~hackernews | Bookmarks (41)

clear filters

hackaday.com ×

The Computers of Voyager

hackaday.com

After more than four decades in space and having traveled a combined 44 billion kilometers, it’s...
After more than four decades in space and having traveled a combined 44 billion kilometers, it’s no secret that the Voyager spacecraft are closing in on the end of their extended interstellar mission. Battered and worn, the twin spacecraft are speeding along through the void, far outside the Sun’s influence now, the...
1
Farewell MFJ

hackaday.com

We were sad to hear that after 52 years in operation, iconic ham radio supplier MFJ...
We were sad to hear that after 52 years in operation, iconic ham radio supplier MFJ will close next month. On the one hand, it is hard not to hear such news and think that it is another sign that ham radio isn’t in a healthy space. After all, in an ideal world, [Martin Jue] — the well-known founder of MFJ — would ha...
1
Trolling IBM's Quantum Processor Advantage with a Commodore 64

hackaday.com

The memory map ofthe implementation, as set within the address space of the Commodore 64 –...
The memory map ofthe implementation, as set within the address space of the Commodore 64 – about 15kB of the accessible 64kB RAM is used. There’s been a lot of fuss about the ‘quantum advantage’ that would arise from the use of quantum processors and quantum systems in general. Yet in this high-noise, high-uncertain...
1
Relatively Universal ROM Programmer Makes Retro Tech Hacking Accessible

hackaday.com

There’s treasures hidden in old technology, and you deserve to be able to revive it. Whether...
There’s treasures hidden in old technology, and you deserve to be able to revive it. Whether it’s old personal computer platforms, vending machines, robot arms, or educational kits based on retro platforms, you will need to work with parallel EEPROM chips at some point. [Anders Nielsen] was about to do just that, wh...
1
End-of-Life for Z80 CPU and Peripherals Announced

hackaday.com
1
Open-source passive radar taken down for regulatory reasons (2022)

hackaday.com

Open-source technology brings a world that laws and regulations are not quite prepared for. As a...
Open-source technology brings a world that laws and regulations are not quite prepared for. As a result, every now and then, open projects need to work around governmental regulations. In today’s news, KrakenRF team has stumbled into an arms-trafficing legal roadblock for their KrakenSDR-based passive radar code, an...
1
Linux fu: getting started with systemd

hackaday.com
2
Capsela Is Dead, Long Live Capsela (2017)

hackaday.com

In the magical 80s, there was a building set that stood apart from the rest. Capsela,...
In the magical 80s, there was a building set that stood apart from the rest. Capsela, originally created by Mitzubishi Pencil Company (the Uniball folks) looked like a series of clear plastic spheres with gears and motors inside. The signature Capsela modules served as both enclosure and functional component. The se...
1
Comparing Desoldering Tools

hackaday.com

[Lee] has a Hakko FR301 desoldering gun and a Duratool knockoff. He freely admits that the...
[Lee] has a Hakko FR301 desoldering gun and a Duratool knockoff. He freely admits that the Hakko is probably better, but he wonders if it’s good enough to justify being four times as expensive. He shows both of them off in a recent video that you can see below. Often, desoldering doesn’t get as much attention as sol...
1
Star Trek Breached the Defences of a Major Broadcaster

hackaday.com

Back in 2000 in the brief lull between COVID lockdowns in the UK, I found myself...
Back in 2000 in the brief lull between COVID lockdowns in the UK, I found myself abruptly on the move, with a very short time indeed to move my possessions into storage. As I was going through the accumulated electronic detritus of over four decades, I happened upon a grey box with some wires hanging out of it, and ...
1
The Roller Ship Was Not an Effective Way to Cross the High Seas

hackaday.com

Boats come in all shapes and sizes. We have container ships, oil tankers, old-timey wooden sailing...
Boats come in all shapes and sizes. We have container ships, oil tankers, old-timey wooden sailing ships, catamarans, trimarans, and all sorts besides. Most are designed with features that give them a certain advantage or utility that justifies their construction for a given application. The roller ship, on the othe...
1
Why x86 Needs to Die

hackaday.com

As I’m sure many of you know, x86 architecture has been around for quite some time....
As I’m sure many of you know, x86 architecture has been around for quite some time. It has its roots in Intel’s early 8086 processor, the first in the family. Indeed, even the original 8086 inherits a small amount of architectural structure from Intel’s 8-bit predecessors, dating all the way back to the 8008. But th...
1
Radicle: An Open-Source, Peer-to-Peer, GitHub Alternative

hackaday.com

The actions of certain large social networks have recently highlighted how a small number of people...
The actions of certain large social networks have recently highlighted how a small number of people possess significant power over the masses and how this power is sometimes misused. Consequently, there has been a surge in the development of federated (or decentralized) services, such as Mastodon and Matrix. But wha...
1
Review: The New Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen

hackaday.com

The city of Shenzhen in China holds a special fascination for the electronic hardware community, as...
The city of Shenzhen in China holds a special fascination for the electronic hardware community, as the city and special economic zone established by the Chinese government at the start of the 1980s it has become probably one of the most important in the world for electronic manufacturing. If you’re in the business ...
1
The 1970s Computer: A Slice of Computing

hackaday.com

What do the HP-1000 and the DEC VAX 11/730 have in common with the video games...
What do the HP-1000 and the DEC VAX 11/730 have in common with the video games Tempest and Battlezone? More than you might think. All of those machines, along with many others from that time period, used AM2900-family bit slice CPUs. The bit slice CPU was a very successful product that could only have existed in the...
1
Insurance Buys the Wheelchair, but Not the App to Run It

hackaday.com

The writer Cory Doctrow coined the term enshittification to describe the way that services decline in...
The writer Cory Doctrow coined the term enshittification to describe the way that services decline in quality as their users become the product. He was talking about online services when he came up with the word, but the same is very much true when it comes to hardware. Items which once just worked now need apps and...
1
Pairing a New Remote to a Cheap RC Car

hackaday.com

The cheap little RC cars are abundant anywhere you are, and if you’ve ever disassembled one,...
The cheap little RC cars are abundant anywhere you are, and if you’ve ever disassembled one, you are familiar with how the PCB looks. A single-sided phenolic paper PCB with a mystery chip driving a bunch of through-hole transistors, a sprinkle of through-hole capacitors, and a few supporting components for the wire ...
1
Create Virtual USB Sticks with a Raspberry Pi Zero

hackaday.com

Playing back music files from USB sticks is a common feature these days, and is built-into...
Playing back music files from USB sticks is a common feature these days, and is built-into the infotainment system in [Folkert van Heusden]’s Opel Astra. Unfortunately such USB playback features often come with a range of limitations on things like audio codecs, and in the case of [Folkert]’s car, a 1000 file limit....
1
Dial-Up Is Still, Just Barely, a Thing

hackaday.com

In an era dominated by broadband and wireless cellular networks, it might come as a surprise...
In an era dominated by broadband and wireless cellular networks, it might come as a surprise to many that dial-up internet services still exist in the United States. This persistence is not a mere relic of nostalgia — but a testament to the diverse and uneven nature of internet infrastructure across the country. Yes...
1
GPS Antenna Mods Make Starlink Terminal Immune to Jammers

hackaday.com

The Starlink receivers need positioning and precise timing information to function, and currently the best way...
The Starlink receivers need positioning and precise timing information to function, and currently the best way to get that information is to use a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) such as GPS. Unfortunately, the antenna used for this secondary satellite connection leaves something to be desired. Of course, ...
1
Restoring Starlink's Missing Ethernet Ports

hackaday.com

Internet connectivity in remote areas can be a challenge, but recently SpaceX’s Starlink has emerged as...
Internet connectivity in remote areas can be a challenge, but recently SpaceX’s Starlink has emerged as a viable solution for many spots on the globe — including the Ukrainian frontlines. Unfortunately, in 2021 Starlink released a new version of their hardware, cost-optimized to the point of losing some nice feature...
1
The White House Memory Safety Appeal Is a Red Herring

hackaday.com

In the Holy Programming Language Wars, the lingua franca of system programming – also known as...
In the Holy Programming Language Wars, the lingua franca of system programming – also known as C – is often lambasted for being unsecure, error-prone, and plagued with more types of behavior that are undefined than ones that are defined by the C standards. Many programming languages were said to be ‘C killers’, yet ...
2
Wire Wrap Odyssey: a 7400 series homebrew CPU

hackaday.com

The Wire Wrap Odyssey’s first Hello World from the CPU module, here hooked up to a...
The Wire Wrap Odyssey’s first Hello World from the CPU module, here hooked up to a logic analyzer in July of 2020. (Credit: Paul Krizak) As part of his computer science curriculum at Texas A&M University in the early 2000s, [Paul Krizak] took a computer architecture course on the basics of their functioning. This an...
1
Localizing Fireworks Launches with a Raspberry Pi

hackaday.com

If you have multiple microphones in known locations, and can determine the time a sound arrives...
If you have multiple microphones in known locations, and can determine the time a sound arrives at each one, you can actually determine the location that sound is coming from. This technique is referred to as sound localization via time difference of arrival. [Kim Hendrikse] decided to put the technique to good use ...
1

~hackernews | Bookmarks (41)

Domains