
"author": "solipso",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T11:45:15",
"content": "With ESP32 you can even do inference to distinguish between your wife yelling at you or yelling out of pleasure, if you know what I mean. Then show the score on an e-paper display.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129064",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T10:07:09",
"content": "Going by horror movies this would indeed be a good security device.I am still wondering if anybody ever screams in such a horror-movie manner when in actual panic/shock/distress.Incidentally a clapper isn’t annoying is it? I mean people were suppose to use those when they live alone surely. Might annoy any pet present though.(seeing this is HaD: ‘pet’ is not referring to the ancient computer in this case.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129649",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T17:52:36",
"content": "When the lights start flashing, don’t ask questions.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129759",
"author": "GameboyRMH",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T03:13:15",
"content": "I’ve often thought that something like this would useful as an industrial emergency stop device.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129972",
"author": "Sean",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T13:48:58",
"content": "My younger brother used to be able to scream an unmodified Clapper on and off when he was about 5 years old I think. He must have hit the same tuned frequency used for clapping. Cool party trick that, being able to scream so loud that the Christmas lights turned off.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,543.920914
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/16/chatgpt-me-chatgpt-is-me/
|
ChatGPT & Me. ChatGPTIsMe!
|
Jenny List
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] |
[
"artificial intelligence",
"ChatGPT"
] |
For a while now part of my email signature has been a quote from a Hackaday commenter insinuating that an article I wrote was created by a “Dumb AI”. You have my sincerest promise that I am a humble meatbag scribe just like the rest of you, indeed one currently nursing a sore shoulder due to a sporting injury, so I found the comment funny in a way its writer probably didn’t intend. Like many in tech, I maintain a skepticism about the future role of large-language-model generative AI, and have resisted the urge to drink the Kool-Aid you will see liberally flowing at the moment.
Hackaday Is Part Of The Machine
As you’ll no doubt be aware, these large language models work by gathering a vast corpus of text, and doing their computational tricks to generate their output by inferring from that data. They can thus create an artwork in the style of a painter who receives no reward for the image, or a book in the voice of an author who may be struggling to make ends meet. From the viewpoint of content creators and intellectual property owners, it’s theft on a grand scale, and you’ll find plenty of legal battles seeking to establish the boundaries of the field.
Anyway, once an LLM has enough text from a particular source, it can do a pretty good job of writing in that style. ChatGPT for example has doubtless crawled the whole of Hackaday, and since I’ve written thousands of articles in my nearly a decade here, it’s got a significant corpus of my work. Could it write in my style? As it turns out, yes it can, but not
exactly
. I set out to test its forging skill.
In Which I Meet My Digital Impostor
A couple of weeks ago
I covered the news of the impending re-entry of a failed Soviet Venus mission
stuck in orbit since 1972. It’s a fascinating story because the craft may survive the experience, and it’s possible that by the time you read this it might have been retrieved. I asked ChatGPT to provide me with a 200 word article on the story “in the voice of the Hackaday writer Jenny List”. Here’s what it came up with:
In the early days of the Space Race, the Soviet Union launched a bold bid to reach Venus: the Venera missions. Among them was Kosmos 482, a 1972 mission that never made it past Earth’s gravity. Now, over five decades later, its descent craft is finally coming home—with a bang.
Kosmos 482 was intended to deliver a lander to Venus, but due to a malfunction in its upper stage, it was stranded in a highly elliptical orbit around Earth. Encased in a semi-spherical titanium shell, the descent craft—designed to survive the brutal atmosphere of Venus—has been orbiting quietly, steadily losing altitude. By early May 2025, that orbit had decayed to a precarious 232 x 136 km, setting the stage for an uncontrolled reentry around May 10th.
Unlike typical space debris, Kosmos 482’s reentry carries a bit more drama. Built to endure Venus’s hellish surface, the lander is expected to survive Earth’s atmospheric plunge mostly intact. Impact predictions estimate it will hit the ground at about 65-70 m/s, roughly the speed of a meteorite, packing the punch of a 500 kg hunk of Soviet engineering.
With an orbital inclination of 51.95 degrees, it could come down anywhere between 52°N and 52°S, adding an element of unpredictability. One thing is certain: after 53 years in limbo, Kosmos 482 is finally coming back to Earth—whether we’re ready or not.
Reading it is a fascinating experience, because superficially it feels like a Hackaday piece. It has my vague style with some phrases such as “
packing the punch of a 500 kg hunk of Soviet engineering
“. It’s casual in its language, and it’s captured my wordiness; in contrast to the more terse style it does when for example I ask it to do the same thing in the voice of my colleague Al Williams. It fails though in several senses, I feel it doesn’t capture my sentence style and the very British way I use punctuation, it relies on far more figures than I would put in a piece, and perhaps most importantly it has no inference. It relies only on the facts it can find, indeed those figures are a sign of it overusing them, and it doesn’t go further in commenting on any likely outcomes. In my human-written version of the same piece I finished up by speculating on who would own it if retrieved, and anything of that nature is absent in its output.
Don’t Worry, Humans Still Needed
So it’s clear from the above that while it can write something which is superficially coverage of the same story in my voice when writing a Hackaday piece, it still fails at the task in hand. Where we would try to give a little introduction, background and comment to the story, it instead presents only a summary of facts it has found. The fact that it can’t infer beyond the story is reassuring, because it means we meat-based Hackaday scribes still have the edge. There are many people who will tell you to look for certain words as clues to AI-written text, but the truth is much simpler. Look for the human touch.
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|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128491",
"author": "Ali",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T17:12:14",
"content": "What’s with the “/s”? Is this reddit already?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128493",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T17:19:47",
"content": "It is the font throwing you off. They italicized the word “is” to add emphasis which makes it look like a “/s”.",
"parent_id": "8128491",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128494",
"author": "Crash",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T17:23:41",
"content": "In the title? That’s “is”, but the italics and all-caps font make it look like a /s.",
"parent_id": "8128491",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128495",
"author": "Sazoji",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T17:23:51",
"content": "that’s known asmarkdown italics, the only instance of /s is in m/s",
"parent_id": "8128491",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128943",
"author": "Cad the Mad",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T01:12:57",
"content": "That’s called “italics”. It has been in use since the 1500s and has nothing to do with Reddit.",
"parent_id": "8128491",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129071",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T10:16:23",
"content": "The use of /s pre-dates reddit quite a bit you know.And since I am on a subject: gg meant ‘good going’ and then became ‘good game’, likely because gamers were ignorant of that meaning. Similar in how facebook moms take lol to be lots-of-love rather than laughing-out-loud.",
"parent_id": "8128491",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128492",
"author": "Adrian (with a little help from Copilot)",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T17:16:20",
"content": "But how does the process work?It began, as these things often do, with a prompt. A user asked ChatGPT to write an article in Jenny’s voice. The AI, ever obliging, paused—ethics, impersonation, yada yada—and then pivoted. Instead of pretending to be Jenny, it wrote about how it might write like Jenny. Meta enough for you?🛠️ Reverse-Engineering a Writing StyleTo emulate Jenny’s tone, ChatGPT had to do what any good hacker would: take it apart and see what makes it tick.Curiosity-Driven Hooks: Jenny doesn’t just report on projects—she wonders about them. So the AI starts with a question or a quirk. Something like:“It’s not every day you see a Raspberry Pi driving a CRT from the Cold War, but here we are.”Technical but Not Arrogant: She explains things without condescension. ChatGPT mimics this by threading just enough detail to keep the engineers nodding, without losing the tinkerers.Historical Context: Jenny loves a good backstory. So the AI digs into the archives, pulling out references to 8-bit CPUs, obscure standards, or the golden age of RS-232.Celebrating the Hack: Whether it’s a kludged-together keyboard interface or a 3D-printed gear that almost meshes, Jenny’s writing always honors the spirit of the build. ChatGPT tries to do the same.🧪 The Test ArticleThe AI then generated a sample article about a Raspberry Pi-powered retro terminal. It had all the hallmarks: a CRT rescued from a skip, a Pi Zero 2 W jammed inside, and a keyboard matrix reverse-engineered with a logic analyzer. It even included a line about “a wiring diagram that looks like spaghetti and functions like art.” Jenny might not have written it—but she might’ve smiled reading it.🧬 Why This MattersThis isn’t just about style. It’s about how we preserve and celebrate the hacker ethos in a world increasingly run by black-box systems. Jenny’s writing reminds us that understanding matters, that curiosity is a virtue, and that sometimes the best projects are the ones held together with zip ties and hope.If an AI can learn to echo that spirit—even imperfectly—it’s a sign that the culture of hacking is alive, well, and maybe even a little contagious.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128567",
"author": "Snarkenstein",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T20:25:35",
"content": "Except, that’s not what the AS (Artificial Stupid) did.It slurped up a lot of statistics on Jenny’s articles, munged them with articles on the satellite, and spit out a string of words mapped by how probably they fit the input prompt.Ta-da!",
"parent_id": "8128492",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128588",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T21:31:15",
"content": "Am I the only one that thinks that original comment was AI?",
"parent_id": "8128567",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128656",
"author": "Nathan",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T02:40:16",
"content": "NopeNo way it wasn’t, unless someone is trying very hard to write like chargptThe emogis at the start of a list of mini sentence paragraphs seems to be somewhat of a pattern when you ask chatgpt to explain something like that.",
"parent_id": "8128588",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128793",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T13:19:45",
"content": "It literally says “with help from CoPilot” in the name.Are you guys just AI impersonating anti-AI commenters?Though I’d think the AI would take into account the name if set up properly.",
"parent_id": "8128656",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129749",
"author": "Michael H",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T01:41:33",
"content": "Is that really what an LLM did to respond to the prompt, or is that just a guess? Does the ability to write in somebodies style in response to a prompt like this just fall out from building an LLM? Is that something that is hacked in later?If many people in the training set said they were writing in the style of this particular hackaday author, I might see how an LLM might learn to follow a prompt of write in this style. That doesn’t seem likely though.If this is an emergent property, why do certain things (like the ability to copy a writing style based on pretty arbitrary descriptors expressed in English, or ability to create shortened version) emerge, and others don’t.If it is a hack – how do we find what the hacked in commands/parameters are? (Presumably one could map this by asking for a style in different ways, see which ones elicit hacked vs. natural behavior.)I am genuinely curious about this.",
"parent_id": "8128567",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128500",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T17:37:31",
"content": "” perhaps most importantly it has no inference”It’s perfectly capable of inferring things. It can be difficult to get it to express what you want, particularly if you’re vague in your ask. You went looking for things you didn’t ask of it however.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128528",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T18:31:27",
"content": "It is fundamentally incapable of inference, because it does not analyze the data it has – it merely combines it according to probability.Any inference that ChatGPT makes has to already exist in some form in its training set. In other words, enough people have had to have said the same thing, made the same inference in different ways, so it would have a fighting chance of appearing in the output.",
"parent_id": "8128500",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128545",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T19:31:53",
"content": "I’m entirely sure you could spend a lifetime playing with it and never get decent results.That is not universal.",
"parent_id": "8128528",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128662",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T03:07:54",
"content": "Nobody said it was, the point is that it does not, can not, infer in the first place. That it is difficult to direct is an incidental effect of statistical starvation in the high dimensional edges that make up the statistical aggregate all input is filtered through.",
"parent_id": "8128545",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128944",
"author": "Cad the Mad",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T01:17:47",
"content": "That hasn’t been true of current AI models for over a year. It isn’t 2020 anymore and modern agentic AI is quite good at pulling together new information from current sources and making inferences.I recommend doing a bit of research for yourself instead of spouting YouTube summaries with no comprehension of your own. You can build your own RAG in a day starting from scratch, if you already know how to program. I did about a year ago, and since then it has grown into a self-hosted AI assistant that helps manage my personal knowledgebase and assists with my project management and debugging. I’m currently working on a robot that it can control and use to explore the house independently.",
"parent_id": "8128528",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131591",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T17:57:55",
"content": "modern agentic AI is quite good at pulling together new information from current sources and making inferences.Except that isn’t modern. It’s a return to older inference engines duct-taped on top of ChatGPT and the like. The trick is that you write special exceptions to catch questions that require inference, and then you apply an old style expert systems to the problem.",
"parent_id": "8128944",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131597",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:06:14",
"content": "Also, RAG doesn’t enable an LLM to do inference. The LLM in principle does NOT infer. It does not care about logic or arguments, epistemology or the like. It merely gives you a kind of weighted average of whatever data it has incorporated. RAG is like online re-training of the LLM rather than giving it the ability to think.RAG gives more relevant answers by emphasizing new information, but that’s it.",
"parent_id": "8128944",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128530",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T18:38:13",
"content": "Of course ChatGPT can generate a sentence that nobody has ever said before – that’s easy – and therefore it can theoretically produce a sentence of inference that is produced by ChatGPT itself.But, that’s not because it took in knowledge and made conclusions out of it, but because of random dumb luck in combining words. That’s infinite monkeys banging on typewriters kind of stuff.",
"parent_id": "8128500",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128518",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T18:01:00",
"content": "As it turns out, yes it can, but not exactlyThe reason is that the LLM has to mix sources. It cannot exactly pull only the style from one example and only the contents from another, because it’s based on summing markov chains. It’s all just data to the model, it doesn’t actually know the difference between content and style, so it ends up mixing both. LLMs and other generative AI tend to “regress towards the mean” in this manner – the result tends to resemble the average of the training set, or the subsets that were selected by the prompt.So if you ask it to write a piece of text in person A’s voice, but replace the contents with something that person B said, the resulting style will be something in between – unless it can find pieces of text where A said the same thing as B, in which case it can emphasize A’s style instead of B. For other parts, it will lean towards how B said it.Since the LLM isn’t pulling data exclusively from something that Jenny wrote, but it includes various other pieces of text as well that relate to the matter, or which happen to be included by accident, the sum probability that it follows is never quite like the original. It’s like Jenny, butmore average.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128523",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T18:10:55",
"content": "Or, if you ask ChatGPT to reproduce anyone’s style, it’s probably going to include 1 ppm of Tim Curry in it.",
"parent_id": "8128518",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128553",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T19:40:54",
"content": "For some of us, 1 PPM of Tim Curry might be an improvement.Not Jenny, though.",
"parent_id": "8128523",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128521",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T18:07:35",
"content": "Jenny is whistling past the graveyard here. ChatGPT didn’t speculate on who would own the fallen satellite because she didn’t ask it to. It would be perfectly capable of doing so. I use ChatGPT quite a lot … it has LOTS of flaws and is often just plain wrong. But it keeps getting better and better, and if I ask it to generate a Hackaday article on a random technical subject based upon something it found elsewhere (which is EXACTLY what HaD authors do) it is going to do a pretty good job of it.I recently asked ChatGPT if it thought AI would become sentient with time and scale. It replied that sentience doesn’t even have an agreed definition yet, and that there is currently no proof that scale alone would get the job done. It even suggested that it’s possible true sentience requires some sort of biological element that hardware will never replicate (how’s that for speculation, Jenny?). The most interesting part of ChatGPT’s reply to me, though, was when it said that while AI might never become sentient, it might be the case that AI gets to the point where humans can’t tell the difference.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128522",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T18:10:04",
"content": "For example:https://chatgpt.com/share/68277e9c-2c24-8001-873b-aa8c9203ec02",
"parent_id": "8128521",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128551",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T19:40:23",
"content": "Except we link to real projects, and that whole thing is a confabulation. Hornswoggle. Hogwash. Balderdash. BS. It only makes sense on the bare surface level.Could an LLM be constantly re-trained to get you snapshots of the real web? Could you prompt it to give you real material with actual links only? Probably! I don’t know that it would be cost-effective compared to us.Say it was, though. Once all the copywriters are replaced with LLMs training on material produced by LLMs, what are you going to get? GIGO and Dead Internet Theory would combine to make some very bizzare output, I’m sure.",
"parent_id": "8128522",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128627",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T00:36:02",
"content": "You don’t get it. LLM (likely) won’t replace true content generation … but it will for sure replace rehashed journalism like HaD and similar sites that are basically aggregators and not generators.",
"parent_id": "8128551",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128632",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T00:52:16",
"content": "What don’t I get? Truly original content is pretty rare. Most things on the internet are derivative and rehashed; arguably Hackaday puts more effort in than a lot of sites. Certainly the ratio of rehash:OC is more than enough to poison the well for LLM training if the traning algorithms continue to pull from the whole ‘net. If LLM makes “rehashed journalism” faster and easier, it’s only going to proliferate, too, making the GIGO problem worse.Plus, people already are trying to use LLMs to replace content generation; its a real problem on sites like Royal Road. We’ve covered plenty of vibe-coded projects, and I’m sure I saw a tool for LLM-generated documentation. All that becomes grist for the mill, too, as the web gets fed back in as training data. GIGO.Not today, not tomorrow, but maybe someday.",
"parent_id": "8128627",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128525",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T18:13:50",
"content": "ChatGPT didn’t speculate on who would own the fallen satellite because she didn’t ask it to. It would be perfectly capable of doing so.The task was to generate an article in their style, and that would include such speculations if ChatGPT had actually picked up how Jenny tends to write articles. Style extends to the choice of contents.",
"parent_id": "8128521",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128526",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T18:15:32",
"content": "But it keeps getting better and betterThe irony is, the way it gets better is by people writing code to catch and handle exceptions and special cases, making it a form ofhumanintelligence, otherwise known as a Mechanical Turk.",
"parent_id": "8128521",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128595",
"author": "Giake",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T21:50:16",
"content": "The irony, to me personally, is that AI creations have become prevalent enough to establish an expectation. Its basis in statistical probability is then ingested by the masses who go on to create content based on the content that is based on our content. Unsurprisingly, like you said, this tool is limited by its creators and merely perpetuates the humanity designing (and ingesting) it.",
"parent_id": "8128526",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128663",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T03:12:20",
"content": "The masses were already making that content, the machine is only copying itself more and more as ads and individuals pump out millions of creditless derivatives. It doesn’t inspire people to create.",
"parent_id": "8128595",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129086",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T10:58:36",
"content": "I think that in the world of LLM AI they are aware that with simple LLM’s with which they started you run into a dead-end and that they are moving beyond that simple system of LLM’s to try to get to real AI.Although I don’t think they’ll get to conscious ones before getting over certain hurdles we put up in ourselves. It depends on some random person with just the right gift and insight to figure it out I expect, more so than any mere money and time and political hysteria spent on it.I saw in the news that researchers discovered that AI code often has dependencies that are made-up and do not exist. And in the comments people reiterated that LLM are ‘just statistics’ and got lots of upvotes, ignoring the simple logic that statistics clash with the concept of frequent made-up non-existent dependencies.I mean were would it get that from? What kind of statistical analysis of code would end up with tons of non-existent dependencies? (unless the training data was deliberately extensively poisoned I suppose.)",
"parent_id": "8128595",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8129698",
"author": "Michael H",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T20:37:22",
"content": "Saying that these dependencies are non-existent and that a LLM generator would recognize them seems like attributing understanding, meaning or intent. LLM just generates code. Code has dependencies. So LLM generated code should have dependencies. Whether they match with anything in some other reality — somebody else’s problem.You notice a pattern of dependencies not existing based on outside knowledge. Where is the evidence that LLMs deal in meaning?",
"parent_id": "8129086",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129700",
"author": "Michael H",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T20:43:20",
"content": "Saying that these dependencies are non-existent and that a LLM generator would recognize them seems like attributing understanding, meaning or intent. LLM just generates code. Code has dependencies. So LLM generated code should have dependencies. Whether they match with anything in some other reality — somebody else’s problem.You notice a pattern of dependencies not existing based on outside knowledge. Where is the evidence that LLMs deal in meaning?There seems to be an ongoing problem with LLMs generating technical documents (legal briefs, for instance) with non-existent citations. Regular old imperative programming could produce a citation checker. They could at least make it come up with a citation to something that exists (even if it doesn’t say what the AI bullshitter says it does.)",
"parent_id": "8129086",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130128",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T20:34:29",
"content": "@Michael H I see what you are trying to say but it’s not about it using dependencies, it’s about it using non-existing ones and then suggesting that’s statistical.And does it write code with non-existing commands? I don’t think it does.I’m not saying it’s aware or anything, I’m just saying it’s not as simple as mere statistics because if it used statistics it would insert popular existing dependencies (probably even when not used in the code) instead of non-existing ones.I simply can’t link non-existing ones as being a natural result of pure statistics, I would think there are more complex modifiers at work that lead to that error. And as I suggested, if it were the result of statistics it would also insert non-existing commands don’t you think?I mean if you imagined you look at code without understanding it but just looked at the patterns then the constraints of the langue of code would make that rather predictable and enable you to learn patterns, much easier than natural language, but you would also stay within the constraints when trying to then create it. In fact that is how humans basically do it right? You look at existing code, you learn the constraints and tricks to reach certain results, then start to apply it.And I also think the issue is that there are a few popular youtubes that explain LLM’s to us laymen, and we should not assume that those videos are either the final word AND are not a simplification.And you can check that by browsing some articles on the matter, yes it started to take off on that (reverse-) statistical premise, but it’s being further developed – and not just fed more data.",
"parent_id": "8129086",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130212",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T00:26:14",
"content": "Thinking about it, maybe I was wrongIf the AI observed the concept of external libraries but does, by its nature, not understand that those libraries don’t come out of thin air, it might just ‘wish’ them into existence.Say you need to translate regional number separators to a universal format, you assume somebody already did the legwork and so you find the work done already and incorporate it. But an AI might stupidly assume it without checking and just imagine how it would be if it existed and implement it, even if it does not exist.You would get total nonsense code linking to hallucinated stuff.I came to this thought when I realize that I had times that I was so convinced something must have been done already and not finding it and being astounded. Of course in my case I often just take it’s my (or the search systems’s) failure to find it rather than it not existing.",
"parent_id": "8129086",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131602",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:21:06",
"content": "ignoring the simple logic that statistics clash with the concept of frequent made-up non-existent dependencies. I mean were would it get that from? What kind of statistical analysis of code would end up with tons of non-existent dependencies?You have to understand that the LLM does not operate on the level of individual words or phrases, or paragraphs of text, but more like predicting which syllables or characters follow one another in a given context. It can generate totally random gibberish, so it can just randomly generate a name of a library that simply does not exist, and then build up on predicting further outputs on the basis of that name as it iterates the answer forwards.It’s basically a game of broken telephone, where errors accumulate on errors.",
"parent_id": "8129086",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8131609",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:29:10",
"content": "If the AI observed the concept of external libraries but does, by its nature, not understand that those libraries don’t come out of thin air, it might just ‘wish’ them into existence.It does not do even that. It observes that in the beginning of code, there is usually a piece of text that goes “include” etc. and then depending on the context there is usually some other piece of text like “stdio.h”. It does not have any concept of libraries – only of strings of characters.So it can generate the names of non-existing libraries by combining stuff that commonly occurs in that part of the code in other examples, with text coming from the prompt, with text coming from whatever other source is accidentally included. It just mashes everything together and tries to figure out the most likely outcome.",
"parent_id": "8129086",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128527",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T18:19:27",
"content": "It even suggested that it’s possible true sentience requires some sort of biological element that hardware will never replicate (how’s that for speculation, Jenny?).That’s just short of quoting John Searle. ChatGPT doesn’t pull the stuff it says out of thin air, or make any sort of inferences or guesses based on data. If it says something might be this or that, it is saying so because a lot of people have said the same thing.",
"parent_id": "8128521",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128559",
"author": "przemek",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T20:00:20",
"content": "I think I understand your meaning, but it is not true that LLMs only regurgitate complete fragments that existed in the training input. You should do a machine learning exercise from the net where you set up handwriting digits recognizer by training a NN on MNIST. It’s substantially the same process as LLMs, and it helps to understand how all this works.",
"parent_id": "8128527",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131613",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:36:27",
"content": "Not complete fragments – it’s just that the LLM uses the fragments to compute the probability of one syllable or letter or word following another, and follows those probabilities with some fuzz factor.It has some small probability of replicating a piece of text verbatim – mostly it’s going to write something very similar; especially if it has multiple examples of the same argument. It is regurgitating the same idea because lots of people have expressed the same idea in multiple different ways and all these examples were included in the training data, biasing the LLM to reproduce a mixture of them.",
"parent_id": "8128559",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128552",
"author": "Jenny List",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T19:40:44",
"content": "Kool-Aid is an American drink mix invented by Edwin Perkins in 1927.",
"parent_id": "8128521",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128597",
"author": "Giake",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T22:01:13",
"content": "Ironically, just last night I used ChatGPT to make me a picture of the KoolAid man to print as a label for a bucket. Perhaps I should have taken that as a sign.",
"parent_id": "8128552",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128629",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T00:39:39",
"content": "Let’s revisit that three years from now and see which of us is being unrealistic here. Bookmark this discussion.",
"parent_id": "8128552",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8129595",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T14:52:32",
"content": "https://chatgpt.com/share/6829f36d-ad2c-8001-9690-c6e7a87075ba",
"parent_id": "8128552",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128885",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T20:15:16",
"content": "Had an interesting discussion as a side-effect. Apparently according to GWT, anonymous agents (like Manus, a Chinese chatbot) may progress to having most of the needed elements for emergent sentience in the future.https://chatgpt.com/share/6828ed02-79c0-8005-af6b-0f464526d158",
"parent_id": "8128521",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128529",
"author": "Todd",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T18:33:37",
"content": "Jenny, thank you so much for all you do, especially doing my code homework for me- Your services are invaluable (especially if you were to ask ChatGPT for your fair share of their profiteering)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128531",
"author": "George Graves",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T18:40:33",
"content": "I feel you about the commenters. They really bring this site down to a lower level than it should be at. It’s a shame really, becuase it could be fixed – and a more friendly, non-combative, interesting discussion could take place.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128532",
"author": "TerryMatthews",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T18:49:55",
"content": "As I have often joked, if AI had to do surgery on someone’s tennis elbow, it would first remove the heart so the patient didn’t die….It definitely gets better all the time and I am constantly in awe of its ability to help me with schematics or bits of code BUT it tends to get an idea fixe and god help you if it wants to predict code from another version of whatever sdk/ide/versioned library than you are working with. You could hit it with a stick and it would still try the same version over and over until it is either debugged or man or machine give up lol. All in all it is way more efficient than posting to a forum, waiting days or weeks for somebody to gatekeep or berate you, and still not have come any closer to an answer. AI will often overexplain things in a good way so I will spot something to focus on or a parameter or function I had no clue even existed (who can know them all lol?) so I even learn something which is cool. The absolute best part though is it is not a dick about things and is even pretty good about keeping me upbeat when a project drags on. It will list what we have accomplished so far and the finish line does not seem so far away and it acknowledges project fatigue and frustration and the need for mental health breaks etc. If I had this as a young teen there is no telling how many magnitudes further along I would be than I am with things but that is life. Glad I got to ride a bike to return a vhs tape and tuned the antenna to get cartoons on a saturday morning and play in a creek. It is nice though as long as you keep a side eye on what it is trying to do.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128542",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T19:23:04",
"content": "“The absolute best part though is it is not a dick about things”Suddenly I understand why people use the AI for possiby-dodgy advice. Better that than go to human netizens and get possibly-dodgy advice with heaping sides of condescention and attitude.",
"parent_id": "8128532",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128613",
"author": "TerryMatthews",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T23:25:47",
"content": "I’m an old creature of habit so I am used to just clicking on the comments for the real story and links but man it just doesn’t happen so much these days. There isn’t dialogue so much as 1000 monologues and in the rare occasion one does occur, it is a fractal of fragile egos and people mad at themselves. I mean I can tell AI to give me snarky answers and it will and it even gave me a humorous nickname after a particularly long debug session but man some positivity really does go a long way. It was pretty good at getting me to give it a third final try and push thru. Funny though you can tell when they tweak the responses though. Some days it is a complete sycophant and others it can be like a depressed sibling you have to wring answers from. But yes, dodgy advice either way but a much gentler douche curve which is something I should teach it.Thomas Douche (pronounced dooooooshay) and his academic opus from 1923 in the Journalia of Academica Supplemente entitled “Derivations of Orbitational Toxicity in an Urban Metropolis”. His combination of the previous theories of his contemporaries was heralded at the time as one of the greatest contributions since Edison’s first Apple Computer named the LISA, which was first thought to reference its new Large Integer Scalar Array microprocessor and not his AKA Triple Award Winning Cocker Spaniel of the same name. Raised in a sharecropper home in Alabama, Douche attended Terrence R Matthews Elementary School until the age of 8, when he started working for the county clearing fire breaks for up to 19 hours per day. By the age of 11 he had risen to a managerial role and started to notice the sharp discrepancy in worker attitude within the organization. He was awarded the Taft Award for Junior Excellence and a scholarship to Matthew R Terry Middle School where he again excelled at basic math and contractions. After the war, he briefly worked at Sun Pak Labs as a research technician for storage of frozen seafood. He was present when someone else accidentally discovered Flash Freezing technology before promptly falling into the machine and freezing himself and the very secret to unthaw him at full, fresh, flavor (widely referred to as “The Three Fs of Flash Freezing Food From Full Fresh Flavor”. While delivering the eulogy, Douche was overcome with grief and in a moment later described as “desperate inspiration” proclaimed he would beat Lindberg’s transatlantic record in a Ford Model T instead of a plane. He would be posthumously honored with a Florida tag on the news conglomerate site, Fark.com. While recovering in the hospital, Douche noticed how relaxed the nursing staff was and how his pain medication “didn’t do shit” and began studying the organizational loopholes which later culminated in his first academic article entitled “A Treatise on the Hospital Horse Hustle and Pain Management” which received little fanfare until seven months after its release, when Teddy Roosevelt was so impressed he was briefly employed as one of the Trust Busters, until he found organizational flaws and they were disbanded as a governmental league and certainly not recognized as an official New England Revenue Prefecture collector nor distributor. A mere ten years after the invention of the carburetor for gasoline combustion engines, Douche found himself yet again thrust into the public spotlight when he saved three separate infants from a horrific trampling when elephants defied their captors whips and rifles during the Thanksgiving Day Parade in Watersville. With half of the town wiped out trampling each other to escape the elephants, Douche set off with the now orphans to stead a farm in the foothills of Missouri for the next two years before attending the newly established Calabash Community College and enjoying their cafeteria during a luncheon for free. His next paper saw little success as well until again it was noticed by a contemporary and lauded throughout the Halls of Academia, where all papers go to become articles. He was initially paid a meagerly sum of $3.54 for his work until he pointed out the Douche Curve. The President Superlative of the Halls of Academia immediately saw how he “was being a Douche” as per the graph displayed and immediately embiggened his offer to a cromulent value at the time. Though neither man ever admitted it, they were deeply jealous of each other and would lampoon the other’s cause noble, often in public. In his later years, Douche would go on to publish refinements to his Douche Curve, reflecting quarterly profit differences that Sears and Roebuck sustained during their wartime efforts. In his final years, Douche actually published an article discounting his previous efforts as “pure peacock ham” noting there was an error in the original Douche Curve formula in which he forgot to subtract one at the end. He was later awarded an Emeritus Status Quo at Oscar Meyer University and won several conservatorships posthumously. His lectures were often described as “fiery and energetic full of pith and vinegar” and “orange like the…fruit?” even though he was modestly dressed at most functions. Ever the scholar, he continued his studies until he became overcome with exhaustion and prescribed laudanum for his rapid hair loss. In his final years he became overwrought with grief at the very mankind he studied and their various inequalities in organizations until he famously proclaimed, “The differences of Man are so great and incongruous that it would take a canoe to cross the abyss of the Douche Curve…” After his passing due to a collapsed lung during a horse attack, Douche was buried without honors on the southwest lawn of the Hall of Academia next to the horse that mortally wounded him. The three orphans he left in the foothills of Missouri died about four hours after he left according to a coroner’s report and further accusations by the Sheriff of the County of possible foul play. Douche had always laughed these charges off in public, calling them “pure speculation by a ham-fisted peacock” before citing Draconian Extradition Laws and the Mueller Act, which made no mention of them. He was later famous for the proclamation “Cool beans”, a slight jab at Roosevelt’s failed Terrence Rooster Act. Congress would later condemn this phrasing and abolish the Terrence Rooster Act in error, leading to the creation of the TRA2 and some members of congress to briefly defect but return after an overly fatty lunch that only complicated many of their conditions dealing with the common ailment of gout. Though broad in stature and often considered baseless in merit, the TRA2 was the document de facto for the next three decades until it was repealed in 1979. In his famous “Thousand Drops of Rain” the Vice President often referenced the Douche Curve and hurled slurs at his opponents, calling them “zebras without their stripes” a rural slang for a vanilla malt. Even with this outpouring of support, the Vice President never made the Douche Curve an official policy neither at the national level nor abroad even when requested by the Archduke Geribald. This constant friction would echo for decades after their passing and long after a newfound class warfare that could be profiteered and proliferated into a lifelong battle with cancer. Many of the northern peninsula’s bird population have been featured as an Organization of Notoriety Recipient 2003 thanks to the continued funding of the Douche Curve’s humble origins.",
"parent_id": "8128542",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130034",
"author": "genr8trr",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T16:10:16",
"content": "i aint readin all ‘at!!!",
"parent_id": "8128613",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131614",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:43:57",
"content": "You’re just not used to tying an onion to your belt, because it’s not the style anymore.",
"parent_id": "8130034",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128536",
"author": "Eric Mockler",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T18:58:44",
"content": "Ask it to generate comments for your articles in the style which your articles are commonly commented on.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128549",
"author": "Jenny List",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T19:39:28",
"content": "The hack, such as it is, lies in examining how well an LLM does when trying to copy a real person.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128604",
"author": "SETH",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T22:43:13",
"content": "Some day, deep in the LLM blackbox as it sits in an data center archive, will be a set of neurons trained on your writings. Future specialists will use this data to recreate a low resolution facsimile of your consciousness and pseudoresurrect you.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128616",
"author": "merser",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T23:36:08",
"content": "It’s funny a few mentioning their distaste for the way Chatgpt uses probability to construct it’s output and yet at the base of all that exists everything is probability.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128665",
"author": "dremu",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T03:23:05",
"content": "ChatGPT is people. No, wait, that’s Soylent Green…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128687",
"author": "MakeOrBreakOrWhatever",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T06:14:11",
"content": "Bingo.To expand on your comment:ChatGPT, like Soylent Green,ispeople in the sense that it ingests the components of people to which it has access – their existing data, in this case – and restructures it into something conveniently consumable, if not particularly good or healthy.See:“… it’s people.Soylent Green is made out of people.They’re making our food out of people. Next thing they’ll be breeding us like cattle for food.”Turns out the movie was prophecy, they were just a little bit off on the timing. And we’re the lottery winners who get to experience the first wave. How…lucky.",
"parent_id": "8128665",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8131617",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-23T18:55:11",
"content": "Soylent green in the movie was made out of people who voluntarily offed themselves in the suicide clinics, which were set up because of the overpopulation problem.The whole “problem” of Soylent Green wasn’t that it was some sort of evil plot – it was simply amorality. The society had problems: too many people, not enough food. People were voluntarily dying because they were in misery, and in consequence feeding those who were left behind, which was helping both problems – the only fault was in not disclosing the fact to the public.",
"parent_id": "8128687",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8129104",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-05-18T11:28:48",
"content": "Wait, if soylent green is people. and corporations are people, does that means we should eat corporations?But wait a second, corporations DO eat corporations..But uhm, eating people is not legal, even if they are dead, so corporations should be disallowed to eat corporations right? The law is the law.",
"parent_id": "8128665",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128689",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T06:16:40",
"content": "But because the LLM crawls old articles, where the commenters have already fixed all the typos, we can recognize genuine articles by counting the typo index of the post as soon as they are published!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8130504",
"author": "Jim J Jewett",
"timestamp": "2025-05-20T19:25:38",
"content": "I appreciate Jenny doing this experiment; not everyone could. Sheisin a category of people who aren’t world-famous, but whom an LLM might have enough data from anyway. (patio11 has done something similar, but I think that instance also had access to lots of direct feedback and work he hadn’t posted publicly.)It didn’t imitate her as well as thebesthuman impersonators — but it did so far better than most human mimics would, and well enough that I suspect only half her casual but regular readers would have noticed.For me, this marks an important checkpoint. 30 or 40 years ago, I would have found “computers can do this in 2025” unsurprising. But 10 years ago, and probably even 5 — I would have been surprised.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,543.871151
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/16/hackaday-podcast-episode-321-learn-you-some-3dp-let-the-wookie-win-or-design-a-thinkpad-motherboard-anew/
|
Hackaday Podcast Episode 321: Learn You Some 3DP, Let The Wookie Win, Or Design A Thinkpad Motherboard Anew
|
Tom Nardi
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] |
[
"Hackaday Podcast"
] |
Join Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi as they take a whirlwind tour of the best and brightest hacks of the last week. This episode starts off with an update about that Soviet Venus lander that’s been buzzing the planet, then moves on to best practices for designing 3D printed parts, giving Chrome OS devices a new lease on life, and a unique display technology that brings a
Star Wars
prop to life.
You’ll also hear about designing new motherboards for beloved old computers, why you might want to put your calipers on a flatbed scanner, and a NASA science satellite that’s putting in double duty as a wartime reporter. Finally, they’ll cover the interesting physics of meteor burst communications, and the latest developments in the ongoing libogc license kerfuffle.
Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Download in DRM-free MP3
.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 321 Show Notes:
News:
Reentry prediction Soviet-era Venera Venus lander – Rocket Science
Telegram: View @roscosmos_gk
What’s that Sound?
Know that sound?
Fill out this form for a chance to win
!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Best Practices For FDM Printing
Learn 15 Print-in-Place Mechanisms In 15 Minutes
Turning A Chromebox Into A Proper Power-Efficient PC
Let The Wookie Win With This DIY Holochess Table
Aska3D
A Little Optical Magic Makes This Floating Display Pop
What’s Inside A Neonode Laser Sensor?
A Brain Transplant For A Philips Smart Lamp
Tearing Down A Forgotten Video Game
Pong-Story : PONG in a Chip
Another Old ThinkPad Gets A New Motherboard
Replacement Motherboard Brings New Lease Of Life To Classic Thinkpads
Revive A Sony Vaio P-Series With KiCad’s Background Bitmaps
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Move Over, Lithophane: 3D Printed 3D Photos With Gaussian Splats
A Single-Pixel Camera Without Moving Parts Using Compressed Sensing
Scan Your Caliper For Physical Part Copies
Tom’s Picks:
Studying QR Code Degradation
The World’s Longest Range LED Flashlight
Open Source ELINT Accidentally From NASA
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Radio Apocalypse: Meteor Burst Communications
RTEMS Statement Deepens Libogc License Controversy
Libogc Allegations Rock Wii Homebrew Community
| 3
| 2
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128544",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T19:31:15",
"content": "Correction on the meteor bounce portion of the talk: meteoroid bounce comms don’t bounce off of the meteoroids, but off of the ionized air trail they leave in their wake. As such, they don’t have to actually track the meteor, but they do stick around for many milliseconds.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128574",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T20:54:38",
"content": "Right. Thanks!I also kept saying “comet” occasionally, because of the COMET acronym thing… I had to edit that out.",
"parent_id": "8128544",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128742",
"author": "mist4a4",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T10:48:26",
"content": "Props for all Elliot and all cohosts, always love Tom’s energy. Kristina has been killing it lately as well",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,544.086991
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/16/compliant-mechanism-shrinks-instead-of-stretching/
|
Compliant Mechanism Shrinks Instead Of Stretching
|
Ian Bos
|
[
"Parts"
] |
[
"actuator",
"compliant mechanisms",
"damping"
] |
Intuitively, you think that everything that you stretch will pull back, but you wouldn’t expect a couple of pieces of plastic to win. Yet, researchers over at [AMOLF] have figured out a way to make a mechanism that will
eventually shrink once you pull it enough
.
Named “Counter-snapping instabilities”, the mechanism is made out of the main sub-components that act together to stretch a certain amount until a threshold is met. Then the units work together and contract until they’re shorter than their initial length. This is possible by using compliant joints that make up each of the units. We’ve
seen a similar concept
in robotics.
Potentially this may be used as a unidirectional actuator, allowing movement inch by inch. In addition, one application mentioned may be somewhat surprising: damping. If a structure or body is oscillating through a positive feedback loop it may continue till it becomes uncontrollable. If these units are used, after a certain threshold of oscillation the units will lock and retract, therefore stopping further escalation.
Made possible by the wonders of compliant mechanics, these shrinking instabilities show a clever solution to some potential niche applications. If you want to explore the exciting world of compliance further, don’t be scared to check out this
easy to print blaster design
!
Thanks to [I’m Not Real] for the tip!
| 17
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128477",
"author": "Salo",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T16:26:01",
"content": "That’s pretty cool! I was initially confused when I read that it “shrinks when pulled”, though. I think of pulling being a movement, as opposed to a force. It initially extends when applying a load, and then when the load increases it contracts. I guess there’s not a short, catchy way to explain it this way.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128537",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T19:01:17",
"content": "and then when the load increases it contracts.That’s inaccurate and ultimately impossible. When the mechanism gets stretched it acts like a loose spring. When it gets stretched far enough, it switches state and starts to act like a stiff spring, which might cause it to pull back some way, but if the load keeps increasing it will keep stretching as any elastic material would.",
"parent_id": "8128477",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128872",
"author": "Jeff Wright",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T19:32:12",
"content": "https://www.nomaco.com/blog-new-material-thickens-when-stretched/https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2024/05/new-way-designing-auxetic-materials",
"parent_id": "8128537",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128890",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T20:39:59",
"content": "Those suffer from a similar confusion in language. In auxetic materials, axial elongation causes transversal elongation, meaning that they get wider when they are stretched. They do not “contract” when the “load increases”.Contracting while stretching is an oxymoron – it’s saying the material gets shorter when it gets longer, which is simply a contradiction in terms. It’s nonsense.",
"parent_id": "8128872",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128478",
"author": "duc4rm3",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T16:32:07",
"content": "Thanks for sharing! The way it reduces vibrations is quite interesting: upon resonance, the structure switches to a configuration that is stiffer, thereby changing the resonance frequency of the system and moving away from the resonance point.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128538",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T19:03:30",
"content": "Question is, how do you switch back?",
"parent_id": "8128478",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128569",
"author": "duc4rme",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T20:29:19",
"content": "by releasing the tension",
"parent_id": "8128538",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128891",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T20:42:54",
"content": "I don’t see any explanation of whether the mechanism will actually flip back to the original state, or how.",
"parent_id": "8128569",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128534",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T18:53:44",
"content": "It doesn’t get “shorter when pulled”, it gets shorter when you pull it past a certain point and then stop pulling, so it can retract to a length shorter than it was before.If you keep pulling on it, it will keep getting longer and longer like any other material.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128535",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T18:56:47",
"content": "Also, every elastic object “wants to shrink when pulled”.The real deal here is that this object exhibits two states: it’s a spring that has two different spring constants that are switched when the object is extended far enough. It will keep stretching if you keep pulling – it’s just going to be harder to do so after a point.",
"parent_id": "8128534",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128557",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T19:48:32",
"content": "You can think of something, generally elastic, that grows when pulled…even in diameter.",
"parent_id": "8128535",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128555",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T19:46:50",
"content": "It shortens while water is added to the load for a small part of it’s length range.It’s a trick with parallel non-linear springs.",
"parent_id": "8128534",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128714",
"author": "dragonfly231",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T09:42:41",
"content": "In the video, it can be seen that the structure contracts while the load keeps on increasing. While the applied force is increasing, the structure can suddenly contract. You do not need to stop pulling.",
"parent_id": "8128534",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128892",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T20:46:12",
"content": "Here you have a semantic trick between “pulling” and “load”. If you apply a force that keeps increasing gradually, it can shrink back temporarily, but if you keep pulling it further and further (forced displacement), it will not.",
"parent_id": "8128714",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128558",
"author": "Charles Springer",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T19:57:51",
"content": "What did I miss? Does the force increase when it switches. And a rubber band is a terrible example. It is nothing like a spring (but can be a good damper).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128563",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T20:15:46",
"content": "Username checks out.",
"parent_id": "8128558",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8143666",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2025-07-01T02:49:44",
"content": "Is the a model out there to print? I need to experience this",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,544.045979
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/16/this-week-in-security-lingering-spectre-deep-fakes-and-coreaudio/
|
This Week In Security: Lingering Spectre, Deep Fakes, And CoreAudio
|
Jonathan Bennett
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] |
[
"ai",
"CVEs",
"Spectre",
"This Week in Security"
] |
Spectre lives
. We’ve got two separate pieces of research, each finding new processor primitives that allow Spectre-style memory leaks. Before we dive into the details of the new techniques, let’s quickly remind ourselves what Spectre is. Modern CPUs use a variety of clever tricks to execute code faster, and one of the stumbling blocks is memory latency. When a program reaches a branch in execution, the program will proceed in one of two possible directions, and it’s often a value from memory that determines which branch is taken. Rather than wait for the memory to be fetched, modern CPUs will predict which branch execution will take, and speculatively execute the code down that branch. Once the memory is fetched and the branch is properly evaluated, the speculatively executed code is rewound if the guess was wrong, or made authoritative if the guess was correct. Spectre is the realization that incorrect branch prediction can change the contents of the CPU cache, and those changes can be detected through cache timing measurements. The end result is that arbitrary system memory can be leaked from a low privileged or even sandboxed user process.
In response to Spectre, OS developers and CPU designers have added domain isolation protections, that prevent branch prediction poisoning in an attack process from affecting the branch prediction in the kernel or another process.
Training Solo
is the clever idea from VUSec that branch prediction poisoning could just be done from within the kernel space, and avoid any domain switching at all. That can be done through cBPF, the classic Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) kernel VM. By default, all users on a Linux system can run cBPF code, throwing the doors back open for Spectre shenanigans. There’s also an address collision attack where an unrelated branch can be used to train a target branch. Researchers also discovered a pair of CVEs in Intel’s CPUs,
where prediction training was broken
in specific cases, allowing for a wild 17 kB/sec memory leak.
Also revealed this week is
the Branch Privilege Injection research from COMSEC
. This is the realization that Intel Branch Prediction happens asynchronously, and in certain cases there is a race condition between the updates to the prediction engine, and the code being predicted. In short, user-mode branch prediction training can be used to poison kernel-mode prediction, due to the race condition.
(Editor’s note: Video seems down for the moment. Hopefully YouTube will get it cleared again soon. Something, something “hackers”.)
Both of these Spectre attacks have been patched by Intel with microcode, and the Linux kernel has integrated patches for the Training Solo issue. Training Solo may also impact some ARM processors, and ARM has issued guidance on the vulnerability. The real downside is that each fix seems to come with yet another performance hit.
Is That Real Cash? And What Does That Even Mean?
Over at the Something From Nothing blog, we have a surprisingly deep topic, in
a teardown of banknote validators
. For the younger in the audience, there was a time in years gone by where not every vending machine had a credit card reader built-in, and the only option was to carefully straighten a bill and feed it into the bill slot on the machine. Bow how do those machines know it’s really a bill, and not just the right sized piece of paper?
And that’s where this gets interesting. Modern currency has multiple security features in a single bill, like magnetic ink, micro printing, holograms, watermarks, and more. But how does a bill validator check for all those things? Mainly LEDs and photodetectors, it seems. With some machines including hall effect sensors, magnetic tape heads for detecting magnetic ink, and in rare cases a full linear CCD for scanning the bill as it’s inserted. Each of those detectors (except the CCD) produces a simple data stream from each bill that’s checked. Surely it would be easy enough to figure out the fingerprint of a real bill, and produce something that looks just like the real thing — but only to a validator?
In theory, probably, but the combination of sensors presents a real problem. It’s really the same problem with counterfeiting a bill in general: implementing a single security feature is doable, but getting them all right at the same time is nearly impossible. And so with the humble banknote validator.
Don’t Trust That Phone Call
There’s a scam that has risen to popularity with the advent of AI voice impersonation. It usually takes the form of a young person calling a parent or grandparent from jail or a hospital, asking for money to be wired to make it home. It sounds convincing, because it’s an AI deepfake of the target’s loved one. This is
no longer just a technique to take advantage of loving grandparents
. The
FBI has issued a warning
about an ongoing campaign using deepfakes of US officials. The aim of this malware campaign seems to be just getting the victim to click on a malicious link. This same technique was used in a LastPass attack last year, and the technique has become so convincing, it’s not likely to go away anytime soon.
AI Searching SharePoint
Microsoft has tried not to be left behind in the current flurry of AI rollouts that every tech company seems to be engaging in. Microsoft’s SharePoint is not immune, and the result is Microsoft Copilot for SharePoint. This gives an AI agent access to a company’s SharePoint knowledge base, allowing users to query it for information. It’s AI as a better search engine.
This has some ramifications for security
, as SharePoint installs tend to collect sensitive data.
The first ramification is the most straightforward. The AI can be used to search for that sensitive data. But Copilot pulling data from a SharePoint file doesn’t count as a view, making for a very stealthy way to pull data from those sensitive files. Pen Test Partners found something even better on a real assessment. A passwords file hosted on SharePoint was unavailable to view, but in an odd way. This file hadn’t been locked down using SharePoint permissions, but instead the file was restricted from previewing in the browser. This was likely an attempt to keep eyes off the contents of the file. And Copilot was willing to be super helpful, pasting the contents of that file right into a chat window. Whoops.
Fuzzing Apple’s CoreAudio
Googler [Dillon Franke] has
the story of finding a type confusion flaw in Apple’s CoreAudio daemon
, reachable via
Mach
Inter-Process Communication (IPC) messages, allowing for potential arbitrary code execution from within a sandboxed process. This is a really interesting fuzzing + reverse engineering journey, and it starts with imagining the attack he wanted to find: Something that could be launched from within a sandboxed browser, take advantage of already available IPC mechanisms, and exploit a complex process with elevated privileges.
Coreaudiod
ticks all the boxes, but it’s a closed source daemon. How does one approach this problem? The easy option is to just fuzz over the IPC messages. It would be a perfectly viable strategy, to fuzz CoreAudio via Mach calls. The downside is that the fuzzer would run slower, and have much less visibility into what’s happening in the target process. A much more powerful approach is to build a fuzzing harness that allows hooking directly to the library in question. There is some definite library wizardry at play here, linking into a library function that hasn’t been exported.
The vulnerability that he found was type confusion, where the daemon expected an
ioctl
object, but could be supplied arbitrary data. As an
ioctl
object contains a pointer to a
vtable
, which is essentially a collection of function pointers. It then attempts to call a function from that table. It’s an ideal situation for exploitation. The fix from Apple is an explicit type check on the incoming objects.
Bits and Bytes
Asus publishes the DriverHub tool, a gui-less driver updater. It communicates with
driverhub.asus.com
using RPC calls. The problem is that it checks for the right web URL using a wildcard, and
driverhub.asus.com.mrbruh.com
was considered completely valid. Among the functions DriverHub can perform is to install drivers and updates. Chaining a couple of fake updates together
results in relatively easy admin code execution on the local machine
, with the only prerequisites being the DriverHub software being installed, and clicking a single malicious link. Ouch.
The VirtualBox VGA driver just patched
a buffer overflow that could result in VM escape
. The
vmsvga3dSurfaceMipBufferSize
call could be manipulated so no memory is actually allocated, but VirtualBox itself believes a buffer is there and writable. This memory write ability can be leveraged into arbitrary memory read and write capability on the host system.
And finally,
what’s old is new again
. APT28, a Russian state actor, has been using very old-school Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks to gain access to target’s webmail systems. The attack here is JavaScript in an email’s HTML code. That JS then used already known XSS exploits to exfiltrate emails and contacts. The worst part of this campaign is how low-effort it was. These aren’t cutting-edge 0-days. Instead, the target’s email servers just hadn’t been updated. Keep your webmail installs up to date!
| 5
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128483",
"author": "MrSVCD",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T16:48:26",
"content": "Did the later SPARC cpus try to solve the memory is slow problem with more cores? Or are they also vulnerable to specter?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128570",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T20:43:18",
"content": "The fact anyone could believe they need a ‘driver updater’ is ludicrous when you consider Microsoft’s driver update store is completely cromulent.They usually exist for one reason, to exfiltrate data.Spectre is interesting, would following both paths and never unwinding be a fix? Or would that expose more data? Have separate registers for speculation that are not exposed in any way? Not sure what the solutions could be.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128600",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T22:15:49",
"content": "It is so sad that we just can’t use technology without having so much wasted human energy to figure out exploits and another bunch of people wasting energy to close off the exploits. But it is the ‘reality’ I guess. As a Linux home user, at least somewhat more ‘insulated’ from the bad actors with a little help from firewalls and such…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8128630",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T00:50:34",
"content": "Sorry to break it to you, but you guys are truly full decade behind.“…a young person calling a parent or grandparent from jail or a hospital, asking for money …” has been going on all over the world (and EU countries in particular) for the last decade or so. Some were real voices recorded off someone else’s distress call, and some were AI-generated using real voices recorded off someone else’s real phone call, but the scenario is about the same, “wire me money NOW, I am in TROUBLE!”Reporting the front lines that are NOT in the US. What to do about such a call? Ask the caller his/her name – who is he/she and who is she/he calling. They usually just hang up, but the call could be originating ANYWHERE, thanks to all kinds of Skypes faking the number. Oh, and they ARE recording your response. Not sure if there will be much of a value, but eventually they WILL BE calling others faking you. Just not sure when and how, but it is coming just the same.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8130096",
"author": "Collie147",
"timestamp": "2025-05-19T19:00:49",
"content": "On the SharePoint AI integration. SharePoint search would still give info if the file wasn’t locked down with permissions, even if preview was off, as in the Search return it always gives the first 5 or so words for context, and if you search those words in quotations, you get the next 5 words and so on until you can read a whole file. That was always the case and MS say it’s a feature not a bug! So in this case it seems the person testing got the expected results! And who in their right mind would save a password file in plaintext? But as for the AI reading it, the SharePoint search service has access to everything and indexes the lot, especially the on Prem service, that’s by design, but search results would always be based on permission of the user to access the site or site collection that the data was gathered from. It sounds like if that’s the case (I must read up on it further) the AI is leaking info. Should be a simple fix by enforcing segregation of the indexed data and the LLM.",
"parent_id": "8128630",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,544.227463
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/16/home-casting-thermoelectric-alloys/
|
Home-casting Thermoelectric Alloys
|
Aaron Beckendorf
|
[
"Science"
] |
[
"thermocouple",
"thermoelectric effect"
] |
If you want to convert heat into electrical power, it’s hard to find a simpler method than a thermoelectric generator. The Seebeck effect means that the junction of two dissimilar conductors will produce a voltage potential when heated, but the same effect also applies to certain alloys, even without a junction. [Simplifier] has been trying to find the best maker-friendly thermoelectric alloys, and
recently shared the results of some extensive experimentation
.
The experiments investigated a variety of bismuth alloys, and tried to determine the effects of adding lead, antimony, tin, and zinc. [Simplifier] mixed together each alloy in an electric furnace, cast it into a cylindrical mold, machined the resulting rod to a uniform length, and used tin-bismuth solder to connect each end to a brass electrode. To test each composition, one end of the cylinder was cooled with ice while the other was held in boiling water, then resistance was measured under this known temperature gradient. According to the Wiedemann-Franz law, this was enough information to approximate the metal’s thermal conductivity.
Armed with the necessary data, [Simplifier] was able to calculate each alloy’s thermoelectric efficiency coefficient. The results showed some useful information: antimony is a useful additive at about 5% by weight, tin and lead created relatively good thermoelectric materials with opposite polarities, and zinc was useful only to improve the mechanical properties at the expense of efficiency. Even in the best case, the thermoelectric efficiency didn’t exceed 6.9%, which is nonetheless quite respectable for a homemade material.
This project is a great deal more accessible for an amateur than
previous thermoelectric material research we’ve covered
, and a bit more efficient than
another home project we’ve seen
. If you just want to get straight to power generation,
check out this project
.
| 4
| 2
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8128443",
"author": "Stanson",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T14:14:35",
"content": "The Seebeck effect means that the junction of two dissimilar conductors will produce a voltage potential when heatedIt’s wrong, change that toThe Seebeck effect means that the junction of two dissimilar conductors will produce a voltage potential when temparature difference applied.or something like. You need temparature gradient over junction, not just heat to get voltage with Seebeck effect.Cool project. Guys also deserve special great respect for report page. It’s a rare thing now when people care more about information over web design.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128912",
"author": "Art Smaleck",
"timestamp": "2025-05-17T22:41:20",
"content": "Actually, that’s only slightly less incorrect than the original explanation. Don’t feel bad, this is a very common misconception.The junction is not what generates the voltage. The junction is just there to hold the two ends of the different conductors at the same voltage.The temperature gradient within the conductor produces a voltage gradient in the conductor. If you take a single isolated copper wire and make one end hotter than the other there will be a potential difference between the two ends. There’s no way to directly measure that without putting a different wire on it which will also have a temperature gradient, hence a potential difference, but that is the reality. This becomes useful because some materials have different Seebeck coefficients, so if you put an iron wire next to the copper wire, the potential difference between the ends will be different in the two different materials. If you now tie the far ends together conductively then there will be a potential difference between the two conductors at the near end, ergo a measurable potential difference will exist. Now if you put your copper voltmeter leads on those the gradient in the leads is equal, so you can measure the potential in the thermocouple.This is why it doesn’t matter what you do at the junction end of a thermocouple: twist the two wires together, bond them with conductive epoxy, solder them, or spot weld them. It doesn’t matter as long as there is low resistance at the junction.",
"parent_id": "8128443",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8128464",
"author": "Maave",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T15:41:09",
"content": "This writeup is very nice, especially the color-coded chart. His previous metal casting project is also well done – I’ve never heard of molasses sand.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8128587",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2025-05-16T21:30:55",
"content": "People used to make cores out of molasses sand because you can bake it in the core box and get something that’ll hold together solidly while being placed in a green sand mold and exposed to hot metal. I think in general most of sand casting is “what’s the cheapest way to make this?” and the materials they choose are prioritized for A: reusability (green sand) and B: cheapness (molasses over sodium silicate, say, which has also been used for cores.) Oil sands are really good for sandcasting, but clay/water are cheaper, and usually the additives people put in to increase its ability to vent, say, are industrial waste like sawdust.",
"parent_id": "8128464",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,544.272979
|
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