In previous installments of this series we looked at how creating a DIY router using an e-waste-level PC has changed over the years, before attempting to boot OpenWrt for x86 …read more
Much of science is performed through inference, with the readings on instruments, a flash of light in heavy water, or the results of parsing through terabytes of sensor data after …read more
Of the popular 1980s 8-bit computers, it’s fair to say that Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum punched above its weight. Sir Clive’s love of squeezing more functionality out of less hardware meant …read more
Photodetectors come in a wide variety of constructions and materials, with the Cu2O-based photodetector that [Mad Scientist Creations] demonstrates in a recent video being a good example of a photodetector …read more
Some sad news to start this week off — after 52 years in business, Sherline has announced they are winding down their manufacturing operations. By the end of October they …read more
TEMPEST attacks are often the most effective way to break air-gapped security: rather than directly accessing a computer, the attacker records the system’s unintended radio emissions and uses them to …read more
Getting rid of rodents like squirrels, mice, or groundhogs is a lot like digging a hole on the beach. No matter how much you remove, it’ll always fill back in. …read more
When you think of wartime cryptography, you probably think of World War II and Enigma, although there were other famous codes used during that war. But in fact, there have …read more
For his own reasons, [Jose Luis Monteiro] (aka [emsyscode]) decided he needed to drive the LCD on a Sony CDX-A250 car stereo’s front panel using an Arduino. There’s probably a …read more
It’s an unfortunate side effect of proximity to a large transmitter that the received signal can overload a receiver’s front end even when tuned to other frequencies. [Rfrht]’s had this …read more
There are lots of reasons to run LLMs locally, from privacy concerns to just wanting to futz about with the technology, but if you want to run the big models, …read more
Water timers are nifty devices that can water the lawn at set times or keep that vegetable garden from turning into a dustbowl. When [electronupdate] timer refused to output water …read more
The RP2350 is actually a pretty secure chip, all things considered. It has secure boot, ARMv8’s TrustZone to split secure and non-secure execution, and you can permanently disable debug — …read more
A Linux handheld computer is, in theory, easy and inexpensive given the availability of single-board computers, but in practice the budget invariably edges well into three figures. There’s an interesting …read more
This article is written on an open-source operating system, but not an open-source machine — the BIOS isn’t open-source, and even if it were supported by the coreboot project (formerly …read more
Although it wasn’t apparently designed with this in mind, it seems particularly fortuitous that this walking robotic hand was released in time for Halloween. Designed by researchers from ETH Zurich, …read more
Using tools properly takes skill, and this goes for software tools as well as hardware. You don’t just buy a paintbrush and on day one paint the Mona Lisa. Similarly, …read more
Generally semiconductor devices like transistors have fixed properties, but using an azobenzene (Azo) compound it’s possible to optically alter these properties by exposing them to UV light. This is demonstrated …read more
There are so many things we approximate to make life simple. Wires, for example, have no resistance or other strange effects. Crystal oscillators output their exact frequency. But surely our …read more
The concertina is an instrument that features heavily in European folk music, of which there are a variety of types. [Xcott Craver] has built one, an anglo concertina of the …read more