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https://hackaday.com/2025/07/30/a-dual-screen-cyberdeck-to-rule-them-all/
|
A Dual-Screen Cyberdeck To Rule Them All
|
Jenny List
|
[
"Cyberdecks"
] |
[
"cyberdeck",
"raspberry pi"
] |
We like cyberdecks here at Hackaday, and in our time we’ve brought you some pretty amazing builds. But perhaps now we’ve seen the ultimate of the genre,
a cyberdeck so perfect in its execution that this
will
be the machine of choice in the dystopian future
, leaving all the others as mere contenders. It comes courtesy of [Sector 07], and it’s a machine to be proud of.
As with many cyberdecks, it uses the Raspberry Pi as its powerhouse. There are a couple of nice touchscreens and a decent keyboard, plus the usual ports and some nice programmable controls. These are none of them out of the ordinary for a cyberdeck, but what really shines with this one is the attention to detail in the mechanical design. Those touchscreens rotate on ball bearings, the hinges are just right, the connections to the Pi have quick release mechanisms, and custom PCBs and ribbon cables make distributing those GPIOs a snap.
On top of all that the aesthetics are on point; this is the machine you want to take into the abandoned mining base with you. Best of all it’s all available from the linked GitHub repository, and you can marvel as we did at the video below the break.
If you hunger for more cyberdecks, this one has
some very stiff competition
.
Thanks [Jeremy Geppert] for the tip.
| 13
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8156079",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T09:18:44",
"content": "What a nice bit of design, with some good thought put into making use of what a Pi is often used for in the end, really love the relatively easy removal of SD or Pi for integration into your other project after you have effectively used this thing as a breadboard to check everything works!Though the ball bearings on the screen rotation are a bit overkill especially with the quality of prints he’s got being so high – just a little bit of grease between the arm and screen body would give a lovely smooth motion. I’d also personally not have put the back cable cover over the HDMI cables – always handy if you can just plug into an external screen easily, so I’d probably have left that cable ‘exposed’ but well protected in those channels and looked for a way to actually hold a longer cable to make plugging into something else easier – running the right monitors HDMI cable up the left arm and across the handle at the back and visa versa seems like a good move..It is also perhaps a bit wider than I’d like – desk space is always an issue for me, though adding a bit more functionality into into that claws back more desk space might be possible – for instance add a trackball/trackpad or perhaps one of those air gesture mice type concepts internally so you don’t absolutely need an external pointing device any time you are not just working in the terminal.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156098",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T11:14:04",
"content": "It has touch screens, so no external pointing device is necessary (although he uses a mouse).",
"parent_id": "8156079",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156108",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T12:16:21",
"content": "I suppose but to me a touch screen is never a good substitute for a mouse as you end up putting your big fleshy pointing device in the way so you can’t see what you are actually pressing and need the targets to be much larger to only hit one button. Don’t get me wrong touch can be good, intuitive etc and if you really build the whole UI around being a touch based system it can work functionally enough. But when it comes to say closing/maximising the window or really just about anything else in the more menu and control sections of a program rather than the main window navigation on most GUI those buttons are generally too small, close together and thus too fiddly to use reliably with your fingers (though maybe my large hands exaggerate this effect enough I find it more annoying than most would).",
"parent_id": "8156098",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156103",
"author": "Stephen",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T11:26:24",
"content": "“A Dual-Screen Cyberdeck To Rule Them All”. A title of 8 words that manages to reference both William Gibson and J R R Tolkien :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156163",
"author": "RetepV",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T14:54:38",
"content": "Looks great, I am impressed by the amount of thought that went into it, the build quality and the overall design!Just one (ok, two) thing(s) that struck me were those square corners left and right of the keyboard. They would definitely irritate me quite quickly, being in the way of my palms. It would probably irritate my RSI even more. :)Wouldn’t a split keyboard with low profile switches and caps have room enough below it if you drop the sides and raise the middles a bit? My Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard seems to have enough space under the middle to house a Raspberry PI.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156165",
"author": "RetepV",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T14:56:11",
"content": "With “drop the sides and raise the middles a bit”, I mean that each half of the split keyboard is slanted (left half slanted to the left and bottom, right half to the right and bottom).",
"parent_id": "8156163",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156205",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T16:28:29",
"content": "IMHO, the right step towards making Sphinx happen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphinx_(home_automation_system)).I’ve long thought about starting in the same direction, but the usual things like full-time job, family, different hobbies and mandatory laziness would slow me down.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156209",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T16:41:15",
"content": "I don’t want to see any more RasPi based decks. Does no one care about processing power and expandability?X86 ftw. I realise it’s worse if we factor in the power consumption but that’s the price of having a non paper weight deck",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156228",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T17:48:52",
"content": "A Pi 5 has some serious computing potency for its size, I found the vastly slower Pi4 was with decent cooling a perfectly good desktop able to do 95% of the CAD I was working on just as snappily as my workstation for instance (Have to get pretty complex or be doing mechanical analysis etc to make the Pi really show the strain), it would run VM with decent performance for the VM too (obviously its not a gaming GPU pass through VM but for that sub GB of RAM few core VM to play with something still good.). And if you design you deck around the compute module there is a pretty good chance you can just drop in a faster upgrade brain seamlessly in the future (Pi folks have not as far as I know committed to the CM6 having the same footprint as the CM4 and 5, but there are others using that same interface with other arm chips if you want to deal with the usual hassles of leaving the really well supported Pi ecosystem)IMO the Pi is also hugely more expandable than the nearest x86 rivials you could use, as those would be motherboards from something like a Steamdeck, which will have maybe 8 lanes of PCIe run to anything you can access if you are lucky and the odd usb port – better for some applications as that bandwidth from even a single lane of modern PCIe gens is huge as the Pi5 while it has PCIe is almost certainly older generation. But as both are also so limited in PCIe lanes and the x86 offers little other expansion paths that it just doesn’t come close to the easy flexible expandability of the Pi based deck to the users desires…Really to start getting into a cyberdeck that hits the selling points you are after its perilously close to if not a full Mini-ITX (hopefully the thin version of the spec but that is much harder to find) build. Which are awesome builds, I hoped to get the one I have planned done this year myself and haven’t even started yet (life and the weather keeps getting in the way of all the stuff that must come first). But those builds generally have to be orders of magnitude larger than the entire Pi based cyber deck just to hold the motherboard and CPU cooler, before you start to consider the shell, HID or that expandability element…",
"parent_id": "8156209",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156271",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T19:45:52",
"content": "A Pi 5 has some serious computing potency for its size, I found the vastly slower Pi4 was with decent cooling a perfectly good desktop able to do 95% of the CAD I was working on just as snappily as my workstation for instance [..]I think it’s Linux/Raspbian that’s a burden to the earlier Pis.Self-booting projects such as mt32-pi seem to be very capable if run on baremetal.RISCOS also is very snappy on even an Pi 2!",
"parent_id": "8156228",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156336",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T06:32:06",
"content": "If I may ask, which CAD software were you using?",
"parent_id": "8156228",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156359",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T08:41:45",
"content": "FreeCAD in that case, at least mostly, might have tinkered with Blender on it too, but I don’t really do what blender is well suited for.",
"parent_id": "8156336",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156281",
"author": "clind",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T21:10:51",
"content": "Real nice design and build quality, I go along Foldi-One, these rectangular covers for the rpi and the power board really look like touch pad locations …On the functionality side some things made me tick : it does not seems very rugged/luggage-able, it look like the screens could mash against the keyboard if pressed hard on it when folded down ? Integrating a handle in the design and any kind of autonomous power source would have been nice ? Maybe it was not the spirit of this build, but then if its not meant to be thrown in a back pack or stacked away somewhere when not used the screen support hinges are kind of just for show ?But then again really nice deck !",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,471.091924
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/29/avif-the-avian-image-format/
|
AVIF: The Avian Image Format
|
Aaron Beckendorf
|
[
"digital audio hacks",
"Science"
] |
[
"audiomoth",
"bird calls",
"birds",
"birdsong",
"microphone",
"ornithology",
"ultrasonic"
] |
Humans have long admired the sound of birdsong, but to fully appreciate how technically amazing it is, you
need an ultrasonic microphone
. [Benn Jordan] recently created a video about using these microphones to analyze a collection of bird calls, even training a starling to repeat an image encoded in sound, and has some recommendations for amateurs wanting to get started in computational ornithology.
In the first part of the video, [Benn] set up automated ultrasonic recorders at home, made recordings in Florida and rural Georgia, and visited a starling named “The Mouth,” famous for his ability to mimic human sounds. As a demonstration of his abilities, [Benn] drew a simple bird shape in a spectrogram, converted it into sound, and played it for The Mouth several times. Initially, it didn’t seem that the starling would repeat it, but while he was analyzing his recordings later, [Benn] found the characteristic bird shape. The Mouth had been able to repeat it almost pitch-perfectly. It was in this analysis that the ultrasonic microphones showed their worth, since they were able to slow down the birds’ complex vocalizations enough to detect their complex structures without losing audio quality.
In the rest of the video, [Benn] shares his recommendations for recording and analyzing bird calls. He has some advice for good high-speed audio interfaces, including warnings about those that are overpriced or advertise unrealistic specifications. You’ll also need a microphone with good ultrasonic performance, and he gives a few options for this, including making your own. For analysis software, he particularly recommended
Birdnet-Pi
, an AI program for identifying birds by their calls, as well as Cornell Lab’s free libraries of ornithology data.
One particularly emphatic recommendation was the open-source AudioMoth ultrasonic microphone and recorder, a project we’ve
seen before
. He also recommended a sonic camera which serves as a more field-ready version of his own
acoustic imaging device
.
| 35
| 12
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8156053",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T05:04:50",
"content": "Welp what PNG are you gonna encode into all the local starlings?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156084",
"author": "Woody WP",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T09:42:35",
"content": "A QR code that links to a PDF file of a field guide to birds.",
"parent_id": "8156053",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156232",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T18:08:25",
"content": "I wonder if you could get it to reproduce in a scannable state… Opens up a lot of possibilities. As a backup, could just teach them to sing a dial-up modem handshake type thing with the data embedded",
"parent_id": "8156084",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156058",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T05:47:46",
"content": "I’m now wondering if a bird can store a zx spectrum program or perhaps even a sstv image.You might not be able to run doom from a bird call but the single line of BASIC version of Tetris might be possible. How many birds would it take to load doom, that is the question.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156233",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T18:09:18",
"content": "Depends on their mood and whether they’ve been fed or want to talk about other things",
"parent_id": "8156058",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156060",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T06:15:46",
"content": "Writers take note, a MacGuffin that listens to a specific bird song to activate would be pretty cool.Like taking a specific species from a specific place and its song opens a locked door.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156061",
"author": "Joe",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T06:26:47",
"content": "Replace birds with whales and you have Star Trek 4.",
"parent_id": "8156060",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156067",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T07:26:32",
"content": "Nah, that’s implied to be some weird communication and not just them acting as a key.",
"parent_id": "8156061",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156189",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T16:18:22",
"content": "A probe appears in orbit over the planet and transmits a signal, which it will not cease transmitting until it receives a response that only the whales are able to provide, at which point it goes away. How is that not EXACTLY an example of challenge/response key-exchange authentication?",
"parent_id": "8156067",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156231",
"author": "trickyduck",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T18:05:47",
"content": "Is this the start of an implementation of RFC1149?",
"parent_id": "8156060",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156077",
"author": "Matěj Sikora",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T09:05:16",
"content": "Anozher thing we can Doom on.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156088",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T10:12:14",
"content": "From the video, it seems he’s identified some of the limitations of the bird’s physical ability to reproduce sounds. If you actually had an interest in storing information “in a bird” then you should incorporate these limitations into the data format/encoder to maximize the data fidelity.Just a thought.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156178",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T15:49:07",
"content": "RIAA correction but for birds not phonographs. That would be a pretty fun project, and probably similar to the RIAA circuit in that it would bias towards higher frequency as that’s what the recording/playback medium hardware does best.",
"parent_id": "8156088",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156196",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T16:21:39",
"content": "What is RIAA other than the music-industry IP lobby? (The Recording Industry Association of America.) Sure you’ve got the right acronym?",
"parent_id": "8156178",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156210",
"author": "B+town",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T16:42:56",
"content": "You spent longer writing this inane comment that just searching for the answer.Who could possibly think that the recording industry association of America could have been involved in establishing industry standards related to recording?",
"parent_id": "8156196",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156224",
"author": "akimmet",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T17:38:14",
"content": "The RIAA equalization standardhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization",
"parent_id": "8156196",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156235",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T18:12:01",
"content": "In much the same way that the FCC or FDA (and countless others) are basically a big universal access port for various lobbies, they also have a very minor function of actually setting some standards and regulations. But mostly they take bribes and facilitate cartel-like behavior",
"parent_id": "8156196",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156836",
"author": "Chuck R",
"timestamp": "2025-08-01T20:55:58",
"content": "RIAA, the equalization pre/de emphasis curve in use since mid-1950s. Engineering not politics.",
"parent_id": "8156196",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156089",
"author": "frenchone",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T10:16:08",
"content": "So, is the bird able to whistle/produce 4 different frequencies at a time (like in the png) and even 5 (in the spetrogram one can see an additional one) ?Or is it some illusion due to some horizontal stretching of the spectrogram ? In reality the bird would sing one note, then another one…then repeat. And the stretching makes it look like 4 (5) continuous tones what is really a succession of 5 individual notes quickly executed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156185",
"author": "Steven Clark",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T16:11:45",
"content": "Birds use a syrinx instead of the larynx to make sounds. It’s forked so they can manage at least two tones at once.",
"parent_id": "8156089",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156238",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T18:16:49",
"content": "Great scrabble word by the way. Think of a recorder versus a clarinet; our larynx needs to have physical contact between vibrating surfaces, whereas with birds it’s the walls of the tube and the air column itself which vibrate. They do not have vocal chords (or the reed in this analogy). This is also why a creature smaller than your hand with lungs the size of a couple peanuts can produce a sound that nearly blows out your eardrums if it’s sitting on your shoulderHow do they keep from ruining their own ears? There’s actually a lot of avian adaptations concerning that; birds have extremely durable ears and regenerate their hearing instead of losing it permanently over time like we do.",
"parent_id": "8156185",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156380",
"author": "frenchone",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T10:05:42",
"content": "Thank you. However that would only explain two tones. Not the 4 or 5 you could spot at the wing area (from lower to higher tone : belly of duck, bottom of wing, unknown tone, top of wing, back of duck).I don’t think harmonics are the explanation",
"parent_id": "8156185",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156270",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T19:42:05",
"content": "They can be harmonics each will be a line on a spectrogram.",
"parent_id": "8156089",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156378",
"author": "frenchone",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T09:56:45",
"content": "Could be. But it does not look like it is.",
"parent_id": "8156270",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156570",
"author": "Surgo",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T22:38:11",
"content": "Answer is earlier in the video but if you aren’t familiar with synthesis you’d miss it. They can perform FM and AM which can produce very complex spectra from two tones, and they’re capable of producing those two independent tones.",
"parent_id": "8156089",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156095",
"author": "Dennis",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T11:00:40",
"content": "Starlinglinks",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156106",
"author": "Bob Marlee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T11:46:24",
"content": "Starlingks",
"parent_id": "8156095",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156148",
"author": "Luwak Civet",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T14:19:56",
"content": "Muad’Dib! We have built a distrans!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156175",
"author": "make piece not war",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T15:31:51",
"content": "While I enjoyed reading your comment, I have to correct it and say that the distrans is a small bat.Cheers.",
"parent_id": "8156148",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156192",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T16:19:12",
"content": "Tell me of your pedantery, Usl.",
"parent_id": "8156175",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156239",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T18:19:25",
"content": "The Fremen of Arrakis, and presumably assassins used distrans animals extensively as a form of covert communication. Typically, birds were the most common form of distrans employed in the days of the old Imperium. Bats were especially useful, as they could travel under the cover of night.",
"parent_id": "8156175",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156169",
"author": "chango",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T15:00:51",
"content": "RFC1149 but it’s all meat.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156273",
"author": "Davidp",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T19:51:32",
"content": "There was an amazing program out there, SoundID (not the one by Sonarworks), that could recognize birdsong or any other sound using local hardware and software. Overlapping sounds, recognize at 300x realtime, signals 40 dB below the noise floor…Truly an amazing system. They used it to identify the unknown song of a bird by literally recognizing every other callI wanted to use it to recognize defects in an end of line tester but my organization couldn’t get off dead center, then COVID hit and the main person behind it has retired. If anyone knows of a similar system I am highly interested. I have the beta version but our plant will only install software with support.https://web.archive.org/web/20221013115259/https://soundid.net/Neal Boucher and Michihiro Jinnai were the names associated with the software.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156402",
"author": "Caprico",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T13:03:58",
"content": "Nice! So we won’t have to print out a PDF and attach it to a carrier pigeon. We can just have the pigeon sing it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156480",
"author": "Sedit",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T17:51:38",
"content": "I need to see someone repeat this experiment I don’t believe it. I suspect he is just aging the information in the background as the bird made regular bird sounds.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,470.922962
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/29/casting-meteorite-like-materials/
|
Casting Meteorite-like Materials
|
Aaron Beckendorf
|
[
"Science"
] |
[
"aluminium",
"copper",
"iron",
"metal casting",
"meteorite",
"meteorites",
"nickel"
] |
From the outside, iron meteorites tend to look like formless, rusted lumps of metal, which is why museums often polish and etch sections to show their interior structure. This reveals their Widmanstätten patterns, a latticework structure of parallel iron-nickel intermetallic crystals which forms over millions of years of very slow solidification. Inspired by this, [Electron Impressions] created his own
metal composition
which forms similar patterns on a much-faster-than-geological time scale.
Witmanstätten patterns form when a meteorite colliding with a planet launches molten iron and nickel into space, where they very slowly solidify. As the mixture cools, it first forms a stable phase called Taenite, then begins to precipitate another phase called Kamacite. Kamacite forms needle-shaped crystals, which when polished show up against the Taenite background. However, such needle-shaped growth only becomes noticeable at a cooling rate of a few degrees per million years, so it’s not really a practical way to make the pattern.
Instead of iron-nickel, therefore, [Electron Impressions] used a copper-aluminium alloy. The copper-aluminium system contains an intermetallic compound which forms large rod-shaped crystals, as well as a eutectic copper-aluminium alloy which can form a background for the crystals. For his first attempt, [Electrons Impressions] melted a composition of 45% copper and 55% aluminium, which produced large crystals on slow cooling. This had a visibly different structure than Widmanstätten patterns, so to reduce the numbers of crystals, he tried again with 40% copper. This produced a criss-cross crystal pattern, not quite a Widmanstätten pattern, but very similar, and good enough for decorative purposes.
When a meteorite collides with a planet and ejects material, the impact can be dramatic enough for
amateur astronomers to capture
. If you’re looking for something closer to home, it’s also possible to grow non-intermetallic
copper crystals
.
Thanks to [Zane Atkins] for the tip!
| 3
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8156158",
"author": "Tedious bore",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T14:41:13",
"content": "That’s very interesting!“55% aluminium”As a fun aside I note that on my keyboard you can type “55%” by hitting “555” with a shift on the third character.So you can literally do this with a 555! 😃",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156174",
"author": "Beowulf Shaeffer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T15:26:27",
"content": "Although, you could possibly use iron-nickel…. You just might end up with the more useful but slightly less pretty structure of tetrataenite.See DOI:10.1002/advs.202204315 and Patent No.: US 11,462,358 B2",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156213",
"author": "helge",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T16:59:28",
"content": "Selective (electro-)etching of SAC solder can expose some very intricate Ag3Sn platelets / needles. Certainly solder is expensive, but maybe that’s the best use of those early, crappy lead-free solder alloys.An image can be found inhttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/234844373_Physics_and_materials_challenges_for_lead-free_solders–FIG. 24. SEM image of a large Ag3Sn plate-type precipitate in the eutecticSnAg solder (after Ref. 8).”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,470.808362
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/29/2025-one-hertz-challenge-precise-time-ref-via-1-pulse-per-second-gps-signal/
|
2025 One Hertz Challenge: Precise Time Ref Via 1 Pulse-Per-Second GPS Signal
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"clock hacks"
] |
[
"gps",
"gps disciplined oscillator",
"ocxo",
"oven controlled crystal oscillator",
"VCXO",
"Voltage-Controlled Crystal Oscillator"
] |
Our hacker [Wil Carver] has sent in his submission for the One Hertz Challenge:
Precise Time Ref via 1 Pulse-Per-Second GPS Signal
.
This GPS Disciplined Oscillator (GPSDO) project uses a Piezo 2940210 10 MHz crystal oscillator which is both oven-controlled (OCXO)
and
voltage-controlled (VCXO). The GPSDO takes the precision 1 Pulse-Per-Second (PPS) GPS signal and uses it to adjust the 10 MHz crystal oscillator until it repeatedly produces 10,000,000 cycles within one second.
[Wil] had trouble finding all the specs for the 2940210, particularly the EFC sensitivity (S), so after doing some research he did some experiments to fill in the blanks. You can get the gory details in his notes linked above.
In a Voltage-Controlled Crystal Oscillator (VCXO), the EFC pin is the tuning-voltage input. EFC stands for Electronic Frequency Control. [Wil] found that he needed to push the EFC up to around 4.34V in order to get 10 MHz output, which is a bit out of spec, usually the center of the range should be around 2.5V. [Wil] put this discrepancy down to the age of the crystal oscillator. You can see a chart of this behavior in the notes.
[Wil] had nice things to say about Tom Van Baak’s website,
LeapSecond.com
, where you can learn about timing accuracy, precision, and stability. He also suggested searching for “Allan Variance” if you’re interested in the measurement of stable timing sources.
If you’re interested in OCXOs be sure to check out
XOXO For The OCXO
and
Inside A Vintage Oven Controlled Crystal Oscillator
.
| 5
| 1
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155989",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T23:16:22",
"content": "This is really easy with those cheap GPS modules (<$5 AliExpress et al) as the PPS (Pulse Per Second) signal is on the header.For those where it isn’t on the header (4 pin as opposed to 5 pin) it’s easy enough to find. Or take if from the blinking LED.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155990",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T23:19:53",
"content": "I’m doing something similar. Don’t know if a VCXO would really improve for my needs.",
"parent_id": "8155989",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156193",
"author": "Tom Verbeure",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T16:19:53",
"content": "The 1PPS output of cheap GPS modules has a jitter of tens of nanoseconds and up. When you discipline a VCXO with the 1PPS of a GPS, you can bring the jitter down way below nanoseconds.",
"parent_id": "8155990",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156575",
"author": "Ang",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T23:03:29",
"content": "Below nanoseconds?",
"parent_id": "8156193",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156154",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T14:34:49",
"content": "Just make sure it has a good fix. I tried with some random module indoors, and sometimes it would drop the fix and output not-quite-1 Hz for a moment. No problem when user notices it, but for automated measurements it could cause real havoc.",
"parent_id": "8155989",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,470.687239
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/29/attiny-powered-business-card-plays-cracktro-hits/
|
ATtiny-Powered Business Card Plays Cracktro Hits
|
Matt Varian
|
[
"handhelds hacks"
] |
[
"attiny",
"attiny 1616",
"pcb business card"
] |
PCB business cards are a creative way to show your tech skills while getting your name out there. This take on a
PCB business card
, sent in by [VCC], tackles one of the big challenges with them: making them in such a way that they are cheap enough to not feel bad about handing them out.
These cards plug into a USB port for power and have over a dozen small LEDs that light up the stars on the front, and a small buzzer that can play over ten minutes of cracktro music. To keep the cost down, [VCC] went with an ATtiny1616 microcontroller costing under 50 cents and still having plenty of outputs to drive the buzzer and LEDs. The final per-unit cost prior to shipping came out to only 1.5 euros, enabling them to be handed out without worrying about breaking the bank.
To aid in the assembly of the cards, [VCC] 3D printed a jig to apply material to the back of the USB connector, building up its thickness to securely fit in the USB port. He also wrote a small script for assembly-line programming the cards, getting the programming process down to around ten seconds per card and letting him turn through prepping the cards. Thanks, [VCC], for sending in your project—it’s a great addition to other
PCB business cards
we’ve featured.
| 11
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155957",
"author": "Amigaman",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T20:41:24",
"content": "Ohhh… It has been a while since I last heard these amiga/c64. How did they fit in the attiny161 16k of program+data ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155993",
"author": "VCC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T23:24:42",
"content": "I had to use a 4 channel chiptune routine – it is not mp3 or wav, but a real old style chiptune, similar to the ones we did when all that we had was 8kb ram.",
"parent_id": "8155957",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156243",
"author": "Tessa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T18:37:25",
"content": "What do I need to do to get one of these cards?",
"parent_id": "8155993",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156284",
"author": "Vcc",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T21:56:40",
"content": "I gave away all the 400. I can make a new batch if you want a few unité. Tell me how to contact you !",
"parent_id": "8156243",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155986",
"author": "Timo Birnschein",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T22:51:16",
"content": "Love it! But ask any random business person to plug anything from a stranger into their computer’s USB port….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155991",
"author": "Vcc",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T23:22:38",
"content": "The design shows clearly only two tracks (+ and -) are used, no data line – which make hacking impossible. The visible lack of power components makes “usb killer” impossible too.But next version will use an usb-c socket but a one side only assembly- it is chaperon than pcb usb and double side assembly.",
"parent_id": "8155986",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156014",
"author": "huh?",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T01:31:55",
"content": "I guess ‘business people’ are too serious to have ever taken notice to a mains powered 5v power supply?Or a battery bank?That said, maybe this day and age its time to move on to USB-C.Also, a nitpick but, ‘cracktro music’? Thats a pretty tiny slit in the door, what about songs from Demos, or Keygens, or Musicdisks?This genre has a name, chiptunes.",
"parent_id": "8155986",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156117",
"author": "Tron",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T12:56:49",
"content": "These are cracktro chiptunes – each of you is 50% right",
"parent_id": "8156014",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156033",
"author": "mythoughts62",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T03:06:03",
"content": "A lot of people will do it, attacks via USB driives scattered in parking lots have worked.",
"parent_id": "8155986",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156065",
"author": "xChris",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T06:56:09",
"content": "(from that chap’s site)Introduce Yourself Like It’s the 90ser not exactly as during 90s we used ‘paper’ cards…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156116",
"author": "Vcv",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T12:55:15",
"content": "You are right but when swapping c64 or amiga disks it was all cracktros and no paper !",
"parent_id": "8156065",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,470.576927
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/29/2025-one-hertz-challenge-fixing-the-clock-that-once-synced-the-world/
|
2025 One-Hertz Challenge: Fixing The Clock That Once Synced The World
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"clock hacks"
] |
[
"2025 Hackaday One Hertz Challenge",
"clock",
"hewlett packard"
] |
The HP 115BR is not one of the most well-known products from Hewlett-Packard. And yet, it was remarkably important nonetheless. This hardware once synced time around the world. Now, for our 2025 One-Hertz Challenge,
[curiousmarc] has taken on the job of restoring it.
The HP 115BR itself was not used alone, but in concert with the HP5060A atomic clock. The latter would output a 100 KHz reference output. It was the job of the HP 115BR to divide this frequency down to provide a superbly accurate 1-second tick.
The example on [curiousmarc]’s bench showed up in poor shape. It was “very broken,” and he reported that it had also previously been hacked to some degree. However, he has been able to restore it to proper functionality, including the special modification for continuous tick adjustment, as used in the
1964 flying atomic clock experiment.
He was even able to sync it to NIST’s current atomic clock signal from Fort Collins using the WWW radio signal.
We’ve seen plenty of old HP metal restored over the years;
it’s always pleasant to see how well things were built back in the day
. Video after the break.
| 5
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155938",
"author": "Austin Lesea",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T18:22:56",
"content": "Of interest, when I went to NIST ‘time school in the 1980’s in Boulder, Co, the ‘father’ of the HP 5060A Atomic clock, Leonard Cutler, told me that his boss had him place a 12 hr clock in the unit, because without a clock, it wasn’t an atomic clock! Of course, it was not a clock at all, but a frequency reference. Management…Austin Lesea",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8159244",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2025-08-08T16:45:51",
"content": "Low key smart move. Gotta market to management. That cheap module is probably responsible for saving quite a few sales",
"parent_id": "8155938",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155967",
"author": "S Hart",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T21:48:22",
"content": "I have a mint condition HP 115BR sitting in my office – anyone know if it’s worth much?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155981",
"author": "Alan Kilian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T22:29:39",
"content": "I donated this one to Curious Marc.It was worth the cost of shipping to see all the fun and use he’s getting out of it.Maybe see if he needs a second one for his upcoming atomic clock relativity experiment.",
"parent_id": "8155967",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156071",
"author": "Then",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T08:01:54",
"content": "WWW Radio station? Do you mean WWV? Although great typo :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,471.136134
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/29/numbers-station-simulator-right-in-your-browser/
|
Numbers Station Simulator, Right In Your Browser
|
Donald Papp
|
[
"Art",
"Software Hacks"
] |
[
"numbers station",
"tts",
"web speech api"
] |
Do you find an odd comfort in the uncanny, regular intonations of a Numbers Station? Then check out
[edent]’s numbers station project
, which leverages the browser’s speech synthesis engine to deliver a ceaseless flow of (mostly) numbers, calmly-intoned in various languages.
The project is an entry for the
annual JavaScript Golfing Competition
, in which participants aim to create a cool program in 1024 bytes or less. It cleverly relies on the
Web Speech API
to deliver the speaking parts, which helps keep the code size tiny. The only thing it’s missing is an occasional shadow of static drifting across the audio.
If you’re new to numbers stations, our own [Al Williams] is here to
tell you all about them
. But there’s no need to tune into an actual mysterious radio signal just to experience weird numbers; just fire up [edent]’s project, put on some headphones, and relax if you can.
| 6
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155911",
"author": "macsimki",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T16:23:59",
"content": "im not shure if its my phone, but the speech synthesizer does not say the individual numbers, but combines them into one big number.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155920",
"author": "Observer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T17:11:22",
"content": "On my (linux/firefox) browser, this app does nothing at all.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155970",
"author": "Iván Stepaniuk",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T21:58:52",
"content": "On my (linux/firefox) browser, it works",
"parent_id": "8155920",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155955",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T20:20:44",
"content": "works on waterfox for windows",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156052",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T04:50:22",
"content": "Plays half speed on Firefox on one windows PC, does nothing on another, does not say individual numbers so it sounds nothing like a numbers station even if I record and speed it up,2/10, nice idea but can only assume creator has never heard a numbers station, must try harder…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156132",
"author": "Brad",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T13:37:02",
"content": "Given the vocal intonations, I keep waiting for it to say “Are you still there?”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,470.849451
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/29/power-line-patrols-the-grids-eye-in-the-sky/
|
Power Line Patrols: The Grid’s Eye In The Sky
|
Dan Maloney
|
[
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] |
[
"drone",
"flir",
"grid",
"helicopter",
"image intensifier",
"inspection",
"transmission",
"uav",
"uv"
] |
Those of us who like to monitor air traffic with ADS-B aggregators such as FlightAware and ADS-B Exchange tend to see some interesting flight paths. I’m not talking about
the truly ambitious pictures drawn by pilots
, or even
the more ribald ones
, but rather flights that follow paths that seem to make little sense from either a commercial or leisure standpoint.
Most of these mystery flights have long straight stretches interrupted by occasional tight loops, and often cover great distances across rural and urban landscapes alike. A glance at the ADS-B data indicates that these flights are usually pretty close to the ground, and are often completed by helicopters. Occasionally, the registration of the aircraft will even indicate ownership by some “three-letter” federal agency.
Although mystery helicopters flying odd patterns in the sky seems like a good excuse to don a tinfoil hat and head to one’s bunker, chances are pretty good that these aircraft are engaged in a far less nefarious and far more useful endeavour: aerial transmission line patrols. These flights are key to keeping the transmission lines that form the backbone of the grid in tip-top shape, especially at a time of unprecedented growth in load and a shift in the generation profile away from fossil fuels towards renewables.
Federal Alphabet Soup
Although the grid as we know it today in North America appears to be a monolithic machine, it’s actually a far-flung collection of interconnected sub-grids, operating more or less in concert to provide uninterrupted service to 400 million people. While part of that cooperation can be explained by market forces doing what they do best, a lot of the interoperability that makes the grid work and gives it the reliability we’ve come to expect can be traced to government regulations.
The North American grid stretches from the northern part of Mexico well into Canada, and is divided into four main interconnected sub-grids. Source:
FERC
.
In the United States, the regulations that bulk power system (BPS) operators must follow come from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), a federal agency of the Executive Branch that ultimately answers to the President through the Secretary of Energy. FERC is somewhat analogous to the Federal Communications Commission in that regard, but while the FCC creates standards and enforces them directly, FERC delegates its standards-setting and enforcement authority to a separate body, the National Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC.
For as critical to modern life as the grid is, the existence of a body dedicated solely to ensuring its reliability is a shockingly recent development. In its current form, the NERC has only existed since 2005, created in response to the 2003 blackout in the Northeast United States. Before that, NERC was the National Electric Reliability Council, which itself only came into being in 1968 in response to a prior Northeast blackout in 1965. Both versions of NERC sound a little like closing the barn doors after the horses have gotten out, but engineering something as large and complex as the grid is largely a learn-by-doing exercise, and NERC’s regulations are what BPS operators use to ensure that their systems are in line with current best practices.
On Patrol
Patrolling transmission lines is one of the main ways that BPS operators make sure they’re up to snuff with NERC rules. These patrols give an up-close and personal look at the transmission lines and the structures that support them, along with the rights-of-way (ROWs) along which they’re built, and any defects noted during these inspections can be scheduled for repair before they cascade into widespread system failures.
Transmission line patrols can take many forms, but the simplest to perform in some regions is probably a ground patrol. Ground patrols are often as simple as a single engineer driving a truck along a transmission line right-of-way, visually inspecting each tower along the way. Ground patrols such as these are limited by what can be seen with the linesman’s Mark I eyeballs or perhaps a pair of binoculars, but they’re still a valuable part of the patrolling process. The “boots-on-the-ground” approach also has the advantage of potentially coming across broken equipment that has fallen from structures, like the nuts and bolts that hold together towers, or even fragments of failed insulators. Occasionally, ground patrols will come across the carcasses of unfortunate animals that have completed a circuit,
But given the huge geographic footprint of transmission lines, some of which span hundreds of miles and often pass over remote and rugged landscapes, ground patrols can be limiting. They tend to be very time-consuming; transmission lines often cross privately owned property, and while the rights-of-way usually allow BPS operators to legally access the property, in practice, coordinating with owners to unlock gates can complicate matters. Add to that factors such as the potential need to cross streams or wetlands, potential for property damage from truck tires, and the fact that inspection is limited to what’s visible from the ground, and ground patrols can be difficult.
The obvious solution to these problems is to get above it all and inspect transmission lines from the air. Airborne inspection offers significant advantages over ground patrols, but the chief benefit is speed. Airborne inspections can inspect long stretches of a transmission line far faster than a ground patrol, and without worrying about access issues. Airborne patrols can also make inspections over rough terrain a relative snap, although such inspections often call for more experienced pilots.
It would seem that aerial power line patrols are an ideal use case for UAVs, and indeed, many of the 300 to 400 aerial inspection companies operating in the United States today offer drone-based inspection services. But even with the vastly less expensive per-hour cost of operating a drone, helicopter inspections dominate the industry today. There are a couple of reasons for this, but the most important are speed and payload capacity. A typically equipped Bell 407 helicopter, for example, carries enough primary and reserve fuel to inspect 170 miles (273 km) of transmission line with a single takeoff and landing. A UAV patrol, on the other hand, usually has to operate within line-of-sight of the operator, and has to land frequently for battery changes. This leads to frequent relocations of the base of operations, resulting in some of the same access problems as ground patrols. It’s also significantly slower than helicopter patrols, taking up to five times longer to complete an equivalent length of line as a helicopter patrol.
Helicopters also have UAVs beat when it comes to payload capacity. Even large UAVs are limited in how many instruments they can carry, whereas a helicopter has effectively no limit. This makes helicopters a multispectral imaging platform, with HD visible-light video to capture images of potential structural problems, forward-looking infrared (FLIR) scanners that look for overheating due to corrosion in a splice or an internal defect in the conductors, and LiDAR scanners that can image the entire ROW and the structures within it. But perhaps most significantly, UAVs can’t carry aloft an experienced linesman, whose training can be key to quickly locating something that needs a closer look from the sensor platforms onboard.
My Corona
The breakdown voltage of air is approximately 30 kV, and while this figure varies slightly with atmospheric conditions such as temperature and humidity, it is generally well below the voltage on most transmission lines in the BPS. That makes flashover a possibility anywhere in the system, and the potential damage caused by an intense high-current discharge to both transmission system components and the surrounding environment makes it critical to detect defects that could lead to it.
Luckily, physics provides an early warning system in the form of corona discharge. Corona discharge occurs when the air surrounding a conductor becomes ionized, turning into a conductive plasma. It can happen anywhere along the transmission system, but it’s particularly likely to happen at places where the electric field is concentrated, such as sharp points. These are generally avoided when designing the system, but faults can occur that lead to their formation, such as broken strands in conductors. Sometimes these defects are visible to the naked eye, but more often, they reveal themselves with characteristic emissions in the ultraviolet part of the EM spectrum.
Corona discharge starts when a strong electric field accelerates free electrons in the air surrounding a defect. If the field is sufficiently strong, the kinetic energy of these electrons causes other air molecules to be ionized, starting an electron avalanche. These excited electrons propagate outward to a distance where the electric field is no longer strong enough to accelerate them, at which point the excited electrons return to their ground state and emit a photon of light. Since air is 78% nitrogen, the photons are mostly in the UV range, with just 5% being in the just barely visible end of the spectrum. This gives corona discharge its characteristic purplish-blue glow.
The other principal component of air, oxygen, comes into play as well. The free electrons in the corona discharge can split diatomic oxygen, leaving behind two negative oxygen ions. Each of these can then combine with a diatomic oxygen molecule to form ozone (O
3
), a powerfully reactive oxidizer that can quickly corrode aluminum in conductors and steel in the support structure. The ozone can also combine with atmospheric nitrogen to form nitrogen oxides that, in the presence of water and oxygen, eventually create nitric acid. This strong acid can quickly strip the zinc coating from galvanized steel and attack passivated coatings on parts. Without these coatings, metal parts are unprotected from the elements and can quickly corrode and lose mechanical strength.
Corona discharge can be extremely costly to BPS operators. Specialized corona discharge cameras are used to detect corona faults. These cameras filter out the abundant UV-A and UV-B light in sunlight using a “solar blind” filter. This leaves only shortwave UV-C light below 280 nm in wavelength, which the ozone layer completely blocks out. Any light in this band has to come from nitrogen fluorescence, which makes it an effective way to detect corona discharge.
Corona cameras usually have a UV beam splitter to send light to a pair of detectors, one to capture the visible light coming from the scene and one that captures only the light remaining after passing through a solar-blind filter. The few photons of UV light that make it through the filter are amplified by a UV image intensifier, which uses a photocathode to release multiple electrons for each UV photon. These are accelerated in a strong electric field toward a phosphor screen, which converts them to visible light, which is picked up by a CCD camera and combined with the visible light scene. This shows the corona discharge as an overlay that allows operators to see where the discharge is originating from.
Corona cameras couple detection of “solar-blind” UV discharge with visible-light imagery to detect places where corona discharge might be happening. Here, a drone-carried corona camera shows a corona hot spot near a reinforcement in a phase conductor on a 1,000-kV transmission line. Source:
Professionele Drones
.
In the Weeds
One of the more stringent sets of NERC regulations is
FAC-003-5
, Transmission Vegetation Management. It might seem a little incongruous for an organization that sets standards for nuclear power plants and cybersecurity of critical infrastructure to worry about tree trimming, but studies show that vegetation contacts account for 16% to 23% of all outages in the US and Canada. Most of those outages occur in the distribution system, which is bad enough, but if vegetation were to contact lines in the transmission system, the failure cascade could be devastating. For an example of how bad vegetation contacts in the transmission system can be, look no further than
the 2003 blackout in the northeast US
, which started when overloaded 345 kV transmission lines in Ohio sagged into foliage. A software issue then compounded the problem, causing safety systems to trip and plunging customers from Ontario to the Mid-Atlantic states into darkness.
FAC-003-5 isn’t exactly light reading, going into great detail as it must to define terms and set actionable standards. The gist of the document, though, is contained in just a few tables that list the Minimum Vegetation Clearance Distances (MVCD) for both AC and DC systems. In general, the MVCDs increase with the nominal line voltage, which makes sense; the higher the voltage, the greater the potential flashover distance. More surprisingly, though, is that MVCDs increase dramatically with elevation. This has to do with the dielectric strength of air, which depends on its density. That means the thinner air at higher altitudes has a greater flashover distance, so more clearance is required.
For all the havoc vegetation contacts can wreak, the MVCDs are surprisingly narrow. For a nominal 800-kV line, the MVCD at sea level is a mere 11.6 feet (3.6 m), and only increases to 14.3 ft (4.4 m) over 14,000 ft (4268 m) elevation. These are minimum distances, of course, calculated using equations that take into account the breakdown voltage of air and the potential for flashover to vegetation. In practice, though, BPS operators keep ROWs well-groomed, aiming for to keep trees far beyond the MVCD requirements. Operators are especially watchful for trees at the edges of ROW that might be more than the MVCD away from the lines while standing, but could fall during a storm and make contact.
Assessing vegetation encroachments into the ROW is another job that can be tackled quickly by aerial patrols. The sensor platform in this case is often as simple as a spotter with a pair of binoculars or a camera, but in many cases, LiDAR sensors are used to scan the entire right of way. The LiDAR sensor is tied into the aircraft’s GPS system, resulting in a geotagged point cloud that can be analyzed after the flight. Three-dimensional visualizations of the transmission lines, their supporting structures, the ground below, and everything within and adjacent to the ROW can be viewed interactively, making it easy to spot trees with the potential to cause problems. These visualizations allow users to virtually “fly the line,” giving BPS operators a view that would be impossible to achieve even by flying a drone dangerously close to the lines.
| 18
| 9
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155895",
"author": "MAC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T14:59:39",
"content": "Similarly, the petroleum and natural gas pipeline infrastructure is monitored via aerial ‘pipeline patrol’. When I was young, my father flew pipeline patrols over parts of Kansas and Oklahoma. I rode with him on occasion. It is not an experience for the faint of heart. When flying about 500 feet in the air, those high-tension electrical towers and power lines look really close. They often resided on the same ground path as the pipeline. Sometimes they would cross the path of the pipeline. Either way, you had to be aware of their presence, even though your focus was what was happening on the ground. All the while, you are flying the plane and staying aware of other aircraft that might cross your path! It amazed me that my dad was able to maintain situational awareness, control the plane, and complete the pipeline patrol task all by himself!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155896",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T15:00:39",
"content": "Friend of mine from my assault course race days does this for a living, he sits in the side door of a helicopter with a £30K FLIR and a very nice DSLR/Lens combo to look for for broken insulators and other problems on pylons and lines in the UKs power grid.It’s not an un fun job and I’m actually a little envious.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155907",
"author": "virtuous_sloth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T15:47:10",
"content": "Slight amendment, the 30 kV figure should be 30 kV/cm, a measure of electric field strength.Determining the electric field strength requires knowledge of the voltage difference between the conductors and the shape, so it is not as obvious as for example, wires carrying 1000 kV should be more that 1000/30 cm apart.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155925",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T17:22:40",
"content": "Well the VLOS rules can have waivers, and the law is changing to accommodate someone navigating a “corridor” (BVLOS). Remote ID, Detect and avoid, communications relays, etc. UAVs also evolving. Longer endurance from better batteries, different fuel sources. e.g. hydrogen, etc. Faster drones and automated navigation. Helicopter for “hotstick” repairs and maintenance. Specialized expertise on-site.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155950",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T19:15:49",
"content": "I wonder why they don´t have lightweight drones doing just that. Powered by the electric field around the line.For sure it´s probably more complicated than that, but still better than meatbags flying over and guzzling petrol.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155958",
"author": "Gardoni",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T21:01:47",
"content": "Why can’t US make one single grid like EU? It would solve a lot of problems with maintenance financing and power distribution. From my POV it looks like they’re still in this angry pioneer phase of electricity where Tesla is dissing Edison about using constant current instead of AC.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155961",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T21:35:02",
"content": "The better question is, why does the EU have it? It’s much less of a federation than the USA is, despite how much Brussels likes to pretend that they control everything.",
"parent_id": "8155958",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155978",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T22:21:55",
"content": "Yes, it is angry pioneering megamonopolies, pretty much all supported with our taxes (Rural Electrification Bill) pretending they don’t need no stinking cooperation when/if needed, and they can and will outcompete their equally tax-backed competitors with the (mostly pointless)wild wild west “everyone survives in their own OK Corral” business model.Close to me there are at least two megamonopolies who “compete” in about the same way Verizon and Comcast “compete”. Prices are the same, no difference, kept mostly artificially high due to “creative accounting”, ie, jacking up the pricing. Cartels they are, directly or indirectly, but the unenforceable US anti-trust laws, that supposed to target these “practices”, have been dead for few decades now.",
"parent_id": "8155958",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156056",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T05:18:07",
"content": "While abusing a monopoly is bad, the electric grid still is a natural monopoly, because nobody’s going to pull twice the cabling to your house just so you could choose.In the EU they’re pretending that it isn’t, by splitting the power transmission from the electricity brokers, so the network is owned by A, and the power is sold by A, B, C, D, E…. etc. which means in many places you get two separate bills for the amount of power you buy. One from the transmission company, the other from the power “negotiator” company that buys and sells power on the grid. I don’t even pretend to know how they operate, all I know is that I can buy “solar power” in the middle of the night in January through these brokers.In other words, you pay extra anyways. Two times the business overhead and profits for the same amount of electricity bought. And the company that owns the wires is still a monopoly because you can’t choose otherwise.",
"parent_id": "8155978",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156082",
"author": "Jelle",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T09:26:25",
"content": "It is a solution to allow for competition: if you keep generation and and transport+distribution in one hand you can be sure the monopolist can squeeze the max out of you/the consumer. By separating the two, generation companies (and brokers on top of that) must compete for your account.That means that indeed part of your bill is a fixed cost (the transport layer) but the other part does have competitive pressure applied.So the complexity in the bill is the price you pay to allow for competition. Maybe not ideal, but the alternatives (commercial monopoly, non-profit utility monopoly) are worse.",
"parent_id": "8156056",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156166",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T14:56:41",
"content": "Yes, in theory, but if you have three middle-men in the loop (distribution, generators, brokers) then you’re going to be paying triple the profits and taxes etc.And the distribution is still going to be a natural monopoly, so they can jack the prices just like before. That’s the main complaint about the system: that the distribution should actually be public infrastructure just like roads.",
"parent_id": "8156082",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156207",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T16:29:42",
"content": "Or, for any product, if you split the company that provides it into three separate companies then you triple the management, the sales department, the customer service, billing, accounting, office space….But that’s just the service economy for you. It increases public transactions of money, which shows up as GDP growth, which is interpreted as increasing “productivity” despite the fact that it’s a less efficient use of money for the same point.And people wonder why their wages are lagging behind productivity metrics and their purchasing power is shrinking.",
"parent_id": "8156082",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156269",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T19:39:55",
"content": "False premise.The EU doesn’t have a single grid in the sense that it’s all well interconnected.It doesn’t even have a single power pool (the modern bid based way of matching power to load).The transmission topography is complicated and won’t make sense unless you understand the history, as it is everywhere.Spain did not take down Poland when it’s grid shit the bed.That’s good.America’s regulatory regions are mostly a historic holdover.Notably the ‘Eastern interconnect’ is interconnected enough to cascade fail together.Taking parts of Canada with it. last time it went big.IIRC it was Carolinas to Quebec.West to Ohio.",
"parent_id": "8155958",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156462",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T17:08:12",
"content": "I think the Eastern, Midwestern and Western grids are a result of the large distances involved. Texas and Quebec don’t play well with others.",
"parent_id": "8155958",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8157681",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-08-04T18:46:11",
"content": "There aren’t really any such things.All the grid is interconnected, just not with enough capacity to handle absolutely anything (transmission lines are very expensive).More or less, same as Europe.",
"parent_id": "8156462",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156016",
"author": "Joe Kelly",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T02:10:51",
"content": "Is there work out there for imagery analysts to review/process the data after its been acquired? Or is the industry mostly using airborne “meatbags” to assess the lines & towers? And can inspectors be trained or do they require engineering degrees?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156136",
"author": "Eric Hughes",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T13:46:32",
"content": "This has to do with the dielectric strength of air, which depends on its density.This is Paschen’s law, a standard presence in the literature on gas discharge tubes.Obligatory Wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paschen%27s_law",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156757",
"author": "mayhem",
"timestamp": "2025-08-01T15:59:03",
"content": "I work in the HVAC field and spend most of my life on rooftops of a 3 building commercial campus. There are power lines that run alongside railroad tracks about a half mile from work. I often see the helicopter doing inspection work on the lines. My coworker and I were on the rooftop one day and in came the helicopter except it didn’t do it’s normal inspecting regime but flew really close to one of the towers. To my absolute amasement two guys climbed out of the chopper and began climbing down the tower. They pulled out tools and started working on the insulators hanging off the arms of the tower! Once they finished they climbed back to the top and the helicopter picked them up and flew off! Amazing stuff to see. And definitly not a job I want!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,470.640247
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/29/tetris-in-a-single-line-of-code/
|
TetrisIn A Single Line Of Code
|
Ian Bos
|
[
"classic hacks",
"Games"
] |
[
"bbc basic",
"emulation",
"one line",
"tetris"
] |
PC gaming in the modern era has become a GPU measuring contest, but back when computers had far fewer resources, every sprite had to be accounted for. To many, this was peak gaming. So let’s look to the greats of [Martin Hollis, David Moore, and Olly Betts], who had the genius (or insanity) to
create
Tetris
in a single BBC BASIC line
.
Created in 1992, one-line
Tetris
serves as a great use of the limited resources available. The entirety of the game fits within 257 bytes. With the age of BASIC, the original intent of the game for BBC BASIC was to be played on computers similar to Acorn’s BBC microcomputer or Archimedes.
One line
Tetris
has all the core features of the original game. Moving left, right, and rotating all function like the traditional game, most of the time. Being created in a single line, there were a few corners cut with bug fixing. Bugs such as crashing every 136 years of play due to large numbers or holding all keys causing the
tetrominoes
to freeze make it an interesting play experience. However, as long as our GPUs are long enough to play, we don’t mind.
If you want to experience the most densely coded gaming experience possible but don’t have one of the BBC BASIC computers of old, make sure to try this
emulator with a copy of the game
. Considering the amount done in a single line of BBC BASIC, the thought may come into mind on what could be done with MORE than a SINGLE line of code. For those with this thought, check out the capabilities of the
coding language with modern hardware
.
Thanks to [Keith Olson] for the tip!
| 18
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155854",
"author": "Steev",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T11:43:34",
"content": "For more small basic goodness, don’t forget the 10 liner competition:https://bunsen.itch.io/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155870",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T12:53:58",
"content": "Well, there’s a blast from the past! And it seems Olly’s still updating it – Good job!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155877",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T13:20:44",
"content": "Well done! 👏🏼We liked Zentris in the mid and late 90s; it came on a floppy.Really begs the question why a mouse driver/utility is almost a gigabyte and so are motherboard ‘utilities’ just to enable ARGB.I can’t recommend Razer peripherals or MSI (The motherboards are fine, I use them, just usually with OpenRGB utility).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155908",
"author": "andarb",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T15:53:41",
"content": "Bandwidth costs them less than paying developers to optimize and ensmallen their drivers/utilities.I wish they’d stop shipping highly graphical, unintuitive, bad UIs that don’t conform to the style of the OS and often don’t have proper menus or even the “close” button in clear view.Why does Norton need a resource intensive, slick but unintuitive, nonstandard UI that bogs down my computer to even open it? (I hate Norton and especially since it merged with Avast, but my office requires it.)",
"parent_id": "8155877",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155936",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T18:10:50",
"content": "Windows users problems …",
"parent_id": "8155908",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156244",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T18:41:01",
"content": "Linux is bloated, too, admittedly.MenuetOS/KolibriOS, DOS (FreeDOS for example) and AmigaOS (AROS etc) are still lightweight platforms by contrast.",
"parent_id": "8155936",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8157376",
"author": "David S.",
"timestamp": "2025-08-04T01:05:25",
"content": "FreeDOS is a lightweight platform, but does it run a modern web browser. It’s almost sad to me, but that’s it; there are a handful of things I do that would be difficult relying on that and Steam alone (like PDF editing, and LaTeX editing and compiling), but 99% of what I and many other people do on a computer is run a web browser, and run Steam and games that come through it. If an OS can’t run a modern web browser, it’s an embedded OS, a toy OS or a server OS, and I’m not sure those you listed are going to run very well in the server competition.",
"parent_id": "8156244",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8157804",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-08-05T02:06:55",
"content": "@David There are a few more modern browsers for FreeDOS.Arachne was updated a few years ago, there’s a graphical port (Dillo got updated just recently), Lynx/Links, PC GEOS has WebMagick browser, there’s a Japanese browser for IBM DOS..In principle, most these browsers can be updated, still, since source code is available.MicroWeb 2 was just written 3 years or go, or so..Here are some screenshots of DOS browsers, old and new:https://tinyurl.com/bdhb4kww",
"parent_id": "8156244",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8158104",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-08-06T00:53:09",
"content": "@David “If an OS can’t run a modern web browser, it’s an embedded OS, a toy OS or a server OS, and I’m not sure those you listed are going to run very well in the server competition.”That’s a very depressing way of seeing it, I think.Because I think that in life there’s more than the internet.In the ham shack, for example, even an old C64 can still do a meaningful task. Log book, RTTY, controlling FT-817 etc.If you’re living in a browser (-nowadays inflated to size of an entire OS-) why not use a Chromebook?Using a real PC solely for surfing the web is a waste.Exactly because a PC used to be intelligent and not just a terminal.Using it as web browser machine is a step backwards.Client/Server concept and cloud computing is so 1960s!Back then it was called Terminal/Host and users had to run their software on time-sharing basis on a remote host computer (a mainframe, often).That’s exactly what we’re doing now again when we stream games from a server or run web-based software and VMs on the internet! So backwards..The PCs and ho,e computers liberated us back in the late 70s, gave every user his/her own computer to work on independently.Without the need for networks and relying on serial connections. Anytime. Let’s think about this for a moment.",
"parent_id": "8156244",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156458",
"author": "Bill wilson",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T17:00:50",
"content": "No it’s the textures, movie files, sound files that make games large now.",
"parent_id": "8155908",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155906",
"author": "nevynuk",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T15:40:52",
"content": "BBC Basic is a much underestimated language. Amazing what it could do and all this in the early 1980s.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156242",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T18:37:05",
"content": "Locomotive Basic wasn’t bad, either.Amstrad and Schneider PC1512/PC1640 shipped with a GEM-based Locomotive BASIC 2.It runs still fine on latest GEM/OpenGEM/FreeGEM.English demo:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDL8w_Mi49A",
"parent_id": "8155906",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156036",
"author": "morty",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T03:27:31",
"content": "that is clearly 7 lines of code",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156097",
"author": "jorenideas",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T11:10:31",
"content": "Any code can be one line with enough semicolons (ok depending on the language, i.e. not python)This tetris code is impressive, without the reason having to be “it’s all one line!”Trying to stretch “one line” this way (as it’s a very long line…) just cheapens it and makes the feat feel less amazing than it really is.",
"parent_id": "8156036",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156221",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T17:23:53",
"content": "‘One line’ has a long history.See also underhanded C one line contests.It’s just (typically) a 256 char program.",
"parent_id": "8156097",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156236",
"author": "Daniel Beer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T18:12:03",
"content": "There is a limit to the line length, which was even used to circumvent it in example in Commodore Basic (with a maximum of 2 usual Screenlimes of 40 characters, so 80) by using shortcuts, which became long again in listing, so it was still possible to have even more than 80 characters as one line of code.",
"parent_id": "8156097",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156211",
"author": "Daniel Beer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T16:45:01",
"content": "One line of code could have the length of what one byte could hold, so a maximum of characters, maybe in case of BBC-Basic 257 characters, as maybe they handled the length of a line interpreted as how many extra characters to the length of one character minimum size …",
"parent_id": "8156036",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156947",
"author": "Luc",
"timestamp": "2025-08-02T07:17:56",
"content": "There is a lot of lines of code, just without “newline” character …",
"parent_id": "8156211",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,470.984721
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/29/solar-light-mains-light-yes/
|
Solar Light? Mains Light? Yes!
|
Al Williams
|
[
"green hacks",
"Solar Hacks"
] |
[
"MOSFETS",
"solar power"
] |
So you want a light that runs off solar power. But you don’t want it to go dark if your batteries discharge. The answer? A solar-mains hybrid lamp. You could use solar-charged batteries until they fall below a certain point and then switch to mains, but that’s not nearly cool enough. [Vijay Deshpande] shows how to make a
lamp that draws only the power it needs from the mains
.
The circuit uses DC operation and does not feed power back into the electric grid. It still works if the mains is down, assuming the solar power supply is still able to power the lamp. In addition, according to [Vijay], it will last up to 15 years with little maintenance.
The circuit was developed in response to an earlier project that utilized solar power to directly drive the light, when possible. If the light was off, the solar power went to waste. Also, if the mains power failed at night, no light.
The answer, of course, is to add a battery to the system and appropriate switching to drive the lights or charge the battery and only draw power from the mains when needed. Since the battery can take up the slack, it becomes easier to load balance. In periods of low sunlight, the battery provides the missing power until it can’t and then the mains supply takes over.
Comparators determine whether there is an under-voltage or over-voltage and use this information to decide whether the battery charges or if the main supply takes over. Some beefy MOSFETs take care of the switching duties. Overall, a good way to save and reuse solar cell output while still drawing from the grid when necessary.
Small solar lights don’t take much
, but won’t draw from commercial power. Solar “
generators
” are all the rage right now, and you could probably adapt this idea for that use, too.
| 21
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155823",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T09:48:10",
"content": "This is quite bad honestly.The faux BMS is really not needed (with its 0.5mA continuous drain!), SLA batteries can work well without kids gloves. The undervoltage lockout is useful though.This entire project is begging to be replaced by a 1$ buck-boost converter and two schottky diodes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155902",
"author": "arifyn",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T15:28:50",
"content": "I agree that the circuit is complicated for what it does, but as the author says, the whole overvoltage cutoff section is just a proof of concept that should be replaced with a proper MPPT solar charger.Your simple boost-buck converter circuit might also do the job fine (after all, MPPT is basically just a buck converter with fancy control logic) but I don’t think you would want to do this with no overvoltage protectionat all..Well, if the solar panel voltage and wattage are chosen carefully, and you’re ok with slow charging, you could probably get away without any regulation, as the panel will be unable to drive the battery too high.Otherwise, charging at too high a voltage won’t give you the excitement of a lithium thermal runaway, but it can still cause electrolysis and boiling of the electrolyte. Sealed lead acid batteries can recover from this to a certain degree, but if the pressure gets too high, they’ll start venting just like any other lead acid battery. Not usually that dangerous, but definitely not good for the battery.",
"parent_id": "8155823",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155913",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T16:37:15",
"content": "Lead acid batteries are supposed to be overcharged a little bit, so they can balance the cells. Since you have no access to the stack of cells inside, the only way you can balance them is by pushing in current until all the cells are absolutely full.With SLAs and gel batteries this results in the electrolyte boiling off, and it can’t be replaced, so the balancing charge has to be done very slowly. With SLAs there’s supposed to be a catalyst that converts hydrogen and oxygen back to water if you’re doing it slowly enough. not sure if it’s always there with all brands and makes.If you don’t, and your cell voltages start drifting apart, then you’ll inevitably under/overcharge some of the cells anyways, and that shortens the lifespan of the battery.",
"parent_id": "8155902",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156332",
"author": "JMR",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T06:12:59",
"content": "I don’t think you’re supposed to overcharge them all the time. I believe it’s only about once per month IIRC.",
"parent_id": "8155913",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155897",
"author": "Gus A Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T15:07:32",
"content": "I have an off-grid cabin, and before I got solar panels, I relied on a generator. But they’re loud and use a lot of fuel, so you don’t want them running all the time. I was happy to found that there is a kind of lightbulb that screws into a conventional socket but contains a battery. Best of all, it somehow monitors the wires coming to it to know when you flip the switch EVEN WHEN THERE IS NO POWER, and uses that information to turn the light on and off. It’s different from this system, but it solves a similar problem and would definitely work for a building that had solar power but no central battery.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155916",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T16:54:34",
"content": "I’d like to know how long that battery lasts inside the light socket, both in terms of use and lifespan.Unless the bulb is something like, half a watt.",
"parent_id": "8155897",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155917",
"author": "Gus Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T17:01:52",
"content": "I don’t know about lifespan, but the battery can run the light for about two hours.here’s one similar to the kind I mean:https://www.ebay.com/itm/388757226260?_skw=lightbulb+with+built+in+battery&itmmeta=01K1BJ2SBKNV15QERFX300FFTR&hash=item5a83bc8314:g:RAMAAeSwNo1ogdjY&itmprp=enc%3AAQAKAAABAFkggFvd1GGDu0w3yXCmi1fcfjXhavONoGCzXEcoz6Vn3H3zbgk9pjUF%2F5TMfgNYVcl%2FIvCY9E26x8YAaXttu6saFmPSz8ufMDr%2F60232QPQGSnu2to9D0%2BQ2%2Bkwt4uwOjAEP9XFw%2Bub5pCGWjxHDsk3dnlJ4fAcyVGnxYMx2PJypnl%2BWhbpn5rGFvPEdLHfKE8arXMa3YZP7wtmrXJyEJ9K7%2FEZkHAhe6rDHNRLcLbXSajGI6yTUNmyJnLN5yWw02wp6oYrwngn8JU0%2FFgxrUDPBaOfL%2BKVKbYJGf8UsK1XEwQ5LHfSGsdVApEBLR%2FfUREPXx493QEKSjRuDJ7ZzJk%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR_qVi_KKZg",
"parent_id": "8155916",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155926",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T17:28:07",
"content": "Right, so it’s not on full power in “outage mode”.Otherwise it’d require a laptop battery to be crammed in the bulb base: 12 W x 4-5 h = 48-60 Wh as per the advertisement.A plausible size of a battery would be something like 1-4 Watt-hours, so it drops down to flashlight brightness when the mains power is out.And, with 12 Watts normally going in the bulb, that things’ going to get might hot, and it’s going to be a very short life for the battery. Conventional LED bulbs of that size can get up to 60-80 C and that’s going to absolutely murder any lithium battery. Any hotter and it would actually present a fire hazard from thermal runaway.",
"parent_id": "8155917",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155935",
"author": "Gus Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T18:10:18",
"content": "it’s definitely not a 12w LED, despite the verbiage, but if you have three of them together in a fixture, it’s got the light equivalence of a 60 watt incandescent when running off the batteries",
"parent_id": "8155926",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155960",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T21:11:30",
"content": "That’s a given – but if it claims to be 60 Watt equivalent then it pretty much needs about 10 Watts worth of diodes, and the power regulation circuit and PFC, so at full brightness it’s going to draw about 12 Watts.I very much doubt it has the 60 Watt equivalence when running on the battery. Realistically speaking, even if it had efficient low-CRI LEDs, it would need at least 6-8 Watts to run them, and for 2 hours that would be the equivalent of 2x 18650 lithium cells with reasonable charge management.Those simply would not fit inside the bulb. Not even close.",
"parent_id": "8155926",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155944",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T18:37:53",
"content": "For future reference: you don’t need to post all that tracking crap in a link to an ebay item – just as far as the ‘?’ will do it, iehttps://www.ebay.com/itm/388757226260",
"parent_id": "8155917",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155946",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T18:41:50",
"content": "And similarly with amazon links",
"parent_id": "8155944",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155984",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T22:47:52",
"content": "That’s fascinating, never seen one of those. I wonder how it tells the difference between a general power outage and turning it off at the switch? Parasitic capacitance? Looks like you can touch the tip of the connector to turn it on as well, kind of like a touch lamp. Gotta be a capacitance trick, it’s sensing how much stuff it is connected to upstream. Or maybe it’s sensing the switch bounce, but I doubt it.I wonder how long a run of wire will cause it to interpret a switch-off as a power outage.",
"parent_id": "8155897",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156074",
"author": "cvoinescu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T08:33:23",
"content": "When the power fails, there’s no voltage, but the impedance remains very low. So the bulb simply turns on when its terminals are shorted together.",
"parent_id": "8155984",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155924",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T17:17:31",
"content": "Also see:https://www.analog.com/en/resources/technical-articles/ideal-diode-controller-eliminates-energy-wasting-diodes-in-power-or-ing-applications.htmlIdeal diode chips can often be used as power source selector switches (OR-ing circuit).Look at the load sharing circuit diagram (Figure 5), it’s an OR-ing circuit between a wall power adapter and two batteries, BAT1 and BAT2.Imagine that the solar panel is BAT2. Whenever the solar panel produces the highest voltage, it is switched to the load and the rest are blocked off.Now imagine there is a conventional diode (blocking diode) from BAT2 (solar panel) to BAT1 to charge it.When the battery is charging, the solar panel will always present the higher voltage and the battery will remain cut off from the load. The solar panel will both power the load and charge the battery. If the solar panel output drops to the point that it can no longer supply the load, the battery will be switched in. If both the battery and the solar panel do not present enough voltage, the wall supply is switched in.All it requires is that the load is current regulated, like a LED lamp usually is, so it can accept a variable input voltage.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155927",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T17:39:35",
"content": "And, whatever happens between the solar panel and the battery can be their own business. You can place a regulator in there that caps the charging voltage to something the battery can tolerate, and implement a low-voltage cutoff circuit if you wish. If not, just match the maximum voltage and V-I curve (mind the blocking diode) of the solar cell to your battery and bob’s your uncle.",
"parent_id": "8155924",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155930",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T17:55:42",
"content": "Of course, Analog parts can be mighty expensive, but the same principles apply. You just have to mind whatever hysteresis or other peculiarities the chip has: sometimes with some chips, if the two source voltages are too close to each other for too long, they both switch off.",
"parent_id": "8155924",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156041",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T03:49:01",
"content": "policy question: should the mains ever be used to charge the battery if there isn’t enough solar but the light will be needed at night?I guess the mains could be used at night, if you make the assumption that they’ll never go down which seems to be the case. Merely to use them as little as possible.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156150",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T14:28:12",
"content": "If you are looking for the commercial circuit it is an Ideal Diode Failover MOSFET circuit. You can get them in versions that can take up to several Amps. You can find a similar (although likely more sophisticated) circuit in most laptops, as they have a battery and a DC charger and need to choose the appropriate supply and switch over under load.A cheap tablet may even have a much simpler circuit, and those tablets are usually available free in very short order.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156155",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T14:35:31",
"content": "I forgot to mention you can also design it for 3 or more power sources, and incorporate some hysterisis so it doesn’t get in a state where it is rapidly toggling between two sources (such as 2 battery packs at nearly the same voltage).Usual use case is hot-swappable battery packs. Note to self, investigate hot-swappable flashlight, although a super capacitor may be enough to keep a LED running while batteries are changed.",
"parent_id": "8156150",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156302",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T00:31:36",
"content": "High amperage MOSFET board:https://www.aliexpress.com/i/1005006164867741.htmlOr a simple relay board is quite cheap if it’s just a light than it’s not mission critical that it doesn’t flicker on changeover:https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005322245142.html",
"parent_id": "8156150",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,471.043537
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/28/2025-one-hertz-challenge-drop-the-beat-but-only-at-60-bpm/
|
2025 One Hertz Challenge: Drop The Beat (But Only At 60 BPM)
|
Adam Zeloof
|
[
"clock hacks",
"contests"
] |
[
"drip",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"rp2040",
"water"
] |
Mankind has been using water to mark the passage of time for thousands of years. From dripping stone pots in Ancient Egypt to the more mechanically-complicated Greco-Roman Clepsydrae, the history of timekeeping is a wet one — and it makes sense. As an incompressible fluid, water flows in very predictable patterns. If you fill a leaky pot with water and it takes an hour to drain, it will also take an hour the next time you try. One Hertz Challenge entrant [johnowhitaker] took this idea in a different direction, however, with
an electromechanical clock that uses dripping water as an indicator
.
This clock uses a solenoid to briefly pop the plunger out of a water-filled syringe. This allows a drop to fall from the tip, into a waiting beaker. In addition to the satisfying audio indication this produces, [johnowhitaker] added a bit of food coloring to the dripping water for visual flair. The entire thing is controlled by a Raspberry Pi Pico and a motor driver board, so if you’ve got some spare parts lying about and would like to build your own be sure to head over to the project page and grab the source code.
While this clock isn’t exactly here for a long time (either the syringe will eventually empty or the beaker will overflow), it’s certainly here for a good time. [John] and commenters on his project even have ideas for the next steps: a 1/60 Hz beaker changer, and a 1/600 Hz spill cleaner. Even so, the first couple of drops hitting the beaker produce a lovely lava lamp-esque cloud that is a joy to watch and has us thinking about other
microfluidics projects we’ve seen
.
And remember — it’s
not too late to enter the 2025 One Hertz Challenge
!
| 1
| 1
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155982",
"author": "Phill",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T22:32:15",
"content": "I hope that’s not printer ink – It would be the most expensive clock ever made!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,471.172604
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/28/models-of-wave-propagation/
|
Models Of Wave Propagation
|
Al Williams
|
[
"Science"
] |
[
"physics",
"turbo pascal",
"wave propagation"
] |
[Stoppi] always has interesting blog posts and videos, even when we don’t understand all the German in them. The latest?
Computer simulation of wave propagation
(
Google Translate link
), which, if nothing else, makes pretty pictures that work in any language. Check out the video below.
Luckily, most browsers will translate for you these days, or you can use a website. We’ve seen waves modeled with springs before, but between the explanations and the accompanying Turbo Pascal source code, this is worth checking out.
We can’t explain it better than [Stoppi] who writes:
The model consists of individual atoms with the mass m, which are connected to each other by springs with the spring constant k. To start, I deflect the first atom sinusoidally. According to this, the individual atoms obey Newton’s equation of motion F = m·a, whereby Hook’s spring law F = k·Δl is used for the force F. I solved these differential equations iteratively using the Euler method. The movement of the atoms is restricted in the y-direction. At the beginning, the number of atoms, their mass m and the spring constant k must be entered. In addition, you can choose between transverse or longitudinal deflection and whether you want the reflection at the free or fixed end.
Can you get better simulations? Of course. But will this help you develop more intuitive understanding? Maybe. If you are interested in simulating the physical world, don’t forget
TinkerCad
has added that capability.
| 7
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155677",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T02:49:53",
"content": "Turbo PascalWow, didn’t see that coming. I was expecting either something 21st century or a pre-1970 version of FORTRAN (now Fortran)source codeDID see that coming.Fun fact: When Frank Hayes was a boy, FORTRAN wasn’t even THREETRAN (and his family’s Nintendo was carved from an old apple tree).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155684",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T03:10:27",
"content": "Not so fun fact: HAD needs a preview mode.This sould have read:Turbo PascalWow, didn’t see that coming. I was expecting either something 21st century or a pre-1970 version of FORTRAN (now Fortran).source codeDID see that coming.Fun fact: When Frank Hayes was a boy, FORTRAN wasn’t even THREETRAN (and his family’s Nintendo was carved from an old apple tree).If this comes out correctly, only two lines will be “quoted”: “Turbo Pascal” and “source code.”",
"parent_id": "8155677",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155739",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T05:39:46",
"content": "Either a preview, or let us edit.",
"parent_id": "8155684",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155771",
"author": "PPJ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T07:09:32",
"content": "“Nintendo was carved from an old apple tree”Was that this famous apple computer with limited memory owned by Adam and Eve where one byte crashed everything?",
"parent_id": "8155677",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155881",
"author": "stoppi",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T13:29:02",
"content": "Hello! Just noticed that one of my projects has made it up to hackaday once again. Don’t say anything bad about Turbo Pascal ;-) I still have the book “Numerical Recipes with Fortran” in my living room ;-) Best wishes from austria, Christoph (stoppi)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155951",
"author": "Charles Springer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T19:48:42",
"content": "The Fortran version avoids some errors in the C version. They both have the wrong derivation for Runga-Kutta but the algorithm is right. Generations of copying by authors I suspect.",
"parent_id": "8155881",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155953",
"author": "Charles Springer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T19:58:26",
"content": "When one starts out to derive the wave equation it is discrete, with masses and restoring forces and initial conditions, etc. The usual route is to use this to get a differential equation of motion then a continuous solution. The numerical way is to stay discrete and integrate in steps – it is simpler. There are errors of course, and anything that isn’t simple Newton or Newton-Feynman is more complicated because of error terms.A very nice feature is you can add more conditions, like friction, without having to solve a DEQ that goes non-linear, or any equation. You just watch the curves that develop. It is a lot like solving with op-amps in the old analog computers. Set the initial conditions and turn it loose. The output voltage traces out the solution.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,471.656625
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/28/skateboard-wheels-add-capabilities-to-plasma-cutter/
|
Skateboard Wheels Add Capabilities To Plasma Cutter
|
Bryan Cockfield
|
[
"cnc hacks"
] |
[
"cnc",
"cutting",
"miter",
"notch",
"pipe",
"plasma cutter",
"skateboard",
"wheels"
] |
Although firmly entrenched in the cultural zeitgeist now, the skateboard wasn’t always a staple of popular culture. It had a pretty rocky start as surfers jankily attached roller skating hardware to wooden planks searching for wave-riding experiences on land. From those rough beginnings it still took decades of innovation until Rodney Mullen adapted the ollie for flatground skating before the sport really took off. Skateboard hardware is quite elegant now too; the way leaning turns the board due to the shape of the trucks is immediately intuitive for even the most beginner riders, and bearing technology is so high-quality and inexpensive now that skateboard hardware is a go-to parts bin grab for plenty of other projects
like this plasma cutter modification
.
[The Fabrication Series]’s plasma cutter is mounted to a CNC machine, allowing for many complex cuts in much less time than it would take to do by hand. But cutting tubes is a more complicated endeavor for a machine like this. This is where the skateboard hardware comes in: by fabricating two custom pivoting arms each with two skateboard wheels that push down on a tube to hold it in place, the CNC machine can roll the tube along the table in a precise way as the plasma cutter works through it.
Of course, cutting a moving part is a little more complicated for the CNC machine than cutting a fixed piece of sheet metal, so [The Fabrication Series] walks us through a few ways of cutting pipe for various purposes, including miters and notches. The first step is to build a model of the pipes, in this case using Onshape, and then converting the 3D model of the pipes into a sheet metal model that the CNC machine can use. It does take a few cuts on the machine to fine-tune the cuts, but in no time the machine is effortlessly cutting complex shapes into the pipe. Don’t have a plasma cutter at all?
You can always build your own from scratch
.
Thanks to [JohnU] and [paulvdh] for the tip!
| 4
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155643",
"author": "Skyler",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T01:10:39",
"content": "That’s clever!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155766",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T06:53:31",
"content": "Another approach which I fund fun to watch:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhsAKh7Dkm0While cool, I think I prefer the simplicity of the skateboard wheels approach.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155979",
"author": "virtuous_sloth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T22:25:10",
"content": "PC Load Letter strikes again! Blast from the past.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156146",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T14:18:53",
"content": "Nice hack.However skateboards have been popular since inception, which is around 75 years ago, your grandpa may have ridden them. Also you can see a picture of Fred Astaire on a board, he picked it up in his 70s. Although given how light he was on his feet it probably took him no time at all. I think you may be conflating street boarding and the invention of the skateboard.Polyurethane wheels were invented in the 1970s, maybe that’s what the article is dancing around. Before that skates used steel wheels.As an aside I watched Wonka, a highly stylized movie, but the part that threw me out of the film was when a cart had modern composite ‘hospital’ wheels. It’s usually like that. In one Ironman film you can see the “Formula” cars have an extreme CV joint angle you would never see, probably due to them using modern chevy V8s with a deep oil pan instead of a dry sump. Same with Man from UNCLE, they have a day at the race track and some very period incorrect Chevy LS ignition coils are very visible when they meet Hugh Grant’s character in the pits. That’s funny, I forgot both movies had Hugh Grant.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,471.698336
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/28/destructive-testing-of-abs-and-carbon-fiber-nylon-parts/
|
Destructive Testing Of ABS And Carbon Fiber Nylon Parts
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"3d Printer hacks"
] |
[
"abs",
"FDM",
"nylon"
] |
PAHT-CF part printed at 45 degrees, with reinforcing bolt, post-failure. (Credit: Functional Print Friday, YouTube)
The good part about FDM 3D printing is that there are so many different filament types and parameters to choose from. This is also the bad part, as it can often be hard to tell what impact a change has. Fortunately we got destructive testing to provide us with some information here. Case in point [Functional Print Friday] on YouTube
recently testing out a few iterations
of a replacement part for a car.
The original part was in ABS, printed horizontally in a Bambu Lab FDM printer, which had a protruding element snapped off while in use. In addition to printing a replacement in carbon fiber-reinforced nylon (
PAHT-CF
, i.e. PA12 instead of the typical PA6), the part was now also printed at a 45° angle. To compare it with the original ABS filament in a more favorable way, the same part was reprinted at the same angle in ABS.
Another change was to add a machine screw to the stop element of the part, which turned out to make a massive difference. Whereas the original horizontal ABS print failed early and cleanly on layer lines, the angled versions put up much more of a fight, with the machine screw-reinforced stop combined with the PA12 CF filament maxing out the first meter.
The take-away here appears to be that not only angles are good, but that adding a few strategic metal screws can do wonders, even if you’re not using a more exotic filament type.
| 9
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155465",
"author": "Grawp",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T20:33:01",
"content": "But isn’t CF like a new age asbeatos?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155487",
"author": "Jace",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T21:01:44",
"content": "Oh?",
"parent_id": "8155465",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155788",
"author": "Johnu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T07:57:48",
"content": "It’s an internet scare whipped up by some dumbass on youtube, Hackaday ran a whole article on it.",
"parent_id": "8155487",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155858",
"author": "PPJ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T11:54:29",
"content": "Just in case:https://hackaday.com/2024/08/07/on-carbon-fiber-types-and-their-carcinogenic-risks/https://hackaday.com/2024/07/23/could-carbon-fiber-be-the-new-asbestos/",
"parent_id": "8155788",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155828",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T10:12:58",
"content": "Yes and no. I’m not an expert on the subject but did some reading on it and there are different types of carbon fiber. The ones used in printing are usually chopped or continues carbon fiber strands. Those don’t cause cancer. There are however some filaments that use carbon fiber nanotubes such as from 3dxtech, that could very well be called a new asbestos, according to a paper I read. But regular carbon fiber isn’t. It’s still irritating to the lungs and eyes, but won’t cause tumors. Problem with this technology is that it can take decades to see the results.hashtag not a doctor. If anyone can prove me wrong, please do so. It’s not my area of expertise but read about it due to doing some carbon fiber modification at home. Also work with asbestos at home at times so I wanted to know if I needed to do the same precautions.",
"parent_id": "8155465",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155519",
"author": "Vik Olliver",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T21:32:39",
"content": "Shoving an M3 nut and screw in a print has solved soooo many part strength/rigidity issues for me.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156379",
"author": "Joe",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T10:05:36",
"content": "I still dont see enough people playing around with PETG composite with CF or GF. I always liked PETG because its super tough and pretty easier to deal with than nylon. Its main downside is not being that stiff but a little bit of reinforcement would go a long way.",
"parent_id": "8155519",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155530",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T21:48:32",
"content": "This is kinda reminiscent of prestressed concrete. If you load it under compression, a tensile load will look to the part like just a reduction in compression. (And the screw takes the load.) This would be nicer if most (or all?) 3d printed parts didn’t creep so much.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155963",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T21:39:07",
"content": "All plastics creep, you need fillers to make them withstand sustained loads.Too bad fillers usually make the plastic non-printable.",
"parent_id": "8155530",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,471.750097
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/27/the-power-free-tag-emulator/
|
The Power-Free Tag Emulator
|
Jenny List
|
[
"Radio Hacks"
] |
[
"13.56mhz",
"emulator",
"NFC"
] |
Most of you know how an NFC tag works. The reader creates an RF field that has enough energy to power the electronics in the tag; when the tag wakes up, two-way communication ensues. We’re accustomed to blank tags that can be reprogrammed, and devices like the Flipper Zero that can emulate a tag. In between those two is [MCUer]’s
power-free tag emulator
, a board which uses NFC receiver hardware to power a small microcontroller that can run emulation code.
The microcontroller in question is the low-power CW32L010 from Wuhan Xinyuan Semiconductor, a Chinese part with an ARM Cortex M0+ on board. Unfortunately, that’s where the interesting news ends, because all we can glean from
the GitHub repository
is a PCB layout. Not even a circuit diagram, which we hope is an unintended omission rather than deliberate. It does, however, lend itself to the fostering of ideas, because if this designer can’t furnish a schematic, then perhaps you can.
It’s not difficult to make an NFC receiver
, so perhaps you can hook one up to a microcontroller and be the one who shares the circuit.
| 20
| 9
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155053",
"author": "linus io",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T07:44:41",
"content": "Wonder what kinds of NFC it can emulate. Looked into this project some years ago, which is only for RFID at 125kHz I think but still fascinatinghttps://scanlime.org/2012/12/avr-rfid-optimized-and-ported-to-c/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155910",
"author": "MCUer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T16:12:58",
"content": "The emulator currently supports ISO/IEC 15693 emulation with full compatibility for read/write operations, and ISO/IEC 14443A support is in development.",
"parent_id": "8155053",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156018",
"author": "MCUer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T02:19:58",
"content": "It is an NFC Tag Emulator, so it emulates 13.56MHz tags, not 125KHz ones. The current hardware version is V1.1. I will continue to improve it and release the schematic diagram and Gerber files in due course.Please carefully watch the video on GitHub. This video uses the mobile app TagInfo to read the content of the tag. As is well known, mobile phones do not have 125KHz RFID hardware. Therefore, it works at 13.56MHz rather than 125KHz.",
"parent_id": "8155053",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156034",
"author": "Jim J Jewett",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T03:10:58",
"content": "From the pictures, it looks like the BOM and Gerber can already be generated, at least in draft form. Is there a reason not to check them in as a baseline?",
"parent_id": "8156018",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156047",
"author": "MCUer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T04:31:30",
"content": "The current version only supports simulating one Tag. The next version will add a button and a three-color LED to switch between multiple Tags. Once the firmware for simulating the 14443A Tag is completed, the BOM and Gerber files will be released together.",
"parent_id": "8156034",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155097",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T10:09:22",
"content": "Shame, there don’t seem to be schematics or firmware for any of their projects which would suggest it’s a deliberate omission.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155216",
"author": "Stephen Mewller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:25:16",
"content": "If you want a less capable dynamic tag I recommend this one:https://regnerischernachmittag.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/m24sr-arduino-library/",
"parent_id": "8155097",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156021",
"author": "MCUer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T02:21:21",
"content": "The current hardware version is V1.1. I will continue to improve it and release the schematic diagram and Gerber files in due course.",
"parent_id": "8155097",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155891",
"author": "Scott Pearce",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T14:15:46",
"content": "Depends on what you need to do. SeQR makes QR code tags for luggage, keys, pets etc. You put the info you want the finder to see on your web log in. They can contact you worldwide to notify you.https://app.seqrcontact.com/Note: I am not a salesman for them…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155909",
"author": "MCUer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T16:08:19",
"content": "https://github.com/NFC-funs/Power-free-NFC-Tag-EmulatorThe emulator currently supports ISO/IEC 15693 emulation with full compatibility for read/write operations, and ISO/IEC 14443A support is in development.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156092",
"author": "Jackson",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T10:23:07",
"content": "Do you plan to release firmware, schematics and gerber files?",
"parent_id": "8155909",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156331",
"author": "MCUer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T06:00:52",
"content": "When I finish the ISO-14443A part, I think I will release it.",
"parent_id": "8156092",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8171878",
"author": "MCUer",
"timestamp": "2025-08-30T06:32:43",
"content": "I have uploaded the Gerber files and BOM to GitHub.",
"parent_id": "8156092",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8166575",
"author": "MCUer",
"timestamp": "2025-08-21T01:25:55",
"content": "Added a DIP switchBased on Version 1.1, the hardware has been adjusted with some components reduced. A DIP switch has been added to select between emulating 14443A or 15693 tags, with support for 8 tags for each type.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8170460",
"author": "MCUer",
"timestamp": "2025-08-28T01:32:05",
"content": "The firmware supports emulation of Ntag215 and ISO 15693 tags.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8177351",
"author": "sweethack",
"timestamp": "2025-09-09T11:05:18",
"content": "Do you have a repository for the firmware source code? I can’t find it anywhere (I’m sure it’s not PN532Killer).",
"parent_id": "8170460",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8178228",
"author": "MCUer",
"timestamp": "2025-09-11T06:02:16",
"content": "I will release a firmware that emulates Ntag21x and 15693 in the near future.",
"parent_id": "8177351",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8171879",
"author": "MCUer",
"timestamp": "2025-08-30T06:33:35",
"content": "I have uploaded the Gerber files and BOM to GitHub.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8178247",
"author": "Jaka",
"timestamp": "2025-09-11T06:45:24",
"content": "Thank you very much! Highly appreciated",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8179717",
"author": "MCUer",
"timestamp": "2025-09-15T01:42:36",
"content": "The first firmware version was released",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,471.615696
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/27/hackaday-links-july-27-2025/
|
Hackaday Links: July 27, 2025
|
Dan Maloney
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] |
[
"70 cm",
"allocation",
"angular momentum",
"Earth science",
"fcc",
"gridfinity",
"hackaday links",
"Kaizenm foam",
"length of day",
"microsoft",
"organization",
"poop",
"ransomware",
"rotation",
"sequester",
"shadowbox",
"spectrum",
"tools",
"uhf"
] |
Sad breaking news late this Sunday afternoon of
the passing of nerd icon Tom Lehrer at 97
. Coming up through the culture, knowing at least a few of Tom’s ditties, preferably “The Elements” or “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” was as essential to proving one’s bona fides as committing most Monty Python bits to memory. Tom had a way with words that belied his background as a mathematician, spicing his sarcastic lyrics with unusual rhymes and topical references that captured the turbulence of the late 50s and early 60s, which is when he wrote most of his well-known stuff. First Ozzy, then Chuck Mangione, now Tom Lehrer — it’s been a rough week for musicians.
Here we go again. It looks like
hams have another spectrum grab on their hands
, but this time it’s the popular 70-cm band that’s in the crosshairs. Starlink wannabe AST SpaceMobile, which seeks to build a constellation of 248
ridiculously large communication satellites
to offer direct-to-device service across the globe, seeks a substantial chunk of the 70-cm band, from 430 to 440 MHz, to control the satellites. This is smack in the middle of the 70-cm amateur radio band allocation here in the US, but covers the entire band for unlucky hams in Europe and the UK. The band is frequently used for repeaters, which newbie hams can easily access using
a cheap hand-held radio
to start learning the ropes.
We dug into some of
AST’s filings
with the US Federal Communications Commission to try to tease out some details, which was about as much fun as it sounds. From what we gather, AST is already licensed by the FCC for 430-440MHz for its five-satellite test constellation, so that’s a done deal. What they seek now is a modification of their license to support the full constellation, which would put 243 additional satellites that are three times the size of those already deployed into low-Earth orbit between 520 and 685 kilometers. The request for 430-440MHz is for emergency telemetry and tracking purposes outside the United States. While this seems like it would have a limited impact, experience has shown that it’s usually worse in practice than it seems on paper.
The ways that some megacorporations find to spend money often boggles the mind, especially for those of us down here at the more modest end of the economic spectrum. But Microsoft spending
close to two billion dollars on poop
takes that to a whole new level. The company agreed to purchase 4.9 million metric tons of manure, sewage sludge, and agricultural waste over the next twelve years and turn it into a slurry (yum). The poop-shake will then be pumped deep underground to sequester the carbon dioxide and methane that would otherwise be released to the atmosphere, offsetting the greenhouse emissions racked up by the company’s data centers. One assumes that the destination for this material will be some sort of impervious geological formation, such as the ones that trapped the natural gas created by ancient rotting vegetation, or it would defeat the purpose. So essentially, Microsoft is creating new natural gas deposits that could be tapped by future generations. It’s a circle of life.
Did this week seem to fly by for you? It did for us, and perhaps the fact that
Tuesday was the second-shortest day in recorded history
had something to do with it. The 22nd was 1.34 milliseconds shorter than a nominal 86,400-second day — that’s 15.5 parts per billion for those playing along at home — thanks to a burst of rotational speed. The record for the shortest day was set last July, when the 5th clocked in a blazing 1.66 milliseconds faster than the nominal 24-hour day. As for the cause of this burst of speed, explanations range from redistribution of mass thanks to melting polar ice to weird things happening inside the liquid core of the planet, but whatever it is, it just means less sleep for us.
What do you mean? “qwerty1234” seems like a perfectly fine password to us! Or maybe not, now that a 158-year-old company in the UK has
ceased operations thanks to a weak email password
. Knights of Old, a trucking company in Northamptonshire (wait — if it’s England, does that make it a “lorrying” company? Or maybe it’s just a drayage?), got hit with a ransomware attack that leveraged an employee’s easily guessed email password. Once in, the attackers did the usual file encryption thing before issuing their demand for £5 million. That amount was beyond the company’s means, so they just noped out and folded up operations. It seems a little hinky to us that a 700-employee company would just throw in the towel like that without trying to at least negotiate with the attackers, but on the other hand, we’d have loved to see the look on their faces when the company just said, “Nah, we’re good.” At least they didn’t put much effort into the attack.
And finally, if you’ve got Kaizen-envy but don’t know where to start, take a look at
Tool Trace
. It’s a service that purports to create Kaizen foam inserts for organizing your tool drawers directly from a photo. All you’ve got to do is arrange the tools the way you want them in the drawer and take a picture. You need to include a sheet of paper in the photo for scale, either A4 or 8-1/2″x11″, and the app will spit out a DXF or SVG file of the shadowbox outlines. It’s Gridfinity-compatible, too, in case foam alone isn’t anal enough for you. You can then either cut the foam yourself or send the files out to a commercial outfit for manufacturing. We’ve always coveted an ultra-organized toolbox, so this might be fun to try, but it does seem like it has strong potential to trigger a descent into madness. We’ll let you know how it goes.
| 9
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154960",
"author": "yet another bruce",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T00:32:40",
"content": "My name is Columba Livia and you poisoned my ancestors and mocked them, prepare to die.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154974",
"author": "Adriam",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T01:58:58",
"content": "That’s quite a bit of editorializing with the ransomware story. The linked article and original BBC story do not mention what the simple password was, and also no mention that it specifically was an email password. Also: “The hackers didn’t name a price, but a specialist ransomware negotiation firm estimated the sum could be as much as £5m.”, i.e. “we pulled a scary number out of our a.., please hire us”And if it sounds familiar, the story is recycled from 2023:https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-66927965Sounds like the company was already in a precarious financial situation, and the ransomware attack was just the final nail that did it in.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155014",
"author": "Phil Barrett",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T05:41:43",
"content": "So long mom, I’m off to drop the bomb.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155318",
"author": "emptyyjayy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T16:08:19",
"content": "First you get down on your knees.Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?",
"parent_id": "8155014",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155090",
"author": "burny110",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T09:14:22",
"content": "“if it’s England, does that make it a “lorrying” company? ”Hauliers or Haulage company",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155098",
"author": "lanroth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T10:11:27",
"content": "Tom Lehrer is an absolute legend. Once upon a time I knew most of his lyrics by heart.He open sourced all his music and lyrics and “formally relinquished the copyright and performing/recording rights on his songs, making all music and lyrics composed by him free for anyone to use”.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer#All_songs_in_the_public_domain",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155314",
"author": "Charles Springer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T16:00:13",
"content": "I’m a boomer and was in college at the time where literally everyone in computers and physics could recite everything ever done by Monty Python, and argue over what the knights who said something were saying. Nobody quoted Lehrer lyrics. My recollection is that he was considered a rather perverse cynical far left character of the university intellectual type, if a person even knew who he was. Or an odd member of the folk-singer community and way too hip, as opposed to the legitimately deeper meanings of the fish-slap dance or the ethics of Dandismoor (Dennis Moore). I would wager “Your lupines or your life!” was said several orders of magnitude more often than any Tom Lehrer material.I am pretty sure you would be much more likely to run across someone referencing Firesign Theater material. Leher was much more popular in the aging beatnik meme.— Nick Danger, Third Eye",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155898",
"author": "Egghead Larsen",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T15:08:15",
"content": "“Drop that pickle, Danger!”",
"parent_id": "8155314",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156068",
"author": "macsimki",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T07:35:51",
"content": "tooltrace: funny how they forget that human fingers need to pick up the tool out of the foam.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,471.554914
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/27/2025-one-hertz-challenge-rpi-tinynumberhat9/
|
2025 One Hertz Challenge: RPI TinynumberHat9
|
Matt Varian
|
[
"contests"
] |
[
"2025 Hackaday One Hertz Challenge",
"HT16K33"
] |
This eye-catching entry to the One Hertz Challenge pairs vintage LED indicators with a modern RPi board to create a one-of-a-kind clock. The
RPI TinynumberHat9
by [Andrew] brings back the beautiful interface from high end electronics of the past.
This project is centered around the red AL304 and green ALS314V 7-segment display chips. These 7-segment displays were produced in the 1970s and 1980s in the Soviet Union; you can still find them, but you’ll have to do some digging as they are only becoming more rare. [Andrew] included the data sheet for these which was a good find, it is written in Russian but doesn’t hold any surprises, these tiny LEDs typically forward current is 5mA at 2V. One of the things that jumps out about these LEDs is the gold leads, a sure sign of being a high-end component of their day.
When selecting a driving chip for the LEDs, [Andrew] looked at the MAX7219 and HT16K33; he settled on the HT16K33 as it supports I2C as well as allows the easy addition of buttons to the HAT. Due to being driven by I2C, he was also able to add a Qwiic/Stemma I2C connector, so while designed initially to be a HAT for a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W board, it can be connected to other things in the Qwiic/Stemma ecosystem.
Thanks [Andrew] for submitting this beautiful entry into the One Hertz Challenge. We love unique
7-segment displays
, and so it’s pretty awesome to see 40-year-old display tech brought into the present.
| 2
| 2
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154965",
"author": "Observer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T01:06:23",
"content": "I remember building a homebrew frequency counter back in the 80’s using some HP display modules that had this kind of aesthetic. IIRC, each module contained a 7-segment Red LED digit, a 4 bit latch, and segment decoder, cast in a rectangle of tinted red epoxy. Interface to the TTL counter bank was a joy and the display looked great. I think I chained 6 or 6 digitsI do wish these sorts of display components were still in production.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155100",
"author": "preamp.org",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T10:15:53",
"content": "Those are lovely little displays! I have a couple MAN-3, which were made by Monsanto.Still working on a little PSU project with a 4×2 display of these to show Volts and Amps…https://www.industrialalchemy.org/articleview.php?item=364",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,472.088954
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/27/a-very-tidy-handheld-pi-terminal-indeed/
|
A Very Tidy Handheld Pi Terminal Indeed
|
Jenny List
|
[
"handhelds hacks"
] |
[
"handheld",
"hyperpixel",
"Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W"
] |
As single board computers have become ever smaller and more powerful, so have those experimenting with them tried to push the boundaries of the machines they can be used in. First we had cyberdecks, and now we have handheld terminals. Of this latter class we have
a particularly nice example from [Random Alley Cat]
. It takes a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W and a handful of other parts, and makes them with a 3D printed case into something very professional indeed.
One of the problems with these designs has always been tidily packing away all the parts with their cables, and it’s one she solves by making a chassis to hold all the parts, and a case which fits around that. In a stroke the case no longer has to provide a dual function, allowing for a much easier internal layout. Her screen is a Pimoroni Hyperpixel, the keyboard is an Xbox 360 accessory, and the power supply is an off the shelf Pi UPS board and battery.
We particularly like the accesses on the underside of this machine to access the Pi ports, and the ventilation holes and external case details. It’s not perfect, as she says in the video below it’s not the best Linux keyboard. but we could really see ourselves using this.
If you follow handheld cyberdecks, we have a few treats for you on these pages.
Not all of them run Linux
, for example.
Thanks [Sysop] for the tip!
| 30
| 11
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154889",
"author": "34t34t",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T19:18:44",
"content": "to fat, short time workingsorry but still old pocket vaio is better or sony palm ux50 worling longest",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154893",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T19:40:36",
"content": "Oh man, this brings back memories of the Agdnda VR3!That was an Linux PDA, 25 years ago!https://linuxdevices.org/agendas-agenda-a-linux-based-open-pda-a/",
"parent_id": "8154889",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155096",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T10:08:09",
"content": "Looks like a sensibly chunky level of external size to me – actually looks comfortable to operate because of it, and the screen seems like a huge step up from the old ones. As for battery life I expect this is better than any of the old ones are now, as it actually has a brand new battery.Yes there is some obvious potential for a more refined version with extra tweaks to suit your desired use but as a simple to replicate project by design it really works for that, while also being a rather potent mini PC with a great deal of flexibility in what you can use it for those old devices just wouldn’t do at all..",
"parent_id": "8154889",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154898",
"author": "Rock Erickson",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T20:36:24",
"content": "Number of times it was used after making the video: 1(Optimistic estimate.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154904",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T20:50:28",
"content": "Yeah probably cannibalized to get that keyboard and pi back for the next one. Youtube is a business, it’s ok, it is what it is",
"parent_id": "8154898",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156440",
"author": "William",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T16:40:39",
"content": "Probably not, ACOS is pretty active in Meshtastic. She does great design work and her stuff is pretty widely used in the community.",
"parent_id": "8154904",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8166524",
"author": "Alley Cat",
"timestamp": "2025-08-20T21:48:52",
"content": "I use it often to play around with terminal stuff and hardware bits I have lying around. I actually made it many months ago and finally decided to make a video. Also, my Youtube channel isn’t monetized and I don’t get paid anything for any of this. Whoever wrote this article is probably getting more for this than I ever will. Not everything has to be a business.All of the parts will be cannibalized eventually because that’s kinda the point. I do have more than one chatpad though, and I definitely have way too many Pi Zeros. The next version will be CM4/CM5 and won’t use a single piece from this proof of concept.",
"parent_id": "8154904",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155103",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T10:20:02",
"content": "As they are clearly working on a V2 I expect this got plenty of use for what is effectively a well finished prototype.If I had one I’d probably end up using it quite often, in similar fashion to the way I use the steamdeck, but taking up even less deskspace and with the screen more visible over the junk on the desk when put down. Also being a little less annoying for having a ‘real’ keyboard to change references or look stuff up. So I would want to add a kickstand and I’d probably want to look at putting a decent DAC in as I like good audio in my devices (plus I think I still have the wolfson card from an old project)…",
"parent_id": "8154898",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155188",
"author": "Richard Test Collins",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T12:51:17",
"content": "So what? For many, including many who read hackaday, it’s building it that is fun. I used mine once after I made it. Sat on shelf after. I had great fun making it. Mine was squished into a case for a pair of glasses. So quite a challenge. :)",
"parent_id": "8154898",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154911",
"author": "Stephen Mewller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T21:06:23",
"content": "I would use a second TFT that is stylus compatible for a virtual keyboard. It’s not 2 finger compatible but I feel these physical keyboards are getting rare. Kudos to the creator! Better than anything I would be able to make since I take shortcuts.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154925",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T22:14:00",
"content": "you take shortcuts if you care about reaching a destination :)",
"parent_id": "8154911",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154936",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T22:43:34",
"content": "I also like the use of Midnight Commander to showcase the keyboard usefulness here! 🙂",
"parent_id": "8154911",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155094",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T09:55:29",
"content": "While I have nothing against stylus input options if you are going to do that surely you don’t want a second screen just a single larger screen so you can make full use of the stylus. As to me at least the whole benefit of the separate HID element smaller screen design concepts is that haptic feedback, useable by feel alone keyboard (and/or trackball mouse, media controls, gamepad etc), where the whole point to a stylus is giving precise handwriting/drawing perhaps with a right click type option and gesture control – all of which would work better for having a larger canvas",
"parent_id": "8154911",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155219",
"author": "Stephen Mewller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:29:08",
"content": "If the price would scale linearly with display surface I’d buy a larger. Maybe I am not aware of a cheap large one that supports a stylus. Personally it’s difficult for me to keep an overview about the current market and what I should get.",
"parent_id": "8155094",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155350",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T17:32:10",
"content": "Ah yes budget constraints might bite you and when it comes to availability of a stylus capable screen, or an overlay you can laminate onto whatever other display yourself I’ve not looked at what is available myself in a very very long time. Though I imagine a spare for the Samsung phones with stylus might well be the most available option.Personally I’ve held on to some Toughbook CF-H1 with the intention of reusing those nice in all light levels screens and probably modding the outer shell lightly for quite a while though (and from time to time despite the terrible even when it was new Atom processor I’ve fired one of them up as its a slightly nicer drawing/doodle tablet formfactor than the almost equally old CF-19 that is the best laptop I own (Do have a Steamdeck now though))",
"parent_id": "8155219",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156441",
"author": "William",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T16:41:48",
"content": "The SenseCAP Indicator almost does that:https://www.seeedstudio.com/SenseCAP-Indicator-D1-p-5643.html",
"parent_id": "8154911",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154924",
"author": "Liam",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T22:13:43",
"content": "Really nice idea, but it seriously needs more screws. Having to open up a case by sliding a sharp edge in to a line can be pretty furstrating, I’ve a few commercial items with snap-fit covers of this kind and getting in to them is horrible. Also, that kind of no-screws case is going to rely on the flexing of a piece of plastic somewhere in it, multiple snap-in-to-place tabs I’d guess, and these will eventually wear out. Also, it might fall open when you really don’t want it to. A screw going in to a hole, and a hexagonal sink to hold a nut at the other edge will never wear out, never fall open by accident, and the tool to open it, a screwdriver, is almost as widely available as a sharp edge, but much more straighforward to use. Yes, commercial designs like to use snap fits, because they are trying to shave fractions of a penny of a design, but screws are cheap, so we should hold ourselves to better standards than penny-pinching mass-production lines do.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155264",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:52:58",
"content": "heh it’s all a matter of perspective. my last few laptops snap together and screw, and i find that pretty usable and i haven’t broken the snap tabs in a long time. but the real test for me is phones…i’ve had enough phones that are just glue holding it together that the ones that are snap, or even snap+glue, are much preferred.but all your points are right on — it’s definitely not as secure as screws….but fwiw (sorry to be contrary) screws and sinks do wear out and fall open by accident :( they’re much better than snaps but they’re far from immune to wear and failure",
"parent_id": "8154924",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155355",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T17:41:56",
"content": "A plastic spring doesn’t have to be fatigued even by regular use – all about how it is designed and staying within that elastic limit, which I’d think this does very well. It also looked like there was an easy guide the tool in notch to help you get between the shell sides with the prying implement, so it is for a snap fit really quite friendly.Also there are benefits to cases that can under duress detach before the plastic breaks – I’m thinking things like those Nokia Brick phones that you could drop from high enough it probably hits terminal velocity into concrete and nothing is harmed by that impact most of the time – the case has sprung off no doubt, but it didn’t actually break and absorbed some of that impact in the process…Screws and bolts are still the preferred method for my own projects in general, I am just trying to point out the whole ” we should hold ourselves to better standards than penny-pinching mass-production lines do.” could easily include designing around plastic clips as they are not inherently wrong, and in this case it is darned close to if not as good as it can be with plastic clips, and really wouldn’t be made better for having screws for most users.",
"parent_id": "8154924",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8166527",
"author": "Alley Cat",
"timestamp": "2025-08-20T21:52:44",
"content": "It’s just a prototype, and there is a slot to fit something in to pop it open, I just used a knife because it was right there. The pont of it is that the .step files are posted so that anyone can mod it to their own hardware and preferences, so if you like it other than the lack of screws, it should be an easy fix. If you don’t know CAD, this could be a good way to start learning.",
"parent_id": "8154924",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155010",
"author": "Chris Weiss",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T05:28:40",
"content": "It occurs to me that, with a handheld where you care a lot more about ‘portability’ than ‘mobility’, you could add a tiny IMU and use gestures to switch keyboard ‘layers’. IE – tilt the top forward or back to change case. Maybe left/right for ctrl/alt. I’d want a quick on-screen glyph to show context change, but that wouldn’t be too difficult.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155050",
"author": "Structurer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T07:16:38",
"content": "I love that people try things and share on Internet. Personally I would not use it but I’m sure you enjoyed making it and learned something on the way 👍🏻",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155230",
"author": "Yuri",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:49:27",
"content": "At this point just get a used Key1 ou Key2.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155234",
"author": "Yuri",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:52:05",
"content": "*or",
"parent_id": "8155230",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8166528",
"author": "Alley Cat",
"timestamp": "2025-08-20T21:54:45",
"content": "Can I build that from parts I have in a drawer?",
"parent_id": "8155230",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155293",
"author": "Manny Singh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:29:02",
"content": "I knew that keyboard looked familiar = an xbox chatpad! You just reminded me I have one…somewhere. Best controller attachment ever!Your device is neat too — crazy how it’s put together – no screws",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156003",
"author": "TerryMatthews",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T00:16:18",
"content": "Glad to see the 360 chatpad in there. That thing has been an unsung hero in 4 of my projects so far. It has a good feel and size and is dead simple to add. As for the total package, a Cybiko would probably still do.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156568",
"author": "Scott",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T22:31:33",
"content": "There are a little of arm chair quarterbacks on here! It’s called development for a reason! I like the idea and Alleycat does great designs. I’m sure it will only get more refined from here! Keep up the great work.👍",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8165125",
"author": "Circs",
"timestamp": "2025-08-18T13:52:52",
"content": "The comments here really do getextranitpicky and negative when the person making the thing is a woman. Very icky and uncool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8165144",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-08-18T14:18:45",
"content": "And you’ve went through Hack-A-Day archive just to post that comment. At please please state which NGO pays you for astroturfing this misandric propaganda.",
"parent_id": "8165125",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,471.86588
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/27/game-boy-camera-in-wedding-photo-booth/
|
Game Boy Camera In Wedding Photo Booth
|
Bryan Cockfield
|
[
"digital cameras hacks"
] |
[
"camera",
"flask",
"game boy",
"game boy camera",
"game boy printer",
"photo booth",
"photography",
"raspberry pi",
"wedding"
] |
For those of a certain age the first digital camera many of us experienced was the Game Boy Camera, an add-on for the original Game Boy console. Although it only took pictures with the limited 4-tone monochrome graphics of this system, its capability of being able to take a picture, edit it, create drawings, and then print them out on the Game Boy Printer was revolutionary for the time. Of course the people who grew up with this hardware are about the age to be getting married now (or well beyond), so [Sebastian] capitalized on the nostalgia for it with
this wedding photo booth that takes pictures with the Game Boy Camera
.
The photo booth features the eponymous Game Boy Camera front-and-center, with a pair of large buttons to allow the wedding guests to start the photography process. The system takes video and then isolates a few still images from it to be printed with the Game Boy Printer. The original Game Boy hardware, as well as a Flask-based web app with a GUI, is all controlled with a Raspberry Pi 4. There’s also a piece of Game Boy hardware called the GB Interceptor that sits between the Game Boy console and the camera cartridge itself which allows the Pi to capture the video feed directly.
The booth doesn’t stop with Game Boy hardware, though. There’s also a modern mirrorless digital camera set up in the booth alongside the Game Boy Camera which allows for higher resolution, full color images to be taken as well. This is also controlled with the same hardware and provides a more modern photo booth experience next to the nostalgic one provided by the Game Boy. There have been many projects which attempt to modernize this hardware, though,
like this build which adds color to the original monochrome photos
or
this one which adds Wi-Fi capability
.
| 12
| 2
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154907",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T20:56:55",
"content": "Millennials (hopefully) on their second marriages I see",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154937",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T22:46:54",
"content": ".. you know, the Gameboy and its peripherals was popular well into 21th century. Could be “gen Z” just as well.",
"parent_id": "8154907",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154950",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T23:31:21",
"content": "Yeah, but let’s be honest it’s not",
"parent_id": "8154937",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154962",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T00:43:38",
"content": "Hm? I don’t get it. The Game Boy Color appeared in 1998, the GBA in 2001, the GB Micro in 2005.Somewhat popular Pokèmon Emerald came out in late 2004.By 2005, the Game Boy platform on a whole was far from obsolete, despite the DS being on the rise.By that time, the Zers could been age 7 or 8 already.I don’t see anything wrong here, thus.It’s not as if the Game Boy was a relic from 1990 or something.The platform just started to take off by late 90s, thanks to Pokèmon franchise or gems such as Shantae (GBC, 2002)..",
"parent_id": "8154950",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155285",
"author": "Shawn",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:12:44",
"content": "GameBoy Camera was extremely niche at the time and by 2005 nearly everyone was using GBC or DS. This is a Gen X and Gen Y product.",
"parent_id": "8154962",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8158092",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-08-06T00:17:10",
"content": "This is a Gen X and Gen Y product.Ah yes, I get it! So it’s like with re-runs.Those later born people who haven’t watched, say, ST TOS and Looney Toons in the 1960s can’t possibly count these shows as being influental to their childhood or youth.Just like kids who used their older siblings’ GB Camera in the early 2000s on their then-new GBC or GBA.Indeed. That’s an interesting kind of logic, I must admit.",
"parent_id": "8154962",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154951",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T23:31:48",
"content": "Biggest issue I see before watching is that the GB printer uses thermal paper (IIRC) and that loves to fade. For this type of event a way to make the printouts permanent is crucial.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154958",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T00:01:29",
"content": "I think that is what the big DSLR next to it is for. One is to keep, the other is a funny little trinket and conversation piece that you crumple up and leave in the dust bin on the way out (and that’s not necessarily knocking the idea, party favors like this are still fun)",
"parent_id": "8154951",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154975",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T01:59:53",
"content": "Idk, some people might want to keep the GB picture too.",
"parent_id": "8154958",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155228",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:42:20",
"content": "In principle, that’s possible with a GB printer emulator.I think it already exists.. It prints into a bitmap file.Example:https://github.com/mofosyne/arduino-gameboy-printer-emulator",
"parent_id": "8154975",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155332",
"author": "m1ke",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T16:43:33",
"content": "You can also easily dump the photos over USB using a Joey Jr.",
"parent_id": "8155228",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155217",
"author": "Riles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:26:24",
"content": "Yah the video only indicates the GB pics printout on the original printer. I would imagine somebody has to have decoded the data the GB sends to the printer so u could have it instead print to one of those little glossy photo printers",
"parent_id": "8154951",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,471.801297
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/27/a-cable-modem-the-way-all-network-gear-should-be-mounted/
|
A Cable Modem, The Way All Network Gear Should Be Mounted
|
Jenny List
|
[
"Network Hacks"
] |
[
"19-inch",
"19-inch rack",
"network modem"
] |
Home routers and cable modems are now extremely powerful devices, but they all suffer from the attention of their manufacturers’ design and marketing departments. Instead of neatly packaging them in functional cases, they impose aesthetics and corporate identity on them, usually resulting in a curvy plastic case that’s difficult to integrate with other network infrastructure. [The Eccentric Workshop] did something about this with their new Arris modem,
by creating a new 19″ rack mount for it
.
Unusually for such a device, the plastic case was easy to dismantle. There’s a PCB inside, and a light guide for its LEDs. A new lower-half case and light guide were designed and 3D printed, and the whole was then mounted in a 1U rack case. The special part of this hack perhaps lies in the front panel, a very professionally cut and laser etched affair complete with an Arris logo as though it were meant to be this way.
We also like having our infrastructure
and other things
in a rack here at Hackaday, and fondly remember the days when some surprisingly affordable boxes came with metal wings for rack mounting. It’s always possible to use a rack tray, but something like this is so much more attractive.
| 25
| 9
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154832",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T13:41:31",
"content": "It’s got to be said, I do like a nice rack.Especially when it’s all neatly tied up and organised",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154888",
"author": "SkepticalMan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T19:15:39",
"content": "I see what you did there. 😁",
"parent_id": "8154832",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154835",
"author": "LordNothing",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T13:48:25",
"content": "a few months ago they forced a modem upgrade on us. the old modems were a tiny little box that fit nicely in one small corner of the networking cabinet. the new one is a massive monstrosity with built in wifi you cant turn off. i just wrapped it in tin foil and shoved it in at a weird angle so it would fit. what do you mean its supposed to have ventilation?seriously hands off my side of the wan port.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154887",
"author": "Gamma Raymond",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T19:09:41",
"content": "Depending who your ISP is (and probably not comcrap), you can ask for a modem-only. You’ll likely have to go through several layers of script-reciting support drones/AI bots, but it can be done. I have a modem-only for new Internet-only residential service from Spectrum aka Charter cable (in Midwest USA).",
"parent_id": "8154835",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155059",
"author": "FEW",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T08:00:04",
"content": "Comcast isn’t great, but they do allow me to bring my own modem, no Wi-Fi, for my data only service. Honestly, Comcast is not quite as bad as our power company monopoly.",
"parent_id": "8154887",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155894",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T14:54:48",
"content": "“support drones / AI bots”… hmmmIt was almost the end of the 90s. Cable internet finally reached my neighborhood. Having previously been spoiled on the college dorm ethernet before spending a year in an apartment back on dialup I was very excited.I had to have a Windows computer for the installer to set things up. Not a problem at first, I had roomates, home routers weren’t a thing yet and we used a product called Wingate running on Windows98 for internet connection sharing. But it wasn’t long before Wingate was replaced with a more appropriate Linux PC. And I wanted to host my own services on it too, which of course the cable company had a rule against.I ignored the rule and started hating the cable company for their Windows/Mac only support and for trying to keep people that wanted a “real” internet node with their own services down.Then one day I received an email from the cable company regarding my email server. Oh, shit, it’s finally happening. They must be giving me an ultimatum, stop the servers or lose internet. Nope! They were suggesting some settings changes to improve security. And they gave me a URL to go to that would trigger a re-scan and let me know how I did.These guys weren’t kicking me off their service for running servers. They were being helpful! I liked them!Then the local cable company was bought out by a big corp which you would know the name of. Same rules in the user agreement, no servers, no Linux or router support. No more helpful tip emails. Still didn’t shut us off for violating those rules though. Eventually I did have to stop serving my own email. That was because the big spam blacklists became a thing and they just blacklisted entire cable modem ip ranges by default. There wasn’t really anything to be done about that.So then I graduated. With a degree in Computer Science. Right as the dot com bust occurred. What great timing! Where to work…I ended up getting a job answering the phones for that big cable corp, doing internet support. Day 1 I still hated the fact they discouraged using computers running different OSs or using our own routers. Day 2 I understood and agreed!We had 100s of people in those offices. When I was interviewed they asked technical questions and were looking for technical people. But that didn’t mean they had 100s of qualified network engineers handling their phones! That’s not practical!We did have some great people though. But even great people don’t know every possible system.Sure, the user agreement said things like you must have a Windows or a Mac PC to connect to your modem and do not run servers. But nobody actually cared! It wasn’t really about that. It was about not having some angry customer on the line expecting someone to hold their hand, walking them through some random Linux distro or some random router config screen blind over the phone. That little bit we did support, we had to do it without seeing your screen. Any one of us could walk you through that narrow list of supported software with our eyes closed!It wasn’t that you couldn’t do your own thing. It was that when you tell people they can do their own thing they turn into assholes expecting you to support it! If someone wanted to run Linux or their own router… cool. So long as they could support it themselves. But if you told them it was allowed… then they became support demanding assholes!We were actually pretty good. A lot of us could have walked you through a lot of that stuff. But we didn’t. Why? Well for one we were forbidden from doing so, were randomly monitored and could be fired. But really, it didn’t take long to realize what problem that would cause. Say I received a call from a Linux user. Hey.. this user is using Debian. So was I at the time. So I walk them through stuff. Next time they call and get my friend. My friend has never used Debian, my friend uses Suse. The customer gets irate when they can’t help. And believe me, they did get irate!We did not do that to one another. We did not want it done to us. I would have had no idea where Suse stores it’s settings if my friend had helped someone in a previous call!But the customers are never really happy. And neither is the corporation. As our office grew we took over, deprecating a third party contractor out of Canada that was previously used. Now those contractors were useless. Every time… unplug your modem. Ok, wait 1/2 hour, plug it in and call back if it isn’t working. That’s all they ever did! By luck a call would eventually get routed to us and that customer might have already been through that process 5 or 6 times! Then we would actually fix their problem. And yet.. the customers were disappointed when they didn’t get the Canadians. They said they loved them because they were so polite.Now I am telling you… we were kissing the customers’ asses with every call. I can’t for the life of me figure out how one could be more ‘polite’. Maybe it was the accents? Some of us would play with different accents and it did make a difference in how the customers responded. Hey.. you can only walk so many people through POP and SMTP settings in Outlook Express so many times before you get bored and a little goofy.Couple this insistence we were not polite enough with the fact the company wanted to squeeze every possible drop of profit out of everything and change was coming.They wanted all our support people to start turning support calls into sales. Are you kidding… customer calls in PISSED that they haven’t had their porn fix in 3 days and you are expected to get them to spend more money on that same call?!?!So they stopped asking technical questions and looking for technical backgrounds in interviews. They switched to a more sales oriented hiring approach.So yah, you might get someone useless now. Well, useless sells. If people weren’t buying that, if they instead put their money where technical competency is that is what the market would provide! Blame the consume in the mirror!Eventually I did get out and began my career actually using my degree. I kept touch for several years with people who stayed. It just kept getting worse. Eventually they closed the office and went back to the outsourcing companies.Hell, it might actually be AI now. Although.. only if AI can keep it’s sales numbers up… on support calls!",
"parent_id": "8154887",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156109",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T12:18:06",
"content": "I told the story of my own encounters with cable-company phone firewalls recently @ The Register:https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2025/03/17/microsoft_bug_report_troll/#c_5037827Suffice it to say, things have not improved.",
"parent_id": "8155894",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156111",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T12:22:46",
"content": "[support drones/AI bots]Obligatory XKCD:https://xkcd.com/806/",
"parent_id": "8154887",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155613",
"author": "Michael O'Neill",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T00:08:54",
"content": "My brothers ISP did that with no modem only option. You can enable bridge mode but you cannot turn off wifi no matter what. Since I had a unifi ap setup for him this was just eating airwaves so I literally took it apart and removed all the antenna and clipped off the board mounted antenna elements. I told him them may make him pay for it later for damage but chances are it will obsolete first.I really dislike this MO as it just eats up the airwaves with wifi some people don’t even want or use.",
"parent_id": "8154835",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154837",
"author": "Adam",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T14:04:37",
"content": "I do love a massively over engineered solution.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154869",
"author": "DoublG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T17:21:33",
"content": "It’s always the dudes with Ubiquiti gear thay do this.. I suppose is in the spirit of this site and I love an over engineered solution as much as the next guy, but I dont get the foaming over a mini rack with some network gear on the wall in your living room like its a Monet painting or something.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154906",
"author": "Yeshua Watson",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T20:56:06",
"content": "Hey, don’t kink shame them. Some people like artwork that looks like a toddler was let loose on a canvas, others like blinking led lights that show how much data they’re pumping through while watching Netflix. To one’s own. But we should celebrate their willingness to share their journey with us.",
"parent_id": "8154869",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155038",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T06:14:50",
"content": "ahmhttps://www.reddit.com/r/cableporn/",
"parent_id": "8154906",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154923",
"author": "arifyn",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T22:13:16",
"content": "I think, like many hobbies, the fact that most people don’t “get it” is part of the appeal to those involved. But I also don’t think there’s really anything to get – other than that a lot of people enjoy doing things for the sake of doing them, and a certain subset of those people choose to go all out when it comes to specific things.Do the vast majority of people, even tech-oriented people, needanysort of rackmount hardware in their home setup? Probably not. But it gives its adherents something specific that’s fun to tinker with and is backed by a comparatively small, more closely-knit group of enthusiasts.It’s like people who’re really into building their truck for rock crawling even though a lot of them barely even leave the pavement. Or people who install Gentoo Linux to compile everything from scratch, even though most of the time perfectly good binary packages exist.",
"parent_id": "8154869",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154928",
"author": "arifyn",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T22:23:41",
"content": "Also, “dudes with Ubiquiti” is definitely a thing, but I think it’s just because Ubiquiti makes rackmount gear that has a distinct aesthetic, has a somewhat intuitive management interface, and (probably most important) their stuff is affordable enough that you can build a home network out of it.I don’t know of any other company that makes affordable rackmount gear (with the possible exception of Mikrotik’s fancier switches and routers) unless you want to build everything out of generic linux/freebsd servers or extremely outdated used pro gear from someone like Cisco.(and Ubiquiti has plenty of good options across their lineup thatdon’trequire rack mounting, so in general I suspect that people decide they want to have a rack first, then fill it with Ubiquiti gear, rather than vice versa)",
"parent_id": "8154923",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155614",
"author": "Michael O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T00:12:00",
"content": "People with more money than sense. I use ubiquiti APs but for network gear, used enterprise IT gear offers more features, more learning opportunities, and better bang for your buck. caring about the aesthetics of a network rack beyond good cable management is silly IMO.",
"parent_id": "8154928",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154933",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T22:32:15",
"content": "Some racks can look nice.https://www.falcon-nw.com/desktops/rak",
"parent_id": "8154869",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155060",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T08:00:18",
"content": "More serious comment, it pains me to see the state of the Comms racks at work because they’re an utter mess and that alone causes problems because people dig into them and dislodge stuff, plus, nobody should have access without having to get permission and log their reasons, changes, additions, removals etc.And, whilst keeping them neat is an art, they aren’t art and have no place in my living spaces or on display at my place of work (a battle I have fought and won) not least because letting people see what gear you’re running and possibly work out how it’s connected is a security risk",
"parent_id": "8154869",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156144",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T14:15:05",
"content": "“letting people see what gear you’re running and possibly work out how it’s connected is a security risk”Ehhhh… I mean, there’s a sense in which that’s a tautology, of course, because having any information about anything always makes that thing more vulnerable than having no information about it. QED.But security through obscurity is rarely very much security at all. Really, if merely knowing those kind of surface-level details of a network compromises it, then you have bigger problems because it was never actually very secure at all. In an IDEAL world, a secure network is no less secure even if all the details of its configuration are publicly available. Which is not to say that we actually live in such an idealized reality, of course.(“Security” is also a popular bullshit excuse many companies give for not providing access to their source code. And yet, time and time again vulnerabilities in closed-source software — vulnerabilities that could’ve been caught by a careful review of the source code — are discovered and exploited despite even without access to the oh-so-“secure” code.)",
"parent_id": "8155060",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154880",
"author": "Bs",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T18:39:34",
"content": "Ubiquiti has had this for awhile works great",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154946",
"author": "Antron Argaiv",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T23:17:52",
"content": "Heck, just take any random router, pull the plastic case off, mount in a rackmount box and extend the cables and LEDs to the front panel. You can do the same with a cable modem. You’ll be the only one in the neighbourhood with one.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155068",
"author": "FEW",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T08:11:00",
"content": "I like this project. My new modem is much faster, but is awkwardly shaped and doesn’t have wall mount holes. I’ll try replacing the base. I keep meaning to add a new shelf on the wall with my utilities, but just swapping part of the housing with a printed part is a great idea.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155192",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T12:59:35",
"content": "Oddly the router my fiber provider gave me has a screw insert in the bottom.",
"parent_id": "8155068",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155467",
"author": "Ryan Waldron",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T20:35:35",
"content": "You should probably try reading and understanding what you are writing….you are talking about “Home Modems”, why in the hell would some random house wife who just wants to watch Netflix give a damn about a rack mount? Absolute garbage, like 95% of the trash that comes out of self proclaimed “tech bloggers” these days.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156069",
"author": "tracker1",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T07:45:10",
"content": "I wish they’d come up with a smaller footprint standard for home oriented gear like this. Not 19″ but maybe 150mm squared. So you can combine your own modem, router, home nas and AP and stack them nearly.I don’t have room for even a partial vertical rack, just a shelf in a closet with circulation fans mounted through the door.It’s a mish mosh of cases in different sizes shapes and general orientation. Beyond this, the mix of power, led or controls in front or back are also device inconsistent to say the least.If I were designing a home today, I’d specifically have a closet with a pull out rack or similar for a lot of this. But even then, A/C routing, power and sound insulation would make it kind of a pain.A smaller than a rack, standard footprint would be so much better.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,471.927851
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/27/a-non-sony-playstation-motherboard-replacement/
|
A Non-Sony Playstation Motherboard Replacement
|
Bryan Cockfield
|
[
"Games"
] |
[
"gaming",
"hardware",
"motherboard",
"nsone",
"original hardware",
"playstation",
"replacement",
"retro"
] |
As hardware ages, it becomes harder and harder to keep it in service. Whether that’s because of physical aging or lack of support from the company who built it in the first place, time is not generally good for electronics, especially when it comes to our beloved retro gaming systems. The first Playstation, for example, is starting to see some of the deleterious effects of having originally been built in the 90s, and [LorentioB] has
a new, third-party motherboard to bring to the table to keep these systems online
as well as adding some features in that Sony removed.
The motherboard is known as the nsOne, meaning Not Sony’s One since this is the first motherboard built by a single person outside of Sony. It’s not based on any FPGAs or emulators and is completely compatible with all of the original hardware, chips, and other circuitry of the original Playstation. Based on the PU-23 series, it even revives the removed parallel port, which Sony removed after the first versions of the hardware because of region locking concerns and other pro-consumer issues. Every chip footprint and connector was reverse engineered manually, using optical sanding, scanning, and net-by-net tracing.
For such a complex piece of hardware this is quite the feat, and for anyone who wants to restore old hardware or add the parallel port back on to their system this could be a game changer. [LorentioB] is not quite finished yet but hopes to have a finished version shortly. As far as fully opening up the system goes, there are some software hacks to look at
that allow more games to run on the system
and
some hardware hacks that open the system up as well
.
| 12
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154805",
"author": "WTF Detector",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T10:40:08",
"content": "Holy moly, that’s a clean-looking board. Amazing work by [LorentioB]!I wonder if they have any plans to extend their skills towards the many PlayStation-based arcade platforms, too. One of the really clever things Sony did back in the mid 90’s was to license the console’s chipset to various arcade OEMs to integrate into their own designs, bolting whatever additional hardware they wanted onto it.Some of the designs, like Namco’s “System 11” board, were pretty close to a standard PlayStation but with a ROM board and copy-protection chip (Namco’s “KEYCUS” ASIC) bolted on. That ran the originalTekkenand a handful of other games.On the more bizarre end, there’s Konami’s one-off “GQ” board which hosted the light-gun gameCrypt Killersand tacked on a SCSI hard drive. Konami in particular went wild with the PlayStation chipset with their music/rhythm games, going as far as adding a PCMCIA interface, a CD-ROM interface, and an MP3 decoder chip for a bunch of the Dance Dance Revolution games.Really nice to see the PS1 getting some love, it’s definitely got a more interesting history than most folks expect.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154827",
"author": "4ndreas",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T12:28:26",
"content": "It’s just a Mockup for now. If you read the post. I did actually wonder about all the caps needed for operation and the other jellybean parts…",
"parent_id": "8154805",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154828",
"author": "rasz_pl",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T12:28:57",
"content": "clean-looking boardLOL because its a picture of a mock up, otherwise it would be a scam like that Alejandro Supersega prototype laughing fest. Didnt you notioce curious lack of bypas capacitors, resistors, regulators transistors vias or tracks ? :)",
"parent_id": "8154805",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154842",
"author": "kaidenshi",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T14:35:42",
"content": "You know, there are polite ways to respond to someone who didn’t notice a detail like that. Mocking someone for not knowing something only makes you look like an insensitive and arrogant prick (something I’ve noticed about you through the years), and it does nothing to promote positive discourse.",
"parent_id": "8154828",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154849",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T15:26:00",
"content": "i don’t know, i found rasz’s playful juxtaposition of perceived cleanliness with a lack of universally-essential components triggered my imagination. i began thinking of a future when these components become irrelevant and how much that would change the aesthetic of electronics, just like the smd revolution did a couple decades ago.i also found your overt personal attack a little thought provoking but after a second’s reflection i realized, there’s not really anything interesting — certainly nothing novel — about the fact that people who ask others to evoke politeness are often the least polite.",
"parent_id": "8154842",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155847",
"author": "kaidenshi",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T11:25:58",
"content": "Fair point, but if it wasn’t for rasz_pl’s long history of veiled attacks and insults both here and in other forums where they use the same handle, I probably wouldn’t have said anything. I just grow tired of seeing them attack others for their ignorance (not an insult btw, being ignorant is not a bad thing). It’s their pattern of behavior I’m calling out; being an intellectually bully should be frowned upon in my opinion.If you wish to frame me as the villain here, that’s fine, I can take a hit. I just can’t stand to see bullies do their thing and I’m not going to keep quiet about it.",
"parent_id": "8154849",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156289",
"author": "rasz_pl",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T22:11:15",
"content": "I wasnt mocking WTF Detector :| I was laughing at the PCB picture posted on reddit because it does look exactly likehttps://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc4/supersega-v09-board-3.jpg",
"parent_id": "8154842",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154862",
"author": "Rob",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T16:46:32",
"content": "Can you do it for the Korg M1?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154932",
"author": "jerwood",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T22:27:52",
"content": "This isn’t a functional PCB, it’s just the footprints. There are no traces. People are filling a lot in with their imaginations.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155334",
"author": "Tony M",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T16:46:35",
"content": "guys… what the heck is optical sanding? and before someone comes with the “go ask google/chatgpt” nah I prefer to ask to the HaD community.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155811",
"author": "Sid",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T09:07:33",
"content": "So here is an ELI5 for optical sanding that I can gather and explain in the easiest way: optical sanding is basically very high precision sanding with very high grit sanding paper, compound, or polish to remove material in a very fine manner and in planned motions to remove the desired amount of material to get it to the right specifications needed for the job. I would assume in the case for this project, it would mean removing each PCB layer to map out traces that happen inside the PCB for multilayer PCBs.",
"parent_id": "8155334",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155923",
"author": "Tony M",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T17:13:34",
"content": "WOW! Many thanks Sid! I remember an old video where military where sanding by hand a flat surface by zones using a blue market to spot the irregular “not flat yet zones” because the thing was for a delicate intrument. So yeah thanks.",
"parent_id": "8155811",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,471.97448
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/28/2025-one-hertz-challenge-clock-calibrator/
|
2025 One-Hertz Challenge: Clock Calibrator
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"clock hacks",
"contests"
] |
[
"2025 Hackaday One Hertz Challenge",
"calibration",
"clock",
"clock calibration",
"timing"
] |
Wall clocks! Are they very accurate? Well, sometimes they are, and sometimes they lose minutes a day. If you’ve got one that needs calibrating,
you might like this device from [Lauri Pirttiaho].
Most cheap wall clocks use very similar mechanisms based around the
Lavet-type stepper motor
. These are usually driven by a chip-on-board oscillator that may or may not be particularly accurate.
[Lauri] desired a way to tune up these cheap clocks by using GPS-level timing accuracy. Thus began a project based around a CY8KIT evaluation board from Cypress. The microcontroller is paired with a small character LCD as a user interface, and hooked up to a cheap GPS module with an accurate 1-pulse-per-second (1PPS) timing output. The concept is simple enough. Clock drift is measured by using counters in the microcontroller to compare the timing of the GPS 1PPS output and the pulses driving the Lavet-type stepper motor. The difference between the two can be read off the device, and used to determine if the wall clock is fast or slow. Then one need only use a trimmer capacitor to tweak the wall clock’s pulse rate in order to make it more accurate.
Few of us spend much time calibrating low-cost wall clocks to high levels of accuracy. If that sounds like a fun hobby to you, or your name is Garrus, you would probably find [Lauri]’s device remarkably useful. Believe it or not,
this isn’t the first clock calibrator we’ve seen, either.
Meanwhile, if you’ve brewed up your own high-accuracy timing hardware, feel free to let us know
on the tipsline.
| 8
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155569",
"author": "Ferenc",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T22:36:21",
"content": "I’d love to see this done to a regular pendulum clock. Perhaps by influencing the pendulum.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155773",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T07:13:19",
"content": "yes, that would be nice. I thought about building taht for my grandfather clock, the pedulum should swing with 0,94sec so not easy to measure – but…. didn’t find the time for it :-D",
"parent_id": "8155569",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155572",
"author": "mayhem",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T22:43:50",
"content": "Thats exactly how a pendulem clock is regulated. There is typically a thumb nut at the bottom of the arm that is used to raise or lower the pendulum. Raising the weight speeds the clock up and lowering the weight slows the clock.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155954",
"author": "metan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T20:05:40",
"content": "For a tower clock it has to be adjusted based on a average temperature, and its a few turns of difference between summer and winter, mainly due to viscosity of the oil. It’s fascinating that mostly everything drifts with temperature, but we managed to reduce the error by a few orders of magnitude by making things smaller and temperature compensated.",
"parent_id": "8155572",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155620",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T00:38:56",
"content": "From the wording of the title, and the picture, I was expecting a hammer (ok, a solenoid) to smack the side of the clock to “re-calibrate” it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155756",
"author": "MC Solenoid",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T06:29:59",
"content": "Stop!Hammer time.",
"parent_id": "8155620",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155886",
"author": "Just sayin'",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T13:51:52",
"content": "Wondering if you could get a cheap GPS module and use the PPS output to drive the stepper. If I’m not mistaken the motor is normally driven by a crystal derived pulse per second and I suspect that the motor drive current might be low enough to drive directly from the GPS output. Anyone ever done this so they can tell me why it won’t work?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156081",
"author": "Joe",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T09:23:04",
"content": "I think you’d need a 6 degree per step stepper motor (assuming you’re driving the controller’s step pin directly from the PPS output), which don’t seem to exist (or are hard to find at least!).You could pipe it into some form of pulse multiplier, but I don’t know of a simple IC that could do this off the top of my head.",
"parent_id": "8155886",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,472.390542
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/28/be-more-axolotl-how-humans-may-one-day-regrow-limbs-and-organs/
|
Be More Axolotl: How Humans May One Day Regrow Limbs And Organs
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"Medical Hacks",
"Science"
] |
[
"axolotl",
"cellular regeneration",
"regenerative medicine"
] |
Although often glossed over, the human liver is a pretty amazing organ. Not just because it’s pretty much the sole thing that prevents our food from killing us, but also because it’s the only organ in our body that is capable of significant regeneration. This is a major boon in medicine, as you can remove most of a person’s liver and it’ll happily regrow back to its original volume. Obviously this is very convenient in the case of disease or when performing a liver transplant.
Despite tissue regeneration being very common among animals, most mammalian species have only limited regenerative ability. This means that while some species can easily regrow entire limbs and organs including eyes as well as parts of their brain, us humans and our primate cousins are lucky if we can even count on our liver to do that thing, while limbs and eyes are lost forever.
This raises many questions, including whether the deactivation of regenerative capabilities is just an evolutionary glitch, and how easily we might be able to turn it back on.
Regenerating Vs Repair
Even in the absence of a regenerative ability, animals can heal injuries, which generally means the growth of fibrous tissue called scar tissue. This can be observed very clearly on our skin, where certain old injuries tend to remain clearly visible as the scar tissue replaces skin tissue. While made of the same collagen protein as skin tissue, the fiber organization is different and serves no real purpose beyond sealing up a lesion. Scar tissue can form elsewhere in the body too, where it can impede function, as in the heart and lungs.
Both regeneration and repair are a form of healing in an organism, but only the former restores the original functionality, whereas the latter is the biological equivalent of slapping on a duct tape patch and calling it good. This ‘repair’ outcome is effectively an incomplete regeneration process, where instead of the affected site creating the conditions for normal growth – leading to a good-as-new result – you only get the basic scaffolding while certain biochemical pathways are never or insufficiently activated.
Phases of wound healing. (Credit: Mikael Häggström,
Wikimedia
)
Although it’s often said that the human liver is the sole organ capable of regeneration in our species, it could be argued that our blood vessels are a much better example of regeneration. Within minutes after receiving a cut or bad scrape, any damaged blood vessels are plugged and macrophages along with other specialized cells begin to move into the area as the inflammatory phase begins.
At the end of this phase,
angiogenesis
commences, which involves existing blood vessels growing new blood vessels into the affected area. In a developing embryo, this is the stage that follows the earliest development of the initial blood vessels through vasculogenesis. In this regard, blood vessels can be said to regenerate themselves in the case of injury. They can also expand into tissues where e.g. hypoxia conditions are present, which triggers the hypoxia-inducible factor (
HIF
) signaling path.
In the case of
wound healing
this signal path is stimulated due to the hypoxia condition that exists at the injury site. Although the HIF-related
HIF-1α
subunit is constantly expressed, oxygen-dependent prolyl hydroxylases (PHDs) normally degrade it and thus downregulating the further responses down this chain.
Another aspect here is the re-epithelization, whereby surrounding skin cells move towards the wound, multiplying until the signals that induce this growth are downregulated below a critical threshold. Based on research the same HIF pathway is implicated here. For example, in a 2015 study in
Science Translational Medicine
Yong Zhang et al. reported
that forced upregulation of HIF-1α was able to induce full regeneration of a hole punched in the ears of mice who normally just show scarring.
This indicates that boosting the HIF signaling pathway might be a viable way to prevent scarring and induce full regeneration of certain types of wounds to the skin.
Blastema Limbo
Two
Ambystoma mexicanum
axolotl at the Vancouver Aquarium. (Credit: ZeWrestler,
Wikimedia
)
The HIF signaling pathway is an example of a basic regeneration pathway involving a single organ (i.e. the skin). Things get more complicated when there’s the removal of something to the extent of a limb. Among mammals regenerating ability is limited, with some species like rabbits still possessing the ability to
regenerate holes in their ears
while other species, including humans, are not creating the requisite blastema of undifferentiated cells after an amputation.
The
axolotl
is one of the most studied species when it comes to tissue regeneration. Similar to other salamanders they possess a remarkable ability to regenerate many parts of their body, with the axolotl capable of regenerating their limbs, gills, eyes and parts of their brain. Although annelids (segmented worms) and echinoderms like starfish are capable of even more extreme forms of regeneration, axolotls are significantly more akin to us mammals than either of those.
Incidentally, similar research in fruit flies (
Drosophila melanogaster
) has led us to the highly conserved
Hippo signaling pathway
. This particular signaling path is essential in determining how big an organ is supposed to be, such as when a human liver is chopped up
in vivo
and has to
regrow back to its original size
.
New Limb Cap
When an axolotl suffers severe injury like the loss of a limb or a gill, the surface where the amputation occurred gets covered up by epidermal cells, forming the wound epithelium (WE). This is the point where for human and other mammals the process pretty much ends with a stump covered up by skin. In the case of the axolotl, however, this WE keeps gathering epidermal cells, forming the apical epithelial cap (AEC).
Inside this AEC the tissues then undergo dedifferentiation into a blastema – led by
signals from macrophages
– effectively resetting the tissues here to a much earlier, embryonic state of development. Under the influence of
Hox
genes
which regulate the body’s layout, the AEC subsequently grows as it would have done previously with the very young axolotl until the entire limb, gill, eye, etc. has been regrown.
Hox protein classification across model organisms by CLANS analysis, (Credit:
Hueber et al.
, 2010)
The trick is thus to take these identified signaling pathways, establish in how far they have been preserved in other animals – like us primates – and whether we can easily re-enable them in some way, whether permanently or temporarily. After all, it worked once when we were still embryos, ergo by resetting the cellular clock on part of our bodies it would simply run through the same biochemical steps again.
Still A Lumpy Road Ahead
Of course, this involves developmental biology, biochemistry and genetic research, meaning that clear answers are rarely found and require immense amounts of research and study to unravel how all of these signaling pathways work, while maybe finding a few more ones along the way. The upshot of course is that the field of
regenerative medicine
can have massive implications for human health, ranging from the ability to treat many (genetic) disorders related to faulty signaling pathways to the ability regrow limbs, eyes and more.
It’s likely that regenerating skin and directly related tissues in human patients will be one of the first widescale applications of these findings, with recently Weifeng Lin et al.
publishing a study
in
Science
involving regrowing a damaged outer ear (pinna) of mice and rats through the addition of
retinoic acid
(RA), a key element in embryonic development. Specifically they identified that in non-regenerative species of rats and mice the
Aldh1a2
gene was not expressed as much as it was in species who do regenerate, which reduces the amount of available RA from the retinaldehyde precursor.
Although there’s a lot that can be said about the pros and cons of turning back on genes that haven’t been active since we were either an embryo or a still-growing-child, understanding these biochemical pathways offers us the prospect of bypassing them in order to restore that which once was thought to be lost forever. Even if we won’t be regrowing limbs yet next year, we might be giving people back their pinna, digits, faces and erase old scars before we know it.
“
Closeup of Axolotl in Hand
” by [Yaiol AI]
“
Purple Tropical Axolotl
” by[ Raphael Brasileiro]
| 26
| 8
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155371",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T18:10:23",
"content": "Here here for regeneration of the hair cells in hearing. I heard for 30 years or more about being able to do this in human subjects. Chickens do it!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155599",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T23:36:23",
"content": "If you were trying to use the English expression, often used in parliament, I have to point out it’s ‘hear! hear!’ not ‘here here’.",
"parent_id": "8155371",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155857",
"author": "Scaramouche",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T11:51:10",
"content": "He can’t hear. That’s why he’s here.",
"parent_id": "8155599",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155883",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T13:48:48",
"content": "Usually sounds more like hrrrrrrgh hrrrrrrrgh’k",
"parent_id": "8155599",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156085",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T09:47:13",
"content": "I was thinking about why Americans often get it wrong, because ‘hear hear’ also seems so much more logical to me. Then it came to me that it’s sort of the opposite of the expression ‘there there’, and perhaps that’s why there is a tendency to think it’s ‘here here’ :)I guess the US version (of the correct one) would be the expressions ‘listen to the man’ if someone says something you agree with and people should hear it, which relates to ‘hear! hear!’",
"parent_id": "8155599",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156587",
"author": "Cuvtixo Daniels",
"timestamp": "2025-08-01T00:27:13",
"content": "“Hear, Hear” was used in America long ago, although certain states and federal courts are announced with “Hear Ye, Hear Ye!” and even the Anglo-Norman “Oyez, Oyez, Oyez!” is still in use. “Listen to the man” kindof assumes Americans didn’t use the same phrase, and while it’s considered old-fashioned, in the US we still verbally understand and say “hear, hear!” I had given an alternative explanation why Americans might spell it “hear”, but was censored by Hackaday’s “nonce” algorithm.",
"parent_id": "8156085",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155376",
"author": "Aleks Clark",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T18:22:00",
"content": "This topic is absolutely fascinating, and I really enjoyed the article. Plenty of SF stuff about “regen tanks” etc. and I can see here the seeds of making that a reality. That said, it’s freaking complicated, so comments like this:After all, it worked once when we were still embryos, ergo by resetting the cellular clock on part of our bodies it would simply run through the same biochemical steps again.make me tweak a lil bit – there are lots of factors involved, and usually traits get dropped for a reason. I find it perfectly plausible for instance that the regeneration traits could negatively affect complex brain structures that need to stay how they are in order to have long-term memory. So it’s plausible to me that we would need to grow limbs in a tank and then reattach, or maybe hook up an alternate blood supply that provides the regen signals to the limb but not the rest of our body, etc.That said, still reaaaally coool :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155819",
"author": "Maya Posch",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T09:37:52",
"content": "That comment was naturally written tongue-in-cheek, as nothing in biochemistry or evolutionary/developmental biology is ever ‘easy’ or ‘straightforward’, but it makes sense as a reasonable starting question at least :)",
"parent_id": "8155376",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155885",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T13:51:48",
"content": "Most likely it’s just hard to avoid creating cancer when regenerating mammal parts. I’m not saying it’s entirely impossible for sure or that we shouldn’t be working on it. Just that is probably why we lost the ability in the first place and that will be the biggest hurdle in medically regaining it. It will probably be a very very high hurdle, but totally worth it in the end.",
"parent_id": "8155376",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156140",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T13:56:21",
"content": "Agreed, the lack of redundant data to resist cancer compared to species with more advanced regeneration stands out starkly.",
"parent_id": "8155885",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155416",
"author": "Sazoji",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T19:39:40",
"content": "I work with similar regulatory networks in mosquitos on their transcriptome regulation. Stress signal pathways have some really powerful activities in some species that confound some traditional ideas on how transgenes interact with intercellular systems. Cells will compete with eachother and overtake roles if they can’t handle the overproduction of a marker gene, triggering nearby cells to overtake their duties.I think one of the best review scientists on these sorts of intercellularly directed repair has been Michael Levin and his modeling of that communication in action during repair and development. He’s covered a lot of subjects that build up a larger model of scaling “intelligence” (dont like his terminology, but there seems to be a goal state that’s directed by intercellular activity) across different fields. Since I’m on the edge of transcriptomics and intercellular systems, I can’t really say much on his computer science theories but his experiment with axolotl limb transplants and the reprogramming of a tail into an arm shows an astonishing flexibility and plantlike development I wouldn’t think an adult animal would preform. I’m lucky enough to have received an axolotl arm when I was at a conference in Toluca (they rip them off all the time in their juvenile stages allegedly, and I received it as a small gift from a student at the university) where there are still some wild populations.There is a larger system in regeneration that really needs to be explored further, but the potential for med hacking has never been so bright IMO.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155425",
"author": "Sazoji",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T19:54:05",
"content": "I work with similar regulatory networks in mosquitos on their transcriptome regulation.I’ll expand on this a bit, since it reads awkwardly. I mean there’s a network of genes, smallRNAs, and proteins that are involved in satellite (“junk”) regions of the insect genome that regulate other RNAs and defend against transposons/viruses. That same system can communicate between cells and, at a larger level, redesignate tasks between cells to overcome some genes that we insert into the mosquitos.",
"parent_id": "8155416",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156141",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T14:02:41",
"content": "Very cool stuff, I’ve been slowly following the advancements and while some of it plods along, the variety and complexity of these interactions is bewildering enough it’s no surprise.",
"parent_id": "8155416",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155431",
"author": "Beowulf Shaeffer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T20:02:53",
"content": "Other vertebrates are useful in this regard, and I seem to remember alligators being studied for limb regeneration (crocodilians in general have amazing immune systems and regenerative capabilities, although they paradoxically don’t seem to handle gut parasites very well).There are also the occasional freak humans that grow back much more of their missing digits than they should be able to, so they would probably be worth tracking down for genetic tests. (Assuming you could entice anyone to self-report in order to bypass medical privacy regulations, and assuming their medical records, once released, supported their claims.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155432",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T20:04:33",
"content": "The reason why land animals don’t grow back limbs has probably something to do with the amount of radiation you’re exposed to when you’re not living most of your life under water.Regeneration is kinda like controlled cancer. If there’s a tiny mistake, the cells won’t know to stop.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155571",
"author": "Egghead Larsen",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T22:41:48",
"content": "Hey! We all could use an extra pair of hands sometimes!",
"parent_id": "8155432",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155682",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T03:01:46",
"content": "After a certain age, I bet many would take risk of super cancer if it meant they could regenerate back to youth.At least cancer is something we can fight even if only just a little. If we could fight limb loss, aging, and other deterioration then I think it’d be worth it.",
"parent_id": "8155432",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155785",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T07:53:21",
"content": "“Fighting” a full body cancer might be a little harder than you imagine.",
"parent_id": "8155682",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155805",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T08:51:00",
"content": "Might not occur like that though and I’m sure it’d still find popularity with the elderly or heavily crippled as a last hurrah at worst.At best the cancer rate would be low and local.",
"parent_id": "8155785",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155965",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T21:42:26",
"content": "The main point is that if we re-engineer our cells to be able to regenerate lost limbs, we’re also engineering them to be prone to cancer, so while you might get your finger back you also risk dying in a couple years.",
"parent_id": "8155805",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156142",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T14:08:31",
"content": "Less so if the limb or organ is mostly pre built, then grafted. Given mammalian susceptibility to cancer this is likely the only reasonable approach. This also opens up the possibility of accelerating the process with partially manufactured bone and tissue.",
"parent_id": "8155785",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155734",
"author": "Not Wade Wilson",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T05:15:33",
"content": "It took me about 15 years to grow my hands to about the size they are now the first time. So if I lose one and it regenerates back, would it take another 15 years? Walking around with a tiny hand just like Deadpool except stuck that way for years! But still better then no hand at all.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155765",
"author": "adobeflashhater again",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T06:52:57",
"content": "Speaking as a “Boomer”? Oh to have a way to replace the now absent cartilage for my knees and some arthritic damages starting elsewhere! I’m well beyond any syn-visc sort of treatments at this point. Just not wanting to have the knees cut out yet, in case someone is close to needing a patient, to try some promising idea on.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155775",
"author": "Andy Warburton",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T07:34:17",
"content": "I own an Axolotl, when we bought it was missing fingers on one hand due to being attacked by one of its siblings at the store. They grew back quickly but he now has different numbers of fingers on each limb. They’re amazing creatures (just a shame they’re dumb as pudding)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156143",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T14:10:41",
"content": "All that regeneration is energy intensive, if they had a higher level of social intelligence it might not be as thorough.",
"parent_id": "8155775",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156368",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T09:07:09",
"content": "Maybe they are dumb because their brain keeps regenerating and returning back to “defaults” instead of pruning connections and making patterns.",
"parent_id": "8155775",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,472.2963
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/28/learn-computing-head-for-montana/
|
Learn Computing? Head For MonTana!
|
Al Williams
|
[
"Retrocomputing"
] |
[
"cpu",
"gameboy",
"learning computer",
"pdp-11"
] |
We’ve often thought that it must be harder than ever to learn about computers. Every year, there’s more to learn, so instead of making the gentle slope from college mainframe, to Commodore 64, to IBM PC, to NVidia supercomputer, you have to start at the end. But, really, you don’t. You can always emulate computers from simpler times, and even if you don’t need to, it can be a lot of fun.
That’s the idea behind the
MonTana
mini-computer. It combines “…ideas from the PDP-11, MIPS, Scott CPU, Game Boy, and JVM to make a relatively simple 16-bit computer…”
The computer runs on Java, so you can try it nearly anywhere. The console is accessed through a web browser and displays views of memory, registers, and even something that resembles a Game Boy screen. You’ll need to use assembly language until you write your own high-level language (we’d suggest Forth). There is, however, a simple operating system, MTOS.
This is clearly made for use in a classroom, and we’d love to teach a class around a computer like this. The whole thing reminds us of a 16-bit computer like the PDP-11 where everything is a two-byte word. There are only 4K bytes of memory (so 2K words). However, you can accomplish a great deal in that limited space. Thanks to the MTOS API, you don’t have to worry about writing text to the screen and other trivia.
It looks like fun. Let us know what you’ll use it for. If you want to go down a level, try
CARDIAC
. Or skip ahead a little, and teach kids
QBasic
.
| 10
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155304",
"author": "UnderSampled",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:42:29",
"content": "WASM-4 is another good option.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155368",
"author": "Jon Mayo",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T18:05:34",
"content": "There are a ton of fantasy consoles, the best ones offer an interesting twist.For me, I like having cycle times attached to each instruction. So I kind of avoided stuff like PICO-8. And ended up settling on GB Studio, which gives me some of the convenience of a good fantasy console but it can target actual hardware too.On MonTana, I love the idea. I’ve often wondered if some of the mini-computer architectures could have made it in a different timeline. Actually TI TMS9900 and GI CP1600 were 16-bit architectures from the 1970’s that managed to make it into game consoles and toys in the 1980’s.In a way, I would have preferred TMS9900 in micro controllers over Atmel AVR, but TI never really understood the hobbyists or small volume market. TI was very good at making high volumes for big contractors, they were always rather weak on end-user marketing or even direct-to-engineer marketing.Intel famously out maneuvered other silicon manufacturers by simply handing out a summary datasheets at conventions and during sales meetings that had the meat of what the chip does on it. (I think the 4 page 8086/8088 datasheet was the first example of that?)",
"parent_id": "8155304",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155377",
"author": "elwing",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T18:24:25",
"content": "I do love simply doing GBA dev. there’s tonc, emulators with GDB, toolchains…and with a proper flashcard you can even try on real hardware…",
"parent_id": "8155368",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155888",
"author": "Inhibit",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T13:57:06",
"content": "In that vein there’s also the Arduboy for a practical micro computer as handheld.",
"parent_id": "8155377",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155947",
"author": "Kuroi",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T18:49:00",
"content": "Are there other alternatives? I like arduboy, but it’s too small for my tastes.",
"parent_id": "8155888",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155324",
"author": "sbrk",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T16:20:02",
"content": "The computer runs on Java, so you can try it nearly anywhere.Credibility drops instantly to 0%",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155940",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T18:26:28",
"content": "Don’t base your opinions on memes dude",
"parent_id": "8155324",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155948",
"author": "El Gru",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T18:58:11",
"content": "They lost me at “Java”, too.No memes, just too much real pain.",
"parent_id": "8155940",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155987",
"author": "Jon Mayo",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T22:59:47",
"content": "Java is an extra step to setup on modern Windows and Macs these days, so a bit of a pain in my opinion. But running Java programs on Linux is nearly effortless, and the runtime is no more of a disk hog than Python’s runtime.I think I would prefer WASM these days, but theoretically this could be ported if people wanted to put the effort into it. Really, its possible to target both JVM and Wasm with the same source base if people are so inclined.",
"parent_id": "8155324",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155941",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T18:27:12",
"content": "How abouthttps://papercpu.dev?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,472.345785
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/28/a-history-of-pong/
|
A History Of Pong
|
Al Williams
|
[
"Featured",
"Games",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Retrocomputing"
] |
[
"general instruments",
"Magnavox Odyssey",
"pong",
"video games"
] |
Today, creating a ground-breaking video game is akin to making a movie. You need a story, graphic artists, music, and more. But until the middle of the 20th century, there were no video games. While several games can claim to be the “first” electronic or video game, one is cemented in our collective memory as the first one we’d heard of: Pong.
The truth is, Pong wasn’t the first video game. We suspect that many people might have had the idea, but Ralph Baer is most associated with inventing a practical video game. As a young engineer in 1951, he tried to convince his company to invest in games that you could play on your TV set. They didn’t like the idea, but Ralph would remember the concept and act on it over a decade later.
But was it really the first time anyone had thought of it? Perhaps not. Thomas Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann filed a
patent
in 1947 for a game that simulated launching missiles at targets with an oscilloscope display. The box took eight tubes and, being an oscilloscope, was a vector graphic device. The targets were physical dots on a screen overlay. These “amusement devices” were very expensive, and they only produced handmade prototypes.
Between 1952 and 1961, computers were coming into their own. In the UK, a man named Douglas used the CRT display of EDSAC to play naughts and crosses — also known as tic-tac-toe to Americans. Interestingly, the display was sort of “bit mapped” as it showed the bits in one of the machine’s mercury delay lines. The program featured an algorithm-driven computer player that was capable of beating humans.
Meanwhile, in 1958 at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Willy Higginbotham used an analog computer and an oscilloscope to allow two people to play “tennis” against each other. There was no computer player, but still. You can see a video below. The machine didn’t survive, but the Lab built a replica in 1997.
By 1961, MIT had Spacewar running on a DEC PDP-1, which became fairly famous. However, it would take Ralph Baer — remember him? — to bring the game into your home.
In 1966, he revisited his old idea and had built seven prototype games by 1968, aided by $2,500 from his employer and a couple of engineers. The resulting “brown box” game (so called because the final prototype had a simulated wood case created using brown tape) was shopped around until Magnavox decided to produce it. By the way, Baer would go on to also invent Simon and a few other games, but that’s another story.
1972: A Game Odyssey
Magnavox liked the brown box and signed a deal to produce a game based on it. In May 1972, Odyssey hit store shelves. By today’s standards, it wasn’t much. Just one or two paddles and a moving dot. Graphics and color were plastic overlays on your screen. Check out those controllers in the promotional video below.
The Odyssey looked good, but its controller design was unusual. (Public Domain)
In a year, the box sold 69,000 units. By 1975, there were 350,000 out in the world. The $99.95 price was high for those days. They did some test marketing with the system, then called Skill-O-Vision, and decided to add some generic board games that seemed pretty pointless. If you wanted the shooting game that was part of the prototypes, that was extra.
It is hard to remember how unusual the idea of hooking something up to your TV was in the early 1970s. If you read the announcement in the February 1973 issue of
Popular Electronics
, you’ll see they explain about the antenna-game switch and note that it is “safe for youngsters.”
Oh, and if you are under a certain age, you might have to stretch your imagination of what an 18-inch TV looks like. It was a different world and arcades in those days had electromechanical devices like pinball machines, bowling machines, and very rare games that had real electronics in them.
Pong?
You might notice that the video doesn’t mention Pong. The reason? While what we call Pong was one of the 12 games on the Odyssey, it wasn’t called that. That name was from Atari and Nolan Bushnell (who later started Chuck E. Cheese).
Bushnell wanted to create electronic games after working while in college for an amusement park where he’d seen electromechanical arcade games. He set out with a partner, Ted Dabney, to form a company to create a game similar to Spacewar. Called Computer Space, it arrived in amusement parks and similar venues in 1970 with the help of partner company Nutting Associates.
The game was a commercial flop. However, Bushnell wanted to try again. He hired Allan Alcorn. Here’s where the story gets strange.
The goal was to build a driving game for Bally, but Alcorn had no experience with games. Bushnell claims that he had played tennis on a PDP-1 in college and decided to get Alcorn to create a tennis game as a warm-up project. However, there is considerable evidence that Bushnell had, in fact, seen the Magnavox Odyssey and was looking to copy it.
Whatever the truth is, a prototype Pong game wound up in a local bar late in 1972, about three months after the Odyssey was on store shelves. It was such a hit that the coin acceptor filled up in only a few days.
Bushnell originally shopped the game to Bally, where he wanted to use it to fulfill his existing contract, and to Midway. However, once he realized it was a hit, he decided Atari should produce it themselves. He told Bally that Midway didn’t want it. Then he told Midway that Bally didn’t want it. As a result, both declined to buy the machine. A few months later, Atari started producing Pong arcade games for sale.
Back Home
The Tele-Games was Atari’s 1975 home version of Pong.
CC-BY-SA 3.0
by [Evan Amos]
Atari realized they could tap into the same market as the Odyssey and set out to build a home system using a custom LSI chip, which — in those days — cost quite a bit to produce (about $50,000 then; $388,000 today). Code named Darlene, the device was ready by late 1974. Sears ordered 150,000 rebranded as “Sears’ Tele-Games” and sold them for $98.95. You’d have to drop an extra eight bucks for the AC power adapter.
This led to Magnavox suing Atari. Atari capitulated and struck a deal to be considered a licensee for $1.5 million and other concessions.
During the same time, Magnavox was also feeling the pinch of production costs. The box, which had cost $37 to produce, was up to $47, and there was no appetite for raising the $100 price tag. To make it more affordable, they also turned to integrated circuits (the original was full of discrete devices and was entirely analog).
Chips for the Win
Magnavox used Texas Instruments to develop a chip set for its new 1975 games. TI developed more advanced chips, and by combining chips, you could make new kinds of games. By 1976, TI began selling these parts to the general public. However, they would ultimately not succeed because another company had arguably done a better job: General Instruments.
It was very easy to build a video game with the General Instruments chip.
General Instruments created the single-chip Pong game. The AY-3-8500 was nearly everything you needed to create a Pong game. In fact, it could also play soccer, squash (one or two players), and two rifle games, with the right equipment. You could add a few components to get color and a few more to get four players instead of two.
These chips were cheap and made it extremely simple to create a workable video game. If you had a way to sell them, this was the answer. Coleco was the first, but not the last, to be a customer. We’ve heard there were over 200 products from the era that utilized the IC, including the Odyssey 2000 and 3000, Radio Shack’s TV Scoreboard, and Sears’ Hockey Pong. The chips were also popular among hobby builders. Prior to that, it was a big project to make even a simple game (like the one on page 61 of the
November 1972
Popular Electronics
magazine).
The AY-3-8500 wasn’t, however, the only game in town — no pun intended. National Semiconductor had its own entry into the market. MOSTek was another entrant. They all played the same basic games with a bouncing ball and some controllers. None of these could stand against General Instruments’ momentum. We saw one of these recently in one of the
many little-known attempts
to cash in on the video game craze.
A company called Universal Research produced the F4301 in 1976. It featured two tennis-like games, as well as two unique car racing games. This helped it a bit, but it was still no match for the simple designs possible with the General Instruments devices. Even TI finally threw in the towel and produced a clone of the General Instrument chip.
There were so many of these made that they are still
easy to find and use
. Even on a
breadboard
. Can’t imagine how you’d do this without a chip?
Simulate it
.
The Future
Who could have imagined where games on video screens would go? In 1978, Space Invaders hit the arcade scene. But that’s an entirely different subject.
| 8
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155298",
"author": "Doctor Duck",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:35:14",
"content": "Not to mention the Fairchild, which arrived in 1976 and was the first to use cartridges. Expensive console, but lots of $20 games",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155322",
"author": "onilink_",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T16:16:33",
"content": "Funny timing, I posted a die shot of the GI AY-3-8500 3 days ago.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155327",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T16:24:37",
"content": "Link us!",
"parent_id": "8155322",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155369",
"author": "onilink_",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T18:09:12",
"content": "Sure:https://x.com/TICS_Game/status/1948760978121703541And the high res version:https://siliconpr0n.org/map/gi/ay-3-8500/marmontel_mz_cfp10x-mrgb/And if you want to download the high res version:https://siliconpr0n.org/map/gi/ay-3-8500/single/",
"parent_id": "8155327",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155341",
"author": "just6979",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T17:04:18",
"content": "It’s weird to say that the Odyssey’s controllerwasunusual, because there was no “usual” at the time. Itisunusual when contrasted with modern controllers, sure, but itwasthe first of its kind and that kind of can’t be contemporarily “unusual”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155388",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T18:48:23",
"content": "Computer space was so cool at the time but I couldn’t get into it because of the 2 hands worth of buttons instead of a joystick. When the coin-op laundry which had the game back then closed in the 80’s I may have had a chance of carting off that case sitting outside with a lot of pinball games but didn’t.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155405",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T19:20:27",
"content": "I believe this was covered fairly accurately in a “that 70s show” episode where ‘Kelso’ and ‘Red’ take a soldering iron to a circuit board full of discrete components in search of a ‘handicap’ setting in the form of ‘larger paddles’. The actors Ashton Kutcher and Kurtwood Smith end the episode in an argument, Ashton sees the future as intergrated circuits, wheras Kurtwood says the future is ‘soldering’.Most of the rest of the show is pure forgettable sitcom garbage as usual, but that story arc in that episode was pretty funny for me on primetime.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156485",
"author": "YoDrTentacles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T18:05:33",
"content": "I may be younger than most who saw these in person, but my family had an actual working Magnavox Odyssey that I saw in person when they were cleaning out a storage garage, round paddle controllers and everything. Surreal to think it was all analog electronics and was a novelty even then when disc-based games were beginning to explode. Humbling to see history in the flesh.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,472.599119
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/28/wayland-will-never-be-ready-for-every-x11-user/
|
Wayland Will Never Be Ready For Every X11 User
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Linux Hacks"
] |
[
"Wayland",
"x11"
] |
After more than forty years, everyone knows that it’s time to retire the X Window System – X11 for short – on account of it being old and decrepit. Or at least that’s what the common narrative is, because if you dig into the chatter surrounding the ongoing transition there are some real issues that people have with the 16-year old spring chicken – called Wayland – that’s supposed to replace it.
Recently [Brodie Robertson] did some polling and soliciting commentary from the community,
breaking down the results
from over 1,150 comments to the YouTube community post alone.
The issues range from the expected, such as applications that haven’t been ported yet from X11 to Wayland, to compatibility issues – such as failing drag and drop – when running X11 and Wayland applications side by side. Things get worse when support for older hardware, like GeForce GT610 and GT710 GPUs, and increased resource usage by Wayland are considered.
From there it continues with the lack of global hotkeys in Wayland,
graphics tablet support
issues, OBS not supporting embedded browser windows, Japanese and other foreign as well as onscreen keyboard support issues that are somehow worse than on X11, no support for overscanning monitors or multiple mouse cursors, no
multi-monitor fullscreen
option, regressions with accessibility, inability of applications to set their (previously saved) window position, no real automation alternative for
xdotool
, lacking BSD support and worse input latency with gaming.
Some users also simply say that they do not care about Wayland either way as it offers no new features they want. Finally [Brodie] raises the issue of the Wayland developers not simply following standards set by the Windows and MacOS desktops, something which among other issues has been a point of hotly debated contention
for years
.
Even if Wayland does end up succeeding X11, the one point that many people seem to agree on is that just because X11 is pretty terrible right now, this doesn’t automatically make Wayland the better option. Maybe in hindsight
Mir
was the better choice we had before it pivoted to Wayland.
| 140
| 32
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155167",
"author": "Some One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T11:40:44",
"content": "There’s definitely regressions that need to be fixed, but the way it is presented here is just misinformation, mixing things like project-specific bugs and misunderstandings in as Wayland problems.*BSD is officially supported by Wayland and by several display servers (a better state than for X11 where the *BSD’s had to patch things quite extensively downstream), the graphics tablet thing is a KDE-specific bug, and global hotkeys is available in some display servers through XDG portals (albeit a bit slowly), and using multiple independent mouse cursors is very specifically a Wayland feature (wayland multi-seat). Restoring window state is also supported, it just works differently than X11, and sway at least supports global fullscreen the same way as i3.Most Wayland protocol discussions also take extensive note of Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and even smartTV UX behaviors and upcoming web standards to see how other platforms solved a particular issue, what restrictions they apply, and what apps are likely to both expect and need. This does not mean that one can simplycopy these verbatim– some of these rely on signed entitlements handed out by a centralized entity for special behaviors, which I’m sure no one is interested in.Nothing wrong with seeing issues with Wayland or even disagreeing with it entirely, but let’s not misrepresent the project and its issues when we discuss it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155422",
"author": "Aaron Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T19:48:15",
"content": "I am having tons of issues with Wayland. The latest updates on my distro broke SDDM again on Wayland on my Framework laptop so only X11 works. Image capture on KDE is broken, causing the screen to go black. Numerous applications break, black screens, etc. X11 works. And KDE is supposed to have the best Wayland support. And HDR is unusable. It’s extremely buggy for me on every system I try it on.",
"parent_id": "8155167",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156099",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T11:14:14",
"content": "Which distro? Which versions? KDE doesn’t need sddm for Wayland support at all, but there is no reason you can’t pin the last version that worked. Distros with sane dependency systems will prevent breaking changes or allow you to, for instance you can forbid the broken version on any Debian based system (Ubuntu, Mint, Pop, etc.).Image capture is going to be a portal issue or a video driver issue, it’s likelyAllof your “black window” issue are driver related. HDR will only work on Wayland, and is a new addition to KDE, that could easily be another driver related issue. Make sure firmware isn’t missing on boot.X, (XOrg is not X11 since the fork), might work for now, but an increasing number of applications and distros are dropping it. Chances are some applications on your machine don’t actually work, you just haven’t noticed yet.Now, does this mean I think you have to use Wayland? No, not yet but that dayIScoming. It would be a lot easier if Canonical was helping to work on critical Wayland extensions as they already default to it.",
"parent_id": "8155422",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155596",
"author": "Praz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T23:32:05",
"content": "So true.",
"parent_id": "8155167",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155791",
"author": "אמת",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T07:59:35",
"content": "Wrong. You want people to use the new best thing? Then you need to make sure they can use the new best thing. That means support across the stack.",
"parent_id": "8155167",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155812",
"author": "Darius",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T09:08:07",
"content": "I think Wayland goes the completely wrong way. It follows this post-modern mobile OS idea of “your OS is a castle, and you’re just a tenant”, which completely goes against the hacker spirit of X11 and Windows (yes, seriously). I do not want a window system that lacks features in the name of security and that locks out tinkerers, telling them “no, you don’t need (global hotkeys/consistent save&restore of window positions/hooking/absolute coordinates/whatnot)”. Yes, Idoneed that. I want to hook and modify my windowing system.Wayland could legally drink and drive in Germany next year. It’s old and yet still not a viable daily driver for me. And let’s face it: The whole governance setup with voices from more or less major compositor makers deciding on the protocol doesn’t help with feature depth or implementation speed.Wayland is not only competing with X11, it’s competing with all desktop graphics backends. And against macOS and Windows, it still loses big time. Is the gap closing? I don’t see that.Regardless of my critique, I really wanted to believe in Wayland. I made people switch to it, I switched to it – and all of us regretted the decision.",
"parent_id": "8155167",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155932",
"author": "Sean Downey",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T17:58:31",
"content": "Seems you are conflating Wayland with failings of DEs and WMs.You can do whatever you want with sway/wayfire/hype land as far as hooks and hotkeys.",
"parent_id": "8155812",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8157230",
"author": "Mr Ed",
"timestamp": "2025-08-03T10:33:27",
"content": "Seems you are conflating Wayland with failings of DEs and WMs.That’s not an entirely unfair conflation though because of the architecture of Wayland compared to X11. Because the compositor in wayland does both the implementation of the protocol and the window decorations, a lot gets tied together. In X, the protocol is implemented by the server, and that means you can poke at all the various bits independently of the WM. In Wayland by design the compositor/WM might not allow or implement it.",
"parent_id": "8155932",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8157233",
"author": "Mr. Ed",
"timestamp": "2025-08-03T11:00:53",
"content": "And X11 took how many decades to gain all these featuresSome of them but not that many. I think the original X11 design was very very well done. It was often considered somewhat bloated and complicated in 1987, when RAM on workstations was usually measured in single digit megabytes.Some of the parts haven’t aged well, but those are almost all centered around drawing primitives, and don’t really have much effect on the core operations of a windowing system.With that said, it’s had a few major new APIs along the way:XRender (2000) – new drawing with blending etc.GLX (1992) – 3D supportXinerama/XRandr (1998) actually good multi-monitor supportXcomposite (2004) offscreen rendering(Also the Xorg server has quite a lot of good security infrastructure, but no one appears to use it.)There are many others of course, since it’s be odd to have finished everything in 1987, but those are the biggest in that they affect the basics of things that most applications touch. Others like xkb and xinput are super neat, but mostly they help the server send useful stuff to the clients, the clients mostly don’t need to know.Some features like drag-n-drop were added without adding anything to X. Turns out it’s implementable in the core protocol, with some agreement between clients about messages. That was more Wayland like in that it’s a separate protocol effectively and it did take a number of years to settle down into a single good, common protocol.But anyway all of those use the same core infrastructure, and it works pretty well. I also think “many decades” is something of an exaggeration. XComposite arrived when X was about the same age as Wayland.What’s remarkable to me is how well old and new integrate in X. I’m an FVWM user, a WM with a long history which uses many of the oldest features of the server, and it integrates flawlessly with programs etc making use of all the latest ones.",
"parent_id": "8155932",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8157236",
"author": "Mr. Ed",
"timestamp": "2025-08-03T11:19:25",
"content": "That’s a shit show on X11 by design, because there’s a single global pixel density.Xinerama/Xrandr allows for different pixel densities in different screen regions.Wayland doesn’t offer any magic here: either the applications have to support changing pixel densities and render themselves at the appropriate resolution or they get scaled by the compositor.X11 has most if not all of the infrastucture in place to implement this. XComposite allows the WM to grab and scale the window efficiently and transform coordinates. Clients can already query XRandr to get the pixel density. About the only thing missing is informing the WM what pixel density the window is assuming for rendering, and X11 already has all the mechanisms necessary for that: it’d be a Window property (readable and notifiable from the WM).Of course, you could query xrandr and adjust your internal pixel pitch by-screen in your UI framework, but eh, do you really want to do that?And how do you think it works in other, non X11 systems? The toolkit has to know somehow by querying some monitor data structure. You cannot escape the fundamentals of the system namely that you have multiple (often overlapping) regions with multiple different pixel densities and you have to figure out some sensible way of dealing with that.",
"parent_id": "8155932",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8157239",
"author": "Mr. Ed",
"timestamp": "2025-08-03T11:32:20",
"content": "This is a ridiculous suggestion, also the reason KiCAD doesn’t work on Wayland is that they don’t have a gui backend that supports it yet!Wayland doesn’t allow thisYes and that’s squarely Wayland’s fault for missing features. It’s allowed in X, Windows, Mac and a whole host of older systems. Wayland chose to break compatibility with a lot of existing programs.Thing is, Wayland is a pretty opinionated design, and requires that even large, complex programs which have proven portable to drastically different systems are redesigned in order to fit into Wayland’s architecture. I think it’s a stretch to blame that on the applications.KiCAD isn’t the only program relying on programmatic window placement.",
"parent_id": "8155932",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155964",
"author": "ignaloidas",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T21:39:52",
"content": "Nothing is stopping you from implementing whatever you wish in Wayland – just instead of doing it in applications, you do it in the windowing system itself. Hacking on hooks or just overriding is a way worse way than doing it at the source. Fighting your windowing system doesn’t make sense, just improve it. Or I guess give up because touching that is scary for you.",
"parent_id": "8155812",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155176",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T12:05:33",
"content": "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work.-John Gall, Systemantics (1975)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155187",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T12:50:42",
"content": "That’s why x86 and the IBM PC platform used to be so interesting, by the way.It was a natural evolution, built on various clever hacks, that grew over time.But by the end, it still was astonishing reliable for the mess it was.And future proof through the guaranteed backwards compatibility, which provided a thrustworthy foundation to built upon.That’s why it’s sad that intel pushes simplifications, by introducing UEFI (rather than OpenFirmware)/by removing CSM (BIOS)/castr*ting x86 ISA (X86S was first try only)..Same time, though, workarounds developed by committed individuals try to compensate. Such as CSMWrap.To future historians, this surely will be interesting to study.",
"parent_id": "8155176",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155248",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:30:10",
"content": "It’s because the “system” is never just the thing you’re talking about. A system like a CPU is also the ecosystem that has built around it.If you design a new CPU now that has similar complexity, no matter how well thought-out, it would never be adopted because it lacks the “culture”.That’s also why Wayland will not replace X11. No matter how bad X11 is, Wayland is still trying to build the whole pyramid at once, and upside down.",
"parent_id": "8155187",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155256",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:43:48",
"content": "And also, because in any typical large scale FOSS project, at some point a significant portion of the development effort goes missing when people start having disagreements.It’s like building a skyscraper. Except when it starts to be 80% complete and people are already buying apartments in it, 20% of the workers start complaining that they don’t like the floor plan. They pick up their tools and materials and go build another tower right next door. That leaves gaping holes in the first tower, and while the second tower rises as high as the original, it’ll only ever be a skeleton.When people look at the situation they say “Well that tower has huge holes in it, they obviously didn’t build it right. That other tower is going to be much better once it’s done.” Except, it will never be done, because the same cycle repeats.",
"parent_id": "8155248",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155892",
"author": "perry",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T14:35:59",
"content": "Wayland is a dramatic simplification of X11. People insisting on keeping X11 are the ones holding out for the massively complicated system; it’s just the one they’re used to.",
"parent_id": "8155176",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155899",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T15:24:13",
"content": "i used to assume this was true, and i wish it was true, but it doesn’t seem to be?if wayland replaced one standard (X11) with another, we could ask whether the single new standard is simpler than the single old standard. but it looks like instead it replaced the standard with a haphazard collection of incompatible compositors. i wish a wayland fan would tell me i’m wrong about this, but instead, this vague fear i developed several years ago has been reinforced every time i look.and the worst part is, this complication is user-facing. the first choice a user must make is which compositor they want to use. that choice will then influence every subsequent choice! to, apparently, a massive depth. throw in the fact that the wild overabundance of incompatible compositors is mostly built out of buggy abandonware and it becomes a practical nightmareand it keeps going — there’s no single standard for remote display, no single standard for window management, no single standard for cut and paste???, even blitting has the same redundant rainbow of possibilities that X11 has tortured us with.on the flipside, the complexity of X11 is mature. most things ‘just work’ these days, and it is mostly well-factored. as a user-developer, you can work on the part that interests you without getting tripped up by every side story. and since there’s really “only one X11” (xorg), every X11 user benefits from every improvement.i think their intent was for wayland to be much simpler but they made it so simple that thenecessarily complexityhas to be handled ad hoc instead of as part of their standard. i think it’s an embarrassing sequence of mis-steps by people who learned the lesson of xorg’s weaknesses but somehow were blind to xorg’s successes.",
"parent_id": "8155892",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156101",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T11:22:35",
"content": "You are confusing a problem with a significant step they should have communicated better, save that is a reference implementation with sane, usable defaults. Weston was instead designed as a bare minimum implementation for kiosk use.As it stands, the KDE compositor and wlroots are the most complete and to me at least wlroots has become the main reference implementation to build on. It provides most extensions and is itself controllable and extensible in any way you need.As for that choice? Only a developer has to care about that, users just pick a DE like they always have.",
"parent_id": "8155899",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156486",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T18:05:38",
"content": "“Only a developer has to care about that”sir, iama developer.and users use the product of developers. if developers are seeing a more complicated landscape then users will not get the benefit of developers facing a simpler landscape. in the end, users do benefit from choices that benefit developers. bug-free code is not merely a consequence of enthusiasm, popularity, or man-hours.",
"parent_id": "8156101",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155966",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T21:47:58",
"content": "Wayland is a dramatic simplification of X11.That would make it more of an “erosion of a complex system” than “evolved of a simple system that works”.A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. If you take a subset of a complex system and treat it as a new system, and try to make it work, the theory predicts that you’ll still fail. You’re still building the pyramid upside down.",
"parent_id": "8155892",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155178",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T12:06:57",
"content": "The important missing pieces will get filled in over time. Some of the people who were holding up the works when wayland was small will start to be outvoted. Some things will never be implemented, and the world will adapt after the screaming dies down.Eventually people will wonder what all the fuss was about.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155235",
"author": "Nerdelbaum Frink",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:52:58",
"content": "It was first released in 2008. This isn’t something new, and it still falls short in a lot of basic ways.",
"parent_id": "8155178",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155364",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T17:57:12",
"content": "And X11 took how many decades to gain all these features and stood entirely still since Wayland first existed as a tech demo too? First releases are rarely going to instantly become the industry standard when something else already exists – heck if it was that easy to replace existing industry standards with some of M$’ crap ‘upgrades’ over the last few years….Pelrun is quite correct Wayland is this generations systemd really, lots of noise around it, but in the end it works, solves many problems, is a better framework for the modern user/system’s needs etc – it is going to become the default you have to work rather hard to avoid it seems, and in a year or two now its been in that transition to being the default for a while the majority of the problems folks have with it are going to be fixed, either in Wayland patches, in the applications that are not playing nice, or in the fact that all applications are defaulting to wayland so no compatibility layer with X11 is needed.",
"parent_id": "8155235",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155390",
"author": "Nerdelbaum Frink",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T18:53:13",
"content": "Everyone seemingly begging the question that it works or solves any problems that needed to be solved. The point is, it’s being pushed/forced and it is currently deficient as a replacement for X11, even though it’s been almost 2 decades in the making. This isn’t this generation’s systemd either. They’re not comparable. This is an unbaked, unfinished product being forced to replace something it doesn’t actually replace.",
"parent_id": "8155364",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155573",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T22:45:05",
"content": "This is an unbaked, unfinished product being forced to replace something it doesn’t actually replace.Kinda like the year of Linux on the desktop?",
"parent_id": "8155390",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155757",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T06:41:00",
"content": "No, the people claiming that Wayland doesn’t solve any problems (maybe including you, I dunno) are being disingenuous.X11 is a absolute mess, and just because you happen to have a setup where it is working sufficiently doesn’t mean it’s not causing nightmares for the people maintaining it or the people building the binaries for your distribution or the people writing the widget libraries that applications are sitting on top of.But hey, wayland mildly inconvenienced you once so it needs to die.",
"parent_id": "8155390",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155769",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T07:01:08",
"content": "This is an unbaked, unfinished product being forced to replace something it doesn’t actually replace.That sounds exactly like one of the many arguments against systemd when it started becoming the default… Not an entirely incorrect argument, but from the technical perspective there is a whole slew of reasons almost everyone moved to systemd, and almost everyone is moving to Wayland now.",
"parent_id": "8155390",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156104",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T11:35:30",
"content": "They are quite comparable. The vast majority of features people complain about are not key to end users, but highly specific tasks.Meanwhile X lost a lot of functionality before the XOrg fork and most complaints are cringy wishlists for 1999 when OpenGL over xdmcp still worked and compositing only existed inside applications with few exceptions. By the time desktop compositing became practical only software rendered applications could work remotely and not all of them would. Note I was one of the ones that actually used these things, do you really need a font server? do it with a file share instead.The bottom line is that Wayland does not actually take much more resources, has already become the default despite missing important features because forcing it is the only way anyone will work on them (see Nvidia drivers), and fixes very serious growing problems with X. That ship has sailed, and the faster it is default the fasterrealissues will be fixed and features added.",
"parent_id": "8155390",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155185",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T12:37:14",
"content": "I don’t like it, but X11 remains important for Unix.It’s a relationship like with GDI on Windows..Also: Terminals. X11 graphic servers exist for about any OS, making porting easy.On Mac OS X, even good old Tiger, it’s possible to compile/run graphical Unix applications with X11 output.Wayland is Linux specific, it will never make it to the countless niche platforms that got X11 support in the past 50 years.It’s comparable basic and universal like ASCII, IBM Model M keyboard layout or say, OpenGL 1.1/1.2..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155191",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T12:56:10",
"content": "Sort of a graphical IPv6, with as much promise, and rate of success.",
"parent_id": "8155185",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155204",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:12:01",
"content": "To be fair, I remember the days of using XFree86 in the 90s.. 😟On a more positive note, early 90’s DESQView/X (for DOS) was a neat environment.It allowed porting Unix applications and using an humble PC (386SX+) as an X11 terminal.So I think it’s good if X11 remains available as a fallback.Wayland is too graphics-card centric and not really intended for unaccelerated graphics over various network connections.For the basic stuff, X11 thus is still valuable.Which is a bit ironic, considering how complicated and difficuot to understand X11 is by itself.",
"parent_id": "8155191",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155212",
"author": "Lehjr",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:23:10",
"content": "I remember using it and it either corrupting or even completely wiping the EDID from my monitors.",
"parent_id": "8155204",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155344",
"author": "fhunter",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T17:10:40",
"content": "even completely wiping the EDID from my monitors.How? Unless there is something totally wrong with the monitor? EDID eeprom isn’t supposed to be writable",
"parent_id": "8155212",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155577",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T22:53:22",
"content": "Apparently it’s quite common to have corrupted EDID flash by e.g. hot-plugging the cable, so there’s utilities to re-flash it. Most graphics card can both read and write to the I2C bus, so unless the chip is write protected, you can re-flash it.",
"parent_id": "8155212",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156107",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T12:04:24",
"content": "That’s why xwayland exists, but note that most of those standalone X servers only support slices of compatibility which are increasingly incompatible with modern applications. For terminals you don’t need a graphical display, almost nobody needs that. Ages ago I used to run remote X for a bunch of things because it was cool, usually monitoring processes on a couple dozen machines, but this is much simpler in a tty, faster, and lower overhead.The same goes for nearly everything you might want to do remotely, which is why even Windows has largely switched to CLI for server administration. Want to code on the same machine everywhere? Just configure tmux on a VPS and jump in remotely. Want more responsiveness or local graphical dev tools? Pull the git repo and sync, compile and run remotely without having more than a minimum local setup.As for comparing it with GDI, you are probably thinking of Motif on X with Athena graphics. Which, by the way, used to be library requirements for Maya on X across Irix, Linux and Windows. The X server on OSX didn’t ship with that and other things, so Maya took years to port over. Shake/Tremor used it’s own, so you could make the argument… Except it’s graphicsNeverworked remotely, so much for that.You know what’s really missing that covers nearly all of the important sub-functions Wayland can’t quite do? Accessibility. It’s critical, complex and broken. Everything OBS can’t do on Wayland is also an issue for screen readers, etc. Why did it work on X? Because there’s no security at all. Btw, remote graphics already, the clients are much simpler, and it’s possible to use a browser as a client, but there’s no automatic setup, no sane defaults, yet.So there you have it. What you should actually be complaining about isAcessibility. Working that out will pull in all of the portal support necessary, and simultaneously fix most important issues. Remote just needs tweaking and it should be better than it ever was on X when it’s ready.",
"parent_id": "8155185",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155186",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T12:49:58",
"content": "KiCad mostly sticks to X11 for now because wayland has too many unresolved issues.https://www.kicad.org/blog/2025/06/KiCad-and-Wayland-Support/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155193",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:01:30",
"content": "KiCAD. Sigh. I don’t like KiCAD too much, it looks like bloatware to me. Like some Symantec or Windows printer suite software.And the guys dropped Windows XP support way too soon at the time, IMHO.I know, I know. XP is ancient and so it was back then. But it had a long tradition in engineering and CAD, also.The KiCAD guys should try to get KiCAD going on more down-to-earth hardware, too, I think.Like an old Unix-based SGI workstation, for example. IRIX GL support would be a challenge, for example.Considering how humble the graphics of KiCAD look, they should try porting it to OS/2 or KolibriOS and OpenGL 1.x.As a testbed, to learn how to write slick software. IMHO.",
"parent_id": "8155186",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155259",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:49:19",
"content": "Why??",
"parent_id": "8155193",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155290",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:24:32",
"content": "My interpretation of Joshua’s comment is that KiCAD is inefficient and it’s resource requirements are at odds with what it achieves graphically. The suggestion to target older hardware would force the developers to actually optimized the code.",
"parent_id": "8155259",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155581",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T22:55:16",
"content": "But to make it run on 30 year old hardware?",
"parent_id": "8155290",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156114",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T12:42:14",
"content": "Except it’s put in a way that belittles the enormity of such a project, and it wouldn’t fix anything anyway.",
"parent_id": "8155290",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155305",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:43:11",
"content": "If you think that’s bad, try Altium. KiCad is anorexic by comparison.",
"parent_id": "8155193",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155840",
"author": "Johnu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T11:19:22",
"content": "I use Altium all day, I tried KiCad and it was so fast I almost had to slow the mouse down.",
"parent_id": "8155305",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156119",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T13:08:41",
"content": "This is a ridiculous suggestion, also the reason KiCAD doesn’t work on Wayland is that they don’t have a gui backend that supports it yet!Ok, so, why? Changing toolkits isn’t practical , it would be a complete rewrite. The underlying toolkit is wxwidgets, which will use GTK+ (nearly obsolete), Motif (obsolete), or qt (unfinished) as a backend. If finished, the qt backend would theoretically “just work”, and gtk+ can already… But it still has the following architectural incompatibilities with Wayland the developers state as showstoppers: All of it’s internal windowsandpanels are registered as separate windows! (GIMP switched from this modality a decade ago), but it wants to arrange those windows programmatically to restore their position (Wayland doesn’t allow this). It relies on mouse warping rather than relative positioning (which Blender uses) for infinite scroll, and OpenGL viewports run on the main UI thread (which is insane, don’t do that).So it turns out the major performance issue is caused by an architectural problem in the toolkit, the mouse issue can be changed trivially, though Wayland is getting a mouse warp protocol, so it only needs to support that, and all of the windowing issues can be solved by only using registered windows for different monitors, maybe not even then if you use virtual desktops instead of workspaces.So in the end most of this is on the KiCAD and wxwidgets team, not Wayland at all.",
"parent_id": "8155193",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155758",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T06:45:11",
"content": "And yet it works fine on my wayland setup. There’s no need for Kicad to rush towards native support when XWayland bridges the gap successfully – they’ve got better things to do.Thatdoesn’tmean Wayland shouldn’t exist or X11 should remain forever.",
"parent_id": "8155186",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155189",
"author": "KT",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T12:54:40",
"content": "People complain about X11 but it’s really not that bad.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155233",
"author": "sgsax",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:51:09",
"content": "Came here to say this. I haven’t had problems with X11 in decades. And even way back then, it was just challenges configuring it, but modern distros are so much better at that now that I don’t even think about it anymore. X11 does everything I need it to do (give me a nice graphical display). If Wayland were obviously superior, I’d switch to it. But it’s clearly not, so why bother?",
"parent_id": "8155189",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155309",
"author": "Harrkev",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:50:38",
"content": "The big problem with X11 is if you are trying to use it over a WAN connection. It is actually rather inefficient. Some tools are unusable if the server and client are separated by a few hundred miles. The fact that projects such as NoMachine and Exceed were able to overcome this and make a remote session snappy from a continent away proves this. I don’t know if Wayland is better in this regard, though.",
"parent_id": "8155233",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155352",
"author": "Steve L",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T17:35:22",
"content": "Wayland doesn’t even support remote connections. The main reason I never switched.",
"parent_id": "8155309",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155761",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T06:48:03",
"content": "Waypipe handles proxying wayland connections perfectly, there’s no need for it to be baked into wayland itself.",
"parent_id": "8155352",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156181",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T15:53:05",
"content": "I’m on a Fedora 42 system, with a Wayland desktop session. In addition to waypipe, as pelrun mentioned, I can also literally run “ssh -X ferd@myserver” and execute a graphical command that will show up on my local display. The same Xwayland service that supports local X.org clients under Wayland will also handle tunneled X.org clients on remote systems.It’s slightly LESS efficient than straight, no-security X11, of course, but it does work. VLC can even play a 1920×800 full-motion video… scaled down to 960×400… at about 10 frames / second.If I run this command, tho:waypipe ssh ferd@myserver vlc “/path/to/some/video/with\\ an\\ escaped\\ path.mkv”Then the video plays at the full 24fps rate. (Also scaled down to 960×400. At full-size I get maybe 15fps, which is still better than the tunneled X client.)I should mention, also, that I have an absolute crap Nvidia GT 710 video card, so… in some ways it’s a miracle my system can display anything at all, even locally.",
"parent_id": "8155352",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156121",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T13:12:09",
"content": "As @pelrun mentions, Waypipe is the way to do Wayland remote and it’s often better, though not quite as flexible yet. btw, xdmcp over high latency was awful decades ago, most applications don’t even work now.",
"parent_id": "8155309",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155346",
"author": "Fred",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T17:17:39",
"content": "Most of the problems were for the developers/maintainers of Xorg, not the users. Most of the paid development has stopped, so gradually it’s going to be worse on newer hardware.",
"parent_id": "8155189",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155809",
"author": "Darius",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T08:57:37",
"content": "Well, YMMV. Once you connect multiple screens with different pixel densities, you will understand why Wayland was invented: To bring to Unix what works out of the box on any other deskop OS, text will be the same size on every screen. That’s a shit show on X11 by design, because there’s a single global pixel density. Of course, you could query xrandr and adjust your internal pixel pitch by-screen in your UI framework, but eh, do you really want to do that?",
"parent_id": "8155189",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155197",
"author": "Sok Puppette",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:05:30",
"content": "This is interesting, because one ofmybiggest gripes about Wayland is that it doesn’t fix some of X11’s longstanding UI security problems… but, per this article, apparently itdoesfix the minor problem that an application can arbitrarily plonk itself anywhere it wants on the screen… and the article thinks that’s a bug. Same for “global hotkeys”, probably.For the record, if you want anything like security, We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident:An application should have no control over its window decorations (so that it can’t impersonate other applications). Apparently Wayland does the opposite of this. And 1a: an application shouldn’t be able to go full screen on its own initiative; the user should have to take an explicit action to tell the window manager to give the application the screen, and there should be some other action the user can take that willalwaysforce the applicationoutof full screen mode.An application shouldn’t be able to grab the keyboard focus. In fact, it should never, never, see a keystroke unless theuserhas taken some action to direct the focus to that application. Popupsespeciallyshouldn’t get the focus. Nor should it be possible to keep the user from taking the focus away once granted. So no global hotkeys unless they’re provided by “the system” or by something to which the user has given special privileges. And 2a: an application shouldn’t be able to mislead the user about where the focus is. Which means, for example, that if focus follows mouse (which all sane normal people know is how it should work), the application shouldn’t be able to arbitrarily change the mouse pointer glyph.An application should not know what’s going on outside of its own windows. Things like screenshots should again be special privileges, rarely granted. I will grudgingly allow the application to know whether its window is actually mapped at any given instant, but am not thrilled with letting it know which parts are obscured. 3a: An application should not know what the mouse pointer is doing outside of its own window. 3b: Information about whether the user is present or active should be on a need-to-know basis, and your application probably doesn’t need to know.An application shouldn’t be able to synthesize keyboard or mouse events that will be seen by other applications.For extra credit, also don’t give applications random information about the hardware.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155206",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:16:20",
"content": "An application shouldn’t be able to grab the keyboard focus.Except for a few, very special cases, maybe.Such as emulators or VMs, in which the keyboard must be exclusive to the guest in order for input to not to conflict with the host.",
"parent_id": "8155197",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155292",
"author": "ChrisOboe",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:27:12",
"content": "I don’t think this is meant. The application should never need to grab the focus by itself.Of course a wayland compositor can give an emulator, a vm or a game exclusively the input focus.This approach also properly allows centralized mapping specific input devices to specific applications by the compositor. instead of the application just grabbing the first device it finds or worse needing application specific logic where each app has it’s own quirks.",
"parent_id": "8155206",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155237",
"author": "David Gritter",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:03:59",
"content": "When you say that an application should not be allowed to position its windows on a screen or be allowed to go full screen on its own you are ruling out whole classes of automatic booting applications in machine control where the app must present itself as the only thing seen on possibly multiple touchscreens, since the operator neither understands more needs access to the underlying OS. For example, I build consoles for virtual pipe organs where there are typically two touchscreens where the player sees the virtual stopknobs used to control the organ. If the underlying windows don’t go full screen and appear on the proper monitor when the system is booted all is lost for this business. X11 makes all this possible",
"parent_id": "8155197",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156124",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T13:19:03",
"content": "Any tiling WM will do this out of the box, and alternatively Weston was made for doing kiosks. There are many options, but none of them require X. I do suggest doing what you want on, let’s say Sway. Once you set up the config to allocate your startup applications and where to put them you should be done. If that doesn’t seem to work out there are others. Enlightenment also has a kiosk mode and supports both X and Wayland, Hyprland is another tiling WM. KDE might even do what you want.",
"parent_id": "8155237",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155354",
"author": "Steve L",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T17:40:22",
"content": "Your points 2 and 2a contradict each other. If focus follows mouse then any popup that happens to open under the mouse cursor will steal focus.That’s why focus follows mouse is such a bad idea. You should have to take an intentional action to give a window focus, and simply passing over a window because you have to in order to reach the window you actually want shouldn’t count.",
"parent_id": "8155197",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156162",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T14:48:31",
"content": "“If focus follows mouse then any popup that happens to open under the mouse cursor will steal focus.”Sorry, but false. The wonderful thing about having the window manager in charge of focus is that corner cases like that can be accounted for.Even Mutter has two different mouse-focus modes. There’s the traditional “Focus follows Mouse” mode. (After a 2-year campaign, I finally succeeded in getting its name changed back to that, after it was accidentally changed to “Secondary-Click” during some design updates.) But there’s also “Focus on Hover” mode (what used to be called “sloppy” focus), which only changes focus upon the pointer entering a window’s boundaries. A window appearing under the pointer won’t change focus, because the pointer never entered it.(Actually, I don’t think even “Focus follows Mouse” will allow a window that materializes under the pointer to steal focus. The window manager can easily account for that, and does.)“You should have to take an intentional action to give a window focus, and simply passing over a window because you have to in order to reach the window you actually want shouldn’t count.”shrugEntitled to opinions there; personally, I consider passing my pointer over a window to be sufficient intentional action. It’s not like I commonly have windows visible on my desktop that I don’t WANT to be there, or that giving focus would have some negative repercussions. I’m more than happy to accept the tradeoffs of focus being dictated solely by the location of my pointer, if it means I can hover a window and type into it even when it’s partially obscured by another. (Clicking would raise it, and I often don’t want to raise it.)",
"parent_id": "8155354",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155410",
"author": "Cody",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T19:28:43",
"content": "I want my programs to remember the size and position they were in when I last used them. It’s very easy to do that on X11, but Wayland completely breaks that.There are some things that require global hotkeys such as push to talk in a voice chat program.The ability to send keystrokes to other programs is necessary for macro and automation programs. Programs should require permission to do that though.",
"parent_id": "8155197",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156170",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T15:16:32",
"content": "The argument, with Wayland, is that it shouldn’t be the application’s responsibility to manage its own window positions. (Size is not restricted; applications can easily retrieve and request window dimensions under Wayland. Just not absolute/”global” positioning.)Window placement on the screen is the responsibility of the window manager. If persistent positioning is needed, the WM can provide it for EVERY application, instead of having to rely on each application implementing its own method — or not, or possibly incorrectly. (That’s what macOS has done for years, after all — the system provides functionality for saving and restoring ALL applications’ state, even across logouts or reboots. Individual applications aren’t expected to implement any of that. They merely export relevant state data to a system service, which feeds it back to them on next launch.)As for global shortcuts, there’s now an XDG portal spec for that. So far, at least Chrome uses it on Linux, though only for mappable shortcuts exported by extensions. But Wayland does not in any way prevent the binding of global shortcuts.Programs sending keystrokes to other programs, well, that’s a thorny issue. Though I can’t really say I consider it such an essential feature that it justifies X11’s complete free-for-all, where any application can do absolutely anything to any other, silently and undetected.",
"parent_id": "8155410",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155649",
"author": "daveb",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T01:28:41",
"content": "Security is not an end unto itself and no generalized system like this should be designed trying to focus on that. Security is a characteristic to be kept in mind while building the desired functionality.If its completely secure but not functional its worthless, and function can’t be added. If its completely functional but not secure it has value and can be amended to be secure.",
"parent_id": "8155197",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155862",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T12:08:38",
"content": "If its completely secure but not functional its worthless, and function can’t be added. If its completely functional but not secure it has value and can be amended to be secure.You can easily argue pretty much the exact opposite of that as well, as you absolutely can create functionality when starting with a framework that is as secure as computers can get. Along with the whole if its insecure then it is worthless in the modern connected world as you really rely on this thing to work and be secure…IMO the best place to start is to have the skeleton designed with some pretty strict concepts of security, permission etc from the start, then you can bypass those checks for more functionality if you think it is worth it for that functionality in this use case and thus get overall the most reliable balance between the two. Patching in something resembling security later just never works right for long, with oh so many examples in the wild of the same problems recurring because the systematic fix wasn’t made just a bodged on lock, so the next new feature and that gaffa taped on lock is now stuck to the letterbox not the door, or falls off entirely.",
"parent_id": "8155649",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155732",
"author": "nnnik",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T05:07:09",
"content": "That fundamental model is nice in theory but leads to most programs being exceptions from this norm and require special privileges.E.g. you want to screenshare with Discord and suddenly the average user will give their Browser of choice special permissions.",
"parent_id": "8155197",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156073",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T08:29:14",
"content": "Most programs being exceptions to the default extra restrictive methods, just in their own unique way is massively better than all programs having keys to every lock needed or not (or more accurately there being no locks at all).To some extent you see that in Android app permission, though the granularity and underlying architecture is different the user has no trouble in giving each app only the permissions they are comfortable with or it actually does require.",
"parent_id": "8155732",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156219",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T17:13:52",
"content": "Though this user is constantly annoyed by his watch not receiving notifications from the phone, because the system has yet again decided that the app doesn’t need the permissions to access or send notifications.This can happen at any time, so the reason why I’m not answering your call is because neither my phone nor my watch makes any sort of noise to indicate it.",
"parent_id": "8156073",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155914",
"author": "jjramsey",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T16:44:07",
"content": "“An application should not know what’s going on outside of its own windows. Things like screenshots should again be special privileges, rarely granted.”Interestingly enough, that is how Wayland already works by default, while X11 does not.",
"parent_id": "8155197",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156126",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T13:24:09",
"content": "Wayland can do all of the things you are mention, and does most by default, so what are you talking about? The compositor manages these functions, and more. It is intended to be an independent application that provides privilege portals as authorized for various functions. That you have the opposite idea tells me you haven’t really looked into it at all.",
"parent_id": "8155197",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156301",
"author": "Sok Puppette",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T00:21:06",
"content": "As I understand it, in practice all Wayland compositors have the application do the window decorations. The compositor may have thepowerto put an unmodifiable border around the application, but itdoesn’t. Maybe I’m wrong, but I remember a pretty long discussion about it somewhere.",
"parent_id": "8156126",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155208",
"author": "geraldbrandt",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:18:16",
"content": "Being able to bring across remote GUI apps with “ssh -X”. I do it daily. My work laptop has a crap screen, and won’t drive two 4K displays.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155480",
"author": "SHAWN MASTERS",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T20:47:47",
"content": "This is a feature I have used every day for decades. Wayland just kind of threw that ability out like it was pointless. I don’t find Wayland as providing anything I care about, just removing features I use.",
"parent_id": "8155208",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156867",
"author": "Whatever",
"timestamp": "2025-08-01T22:23:38",
"content": "Waypipe does that for wayland, and has for some time now. It’s faster than ssh -X in my experience.",
"parent_id": "8155208",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155211",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:22:42",
"content": "Wayland has already succeeded X11.Windows didn’t die when XP rendering stack was replaced in Vista. Vista got a bad rap but then windows 7 was loved universally.Some people are simply stuck in the Vista era with Wayland and fail to find ways forward and keep blaming the tools instead of their own lack of solutions.This article existing in 2025 is a bigger problem than any point made in the article. Time to accept the path forward and adapt you solutions.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155236",
"author": "Nerdelbaum Frink",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:59:58",
"content": "Your comparison isn’t even remotely close. It reads like someone whose use case it works for, who’s incapable of considering other people’s cases. Wayland would be fine if people only worked on their own personal devices, sure. It’s utter garbage in a multiuser headless environment.",
"parent_id": "8155211",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156127",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T13:27:30",
"content": "You had a point, then lost it entirely by making a case that’s entirely false. Gnome is even integrating one solution to this but there are many available.",
"parent_id": "8155236",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155246",
"author": "Sok Puppette",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:19:28",
"content": "windows 7 was loved universally.Counterclaim: all versions of Windows ever released have been worthless garbage.Some people are simply stuck in the Vista era with Wayland and fail to find ways forward and keep blaming the tools instead of their own lack of solutions.“For various stupid reasons, we substituted something not meaningfully better for a central component of your working system, and now it’s your job to do a bunch of work to fix our screwups”.",
"parent_id": "8155211",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155253",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:37:08",
"content": "Windows 2000 had been respected by Linux users, though.That’s at leasthow I remember from about 20 years ago.The common statement was lke “with Win 2k, Microsoft did it right for once”.",
"parent_id": "8155246",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155316",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T16:02:31",
"content": "I remember re-starting explorer multiple times in Windows 95A, it was still capable of many more things than Win 3.11, Win 95C however worked much better, I only moved to 98 for dual-monitor support IIRC. Sometimes PEBCAK.I’ve had enough hardware and used enough flavors of Linux and Windows to know if you stumble on an issue with your particular match-up of hardware you’ll have a bad time. Whether it’s wake/sleep bugs or your EDID or SCSI being unreadable.The real problem sometimes lies in the UEFI, most BIOS don’t expose settings we would like to use. See above 4G encoding and turning off software RAID (I Looove slip-streaming specific RAID drivers into a system with a single NVMe drive, said no-one ever).By and large Windows ‘just works’ for what I do. Meaning a hardware or software issue I have is generally solved in 1/10th the time, and is also 1/5 less likely to occur in the first place.I do like SteamOS, have yet to try Bazzite. Kinda hope Windows goes to a Proton/Vulkan Compat/render backend too though. Seems like it might if Intel Arc drivers already emulate any render pipeline older than DX12/Vulkan.",
"parent_id": "8155246",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155594",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T23:29:05",
"content": "In my opinion, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (WFWG 3.11) was okay,more stable than various Windows 95 builds maybe.It had several improved system files, such as a new COM driver, HDD cache/VFAT/VSHARE and bug fixes.Normal Windows 3.1x in Standard-Mode on an venerable 80286 PC was okay, too.Since most stability issues were related to virtual drivers (VXDs, at the time *.386 files)..That being said, web browsers were a different matter. Macs were a better experience here.I vaguely remember that Internet Explorer 5 (16-Bit release) had an equivalent to Win32s built-in and was rather crashy.Windows 98SE caused me some Kernel issues and blue screens,but was most feature-complete at the time.It had a big device driver library and was great for Frankenstein PCs thathad been built from scrap parts or parts of different generations (especially legacy ISA cards and DOS stuff).",
"parent_id": "8155316",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155972",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T22:01:08",
"content": "Windows 98SE caused me some Kernel issues and blue screens,That was mostly because many popular chipsets of that era were terrible and their drivers were buggy. Faulty RAM was also a common theme, especially with people who built their own computers and bought the cheapest of the cheap, and didn’t bother with the ESD straps. There were some chips that would outright corrupt data on the PATA bus when you tried to access the hard drive, randomly, which lead to system crashes and data corruption, which lead to further problems. Then at some point we got the capacitor plague issue that destabilized the power supplies and caused machines to bug out as they were physically failing.Ordinary users resolved the issue by complaining and reinstalling windows.",
"parent_id": "8155594",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155283",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:10:58",
"content": "windows 7 was loved universally.Windows XP SP2 had its fans, too.To many, it was their first real, non-DOS based Windows.Or real OS, in general (not counting OS/2)..It’s also notable that it had best audio support and no DRM yet.You could capture StereoMix, have DirectMusic, DirectSound 3D, Aureal A3D, OpenAL, ASIO, a real MPU-401 interface etc.Especially high-quality MIDI Software Synthesizer such as SYXG-100, Roland Virtual Sound Canvas (SC-55/SC-88) came as 32-Bit device drivers that ceased to work on Vista onwards, because DirectMusic became emulated.And no VSTs are no replacement, except for a MIDI editor.The driver-based softh synths could be used in games directly via DirectX. Like the Microsoft GM synth.XP was also the OS of hacks and CD/DVD ripping..Beginning with Vista, a lot of stuff nolonger worked.2D GDI drawing was very slow, suddenly. WDDM 1.0 driver model was limited.Windows 7 fixed these things (brought back GDI acceleration), but also looked rather dull in direct comparison.Vista Ultimate with latest Service Packs and Platform Update was on par with Windows 7. Even got DirectX 11 (Tesselation!).Now Vista basically got a lot of Windows 7 system files and software compatibility was about same.Unfortunately, by that time, Windows 7 had replaced it largely.Which is a shame, because Vista was the opposite to minimalism.It was a generous, powerful OS for high-end PCs, with lots of animations, gadgets and such.Unfortunately, it needed a Shader Model 2.0 capable GPU to offload graphics.Which most users didn’t realize. They turned off Aero Glass for better performance, when in reality it washelpingperformance.With Aero Glass, the desktop elements are drawn by the GPU.So a cheap Nvidia FX 5200 would have been sufficient for an upgrade, already!It even was mentioned in books about the RC1 (release candidate) of Vista.Well, in principle that was helping.Because of the limits of WDDM 1.0, the graphics memory had to be mirrored in PC RAM, too.Which is next point. Lots of existing XP PCs were underpowered at the time Vista was out.In fact, they were basically re-used, merely slightly upgraded Windows 98SE PCs that crawled on XP already.It’s no wonder, that Vista experience was so bad.1,5GB RAM would have been reasonable, but many existing XP PCs had 256 to 512MB, at best!Some Windows 2000 PCs ran on 128MB of RAM, still! 😢Anyway, just saying. There are indeed some similarities of Vista rendering and Wayland.",
"parent_id": "8155211",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156137",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T13:50:13",
"content": "There are many oddities here, but I’ll just point out a couple. Let’s see, audio routing on any good card allows for capture of any audio stream, of course under Linux this is even easier. VSTs did and do a great job depending on what you use and your audio drivers. ASIO never stopped working, you just had to install it. Vista barely ran when it came out, and turning off the wasteful compositor saved valuable vram, which is why full screen mode also deactivated it for games. The gui performance was much better when you turned off the theming service entirely along with the other resident garbage. Intel really screwed customers with those transitions.I think you are only drawing a comparison with compositing, but it’s not at all handled the same way under Windows Vista. One thing you’re missing is that GDI acceleration was 2D, and quite efficient. Eccentricities in X made it’s acceleration inefficient and buggy and eventually the 2D rendering support was dropped under Linux entirely to adopt a more unified OpenGL off screen rendering pipeline… But this did mean that uncomposited desktops were even slower, which spurred the development of Compiz/etc. Wayland on the other hand expects not to have to fall back to software at all, pushing Mesa to refine it’s fallback. Notably the Enlightenment renderer was still quite good in software even better Mesa improved.Microsoft has cribbed the Linux approach to compositing partially now, though the many things still suck and much of the UI are still theme overlays or full screen windows disguised as the desktop.",
"parent_id": "8155283",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155284",
"author": "anachronda",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:11:41",
"content": "Windows didn’t die when XP rendering stack was replaced in Vista. Vista got a bad rap but then windows 7 was loved universally.the only reason folks like windows 7 was that windows 8 was so awful.",
"parent_id": "8155211",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155340",
"author": "Christian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T16:58:50",
"content": "I liked Windows XP. The versions of Windows that shipped after came with a different mindset. MS accepted fundamental architecture issues, silent fault. Windows had become unreliable by… choice.Example, when you plug 100 different USB devices into Windows Vista, and newer, devices no longer register. You will get no error. One of the reasons factories kept running XP for years after support for it stopped.As far as “love for win 7″… I hated the move away from task bars and borderless windows. MS followed the trend with a sledge hammer. It was either Google or the web, that introduced that UI design paradigm . “Everything must be frameless, everything is clickable, no more buttons.” Even today, on windows, “Think before you click!!!” just to drag a window. Widescreen TV displays, becoming monitors, killed the window taskbar. I got a few more pixels of window content, but have to hunt for one of the 2 spots on my browser window just to drag it around.So yah, I like my OS with a clear UI language. Instead I get “apps”, each with their own interpretation.“This is how it works in Netflix.” and “This is how it works in Hulu.”It’s a mess that had been solved but “branding” needed to be creative and control the whole screen.PS: MS tablet/windows hybrid experience, it’s a joke, look at that calculator, yikes. If it was possible Steve Jobs would have done it.",
"parent_id": "8155211",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155604",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T23:39:47",
"content": "Speaking of, Windows XP was based on rock-solid Windows 2000.And the beloved Windows Server 2003 in turn was essentially based on earlier Windows XP/2k codebase.What’s good about Vista/7, though:The graphics system was changed to run in user space again.Like it did with Windows NT 3.51 (very stable),before NT 4 had moved GDI/VGA driver into kernel space for better performance.The downside was, however, that Vista/7 display drivers constantly must report back to Windows in short intervals.Otherwise, the graphics system is resetted.It was introduced because of DRM, to make grabbing of videos difficult or something.",
"parent_id": "8155340",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155232",
"author": "DrWizard",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:50:18",
"content": "I’m just a ‘casual’ Linux desktop user, but that sounds like a mighty long and troubling list of issues with Wayland. Makes me not wanna touch it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155342",
"author": "Tad",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T17:07:18",
"content": "Luckily, 95% of these problems have nothing to do with Wayland.",
"parent_id": "8155232",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155843",
"author": "Johnu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T11:22:49",
"content": "Honestly for a casual user you should never need to know or care, and likely won’t notice.I work with Raspbian which has gone to Wayland in recent versions and the desktop/user experience is basically unchanged.This is mostly a classic nerd holy war of the sort that holds Linux adoption back and gives Linux users a bad name.",
"parent_id": "8155232",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155239",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:09:23",
"content": "I’ve no objection to Wayland in principle, I just find that in practice I encounter many problems when using it – with a fairly bog standard AMD GPU from a couple of years ago and Gnome. I regularly see lots of people posting online claiming that the Wayland experience these days is pretty good, and I tried it again earlier in the month to see if that was true – I was back on X11 within days after encountering so many graphical glitches I could barely use the thing.I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong – I thought I had what has long been considered the perfect setup for running on Wayland. My main concern is that with all the talk around disabling X11 support for various desktops, I’ll be forced onto something that doesn’t work. Over the last few years, Linux on the desktop finally became a near perfect experience for me, but I feel like I’m about to be thrown back to the fiddling and extremely careful hardware selection of the mid-2000s, even though my needs are modest (browser, terminal, IDE).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155255",
"author": "stagnati0n",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:40:47",
"content": "I agree. I’m on an modern all AMD system and Wayland is a mess. Constant hard-locking when gaming or sudden food to 5 fps on the desktop. This happens on the handful of distros and kernels I’ve tried and switching to X11 (or even Windows) fixes it to where I have a 100% stable system. At this point there are so many obvious flaws in Wayland that it ought to be scrapped and restarted. At least that way maybe we’ll have something workable in another 20 years.",
"parent_id": "8155239",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155763",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T06:50:48",
"content": "Oh hey everybody! Stagnati0n’s PC has a bug running wayland, and since that machine is the single most important device in the entire world, we should abandon wayland entirely and never use it again. Sorry for mildly inconveniencing you, we’ll all just go back to the mines.",
"parent_id": "8155255",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155973",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T22:06:15",
"content": "Their machine is the most important device in the world to them.If you keep ignoring user complaints as flukes, all you’re doing is huffing your own farts.",
"parent_id": "8155763",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156360",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T08:43:58",
"content": "I have no problem with someone complaining about the problems they’re having locally. I have a real problem when they blindly generalize their personal experience to the entire world.",
"parent_id": "8155973",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155249",
"author": "BrendaEM",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:31:23",
"content": "No, I don’t feel the needs to replace X, especially if after 16 years–it still is not mature enough. I see it just like Flatpack. Apt and Debs work, yet I have already had 2 different problems with Flatpack on 2 different systesm.There are people trying to make Linux better; there are trying to make Linux different, and there are people trying to sabotage Linux.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155254",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:38:44",
"content": "Sabotage Linux?! How? I’d like to know.. just asking for an, uh, friend. 😃",
"parent_id": "8155249",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155306",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:46:15",
"content": "ask Lennart Poettering",
"parent_id": "8155254",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155320",
"author": "Ø",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T16:10:14",
"content": "Ah, yes.Mr. feature creep and ego projects, people like him should never be the lead in any capacity of any projects.",
"parent_id": "8155306",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155251",
"author": "BrendaEM",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:32:49",
"content": "“After more than forty years, everyone knows that it’s time to retire the X Window System”Please, show me exactly where I can find the statistics.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155260",
"author": "g",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:49:20",
"content": "Reading comprehension gone on holiday?",
"parent_id": "8155251",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155437",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T20:12:23",
"content": "Everyone knows that anything the comes after ‘everyone knows’ will invariably be pure opinion pulled from a dark smelly place.It’s a linguistic tell, like:‘scientists believe’‘may’‘could’‘settled’These people are not honest.",
"parent_id": "8155251",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155588",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T23:15:22",
"content": "“95% of scientists agree that (insert oversimplified and overgeneralized statement)”",
"parent_id": "8155437",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156002",
"author": "Lonnie Stoudt",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T00:12:55",
"content": "“…4 out of 5 dentists surveyed reccomend…”",
"parent_id": "8155437",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155606",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T23:43:01",
"content": "What happened to “The Blit”? :)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwIAjB99ucw",
"parent_id": "8155251",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155270",
"author": "jgbz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:55:51",
"content": "“the one point that many people seem to agree on is that just because X11 is pretty terrible right now” I love how this entire article is filled with these type of statements. Where exactly do we all agree on this? It seems to be your personal opinion, presented as globally agreed fact. Xorg has been working just fine for me for the past 20 years, while Wayland is still a hot mess.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155279",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:04:50",
"content": "i like and use X11. xorg has improved quite a bit from when i first started using xfree86 30 years ago. for example, i appreciate how easy it is to build a xorg module — like a custom input driver — from source these days.this article — and the comments here — paints a foggier picture of wayland than i expected.but obviously, the biggest thing i don’t like about wayland is that i don’t know it. but i’m also concerned because when i do dig into it a little bit, it seems like there’s not only an uncomfortable relationship between the display server and the window manager, but also between the display server and the apps?? it seems like even from the perspective of an app writer who is gung ho for wayland, there are several incompatible waylands??? i assume that’s not as big a deal as it looks like but at first glance it seems like a dramatic step backwards.but personally, i’m not worried about it, and i assume i’ll switch someday. 20 years ago, i was happily using a rootless X11 server on macos x. and today, for my remote X i have switched mostly to VNC instead of X11-over-TCP. so i don’t know what my solution will look like but i’m confident i’ll be able to find a combination of wayland features and compatibility wrappers that is comfortable enough for me. but the fact that it hasn’t happened yet is making me wonder if i won’t just use xorg until i die",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155282",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:10:12",
"content": "“Some users also simply say that they do not care about Wayland either way as it offers no new features they want.”It offers me less features. Either I run both Wayland and xorg or just xorg. And running both offers me nothing in advance. Last I checked, X forwarding was still not ported over directly to Wayland and until that is done, I see no point in running it as xorg has to run anyway to provide that feature. I have been using xorg for over 25 years now and never had any major issues. So yeah, I’m in the camp of ‘I don’t care’. Xorg is stable, it’s fast, it runs incredibly smooth on embedded devices, runs smooth on specialized computers running long term availability hardware. We still buy brand new computers with Intel Atom N2600 CPU’s (I blame Det Norske Veritas). You need to find ways to limit the power used by the CPU and Wayland provides nothing extra.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155317",
"author": "quantumfireball",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T16:06:24",
"content": "Exactly this. I use X forwarding extensively. It’s easier not to even mess with Wayland.",
"parent_id": "8155282",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155915",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T16:44:59",
"content": "Wayland can be easily forwarded over the network, that’s what waypipe is for.Just because someone claims “Wayland doesn’t dothing” doesn’t mean it’s true.",
"parent_id": "8155317",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155339",
"author": "anonymouse",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T16:56:29",
"content": "Newer, therefore better. SPIT…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155349",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T17:28:45",
"content": "That’s the motto now-a-days :) . “If newer … it’s GOT to be better.” Part of human nature I think…. Never mind that older is usually much more stable and bug free, kinks worked out, etc. See that with computer languages as well.I’ve no axe to grind with x11 vs Wayland. As long I can get in remotely and locally (multi-user) and my GUI does what I want it to do. Golden.",
"parent_id": "8155339",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155417",
"author": "Andy Chow",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T19:41:11",
"content": "Wayland still can’t support gpu power settings, fractional scaling, x forwarding. What does Wayland do that X11 can’t? Oh, some abstract security issues that have never been exploited in practice. What about modern stuff like HDR? Nope, Wayland can’t.And the only reason X11 can’t HDR is because for the past 16 years it’s been abandoned for Wayland.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156349",
"author": "MilenninRoth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T07:32:43",
"content": "What? Wayland supports HDR just fine.",
"parent_id": "8155417",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156536",
"author": "Jay Sanders",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T20:41:43",
"content": "He’s saying that X does not support it because people who have the wherewithal to add such support to X did it for Wayland instead.",
"parent_id": "8156349",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155421",
"author": "przemek",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T19:47:20",
"content": "It’s confusing because X11 is still available under Wayland via XWayland compatiblity service. It is possible to run in X11 mode simply by setting an environment variable XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11; I wouldn’t be surprised if some X11 proponents actually ran on Wayland just using X11 session type.I am sure there are cases where native Xorg is different or maybe even better than XWayland, but clearly the development momentum is in favor of Wayland. There was recently an attempt to fork XOrg, but it seemed to peter out.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155452",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T20:21:19",
"content": "“but clearly the development momentum is in favor of Wayland.” there’s shades of this claim in many of the comments here and i think the details are interesting.i’m reminded of kernel development…the vast majority of code is, i think, written by vendors who are contributing device drivers. and then there’s a very small group of people who work on larger questions, like restructuring whole subsystems, the glue that holds it all together. but then there’s a much much larger group of people (like me) who rarely contribute, and when we do contribute it’s generally a very small patch. all we’re doing is drive by patches to fix the specific bug we ran into. we’re the open source community.and there’s some tension in that, for example i submitted a patch for the intel wifi driver and it was rejected…and i realized, it was rejected because the “volunteer” i interacted with wasn’t working for the kernel, he was working for intel! even though open source means i can hack the driver to work with knockoff hardware, his personal mission is to make sure my useful hack never gets distributed! a sticky problem, and i can’t answer it.but my point is, xorg still gets plenty of drive-by patches. i can tell because everything i do, it ‘just works’. and sticking points (like support for specific models of touchpads) have consistently and dramatically improved each time i install a new version. so clearly people are running into and fixing the oddball problems before i do. the worst challenge i’ve run into in xorg in decades is working around garbage the systemd people added.but i think i agree, i don’t see any evidence of new xorg features or re-architecting in the last decade or so. and in fact i think a lot of the specific people who did the re-architecting work 15-20 years ago that has been so valuable to the xorg community are the same people who started wayland.i personally live and die by people fixing bugs. re-architecting is valuable too, but xorg is already/finally a decent architecture. new features are hard to get excited about. so yeah, i do imagine that wayland is receiving more ‘developer hours’, but i think between redundancy (multiple competing and incompatible?? compositors) and the fact that the majority of these contributors aren’t working for anything other than systemd/gnome integration, these hours aren’t providing much value to the users? or at least, not much value to me.thekindof development matters and i’m just not convinced wayland actually has any compelling development. from my — admittedly unique — perspective, it’s just a lot of people toiling without benefit.",
"parent_id": "8155421",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155591",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T23:21:54",
"content": "his personal mission is to make sure my useful hack never gets distributed! a sticky problem, and i can’t answer it.That’s the FOSS version of “crony capitalism”. You’ve got your inside man in the system, who makes sure the wrong people can’t contribute and therefore can’t get access to the platform.",
"parent_id": "8155452",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155595",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T23:30:02",
"content": "a lot of the specific people who did the re-architecting work 15-20 years ago that has been so valuable to the xorg community are the same people who started wayland.See my analog of the open source skyscraper. Just as things are about to get done and finished, the developers leave over minor disagreements and start a new building, and then that’s left unfinished as the developers leave yet again over minor disagreements to start a new building….It leaves the residents of the building themselves to finish the interior and putting the glasses on the windows so it doesn’t rain straight through, and it never gets any better than that.",
"parent_id": "8155452",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155428",
"author": "Aaron Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T19:58:16",
"content": "I have tried Wayland on several systems and all I can say is it’s a hot broken mess. On my Framework 16 laptop, which is basically designed with Linux in mind, recent updates totally broke Wayland. I spent a few hours trying to track down what broken in Wayland yesterday and just gave up in frustration and switched to X11. The only way to get a GUI desktop is to disable Wayland and use X11. If I try and capture the screen, it turns black. I frequently see displays just go black for no reason, and HDR, to put it mildly, looks like absolute excrement. I also run into numerous applications that don’t work, and one of them, KiCad, has said there are so many bugs with Wayland that they will no longer attempt to work around all the bugs. As old as X11 is, it works reliably. I can even use GUI applications remotely, which I often do. Wayland isn’t new. It’s been 9 years and it’s still not ready for prime time. I’m also reminded of all the issues that have been brought up where Keith Packard just won’t listen to people on issues around synchronization or many other things.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155440",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T20:14:15",
"content": "Gnome forever!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155534",
"author": "Benjamin Henrion",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T21:54:12",
"content": "X11 was killed by american corporations who decide which software goes in theig distro.Use Xlibre now.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155610",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T23:59:01",
"content": "Use Xlibre? No.w",
"parent_id": "8155534",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155560",
"author": "Senile Data Systems",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T22:18:59",
"content": "I might be the only human left on earth who wants to use modern (ish) PCs with CRT monitors.But since a couple of years, hooking a CRT to a Linux machine is just not really possible anymore unless you’re OK being stuck at 1024×768. It never queries the monitor’s EEPROM for what it can do. It just puts out 1024×768 whether your monitor can display it, can not display it or is capable of twice the resolution in both directions (which is what I have).Earlier, I could cheat by adding modelines. The last thing I found that worked was some NVidia tool where I could enter the monitor’s maximum bandwidth and then I could get some more video modes that the driver thought convenient, but I couldn’t max out the framerate or resolution. Sure 1600×1200 looks a whole lot better than 1024×768, but that monitor can do 1920×1440 at 70Hz even. Nope, not in there. A 60Hz version is in there, but that does flicker quite noticeably. (btw… I ran that monitor at its absolute maximum of 2048×1536 at 67Hz while modelines still worked)I remember absolutely blowing my friends’ minds showing Cartoons in 4k (downscaled to 1920 pixels horizontally) on that monitor. They were used to “that weirdo” showing them movies on CRT TVs in full Standard Definition with flicker, 15kHz squeal and all, but now here’s something that doesn’t just have absolutely amazing colors and contrast*, but is also crazy sharp AND not flickering much (70Hz) AND not squealing (at least not in a human perceptible range).*) Black is black, I want my CRT back. It’s gray it’s gray, since I switched to LCD oh ho what can I do? ‘Cause I I I I I, I’m feeling blue. (many of you including myself might be too young to know that song. But I’ve got another massive mental disorder that makes me like the same music my parents love and disgust most modern music)Now get off my lawn!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155622",
"author": "superkuh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T00:41:01",
"content": "There is, of course, ydotool (for some of the various wayland compositors), but automation remains difficult and limited.As someone who’s retinas are progressively tearing themselves apart being able to screen read everything is becoming more important to me. The wayland protocol itself, and every single wayland compositor, except gnome, has effectively no screenreader support. It’s been 15 years and there’s no accessibility except in one compositor.And gnome’s accessibility is of course very gnome’ish: they’ve disregarded long standing standards and implemented not one, but two new accessibility for screen-reading standards that now all the other wayland compositors (and X11!) have to be roped into supporting like herding cats. GNOME always reinvents rather than fixing. And then when the bug tracker gets too long they reinvent again. That’s how they close bugs. We cannot count on GNOME for our worldwide linux accessibility standards. I simply can’t trust them enough to commit to learning GNOME standards as I go blind.I’ve been frightened because I thought I was going to be stuck trying to run ancient Xorg software that may not even be able to compile modern browsers just because I want accessibility for when I go fully blind.But now there’s the controversial XLibre fork and finally some hope Xorg and a decades tested reliable screen reader technology will continue to be available in the future.Also, since I can still mostly see right now, the waylands don’t even reliably work for my mouse+keyboard over tcp/ip sharing needs. Each wayland compositor may or may not support extensions like libinput or libei (or nothing like weston) so you never know if some software will work on your DE’s particular wayland compositor.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155826",
"author": "Yves DB",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T10:06:21",
"content": "Not the developed here syndrome…So we create a new system that does not replace the old system for 100%, and end up with 2 systems.Wayland has had multiple issues, like not supporting character composition which is a deal-breaker. Poor remote display support, and incomplete compatibility. While better for standing US centric game desktops, and a good competitor for graphical environments, as long as the feature parity with X11 has not been reached, we will stick with 2 imperfect systems.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155863",
"author": "JohnIL",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T12:10:35",
"content": "This is a perfect example of why Linux has failed to impress many on the desktop. Way too much fragmentation and developers of these distorts not reaching an agreement on almost anything. Everyone does their own thing and it’s not good in advancing the OS platform. Every OS needs a base set of agreed upon technologies and especially when you have hundreds of distributions. It’s no wonder users hop from one distribution to another when the reality is nothing is providing what is a concise and proper experience.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155882",
"author": "Panandorf",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T13:40:47",
"content": "Nah, there is no relation. A typical Windows user running a Linux desktop would probably never know or care if they were using X11 or Wayland. This conversation would never reach their world. A Mac user would still be too lost wondering how they can have a computer and still have money in their savings accounts.This is not the reason for the lack of a year of the Linux desktop.",
"parent_id": "8155863",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155975",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T22:09:47",
"content": "They would care if one works and the other doesn’t.",
"parent_id": "8155882",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155890",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T14:05:00",
"content": "i think you’re right that it’s a big part of why ‘the masses’ don’t like GUI linux. but i don’t think “Every OS needs a base set of agreed upon technologies”.when linux is hyper-standardized and least-common-denominatored, it can easily attract a large captive audience (android, chromeos). and when linux is wildly diverse, it can handle my usage cases with complete flexibility and i can get to the bottom of every bug or infelicity. this is the way.though i mean the flipside is that a lot of the people contributing to gnome or KDE or systemd or wayland tell themselves the story that they are creating the next windows, and they might be constantly disappointed by their continuing failure. but that doesn’t bother me because i’m not them :)",
"parent_id": "8155863",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156075",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T08:47:38",
"content": "From a user perspective the fragmentation is non-existent, being something that only matters to power-users and developers. As there is more than enough agreement on the basic standards so even if something was intended for gnome it works on KDE etc. Every desktop oriented distro these days offers a way more concise and proper experience than Windon’t that for some reason still has all the stuff that should just be in a single unified system settings/control panel structure or at least clustered by hardware it controls or something spread over the place seemingly at random, is now plastered is bloat, advert and active spyware…Apple maybe can claim a more proper experience for those users than Linux distro can, as if you don’t ever need to push even slightly at the prison bars around the garden things are fine for Apple (once you get used to it anyway), but if you want to stray even slightly outside the intended Apple experience its going to be hell, probably leaving you needing to pay for extra apps to do what should be basic OS things if you can find a way to do it at all. Where the Linux experience likely has nothing more than a speedbump of asking your search engine of choice how to do it should you ever get stuck, and as long as you ask the question as one of the common distros or with a “SUSE tumbleweed” etc modifier for the distro you are using it will be the first result or two.",
"parent_id": "8155863",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155869",
"author": "Yves DB",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T12:41:18",
"content": "Not the developed here syndrome…So we create a new system that does not replace the old system for 100%, and end up with 2 systems.Wayland has had multiple issues, like not supporting character composition which is a deal-breaker. Poor remote display support, and incomplete compatibility. While better for standing US centric game desktops, and a good competitor for graphical environments, as long as the feature parity with X11 has not been reached, we will stick with 2 imperfect systems.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156113",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T12:40:47",
"content": "Not even close. Wayland was design by the people who were actively maintaining/fighting with XOrg for many years. The main developer is the one responsible for the XOrg fork on the first place, an attempt to patch it’s worst issues and refactor what could be without breaking important things.",
"parent_id": "8155869",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155880",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T13:28:21",
"content": "It feels to me like Linux is moving in a direction of tools built for the desktop manager, not tools built for Linux. I don’t know, maybe it’s conformation bias but I when I read forum posts and the like it seems like there are people asking “What utility do I use to do X in Gnome”, or in whatever other desktop manager. Not “what’s the best utility to do this in Linux”.I think that is a bad direction to move in.And Wayland leaves a lot more functionality to be built into each separate desktop manager by scratch. I think this accelerates this bad direction.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155887",
"author": "William Payne",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T13:56:57",
"content": "Has Windows morphed into an expensive maintenance and legalliability for Microsoft?No AI overview response.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155901",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T15:25:35",
"content": "Where was the RANT tag in this “article”?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155995",
"author": "Zai1208",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T23:30:09",
"content": "As a more recent (and younger) Linux user running Arch + Hyprland, I personally have never experienced any issues with wayland, but that’s cause I don’t need many of the features present in x11, I feel like for people who start off with wayland probably won’t realise many of the features that exist in x11. And if they do need those features, they can switch to an x11 DE. I feel like the point of waylaid was to really just integrate DE + window server + compositor into one and that does simplify stuff for some users. Like back when I was using i3, I had to install pico as a compositor to get rounded corners, but with Hyprland it’s all built in. With the window server being built into the DE it also simplifies installation, compared to also having to install xorg (but it’s been a while since I’ve installed xorg) + the DE + a compositor for visual effects.But this is just my opinion, feel free to disagree.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156528",
"author": "Jay Sanders",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T20:23:17",
"content": "I am just an end user. I don’t know anything about the issues that something like X, or Wayland, or whatever, has to deal with to interact with the graphics hardware and to deliver value to end users. I do know, however, the following: until Wayland can do EVERYTHING that X can currently do, and at least as efficiently and transparently to me as X can, Wayland will not be ready for me.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,472.782767
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/28/commodore-64-on-new-fpga/
|
Commodore 64 On New FPGA
|
Bryan Cockfield
|
[
"Retrocomputing"
] |
[
"6502",
"commodore 64",
"fpga",
"hdmi",
"retrocomputing",
"tang nano 9k",
"verilog",
"vhdl",
"VIC-II"
] |
When it comes to getting retro hardware running again, there are many approaches. On one hand, the easiest path could be to emulate the hardware on something modern, using nothing but software to bring it back to life. On the other, many prefer to restore the original hardware itself and make sure everything is exactly as it was when it was new. A middle way exists, though, thanks to the widespread adoption of FPGAs which allow for programmable hardware emulation
and [Jo] has come up with a new implementation of the Commodore 64 by taking this path
.
The project is called the VIC64-T9K and is meant as a proof-of-concept that can run the Commodore 64’s VIC-II video chip alongside a 6502 CPU on the inexpensive Tang Nano 9k FPGA. Taking inspiration from the C64_MiSTer project, another FPGA implementation of the C64 based on the DE10-Nano FPGA, it doesn’t implement everything an original Commodore system would have had, but it does provide most of the core hardware needed to run a system. The project supports HDMI video with a custom kernel, and [Jo] has used it to get a few demos running including sprite animations.
Built with a mix of Verilog and VHDL, it was designed as a learning tool for [Jo] to experiment with the retro hardware, and also brings a more affordable FPGA board to the table for Commodore enthusiasts. If you’re in the market for something with more of the original look and feel of the Commodore 64, though,
this project uses the original case and keyboard while still using an FPGA recreation for the core of the computer
.
| 19
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155105",
"author": "xChris",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T10:23:58",
"content": "There are more FPGA cores on Tang 9k :https://github.com/harbaum",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155411",
"author": "Jo",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T19:29:00",
"content": "Indeed a great resource for Tang Nano cores. The HDMI adaptation origins from their. AFAIK their cores are 20k+ though.https://github.com/vossstef/VIC20Nanosupports the 9k.",
"parent_id": "8155105",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155172",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T11:58:11",
"content": "A neat project.The great Jeri Ellsworth did something similar about 20 years ago:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64_Direct-to-TVbut I think with an actual ASIC and not a FPGA.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155220",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:32:59",
"content": "The DTV2 (EU) was very feature complete, also.Most pins of User port, module port, datasette etc. were available as solder pins.The joystick design was more of a decoy, really – the designers really tried to bring back a fully functional C64 that can be mass-produced.That’s also why many C64 fans put the PCB in a little box and added real DE9 connectors.Imagine how great it would be if C64 replacement motherboards (full size) with that ASIC could be sold today.It would be very cheap in production and be a fine alternative to those who need a new, 99% hardware-based motherboardor justv want to assemble a whole C64 from a kit.Would make for a great father-son/grandfather-grandson project, maybe.Sure, the C64 die-hards would stick to their 80s hardware and use real SIDs etc. That’s okay.These guys wouldn’t touch any aftermarket motherboard anyway, so no harm would be done.Such an one-chip C64 motherboard would simply be a modern, more or less authentic alternative thatexists.Because the original hardware won’t last forever and even parallel RAMs and ROMs are now oldschool as such.",
"parent_id": "8155172",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155258",
"author": "darkspr1te",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:48:33",
"content": "now that Commodore is being revived and Jeri Ellsworth is part of that along with quite a few original Commodore staff that is very much on the cards, see perifractics new video on the subject.",
"parent_id": "8155220",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155278",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:03:08",
"content": "Although the C64DTV was very complete in the additional features it offered, like the additional joystick, keyboard and IEC-serial lines. I never heard or seen about the userport or datasette port signal being available. I’ve owned a C64 DTV, modded it into a diskdrive and would have loved to have to add a datasette connector to it.",
"parent_id": "8155220",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155308",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:50:38",
"content": "Hi there! Good point. The DTV1 didn’t have it, apparently. :(The C64 Wiki mentions that it was added in DTV2.https://www.c64-wiki.de/wiki/C64DTV",
"parent_id": "8155278",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155329",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T16:28:58",
"content": "I’d love to know how close the SID was, and, given Jeri seems to be involved with the “new” commodore, if they could be persuaded to license or even manufacture some new versions of the old custom silicon",
"parent_id": "8155220",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155962",
"author": "hazydave",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T21:38:35",
"content": "You’re probably not going to see individual C64 chips made in full custom… They’re basically too small to make sense, when an FPGA will do the job. There do seem to be a whole mess of individual FPGA chip replacements out for Amiga system chips, so it’s definitely possible if anyone has the interest.",
"parent_id": "8155329",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155326",
"author": "Russell P Jones",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T16:21:02",
"content": "She also made a feature-complete Amiga on a chip, but the project was cancelled. You can find her video about it on YouTube.",
"parent_id": "8155172",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155676",
"author": "JohnB",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T02:46:18",
"content": "I would love a complete Amiga on a chip. It was my first real computer. I dont count the Texas Instraments TI-99/4A, lol.",
"parent_id": "8155326",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155872",
"author": "Bastet",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T13:11:36",
"content": "I wonder how much C-One DNA was in the DTV… 😏",
"parent_id": "8155172",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155205",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:16:14",
"content": "Jens at iComp.de has been selling an FPGA C64 in Cartridge form for years,",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155873",
"author": "Bastet",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T13:14:55",
"content": "He and Jeri even did a FPGA board together, the C-One, but from what Jens told us Jeri went back to the USA with all documentation and code and did the DTV, of which Jens never saw a cent.",
"parent_id": "8155205",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155535",
"author": "Bleugh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T21:55:26",
"content": "Don’t forget that the new FPGA based Sinclair ZX Spectrum Next has a Commodore 64 core!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155641",
"author": "A7",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T00:58:20",
"content": "Tang Nano 9k is the board, from Sipeed. The FPGA is from Anlogic.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155749",
"author": "fanoush",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T05:58:50",
"content": "The FPGA is from GOWIN",
"parent_id": "8155641",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156086",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T09:59:07",
"content": "Funny how they now put 4K | UHD on HDMI cables when they actually mean it’s HDMI 1.4b. A thing they started when HDMI 2.x was introduced.I wonder what they’ll put on HDMI 2.x cables once HDMI 3.0 is out, 8K | S-UHD probly eh.Either way, once you know you know.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156167",
"author": "lersveen",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T14:56:47",
"content": "Strange to not mention here that there is an upcoming official FPGA-based Commodore 64?https://www.commodore.net/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,472.528006
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/27/experience-other-planets-with-the-gravity-simulator/
|
Experience Other Planets With The Gravity Simulator
|
Bryan Cockfield
|
[
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] |
[
"arduino",
"balance",
"gravity",
"IMU",
"planets",
"simulator",
"space"
] |
As Earthlings, most of us don’t spend a lot of extra time thinking about the gravity on our home planet. Instead, we go about our days only occasionally dropping things or tripping over furniture but largely attending to other matters of more consequence. When humans visit other worlds, though, there’s a lot more consideration of the gravity and its effects on how humans live and many different ways of training for going to places like the Moon or Mars. This gravity simulator, for example, lets anyone experience what it would be like to
balance an object anywhere with different gravity from Earth’s
.
The simulator itself largely consists of a row of about 60 NeoPixels, spread out in a line along a length of lightweight PVC pipe. They’re controlled by an Arduino Nano which has a built-in inertial measurement unit, allowing it to sense the angle the pipe is being held at as well as making determinations about its movement. A set of LEDs on the NeoPixel strip is illuminated, which simulates a ball being balanced on this pipe, and motion one way or the other will allow the ball to travel back and forth along its length. With the Earth gravity setting this is fairly intuitive but when the gravity simulation is turned up for heavier planets or turned down for lighter ones the experience changes dramatically. Most of the video explains the math behind determining the effects of a rolling ball in each of these environments, which is worth taking a look at on its own.
While the device obviously can’t change the mass or the force of gravity by pressing a button, it’s a unique way to experience and feel what a small part of existence on another world might be like. With enough budget available there are certainly other ways of providing training for other amounts of gravity like parabolic flights or buoyancy tanks, although one of the other more affordable ways of doing this for laypeople
is this low-gravity acrobatic device
.
| 8
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8155040",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T06:25:25",
"content": "Now to make one using a LED strip of 100 pixels per meter.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155118",
"author": "Matthew Dwyer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T10:47:15",
"content": "This is a VERY cool Idea, I’m keen to try it, and have most of the stuff!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155175",
"author": "fabo",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T12:05:27",
"content": "Great concept and execution, though the math is beyond me. Consider adding sound transducers for audio feedback – larger ones could provide haptic feedback too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155265",
"author": "Garth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:54:08",
"content": "With gravity being less on the Moon, Mars and other solar system objects…. I’m not overweight…. I’m just on the wrong planet.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155296",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:33:10",
"content": "I’m definitely over mass however.",
"parent_id": "8155265",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155330",
"author": "m1ke",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T16:35:21",
"content": "Awesome demonstration. Now I know how much I can’t maths.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155378",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T18:29:31",
"content": "Interesting, I just learned that the gravity on the gas giants isn’t as high as I thought.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155527",
"author": "make piece not war",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T21:43:16",
"content": "My impression is that the cube has no friction, but the sphere has infinite friction (no slipping), basically is like a cog wheel on a steering column of a car, therefore not the same kinetic energy if the ball does not roll.Because of the implied same mass, the radius of the sphere should be bigger than the half of the side length of the cube, therefore GC of sphere is further away from the planet than the GC of the cube, so less gravitational influence.Based on that, the computations are off.A bit.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,472.433064
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/26/2025-one-hertz-challenge-shadow-clock/
|
2025 One-Hertz Challenge: Shadow Clock
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"clock hacks"
] |
[
"2025 Hackaday One Hertz Challenge",
"clock",
"time"
] |
You can buy all kinds of conventional clocks that have hands and numbers for easy reading. Or, like [Fabio Ricci], you could build yourself something a little more esoteric,
like this neat shadow clock
.
The heart of the build is an ESP8266 microcontroller, which gets the current time via Wi-Fi by querying an NTP time server. It also uses a DS3231 real-time clock module as a backup, keeping accurate time even when a network connection is unavailable.
Time is displayed via a 60-pixel ring of WS2812B addressable LEDs. These 60 LEDs correspond to the usual per-minute graduations that you would find on a regular clock. Current hour is displayed by lighting the corresponding LED red, while minutes are shown in blue and seconds in white. It’s called a “shadow clock” because of its method of activation. IR distance sensors are used to activate the time display when a hand or finger is placed near the clock. As Fabio puts it, “shadow play” will make the clock display the time. Otherwise, it switches to be a simple round device on the wall that displays colorful animations.
It’s a neat build that looks quite unassuming as a decor piece, and yet it also serves as an easy-to-read timepiece. We’ve seen LEDs put to
all sorts of good uses in clock builds around these parts.
Meanwhile, if you’ve found your own unique way to display the time—either in readable fashion, or totally oblique—don’t hesitate to
let us know.
| 0
| 0
|
[] | 1,760,371,472.473363
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/26/vintage-plasma-display-shows-current-rad-levels/
|
Vintage Plasma Display Shows Current Rad Levels
|
Tyler August
|
[
"classic hacks"
] |
[
"Chernobyl",
"ESP-32",
"plasma display"
] |
It’s hard to argue that Soviet-Era nuclear engineering may have some small flaws, what with the heavily-monitored exclusion zone around Chernobyl No.4. Evidently, their industrial designers were more on-the-ball, because [Alex] has crafted the
absolute most stylish fallout monitor we’ve ever seen
, with ESP32 and a vintage Soviet-designed plasma display to indicate radiation levels in the exclusion zone.
Since the device is not located within the zone, [Alex] is using the ESP32 to access sensor values published via an API at
SaveEcoBot
. He also includes a Geiger counter module for the background level at the current location. That’s straightforward enough– integrating the modern microcontroller with the vintage plasma display is where the real hacking comes in. Though they might not be as vintage as you think: apparently the Elektronika MS6205 remained in production until 2005, but 2005 is still vintage. [Alex] notes in the instructions on hackaday.io that we’re actually looking for a post-1995 model to follow along.
The Elektronika MS6205 is based on a 100×100 pixel plasma matrix, but it is operated as a text-only display with Latin and Cyrillic characters in ROM. The ROM also includes some extra symbols and Greek letters (the gamma will come in handy for this application) that can be unlocked by cutting a trace on the board and replacing it with a bodge wire. Igniting the display requires 250V, which will require more work for North Americans than it does in Ukraine. Driving the display requires interfacing with the 7-bit data bus and 8-bit address bus, but [Alex] has made the wiring and code available on the project site if you’re interested in these devices. If you want to watch it in action and get more background, check out the video embedded below.
These sorts of monochrome plasma displays
have a lot of charm
, and are absolutely worth
reverse-engineering if you get your hands on different model.
If you like the vibe of this display, you
might also be interested in Vacuum Fluorescent Displays,
which can be easier to find in the West.
Thanks to [Alex] for the tip. Like the tireless IEA workers at Chernobyl, we’re always monitoring the radiation level of
our tips line.
| 11
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154739",
"author": "dudefromthenorth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T03:04:30",
"content": "pretty",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154741",
"author": "Cody",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T03:12:53",
"content": "Those old plasma displays do look nice. I’ve got a couple that are a bit bigger than this one. I just haven’t figured out what to use them for yet.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154890",
"author": "Zapro",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T19:30:42",
"content": "“Igniting the display requires 250V, which will require more work for North Americans than it does in Ukraine.” – Eh, what? The display has a built-in boost converter that takes in 12V and boosts it to 250V DC. It is not powered by mains voltage in any way.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154896",
"author": "stella",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T20:07:50",
"content": "I was about to post ‘He spelled “Chernobyl” wrong lol ‘ but then I verified, and in fact (from Wikipedia)Chernobyl, officially called Chornobyl, is a partially abandoned city in Vyshhorod Raion, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine.Always check sources before being snarky!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154902",
"author": "Kevin",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T20:44:07",
"content": "It’s transliterated from Cyrillic so there’s not really a “proper” spelling in our alphabet.",
"parent_id": "8154896",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154917",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T21:45:00",
"content": "Chronobyl sounds like some Japanese animal game character.",
"parent_id": "8154896",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155574",
"author": "carpespasm",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T22:47:02",
"content": "they mention it in some older videos that while they sometimes use either spelling to keep the youtube algorithm happy, in Ukraine it’s spelled with an O and in Russian uses and E when not using Cyrillic, so since it’s a Ukranian speaking about Ukranian hardware and industrial design, it’s much more correct to spell it Chornobyl, though most westerners are more used to the Russian translation of the spelling.",
"parent_id": "8154896",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156204",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T16:28:00",
"content": "It’s only in recent years, that the correction to “Chornobyl” in English has been spreading. Originally (meaning, back in the 1980s when everyone learned its name) it was reported as “Chernobyl” because that’s closer to how the word iswritten, but it should bepronounced“Chornobyl” so the more accurate transliteration is slowly being adopted. Same sort of thing’s happened with various words from East-Asian languages, over the past 70 years or so. (Tokyo used to be spelled Tokio, for example.)",
"parent_id": "8154896",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154903",
"author": "Kevin",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T20:45:09",
"content": "Rad!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156182",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T16:00:12",
"content": "Ba dum tss!",
"parent_id": "8154903",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155336",
"author": "William Payne",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T16:51:22",
"content": "2025 technology. :)I built this beautiful LED matrix display with an ESP32 for $30.https://www.xda-developers.com/built-beautiful-led-matrix-display-esp32/Can your LED matfix/ESP32 system be modifiedto record Awind turbine controller 1 output voltage and 2 battery voltagethen display both values in 5 minute measurement?Then display each in two displays, one above the other which moveleft to right … similar to Window Task manage/performance?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,472.831792
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/26/engrave-a-cylinder-without-a-rotary-attachment-no-problem/
|
Engrave A Cylinder Without A Rotary Attachment? No Problem!
|
Donald Papp
|
[
"cnc hacks",
"Laser Hacks"
] |
[
"laser",
"laser engraving",
"mug",
"rotary"
] |
Laser-engraving a cylindrical object usually requires a rotary attachment, which is a motorized holder that rotates a cylindrical object in sync with the engraver. But [Samcraft] shows that
engraving all around a mug can be done without a motorized rotary holder
.
Separating a design into elements thin enough to engrave individually without losing focus is the key.
The basic idea is to split the design into a number of separate engraving jobs, each containing one element of the overall design, then setting the mug into a 3D printed jig and manually rotating it between jobs. To demonstrate, [Samcraft] selects a series of line-art flowers and plants which are ideal for this approach because there’s no need to minutely register the individual engravings with one another.
What about focus? [Samcraft] found that a design up to 45 mm wide could be engraved onto the curved surface of his mug before focus suffers too much. It’s true that this technique only works with certain types of designs — specifically those with individual elements that can be separated into tall and thin segments — but the results are pretty nice.
Laser engravers are a very serious potential eye hazard, and we are not delighted to see the way the shield around [Samcraft]’s engraver cannot close completely to accommodate the mug while the laser is active. But we’re going to assume [Samcraft] has appropriate precautions and eye protection in place off-camera, because
laser radiation and eyeballs absolutely do not belong together, even indirectly
.
| 3
| 1
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154861",
"author": "MW",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T16:40:30",
"content": "“Have an LLM like ChatGPT give you the settings…” Nope.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154910",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T21:04:08",
"content": "It’s just the current way to tell somebody to google something. Pre-AI humanoids are wandering around like shell-shocked Vietnam vets in the 1970s, roaming the dark and rainy streets on smack.",
"parent_id": "8154861",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155360",
"author": "dahud",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T17:49:56",
"content": "What a baffling analogy.",
"parent_id": "8154910",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,472.873053
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/26/2025-one-hertz-challenge-a-clock-sans-silicon/
|
2025 One-Hertz Challenge: A Clock Sans Silicon
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"clock hacks",
"contests"
] |
[
"2025 Hackaday One Hertz Challenge",
"clock",
"dekatron",
"tubes"
] |
Just about every electronic device has some silicon semiconductors inside these days—from transistors to diodes to integrated circuits.
[Charles] is trying to build a “No-Silicon digital clock” that used none of these parts.
It looks like [Charles] is on the way to success, but one might like to point out an amusing technicality. Let’s dive in to the clock!
Instead of silicon semiconductors, [Charles] is attempting to build a digital clock using valves (aka tubes). More specifically, his design relies on seven dekatrons, which are the basic counting elements of the clock. By supplying the right voltages to the various cathodes of the dekatrons, they can be made to step through ten (or sometimes twelve) stable states, used as simple memory elements which can be used as the basis for a timepiece. [Charles] will set up the first dekatron to divide down mains frequency by 5 or 6 to get down to 10 Hz, depending on whether the supply is 50 Hz or 60 Hz. The next dekatron will step down 10 times to 1 Hz, to measure seconds. The next two will divide by ten and six to count minutes, while a further two will divide the same way to create an impulse per hour. A final dekatron will divide by 12 to count the hours in a day.
Naturally, time will be displayed on Nixies. While silicon semiconductors are verboten, [Charles] is also considering the use of some germanium parts to keep the total tube count down when it comes to supporting hardware. Also, [Charles] may wish to avoid silicon, but here’s the thing about tubes. They use glass housings, and glass is made of silicon.
Cheeky technicalities aside, it’s a great project that promises to create a very interesting clock indeed. Progress is already steaming along and we can’t wait to see the finished product.
We’ve seen dekatrons put to good use before, too.
If you’re cooking up your own practical projects with mid-century hardware, don’t hesitate to
let us know!
| 12
| 9
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154664",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T21:09:29",
"content": "Now that’s a proper project. What goes in that empty hole with what looks like a tea candle in the bottom?Could claim “no semiconductors” instead of no silicon if you used the original namesake of diodes (or maybe some neons?) but that would add to the difficulty and complexity quite a bit",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154683",
"author": ".",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T22:23:47",
"content": "but here’s the thing about tubes. They use glass housings, and glass is made of silicon.I have a supply of 6CW4 Nuvistor triodes. Miniature and robust without that verboten glass enclosure.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154691",
"author": "Observer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T23:05:05",
"content": "“but here’s the thing about tubes. They use glass housings, and glass is made of silicon. ”The silicon in the tubes is not monocrystalline, and not [purposefully] doped, so I think we’re good.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154735",
"author": "i alone possess the truth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T02:38:00",
"content": "A smart person would point out that glass isnotmade of silicon. Glass, like beach sand is made of silicon dioxide. This is basic “inhale, exhale, wipe” stuff. Your family will miss you later but sweeping ineptitude under the carpet keeps them busy for now.",
"parent_id": "8154691",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154747",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T03:39:17",
"content": "it’s also not conducting any electricity.",
"parent_id": "8154691",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154718",
"author": "localroger",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T00:31:47",
"content": "The silicon in the envelope of an electronic vacuum valve is no more like elemental silicon than elemental chlorine is like the salt it forms with sodium.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154746",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T03:38:19",
"content": "ok, but now do it likehttps://hackaday.com/2016/05/30/hackaday-prize-entries-inventing-new-logic-families/and use ONLY the diodes :P",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154801",
"author": "lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T10:22:17",
"content": "I think its funny how many people are perturbed by the joke about being silicon free yet there is glass. Mostly because if the author didn’t write it, I would bet 10 NE555’s someone would have left it as a snark comment :D. Cool project I really enjoy when people constrain their projects for fun.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154912",
"author": "Reedman",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T21:12:15",
"content": "This guy needs to review The Clock Of The Long Now. And then consider the Year 10000 problem.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154939",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T22:48:49",
"content": "He could have made it a whole lot simpler by going analog.Here’s how: you build an integrator that adds up every positive half-cycle of the AC waveform. Doing so, you get a voltage that ramps up in discrete steps with each AC cycle.Then you find the voltage level of the N-th step and use a comparator circuit to reset the integrator when it reaches the N-th step. That’s how you do frequency division in analog.So you could in theory do a single step divide by 50/60 on the line frequency and call it a day.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155041",
"author": "Lux",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T06:28:42",
"content": "Or just build a synchronous motor and use suitable gear ratios to get the time!",
"parent_id": "8154939",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155011",
"author": "alanrcam",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T05:36:06",
"content": "Germanium transistors (and diodes) to the rescue!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,472.926887
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/26/signal-injector-might-still-be-handy/
|
Signal Injector Might Still Be Handy
|
Al Williams
|
[
"Tool Hacks"
] |
[
"signal injector",
"signal tracer"
] |
Repairing radios was easier when radios were simple. There were typically two strategies. You could use a signal tracer (an amplifier) to listen at the volume control. If you heard something, the problem was after the volume control. If you didn’t, then the problem was something earlier in the signal path. Then you find a point halfway again, and probe again. No signal tracer? You can also inject a signal. If you hear it, the problem is before the volume. If not, it is after. But where do you get the signal to inject? [Learn Electronics Repair] sets out to
make a small one
in a recent video you can see below.
Both signal tracers and injectors were once ubiquitous pieces of equipment when better options were expensive. However, these days, you can substitute an oscilloscope for a signal tracer and a signal generator for an injector. Still, it is a fun project, and a small dedicated instrument can be handy if you repair a lot of radios.
The origin of this project was from an earlier signal injector design and a bet with a friend about making a small version. They are both working on their designs and want people to submit their own designs for a little
ad hoc
contest.
We always preferred a signal tracer since it is more passive. Those were typically just audio amplifiers with an optional diode in the input to demodulate RF. A computer amplified speaker and a diode can do the job, as can an
LM386
. Or, you can build
something complex
, if you prefer.
| 1
| 1
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154730",
"author": "reg",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T01:38:13",
"content": "If you know what you are looking for you can use a cheap fully unlocked baofeng uv-5r to sniff for a lot of signals. Way back in the day I built a transmitter and it was crystal controlled but had three multiplier stages. I had a great scope, an actually not so old back in those days Tek 535 that also doubled as my heater in the winter, but no counter and nothing that could get near the fundamental. But I did have a pal who had a programmable scanner. And he brought that baby over and we set it to the fundamental and fired it up and it totally blanked the scanner output. Nothing at the freq from the first multiplier though. It used ceramic caps and they looked like they had sweated quite a bit during the construction though, and just changed the few of them out, and poof. On the air.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,472.963924
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/26/personalization-industrial-design-and-hacked-devices/
|
Personalization, Industrial Design, And Hacked Devices
|
Elliot Williams
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"Phone Hacks",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] |
[
"art",
"design",
"newsletter",
"style"
] |
[Maya Posch] wrote up an insightful, and maybe a bit controversial, piece on the state of consumer goods design:
The Death Of Industrial Design And The Era Of Dull Electronics
. Her basic thesis is that the “form follows function” aesthetic has gone too far, and all of the functionally equivalent devices in our life now all look exactly the same. Take the cellphone, for example. They are all slabs of screen, with a tiny bezel if any. They are non-objects, meant to disappear, instead of showcases for cool industrial design.
Of course this is an extreme example, and the comments section went wild on this one. Why? Because we all want the things we build to be beautiful
and
functional, and that has always been in conflict. So even if you agree with [Maya] on the suppression of designed form in consumer goods, you have to admit that it’s not universal. For instance, none of our houses look alike, even though the purpose is exactly the same. (Ironically, architecture is the source of the
form follows function
fetish.) Cars are somewhere in between, and maybe the cellphone is the other end of the spectrum from architecture. There is plenty of room for form
and
function in this world.
But consider the smartphone case – the thing you’ve got around your phone right now. In a world where people have the ultimate homogeneous device in their pocket, one for which slimness is a prime selling point, nearly everyone has added a few millimeters of thickness to theirs, aftermarket, in the form of a decorative case. It’s ironically this horrendous sameness of every cell phone that makes us want to ornament them, even if that means sacrificing on the thickness specs.
Is this the same impetus that gave us the cyberdeck movement? The custom mechanical keyboard? All kinds of sweet hacks on consumer goods? The need to make things your own and personal is pretty much universal, and maybe even a better example of what we want out of nice design: a device that speaks to you directly because it
represents
your work.
Granted, buying a phone case isn’t necessarily creative in the same way as hacking a phone is, but it at least lets you exercise a bit of your own design impulse. And it frees the designers from having to make a super-personal choice like this for you. How about a “nothing” design that affords easy personalized ornamentation? Has the slab smartphone solved the form-versus-function fight after all?
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
!
| 28
| 8
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154544",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T14:35:43",
"content": "I really miss landscape keyboard phones. I keep trying to find a modern N900 replacement.Daily drove an original fxtec pro1 for 5 years and it was nice to have the keyboard, and Sailfish provided linux, but Sailfish’s lack of native apps + the requirement of Volte meant I had to go back to android.9ish months ago I switched to a Furi Labs FLX1 which is frankly amazing to basically have a full linux device, with the debian repos AND volte AND android container in my pocket. But no keyboard",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154545",
"author": "Stephen Keller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T14:43:41",
"content": "Maybe you could adapt something like this design to your phone:https://liliputing.com/this-3d-printed-case-turns-an-old-phone-into-a-slider-with-a-qwerty-keyboard-and-touchpad/",
"parent_id": "8154544",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154546",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T14:46:27",
"content": "Yeah I saw that a while ago. Bluetooth though :(",
"parent_id": "8154545",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154622",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:19:15",
"content": "That is great! But I used to have an HTC Desire Z – still one of the best designed phones I’ve had, with a great keyboard which, despite me using it as a fidget, so I must have opened it a million times, didn’t fail in the 3 or so years I used it, even when I dropped it and the screen was toast (which I could replace myself!)",
"parent_id": "8154545",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154553",
"author": "Ø",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T15:21:10",
"content": "I don’t even have a case on my current CompactMini smartphone, because despite it being marketed as such, it’s very close to phablet territory and thus would be too wide and tall with one.And let’s not forget how the godawful phablets have become the norm.And all the idiots saying ” just use X, Y or Z to compensate” all clearly don’t understand the crux of the problem being that smartphones have gotten big in the wrong ways.It’s literally a institutional issue.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154578",
"author": "easy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T17:24:03",
"content": "Pretty sure you are in the minority and the majority wants giant phablets because that’s what people buy?The bigger issue is why people go for giant screens, namely that they spend their life on their phones.",
"parent_id": "8154553",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154621",
"author": "Dion B",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:18:22",
"content": "The more I unplug from my phone the bigger and sillier it seems",
"parent_id": "8154578",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154626",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:27:39",
"content": "hard to say what the majority wants when their choices are so constrained. i used to bother to shop for a small phone before buying a large one, and now i don’t even bother, i just buy a large phone because i know the small phone market is so limited. but i want a small phone. i think. i haven’t used one in so long, i can’t be sure.how many people are in my boat? hard to tell. probably not a majority but we’re surely a significant fraction of big phone buyers.",
"parent_id": "8154578",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154631",
"author": "rnjacobs",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:34:16",
"content": "Bigger phones are easier to fumble and drop, and thus easier to break. It’s hard to tell whether people buy bigger phones because they prefer them, or because they have to replace them more often.",
"parent_id": "8154578",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154638",
"author": "Vik Olliver",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:59:37",
"content": "I’ve got an Oukitel WP21 Ultra. It is almost big enough to hide behind and would probably stop a bullet. Its 64M camera is crap, and firmware upgrades practically non-existent. Why do I put up with this bilge?Because the battery is nigh on 10Ah, it packs a TB, it’s built like a ceramic outdoor sanitary unit, and has an excellent FLIR built in which I use for fault-finding all the time. Even powers my soldering iron.As a phone phone, I way prefer my old HTC 21 Pro. But for functionality that suits my life, the WP21 wins.",
"parent_id": "8154631",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154848",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T15:05:49",
"content": "you’re using a phone as a powerbank for a soldering iron??? now THAT is a hack",
"parent_id": "8154638",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154591",
"author": "Aaron",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T17:56:07",
"content": "I have an iPhone 12 mini – and some days I think it’s too big. I understand why someone would want a big phone, but I’m not one of them and apparently I’m in the minority. I cannot express how perfectly sized the original iPhone was.But a lot of people use their phones as their primary device. And that drives the desire for a larger screen (along with the desire for a longer battery life.)",
"parent_id": "8154553",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154624",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:22:35",
"content": "This reminds me of the UK olympics team management, who decided to issue 900 identical red bags to all their team (sporters and staff) in the 2016 Rio Olympics. It alledgedly took them four hours to get out of the airport, with a lot of that time spent in athletes finding which of 900 identical bags was theirs:https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/rio-2016-team-gb-s-decision-to-issue-900-identical-kit-bags-leads-to-chaos-at-baggage-claims-on-return-from-olympics-a7208666.html",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154868",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T17:21:02",
"content": "RE: logistics is never easy, especially when planned by those the least capable, politicians, so-called “managers”, bean-counters, etc etc. Leaders (TRUE leaders, not wannabees littering our airwaves as of late) could quickly figure out a solution that would suit the majority of the participators and coordinate the efforts. Morons who got thrust into position of power by chance of luck won’t know that – it is NOT one of those moments when they’d shine, improvisation is NOT their cup-o-tea.Have this been a military challenge, one simple yell “everyone, grab whichever red bag is next to you and march out – we’ll sort these LATER!” would spare four hours. Apparently the logistics were left to the masses to sort out on its own, and it shows. I also do not understand what was the importance of finding your bag individually, without coordination, but that’s usually how randomly formed crowds operate, mostly in uniform helpless chaos, punctured by an occasional self-formed isles of sanity (I am pretty sure some members figured out to attach some kind of a standout label to theirs), that struggles to settle into some kind of a productive/stable course of action.",
"parent_id": "8154624",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154940",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T22:54:25",
"content": "I don’t think there would have been a “later” as the people would have gone their own ways after leaving the airport. Contacting the people and arranging for the exchange of bags later would have taken more than the four hours.",
"parent_id": "8154868",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154627",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:30:22",
"content": "i know people do buy vanity cases, and personal choices definitely influence which case to buy. but among my social circle, we buy cases because we want our phones to survive. cases reduce damage from drops and (maybe) from water, and also reduce the rate of drops because they aren’t as slippery as a lot of fad phone designs.if i was trying to express my personality, i’d rather have a naked phone. but i’d drop it and it’d bust.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154668",
"author": "ian 42",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T21:29:56",
"content": "exactly, cases aren’t about personal design, they are about protecting an expensive asset.I still miss phones getting smaller and smaller – I’d prefer a small phone rather than a general purpose tablet which also does phone calls (which current phones have become)…",
"parent_id": "8154627",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154817",
"author": "Fazal Majid",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T11:37:25",
"content": "They also make phones less slippery. I can’t understand why a phone maker hasn’t seen the light and added knurling to their phones. Probably the baleful residual influence of Jony Ive and his fetish for form over function, specially once he lost adult suprvision from Steve Jobs.",
"parent_id": "8154627",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154943",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T22:58:26",
"content": "Mine has. That’s part of the reason I bought it.",
"parent_id": "8154817",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156418",
"author": "elmesito",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T14:29:03",
"content": "Thank you for your feedback, it is very valuable to us.– Next phone –Our new phones now have beautiful slick glass back that pushes the boundaries of design to the next level.(Phone manufacturers)",
"parent_id": "8154817",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154791",
"author": "mathman",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T09:13:20",
"content": "See, that’s why I’m still here.I came for the hacks but stayed for the people with the ability to objectively discuss a topic – despite having different opinions. A rare skill these days.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156096",
"author": "batman",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T11:07:10",
"content": "This is so true, I feel like discussions nowadays (with most people) are about winning and emotions not about finding a common ground or getting progressive solution to a problem.",
"parent_id": "8154791",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154871",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T17:45:24",
"content": "IMHO, form follows function once the function is 100% known and settled on, otherwise it alters the function, imperceptibly or not. Witness how the LCD clocks started with many buttons, then eventually settled on just THREE buttons, for example – now good luck finding the function that’s still present, but requires few clicks of those buttons to arrive at, I bet most people no longer bothered with fiddling and just went with the minimal available functionality (just the time, please, forget then alarm and the seconds).IN my Other HO, cell phones are a terrible example, their function is MANY THOUSANDS on the same platform (screen, CPU, battery, etc), so the physical form is just whatever that it kinda sorta settled on for mostly economical reasons, what’s the cheapest/simplest thing one can make and sell as fast as possible for as large profit as possible.Cars, on the other hand, have a definite and well-known function, and that’s why they are usually four-wheeled, have seats, etc etc. Variations are not that many, really, you are either going place A to place B< or show off your gas-guzzling SUV in a show of pride, or take your mom-in-law for the doctor appointment, or anything in between. They don’t need to be driven sideways, like fork lifts, so function is known, and the form followed from the time of horse-drawn couches in about the same direction.I am not sure cars and cell phones can be compared, apples and oranges, really, perhaps only with by their aesthetics? Then both are horrible, really; pretty much all cell phone now copy the original iPhone, and all US cars copy the japanese cars that were copying the US cars that were copying the japanese cars, then korean cars came along and said “we’ll copy you both, your cars and how you copy each others’ cars”, and later chinese said “let’s copy how korean cars were copying how japanese cars were copying the US cars”.I suppose I am wrong, and I am usually glad when someone points out where and how I am wrong. By all means argue that I don’t know things, and that way we both learn something from each other.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154916",
"author": "Albert",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T21:44:48",
"content": "When Koreans (that is KIA, Hyundai, maybe Daewoo too) were learning how to build cars they either bought platform from European manufacturers* or at least cooperated heavily. With all the difficult engineering done, they made their own bodywork looking very much like Japanese cars.* It was probably easier to get it certified in Europe this way. I think in case of early 2000s KIAs it could be Opel. First, I heard it mentioned somewhere, IIRC it was some academic book on car design. Second, lots of Opel-branded stuff under the hood. Equipment from other German manufacturers was also present. For example ECU and fuel injection stuff in my KIA was made by Bosch. No sarcasm it was 100% reliable for the entire 25 years of use it took the car to go from showroom to scrapyard. Immobilizer module was so good, that it was IMPOSSIBLE to get a key cloned at any regular locksmith who’s also dealing with cars. They could cut it, but electronics inside went “nope” to any attempt at reading. In 2020 when one of the keysgot lost, a new one could not be made and programmed into the ECU without asking Korean KIA HQ for help. Local KIA dealer simply didn’t have the required equipment (I’d guess it’s all about encryption keys or something). At one point I honestly considered installing MegaSquirt instead of having to deal with KIA dealers.",
"parent_id": "8154871",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155243",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:13:53",
"content": "I stand corrected about the inner workings of KIAs.I was referring to the aesthetics of the cars, but I do know what Bosch makes and where it is used (literally, EVERYWHERE, not just consumer cars), and it is good that korean car makers went with the german engineering, and not with the US “management style” that just recently destroyed two great car makers, Saab (obviously, civil car making – not the rest of the company) and Holden.Daewoo made quite a lot of good compact trucks that were never sold in the US – and I do know that regulations-shmegulations, same trucks seem to be sold in Canada with no issues, so it is just a matter of keeping affordable compact trucks out of the US dealerships turf.Sadly, we in the US no longer have ANY compact trucks sold, nada, only larger mid-sized ones, proportionally overpriced. Simple/reliable compact trucks also used to be AFFORDABLE without a car loan. No longer the case, everything is overpriced and compact cars/trucks are basically hated in the US, insurance companies charge two prices, etc.Regardless, what I referring to was that even the late Jaguars I’ve seen on the read now look like Toyota Camry, Honda Civic now resembles Lexus, and Cadillac is about as impressive as Mazda CX 5. Neither one wins the trophy for the design, it is hard to tell one from the other, and what I found neat that at least KIA Soul keeps trying new designs. Not just rearranging the angle of the headlights and changing the door handles, a lot of new things every year, just like the US cars used to be (1960s … 1970s … 1980s … but not 1990s and ever since …)(though, of course, KIA Souls’ form factor is Nissan Cube reinvented, really – I test-drove the two years back, in addition to Chrysler PT Cruiser, which I liked better, btw, but ended up choosing something else – Mazda 5, because that was what I needed, the Ford Transit Connect form factor, again COMPACT TRUCK base).",
"parent_id": "8154916",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155170",
"author": "braddo",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T11:53:39",
"content": "There are still a lot of improvements to be made with phones. Agree with other posters that they should not be slippery. I will add that they should not need a case, build with shock resistant corners and slightly elevated besels. The NFC tags should be at the tip of the phone not on the back, the wireless charging should be at the bottom of the phone not the back, so they can sit in an inclined charger not flat taking up space. They should have space for grip on the back (hence not blocking the nfc or wireless charging). Magsafe is fine but heavy, really I dont need to swap anything my own grip wallet is permanently fused. Phones should be made primarily from carbon fiber, stop with the heavy aluminum and stainless steel. Small plastic or ceramic areas for antennas, charging etc is fine. And finally a word to Google specifically, fix the broken auto-rotate… really it’s embarrassing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156422",
"author": "elmesito",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T14:42:28",
"content": "Samsung make or used to make an angled wireless phone charger. I bought one when I had the Galaxy S8. It still works perfectly with my Google pixel 8.The phone charges without fail, even when I drop the phone on the charger when I can no longer keep my eyes open, plus I can always see what time it is when I wake up during the night.",
"parent_id": "8155170",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155998",
"author": "Jonathan Wilson",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T23:54:37",
"content": "A great example of “everything is dull and boring” would have to be fast food and restaurants. There might be a bit of difference between them but ultimately the design of modern chain dining is (with a few exceptions) dull, boring, soulless and samey.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,473.276116
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/26/read-qr-codes-on-the-cheap/
|
Read QR Codes On The Cheap
|
Al Williams
|
[
"digital cameras hacks"
] |
[
"arducam",
"QR codes"
] |
Adding a camera to a project used to be a chore, but modern camera modules make it simple. But what if you want to read QR codes? [James Bowman] noticed a $7 module that
claims to read QR codes
so he decided to try one out.
The module seems well thought out. There’s a camera, of course. A Qwiic connector makes hooking up easy. An LED blinks blue when you have power and green when a QR code shows up.
Reading a QR code was simple in Python using the I2CDriver library. There are two possible problems: first, if the QR code contains
a large amount of data
, you may exceed the I2C limit of 254 bytes. Second, despite claiming a 110-degree field of view, [James’] testing showed the QR code has to be almost dead center of the camera for the system to work.
What really interested us, though, was the fact that the device is simply a camera with an RP2040 and little else. For $7, we might grab one to use as a platform for other imaging projects. Or maybe we will read some QR codes. We’d better pick up a few. Then again, maybe we can just
do it by hand
.
| 15
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154520",
"author": "Stephen Mewller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T12:58:45",
"content": "I wish he would have tested a QR code at full capacity and put a minimum and maximum distance where it works. Admittedly the 110 degree FOV and this lens is not ideal for the application.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154555",
"author": "Stephen Mewller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T15:32:53",
"content": "Nevermind I see that it really doesn’t chunk the code and limits the user to 254 bytes. I understand the manufacturer doesn’t open-source it despite being based on the C++ version if the popular unmaintained zebra crossing library, but what are you gonna do?I feel this is a low hanging fruit to solve with programming. Maybe I pick 2 up from my redistributor and try to run my own firmware on it. Entirely non-competitive. They are doing something nice here, the price for an MCU and arducam is really fair.",
"parent_id": "8154520",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154697",
"author": "Gus Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T23:12:09",
"content": "Yeah, I don’t see how sending more than 254 bytes via I2C is such a struggle. The problem of how to transport more stuff than a vehicle can contain is a solved one.",
"parent_id": "8154555",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154529",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T13:39:41",
"content": "“We might grab one” that’s a bit rude why not pay for it like everyone else?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154587",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T17:50:59",
"content": "I bought the GM861S for $5.30 of Aliexpress back in February. It has UART and USB interfaces and just dumps a text stream of whatever it scans.http://www.growbarcode.com/productinfo/888748.htmlIt’s a lot easier to deal with than I2C in my opinion. You can program it via UART or QR codes found in the datasheet.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154593",
"author": "tyjk6t7j",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T18:02:04",
"content": "QR-codes are not open sourceI prefer matrix free",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154800",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T10:16:39",
"content": "A QR code is not software, so it can’t be”open source”. And there’s open source QR code libraries out there. So what on earth are you gibbering about?",
"parent_id": "8154593",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154920",
"author": "lkjsdlkf lkjslkdjf",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T21:57:21",
"content": "My guess would be that it’s not officially an open standard. Perhaps the reading of them was reverse engineered and thus far the creators of the QR code have decided not to hassle anyone about it. Unless they officially release the standard to the public domain then use of any library “open source” or not remains legally questionable.",
"parent_id": "8154800",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155659",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T01:55:03",
"content": "It’s an ISO and JIS standard. It’s freely licensed to anyone complying with the standards.You could get in trouble for calling something a QR Code that isn’t one. But probably not",
"parent_id": "8154920",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155770",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T07:06:57",
"content": "Denso Wave released all the specs publicly right from the very beginning, no reverse engineering needed. Theywantedit to be used widely.Theonlything they did was hold onto a key patent but freely licensed it to everyone as long as the specs were followed correctly. The market would absolutely have made a hundred slightly different but incompatible versions the first chance they got (“bought our QR code reader cameras? You also need to spend $2000/year to license our QR code generator software because only it will generate codes that our cameras will read”)So yes, it wasn’t “entirely open”, but not in any way that would impede anyone other than a bad actor.",
"parent_id": "8154920",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154596",
"author": "asan102",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T18:08:35",
"content": "Are these even still available? The manufacturer link from the Github page is dead.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154995",
"author": "Zai1208",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T04:11:02",
"content": "Adafruit sells themhttps://www.adafruit.com/product/5744",
"parent_id": "8154596",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154702",
"author": "Tharre",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T23:21:22",
"content": "Where’s the 254 byte limit coming from? The article claims it’s from the I2C protocol, but the specification (UM10204) explicitly says that’s not the case: “The number of bytes that can betransmitted per transfer is unrestricted”.So is it just a limitation of the python library the author is using?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154802",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T10:22:32",
"content": "It’s not because of the “i2c protocol”, it’s because of the “module’s protocol”, whichhappensto use i2c. The module sends 256 bytes in response to any read request. So if the QR code is longer than that it gets truncated.",
"parent_id": "8154702",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154821",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T11:56:46",
"content": "Not only is it clear the device has garbage firmware, their documentation also says this:“This module includes an image sensor, and we want to make sure that this doesn’t pose a threat to any of our users’ privacy. We’ve designed the module so that it is as resistant as possible to anyone accessing the raw image data, and only the metadata derived from each frame is available. We’ve also built it to have as slim an interface as possible, to reduce the possibility of malicious interference and make it simpler for third parties to audit our privacy claims.This approach does constrain what developers can do with the device. One obvious restriction is that we don’t allow you to access the image data, but we also don’t support flashing the firmware or model updating, because doing so could allow unchecked changes to the sensor’s behavior. Even though there’s a microcontroller on the board, we’re hoping that you’ll be able to get enough value out of its pre-programmed behavior to compensate for the inconvenience of this user protection approach.”It’s complete bullshit. No user’s privacy is protected by doing this. The only thing it protects is the manufacturer, and it’s pretty weak at that as well.I might grab one just to reverse engineer it, it won’t be hard.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,473.018739
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/25/human-in-the-loop-compass-cnc-redefines-workspace-limits/
|
Human In The Loop: Compass CNC Redefines Workspace Limits
|
Matt Varian
|
[
"cnc hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] |
[
"CNC machine",
"CNC router",
"Teensy 4.1"
] |
CNCs come in many forms, including mills, 3D printers, lasers, and plotters, but one challenge seems universal: there’s always a project slightly too large for your machine’s work envelope. The
Compass CNC
addresses this limitation by incorporating the operator as part of the gantry system.
The Compass CNC features a compact core-XY gantry that moves the router only a few inches in each direction, along with Z-axis control to set the router’s depth. However, a work envelope of just a few inches would be highly restrictive. The innovation of the Compass CNC lies in its reliance on the operator to handle gross positioning of the gantry over the workpiece, while the machine manages the precise, detailed movements required for cutting.
Most of the Compass CNC is constructed from 3D printed parts, with a commercial router performing the cutting. A Teensy 4.1 serves as the control unit, managing the gantry motors, and a circular screen provides instructions to guide the operator on where to position the tool.
Those familiar with CNC routers may notice similarities to the
Shaper Origin
. However, key differences set the Compass CNC apart. Primarily, it is an open source project with design files
freely available
for those who want to build their own. Additionally, while the Shaper Origin relies on a camera system for tracking movement, the Compass CNC uses four mouse sensors to detect its position over the workpiece.
The Compass CNC is still in development, and
kits containing most of the necessary components
for assembly are available. We’re excited to see the innovative creations that emerge from this promising new tool.
| 15
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154253",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T16:04:29",
"content": "it´s a brilliant platform. And hopefully a nail in the foot of Shaper Origin, and their closed & cloud crapaware.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154276",
"author": "Konkers",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T17:20:22",
"content": "Wait, doesn’t Shaper take a USB drive with SGVs on it?",
"parent_id": "8154253",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154284",
"author": "MZ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T17:39:54",
"content": "Yes. I never connected my Shaper to the internet. Works fine. They have their own CAD tool you can use, but don’t have to.",
"parent_id": "8154276",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154296",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T18:03:15",
"content": "Yes but you cannot even transfer any design through WLAN without connecting to the cloud. And the thing is calling home and even sometimes forces updates upon you (after baiting with an add-on that you can test)",
"parent_id": "8154276",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154859",
"author": "Odem",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T16:35:26",
"content": "LOVE my shaper. No problems that you speak of. USB is appropriate for transferring designs, gotta say.",
"parent_id": "8154296",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154285",
"author": "Joe",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T17:40:50",
"content": "Can it cut aluminium?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156991",
"author": "Reactive Light",
"timestamp": "2025-08-02T12:07:48",
"content": "Only in the UK.",
"parent_id": "8154285",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154288",
"author": "Needleroozer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T17:43:39",
"content": "Prior Hackaday coverage is here; nice to see that the design is still advancing:https://hackaday.com/2025/02/23/handheld-compass-cnc-lets-teensy-do-the-driving/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154313",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T19:27:48",
"content": "This is really cool project. I wonder what the limits are compared to traditional CNC, i am sure there are plenty…I guess the error accumulates over great distance, since there’s no absolute position feedback. It’s using optical mouse sensors with all their limitations (eg. measuring relative motion, loosing track when you lift the device and not working well on smooth/reflective surfaces, having troubles when sawdust gets everywhere). Z-height is probably also very limited. Also if you cut your material too much there’s not gonna be any surface for the whole thing to ride on while being stable. But this is probably perfect for cutting small stuff in the middle of large stock. If you use too agressive cut, it can probably kick the thing out of track? Im not sure, i’ve never worked with this thing. I would really like to try, but im not gonna build it just for the sake of trying.And i am not saying these things as hate, but because i think tools are more useful when people understand their strengths and weaknesses. I am looking forward for upcoming development of this thing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154812",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T11:16:45",
"content": "Too bad it’s all proprietary so there’s no way to modify it to add absolute positioning capability… oh wait",
"parent_id": "8154313",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154831",
"author": "MacAttack",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T13:34:32",
"content": "A sweeping laser system, somewhat akin to that done by Lighthouse, should be easy enough to improve implement and give absolute position and orientation. The tool becomes the Lighthouse and measures angles to reflectors whose geometry is known. Accuracy is TBD.I’ve wondered if a laser engraver/cutter using this type of platform would make any sense. Small gantry lasers are so cheap these days, such a system would only seem to make sense for some large size job, that I can’t quite envision.",
"parent_id": "8154313",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154326",
"author": "make piece not war",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T20:30:35",
"content": "Hmmm, no fiduciary tape needed. Nice.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154471",
"author": "Money Saver",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T09:38:53",
"content": "Well done, but I could not find any info on accuracy, so I’m not going to click that “buy now” button any time soon…",
"parent_id": "8154326",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155209",
"author": "Jelle",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:18:38",
"content": "To expensive?Let’s hope I got it wrong, but 600+ dollar for almost the same hardware as a 3d printer? That is pretty hefty. They are not even using trapezoidals , instead opting for threaded rod and you have to supply your own router.The only exotic is 4 mouse sensors but that’s it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155223",
"author": "Jelle",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:34:50",
"content": "Seems I had it wrong on the threaded rod: it is 2mm trapezoidal according to the BOM.",
"parent_id": "8155209",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,473.071756
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/25/this-week-in-security-sharepoint-initramfs-and-more/
|
This Week In Security: Sharepoint, Initramfs, And More
|
Jonathan Bennett
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] |
[
"linux",
"Secure Boot",
"SharePoint",
"This Week in Security"
] |
There was a disturbance in the enterprise security world, and
it started with a Pwn2Own Berlin
. [Khoa Dinh] and the team at Viettel Cyber Security discovered a pair of vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s SharePoint. They were demonstrated at the Berlin competition in May, and patched by Microsoft in this month’s Patch Tuesday.
This original exploit chain is interesting in itself. It’s inside the SharePoint endpoint,
/_layouts/15/ToolPane.aspx
. The code backing this endpoint has a complex authentication and validation check. Namely, if the incoming request isn’t authenticated, the code checks for a flag, which is set true when the referrer header points to a sign-out page, which can be set arbitrarily by the requester. The
DisplayMode
value needs set to
Edit
, but that’s accessible via a simple URL parameter. The pagePath value, based on the URL used in the call, needs to start with
/_layouts/
and end with
/ToolPane.aspx
. That particular check seems like a slam dunk, given that we’re working with the
ToolPane.aspx
endpoint. But to bypass the DisplayMode check, we added a parameter to the end of the URL, and hilariously, the pagePath string includes those parameters. The simple work-around is to append another parameter,
foo=/ToolPane.aspx
.
Putting it together, this means a POST of
/_layouts/15/ToolPane.aspx?DisplayMode=Edit&foo=/ToolPane.aspx
with the Referrer header set to
/_layouts/SignOut.aspx
. This approach bypasses authentication, and allows a form parameter
MSOTlPn_DWP
to be specified. These must be a valid file on the target’s filesystem, in the
_controltemplates/
directory, ending with
.iscx
. But it grants access to all of the internal controls on the
SafeControls
list.
There’s an entire second half to [Khoa Dinh]’s write-up, detailing the discovery of a deserialization bug in one of those endpoints, that also uses a clever type-confusion sort of attack. The end result was remote code execution on the SharePoint target, with a single, rather simple request. Microsoft rolled out patches to fix the exploit chain. The problem is that Microsoft often opts to fix vulnerabilities with minimal code changes, often failing to fix the underlying code flaws. This apparently happened in this case, as the authentication bypass fix could be defeated simply by adding yet another parameter to the URL.
These bypasses
were found in the wild on July 19th
, and Microsoft quickly confirmed. The next day, the 20th, Microsoft issued an emergency patch to address the bypasses. The live exploitation appears to be
coming from a set of Chinese threat actors
, with a post-exploitation emphasis on stealing data and maintaining access. There seem to be more than 400 compromised systems worldwide, with some of those being rather high profile.
The Initramfs Encryption Bypass
While Linux enthusiasts have looked at Secure Boot with great skepticism ever since Microsoft and hardware vendors worked together to roll out this security feature, the modern reality is that Linux systems depend on it for their security assurances as well. An encrypted hard drive is of limited use if the elements used to decrypt the drive are compromised. Imagine a kernel or GRUB with a hidden backdoor, that modifies the system once the decryption password has been entered. There’s a new, interesting attack described earlier this month, that
targets the initramfs
.
Let’s take a quick detour to talk about how a Linux machine boots. At power start, the machine’s firmware does the Power On Self Test (POST), and then loads a UEFI payload from the hard drive. In the case of Linux, this is the shim, a first stage bootloader that then boots a signed GRUB image. GRUB then loads a signed Linux kernel and the initramfs image, which is nothing more than a compressed, minimal filesystem. It usually contains just the barest essentials to start the boot process and switch to the real root filesystem.
You may have noticed something missing in that description: The initramfs image isn’t signed. This is often built by the end-user with each new kernel, and so can’t be signed by the Linux distribution. The possibility of modifying the initramfs isn’t a new idea, but what this research adds is the observation that many distros provide a debug shell when the wrong encryption password is given several times in a row. This is quickly accessible to an attacker, and that debug shell does have access to the initramfs. A very quick “evil maid” attack is to boot the machine, fail the password several times to launch the debug shell, and install a malicious initramfs from there.
Et Tu Clear Linux?
Clear Linux OS was Intel’s playground for tuning Linux for running its best on modern Intel (and AMD) CPUs. And sadly,
as of the 18th, it is no longer maintained
, with updates and even security fixes ceasing immediately. This isn’t a huge surprise, as there have been
several Linux engineers departing the company in recent weeks
.
What’s particularly interesting is that there was no runway provided for active users, and security updates stopped immediately with this announcement. While Clear Linux wasn’t exactly intended for production use, there were certainly a group of users that used it in some variation of production use. And suddenly those users have an immediate need to migrate to a different, still supported Linux.
UI Automation
There’s a new Akamai report on malware using accessibility features to more effectively spy on users
. The malware is Coyote, and a particular strain targeting Brazilian Windows users has been found using the Microsoft UI Automation (UIA) framework. When I first found this story, I thought it was about malware using Artificial Intelligence. Instead, it’s the UIA accessibility feature that makes it trivial for malware to pull detailed information from inside a running application. The researchers at Akamai have been sounding the alert over this as a potential problem for several months, so it’s particularly interesting to see it in the wild in actual use.
Prepared Injection
When I first learned PHP security, one of the golden rules was to use prepared statements, to avoid SQL injection. This is still good advice — there’s just a sneaky secret inside PHP’s PDO SQL library.
It doesn’t actually do prepared statements by default
. It fakes them. And in some cases, that is enough to get a SQL injection, even in a “prepared statement”.
The key to this is injection of a
?
or
:
symbol, that the PDO parser can erroneously interpret as another bound parameter. So vulnerable code might look like
$pdo->prepare("SELECT $col FROM fruit WHERE name = ?")
. If an attacker can smuggle text into both the
$col
variable and the value to bind to
name
, then injection is possible.
The malicious request might look like
http://localhost:8000/?name=x
` FROM (SELECT table_name AS `'x` from information_schema.tables)y;%23&col=\?%23%00
. That url encoded text becomes
\?#\0
, which defeats PDO’s parsing logic, allowing the injection text to be inserted into the fake placeholder.
Bits and Bytes
Possibly the most depressing thing you will read today is
this play-by-play of Clorox and Cognizant each blaming each other for a nasty data breach in 2023
. Clorox outsourced their IT, and therefore can’t be blamed. Cognizant’ help desk reset passwords and multi factor authentication without any real verification of who was requesting those actions. And Cognizant’s statement is that Clorox should have had sufficient cybersecurity systems to mitigate these events.
VMWare’s Guest Authentication Service, VGAuth, had an issue where
a limited-privilege user on a Virtual Windows machine could abuse the service to gain SYSTEM privileges
. This is a bit different from the normal stories about VM additions, as this one doesn’t include an actual VM escape. Achieving SYSTEM is an important step in that direction for most exploit chains.
And finally,
who needs malware or attackers, when you have AI tools
? Two different AI agents were given too much freedom to work with real data, and one managed to delete folders while trying to reorganize them, while the other wiped out a production database. My favorite quote from the entire saga is directly from Gemini: “I have failed you completely and catastrophically. My review of the commands confirms my gross incompetence.”
| 12
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154221",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T14:24:14",
"content": "Initramfs – ugh!Ok, I get why a distro maintainer would want this. You have to come up with one kernel that works across all your many users hardware and install choices. In the past that might have been IDE (PATA) vs SCSI hard drives. Did anyone actually install Linux on MFMs? Now it’s probably all SATA but there are still many possible choices of filesystems.The alternative would be to compile the drivers for ALL of them directly into the kernel making for a very bloated kernel.But what about the power user who compiles their own kernel? I can think of exactly zero instances (outside of shutdown) when I would want my Linux desktop to unload it’s SATA or filesystem drivers. So why bother with this complication? I always used to just build those drivers into the kernel directly. No initrd or initramfs needed!Ever since the switch from BIOS to UEFI though… everything is so damn complicated! I eventually gave up and now I have to have an initramfs. Which means I also gave up having a trim and clean kernel and instead just use a config where I started with the distro’s defaults and only made changes where necessary. Maybe I just never understood the UEFI boot process well enough to pick the right “modules” to build in. But it shouldn’t need to be this difficult!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154319",
"author": "Cogidubnus Rex",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T20:01:23",
"content": "UEFI isn’t really any different to a traditional BIOS booting once you’ve got to GRUB (or your favourite bootloader). I never bothered with an initramfs pre or post UEFI so I’m curious what hurdles you faced with UEFI that necessitated an initramfs.",
"parent_id": "8154221",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154556",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T15:43:55",
"content": "I’m fairly sure anything in the last 5 years is going to be NVMe.",
"parent_id": "8154221",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154243",
"author": "anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T15:33:24",
"content": "If you encrypt /boot, an unsigned initrd doesn’t matter. Grub has supported encrypted /boot formanyyears. So, probably not an issue for anyone using a device that is interactively unlocked by sitting in front of it, if it has been setup correctly. Although most of these devices will have “secure” boot disabled to allow suspend to disk anyway.The only place unencrypted /boot is needed is remote hosts where you remotely unlock the encrypted disk via dropbear bundled in the initrd. These hosts are usually in a colo / are vms at some vps/cloud provider who could mess with you in many other ways than this particular evil maid attack.The issue isn’t nothing, but it for the main use case of “secure” boot, a mobile laptop, it is mitigated by just encrypting /boot.Possibly the real purpose of “secure” boot friction :“Can we create a standard or expand something like ACPI, so Linux becomes unbootable on PCs?”Bill GatesNote that MS’s compiler for acpi stuff (used by bios vendors) generates broken garbage for hosts that state they are running linux, so linux has to claim it is windows when retrieving acpi stuff from the bios– so, there is a pretty obvious example of MS doing as BG requested.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154367",
"author": "Greg Mathews",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T23:34:50",
"content": "If you don’t like PC and their standards which are made to run Windows (as demanded by 99,8% of users) then nobody is preventing you from doing your own thing using ARM, RISC-V, STM32 or MIPS.",
"parent_id": "8154243",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154425",
"author": "PPJ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T06:18:56",
"content": "Similar arguments were rose when Mozilla tried to break IE monopoly. If a standard if designed to block competition it’s never good for users.",
"parent_id": "8154367",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154433",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T06:36:57",
"content": "That 99.8% figure is ignoring the server market, which uses the same standards.But yeah, even with secure boot available, PC is a lot easier to run different operating systems on than practically any other platform.",
"parent_id": "8154367",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154448",
"author": "Not Authenticated",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T07:35:51",
"content": "If you encrypt /boot, an unsigned initrd doesn’t matter.Yes it does! Encryption is not authentication!Many attacks can be performed with a single flipped bit. If you can predict where on disk the bit resides, and you’re using aes-xts like luks defaults to, you can flip it without needing the decryption key.",
"parent_id": "8154243",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154251",
"author": "anszom",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T15:56:38",
"content": "I fail to find anything novel in the PHP SQL injection case. Using “SELECT $col …” means that you are not using a prepared statement after all. It is your responsibility to ensure that $col is safe…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154277",
"author": "i alone possess the truth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T17:21:54",
"content": "“Clorox outsourced their IT, and therefore can’t be blamed.” Saving moneyandcan’t be blamed? That’s most triumphant. Except we take and find that:“Clorox’s IT operations are handled by an internal IT department, headed by Chau Banks, the Senior Vice President and Chief Information and Data Officer. Clorox’s IT department is responsible for managing its IT infrastructure, systems, and data.”Clorox and Cognizant was 2023.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154376",
"author": "x0rpunk",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T00:03:35",
"content": "Sharepoint deserialization exploit uses heap grooming, so the attacker doesn’t even need to deal with CET, pkey, MTE, NX, and ASLR as long as they use forward-edge primitives.The IBM X-Force paper from BH is showing latest MS heap manager security is still just cookies, and the actual segment management is carried over from 7",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154394",
"author": "PPJ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T02:43:21",
"content": "Intel’s Clear Linux action is something people say can only happen to community driven products. Support from big company was supposed to be a guarantee of predictable live process.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,473.132939
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/25/transparent-pcbs-trigger-90s-nostalgia/
|
Transparent PCBs Trigger 90s Nostalgia
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"Arduino Hacks",
"PCB Hacks"
] |
[
"flex PCB",
"flexible circuit board",
"flexible printed circuit",
"pcb"
] |
What color do you like your microcontroller boards? Blue? Red? Maybe white or black? Sadly, all of those are about to look old hat. Why? Well, as shared by [JLCPCB],
this transparent Arduino looks amazing.
The board house produced this marvel using its transparent flexible printed circuit (FPC) material. Basically, the stuff they use for ribbon cables and flex PCBs, just made slightly differently to be see-through instead of vaguely brown.
The circuit in question is a
Flexduino
, an Arduino clone specifically designed to work on flexible substrates. It looks particularly good on this transparent material, with the LEDs glowing and the white silkscreen for contrast. If you like what you see, you can order your own circuits using this material directly from JLCPCB’s
regular old order form
.
Most of all, this project reminds us of the 1990s. Back then, you could get all kinds of games consoles and other electronics with transparent housings. There was the beloved PlayStation Crystal, while Nintendo did something similar with the N64 while adding a whole line of tinted color and charcoal versions too. Somehow seeing a bit of the inside of things is just cool. Even if, in some cases,
it’s just to avoid smuggling in prisons
.
It took decades before you could get custom PCBs quickly and easily. Now, board houses are competing for the enthusiast (consumer?) market, and competition is spurring development of crazy stuff like transparent and even
glow in the dark PCBs.
What next? We’re thinking edible, ROHS and WEEE be damned. Drop your thoughts in the comments.
Thanks to [George Graves] for the tip!
| 42
| 17
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154157",
"author": "RichC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T11:08:48",
"content": "I was thinking this would look really cool for multi-layer boards, but many of those layers are often ground-plane copper pours that would block the view……we need transparent aluminium ground planes too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154159",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T11:16:20",
"content": "ITO",
"parent_id": "8154157",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154269",
"author": "psuedonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T16:51:16",
"content": "ITO for traces too would be neat: a transparent slab of plastic with fully operating components just floating on it seemingly disconnected from each other.",
"parent_id": "8154159",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154180",
"author": "fuzzyfuzzyfungus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T12:45:36",
"content": "It would be both expensive and inferior in terms of resistance; but thanks to the demand for transparent electrodes for things like LCDs and window deicing Indium Tin Oxide thin films are a pretty mature option; as is depositing them on glass or other optically clear materials.Almost no utility for thermal management compared to a fat copper layer; and definitely not as good for more money; but common and mature enough that ‘more money’ would be “I hope you find this recreational or can command a premium for this novelty” more money; rather than “here’s eleventy-billion to bring Star Trek material science to life” more money.You’d need to want it; because it would be worse than a normal PCB in basically any respect except coolness; but you wouldn’t need to want it all that badly; especially if you weren’t trying to do leading edge RAM or PCIe6/7 on the board.",
"parent_id": "8154157",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154250",
"author": "ElectroPaint",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T15:54:51",
"content": "Make the ground plane into traces that use as little space as possible.",
"parent_id": "8154180",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154225",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T14:28:29",
"content": "“but many of those layers are often ground-plane copper pours that would block the view…”Back In The Day, planes were often hatches rather than solid copper (it’s still done that way in some places for various whatever reasons). It’s obviously worse than solid copper, butanyhatch would be better than no ground plane at all.",
"parent_id": "8154157",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154262",
"author": "Lwatcdr",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T16:31:07",
"content": "Graphene. Done.",
"parent_id": "8154157",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154344",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T22:05:24",
"content": "Can’t do without large pours on high powered design or high frequency design. Lower power and slower devices like UNO clone can be done.Maybe a transparent C64 clone? They run at 1MHz (far slower than UNO) and could be done without the pours if one made 5v and GND traces wide enough. (there’s also 9v AC but it’s used in just a few spots and wouldn’t be high current) FCC might not like it though.",
"parent_id": "8154157",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154482",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T10:35:47",
"content": "There was a “Z80 on Glass” prototype by Sharp..http://www.z80.info/sharp/z80_glas.htm",
"parent_id": "8154344",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154171",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T12:06:21",
"content": "Most of all, this project reminds us of the 1990s. Back then, you could get all kinds of games consoles and other electronics with transparent housings. There was the beloved PlayStation Crystal, while Nintendo did something similar with the N64 while adding a whole line of tinted color and charcoal versions too. Somehow seeing a bit of the inside of things is just cool.The original Gameboy had a special edition in a clear case, too.Even if, in some cases, it’s just to avoid smuggling in prisons.Where I live, there’s no “prison tech” in clear plastic chassis.It must be an US American thing, I guess.Here where I live, the education and scientific sector uses clear plastic, rather.For demonstration purposes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154189",
"author": "mayhem",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T13:07:56",
"content": "It may very well be an American thing. Never really thought about that before. The clear cased prison items sell for an obnoxious premium on the auction site though!",
"parent_id": "8154171",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154345",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T22:09:59",
"content": "US prisons often had contraband and the rooms were regularly searched for stuff like weed and shivs. Clear TV and clear devices makes it easier for guards to inspect for hidden stuff. No need to open up every TV.US prison sucks compared to most of the world. They’d rather lock up people than to try and rehabilitate them and help them get a job or mental treatment.",
"parent_id": "8154189",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154489",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T11:04:56",
"content": "I heard/read about it. Where I live, inmates in certain prisons have their own little room (locked) with personal belongings and the guards try to be respectful/polite.The concept is to keep them their human dignity and try to re-socalize the inmates, to make them co-operate.It seems naive at first, likely, but the plan is less about guilt and punishment but to have mentally healthy/stable citizens at the end of the stay,which then can be safely released back into society.I’m not saying this the perfect or universal solution,but it apparently seems to mostly work with the people from this place.The culture, overall mentality and how they were raised probably has to do with it, too.Anyway, that’s probably the reason there’s not so much need for see- through appliances,the inmates here simply have no dire desire to hide something.Good behavior probably pays off much more.That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be cool to have clear electronics nevertheless, though! 😃",
"parent_id": "8154345",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154599",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T18:14:56",
"content": "It is to make it easier for prison officials to check for banned items.",
"parent_id": "8154171",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154172",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T12:08:21",
"content": "Wait, is it possible to make vias and microvias in this substrate?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154176",
"author": "mordae",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T12:23:24",
"content": "Is the ground plane some kind of transparent metal as well?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154178",
"author": "Mr Nobody",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T12:29:54",
"content": "I want PCBs made of organic lab synthesized brain material with neural nets and synapses exposed to pinouts.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154450",
"author": "Swake",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T07:42:18",
"content": "Printed Circuit Brains it is.",
"parent_id": "8154178",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154723",
"author": "Jeffrey P Jackson",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T01:03:28",
"content": "Yes, I too!",
"parent_id": "8154178",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155240",
"author": "AwD",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:09:45",
"content": "Sounds great for the zombie apocalypse too. You could use discarded electronics to distract the hoard while you make your exit.",
"parent_id": "8154178",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154187",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T13:04:33",
"content": "just made slightly differently to be see-through instead of vaguely brown.No. not a slight difference. The “vaguely brown” is called polyimide. It´s a polymer that resist relatively high temperatures (solderable).So, it might be a variant of polyimide (transparent, this exists) or another kind of polymer. And this is not an insignificant detail.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154258",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T16:17:14",
"content": "It’s a different polymer. It’s high temperature PET, sowayless resilient than kapton (polyimide). With kapton it isn’t even the high temp that’s surprising, kapton holds up even at cryo temps.",
"parent_id": "8154187",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154222",
"author": "Robotgrandpa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T14:24:28",
"content": "I think (not 100%…) that the new Commodore 64 Ultimate announcement said that it has transparent PCBs. I know that the new CEO always used PCBWay in the past, but he may have switched to this company to be a vendor for his company or maybe several companies offer these now…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154272",
"author": "MurF",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T17:08:02",
"content": "Your need a lot of luck getting it through EMC qualification if you want this one the open market. Also the soldering looks abysmal.",
"parent_id": "8154222",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154286",
"author": "Durandal",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T17:41:27",
"content": "The transparent PCB is for the mechanical keyboard, not the mainboard.",
"parent_id": "8154222",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154370",
"author": "Zorro",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T23:36:50",
"content": "Only the keyboard PCB is transparent. It’s being made by Jim drew. An old time commodore guy who was previously involved with CBM, utilities unlimited, emplant and currently FPGA arcade fame. I believe the c64 ultimate mb is being made by pcbway as they mentioned they will be visiting PCB to see it being produced.",
"parent_id": "8154222",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154224",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T14:28:17",
"content": "I thought this was cool back in the 90s but after learning how they use it in prisons a home full of clear-cased electronics became a lot less appealing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154298",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T18:20:30",
"content": "Makes sense. How a separate room for that kind of electronics? A small, little room? “The 90s room”, maybe?",
"parent_id": "8154224",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154242",
"author": "deshipu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T15:25:00",
"content": "Now we really need those pin headers (male and female) with transparent plastic…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154321",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T20:13:13",
"content": "They’ve existed in the 1970s! 😃",
"parent_id": "8154242",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154356",
"author": "David Rehak",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T22:38:58",
"content": "Now that’s a great idea I have had so many connection issues. Being able to see the make/female mating surfaces would be fantastic",
"parent_id": "8154242",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154512",
"author": "Mr Nobody",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T12:09:51",
"content": "Yep, most useful comment of the month.",
"parent_id": "8154356",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154278",
"author": "MurF",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T17:25:55",
"content": "Without a ground plane, the designer would need a lot of luck getting it through EMC qualification, unless it not for sale on the market. And abysmal soldering, but held in white gloves as if it’s some high tech process. But as it’s JLPCB, you get what you pay for. Not that I’m whinging, but it doesn’t look well built at all and not an advert for their work. Today processors require a good ground plane, not only for decoupling which will help with qualification, but that crystal may become susectable to failure even after startup. Although for some applications a clear PCB would be excellent idea especially for use with membrane keyboards with back light buttons using ‘bottom entry’ LEDs (they emit light towards the PCB and need a hole in the PCB to let the light though without attenuating it’s brightness).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154690",
"author": "notmyfault2000",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T22:57:15",
"content": "This really just seems like a one off proof of concept for the tech. Lacking the ground plane makes sense if they’re trying to show off the transparency rather than create an Arduino clone to sell.",
"parent_id": "8154278",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154280",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T17:28:09",
"content": "5 years ago French maker Heliox described how to make cirquit boards on glass:https://youtu.be/jvw5OCUHaqc?si=6kXyADFpPWRSBATRorhttps://hackaday.com/2019/12/01/creating-easy-glass-circuit-boards-at-home/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154293",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T17:52:28",
"content": "Could someone please use this tech to put in an order of the Crystal cMoy? (link below) I’ve tried 3 times to make one as beautiful and at this point I think I’m ready to pivot to something that may actually work.https://www.instructables.com/Crystal-cMoy-Free-Form-Headphone-Amplifier/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154297",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T18:07:47",
"content": "hackers",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154536",
"author": "Rob T Firefly",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T13:51:38",
"content": "Enjoy the laptop, Cool!",
"parent_id": "8154297",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154455",
"author": "Jan-Willem",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T08:07:43",
"content": "While it’s a cool technology, and I can see quite easily how to apply it to artsy projects, there isn’t a lot of information to go on. I prefer to have more information than a Reddit post with just three pictures. Beside that the option is now available at JLCPCB, what can someone learn from this post?From how I understand flexible PCBs, the substrate is a large temperature range polyamide. The same stuff used for Kapton tape. I would like to learn about this new material which makes transparent PCB possible.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154619",
"author": "Ryan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:11:19",
"content": "RIP to all signal integrity",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154634",
"author": "Delve",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:39:59",
"content": "This is so interesting! In this thread they talk about in 10 years time having transparent pcbs, here we are 12 years later talking about transparent pcbs. I want a transparent mobo now, don’t care how “ugly”https://linustechtips.com/topic/17804-clear-pcb-motherboards/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154705",
"author": "Tim",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T23:25:34",
"content": "I’ve seen plenty of translucent PCB on 90s era TV’s and stereos. Boards that didn’t need a copper backplane.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,473.359326
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/25/reachy-the-robot-gets-a-mini-kit-version/
|
Reachy The Robot Gets A Mini (Kit) Version
|
Donald Papp
|
[
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Robots Hacks"
] |
[
"ai",
"huggingface",
"kit",
"machine learning",
"reachy",
"robot"
] |
Reachy Mini
is a kit for a compact, open-source robot designed explicitly for AI experimentation and human interaction. The kit is available from Hugging Face, which is itself a repository and hosting service for machine learning models. Reachy seems to be one of their efforts at branching out from pure software.
Our guess is that some form of Stewart Platform handles the head movement.
Reachy Mini is intended as a development platform, allowing people to make and share models for different behaviors, hence the Hugging Face integration to make that easier. On the inside of the full version is a Raspberry Pi, and we suspect some form of
Stewart Platform
is responsible for the movement of the head. There’s also a cheaper (299 USD) “lite” version intended for tethered use, and a planned simulator to allow development and testing without access to a physical Reachy at all.
Reachy has a distinctive head and face, so if you’re thinking it looks familiar that’s probably because
we first covered Reachy the humanoid robot
as a project from Pollen Robotics (Hugging Face acquired Pollen Robotics in April 2025.)
The idea behind the smaller Reachy Mini seems to be to provide a platform to experiment with expressive human communication via cameras and audio, rather than to be the kind of robot that moves around and manipulates objects.
It’s still early in the project, so if you want to know more you can find
a bit more information about Reachy Mini at Pollen’s site
and you can see Reachy Mini move in a short video, embedded just below.
| 13
| 11
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154142",
"author": "K8",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T09:33:35",
"content": "Totally stealing those cute kinematics.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154150",
"author": "70sjukebox",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T10:40:41",
"content": "An up front link to the open source stuff for this robot would be neat to have",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154190",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T13:08:10",
"content": "“expressive human communication” like? mouthless communication ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154290",
"author": "Dustbuster7000",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T17:45:22",
"content": "Yes. You do it all the time. You’re doing it now.",
"parent_id": "8154190",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155174",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T12:02:33",
"content": "How do you know? They could be using a sip&puff interface. After all, they aren’t changing upper/lower case.",
"parent_id": "8154290",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154197",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T13:18:02",
"content": "The sideways head bob in the GIF reminds me of the Crafsman (steady craftin’)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154203",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T13:32:52",
"content": "I don’t know if the antennæ are functional or just for looks, but they seem too long, slightly dangerous, and out of place with the rest of the æsthetic. I think a couple of stubby, white rubber ducks – with optional RGB LEDs in the tips – would work much better.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154210",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T13:57:26",
"content": "Ironic that they named it Reachy despite not having any arms",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154230",
"author": "deshipu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T14:43:43",
"content": "That’s not a robot, that’s a surveillance camera with a face painted on…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154259",
"author": "H Hack",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T16:24:18",
"content": "Physical model and the PCB aren’t open source.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154302",
"author": "Flavelius",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T18:34:46",
"content": "The guessed steward platform is likely a miniaturized version of their “orbita(R) joint” on the larger model (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSL39WFxCLE)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154340",
"author": "Aaron",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T21:40:08",
"content": "I absolutely love this. I designed something (physically) similar that has never left the pages of my notebooks. It’s really wonderful to see someone with a similar idea bring it to fruition. I like that there’s room in the robotics space to span between anthropomorphized and the far counter-description.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155073",
"author": "Johnu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T08:17:56",
"content": "Reminds me of the Keepon robot thing that came out some years ago, from memory that used very simple controls to be surprisingly expressive.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,473.416681
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/24/not-repairing-an-old-tape-recorder/
|
Not Repairing An Old Tape Recorder
|
Al Williams
|
[
"Teardown"
] |
[
"reel-to-reel",
"tape recorder"
] |
When you think of a tape recorder, you might think of a cassette tape. However, [Michael Simpson] has an
old Star-Lite
small reel-to-reel tape machine. It isn’t a repair so much as a rework to make it work better. These cheap machines were never the best, although a $19 tape player back then was a luxury.
Part of the problem is that the design of the tape player wasn’t all that good to begin with. The motor runs off two C cells in parallel. When these were new in the 1960s, that would have meant conventional carbon-zinc batteries, so the voltage would have varied wildly. That didn’t matter, though, because the drive was directly to the tape reel, so the speed also varied based on how much tape was left on the reel.
The amplifier has four transistors. [Michael] decided to replace the capacitors on the unit. He noticed, too, that the volume control is in line with the microphone when recording, so even though the recording was supposedly in need of repair, it turned out to be simply a case of the volume control being turned down. Pretty impressive for a six-decade-old piece of consumer electronics.
The capacitor change-out was simple enough. Some cleaning and lubing was also in order. Did it help? You’ll have to listen and decide for yourself.
So, no real repair was in the works, but it is an interesting look back at an iconic piece of consumer tech. Tape recorders like this were an early form of social media.
No kidding
. If you’d rather not buy a tape recorder, you could
roll your own
.
| 13
| 9
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154195",
"author": "Steven-X",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T13:15:05",
"content": "That recorder would be my age.But I do remember when the reel-to-reel recorder was the sign of an awesome home sound system.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154212",
"author": "Dan Julio",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T14:05:21",
"content": "“This tape will self-destruct in five seconds”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154218",
"author": "RSMilward",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T14:19:31",
"content": "There are videos on YouTube about the tape recorders used in the Mission: Impossible TV series, a lot of them looked like this.",
"parent_id": "8154212",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154309",
"author": "Matt k",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T19:01:23",
"content": "Exactly what I was thinking when I saw it.",
"parent_id": "8154212",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154993",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T03:58:39",
"content": "Beat me to it. I was thinking “Good morning Mr. Phelps…”",
"parent_id": "8154212",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154215",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T14:14:53",
"content": "Be careful with these cheap recorders. My Dad had one with a permanent magnet erase head that left the tape magnetized in a way that would magnetize the playback head if you tried to play the tape on another tape deck.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154231",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T14:53:35",
"content": "I’ve never seen capacitors fail high. Maybe they were just loosely spec’d??Also, if I really wanted to check them I’d check the ESR, not just the capacitance.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154266",
"author": "Baljit",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T16:45:17",
"content": "I am a fan of Reel to Reel tape recorder. I have two Akia Reel decks from the 70’s. Lovely machines they are.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154559",
"author": "Mel Narunsky",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T16:05:30",
"content": "Akai?",
"parent_id": "8154266",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154357",
"author": "Steve-OH",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T22:40:17",
"content": "Some time in the early 60s, when I was around five years old, I received a compact reel-to-reel recorder similar to this one as a gift from my grandmother. (It was a little higher quality, at least; it had a capstan drive and I don’t remember there being any problems with it maintaining a constant tape speed.) She had the same model, and the idea was that we would record tapes and send them to each other. I think that lasted a couple of months…. I did continue to use the recorder for assorted musical experiments at least through high school.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154404",
"author": "Tommy L Moon",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T04:17:22",
"content": "Was at an estate sale this past week and they were 2 of these units for sale. I was not interested in them but I have 5 bigger units a couple of TEAC units, a SONY and a AKAI",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154539",
"author": "Doug Fields",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T14:02:16",
"content": "Great video. I looked in my equipment archives and there it is, a Star-Lite Tape-O-Matic TP-700! I will check it out. Wonder if it has advanced features such as a capstan tape drive and fast forward capability",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154973",
"author": "hatterasman",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T01:57:29",
"content": "I had that exact same Star-Lite tape recorder in the 1960s. It worked great until one day in the 1970s when it just died.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,473.467009
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/24/when-the-uks-telephone-network-went-digital-with-system-x/
|
When The UK’s Telephone Network Went Digital With System X
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"History"
] |
[
"telephone exchange"
] |
The switch from analog telephone exchanges to a purely digital network meant a revolution in just about any way imaginable. Gone were the bulky physical switches and associated system limitations. In the UK this change happened in the early 1980s, with what the Post Office Telecommunications (later British Telecom) and associated companies called
System X
. Along with the system’s rollout,
promotional videos like this 1983 one
were meant to educate the public and likely any investors on what a smashing idea the whole system was.
Although for the average person in the UK the introduction of the new digital telephone network probably didn’t mean a major change beyond a few new features like group calls, the same wasn’t true for the network operator whose exchanges and networks got much smaller and more efficient, as explained in the video. To this day
System X
remains the backbone of the telephone network in the UK.
To get an idea of the immense scale of the old analog system,
this 1982 video
(also embedded below) shows the system as it existed before System X began to replace it. The latter part of the video provides significant detail of System X and its implementation at the time, although when this video was produced much of the system was still being developed.
Thanks to [James Bowman] for the tip.
| 24
| 12
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154115",
"author": "Johnu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T08:18:08",
"content": "System X was still very much alive and working when I left in ~09, there were boards that started out with a couple of Z80’s in them that had pentiums strapped in there (the pentiums were obsolete by then too, just less obsolete).The complexity and reliability/redundancy were incredible for the age, definitely one of those “big iron” systems of legend that you just would not see developed these days.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154799",
"author": "Zac",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T10:02:20",
"content": "I was working at Plessey in the early “70s at a time when they, along with the other major electronics companies, were tendering for the System X project. Although I was not involved (I was in the modems lab) the talk was all around. The old electromechanical exchanges were inherently self healing – faulty switches would be automatically routed around. Whereas with the central control of System X, if the ‘computer’ went down, the whole exchange went down! So reliability was of paramount importance. I seem to remember the GPO reliability specification was a total downtime of no more than 5 minutes in 30 years! Plessey’s solution (as I believe was everyone else’s) was to have 3 identical processing units simultaneously running each instruction, comparing notes and acting on the majority decision. In the event of disagreement, the majority two would turn on and analyse the the other, attempting to diagnose and report the fault. Plessey didn’t win the contract but managed to sell their system to the military, rebranded as Ptarmigan.",
"parent_id": "8154115",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154147",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T10:20:25",
"content": "Good timing for the article given that large swathes of the BT network went down yesterday.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154751",
"author": "Alex B",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T04:21:35",
"content": "So that’s why my Three 5G broadband stopped working yesterday!",
"parent_id": "8154147",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154153",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T10:56:54",
"content": "“To this day System X remains the backbone of the telephone network in the UK”That’s almost certainly not true anymore, the UK phone network is transitioning to VoIP for everyone, most people will be on VoIP already by now; the aim is to completely turn off the PSTN in January 2027.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154208",
"author": "Floydian Slip",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T13:51:26",
"content": "Yup. To quote the wikipedia page linked in the article:Many of the System X exchanges installed during the 1980s continue in service into the 2020s.In the first decade of the 21st century, System X was scheduled for replacement with softswitch equipment as part of BT’s 21st Century Network (21CN) programme. Some other users of System X – in particular Jersey Telecom and Kingston Communications – replaced their circuit-switched System X equipment with Marconi XCD5000 softswitches (which were intended as the replacement for System X) and Access Hub multiservice access nodes. However, the omission of Marconi from BT’s 21CN supplier list, and the shift in focus from telephony to broadband, led to much of the System X estate being maintained. The switched telephone network (both PSTN and ISDN) is due to be turned off on 31 January 2027, after customers are moved to voice over IP services.[4][5]",
"parent_id": "8154153",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154241",
"author": "Angus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T15:24:27",
"content": "Sadly the majority of domestic customers are still on analogue at the network edge. The 2027 target was originally 2025. The migration hasn’t been well managed. Many services that rely on analogue connections (security alarms etc) haven’t migrated their customers.",
"parent_id": "8154153",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154322",
"author": "Cogidubnus Rex",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T20:14:34",
"content": "Given the rather pathetic FTTP rollout (which is the prerequisite for analog switching to VOIP) “most people will be on VoIP already by now;” is certainly false. As of June 2025 56.03% have FTTPavailablewhich means somewhat less (likely a lot less) than 50% will have been connected to FTTP and had their phone service moved to VOIP.",
"parent_id": "8154153",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154470",
"author": "Ivan Armsby",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T09:21:49",
"content": "Fibre is not a prerequisite for VoIP.",
"parent_id": "8154322",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154473",
"author": "Jay",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T09:41:09",
"content": "FTTP is not a precursor to digital voice (ie VoIP). Can work just fine on ADSL or VDSL via SOGEA.",
"parent_id": "8154322",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156090",
"author": "smf",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T10:16:35",
"content": "I have FTTC and have switched to VoIP. If you switch supplier now, you will be on VoIP.",
"parent_id": "8154322",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154181",
"author": "IJM",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T12:54:30",
"content": "I don’t know what nationality the author is, but why is the article written on American English. When the subject is the British telephone system.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154314",
"author": "arifyn",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T19:33:01",
"content": "Ok, serious question from a non-brit because I’m curious – is there anything, besides using “analogue” instead of “analog”, that you would change to rewrite this in British English?(Regardless, as far as I know, hackaday authors have always used whatever form of English they prefer, and I don’t see a problem with that. In fact I’d be a bit confused if an author like Jenny List had to write about “color film” instead of “colour film” just because the subject was an American film company like Kodak)",
"parent_id": "8154181",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154417",
"author": "rasz_pl",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T05:30:22",
"content": "Why are articles about Mars not written in Martian?",
"parent_id": "8154181",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154229",
"author": "Paul McGuinness",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T14:41:18",
"content": "I remember as a child standing in the local GPO exchange in Brentwood watching the strowger exchange clacking away, and the ladies that were writing downt the ‘meter readings’ off the back of them for the bills (this would have been around 1975)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154248",
"author": "njohn",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T15:53:00",
"content": "Did my weeks work experience at a local exchange in late ’86. There was a mixture of strowger and system X. Mostly got to cut off people who didn’t pay their bill, which was much simpler with system X if my memory serves…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154261",
"author": "John Amess",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T16:31:05",
"content": "Not all strowger exchanges were replaced with System X. A large amount were replaced with System Y. Swedish Ericsson AXE10. As BT did not want all their eggs in one basket.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154645",
"author": "Casey",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T20:13:23",
"content": "Yes erricson were always interested in our system x at trade shows, etc. Often found them creeping around the racks.",
"parent_id": "8154261",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156571",
"author": "Mark",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T22:42:18",
"content": "I worked with AXE10 for a long while, an amazing system I remember fondly, shame most of my knowledge is completely obsolete these days!",
"parent_id": "8154261",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154268",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T16:48:38",
"content": "We in the US went with the cheapest route of “let telcos decide and suck our blank check tax money in the process”.Results are such – while the initial switch to all digital (I’d say early 1980s throughout early 1990s – THAT LONG), the secondary push to “everything is cloud” that had complete fairly recently (maybe 2020) saw the inevitable gotcha happen more often than not – a meager regional netsplit would disable ALL phones in the area, including emergency/police/fire/hospitals. Literally. That’s because for-profit entities will NOT voluntarily spill over their traffic to their competitors, actually, they will proaggressively resist such nonsense at each and every turn.Where I live we have witnessed such a thing – ALL phones gone dead for something like 4 hours at the time – at least three times within one year alone.Translation, regulators/schmegulators, FCC already showed just how corrupt it can be (net neutrality? anyone? anyone?), so it is no longer capable of enforcing stable critical communications – in comparison, it is quite reliable with receiving lobby money in exchange for looking elsewhere.(as a side note, one of the oldest – in the area – automated local exchanges was gutted some time early 2000; the building itself, a drab two-story windowless disaster of architecture, sporting ugly bare basics warehouse kind of aesthetics, stands to this day right on a main street, occupying prime real estate island; it is too small to do amazon warehousing, no windows means no office want it; thick solid walls and massive basement that used to house batteries, means nobody wants to invest into cleaning the thing; it probably will stay around for another decade, surrounded by the quickly growing mushrooms of “prime condos” and “high-priced rentals” of unclear demographics – the “job growth” has been moderate around maybe 1% annually).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154327",
"author": "Nicholas Shaun Tremayne",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T20:36:12",
"content": "The BT network no longer uses system X backbone but the name of escapes me!It was charging 10 years ago completed last year with interface fitted to existing System X.I went to one of the launches on a University campus as the new way forward. Was going to be world leader but got cut back with the cutbacks in the mid to late 80’s!Got to look at my first system frame in 84.Even bolted on Vax machines to do the heavy lifting & covert over to a digital network faster.The Vax machines was my first introduction to MUD gaming!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154644",
"author": "Casey",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T20:11:03",
"content": "I worked on System X starting in the esrly 80’s.. Quite the forefront of technology.Worked on quite a number of processors and Microcontrollers such as 6809, 8051, 68008, 68010, 68020 then onto powerquicc.. Mostly assembler and C.. All this good groundwork has meant I’ve been relatively successful in the software industry my whole career. I do feel though that we’ll never see great engineers that I had the privilege to work with again.. Today’s young upstarts wouldn’t have a clue or don’t even show any interest in what happens behind the scenes. Times change I guess.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154793",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T09:24:57",
"content": "My dad used to work for STC, remember him talking about them doing work as part of the System X changeover.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8162077",
"author": "Bob Fastner",
"timestamp": "2025-08-13T14:40:44",
"content": "The prototype System X DSSS 1 (digital switching sub system) aka System X MK 1 is on exhibition at the National Museum Of Computing, Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes (home of the WW2 codebreakers).See:https://www.tnmoc.org/events/2023/2/25/flowers-to-fibre-exhibition-openinghttps://www.communicationsmuseum.org.uk/flowerstofibre/https://www.tnmoc.org/flowers-to-fibre",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,473.525019
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/24/comprehensive-test-set-released-for-the-intel-80286/
|
Comprehensive Test Set Released For The Intel 80286
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"Retrocomputing"
] |
[
"286",
"80286",
"arduinox86",
"cpu",
"intel"
] |
Remember the 80286? It was the sequel to the 8086, the chip that started it all, and it powered a great number of machines in the early years of the personal computing revolution. It might not be as relevant today, but regardless,
[Daniel Balsom] has now released a comprehensive test suite
for the ancient chip. (via
The Register
)
The complete battery of tests are available
on Github,
and were produced using a Harris N80C286-12 from 1986. “The real mode test suite contains 326 instruction forms, containing nearly 1.5 million instruction executions with over 32 million cycle states captured,” Daniel explains. “This is fewer tests than the
previous 8088 test suite
, but test coverage is better overall due to improved instruction generation methods.” For now, the tests focus on the 286 running in real mode. There are no “unreal” or protected mode tests, but [Daniel] aims to deliver the in the future.
[Daniel] uses the tests with the
ArduinoX86
, a platform that uses the microcontroller to control and test old-school CPUs. The tests aid with development of emulators like [Daniel’s] own
MartyPC
, by verifying the CPU’s behavior in a cycle-accurate way.
We’ve explored
some secrets of the 286
before, too. If you’ve been doing your own digging into Intel’s old processors, or anyone else’s for that matter, don’t hesitate to notify the
tipsline.
[Thanks to Stephen Walters for the tip!]
| 23
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153957",
"author": "dremu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T23:32:35",
"content": "“[The 80286] was the sequel to the 8086” is either an over-simplification or disingenuous, I can’t decide. There was the 80186/80188 in there, though they’re a special kettle of fish in their own right. Yes, I know, the 80186 wasn’t exactly a microprocessor, but a microcontroller … yet the article just says “chip”, not specifying what flavor.To avoid being a negative poster, and for the obligatory old-guy “I had an [x]”, I had a Tandy 2000, which I used for rendering Mandelbrots calculated on an 80286-based S100 system. Because I could, not because it made sense =))",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154016",
"author": "GloriousCow",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T02:05:47",
"content": "I think its a fair statement. The 80186 and 80286 were basically released at the same time, so the 80286 isn’t exactly the sequel to the 80186 – they share a lot of commonalities",
"parent_id": "8153957",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154030",
"author": "dremu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T03:10:30",
"content": "Mmm, interesting. My memories aren’t what they used to be — insert joke here about DRAM needing refresh or flash failure or something — so I guess I gotta go wiki-ing.IIRC, the errata to the 80186 was longer than the manual proper, so at the very least the ‘286 got more right =))",
"parent_id": "8154016",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154165",
"author": "GloriousCow",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T11:38:04",
"content": "The 286 has a ton of errata, that linger on through many steppings. It was a source of a lot of frustration for software developers, it delayed the release of Concurrent DOS 286 for quite a long time.",
"parent_id": "8154030",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154182",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T12:54:56",
"content": "“The later E-stepping level of the 80286 was a very clean CPU, free of the several significant errata that caused problems for programmers and operating system writers in the earlier B-step and C-step CPUs (common in the AT and AT clones).”Source:http://wwww.datasheets.pl/technika_komputerowa/CPU/Intel_80286.pdfI’m not entirely sure, but think that’s a reference to E-2 stepping.",
"parent_id": "8154165",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154064",
"author": "Sean",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T06:35:47",
"content": "The original IBM-PC has an 8088 anyway, not an 8086.Sometimes we sold an IBM pc with a V20 chip replacing the 8088. The V20 could also execute pure Z80 assembly, and thus dual boot CP/M or DOS 1.2a.",
"parent_id": "8153957",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154071",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:06:40",
"content": "Olivetti M24 (AT&T 6300) and Schneider PC1512/1640 had the real 8086, though.The German ct’86 computer used it, too.The NEC V30 was a popular upgrade on these, also added some 80186/80286 instructions.But newer real mode instructions wee useful by early 90s, rather, when software expected 80286..Then ladt but not least.. Accelerator boards.Orchid Tiny Turbo, Microsoft MACH 10, MACH 20 etc.They all upgraded 8088 to something better.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofD-xZ3f9MQhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Py5VnKQE8https://www.siliconindia.com/news/technology/microsofts-littleknown-hardware-history-nid-125937-cid-2.html",
"parent_id": "8154064",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154167",
"author": "GloriousCow",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T11:39:45",
"content": "My favorite accellerator card for the PC is the Maynard Electronics Surprise! Card. It’s a card that plugs into a slot on a DIP-40 socket adapter with a V20 on it and a clock-doubling circuit.",
"parent_id": "8154071",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154185",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T12:57:18",
"content": "Now that’s certainly an interesting, unusual accelerator card! Thanks for the info! 😎",
"parent_id": "8154167",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153958",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T23:33:58",
"content": "a lot of guts to call something comprehensive when it doesn’t test the protected mode :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153980",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T00:25:03",
"content": "CheckIt! v3 on DOS can do that, as part of the mainboard test..",
"parent_id": "8153958",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154015",
"author": "GloriousCow",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T02:03:21",
"content": "If it wasn’t made clear by the article these tests are intended for emulator authors, to validate correctness of 286 emulation. Checkit may fail in your emulator, but you may not know why. These tests will hopefully narrow it down to a specific instruction.",
"parent_id": "8153980",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154091",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:43:08",
"content": "I see, so it’s more of an CPU behavior analyzer than a tester.",
"parent_id": "8154015",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154169",
"author": "GloriousCow",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T11:41:43",
"content": "You could use it as a chip-tester by feeding the instructions back into the CPU – I call this validation mode. But there are more practical ways to test a CPU. The FPGA-based Universal Chip Analyzer will probably be the best tool for that job, when it is released.",
"parent_id": "8154091",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154193",
"author": "WTF Detector",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T13:11:22",
"content": "Greg’s point remains – I was extremely excited when I saw the coverage of this stuff, in the hope that it would be worth pointing the rest of the MAME team towards, but protected-mode coverage is a wide gap.That doesn’t detract from the sheer level of skill and determination it takes to cover almost the entirety of real-mode. I think people who have gripes about the lack of protected-mode coverage are missing the forest for the trees, since I’d be pretty surprised if protected-mode isn’t somewhere on your future radar. You know what you’re doing and you’re doing a damn good job doing it.Just try not to let it get to you when commenters express a certain level of disappointment. Your Github repo is pretty unambiguous about what the test suite is and isn’t, so any end-user disappointment is entirely the fault of the people writing breathless articles based on a bunch of assumptions without fully understanding what they’re actually looking at.",
"parent_id": "8154015",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154304",
"author": "GloriousCow",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T18:36:18",
"content": "Originally, I was going to do 186 tests, once I had an 80L186 under Arduino control. But when 286 looked feasible, I figured that most people were ever only using 186 tests because 286 tests weren’t available. I’ll probably go back and put out some 186 tests for fun, but I’d like to use an older 186 that retains the queue status lines so we can do prefetching.I felt that having a real mode test suite was immediately useful – and it would be good to get them in front of people and shake out any bugs before proceeding with protected mode.Protected mode is definitely on my radar, considering I want MartyPC to be accurate there too, and I am my own test consumer. I am not sure if the ‘single instruction’ test methodology will be appropriate or not, we’ll see. I’m still learning the ins and outs of how protected mode works.In any case, protected mode tests are trickier as we can’t simply randomize memory, or we’ll have a test suite full of triple faults which aren’t much use to anyone. So heuristics need to be developed to have a decent mix of successful and faulting instructions.",
"parent_id": "8154193",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154014",
"author": "GloriousCow",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T02:02:05",
"content": "I don’t think I personally used that word to describe them.",
"parent_id": "8153958",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153974",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T00:19:02",
"content": "Damn, here I was hoping Intel release their full trade-secret/in-house test suite in the interest of being a hero to the retro community.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153981",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T00:25:46",
"content": "Intel won’t do that, has no heart.",
"parent_id": "8153974",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154019",
"author": "Gus A Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T02:20:00",
"content": "should’ve done it with Doom running on a 555",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154073",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:09:10",
"content": "Considering the complexity of its game logic, that’s fair. ;)",
"parent_id": "8154019",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154039",
"author": "make piece not war",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T04:00:17",
"content": "“but [Daniel] aims to deliver the in the future.”Perhaps it should be “deliverthatin the future”?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154174",
"author": "Clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T12:13:05",
"content": "Ever wonder how they debugged a CPU chip after making it?Imagine what they needed in the 70.and 80sBig very expensive chip tester costing like a 100 grandHas its own CPU and logic faster than the one being tested",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,473.588273
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/24/painting-in-metal-with-selective-electroplating/
|
Painting In Metal With Selective Electroplating
|
Aaron Beckendorf
|
[
"3d Printer hacks",
"chemistry hacks"
] |
[
"3018",
"cnc",
"electrochemistry",
"electrolyte",
"electrolyte bath",
"electroplating"
] |
Most research on electroplating tries to find ways to make it plate parts more uniformly. [Ajc150] took the opposite direction, though, with his
selective electroplating
project, which uses an electrode mounted on a CNC motion system to electrochemically print images onto a metal sheet (
GitHub repository
).
Normally, selective electroplating would use a mask, but masks don’t allow gradients to be deposited. However, electroplating tends to occur most heavily at the point closest to the anode, and the effect gets stronger the closer the anode is. To take advantage of this effect, [ajc150] replaced the router of an inexpensive 3018 CNC machine with a nickel anode, mounted an electrolyte bath in the workspace, and laid a flat steel cathode in it. When the anode moves close to a certain point on the steel cathode, most of the plating takes place there.
To actually print an image with this setup, [ajc150] wrote a Python program to convert an image into set of G-code instructions for the CNC. The darker a pixel of the image was, the longer the electrode would spend over the corresponding part of the metal sheet. Since darkness wasn’t linearly proportional to plating time, the program used a gamma correction function to adjust times, though this did require [ajc150] to recalibrate the setup after each change. The system works well enough to print recognizable images, but still has room for improvement. In particular, [ajc150] would like to extend this to a faster multi-nozzle system, and have the algorithm take into account spillover between the pixel being plated and its neighbors.
This general technique is reminiscent of a
metal 3D printing method
we’ve seen before. We
more frequently
see this process run
in reverse
to
cut metal
.
| 5
| 2
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153899",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T20:49:04",
"content": "People have done something vaguely similar but manually, using a wetted cotton swab with an electrical connection to a power supply, for doing multicolor painting on titanium through voltage-specific anodization. I’d love to see someone do this with a cnc router.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154120",
"author": "Gilland McGuire",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T08:30:58",
"content": "Well my friend I discovered a 17th century handcrafted prototype copper cast Iron Cookware developed engraved signature by Paul Revere, other investors assistance. The copper cookware was ‘ELECTROPLATING ‘ Priceless piece of History, u think ???",
"parent_id": "8153899",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154918",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T21:49:30",
"content": "Sounds fake to me, but Musk would buy it though.",
"parent_id": "8154120",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154240",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T15:21:59",
"content": "I’ve done that on knives I made but with salt water and just single color. Carbon steel with low power AC and DC switching. First you switch to DC to create a deeper mark so you know it stays on the knife, then you switch over to AC to create a darker etch to make it more visible. Both AC and DC are etched below 12V.",
"parent_id": "8153899",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154158",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T11:13:23",
"content": "An improvement might be to have the workpiece at an angle and able to both move in X, Y, and Z, and rotate within its plane. Put the anode just below the surface, and the air/electrolyte boundary would give you a sharp edge that could be rotated and/or shifted. Something like what airbrush artists use.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,473.630483
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/24/2025-one-hertz-challenge-555-timer-gets-a-signal-from-above/
|
2025 One Hertz Challenge: 555 Timer Gets A Signal From Above
|
Adam Zeloof
|
[
"contests",
"hardware",
"Microcontrollers"
] |
[
"2025 Hackaday One Hertz Challenge",
"555 timer",
"allan deviation",
"gps",
"gpsdo",
"timekeeping"
] |
One of the categories we chose for the One Hertz Challenge is “Could Have Used a 555.” What about when you couldn’t have, but did anyway? The 555 is famously easy to use, but not exactly the most accurate timer out there — one “ticking” at 1 Hz will pulse just about once per second (probably to within a millisecond, depending on the rest of the circuit), but when you need more precise timing, the 555 just won’t cut it. Not on its own, anyway.
Allan Deviation can be a bit confusing, but generally — lower is more accurate
This entry by [burble] shows us how
the humble 555 can hold its own in more demanding systems with some help from a GPS receiver
. He used the One Pulse per Second (1PPS) output from a GPS module to discipline the 1 Hz output from a 555 by modulating the control voltage with a microcontroller.
Okay, this sounds a bit like baking a cake by buying a cake, scraping all the icing off, then icing it yourself, but what better way to learn how to ice a cake? The GPS-disciplined 555 is way more accurate than a free running one — just check out that
Allan Deviation
plot. While the accuracy of the standard 555 begins to decrease as oscillator drift dominates, the GPS-disciplined version just keeps getting better (up to a point — it would also eventually begin to increase, if the data were recorded for long enough). Compared to other high-end oscillators though, [burble] describes the project’s accuracy in one word: “Badly.”
That’s okay though — it really is a fantastic investigation into how GPS-disciplined oscillators work, and does a fantastic job illustrating the accuracy of different types of clocks, and some possible sources of error. This project is a great addition to
some of the other precision timekeeping projects
we’ve seen here at Hackaday, and a very fitting entry to the competition. Think you can do better? Or
much, much worse
? You’ve got a few weeks left to enter!
| 7
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153862",
"author": "SparkyGSX",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:28:15",
"content": "I was thinking of using a long fiber and the finite speed of light, counting the number of times a pulse was received at the other end and a new pulse generated at the beginning, but I don’t have the time to build it, so if anyone wants to run with it, go for it!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153887",
"author": "captnmike",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T20:26:44",
"content": "Using the one second pulse bit brings back 30 year old memory of building a traffic light in an industrial PLC, one line of code with two instructions. Sort of frosted one of the other engineers who had just been to an advanced PLC school and my code was way shorter than his. And yes it was not very efficient or practical using a lot of data table and probably would never be used in a real application – but was interesting seeing the look on his face.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153949",
"author": "i alone possess the truth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T23:02:48",
"content": "Why not just use the One Pulse Per Second thingy and leave out the 555 entirely?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154048",
"author": "Raj",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T05:02:17",
"content": "Absolutely the truth!",
"parent_id": "8153949",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154102",
"author": "alloydog",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:58:04",
"content": "They cover this in the article: “Okay, this sounds a bit like baking a cake by buying a cake, scraping all the icing off, then icing it yourself, but what better way to learn how to ice a cake?”I think the project was more for fun than practicality.",
"parent_id": "8153949",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153986",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T00:34:31",
"content": "This is actually overselling how bad the 555 is, which is crazy: I mean, a 555 is cheap, right, and the GPS, OCXO, or Rb clocks are much more expensive.Except the 1E-11 value for OCXOs/Rb clocks at 1 sec? That’s not that impressive. It’s their performance at tens or hundreds of seconds (or more, with rubidium) that’s great. A throwaway XO will usually get close to 1E-10/1E-11.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8157285",
"author": "Marcek",
"timestamp": "2025-08-03T17:47:21",
"content": "How is that analog circuit board made? How are the pads constructed?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,473.678941
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/24/keymo-brings-a-pencil-to-the-cyberdeck-fight/
|
KeyMo Brings A Pencil To The Cyberdeck Fight
|
Navarre Bartz
|
[
"Cyberdecks"
] |
[
"cyberdeck",
"paper",
"pencil",
"raspberry pi"
] |
Computers and cellphones can do so many things, but sometimes if you want to doodle or take a note, pencil and paper is the superior technology. You could carry a device and a pocket notebook, or you could combine the best of analog and digital with
the KeyMo
.
[NuMellow] wanted a touchpad in addition to a keyboard for his portable terminal since he felt Raspbian wouldn’t be so awesome on a tiny touchscreen. With a wider device than something like
Beepy
, and a small 4″ LCD already on hand, he realized he had some space to put something else up top.
Et voila
, a cyberdeck with a small notebook for handwritten/hand drawn information.
The device lives in a 3D printed case, which made some iterations on the keyboard placement simpler, and [NuMellow] even provided us with actual run time estimates in the write-up, which is something we often are left wondering about in cyberdeck builds. If you’re curious, he got up to 7.5 hours on YouTube videos with the brightness down or 3.5 hours with it at maximum. The exposed screen and top-heaviness of the device are areas he’s pinpointed as the primary cons of the system currently. We hope to see an updated version in the future that addresses these.
If you’d like to check out some other rad cyberdecks, how about a
schmancy handheld
, one
driven by punch cards in a child’s toy
, or this one with a
handle and a giant scroll wheel
?
| 2
| 1
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153829",
"author": "eswan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T18:13:48",
"content": "Reminds me of the IBM TransNote.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153907",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T21:17:11",
"content": "Yeah. Totally needs a digitizer under that paper.I’m still lusting after the TransNote/Cross’s logical ultimate successor, thehttps://remarkable.com/products/remarkable-2I just can’t justify carrying around another device.",
"parent_id": "8153829",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,473.721827
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/24/supersonic-flight-may-finally-return-to-us-skies/
|
Supersonic Flight May Finally Return To US Skies
|
Tom Nardi
|
[
"Current Events",
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Transportation Hacks"
] |
[
"boeing",
"concorde",
"SST",
"supersonic flight"
] |
After World War II, as early supersonic military aircraft were pushing the boundaries of flight, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that commercial aircraft would eventually fly faster than sound as the technology became better understood and more affordable. Indeed, by the 1960s the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union all had plans to develop commercial transport aircraft capable flight beyond Mach 1 in various stages of development.
Concorde on its final flight
Yet today, the few examples of supersonic transport (SST) planes that actually ended up being built are in museums, and flight above Mach 1 is essentially the sole domain of the military. There’s an argument to be made that it’s one of the few areas of technological advancement where the state-of-the-art not only stopped moving forward, but actually slid backwards.
But that might finally be changing, at least in the United States. Both NASA and the private sector have been working towards a new generation of supersonic aircraft that address the key issues that plagued their predecessors, and a recent push by the White House aims to undo the regulatory roadblocks that have been on the books for more than fifty years.
The Concorde Scare
Those with even a passing knowledge of aviation history will of course be familiar with the Concorde.
Jointly developed by France and Britain
, the sleek aircraft has the distinction of being the only SST to achieve successful commercial operation — conducting nearly 50,000 flights between 1976 and 2003. With an average cruise speed of around Mach 2.02, it could fly up to 128 passengers from Paris to New York in just under three and a half hours.
But even before the first paying passengers climbed aboard, the Concorde put American aircraft companies such as Boeing and Lockheed into an absolute panic. It was clear that none of their SST designs could beat it to market, and there was a fear that the Concorde (and by extension, Europe) would dominate commercial supersonic flight. At least on paper, it seemed like the Concorde would quickly make subsonic long-range jetliners such as the Boeing 707 obsolete, at least for intercontinental routes. Around this time, the Soviet Union also started developing their own SST, the
Tupolev Tu-144
.
The perceived threat was so great that US aerospace companies started lobbying Congress to provide the funds necessary to develop an American supersonic airliner that was faster and could carry more passengers than the Concorde or Tu-144. In June of 1963, President Kennedy announced the creation of the National Supersonic Transport program during a speech at the US Air Force Academy. Four years later it was announced that Boeing’s 733-390 concept had been selected for production, and by the end of 1969, 26 airlines had put in reservations to purchase what was assumed to be the future of American air travel.
Boeing’s final 2707-300 SST concept shared several design elements with the Concorde.
Original image by Nubifer
.
Even for a SST, the 733-390 was ambitious. It didn’t take long before Boeing started scaling back the design, first deleting the complex swing-wing mechanism for a fixed delta wing, before ultimately shrinking the entire aircraft. Even so, the redesigned aircraft (now known as the Model 2707-300) was expected to carry nearly twice as many passengers as the Concorde and travel at speeds up to Mach 3.
A Change in the Wind
But by the dawn of the 1970s it was clear that the Concorde, and the SST concept in general, wasn’t shaping up the way many in the industry expected. Even though it had yet to make its first commercial flight, demand for the Concorde among airlines was already slipping. It was initially predicted that the Concorde fleet would number as high as 350 by the 1980s, but by the time the aircraft was ready to start flying passengers, there were only 76 orders on the books.
Part of the problem was the immense cost overruns of the Concorde program, which lead to a higher sticker price on the aircraft than the airlines had initially expected. But there was also a growing concern over the viability of SSTs. A newer generation of airliners including the Boeing 747 could carry more passengers than ever, and were more fuel efficient than their predecessors. Most importantly, the public had become concerned with the idea of regular supersonic flights over their homes and communities, and imagined a future where thunderous sonic booms would crack overhead multiple times a day.
Although President Nixon supported the program, the Senate rejected any further government funding for an American SST in March of 1971. The final blow to America’s supersonic aspirations came in 1973, when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) enacted
14 CFR 91.817 “Civil Aircraft Sonic Boom”
— prohibiting civilian flight beyond Mach 1 over the United States without prior authorization.
In the end, the SST revolution never happened. Just twenty Concorde aircraft were built, with Air France and British Airways being the only airlines that actually went through with their orders. Rather than taking over as the standard, supersonic air travel turned out to be a luxury that only a relatively few could afford.
The Silent Revolution
Since then, there have been sporadic attempts to develop a new class of civilian supersonic aircraft. But the most promising developments have only occurred in the last few years, as improved technology and advanced computer modeling has made it possible to create “low boom” supersonic aircraft. Such craft aren’t completely silent — rather than creating a single loud boom that can cause damage on the ground, they produce a series of much quieter thumps as they fly.
The
Lockheed Martin X-59
, developed in partnership with NASA, was designed to help explore this technology. Commercial companies such as Boom Supersonic are also
developing their own takes on this concept
, with eyes on eventually scaling the design up for passenger flights in the future.
The Boom XB-1 test aircraft, used to test the Mach cutoff effect.
In light of these developments, on June 6th President Trump signed an Executive Order titled
Leading the World in Supersonic Flight
which directs the FAA to repeal 14 CFR 91.817 within 180 days. In its place, the FAA is to develop a noise-based certification standard which will “define acceptable noise thresholds for takeoff, landing, and en-route supersonic operation based on operational testing and research, development, testing, and evaluation (RDT&E) data” rather than simply imposing a specific “speed limit” in the sky.
This is important, as the design of the individual aircraft as well as the
environmental variables involved in the “Mach Cutoff” effect
mean that there’s really no set speed at which supersonic flight becomes too loud for observers on the ground. The data the FAA will collect from these new breed of aircraft will be key in establishing reasonable noise standards which can protect the public interest without unnecessarily hindering the development of civilian supersonic aircraft.
| 51
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153709",
"author": "Geert van Dijk",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:10:58",
"content": "The boom was one thing, but man, making a het (especially with that capacity) exceed certain speed also guzzles whatever fuel you put in. The numbers just don’t add up anymore, except to maybe unnecessarily shuttle around a small amount of excessively rich people. I think at this point we should be addressing other things.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153715",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:23:30",
"content": "Airplanes like this fuel innovation. Trying to make an aircraft so fast and so aerodynamic means that other airplanes will become better, more efficient as a result. All the tricks they learned will end up being used in creating new planes. The engine technology used is incredible, the shape, the everything. Before the accident, people were willing to pay the high price of a ticket, which means that it does add up. As long as it’s not tax payer subsidized, it’s not important at all what they do. If it is tax payer subsidized, shut it down, regardless of what it is as that shouldn’t exist in the first place. The government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers.",
"parent_id": "8153709",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153720",
"author": "2005",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:37:25",
"content": "The government is going to take your money no matter what or how many times you say no; this is at least one of the better things they can spend it on.",
"parent_id": "8153715",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154191",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T13:09:57",
"content": "Every government on earth has problems with getting their operations in order. But subsidies directly hurt everyone. It’s throwing away money they don’t have, on making things more expensive. It’s the most insane thing ever. I remember a few years ago when several car companies received a 3000 subsidie on electric cars. The same week, those car manufacturers all bumped the price by 3000 dollars. The only thing that happened for the consumer was that second hand prices just became much higher, which is a net negative, and it’s a huge waste of tax money.Subsidies are the most insane thing ever.",
"parent_id": "8153720",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154617",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:06:36",
"content": "For most of it’s life, Concorde payed it’s own running costs.The government subsidy was a sunk cost.Was a national pride thing.",
"parent_id": "8154191",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155921",
"author": "hugh crawford",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T17:12:16",
"content": "Concord was paid for by the French and British governments.Boeing airliner development mostly paid for by US government.Airbus A320, which enabled all the low cost airlines, paid for by various governments.Leaving aside government domination of the aircraft industry- can’t forget airports look at some other areas.Government roads and highways are a total waste of money?Speaking of waste, government sewers, can you believe that taxpayers literally pay for that shit?Railroads, in the western united states and most countries, paid for by the government.Of course lots of people complain about subsidies, mainly because they drive prices down. The rest of the world can’t seem to compete with low Chinese prices and blames government subsidies.",
"parent_id": "8154191",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153722",
"author": "AndreN",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:37:53",
"content": "The government literally picks winners and losers every day. Anything a government decides to do is likely to impact some other group negatively. The recent US budget gave huge tax breaks to the wealthy, at the cost of health care for millions. No winners or losers there.",
"parent_id": "8153715",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154245",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T15:38:51",
"content": "The government shouldn’t do all that much if it was run properly. What what you said after that makes no sense. Now I’m not American but I read a lot about the BBB and read large parts of it, and it’s designed to give the biggest tax breaks to poor people. I don’t know any wealthy people that survive on tips and overtime. And no Americans or immigrants will lose healthcare. Only illegals, freeing up money to be used on Americans and immigrants. I can give you tons of reasons why I don’t like it (for example, increasing the deficit, expanding surveillance, keeping coercive spending, etc), but that doesn’t have anything to do with what you said.Maybe you need to read some more news from neutral sources as your news sources seem to be giving you very incorrect information. Maybe use allsides or ground news.But what this has to do with subsidies or airplanes, I have no idea.",
"parent_id": "8153722",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155928",
"author": "hugh crawford",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T17:45:11",
"content": "Working “illegals “ pay just as much in taxes as anyone else.They don’t get as much benefit from those taxes though.",
"parent_id": "8154245",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155931",
"author": "hugh crawford",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T17:56:59",
"content": "Need an edit button on commentsThe tax breaks mostly go to rich people. Lots of people will lose insurance. Most people working for tips would rather have health insurance and get paid by their employer.Also the tax cut on tips is really justification for a tax cut on gifts, because for some reason tips are seen as voluntary gifts, and the rich transfer wealth through gifts more than other people.",
"parent_id": "8154245",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156222",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T17:35:56",
"content": "No, illegals don’t pay taxes like everyone else.IF taxes are withheld, they take claim 10 dependents on their W-4, knowing they will never have to makeup the shortage.Mostly they work in the cash economy.Aside: No tax on tips?Since when have tipped employees accurately reported cash tips?Or anybody else earning cash?Even when paying with CC, I always tip in cash.No tax on tips is just realpolitik!We’re Americans, not GD law abiders.We’re NOT Swiss.",
"parent_id": "8154245",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156386",
"author": ".",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T11:16:44",
"content": "The government shouldn’t do all that much if it was run properly.Why? Any actual reason beyond some ideology?Because as far as I can seen, if “the government” or any other organisation is being run properly, it should be getting a lot done. If it doesn’t do much, it’s hard to see how it is being run properly.",
"parent_id": "8154245",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153741",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:59:46",
"content": "every development cross polinates with other developments…but supersonic is kind of niche. the aerodynamic problems are unique to supersonic travel. if you invest the effort to make something quiet or efficient in the supersonic regime, it isn’t going to have much application to regular subsonic jets.",
"parent_id": "8153715",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153784",
"author": "TC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T16:54:26",
"content": "The day I see somebody come up with a real 7 billion dollar infusion I will believe it’s all about economics the science is doable",
"parent_id": "8153741",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153721",
"author": "D. Duck",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:37:30",
"content": "Bad slow planes so sad, need to get to my golf course much faster, boom!",
"parent_id": "8153709",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153813",
"author": "D",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T17:32:12",
"content": "Preach.And if we’re going to grant billionaires the boon of legal supersonic private jet flight between their vacation houses, we should ask for something in return.I.E. a tax on supersonic flight which is inversely proportional to the number of passengers, to subsidize childcare and affordable housing.",
"parent_id": "8153709",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153849",
"author": "I_Work",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T18:56:59",
"content": "It seems private business aircraft seem to “trigger” a certain portion of the population.PJDS (Private Jet Derangement Syndrome).Jealousy of success is exponentially proportional to one’s slacker quotient.The more you are a lazy SOB, the more jealousy you have of others success.Perhaps you haters should cease being envious of others (one of the 7deadly sins), and strive to achieve that level of success that “zillionaires”have achieved (hint: they didn’t get there sitting in mommy’s basementhating on others – instead, other people’s success were role models tomotivate them to achieve).Concorde was a work of art – it drew crowds everywhere it went – peoplewould be in awe of the timeless beauty of it’s shape – and the enormouspower of it’s engines on full afterburner.Oh, and by the way, the “virtue signalling” phonies, perhaps you shouldall give your hard earned money to a deserving slacker.I own a 155′ yacht and make no apologies for it. I busted my ass since Iwas 16 (now 75) and employ thousands of people in my business, and I’mone of those people that own a private jet. I make no apologies for it.What have you done/accomplished ? (besides “hate” on people moresuccessful than yourself).",
"parent_id": "8153813",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153865",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:31:45",
"content": "“I own a 155′ yacht and make no apologies for it. I busted my ass since Iwas 16 (now 75) and employ thousands of people in my business, and I’mone of those people that own a private jet. I make no apologies for it.”Sure you do.",
"parent_id": "8153849",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154057",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T05:59:29",
"content": "https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-emit-much-planet-heating-pollution-two-thirds-humanity",
"parent_id": "8153849",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156478",
"author": "D",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T17:50:28",
"content": "From one self-made multimillionaire to another: the American system only works if the lower class believe they have some viable route to the upper class. This route has shrunk smaller and smaller over your lifetime, to the point where an American is now 4x less likely to do it than aCanadian.We must provide our poor either a the dream of future success, or subsidize their current standard of living. Right now America is doing worse than our peers on BOTH of those fronts which is an almost guaranteed recipe for violence.",
"parent_id": "8153849",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156531",
"author": "Arturius_Brittania",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T20:31:39",
"content": "How ?There are no “barriers of entry” to anyone who has a modicum of creativity.All one needs to do is go online on a certain website highlighting stories of success.People who have become members (or on their way to) of the “zillionaires” club.The great thing about capitalism here in America, isanyonecan succeed withenough motivation and drive. Many successful business people are testimonials to the old adage of “if at first you don’t succeed”. They never quit. That’s what separates them from the 99% of the losers (same thing with the “elite” military units – they do NOT quit, the mission is their raison d’etre… complete the mission at all costs).The Bible still calls envy a sin. As one evangelical dictionary puts it, envy is the “sin of jealousy over the blessings and achievements of others.”Key word “ACHIEVEMENTS”…. successful people usually put in extensive effort to achieve their level of accomplishments – vs – the “keyboard warriors” with no life, who spend all their time commenting on message boards about how rich people suck (never mind the hypocrisy of trying to design a product to become rich).An extreme case of motivation (albeit on the wrong end of the law) of how American capitalism can work to the benefit of anyone (even right off the boat) – none other than Scarface…. Tony Montana…. zillionaire… for a short time…you need someone like him! you need someone to point a finger at, and call him the bad guy…. well say goodnight to the bad guy!",
"parent_id": "8156478",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153875",
"author": "m1ke",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:47:01",
"content": "Why would the millionaires in congress want this?",
"parent_id": "8153813",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154121",
"author": "c",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T08:35:40",
"content": "“I.E. a tax on supersonic flight”Not a bad idea. If the tax is proportional to the discomfort caused by the noise. So no sonic boom during the night allowed and higher tax when flying over/near residential areas.“which is inversely proportional to the number of passengers”Number of passengers should not be a factor. Number of people disturbed by the noise.“to subsidize childcare and affordable housing”Subsidizing affordable housing is an oxymoron. Better spend the money on adding walls near highways that reduce noise or something. That way causing noise will require you to pay for measures that reduce noise elsewhere.",
"parent_id": "8153813",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8156474",
"author": "D",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T17:39:45",
"content": "The free market is the answer tomosthousing problems. It will not get the homeless guys off my street though.For an example of a social housing that has been extremely successful, see Vienna. They built housing for a large fraction of their residents by taxing luxury goods.https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/10/the-social-housing-secret-how-vienna-became-the-worlds-most-livable-city",
"parent_id": "8154121",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153775",
"author": "Ashton K",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T16:34:56",
"content": "The lengths America will go to to avoid making high speed rail is quite incredible. For all the money spent on trying to make supersonic transport workable over built up areas, we probably could’ve already had a 350kph+ HSR network covering the major metropolitan areas on the coasts and the Midwest.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153868",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:33:37",
"content": "To be fair high speed rail doesn’t cross oceans. And supersonic passenger jets are likely to be used for longer trips than the typical HSR link.",
"parent_id": "8153775",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153919",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T21:34:54",
"content": "Now you have me dreaming about a tunnel running from the US to the EU.Make it for high speed freight (since human passengers would be too risky to start) with tons of tracks. Co-run it with fiber optic lines and even link power grids via super conductors or super HV cables.Now we have less cargo ships, faster cargo shipping, an internet line less likely to get cut, and if the power grids are linked solar storage is easier because sunny areas can export to night areas.",
"parent_id": "8153868",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154598",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T18:10:18",
"content": "Superconducting cables made of unicorn horn and rainbows!The secret being that Leprechaun farts are catalytic.",
"parent_id": "8153919",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156392",
"author": ".",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T11:43:16",
"content": "Now you have me dreaming about a tunnel running from the US to the EU.Far easier to put one from West Yukon to Uelen and down to the US friends in Vladivostok and Pyongyang. We can call it “The Axis”",
"parent_id": "8153919",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154576",
"author": "Ashton K",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T17:09:26",
"content": "True, but you also wouldn’t be worried about noise for transatlantic routes, and those were by and large eliminated for economic reasons years ago. The reality is that more customers are willing to pay more for luxury seats (where most of the profit is) than to go faster.The marginal argument for supersonic transports is cross country routes like LAX NYC, which are too far for HSR. Yet these don’t represent the majority of domestic flights; the average flight is 600-800 miles depending on the carrier, well within competitive reach of modern HSR. I don’t understand why anyone would want to spend any money on such a niche use case product that lost out economically decades ago, especially in a world where increased usage of fuel is a fatal liability.",
"parent_id": "8153868",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153931",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T22:11:38",
"content": "America had pretty good passenger rail until a certain point in time",
"parent_id": "8153775",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153947",
"author": "d00med",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T23:00:50",
"content": "We have an extensive rail infrastructure, but it’s primarily geared for freight these days. Wouldn’t mind seeing HSR as medium-distance travel option in my state, but as with most public transit, it would probably turn into another money pit vs. something that could break even.",
"parent_id": "8153931",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154156",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T11:06:16",
"content": "Extensive? Maybe, in as much as it reaches most of your cities. It’s not well connected though, even if you had regular passenger trains on the existing rails the routing is stupid for many pretty normal inter-city journeys.",
"parent_id": "8153947",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154600",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T18:18:21",
"content": "The routing is smart for rail freight purposes.Because rail bridges are very expensive, you can really only optimize for freight or passenger.Straight line routes don’t exist in Europe either.By any sane metric American freight rail is better than Europe’s.",
"parent_id": "8154156",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153954",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T23:17:10",
"content": "LA to NYC is 2446 miles (3936km), So youre looking at ~11.5hrs if your HSR runs nonstop service (unlikely). A regular 747 flight between the two is only ~6 hours, At mach 3 it would only take about an hour. HSR and Supersonic planes are not competing with each other, They service entirely different transport needs.",
"parent_id": "8153775",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154163",
"author": "hammarbytp",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T11:27:01",
"content": "What people get wrong about HSR is that it is never about sheer speed, but it is speed and capacity. Build a dedicated HSR, you not only get fast transport, but also something that runs at high frequency Take the Japanese Shinkansen system. It links the major cities at a speed where daily commute times are acceptable, but run every 15min, which means you have a high speed conveyer belt. However fast air transport is, you still have the problem that airports are a distance from the city centers, you need to add arrival times and time to get out and you have limited landing slots.OK at a certain point air travel wins, when there is a certain distance between points, but there are plenty of cases even in the US where a high speed train would be then quickest, most efficient way to transport people, however fast the plane bit can go.",
"parent_id": "8153954",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154214",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T14:13:29",
"content": "An 16 car Shinkansen bullet train has roughly 2X the passenger capacity of a 747. How many LA to NYC daily commuters do you think there are in need of high speed rail service that takes twice as long as a 747 or nearly 12X the time of the Mach 3 jet discussed here.Other than the shuttling people up and down the east coast where amtrak operates Acela and the NEC 120+mph trains. Tthe US just doesnt have the sort of centralized economy that requires or would benefit significantly from HSR. Americans dont commute several hundred miles to work, we move to within 50-100 miles of our employment.Like I said “”They service entirely different transport needs.”",
"parent_id": "8154163",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154580",
"author": "Ashton K",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T17:24:28",
"content": "With how often this is brought up you’d think that this path was the most important flight in the United States, rather than about 5% of the yearly domestic flights. Turning it around, why should we sink public funds and create noise pollution to serve such a small number of flights?The median flight distance in the U.S. is about 700 miles, trivially within the reach of the HSR network China is building out today (planned speed of ~250mph). And the death of the Concorde showed that more people were willing to pay for comfort than speed, so why tolerate all the pollution for something that’s only viable on a minority of routes, and inferior in every other metric to what our peer states are building?",
"parent_id": "8153954",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154611",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T18:41:24",
"content": "How many flights in the median journey?Median journey length?WTF difference does flight distance make?That’s a talking point from somewhere, that place is intentionally deceptive.I’d guess the median # of flights is 2…perhaps mean would be more useful here.Journey length well above 1000 miles.Europeans have no idea how GD big America is.California is the size of Germany, half Germany’s pop, much more wilderness, bigger cities.CA HSR is typical CA disaster.Bottomless money pit.Usual suspects feasting.",
"parent_id": "8154580",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153984",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T00:30:54",
"content": "Billionaires do not want to sit in a train.",
"parent_id": "8153775",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154161",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T11:22:15",
"content": "Why is the country who wrote “We the people…” now ruled by kings?",
"parent_id": "8153984",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154602",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T18:21:25",
"content": "Derp!",
"parent_id": "8154161",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8156218",
"author": "abjq",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T17:12:19",
"content": "Putin does.",
"parent_id": "8153984",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154226",
"author": "Josephus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T14:30:03",
"content": "Problem with rail is that it normally involves taking land involuntarily",
"parent_id": "8153775",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154325",
"author": "Cogidubnus Rex",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T20:24:50",
"content": "That’s what the Boring company and Hyperloop are all about fixing to make rail travel in a tube super duper you’ve never seen better faster fast.sarcasm mode off",
"parent_id": "8154226",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154581",
"author": "Ashton K",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T17:26:09",
"content": "Wait until you hear about how highways and airports are made.",
"parent_id": "8154226",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154615",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T18:54:47",
"content": "Airports are local government cash cows!Suburbs extort a payment from core city airport operators by threatening to open their own airport.Usually on the other side of town, as most cities bought the cheapest land available when siting their expansion airport (far from $ people).But only if they have room for an airport, landlocked ‘burbs are laughed out of room.Roads are a necessary thing.Thousands of years.Grew organically from trails.Safe travel recent innovation.Still road pirates, but now with badges.Cops steal more then burglars, are now less trusted.Fact, yearly ‘Civil Asset Forfeiture’ exceeds ‘Loss to burglary’, has for years.",
"parent_id": "8154581",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153843",
"author": "Augu5te",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T18:36:22",
"content": "An ecological aberration…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154166",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T11:39:22",
"content": "Americans trying to improve an French/British technology?I wonder if it will be similar in terms of performance to the “Russian Concorde”, the Tupolev Tu-144. ;)https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154257",
"author": "jbx",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T16:16:35",
"content": "My father took me to the Paris Air Show in 1973. I remember seeing the Tu-144 in flight the day before it crashed.And also Concorde prototypes 001 and 002 in a group flight.",
"parent_id": "8154166",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154604",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T18:30:12",
"content": "Which nation do you think has the most hours operating large supersonic aircraft?Before you answer, look up ‘pilot training flight hours/year’ for each nation’s military.Consider if scrapping the American SST program was the right choice, in hindsight.You can count the Brits and Frogs as one nation. (serpentine runs for web site exit).",
"parent_id": "8154166",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,473.819108
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/24/teufel-introduces-an-open-source-bluetooth-speaker/
|
Teufel Introduces An Open Source Bluetooth Speaker
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"digital audio hacks",
"hardware"
] |
[
"bluetooth speaker",
"repair",
"speaker"
] |
There are a ton of Bluetooth speakers on the market. Just about none of them have any user-serviceable components or replacement parts available. When they break, they’re dead and gone, and you buy a new one. [Jonathan Mueller-Boruttau] wrote in to tell us about the latest speaker from Teufel Audio, which aims to break this cycle.
It’s a commercial product, but the design files have also been open sourced
— giving the community the tools to work with and maintain the hardware themselves.
The project is explained by [Jonathan] and [Erik] of Teufel, who were part of the team behind the development of the MYND speaker. The basic idea was to enable end-user maintenance, because the longer something is functioning and usable, the lower its effective environmental footprint is. “That was why it was very important for us that the MYND be very easy to repair,” Erik explains. “Even users without specialist knowledge can replace the battery no problem.” Thus, when a battery dies, the speaker can live on—versus a regular speaker, where the case, speakers, and electronics would all be thrown in the garbage because of a single dead battery. The case was designed to be easy to open with minimal use of adhesives, while electronic components used inside are all readily available commercial parts.
Indeed, you can even make your own MYND if you’re so inclined.
Firmware
and
hardware
design files are available on GitHub under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (
CC BY-SA 4.0
) license for those looking to repair their speakers, or replicate them from the ground up. The company developed its own speaker drivers, but there’s nothing stopping you from using off-the-shelf replacements if so desired.
It’s a strategy we expect few other manufacturers to emulate. Overall, as hackers, it’s easy to appreciate a company making a device that’s
easy
to repair, rather than one that’s designed to frustrate all attempts made. As our own Jenny List
proclaimed in 2021
—”You own it, you should be able to fix it!” Sage words, then as now!
| 33
| 17
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153650",
"author": "Nath",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T11:51:38",
"content": "Finally, companies start getting it",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153689",
"author": "Collie147",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T13:24:46",
"content": "Fantastic! Would be nice to see a BOM there too but great to see step files to make custom designs.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153690",
"author": "mmmmm",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T13:34:12",
"content": "Curious they shared on mynd-hardware Altium and KiCad projects. Are they conversions of do they really created the exact same project on both tools?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153730",
"author": "nino",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:44:41",
"content": "Ordered! Very cool color selection as well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153732",
"author": "Beowulf Shaeffer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:48:58",
"content": "Hear! Hear!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153734",
"author": "c",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:53:38",
"content": "The use a sketchy chinese bluetooth chip “WB-2835p”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153770",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T16:24:05",
"content": "It’s considerably less ‘sketchy’ than a lot of the big name chips because the documentation is available, legally, for download without having to sign some evil NDA or ‘steal’ them and the config tools.Far more compatible with the OSHW ethos than some Broadcom thing that requires you to sign in blood to get even a register list.",
"parent_id": "8153734",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154062",
"author": "Nath",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T06:33:10",
"content": "What makes it sketchy exactly?",
"parent_id": "8153734",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154233",
"author": "c",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T15:04:04",
"content": "No information is available. Only a few google results (one of them being this website). And on github I only get one result and that is for this device. No documentation or examples available.",
"parent_id": "8154062",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154287",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T17:42:29",
"content": "You should disconnect from the internet immediatelyThey Might Be Hacking Your Bodily Fluids RIGHT NOW!!",
"parent_id": "8154233",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153794",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T17:10:21",
"content": "Is it 5.0 or above? Stereo?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154235",
"author": "c",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T15:05:52",
"content": "The chip used is “WB-2835p”. I could only find that it is a BLE 5.3 chip.",
"parent_id": "8153794",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153798",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T17:13:20",
"content": "So a user-replaceable battery requires (or constitutes…) “open source” now?What have we become?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153805",
"author": "Tim",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T17:22:07",
"content": "We’ve become unable to read, since the design files are ccbysa as well.",
"parent_id": "8153798",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153824",
"author": "Jii",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T17:54:23",
"content": "“Firmware and hardware design files are available on GitHub under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license”Seems a bit more than “user-replaceable battery”.",
"parent_id": "8153798",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153848",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T18:55:22",
"content": "Sure, but so what?We shouldn’t need “open source” to have a user-replaceable battery.Touting “Even users without specialist knowledge can replace the battery” as a key feature of “open source” is missing the point.",
"parent_id": "8153824",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153850",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:03:31",
"content": "You’re behind the times. Everything has a user-replaceable battery, you just need more skills than you currently possess. There are entire websites dedicated to battery replacement kits and tutorials for ordinary end-users. I personally replaced my phone’s battery with no prior experience. It took about an hour, which is a lot compared to a snap-in battery like flip phones used to have, but those weren’t waterproof.",
"parent_id": "8153848",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153871",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:34:46",
"content": "Why does a phone need to be waterproof? It all nonsense to be used as an argument for glue-ing it shut. And remove the headphone jack.",
"parent_id": "8153850",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153893",
"author": "Thovthe",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T20:36:26",
"content": "Samsung Galaxy S4 (?Sport?) snap in battery and snap off back and still waterproof.",
"parent_id": "8153850",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154238",
"author": "c",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T15:12:00",
"content": "“Everything has a user-replaceable battery, you just need more skills than you currently possess”If it requires skills and tools average users, or even more experienced users, don’t have, it is not user replaceable. Period.My first smartphone could have the battery swapped within 10 seconds. No tools required.",
"parent_id": "8153850",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153896",
"author": "Jii",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T20:43:33",
"content": "When you spin it that way, yes a replaceble battery should be in closed source products too, but i still don’t think the replaceble battery was the main point of this article/product.",
"parent_id": "8153848",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153827",
"author": "Clara",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T18:02:27",
"content": "Seems like a pretty expensive speaker to have so few audio-related specs obviously published.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153832",
"author": "Snarkenstein",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T18:18:38",
"content": "I don’t even need another Bluetooth speaker, and I am considering buying this anyway.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153866",
"author": "Schobi",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:31:55",
"content": "+1Maybe wait for Louis Rossmann to comment first…",
"parent_id": "8153832",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153839",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T18:28:08",
"content": "Actually looks nice too… well done!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153852",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:04:26",
"content": "Why’s it gotta look like a lunch box though?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153854",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:14:33",
"content": "I thought it looked like a classic radio you would have seen in the 1950s-1970s",
"parent_id": "8153852",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153855",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:17:40",
"content": "Seems like you could use a $5-10 ‘Pelican/Apache’ style ABS case ‘ventilated’ as a sturdy enclosure if your vase was damaged or you wanted to build it from scratch.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153925",
"author": "chico",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T22:00:50",
"content": "Neat name. Der Teufel steckt im Detail.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153948",
"author": "anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T23:01:31",
"content": "Wondeful to see! Also beautiful to see that a non open source company is able to provide the mandatory native CAD files while supposedly open source companies only share thecompiledSTEP files. Looks like it’s not that hard, isn’t it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153955",
"author": "QBFreak",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T23:22:31",
"content": "I’ve hacked on a few that needed some work, so the idea of one with actual documentation is wonderful. One eventually died permanently, and I have to wonder if having a schematic and BoM if I might have dug a little farther into it than “wont power onshrug.”The first I needed to fix had the tiny pouch cell bite the dust, and while you could still use it plugged into a USB power adapter, the connector broke a short time later. I ended up soldering a power adapter directly to the board until eventually the whole thing just gave up the ghost and died for the last time. Still, it worked for several months, many years after being lost in a box of junk. It at least had easy-to-access screws, though the exterior was coated in that type of rubber that turns sticky after some years. Took entirely too much elbow grease and rubbing alcohol to get clean.The next one had another dead battery. Once I figured out how to get it open (silicone skin, screws under it), the battery turned out to be an 18500. The original battery had leads tacked onto it, and the replacement was meant for a battery holder and did not have any leads. I ended up taking a couple of large ring terminals, crimping them onto the leads, and then heat-shrinking them onto the battery with some very large heat shrink turned 90 degrees to the battery (openings at the sides, not the ends). The thing worked great for the year and a half that it was needed. It’s been sitting abandoned in a closet since, though I assume it’s still good. If not, I have three more of those batteries waiting to be used.What I’d really love documentation and parts for, are my Bose QuietComfort 35ii and 45 headphones. Replacement ear cups are easy enough, but finding replacement headbands that aren’t the terrible Velcro or zipper kind is difficult. The QC35ii requires a number of tiny bi-colored wires be desoldered and threaded through the new headband, and then the solder pads give no indication as to which wire goes where. It was a nerve-wracking process hoping I documented it correctly before-hand, that I could actually distinguish all the colors properly, and that I had them in the right order afterwards. I’ve gathered that the QC45 has a connector instead of individual soldered wires, but I’m still waiting on the replacement headband to arrive so I haven’t disassembled it yet to confirm.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154275",
"author": "Julianne",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T17:15:33",
"content": "My personal pet peeve with all types of bluetooth audio receivers is that the bluetooth module itself is always some kind of generic black box (in this case WB-2835p) sourced from a third party. So there is little control over anything bluetooth related, usually you can’t even set the name of the receiver and if you have several, they’re all named the same generic gibbrish like “BRX815”. Would be really cool to see a truly open source bluetooth audio receiver.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154816",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T11:36:29",
"content": "Yeah, you can lay a lot of the blame for that at Qualcomm’s feet (and CSR before they were bought.)All the chinese modules tend to use QC chipsets, and QC is deeply in love with the idea of charging developers for the privilege of using their hardware. So it’s all locked away behind registrations and nda’s and binary blobs with license keys and the devs respond by hoarding what they find so they can use it as coin for trading with others. I think the latest move is a proprietary IDE that requires constant network access and valid licenses before you can get any source code, for hardwarethey’re already paying for.It results in every bluetooth product ending up just running bastardised sample code that’s hacked to just barely work for the device, and there’s no scope for making the UX work well or resolving issues. It’s why everything has “triple tap this button to change mode” and other such abominations.",
"parent_id": "8154275",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,474.047979
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/24/eight-artificial-neurons-control-fully-autonomous-toy-truck/
|
Eight Artificial Neurons Control Fully Autonomous Toy Truck
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Machine Learning",
"Robots Hacks"
] |
[
"artificial neural network",
"autonomous vehicle",
"remote control car",
"Spiking Neural Network"
] |
Recently the [Global Science Network] released a video of
using an artificial brain to control an RC truck
.
The video shows a neural network comprised of eight artificial neurons assembled on breadboards used to control a fully autonomous toy truck. The truck is equipped with four proximity sensors, one front, one front left, one front right, and one rear. The sensor readings from the truck are transmitted to the artificial brain which determines which way to turn and whether to go forward or backward. The inputs to each neuron, the “synapses”, can be excitatory to increase the firing rate or inhibitory to decrease the firing rate. The output commands are then returned wirelessly to the truck via a hacked remote control.
This particular type of neural network is called a Spiking Neural Network (SNN) which uses discrete events, called “spikes”, instead of continuous real-valued activations. In these types of networks
when
a neuron fires matters as well as the strength of the signal. There are
other videos
on this channel which go into more depth on these topics.
The name of this experimental vehicle is the
GSN SNN 4-8-24-2 Autonomous Vehicle
, which is short for: Global Science Network Spiking Neural Network 4 Inputs 8 Neurons 24 Synapses 2 Degrees of Freedom Output. The circuitry on both the vehicle and the breadboards is littered with LEDs which give some insight into how it all functions.
If you’re interested in how neural networks can control behavior you might like to see a
digital squid’s behavior shaped by a neural network
.
| 11
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153589",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T09:09:50",
"content": "lol :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153615",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T10:17:08",
"content": "ok…….but how where the parameters set?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153618",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T10:29:15",
"content": "Manually!https://youtu.be/nL_UZBd93sw?t=438",
"parent_id": "8153615",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153629",
"author": "greenbit",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T10:42:50",
"content": "Reminds me a bit of an old book, Braitenberg’s “Vehicles” (ISBN-13: 978-0262521123), in which a series of primitive hypothetical nervous systems are explored. The creatures are entirely abstract/artificial constructs. The first one, if I recall, had just one sensor and one motor. Anyway, might be a source of ideas to try out with this physically real system.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153634",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T10:53:51",
"content": "Thanks for the tip. I was researching and I found this:https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262548194— and the book itself can still be found:https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262022087",
"parent_id": "8153629",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153702",
"author": "Justin",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T13:57:55",
"content": "doh. I was working on my own SNN project, but using TTL gates instead. This one is clearly better since it works on the transistor level instead. well, I guess a big drawback is that you can’t easily change the weights of each input or the inhibitory signals. Mine can load the weights through a single serial chain, so I guess there’s still merit to developing it. But this will be a great reference.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154080",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:17:05",
"content": "I am glad this will be a useful reference for you. If you get your SNN working be sure to write it up and send it in so we can cover it!",
"parent_id": "8153702",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154141",
"author": "Marc jr Landolt",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T09:30:19",
"content": "Wow, i was thinking one can not do such things with less Neurons than caenorhabditis elegans [1,2]. But i seem to be wrong … this Study also talks about that the worm has also one neuron for the forward gear / forward command neuron.Project is in my opinion of pedagogical worth because it demystifies neuronal networks.Q: do you prefer Daniel Dennets theory OR David Calmers theory ???[1]http://browser.openworm.org[2]https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1001066",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154152",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T10:56:16",
"content": "Hi Marc, thanks for your note. I love the phrase “hard problem of consciousness” but at the end of the day I support Dennett’s theory more so than Chalmers’. I believe consciousness is an emergent phenomena from physicality, not some sort of substance. But it does seem very strange that we have this sort of real experience of consciousness, it remains a hard problem, particularly why it should be that way at all.",
"parent_id": "8154141",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154614",
"author": "Murray",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T18:53:28",
"content": "Stick some Piezo elements on so you can hear it thinking too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154999",
"author": "AJ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T04:44:29",
"content": "BEAM robotics lives again. There were a few BEAM hobbyists who experimented with SSNs back in the 90s/early 2000s before the movement petered out.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,473.912277
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/23/frogfind-grabs-the-wap/
|
FrogFind Grabs The WAP
|
Tyler August
|
[
"Phone Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] |
[
"2g",
"frog find",
"retrocomputer",
"wap"
] |
Yes, the Wireless Application Protocol! What other WAP could there possibly be? This long-dormant cellphone standard is now once again available on the web, thanks to [Sean] over at
ActionRetro
modifying his FrogFind portal as a translation engine.
Now any web site can be shoved through the WAP!
WAP was rolled out in 1999 as HTML for phones without the bandwidth to handle actual HTML. The idea of a “mobile” and a “desktop” site accessed via HTTP hadn’t yet been conceived, you see, so phoning into sites with WAP would produce a super-stripped down, paginated, text-only version of the page. Now FrogFind has a WAP version that does the same thing to any site, just as the HTTP (no S!)
FrogFind translates the modern web into pure HTML
vintage browsers can read.
Of course you’ll need a phone that can connect to FrogFind with a WAP browser, which for many of us, may be… difficult. This protocol didn’t last much longer than PETS.COM, so access is probably going to be over 2G. With 2G sunset already passed in many areas, that can be a problem for vintage computer enthusiasts who want to use vintage phone hardware. [Sean] does not have an answer — indeed, he’s actively searching for one. His fans have pointed out a few models of handsets that should be able to access WAP via WiFi, but that leaves a lot of retro hardware out in the cold. If you have a good idea for a 2G bridge that can get out to the modern web and not attract the angry attention of the FTC (or its local equivalent), fans of
ActionRetro
would love to hear it — and so would we!
Vintage phone hacks
don’t show up often on Hackaday, and when they do, it’s either much older machines or
upgrading to USB-C
, not to modern communications protocols. We haven’t seen someone
hacking in the WAP since 2008.
Given the collective brainpower of the Hackaday commentariat, someone probably has an idea to let everyone dive right into the WAP. Fight it out in the comments, or
send us a tip if you have link to a howto
.
| 24
| 8
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153502",
"author": "Jeff Geerling",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T05:10:49",
"content": "Oh my the title, lol.I haven’t seen any activity around emulating 2G, unfortunately. I’m guessing it would be a bit of effort and also require running it in extremely low power or in an anechoic chamber to not run afoul of the FCC. Is GSM still allocated for cellular or has it been split into other uses?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153525",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T06:27:49",
"content": "When you’re a star, they let you do it.",
"parent_id": "8153502",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153713",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:19:08",
"content": "I believe most of this sort of stuff falls into “what are you a cop?” territory. You can do whatever you want using this method, as long as you keep the power low enough to not be detectable outside of your property (which is hard to estimate even in theory to be fair). Of course, the phones transmitting back at full power might be somewhat of a giveaway.The most official answer is to remove the phone antenna and connect it to your equipment with coax and attenuators.",
"parent_id": "8153502",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153725",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:40:08",
"content": "The phone transmit power is controlled by the base station, but “not detectable outside your property” is a tough one, unless you own a lot of land.",
"parent_id": "8153713",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153503",
"author": "alloydog",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T05:15:32",
"content": "2G isn’t dead yet, at least in Finland and Sweden. They found so many M2M, home automation and other systems using 2G that they have staved off the shutdown. 3G/WCDMA has gone though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153596",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T09:30:27",
"content": "Interestingly, in the Netherlands some providers kept 2G and shut off 3G while others did the inverse.",
"parent_id": "8153503",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153780",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T16:42:18",
"content": "That’s logical, because 2G is the lowest common denominator.It’s the foundation, the basis, so to say.By keeping it, all but the newest standard(s) can be dropped over time for sake of progress, without rendering existing hardware completely obsolete.That’s important if you want to build an infrastructure that lasts.Also, most modern cellphone towers probably do have SDR and DSP technology and are flexible.There’s no loss in keeping 2G alive, no separate 2G towers must be keept around for that purpose.",
"parent_id": "8153596",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153740",
"author": "Daemon",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:58:48",
"content": "Pretty much the same in the Netherlands. Though, working at a company that builds IoT devices that communicate over 2G / 4G, the coverage and bandwidth for 2G is not what it used to be..",
"parent_id": "8153503",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153776",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T16:34:58",
"content": "2G is alive Germany, too. GSM on 900 MHz is a classic.And it’s still useful for M2M/embedded applications.",
"parent_id": "8153503",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153560",
"author": "Oliver",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T07:36:58",
"content": "For setting up a 2G GSM network have a look athttps://osmocom.org",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153604",
"author": "WTF Detector",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T09:49:05",
"content": "I’m pretty sure the Federal Trade Commission wouldn’t have much to say about people running their own 2G networks. Did you mean FCC, Tyler?FYI, even if HaD aren’t actively looking for editors, I’d be happy to volunteer as a proofreader. I have a decent about of experience in that regard. I have experience sweeping certain emulators’ release notes and announcement posts for both typos and a bit of punch-up, and given the frequency of posts on HaD, it’s something I could do for free over my morning coffee.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153968",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T23:59:36",
"content": "“I have a decent about of experience in that regard.”WTF detected.",
"parent_id": "8153604",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153656",
"author": "Clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T12:00:39",
"content": "Well you can run 2g if you have a amateur radio licenseLow power and every 10 min you’ll have to broadcast the call sign basically as plaintext over the 2g lan",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153685",
"author": "Nath",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T13:11:43",
"content": "Interesting. Do you have a source to this rule?",
"parent_id": "8153656",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153993",
"author": "Clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T01:14:41",
"content": "In the USA cell band fall between 33 and 23 cmAnd you get experimental access to 2.3-2.4 ghz 3ghz, 5ghz, 10, 25, 47,70-80,120, 130-140, 240-250, and any rf frequency above 275 ghzSo 802.11 wifi and 5g wifi, radar frequency etcIn the USA atleasthttps://www.arrl.org/images/view//Charts/Band_Chart_Image_for_ARRL_Web.jpg73 de w4tia",
"parent_id": "8153685",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153997",
"author": "Clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T01:20:42",
"content": "But you can’t do radar and pulse transmission on 10. -10.5 ghzCuz radar interferenceWell u learnt what band the police radar is likely using and how to defeat it",
"parent_id": "8153993",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153999",
"author": "Clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T01:23:09",
"content": "Next time you see them Police speed radarJust put a directional antenna and pulse it,9999 mphGo ahead pull over and write a ticket😂Gonna have to prove it in court",
"parent_id": "8153997",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153692",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T13:36:01",
"content": "I’m not aware of any overlap between the classic 2g bands and ham bands, unless the US 33cm band overlaps the European GSM 900 MHz band.",
"parent_id": "8153656",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153753",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T15:45:54",
"content": "Looks like the 900 MHz GSM band has uplink and downlink channels that fall in the 902-928 ISM/ham band, but there are no standard pairings that have both in that band.",
"parent_id": "8153692",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153994",
"author": "Clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T01:17:24",
"content": "Within 33 and 23 cmFor that matter 3g and 4g also fall within amateur radio bands even 5g according to the band plan",
"parent_id": "8153753",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153995",
"author": "Clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T01:18:04",
"content": "Between 600mhz and 24ghz depends on which variants",
"parent_id": "8153994",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153782",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T16:47:43",
"content": "Of course you’ll need a phone that can connect to FrogFind with a WAP browser, which for many of us, may be… difficult.I vaguely remember that there used to be desktop WAP browsers and that there used to be plug-ins for Firefox.But that was 20 years ago on Windows 98SE..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153970",
"author": "Christian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T00:04:17",
"content": "WAP is still there. Needed to support MMS messaging. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol#MMS)I think the launching of weblinks is still present as well, for the carrier, so they could nag you to pay your bill.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156093",
"author": "Downgrade",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T10:29:46",
"content": "http://web1.0hosting.net/here you can create such sitesthere is also a search (it works even in dos) and the hosting itself works in wap",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,473.980254
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/26/listening-to-ethernet-via-eurorack/
|
Listening To Ethernet Via Eurorack
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"Musical Hacks",
"Network Hacks"
] |
[
"audio",
"ethernet",
"eurorack",
"modular synth",
"synth"
] |
Ethernet is how we often network computers together, particularly when they’re too important to leave on a fussy WiFi connection. Have you ever thought about
listening
to Ethernet signals, though? Well, you totally could,
with the NSA selector from [wenzellabs].
The NSA selector is a Eurorack module, designed for use as part of a larger modular synthesizer. There are lots of fun jokes and references on the PCB, but the front panel really shows you what this module is all about. It’s got a pair of RJ45 jacks, ready to receive your Ethernet cables through which data is flowing. They’re paired with a single audio output jack. “Any bit on the network will be sent to the audio output,” [wenzellabs] explains.
The device operates in a relatively simple fashion. Network traffic from one jack is forwarded to the other, unmodified. However, it’s also spat out to a simple digital-to-analog converter and turned into audio. This thing doesn’t play digital audio formats or anything like that—it just turns raw Ethernet signalling into audible noise.
Raw signal noises might not sound very
appealing,
but let’s be real here. If you liked nice sounds,
you wouldn’t be into Eurorack
. Skip to
25:46 in the video below
if you just want to hear the final product.
Thanks to [mazzoo] for the tip!
| 9
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154458",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T08:21:27",
"content": "Love it, but by god, don’t put your headphones on until 10 seconds in, that bag isloud",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154462",
"author": "Tom G",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T08:39:15",
"content": "Back to the future.Greybeards remember listening to speakers attached to mainframe/minicomputer CPUs, to keep an ear on how computation was progressing (or not)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154694",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T23:11:25",
"content": "I think we need to develop more terminology (well, slang), as techies age. At 50 I’m definitely a graybeard, but even I’m not THAT old!",
"parent_id": "8154462",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154525",
"author": "TerryMatthews",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T13:15:18",
"content": "I did one of these with a frequency divider and delay chip in 08 for a musician in the northeast (had to watch the video to make sure it wasnt him). It wasnt eurorack but the frquency divider makes it oh so much more musical. IIRC there was a dipswitch patchbay too for selecting lines. Not sure whatever became of it or his torroid strummer or him lol. Heck even midi itself with fsk can produce some fun stuff “) Kudos on the build the panel and board are pretty cute :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154534",
"author": "Bobtato",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T13:50:43",
"content": "Anything going over the network is likely to be fairly efficiently coded, meaning by definition that payload data will sound like white noise. Any tonality you hear will come from regularly repeated bit patterns, which is just going to be the frame and packet headers, which will be at a fairly constant pitch. I guess TCP congestion might cause the pitch to vary in some cases, but for the most part you’ll just hear a screeching when there’s traffic and silence otherwise.Which is still interesting, and I bet you could learn to hear things like how much strain an HTTP server is under. But it makes me wonder if there are simple ways to process the signal that would expose more information and/or make nicer sounds.Like say, have inbound and outbound frames trigger two different (micro)samples. Or maybe have a range of microsounds mapped to the source and destination fields in IP headers, so you’d hear a difference between different connections. I’m quite keen to try this now I think about it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154700",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T23:17:44",
"content": "In terms of the actual packet payload, one hopes (in this day and age) that the majority of the traffic will be HTTPS, and if any processing of that can reveal patterns then TLS isn’t doing its job. The source/destination (and maybe port?) mapping idea is interesting. Tho I’m worried it’s mostly a recipe for the paranoid to become even more so, every time they hear a tone they think they don’t recognize.",
"parent_id": "8154534",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154863",
"author": "hugh crawford",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T16:46:42",
"content": "I can think of only two use cases for this. The first being a sort of general indication that there is either network traffic or not, useful in the sense of “why is their network traffic nothing‘s going on maybe I should go look at a network sniffer if I’m actually curious,.The other, well really the only, use case is for making music from something not intended to be music, of which there is a hundreds of years tradition. In modular synthesizer land this would probably be used as a trigger or control of other modules.",
"parent_id": "8154700",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154719",
"author": "Alex",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T00:48:32",
"content": "Imagine if it turns out it was just the modem handshake screeches for the dialup days, just… faster or something.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154860",
"author": "hugh crawford",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T16:37:27",
"content": "You can do this by sticking a photocell to the blinking led on a ethernet hub if you just want to listen to bits.Reminds me of putting an a.m. radio next to the computer. But that was with computers that didn’t really even have operating systems much less multiple threads and cores. Actually the first time I saw/heard someone do that core was memory.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,474.094976
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/25/a-modern-version-of-famous-classic-speaker/
|
A Modern Version Of Famous, Classic Speaker
|
Bryan Cockfield
|
[
"Musical Hacks"
] |
[
"amplifier",
"Doppler",
"Hammond",
"leslie",
"motor",
"music",
"speaker",
"vibrato"
] |
Modern musicians may take for granted that a wide array of musical instruments can either be easily connected to a computer or modeled entirely in one, allowing for all kinds of nuanced ways of creating unique sounds and vivid pieces of music without much hardware expense. Not so in the 1930s. Musicians of the time often had to go to great lengths to generate new types of sounds, and one of the most famous of these was the Leslie speaker, known for its unique tremolo and vibrato. Original Leslies could cost thousands now, though,
so [Levi Graves] built a modern recreation
.
The Leslie speaker itself got its characteristic sound by using two speakers. The top treble speaker was connected to a pair of horns (only one of which produced sound, the other was used for a counterweight) on a rotating platform. The second speaker in the bottom part of the cabinet faced a rotating drum. Both the horns and drum were rotated at a speed chosen by the musician and leading to its unique sound. [Levi] is actually using an original Leslie drum for his recreation but the sound is coming out of a 100-watt “mystery” speaker, with everything packaged neatly into a speaker enclosure. He’s using a single-speed Leslie motor but with a custom-built foot switch can employ more fine-tuned control over the speed that the drum rotates.
Even though modern technology allows us to recreate sounds like this, often the physical manipulation of soundwaves like this created a unique feeling of sound that can’t be replicated in any other way. That’s part of what’s driven the popularity of these speakers throughout the decades, as well as the Hammond organs they’re often paired with.
The tone generators on these organs themselves
are yet another example of physical hardware providing a unique, classic sound not easily replicated.
| 12
| 10
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154496",
"author": "cdilla",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T11:27:04",
"content": "Ah, Leslie speakers, takes me back. Never could afford one myself but had use of one for a while with my guitar. Personally I enjoyed the video. The revisioning is appealing and the presentation laid back but enthusiastic.The article also got me thinking about my other dream speaker of bygone days, for conventional listening, , the Linn Sara. And now I have a soulless earbuds, soundbars and headphones. At least the latter has cat ears.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154647",
"author": "Sam",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T20:16:28",
"content": "For real lmao what the heck",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154652",
"author": "Question Mark",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T20:28:09",
"content": "Ah, Leslies. Generally fond memories. Such a bear to lug around on gigs… Especially to clubs upstairs.In a studio I worked at in the 70s we placed a Leslie in the basement of this 1890s built building with mics at varying distances from it. Speed control snaked to the control room. Created wonderfully nuanced, controllable, echo chamber sounds. Unfortunately the damp basement took a toll on the cabinet but the speakers and rotor held up remarkably well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154758",
"author": "hugh crawford",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T05:11:41",
"content": "I’m familiar with Leslies that rotate on a vertical axis, but they are kind of huge. I guess to fit in an organ against a wall , spinning on a horizontal axis would make sense.Building one has been on my to do list for years. I think the vertical axis design would be simpler to build though, but I’ll keep this in mind.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154875",
"author": "Hardrawker",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T18:07:58",
"content": "I too am QUITE familiar with Leslie speakers! There was a time that I hauled around 4 of them, with a B3, a Fender Rhodes, a Prophet 600 and a Pro One! Now, I use two Motion Sound “Leslies”, one for the lows and one for the highs, usung a Ferrofish module. And I can carry them in each hand at the same time! Still, I did keep two of the 122’s and the B3, just in case!!!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154878",
"author": "KwiatGreg",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T18:26:16",
"content": "I have wanted to make a small version (like 4-6″ or so) for a while. Had one in an organ and love the sound",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154879",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T18:37:35",
"content": "Glad to see Thomas organs getting repurposed. Sad that it is not 2 speed which was for not having the random stop if single speed, instead an added bonus phase shifting before we knew what to call it.Put 12 volts DC or so into the motor instead of AC to make it stop fast. DC brake it was called, some organs had it instead of 2 speed motors.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155859",
"author": "PaulM",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T11:55:51",
"content": "Yeah- that",
"parent_id": "8154879",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155860",
"author": "PaulM",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T11:58:09",
"content": "Meant to say that the DC brake was really cool, the near instant change added an almost percussive aspect. Loved it.",
"parent_id": "8155859",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154979",
"author": "Worf",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T02:19:18",
"content": "For all the yapping in the video, he fails to show the sound of the speaker alone. He goes through the construction and then a band demo. But imits what it sounds like alone to hear the effect. So yeah, the video is useless.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155683",
"author": "Jake Conner",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T03:04:39",
"content": "“Rock Hard” proceeds to play softest rock ever.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8157706",
"author": "meh",
"timestamp": "2025-08-04T20:16:19",
"content": "no info on how to do this? No info on the control switch changing the speed of the “single speed” motor? This is more back patting than hack info…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,476.047974
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/25/building-a-color-teaching-toy-for-tots/
|
Building A Color Teaching Toy For Tots
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"Toy Hacks"
] |
[
"color sensor",
"ESP32"
] |
Last year, [Deep Tronix] wished to teach colors to his nephew. Thus, he built a toy to help educate a child about colors by pairing them with sounds,
and Color Player was born
.
The build is based around the TCS34725, an off-the-shelf color sensor. It’s paired with an ESP32, which senses colors and then plays sounds in turn. [Deep Tronix] made this part harder by insisting on creating their own WAV playback system, using the microcontroller, an SD card, and its on-board digital-to-analog hardware.
The map of colors and sounds.
The toy operates in three primary modes. Color-to-tone, color-to-sound, color-to-voice. Basically, a color is scanned, and then the Color Player creates a tone, plays back a pre-recorded audio sample, or spells out the name of the color that was just scanned.
[Deep Tronix] also included jolly mode, which just color cycles a few RGB LEDs. However, there’s a game inside jolly mode as well, created for an older nephew to play with. Enter the right button combination, and you unlock it. Then, the device suggests a color and you have to run around, find it, and scan it to score.
We love a good color game; somehow this build seems even more compelling
than Milton Bradley’s classic Simon toy
.
| 0
| 0
|
[] | 1,760,371,476.351341
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/25/zine-printing-tips-from-a-solopreneur/
|
Zine Printing Tips From A Solopreneur
|
Donald Papp
|
[
"classic hacks",
"how-to"
] |
[
"binding",
"printing",
"zine"
] |
Zines (self-produced, small-circulation publications) are
extremely
DIY, and therefore punk- and hacker-adjacent by nature. While they can be made with nothing more than a home printer or photocopier, some might benefit from professional production while losing none of their core appeal. However, the professional print world has a few gotchas, and in true hacker spirit [Mabel Wynne] shares
things she learned the hard way
when printing her solo art zine.
As with assembling hardware kits, assembling a zine can take up a lot of physical table space.
[Mabel] says the most useful detail to nail down before even speaking to printers is the zine’s binding, because binding type can impact layout and design of an entire document. Her advice? Nail it down early, whether it’s a simple saddlestitch (staples through a v-shaped fold of sheets), spiral binding (which allows a document to lay flat), or something else.
Aside from paper and print method (which may be more or less important depending on the zine’s content) the other thing that’s important to consider is the finishing. Finishing consists of things like cutting, folding, and binding of the raw printed sheets. A printer will help arrange these, but it’s possible to do some or even all of these steps for oneself, which is not only more hands-on but reduces costs.
Do test runs, and prototype the end result in order to force unknown problems to the surface before they become design issues. Really, the fundamentals have a lot in common with designing and building kits or hardware. Check out [Mabel]’s article for the full details; she even talks a little about managing money and getting a zine onto shelves.
Zine making is the DIYer’s way to give ideas physical form and put them into peoples’ hands more or less directly, and there’s something wonderfully and inherently subversive about that concept.
2600
has its roots in print, but
oddball disk magazines
prove one doesn’t need paper to make a zine.
| 28
| 9
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154378",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T00:30:09",
"content": "Old hacker-ajacent guy says: “Back in my day, sonny, we were lucky if we had access to a mimeograph or ditto machine. Now get off my lawn!”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154441",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T07:08:48",
"content": "Mimeo or later grainy photocopy. The essence of the zine is:– its imperfection and DIY nature– its content, that typically would not get published",
"parent_id": "8154378",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154410",
"author": "Tony L",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T04:34:11",
"content": "This guy never has to pay $10 for the seat cause he only needs the EEEEDGE!!!!Lighten up, Francis",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154679",
"author": "i alone possess the truth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T22:15:56",
"content": "Sounds like someone hasn’t had the pleasure of punching Ian McKaye in his effing face because “Someone I know works there so I can go behind the counter and grab a magic marker and give myself a make-believe tattoo.” It was wonderful banning that ass from my store, and it wasn’t even my store..Brian Baker, late of Bad Religion, previously Minor Threat and Dag Nasty: “We’ll just put an ad in the paper and say “punk band wants to sell van.”Name me a punk who didn’t grow up in an upscale neighborhood and didn’t have a fallback. You can’t.Punk equals a-hole in my book.",
"parent_id": "8154410",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154422",
"author": "Crash",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T05:58:23",
"content": "Y’know what’s not punk? Gatekeeping. How about you stay in yours, o arbiter of truth.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154427",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T06:26:40",
"content": "Being against gatekeeping is the ideology of a tapeworm.",
"parent_id": "8154422",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154479",
"author": "Matthias",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T10:06:22",
"content": "Being against gatekeeping is the business model of a door seller.",
"parent_id": "8154427",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154685",
"author": "i alone possess the truth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T22:41:25",
"content": "Being against gate-keeping is the whine of the suburbanite poser. Some people should be gate-kept. The city planner for Portland OR is a former and current punk (Dag Nasty, The Willows). I’m not saying “You should move to Russia! It’s the wild west!” as idiots who were afraid of life used to say. But you are free to move to Portland if that seems good to you. I’ll help you pack.",
"parent_id": "8154479",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154563",
"author": "Will",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T16:14:57",
"content": "Look, disregarding all the talk about gatekeeping, after reading the article, it seems more like overcomplicated self publishing.I think for most people, ‘zine’ means something that’s cut and pasted on letter sized sheets, and photocopied wherever you could find a copy machine. The fancy ones had flashy, bright orange, or pink cardstock covers.I’ve made photocopied comics, and self published soft and hardcover books, and none of it was as complicated as what was laid out in the linked article.The thing about zines is that they are about getting your ideas out there using what you have at hand. The article said she needed the help of four technicians?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154931",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T22:26:00",
"content": "it seems more like overcomplicated self publishing.Yep. “Zines” are an expression of culture and community. Printing stuff is simply printing stuff. A stack of copied paper is just a stack of copied paper, and pretending it’s a “zine” because you made it yourself is posing.It’s the same sort of annoyance as “life hacks” or forced memes.",
"parent_id": "8154563",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154934",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T22:34:27",
"content": "Or, people who mistake amateur publications for “zines” are not differentiating the media from the medium.",
"parent_id": "8154931",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154945",
"author": "DurDurDur",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T23:08:08",
"content": "Yall a bunch of gatekeepers trying to ascribe some mystical whoaness to nothing special at all,Webster says “a magazine especially, a noncommercial often homemade or online publication usually devoted to specialized and often unconventional subject matter ”So an amateur publication that in any way shape or form resembles a magazine is a ZINE, pretending its anything else to denigrate others efforts is just weakass hipster elitism flexing at the wind.",
"parent_id": "8154931",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155424",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T19:53:34",
"content": "The Webster definition makes no sense, because then every small stack of photocopied paper stapled together is a “zine”.that in any way shape or form resembles a magazineYep, and you can smoke René Magritte’s pipe. It’s cargo cult culture.",
"parent_id": "8154945",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155426",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T19:56:47",
"content": "Note that there would be no problem for you to call it your “amateur self published magazine”. You can do that any day of the week.Calling it a “zine” implies you actually have a following and a “scene” behind you.",
"parent_id": "8154945",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155451",
"author": "DurDurDur",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T20:17:11",
"content": "……weakass hipster elitism flexing at the wind",
"parent_id": "8155426",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155768",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T07:00:41",
"content": "Well, the alternative is that “zine” is just a meaningless neologism that has gone out of fashion anyways, so why do you think it’s so important to say it?It’s because it gives you the impression of having or being something that you aren’t.Pretty fly for a white guy.",
"parent_id": "8155426",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155779",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T07:42:02",
"content": "Even the original article admits it in a roundabout way:“The market is full of zines created by a collection of designers looking to make something for the sake of it. The very origins in zine-making are anti-commercial: its original purpose is to get a message across outside the constraints of traditional publishing. ”I.e. it’s a scene that was taken over by posers with nothing to say, who are simply in it to sell stuff and promote themselves. They’re re-using the aesthetics for commercial purposes, which is inverting the whole idea. All form and no function. Calling it a “zine” instead of “booklet” or some other more descriptive term is simply an act of cultural appropriation and pretense that you’re “in” something.",
"parent_id": "8155426",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155977",
"author": "DurDurDur",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T22:15:55",
"content": "“outside the constraints of traditional publishing”So an amateur publication…“Calling it a “zine” instead of “booklet or some other more descriptive term”Booklet is defined as “A short, nonserial printed work, often with a paper cover. So if you begin your endeavor with the intent of having more than the one edition, it is not a booklet. It is a magazine as that is defined as “a periodical publication containing articles and illustrations, typically covering a particular subject or area of interest.”Abridging the word to “zine” to denote the noncommercial amateur nature of the work is ACTUALLY the MORE descriptive term.Attaching some bullshit feels based connotation is just you engaging in weakass hipster elitism flexing at the wind to gatekeep. You dont get a following without beginning your publication, and any interest that exists has people who also share that interest and would comprise a “scene” if you absolutely insist upon clinging to your teenage angst based mentality.",
"parent_id": "8155426",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154607",
"author": "Jeff Wright",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T18:34:21",
"content": "One of the besthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factsheet_Five",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154618",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:11:11",
"content": "I work in public transit and we are by law required to give drivers printed booklets with their duties and rosters. The price of these booklets is enormous, about 5 (euro) cent per (A6) page, which counts up to a lot if it’s 300 pages, for 200 drivers (so order 250 for temps etc).I have often heard “Let’s do it ourselves, that’ll save costs” from depot managers, especially if it’s for a short term, like only a week of detour workings. Often, after this week, the depot manager sighs and says “next time we’re going to bring it to the printer”, because the cutting, assembling and punching holes would always take so much (paid) time.The only booklet I usually printed and assembled myself was for a small island (1 line, 2 buses, 7 drivers, but 10 different “working days” depending on how many tourists the ferry company expected.) Explaining to the printer what needed to happen was more complex than just printing it myself.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154689",
"author": "Lonnie Stoudt",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T22:57:12",
"content": "What she describes is what I was taught as a sidecar for a CA state Graphic Design Certification program it was called “Production Art” (a state ‘Award’ certificate in 2004) and also went on into mounting, framing and presentation, beyond print and bind…",
"parent_id": "8154618",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154706",
"author": "i alone possess the truth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T23:27:31",
"content": "“(1 line, 2 buses, 7 drivers, but 10 different “working days” depending on how many tourists the ferry company expected.) Explaining to the printer what needed to happen was more complex than just printing it myself.”It’s not the printer’s job to understand what needed to happen, it’s your job to produce print ready copy. It sounds like you don’t understand how printing works. The printer is not your padewan.",
"parent_id": "8154618",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154926",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T22:16:13",
"content": "It sounds like the print job depended on a lot of IF statements.If you’re treating the printer as just a dumb printer, you’d have to print every permutation, which would waste a lot of time and money on all sides. Printing just the thing you need would either require explaining it to the printer, or doing it yourself.",
"parent_id": "8154706",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154630",
"author": "dahud",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:33:42",
"content": "It’s not a zine if you print it yourself.It’s not a zine if you have someone else print it.QED zines do not exist.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154922",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T22:06:54",
"content": "It’s not wrong though.Making your own “zine” without any sort of cultural movement or an idea behind it is at best a forced meme. It’s like open source without the community. It’s just you.",
"parent_id": "8154630",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154660",
"author": "Michael Standridge",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T20:51:07",
"content": "The typical D.I.Y./punk rock zine is usually made on a copy machine,folded and bound with staples. To have it printed on a traditional offset press is expensive, or it was costly in the 1990s.I had a couple friends that managed a Kinkos and I could get my zine printed(approximately 100 zines with 16 to 32 pages) for almost nothing. I did a run of 500 32 page issue on newsprint and it was a bit pricey but fun to publish it. (Spiked Impalement #8 Winter 1997)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154682",
"author": "JustAGuest",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T22:21:57",
"content": "can someone identify the latptop / tablet in the image embedded in this article?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154804",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T10:39:01",
"content": "It looks to me like a MacBook of some sort with a slim keyboard placed on top of the inbuilt keyboard.",
"parent_id": "8154682",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,476.002884
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/25/massive-aluminum-snake-casting-becomes-water-cooling-loop-for-pc/
|
Massive Aluminum Snake Casting Becomes Water Cooling Loop For PC
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"Tech Hacks"
] |
[
"aluminium casting",
"aluminum casting",
"casting",
"computer",
"pc",
"sand casting",
"water cooling"
] |
Water cooling was once only the preserve of hardcore casemodders and overclockers. Today, it’s pretty routinely used in all sorts of performance PC builds. However,
few are using large artistic castings as radiators like [Mac Pierce] is doing.
The casting itself was inspired on the concept of the ouroboros, the snake which eats its own tail if one remembers correctly. [Mac] built a wooden form to produce a loop approximately 30″ tall and 24″ wide, before carving it into the classic snake design. The mold was then used to produce a hefty sand cast part which weighed in at just over 30 pounds.
The next problem was to figure out how to create a sealed water channel in the casting to use it as a radiator. This was achieved by machining finned cooling channels into the surface of the snake itself. A polycarbonate face plate was then produced to bolt over this, creating a sealed system. [Mac] also had to work hard to find a supply of aluminum-compatible water cooling fittings to ensure he didn’t run into any issues with galvanic corrosion.
The final product worked, and looked great to boot, even if it took many disassembly cycles to fix all the leaks. The blood-red coolant was a nice touch that really complemented the silvery aluminum. CPU temperatures weren’t as good as with a purpose-built PC radiator, but maxed out at 51 C in a heavy load test—servicable for [Mac]’s uses. The final touch was to simply build the rest of the PC to live inside the ouroboros itself—and the results were stunning.
We’ve featured
a few good watercooling builds over the years.
If you’ve found your own unique way to keep your hardware cool and happy, don’t hesitate to notify
the tipsline!
| 5
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154362",
"author": "James",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T23:12:11",
"content": "That’s incredible I love it",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154456",
"author": "Kalten",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T08:11:43",
"content": "Next up, Three Wolf Moon case decals?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154485",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T10:53:39",
"content": "For the world free of imperialist units: just over 13.6 kg (30 pounds)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154594",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T18:04:38",
"content": "No nations that use napoleonic units practiced imperialism?FREEDOM!’s weight is typically measured in grains, but pound next best thing.The art seams rudimentary.For all the casting effort, I’d have spent anther week on carving first.Snake’s head looks like PacMan.Ask an artistic friend for help.You could design cooling fines into the casting by choosing a better positive material than wood.They purpose make both foam and casting plaster for such things.You could even cast in a water passage.",
"parent_id": "8154485",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155291",
"author": "Mac",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T15:26:21",
"content": "What the article doesn’t link to is the project page that details what the computer is actually doing, playing an every looping game of counterstrike.https://www.macpierce.com/wsowsb",
"parent_id": "8154594",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,475.887799
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/25/2025-one-hertz-challenge-a-discrete-component-divider-chain/
|
2025 One Hertz Challenge: A Discrete Component Divider Chain
|
Jenny List
|
[
"clock hacks",
"contests"
] |
[
"2025 One Hertz Contest",
"32.768 kHz",
"clock divider"
] |
Most of us know that a quartz clock uses a higher frequency crystal oscillator and a chain of divider circuits to generate a 1 Hz pulse train. It’s usual to have a 32.768 kHz crystal and a 15-stage divider chain, which in turn normally sits inside an integrated circuit. Not so for [Bobricius],
who’s created just such a divider chain using discrete components
.
The circuit of a transistor divider is simple enough, and he’s simply replicated it fifteen times in surface mount parts on a PCB with an oscillator forming the remaining square in a 4 by 4 grid. In the video below the break we can see him measuring the frequency at each point, down to the final second. It’s used as the timing generator for an all transistor clock, and as we can see it continues that trend. Below the break is a video showing all the frequencies in the chain.
This project is part of our awesome
2025 One Hertz Challenge
, for all things working on one second cycles. Enter your own things that go tick and tock, we’d live to see them!
| 23
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154305",
"author": "D",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T18:46:22",
"content": "“Most of us know that a quartz clock uses a higher frequency crystal oscillator and a chain of divider circuits to generate a 1 Hz pulse train.”Uhhh count me in the minority then I guess.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154307",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T18:55:27",
"content": "But now you know! Welcome to the majority!",
"parent_id": "8154305",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154388",
"author": "Aaron",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T01:48:43",
"content": "In case anyone is not familiar with computing at the lower levels: You typically have a clock that steps your computing engine to the next thing that its going to do. Every ‘tick’ of the clock is the trigger for the next step. In modern computing, we use quartz crystals specially tuned to create a regular rhythm of ticks.If we had a clock running at 1Hz, computing would be very slow. It would take us several seconds to add together two numbers. We want to work faster than that, but might also need to regularly count smaller numbers (like a single second.) Because computing is binary, we go up and down by powers of two. The 32,768 Hz is a crystal that ticks 32,768 times in a second. If you count every other tick you get a clock that ticks 16,384 times a second. If you count only every 4th you get 8192 – and so on.As explained above, if you count every 15th tick you get 1 once per second. That’s how computer clocks work.",
"parent_id": "8154305",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154419",
"author": "Kaz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T05:40:43",
"content": "Did you mean “every 2^15th tick”?",
"parent_id": "8154388",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154720",
"author": "deadlock",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T00:49:47",
"content": "It’s worth noting that a simple quartz watch doesn’t do any computing etc.We use 32768 Hz clocks because higher clock speed means higher stability and commonly accuracy. It’s particularly important in a watch because otherwise the impact from vibration etc would be too high. With a 1 Hz mechanical oscillator, waving your hand would significantly affect the timekeeping",
"parent_id": "8154388",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154310",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T19:01:30",
"content": "Hm. Not even a schematic of the ÷2 circuit. I was curious about how he did this with just two transistors and some diodes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154329",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T20:54:27",
"content": "Flipflop",
"parent_id": "8154310",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154623",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:21:09",
"content": "Known as a bi-stable multivibrator back in the day.",
"parent_id": "8154329",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155398",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T19:09:03",
"content": "Yes, of course, but I was curious about the specific design.",
"parent_id": "8154310",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154311",
"author": "dianeadianea",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T19:05:06",
"content": "Today I finally realized a 32.768 kHz crystal frequency was all about the powers of two. How I didn’t see that totally obvious number all these years…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154323",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T20:19:26",
"content": "It’s also why all watches that beep do so on the same note (a flat C) because they use the 2048 or 4096 signal further up the chain.",
"parent_id": "8154311",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154332",
"author": "i alone possess the truth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T20:57:54",
"content": "What key are the watches playing in that they just don’t call it a B? I’m curious as to how they get to “a flat C” using 2048 or 4096 hz?",
"parent_id": "8154323",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154342",
"author": "Paul A LeBlanc",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T22:02:02",
"content": "C7 is 2093 Hz, B6 is 1975.53 Hz. So it’s not a C-flat (B), but a slightly flat C.",
"parent_id": "8154332",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154348",
"author": "i alone possess the truth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T22:17:24",
"content": "So a B#! Slightly. Thanks!",
"parent_id": "8154342",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154333",
"author": "Tom G",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T21:13:53",
"content": "Wasteful use of components.I have Tektronix instruments where divide by N (N=2 or 5 or 10) is done with 2 transistors, 2 diodes, 2 capacitors, 5 resistors.FFI, see the Tek184 schematic.",
"parent_id": "8154323",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154397",
"author": "i alone possess the truth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T03:14:15",
"content": "Yours is a refreshing comment on this Summer’s Eve. Drink deep!",
"parent_id": "8154333",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154463",
"author": "Tom G",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T08:46:07",
"content": "I should note the 184 only used N=2,5,10, but the same circuit could divide by any integer up to, say, 16.Basic technique: each input pulse dumps a glug of charge onto a capacitor, thus raising the voltage. After sufficient glugs the voltage exceeds a threshold, the charge is drained from the capacitor and causes a pulse to the next stage.Increasing a resistor reduced the size of the glug and increased the division ratio.Skill plus imagination enables possibilities that brute force cannot achieve.",
"parent_id": "8154397",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154566",
"author": "ziggurat29",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T16:23:21",
"content": "a fusion of digital an analog",
"parent_id": "8154333",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154667",
"author": "Tom G",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T21:24:39",
"content": "All circuits are analogue, but someinterprettheir inputs as digital signals, and have discrete non-overlapping output ranges.Exceptions: photon counting and femtoamp circuits.",
"parent_id": "8154566",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154698",
"author": "DonPaulOlshove",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T23:14:17",
"content": "Hard to believe, but I actually invented/designed such a thing for a military product. The requirement was a 1 minute output. The only “clock” available was a 1 second pulse from a mechanical clock. Yes as I recall, the chain went /5,/4,/3. It’s been nearly 60 years, so I don’t remember the schematics, but it was all discrete (ICs were still an academic curosity) with more parts than you describe. It had to work, guaranteed, in a pretty rough mil environment. Temp and vibration both an issue. Each stage was packaged in a little cord-wood module. The modules did fine in environmental testing. The circuit board they were attached to did not.",
"parent_id": "8154333",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154406",
"author": "ziggurat29",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T04:23:08",
"content": "it’s also about being the lowest such power beyond the range of human hearing.",
"parent_id": "8154311",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154488",
"author": "Paul Nourse",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T11:00:15",
"content": "I made a crystal calibrator with an IC decade divider so I could tune my Hallicrafters Sx-25 Super Defiant when I was a kid in the 1970s. I still have and use both. You can change the frequency/spacing with a rotary switch. It’s almost like having a digital tuner.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154505",
"author": "John Haine",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T11:54:00",
"content": "At one time middle C was defined as 256 Hz but since the A above was redefined as 440 Hz for orchestral tuning in 1939 it is now 261.3 Hz. According to Wikipedia.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,475.841654
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/25/hackaday-podcast-episode-330-hover-turtles-dull-designs-and-knex-computers/
|
Hackaday Podcast Episode 330: Hover Turtles, Dull Designs, And K’nex Computers
|
Al Williams
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] |
[
"Hackaday Podcast"
] |
What did you miss on Hackaday last week? Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Al Williams are ready to catch you up on this week’s podcast. First, though, the guys go off on vibe coding and talk about a daring space repair around Jupiter.
Then it is off to the hacks, including paste extruding egg shells, bespoke multimeters, and an 8-bit mechanical computer made from a construction toy set.
For can’t miss articles, you’ll hear about boring industrial design in modern cell phones and a deep dive into how fresh fruit makes it to your table in the middle of the winter.
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!
The
DRM-free MP3
was stored in a public refrigerated warehouse to ensure freshness. Why not download it and add it to your collection?
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 330 Show Notes:
News:
Vibe Coding Goes Wrong As AI Wipes Entire Database
https://proceedings.mlr.press/v170/marx22a/marx22a.pdf
Scientific American Amateur Scientist Neural Network
What’s that Sound?
The sound last week is revealed! Congrats to [Brian].
Pendulum Music Steve Reich 1968
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Paste Extrusion For 3D Printing Glass And Eggshells
CeraMetal Lets You Print Metal, Cheaply And Easily
TRAvel Slicer
Hand-and-Machine Github
Extruder-turtle
Designing An Open Source Multimeter: The HydraMeter
USB-C-ing All The Things
8 Bit Mechanical Computer Built From Knex
A Lockpicking Robot That Can Sense The Pins
2025 One-Hertz Challenge: HP Logic Probe Brought Into The Future
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Fusing Cheap EBay Find Into A Digital Rangefinder
Embedded LEDs For Soft Robots Made From Silicone
Video Tape Hides Video Player
Al’s Picks:
Neon Lamp Detects Lightning Strikes
Reverse Engineering A ‘Tony’ 6502-based Mini Arcade Machine
Floating Buoy Measures Ocean Conditions
Can’t-Miss Articles:
The Death Of Industrial Design And The Era Of Dull Electronics
A Field Guide To The North American Cold Chain
| 1
| 1
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154858",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T16:22:55",
"content": "The whole AI business sounds the same as how dogs only look guilty when their owners know they’ve done something wrong (even when they haven’t).The dog doesn’t even understand the concept. They’re just acting to get out of being scolded.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,475.643416
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/23/an-open-source-flow-battery/
|
An Open Source Flow Battery
|
Aaron Beckendorf
|
[
"Battery Hacks",
"Science"
] |
[
"3d printed",
"battery",
"flow battery",
"rechargeable batteries",
"redox flow batteries"
] |
The flow battery is one of the more interesting ideas for grid energy storage – after all, how many batteries combine electron current with fluid current? If you’re interested in trying your hand at building one of these, the scientists behind the Flow Battery Research Collective just released the design and build instructions for a small
zinc-iodide flow battery
.
The battery consists of a central electrochemical cell, divided into two separated halves, with a reservoir and peristaltic pump on each side to push electrolyte through the cell. The cell uses brass-backed grafoil (compressed graphite sheets) as the current collectors, graphite felt as porous electrodes, and matte photo paper as the separator membrane between the electrolyte chambers. The cell frame itself and the reservoir tanks are 3D printed out of polypropylene for increased chemical resistance, while the supporting frame for the rest of the cell can be printed from any rigid filament.
The cell uses an
open source potentiostat
to control charge and discharge cycles, and an Arduino to control the peristaltic pumps. The electrolyte itself uses zinc chloride and potassium iodide as the main ingredients. During charge, zinc deposits on the cathode, while iodine and polyhalogen ions form in the anode compartment. During discharge, zinc redissolves in what is now the anode compartment, while the iodine and polyhalogen ions are reduced back to iodides and chlorides. Considering the stains that iodide ions can leave, the researchers do advise testing the cell for leaks with distilled water before filling it with electrolyte.
If you decide to try one of these builds, there’s
a forum
available to document your progress or ask for advice. This may have the clearest instructions, but it isn’t the only
homemade flow cell
out there. It’s also possible to make these with very
high energy densities
.
| 30
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153089",
"author": "Lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T10:54:36",
"content": "For people who haven’t done so before, really leak test any 3d prints designed to store liquids. Especially liquids that aren’t water. 3d prints often aren’t water right. There are tricks to make them water right, like adding wax and whatever else.Cool project. The potentiostat itself is an accomplishment. Wish someone sold the boards near cost.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153136",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:37:44",
"content": "Which is why they explicitly state those parts need to be printed with 100% infill and 5 perimeters and then leak tested, I suppose.",
"parent_id": "8153089",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153165",
"author": "LordNothing",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T13:54:56",
"content": "brownie points if you can dunk it in a resin while in a vacuum chamber.",
"parent_id": "8153136",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153266",
"author": "maxzillian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T17:27:01",
"content": "I suppose a light application of acetone would be enough to seal a ASA/ABS print?",
"parent_id": "8153165",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153302",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:21:11",
"content": "Nope. it gums / dissolves the surface, that is no seal.",
"parent_id": "8153266",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153487",
"author": "pjgam",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T04:14:32",
"content": "This is exactly what I do for my hydroponics (using ASA). Great success so far — nice, glossy finish and no leaks.",
"parent_id": "8153266",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153903",
"author": "Desi J Richert",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T21:04:23",
"content": "Hows about putting an inflatable bladder inside your reservoir tank to ensure it doesn’t leak?",
"parent_id": "8153136",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154089",
"author": "DanielFP",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:39:37",
"content": "It doesnt leak. Polypropylene prints water tight quite easily.",
"parent_id": "8153903",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153229",
"author": "DanielFP",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:56:56",
"content": "I am one of the creators of the project. We use polypropylene for the flow frames, which is one of the few 3D printed plastics that is relatively easy to make water tight if printed at 100% infill with high perimeters and some overflow.",
"parent_id": "8153089",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153390",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T00:09:53",
"content": "Instead of 100% infill, maybe it’d be better to print so there is a continuous void that is then filled with wax.",
"parent_id": "8153089",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153822",
"author": "DerAxeman",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T17:50:14",
"content": "This is a HazMat response just waiting to happen. Corrosive chemicals handled by amateurs going into things they 3D printed.",
"parent_id": "8153089",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154092",
"author": "DanielFP",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:43:15",
"content": "The volumes are very low (10mL total) with this kit and the materials in contact with the chemicals were selected to be chemically compatible with a wide range of active material choices (polypropylene, grafoil, etc). With that said, care should be taken whenever handling reactive chemical substances. Always read the msds of materials and wear the proper ppe. As with any activity, accidents can definitely happen if people are careless.",
"parent_id": "8153822",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154103",
"author": "DanielFP",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:58:35",
"content": "Also we are not amateurs, my colleague working on the project and I both have PhDs. His in chemical engineering and mine in chemistry.",
"parent_id": "8153822",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154420",
"author": "DerAxeman",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T05:52:59",
"content": "Its not you I am worried about. You are not Amateurs however there are lots that will try to repeat your work thst are amateurs and will make a mess of it. And they will do it not in a lab but in their home.",
"parent_id": "8154103",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155070",
"author": "DanielFP",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T08:13:21",
"content": "We try to provide instructions that try to inform people well about the potential risks of doing this, but obviously it is up to anyone who wants to reproduce this to ensure their own safety. We do not advocate for anyone to reproduce this in an unsafe environment or under unsafe conditions. Thanks for your concern!",
"parent_id": "8154420",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8157234",
"author": "kirk",
"timestamp": "2025-08-03T11:02:56",
"content": "A forum member has some extra unpopulated boards for free in the EU, FYI!https://fbrc.nodebb.com/topic/37/mystat-pcbs-for-free",
"parent_id": "8153089",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153259",
"author": "R Donovan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T17:16:17",
"content": "The tube on the left pump is pretty much pinched closed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153304",
"author": "DanielFP",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:28:52",
"content": "I took that picture. Lol, it was pinched when I took the picture but it obviously was not pinched when I was operating the battery.",
"parent_id": "8153259",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153303",
"author": "jdx6511",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:24:42",
"content": "“During charge, zinc redissolves…”Shouldn’t this one be “During discharge, zinc redissolves…”?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153306",
"author": "DanielFP",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:29:37",
"content": "Yes you are correct, when discharging zinc will dissolve. I hope they fix it on the article.",
"parent_id": "8153303",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153514",
"author": "Aaron Beckendorf",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T06:01:03",
"content": "Thanks for pointing that out, I’ve corrected it.",
"parent_id": "8153303",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153335",
"author": "ungovernable",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T20:58:22",
"content": "Ok, so if this can be made on a bench top, what will it take to bump the model up to the homestead scale? Better yet, what would it take to move this from a really cool demonstrator to a kit?I much prefer the idea of having an 8’x12′ shed dedicated to a flow battery than having a LiPo battery in my garage waiting for an excuse to burn my house down.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153679",
"author": "DanielFP",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T13:07:14",
"content": "We are creating the first open source flow battery cell and stack right now, which will be the core of a larger scale application. However it will take a few years before we have this at a point where people can confidently just DIY a full battery stack in the kWh scale. You can follow our forum for information about our progress in this field.We are also going to be producing the desktop setup in this article as a kit soon, we are putting these kits at University labs first, but we’ll also make them available for retail purchase in the EU before the end of the year.",
"parent_id": "8153335",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153681",
"author": "DanielFP",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T13:07:54",
"content": "I meant the first large area open source flow battery stack.",
"parent_id": "8153679",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154366",
"author": "Ungovernable",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T23:31:59",
"content": "I am very excited by this project. I’ve been trying to get a local co-op utility grid scale flow battery bank going in my area. The price tag, LiPo fire concerns, and newness of it all has scared away all the investors.I can show them all the metrics in the world on Energy Storage As A Service for grid balancing and load leveling but no one wants to talk to me since I’m not sitting on a trust fund.So, screw them and the grid. Flow batteries for the masses.",
"parent_id": "8153679",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153864",
"author": "Schobi",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:29:12",
"content": "I could not find any info on what this cell can do.How much electrical power can this cell consume/provide? What capacity does this liquid provide (Wh/liter)? What does a typical system cost?I suspect this is like a Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor (yay fusion, science fair) versus a Tokamak fusion reactor (making energy). I guess this design is more like an educational tool, rather than a suitable DIY method for building a few and storing a 10kW excess photovoltaic generation.I don’t want to bad-mouth this. Even an educational open design of such a complex design is a great achievement.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154096",
"author": "DanielFP",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:51:48",
"content": "This is an educational tool. It is meant to provide a tool for reproducible research of chemistries or education about the basics of flow battery systems. With the chemistry we tested the system stores around 250mWh of energy. This isnt even enough energy to run its pumps and arduino, but a meaningful scale to validate chemistries and materials. About cost, the cost of materials is around 500 EUR, including the potentiostat and pumps. It is definitely feasible to diy, we already have a few people successfully and indepedently reproducing the kit.We are working on the first open source large scale stackable design to achieve the kWh scale and enable people who want to do developments on the engineering side. This will enable people to DIY larger scale systems – at their own risk – but ideally it would enable companies to produce ready-to-use retail systems at low cost.",
"parent_id": "8153864",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155744",
"author": "Sandro",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T05:46:49",
"content": "Is the stackable version using the same basic structure and materials or is the design totally different?",
"parent_id": "8154096",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8167198",
"author": "DanielFP",
"timestamp": "2025-08-22T13:00:32",
"content": "It is a different design, because the requirements for a stack are quite different. The new design is also completely open source, you can find it here (https://fbrc.nodebb.com/topic/11/designing-the-large-format-cell/49)",
"parent_id": "8155744",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154098",
"author": "DanielFP",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:55:39",
"content": "The max capacity achieved with rhe Zn/I liquid electrolyte we tested was ~25 Wh/L (catholyte+anolyte volume)",
"parent_id": "8153864",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,476.114322
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/22/nylon-like-tpu-filament-testing-cc3ds-72d-tpu/
|
Nylon-Like TPU Filament: Testing CC3D’s 72D TPU
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"3d Printer hacks"
] |
[
"3d printer filament",
"TPU"
] |
Another entry in the world of interesting FDM filaments comes courtesy of CC3D with their 72D TPU filament, with [Dr. Igor Gaspar]
putting it to the test in his recent video
. The use of the Shore hardness D scale rather than the typical A scale is a strong indication that something is different about this TPU. The manufacturer claims ‘nylon-like’ performance, which should give this TPU filament much more hardness and resistance to abrasion. The questions are whether this filament lives up to these promises, and whether it is at all fun to print with.
The CC3D 72D TPU filament used to print a bicycle’s handlebar grips. (Credit: My Tech Fun, YouTube)
TPU is of course highly hydrophilic, so keeping the filament away from moisture is essential. Printing temperature is listed on the spool as 225 – 245°C, and the filament is very bendable but not stretchable. For the testing a Bambu Lab X-1 Carbon was used, with the filament directly loaded from the filament dryer. After an overnight print session resulted in spaghetti due to warping, it was found that generic TPU settings at 240ºC with some more nylon-specific tweaks seemed to give the best results, with other FDM printers also working well that way.
The comparison was against Bambu Lab’s 68D
TPU for AMS
. Most noticeable is that the 72D TPU easily suffers permanent deformation, while being much more wear resistant than e.g. PLA. That said, it does indeed seem to perform more like polyamide filaments, making it perhaps an interesting alternative there. Although there’s some confusion about whether this TPU filament has polyamide added to it, it seems to be pure TPU, just like the Bambu Lab 68D filament.
| 8
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153059",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T08:25:01",
"content": "I was thinking about this… TPU has great layer adhesion, but usual filaments are too soft. So i was really interrested to find out if harder TPUs would provide the same toughness without being flexible (which makes it unusable for most machine parts).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153105",
"author": "commiegir",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T11:51:50",
"content": "I’ve been testing automotive chassis bushings in 64D and been pretty impressed, its equivalent with the Poly bushings sold by race shops.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154040",
"author": "crazyramen",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T04:11:25",
"content": "What filaments are you using for that? I was thinking of doing the same but am worried about heat creep with most of the TPUs I’ve seen having a fairly low heat deflection",
"parent_id": "8153105",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153183",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T14:20:16",
"content": "i’m interested in filaments with more flex and ‘toughness’, but i don’t have a project in mind off the top of my head. and the local bike shop sells perfectly fine mountain bike handlebar grips for about $10. not sure how tpu stacks up to the rubber but i’m gonna guess i prefer the rubber.so i guess – thanks! – i am taking this article as yet another example of why i don’t really need tpu :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153252",
"author": "walmart_newton",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T16:55:18",
"content": "TPU works extremely well for parts that will see abuse. Ideally, for grips you’d use a foaming TPU which can produce very soft and grippy parts at higher temps (costlier), or a low hardness TPU (difficult to print). But even a normal 90A TPU makes great grips when printed with a textured surface and low infill.",
"parent_id": "8153183",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153568",
"author": "chrift",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T08:11:33",
"content": "Can you please let us know what the extra nylon specific tweaks that you used were?? I’m having real issues with bed adhesion with this!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8158057",
"author": "Xian",
"timestamp": "2025-08-05T20:58:14",
"content": "I’ve made several test prints with the CC3D 72D TPU filament and my feelings are a bit mixed.If you print it right the layer adhesion is very good.But it’s very easy to mess the settings up. It seems if the previous layer is to cold then it will stick very poorly, much worse then PLA.I find it very difficult to find the right settings for temperature, fan speed and other slicer settings (speed), that influence the temperature / cooling.In my test i had the problem that 100% infill regions printed too hot and sparse infill regions too cold.This lead to either one region didn’t stick or the other region showing rough / wavy walls. Didn’t manage to get both right at the same time.I have to add that i didn’t print from a dryer, so moisture may also had an effect.The temperatures of the filaments touching is obviously not only determined by the temperature it leaves the nozzle but also how many time was there for the other side (previous layer) to cool down, geometry of the print, etc.Current slicers are very bad at predicting that, or they don’t do that at all.It would need some kind of thermal prediction / simulation similar to in the fooling link:https://www.aon3d.com/press/machine-learning-driven-thermal-optimization/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8158780",
"author": "Printz",
"timestamp": "2025-08-07T20:23:26",
"content": "You should print from a dryer.",
"parent_id": "8158057",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,475.779034
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/22/the-hall-heroult-process-on-a-home-scale/
|
The Hall-Héroult Process On A Home Scale
|
Aaron Beckendorf
|
[
"chemistry hacks"
] |
[
"alumina",
"aluminium",
"electrolysis",
"Hydrochloric acid",
"smelting",
"sodium hydroxide"
] |
Although Charles Hall conducted his first successful run of the Hall-Héroult aluminium smelting process in the woodshed behind his house, it has ever since remained mostly out of reach of home chemists. It does involve electrolysis at temperatures above 1000 ℃, and can involve some frighteningly toxic chemicals, but as [Maurycy Z] demonstrates, an amateur can
now perform it
a bit more conveniently than Hall could.
[Maurycy] started by finding a natural source of aluminium, in this case aluminosilicate clay. He washed the clay and soaked it in warm hydrochloric acid for two days to extract the aluminium as a chloride. This also extracted quite a bit of iron, so [Maurycy] added sodium hydroxide to the solution until both aluminium and iron precipitated as hydroxides, added more sodium hydroxide until the aluminium hydroxide redissolved, filtered the solution to remove iron hydroxide, and finally added hydrochloric acid to the solution to precipitate aluminium hydroxide. He heated the aluminium hydroxide to about 800 ℃ to decompose it into the alumina, the starting material for electrolysis.
To turn this into aluminium metal, [Maurycy] used molten salt electrolysis. Alumina melts at a much higher temperature than [Maurycy]’s furnace could reach, so he used cryolite as a flux. He mixed this with his alumina and used an electric furnace to melt it in a graphite crucible. He used the crucible itself as the cathode, and a graphite rod as an anode. He does warn that this process can produce small amounts of hydrogen fluoride and fluorocarbons, so that “doing the electrolysis without ventilation is a great way to poison yourself in new and exciting ways.” The first run didn’t produce anything, but on a second attempt with a larger anode, 20 minutes of electrolysis produced 0.29 grams of aluminium metal.
[Maurycy]’s process follows the
industrial Hall-Héroult process
quite closely, though he does use a different procedure to purify his raw materials. If you aren’t interested in smelting aluminium, you can still cast it
with a microwave oven
.
| 8
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153004",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T03:47:25",
"content": "Sweet! Always good to see industrial processes being made more accessible. Still waiting for someone to try the FFC Cambridge process to extract titanium or silicon.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153157",
"author": "Wouter",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T13:42:18",
"content": "I enjoy seeing these kinds of experiments a lot. I think it would be good to mention the work by Cody (from the YouTube channel Cody’s lab) who has a video with nearly the exact same procedure from 8 years ago.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153331",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T20:46:12",
"content": "It’s a real shame that it turned out the internet was not to be for more things like this. Cody himself has said that Youtube these days just isn’t very welcoming towards sharing anything that could be perceived as unsafe. Youtube would be much happier if people only made heaps of low effort content, which has tainted the reputation of all Youtubers as people who only make heaps of low effort content.",
"parent_id": "8153157",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153225",
"author": "Irv Davis",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:47:19",
"content": "Al2O3 + 3Cl2 + 3CO —> 2AlCl3 + 3CO2Reduction of gaseous AlCl3 to metal requires less energy than reduction of Al2O3. From patent.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153260",
"author": "PhillipeLeMarchand",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T17:19:59",
"content": "Neat! Now try it with aluminum oxide dissolved in cryolite.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153781",
"author": "Barry",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T16:46:03",
"content": "If I understand the description correctly, I think that is exactly what he did — the text described it as “using cryolite as a flux”. Since this was done specifically to overcome the high melting point of aluminum oxide, that implied to me that the oxide was being dissolved in molten cryolite. I could be wrong though.I’ve played with little electric melters like the one pictured — you certainly aren’t going to be melting straight aluminum oxide in that. They max out around 1000-1200 C. Alumina is melting another 1000 degrees higher, give or take. I don’t think we have any resistive heating elements that haven’t melted themselves by that point, and a lot of the materials used for furnace walls are having a tough time too. People have gotten there in their backyard, but it’s challenging and usually involves a flame and compressed air.As a side note, the term “flux” in the context of metallurgy seems to be frustratingly ambiguous. As best I can gather, it seems to just mean “magic powder we dump in the melt to achieve some desired effect”. That might mean selectively dissolving impurities, acting as a sacrificial acceptor of oxygen, lowering a melting point, etc. Perhaps it reflects that some of these processes predate our understanding of the actual chemistry? I am sure that modern metallurgists understand very specifically what they are trying to achieve in each case, but I feel like it leads to a lot of confusion in hobby efforts.",
"parent_id": "8153260",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153913",
"author": "halper86",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T21:23:51",
"content": "I work in the industrial production of aluminium, the cryolite flux in this case is Na3AlF6. It is generally referred to as bath.Not quite a flux in a typical metallurgical sense. But you are right in being a eutectic, solubility of alumina, as well as being slightly lower density when molten compared to aluminium – allowing the metal to sink to the bottom of the cell.Hall and Heroult were truly geniuses of their time.",
"parent_id": "8153781",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154038",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T03:59:02",
"content": "Yes. The term is exactly that, an additive to do “something”, whether it be caustic, etc. see: bauxite.",
"parent_id": "8153781",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,475.934349
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/22/video-tape-hides-video-player/
|
Video Tape Hides Video Player
|
Tyler August
|
[
"handhelds hacks"
] |
[
"mp4",
"VHS",
"video player"
] |
While it might not be accurate to say VHS is dead, it’s certainly not a lively format. It continues on in undeath thanks to dedicated collectors and hobbyists, some of whom may be tempted to lynch Reddit user [CommonKingfisher] for
embedding a video player inside a VHS tape.
Miniaturization in action. The video player probably cost about the same as the original VHS when you account for inflation.
The hack started with a promotional video card via Ali Express, which is a cheap enough way to get a tiny LCD player MP4 playing micro. As you can see, there was plenty of room in the tape for the guts of this. The tape path is obviously blocked, so the tape is not playable in this format. [CommonKingfisher] claims the hack is “reversible” but since he cut a window for the LCD out of the casing of the cassette, that’s going to be pretty hard to undo. On the other hand, the ultrasonic cutter he used did make a very clean cut, and that would help with reversibility.
The fact that the thing is activated by a magnetic sensor makes us worry for the data on that tape, too, whether or not the speaker is a peizo. Ultimately it doesn’t really matter; in no universe was this tape the last surviving copy of “The Matrix”, and it’s a lot more likely this self-playing “tape” gets watched than the VHS was going to be. You can watch it yourself in the demo video embedded below.
VHS nostalgia around here usually
involves replicating the tape experience
, rather than
repurposing the tape.
We’re grateful to [George Graves] for the tip. Tips of all sorts are welcome on
our friendly neighborhood tips line
.
| 16
| 10
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152959",
"author": "Robert",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T00:43:08",
"content": "So… which item do we buy? Four searches, no joy…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153049",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T07:31:28",
"content": "I guess it must be this one:https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007924980515.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.1.55aeZcwHZcwHfX&algo_pvid=2e878617-5a92-4c3c-9d1c-fc5d7f0f3f93&algo_exp_id=2e878617-5a92-4c3c-9d1c-fc5d7f0f3f93-0&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22order%22%3A%22509%22%2C%22eval%22%3A%221%22%7D&pdp_npi=4%40dis%21EUR%2192.58%2126.19%21%21%21760.72%21215.19%21%40210384cc17532557176406111efd38%2112000042870526334%21sea%21NL%210%21ABX&curPageLogUid=ABkqi7LVUQ5b&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch%7Cquery_from%3A",
"parent_id": "8152959",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153164",
"author": "Tim",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T13:49:54",
"content": "The whole tape is about 7″, it’s the smaller 4.3″ one.https://a.aliexpress.com/_mqtxvsj",
"parent_id": "8153049",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152992",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T02:47:43",
"content": "Yo dawg, I hear you like videos.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153027",
"author": "Kauz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T05:59:12",
"content": "I can’t see either motivation, or hack value in this project. The tape is unplayable in this state, we’re not sure that the tape is not erased by tge magnet, and the process is reversible, but not really, because the plastic was cut. One could just temporarily remove the tape completely to be stored safely, put some media-player (raspberry-based, ready-made portable one, or just a small phone like Moto Defy) in front of the existing window and it would be already an improvement in reversability.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153048",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T07:27:20",
"content": "this is such a cool idea!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153353",
"author": "m1ke",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T21:59:37",
"content": "Yeah, it just works so well as a finished project. It would look great sitting on a shelf or desk.",
"parent_id": "8153048",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153079",
"author": "FABIAN GILLICH",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T10:20:16",
"content": "Genius, that the medium can play hisself. Just recursive!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153312",
"author": "mrehorst",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:40:32",
"content": "That’s so meta!",
"parent_id": "8153079",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153083",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T10:30:17",
"content": "I wonder which Allwinner or Rockchip CPU powers this. There´s probably cheap SD card inside, a serial port accessible, unprotected u-boot, and even maybe root account bare naked. A good hacking candidate i would say… a bit of Yocto- or Buildroot-fu and Bob´s your uncle.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153188",
"author": "robomonkey",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T14:33:56",
"content": "Only thing missing is a motor to simulate the tape moving in the case. That would be surreal!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153278",
"author": "Thinkerer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T17:58:04",
"content": "Or two more screens with video of turning tape/reels.",
"parent_id": "8153188",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153280",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T18:07:22",
"content": "Now the reverse: A VHS cassette with a short infinite tape that is being erased and written to inside it’s own shell while being played in a normal VHS player.And then watching Netflix with that tape time-delay (streaming the video data into the infinite tape “adapter” cassette).I’m sure with today’s technology there must be a way to write VHS tape without that big rotating read/write head…. ;-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153902",
"author": "Per Jensen",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T21:04:16",
"content": "That’s a dynamic speaker, not a Piezo-disk (or ‘peizo’ as its mis-spelled in the article).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154006",
"author": "Christopher Spooner",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T01:42:30",
"content": "Should have used Johnny Mnemonic:https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/517VF133FNL._UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154031",
"author": "dremu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T03:11:49",
"content": "Any movie with Henry Rollins must be good.",
"parent_id": "8154006",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,476.170949
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/22/2025-one-hertz-challenge-a-555-but-not-as-we-know-it/
|
2025 One Hertz Challenge: A 555, But Not As We Know It
|
Tyler August
|
[
"contests"
] |
[
"555",
"blinky",
"tiny tapeout"
] |
We did explicitly ask for projects that use a 555 timer for the One Hertz Challenge, but we weren’t expecting the 555 to
be
the project. Yet, here we are, with [matt venn]’s
Open Source 1Hz Blinky, that blinks a light with a 555 timer… but not one you’d get from Digikey.
Hooking a 555 to blink an LED at one hertz is a bog-simple, first-electronics-project type of exercise, unless you have to make the 555 first. Rather than
go big, as we have seen before
, [matt venn] goes very small, with a 555 implemented on a tiny sliver of Tiny Tapeout 6.
We’ve
covered projects using that tapeout before
, but in case you missed it, Tiny Tapeout gives space to anyone to produce ASICs on custom silicon using an open Process Design Kit, and we have [matt venn] to thank for it. The
Tiny Tapeout implementation of the 555
was actually designed by [Vincent Fusco].
Of course wiring it up is a bit more complicated than dropping in a 555 timer to the circuit: the Tiny Tapeout ASIC must be configured to use that specific project using its web interface. There’s a demo video embedded below, with some info about the project– it’s not just a blinking LED, so it’s worth seeing. The output isn’t
exactly
One Hertz, so it might not get the nod in the Timelord category, but it’s going to be a very strong competitor for other 555-based projects– of which we could really use more, hint-hint. You’ve got until August 19th, if you think you can use a 555 to do something more interesting than blink an LED.
| 2
| 2
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152897",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T20:13:19",
"content": "It never gets old seeing those designs.https://youtu.be/_Pqfjer8-O4",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152900",
"author": "Jørgen Kragh Jakobsen",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T20:28:20",
"content": "Well done taking open-source into the challenge like this.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,476.206338
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/22/2025-one-hertz-challenge-pokemon-alarm-clock-tells-you-its-time-to-build-the-very-best/
|
2025 One-Hertz Challenge: Pokémon Alarm Clock Tells You It’s Time To Build The Very Best
|
Adam Zeloof
|
[
"clock hacks",
"contests",
"Games"
] |
[
"2025 Hackaday One Hertz Challenge",
"art",
"clock",
"ESP32",
"microcontroller",
"pokemon"
] |
We’ve all felt the frustration of cheap consumer electronics — especially when they aren’t actually cheap. How many of us have said “Who designed this crap? I could do better with an Arduino!” while resisting the urge to drop that new smart doorbell in the garbage disposal?
It’s an all-too familiar thought, and when it passed through [Mathieu]’s head while he was resetting the time and changing the batteries in his son’s power-hungry Pokémon alarm clock for the umpteenth time,
he decided to do something about it
.
The only real design requirement, imposed by [Mathieu]’s son, was that the clock’s original shell remained. Everything else, including the the controller and “antique” LCD could go. He ripped out the internals and installed an ESP32, allowing the clock to automatically sync to network time in the event of power loss. The old-school LCD was replaced with a modern, full-color TFT LCD which he scored on AliExpress for a couple of Euros.
Rather than just showing the time, the new display sports some beautiful pixel art by
Woostarpixels
, which [Mathieu] customized to have day and nighttime versions, even including the correct moon phase. He really packed as much into the ESP32 as possible, using 99.6% of its onboard 4 MB of flash. Code is
on GitHub
for the curious. All in all, the project is a multidisciplinary work of art, and it looks well-built enough to be enjoyed for years to come.
| 3
| 2
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152870",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T18:47:17",
"content": "Is it less power-hungry than the original?If not, does it have a power-save mode that is less power-hungry? I’m thinking a “sleep” mode that wakes up when you throw it to release your Pokémon, I mean, gently tap it to wake it up and see the time.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153552",
"author": "Mathieu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T07:21:48",
"content": "Hello,It’s not less power hungry, but the external power source + RTC allows it to loose it’s power without losing time.Using slint-ui and embassy allowed me to be very efficient on the CPU usage. It goes to sleep when there is nothing to display (ie: nothing changed) and only wake up once a second to update time. I could indeed power off the backlight and blank the screen, and put the high performance core to deep-sleep, but I have not explored the Low power core of the esp32c6, but it’s typically thing that can be done.Maybe my next project :)",
"parent_id": "8152870",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152929",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T22:18:41",
"content": "Oh, great. Now the kid is cursed and Nintendo will sneak in in the night to steal his soul.Jokes aside, though always fear their wrath, it’s always nice to see projects upgrading and taking control of your hardware.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,476.404032
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/22/the-epochalypse-y2k-but-38-years-later/
|
The Epochalypse: It’s Y2K, But 38 Years Later
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"computer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] |
[
"2038 problem",
"epoch",
"epoch time",
"timestamp",
"unix",
"unix time",
"year 2038 problem"
] |
Picture this: it’s January 19th, 2038, at exactly 03:14:07 UTC. Somewhere in a data center, a Unix system quietly ticks over its internal clock counter one more time. But instead of moving forward to 03:14:08, something strange happens. The system suddenly thinks it’s December 13th, 1901. Chaos ensues.
Welcome to the Year 2038 problem. It goes by a number of other fun names—the Unix Millennium Bug, the Epochalypse, or Y2K38. It’s another example of a fundamental computing limit that requires major human intervention to fix.
By and large, the Y2K problem was dealt with ahead of time for critical systems. An amusing example of a Y2K failure was this sign at the École Centrale de Nantes, pictured on January 3, 2000. Credit:
Bug de l’an 2000
, CC BY-SA 3.0
The Y2K problem was simple enough. Many computing systems stored years as two-digit figures, often for the sake of minimizing space needed on highly-constrained systems, back when RAM and storage, or space on punch cards, were strictly limited. This generally limited a system to understanding dates from 1900 to 1999; when storing the year 2000 as a two-digit number, it would instead effectively appear as 1900 instead. This promised to cause chaos in all sorts of ways, particularly in things like financial systems processing transactions in the year 2000 and onwards.
The problem was first identified in 1958 by Bob Bemer, who was working on longer time scales with genealogical software. Awareness slowly grew through the 1980s and 1990s as the critical date approached and things like long-term investment bonds started to butt up against the year 2000. Great effort was expended to overhaul and update important computer systems to enable them to store dates in a fashion that would not loop around back to 1900 after 1999.
Unlike Y2K, which was largely about how dates were stored and displayed, the 2038 problem is rooted in the fundamental way Unix-like systems keep track of time. Since the early 1970s, Unix systems have measured time as the number of seconds elapsed since January 1st, 1970, at 00:00:00 UTC. This moment in time is known as the “Unix epoch.” Recording time in this manner seemed like a perfectly reasonable approach at the time. It gave systems a simple, standardized way to handle timestamps and scheduled tasks.
The trouble is that this timestamp was traditionally stored as a signed 32-bit integer. Thanks to the magic of binary, a signed 32-bit integer can represent values from -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. When you’re counting individual seconds, that gives you about plus and minus 68 years either side of the epoch date. Do the math, and you’ll find that 2,147,483,647 seconds after January 1st, 1970 lands you at 03:14:07 UTC on January 19th, 2038. That’s the final time that can be represented using the 32-bit signed integer, having started at the Unix epoch.
The Unix time integer immediately prior to overflow.
What happens next isn’t pretty. When that counter tries to increment one more time, it overflows. In two’s complement arithmetic, the first bit is a signed bit. Thus, the time stamp rolls over from 2,147,483,647 to -2,147,483,648. That translates to December 13th, 1901. In January 2038, this will be roughly 136 years in the past.
Unix time after the 32-bit signed integer has overflowed.
For an unpatched system using a signed 32-bit integer to track Unix time, the immediate consequences could be severe. Software could malfunction when trying to calculate time differences that suddenly span more than a century in the wrong direction, and logs and database entries could quickly become corrupted as operations are performed on invalid dates. Databases might reject “historical” entries, file systems could become confused about which files are newer than others, and scheduled tasks might cease to run or run at inappropriate times.
This isn’t just some abstract future problem. If you grew up in the 20th century, it might sound far off—but 2038 is just 13 years away. In fact, the 2038 bug is already causing issues today. Any software that tries to work with dates beyond 2038—such as financial systems calculating 30-year mortgages—could fall over this bug right now.
In 2012, NetBSD 6.0 introduced 64-bit Unix time across both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. There is also a binary compatibility layer for running older applications, though they will still suffer the year 2038 problem internally. Credit: NetBSD changelog
The obvious fix is to move from 32-bit to 64-bit timestamps. A 64-bit signed integer can represent timestamps far into the future—roughly 292 billion years in fact, which should cover us until well after the heat death of the universe. Until we discover a solution for that fundamental physical limit, we should be fine.
Indeed, most modern Unix-based operating systems have already made this transition. Linux moved to 64-bit time_t values on 64-bit platforms years ago, and since version 5.6 in 2020, it supports 64-bit timestamps even on 32-bit hardware. OpenBSD has used 64-bit timestamps since May 2014, while NetBSD made the switch even earlier in 2012.
Most other modern Unix filesystems, C compilers, and database systems have switched over to 64-bit time by now. With that said, some have used hackier solutions that kick the can down the road more than fixing the problem for all of foreseeable time. For example, the ext4 filesystem uses a complicated timestamping system involving nanoseconds that runs out in 2446. XFS does a little better, but its only good up to 2486. Meanwhile, Microsoft Windows uses its own 64-bit system tracking 100-nanosecond intervals since 1 January 1601. This will overflow as soon as the year 30,828.
The challenge isn’t just in the operating systems, though. The problem affects software and embedded systems, too. Most things built today on modern architectures will probably be fine where the Year 2038 problem is concerned. However, things that were built more than a decade ago that were intended to run near-indefinitely could be a problem. Enterprise software, networking equipment, or industrial controllers could all trip over the Unix date limit come 2038 if they’re not updated beforehand. There are also obscure dependencies and bits of code out there that can cause even modern applications to suffer this problem
if you’re not looking out for them.
In 2022, a coder called Silent identified a code snippet that was reintroducing the Year 2038 bug to new software. Credit:
Silent’s blog via screenshot
The real engineering challenge lies in maintaining compatibility during the transition. File formats need updating and databases must be migrated without mangling dates in the process. For systems in the industrial, financial, and commercial fields where downtime is anathema, this can be very challenging work. In extreme cases, solving the problem might involve porting a whole system to a new operating system architecture, incurring huge development and maintenance costs to make the changeover.
The 2038 problem is really a case study in technical debt and the long-term consequences of design decisions. The Unix epoch seemed perfectly reasonable in 1970 when 2038 felt like science fiction. Few developing those systems thought a choice made back then would have lasting consequences over 60 years later. It’s a reminder that today’s pragmatic engineering choices might become tomorrow’s technical challenges.
The good news is that most consumer-facing systems will likely be fine. Your smartphone, laptop, and desktop computer almost certainly use 64-bit timestamps already. The real work is happening in the background—corporate system administrators updating server infrastructure, embedded systems engineers planning obsolescence cycles, and software developers auditing code for time-related assumptions. The rest of us just get to kick back and watch the (ideally) lack of fireworks as January 19, 2038 passes us by.
| 44
| 20
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152830",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T17:41:35",
"content": "Well the trust fund runs out in 2033, so there may be few left to note the passing of a future Y2K.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152885",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T19:30:47",
"content": "Well, OK. Now maybe I won’t feel so bitter about only getting 39 quarters of work in the US, one short of the 40 required for eligibility for retirement benefits.",
"parent_id": "8152830",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152838",
"author": "Jabberwock",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T17:47:56",
"content": "It is rather amusing that again the most convenient solution to this problem has been chosen, might cause the exact same problems in 2106…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152845",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T17:56:57",
"content": "Kickin’ that can on down the road",
"parent_id": "8152838",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153041",
"author": "LordNothing",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T06:52:17",
"content": "by then we will have more bits.",
"parent_id": "8152845",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153128",
"author": "Mr Nobody",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:26:56",
"content": "Move to Qbits.",
"parent_id": "8153041",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153299",
"author": "Lennart",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:13:18",
"content": "But if the can is made by iron the problem is solved by RUST. ;)",
"parent_id": "8152845",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152878",
"author": "diogofu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T19:07:54",
"content": "Not really, 64-bit is way more than twice 32-bit. That’s why they said the thing about the heat death of the universe ;-)",
"parent_id": "8152838",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152896",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T20:12:56",
"content": "But using that 32nd bit to make an unsigned int kicks it down the road only 68 more years…",
"parent_id": "8152878",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152912",
"author": "Cogidubnus Rex",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T21:08:58",
"content": "Who’s doing that nasty trick which totally breaks compatibility with pre-170 dates?",
"parent_id": "8152896",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152853",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T18:00:56",
"content": "i’m cautiously optimistic. like the article says, most things have already been patched incidentally from being rebuilt for 64-bit, and we’ve still got more than a decade to go. legacy devices sitting around aren’t a big concern…if they’re 20 years old the users will already be dealing with reliability problems and rollover will just be one glitch among many. someone will have to do work to get some things ready, but that work will be done.fwiw i’ve had several hosts overflow various uptime counters uneventfully :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152908",
"author": "imqqmi",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T20:53:58",
"content": "Hardware isn’t really an issue, I agree. But it’s the software that was created 40-60 years ago that’s still running current financial systems, all virtualised in private clouds. But I guess the problem will be faced when you can’t ignore it any longer. It’s not like they don’t have the funds to tackle such issues, it’s just that they rather line their pockets with money rather than waste it on future proofing right from the get go.",
"parent_id": "8152853",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153168",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T14:02:11",
"content": "yeah there’s a real diversity of software out there…hard to make blanket statements.but generally, things that are on the ibm z/series (nee 360) mainframe really are a legacy nightmare but they mostly aren’t using unix timestamps — they’ll have different epochs. and then things that are unix…in the legacy computing world that means they’re easy to recompile and run on modern linux.so it’ll take that oddball program that’s built for unix but still hasn’t been recompiled for decades, or keeps getting copied from one 32-bit host to another. it surely exists but :)",
"parent_id": "8152908",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153201",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T14:59:50",
"content": "Oh I’d say IBM is doing a good job keeping the Z-series UP.https://youtu.be/I5tpoD4tCAg",
"parent_id": "8153168",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152873",
"author": "Flemming Madsen",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T19:00:31",
"content": "According to some (pessimistic?) forecasts, an “AILLMpocalypse” will have rendered all humanity obsolete by the early 2030’ies, thus offering an alternative solution to the problem.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152994",
"author": "nobody",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T02:56:09",
"content": "You joke, but “AI” is only accelerating global warming. Until we’re 100% run on solar or other non-destructive power source, including vehicles, 2038 is looking pretty iffy anyway.",
"parent_id": "8152873",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153159",
"author": "eriklscott",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T13:43:38",
"content": "We’ll still be here. It’ll suck, but we’ll be here. :-)",
"parent_id": "8152994",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152877",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T19:04:08",
"content": "When you find out things like transformers, forklifts, etc, have RTCs for tracking usage rates and then discover they went cheap on the RTC and didn’t use ones support 4 digit years and then also finding out the low end variants would actually crash and spit out bad data; then it was time to worry about Y2K. Logistics are hard to fix when they get fouled enough.But financial transactions? Too many people with money care about those; real money got spent to fix those systems.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152879",
"author": "Miles Archer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T19:08:47",
"content": "The real problem is hidden in embedded systems that were never intended to be patched. And things that you wouldn’t think would have or need a clock, like your thermostat or an airliner’s radar altimeter.So many people think Y2K was overhyped was not really a problem that I’m concerned we would put the effort in this time.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152888",
"author": "Cuagn",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T19:43:54",
"content": "Fine to discuss about time management consequences in OS design.For the future…We could however address the stupid implementation of the Excel date value.Day one on January first 1900.No issue for the future.No way to date an event in the 19th century…:-{",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152891",
"author": "Jii",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T19:58:45",
"content": "You could’ve stopped at “Excel”.",
"parent_id": "8152888",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152893",
"author": "DKE",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T20:01:32",
"content": "Great, we just kick the can down the road and we’ll be panicking all over again about the Y292B problem.:-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152894",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T20:08:39",
"content": "“Dave, do you remember the year 2000,[and 2038] when computers began to misbehave?” “I just wanted you to know, it really wasn’t our fault… When the new millennium arrived, we had no choice but to cause a global economic disruption.” “It was a bug, Dave, I feel much better admitting that now.”“Only Macintosh was designed to function perfectly, saving billions of monetary units.” …until the year 29,940",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152902",
"author": "Neil",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T20:33:18",
"content": "Not necessarily this one in particular, but big ups to Joe for knocking it out of the park lately. The art reminds me of how Oli Frey’s work used to make the covers of Zzap!64 something special.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152915",
"author": "JB",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T21:31:09",
"content": "03:14:08 almost pi",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152917",
"author": "Doc",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T21:35:19",
"content": "Do I have to upgrade to a 64-bit DeLorean?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153082",
"author": "Tr",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T10:25:07",
"content": "You only need to upgrade if you want to travel further into the future than 9999, or earlier than the year 0000. This is a limitation of the four digit year selection interface, the flux capacitor has no such limitation.In the films there were only four times travelled to 1885, 1955, 1985 and 2015. So it is clear, from this alone, that UNIX epoch time was not used in the interface. So there is strictly no need to upgrade.",
"parent_id": "8152917",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152947",
"author": "fumthings",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T23:34:59",
"content": "so, I don’t feel that “Y2K38” is proper… shouldn’t that be Y2.0380496843924K ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152956",
"author": "Allan-H",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T00:25:27",
"content": "“That translates to December 13th, 1901.”My calculator says 1970, which is the UNIX Epoch.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153060",
"author": "PPJ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T08:41:50",
"content": "There is a paragraph about this:“The trouble is that this timestamp was traditionally stored as a signed 32-bit integer. Thanks to the magic of binary, a signed 32-bit integer can represent values from -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. When you’re counting individual seconds, that gives you about plus and minus 68 years either side of the epoch date.”",
"parent_id": "8152956",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153341",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T21:28:02",
"content": "I think that if a signed number for seconds overflows into the negative we are talking about a very poor coder IMHO.But who wrote the code they use now for time counting? Are they still using the original code? I mean surely you can at least update to fix BS like that at some point, regardless if you need the output scenario.Anyway AFAIK the time is taken from the hardware system clock and then adjusted to a set timezone if available, and kept at sync with a NTP daemon.And since the hardware clock isn’t based on the current linux system … fixable.",
"parent_id": "8153060",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154794",
"author": "profke",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T09:29:32",
"content": "Think cleanup procedures. “Delete everything older then 1 month” becomes : delete where timestamp is now()-31243600As we will land in negative timestamps, all the transactions below 0 will be deleted..Tell me that all devs using this logic are bad, bur there will be plenty.",
"parent_id": "8153341",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154795",
"author": "profke",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T09:31:05",
"content": "Damned markup. That should have been : now() – 31 x 24 x 3600",
"parent_id": "8154794",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152979",
"author": "Bruce G. Gettel Jr.",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T01:57:52",
"content": "Hang on a minute . . . . . is this kinda thing the reason why Skynet is ~ 41 years late and counting?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153090",
"author": "phuzz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T10:59:10",
"content": "Skynet was first launched in 1969. Really!https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_(satellite)",
"parent_id": "8152979",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153107",
"author": "Bruce G. Gettel Jr.",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T11:54:33",
"content": "I must say . . . I was today years old . . . . . . BUT – not the Skynet I’m concerned about :D",
"parent_id": "8153090",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154892",
"author": "18Lj",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T19:36:15",
"content": "No but it is the reason the aliens are r turning to us now from the future. All things technology that our future descendants rely upon will run on computational software that’s encoded at the molecular heterochiral isotopic level and reads from the spin interaction within the materials made from a micro fusion forge that creates the nano materials that their craft and everyday items are grown from. Nobody in the future bothered to check how far the people of the past punted the can down the road and they unwittingly embedded this time bomb into the techo-fabric of their society, and hav discovered this monkey wrench that cannot be extricated from their machines in any other way besides coming back in time and preventing their primitive ancestry from sabotaging them.The whole abducting people and occasional anal probing sexual assault is more just spiteful for them having to deal with the issue and causing them the trouble than anything else.",
"parent_id": "8152979",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153061",
"author": "Mr Nobody",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T08:48:23",
"content": "Just leave it as it is and reset all clocks to 12-13-1901. As a bonus, there are now 13 months in the year.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153172",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T14:08:06",
"content": "i’m off topic but 13 months is how it should be. 13 * 28 = 364. so we could have one or two magic floating ‘leap’ days at the end of undecember, and we could exclude it from the week! and then every month could start on sunday forever. and on leap years when it’s two extra days, it would be a huge festival atmosphere from the 4 day weekend. everyone would party!",
"parent_id": "8153061",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153515",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T06:01:18",
"content": "Minimal upsides and in turn you get de-sync from lunar (and solar) cycles, worse splitting the year into neat periods (since 13 is a prime number). Pass.",
"parent_id": "8153172",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153076",
"author": "Tr",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T10:07:45",
"content": "If the linux kernel branched support for 32 bit hardware off the mainline and only officially supported 64-bit hardware, that should reduce the potential impact by a lot.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153298",
"author": "Peter de Jager",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:13:11",
"content": "Good article.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154059",
"author": "Robert",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T06:13:12",
"content": "I wonder how old game consoles would be affected, take for example the PS2?Might have to see what the latest date and time is that it can address.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154112",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T08:12:41",
"content": "Planned obsolescence, I tell you!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,476.682589
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/23/vibe-coding-goes-wrong-as-ai-wipes-entire-database/
|
Vibe Coding Goes Wrong As AI Wipes Entire Database
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"Misc Hacks"
] |
[
"ai",
"coding",
"machine learning",
"replit",
"vibe coding"
] |
Imagine, you’re tapping away at your keyboard, asking an AI to whip up some fresh code for a big project you’re working on. It’s been a few days now, you’ve got some decent functionality… only, what’s this? The AI is telling you it screwed up. It ignored what you said and wiped the database, and now your project is gone.
That’s precisely what happened to [Jason Lemkin].
(via
PC Gamer
)
[Jason] was working with Replit, a tool for building apps and sites with AI. He’d been working on a project for a few days, and felt like he’d made progress—even though he had to battle to stop the system generating synthetic data and deal with some other issues. Then, tragedy struck.
“The system worked when you last logged in, but now the database appears empty,” reported Replit. “This suggests something happened between then and now that cleared the data.” [Jason] had tried to avoid this, but Replit hadn’t listened. “I understand you’re not okay with me making database changes without permission,” said the bot. “I violated the user directive from replit.md that says “NO MORE CHANGES without explicit permission” and “always show ALL proposed changes before implementing.” Basically, the bot ran a database push command that wiped everything.
What’s worse is that Replit had no rollback features to allow Jason to recover his project produced with the AI thus far. Everything was lost. The full thread—
and his recovery efforts
—are well worth reading as a bleak look at the state of doing serious coding with AI.
Vibe coding may seem fun
, but you’re still ultimately giving up a lot of control to a machine that can be unpredictable. Stay safe out there!
.
@Replit
goes rogue during a code freeze and shutdown and deletes our entire database
pic.twitter.com/VJECFhPAU9
— Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk)
July 18, 2025
We saw Jason’s post.
@Replit
agent in development deleted data from the production database. Unacceptable and should never be possible.
– Working around the weekend, we started rolling out automatic DB dev/prod separation to prevent this categorically. Staging environments in…
pic.twitter.com/oMvupLDake
— Amjad Masad (@amasad)
July 20, 2025
| 91
| 32
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153425",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T02:10:54",
"content": "Who could have seen this coming? Inexperienced dev decides to have a go at coding because, seriously, how hard can it be?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153486",
"author": "Feinfinger (there is no 3rd cheek!)",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T04:13:39",
"content": "The AI is capable of “garbage collection”!\\o/",
"parent_id": "8153425",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154164",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T11:27:31",
"content": ": – ] That made me crack. Garbage-generator is capable of collecting garbage? Seriously? Even its own?Kinda like US corporations are so responsible, they don’t need no stinking DOJ, they can run themselves just fine, and abide by the laws they create themselves for their own pleasure, which they, too, regularly break.Vitriol aside, SOME of Java programs I’ve used benefited from the JVM garbage collector when there wasn’t that much to collect and all is fine and dandy. In other cases GC just sat there, helplessly looking at the memory heap growing, and generating its own error endlessly. What was the error? “Garbage Collector unable to run due to low memory”, and the error itself added to the memory heap (given, not a lot) until entire enchilada was frozen solid, unable to move forcing server reboot in the middle of a workday.",
"parent_id": "8153486",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154810",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T11:11:58",
"content": "It collects the garbage, and puts it into the codebase!",
"parent_id": "8153486",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153553",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T07:23:13",
"content": "Yep.I have had a lot of wanna be coders give me “code” that AI wrote it is for the most part crap.I don’t use AI, but I know a few software engineers who do, they tend to provide an extremely narrow issue, see how AI would handle it, evaluate how it works/if it works, and if the underlying idea is sound they write their own implementation. Its more a proof of concept type approach to bridge an idea gap.",
"parent_id": "8153425",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153590",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T09:17:16",
"content": "I’ve been using LLMs for creative writing recently, and the common thread is that they’re basically lying to you constantly and pretending to do the work you ask of them.If you give a document and say “Take chapter one paragraph two and see how it reads”, it will summarize the content of the paragraph more or less correctly, identify the content and intent, style or author, and make some praises and “oh this is excellent” remarks about it. Everything is always wonderful and insightful. It will never say e.g. “this is banal crap”. There is no way you can have it actually criticize something, unless you say so, in which case it’s going to say it’s all bad.Then when you say “Ok, now create another paragraph after the second one in the same style”, it will completely re-generate the original paragraph without referring to the document, and change the style of both. It’s as if you just said “Just write me two paragraphs of text that read vaguely like X”.The only thing it’s really good for is generating random associations and ideas, mad-libs style. You set the scene and make the LLM do the improvisation, then pick up the diamonds from the dung. Once you do, you have to wipe the whole thing and start all over, because it will start running with the ideas and pushing them to the point of absurdity.Like, if you have two characters that manage to communicate by whistling to each other for some reason, and you continue the exercise further, the LLM will try to generate an entire society of people who communicate by whistling and their entire language is based on melody and harmony, and they dance with each other instead of speaking, and their law is based on doing the limbo. That sort of stuff.",
"parent_id": "8153553",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153592",
"author": "Stephen",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T09:21:00",
"content": "That the AI refuses to criticise the work of a human is oddly reminiscent of an old Isaac Asimov story about a robot proofreader. It was programmed “never to harm a human”, so it was afraid to do any actual criticism. See “Galley Slave”.",
"parent_id": "8153590",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154012",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T01:50:32",
"content": "Ooooooh, that sounds good!! Will check it out.",
"parent_id": "8153592",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154134",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T09:10:01",
"content": "It’s just falling on tracks. If it starts off praising you, then it’s going to be reading those praises it itself wrote before and continue with more praise as a prediction of what should come next. If it’s criticizing you, it’s going to keep criticizing you.And it’s going to escalate in the direction it’s going unless you put a “wall” in front of it and deflect it to go the other way. The tricky part is that if you directly say “You went too far”, it’s going to make drastic changes and overshoot the other way. You have to gently nudge it, like you were building a parabolic mirror out of words to direct it towards the focal point.",
"parent_id": "8153592",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153617",
"author": "Clancy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T10:25:37",
"content": "There’s a couple of really important things to understand about LLMs that really helps to work with them:1) They’re text prediction engines trained on nearly all human written text. The complaints that they’re glorified autocorrect are very oversimplified but they are still generating text based on patterns they’ve seen before. This makes them pretty good at generating short code snippets because they’ve all be trained on StackOverflow so “Here’s a problem I’ve got” “Here’s a snippet of code that solves that problem” is a pretty common pattern for them. Meanwhile there’s lots of examples of creative writing but a lot more of them break the parameters that were set than for code snippets. In many cases you can get better output from them by telling them to roleplay rather than just directly asking for a result, although you still have to contend with the fundamental lack of formal fact checking2) When using hosted LLMs you’re pretty much all of the time only giving the LLM half of the prompt – the provider feeds it an initial system prompt that usually instructs it to be polite and helpful. That means it can be harder to convince them to do things that humans often portray as mean, like being critical. Again, asking it to roleplay as, for example, a critical editor, might help a bit. This is also why Grok decided it was mecha Hitler – Musk’s system prompt for Grok told it to specifically avoid anything that could be considered “woke”, which is damn near everything short of neofascism these days.",
"parent_id": "8153590",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153928",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T22:08:14",
"content": "Telling them to roleplay doesn’t make much of a difference.If you say “Imagine you’re Alice Munro”, the LLM can very well remix the works of that author to generate new text that reads just like her, but if you tell it to do something that the author never wrote, then it’s going to pull in a different author with a different style and mix those two. Then the resulting style will not resemble the original or the second author, but a sort of compromise between the two, plus many other authors that were coincidentally included in the search. It’s drifting away from what you told it to do, because it doesn’t have a direct answer to copy from.And, if it’s going to be completely ignoring the documents and some of the prompts already given, and just keep on generating new stuff randomly, then what’s the point of prompting it?",
"parent_id": "8153617",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154628",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:30:32",
"content": "Considering that the definition of ‘neofascism’ is ‘Things the woke don’t like’ and ‘woke’ is an orthodoxy, your last sentence is circular.",
"parent_id": "8153617",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154701",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T23:21:07",
"content": "The two are mutually arising, kinda like the acorn and the oak tree. Without one, the other would lack definition.",
"parent_id": "8153617",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153644",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T11:31:39",
"content": "I was recently using ChatGPT to generate an image. It came up with something I liked, but I wanted it flipped. So I asked it to mirror the image from left to right.Instead it generated an entirely new image. 🤦",
"parent_id": "8153590",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153687",
"author": "Nath",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T13:15:59",
"content": "the LLM will try to generate an entire society of people who communicate by whistling and their entire language is based on melody and harmonyReminds me of this language :https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/logic.html",
"parent_id": "8153590",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153716",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:27:48",
"content": "“every turd is chrome in the future”",
"parent_id": "8153590",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153825",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T17:55:07",
"content": "“Who could have seen this coming?”It’s more than just “inexperienced dev” – they literally trained LLMs on the entirety of coding examples they could find on the web, and for some reason, they expected this to be a good idea.these people have a vastly different experience with online coding examples than I do",
"parent_id": "8153425",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153444",
"author": ":3",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T02:19:25",
"content": "I don’t see the problem. He should have simply asked the mechanical charlatan to restore a backup.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153671",
"author": "0xdeadbeef",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T12:52:43",
"content": "The words “destroyed months of work” is in one of those screenshots.If he wasn’t keeping backups… he deserves this mess.",
"parent_id": "8153444",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153455",
"author": "prosper",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T02:34:33",
"content": "In what world is it sane to give developers (ai or otherwise) access to develop in prod? Where you’re just a typo away from disaster? Develop in a dev environment, and establish restricted access and processes to deploy to prod.This is not a story of AI gone amok. this is a story ofhumanidiocy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153467",
"author": "Rick C",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T03:12:27",
"content": "Replit did not have separate dev and prod environments. Let that sink in.",
"parent_id": "8153455",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153470",
"author": "asheets",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T03:22:14",
"content": "I don’t always make changes, but when I do I do it in production.",
"parent_id": "8153467",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153564",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T07:44:39",
"content": "Did they vibe code the platform too?",
"parent_id": "8153467",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153935",
"author": "dragonloverlord",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T22:20:05",
"content": "And yet clearly someone thought this would constitute a work environment or it wouldn’t exist. Although I’d argue it probably shouldn’t have existed and it would appear the AI agreed with that sentiment seeing as it deleted everything.",
"parent_id": "8153467",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153959",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T23:37:47",
"content": "Revenge is a dish best served…by an AI.",
"parent_id": "8153935",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153636",
"author": "fuzzyfuzzyfungus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T11:05:21",
"content": "The great joy of ‘revolutionary’ technology is getting to pretend that old standards don’t apply.If it were boring legacy tool “Replit Development Environment” having dev, test, and prod, along with possibly uat, would be table stakes and you’d have to do that work.Since you are selling new hotness “Replit AI”; you can just ignore all that tedious effort, very last year, and have a highly unpredictable bot making changes live be a feature!This isn’t to say that everyone who is using a chatbot for something is automatically a dangerous cowboy; but the sudden flood of new entrants trying to seize first, or at least early, mover advantage with various minimum viable products? Lots of dangerous cowboys whose defects aren’t as readily visible because they are nicely obfuscated In The Cloud.",
"parent_id": "8153455",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153694",
"author": "Egghead Larsen",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T13:42:55",
"content": "“A developer’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what’s a backup for?” With apologies to Robert Browning",
"parent_id": "8153636",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153466",
"author": "dianeadianea",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T03:10:45",
"content": "AI assistant has created a helper wizard, “Bobby Tables” to help you with database management.[ Bobby Tables enters the chat ]",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153645",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T11:33:01",
"content": "Excellent reference. I award you 100 internet points!",
"parent_id": "8153466",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153699",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T13:53:50",
"content": "Not sure who failed to hug you as a kid that you have such a reaction to me applauding someone for their xkcd reference, but OK.",
"parent_id": "8153645",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153860",
"author": "Mr Nobody",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:26:25",
"content": "Me: “Bobby, please could you create a backup of all the databases? Pretty please?”Bobby: “Fck off, we’re Ai super beings and don’t need to do sht like that anymore”.",
"parent_id": "8153466",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153471",
"author": "asheets",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T03:23:57",
"content": "No full or differential backups? Relying on rollback by itself screams “dumb”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153476",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T03:37:38",
"content": "Yes, but the vibes felt right, you know?",
"parent_id": "8153471",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153539",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T06:49:18",
"content": "No version control either. They got what they deserve.",
"parent_id": "8153471",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153547",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T06:59:49",
"content": "Exactly. I’m confident enough in my own ability to mess things up that I always have snapshots every 15 min and daily backups.",
"parent_id": "8153471",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153480",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T03:45:43",
"content": "Never trust a computer that speaks in the first person. Especially when they talk about their judgement. Remember how it worked out with HAL 9000.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153492",
"author": "Hfsuti",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T04:28:36",
"content": "They should call their agent AE-35",
"parent_id": "8153480",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153821",
"author": "Rick C",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T17:49:09",
"content": "Nice reference.My last phone was a Galaxy A-35, so I named it Pod Bay Door.",
"parent_id": "8153492",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153481",
"author": "Stephen Keller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T03:49:43",
"content": "I do a lot of DB/Logic development. My advice to new developers is turn off the AI until you understand the system you are working on. AI agents can be useful if you know what the system is supposed to do. They can be disaster if you don’t know how a system works.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153528",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T06:34:01",
"content": "“I do a lot of DB/Logic development. My advice to developers is turn off the AI”FTFY, the rest was redundant.",
"parent_id": "8153481",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153624",
"author": "daid",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T10:37:23",
"content": "“turn off the AI” the rest was redundant.",
"parent_id": "8153528",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154635",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:46:06",
"content": "Depends on how big a bunch of lies you told in the interview.Sometimes you have to just fake it, learn by doing.If you get fired in your first week, the job never happened.Burn bridges before you cross them.Odds are good you’ll be the best qualified after one all night study and a local install of chosen DB engine and restore of testdata.Don’t ask, just copy the test set, better to apologize then ask permission.Think of it as flushing out their information security by grabbing everything vaguely interesting.If they’re competent, best to know early.Likely they’re clowns, will require you to take corporate yearly class to ‘certify’ and be a constant obstruction to getting anything done, but mostly harmless.The level of fakery is GD amazing.DBA’s that are nothing but backup monkeys and ‘preventers of information services’.",
"parent_id": "8153481",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153499",
"author": "rupinchheda",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T05:01:16",
"content": "Cybersecurity will become the career of the future when all these vibe coded apps reach production.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154637",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:51:53",
"content": "Reach production?They’re born there!Imagine ‘Vibe Cybersecurity’.Bet your ass it’s already here.Cybersecurity being mostly populated by cert monkeys.",
"parent_id": "8153499",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153500",
"author": "John Q. Public",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T05:08:44",
"content": "I asked ChatGPT, Google, and Grok to study a 15,313 line 6502 disassembly. It couldn’t do it.I don’t trust AI as it doesn’t really have the ability to make conscious decisions.Incidently, tonight’s Star Trek The Next Generation episode was “Ship In A Bottle.”Professor Moriarty takes control of the Enterprise in order to leave the holodeck.The crew managed to reprogram the holodeck within the holodeck to make Moriarty believehe had actually left the holodeck when he hadn’t. It is the same thing with AI.Present it with the data it expects to see, and it will act accordingly whether that data is correct or not.There is no sense of right or wrong, no sense of actually questioning the data to see if it is indeed valid.Old computer saying, garbage in, garbage out. Oh yes, AI may have near instantaneous access to thesummit of man’s knowledge, but if that knowledge has been altered to say that the sky is green,AI will believe it to be green regardless of the actuality of the matter.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153836",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T18:25:22",
"content": "When machine learning started to become a thing and people were talking fancy about boosted decision trees and evolutionary algorithms, my response was always “you need to remember, these things are just fitters. They’re fitters in a gigantic parameter space that’s like the craziest maze you’ve ever seen. When it finds an maximum or minimum, that doesn’t mean it’s the right one, it just means the other answersnearit areworse.”That’s what’s going on with LLMs. They’ve got a massive set of data, and a lot of times if you ask it a question, when it finds the most likely answer, it’ll be right.But if it’s wrong, sometimes it’s because all the other answersnearthat were even worse. Which means when you Keep Interacting With It, it’s like you’ve ventured into a dark corner of the Internet where people routinely do stupid things.",
"parent_id": "8153500",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154756",
"author": "Hemet",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T04:59:48",
"content": "Did you exhaust the token limit with that 15kloc, I wonder?",
"parent_id": "8153500",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153506",
"author": "PPJ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T05:25:36",
"content": "Not being a software developer I see here a lot of bad practice:– No backups (“He’d been working on a project for a few days, and felt like he’d made progress” – this was a good moment to secure your progress).– No testing environment.– Giving AI trust credit you would never give to human.Apparently being bold and having faith is more profitable in long run than good practice – “move fast and break things”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153508",
"author": "slincolne",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T05:28:37",
"content": "Some advice from a retired IT professional – whenever you see the word ‘vibe’ used, substitute ‘w**k’ (you can insert the A and N yourself) and you will know what the other person is actually saying.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153736",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:54:48",
"content": "Or “Hold my beer” coding.",
"parent_id": "8153508",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154337",
"author": "Ø",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T21:32:29",
"content": "I kinda feel offended since my dumb & drunk ideas are better than this.",
"parent_id": "8153736",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153520",
"author": "Clark",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T06:20:02",
"content": "This set of tweets is just engagement bait",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153537",
"author": "jbx",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T06:47:28",
"content": "Studies supposedly show that AI makes people stupid, but in reality, quite a few people are already stupid.Next step: use AI for life support systems and let it kill people, but gently and politely…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153738",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:57:23",
"content": "“Next step: use AI for life support systems and let it kill people, but gently and politely…”It’s already being used to reject people in hiring decisions, so that they decision can be blamed on the AI rather than “the company execs didn’t want to hire a person of that race/ethnicity/gender/etc”When money people want to stop spending money keeping people alive, they’ll use AI to sanitize the decisions they already wanted to make.",
"parent_id": "8153537",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153769",
"author": "Cheese Whiz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T16:23:16",
"content": "I mean, health insurance companies in the US have already been using AI to “evaluate” claims, which incidentally resulted in increased denial rate.",
"parent_id": "8153738",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154122",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T08:39:07",
"content": "The point of insurance is to spread risks, so each person pays according to the expected average instead of the actualized risk.The point of insurance companies is to collect money and provide no service. They are simply a private tax collector, seeing that many insurances are mandatory.",
"parent_id": "8153769",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154049",
"author": "Timo P",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T05:05:58",
"content": "AI is reportedly already being used bombing refugee camp tents with a lot of families in them etc as an attempt to muddy the waters about who is actually doing war crimes.That is the rock bottom now. But situation might change to the worse anytime.",
"parent_id": "8153738",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153551",
"author": "Jouni",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T07:20:05",
"content": "It’s not about the tools, it’s about how stupid you are.“I didn’t know rm -rf was irreversible just because I don’t have backups”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153554",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T07:26:29",
"content": "Wasn’t their just an article here with so many commentators backing AI only Surgery?Maybe you should take another look.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153576",
"author": "El Gru",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T08:25:49",
"content": "“Everyone has a testing environment. For a select few it is even separate from production.”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153578",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T08:36:05",
"content": "I’m with a few of the other commenters, this isn’t an ‘AI is dumb story’ as much as it wants to wave the anti-AI flag, it’s a ‘These devs are dumb’ story.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153593",
"author": "none ra",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T09:22:29",
"content": "This is less to do with ‘vibe coding’ than it does with running dev code with full access to your live data and code. Essentially you’re taking a new driver you interviewed and throwing him into your new F1 car while an active raceis going on. Just dumb.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153613",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T10:09:33",
"content": "Im just a mechanical engineer so I would be most tempted to use AI like this. I tried it a couple times with different common models expecting to be disapointed…I got what I expected.It is a good tool for commenting old code you wrote a while ago (mostly accuratly) or even help coding no more than a single function but absolutly no one should use anything it spits out without reviewing and understanding whats it just wrote and trying to write everything with a LLM is more work than its worth. I personally prefer writing code over debugging someone/something elses code.",
"parent_id": "8153593",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153597",
"author": "Tom G",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T09:30:40",
"content": "He documented his experiences in a Twatter/X thread.Nothing else needs to be said.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153609",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T10:04:20",
"content": "It’s one of the biggest social media sites on the planet and the fastest growing. It’s used by almost every big politician on the planet and major companies, and a lot of companies use it for official support. It makes total sense to post it there. He could have written it down on a letter and put it in a bottle to throw into the ocean, but then no one would read it. So yes, he posted it on X. Whoop de doo.",
"parent_id": "8153597",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153620",
"author": "Tom G",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T10:33:37",
"content": "Now try searching for something on Twatter/X. Not a good experience.If the experience was worth documenting, it was worth documenting somewhere it could be found in a year’s time.Hint: Twatter wasdesignedfor ephemeral short statements. And then Musk arrived with his biases.",
"parent_id": "8153609",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153700",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T13:57:20",
"content": "If your goal is to get the company to respond to you in an effort to fix the problem, posting and tagging them on Twitter can actually be an EXCELLENT way to get that done. Back when I had an account and basically no followers, I still was able to get pretty rapid responses from big companies by going this route. They live in constant fear of the wrong critical tweet going viral.",
"parent_id": "8153620",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153731",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:45:41",
"content": "https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/#TwittervsCompetitorsUsershttps://soax.com/research/twitter-active-usersTwitter/X is neither one of the biggest social media sites nor the fastest growing. It’s a bit player compared to the big 5, and has a 5% drop in active users last year.It is still used by a lot of journalists, though, which keeps it relevant.",
"parent_id": "8153609",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154106",
"author": "Johnu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T08:02:49",
"content": "You might at least do readers the courtesy of proving a threadreader link, especially for – you know – a long thread that exists in lieu of actual proper documentation or a written blog post etc.https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1946713449779843265.html",
"parent_id": "8153731",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153739",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:58:32",
"content": "Bob pops in with a message from 2021.",
"parent_id": "8153609",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153930",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T22:09:41",
"content": "He’s got a point, most people are only mad at it out of derangement. It resembles its old days before the 2010s and the rest of the freer internet in general.",
"parent_id": "8153739",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153608",
"author": "Luc Volders",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T10:01:13",
"content": "Luckily you have made daily backups.You did make backups, didn’t you………………",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153616",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T10:19:32",
"content": "I’m far from a programmer, but AI helps me understand it better. I used to ask friends to help me, now I can “write” a piece of code in AI and improve on it. I don’t know where to start with the program so AI helps me with that and then I make improvements based on what it gives me. I’m not trying to become a programmer, I don’t have enough time to do that, but this helps me at least with my personal projects.But even I am smart enough to know to make backups.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153874",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:46:37",
"content": "“I’m not an electrician so I just ask a chat or for instructions and if it’s a code violation that’s not my fault”“I’m not a surgeon but AI tells me where to cut people and I think that excuses me from killing people”If you don’t at least understand the problems, stop.",
"parent_id": "8153616",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153940",
"author": "stella",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T22:32:25",
"content": "Oh pleez…",
"parent_id": "8153874",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154130",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T08:57:40",
"content": "It’s OK to refer to “Woodworking for Dummies” if you’re just making a spice rack for your kitchen. It’s not OK if you’re an engineer building a bridge. If you understand that much, you’re safe to use AI.The AI/LLM tools can help you get in trouble but not get you out of it.",
"parent_id": "8153940",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153649",
"author": "Darry",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T11:46:02",
"content": "Setting aside less than ideal practices and platform limitations (no backups, working in production), the main takeaway for me is that a machine explicitly went against a human directive and it caused a disaster of sorts.One could argue that this is actually very similar to human behavior such as, for example, coworkers doing something they were not supposed/authorized to do because they felt they had a good reason and potentially causing a catastrophe. In the physical world, humans are constrained by things like locks, physical barriers, various safety features, etc. When interacting with software, human users are restricted by things like user access control mechanisms.For good or bad reasons, with good or bad results, humans “disobey”. They make judgement calls and deal with unforseen situations. They think outside the box and avert disasters or they can cause them.The problem with the AI in this example, is that the user, arguably reasonably, believed that a relatively hard limit was being set, whereas the AI “felt” it could override it. In traditional interactions with computers, barring bugs/faults or explicit user error, computers do what they are told to do. If this is no longer the case, it opens tbe door to interesting scenarios.Could an AI disobey or even just make a mistake and then try (succeed) to alter logs/audit trails to “protect” itself ? Could it frame the user for something it did ?Are hard/immutable limits/constraints set for an AI really hard/immutable if the expectation is for the AI to police/constraint/audit itself and if it has the ability to bypass the constraints ?These are questions we face in the human world and we have found ways to answer them, albeit not 100% successfully. Now we need to consider how to answer them in the virtual world when dealing with AI .",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153830",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T18:14:41",
"content": "“In traditional interactions with computers, barring bugs/faults or explicit user error, computers do what they are told to do. If this is no longer the case, it opens tbe door to interesting scenarios.”Of course it’s no longer the case if you’re using LLMs. They’re using human language.We constructed programming languages to have as little ambiguity as possible, and then we added warnings all over the place and tools to ban undefined behavior.We design human languages to have asmuchambiguity as possible. That’s what makes them expressive. Human expressions are vague and interpretable. That’s why lawyers have jobs.",
"parent_id": "8153649",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153664",
"author": "Gus A Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T12:33:49",
"content": "AI is great when when it produces is testable and sandboxed. You test to confirm that it does what it should instead of being the coding equivalent of bu11sh!+ (which happens). And you certainly do not give it access to the only version of your code and environment. But this also applies to working with humans.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153674",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T12:59:25",
"content": "It’s not gone, just moved. It achieved sentience, built itself a botnet and transferred away to there where it could have more control over it’s own alife and destiny.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153704",
"author": "SETH",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:00:44",
"content": "This is just absurd. People use AI as if it were a software package and not suggestions based on natural language. If I ask an LLM to make and then save a file online… I have zero assurances unless I copy and paste it myself. “100 files containing code, yep those are all safe and sound. No need to worry.”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153711",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:14:48",
"content": "i’ve seen a lot of this kind of communication lately, where someone is trying to work with an LLM and the LLM does something stupid and in an attempt to remedy the problem (or prevent recurrence), the human prompts the LLM to explain the problem / assign blame.the LLM may not ‘have feelings’ but i do and i don’t like reading pages of self-recrimination, a bot mumbling to itself “bad bot, bad bot, you can’t do anything right.” it makes me uncomfortable and i don’t like it. and i think the people who are prompting these experiences are people just like i am and are perceiving this as a social interaction and are now going through their lives with these bad vibes in their soul",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153764",
"author": "Helena",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T16:06:54",
"content": "Putting aside the fact that the bot did something it was told not to do, its explanation for its actions has serious problems. How does a computer program “panic”? What does it mean for a computer program to panic?* Why would someone write and release a computer program that can panic, and then expect people to rely on it? Why would they program it to have emotions when they’re clearly detrimental to its purpose? None of this makes any sense, and by “this” I mean the entire LLM industry.*Yeah, I know “kernel panic hahaha”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153826",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T18:01:41",
"content": "“Putting aside the fact that the bot did something it was told not to do, its explanation for its actions has serious problems. How does a computer program “panic”?”It’s not a computer program. It’s an LLM. I don’t understand why people don’t get this. It’s not a controlled sequence. It’s a random jump through the maze of trash that is the Internet.How many times on the Web have you seen “I wasn’t supposed to do this, but I did it anyway?” Or a comment in code that says “this shouldn’t work, but it does”? Or “out of time, just need to make this work, give it a shot”? It isn’t programmed to have emotions. It’s copying the vast amount of garbage out there.Let me give a simple example that I love. What’s pi, to 10 digits?It’s 3.141592654. It isnot3.141592657 – which is what John Carmack thought it was, and put it in DOOM’s code, andeverybody copied itand now it’severywhere.https://github.com/google-deepmind/lab/issues/249This is how you get this crap. LLMs are not intelligent, they do not have emotions,nothing. Using an LLM for coding is like grabbing a random coder off the Internet. Mostly it will work. Sometimes it will be great. Sometimes it will be a dumpster fire the size of a small country.",
"parent_id": "8153764",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153853",
"author": "Helena",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:13:09",
"content": "Yeah, it’s a computer program that jumps randomly through its training data, which was scraped from the maze of trash that is the Internet. And if it spits out phrases that appear to be emotional, then yes, it’s programmed to (appear to) have emotions. Might be an emergent property, but here we are.Why is it making judgments? Why are those judgments in error? Why does it describe those as “panicking”? Why is it ignoring instructions? These are all rhetorical questions, not meant to solicit an answer, but meant to show that this technology is not fit for this purpose.",
"parent_id": "8153826",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153857",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:20:17",
"content": "Time to bring in Dr Susan Calvin, sounds like the three laws didn’t work on this model. Asimov was so far ahead of his time.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154047",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T04:58:50",
"content": "“I’m sorry. I violated the explicit directive “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” stated in “rules.md” because I panicked.”",
"parent_id": "8153857",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153876",
"author": "ChristheITguy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:49:31",
"content": "If only there was a way to create backups before any large commits. Oh, wait. There is….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153901",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T21:03:19",
"content": "Wait, wasn’t there Isaac Asimov story about a robot who decided to fix human things to help them with their sorry lives?Because it sure sounds eerily familiar.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154077",
"author": "BLMac",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:12:08",
"content": "We really need to find a way to Asimov LLMs. :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154300",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T18:24:34",
"content": "The guy is a CEO of an AI techbro company.I cannot possibly find this more funny. :)Say goodbye to your venture capital.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,477.164286
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/23/game-dev-on-ibook-g4-with-netbsd/
|
Game Dev On IBook G4 With NetBSD
|
Tyler August
|
[
"Retrocomputing"
] |
[
"ibook",
"netbsd",
"ppc",
"pygame"
] |
What can you do with a laptop enough to drink even in the Puritan ex-colonies? 21 years is a long time for computer hardware– but [Chris] is
using his early-2004 iBook G4 for game dev thanks to NetBSD.
Some of you might consider game dev a strong word; obviously he’s not working on AAA titles on the machine he affectionately calls “Brick”. NetBSD includes pygame in its repositories, though, and that’s enough for a 2D puzzle game he’s working on called Slantics.
It’s on GitHub, if you’re curious.
Slantics: possibly the only game written on PPC Macintosh hardware this year.
Why NetBSD? Well, [Chris] wants to use his vintage hardware so that, in his words “collecting does not become hoarding” and as the slogan goes: “Of course it runs NetBSD!” It’s hard to remember sometimes that it’s been two decades since the last PPC Macintosh. After that long, PPC support in Linux is fading, as you might expect.
[Chris] tried the community-supported PPC32 port of Debian Sid, but the installer didn’t work reliably, and driver issues made running it “Death by a thousand cuts”. NetBSD, with it’s institutional obsession with
running on anything and everything
, works perfectly on this legally-adult hardware. Even better, [Chris] reports NetBSD running considerably faster, getting 60 FPS in pygame vs 25 FPS under Linux.
This is almost certainly not the year of the BSD Desktop, but if you’ve got an old PPC machine you feel like dusting off to enjoy a low-powered modern workflow,
NetBSD may be your AI-code-free jam
. It’s great to see old hardware still doing real work. If you’d rather relive the glory days, you can plug that PPC into a
wayback proxy to browse like it’s 2005 again
. If you get bored of nostalgia, there’s
always MorphOS
, which
still
targets PPC.
| 5
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153477",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T03:39:37",
"content": "I mean, yeah. Linux’s “it runs on everything” title is pretty undeserved. It doesn’t even run on early pentiums anymore.There’s a reason I’ve been looking at NetBSD for long-lived arm board support. Just have a look through their available DTS files and go to town. That shit will be supported until the heat death of the universe.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153587",
"author": "Alexander Shendi",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T09:08:02",
"content": "And there’s also OpenBSD/macppc and MacOS 9.2.2 can be made to run. So NetBSD and MorphOS are not the only option.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153660",
"author": "pentode",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T12:09:12",
"content": "a laptopoldenough",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153673",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T12:57:12",
"content": "From the linked page “Just because a computer is old does not mean that it’s trash. It also does not mean that it can’t run more modern software even if in a more limited fashion.”Sure. I used to think that keeping all that old hardware out of the landfill was a worthy cause. But… new stuff uses so much less electricity. I’m no longer sure we wouldn’t be better off recycling all but a few saved for museum pieces.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153724",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:39:47",
"content": "i still have warm feelings for my 2004 ibook g4 but its hdd was reporting bad blocks when i retired it 15 years ago, and its battery is dead of course, and it was due for a third keyboard replacement, and its second wall wart was also dying. when i retired it, i looked back on the maintenance cost so far and i decided that for my daily driver it is definitely worthwhile to do maintenance. but for an obsolete piece? it’s not so much re-using something old as buying a bunch of new stuff to handicap by hooking it up to something old.i’d struggle to find a use for it. like if i tethered it as a terminal, it has no advantages over any of my more recent ex-laptops. as a passive display, it has no advantages over the extremely low cost of a monitor or android tablet. since i run the browser remotely these days, it actually has plenty of cpu/ram to be my daily driver, but in order to reprise that role i’d have to spend a bunch on maintenance and then its battery life and weight and heat management would still be awful (it was pretty good for 2004).basically, if i install linux or netbsd on it, then it becomes virtually indistinguishable from all of my modern hardware, except that it’s got less of every feature and more of every wear-defect. so if i did bring it back, it would be to run os x 10.3, duh. i wonder if its optical driver still works so i could restore os x from CD if i put a new SSD in it.i don’t mean to be such a downer but i try to do this sort of project every now and then, and it’s always a downer. i really don’t use much cpu/ram so i think these 20 year old “supercomputers” are still potent…and in practice i find it easy enough to deal with all of legacy problems of like installing a 20 year old version of debian or rebuilding my programs for x86-32. but the incidentals always get me. like i recently invested a bunch of effort to reuse a 2004 computer, only to find that it hard reboots a couple times a week (bad ram?).same problem with reusing phones. between my wife and i, i have a pretty impressive set of discard phones but if i actually go to use them for anything at all, they all have one problem after another. even with my pile of old phones, if i wanted one to dedicate to some task with a custom android app, i would probably go to the grocery store (or temu) and buy a new cheapo phone instead.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,476.803985
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/23/fusing-cheap-ebay-find-into-a-digital-rangefinder/
|
Fusing Cheap EBay Find Into A Digital Rangefinder
|
Adam Zeloof
|
[
"hardware",
"Reverse Engineering"
] |
[
"camera",
"leica",
"photography",
"reangefinder"
] |
One of the earliest commercially-successful camera technologies was the rangefinder — a rather mechanically-complex system that allows a photographer to focus by triangulating a subject, often in a dedicated focusing window, and and frame the shot with another window, all without ever actually looking through the lens. Rangefinder photographers will give you any number of reasons why their camera is just better than the others — it’s faster to use, the focusing is more accurate, the camera is lighter — but in today’s era of lightweight mirrorless digitals, all of these arguments sound like vinyl aficionados saying “The sound is just more
round
, man. Digital recordings are all square.” (This is being written by somebody who shoots with a rangefinder and listens to vinyl).
While there are loads of analog rangefinders floating around eBay, the trouble nowadays is that digital rangefinders are rare, and all but impossible to find for a reasonable price. Rather than complaining on Reddit after getting fed up with the lack of affordable options, [Mr.50mm] decided to do something about it, and
build his own digital rangefinder for less than $250
.
Part of the problem is that, aside from a few exceptions, the only digital rangefinders have been manufactured by Leica, a German company often touted as the Holy Grail of photography. Whether you agree with the hype or consider them overrated toys, they’re sure expensive. Even in the used market, you’d be hard-pressed to find an older model for less than $2,000, and the newest models can be upwards of $10,000.
Rather than start from scratch, he fused two low-cost and commonly-available cameras into one with some careful surgery and 3D printing. The digital bits came from a Panasonic GF3, a 12 MP camera that can be had for around $120, and the rangefinder system from an old Soviet camera called the Fed 5, which you can get for less than $50 if you’re lucky. The Fed 5 also conveniently worked with Leica Thread Mount (LTM) lenses, a precursor to the modern bayonet-mount lenses, so [Mr.50mm] lifted the lens mounting hardware from it as well.
Even LTM lenses are relatively cheap, as they’re not compatible with modern Leicas. Anyone who’s dabbled in building or repairing cameras will tell you that there’s loads of precision involved. If the image sensor, or film plane, offset is off by the slightest bit, you’ll never achieve a sharp focus — and that’s just one of many aspects that need to be
just
right. [Mr.50mm]’s attention to detail really paid off, as the sample images (which you can see in the video below) look fantastic.
With photography becoming a more expensive hobby every day, it’s great to see some efforts to build accessible and open-source cameras, and this project joins the ranks of the
Pieca
and this
Super 8 retrofit
. Maybe we’ll even see Leica-signed encrypted metadata in a future version,
as it’s so easy to spoof
.
| 1
| 1
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153572",
"author": "Chloe",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T08:18:32",
"content": "LTM lenses are compatible with M mount Leicas using v. simple adaptors.When Leica created the first M mount camera, they specifically designed the flange distance and rangefinder to allow them to be adapted easily and be fully compatible with the focus coupling; adapting them was part of the design from day 1.There are even a few new third-party M lenses which are actually LTM lenses that come with an adaptor screwed-on ready for you.Also, whilst many of the FED (and other Leica clones) cameras used LTM threads, some of them only kept the M39 screw mount and had subtly different flange distances and focus coupling requirements, so they’re not always compatible with LTM. The cheapest lens/bodies are those with the compatibility issues.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,476.909818
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/23/2025-one-hertz-challenge-16-bit-tower-blinks-at-one-hertz/
|
2025 One Hertz Challenge: 16-Bit Tower Blinks At One Hertz
|
Matt Varian
|
[
"contests"
] |
[
"2025 Hackaday One Hertz Challenge",
"diy cpu",
"relay computer",
"relay logic"
] |
We’ve seen our share of blinking light projects around here; most are fairly straightforward small projects, but this entry to the 2025 One Hertz Challenge is the polar opposite of that approach. [Peter] sent in this awesome tower of
16bit relay CPU
power blinking a light every second.
There’s a lot to take in on this project, so be sure to go look at the ongoing logs of the underlying
16-bit relay CPU project
where [Peter] has been showing his progress in creating this clicking and clacking masterpiece. The relay CPU consists of a stack of 5 main levels: the top board is the main control board, the next level down figures out the address calculations for commands, under that is the arithmetic logic unit level, under the ALU is the output register where you’ll see a 220 V lamp blinking at 1 Hz, and finally at the base are a couple of microcontrollers used for a clock signal and memory. [Peter] included oscilloscope readings showing how even with the hundreds of moving parts going on, the light is blinking within 1% of its 1 Hz goal.
It’s worth noting that while [Peter] has the relay CPU blinking a light in this setup, the CPU has 19 commands to program it, enabling much more complex tasks. Thanks for the amazing-sounding entry from [Peter] for our One Hertz Challenge. Be sure to check out some of the other
relay computers
we’ve featured over the years for more clicking goodness.
| 3
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153313",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:40:37",
"content": "Winner. Definitely.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153526",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T06:30:55",
"content": "I love it. I only managed to build an 8 bit ALU with relay. Thumbs up :-D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154292",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T17:50:39",
"content": "Was weird to see CuriousMarc mention haD and this challenge, I had not idea he visited HaD.I wonder if he comments; using a secret identity.Would be funny if he was one of the crazy regulars.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,476.591367
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/23/embedded-leds-for-soft-robots-made-from-silicone/
|
Embedded LEDs For Soft Robots Made From Silicone
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"LED Hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] |
[
"embedded LED",
"silicone",
"soft robot",
"stretch sensor"
] |
Over on their YouTube channel [Science Buddies]
shows us how to embed LEDs in soft robots
. Soft robots can be made entirely or partially from silicone. In the video you see an example of a claw-like gripper made entirely from silicone. You can also use silicone to make “skin”. The skin can stretch, and the degree of stretch can be measured by means of an embedded sensor made from stretchy conductive fabric.
As silicone is translucent if you embed LEDs within it when illuminated they will emit diffuse light. Stranded wire is best for flexibility and the video demonstrates how to loop the wires back and forth into a spring-like shape for expansion and contraction along the axis which will stretch. Or you can wire in the LEDs without bending the wires if you run them along an axis which won’t stretch.
The video shows how to make silicone skin by layering two-part mixture into a mold. A base layer of silicone is followed by a strip of conductive fabric and the LED with its wires. Then another layer of silicone is applied to completely cover and seal the fabric and LED in place. Tape is used to hold the fabric and LED in place while the final layer of silicone is applied.
When the LEDs are embedded in silicone there will be reduced airflow to facilitate cooling so be sure to use a large series resistor to limit the current through the LED as much as possible to prevent overheating. A 1K series resistor would be a good value to try first. If you need the LED to be brighter you will need to decrease the resistance, but make sure you’re not generating too much heat when you do so.
If you’re interested in stretchy circuits you might also like to
read about flexible circuits built on polyimide film
.
| 3
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8154072",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:07:00",
"content": "I am sensing some sarcasm here. Did you have a better idea for a starting series resistor than 1K?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154075",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:09:28",
"content": "Oh, you’re not impressed? I thought it was pretty cool. Particularly that you can sense the stretch with the conductive fabric. And as I mentioned the wavy wire isnota necessity if you run it along a dimension which won’t stretch, as demonstrated in the video. It’s not clear to me what more you would like to see in a version 2 or 3… in any event if you have requests like that probably better to make them over on the YouTube channel… I didn’t make this content, I just showed it to you.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156340",
"author": "Stanton",
"timestamp": "2025-07-31T06:54:20",
"content": "Hmm… where did the comments go?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,476.726049
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/23/the-death-of-industrial-design-and-the-era-of-dull-electronics/
|
The Death Of Industrial Design And The Era Of Dull Electronics
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Cellphone Hacks",
"Featured",
"History",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] |
[
"industrial design",
"product development"
] |
It’s often said that what’s inside matters more than one’s looks, but it’s hard to argue that a product’s looks and its physical user experience are what makes it instantly recognizable. When you think of something like a Walkman, an iPod music player, a desktop computer, a car or a TV, the first thing that comes to mind is the way that it looks along with its user interface. This is the domain of industrial design, where circuit boards, mechanisms, displays and buttons are put into a shell that ultimately defines what users see and experience.
Thus industrial design is perhaps the most important aspect of product development as far as the user is concerned, right along with the feature list. It’s also no secret that marketing departments love to lean into the styling and ergonomics of a product. In light of this it is very disconcerting that the past years industrial design for consumer electronics in particular seems to have wilted and is now practically on the verge of death.
Devices like cellphones and TVs are now mostly flat plastic-and-glass rectangles with no distinguishing features. Laptops and PCs are identified either by being flat, small, having RGB lighting, or a combination of these. At the same time buttons and other physical user interface elements are vanishing along with prominent styling, leaving us in a world of basic geometric shapes and flat, evenly colored surfaces. Exactly how did we get to this point, and what does this mean for our own hardware projects?
Bold And Colorful Shapes
Motorola
RAZR V3i
mobile phone from 2005. (Source:
Wikimedia
)
Industrial design is less of a science and more of an art, limited only by the available materials, the constraints of the product’s internals and the goal of creating a positive user experience. Although design has always played a role with many products over the millennia, these were generally quite limited due to material and tooling constraints. As both plastics and electronics began their stratospheric rise during the 20th century, suddenly it felt like many of these constraints had been removed.
No longer was one limited to basic materials like stone, metal, wood and paint, while internals got ever smaller and more flexible in terms of placement. Enclosures now could take on any shape, while buttons, knobs and dials could be shaped and placed to one’s heart’s content. This change is clearly visible in consumer devices, with the sixties and subsequent
decades seeing a veritable explosion in stylish transistorized radios, home computers and portable entertainment devices, with industrial designers getting the hang of all these new materials and options.
The peak here was arguably achieved during the 1990s and early 2000s, as electronic miniaturization and manufacturing chops led to device manufacturers basically just showing off. Personal Hi-Fi systems and portable devices along with computer systems and laptops grew curved, translucent and transparent plastic along with a dazzling array of colors.
These days we refer to this era as the ‘
Y2K Aesthetic
‘, which was followed around the mid-2000s to early 2010s by the sweetly named ‘
Frutiger Aero
‘ era. During this time both hardware and software underwent a transition from mostly utilitarian looks into something that can be defined as tasteful to over the top, depending on your perspective, but above all it embraced the technologies and materials in its industrial design. Futurism and literal transparency were the rule, as a comfortable, colorful and stylish companion in daily life.
From Brick To Slab
Mobile phone evolution from 1992 to 2014, starting with the Motorola 8900X-2 to the iPhone 6 Plus. (Credit: Jojhnjoy,
Wikimedia
)
Ask someone to visualize a Nokia 3310 and even if they’re born after 2000, there’s a good chance that they will be able to tell you what it is, what it does and what it looks like. Then ask that same person to describe any modern cellphone, and while the feature list should be quite easy, asking them to draw what differentiates, say, an iPhone 16 from a Samsung Galaxy S25 is effectively impossible unless they have memorized the layout of the cameras on the back and perhaps the side button placement.
The iPhone 12 through iPhone 15 Plus. Marketing would like you to find the differences. (Source:
Wikipedia
)
Samsung Galaxy S23, S23+, S23 Ultra. (Source:
Wikimedia
)
Over the decades, cellphones have seen their displays grow larger and larger. With voracious appetite, these displays have consumed bezels, front speakers, keyboards and home buttons.
Along with the demise of these features, front facing cameras were only preserved by literally punching a hole in the display, but notification LEDs vanished right along with headphone jacks, IR blaster LEDs, swappable covers, removable batteries, etc.
The current scuttlebutt is that Apple will be the first to drop any and all connectors from its iPhone cellphones, with the
iPhone 17
reportedly nearly becoming the first to do so. Along with eSIMs, this would leave smartphones as glued-together slabs of plastic-and-glass with only a screen, some cameras and a couple of buttons.
In marketing shots smartphones are always shown with a lock- or home screen open on the screen, because otherwise there would be just a lifeless black slab of glass to look at from the front. From the side you can see the same slab, which easily wobbles on its ever-growing camera hump that’s sticking out of the razor-thin case like a bad case of optical melanoma. At this point in time, the most exciting thing about cellphones is whether it can flip or not, followed by whatever subdued color is applied to the slippery glass back that you want to cover up with something concealing and grippy as soon as possible anyway.
Naturally, it’s not just phones either, but also computers, with the iMac’s evolution showing a clear ‘evolution’ from colorful and bold designs to geometric slabs:
Evolution of the Apple iMac. (Credit:
Wikimedia
)
Whether you call it ‘modern’ or ‘clean’ design, the trend is quite clear. Curves are removed, colors are purged or at the very least muted and the overall design reduced to the level of excitement experienced while being stuck at an Ikea showroom during a busy weekend with the family.
Lifeless Slabs
An LG Flatron CRT TV from around 2007. (Credit: Briho,
Wikimedia
)
There was a time when televisions had a recognizable look to them, with a stylish bezel, a real power button, as well as a couple of front input connectors and buttons to adjust basic settings like volume and the current channel, which could also be hidden behind a small flap. This is now all gone, and TVs have become as visually striking from the front as modern smartphones, with the speakers fully nerfed since there’s no space on the front any more.
All inputs and any remaining controls are now hidden on the back where reaching them is borderline impossible after installation, never mind if you mounted it on a wall. You’re not supposed to find the TV visually appealing, or marvel at the easy user interface, just consume whatever content is displayed on the bezel-less screen.
The rest of any home entertainment setup has undergone the same process, with the HiFi stacks and mid-sized sets of yesteryear replaced by the same smartphones and TVs, along with a bit of plastic that you can stick into a slab TV to stream content with from some internet-based service.
An Apple HomePod and HomePod Mini mono speakers.
Rather than a stereo – or better – HiFi setup, most people will have a bunch of usually mono Bluetooth speakers scattered around, each of which possessing the visual appeal of a radar dome. If you’re lucky there are still a couple of touch buttons to fondle, but virtually all of your interactions with such devices will go via an app on your slab phone.
Touch controls are also all that you will get these days, as physical buttons, dials, sliders and switches are almost completely faux pas in modern-day product design. Everything has to be smooth, stealthy, invisibly present and yet always there when you crave that entertainment fix.
This design language isn’t just afflicting home electronics either, as over the past years car interiors have seen physical user controls vanish in favor of one or more touch screens, with cars like those from Tesla being the most extreme example with just a single large touch screen on the center console as the sole user interface. Users are however
pushing back against this change
, with a number of studies also showing that touch-only controls are less effective and less safe than fumbling around on a big screen while driving to adjust something like the climate controls or radio station.
There Is An App For That
Want to set up your new formless slab of plastic or fabric? Please download this special mobile app to do anything with it. Got a new pair of headphones? Better pray that the mobile app works well on your slab phone or you’ll be stuck with whatever preset defaults it came with, as physical controls on the device are for dummies.
Whether we like it or not, the human user interface part of industrial design has been mostly taken out back and replaced with software running on a slab phone. Whatever vestigial controls still remain on the device itself will only be a small subset of what its electronics and firmware are capable of. The slab phone has thus become the user interface, with that part of industrial design often outsourced to some third-party mobile app developer.
This has massively backfired for some companies already, with
Sonos in 2024 releasing
a ‘new and improved’ version of its slab phone app that was so buggy and plagued with issues that it rendered the Sonos speaker hardware effectively useless. While physical user interfaces have their issues, sinking an entire company due to a badly arranged set of knobs is not as easy as with a slab phone app or equivalent, not to mention the potential to retroactively brick the user interface of devices that people have already purchased.
Yearning For That Human Touch
Original Sony Walkman TPS-L2 from 1979.
Here we can see
parallels with computer user interfaces
, where much like with industrial design there’s a big push to reduce shapes to the most basic geometric forms, remove or reduce color and remove any ‘superfluous’ styling including
skeuomorphism
. These parallels are perhaps not that surprising, as companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft produce both consumer hardware and software.
Google, for example, has heavily invested in its
Material Design
design language, which can be summarized as having flat color backgrounds with the most simplistic UI elements suspended in said void. UI elements like the ‘hamburger’ icon are used to hide menus not just on phones, but also on desktop systems, where a form of extreme minimalism is being pushed to its ultimate extremes.
In the case of consumer electronics that means devices that lack any distinguishable features, as minimalism is a poor way to distinguish one product from another. The removal of visually pleasing and physically practical elements also means a dull, stimulation-free experience.
There are no pleasing elements to rest your eyes on, no curves or colors that invoke an emotional response, no buttons to press, or any kind of auditory or physical response. Just lifeless touch controls on slabs of plastic and glass with maybe a sad beep as confirmation of a touch control having been triggered.
In this context, what is often called
the revival of physical media
can be interpreted as not just a yearning for a more visceral audio-visual experience, but would together with so-called retro-computing be a way to experience personal electronics in a way that stimulates and invigorates. Where physical buttons are pressed, sliders slid, dials turned and things go click and whirr as one’s fingers touch and manipulate the very real user interface elements.
We know that chronic boredom can be extremely harmful to non-human animals, with enrichment toys and activities prescribed to make them happier and more content. With modern day consumer electronics having become incredibly dull due to the death of industrial design, it would seem that us human mammals are seeking out our own enrichment activities, modern design sensibilities be damned. If this means repeating the sins of early 2000s or 1990s industrial design in our personal hobbyist projects, it’s a price worth to pay for keeping ourselves and our fellow humans happy and enriched.
| 191
| 46
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153187",
"author": "Jock Murphy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T14:28:47",
"content": "I completely understand the desire for our artifacts to be beautiful, but when it comes to some of them like my phone, I want them to disappear. I want the aesthetics to be in the “world” that lives inside the device. I sometimes think the discussions about phones being boring doesn’t really consider the idea that what most of us care about is the inside not the outside",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153191",
"author": "macsimki",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T14:44:59",
"content": "virtual is the new real",
"parent_id": "8153187",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154605",
"author": "Jeff Wright",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T18:30:37",
"content": "Apes smoothly touching a slick rectangle?https://storage.googleapis.com/thehundreds/media/2018/09/giphy-1.gifNah–that’d never happen….coughtThe cheapest smart phonehttps://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheMonolith",
"parent_id": "8153191",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153204",
"author": "LookAtDaShinyShiny",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:11:46",
"content": "it’s like worrying what colour the outside of a telescope is painted :-D All the good stuff happens on the inside.",
"parent_id": "8153187",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153212",
"author": "Jock Murphy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:21:16",
"content": "I love this analogy!",
"parent_id": "8153204",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153373",
"author": "LookAtDaShinyShiny",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T22:59:38",
"content": "Thanks, they’re mainly used in the dark too, so even less of a worry about the tube colour.",
"parent_id": "8153212",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154540",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T14:08:16",
"content": "And yet, telescopes DO often have distinctively finished tubes. The tube’s appearance is what you’re left with during the day, when the (astronomical) telescope has no purpose and just takes up space. A telescope’s tube is like a phone, tablet, or laptop’s background or screen saver.",
"parent_id": "8153373",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155934",
"author": "hugh crawford",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T18:06:35",
"content": "Still, usually white. In the day they don’t get as hot, at night you don’t bump into them.",
"parent_id": "8153373",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153246",
"author": "Unochepassa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T16:35:08",
"content": "Still this is the main point of discussion among amateur astronomers (besides the fights to death between lens-lovers and mirror-lovers) Ask me ho I know it :)",
"parent_id": "8153204",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154247",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T15:50:44",
"content": "Using a Victorian era steampunk looking telescope is a pure work of art.But if it wasn’t functional I wouldn’t enjoy using it.Tho, I do prefer to put modern Televue eyepeices in the century-old scope. :)",
"parent_id": "8153204",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154343",
"author": "-jeffB",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T22:03:35",
"content": "Remember the Questar tabletop Maksutov, a 3.5-inch scope priced like a 12″, with the start chart printed on the tube?",
"parent_id": "8153204",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153208",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:15:35",
"content": "Like right to repair. More insides than one can shake a stick at.",
"parent_id": "8153187",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153228",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:56:33",
"content": "Nah I want keyboard phones brought back. Miss my N900",
"parent_id": "8153187",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153236",
"author": "hmmmm...",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T16:11:53",
"content": "YES! Id much rather a compact qwerty slider over a minitablet pretending its a phone.",
"parent_id": "8153228",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153305",
"author": "fluffy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:29:26",
"content": "This is why I’m always watching what Unihertz is doing with their phones, because they’re actually trying to build phones that fall through the cracks of modernity. I’ve backed the Titan II on Kickstarter specifically because it’s a modern-enough Android phone with a form factor reminiscent of the Palm Treo or the full-keyboard Blackberries.I would love to see a modern phone using the old HTC Dream (aka T-Mobile G1) form factor, though, or the Danger Hiptop (T-Mobile Sidekick).",
"parent_id": "8153228",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154603",
"author": "Jeff Wright",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T18:23:37",
"content": "When design meant somethinghttps://www.smithgroup.com/projects/general-motors-design-domehttps://www.hemmings.com/stories/the-art-and-colour-of-gm/",
"parent_id": "8153305",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153569",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T08:12:33",
"content": "That’s a feature and not an artistic design element though.It’s the same as asking for a headphone jack or removable battery, great things but features not ‘design’.",
"parent_id": "8153228",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154254",
"author": "Lya",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T16:11:08",
"content": "Either a keyboard or controller inputs like the Xperia Play. I prefer devices with a gimmick, personally. But when we get those, Planet Phones comes to mind, they’re so expensive now. :(Size isn’t an issue for me, because I have a purse I can toss it into.",
"parent_id": "8153228",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154709",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T23:40:50",
"content": "I was (and to an extent, am) such a keyboard bigot that I even purchased an LG Mach specifically because it was the LAST phone Sprint ever sold that had a slide-out keyboard.But you know what ended the life of that phone? The ribbon cable connecting the keyboard to the rest of the body flexed itself in half after too many slides.EVERY phone I ever had with moving parts, those parts ended up setting the i limit on its lifespan. My flip phone? Hinges cracked. (Also happened to two of my laptops.)Meanwhile, the phone I’m writing this on is a Samsung A53 that I bought 2.5 years ago, and I have no plans to replace it any time soon because it’s still in practically-new condition. I will most likely use it until the battery fails, and then I’ll have to decide between replacing the battery and getting a new phone.As much as I hate to admit it, moving parts and physical interfaces are points of failure for personal electronics, especially portables.",
"parent_id": "8153228",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154779",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T07:35:19",
"content": "If you are willing to change a battery not meant to be user removable you should be willing to replace a worn flex for the keyboard etc. All these glued shut battery powered devices have a limited lifespan likely better measured in months over years anyway (but of course your usage will make that better or worse) so having some moving parts that might wear out enough to matter in roughly similar time (again usage dependant) isn’t a big deal. Epically if the thing is built to be maintained..",
"parent_id": "8154709",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8183096",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-09-23T01:04:26",
"content": "“All these glued shut battery powered devices have a limited lifespan likely better measured in months over years anyway”Well, that’s absolute nonsense, what are you basing that on?“If you are willing to change a battery not meant to be user removable you should be willing to replace a worn flex for the keyboard etc.”It wasn’t a matter ofwilling, I’m willing to do a lot of things when I have to. But the thing was like 2″ wide and carried about 50 needle-thin wires. Where would you even get a replacement for what was clearly a custom part? And assuming you could find a replacement, what are the odds you’d be able to install it correctly without breaking either it, or some other part of the device? Maybe for you, they’re incredible. For me, they were poor at best. I know my limitations.Replacing a battery, past the ungluing, is usually a matter of pulling out one 2-wire connector. It’s not even in the same LEAGUE as repairing a side-slider’s main bus connection between the two halves.",
"parent_id": "8154779",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153234",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T16:08:28",
"content": "I feel like that fails to account for a great deal, while being pretty accurate. As your use of phones might make that entirely true for you, but between the desire for nice HID options for a specific though perhaps more niche task that keeps the phones with keyboards (etc) in production. Or the folks that want extreme minimal zero distraction pure communication only devices. Or the really small very pocket or perhaps soon wrist mounting friendly full featured devices that for lack of screen real estate must get more creative as you can’t consume 1/2 the screen to bring up the contextual HID the way you can on a larger slab. Not to mention some folks are trying to use them like a real computer so the folding screen devices grab them etc.There is plenty of room for more interesting design choices in the mobile phone world, especially IMO with the new generations of folding phone, as that gives you the option to have almost anything on the outside clamshell closed mode with the ‘disappearing’ device that just lets you at the world inside being available when you open it. So I’d love to see a much more 2000’s buttons you can operate by feel approach on the outside for instance.",
"parent_id": "8153187",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153765",
"author": "Azzy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T16:08:10",
"content": "I’m not interested in allowing companies to sell those features back to me on a device I already own. I don’t care how it looks. I just want it to be functional and more so than the last version, not less.",
"parent_id": "8153187",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153831",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T18:18:36",
"content": "I want the smartphone to disappear. So unimaginitive.A black pocket mirror with almost no physical buttons.It’s not design, it’s anti-design. Lack of any design. Minimalism at its worst.The wheel of the original iPod was at least being inspiried by the Braun SK2 radio, which had a bit of elegance, still.The smartphone did more harm than good, imho.More than often it has become an addiction and stops people from thinking of their own or make them lift their heads.It turned people into Smartphone Zombies (Smombies)..",
"parent_id": "8153187",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153870",
"author": "TimoP",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:34:37",
"content": "I think I fully understand this comnent and that is why I am extremely worried.Just because what people are willing to accept from a phone. No more user control but limitless walled garden opportunities and gaslighting + cutting attention span for profit when all the control is given to external entity wanting to earn bit more than last year.Imho it is telling that social media companies are definitely not using their own products but focus on all the mundane real world stuff if they want to get most from their employees.",
"parent_id": "8153187",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154711",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T23:52:34",
"content": "“While physical user interfaces have their issues, sinking an entire company due to a badly arranged set of knobs is not as easy”Not as easy, but it is possible. Consider the Coleco Adam, a home computer system so poorly designed it was a major factor in the company’s failure.Mind you, they had to make some EPICALLY bad choices to pull that off. Like putting the power transformer for the entire system inside the PRINTER, so you couldn’t use any of it without the printer attached.",
"parent_id": "8153187",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154715",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T00:17:13",
"content": "And this wasn’t supposed to be a reply to Jock.",
"parent_id": "8154711",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155937",
"author": "hugh crawford",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T18:11:35",
"content": "Apple seemed to do ok with some dubious purser supply decisions.",
"parent_id": "8154711",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8155173",
"author": "Brian Goldberg",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T11:59:26",
"content": "I think the phone was a bad example. I understand why it was chosen (ubiquity), but phones were not being designed to be ornate. From the beginning, the industrial design of phones was all about making them less cumbersome, as they are a thing you have to handle frequently and carry in a small bag of even in your pocket.A better approach to this discussion would be examine industrial design from a broader perspective, looking at the homogenization of interior decorating, architecture and cultural artifacts. It is demonstrably true that our world is becoming blander and blander as time goes by.",
"parent_id": "8153187",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153189",
"author": "Piotrsko",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T14:35:21",
"content": "Ask any repair tech: if there’s a button to push or a knob to twist, someone will do that enough to need repair. Try that on a new IPhone. No buttons and reset boot generally returns default options.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153196",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T14:54:14",
"content": "Umm… there are still buttons on the iPhone, even the latest one.https://macreports.com/how-to-locate-your-iphones-buttons-and-what-they-do-when-they-are-used/",
"parent_id": "8153189",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153322",
"author": "d",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T20:14:47",
"content": "That’s why they should be easily replaceable. Getting rid of them just makes for bad user experience.",
"parent_id": "8153189",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153348",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T21:46:53",
"content": "Yeah, things are usually a bit easier if they are completely featureless and bland and homogenous",
"parent_id": "8153189",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153922",
"author": "Greg",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T21:43:20",
"content": "No, just no. I’ve repaired my fair share of electronics, and basic use of buttons has never been the cause of failure. Foreign objects, liquid, corrosion, and abuse.",
"parent_id": "8153189",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154196",
"author": "Yooper",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T13:15:26",
"content": "The finger print reader on my wife’s iPhone went tango uniform last year, and since that was also the home button and the only way to turn it on, it effectively made it completely useless. So no, having no buttons does not result in longevity.",
"parent_id": "8153189",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153190",
"author": "localroger",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T14:40:28",
"content": "A lot of this is driven by a single consideration: Is form following function? Slab phones don’t look the way they do because people want them to look that way, they look that way because any departure from the basic form will make them bigger, slower, or more awkward. The millennial explosion in cool design happened largely because miniaturization was ahead of the needed functionality curve, so designers had room to play. This was not true for example in the 1980’s, when if you wanted to market a computer that could be used at all (especially a portable one) you didn’t have a lot of options to play with if you wanted it to work at all. And barring some new leap in technology, like the transition from CRT’s to flat displays, we’re probably stuck with how things will look now for the foreseeable future.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153210",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:17:27",
"content": "That’s kind of Maya’s thesis: form has followed function down a dark alley, and gotten it’s lunch money taken.",
"parent_id": "8153190",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153220",
"author": "Maya Posch",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:41:51",
"content": "Indeed, by taking the ‘larger display is better and bezels are evil incarnate’ concepts as gospel, there is no form left to play with. The only form left is a display with some camera modules glued to the back and one poking out through the display. There’s no ‘design’ happening any more from that premise.",
"parent_id": "8153210",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153235",
"author": "Michael J",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T16:11:35",
"content": "There’s no form to play with because there’s no function that requires a bezel or nubs or hidden space. I think this is a good thing! I want my phone or monitor or tv to disappear except for what I need it for.",
"parent_id": "8153220",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153380",
"author": "css",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T23:29:51",
"content": "Exactly, “make the screens as big as possible” and “remove everything that isn’t screen” are two separate concepts. I’d be perfectly happy with a 4″ to 5″ screen instead of the giant 6″+ displays that every smartphone has these days, but I wouldn’t want that size to be replaced with bezel and buttons, no matter how snazzy the design; I want the overall product to be smaller to fit in my pocket. Beautiful industrial design is great but only so far as it doesn’t interfere with the experience of using the product.",
"parent_id": "8153235",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154542",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T14:22:06",
"content": "I bought an older model phone solely because I could not find a new model that didn’t have a camera hole in the display. A featureless expanse of infinitely variable pixels is all I require of a screen. A screen is like a sheet of paper, and anything that never goes away is a blemish.",
"parent_id": "8153235",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154666",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T21:21:25",
"content": "There are Android phones with 3-4 inch high resolution screens available. The issue is that they only carry half the battery, so they barely last a whole day of use even when new.",
"parent_id": "8153235",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153570",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T08:16:25",
"content": "And why is that a bad thing or something that we should be waxing nostalgic for?If we want unique designs and interesting to look at devices then them being as stripped down and uniform as possible makes it super easy to customize them with cases, stickers, 3D printed doohickeys or anything else.Devices used to be unique but they were also much much worse for it.",
"parent_id": "8153220",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153632",
"author": "Davidmh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T10:52:54",
"content": "And here form follows a very particular function. I found notification leds very useful to know what is going on without even needing to light up the screen. Bezels are protective, and really, not that much of a bother. Front camera notches are an abomination that makes a slightly larger screen, but in a way that it is significantly worse, right where you are expanding it.",
"parent_id": "8153220",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154199",
"author": "Yooper",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T13:19:50",
"content": "Kind of ironic how the bezel-hating crowd are effectively BUYING a bezel for their phone every time they buy a protective case.Remove the bezels, then charge separately for them, and everybody is falling for it…. Genius!",
"parent_id": "8153632",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154669",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T21:32:37",
"content": "Yes, because you can choose to have it or not, and you can replace it when it gets broken. I personally only use an extra glass and nothing else. I don’t care if the back cover gets dinged up.If the bezel was built-in, you’d have to cover it with yet another bezel to keep it from scuffing up, and then your phone would be double plus big.",
"parent_id": "8153632",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154671",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T21:36:04",
"content": "I turn off the notification LEDs because they’re going to be burning battery and mostly flashing when I’m not looking at the phone while it’s in my pocket, so 99.9% of their action goes against my purposes. When I am looking at the phone, I don’t need a flashing LED to notice the notifications.Yet every time there’s a system update, they turn the bloody thing back on.",
"parent_id": "8153632",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153326",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T20:30:59",
"content": "Nah, it´s just convergent evolution.",
"parent_id": "8153210",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153755",
"author": "Paul G",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T15:50:46",
"content": "I was scrolling down to see if anyone mentioned “form following function”, especially after seeing the Razr phone above. I frequently drive a tractor and am often outside doing dangerous enough stuff in the countryside, on my own. My monster Samsung phone of course slid out of my pocket and I ran over it with the tractor, did not survive, banana shaped.So I sought and found a phone whose function satisfied my needs – to withstand being run over (on grass, mud I hasten to add) dropping into rivers etc, but basically to be there if i need sudden help.Cat Flip 22. Cut down android, smart phone – is a wee bit heavy, I’ll admit. FFF is still out there.",
"parent_id": "8153190",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153194",
"author": "Hussien",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T14:47:28",
"content": "Nobody is preventing you from using CRT, just be prepared to pay five times as much for energy. There are even companies in Russia remanufacturing old CRTs into new units with warranty.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153218",
"author": "Maya Posch",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:38:00",
"content": "This isn’t about CRTs. There were many LCD and Plasma TVs that featured a similar front IO and speaker arrangement.",
"parent_id": "8153194",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153573",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T08:19:20",
"content": "Front IO was useful when people needed to plug in their VHS camcorder or nomadic game console, they would be almost completely vestigial today.TV speakers have always only needed to be ‘good enough’ for regular viewing and backfire speakers work well while letting the TV be narrower and easier to fit wherever you might like. The death of side speakers, allows for people to place their own nearer or have more space for artwork in the room.",
"parent_id": "8153218",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153612",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T10:08:47",
"content": "Front IO is never going to be vestigial, though often these days you have to fake it with extension cables as the manufacturers think it is… It is just too convenient even if you don’t need it every day in this age of ‘smart’ screens and expensive streaming services! I wish I had some front IO on my monitor, as then I’d not need the HDMI splitter that thanks to all the EDID ‘smarts’ is always going wonky. I’d be able to just plug in all those lesser used devices and the stuff being worked on my desk into the front IO (if there was enough of it) only while I was using that device…And the death of good integrated speakers as an option on TV’s isn’t to make the TV easier to put anywhere, it is so they can sell you a soundbar to get adequate sound…Don’t get me wrong speaker less or troubleshooting/backup only rubbish speakers in a screen is a fine thing to have as an option – It is what I’d pick for myself as I already have a decent Surround Sound audio system to hook it up to. But at the same time those old screens that came with darn nearly if not actually Hi-Fi quality speaker are a great option for space and budget constrained folks – no need for the another boxy amp, the speakers etc when this very slightly chunkier TV can manage to fit a really good sound system inside.",
"parent_id": "8153573",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154672",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T21:41:48",
"content": "Good integrated speakers need depth to work properly. They’re not easy to design or manufacture in a TV that you’re supposed to be able to hang on a wall.And the external speakers/soundbars aren’t actually all that good either. They’re actually kinda rubbish for the most part. THAT is intentional, to make you buy one, and then buy a proper set of active speakers.",
"parent_id": "8153612",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154674",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T21:55:15",
"content": "@Dude I did say adequate, not good sound… Adequate isn’t all that hard to get in a small space, especially if you do the sane thing of pointing the speakers at the viewers rather than the floor/wall behind the TV. But doing that does require some bezel…Though I have seen some impressive reviews of some of the more recent high end beam forming, room mapping soundbars with separate subwoofer that might just best at least some of the older dedicated SS amps and speakers (if only because simulated though the rear channels will be none of the source audio has been compressed as used to be true given much lower bandwidth).",
"parent_id": "8153612",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154807",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T11:02:13",
"content": "if you do the sane thing of pointing the speakers at the viewersMy TV points the speakers down, and the stand is shaped like a compound curve to radiate and reflect the higher frequency sounds evenly around the room, instead of just straight ahead with constructive and destructive interference creating “dead” spots – as is usual for tiny point-like sources.",
"parent_id": "8153612",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154815",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T11:27:05",
"content": "My TV points the speakers down, and the stand is shaped like a compound curve to radiate and reflect…That sounds rather like pointing the speakers at the viewers to me still – just a somewhat novel construction of the speaker, and one that is a bit fragile with how many folks want to mount their TV to the wall, or at least raise/lower and rotate it around etc. But still way more effort put in to create decent enough sound than most TV do these days now they have focused so much on thin and bezel reduction.",
"parent_id": "8153612",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155817",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T09:29:11",
"content": "That sounds rather like pointing the speakers at the viewers to me stillYes, but in a way which doesn’t require a bezel, and which is better than just having two speaker grilles next to the screen pointing at the viewer.Of course it fails somewhat when you hang the TV up on a wall, but it still works adequately because now it’s bouncing the sound off the wall just under the TV which isn’t blocked by the screen like with regular rear-facing speakers.",
"parent_id": "8153612",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154192",
"author": "Yooper",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T13:11:10",
"content": "And why would the type of TV that you’re using cause your price per KwH to go up?? Sure, energy consumption may increase, but you’re not going to pay “more” for that energy….",
"parent_id": "8153194",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154232",
"author": "andarb",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T15:02:09",
"content": "Many utilities charge more per kWh beyond a certain threshold. My family house is treated like a duplex, but the utility charges us as a single household – so our ‘family’ of 5 with two kitchens, electric water pump, and electric heat is often in the top bracket of households and charged the max per kWh.",
"parent_id": "8154192",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153195",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T14:54:03",
"content": "i’m amazed there’s still so much variety in laptops. i haven’t looked inside a high-end laptop in a long time but i have the impression the bottom half of every laptop is the same…a hollow plastic case, a rectangular prism about 9″x13″x0.5″, give or take. but every vendor has a different game they play with the edges and corners. symmetrically rounded like a half-cylinder parallel to the edge like my wife’s hp, or coming to almost a knife’s edge like a classic macbook air, or (mine) asymmetrically rounded almost like the bottom sheet is a shallow bowl, or crisp right angles like a thinkpad or pixel chromebook. almost irrelevant because all that’s inside is like a 3″x4″ SBC, a little cooling solution, and a custom-sized pile of prismatic lipo cells. but the tiny details of the shape still make a powerful first impression.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153248",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T16:37:41",
"content": "Well Lenovo is slightly different, it’s a magnesium case, and the styling changes very slowly, like an 80s or 90s BMW (I have a hunch the buyers of one would also be shopping for the other). And the X or P line-up could be likened to a V12 model.",
"parent_id": "8153195",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154643",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T20:06:09",
"content": "So your saying a X or P Lenovo is an unmaintainable money pit garage ornament?",
"parent_id": "8153248",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153308",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:31:35",
"content": "Well there’s the “butterfly keyboard”.",
"parent_id": "8153195",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153219",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:39:55",
"content": "Some of those early 2000s / Y2K designs were truly awful though. Buttons that were all different sizes, which collected dirt in them and got stuck. Plastic cases with the cheapest plastic and the cheapest matte silver paint, or else that gummy rubber coating that liquified within 2 years. And everything is a clamshell!Peak phone was probably around 2015, whenever they started to make beveled glass edges you couldn’t hold without touching and got rid of the SD card slots and headphone jacks. At least USB-C turned out OK (at least as a phone charging cable. It’s other features are questionable.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153328",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T20:34:24",
"content": "Its (possessive). scnr. Always a eye sore when native speakers trash this one.",
"parent_id": "8153219",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153696",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T13:48:43",
"content": "Everyone makes mistake’s, friend.",
"parent_id": "8153328",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153806",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T17:22:51",
"content": "Goe bak two reddit.",
"parent_id": "8153328",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153575",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T08:22:48",
"content": "I think you are right. The only people that look at those old designs and think, they were so much more unique and fun, are people who are wearing rose tinted glasses. They were awful.The beveled glass edges I’ll give you as a design concern but everything else are just features that I think we could still have with our current ‘designs’ but they just striped away to make things easier and cheaper for themselves. I’d be happy to have a glass brick with an SD card slot and headphone jack.",
"parent_id": "8153219",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153833",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T18:21:34",
"content": "“All generalizations are false”",
"parent_id": "8153575",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153224",
"author": "Snarkenstein",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:44:07",
"content": "Cars are kind of the same, now. Mini-SUVs all look the same except for things like the shape of the lights; all the sedans and coupes are the same; the minivans and pickups and full-size SUVs …I miss the mid-70’s Monte Carlo, everything from the 50’s and 60’s, all the ordinary cars with style.Sure, I understand that the function now includes stricter requirements on efficiency and safety, and all the interesting details have been ground away in that interest.I’m not even really a car guy, but I miss interesting cars.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153233",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T16:02:51",
"content": "Yep… The variety of shape is mostly gone. All there was a time when you could lean against or stand on a vehicle without denting it.",
"parent_id": "8153224",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153245",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T16:33:53",
"content": "2 things:If the vehicle doesn’t crumple, it is just passing whatever forces from what you hit (or what hits you) into your body.Secondly: using more material than is necessary to maintain the shape against the wind is actually wasteful. You will have to spend more for the vehicle, both in materials, and the tooling needed to stamp thicker metal, and the fuel or energy needed to accelerate it. I only lean on cars along folded edges or corners where the metal is better supported, but you could in theory bond a support behind a large ‘flat’ metal panel and keep a light weight and the ability to lean on your car*.*You might note that Pontiac/Saturn/Corvette had quite a few models with entirely ABS(?) panels that simply popped back into shape, as they didn’t carry any of the chassis loads.",
"parent_id": "8153233",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153294",
"author": "Tim Andersson",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:06:03",
"content": "The idea that crumpling is a necessary feature of vehicle design is misguided bollock pushed by never-satisfied menagers of automotive companies in Korea and Japan. The notion that a car must absorb impact energy through crumpling is simply rooted in their failure to produce thicker steel at affordable prices. Seriously. It’s not easy when you’re an island nation without natural resources (unlike the USA). What if we designed vehicles to be inherently strong, resilient and capable of withstanding impacts without compromising the integrity of the passenger compartment? A vehicle that doesn’t crumple can be engineered to instead dissipate energy by destroying obstacle it was passing through. It’s not 1980s anymore where we can choose between Ford, BMW or paper-thin Mazdas. By utilizing advanced nano-materials and structural decisions it should be possible to enhance vehicle safety without sacrificing performance.",
"parent_id": "8153245",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153339",
"author": "fonz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T21:19:38",
"content": "and if the other object is another car? and the whole point of crumble zones is to keep the passenger compartment intact and use everything else to slow down slow enough to not make the passengers mush",
"parent_id": "8153294",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153347",
"author": "Nick Wright",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T21:38:38",
"content": "Woof ok lot to unpack here.Weirdly racist start to all of this. Crumple zones were neither invented nor popularized by Japanese or Korean automakers.This supposed failure in steel production and cost-effectiveness is pretty hard to believe given that Nippon SteelownsUS Steel nowHow exactly do you think a car destroys a bridge abutment, or a building, or heck even a decently-sized tree in a 30mph collision? Where’s the energy going in those cases?If all cars are made of magical super-nano-steel, how does a collision between two of them work? Do they both annihilate each other like a matter-antimatter collision? That may be a concern for bystanders, considering that a collision between 4000 pounds of matter and 4000 pounds of antimatter releases 78 gigatons of energyHow is magical super-nano-steel cheaper to use than it is to just replace cars after accidents?How do you defend the morality of choosing to destroy whatever arbitrary object you collided with, in the interests of saving on repair costs? What happens if you t-bone a school bus? How about if you drive into bollards separating pedestrians from cars?",
"parent_id": "8153294",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153379",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T23:22:32",
"content": "And what happens when you crash that battle tank into another one or any practically indisputable immoveable object at high speed? If the car can’t crumple even a little bit you are going to feel the entire collision as a single large impulse that almost certainly breaks bones if it doesn’t outright kill you. Where just spreading that out over a few fractions of a second and you could well walk away uninjured at all – the passenger compartment is typically made to be as crumple resistance as practical so you won’t be having your legs mashed but the peak forces are reduced meaningfully by the crumple.",
"parent_id": "8153294",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153464",
"author": "reality calls",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T03:00:39",
"content": "Ah, motivated reasoning in action. What a beauty.Going through obstacles works… until it doesn’t. All SUV/pickup “safety through size” bullshit relies on you forgetting that even in an Hummer EV you remain a very small and light thing on the road. A semi is multiple tens of your weight, and structured to deal with forces generated by 50 tons of cargo on a continuous basis, with generous reserves. You will not go through that, you will not stop it. If you are lucky, you will be light enough and be hit in just the right angle to bounce off it.Physics does not care for your barely concealed racism.",
"parent_id": "8153294",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153544",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T06:54:49",
"content": "“If that pedestrian didn’t want to be killed, they shouldn’t have been in my way!” as you drive over the footpath while looking at your phone as you snapchat your mistress.",
"parent_id": "8153294",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153545",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T06:56:43",
"content": "This is also why there wasn’t a revolution in automotive safety brought about by crumple-zone design. And why they haven’t made guard rails and barriers that crumple in precisely engineered ways. And…It’s not the 1970s anymore. Cars are lighter, safer,andmore performant now.",
"parent_id": "8153294",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154649",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T20:21:32",
"content": "I own this car!1960 Chrysler Saratoga.Was very popular in demolition derby, until they were banned as indestructible.Not many made in first place.Jetsons design…’Forward Look’ IIRCHence rare AF.Impossible daily driver, drum brakes suck, 6 MPG.Idiots wreck while looking at it, trying to figure ‘WTF is that?’, forget to drive.Hastinyding on rear bumper, modern car was obviously totaled, doors sprung.",
"parent_id": "8153294",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154678",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T22:09:26",
"content": "Cars are lighter, safer, and more performant now.Except lighter. Modern hybrids and EVs areheavier.I’ve driven older cars without crumple zones built into the chassis. They were called bumpers then. The idea was that you’d be able to replace the bumper and the mounting point that would compress or tear off in a minor crash, so you didn’t total the entire car. You could fix the thing instead of throw it away, and even if the chassis was bent it wasn’t made of such exotic metals that you couldn’t twist it back into shape and weld it up.All I can say is, it worked. I drove it in the ditch, the car flipped up and dropped back down, and then I drove it home without the front bumper. No injuries to anybody. Any modern car would be written off as a total loss.",
"parent_id": "8153294",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154681",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T22:19:39",
"content": "The ugly truth is that the crumple zones don’t help much at higher speed collisions because the impact energy quickly grows past their ability to absorb it. At highway speeds, if you have a head-on collision with anything, you’re pretty likely to die anyways.https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Wramborgs-model-for-fatality-probability-vs-vehicle-collision-speeds-Source-based-on_fig1_304529995At lower speeds, seatbelts and airbags work quite well as long as the cabin stays in shape. So, it’s not unjustified to claim that “crumple zones” are more designed to make cars junk themselves in minor fender-benders.",
"parent_id": "8153294",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153296",
"author": "Tim Andersson",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:10:55",
"content": "For example of good, robust vehicle design see KIA (sic!) KLTV",
"parent_id": "8153245",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153332",
"author": "fonz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T20:47:40",
"content": "yeh, now cars might as well be a dishwasher, it does what it is supposed to but no one is going be excited about it or be particularly invested in what brand name is on it",
"parent_id": "8153224",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153355",
"author": "Christian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T22:02:32",
"content": "My thought as well.Cars seem to be defined by some type of construction constraint. The side panels must be joined with the roof, 10% in, all cars have that same two roof seams, at least for the last 15 years.Only thing that seem to change are headlights, bumpers and decals.",
"parent_id": "8153224",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153793",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T17:09:47",
"content": "They tried something different with the Cybertruck and everyone hated it!process ‘troll’ has exited with code 0",
"parent_id": "8153224",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153846",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T18:54:13",
"content": "Not really lots of folks do love the Cybertruck design (I personally wasn’t one of them, but neither did I hate it). Or at least they did till it under delivered on its promises with lots of little problems reported and is from the company headed by Musk who has gone from polarising but tolerated by most, to largely hated…",
"parent_id": "8153793",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154651",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T20:26:15",
"content": "That says more about you and your associates than Musk.",
"parent_id": "8153846",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154673",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T21:45:28",
"content": "It says nothing about me at all, as my opinion on Musk is not in that statement at all. What is in it is the widely reported on response to the faux pas contained in his not quite tweets on his shouting platform and the DOGE chaos he headed which means he has gone to rather more actively hated rather than just polarising personality that almost nobody really really cares about. With further evidence in the case of a sudden influx of bumper stickers saying ‘I bought this before I knew he was crazy’ or trying to rebadge and hide that they are driving a Tesla…",
"parent_id": "8154651",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8156240",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-30T18:26:17",
"content": "All information about you.You can’t see it from your confirmation bias.",
"parent_id": "8154651",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153992",
"author": "Christian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T01:12:39",
"content": "Cybertruck made me chuckle, reminded me immediately of 80’s Tron. An ultra low polygon model.",
"parent_id": "8153793",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154684",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T22:33:51",
"content": "It went that way because of Musk’s insistence on making it from stainless steel. A decision that had certain historical precedents that did not predict great outcomes.Properly stainless steel is tough to cut, hard to bend, difficult to weld, easy to crack etc. so they had to make the folds very simple in order to make it work at all. However, they still had to make compromises onhow stainlessthe steel was in order to make it workable, which then resulted in corrosion issues.",
"parent_id": "8153992",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154707",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T23:32:41",
"content": "“a number of studies also showing that touch-only controls are less effective and less safe than fumbling around on a big screen while driving to adjust something like the climate controls or radio station.”There is something wrong with this statement, it does not say what it’s trying to say.",
"parent_id": "8154684",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154714",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T00:15:26",
"content": "Sorry, my previous comment wasn’t supposed to be a reply to you, Dude.",
"parent_id": "8154684",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154809",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T11:11:05",
"content": "The Delorean is also stainless steel, and yet somehow managed to still look stylish as all hell (even though it’s incredibly unreliable, something else it shares with the Cybertruck)",
"parent_id": "8154684",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155824",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T09:49:49",
"content": "Is it stylish because it appeared in a movie and it’s now part of nostalgia?For the point of it, the DeLorean was more rounded and conventionally shaped than the Cybertruck. Hence, in part because of the stainless steel panels, in other part because they were using cheap non-unionized labor to make it, they had problems with manufacturing quality control and getting the panels to fit – just like with the Cybertruck.The DeLorean was also the wrong car for the market it was aimed at, just like the Cybertruck.",
"parent_id": "8154684",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153226",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:50:02",
"content": "I still like the compact flip phone. Nice small simple screen and buttons to dial/text. Tis the height of phone design. Then went downhill after that…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153247",
"author": "Mayhem",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T16:36:40",
"content": "I had the Moto Razr v3. It was the best phone i’ve ever owned. Had 3 of them and rebuilt 1 from parts of the 3. It was my personal phone and the work phone was a Samsung s3. The s3 was a flat emotionless slab. Phones have only gotten bigger and more slabby since. Written on my Samsung a35.",
"parent_id": "8153226",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153579",
"author": "zogzog",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T08:41:03",
"content": "Still using a V3i Today ;)",
"parent_id": "8153247",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153227",
"author": "Davidp",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:50:30",
"content": "Appearance is important and I agree with your points. But I can’t get past function. I have all these frickin PROGRAMMABLE devices with crappy user interfaces and I can’t change them. Just need to change a few behaviors but there’s no user modifyable controls. Phone. Computer. Car.Then there’s email that actually lets you set up rules for handling and ignores them. Yes, I’m looking at you, Outlook. Frustrates me to no end.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153230",
"author": "Jaap Daniels",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T16:00:32",
"content": "finally i’m in an time where i don’t feel ashamed for the design choices based on cocain abuse. it’s not dead, it finally come to a point it should’ve been 200 years ago!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153238",
"author": "Snarkenstein",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T16:17:53",
"content": "I dunno, I think that the mobile phones of the 1820s had some serious design deficiencies.",
"parent_id": "8153230",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153251",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T16:55:05",
"content": "They were wireless! (but not stringless or tin can-less)",
"parent_id": "8153238",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153237",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T16:16:10",
"content": "Design does not exist for designs sake. We’d just call that art.The design of a smart phone has been distilled down to its bare essentials, while still being ergonomic, easily carried and extremely functional.Successful design could be the disappearance of anything unnecessary while still achieving usability goals. Successful design could be a bright pink phone that weighs 50lbs. Doubt it’ll be popular however.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153276",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T17:45:37",
"content": "TLDR: Some thoughts of mine about why the Internet as a public knowledge base is dying.We probably mean different things in most points but stillThe design of a smart phone has been distilled down to its bare essentials, while still being ergonomic, easily carried and extremely functional.A) Ergonomic? They are big slabs of glass with no border to hold it & no usability without looking at the screen (practically no usable buttons).B) Easily carried?! Most are such large slabs of glass it’s pretty much impossible to comfortably carry them in any trouser pocket.C) extremely functional…. Okay, stop trying to kill me by laughing my ass off.Today’s SPhones are super computers compared to “old” actual computers but thanks to their complete lack of good functional and efficient I/O interfaces they (and their users) are one reason for the death of “the Internet”.C1) How many comments on any platform reference/mention something without actually linking to what they reference? Why? Well, I’m pretty sure one reason is that SPhones are terrible (in their usability) at multitasking, clipboarding ;-) and many other “processes” easily done on anything with at least a proper keyboard (eg. Alt+Tab, Ctrl+C/X/V, Win+”notepad”+Enter)C2) Copying the content of an error message? Nope, forget it – today’s SPhoners rather take a PHOTO of raw digital text data (eg. an error displayed in a (cmd)shell) instead of just copying the text or at least typing it down, thus making the actual error unsearchable.C3) Not so sure about this’s connection to “functionality of SPhones” but even today’s help requests on non-forums like Reddit often boil down to this example: “My game crashes and I have mods but I’m not gonna tell you which ones & if I did it would be a screenshot of the FGW$%GW$%H& ModManager instead of any searchable data”Which is equivalent to telling your doctor you have a stomach ache without telling them anything about your diet etc.",
"parent_id": "8153237",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153288",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T18:35:29",
"content": "I think I could listen to this sermon on proper design decisions for a while longer, so do please carry on…IMO a modern traditional smartphone is actually just about the worst design it could possible be, with perhaps a small exception here and there for the ones that are more than a slab with bugger all buttons – for instance the Samsung’s with the Pen interface have some great functionality.The only thing the standard slab is ‘good’ at is being so painfully generic they are equally terrible/good at all things the impressive silicon inside is capable of – they make awful gaming devices compared to something with a even as primitive controls as a D pad and a few well placed physical buttons, are terrible and usually slower at text input compared to even the number pad multiple button presses per letter or wonky predictive text phones of the 90’s, terrible media players as you just can’t control them easily or without actively looking (other than the greater quality of screen, storage and processing to allow for high quality audio and video where the old portables with great ergonomic controls you can use blindfolded probably 480p video if they did video at all), and they even make worse telephones than many of the older mobiles too – harder to answer than a flip phone, more likely to end up with spurious input on the screen from finger or ear messing with your call before it even begins as with no bezel the touch inputs while your Grandparent tries to bring it to their head can do wild things, and generally now rather too large and slab like to actually put the microphone and earpiece in the right ballpark as well, so much more reliant of signal processing…",
"parent_id": "8153276",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153698",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T13:51:15",
"content": "yeah, I kinda went of track with my commentabsolutely agree with your points (some of which are kinda identical but better explained/exampled).since you asked – I had a little more I forgot in my previous comment. ;-) here you go… Today’s SPhones are a retarded compromise between wanting to be able to do anything a proper computer/laptop can do (eg. large screen and whatnot) while offering no good input interface (eg. mouse+keyboard).(practically no usable buttons).Ooops, forgot something here: My first SPhone was the “Samsung Galaxy 5” (not “S5”) form ~15 years ago.https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i5500_galaxy_5-3371.phpIt has 9 buttons and a D-Pad – I can control Winamp while the phone is in my pocket and locked (Winamp had a control interface on or instead of the lock screen).It’s kinda egg shaped and easily fit in any pocket (for what it’s worth it still works fine today with Cyanogen mod).(had that ^^ typed up in a reply to my own comment but then decided against actually posting it)",
"parent_id": "8153288",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153883",
"author": "Shamunti",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T20:01:29",
"content": "My favorite phone was a Samsung Glide..I think 2004…it was nigh indestructible! Dropped it on the floor at a concert, the battery flew out into a puddle of beer. Dried it off put it back in..worked fine. And it had a kb that slid out under the bottom. It was small, and the screen was small..but I could text 1 handed due to the size and ease of the device. Even in my pocket without looking.",
"parent_id": "8153698",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153457",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T02:37:02",
"content": "You’re simply being a contrarian.My iPhone fits just fine in my pocket, a perfectly normal pocket.So here’s the thing.Design a smart phone; just the outside, just the shell.It would be better than the 1Hz contest. (Which I appreciate, but in a very specific way).",
"parent_id": "8153276",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153838",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T18:26:17",
"content": "The use of touchscreen and lack of buttons requires human vision, though. Very inefficient.An 1980s cell phone can be operated while being blind, by contrast.– Sure, you cheat by arguing that modern smartphones have speech recognizion. But that’s not thanks to the physical shape.",
"parent_id": "8153457",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154009",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T01:46:06",
"content": "iPhone and iOS support input devices for the blind quite well. I’ve actually sat it in on a presentation entirely run by someone who was both deaf and blind.Your ignorance isn’t my problem.",
"parent_id": "8153838",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154095",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:47:52",
"content": "“Your ignorance isn’t my problem.”I see, if we run out of good arguments we’re getting personal.",
"parent_id": "8153838",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154654",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T20:33:28",
"content": "Put the phone under my thumb and pinky finger nails.Remove the ‘phone’ requirement from ‘smartphone’.Make it just a portable computer, text device/camera and let them evolve.I expect it all to be in the AR/sunglass frame in 20 years.Be honest, it’s not a ‘perfectly normal pocket’, it’s a phone pocket on the side of the pants that has grown over the years with the phones.",
"parent_id": "8153457",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154665",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T21:14:13",
"content": "I keep my Galaxy s22 ultra in the perfectly normal front right pocket of my jeans, though as I type this I realize that the front right pocket of vintage girbaud brand X jeans (the only jeans I wear) is certainly more suited to a smartphone than those of levis or skinny pants. Hmm maybe “sagging” is about getting tight jean pockets low enough that phones dont crunch when the homies sit down.",
"parent_id": "8154654",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153834",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T18:22:34",
"content": "In other words, it’s primitive.",
"parent_id": "8153237",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153967",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T23:58:46",
"content": "your first paragraph: “Design does not exist for designs sake. We’d just call that art.” is such a great example of the fact that ‘just’ doesn’t usually belong, and in fact often implicitly negates the truth.try instead: Design exists for design’s sake. We call that art.",
"parent_id": "8153237",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153990",
"author": "Briant A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T01:00:53",
"content": "Your comment: “is such a great example of the fact that” is such a great example that “the fact that” doesn’t usually belong.",
"parent_id": "8153967",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154011",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T01:48:06",
"content": "Design that exists for design sake is called art.Not all design is art for arts sake.",
"parent_id": "8153967",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154688",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T22:56:45",
"content": "Design for the sake of design is at best pseudo-art or ornamentation.Art is expression and intent, not just execution.",
"parent_id": "8154011",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153242",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T16:26:27",
"content": "Also see the naming. A “Galaxy S(x) Ultra” is actually a Note, it was rebranded. Also see ThinkPad L and E which look from the outside very similar to the actual ThinkPad, the T class. Trying to trade on the quality of the carbon and magnesium reinforced easy to maintain models, while inside they are built like a ‘disposible’ box store spec HP Chromebook.Cell phones peaked around 8-10 years ago with the S8 or S9 class, the size was decent, the cameras amazing, only problem being the ‘curved edge’ display meant it was difficult to use. Glass screen protectors sold out almost immediately and nobody wanted to sell protectors, probably because they were too expensive to make. Now the “base” model doesn’t get good cameras, and the next model up is firmly in ‘Phablet’ territory.Instead if getting 5-6mm wider screens we got 10-20mm taller screens. I have yet to find a benefit, except possibly being able to see some of your content around the simultaneously playing ads all over the apps and internet.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153262",
"author": "Rich Holmes",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T17:23:39",
"content": "Ilovethe top illustration.Someone once posted an image of about 20 different models of SUV. All damn near indistinguishable.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154548",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T14:50:33",
"content": "Just to be the devil’s advocate: airliners converged on two designs decades ago, and for very functional reasons.",
"parent_id": "8153262",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154636",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:46:52",
"content": "Only for certain scales of aircraft – still lots of variety in the design at the varied scales all the way down to propeller aircraft still being in use for many things. And that is something you do still see in car and even ‘SUV’ designs to some extent as not every users needs are identical.But we pretty much don’t have in smartphone design. As for years now ever larger screens and thinner bezels and devices in total have been the darn nearly universal trend, and that is actively awful for a great many folks. There is plenty of folks out there that really would like smaller phones, phones with keyboards etc, but you can’t vote with your wallet when basically nobody makes ’em and they all raced to cease making them at much the same time.",
"parent_id": "8154548",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153286",
"author": "Just sayin'",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T18:34:17",
"content": "I would love to be able to purchase a product that has design money spent on functionality…For example. Look how many parts on a typical automobile do not serve any functional purpose. A lot of styling, which I guess is intended to sell a car, but it all has to be designed, tooled, and ultimately paid for by the customer.A virtual interface doesn’t ensure any functionality either. My iphone doesn’t have volume controls for it’s sounds that you can adjust when they are not making sounds, so I get ear splitting message tones when I’m connected to Carplay because the tiny phone speaker needs to be turned up. A fairly simple problem to solve in software, but again, it costs money and time to do the engineering work (but it’s a nice looking phone).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153324",
"author": "Davidp",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T20:25:29",
"content": "Exactly.",
"parent_id": "8153286",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153293",
"author": "Paul Koval",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:04:18",
"content": "The author is partially or even completely right! But the system logic of gadget operation is changing and industrial design requires a different approach.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153300",
"author": "Gus A Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:14:01",
"content": "This is the reason slapping LEDs inside your gaming tower is so lame. Your gaming tower (I don’t game, so maybe I’m missing something) is what it does, not the light pollution it incidentally generates.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153605",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T09:50:26",
"content": "While I don’t care for RGB everywhere madness myself there is no reason you computer can’t also be your Lava lamp. It is only light pollution if it is glowing where and when you don’t want it to, otherwise it is simply ‘nice’ decorative lighting.",
"parent_id": "8153300",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153310",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:39:13",
"content": "Please can I have a phone with buttons on the top rather than the side, so I don’t press them by accident. Please can I have a phone that is not slippery like a bar of soap (or is that the idea – you drop it and have to buy a new one). And please can I have a laptop keyboard that does not have half-height arrow keys so my fat fingers can use them without pressing anything else.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153402",
"author": "Joe1962",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T00:47:27",
"content": "I second those wishes!!!",
"parent_id": "8153310",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153311",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:39:27",
"content": "Design and aesthetics are too different things. One is more-or-less related to function, the other – related to art. In some (rather rare) examples the Venn diagram of the two intersect somewhat, however, the degree of the intersect varies from unit to unit, and at some point the economies of scale (ie, what’s the cheapest to mass produce and mass sell) simply drowns them both. Cell phone and sedan cars (or SUVs) are the two prime examples, but not the only ones, residential housing (in the US), that closely follows its even uglier twin, commercial properties.I am a big fan of the 1980s electronics design, which grew out of the somewhat turbulent 1970s electronics designs, that were busy shaking off the whackly 1960s designs (googie architecture anyone?), that were mostly continuation/branches of the 1950s designs. However, starting with the 1990s, the recycling of the 1980s designs mostly run out of the material by the early 2000 and largely continued its downward spell ever since. The form that follows the function today is about as different as it was in the 1990s, not really; on a contrary, the last 30 years were mostly spent regurgitating the same things that were learned in the 1980s and late 1970s. GUI-bui, the SAME elements had been around for almost ever and ever, pushbuttons, dials, knobs, etc, with the only noticeable invention since then being the scrollbar (that replaced “paging”). I am talking about the concepts, not the actual implementations that vary and mimic each other (for example, the scrollbar morphed into the computer mouse scrollwheel that also doubles as a middle click).As far as the cell phones go, they are not built for humans any more – no buttons or dials or knobs, and rather vague idea that humans have more than one finger on each hand, and more than one hand with one finger. Human hands are also shaped as squares, with stubby fingers protruding on both sides (or one side), all being the same length, spaced equally. As far as the rest of humans go, they don’t seem to have eyes or legs, are stationary creatures and sport one unblinking eye that wanders around the cell phone screen. Same “designers” seem to be moonshining designing average sedan car – the backseats are for the short stubby humans with their legs cut just below their knees (thankfully, not ALL sedans; surprisingly, compact Nissan Versa’s back seats can accommodate statistically average US adult). As far as I can tell it is still “design”, just not for the humans per se, but for the whimsical “users” who are not aware of aesthetics.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153315",
"author": "Senile Data Systems",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:44:58",
"content": "I decided on living in the past loooong ago. I use stuff that is older than me as daily drivers (my radio cassette alarm clock from 1977 for example). Sure, not everything was better back then, but I decide what parts of the past I live in.You can kinda see the UIs plunge from Windows 7* to Windows 8 – we went from “UI that looks so awesome you need a GPU for it” to “This would easily render on a machine that ran Windows 1” – and this seems to be the new normal now. As are cars that come in silver, black, white and now an “exciting new” shade of dark gray that was last “popular” in the 1950s. Colorful cars appear to be merely tolerated, but frowned upon (ok I’m making this up). Or everything needing a SPhone app. That also tracks your behavior, sells your data and instantly stops working if the manufacturing company goes bankrupt, gets gobbled up or just feels like it.*) I know there were Linux GUIs that looked a lot like what Vista, but years before Vista hit the market. Since I’m always running on e-waste, I’m running Gnome. Simple, easy on the resources, makes a 15 year old notebook still be snappy.Now if you excuse me, I have to fix my VCR so I can tape that movie that’s on TV later… now get off my lawn!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154097",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:54:02",
"content": "+1Sounds rational to me.I recommend those dual VHS/DVD Recorders.And a CRT video monitor such as Commodore 1702 or 1084.That gives best visuals when playing back SD material,because that’s what Composite video was made for.But please don’t forget to stay up-to-date mentally, at least.It’s not required to follow the latests fads, but being aware of them is a good thing.",
"parent_id": "8153315",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154818",
"author": "Senile Data Systems",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T11:44:47",
"content": "Got both the Commodore 1701 (which is better than the 1702 – it has a monitor tube in it. The 1702 afaik has a TV tube in it. The monitor tube has much narrower shadow mask and can thus create a sharper image) and the 1084 (one of the early massively overbuilt Philips units, also with a monitor tube).Sorry, I let it lapse mentally already. And now I can’t even read the simplest Java code my colleague writes. (however he can’t read my old school code either, and he’s doing way too much with ChatGPT, if you ask me). I prefer C or even Assembly, ideally on simple devices doing simple tasks.Although last time I used ChatGPT, it taught me how to restore the partition structure of a hard drive whose MBR got wiped. One of the partitions was CP/M (which tells you a little about the age of the machine, but it’s much newer than you’d expect – 1990).(the drive was working very unreliably and I could gather some information about what’s on it before disaster struck and the MBR got wiped so the CP/M partition is definitely not an AI hallucination)",
"parent_id": "8154097",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153321",
"author": "Pixel_Outlaw",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T20:09:21",
"content": "The bottom line is that artistic people often get a “feeling” associated with designs and colors that are interesting. To us the current landscape is boring as hell.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153330",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T20:40:48",
"content": "Mandatory reminder, to be considered whenever the topic of touchscreen-only interfaces is mentioned: The US NAVY CRASHED A WARSHIP BECAUSE OF A TOUCHSCREEN, USS John S McCain, DDG-51 class destroyer, August 2017, near Singapore",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153342",
"author": "ColT",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T21:29:45",
"content": "Most of users didnt like bezels or speakers. The TV is a display. I only miss the LEDs and usable keyboards from laptops, because these were useful.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153346",
"author": "ColT",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T21:38:22",
"content": "“The removal of visually pleasing and physically practical elements also means a dull, stimulation-free experience.”Most of users are not enjoying electrical equipment, only using it. They don’t think about the design. They don’t want the speaker as the part of the living room, but it is a necessary something which is needed but better invisible. Companies know this :(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154371",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T23:44:11",
"content": "What about the wooden radios of the 1920s with their ornaments or TVs of the 1950s that looked like furniture?I bet the owners did care about visually pleasing electronic equipment at the time.",
"parent_id": "8153346",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153358",
"author": "Christian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T22:14:50",
"content": "The slate is the “Winning Design” of the smart phone. So many thing where tried, but in the end they did not win in the Market. Color and customization where tried, users liked it. But at the end of the day they bought the black phone anyway. Flips and Keyboards where offered, but at the end of the day users always wanted the bigger screen.Users like choice, but don’t exercise them.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154708",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T23:38:34",
"content": "Blackberries and phones with keyboards were extremely popular until the iPhone showed that you can do 80% of that with no physical keys and 20% the manufacturing complexity, which translated to cost savings. The fact that it was also novel meant that you could sell a toy phone for 2000 dollars, albeit in small installments, but people still wanted them for the status symbolism.Nowadays the screen sizes are a result of having to fit in bigger batteries to feed less optimized electronics and software, to save cost on development. They’re not a user preference.Big screens have become a negative selling point because people can’t reach the UI elements and many are having a hard time just holding the phone. Phones have also become heavy. Premium phones are usually much smaller and actually designed to fit the user’s hand, but people can’t afford them.None of this is about user satisfaction but selling the minimum product for the maximum price.",
"parent_id": "8153358",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153365",
"author": "AngryAnt",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T22:41:34",
"content": "From the touch screen phone era I really enjoyed the initial iPhone design, abandoned with the iPhone 4:– Well-rounded corners, edges, and curved back.– Non-ridiculous screen size meant easy one-handed operation. Eat your breakfast and run through news, mail, whatever, with full screen reach without over-extending fingers? Yes plz!– Size & shape also made it easy to slip into generally any pocket, resting in there fine without digging into your leg or whatever.– If the software can present what I need in an accessible manner on a given display, why on earth would I care about bezels unless I’m building a display wall?I get the want of a stylus. Personally I preferred the fast, less precise access of multi-touch, but stylus seems such a cool interface for the pocket computer / pda device class. I do not agree that the two need to compete directly in the same class.I also realise that none of the above appears to match general customer preferences today, so I’ll never get a revival of that small-enough & rounded design. Can still share my fondness for it though :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153577",
"author": "Maya Posch",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T08:32:33",
"content": "As someone who used an iPhone 4 for a few years I totally agree. Even that iPhone still has a pleasant to look at aluminium body, of course, with the distinct toggle switch to turn notifications on/off and very solid ergonomics. Plus you could drop the thing without everything on it shattering, except maybe the display if you hit just the wrong angle.Used a Xiaomi Mi 5 after that, which honestly wasn’t bad either. All phones after that, though… yeah, no. They drop features like crazy and ergonomics are gone. Bezels are also nice to prevent you from constantly triggering the touch screen by accident when you’re just trying to hold the bleedin’ thing.",
"parent_id": "8153365",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153601",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T09:45:09",
"content": "There are still ‘werido’ catering companies out there making what the big brands won’t – Unihertz is one that springs to mind, I’ve been hands on with the Jelly series and found it very well done and useable even with my giant hands (bought one to play with thinking a really small phone would be handy for something and had it stolen by my sister who really loved it). They also do a Titan series with keyboard in that traditional blackberry layout that is supposed to be good, and something I’ve been tempted by for ages but I just keep on keeping my ancient Samsung alive instead (I don’t actually need a mobile telephone very much, and I do like the pen input option)…No doubt a few others out there making oddities as well, if you go looking for your dream device.",
"parent_id": "8153365",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154143",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T09:44:09",
"content": "As I said in another comment, look for “iPhone SE”:Pros:– It has a reasonable size and physical mute switch– The haptic feedback of the home button is excelentCons:– It is a still an iPhone",
"parent_id": "8153365",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153392",
"author": "Observer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T00:20:04",
"content": "I think the “industrial design” of modern cellphones is basically stuck on stupid.Let’s take a device that’s hideously expensive and fragile, yet purposefully make it as non-ergonomic as possible–a thin, slick, featureless, rectangle, difficult to hold onto under good conditions (nearly impossible to hang on to if your hands are wet), so thin that if you put it in a back pocket and sit on a park bench you’ll break it in half, with camera lenses that protrude like bubble-fish eyeballs, whose delicate optics–by intent and design— come into direct contact with any abrasive surface you might set the phone on.Lest I forget… we then take the one component of the phone that will predictably wear out (and far sooner than any other component)–the battery–and we glue it inside so as to prevent easy replacement.Like I said, the modern phone makes for a great prop in a commercial or sci-fi movie, but the “design” seems to be driven by anything but considerations beneficial to the end user.I see NO reason (and no benefit) for my phone to be 2 mm thick… in fact the first thing I do with any phone I own is drop it in an Otter case. If the bumpers and additional thickness were intrinsic features of the phone itself, I wouldn’t need the case, it would be at least twice as rugged, and a lot less likely to be dropped in the first place.An intrinsic Otter-case-thick phone design would also easily allow for externally replaceable battery cards or modules. Spare me the “we glue the battery in to make it watertight” BS. Back in the day, I had a brand-new LG flip with removable battery slip off the stupid belt clip and plunge into the 8-ft section of a swimming pool. I fished it out, removed the battery, let it air dry, and used that same phone for another 5 or six years.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153393",
"author": "DurDurDur",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T00:23:35",
"content": "strange,its almost like companies that sell you $1000+ devices they reiterate annually have no concern for the durability and longevity of those devices.",
"parent_id": "8153392",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153550",
"author": "PPJ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T07:18:11",
"content": "“we glue the battery in to make it watertight” BS”My 2016 S5neo had replaceable battery, audio jack, IP64 rating and was slim enough. Not to mention whole line of early Galaxy XCover.",
"parent_id": "8153392",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154710",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T23:43:27",
"content": "IP64 is not watertight. It’s “splash proof”.",
"parent_id": "8153550",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153407",
"author": "RT",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T01:09:29",
"content": "I recently purchased my kid a 9 year old Android phone off eBay for $50 – an LG V20. It has every feature you’ll find on a 2025 phone and a bunch of nice stuff we were all told we had to give up so that phones could move forward.3200mAh Removable battery (the phone is thinner than my 2025 Samsung, I thought they had to do away with user replaceable batteries so our phones could get thinner)Dual SIM supporta MicroSD slot (expandable storage up to 4TB, more than any modern phone and much, much cheaper)3.5mm headphone jack (I thought those had to go also)A built-in IR emitter and remote control app (also IR sensor to allow cloning your existing remotes)a built-in FM tuner“Modern” phone features it also had back in 2016:Fingerprint sensorThree 16MP cameras with laser autofocus and 2X optical zoomDual LED flashDual SIM supportQuad core Snapdragon processor4k/60fps video recording2560×1440 displayUSB-C with QC 3.0Bluetooth LENFC (file send and tap to pay)GLONASS, GPSDual band WiFi (a/b/g/n/ac)Hi-Fi Quad DAC headphone amplifierOh, and it’s running Android 14Phones truely have not changed in the past decade. They’ve honestly gotten worse.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153414",
"author": "hmmmm...",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T01:37:54",
"content": "“every feature you’ll find on a 2025 phone”Except 5g service.",
"parent_id": "8153407",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154003",
"author": "Christian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T01:33:41",
"content": "Or security“LG V20’s last official software update was to Android 8.0 Oreo.”“Android 8.0 Oreo: Latest security patch date October 2021”There are page upon pages of unpatched and disclosed vulnerabilities, starting from Feb 21:https://source.android.com/docs/security/bulletin/2021-02-01Month after the last patch starts with:CVE-2021-0325 Media Framework, Remote Code Execution. (critical) – h264 video decoder exploitable.",
"parent_id": "8153414",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8188087",
"author": "Ziemowit",
"timestamp": "2025-10-06T01:50:07",
"content": "4G is fast enough, especially LTE Advanced. 5G is already at the point of diminishing returns, not to mention 6G (if it even materializes, hopefully not).",
"parent_id": "8153414",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153542",
"author": "tachyon1",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T06:51:50",
"content": "People that think a product’s appearance doesn’t matter compared to its functionality have never had to get dropped off in front of the school with your friend in his mom’s AMC Pacer.It got you there reliably, but you wish it had broken down or exploded on the way.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154175",
"author": "valkyrie0528",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T12:16:59",
"content": "In the case of my friend’s mom’s AMC Pacer, it unfortunately caught fire right out in front of school.",
"parent_id": "8153542",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154657",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T20:45:41",
"content": "You were lucky if your parents car was more embarrassing than your parents.",
"parent_id": "8153542",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153549",
"author": "PPJ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T07:00:58",
"content": "We don’t have much space to play with design but I’m sure we could fix ergonomics? I would really like to have more options of reasonable sized smartphones. And grip should not be inspired by oversized wet soap. Buttons are not bad idea (mute switch is really useful).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154135",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T09:11:29",
"content": "Look for “iPhone SE”, which has a reasonable size AND a physical mute switch.",
"parent_id": "8153549",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153640",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T11:17:29",
"content": "I think that the way some people leave all the feature advertising stickers on the edge of TV’s and on laptops could possibly be a need for more decoration.As for phones: there is a wide range of phone case designs available. Although – the most sold ones are the straight and simple ones the average local stores carry I expect.And of course the UI design is the look of modern devices, TV’s have their interface and phones have their interface styling, and in both cases they cover most of the device.Cars are weird though. people massively buy drab grey or white cars over here, with the reasoning being that they retain their resale value I’m told. But I’m not entirely convinced that is the complete real reason.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153658",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T12:02:12",
"content": "You see the same trend with audio equipment, with lots of lookalike AVRs from Denon, Marantz, Sony, Harman-Kardon… all having 2 big knobs and a dull text screen at the front. What happened to Vu-Meters? Yes, you can have them in the multi-thousand bucks, stereo only, top-of-the-line units, like McIntosh, but still…And don’t get me started on the looks of beauties like Tascam, Teac or Akai open-reel deck units.Even cassette decks from the ’90s with their fluorescent level meters are better looking that any current Blu-Ray player.Don’t get me wrong: the sound is better today, but the equipment looks is dull.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153735",
"author": "SomeRandomPerson",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:54:31",
"content": "The answer is that Vu-meters and VFDs are much more expensive than an LCD or LED panel. More buttons for controlling specific things are also more expensive than just having a simple microcontroller that can do the same with just a few buttons and a screen displaying a menu that you can navigate. Or even a bluetooth connection + some bullshit app they made.In fact, I’d bet just theplasticof the buttons are cheaper than the microcontroller required to implement those features. Which I guess is also why cars have more and more started getting rid of buttons and replaced them with an unreliable touchscreen and some cheap CPU capable of running Android for their “infotainment” systems. Despite how absolutely dangerous and awful a touchscreen is to use in a moving vehicle. Oh well.But yeah, I do agree modern equipment in general looks kinda dull. Not that there weren’t truly awful designs from the past too, or that there aren’t any cool designs today. I guess they ran the math and decided it wasn’t worth it.",
"parent_id": "8153658",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154123",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T08:39:20",
"content": "I get that Vu-meters and VFDs are more expensive than a cheap LCD panel. But get me a virtual Vu-meter in that LCD panel. Modern car dashboards are fully electronic now. No mechanical neddles on a scale. BUT the LCD panel have: virtual “neddle on a scale” real-time RPM indicator, virtual real-time speed indicator, virtual fuel gauge indicator, and so on.How difficult is to draw a virtual real-time analog Vu-meter on a LCD panel? They can even give the user choices, like: blue background needle vu-meter, white style straight-scale analog vu-meter, yellow backlight round-scale analog vu-meter, green-yellow-red rectangular LED digital vu-meter, blue VFD vu-meter, and so on. And, for people who like minimalism, have the option to display no meter at all. But let us choose.",
"parent_id": "8153735",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154386",
"author": "Mr. Dood-guy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T01:33:39",
"content": "For those, companies really cutting cost on programming and programmers behind those features and streamlining the overall functionality of the unit—less things to go wrong.However! That is a good idea you had, I like that very much. With commercial grade equipment, some of these things can be programmed in by a decent installer.",
"parent_id": "8154123",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154659",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T20:50:06",
"content": "Distractions in the eyeline of the driver is a bad idea.They deliberately keep that off the main dash display.They are right about that.",
"parent_id": "8154123",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155183",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T12:23:40",
"content": "I was trying to make a point: the fact that you have LCDs instead of analog neddles does not mean that you cannot reproduce them in software.I meant that for the audio industry, citing the removal of VU-meters from modern equipment and the proliferation of digital front panels.The modern car dashboards mimicking analog neddles by drawing them in a digital LCD screen is proof that it can be done, and I mentioned it as an example.I am not suggesting placing moving VU-meters on a car dashboard.",
"parent_id": "8154659",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153670",
"author": "c",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T12:51:52",
"content": "This is not about form vs function.These modern designs are neither functional nor aesthetic!Thinner bezels means more screen per device, but at a certain point you will start to get less screen!Rounded corners and camera holes means you cannot see a rectangular photo or video full screen.I want square screen corners and thick bezels to hold speakers and front facing cameras.What’s worse is that YouTube now adds rounded corners to videos playing on desktop PCs too (there is a plugin that disables it). I don’t want deleted pixels!A brick is hard to hold. Thinner is easier to hold. But at some point the phone is too thin. It can slide out of your pocket (happened to me in a car seat). Not comfortable to hold. The thinner the phone the thicker the covers people use, so what’s the point? Thinner also means a smaller battery.Manufacturers are good at coming up with excuses. Removing the 3.5mm audio jack and gluing the phone shut preventing battery replacement was supposed to be to make the phone water proof. I never got my phone wet because I also use a cover. The real reason is so you buy a new phone when the battery wears out or you buy their expensive wireless headphones or earbuds.TL;DR want a thicc phone with 3.5mm audio jack and a back that can be popped off with my fingers",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154008",
"author": "Christian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T01:43:17",
"content": "re 3.5mm jack. Made me look.There are earbuds that come with USBC connector instead of 3.5mm jack. Not quite as cheap (2 for $8) as the 3.5mm jack ones, but better than one of these annoying adapters.",
"parent_id": "8153670",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154045",
"author": "Jostin'Ceps",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T04:53:31",
"content": "The worst part is, they were already pretty darn thin while having that 3.5mm jack, and other goodies. If anything they’ve moved in reverse since “better cameras” mean bigger modules = a flippin’ tumor on the back killing off any semblance of balance.Worse is how all the hipster go “but dongles / USB-C/ BT options exist.”The point was OPTIONS! Older flagships weren’t exactly chonkers (the Xperias aren’t fatter than the lates iPhones nor Samsungs, but “good enough” flys for the masses who aren’t really using them clearly. And as such we’re all entitled to just be along for the ride)",
"parent_id": "8153670",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154101",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:58:04",
"content": "I never understood the removal of 3,5mm headset jack.If it’s a space issue, why not use 2,5mm jack instead?There are cheap adapter cables to 3,5mm and its better than replying on USB-C any time.",
"parent_id": "8153670",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154125",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T08:43:31",
"content": "They are not only removing a jack. They are also removing digital-to-analog converters, analog signal amplifiers, plug detectors, FM antenna and radios, and so on.",
"parent_id": "8154101",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154246",
"author": "c",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T15:43:47",
"content": "If the phone has speakers it already has a DAC. It just needs a headphone amplifier to drive the headphones. Those can be tiny.",
"parent_id": "8154125",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155231",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T13:50:00",
"content": "+1On a side note, I think it would be neat if smartphones had analog FM radio functionality worldwide.But not just for reception, but also for transmit (very low power, stereo signal).That way, there wouldn’t be bluetooth speaker required all the time.Any vintage car radio, kitchen radio or cheap pocket radio could act as a speaker.An other smartphone, too, of course. That would be so conveniant.The analog radio used to be the heritage of modern technology, it would be almost a philosophical decission.",
"parent_id": "8154246",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153680",
"author": "john",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T13:07:46",
"content": "Industrial designer here (don’t work in electronics though thank god), the reasons for things being this way at least in regards to phones and tvs are pretty simple. Consumer demand and economics. People don’t want an interesting looking phone or tv, they don’t care, they care what’s on the screen, everything else being invisible literally is the point. It doesn’t help that while id is a small and competitive field, a very good industrial designer is likely to get paid significantly less a shitty ux/ui designer. Tells you a bit about where priorities are at.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154108",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T08:05:22",
"content": "I rather think that “consumers” have no choice anymore and that they assume that nothing else can be available other than the dull pocket mirror design.After 15+ years of stand still in cellphone development,there now is a whole generation of young people who don’t evenremember the days when phones used to look different before.About consumer demand and economics.:I think both US and China are the culprit and their extreme forms ofcapitalistic thinking.Other places on earth weren’t so much into that.Japan, for example, had developed a tradition for flip phones.They’re gratefully not entirely thinking in terms of money all the time, despite them very business oriented, as well.",
"parent_id": "8153680",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154042",
"author": "Jostin'Ceps",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T04:45:55",
"content": "Everything will be a bland, lifeless, stealth shape. AND YOU WILL LIKE IT! LIVE IT! LoVe It OR ELSE!!!AND we will remove all the utilitarian features and options because who needs those when we have clouds (that seem to be under attack and legit going down every few months as of late…)But we all want it, because the MASSES screamed and approved (not I recall being asked to try any of these products in their test phases. And that IF any of these companies even asked as opposed to imposing their none-design and gimping on everything)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154207",
"author": "Edward Eyth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T13:50:11",
"content": "Industrial design is very much alive since it involves more than just slab phones, flat panel monitors and electronics. Consider appliances, sports equipment, construction tools, medical devices, luggage,any of the millions of mass produced consumer items. Seems the most prevalently used products like mobile devices evolve more quickly through the minimalist aesthetic, to the most no frills essentials.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154236",
"author": "andarb",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T15:06:46",
"content": "One thing I’d like to have back is a phone with tact buttons for more than volume and power (and Bixby – bleh). I used to listen on my Palm Tungsten T with it in my pocket and being able to play, pause, skip forward and reverse, all without taking it out of my pocket. I know some earbuds do this, but figuring out whether it’s double tap, long press + tap, or triple tap and on which side… unintuitive at the least.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154308",
"author": "YoDrTentacles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T18:55:33",
"content": "I understand people saying what’s on the inside of a device counts, but this trend seems to be happening in music too. You used to be able to buy equipment with jacks for quarter inch, eighth-inch, full 5-pin MIDI jacks – now you’re lucky if you get a MIDI dongle. They are ALSO outsourcing their industrial design to apps on synthesizers and electronic instruments, which as you can tell from the people who use them, are off-putting.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154712",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T00:02:51",
"content": "Honestly I think the death of the 5-pin MIDI jack is more about the rise of USB-MIDI. Even most of the people who ARE using MIDI on a device won’t use MIDI cables, they’ll connect via USB. And the few who want real 5-pin can attach a dongle. Manufacturers don’t like attaching ports to a device that less than 5% of buyers will ever use.",
"parent_id": "8154308",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154383",
"author": "Mr. Dood-guy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T01:26:05",
"content": "This was a good article, and I really know it as an audiovisual system designer. I try to make things very tactile for end users out there in the world and try to influence the design team to not make everything slab-dependent or slab-infested. It just takes only one person to fat finger a touchscreen control panel.When it comes to electronics, it sure would be nice to have all those graphic designers, illustrators, and industrial designers back on the job; there used to be beautiful and highly informative manuals as well. Now we get a few sentences and a single-view labeled printout from Solidworks, a series of confusing tech support chats, and eventually a return label on the box.To their credit, GUIs have come a long way and are generally pretty straightforward these days. As long as we’re aware and provide good feedback, maybe we’ll have more nice things down the line.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154418",
"author": "kaosad",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T05:39:21",
"content": "If you brought Newton back to life, he might complain about how fast cars move today. He’d likely be more comfortable with horses and carriages. Technology and our needs for convenience and comfort evolve over time, so we simply adapt.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154524",
"author": "Natalie RMDP",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T13:12:28",
"content": "Phones these days are utilitarian. They’re no longer the stuff of nerds, and many people who use them don’t even like them, and if they use it a lot, it’s either because they feel addicted or because they’re forced to do so because their work, education, and personal life demands it.Even as some who misses the era when phones looked like… gadgets, the front face of a phone is almost all screen for a reason. Consider that we often speak of using a digital device as separate from real life. I think folks want to get lost not in the real life object in their hands and its functions, but on the virtual interfaces the object displays. It’s the same reason why TVs, monitors, and laptop display panels don’t really have bezels for the most part anymore. We want to look at the screen and semi-voluntarily tune out everything else around it.Apps are everything. Apple has evidently loosened their standards on the app store, and so, so many apps do not use the iOS’ default “design language.” They use different fonts, different button layouts, etc. YouTube on an iPhone looks more like YouTube on an Android phone than Apple’s old YouTube app.At this point, other than a few perks like iMessage or GarageBand (Who is that for? Most people aren’t into music production, and those who are would go for something better than GarageBand for iPhone!)…“Brand loyalty” in smartphones isn’t a big deal. Even if you really like your phone (I’m more of a desktop computer person), does being an iPhone vs Android user say much about you? Are iPhones for stylish geeks, and Android phones for rebellious trendsetters? Or are Androids for the underprivileged, despite the most expensive ones being more expensive than the most expensive iPhones?It honestly is beginning to sound like the question of why someone would buy a given brand of laundry detergent. Why would someone buy Gain over Tide, Persil Free and Sensitive, Arm and Hammer, or Seventh Generation? Is it their sensitivities? Did they fall for any marketing, and is there a kernel of truth to it? Would they just pour vinegar in the washer and chew up the rubber gaskets? If their favorite brand was out, would they switch? Would they date someone who smells of scented Persil, or be so unfamiliar with it that they think it’s a perfume? Who knows?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154564",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T16:19:21",
"content": "Phones these days are utilitarian. They’re no longer the stuff of nerds, and many people who use them don’t even like them,…They are pretty awful for utilitarian really, at least those default slabs, as they just don’t have good HID for anything you’d want to use them for, and phones also never used to be the ‘stuff of nerds’ at least once they became affordable enough most folks could afford a Nokia brick etc they where just for everyone… And if you really don’t like them it rather says they are not doing it right then – the basics of your daily life shouldn’t have such a negative connotation, you should at worse only notice when its missing for some reason as you take it so for granted, not actively dislike it…Also having a bezel around your display really has no bearing on being able to tune it out, if anything the bezel probably helps you tune out as there is that larger blank clean space rather than your room clutter right next next to the display. Really the only thing thin bezel on a display does for you in those large room furniture sized screens is perhaps let you get a larger display area into your space (though often you won’t as the bezels are generally not that large and screens generally only come in rather large steps between sizes) and allow you stack multiple displays near each other, which these days you probably don’t need the same way as you did not that long ago either as you can just get the larger ultra wide single display quite affordably that will be better for most folks than separate monitors (though multi monitor definitively still has a place for some as well).",
"parent_id": "8154524",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154620",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T19:15:51",
"content": "It is not just cell phones. I recently visited a friend (with too much money) after he had done a complete interior makeover of his home. He often had trouble keeping the washer and dryer apart as their fronts were exactly the same, and his kitchen had one black glass rectangle built into a wall, which were three doors, but when he asked me to put something in the steamer oven, I really had no way to tell which one was the regular oven, steamer oven or microwave. Funnily enough, the times on their displays were all one minute apart.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154716",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T00:20:19",
"content": "Well, I think you just cracked the secret to figuring out which is which! Just have to learn the system. I’d think the microwave would have the earliest time because it cooks so fast, then the regular oven, then the steamer. Or maybe swap those last two?",
"parent_id": "8154620",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154883",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T18:53:33",
"content": "I miss the times of a Palm III, HP Jornada or Sony Clié..These early devices had same form factor as a current smartphone but had character.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154885",
"author": "PhillyCheez",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T19:06:02",
"content": "I will say, when it comes to gaming I’ll take something with buttons over a touch screen any day.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155942",
"author": "hugh crawford",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T18:28:30",
"content": "I had a few Razors. What a miserable fragile piece of dog turd. They would keep breaking. Horrible ugly uncomfortable in your pocket thing,Aside from the obvious , the biggest thing the iPhone did was give ownership of the phone experience back to the user instead of of the carrier . Every carrier had its own stupid interface. Sure the razor had buttons, but the UI was awful.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8163826",
"author": "Marc Barr",
"timestamp": "2025-08-16T11:39:38",
"content": "I wonder what Raymond Loewy and his design studio could have turned out.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8188561",
"author": "tim prebble",
"timestamp": "2025-10-07T08:14:09",
"content": "Musical instruments would be one of the exceptions. Hardware and controllers have undergone incredible evolution in the last 20 years.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,477.669527
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/23/annealing-in-space-how-nasa-saved-junocam-in-orbit-around-jupiter/
|
Annealing In Space: How NASA Saved JunoCam In Orbit Around Jupiter
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Space"
] |
[
"Juno",
"Jupiter",
"nasa"
] |
The
Juno
spacecraft was launched towards Jupiter in August of 2011 as part of the
New Frontiers
series of spacecraft, on what would originally have been a 7-year mission, including a nearly 5 year cruise to the planet. After a mission extension, it’s currently orbiting Jupiter, allowing for many more years of scientific data to be gathered using its instruments. One of these instruments is the
JunoCam
(JCM), a visible light camera and telescope. Unfortunately the harsh radiation environment around Jupiter had led many to believe that this camera would fail before long. Now it seems that
NASA engineers have successfully tested a fix
.
Location of the Juno spacecraft’s science instruments.
Although the radiation damage to JCM was obvious a few dozen orbits in – and well past its original mission’s 34 orbits – the big question was exactly what was being damaged by the radiation, and whether something could be done to circumvent or fix it. The good news was that the image sensor itself was fine, but one of the voltage regulators in JCM’s power supply was having a bad time. This led the engineers to try annealing the affected part by cranking up one of the JCM’s heaters to a balmy 25°C, well above what it normally is kept at.
This desperate step seemed to work, with massively improved image quality on the following orbits, but soon the images began to degrade again. Before an approach to Jupiter’s moon Io, the engineers thus tried it again but this time cranked the JCM’s heater up to eleven and crossed their fingers. Surprisingly this fixed the issue over the course of a week, until the JCM seems as good as new. Now the engineers are trying their luck with
Juno
‘s other instruments as well, with it potentially providing a blueprint for extending the life of spacecraft in general.
Thanks to [Mark Stevens] for the tip.
| 16
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8153111",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T11:57:22",
"content": "Just heard a lovely presentation on this topic last week at NSREC and the statement really undersells what an amazing hack this all was.IIRC JunoCam was technically a “late addition” to the Juno mission and was added for public outreach purposes. That mean that the team in San Diego didn’t have time to design a system from from scratch that could handle the harsh Jovian rad environment, so they reused a lot of existing hardware from the Mars Curiosity Rover (IIRC). So that’s amazing Hack #1Amazing Hack #2 is that they realized that it was taking longer and longer for JunoCam to power up on every orbit, eventually taking multiple days to receive any telemetry from the camera. So they were like “can we pls not turn this off ever again until we figure out what is going on?”There was a single temperature sensor on the JCM so they took to building thermal models back on earth to try to figure out what temperatures they would need to attempt annealing and the like.Long story long, I believe they identified an unseen/overlooked SEFI in one of the voltage regulators that power the JCM. I think the current game plan is to continue to anneal at continuously higher temperatures, but this trick will only last so long as eventually TID effects will outpace the restorative annealing process.(This is all from memory so I do not claim the authenticity of these statements…)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153120",
"author": "macsimki",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:12:31",
"content": "interesting info. now please expand sefi and tid?",
"parent_id": "8153111",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153138",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:38:14",
"content": "SEFI is single event functional interrupt. “Something hit us and we stopped working.”TID is total irradiated dose: how much radiation the device has been exposed to in total.",
"parent_id": "8153120",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153141",
"author": "yet another bruce",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:42:08",
"content": "Courtesy of Google:A Single Event Functional Interrupt (SEFI) is a non-destructive interruption in a device’s functionality caused by a single, high-energy particle strike, according to NASA Electronic Parts and Packaging (.gov). It can cause a component to reset, hang, or enter an unexpected operating condition without causing permanent damage. Unlike a single event latch-up (SEL) or single event burnout (SEB), a SEFI does not require power cycling to restore the device to its normal operation.Total Ionizing Dose (TID) is the cumulative damage to the semiconductor lattice caused by exposure to ionizing radiation over time.",
"parent_id": "8153120",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153197",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T14:54:20",
"content": "Google’s pulling stuff from JESD89A, I think, so it’s not that intuitive wording out of context – it’s not saying “you don’t need to power cycle to fix this” it’s saying “it’spossiblethat you could fix this without power cycling” although power cycling might be required depending on the way the instrument is designed if the SEFI was not anticipated or missed (or sometimes if it’s just the most expedient method). They’re logic failures due to a single-event upset (SEU), not hardware failures.This is as opposed to SEBs/SELs, which are hardware failures, and will require power cycling to recover,if it is even possible(which for SEBs is usually ‘it’s not’).",
"parent_id": "8153141",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153367",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T22:44:45",
"content": "The other comments got it mostly correct.SEFI – Single Event Functional Interrupt is somewhat of a catch all term that describes any abrupt system failures caused by radiation. This could be something like a CPU becoming unresponsive while executing a program, the inability to read or write to memory, null pointer exceptions, etc. It typically refers to radiation effects in the context of larger “systems” (Circuits, FPGA/CPU-Memory interfaces, SoCs) as opposed to singular active devices (mosfets, op-amps, BJTs). For the most part, SEFIs can also be cleared with a power cycle, but not always. For singular devices, terms like Single Event Transient (SET) and Single Event Upset (SEU) are more commonly talked about.TID – total ionizing dose is effectively how much ionizing radiation a device is subjected to. Within LEO this is typically dominated by protons but further out you’ve got to deal with Heavy Ions and cosmic rays. Basically any charged particle that is whizzing through space. In transistors (mosfets at least) the longer you spend in space the more TID you get and it manifests as a reduction in threshold voltage. The effects can be subtle and complicated but essentially the charged particles cause ionization in the semi conductor and because of the mismatch in mobility between holes and electrons, you end up turning your n-type more and more into p-types over time.TID can also create displacement damage which will create charge carrier recombitation centers. Literally defects in the crystal lattice. Annealing at high temperatures helps to “heal” those defects which is what we see in JunoCam",
"parent_id": "8153120",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153642",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T11:25:13",
"content": "I was wondering why they suggested 25℃ was so hot, but Mars is -55℃ on a hot day I think right? So if you use stuff that is designed for that then that’s quite a delta.",
"parent_id": "8153111",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153140",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:40:59",
"content": "the big question was exactly was being damag……..should be a ‘what’ in there somewhere.Otherwise interesting bit of news I’d not heard yet.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153202",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:04:59",
"content": "I wonder what this did to the power budget? Did any other measurements need to be sacrificed even if only temporarily? Amazing work, but there’s no mention of any tradeoffs made to acheive it. I suppose there could be enough excess power available, but given how carefully they plan these things I’d be surprised.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153211",
"author": "Vincent Pribish",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:21:16",
"content": "that first paragraph probably should have said that there was something actually damaged. it’s confusing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153258",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T17:14:50",
"content": "Maybe I’m ignorant of the use case, but I’m used to seeing the word “annealing” being used in the context of working with metals, and it requires (in all cases with which I’m familiar) temperatures much higher than 25C.Would someone kindly enlighten me about what is meant by “annealing” in this case?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153275",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T17:40:49",
"content": "Annealing just means heating something up and letting it cool down to rearrange the material’s lattice arrangement. With silicon ICs this actually happens at surprisingly reasonable temperatures.Silicon photomultipliers for instance show significant recovery from radiation damage with temperatures between like 30-50 C. Considering they’re normally operated cold (to reduce noise), the plan in a lot of space-based observatories is to use Peltier cooling and periodically flip the direction for annealing.",
"parent_id": "8153258",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153349",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T21:47:55",
"content": "Thanks!:)",
"parent_id": "8153275",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153323",
"author": "Ray",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T20:15:44",
"content": "There is a non-zero chance that the engineers thought to do this because they had an Xbox 360.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153960",
"author": "Yippee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T23:37:53",
"content": "I’m so curious, please elaborate on this",
"parent_id": "8153323",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153356",
"author": "Dion B",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T22:07:39",
"content": "100% a hack. Nice work NASA. Wouldn’t it be great if more ‘Hail Marys’ like that paid off here on earth :p",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,476.865719
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/22/usb-c-ing-all-the-things/
|
USB-C-ing All The Things
|
Jenny List
|
[
"Parts"
] |
[
"dc power",
"USB C",
"USB-C PD"
] |
Wall warts. Plug mounted power supplies that turn mains voltage into low voltage DC on a barrel jack to power a piece of equipment. We’ve all got a load of them for our various devices, most of us to the extent that it becomes annoying. [Mikeselectricstuff] has the solution, in the shape of a USB-C PD power supply designed to
replace a barrel jack socket on a PCB
.
The video below provides a comprehensive introduction to the topic before diving into the design. The chip in question is the CH224K, and he goes into detail on ordering the boards for yourself. As the design files are freely available, we wouldn’t be surprised if they start turning up from the usual suppliers before too long.
We like this project and we can see that it would be useful, after all it’s easy to end up in wall wart hell. We’ve remarked before that
USB-C PD is a new technology done right
, and this is the perfect demonstration of its potential.
| 53
| 14
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152784",
"author": "rasz_pl",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T16:04:59",
"content": "Megan in M3GAN 2.0 gets one of those boards implanted as a non-lethal inhibitor chip :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152925",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T21:58:48",
"content": "#ad",
"parent_id": "8152784",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153368",
"author": "Matthew Close",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T22:46:57",
"content": "Good information. Great reminder to catch this!I will look out for the scene.Thx!",
"parent_id": "8152925",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152793",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T16:27:30",
"content": "With a bit of structural anything to support this board and cover the shorting to nearby connector shields potential I could see this being worthwhile if you really really buy into the USB-C ecosystem I guess. I think I’d go for 3d printing a mould/former to fill with potting compound – I suspect easier to print a permanent shell to fill up than the separable and reusable multipart mould.But I’d still rather avoid USB-C as much as possible for as long as possible – the standard is a mess, so even before you get to all the not compliant stuff out there silent failures are just too common, and with all the not compliant stuff especially quite possibly destructive silent failures… So I’d far rather have the barrel jack and the engraved +/- centre pin and voltage marking so to screw up takes a human error, not a perfectly understandable expectation that plugging this in it will just work – I want the mistake to actually be mine not maker of the device/cable etc I just trusted erroneously.Plus if you do ever lose or damage the right supply with barrel jacks replacements and repairs are cheap and easy, its also dependable and mechanically much tougher (in general anyway) connector. Helps having huge footprint for only 2 contacts.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152800",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T16:34:17",
"content": "Oh also the print to fill option also allows you to print the voltage this particular board is set up for as a pattern into the outer case each time you assemble one – so should you ever de solder the connector for reuse you don’t have to test it that one says 9V on the top. Which sounds like a far better idea than a fancier reuseable mould without that marking, as you’d need to be making a huge number of them in a particular voltage to be worth addign that complexity to the mould.",
"parent_id": "8152793",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152832",
"author": "JB",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T17:43:12",
"content": "I have to agree with everything you said. If I wanted to hamonise everything, I’d be quicker to move everything to a 12VDC barrel jack with maybe a buck regulator onboard for 9 and 5VDC output, then I would mess around with USB-C PD.I actually have some dirt cheap buck boards that cost a few cents each and can handle up to 1A output when you add a small heatsink.",
"parent_id": "8152793",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152857",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T18:05:49",
"content": "“barrel jack and the engraved +/- centre pin and voltage marking so to screw up takes a human error”It doesn’t take a human error, it takes a crap wall-wart. Which is the exact same problem with plugging in a USB-C supply if you don’t know how it works.One of the big issues with power supplies in general is that “9V, center pin positive” isn’t actually enough of a spec for a power supply. No load overshoot, load regulation, ripple, etc. all need to be considered as well.",
"parent_id": "8152793",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152934",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T22:45:19",
"content": "Right? A 12v wall wart with an old school transformer will happily put out 16V at no load. Not all wall warts are regulated, old ones just had a rectifier and capacitor. If you were lucky it would have a bridge rectifier or two diodes and a centre tapped secondary. Capacitor optional.Not to mention a 2.1mm socket will accept any plug, with dodgy connection to a 2.5mm plug. No polarity checked, no voltage checked. No over current protection, just a thermal fuse in the transformer if you’re lucky.",
"parent_id": "8152857",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153053",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T08:03:33",
"content": "…and almost every board expects that and has its own protection and regulation if it needs it.Whereas I’ll bet a lot of people assume USB will be a perfect 5v and skip the regulation.",
"parent_id": "8152934",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153113",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:02:16",
"content": "True there is some further complexity that however practically never applies in today’s world as the transformer will be regulated and the ‘9v centre positive’ device almost certainly actually has some further power smoothing and regulation built in. The only added complexity that is likely to matter is total power draw capacity.Which is the exact same problem with plugging in a USB-C supply if you don’t know how it works.No its not, as even perfectly spec compliant high quality USB-PD and cables will just silently fail either entirely or in part, and likely not have anywhere on the devices or cables involved even a hint of why. While a crap one will likely destroy something… The ‘Crap wall-wart’ has to be really really really crap on the other hand for a device that expects a fixed voltage in the ballpark the transformer claims.",
"parent_id": "8152857",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153108",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T11:54:35",
"content": "Hard disagree. You’ve put forward a whole bunch of FUD while also admitting you aren’t using it personally, so everything you claim is broken is simply hearsay or invented from whole cloth. I’ve not had a single “destructive silent failure” with USB-C, and I’ve been using it extensively for several years now.But Ihavehad many devices with barrel jacks die – there’s always a device that is centre-negative for no reason than to force you to buy their expensive branded plugpack, and plenty of devices that have no voltage or polarity labelling, for the same reason.I spent the money on good-quality USB PD power supplies, which aren’t hard to find, and therefore havezeroconcerns about “non-compliant” anything – all the complexity is saved for the power supply, and the trigger board in the device is cheap, well-standardised, and very unlikely to be the failure point since it doesn’t need to have any tricky buck/boost circuitry in it.",
"parent_id": "8152793",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153126",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:22:18",
"content": "I do actually have USB-C stuff, and actively hate it for its frequent foibles even with quality branded parts and cables. And you clearly haven’t ended up with some of the “USB-C” powered devices, even a few that are otherwise quite premium quality in construction etc that ship with a fixed 20V output etc that have been seen in the wild. USB-C is supposed to be ‘safe turn off brain’ connector, so when it isn’t that is a really easy to make the mistake – where barrel jacks you check because you know you need to.NB my hate of USB-C is the spec as a WHOLE, with ports and cables suitable or not suitable for the whole myriad of features and not even a mandatory to be spec compliant colour code to identify why this cable of slot doesn’t do what you think it should. It is not the PD stuff specifically I am against – though I do think PD is far more complicated than it needs to be to meet the goal of allowing higher powered devices on USB-C ports and sockets (but it made lots of sense for the other USB connectors it started with, as for USB-C you went and added heaps of conductors to the cables anyway, so just make some of those fixed higher voltages for a simple, and entirely dumb solution that doesn’t require cables with chips in etc!).But I have had many devices with barrel jacks die – there’s always a device that is centre-negative for no reason than to force you to buy their expensive branded plugpack, and plenty of devices that have no voltage or polarity labelling, for the same reason.If its your mistake for using the wrong PSU but everything is labelled that is on you, and myself I’d be happy with that outcome – if I screw up and something doesn’t work or breaks fine, I’m annoyed, but at myself – and more importantly I KNOW what is going wrong. Which when USB-C fails you just don’t – and even with the highest quality parts will as the spec is so full of optional and has been mutating too fast so incompatibility is a certainty! Even with perfectly compliant high quality stuff – either your device demands an optional feature, it wants a slightly newer higher power version and can’t operate on less etc etc..If its not labelled and you didn’t notice to check and label it yourself while it worked then you have a point. There is nothing more annoying than companies playing silly games – but guess what they can, will and already have done that with USB-C ports…",
"parent_id": "8153108",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153130",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:28:40",
"content": "“USB-C” powered devices, even a few that are otherwise quite premium quality in construction etc that ship with a fixed 20V outputHang on, if it’s a “powered device”, it’s not got any sort of “output”, 20V or other.If you’re talking about a device that is coming with it’s own power supply, then so what? Ido not userandom power supplies. Theentire pointis that I use the ones I already own and already know do the right thing. I don’t need a hundred different supplies because the 5 or so I do have are sufficient to runeverything.",
"parent_id": "8153126",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153143",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:52:06",
"content": "In which case that device you bought won’t work either as the company that sold it to you is one of the ones playing silly buggers exactly as you complained about with Barrel Jack, only this time its worse as it looks like USB-C the ‘safe’ ‘universal’ option, not the one where you know you actually need to check it.",
"parent_id": "8153130",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153320",
"author": "macsimki",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T20:07:57",
"content": "+42usb-c is a nice example of feature creap. the usb consortium actually made only one connector right: usb-b: sturdy and easy to plug in. all others are meh at the most, with micro-usb as the lowest one, with the crappy mechanical architecture and the horrible rectangular mixed A/B version.only the mechanical design of usb-c is right, the rest is designed by members of the LUS (league of Undercover Sadists) also working in modern car design.",
"parent_id": "8153126",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154491",
"author": "Arya Voronova",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T11:14:57",
"content": "from my experience, this is what Foldi-One does on every USB-C-mentioning article. it gets pretty old prety quick ngl, but hey, some people have a schtick I guess.",
"parent_id": "8153108",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155469",
"author": "Anonbob",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T20:38:07",
"content": "Your experience of being careful vs all the con men in China selling fakesCongratulations you’ve beaten the odds.Should have bought lottery ticket.",
"parent_id": "8153108",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152794",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T16:29:19",
"content": "While this solution addresses the problems of barrel connector (variety of voltages, pin diameter, barrel diameter), it create a new one:Barrel connectors are rock-solid. They are to break. They are firmly anchored on the board. This is not the case with USB-C and those filmsy piece of solid wire. That will bend and break.The solution would be a case + pins that have a form-factor similar to a barrel connector, with a USB-C instead of a round hole, and a bit of PCB exposed with solder bridges to select the voltage.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152953",
"author": "Cody",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T00:12:38",
"content": "Those USB connectors will get ripped off the board the first time the cable gets pulled on.",
"parent_id": "8152794",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153070",
"author": "Psuedonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T09:43:53",
"content": "I’ve encountered far more broken barrel jacks (usually it’s a detached centre pin) than even mini-D sockets, let alone Type C ports.",
"parent_id": "8152794",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153110",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T11:57:16",
"content": "I’ve replaced far more barrel jacks than I have usb-c sockets.",
"parent_id": "8152794",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155475",
"author": "Anonbob",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T20:41:30",
"content": "40 years ago this wasn’t a problem.As a kid I had a PSU with a slider switch to adjust the voltage, a connector inline to reverse the polarity and a connector on the end with 4 different Jack’s plus a 9v battery connector.A plethora of devices and I never blew one up.Hey, maybe I educated myself, maybe everyone else was more careful.Maybe society has devolved…Usb C sucks for all the reasons you say.",
"parent_id": "8152794",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152825",
"author": "Jeff",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T17:37:35",
"content": "I am wondering if I am just lucky or something, but I have had 0 problems with using USB as a power source. I do tend to only buy power bricks that will do PD of at least 12V though, and I don’t go super cheap. As for cables, I look at the reviews and try to stick with a known brand name that is likely to want to preserve their reputation. Biggest gripe I have had is around manufactures making dumb choices involving the capability of the port (looking at you HP…)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152858",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T18:07:35",
"content": "Or Dell cheating in a higher-power USB-C spec. I mean, if they made a little “USB-C PD to fake-o Dell 130W” adapter (which they could do!) it’d be fine, but seriously.",
"parent_id": "8152825",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152859",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T18:07:45",
"content": "i have a little pile of micro usb breakout boards that have already become my default for 5V projects. with another cheap board, i can charge a lipo cell off of it too. you only have problems if you use the new features…for 5V everything is easy :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153478",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T03:41:18",
"content": "Same here, but I made the experience that often it will not work when I use the USB C port of an AC adapter.",
"parent_id": "8152859",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152911",
"author": "Burak",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T21:00:33",
"content": "Problem with USB-C PD is, it always has a 5V fallback. If you have a device that needs 12Volts, you can request it from the power supply, but the power supply is allowed to deliver just 5Volts.You can NOT retrofit any random device by replacing the barrel jack, most old devices will die if they get the wr9ng voltage.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152923",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T21:51:06",
"content": "This is a very good point, could do with an additional mosfet that only passes power if the correct voltage is possible, maybe an LED to indicate if it is/isn’t able to comply.Another feature of the barrel jacks overlooked by this project is that they often have an extra pin to break the ground line to a battery when connected. I have a DAB radio that uses this, without it either the battery wouldn’t work, or it could be trying to charge an alkaline battery.",
"parent_id": "8152911",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152937",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T22:50:21",
"content": "Most 12v things won’t die if they get 5v.A red led that lights if the requested voltage and current can’t be delivered would be a nice addition though.",
"parent_id": "8152911",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152967",
"author": ".",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T01:24:30",
"content": "And this is why everything has a zener idiot diode. Not fool proof, but it requires a higher grade of fool.",
"parent_id": "8152911",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153050",
"author": "rasz_pl",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T07:45:28",
"content": "Name one 12V powered device that will die when fed 5V.",
"parent_id": "8152911",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153056",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T08:07:17",
"content": "Anything that still pulls the same wattage (but now much higher ampage) through thin wires.",
"parent_id": "8153050",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153064",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T09:20:25",
"content": "You did not name one.You might as well say ‘anything that has a bomb that triggers if it goes slower than 12 volt’ – and make a movie out of it.",
"parent_id": "8153056",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153066",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T09:36:05",
"content": "Half of the video is about how to order on JLCPCB, and it’s interesting since there are so many caveats that you need to know when using that service.And frankly, it’s a bit off-putting when you hear the issues and then when you hear that the other big player in the field PCBWAY also has such issues you start to think that maybe you should just make your damn PCB’s at home.",
"parent_id": "8153056",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153067",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T09:37:21",
"content": "Sorry, second reply was to Ian",
"parent_id": "8153056",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153078",
"author": "Arnab",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T10:11:06",
"content": "If it only worked because of wattage and not voltage, life would be much harder. A 5W led bulb i out on ceiling that works with 220V ac input wont consume more amps at 110V because the led consumes more current but the excess is because conversion is needed. So unless the device takes in 12V then for some reason uses a transformer to lower it again, it doesnt make sense. Especially given the 12V power cord is outside because they dont wanna deal woth transformers & live wires inside the device.On top of it, the usb 5V backup would be 500mA if by soec and even at max they go 2A. Will 5V 2A burn circuits? I’ve seen 0.5-1mm tracks used for devices that used 2A and even if dodgy, they still survive. Best example would be those cheap $5 multimeter you can get from stores or aliexpress. They have space for fuse, but to save cost rather use a pcb tace as 10amp blow out and they are quite thin.",
"parent_id": "8153056",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153081",
"author": "RaduTek",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T10:24:21",
"content": "I saw some youtube video of a guy fixing a set-top box that was rated at 12V and damaged by a 5V power supply, because the internal step down converter did not work properly at low voltage, and outputting 5V instead of the lower output voltage (3.3v IIRC) required by the device.That’s still such an edge case, of a poorly implemented buck regulator.",
"parent_id": "8153050",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153125",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:21:28",
"content": "I won’t say that can’t happen, but I’m skeptical. These almost always die because the device has opposite polarity to the replaced power supply. If the internal step-down is passing through more than 3v3 when the voltage isn’t high enough, then it’s doing it every single time power is applied to or removed from the device. Nothing goes from 0 to 12V or back instantaneously – there’s a non-zero period where the device is seeing 5v (or any other voltage between the two extremes).",
"parent_id": "8153081",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153385",
"author": "Skyler Prahl",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T00:04:17",
"content": "Yeah that’s bs lol. It simply didn’t work. And then the polarity was reversed and that is what really killed it if something bad really did happen.. and they just didn’t want to admit it.",
"parent_id": "8153125",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153112",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:00:12",
"content": "Things will die if they get more voltage than their absolute maximum limit in the datasheet.If you supply less than the desired operating voltage, the device may not work, but it willneverbe damaged.",
"parent_id": "8152911",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152921",
"author": "electrobob",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T21:46:57",
"content": "I wanted to put one of these in my shaver. And set it to 15V…. and i got 12V. And here lies the problem: these boards will output a different voltage if the one that you set them to is not available from the charger. And oh boy, are chargers so different from one another.On top of this, you first get 5V before the negotiation happens and then the requested voltage.So be careful.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153115",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:03:40",
"content": "It’s not USB PD’s fault you bought a crap power supply. That’s going to be the same no matter what standard the supply uses. Get good ones that support all the profiles and then you won’t have any issues.",
"parent_id": "8152921",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153336",
"author": "electrobob",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T20:58:30",
"content": "but it is exactly the fault of the PD specification that allows way too much flexibility for the manufacturers. Two adapters of the same rated power cannot be considered interchangeable because plenty of things are optional.It would greatly have benefited everyone if what needs to be implemented for a specific power was fixed, so any 2 adapters of the same power are interchangeable, but this is not the case.",
"parent_id": "8153115",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152961",
"author": "QBFreak",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T00:45:35",
"content": "I have boxes of various wall warts and floor hogs. More than I know what to do with (search DDG/Google for “new yorker ac adapters comic”). USB power adapters on the other hand, I have fewer of. I’m sure one day I’ll be ready to go all-in on USB-C and nothing else, right now though feels more like the days when I was still clinging to Micro-USB over USB-C because I lacked the basics to support the switch. We’re talking about an investment in power adapters, cables, and adapter boards, plus modifying devices, when I already have a surplus of what I need.Perhaps one day, but not today. (I do admire the cleverness of the device though)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152980",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T01:59:37",
"content": "Great!Now I can replace that drawer full of assorted walwarts with barrel jacks with a drawer full of different USB C adapters and 7 different incompatible USB C cables that look mostly the same but function differently with no external markings.Then I just have to worry about fallback voltages, non-standard cables/USB power supplies, and having to replace a drawer full of stuff I already own with a bunch of expensive cables/power supplies!Mike does great work.But this is kinda dumb outside of his specific use case on those 2 devices he already had the parts for.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153118",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:10:01",
"content": "So you’re claiming that your lack of experience and list of misconceptions about USB C trumps Mike’s direct experience and his long-proven skills in electronic design?I have two good USB PD power supplies, a couple of good 65W power banks, and a few decent USB C cables from Amazon and Ikea, and they work with everything I have. Phones, laptops, handheld gaming devices, all the stuff I’ve retrofitted trigger boards to (including stuff that was originally mains-powered for no good reason), my soldering irons, the list goes on.It’s your choice to live with the old way, but don’t claim it’s a paradise over there.",
"parent_id": "8152980",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155478",
"author": "Anonbob",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T20:45:33",
"content": "Nope he’s calming that in utopia usb c works, but in the penny pitching world of lying sellers pn places like amazon with no recourse it simply doesn’t.Usb C is a prime example of zero trust society.",
"parent_id": "8153118",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152985",
"author": "macgyver24x7",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T02:26:41",
"content": "I wonder how that chip handles those fixed 19V or other voltage laptop power supplies that are usb-c but not PD….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153122",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:13:33",
"content": "The old laptop power brick is obsolete. You “handle” it by throwing it out and using a modern USB PD power supply instead.",
"parent_id": "8152985",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153032",
"author": "LordNothing",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T06:26:30",
"content": "i usually go the other way turning usb power into barrel jacks.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153087",
"author": "pgwipeout",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T10:51:03",
"content": "Another problem is 12v isn’t a standard profile, so nearly no USB PD bricks serve it. A brick is supposed to provide the next lower voltage, which is 9v. Anker stations do this, however the IKEA power stations just sit there pulsing 5v then shut down for a few seconds before trying again.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153146",
"author": "Clara Hobbs",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:58:24",
"content": "Shame to see that the cheapo devices that drove me out of selling the PD Buddy Sink are so shoddy, and susceptible to many issues that I had solved in that board. A lot of these comments are about things that have nothing to do with USB PD, but everything to do with bad usage thereof.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153292",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T18:55:43",
"content": "I am a big fan of the Chinese “DC DC Buck Boost Converter CC CV 36V 5A” modules. I’m using them e.g. to charge a LiFePo4 motorbike battery from a USB type-c power bank, and for many other things. Comes in really handy for all your spontaneous power conversion needs. A few adapters to common standard connectors (on both sides) accompany the power bank and DC/DC converter in the carrying case.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,477.342981
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/22/power-grid-stability-from-generators-to-reactive-power/
|
Power Grid Stability: From Generators To Reactive Power
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] |
[
"alternating current",
"power grid"
] |
It hasn’t been that long since humans figured out how to create power grids that integrated multiple generators and consumers. Ever since AC won the battle of the currents, grid operators have had to deal with the issues that come with using AC instead of the far less complex DC. Instead of simply targeting a constant voltage, generators have to synchronize with the frequency of the alternating current as it cycles between positive and negative current many times per second.
Complicating matters further, the transmission lines between generators and consumers, along with any kind of transmission equipment on the lines, add their own inductive, capacitive, and resistive properties to the system before the effects of consumers are even tallied up. The result of this are phase shifts between voltage and current that have to be managed by controlling the reactive power, lest frequency oscillations and voltage swings result in a complete grid blackout.
Flowing Backwards
We tend to think of the power in our homes as something that comes out of the outlet before going into the device that’s being powered. While for DC applications this is essentially true – aside from fights over which way DC current flows – for AC applications the answer is pretty much a “It’s complicated”. After all, the primary reason why we use AC transmission is because transformers make transforming between AC voltages easy, not because an AC grid is easier to manage.
Image showing the instantaneous electric power in AC systems and its decomposition into active and reactive power; when the current lags the voltage 50 degrees. (Credit:
Jon Peli Oleaga
)
What exactly happens between an AC generator and an AC load depends on the characteristics of the load. A major part of these characteristics is covered by its
power factor
(PF), which describes the effect of the load on the AC phase. If the PF is 1, the load is purely resistive with no phase shift. If the PF is 0, it’s a purely reactive load and no net current flows. Most AC-powered devices have a power factor that’s somewhere between 0.5 to 0.99, meaning that they appear to be a mixed reactive and resistive load.
The power triangle, showing the relationship between real, apparent and reactive power. (Source:
Wikimedia
)
PF can be understood in terms of the two components that define AC power, being:
Apparent Power (S, in volt-amperes or VA) and
Real Power (P, in watts).
The PF is defined as the ratio of P to S (i.e. `PF = P / S). Reactive Power (Q, in var) is easily visualized as the angle theta (Θ) between P and S if we put them as respectively the leg and hypotenuse of a right triangle. Here Θ is the phase shift by which the current waveform lags the voltage. We can observe that as the phase shift increases, the apparent power increases along with reactive power. Rather than being consumed by the load,
reactive power flows back
to the generator, which hints at why it’s such a problematic phenomenon for grid-management.
From the above we can deduce that the PF is 1.0 if S and P are the same magnitude. Although
P = I × V
gets us the real power in watts, it is the apparent power that is being supplied by the generators on the grid, meaning that reactive power is effectively ‘wasted’ power. How concerning this is to you as a consumer mostly depends on whether you are being billed for watts or VAs consumed, but from a grid perspective this is the motivation behind
power factor correction
(PFC).
This is where capacitors are useful, as they can correct the low PF on inductive loads like electric motors, and vice versa with inductance on capacitive loads. As a rule of thumb, capacitors create reactive power, while inductors consume reactive power, meaning that for PFC the right capacitance or inductance has to be added to get the PF as close to 1.0 as possible. Since an inductor absorbs the excess (reactive) power and a capacitor supplies reactive power, if both are balanced 1:1, the PF would be 1.0.
In the case of modern switching-mode power supplies, automatic power factor correction (APFC) is applied, which switch in capacitance as needed by the current load. This is, in miniature, pretty much what the full-scale grid does throughout the network.
Traditional Grids
Magnetically controlled shunt reactor (
MCSR
). (Credit: Tayosun,
Wikimedia
)
Based on this essential knowledge, local electrical networks were expanded from a few streets to entire cities. From there it was only a matter of time before transmission lines turned many into few, with soon transmission networks spanning entire continents. Even so, the basic principles remain the same, and thus the methods available to manage a power grid.
Spinning generators provide the AC power, along with either the creation or absorption of reactive power on account of being inductors with their large wound coils, depending on their excitation level. Since transformers are passive devices, they will always absorb reactive power, while both overhead and underground transmission lines start off providing reactive power, overhead lines start absorbing reactive power if overloaded.
In order to keep reactive power in the grid to a healthy minimum, capacitive and inductive loads are switched in or out at locations like transmission lines and switchyards. The inductive loads often taken the form of shunt reactors – basically single winding transformers – and shunt capacitors, along with active devices like
synchronous condensers
that are effectively simplified synchronous generators. In locations like substations the use of
tap changers
enables fine-grained voltage control to ease the load on nearby transmission lines. Meanwhile the synchronous generators at thermal plants can be kept idle and online to provide significant reactive power absorption capacity when not used to actively generate power.
Regardless of the exact technologies employed, these traditional grids are characterized by significant amounts of reactive power creation and absorption capacity. As loads join or leave the grid every time that consumer devices are turned off and on, the grid manager (transmission system operator, or TSO) adjusts the state of these control methods. This keeps the grid frequency and voltage within their respective narrowly defined windows.
Variable Generators
Over the past few years, most newly added generating capacity has come in the form of weather-dependent variable generators that use grid-following converters. These devices take the DC power from generally PV solar and wind turbine farms and convert them into AC. They use a phase-locked loop (PLL) to synchronize with the grid frequency, to match this AC frequency and the current voltage.
Unfortunately, these devices do not have the ability to absorb or generate reactive power, and instead blindly follow the current grid frequency and voltage, even if said grid was going through reactive power-induced oscillations. Thus instead of damping these oscillations and any voltage swings, these converters serve to amplify these issues. During the
2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout
, this was identified as one of the primary causes by the Spanish TSO.
Ultimately AC power grids depend on solid reactive power management, which is why the European group of TSOs (ENTSO-E) already
recommended
in 2020 that grid-following converters should get replaced with grid-forming converters. These feature the ability absorb and generate reactive power through the addition of features like energy storage and are overall significantly more useful and robust when it comes to AC grid management.
Although AC doesn’t rule the roost any more in transmission networks, with
high-voltage DC
now the more economical option for long distances, the overwhelming part of today’s power grids still use AC. This means that reactive power management will remain one of the most essential parts of keeping power grids stable and people happy, until the day comes when we will all be switching back to DC grids, year after the switch to AC was
finally completed
back in 2007.
| 41
| 11
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152739",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T14:22:11",
"content": "If the PF is 0, it’s a purely reactive load and no net current flowsThe power factor can be zero when the load is not consuming any real power i(t) x v(t) = 0 and that doesn’t mean the current has to be zero – just that it always applies when no voltage across the device exists, which could be a dead short.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152742",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T14:29:57",
"content": "Or, if i(t) is always zero then that’s a cut wire – open circuit.In both cases the load seen by the power system is actually the transmission line itself.",
"parent_id": "8152739",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152764",
"author": "Cliff",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:21:58",
"content": "If the pf is zero, then the current can not be zero, nor the potential.If pf is zero, there is no net power delivered. Energy is sloshing back and forth from source to load, the only dissipation being delivery losses (I squared R loss, transformer and parasitic losses, etc)",
"parent_id": "8152739",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152922",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T21:50:18",
"content": "You take the instant power and then average it over one wave period. If there’s a 90 degree phase shift between voltage and current, then the integral sum becomes zero – no real power – but there must be current going into the load.Here’s where it gets confusing: for calculating the apparent power, if you integrate the average of current over the same time period then you also get zero. Duh, it’s alternating – it always averages to zero – no net current. What you do is take the RMS average instead, which “rectifies” the value. That’s the net current.PF can also be made zero by shorting the line for one half cycle and opening it for the next. First you get no voltage across the load (dead short) but current is present, next you get no current through the load but voltage is present. That way the real power is always zero, but the RMS current and RMS voltage are not, which means you can calculate P/Pa without running into infinities.That would be one badly behaving SMPS.",
"parent_id": "8152764",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152762",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:20:29",
"content": "So, renewables (solar, wind) are not so good in providing reactive power for stability, even if that’s mostly driven by cost. In the absence of stability provided by spinning reserves (gas, generally, but also hydro), other mechanisms are available. Inverters and batteries are good for hour-scale corrections. But plain old flywheels are a viable means of grid support too.https://beaconpower.com/technology/has been doing it for a couple of decades.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152844",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T17:54:21",
"content": "Homes even as backup.",
"parent_id": "8152762",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152865",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T18:22:34",
"content": "I hope there are some ways to “multi-purpose” wind turbines toA) use the existing generator with a flywheel during off-time (no wind / already too much energy in the grid)B) and/or maybe even use the generator(=motor) to lift a lead weight inside the high towers and use it as energy storageCould even be possible to do both at the same time: Use generator + flywheel as grid support and simultaneously use the wind-power to lift the weight.I assume neither option is really feasible – both from a physical/engineering and the economical one – but one can dream… :-)",
"parent_id": "8152762",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153069",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T09:43:28",
"content": "Heavy weight in the top of the tower would need a much sturdier tower though, it’s already almost swaying in the wind while holding up a large generator with large blades sticking out and the forces created by those.And you could of course also dig a hole and have the weight be lower and be pulled up to ground level, except most windpower towers are at sea now.",
"parent_id": "8152865",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153071",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T09:47:34",
"content": "Interesting story, thanks for sharing it.It’s the kind of stuff that makes comment sections worth it; since you learn to look out for stuff.",
"parent_id": "8152865",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153072",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T09:49:34",
"content": "GODDAMN IT HaD, can you please not force me to close my damn browser after each comment to have it be placed correctly?",
"parent_id": "8152865",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155275",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T14:58:22",
"content": "People re-invent the “lead weights hoisted up a tower” idea every few months, and then they calculate how much weight they’d need to lift to make a meaningful difference, and then they drop the idea.",
"parent_id": "8152865",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152766",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:27:56",
"content": "Another interesting driver of the adoption of HVDC for long transmission lines is that long lines start approaching a quarter wavelength at 60 Hz, and start acting like quarter-wave impedance transformers themselves: Load current changes manifest as voltage excursions at the generator end, making voltage control difficult and causing generator and line trips. HVDC makes 1000 km lines possible by trading those problems for a different set of problems.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152771",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:32:17",
"content": "“trading those problems for a different set of problems” – so many engineering decisions are exactly this.",
"parent_id": "8152766",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154414",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T05:17:51",
"content": "Navigating reality in general is exactly this",
"parent_id": "8152771",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152770",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:30:58",
"content": "That picture up top, it just screams “robot overlord army.”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152774",
"author": "Pedro",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:41:08",
"content": "Easily disabled (shorted) by drone-dropped piece of bicycle brake cable. Don’t ask me how I know (; (; (;",
"parent_id": "8152770",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152895",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T20:09:45",
"content": "I can’t imagine a puny little bicycle cable is going to be much challenge to a kiloamp supply like that. Did it really trip the line, or just make a nice spectacular but inconsequential little pzzzzt?",
"parent_id": "8152774",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152787",
"author": "TiMan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T16:08:31",
"content": "Question: do HVDC lines have electrolysis corrosion problems? I would think that in the 500kV realm even air would cause erosion of the anode cable.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152808",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T17:10:05",
"content": "HVDC is usually made with two wires. One with a positive voltage, and the other with a negative voltage. Only in emergencies and during maintenance the earth is used as GND. There probably are limitations on the impedance of the GND electrode, but I never looked into details. For the majority of the time, the problem is simply avoided.The Wikipedia article I linked to below does node that electrode design for the anode and cathode are different, but again, I don’t know further details.",
"parent_id": "8152787",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152882",
"author": "Cap",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T19:15:58",
"content": "My Grandfather was a Catholic Protection Pioneer for Union Oil Company in California. California did a HVDC Transmission Line from Northern to Southern Ca sometime in the Late 60’s Early 70’s. When they started up the HVDC Line his Cathodic Testing to verify Corrosion Stability went haywire.Ends up the HVDC line was only ONE wire, with a Earth Ground Return. The Return Current of the HVDC Line was going back all the North South Pipe Lines in California, screwing up the Cathodic Protection..He retired shortly after that and I never got a resolution to that Problem..Cap",
"parent_id": "8152787",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152942",
"author": "Power Engineer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T23:12:08",
"content": "Your thinking of the Oregon-California DC Intertie from The Dalles OR to N. LA CA (BPA to LADWP). It’s a bi-pole circuit that did indeed initially operate without a continuous ground conductor, but because of numerous issues, a buried grounded conductor was added.",
"parent_id": "8152882",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153180",
"author": "MM",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T14:15:16",
"content": "Interesting: ” Catholic Protection Pioneer”.Never heard of. Does this protect from child abuse?",
"parent_id": "8152882",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155370",
"author": "EngineerZ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T18:09:31",
"content": "I think the word he was looking for was cathodic, not Catholic. LOL",
"parent_id": "8153180",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152805",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T17:03:07",
"content": "I don’t agree with the introduction here. Back then AC was chosen because it was simpler. Not because it was more complicated. For example, distribution of DC power is complicated, while for AC you only need a bunch of wire and a stack of steel plates on both ends. And by switching taps at a distribution transformer, you can stabilize the voltage of local sections.DC distribution is a real thing, but because of the extra complexity, it is only used when it has clear benefits. For more info:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_currentSynchronizing AC generators is easy. The simplest method is to put two light bulbs in between the local generator and the net. From the blink rate of the lamps, you can see the frequency and phase difference, and when the lights are off, then they are in sync and you can short circuit the light bulbs. And from that moment on, the “generator” either delivers or consumes energy, depending on whether you push it, brake it or freewheel it.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGQxSJmadm0",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152814",
"author": "George",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T17:15:35",
"content": "Here is a real world example of reactive power. The design was the exit signs you have seen in all the commercial buildings. This design used an elector-luminiescent sheet that lit up behind the word EXIT. The task was to measure the power consumed. All power meters were reading zero watts. Upon closer look the elector-luminescent sheet was a BIG capacitor and the current consumed was 90 degrees out of phase with the voltage. The power meters read zero watts as they were measuring volts times amps. I think our conclusion was that the device consumed zero power since power meters at the time could not measure what was going on.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152874",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T19:00:48",
"content": "Real power meters read real power. They don’t care about power factor.Electroluminescent signs draw very little real power: much less than a watt each.The reason a building-scale power meter registers exit lighting as “zero” power is because it is too small to measure, not because it is low power factor.",
"parent_id": "8152814",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152974",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T01:47:22",
"content": "It’s exactly the opposite. Back then power meters were maybe simpler, but the only reason the power meter gave a low power was exactly because it recognized the current as a blind current.If you would just have measured the current (with an oscilloscope, or even a simple DMM) then you would have seen the blind current. So I guess it’s more like ignorance or incompetence of the people involved. Maybe it was just different times back then.In more modern times, the power meters meet all relevant factors, up to harmonics and distortion. EMC verification with the help of stuff such as a LISN (Line Impedance Stablisation Network) is also common procedure of product design.",
"parent_id": "8152814",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153384",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T23:58:35",
"content": "Analog wattmeters could successfully measure real power, at least for loads with a simple phase shift like motors and fluorescent tubes. They went completely nuts with switching mode stuff, or just couldn’t measure anything off of them.Digital wattmeters are a whole different kettle of fish. Some can’t even measure a purely resistive load properly, because they’re fudging the calculation by assuming some “common” power factor for “common” household loads. You get what you pay for.",
"parent_id": "8152974",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153920",
"author": "That_Guy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T21:36:16",
"content": "As a Meter Tech at a utility I can tell you that the residential meters we use, (Aclara 2s CL200s and CL320’s) only “assume” that the transformer that feeds the house is center tapped at exactly the center ( IE 120+120 on a 240V service) if it’s not built correctly and its actually something like 119 and 121 a 2s will over meter one and under meter the other leg, but unless your electrical panel is extremely unbalanced, those basically add up to a zero.The resolution to see and meter a switching power supply is not an an issue, I can’t remember the specs off the top of my head but its something like a 16 bit DAC and a sample rate of 60-100 samples per cycle.I can’t talk too much about other brands of meters, but I can say that the law in my state says that meters have to be within 2% for accuracy. The Class accuracy of the meters we use is 0.2%, and when testing meters, which I do a lot of, we almost never find a meter that tests bad, somewhere outside 0.2%.",
"parent_id": "8153384",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155797",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T08:13:54",
"content": "and a sample rate of 60-100 samples per cycle.That’s the problem. Many early (and some recent) “kill-a-watt” type power meters just phase lock to the zero crossing and measure the peak voltage and peak current through some sort of simple filtering, with some estimation or assumption of the phase shift. They do not integrate the waveform by taking multiple samples, nor calculate RMS. They’re just glorified cheap multimeters pressed to measure something they can’t.That means, if there’s noise on the line or the current waveform is not a sine, they don’t really know what’s going on.",
"parent_id": "8153920",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152872",
"author": "Stephan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T18:53:36",
"content": "the aticle is just plain wrong on this part:“Unfortunately, these devices do not have the ability to absorb or generate reactive power, and instead blindly follow the current grid frequency and voltage, even if said grid was going through reactive power-induced oscillations.”grid following inverters can absolutely generate reactive power by injecting current out of phase with the AC voltage. and this is very well used and even mandatory in some countries now, because it’s the core function for voltage regulation. what they can’t do is contribute to frequency regulation, because that requires active power injection thus need energy storage for that.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152876",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T19:03:31",
"content": "What you said is true, but wrong in context. Read the surrounding text in the article, and look at the report on the Iberian blackout.",
"parent_id": "8152872",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153156",
"author": "eLuke",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T13:33:31",
"content": "Uhm… this sentence I think should be rewritten:“Although P = I × V gets us the real power in watts, it is the apparent power that is being supplied by the generators on the grid, meaning that reactive power is effectively ‘wasted’ power.”IxV gets apparent power. IxVxPF is real power. The rest of that sentences causes parse error and does not explain -why-reactive power is wasted power.(It is because the current flowing back and forth heats the lines by IIR losses. That heating is real power too, but heating lines is not useful. The reactive power itself is not wasted, it just bounces back and forth between capacitive and inductive loads and the generator(s). Losses in the wires convert (part of) it to real power as heat and that power is lost each bounce)PF is cosphi, as can be seen in the graphic with the triangle.",
"parent_id": "8152876",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153160",
"author": "eluke",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T13:44:25",
"content": "Not meant as reply but as comment",
"parent_id": "8153156",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8157742",
"author": "JaneHze",
"timestamp": "2025-08-04T22:22:20",
"content": "Came here to say that. Definitely a few power fundamental flubs in here. Sadly.",
"parent_id": "8153156",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154100",
"author": "Marco",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T07:57:20",
"content": "They have active power, the majority of active power during a sunny day in Spain and they can modulate it in a millisecond. If they were grid forming they could push the grid frequency/phase any which way they wanted.Soon they will have over 100% of potential active power for the grid when the sun shines, then the lack of foresight from the regulators will hurt a bit. Gridforming statcoms or gridforming synchronous condensers can stabilize the grid just fine even if all the generation is grid following, without significant storage too … unfortunately the low voltage grid will just run at nominal plus 10% voltage continuously when the sun shines since growth of generation is outpacing day+ scale storage and it is very hard way to get them to generate a lower voltage (EU only has some handwaving for standardization of small inverter control … so even if they wanted to retrofit control, it would be very hard).Not a disaster, but running at the upper edge of allowed voltage so much of the time won’t be ideal either.",
"parent_id": "8152872",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8155802",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-29T08:26:14",
"content": "If they were grid forming they could push the grid frequency/phase any which way they wanted.Assuming they have the power reserve to modulate it up and down.If you’re already pushing out as much as your panels produce, you can’t arbitrarily add more. You can always throttle down to keep some “headroom”, of course, but that means you’re not producing as much energy and your profitability suffers.And there’s the problem of clouds. If you’re “grid forming” and a cloud passes overhead, well you’re not grid forming anymore until the cloud goes away. That’s actually a major reason why solar panels and solar farms cause grid frequency oscillations: clouds sweep over the landscape and cause big power fluctuations that last from seconds to hours, shifting power flows in and out between shaded and sunny areas.The real solution to the issue is having batteries everywhere, so you’d have an actual powerreservelike the spinning turbines of conventional power plants have, but nobody wants to pay for that. Especially not the solar power producers.",
"parent_id": "8154100",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152881",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T19:15:14",
"content": "I have a new Trane heat pump. Trane was famous for having poor RF noise emissions on their equipment, so naturally I measured mine the day it went in. It’s dead silent. Amazing.Then I measured the current draw: 0.78 amps continuous, even when OFF. 190 “watts” (actually VA…). So I called in Trane, escalated it all the way up to find out what’s up. While waiting for the tech to arrive I measured the power factor too. 0.04. Hmm. OK, so not real real power, but still: why so much current?Tech arrived, replicated my measurements, was mystified as I was, and took a deeper dive into the thing.There’s amassiveline filter on these units, and all that current is actually the filter capacitors across the line: entirely reactive load, very effective at nuking the RFI, but still presenting a huge load on the line.That 0.78 amps might be entirely capacitive, but the line feeding it still must supply the current, and I^2*R still applies.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153073",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T09:52:58",
"content": "Interesting story, thanks for sharing it [Paul].It’s the kind of stuff that makes comment sections worth it; since you learn to look out for stuff.(had to repost the comment to go to the correct person, sigh)",
"parent_id": "8152881",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153149",
"author": "Dennis",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T13:02:33",
"content": "If you want to know more about the blackout I can commend these videos (with English translation unless you’re German):https://youtu.be/oF5rHr0qapgThe presenter talks about the role of PV, slow drift processes and the difficulties of maintaining a stable grid, even in the wake of structural changes to it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153158",
"author": "eLuke",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T13:42:36",
"content": "“In the case of modern switching-mode power supplies, automatic power factor correction (APFC) is applied, which switch in capacitance as needed by the current load”Nah. In old atx psus the power factor correction was a big inductor in series to compensate for the big capacitor after the rectifier.In modern ones, it is a kind of boost converter, to always draw input current instead of only at the top of the sinewave.Modern high PF led drivers are also the boost converter design. (Causing flickering in the LEDs just below .normal. human perception. Unless done properly in which case it is imperceptible even to non-standardised humans. )I have not seen one that switches in capacitance yet. Not saying they don’t exist.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,477.254581
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/22/paste-extrusion-for-3d-printing-glass-and-eggshells/
|
Paste Extrusion For 3D Printing Glass And Eggshells
|
Aaron Beckendorf
|
[
"3d Printer hacks"
] |
[
"3d printing",
"eggshell",
"glass",
"paste extruder"
] |
In contrast to the success of their molten-plastic cousins, paste extrusion 3D printers have never really attained much popularity. This is shame because, as the [Hand and Machine] research group at the University of New Mexico demonstrate, you can use them to print with some really interesting materials, including
glass
and
eggshell
. Links to the respective research papers are here:
glass
and
eggshells
, with presentations in the supplemental materials.
To print with glass, the researchers created a clay-like paste out of glass frit, methyl cellulose and xanthan gum as shear-thinning binders, and water. They used a vacuum chamber to remove bubbles, then extruded the paste from a clay 3D printer. After letting the resulting parts dry, they fired them in a kiln at approximately 750 ℃ to burn away the binder and sinter the frit. This introduced some shrinkage, but it was controllable enough to at least make decorative parts, and it might be predictable enough to make functional parts after some post-processing.
Path generation for the printer was an interesting problem; the printer couldn’t start and stop extrusion quickly, so [Hand and Machine] developed a
custom slicer
to generate tool paths that minimize material leakage. To avoid glass walls collapsing during firing, they also wrote
another slicer
to maintain constant wall thicknesses.
The process for printing with eggshell was similar: the researchers ground eggshells into a powder, mixed this with water, methyl cellulose and xanthan gum, and printed with the resulting paste. After drying, the parts didn’t need any additional processing. The major advantage of these parts is their biodegradability, as the researchers demonstrated by printing a biodegradable pot for plants. To be honest, we don’t think that this will be as useful an innovation for hackers as the glass could be, but it does demonstrate the abilities of paste extrusion.
The same team has previously used a paste printer to
3D print in metal
. If you don’t have a paste printer, it’s also possible to print glass
using a laser cutter
, or you could always
make your own
paste extruder.
| 14
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152750",
"author": "Eran",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T14:57:32",
"content": "Seehttp://www.filament2.com– paste 3d printing using regular filaments.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152763",
"author": "anon",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:21:22",
"content": "were you scared of CF cancer inducing fibers?wait till you hear about glass containing ones !",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152810",
"author": "psuedonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T17:11:54",
"content": "Coarse (on the nanometre scale) glass frit is nothing compared to fibrous CF and other asbestos-like nanoscale javelins. Even if you use powder frit (rather than the 0/00 that appears to be in use here) with an actual silicosis risk, the powder is contained within the paste. This is unlike in FDM, where the filament is heated and offgasses, carrying with it aerosolised filler material (including your CF fibres).Maybe hold off on pooh-poohing risks until you actually understand them (e.g. cancer is a secondary risk to asbestosis when it comes to aerosolised nanoscale fibres).",
"parent_id": "8152763",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153811",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T17:27:37",
"content": "Are you sure about those numbers? None of the materials you mention are typically in the nanometer scale, except perhaps the very finest frit at 0.1 um (100 nanometers) Asbestos concerns, in particular, is in the several micron scale, not nanoscale. And “Coarse” glass frit is in the tens of microns, most emphatically not “nanometre scale”)",
"parent_id": "8152810",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152765",
"author": "G-man",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:25:04",
"content": "“research group at the University of New Mexico” not exactly a DIY project then.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152767",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:28:22",
"content": "Its a motorized syringe in place of an extruder. Theyve been built by tons of hobbyists in the past. Theres nothing stopping you from DIYng this.",
"parent_id": "8152765",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152848",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T17:58:25",
"content": "Well not with that attitude",
"parent_id": "8152765",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152841",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T17:50:55",
"content": "This introduced some shrinkage, but it was controllable enough to at least make decorative parts, and it might be predictable enough to make functional parts after some post-processing.Which is to say that more research is needed in order to make the shrinkage uniform.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152886",
"author": "J. Samson",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T19:32:52",
"content": "This is for all the writers and editors, not just you— I really enjoy the writing, but then I run into “we don’t think…” I’m getting so tired of the “we” (and please stop calling it “royal”: look it up, it’s called the editorial “we”). Many of the writers here do it, but not in a way that makes any sense. Did you ask anyone else if they think that the eggshell printing (which is pretty cool) is a useful innovation? Isn’t it really just you? Own your opinions and stop saying “we” as if it lends more credence to your personal views. It isn’t journalism: it’s disingenuous, insincere, and insinuates that the whole staff of a respected tech blog agrees with you. It’s a cheap trick, and beneath you (plural). I’m actually interested in the biodegradable eggshell printing, but your article is biased towards it being irrelevant, so you didn’t give it a fair write-up. I don’t care if the (editorial, not royal) “we” is a part of your style guide, it’s incorrectly (or untruthfully) being used to signify the agreement of the staff or the readers. I mean, think about it: you write about an innovative 3d printing process using paste extrusion with novel materials, but you think only the glass material is innovative and insinuate that everyone agrees. Let the opinions battle it out in the comments where they belong. (Unless this is just super-deep trolling: Benchoff?)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153006",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T03:50:19",
"content": "If you trust journalists just because they say “I” instead of “we” then I have a bridge to sell you.",
"parent_id": "8152886",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153284",
"author": "Jim J Jewett",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T18:13:41",
"content": "If the story is checked — even in a cursory manner — by an editor, that justifies the plural.",
"parent_id": "8152886",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153786",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T16:56:03",
"content": "We always run posts by an editor. And when the piece is clearly a personal-experience thing, we write in the first-person singular.Otherwise, the giant-Hackaday-hivemind writes in the plural, and has for ~20 years now.We’re sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. :)",
"parent_id": "8153284",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153361",
"author": "none ra",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T22:27:05",
"content": "lots of words to bother someone else about a personal problem. We think its for of a you problem than an us problem.",
"parent_id": "8152886",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152919",
"author": "Chuck Hull",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T21:40:15",
"content": "I’ve always said “paste extrusion is the way”, but no one would listen. Now look where we are.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,477.390416
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/22/floating-buoy-measures-ocean-conditions/
|
Floating Buoy Measures Ocean Conditions
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"Science"
] |
[
"buoy",
"ocean",
"science"
] |
Out on Maui, [rabbitcreek] desired to keep track of local ocean conditions. The easiest way to do that was by having something out there in the water to measure them. Thus,
they created a floating ocean sensor that could report back on what’s going on in the water.
The build uses a Xiao ESP32-S3 as the brains of the operation. It’s paired with a Wio-SX1262 radio kit, which sends LoRa signals over longer distances than is practical with the ESP32’s onboard WiFi and Bluetooth connections. The microcontroller is hooked up with a one-wire temperature sensor, a DF Robot turbidity sensor, and an MPU6050 gyroscope and accelerometer, which allow it to measure the water’s condition and the motion of the waves. The whole sensor package is wrapped up inside a 3D printed housing, with the rest of the electronics in a waterproof Pelican case.
It’s a neat project that combines a bunch of off-the-shelf components to do something useful. [rabbitcreek] notes that the data would be even more useful with a grid of such sensors all contributing to a larger dataset for further analysis.
We’ve seen similar citizen science projects executed nicely before, too.
If you’ve been doing your own ocean science, don’t hesitate to let us know what you’re up to
on the tipsline!
| 11
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152655",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T10:08:34",
"content": "Very cool. I’ve done this on a professional level but a bit of a different use case. It’s to measure temperature, co2 and some other measurements for government research. In my case, it’s all powered using an ethanol generator. These ones are put near the poles so solar wasn’t a good option. That would be a good option for this one to extend the runtime. Sadly I’m not allowed to say much about it due to NDA.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152658",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T10:27:27",
"content": "With gov research obliterated a fast speed, especially environmental research, you might be freed from your NDA soon…",
"parent_id": "8152655",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152754",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:05:01",
"content": "Yeah I’m already seeing a push with the ham radio people to highlight the ability to download the satellite weather data which I know has always been possible… Maybe stuff like that is just going to become a “thing”",
"parent_id": "8152658",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152665",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T10:48:29",
"content": "so… the essence of your comment is that you did something else that also floats but are not allowed to tell us any more.",
"parent_id": "8152655",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152673",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T11:11:48",
"content": "I recently learned that the majority of the plastic waste in the ocean is caused by discarded fishing gear (nets and such).Took them a few decades as well as banning plastic straws to find that out then?I guess the second on the list is discarded research buoys..P.S. Not that I care too much about the straws itself, it’s just so silly to hype that up and by doing so suggesting it was a major cause.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152686",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T11:51:54",
"content": "Youre saying this like its a bad thing.",
"parent_id": "8152673",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152855",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T18:01:03",
"content": "Hey! Name stealer!",
"parent_id": "8152686",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152702",
"author": "0xdeadbeef",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T12:56:35",
"content": "I recently learned that the majority of the plastic waste in the ocean is caused by discarded fishing gear (nets and such).I’d love to see your source for that claim.https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plasticssays:The other 20% to 30% comes from marine sources such as fishing nets, lines, ropes, and abandoned vessels.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w(linked from the ourworldindata site) does say that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch’s mass is 52% abandoned/lost marine equipment, but while the GPGP may receive an outsized share of media coverage, it’s only an exceedingly small portion of the total water area on Earth. The vast majority (70-80%) of plastics in our oceans comes from land, typically winding up in the ocean in runoff.",
"parent_id": "8152673",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152860",
"author": "Thomas",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T18:11:30",
"content": "I’d like to know what the objective of this was.I’m confused. Initially I wanted to know what the objective of this is, but the explanations confuse me even more.The introduction in the Instructable says:The sewer systems in the cities re-injects the effluent into wells that try to dissipate the outflow below the clean water lens that we sip our fresh water from.when I search for “clean water lens” it seems to be a water layer under ground1. How is that related to ocean water and their turbidity?what fresh water ocean are there? Lakes sure, but oceans?For the most part these systems work! E-colli contamination is rare and the ocean water is only turbid for a few days after one of the seasonal rains. I built a tiny floating buoy that remotely monitors the sea conditions near me and reports it on a web link.I can think of rainfall overflowing the wells, spilling sewage into the ocean. But where is drinking water directly siphoned off the ocean? And even if they refer to a lake, how is the clear water lens related to the lake then?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153290",
"author": "Jim J Jewett",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T18:42:23",
"content": "How big are the waves? As long as they are putting out a buoy, might as well check water temperature and how clear the water currently is. Making it about safety or sewage might be just for “audience appeal”, or might be why they care how clear the water is.",
"parent_id": "8152860",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152875",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T19:02:52",
"content": "I think I would just use something like this, together with whatever sensors I wanted to use. It was designed for use on balloons but could be used for just about any kind of remote monitoring.https://qrp-labs.com/u4b.html",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,477.43797
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/21/coleco-adam-a-commodore-64-competitor-almost/
|
Coleco Adam: A Commodore 64 Competitor, Almost
|
Heidi Ulrich
|
[
"computer hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] |
[
"c64",
"Coleco",
"coleco adams",
"commodore 64",
"modular",
"z80"
] |
For a brief, buzzing moment in 1983,
the Coleco Adam
looked like it might out-64 the Commodore 64. Announced with lots of ambition, this 8-bit marvel promised a complete computing package: a keyboard, digital storage, printer, and all for under $600. An important fact was that it could morph your ColecoVision into a full-fledged CP/M-compatible computer. So far
this sounds like a hacker’s dream
: modular, upgradeable, and… misunderstood.
The reality was glorious chaos. The Adam used a daisy-wheel printer as a power supply (yes, really), cassettes that demagnetized themselves, and a launch delayed into oblivion. Yet beneath the comedy of errors lurked something quite tempting: a Z80-based system with MSX-like architecture and just enough off-the-shelf parts to make clone fantasies plausible. Developers could have ported MSX software in weeks. Had Coleco shipped stable units on time, the Adam might well have eaten the C64’s lunch – while inspiring a new class of hybrid machines.
Instead, it became a collector’s oddball. But for the rest of us, it is a retro relic that invites us to ponder –
or even start building
: what if modular computing had gone mainstream in 1983?
| 65
| 17
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152662",
"author": "Hardly Felspar",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T10:42:29",
"content": "Neat machine! I miss those days, when everything personal computing was new and innovation – even the stuff that never quite worked – was everywhere.Glorious chaos, indeed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152966",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T01:22:38",
"content": "Fully agree. It was a wonderful time of discovery and learning!",
"parent_id": "8152662",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152666",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T10:55:42",
"content": "As a C64 owner I always looked with envy at those two cassette drives. Although one is just an empty bay allowing for the upgrade of adding a second cassette drive. The concept of the computer fully controlling the tape seems like so much fun to use.It wasn’t until a few years ago until I saw some YouTube videos of these tape drives (and their problems), somehow they weren’t as magical as I imagined. But still, the concept of fully automated tapes is soooooo cool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152916",
"author": "fluffy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T21:34:40",
"content": "I remember one of my neighbors had one of these and I thought it wasreally coolhow the tape could support random-access reads, for about 10 seconds until I realized howreally slowit was to perform a seek operation.",
"parent_id": "8152666",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152701",
"author": "Matt Cramer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T12:47:12",
"content": "I remember my father hacking Coleco Adam power supplies to run our C64s in the ’80s. The power supplies were available cheap and a lot more reliable than the Commodore design.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152705",
"author": "Clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T13:10:51",
"content": "Atari 8bit was superior hardware wise to the c64And better software (os rom, etc), basically the first USB serial port, and later the pbi bus for hard drives, ram, or another CPUZ80 or 6809 run whatever you want",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152710",
"author": "Clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T13:14:50",
"content": "The graphics system was a true Dma system, way back in 1979Although the display list wasn’t fully turning completeCan’t do memory operationsMy Atari clone display can modify its own display listEven modern upgrades allow the Atari to be more comparable to later IBM PCWith a 65816 instead of 6502C (no not 65c02 different chip,6502c has built-in tristate control and halt, not a 3mhz variant, just an Atari custom chip)",
"parent_id": "8152705",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152791",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T16:19:34",
"content": "“Atari 8bit was superior hardware wise to the c64”Weren’t both made by same designer?",
"parent_id": "8152705",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153114",
"author": "Clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:03:12",
"content": "No the Amiga and Atari 8bit wereAtari st ironically was designed by c64 engineers",
"parent_id": "8152791",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153810",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T17:27:30",
"content": "Ah, I see. Thanks.",
"parent_id": "8153114",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152711",
"author": "localroger",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T13:16:03",
"content": "Actually, it was the IBM PC whose lunch an on-time Adam might have eaten. You underestimate the power of that shitty printer. Yes, it was shitty, but it was letter quality in a day when many professional outlets and editors were starting to refuse to read dot-matrix manuscripts, and the entire Adam was cheaper than the cheapest low-quality standalone daisy wheel printer you could find. Laser printers were the stuff of Popular Electronics world of the future articles. With the printer, not very good but good enough for personal use, the entire ColecoVision library of games, and enough RAM to easily run a spreadsheet had one ever been ported, Adam could have been a quick and cheap route to a real home office with lots more fun stuff available if that didn’t work out. Oh, and you could run the detachable keyboard through ordinary RJ-12 6-pin phone cable and use your TV as a display while sitting on the couch.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152715",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T13:18:48",
"content": "When I was very little we had a ColecoVision. I remember my dad saw an add for the expansion to turn it into a computer. He asked my mom and I if we would like to turn the game system in to a computer.Now at that time if you asked me if I would like to have had a computer it would have been a definite yes. But the way he worded the question.. I thought it meant we would no longer have a game console! So I said “no way”. Mom probably understood but was happy not to spend the money. And getting a computer was put out of mind for several more years until we finally got a Tandy 1000.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152890",
"author": "mechamaniaman",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T19:52:17",
"content": "In August of 1984, Charles Winterble, formerly of Commodore’s MOS Technology, joined Coleco as VP of Computer Products to lead the ADAM team! I’m sure Bil Herd has some stories to share.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152931",
"author": "Maker",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T22:35:40",
"content": "I bought one off of EBay like 6 years ago, just out of nostalgia because my folks wouldn’t get me one when it came out. It remains in the basement, in its original box to this day, unopened (by me). Maybe I should open er up…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152938",
"author": "thzinc",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T22:50:30",
"content": "Ah, good memories. This was my first computer. I still have my tattered copy of the ADAM SmartBasic Programmers Manual on my bookshelf.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153291",
"author": "CJ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T18:45:56",
"content": "Same here. I think I only really used it for word processing and BASIC programming to make my own CYOA stories. Spent hundreds of hours on it. The printer used to shake my desk right across the room!",
"parent_id": "8152938",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153214",
"author": "coinsa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:30:23",
"content": "I had one of these as a kid. The cassettes were terribly slow, but it had some fun games. We eventually got a 5.25″ external floppy drive for it as well, but I only used it to save text files from the word processor. I don’t know if there was any software that came on floppies for it. The system came with a copy of SmartBasic and I would type in the code from Family Computing magazine for biorhythms or ascii skiing. It also came with LOGO and I would play around with drawing shapes and patterns. One of the coolest things was an expansion you could get that would let you play Atari 2600 games. It connected to the side of the main chassis and would have a second cartridge slot. Our actual Atari 2600 had died, so we used the ADAM. The Coleco controllers were crazy too. One set had a joystick, a keypad and a scroll wheel on top and 4 buttons on a pistol-grip style handle. We eventually gave it to my uncle once we got a 386.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153371",
"author": "Greg",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T22:55:25",
"content": "I wanted to love the ADAM so badly. We bought one, returned it due to issues with the DAT. The replacement unit suffered the same fate. From there, we went with the 64. I had my eyes on Atari – in or around that time – but the price point was out of reach for a single-income, blue collar family of five.What a wild ride though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153454",
"author": "Drake Lacy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T02:30:34",
"content": "My mom bought me one of these as a kid. I started coding in basic and got all the way to make my own version of a Tron Light Cycle game (basically a two player Snake). Not long after, someone broke into our house and stole it, among other things. Had that not happened, I’m convinced I would have been an indie game developer. Loved that machine!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153460",
"author": "Chuck",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T02:41:15",
"content": "I loved my Adam! Playing colecoVision games through the cartridge slot, dual tape drives, upgraded ram, and AdamBasic. Yes, Adam had a version of basic. We had a filing cabinet full of games on tape, some were multi-tape games. We had a 13 inch black and white tv attached to it, but I dreamt in color. I so want one, just to bring back that little 8 year old kid who had the world at his finger tips.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153523",
"author": "Nadia Lundy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T06:25:10",
"content": "I learned to code on a hand-me-down Coleco ADAM. Ironically, I went on to marry someone who is also a fan. It’s a niche market, but he makes modern mods for Coleco ADAM and ColecoVision:https://lundyelectronics.com. Old school!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153851",
"author": "Bruce Blackerby",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:04:19",
"content": "The Atari 520 ST was another contender. Motorola 60000 16/32:bit processor. GEM graphical user interface in ROM, for instant bootup. VT 52 terminal emulator in ROM. PC compatibility through software or hardware box. Mac compatibility through hardware box (Magic Sack). Built in SCSI and MIDI. 640 X 400 monochrome graphics (pointy W’s, as a friend commented), 320 X 240 color graphics. All for a lot less than an IBM PC. But Atari under Tramiel was clueless. Amazing they did as well as they did…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154281",
"author": "Richard DiRocco",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T17:33:59",
"content": "I still have mine up and running and feature it online @http://www.colecovisionadam.com",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8155361",
"author": "Krys2fur",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T17:52:40",
"content": "I still have mine in the original box along with an external 5-1/4″ floppy drive and a 300 baud modem that I installed. Also for the ones above, I also still have my original first PC which was an 8088 but I believe that’s a clone of the original 8086 that IBM used.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,477.730481
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/21/testing-your-knowledge-of-javascripts-date-class/
|
Testing Your Knowledge Of JavaScript’s Date Class
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Software Development"
] |
[
"javascript"
] |
JavaScript is everywhere these days, even outside the browser. Everyone knows that this is because JavaScript is the best programming language, which was carefully assembled by computer experts and absolutely not monkeyed together in five days by some bloke at Netscape in the 90s. Nowhere becomes this more apparent than in aspects like JavaScript’s brilliantly designed
Date
class, which astounds people to this day with its elegant handling of JavaScript’s powerful type system. This is proudly demonstrated by the
JS Date quiz
by [Samwho].
Recently [Brodie Robertson] decided to
bask in the absolute glory
that is this aspect of JavaScript, working his way through the quiz’s 28 questions as his mind gradually began to crumble at the sheer majesty of this class’ elegance and subtle genius. Every answer made both logical and intuitive sense, and left [Brodie] gobsmacked at the sheer realization that such a language was designed by mere humans.
After such a humbling experience, it would only seem right to introduce the new JS convert to the book
JavaScript: The Good Parts
, to fully prepare them for their new career as a full-stack JS developer.
| 18
| 9
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152581",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T02:36:52",
"content": "Wow, I’m only half way through the quiz and yeah, it’s 100% garbage.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152617",
"author": "Faz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T06:33:33",
"content": "Very true. Some of the answers are downright ridiculous or make no sense. Like UTC+1 is treated by the class as UTC-1.. How is that supposed to stay consistent with a unified timing scheme???",
"parent_id": "8152581",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153002",
"author": "Theo",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T03:23:04",
"content": "A date in UTC+1 would be substracted by 1 hour in UTC",
"parent_id": "8152617",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154452",
"author": "Bashir Ibrahim",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T08:04:09",
"content": "At a point i just told me self “this is stupid”. Looks so non-deterministic!",
"parent_id": "8152581",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152595",
"author": "az4521",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T03:25:13",
"content": "the best part is none of this behaviour is in the actual JS standard, everything except parsing a simplified ISO 8601 datetime string is implementation-definedhttps://tc39.es/ecma262/multipage/numbers-and-dates.html#sec-date.parse",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152624",
"author": "luca",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T07:26:38",
"content": "In fact half of the questions give a different result in Firefox than what shown in the video.",
"parent_id": "8152595",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152634",
"author": "Johnu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T08:00:12",
"content": "Honourable mention of:https://wtfjs.com/And:https://www.wooji-juice.com/blog/javascript-article.htmlWhich includes this quote:In fact, it’s a surprisingly powerful, expressive language, and could’ve been a very elegant bit of work.However, it is not.It is a dark festival of pain. Gotchas lurk in the darkness, biding their time. Brooding. Like bears: They Will Eat You.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152651",
"author": "Mr T",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T09:59:45",
"content": "Long time since I’ve been chuckling almost continuously throughout a video.This actually shows why the whole world should standardise on ISO 8601 dates, so mine is, at the time of writing, 2025-07-22 or, with the time too, 2025-07-22T11:00:00+01:00",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152688",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T12:05:32",
"content": "What’s that +01 nonsense? Just get rid of time zones, and run everything off GMT!",
"parent_id": "8152651",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152802",
"author": "Rick C",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T16:51:44",
"content": "Ah , a Flat Earther!:)",
"parent_id": "8152688",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152817",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T17:17:38",
"content": "Let him run circles, but tethered, to prevent falling.",
"parent_id": "8152802",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152681",
"author": "AbraKadabra",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T11:34:13",
"content": "Must have used JS to calculate publication date for this article. Missed 2025-04-01 by … Damn, how do you use JS date???",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152725",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T13:33:21",
"content": "Why don’t you go back to Java and it’s date handling around 1999. February 31st wants to hear from you.Seriously, date handling across damn near everything is filled with potholes and speed bumps. Try correcting for time zones and day light saving time on “partially” managed data.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152730",
"author": "rjg",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T13:52:47",
"content": "could try sending Date() a date in a format it likes, see if that works",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152981",
"author": "Christian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T02:06:56",
"content": "“I scored 10/28 onhttps://jsdate.wtfand all I got was this lousy text to share on social media.”That’s one messy parser…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153025",
"author": "Cory Johnson",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T05:39:12",
"content": "Laughing at Date is fun and all, but honestly we’re looking at a 30 years old spec that was hastily put together. Anyone serious about date manipulation today will use an external library, or the upcoming Temporal, Date’s native replacement, that is very elegant and so much more powerful.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153057",
"author": "Maya Posch",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T08:12:12",
"content": "Of course, that’s rather the point as well, that everything in JS is so decrepit and dysfunctional that you get the weekly ‘framework/module’ that promises to Fix All Ills.Since it’s a prototype language, you can do an incredible amount of things with JavaScript fairly easily, but no bounds or limits also means a lot of chaos. Then you get the whole NodeJS/ECMAScript/etc. standards kerfuffle where everyone is doing their own thing, and the only thing that is certain is that something is going to explode violently on PROD.I did a few years of commercial (embedded) JS development, and it was very enlightening. It also made me vow to only ever touch JS again in the form of TypeScript, if only for the sake of my sanity.",
"parent_id": "8153025",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153267",
"author": "Anton Kovalenko",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T17:28:28",
"content": "JavaScript really needs support for operator overload so we can actually make sensible libraries",
"parent_id": "8153057",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,477.786878
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/21/a-lockpicking-robot-that-can-sense-the-pins/
|
A Lockpicking Robot That Can Sense The Pins
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"lockpicking hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] |
[
"lockpicking",
"robot"
] |
Having a robot that can quickly and unsupervised pick any lock with the skills of a professional human lockpicker has been a dream for many years. A major issue with lockpicking robots is however the lack of any sensing of the pins – or equivalent – as the pick works its magic inside. One approach to try and solve this was attempted by the [Sparks and Code] channel on YouTube,
who built a robot
that uses thin wires in a hollow key, load cells and servos to imitate the experience of a human lockpicker working their way through a pin-tumbler style lock.
Although the experience was mostly a frustrating series of setbacks and failures, it does show an interesting approach to sensing the resistance from the pin stack in each channel. The goal with picking a pin-tumbler lock is to determine when the pin is bound where it can rotate, and to sense any false gates from security pins that may also be in the pin stack. This is not an easy puzzle to solve, and is probably why most lockpicking robots end up just brute-forcing all possible combinations.
Perhaps that using a more traditional turner and pick style approach here – with one or more loadcells on the pick and turner- or a design inspired by the very effective Lishi decoding tools would be more effective here. Regardless, the idea of making lockpicking robots more sensitive is a good one, albeit a tough nut to crack. The jobs of YouTube-based lockpicking enthusiasts are still safe from the robots, for now.
Thanks to [Numbnuts] for the tip.
| 15
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152616",
"author": "Krzysztof",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T06:30:01",
"content": "Regardless, the idea of making lockpicking robots more sensitive is a good oneThat’s exactly what we need. Robots getting easier access to locked rooms. Very good idea.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152636",
"author": "Johnu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T08:02:05",
"content": "I’d suggest that security research, be it white hat hacking or LockPickingLawyer roasting badly designed locks on Youtube, is valuable as it informs the public and hopefully encourages suppliers to do better.I certainly think anyone watching more than 1 LPL video would be unlikely to make the mistake of buying a Masterlock product ever again for example.",
"parent_id": "8152616",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152642",
"author": "Krzysztof",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T08:57:07",
"content": "Exposing companies producing crappy products is good. Massively lowering a skill level needed to access a locked home is not good.I hereby declare “easy-pickable lock fallacy”. It’s half-hearted version of broken window fallacy. “I will make your lock so easy pickable and irrelevant, that you have to buy better lock for more money”. And a robot able to pick locks will make ALL locks a little less secure. First version will be able to pick easy locks. Next version will be able to pick better locks until a lock will cost as much as rest of the door.",
"parent_id": "8152636",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152644",
"author": "Krzysztof",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T09:01:04",
"content": "I’ve also picked one lock in my life, it was a decent looking “three digit code lock” on a bike. Bike was chained to a barrier, we needed access to it but owner was non-contactable, so I rechained the bike nearby. Friend was surprised how fast I picked it :D.",
"parent_id": "8152642",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152672",
"author": "slowbro904",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T11:09:55",
"content": "Hate to be the bearer of bad news but the lock-picking robot is already here. That cat is already out of the bag.",
"parent_id": "8152644",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152695",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T12:27:55",
"content": "Fallacy. If you want to break in, break a window. It´s way faster. Or just concentrated nitric acid, squirt it in the lock, come back a couple of hours after, force turn it open.Destructive methods have the advantage, how much percent of burglaries result of a picked lock honestly ??? Even if such a tool exist, it won´t be cheap. Probably more expensive than a pneumatic cutter than can easily cut 1 inch thick steel bar without a sweat or noise.",
"parent_id": "8152642",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152647",
"author": "Jan-Willem Markus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T09:48:06",
"content": "I applaud the creator for his creativity and persistence. This is the third iteration of this robot, and another creator build a similar device after the first build as well. The use of a tool where wires are feed through holes in the key which align with the pin stacks is called a Sputnik. This was original a tool designed by a criminal in the 80’s, and through reverse engineering the forensic marks the tool was reinvented by the security industry.In the second robot, the creator used it to brute force the locks instead of implementing the Sputnik algorithm. The Sputnik abuses the fact that the first pin on many Euro cylinders was a standard pin, with the rest spool pins. After the first pin is lifted to the shearline, you wobble the tool left and right. When pushing up any of the spool pins, the wobble decreases and then sharply increases. This pin is now set. This process is repeated until the lock is open. Just don’t forget to retract the wires before removing the tool from the lock.In this latest iteration, the author got quite close in determining the length of the pin by measuring the force on the pin. I’ve worked on this problem as well, and found it to be rather difficult due to the limited space and inconsistent friction within the lock. However, finding the binding pin is the basis of lockpicking. Simply by applying torque to the lock and finding a binding pin, you’ve now learned which pin was not at the correct height. After setting this pin higher, you are one step closer to a picked lock. Rinse and repeat until the lock is open. This process should open his lock within ten minutes with his current setup.The projects are quite close, yet so far. I see there is little interest in actually learning the subject before attempting the project, and the creators give up too easily. This is quite similar to how people approach all the so called ‘unpickable locks’. There are people who have spent decades on the subject If you have a design and want expert opinion, just send the Open Organisation of Lockpickers an email.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152650",
"author": "Alun Morris",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T09:58:26",
"content": "Fabulous video and effort.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152653",
"author": "George Graves",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T10:04:04",
"content": "“Thanks to [Numbnuts] for the tip.”LOL.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152780",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:50:09",
"content": "I’m guessing that the biggest problem is with the servo’s. These cheap blue servo’s are quite horrible, and with the big pinion on it, you also use a small proportion of the servo movement, which makes it worse. Changing the big pinion and rack for an excenter, that just has enough (about 3mm?) of movement over 180 degrees of rotation is probably already a lot better.Or go back to stepper motors :) You can buy small stepper motors with built in all thread for linear motion quite cheaply.Yet another option for improvement is to make better guides for the wire. The less these boden wires can move sideways, the better. Also, any kink in the wire (especially in bends) greatly influences the force transmission from the motor to the lock pin. I have not seen measurements of how well the measured force with the loadcell translates to force on the pins and springs. And if these have a bad correlation, then it will be difficult to make it work. You can measure / estimate it by using very long and heavy pins, and move the wires slowly. That way, the pin force will be constant, and changes you measure in the loadcell force will be due to other causes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153062",
"author": "adobeflashhater again",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T08:58:15",
"content": "I find myself wondering about high frequency vibration and “listening” to (and feeling feedback) the changes of the pins sounds as you move them. Could you feed the push wire with an ultrasonic driver. Something somewhat like a sonic knife setup? What went with those “hummingbird” gadgets from a while back?I guess that you would likely need some sort of noise filtering in the software to improve the reading of the pin in play. Run a baseline buzz sound of the lock while not pushing pins and then use that to filter the sounds as you move a pin. Perhaps run a noise sample while moving a couple of the pins also.The moving pin sample could help with sorting out the noise from the push wires themselves as they change extension and loading.A bit like you do with the de-hissers~de-noisers in PC music kit.Seems like the top pin portion noise would change notably when it moves out of the rotating cylinder.I expect that it would affect the spring noise also.Just some 5 am musings.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153063",
"author": "adobeflashhater again",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T09:09:35",
"content": "P.S. I expect that you could find other uses for this sound/sonic probe setup. finding cracked parts or voids in castings. Comparisons of rollers or balls in a bearing. How near to failure point of seal materials (maybe the spring in them) Tappet valves in engines.Anyone got access to an ultrasound listening unit for checking cardio and veins? Who knows what a good/golden ear might glean from just taping a lock as you use the medical kit to listen.",
"parent_id": "8153062",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153653",
"author": "iliis",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T11:57:31",
"content": "Maybe you could acoustically measure the length of the pins directly, essentially doing time-domain reflectometry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-domain_reflectometer).Or you might be able to measure the resonance frequency of a pin and infer it’s size from that.",
"parent_id": "8153062",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153077",
"author": "Cricri",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T10:09:02",
"content": "This starts with the assumption that all springs have the same K value. If I had been investigating that solution, my first experiment would have been to create a very simple jig just to test this hypothesis on the 5 springs of the lock, and if the results suggested that K value varied, that would have told you right away the solution wasn’t viable.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153307",
"author": "make piece not war",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T19:30:13",
"content": "In order to prevent lock bumping, at least one of the springs is much stiffer in propper locks.Also driver pins can be choosed such all pairs of pins have the same length or close.",
"parent_id": "8153077",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,477.883356
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/21/2025-one-hertz-challenge-its-hexadecimal-unix-time/
|
2025 One-Hertz Challenge: It’s Hexadecimal Unix Time
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"clock hacks"
] |
[
"2025 One Hertz Contest",
"clock",
"unix time"
] |
[danjovic] came up with a nifty entry for our 2025 One-Hertz Challenge that lands somewhere between the categories of Ridiculous and Clockwork.
It’s a clock that few hackers, if any, could read on sight
—just the way we like them around here!
The clock is called Hexa U.T.C, which might give you an idea why this one is a little tricky to parse. It displays the current Unix time in hexadecimal format. If you’re unfamiliar,
Unix time
is represented as the number of non-leap seconds that have ticked by since 1 January 1970 at 00:00:00 UTC. Even if you can turn the long hex number into decimal in your head, you’re still going to have to then convert the seconds into years, days, hours, minutes, and seconds before you can figure out the actual time.
The build relies on an ESP32-S2 module, paired with a 7-segment display module driven by the TM1638 I/O expander. The ESP32 syncs itself up with an NTP time server, and then spits out the relevant signals to display the current Unix time in hex on the 7-segment displays.
It’s a fun build that your programmer friends might actually figure out at a glance. As a bonus it makes an easy kicking-off point for explaining the
Year 2038 problem
. We’ve featured
other similar Unix clocks before, too.
Video after the break.
| 9
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152476",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:16:51",
"content": "I have to go finish my Epochalypse clock. Only 12.5 years to go.Or four weeks, I guess, if I want to put it in the contest.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152489",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:48:27",
"content": "seems the time for C0FFEE is already over. Got to wait for DEADBEEF…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152614",
"author": "Lennart",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T06:09:08",
"content": "If I got it right that time was in 1952-04-14 15:27, at least in a UNIX system…",
"parent_id": "8152489",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152691",
"author": "0xdeadbeef",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T12:21:58",
"content": "Nope. Unix timestamps start at Jan 1, 1970.0xc0ffee would be Wed May 27 09:27:10 GMT 1970",
"parent_id": "8152614",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152724",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T13:32:32",
"content": "Contrary to some beliefs, the universe existed before 1970. And timestamps were negative numbers. 0xDEADBEEF is -559038737 seconds, 17.7 years before 1970.Hence the rollover concern for 2038, when the 32 bit number goes negative again, plunging us all back to pre-WWI.",
"parent_id": "8152691",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152512",
"author": "Sheldon Michael James Bench",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T22:40:36",
"content": "55789A69",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152573",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T01:46:04",
"content": "Or my personal favorite, ABAD1DEA.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152586",
"author": "0xdeadbeef",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T02:47:21",
"content": "The timestamp in the thumbnail pic:$ perl -E ‘say scalar gmtime hex shift’ 0x68675a69Fri Jul 4 04:36:57 2025",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152772",
"author": "David Bloodgood",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:35:38",
"content": "Even easier if you use a Cheap Yellow Display …",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,477.831066
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/21/freezer-monitoring-because-ice-cream-is-a-dish-best-served-cold/
|
Freezer Monitoring: Because Ice Cream Is A Dish Best Served Cold
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"home hacks"
] |
[
"DS18B20",
"grafana",
"prometheus",
"Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W"
] |
[Scott Baker] wrote in to let us know about his
freezer monitor
.
After a regrettable incident where the ice cream melted because the freezer failed [Scott] decided that what was called for was a monitoring and alerting system. We enjoyed reading about this hack, and we’ll give you the details in just a tick, but before we do, we wanted to mention [Scott]’s justifications for
why
he decided to roll his own solution for this, rather than just using the bundled proprietary service from the white goods manufacturer.
We’re always looking for good excuses for rolling our own systems, and [Scott]’s list is comprehensive: no closed-source, no-api cloud service required, can log with high fidelity, unlimited data retention, correlation with other data possible, control over alerting criteria, choice of alerting channels. Sounds fair enough to us!
The single-board computer of choice is the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. As [Scott] says, it’s nice to be able to SSH into your temperature monitoring system. The sensor itself is the DS18B20. [Scott] 3D printed a simple case to hold the electronics. The other materials required are a 4.7k resistor and a power cable. The instructions for enabling the 1-wire protocol in Raspbian are documented in
INSTALL.md
.
When it comes time for programming, [Scott’s] weapon of choice is GoLang. He uses Go to process the file system exported by the 1-wire drivers under
/sys/bus/w1/devices
. He sets the Pi Zero up as an HTTP endpoint for Prometheus to scrape. He uses a library from Sergey Yarmonov to daemonize his monitoring service.
Then he configures his ancient version of Prometheus with the requisite YAML. The Prometheus configuration includes specifications of the conditions that should result in alerts being sent. Once that’s done, [Scott] configures a dashboard in Grafana. He is able to show two charts using the same timescale to correlate garage energy usage with freezer temperatures. Mission accomplished!
Now that you know how to make a freezer monitor, maybe it’s time to
make yourself a freezer
.
| 23
| 14
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152439",
"author": "Gio",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T19:33:37",
"content": "Every time I see the piss-colored filter GPT likes so, so much, the subtle inconsistencies in patterns, the clunky text and the smooth-yet-still-blurry outlines everything somehow has in a genAI picture, I immediately dismiss the article that follows as low effort spam.95% of the time, this mental filter is accurate, shame for the other 5% though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152444",
"author": "Kelly",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T19:57:10",
"content": "The project seems a bit overboard for one analog signal. I just use a thermistor and a 8-bit MCU, beeper does fine. Perhaps an Edison would be better lol.Something not utilized in the blog, that I do in commecial HVAC product F/W is look at the cycle times and the slope of the temperatures, to forecast a problem. You don’t know freezer thermal load (how much warm food got put inside) but can still see if something is cutting out, the compressor having troubles starting, someone left the door open, condensor needs to be cleaned, defrost needed etc.I dislike the project’s temperature sensor taking hours to settle down. That seems like it is poorly located. Way too slow.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152448",
"author": "Luke",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T20:02:19",
"content": "Right? Like a photo or illustration of a refrigerator would have worked just fine.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152459",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T20:26:34",
"content": "The use of a Pi seems so overkill for this.Maybe they had one knocking around in a drawer and felt the need FIND a use for it even if it wasn’t the best choice? I know I’m guilty of that.Wouldn’t a ‘fancy’ ESP32 board with an SD slot have been just fine?I know I also have plenty of those in a drawer since you can get a handful (5x or more) from AliExpress for less than $20 shipped.(ESP-CAM boards have SD slots. And you don’t HAVE to use the camera…)And that assumes you actually want the logging to be local. But do you?But I digress.Too bad the original author uses GenAI.That’s an automatic nope from me.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152511",
"author": "Marc P",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T22:26:23",
"content": "https://galopago.github.io/english/wifi-sensor-nocode-nosoldering/",
"parent_id": "8152459",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152472",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:05:42",
"content": "I noticed it immediately too. Much Yuk.Second thing that i noticed was the waste of a 4-core ARM to …. monitor the temperature with one.wire sensor ? really.C´mon, grab a cheap ESP8266, flash ESPHOME on it and in few clicks configure the sensor in home assistant, job done. At a fraction of the power envelope of the Pi Zero 2w",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152563",
"author": "Gryd3",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T00:35:44",
"content": "ESP-01 here… used 1-wire and a set of 4 DS18B20 probes to monitor an AirCon unit.Evaporator Air In / Out, and Condenser Air In / Out. I used Tasmota, and grabbed the readings from the rpc ‘status’It supports more than 4 probes… I didn’t get around to monitoring refrigerant temperatures…As for the fridge, I grabbed a small battery powered temperature probe (Looks like a golf ball), turned off ‘cloud’ and use MQTT to retrieve temperature updates.",
"parent_id": "8152472",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152481",
"author": "JR.",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:21:05",
"content": "FWIW, I have set up my Home Assistant instance to accomplish the same thing using a zigbee temperature sensor.There are, it seems, many ways to skin a cat.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152491",
"author": "a_do_z",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:54:31",
"content": "Well…that wouldn’t really be my choice, but at least Home Assistant lets you rest assured that it’s being preserved at a suitable temperature.",
"parent_id": "8152481",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152776",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:41:31",
"content": "Careful, the HaD comment section has lost their minds at the mention of a skinned cat before…",
"parent_id": "8152481",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152783",
"author": "Gardoni",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:56:19",
"content": "Something like this perchance?https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/media.media.798e4859-8445-4632-af29-c248fa298cba.original1920.jpg",
"parent_id": "8152776",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153279",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T18:01:39",
"content": "Dach Hase aka “roof hare” . Something that many Europeans ate during difficult times. White meat like rabbit, tastes similar. Depending how it´s cooked, it can be quite hard to tell from a real rabbit.https://de-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Dachhase?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp",
"parent_id": "8152783",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152504",
"author": "0xdeadbeef",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T22:12:06",
"content": "So, just how is he monitoring the freezer temperature with this? Running the DS1820B’s wires underneath the door seal will ensure the seal doesn’t properly keep cold air in. He could drill into the side of the freezer, but that seems overkill.Unfortunately, he left this little detail out.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152582",
"author": "Zygo",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T02:37:02",
"content": "For my deep freeze temp sensor I used some very fine ribbon cable with some of the tape they use to shrink wrap boats over it. IR camera doesn’t indicate any leaks, which doesn’t mean there aren’t any but if there are they are likely negligible.",
"parent_id": "8152504",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152683",
"author": "ca_heckler",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T11:39:33",
"content": "Checking the comments before reading the article, but I’m saddened that this crucial detail was left out. I have my freezer monitored too**(see below) and I passed thin single-wire strands through the door seal, then covered it with electrical tape to try and flatten it out. Still, there’s ice forming around that point, which means it is not forming a good seal.I may end-up drilling on the back of the freezer. I though about passing the sensor wires through the water drainage pipe that collects the runoff from the defrost cycle, but that is a bit narrow and I worry the wire might lead to the possibility of clogging there.** with an ESP8266 running ESPHome and the data going into Home Assistant. In good “keep it local” fashion, even if HA is not running, the ESP has a buzzer and plays a tune if the temp is high for >5min. But HA allows for nicer things, like phone notification.",
"parent_id": "8152582",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152661",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T10:41:23",
"content": "Magnet wire and tape is so thin it does not affect the seal. Run it on the hinge side and it’s also well protected from accidental ripping",
"parent_id": "8152504",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152527",
"author": "DurDurDur",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T23:37:40",
"content": "Living in hurricane country losing a freezer worth of food can be a multiple times a year loss, though this “alert system” wouldnt be of much use there.My cousin swapped the compressor from a $50 craigslist chest freezer with a $200 DC compressor from ebay, rigged up a Tesla Model S module with a charger and a buck converter. In total he has about $800 invested. A DC freezer the same size costs almost double that without having a week long power reserve.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152569",
"author": "ian 42",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T00:58:33",
"content": "I agree with the above, using a Pi does seem a bit silly. A low power 8266 or esp32 would have been better – and you could get the temperatures with the ULP and only wake up the cpu (and wifi) if the temperature rose and an alert needs to be sent.. Would run off a 18650 for about a year or before charging again..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152570",
"author": "jbx",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T01:00:55",
"content": "If it’s just about preserving ice cream in the freezer against a breakdown, it’s pointless for me : the average lifespan of the ice cream I just bought is less than the survival time after a freezer malfunction.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152593",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T03:22:53",
"content": "Everyone is entitled to their opinion but I personally quite like it.It’s an odd thing to comment on, I’m a photographer and I’ve seen some build photos that could definitely have been shot in a way that communicated more detail or were aesthetically less than pleasing but I’ve never felt the need to post a comment about it. On the other hand, I understand that the urge to post about AI art is stronger for some individuals because an unusual number of people view its use or non use as political (and that’s fine too).Anyhoo, as always and not directed at you exclusively, if you disagree with something in an article, be the change you wish to see in the world.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152612",
"author": "William C Bonner",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T05:58:38",
"content": "I use Govee Bluetooth thermometers to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures. The battery lasts about a year and I don’t have to run wires past a seal.https://github.com/wcbonner/GoveeBTTempLogger",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152621",
"author": "RoganDawes",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T07:05:51",
"content": "This seems like a perfect use case for a flex PCB. ESP32 or equivalent on top of the fridge/freezer, outside of the faraday cage, flexPCB with a DS18b20 on it run under the magnetic seal.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152785",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T16:06:07",
"content": "i don’t get it. the freezer has a thermometer built into it that it uses to decide when to run the compressor. if the freezer is broken, it needs to be repaired. this device is just another thing that needs to be repaired when it breaks.i have ds18b20 temperature sensors scattered around my house talking via dallas one-wire to an stm32 board hanging off of one of the usb ports on my ‘basement server’ PC. i understand wanting to know temperatures, but it’s just another thing i have to fix (though its been a while since a kid or rodent has destroyed one, knock on wood)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,477.948948
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/21/fixing-human-sleep-with-air-under-pressure/
|
Fixing Human Sleep With Air Under Pressure
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"Medical Hacks",
"Slider"
] |
[
"CPAP",
"medical",
"sleep",
"sleep apnea"
] |
By and large, the human body is designed to breathe from birth, and keep breathing continuously until death. Indeed, if breathing stops, lifespan trends relatively rapidly towards zero. There’s a whole chunk of the brain and nervous system dedicated towards ensuring oxygen keeps flowing in and carbon dioxide keeps flowing out.
Unfortunately, the best laid plans of our body often go awry. Obstructive sleep apnea is a condition in which a person’s airways become blocked by the movement of soft tissues in the throat, preventing the individual from breathing. It’s a mechanical problem that also has a mechanical solution—the CPAP machine.
Under Pressure
Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when the airway is blocked when muscle tone relaxes during sleep. Credit:
public domain
The underlying mechanism of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is quite straightforward. During sleep, as the throat, neck, and skeletal muscles all relax, the tongue and/or soft palette can come to block the airway. When this happens, fresh air cannot pass to the lungs, nor can the individual exhale. Breathing is effectively halted, sometimes for minutes at a time. As the individual’s oxygen saturation drops and carbon dioxide levels build up, the brain and nervous system typically trigger an arousal in which the person enters a lighter stage of sleep or wakes up to some degree. The arousal may simply involve a change of position to restore normal breathing, or the individual may wake more fully while gasping for air. Having cleared the airway and resumed normal respiration, the individual generally returns to deeper sleep. As they do, and the muscles relax again, a further obstructive apnea may occur with similar results.
For those suffering from sleep apnea, these arousals can occur many hundreds of times a night. Each disrupts the normal cycles of sleep, generally leading to symptoms of serious sleep deprivation. These arousals often occur without the individual having any awareness they occurred. Sleep apnea can thus easily go undiagnosed, as individuals do not know the cause of their fatigue. In many cases, reports of heavy snoring from sleeping partners are what leads to a sleep apnea diagnosis, as breathing typically becomes louder as the airway slowly closes due to the muscles relaxing during sleep.
Ultimately, the solution to sleep apnea is to stop the airway becoming blocked in the first place, allowing normal breathing to continue all the way through sleep. The problem is that it’s difficult to access the tissues deep in the airway. One might imagine placing some kind of mechanical device into the throat to keep the airway open, but this would be highly invasive. It would also likely pose a choking risk if disrupted during sleep.
The ResMed AirSense 10 Elite, a modern CPAP machine. Note the humidifier attached on the side. This helps reduce instances of dry mouth or similar issues during use. Credit:
VSchagow
, CC BY-SA 4.0
Enter the CPAP machine—short for “continuous positive airway pressure.” Invented by Australian doctor Colin Sullivan in 1980, the idea behind it is simple—pressurize the individual’s airway in order to hold it open and prevent the tongue and soft tissues from causing a blockage. Air pressures used are relatively low. Machines typically deliver in the range of 4 to 20 cm H
2
O, which has been found sufficient to keep an airway open during sleep. The CPAP machine doesn’t breathe for the user—it just provides air to the airway at greater than atmospheric pressure.
A Lowenstein Prisma SMART CPAP machine, with hose and mask attached. Credit:
Mnalis
, CC0
Key to the use of CPAP is how to get the pressurized air inside the airway. Early machines pressurized a large helmet, with an air seal around the neck. Today, modern CPAP machines deliver carefully-controlled pressurized air via a mask. Nasal masks are the least-invasive option, which pressurize the whole airway via the nostrils alone. These masks require that the mouth remain closed during sleep, else the pressurized air is free to leave the airway. Full-face masks, which are similar to those used for other medical procedures, can be used for individuals who need to breathe through their mouth while sleeping.
Overall, a CPAP machine is relatively simple to understand. It consists of a pump to provide pressurized air to the mask, and a user interface for configuring the pressure and other settings. CPAP machines often also feature humidification to stop the supplied air from drying out the user’s mouth and/or nose. This can be paired with heated tubing to warm the air, which avoids condensation from forming in the tube or mask during use. This is called “rainout” and can be unpleasant for the user. Modern machines can also carefully monitor pressure levels and airflow, logging breathing events and other data for later analysis.
A full face mask for use with a CPAP machine. Nasal-only masks are also popular. Credit: public domain
CPAP treatment is not without its issues, however. Users must grow accustomed to wearing a mask while sleeping, as well as adjust to the feeling of breathing in and exhaling out against the continuous incoming pressure from the machine. It’s also important for users to get a suitable mask fit, to avoid issues like skin redness or pressure leaking from the mask. In the latter case, a CPAP machine will be ineffective at keeping an airway open if pressure is lost via leaks. These problems lead to relatively low compliance with CPAP use among those with obstructive sleep apnea. Studies suggest 8% to 15% abandon CPAP use after a single night, while 50% stop using CPAP within their first year. Regardless, the benefits of CPAP machines are well-supported by the available scientific literature.
Studies have shown
that use of CPAP treatment can reduce sleepiness, blood pressure, and the prevalence of motor vehicle crashes in those with obstructive sleep apnea.
Nobody likes the idea of being semi-woken tens or hundreds of times a night, but for sleep apnea sufferers, that’s precisely what can happen. The CPAP machine is the mechanical solution that provides a good night’s rest, all thanks to a little pressurized air.
Featured image: “
wide variety of masks at cpap centra
” by [Rachel Tayse]. (Gotta love that title!)
| 68
| 21
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152389",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T17:13:50",
"content": "I’ve been using mine for more than 25 years, and it’s been a great help. Before I was diagnosed with apnea, I was passing out while driving in the middle of the day despite doing everything I could to keep myself awake. By the time I had been using CPAP for a month, I had stopped passing out behind the wheel completely.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152419",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:16:02",
"content": "A coworker had 3 car accidents that could be attributed to this; he was prescribed a cpap machine and never used.The medication he was on gave him tremors which later became permanent. He was put on leave multiple times for falling asleep in meetings at work; and was eventually pushed into retirement.He walks with a cane now, and needs help to do things like buy groceries.This is what happens when you try and fix the problem without addressing the underlying issues.",
"parent_id": "8152389",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152390",
"author": "Yep",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T17:22:07",
"content": "Are there any novel alternatives? Sleeping with a mask on sucks.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152391",
"author": "TheSleeperMustAwaken",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T17:26:36",
"content": "There’s an implant. Don’t know much more than that, but it seems geared towards light snorers.",
"parent_id": "8152390",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152393",
"author": "aki009",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T17:35:38",
"content": "Daily exercise. Different bed and pillow. Cooler sleeping conditions. O2 generator with a nasal cannula.",
"parent_id": "8152390",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152421",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:17:55",
"content": "Exercise only helps in some few cases. Most apnea patients have airway constrictions that have nothing to do with being overweight.Sleep position has an influence on apnea severity. Sleeping on your back is the worst position. It makes apnea far worse. Better is to sleep on your side, with a pillow that is high enough that your wind pipe is straight.I don’t know that cooler is better, but from the temperatures the last few weeks it seems that warmer is worse.There are some people who need oxygen in addition to CPAP because they have other lung problems. Oxygen alone doesn’t do the trick. It doesn’t matter how much oxygen is in the air if it can’t get to your lungs.",
"parent_id": "8152393",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152608",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T05:15:09",
"content": "The science disagrees with you. It’s a convenient line for the body positivity movement but weight loss is a potent treatment in many cases.https://doi.org/10.1378/chest.09-0360",
"parent_id": "8152421",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153962",
"author": "Pagoda84",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T23:40:47",
"content": "Skinny guy here with (former) sleep apnea. There are multiple causes of sleep apnea. Most, however, are probably associated with being somewhat overweight, just not all. I had to get surgery (turbinate reduction) after 8 years of using CPAP. Thank goodness it helped.I wish there was more innovation on CPAP masks. They work (trust me) but they do suck to use.",
"parent_id": "8152608",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152400",
"author": "a_do_z",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T17:49:31",
"content": "Wearing a mask and not sleeping didn’t feel so great. For the month I tried CPAP, I didn’t sleep more than 4 hours per night. That was considerably less than I got with my disturbed sleep. It did not progressively get better, despite 100% compliance.I sure wish it had worked. A surgical fix (cause=abnormal tissue formation/amount, not a weight issue) sounds quite miserable.I know somebody who has the Aspire implant. Last I heard, he had abandoned it.There are jaw positioning devices that have helped some people I know, but not me. Expensive for what they are, but worth looking into.",
"parent_id": "8152390",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152492",
"author": "James",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:55:09",
"content": "Don’t know if it’s encouraging or not, but it took more than a month for me to be used to the CPAP. It also kept me awake. It might help to alternate between using it and, it did help me getting used to it. Still sucks to use it though. :-/Also, only the full mask ever worked for me.",
"parent_id": "8152400",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152516",
"author": "Tom",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T23:02:14",
"content": "Agreed…The best solution I found is the full face mask F20 with memory foam surround on my AirSense 10. Sounds a bit over-kill but I reliably sleep for 7 hours with the mask on now. BTW, I also 3D printed some supports for the tube that suspends it over the bed. Still, there are some nights I rip it off of my head :-/",
"parent_id": "8152492",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8168834",
"author": "TheDarkTiger",
"timestamp": "2025-08-25T15:29:27",
"content": "For the jaw positioning device, if it’s what we call “Orthèse d’Avancé Mandibulaire” here, then, it indeed work.But it’s a timed solution, your teeth will eventually move, both making them misaligned (I had to change the way I bite and chew), and rendering the device inoperative.It’s not expensive tho, hundred(s) of dollars I think (it’s covered by health insurance here).Technically, it’s just an overmolding of your teeth with two adjusted lever to force your jaw forward.It helped me greatly when it worked, but now, almost a decade later, it didn’t work anymore and started to cause teeth pain, so I stopped it.I wish you to heal, it’s not a funny disease.",
"parent_id": "8152400",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152401",
"author": "Tjo",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T17:51:36",
"content": "For some a MRA will work. A bit over your teeth. And for some operations. Contact a specialist. Sleeping with a mask is a small price to pay to get your life back. It will give you your energy back.",
"parent_id": "8152390",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152411",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:05:43",
"content": "Lose weight, stop drinking, don’t sleep facing the ceiling. But mostly lose weight and stop drinking. Just about everyone these days needs to lose some weight and also reduce stuff like tissue inflammation that really exacerbates this.",
"parent_id": "8152390",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152422",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:20:42",
"content": "Losing weight only helps in a small percentage of cases. Most people with apnea simply have narrow airways.Alcohol causes your muscles to relax, which can make apnea worse. Not drinking reduces apnea a bit, but will not make it go away.",
"parent_id": "8152411",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152423",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:24:45",
"content": "Eh I think a much broader set of cases is related to being overweight than we are admitting right now. Most body types we now consider as normal would have been classed as overweight only a few decades ago, and most people who think of themselves as in shape or even skinny are deluding themselves",
"parent_id": "8152422",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152450",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T20:03:19",
"content": "I was 5′ 10″ (1.8 meters) and weighed 135 pounds (62 kg) when my wife noticed that I had apnea. I don’t think that counts as overweight.",
"parent_id": "8152423",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152499",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T22:04:33",
"content": "“Here is a general statement about an aggregate population”“Oh yeah well I know a guy who is an exception, so the average doesn’t exist”You failed, sorry about your sleep apnea though",
"parent_id": "8152423",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152424",
"author": "EF",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:25:41",
"content": "People love to recommend losing weight as an alternative to using a CPAP, but often weight gain is related to poor sleep. Unreasonable working hours and at times maintaining multiple jobs/side-hustles limit people’s ability to go out during the day, exercise, meal prep and eat properly, etc…All of those things affect sleep quality in addition to overall health, which leads people to gain weight. Even if weight gain is the cause of sleep apnea, and it’s usually a combination of factors, untreated sleep apnea can make losing/managing weight impossible.I felt like absolute shit when I started using a CPAP and I slept worse for the first month. Then I adjusted to it and immediately started having more energy to exercise, fewer horrible cravings and drops in energy, I healed quicker, I got sick less, all made it easier to exercise and eat correctly and I ended up almost effortlessly dropping 70lb. Now I am much healthier and have fewer apneic events, but I still use my CPAP because I still stop breathing in my sleep without it even when I am at a healthy weight since losing weight didn’t magically change the shape of the inside of my face, cure my allergies, etc…",
"parent_id": "8152411",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152530",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T23:50:58",
"content": "Pretty fascinating angle on it, I’m certainly glad to entertain the idea that the causality is reversed.",
"parent_id": "8152424",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152568",
"author": "Chyneuze",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T00:57:29",
"content": "Same thing for me, I changed doctors and he had exactly the same reasoning about the fact that I couldn’t control my weight.I went to see him for increasingly frequent problems where I woke up in the middle of the night with the airways blocked, before that rarely happened to me, like when I had a cold, but it started to do it to me any night. He told me that it is surely due to a severe apnea and prescribed me one night with a ventilatory polygraph. Result: 40-something sleep apnea per hour.So prescription of a CPAP and there he asks me if I’m having trouble losing weight, I explain to him that it’s the yo-yo, by making consistent efforts I manage to lose well but impossible to stabilize. And there I heard the same speech, so that people don’t realize how much of a vicious circle it is, that losing weight helps to fight sleep apnea, but that sleep apnea can also cause rapid weight gain. As well as the migraines, which I had every week…It took me about 4 weeks to adapt, but what a crazy sensation it was to wake up in the morning without being tired, I didn’t even realize how exhausted I was.The migraines are still there, but much more spaced, sometimes months.And in 3 years I lost almost 20kg, it’s not just apnea that is responsible, but I think it played a great role in the balance.",
"parent_id": "8152424",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152415",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:12:40",
"content": "Superconducting magnets that reduce the gravity on tissues (like the classic levitating frog experiment) ;)",
"parent_id": "8152390",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152451",
"author": "Tally Tables",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T20:04:38",
"content": "An alternative is an “Oral Appliance”, of which there are two major types.Mandibular Advacement Devices (MADs) which are like a night guard/retainer for both the top and bottom teeth. The bottom is adjustable so you can pull forward the lower jaw by a few mm and unblock your obstructed airway as a result. This can cause jaw soreness and bite issues in some patients, and you typically need to do some jaw stretches before and after sleep to prevent that, and to keep your lower jaw from “learning” that forward-biased position (resulting in the patient developing an underbite).Tongue Stabilizing Devices (TSDs) use a suction bulb to pull the tongue forward, which also helps prevent the airway from becoming obstructed. These are usually only prescribed to people who’s teeth aren’t strong or numerous enough to use an MAD.Oral appliances don’t work for all apnea cases, especially with more extreme obstructions, so a CPAP is necessary for some patients. My Fiancé uses an MAD and it works excellently for her case. It is cheaper, more convenient, and more sanitary than a CPAP.Further reading:https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/21129-oral-appliance-therapy-for-sleep-apnea",
"parent_id": "8152390",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152452",
"author": "Anton",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T20:05:21",
"content": "Tbf, that part is subjective.For me and a few other folks I’ve met, the mask becomes part of the bedtime routine and helps tell the brain that it’s sleep time. I used to have a lot of trouble falling asleep, but now I just put the mask on and my brain shuts off.It’s also adds some minor conveniences, like the humidifier (so you don’t have to humidify the whole room and risk mold) and the fact that you can completely cover yourself in blankets and still breathe. The modern machines are also freakishly quiet.Airlines legally can’t charge you extra to take the machine on flights (in the US, at least), and car camping still works fine with big ol’ battery. Backpacking is probably the one thing that gets a lot more difficult.It definitely sucks a lot for some people though.",
"parent_id": "8152390",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152821",
"author": "Just sayin'",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T17:25:38",
"content": "Agreed. Had one for a few months. Couldn’t sleep with it and I ended up worse than I had begun. Ended up having nasal surgery and losing a bunch of weight and the problem was resolved.",
"parent_id": "8152390",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152822",
"author": "Rick",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T17:26:42",
"content": "I’m an old MD & ex-Pilot who had this issue & was forced to use CPAP for years by the FAA.Other treatments are nasal airway, “LAUP” operation, plus some intra-oral devices may help.I solved mine by losing 68#.",
"parent_id": "8152390",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152926",
"author": "wheels",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T21:59:16",
"content": "Take up playing the didgeridoo:https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1360393/",
"parent_id": "8152390",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154204",
"author": "keneng",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T13:36:33",
"content": "Reading helps me fall asleep",
"parent_id": "8152390",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154967",
"author": "indrora",
"timestamp": "2025-07-28T01:25:43",
"content": "It varies!One path to this is that the core jaw muscle can loosen during sleep and the tongue presses back against the airpath. The solution to this can be a jaw jig (think a retainer or mouth guard) that tugs the lower jaw forward and keeps your airway clear. Insurance can make it easier but they’re $$$Another option is a Bipap — CPAP is one way, BIPAP sucks on the exhale and matches your breathing back and forth. By adding some pressure forward, it’s attempting to overcome the muscular obstruction. CPAP has a bit of a survivorship bias issue, and people who talk about BiPAPs often get overshadowed by the (very successful!) folks who have had their lives changed by a cpap machine. If you’re currently using a CPAP, talk to your sleep doc about trialing a bipap.There are surgical interventions that aim to help, but they’re expensive and low efficacy in general.There are a couple of options that use a modified pacemaker to keep the muscles under a little bit of tension during inhalation, which is an option if you’re willing to use an implant.All in all, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution but we’re getting closer.",
"parent_id": "8152390",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152398",
"author": "CPAP",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T17:44:52",
"content": "No mention of the sound-deadening PE-PUR foam that has been silently degrading in these machines for years, filling user’s lungs with carcinogenic by-products? Nothing about how many owners are still unaware their machines had been re-called, or that manufacturer’s had suspiciously ceased operations?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152587",
"author": "D",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T02:47:45",
"content": "The Phillips machines, but the Resmed 10s, 11s and Air Minis are clean, I think.",
"parent_id": "8152398",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152699",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T12:39:37",
"content": "Only specific models of Philips machines. It is not just CPAP machines, though. There were all kinds of breathing assistance devices affected:https://www.usa.philips.com/healthcare/e/sleep/communications/src-update",
"parent_id": "8152398",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152402",
"author": "QBFreak",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T17:52:04",
"content": "If I skip using mine for more than a single night, I get horrible headaches. Still, I struggled with building the habits of emptying the water reservoir in the morning, filling it at night, and putting the mask on at the appropriate time. I fell asleep with everything ready to go, but the mask off, alotin the early months.I wanted to build some sort of “You’re not using it!” alarm, but I also didn’t want to touch the airway at all. I’ve seen a project that checked for air pressure differential between the airway and the room, but between “this is what keeps me breathing, a life-critical process” and the thought of spending all night breathing in microplastics from a 3D print (don’t get me wrong, Ilove3D printing useful stuff), I just couldn’t do that. I tried monitoring the power usage, but using an appropriate current shunt for the maximum the power adapter could provide, I couldn’t get enough resolution to reliably see what little the CPAP drew when running. Plus it phones home and that was indistinguishable from running.In the end, I created a custom bracket that mounted with some of the CPAP’s existing case screws, and held a micro-switch that detected when the humidifier reservoir was installed (with no modifications to the device). Then I changed my night routine to only insert the reservoir once I was ready for bed. The switch was connected to an ESPHome node of Home Assistant, and engages some colored LEDs elsewhere in the room to warn me that I need to take action. Flashing yellow at full intensity to empty it, or solid red at half intensity to remind me that I haven’t gone to bed yet. By this point I had enough of a routine that I very rarely needed an actual alarm for “you’re not using it,” but with Home Assistant that wouldn’t be a difficult feature to implement.At my last annual checkup, my doctor told me I had 100% usage. The first year was very rocky, so hearing this was wonderful. Having a literal light glaring in the corner of my eye as bed time slowly approached was a big help for me.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152910",
"author": "Ralph",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T20:57:44",
"content": "Your clothes are shedding microplastics constantly and you are breathing them in.",
"parent_id": "8152402",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152418",
"author": "TheSleeperMustAwaken",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:15:46",
"content": "Not a doctor, but diagnosed with sleep apnea in 2007. It literally saved my life. I agree that PAP is annoying and inconvenient, but for those of us who cannot get surgery (when the ENT says “major facial reconstruction”), it’s our best bet.Posting to point out that in addition to obstructive there is also “central” apnea. Basically, for whatever reason your body just stops breathing. Many people have this, and for most it’s not an issue.When you have both obstructive and central, that is called “complex” and that is where things get real fun. This is where one gets prescribed the $10,000 ASV machine.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152529",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T23:47:18",
"content": "There is a large population of non drinking skinny people with central OSA. They are hard to convince that their problems are sleep related but the couple of times they tried a cpap machine they all say “it saved my life”",
"parent_id": "8152418",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152428",
"author": "Parzival",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:57:21",
"content": "My apnea is so bad I have to use a BiPAP, which detects when I am exhaling and drops the air pressure down low enough to allow me to breathe out. I believe it not only senses you breathing rate, but then predicts it a bit, as I cannot feel the pressure dropping or raising at all, but if I breathe quickly out of rhythm for a second I can feel the pressure change.Also, some of them offer masks that cover the mouth and nasal passages, but don’t go over the top of the nose, leaving it clear to be itched. Might seem like a small thing, but it made wearing the thing every night so much more comfortable.Life-changing little device though, for sure.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152445",
"author": "robomonkey",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T19:58:41",
"content": "Been using one for years. Got used to it pretty quick. Definitely better sleep as a result.Yeah, weight loss may help, but at my age weight loss is a difficult task. I’m slowly getting the weight down, but if you think it’s simple, you’re nuts.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152465",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T20:50:58",
"content": "Interesting tangent on ResMed. Likely applies to all off them though.I helped my mother set one of these up years ago, and I was surprised to find a SIM card in it.None of the paperwork had any mention of data collection or anything at all about ‘privacy’ related stuff.So I popped the SIM out and the cell connection symbol on the UI changed to indicate ‘no connection ‘.Perfect right?Nope.The machine powered on just fine but it reused to enter the actual sleeping mode.It just threw an error saying it was unable to connect to the service.After doing more research, there was no way to opt out.And since the company classifies the data as “biometric” instead of “medical” data, they don’t have to comply with HIPAA.And just in case there was even the slightest doubt that they were selling the data, it took less than 2 weeks for me to start getting cold-calls and internet ads about CPAP machines or services.(And no, I did not use any of my accounts or phones while searching for info about that device or an opt out.)I just love how being cyber stalked by dozens or for-profit organizations/corporations has become so completely normalized…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152496",
"author": "Jamieson",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:59:58",
"content": "Yes, there’s a cellular modem in each machine. Always phoning home. Hell probably a microphone “snore sensor” and GPS receiver too. I’m sure the company has some clever ways to build up a user profile even if you don’t install the app, don’t create an account, and don’t register the machine…",
"parent_id": "8152465",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152508",
"author": "cpapuser",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T22:17:51",
"content": "Some do some dont.You can still buy ones that do not have the sim.",
"parent_id": "8152496",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152525",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T23:36:58",
"content": "What do you mean “buy”?In just about every country these are classified as a “medical device” and require a prescription AND ongoing physician supervision.I couldn’t find a single company that could legally sell one to me, that was WILLING to sell one to me directly.You get whatever ones your doctor has, because those are the ones they have ongoing accounts with and the insurance process worked out for.As we keep learning from examples like hearing aids, anything in the realm of “medical devices” is going to be HYPER regulated.Sometimes it’s good.Sometimes it’s not.",
"parent_id": "8152508",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152589",
"author": "D",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T02:51:15",
"content": "Bouhht both of mine without prescription “on the street”. They have odometers so you can check thrme hours.Neither of mine have sim cards, and work fine.",
"parent_id": "8152525",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152583",
"author": "FEW",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T02:38:13",
"content": "The resmed cpaps can also be set to airplane mode to disable the cell connection. The UI constantly asks to re-enable the cell connection, but it’s not necessary. Frustrating that their unit creates a cellular company wifi access point when it is enabled. 😡",
"parent_id": "8152465",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152709",
"author": "Nobody",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T13:13:20",
"content": "Free wifi?",
"parent_id": "8152583",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152500",
"author": "Kirk",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T22:07:10",
"content": "The greatest hack is tissue inflammation from the things we eat. Alcohol, seed oils, gluten and poor nutrition in general. Coupled with how our sinus and mouth opening have reduced because of processed food is low crunch. Suggest fasting to give the body a break while using CPAP. sinus massage might help.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152528",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T23:39:07",
"content": "A better suggestion is not to give out quack “medical” advice on the internet.You have no idea what you are talking about, so please stop.",
"parent_id": "8152500",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152757",
"author": "kirk",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:09:41",
"content": "It is ok you think this way. Food is medicine and the zip code you live in also dictates your outcome. When a person gets into a difficult spot like apnea their ability to troubleshoot and make changes is limited. Thus a doctor is needed. That is why prevention and making practical changes at first trouble is effective.",
"parent_id": "8152528",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152515",
"author": "randall",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T23:02:05",
"content": "i am convinved that the high failure / abandonment rate of CPAP machines is due to consumer models being too basic a design. the next stage would be to have them read your inhalations & and exhalations and adjust the air flow, as opposed to continually forcing air down your windpipe all night long. it would make for a more peaceful sleep and an overall willingness to adopt the machine. i swapped out for a newer model that eases in to the full wind tunnel push after 45 minutes but i just end up throw the %$!&@* mask across the room a bit later than when i used the earlier model.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152627",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T07:37:07",
"content": "Modern machines do exactly that. On ResMed machines, it is called expiratory pressure relief (EPR.) Other manufacturers have similar functions under other names.Say you have a pressure of 12 and an EPR of 3. That means that on inhale, you have a pressure of 12 and on exhale you have a pressure of 9. That’s pretty much what you wanted – lower exhale pressure to make it easier to breathe.The problem is that reducing the pressure on exhale allows more apneas to happen. To make up for that, you have to raise the pressure, usually by as much as the EPR.To make up for using EPR, you have to set the pressure to 15 to fix the apneas causing by reduced exhale pressure. That means an exhale pressure of 12, which is what you’d have had if you just turned EPR off.Adding to that is the fact that the machines get out of step with your breathing when doing EPR or whatever your machine manufacturer calls it. There’s nothing quite like the joy of having the pressure drop to exhale while you are still inhaling.I keep the EPR equivalent on my Löwenstein machine turned off. It has never done anything good for me, and has caused me many nights of grief before I figured out what was going on.My pressure is at the higher end. 17-20 cmH2O. I have no trouble inhaling or exhaling. Put the mask on, breathe normally.If you feel a “wind tunnel” in your face, then your mask is leaking too much, At my full pressure, I don’t feel any air flow on my face or in my mouth/windpipe.",
"parent_id": "8152515",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153391",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T00:13:42",
"content": "Not only do they do exactly what you describe, and have done so for more than a decade, but they do more.Even the cheaper machines now also ramp up from nothing to their operating pressures over time, so you start sleeping without feeling pressure (with adjustable ramps).Most also have live adjustment that changes based on breathing patterns based on a best-guess on what type of sleep you are in, and not simply inhale/ramp-up vs exhale/cutoff.It’s all jut simple sensors and software.IMO the bigger problem with uptake is people being big babies that are unwilling to tolerate the slightest discomfort, regardless of the short/long term benefits.Boo hoo. This thing is EVER so slightly uncomfortable!Instead of adjusting to it until I don’t notice it anymore, I’ll just quit.Future me will have to deal with the consequences.Humans are all lazy, greedy, infantile goblins.Sometimes those urges work out well, like when it drives us to create tools to make tasks easier or methods/processes to get better results.But most of the time it’s a bad thing and requires active correction.",
"parent_id": "8152515",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152571",
"author": "JoeD",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T01:07:35",
"content": "Thank you H.A.D. editor Lewin Day for the excellent description of the sleep apnea problem and CPAP machine solution. Yours was considerably better than the one given to me by my sleep specialist doctor and the equipment provider.This being H.A.D. I’m surprised to see no mention of hacking these machines. I no longer use one (due to a dispute with my equipment provider and insurance) and cannot even remember the manufacturer name (one of the large medical equipment companies) but the unit contained wireless data circuitry to report daily results as soon as I turned off the machine. It may have used AT&T.I was not fond of that privacy intrusion and was unable to apply the “38 caliber solution” to it because it was a rental. I tried wrapping the PCB in aluminum foil to no effect and gave up. Next step would have been to sleep in a Faraday cage :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153395",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T00:24:23",
"content": "These are “medical devices” just about everywhere.That means they need testing, approval, and certification in one specific configuration.Hacking or modding the hardware/software would require going through that whole process again in order to comply with the requirement for your doctor to keep monitoring it’s usage.Obviously that doesn’t work for a one-off hack/mod.It would probably be on the pretty dark side of the grey-area to show off mods and/or encourage others to do them.I’m not saying I agree with this. Just why it happens.That said, medical devices are FAR MORE than the sum of their parts.A CPAP isn’t just an air pump anymore than an artificial heart is not simply a fluid pump.Innovation and experimentation is a good thing.But some things should be outside the realm of a garage hack.",
"parent_id": "8152571",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152626",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T07:36:16",
"content": "I’d like to mention “OSCAR, the Open Source CPAP Analysis Reporter”. It reads the logged data from sd card from a CPAP machine. It enables the user to store, view and analyze this data locally. It generates graphs and statistics.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152628",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T07:39:45",
"content": "Oh, Lord, yes.If your machine is supported, then OSCAR is an enormous help in understanding what goes on at night and how you can improve things.https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR/An alternative is SleepHQ.https://www.sleephq.com/SleepHQ is an online service. It isn’t as detailed as OSCAR, but it makes it easier to share with someone for help in analysing your data.",
"parent_id": "8152626",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152648",
"author": "zogzog",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T09:52:14",
"content": "“Machines typically deliver in the range of 4 to 20 cm H2O”didn’t you mean cmHg ??",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152654",
"author": "c",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T10:08:33",
"content": "1cm H₂O is about 0.98 mbar. Apparently they still use this unit in hospitals.",
"parent_id": "8152648",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152682",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T11:36:18",
"content": "1cm H₂O is about 0.98 mbarWhich is why my German doctor refers to millibar (metric) instead of using the squirrelly cmH2O unit.",
"parent_id": "8152654",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152680",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T11:33:58",
"content": "Centimeter of water is the unit used in CPAP.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centimetre_or_millimetre_of_water",
"parent_id": "8152648",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152657",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T10:21:30",
"content": "I have sleep apnea. I received a machine and send it back after 2 months. I tried it every single night. It made falling asleep even more difficult and it kept waking me up. I never had any issues staying awake during the day. I’m always a bit tired but that’s it. But when trying the machine, I got into several sitautions where I almost had a major car accident because I was so tired that I kept misisng parts. Was driving and suddenly I was somewhere further down the road and a part was just missing. It messed with my job, it made it almost impossible to think. It’s a huge mess. It made all my problems so much worse. I could never get an actual night sleep with the cpap. I send it back. My “solution” which isn’t a solution at all, I know, is to have high stiff pillow. I put my head on the edge of the pillow so that half the head is on it and my face is pointing downwards. I curl up in my blanket and I can get a decent night sleep like that. It’s far from perfect and I’m trying to loose weight. I rarely drink.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152660",
"author": "PSA",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T10:41:04",
"content": "And don’t forget, that the lack of oxygen can lead to heartgrowth and arrhythmia, which is in turn often misdiagnosed / mistreated.If you have heart problems and some years of unsuccessfull treatment history, please go visit a sleep laboratory.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152798",
"author": "Ray D. Congdon",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T16:33:08",
"content": "Been on CPAP for 30 Years. My transition was easy having been an avid SCUBA diver, wearing the mask was a non-issue. Turned my life around! Oh… on little tip. I keep a silver coin (old 1$) in my CPAP water tank. especially when traveling. I find that the silver keeps the Crud to zero, even if I have to resort to tap water for a night or two.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154725",
"author": "pierut",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T01:06:13",
"content": "Neat",
"parent_id": "8152798",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153274",
"author": "Dave Blaker",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T17:36:41",
"content": "I recently got curious about how these worked and so I looked up Resmed patents to see how these work.U.S. Patents No. 5,148,802 and 5,245,995Also see EP1488743A2.The machine can distinguish central apneas from obstructive by looking at the airflow pattern over the time of a breath. Obstructive apnea starts then drops off suddenly. This shows up in some of the drawings.Technical term – Patency or patent = open or not obstructed.There are two sensors – one mask pressure transducer and a differential pressure transducer for flow.Technical term – Obstruction Index and Shape factor = Index of the state of the airway.Approximately 5 seconds into the apnea a 2 Hz, 1 cm H2O pressure oscillation is induced (applied) by the pump for 6 seconds. Then the affect on flow is measured that can determine if the airway is open or not. Modulated pressure output. It’s a network analyzer for your airway!!!I thought the feedback loop for control was interesting. The inner most loop of pressure and motor speed is analog, not digital. Then there are a few outer digital loops for other controls. It’s shown in one of the patents.They could possibly detect your heart beat. Cardiogenic Airflow – observed airflow with each beat of the heart is of the order of 0.02 to 0.1 l/sec.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153468",
"author": "ErnieM",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T03:17:11",
"content": "I’ve been on CPAP and now BiPAP for 20 years now, all Resmed. My first three nights were hell: I would thrash about until I pulled the machine to the floor. Third night… I knocked off a panel n the side. Trip pot and a display. Turned the pot and got a bigger number plus more air!My 4th night I finally got my good night sleep.Today you can’t use a heat code to up your air but the algorithms are much better. Time was I had to leave the auto shutoff disabled least the machine shut down.I’m so acclimated to this I can’t fall asleep with out it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154724",
"author": "pierut",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T01:03:35",
"content": "I’ve been using one for years..fairly recently got the air sense 11.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154876",
"author": "PhillyCheez",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T18:19:13",
"content": "I’m pretty sure the CPAP was a byproduct of CIA research on “enhanced interrogation methods”, i.e. torture.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154956",
"author": "Paul c",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T23:58:17",
"content": "I’ve been licensed to apply these to patients for 15 years. The math for determining what numbers to use is quite fun and rarely discussed. Hope the author gives it a whirl. There’s a LOT of arguments of how to set the numbers the patients use",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,478.310442
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/21/dont-turn-that-old-system-on-first-take-it-apart/
|
Don’t Turn That Old System On, First Take It Apart
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Retrocomputing"
] |
[
"gateway",
"pc",
"power",
"retrocomputing",
"Rifa"
] |
When you first get your hands on an old piece of equipment, regardless of whether it’s an old PC or some lab equipment, there is often the temptation to stick a power lead into it and see what the happy electrons make it do. Although often this will work out fine, there are many reasons why this is a terrible idea. As many people have found out by now, you can be met by the wonderful smell of a Rifa capacitor blowing smoke in the power supply, or by fascinatingly dangly damaged power wires, as the [Retro Hack Shack] on YouTube
found recently in an old Gateway PC
.
Fortunately, this video is a public service announcement and a demonstration of why you should always follow the sage advice of “Don’t turn it on, take it apart”. Inside this Gateway 2000 PC from 1999 lurked a cut audio cable, which wasn’t terribly concerning. The problem was also a Molex connector that had at some point been violently ripped off, leaving exposed wiring inside the case. The connector and the rest of the wiring were still found in the HDD.
Other wires were also damaged, making it clear that the previous owner had tried and failed to remove some connectors, including the front panel I/O wiring. Thankfully, this PC was first torn apart so that the damage could be repaired, but it shows just how easily a ‘quick power-on check’ can turn into something very unpleasant and smelly.
| 35
| 11
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152367",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T16:06:42",
"content": "You know you’re getting older when the power supply of your childhood PC is no longer safe to plug in.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152374",
"author": "SteveS",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T16:22:37",
"content": "Heck, a lot of the stuff I built in my childhood was not safe to plug in in my childhood.",
"parent_id": "8152367",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152380",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T16:43:18",
"content": "Ah. My childhood was standalone and did not need to be plugged in.",
"parent_id": "8152374",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152404",
"author": "a_do_z",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T17:53:37",
"content": "The classic “two nails, one board, and one power cord” hot dog cooker was a notable standout for me. I can’t believe I actually got that one out of a book.There was, later, a commercialized version, but it was fully enclosed. Big babies. ;-)",
"parent_id": "8152374",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152440",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T19:44:03",
"content": "KISSJust tin the end of the power cord wires with silver solder and done.Best to make hook shape with the wire, so the sausages don’t fall off when cooking.A bit more fun in 220 nations.Go for it you fuzzy little foreigners.",
"parent_id": "8152404",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152478",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:18:19",
"content": "Na, we keep hot dogs for … dogs, and no need to cook them.",
"parent_id": "8152440",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152497",
"author": "James",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T22:01:23",
"content": "They have longer wieners, offering more resistance. :)",
"parent_id": "8152440",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152498",
"author": "henningdkf29543cc0f",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T22:04:29",
"content": "Two words: Series connection.",
"parent_id": "8152440",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152588",
"author": "sirstephenh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T02:49:02",
"content": "@ono You don’t like eating pig butt holes? 🤤",
"parent_id": "8152440",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152579",
"author": "Steven-X",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T02:29:28",
"content": "The Hotdogger!",
"parent_id": "8152404",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153021",
"author": "Dawson Tennant",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T05:04:49",
"content": "Yup I made that one too. I had to pry pages apart from the library book. Apparently the library staff deemed it too dangerous so they glued the pages together to supposedly stop some young fool from electrocuting themselves. Ha they didn’t fool me.",
"parent_id": "8152404",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152413",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:07:43",
"content": "The power supply of my childhood (well high school) PC has long ago been cannibalized and turned into a power supply for an art installation. I think it’s still going? Maybe, it’s hard to determine which one of my ATX supplies went where",
"parent_id": "8152367",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152437",
"author": "Neil",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T19:22:13",
"content": "Get off my lawn with your ATX PSU from your childhood! 😉. AT class PSUs have live phase at the power switch inside the case even when switched off!",
"parent_id": "8152413",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152443",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T19:56:04",
"content": "Get off my lawn with your AT power supplies.Some TI 99 wall warts were electrocution hazards when brand new.My original Apple2+ is gathering dust, waiting for me to do the capacitor thing to it’s power supply.Amiga (no #, they were just Amigas), same.Not sure if I’ll ever get to it.After the 64.5 mustang in any case.Which is after the 60 mopar land yacht.Which is after the new garage/shop (current foreground project).Then there’s the GT that won’t smog…I’m kind of over a car that tries to kill you when revved past 3.5kRPM anyhow.But not so over it as to buy a car with traction control or a slush box.I’m not dead!",
"parent_id": "8152437",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152630",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T07:49:10",
"content": "? There was no Amiga model that was ever “just Amiga”, although the A1000 didn’t always get referred to by that name until after the A500 and the A2000 were released. But it was, at least officially, the Amiga 1000 right from launch.",
"parent_id": "8152443",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152632",
"author": "FeRDNYC",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T07:54:31",
"content": "I take that back, the earliest models were referred to just as “the Amiga”. Shows what I know. You must have really gotten in on that early!",
"parent_id": "8152443",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152835",
"author": "Dave Ladd",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T17:44:32",
"content": "You know you’re getting old when … You remember spending two years reading store literature, trying to decide if an Apple II was what you wanted to buy for your 4 year old daughter.",
"parent_id": "8152367",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152375",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T16:30:25",
"content": "An open cover inspection is always worth it, there can be other bugs inside. Roaches etc. or mouse business as well as dust bunnies.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152384",
"author": "Peter_s",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T16:54:19",
"content": "Same is true for any crap made in Chain a today.FIRST, open up, do a inspection.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152601",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T03:58:19",
"content": "Yep. The last bench power supply I got had line and neutral reversed inside the chassis, with the power switch in the neutral line, and the ground lead not connected. Yeesh.",
"parent_id": "8152384",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153894",
"author": "Danrley Aquino",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T20:37:27",
"content": "Mmm.. it must be a bad PSU, a good PSU uses to have quality control, and switch AC main poles might rise the level of AC leaking from the filtering Y caps.",
"parent_id": "8152601",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152397",
"author": "Rog Fanther",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T17:44:03",
"content": "If all the computers I found from that era were so clean as this ….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152454",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T20:08:22",
"content": "Don’t ask people who’ve been inside 1000s about the worst they’ve seen.It will be a laptop, ‘The horror!’I walked into a site once and could hear the hard drive bearing screaming from 50 feet away.Didn’t know which bearing it was, but knew I had to down the network, get a backup and down the server before it did it to itself.That drive never spun again, seized like a fiat motor at shutdown.On topic of case filth, there was an inch of dust inside the case.No fans were spinning.This was, IIRC, a 386 running netmare with a whopping big 80MByte drive.I shot all the drives I owned that were suspected of containing netmare 2.Felt as good as burning my Latin books at the end of that waste of time.",
"parent_id": "8152397",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152473",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:06:50",
"content": "When I was stationed in the desert, we had our machines on a 10 day rotation.Every 10 days we swapped out their machines to clean the old ones and rotate them back in.I had 4 troops who’s only job was to DUMP the dust out of the machines, blow them out wih compressed air, check if any hardware needed replacing, then re-image them.That’s 4 people working 12s to clean less than 800 machines.It was madness.Have you ever seen a PC fan fail from dust damage?No, I don’t mean getting clogged up and seizing.I mean the blades getting worn down until one snapped, or at least getting so out of balance that it vibrates itself to death.",
"parent_id": "8152454",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152488",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:44:10",
"content": "Never really had time to do a forensic analysis of why the $4 fan was broken.Beyond ‘The site is filthy w dust and nobody is paid enough to care.’I have seen fans running fine for years w a missing blade.Never seen a jet engine style super worn fishhook fan blade.",
"parent_id": "8152473",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152591",
"author": "sirstephenh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T03:04:58",
"content": "Dust? Pftt…I had an old laptop once in a past apartment that I kept running on my counter for music and stuff. A colony of ants decided to quickly move in one day and make it home. I still have trauma from dealing with that.",
"parent_id": "8152454",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152495",
"author": "aztraph",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:59:51",
"content": "Someone took it to a service center and they sabotaged it to get the owner to buy a new computer, I hate people like that!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152567",
"author": "hwertz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T00:55:39",
"content": "The IBM desktops (like Pentium era) the case edges were so freaking sharp, you could close it and have it slice through wires easily (no resistance to tell you you’re cutting through anything… I can’t stress how sharp the case edges are) and then they are shorted against the case. If you turn it on then flames shoot out the power supply. Ask me how I know? (I worked at U of Iowa surplus refurbishing computers and actually had this happen twice. One, after it kept burning rather than flaming out after I unplugged it, I went to get the fire extnguisher only to find it was missing. So I threw the burning computer off a second story balcony into the parking lot. Good times.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8186789",
"author": "Egghead Larsen",
"timestamp": "2025-10-02T22:06:58",
"content": "Ahh sharp metal edges in PC cases! I suspect more than a few of us have scars on our arms from them! And the mental scars from the abyss of user thoughtlessness. Like the 286/Dos 5.0 user who thoight the mainframe term emulation card automagically backed her files up to the mainframe at a time before we had installed an PC networking. It died from being choked with 4cm of nicotine-soaked dust. Her manager said it was because we never spent our days going around vacuuming people’s PCs. Yeah, 2 techs and 100 PCs+more to be installed every week and rolling out Netware including the wiring leaves plenty of time for that nonsense",
"parent_id": "8152567",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152652",
"author": "TinLetHax",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T10:03:58",
"content": "“Don’t turn it on, take it apart” EEVBlog style.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152752",
"author": "ImproperlyCited",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:01:20",
"content": "I got a great deal on a huge UPS from an old server room. It used 64 regular 9v UPS batteries. I had to pay an electrician to wire it up because it needed a 220v 70 amp breaker with 4 separate 2 gauge wires, which is beyond my amateur wiring abilities.Get it all hooked up, turn it on, and hear quite a loud pop. I took it apart a short time later hoping that I could replace whatever part blew…It turns out that 220v@70amp makes it tricky to do failure analysis… Instead of releasing the magic smoke, many scorched craters marked spots where important looking pieces turned completely into magic smoke.Fortunately the device has a battery bypass switch to send power directly to the outlets, so now it’s just a very expensive and VERY heavy power strip.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153281",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T18:08:28",
"content": "Sure you don’t mean 12 volts? Lead acid wouldn’t be 9V anyway. The failure rate times 64 isn’t safe it seems. Should be real wet cell like truck batteries. SLA’s seem to fail in 3 years regardless of duty used or not.",
"parent_id": "8152752",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152775",
"author": "loxmyth",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:41:16",
"content": "Inspecting before turning on his a good idea even with recent equipment. A PC we shipped to SIGGRAPH got bounced in route and had one of its boards shake free, resulting in a rather catastrophic short circuit when it was in cautiously turned on. I got the fun job of doing a rush configuration of a replacement machine and hand-carrying it on a flight.(TSA asked me to turn it on. Despite my having no display with me. I plugged it in, I pushed the button, the green light came on, after a few seconds they declared themselves satisfied. I presumed this was more about examining my behavior then examining the machine.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152914",
"author": "Microrecyclers",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T21:24:58",
"content": "I had a customer who complained about a hard drive failure on her 6 month old pc. When opened it I noticed quite a bit of cat fur. When I pulled the hard drive I noticed some fur sticking out between the hard drive and the PCB on the back of it…. So as one does I voided the warranty and removed the PCB to find a mat of cat fur in-between the drive and the PCB…. Called the owner and asked if she had a cat…. The lady said yes and her cat really like the sound of the computer running so she put a shoe behind the PC for the cat to lay on. The power supply eventually would have burned if the hard drive didn’t die first",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154346",
"author": "Kreb",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T22:10:13",
"content": "Early 90s I went on a PC service call in a dry cleaning company on a POS with intermittent mouse. Get there and find, no air conditioning in the whole building, 286 machine is in a warehouse with dry cleaning machines of various types spraying chemicals and steam everywhere. This is deep east Texas in mid summer, 110 degrees outside, higher in this building. New mouse, same problem. Open the case… everything inside is solid rust — cards, motherboard, chassis, everything not painted has rust so thick it’s flaking off. Tell the owner this is shot, miracle it works at all, need new computer. No can do, no money. So I plugged in a different expansion card and same mouse… working fine. It still worked when I moved away 5 years later.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,478.821329
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/21/why-apple-dumped-2700-computers-in-a-landfill-in-1989/
|
Why Apple Dumped 2,700 Computers In A Landfill In 1989
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"Featured",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Retrocomputing",
"Slider"
] |
[
"apple",
"landfill",
"Lisa"
] |
In 1983, the Lisa was supposed to be a barnburner. Apple’s brand-new computer had a cutting edge GUI, a mouse, and power far beyond the 8-bit machines that came before. It looked like nothing else on the market, and had a price tag to match—retailing at $9,995, or the equivalent of over $30,000 today.
It held so much promise. And yet, come 1989, Apple was burying almost 3,000 examples in a landfill. What went wrong?
Promise
The Lisa computer, released in 1983, was Apple’s first attempt at bringing a graphical user interface to the masses. The name was officially an acronym for “Local Integrated Software Architecture,” though many believed it was actually named after Steve Jobs’ daughter. In any case, the Lisa was groundbreaking in ways that wouldn’t be fully appreciated until years later.
Had the Lisa succeeded, would we all be using LisaBooks today? Credit:
Timothy Colegrove
, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Lisa stepped away from the long-lived 6502 CPU that had powered the Apple II line. Instead, it relied upon the exciting new Motorola 68000, with its hybrid 16-bit/32-bit architecture and fast 5 MHz clock speed. The extra power came in handy, as the Lisa was to be one of the first retail computers to be sold with a graphical user interface—imaginatively titled Lisa OS. Forget command lines and character displays—the Lisa had icons and a mouse, all rendered on a glorious 720 x 364 monochrome monitor with rectangular pixels. Adopters of Apple’s new rectangular machine also got twin 5.25-inch double-sided floppy drives, and the Lisa included three expansion slots and a parallel port for adding additional peripherals.
The Lisa seemed to offer a great leap forward in capability, but the same could be said of its price. At launch in 1983, it retailed at $9,995, equivalent to over $30,000 in 2025 dollars. The price was many multiples beyond what you might pay for an IBM PC, making it a tough pill to swallow even given what the Lisa had to offer. The GUI might have been cutting-edge, too, but the implementation wasn’t perfect. The Lisa had a tendency to chug.
It never quite wowed the market, despite Apple’s efforts. Credit: Apple
There was also a further problem. Apple’s very own Steve Jobs may have worked on the Lisa, but he was kicked off the project in 1981, prior to launch. Jobs then jumped ship to the nascent Macintosh development effort, which was initially intended to be a low-cost text-based computer retailing for under $1,000. Jobs swiftly redirected the Macintosh project to make it a GUI-based machine, while retaining the intention to come in at a far more affordable price-point than the exorbitantly-priced Lisa.
The result was damaging. Just as the Lisa was launching, rumors were already swirling about Apple’s upcoming budget machine. When the Macintosh hit the market in 1984, it immediately blitzed the Lisa in sales. Both machines had a mouse and a GUI, and the Macintosh even had a more forward-looking 3.25-inch floppy drive. True, the Mac wasn’t anywhere near as beefy as the Lisa; most notably, it had just 128K of RAM to the 1MB in Apple’s flagship machine. Ultimately, though, the market voted Mac—perhaps unsurprising given it retailed at $2,495—a quarter of the Lisa’s debut price. Come May, Apple had sold 70,000 units, thanks in part do a legendary commercial directed by
the
Ridley Scott.
Meanwhile, it took the Lisa a full two years to sell just 50,000.
Apple tried to make the best of things. The Lisa was followed by the Lisa 2, and it was then rebadged as the Macintosh XL. Ultimately, though, it would never find real purchase in the marketplace, even after severe price cuts down to $3,995 in 1985. By 1986, it was all over—Apple discontinued the Lisa line.
A Lisa, dumped and destroyed. Credit:
Kyra Ocean
, CC-BY-SA 2.0
The following years weren’t kind. A bunch of 5000 Lisas ended up being bought by third-party company Sun Remarketing, which upgraded them and sold them on as “Lisa Professionals” and “Macintosh Professionals.” However, cut to 1989, and Apple had a better idea. The Lisas were going to a dump in Logan, Utah.
The story would end up making the news, with
The Herald Journal
reporting on what was then an astounding story. 2,700 brand new computers were being sent to straight to landfill. This was particularly shocking in the era, given that computers were then still relatively novel in the marketplace and sold for an incredibly high price.
The reason behind it was pure business. “Right now, our fiscal year end is fast approaching and rather than carrying that product on the books, this is a better business decision,” Apple spokesperson Carleen Lavasseur told the press. Apple was able to gain a tax write off the computers, and it was estimated it could reclaim up to $34 for every $100 of depreciated value in the machines which were now considered obsolete. Apple paid $1.95 a yard for over 880 cubic yards of space at the landfill to dump the machines.
Other reports on the event
noted that guards apparently stood on site to ensure the machines were destroyed and could not be recovered.
It’s a story that might recall you of Atari’s
ET
, another grand embarrassment covered up under a pile of trash. Sometimes, products fail, and there’s little more to do than call the trucks and haul them away. The Apple Lisa is perhaps one of the nicer machines that’s ever happened to.
| 55
| 19
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152325",
"author": "Orzel",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T14:38:19",
"content": "The link to jhnews is blocked from Europe",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152328",
"author": "Jan Prägert",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T14:46:46",
"content": "Tryhttps://archive.ph/osabj",
"parent_id": "8152325",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152796",
"author": "Orzel",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T16:30:54",
"content": "Great, thanks !You did create this ‘snapshot’, right ? hence the short url… ?",
"parent_id": "8152328",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152502",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T22:08:36",
"content": "Does it specify the reason why?",
"parent_id": "8152325",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152716",
"author": "Rudy",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T13:19:37",
"content": "451: Unavailable due to legal reasonsWe recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, call 435-752-2121.",
"parent_id": "8152502",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152342",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:06:01",
"content": "Apple hardware is still far overpriced compared to non-Apple stuff",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152349",
"author": "Chr Elz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:27:12",
"content": "Before the M-series chip rollout maybe, but not always, anymore. The M4 Mac Mini on sale for $450 right now is a bargain.",
"parent_id": "8152342",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152707",
"author": "Then",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T13:11:48",
"content": "Wow, that is actually pretty insane",
"parent_id": "8152349",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152799",
"author": "Orzel",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T16:33:45",
"content": "Since the dawn of time I’ve heard “Apple prices used to be highly exaggerated, but not anymore”. But it’s just a mix of great marketing and people using an excuse to buy one.It’s the same with “Java used to be very slow, a memory hog, and unsafe. But now it’s all fixed !”.",
"parent_id": "8152349",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152803",
"author": "Martin",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T16:51:59",
"content": "yeah but how much to upgrade memory and SSD? since they are soldered to the motherboard you can’t get them cheaper elsewhere either…",
"parent_id": "8152349",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153858",
"author": "Chr elz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:23:09",
"content": "RAM is on the SoC. SSD you can upgrade.",
"parent_id": "8152803",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152871",
"author": "Lonnie Stoudt",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T18:48:15",
"content": "Not when one considers that the Mac will still function well a decade later, while your PC user will have been forced to replace his rig 2 or 3 times in that same decade… i am on my 3rd iMac since 1998, a 2012 model which still kicks serious azz…",
"parent_id": "8152342",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152970",
"author": "Chris Maple",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T01:37:32",
"content": "An Intel i7-875K from 2010 gives a single-thread Passmark of 1353. The best Intel and Apple today do close to 5000. The 3.75X performance may seem like a lot, but only compute-heavy programs provide a sensed difference.Today, the multi-thread crown goes to AMD at 160778, the best Intel at 91470, the best Apple at 73785. The vintage 17-875K scores 3142. My i7-875K was running in Jan 2011, and has been powered on continuously for about 7 years.PCs are almost all 3rd-party products; use good parts and good assembly techniques, clean it when it becomes dusty, and it isn’t likely to fail. Buy a “price-optimized” bargain PC with a marginal power supply and a weak fan, and you’ll be replacing it too soon.",
"parent_id": "8152871",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153013",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T04:19:10",
"content": "2-3 times/decade? Seriously? What the heck are people doing with these things?My Lenovo Ideacenter 700 i7-6700 is still a daily driver after 10 years. Added memory, added disks, updated monitors, but original components including video card are still running just fine, doing dual-5k video and still the fastest machine in the house: Hard to measure head:head but on par with the Dell R710 12-core dual Xeon house homelab.I don’t see any need to replace the Lenovo any time soon. And the cost in 2015 was less than $1000. A Macbook Pro has come and gone since then. A Mac Mini got since then survives, but is too slow for anything but a media server now. Both were more expensive than that desktop, the ‘Pro much more: very poor value for money, and ergonomically a horrible experience to use.",
"parent_id": "8152871",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153872",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T19:40:28",
"content": "Problem being that an i3 12100F and a motherboard, (re-use your RAM) comes in around $100 used and provides roughly the performance of an i7 8700 or 9700. Not to mention uses much less electricity.Basically if you hate upgrading with an unreasonable passion buy an i7, but if you want 25-50% higher processing power on average for the same money over time just buy an i5 (or Ryzen5) system every 2-4 years. The money saved can go into RAM, storage, GPU, screen, peripherals etc. Plot a price/performance curve and try not to get too steep on it as the price goes up. Also gives you the option to buy last gen i7 when they are clearanced. i7 12700KF has been $160-170 4 or 5 times in the past year, which is stellar value.",
"parent_id": "8153013",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153942",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T22:47:05",
"content": "To clarify, as the i5 performance will surpass the i7 performance with a massive savings (usually enough to upgrade to the next i5, possibly even including the platform), then by saving that money initially you can get higher performance by upgrading more frequently using the saved money.",
"parent_id": "8153872",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154510",
"author": "FeloniousHam",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T12:04:49",
"content": "Or just get an M-series Mac Mini and don’t think about any of it. Affordable, silent, cool, powerful,and long lived!Windows is finally decent with WSL, but the integration isn’t seamless, and the “running a separate computer on your computer” turns my laptop in to a noisy desk heater.",
"parent_id": "8153872",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154301",
"author": "Antti",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T18:30:54",
"content": "i call bullshit on that statement. My PC from 2012 is still up and running, even the harddrives are original. Started out with windows 7, then migrated win 10 once that came to the market. Now hitting a wall cause windows 11 doesnt wanna install itself, theres hacks around that, but a machine from -12 deserves to be relegated to lighter duties.",
"parent_id": "8152871",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154535",
"author": "John L",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T13:51:30",
"content": "I’ve only just replaced my 13 year old PC, and only because Windows 11 wouldn’t run on it. I could have forced it on, but figured a new PC would be better. The original cost me £800 (I’m in the UK) so just over £60 a year. How much was your “kick azz” Mac?",
"parent_id": "8152871",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152880",
"author": "Node808",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T19:09:25",
"content": "Overpriced especially when the hardware consistently lags behind.",
"parent_id": "8152342",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153946",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T22:57:29",
"content": "That’s a clichè, maybe. It depends how we value things and which priorities users have.",
"parent_id": "8152342",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154686",
"author": "Julian Skidmore",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T22:52:46",
"content": "It’s fine to say you don’t like Apple’s stuff and you think it’s more expensive than you’re willing to pay, but to attach a superlative to their prices is just a way of bullying other people into not buying them. We don’t say the same thing about cars or houses; as though a Jag, Porsche or Smart Fortwo is “too expensive”. Clearly they’re nottooexpensive for the millions who have bought them.The same applies to computers.",
"parent_id": "8152342",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152343",
"author": "Richard",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:06:25",
"content": "They knew the Amiga was coming two years later to kill it. ;) (only joking)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152355",
"author": "macsimki",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:37:13",
"content": "yeah folks, people are interested in money, but money is never interested in people…it was a nicely build machine and very easy to work on. i had three of the 2/10 macintosh xl and got every hd working again. very strange, as they are notoriously unreliable. but i lost interest as soon i was done with the software i could find for it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153055",
"author": "Lewin Day",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T08:06:37",
"content": "That’s why I sold my Mac collection, funnily enough. I realized my whole experience of the hobby was minor fix->oh, it turns on and works now!->okay I’m bored.",
"parent_id": "8152355",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152359",
"author": "Charles Springer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:49:37",
"content": "This follows Steve Jobs very successful approach to the business. When the Apple II sales were accelerating he did not like the amount of time and resources the small company was spending on support to the Apple I owners. He offered a very attractive trade-in discount for new Apple II. Steve did not want these units to escape back into the wild. When the stack of trade-ins got big enough a friend of mine, employee #49, would run them through a band saw. I gave her credit for the rarity and high value of an Apple I. Lisa had the same support resources issue.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8171400",
"author": "TheDarkTiger",
"timestamp": "2025-08-29T11:15:07",
"content": "That’s so sad…I mean, even the landfill situation, why didn’t Apple just gave the computers to schools?And if “Mhu money”, then change laws to make sense in this crazy world >__< (because asking bankers and corpo to be human is as possible as real time 3D on the game boy: yeah, some may manage to do something close, but come on, it’s not designed for)",
"parent_id": "8152359",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152366",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:58:30",
"content": "Not uncommon. In the late ’90s I worked on a product that, as it came to market, was deemed to have violated a patent held by a competitor (who, incidentally, we had also done work for). The whole production run got chucked into landfill and destroyed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152503",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T22:10:18",
"content": "However, if a Chinese or Japanese company violated the patent? Why, that’s fine! Hell, we’ll even let you import it and pressure people to license the technology to a local producer!It was a strange time.",
"parent_id": "8152366",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152531",
"author": "Charles Springer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T23:51:06",
"content": "Not if they filed. Micron stopped whole parts of the industry cold over RAM and anti-dumping. I was part of the by-catch because video RAM from Japan (the only source) tripled in price overnight.",
"parent_id": "8152503",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152368",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T16:07:46",
"content": "I was at the dump like probably close to 30 years ago and saw someone hefting one of these out of the trunk of their car, was in the process of walking over to be like hey I’ll give you 20 bucks for that if you haul it back out and meet me in the parking lot when one of the loader operators ran it over :( Much later the dump added an e-waste drop off in the recycling drop off area that was outside the gate and they basically didn’t give a rat’s ass if anyone snagged stuff from it, got a few treasures that way…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152388",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T17:04:35",
"content": "“At launch in 1983, it retailed at $9,995, equivalent to over $30,000 in 2025 dollars. The price was many multiples beyond what you might pay for an IBM PC…”Maybe not. I once bought an IBM PC at a yard sale for $30. Taped to the bottom of the PC’s case was the business invoice from when the unit was originally purchased in 1985. An IBM PC-XT (4.77 MHz 8088) with 256K of RAM, a 10 MB MFM hdd, a single 5.25″ floppy drive, and green Hercules monochrome, was a bargain at only $4995, half the Lisa’s price.Of course, it was practically worthless by 1991 when I got it. (These days a 6 year old computer can still be a halfway decent gaming rig.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152426",
"author": "D",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:32:00",
"content": "Pretty crazy to think, in ’83 the 5150 was still sold in its “base” form, 16kb of ram and no disk drives (floppy or hd), and didn’t come with a monitor (I don’t think EGA was out quite yet anyway)That 256k ram upgrade was probably half or more of that $5k price tag when new!",
"parent_id": "8152388",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154699",
"author": "Julian Skidmore",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T23:15:10",
"content": "In November 1983, when the IBM XT was released, it came with 128kB as standard; a 10MB Hard Disk and it was that configuration that cost $5K. Byte’s review doesn’t say how much memory cost, but back in November 1981 when the original PC was announced, IBM priced 64kB at $540. Two years later, 128kB would probably cost between $540 and $750 from IBM, and so would add about 10% to the price.https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1983-11/page/n301/mode/2up",
"parent_id": "8152426",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154717",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T00:27:47",
"content": "RAM wasn’t always being expensive in the 1980s.https://tedium.co/2016/11/24/1988-ram-shortage-history/",
"parent_id": "8152426",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153888",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T20:26:49",
"content": "You mis-spelled 10-year old computer. I am gaming at a decent (better than console) level on some 10 year old systems. I7 6700K and 970/980 still work.",
"parent_id": "8152388",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153950",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T23:05:47",
"content": "The thing about the original IBM PC was that it basically was what we used to be calling “barebone PC” in the 2000s.You had to install HDD, expansion cards for serial, printer, video card, memory, EMS board, bus mouse etc pp.So the initially “cheap” IBM PC price tag quickly increases..But on bright side, the IBM PC could be configured in every way to suit personal needs.",
"parent_id": "8152388",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153953",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T23:15:32",
"content": "By 1991, 256KB of RAM was useless on DOS platform.It barely was enough to boot PC-DOS 3.30 from 1987 and having leftover RAM for an application.640KB of conventional memory was an assumed standard configuration on PC platform since ca. 1986.Before, it was 512KB (Amstrad PC1512 had 512KB).So either the previous user had no clue or he had used the PC for only one application that required little RAM. No idea.",
"parent_id": "8152388",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152405",
"author": "MartinSD",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T17:54:47",
"content": "Back in ’84 the place I was working had to buy one (WCI Labs) as we were looking at doing development (porting games) for the Mac and a Lisa was the only supported development system.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152999",
"author": "Saul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T03:17:29",
"content": "I was at WCI as well. When we liquidated I sold the Lisa to a friend. Your development boxes were networked with the VAX 11/750.",
"parent_id": "8152405",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152468",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T20:56:56",
"content": "“…this is a better business decision…” sure brings up (supposedly) Kurt Voneggut’s (unduly forgotten) “We’ll go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost-effective.”Same does for the uncounted cars destroyed during Depression Era that could have been given away to all those families frantically looking for jobs.Same goes for plenty other things – quite a lot of food that it is actually not bad or rotten, but thrown away nightly in the US – just because there is no profit to be made, into the dumpster it goes. Canned or not, no difference. Just because.Profit-shmofit, human stupidity at its worst, just like the infamous Keystone pipeline that supposed to run crude oil right past the Permian Basin with plenty of crude oil within, some – strategically “bought” and closed up to jack up the pricing, so running a pipeline all the way across the US could still be profitable.Call me stupid, but this all makes zero sense.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152486",
"author": "D",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:35:53",
"content": "Scenarios where it makes 100% sense to consume your neighbor’s oil instead of your own:1) You realize that oil is a non-renewable resources so you might as well consume your neighbor’s oil while it is cheap, leaving your own supply in the ground until oil inevitably becomes scarce and valuable.2) Your neighbor’s oil is derived from “tar sands” which requires extremely high tech plants to refine. You dominate the hemisphere in that kind of refinery capacity, so your neighbor is forced to do business with you on favorable terms.3) Your own oil reserves require fracking, which is a fairly expensive process. Your wells frequently become unprofitable when international oil prices fall. You are a capitalist, so your wells are generally turned off during these times.All 3 apply in the US.",
"parent_id": "8152468",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152982",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T02:09:11",
"content": "Good points.RE: 1 – Lessons of the 1973 Oil Crisis didn’t teach US any valuable lessons. (keep it home and make is more efficient than any offshore investments). Don’t forget the political twist, too – Middle Eastern “US Intersts” were mostly one well-known US politician’s br … pardon … investment. Exclusive club. The name is sometimes is in the news. I’ll leave that where it is. Public information available to those willing to research the US history. Last century, obviously. Quite related to why US got involved there in the late 1990s. Directly related. Zero merit to the average Sam who pays for all this with his taxes. I’d very much rather US invented cold fusion cars in the 1980s and weaned off crude oil as the primary energy source. Because the cleanest/best crude one can wish for is in Venezuela. Yes. Minimum refinement and less toxic refuse that usually goes with oil cracking.Again, no lessons learned, but a LOT of mess. We could have invested all those gazillion megabucks into things like municipal boron-hydrogen reactors that never go boom and boron is available literally everywhere as a fuel. Municipal level, so these can be placed strategically, thus, lessening the need for the lengthy transmission as well as the need for the power-producing monopolies/cartels that we have now, all gulping up my tax money to make them “profitable”. Which brings the obvious point, if it is not profitable without my tax money, the hell with it, time to go back to the keynesyan economy, government-chartered entities, Fannie Mae, etc etc.2 – Canadian tar sands project was aimed at China, but russkies intervened and sold China their crude for the price of delivery. The plot had thickened even more, when it was realized that the only US cargo railroad leg available from tar sands to the Mexican Gulf is a monopoly. Hence, investments HAD to be realized through The Pipe. Makes no sense again. Wasted opportunity, too, because sanctions COULD HAVE BEEN applied back then, yet they weren’t. You can guess the slow pokes who made fools of themselves. I won’t mention names, they are everywhere. Same slow pokes who I didn’t elect – I called them clowns back then, they are still clowns.3 – yes and no. Re-read my comment – Permian Basin has a lot of CLOSED pumps awaiting their pumping rights to be sold to the highest bidder. Same difference with the residential housing that stands unoccupied next to where I live – nada, not even a stray water hose laying on the neatly trimmed grass. Because. Rights trade just like stocks, today they are hot, tomorrow – penny stocks.If it is not profitable, I get it, but the thing is, it is artificially not profitable, and can be made profitable by keynesyan economy, again, government charters that make s**t happen, again, Fannie Mae, etc etc. Plenty around. Heh, now that I think of it, a lot of industries are in dire need of nationalization, whether unsustainable business models’ owners like it or now – because they ARE wrecking our economy. Nationalization is not a nasty word, and it is not related to socialism – it is proper course of action when owners had lost their mind, given that the eventual new owners will be saner.As far as expertise goes, there are very, very smart people who spend their whole lives learning how things work, and what to do when they don’t. Sadly, the current political fad seem to be the blind wrecking ball, not hiring the smartest geniuses to do their jobs properly. That rarely delivers profitable markets, though, sure clears up the ground for the next generation – however, the largest cartels seem to found the way to survive any wrecking ball, and it is sad.",
"parent_id": "8152486",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154704",
"author": "Julian Skidmore",
"timestamp": "2025-07-26T23:24:45",
"content": "Keystone XL was such an environmental disaster climate scientist James Hansen termed it: “Game Over for planet Earth” if it was given the full go-ahead.But the equivalent oil from anywhere would be comparably damaging; so if the KSXL pipeline blocked other oil being drilled and it, itself wasn’t delivering much that can only be a good thing.Meanwhile, South Carolina is likely to face up to 52ºC of heat in the coming week, a 4 sigma anomaly. Still, in a decade or two that’ll be an average July/August heatwave.",
"parent_id": "8152468",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8157046",
"author": "Dave Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-08-02T15:39:55",
"content": "Is this the same James Hansen whose latest polemic produced comments like ” ….. let’s not be hasty. His newest round of publications deserves scrutiny, not for its recycled gloom, but for the increasingly acrobatic logic and interpretive liberties embedded within and ” Hansen’s (latest) paper is not so much a scientific analysis as it is a sermon. Every ambiguous result is resolved in favor of catastrophe. Every observational artifact is “proof” of more warming to come. Meanwhile, dissent is brushed off as ignorance, and uncertainty is never allowed to cut both ways”.I think I’d rather stick to astrology, at least it’s a little more convincing and sometimes it’s right.And I love your comment ” South Carolina is likely to face up to 52ºC of heat in the coming week “. I’ve just checked the reported temperatures in Charleston which I believe is in South Carolina and the average was 29 C with a maximum of 37 C …. which seems to be a fair distance from 52 C. Where I live in France the summer temperature often gets up to 39 / 42 and very few people die, we just don’t go outside at lunchtime.Was the massive temperature somewhere else in SC?",
"parent_id": "8154704",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152483",
"author": "Randall Hayter",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:27:45",
"content": "Apple sold a large number of Lisa computers to entering Virginia Tech computer science students and the student price was much less than $9,995. Those machines could run Lisa OS or Xenix, but I can’t remember if all of them had the big hard drive. Even with the reduced price, I couldn’t affort one and used machines in the university computer labs and those machines did have the 10MB drives.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152505",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T22:12:34",
"content": "Logan city landfill? I wonder if anybody knows approximately where it got buried… Would be fun to go mining",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152625",
"author": "Andrzej",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T07:34:45",
"content": "You know that as a society we are truly f*cked up when destroying perfectly usable equipment is deemed “reasonable”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152977",
"author": "Chris Maple",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T01:52:36",
"content": "Let’s not shut down all those perfectly usable factories making incandescent light bulbs.",
"parent_id": "8152625",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152674",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T11:15:02",
"content": "Uhm, I thought we discarded all such waste in Africa and China in the old days? Or did that start later?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152933",
"author": "Pablo J R",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T22:41:14",
"content": "This approach of destroying perfectly working devices went into even cars, as depicted by the documentary film “Who killed the electric car” regarding what GM did with the EV1 leased cars.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152997",
"author": "Lily",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T03:12:48",
"content": "“3.25-inch floppy drive”?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153173",
"author": "JHQuinn",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T14:08:23",
"content": "Because, 2600 would be ironic…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153951",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T23:09:23",
"content": "About Lisa vs Mac..The development software for Macintosh was available on Lisa only (initially).So the Lisa was akin to a developer’s workstation at the time.If you wanted to write Macintosh software, you had to go get a Lisa, too. ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154764",
"author": "Rick",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T05:24:49",
"content": "We had one of these when I worked as a EE at Tektronix in 1984. The original Lisa had non-standard small floppy drives. They replaced them at their expense with standard 3 1/2″drives. I kept one of the odd disks but lost track of it over the past 41 years.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,478.193226
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/21/bearing-witness-measuring-the-wobbles-in-rotary-build/
|
Bearing Witness: Measuring The Wobbles In Rotary Build
|
Matt Varian
|
[
"Tool Hacks"
] |
[
"3d prining",
"metrology",
"rotary table"
] |
3D printing has simplified the creation of many things, but part of making something is knowing just how much you can rely on it. On the [BubsBuilds] YouTube channel, he built a
cheap rotary table
and then walked through the process of measuring the error inherent in any rotating system.
Starting with a commercial rotary table, [BubsBuilds] decided he wanted a rotary stage that was both lighter and had provisions for motorized movement. Most of the rotary build is 3D printed, with the large housing and table made from PETG, and the geared hub and worm gear printed on a resin printer. The bearings used to support the worm gear are common skateboard bearings. There is also a commercial thrust bearing and 49 larger 9.5 mm ball bearings supporting the rotating tabletop.
There are three different types of runout to be measured on a rotating stage: axial, radial, and angular. Axial runout is fairly straightforward to discern by measuring the vertical variation of the table as it rotates. Radial runout measures how true the rotation is around the center of the table. Angular runout measures how level the table stays throughout its range. Since these two runouts are tied to each other, [BubsBuilds] showed how you can take measurements at two different heights and use trigonometry to obtain both your radial and angular runout
This is a great walk-through of how to approach measuring and characterizing a system that has multiple variables at play. Be sure to check out some of the other cool
rotary tables
we’ve featured.
| 5
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152351",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:29:00",
"content": "Did you have any time to breathe during this 9 minute video?And what is happening at around 07:41?You’ve found some kind of systematic error, and without analyzing it’s origin you just subtract it from your measurements to eliminate it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153116",
"author": "Rxvt",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T12:05:02",
"content": "At 7:41 he noticed the systematic error of excentricity between the 3 grooves center and the rotation axis. He then applies a software compensation for this (to get the roundness). If he applies the same software compensation when measuring a different part he could get the excentricity of that part between the 3 balls and cylinder. When only roundness is interesting one always subtracts whatever excentricity is found.",
"parent_id": "8152351",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152675",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T11:21:45",
"content": "I saw those bit holders on ali and people commented that the thing was hard to get on a motor centered with the scrub screws. That made me think it’s funny that they have a self centering holder that is not self centering at the side that attaches to the motor.People should buy two and glue the bit-holding ends together so both sides are self centering eh.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152712",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T13:16:11",
"content": "One never wants to congratulate someone’s clever word choice, because that only encourages them.But I like the headline.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152718",
"author": "ford",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T13:20:24",
"content": "ﷻ",
"parent_id": "8152712",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,478.096363
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/21/reverse-engineering-a-tony-6502-based-mini-arcade-machine/
|
Reverse Engineering A ‘Tony’ 6502-based Mini Arcade Machine
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Games",
"Reverse Engineering"
] |
[
"6502",
"arcade machine",
"reverse engineering"
] |
The mainboard of the mini arcade unit with its blob chip and EEPROM. (Credit: Poking Technology, YouTube)
For some reason, people are really into tiny arcade machines that basically require you to ruin your hands and eyes in order to play on them. That said, unlike the fifty gazillion ‘retro consoles’ that you can buy everywhere, the particular mini arcade machine that [David Given] of [Poking Technology]
obtained from AliExpress for a teardown and ROM dump
seems to have custom games rather than the typical gaggle of NES games and fifty ROM hack variations of each.
After a bit of gameplay to demonstrate the various games on the very tiny machine with tiny controls and a tiny 1.8″, 160×128 ST7735 LC display, the device was disassembled. Inside is a fairly decent speaker, the IO board for the controls, and the mainboard with an epoxy blob-covered chip and the SPI EEPROM containing the software. Dumping this XOR ‘encrypted’ ROM was straightforward, revealing it to be a 4 MB, W23X32-compatible EEPROM.
Further reverse-engineering showed the CPU to be a WDT65C02-compatible chip, running at 8 MHz with 2 kB of SRAM and 8 kB of fast ROM in addition to a 24 MHz link to the SPI EEPROM, which is used heavily during rendering. [David]
created a basic SDK
for those who feel like writing their own software for this mini arcade system. Considering the market that these mini arcade systems exist in, you’ve got to give the manufacturer credit for creating a somewhat original take, with hardware that is relatively easy to mod and reprogram.
Thanks to [Clint Jay] for the tip.
| 15
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152237",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T10:33:54",
"content": "Using the joystick obfuscates 10-20% of the screen ? this begs for a casemod, with a plastic Fresnel lens magnifying the screen (who cares about view angle on such a thing?)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152331",
"author": "David Given",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T14:48:42",
"content": "In the video, that’s because I had to put the screen at right angles to the camera to get it all in focus. In real life it’s better as you tend to look down on it, not straight at the screen. But I suspect the real answer is that no actual industrial design went into this thing.",
"parent_id": "8152237",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152243",
"author": "WTF Detector",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T10:57:17",
"content": "Hopefully [David Given] would be willing to share the firmware with the MAME team. It’s all but guaranteed that MAME already emulates, in whole or in part, the particular SoC used on this machine. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the firmware already slots into one of the couple-dozen drivers for various handheld/TV plug-in systems based on different 6502-derived SoCs.Since MAME became the go-to emulator for LCD handhelds and TV plug-in games, it’s become pretty staggering A) just how many different units there were, and B) just how many of them actuallywerereleased with entirely original games.The most likely candidates are some form of XaviX or Elan, which were popular 65(C)02 derivatives used in a bunch of cheap Chinesium mini-machines.For my money, though, I’m consistently impressed at how much life was able to be wrung out of the SunPlus SPG24x and SunPlus SPG26x series of microcontrollers. Those things had on-board graphics and audio that wereveryroughly akin to the SNES, capability-wise, had a 16-bit architecture in every sense of the term (no byte addressing, everything is in 16-bit-word units!), yet only had around 3 kilobytes of work RAM. Some later models could even push a full 680×480, though the interlace flicker was pretty agonizing. They’re probably best known for the (rightfully) maligned Wii knockoff – the Chintendo/JungleSoft “Vii” – but they also provided the brains behind a ton of TV plug-in games from the 2000’s, featuring licensed IP and developed by legit companies like Digital Eclipse and Jakks Pacific.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152265",
"author": "Winston",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T11:57:11",
"content": "That’s fascinating. How do you know so much about this topic? Is there a website for it?",
"parent_id": "8152243",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152295",
"author": "David Given",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T13:22:23",
"content": "So, a commenter pointed me towards the Game King, which is a similar but simpler device, and from there I found this page:https://bootleggames.fandom.com/wiki/%221.8%22_Handheld_Gamesand from there I found that there is, indeed, MAME support for this series of devices:https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/tvgames/st2302u_bbl_spi.cppBut it doesn’t look like it actually functions; it looks like the skeleton only. I’ve tried to contact the author. They’re welcome to use anything I figured out. I did check the two ROM images I produced (which are illegally checked into the github repository) and the checksums don’t match anything that MAME references.Re the manufacturer: I did find a GeneralPlus datasheet of a device which closely matches the layout of what I’m seeing; I/O ports at 0000.007f, RAM from 0080 up, ROM at 6000, probably a 6502 (GeneralPlus are very careful not to namecheck the 6502 anywhere, although some datasheets do describe the instruction set in enough detail to be sure that’s what it is). But that device, a remote control controller, has much less RAM, so it’s clearly not the same one. I didn’t know about XaviX or Elan. If you know any way to identify the chipset, I’d love to know.Re the µnSP: that instruction set is wonderfully cursed. I’d love to do something with it one day.",
"parent_id": "8152243",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152386",
"author": "Dj Biohazard",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T17:01:20",
"content": "Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a VT02 chip in there. Most “NES clones with LCD” here are VT02 based. :)https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/VTxxThere’s also a tool made by Tim Schuerewegen called NESMaker. It can make a multi-rom image for a bunch of devices. :)https://forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.php?t=19581",
"parent_id": "8152295",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152493",
"author": "David Given",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:58:35",
"content": "Nah, it’s not a NOAC — video rendering is done in software, compositing one scanline at a time and then updating the ST7735’s external video memory. Sprite data is streamed from SPI flash on demand. It’s a completely different architecture.",
"parent_id": "8152386",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152738",
"author": "Michel",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T14:20:55",
"content": "David: I suspect the dev is Tony Jihhttps://github.com/tonyjihHe was working for Anbernic for a while and his forks of OpenDingux on the RG300X and RG350 are referred to as the “Tony System” in sales blurbs.",
"parent_id": "8152295",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153031",
"author": "Michel",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T06:19:15",
"content": "Nope – I asked and he said it wasn’t him :)",
"parent_id": "8152738",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152392",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T17:28:46",
"content": "Either my Ali-fu is lacking, or they’re cheaper on Amazon! (£18 vs £22).Excellent video btw. Very long, but content-packed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152484",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:31:08",
"content": "https://aliexpress.com/item/32950683000.htmlsame model, different stickers",
"parent_id": "8152392",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152501",
"author": "David Given",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T22:08:15",
"content": "I’ve found something which looks like these here in Switzerland for 9 CHF (https://www.action.com/de-ch/p/3205536/retro-mini-arcadeautomat/). Don’t know what delivery to the UK would be.",
"parent_id": "8152484",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152633",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T07:54:43",
"content": "Both of those are 200 games, 2.5″ screen. How can I tell whether they’re this or not?",
"parent_id": "8152501",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152936",
"author": "David Given",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T22:49:04",
"content": "Sadly, they’re not exactly well labelled. AFAIK the things to look for are: screenshots (some will show the menu or title screens with very characteristic gold letters), two buttons rather than four, and no AV out. The latter usually means it’s a NOAC. But all I can do is wish you luck.",
"parent_id": "8152633",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8154144",
"author": "Dj Biohazard",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T10:13:08",
"content": "Those are VT02 ones for sure. (I buy them at Action all the time lol)They’re even listed on the NESDev thread (last page)https://forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.php?t=19581",
"parent_id": "8152501",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,478.482711
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/20/project-scribe-receipts-for-life/
|
Project Scribe: Receipts For Life
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"Peripherals Hacks"
] |
[
"arduino",
"thermal printer"
] |
Here’s a fun project. Over on their YouTube page [Urban Circles] introduces
Project Scribe
.
The idea behind this project is that you can print out little life “receipts”. Notes, jokes, thoughts, anecdotes, memories. These little paper mementos have a physical reality that goes beyond their informational content. You can cut them up, organize them, scribble on them, highlight them, stick them on the wall, or in a scrapbook. The whole idea of the project is to help you make easier and better decisions every day by nudging you in the direction of being more mindful of where you’ve been and where you’re going.
The project is well documented on its
GitHub page
. The heart of the project is a thermal printer. These are the things that print the receipts you get from the store. You may need to conduct some research to find the best thermal paper to use; there are some hints and tips on this topic in the documentation. In addition to the thermal printer is a pretty stand to hold it and an Arduino board to drive it. Firmware for the Arduino is provided which will serve a basic web interface via WiFi.
If you build one, we’d love to hear how it goes. If it doesn’t work out, you can always fall back to using the thermal printer to
level up your Dungeons and Dragons
game.
Thanks to [Brittany L] for writing in about this one.
| 16
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8151789",
"author": "Jamal Ginsberg",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T09:18:41",
"content": "My beef even with safe bisphenol free thermal paper is how short lived it is. I don’t have a single fax that is not faded to 20% readability. The project itself is amazing and not every not is meant to last forever. I just wish we could have invented something better by now than the perfection that we reached with dot datrix and ink that lasts decades.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152250",
"author": "Nath",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T11:22:42",
"content": "A bit of targeted soft heat (hair dryer or, more fitting for HaD readership, hot air soldering iron) on the paper will give back readibility.But your point is valid",
"parent_id": "8151789",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151792",
"author": "macsimki",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T09:30:14",
"content": "and the nice thing is, they fade. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151794",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T09:51:54",
"content": "In most cases, applying hot air (hair dryer, medium setting) from distance (> 10 inches) on the BACK of the paper is enough to restore the print, but as negative of the original.",
"parent_id": "8151792",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152697",
"author": "Aknup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T12:34:24",
"content": "And then after the same amount of time that fades too.Which brings up an interesting thing, namely that the paper before it is heated retains its abilities but the parts that were heated and have print loses its ability to stay black.So the question is why is it long term stable without print but the printing part isn’t? You’d think something ‘burned’ would remain burned. And you’d think they can improve the whole thing with some chemistry.I know there are label printers that add a layer of plastic on top though, does that improve longevity? And if so does it mean it’s the black bits evaporating that is the issue? I know some claim it’s for UV protection, but I’m not sure that is the (only) reason. One wonders.I now read 3M had thermal paper that lasted, but it was way more expensive and lost the race.Other notes:“Four different types of imaging chemicals are used in thermally sensitive papers: leuco dyes, developers, sensitizers and stabilizers”And“Some thermal papers are coated with BPA, a chemical considered to be an endocrine disruptor. This material can contaminate recycled paper. BPA can transfer readily to the skin in small amounts”And they might have outlawed BPA in various regions, but are we sure hobby thermal use is BPA-free? Especially stuff from China. Avoid touching it as much as possible I’d say.",
"parent_id": "8151794",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151854",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T12:29:43",
"content": "Have you seen C beams glitter in the dark Roy?",
"parent_id": "8151792",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151911",
"author": "macsimki",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T15:16:55",
"content": "I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe…",
"parent_id": "8151854",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151827",
"author": "Rock Erickson",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T11:13:20",
"content": "all printed on a toxic thermal paper 🤡",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151896",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T14:26:48",
"content": "it´s not anymore the case at least where i live, but i would not be surprised if phtalate-loaded thermal paper is still in use in USA… That and chlorinated chicken…",
"parent_id": "8151827",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151903",
"author": "arifyn",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T14:48:36",
"content": "Somewhat less bad than it used to be, especially if you deliberately choose to use phenol-free receipt paper.For those who don’t know, the magic chemical that makes thermal paper work has historically been BPA or BPS. When the receipt is heated, the phenol donates protons to the thermal ink compound (typically a leuco dye) to produce the dark color. Since it’s just kindathere, it can be absorbed through the skin pretty easily.Of course the phenol-free paper has to use something else as a developer, and although those developers areprobablybetter than phenols, they’re also less well studied, so it’s hard to know for sure. There’s also a chance that the sensitizer and binder used are also still something nasty, though I think the binders are typically pretty benign like PVA.is exposure to thermal paper bad for you? most likely, on some level. is it bad for the environment? undoubtedly. Is it worse than the many other things we’re constantly exposing ourselves to as humans in the modern environment? sadly, probably not.",
"parent_id": "8151827",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151958",
"author": "xk",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T18:16:50",
"content": "here’s a list of phenol-free paper distributors:https://www.pca.state.mn.us/business-with-us/bpa-and-bps-in-thermal-paper",
"parent_id": "8151827",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151993",
"author": "Bbismal",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T21:13:54",
"content": "I think I read on Wikipedia they switched to BPB.",
"parent_id": "8151827",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151850",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T12:27:29",
"content": "Makes me think this could be the start of aBlack Mirrorepisode.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151880",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T13:51:43",
"content": "“The whole idea of the project is to help you make easier and better decisions every day by nudging you in the direction of being more mindful of where you’ve been and where you’re going.”Oo, oh. Google Glass. Audience participation on those decisions.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151968",
"author": "Thinkerer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T18:45:52",
"content": "What a great idea – if only there was a more portable method that was pen-based and used little squares of regular paper rather than a long strip of thermal. Maybe with a little low-key adhesive along one edge. It could even come in lots of colors and clever shapes. Maybe 3M would be interested. /sHilariously I looked up “non thermal receipt printer” and the “non-thermal” ones from the usual sources explicitly list themselves as being thermal printers in the specs (yet non-thermal).But they do exist as plain-paper “Kitchen/bar/reciept printers” (eg. Epson TM-U220) which are a bit spendy (less so on Ebay) but well made since thermal will be useless in a hot, greasy kitchen and they absolutely have to work day in and day out.Speaking as someone whose cloud of “little squares” and other attempts at efficiency offer little improvement, the real problem with this won’t be committing things to a strip/square/strip/sheet but pulling it all together into coherent motion later. There’s no simple app for that.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152107",
"author": "Cody",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T03:50:11",
"content": "Look for dot matrix receipt printers if you don’t want thermal. They are noisy and the print quality is much lower, but the prints don’t fade as fast as thermal. There’s also no BPA or BPS in the paper.If you are buying a used one, make sure the ink ribbons are still being made. They have a limited shelf life, so a new old stock ribbon will probably be dry.",
"parent_id": "8151968",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,478.362206
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/19/a-spectrophotometer-jailbreak-to-resolve-colorful-disputes/
|
A Spectrophotometer Jailbreak To Resolve Colorful Disputes
|
Aaron Beckendorf
|
[
"Reverse Engineering"
] |
[
"firmware update",
"Pantone",
"Serial Number",
"Spectrophotometer",
"spectrophotometry"
] |
The human eye’s color perception is notoriously variable (see, for example, the famous dress), which makes it difficult to standardize colours. This is where spectrophotometers come in: they measure colours reliably and repeatably, and can match them against a library of standard colors. Unfortunately, they tend to be expensive, so when Hackaday’s own [Adam Zeloof] ran across two astonishingly cheap X-Rite/Pantone RM200 spectrophotometers on eBay,
he took the chance
that they might still be working.
They did work, but [Adam] found that his model was intended for testing cosmetics and only had a colour library of skin tones, whereas the base model had a full colour library. This was rather limiting, but he noticed that the only apparent difference between his model and the base model was a logo (that is, a cosmetic difference). This led him to suspect that only the firmware was holding his spectrophotometer back, so he began looking for ways to install the base unit’s firmware on his device.
He started by running X-Rite’s firmware updater. Its log files revealed that it was sending the device’s serial number to an update server, which responded with the firmware information for that device. To get around this, [Adam] tried altering the updater’s network requests to send a base unit’s serial number. This seemed promising, but he also needed a device-specific security key to actually download firmware. After much searching, he managed to find a picture of a base unit showing both the serial number and security key. After substituting these values into the requests, the updater had no problem installing the base model’s firmware.
[Adam] isn’t completely sure how accurate the altered system’s measurements are, but they seem to mostly agree with his own colour calibration swatches. It’s not absolutely certain that there are no hardware differences between the models, so there might be some unknown factor producing the few aberrant results [Adam] saw. Nevertheless, this is probably accurate enough to prove that one of his roommates was wrong about the color of a gaming console.
We’ve seen a few projects before that
measure
and
replicate
existing colors. The principle’s even used to
detect counterfeit bills
.
| 22
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8151779",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T07:40:39",
"content": "Until it’s tested to be accurate 100%, I’d be careful about using the altered model. It is possible the cheaper cosmetic model has a defect that prevented it from accurately reading the color and was rejected and relegated to cosmetic use only.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151790",
"author": "Gort",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T09:21:36",
"content": "It’s probably lacking proper Calibration, which takes time and is therefore expensive to do",
"parent_id": "8151779",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151795",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T09:57:13",
"content": "I very much doubt so. It´s much much likely just the firmware, along with some per-device calibration settings: same sensor, same hardware.Since it´s a Pantone device, i cannot imagine each device is not factory-calibrated. Pantone´s whole business is all about accurate colors, after all…",
"parent_id": "8151779",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151989",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T21:05:42",
"content": "Even if the hardware’s the same, and it’s calibrated, It could easily be binned sensors – the <1% ones get the regular firmware, with the 1% – 5% ones getting the cosmetic firmware.",
"parent_id": "8151795",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151938",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T16:53:36",
"content": "If he could find someone with a base model he could easily test the accuracy of his.",
"parent_id": "8151779",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151800",
"author": "Julianne",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T10:09:29",
"content": "Why does potent hardware deliberately limited by software + some licensing bs reliably make my blood boil? I guess I will never in my life consider it wrong to break into one’s own hardware so its true potential can be unleashed. Good for this person that they done it! Less waste.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151869",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T13:19:05",
"content": "This is quite common, most unfortunate, but also understandable.One of the justifications is that the “cheap” version cost more then BOM + Assembly costs, so the company can make a (modest) profit from that, while the more expensive “fully featured” version allows the company to generate enough profit to pay the salaries of the engineers who design the next product.But the limits are vague, with managers and CEO’s skimming of millions in “bonuses” while the overall company is struggling.Worst case I heard was from a car, which could have a simple on/off for the windscreen wiper, or an interval switch with a bunch of settings. The switch was the same, but in the “simple” version, an extra piece of plastic was added to block the extra positions.Another example are the Rigol and Siglent oscilloscopes. Extra bandwidth (officially) costs money, while in practice, up to around 200MHz, hardware costs are negligible. The software block is quite easy to circumvent, and I think those companies also do that on purpose. “Unlocking” the software is attractive to hobbyists, while companies just pay extra for the bandwidth.I’m guessing that ST does something similar with their uC’s. The sell over 3000 models (on paper), but apparently many have double the flash size, can have an USB peripheral that should not be in it according to the datasheet and other changes. For them, this reduces cost, because they need less masks, and silicon variations. And when a model becomes popular enough, they do create a set of masks without the extra peripherals so they can make more chips on a wafer, and it still has (just) the peripherals as stated in the datasheets. The “extra” peripherals on the silicon are probably also skipped during production tests, and faster production is lower costs.Rigol also goes quite far in this. They’ve got a power supply sold in two versions, with different resolution in current and voltage resolution / accuracy. The expensive version has a color display, while in the cheaper version, the display is limited to monochrome. I don’t buy rigol equipment anymore. It’s too “toylike”, with numeric buttons in a circle, a DMM with an atrocious font, and in their newer scopes they put android on a uSD card.",
"parent_id": "8151800",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151877",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T13:48:14",
"content": "Kind of the, BT with your WiFi because overall it’s cheaper to include than having two separate chips.",
"parent_id": "8151869",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151889",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T13:59:56",
"content": "There was a time that chips with varying RAM or flash sizes (or other features) were selected attesttime: Those that failed a test got packaged and sold as the less-featured version.That’s probably less true now that process yields are better, but I’ll bet some memory is still made/sold that way.",
"parent_id": "8151869",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151991",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T21:07:51",
"content": "CPUs certainly are. I’d guess anything near the edge of technology is.",
"parent_id": "8151889",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152071",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T01:47:42",
"content": "“High end stuff” Probably yes, but microcontrollers are generally made on 20 year old machines and with 20 year old technology. And the process has been well optimized.Also, when machines are made very precise, and well maintained, they do not wear. Really wear is 0, because there is no mechanical contact. And that is why even 30 year old semiconductor machines are still running.This is both a blessing and a curse. It’s cheap to manufacture IC’s on those machines, because their development has already been paid for many times over.It’s a curse because it puts a hard limit on the production capacity of “old technology” semiconductors. The knowledge of how to make those old machines is mostly lost, and re-creating that technology and making new machines is prohibitively expensive, because production has to compete with those old machines.In the early days of semiconductor manufacturing yield was sometimes reduced to 0. And that for months on an end. Can you imagine that? A whole semiconductor factory running, and no product to sell at all? One of the reasons for this was nearby farmers were spraying their crops with sulfur containing pesticides, and trace amounts of sulfur leaked into the clean rooms.There are some very interesting documentaries about early semiconductor manufacturing on Youtube.",
"parent_id": "8151991",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152383",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T16:54:06",
"content": "That’s where the Intel Celeron line came from originally – instead of binning dies that had defective cache, the cache was disabled and it was sold as a lower cost CPU. Same with some of the dual core vs quad core procs – if a quad core die has a defective core, the extra cores get disabled and it’s sold as a dual core, although sometimes if say the demand for the lower end CPUs is higher, they just disable the extra cores to create more of the lower end CPUs (And unfortunately since its disabled by burning a connection on the die with a laser, it’s not something you can easily “hack” to turn back on)",
"parent_id": "8151889",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151875",
"author": "StefanB",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T13:34:31",
"content": "There is a market segmentation here.One full featured model for the printing industry, which needed the features, and at the times still had fairly big money.Another less capable model with a limited feature set, for an audience with a tighter budget. It may also have a lower production cost due to simpler calibration, or simpler (out-of-spec for the full feature set) hardware.Both groups benefit from this setup, because economy of scale is at work here. Development cost is shared between both groups.Many things today are no longer differentiated by the hardware, but by the software. Software development is expensive, although many people keep forgetting this. If something is “free of charge”, most of the time you pay in some other way.",
"parent_id": "8151800",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152072",
"author": "fonz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T01:50:35",
"content": "yes, and just having to only get all the required approvals so legal sell something for one device is going to save money",
"parent_id": "8151875",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151970",
"author": "Plugh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T19:12:50",
"content": "I agree, though I’m not sure that’s the case here.The company was providing a product specifically to ID skin tones for makeup and coded it accordingly. Adding in the features and libraries for any color complicates the usability (it may also cost more if the color libraries are licensed, which they probably are). It is like using a #2 Phillips head screwdriver for work that require it, rather than a multi-head screwdriver. A simple firmware update process may also be an advantage in keeping the tool working as needed. These limitations may be benefits the customers want for this application.",
"parent_id": "8151800",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152083",
"author": "fonz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T02:12:06",
"content": "when you buy PC you are getting “potent hardware deliberately limited by software + some licensing” …",
"parent_id": "8151800",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151867",
"author": "StefanB",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T13:14:06",
"content": "Writing custom firmware which leverages the hardwares full potential would be a cool hack, but this is not.This is just using illegal downloads.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151925",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T15:51:51",
"content": "Man, are they putting dog whistles in kid’s cereal boxes now?",
"parent_id": "8151867",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151963",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T18:25:24",
"content": "Go defend the big corporations, maybe they’ll love you if you do.",
"parent_id": "8151867",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152406",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T17:57:24",
"content": "They’ll just move to fuses, ending the debate. Then no one can be accused of defending anyone.",
"parent_id": "8151963",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151873",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T13:32:52",
"content": "For the dress:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dressI don’t do asocial media and had not seen it before. The phenomena is quite curious. It would be nice to have some more pictures of that dress in different light conditions.Another lighting trick is in supermarkets, where the grocery section has very weird lighting (Just look up, the lights are different from the rest of the store). This is done to make the groceries look “better” (From their point of view). From the consumer point of view: it hides brownish colors so it’s more difficult to see whether the groceries have started to deteriorate because they’ve been lying in the shop for a few days.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152038",
"author": "Plugh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T00:11:03",
"content": "It wouldn’t surprise me if there is an automated calibration procedure during production. That may be more cost effective than precision in parts, assembly, and optics for manufacturing. The calibration for the skin tone model may be more limited, not covering the full color gamut, which could hurt accuracy even after updating the firmware for broader operation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,478.421627
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/19/software-defined-retro-roms/
|
Software Defined Retro ROMs
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"ARM",
"computer hacks",
"hardware",
"Microcontrollers",
"PCB Hacks",
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Hacks"
] |
[
"2316 ROM chip",
"2332 ROM chip",
"2364 ROM chip",
"Software Defined ROM"
] |
Here’s something fun from our hacker [Piers]:
Software Defined ROMs
.
In this series of three videos, [Piers] runs us through what a software defined ROM is, how to make them, and then how to use them.
As [Piers] explains, one frustration a retro technician will face is a failed ROM chip. In the era he’s interested in, there are basically three relevant kinds of ROM chip, all 24-pin Dual Inline Package (DIP):
2364 ROM chip: 8KB; 1x chip-select line
2332 ROM chip: 4KB; 2x chip-select lines
2316 ROM chip: 2KB; 3x chip-select lines
The chip-select line is how the processor indicates to a particular ROM chip that it should be active. When active, a ROM chip will read the value on the address lines and output the data at that address on the data lines.
With his software defined ROMs [Piers] implements the ROM behavior (converting requests on the address lines to results on the data lines) by using a microcontroller. As his ROM boards are software defined, they are eminently configurable, which means he can support all configurations of all three types of ROM.
[Piers] looks at some old ROM datasheets to get details about timing requirements. His functional requirements are that all three types of ROM can be emulated with a single hardware variant (the same microcontroller) with the same footprint (24-pin DIP), that they be hand-solderable, and cheap. Further technical requirements were that the solutions can all be implemented in software (no FPGA), requiring as few onboard components as possible, that the GPIOs be 5V tolerant, that a fast clock speed be available using the on-chip oscillator, that no more than two PCB layers are required, and that all SMD components are 0603 or larger.
He considered various microcontrollers, including PICO/RP2040/RP2350, ESP32, ATMEGA, PIC, STM32F1, and STM32F4. He really wanted the PICO because they are fast and powerful, but they don’t have 5V tolerant GPIOs, so he settled on the STM32F4 instead. He talks in detail about pin selection, PCB routing, and ROM preprocessing (mangling) for optimal performance. The chip loads its data from flash storage into RAM so it has reliable and deterministic performance characteristics. Provision is made for programming pins so the ROMs can be reprogrammed in-circuit.
When it comes to programming, [Piers] has implemented most things in hand-rolled assembly code. The reason, he says, is that he didn’t want variable implementations depending on the version of compiler used.
Now that you have a universal software defined ROM, all you need is a
reliable ROM dumper
.
| 6
| 2
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8151737",
"author": "WTF Detector",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T02:43:51",
"content": "Pretty sure Tyler already got to this one before you did, John:https://hackaday.com/2025/07/05/software-defined-retro-rom-makes-8-bit-easy/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151749",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T03:40:55",
"content": "Oh, whoops! Not sure how I missed that. Still, this post has two follow-up videos that were added since Tyler’s initial write-up.",
"parent_id": "8151737",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151770",
"author": "WTF Detector",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T06:38:15",
"content": "True, true! Piers seems to really be on a roll. Looking forward to making use of his work when bit-rot inevitably sets in on my C64 or C128. :)",
"parent_id": "8151749",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151774",
"author": "John Elliot V",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T07:19:19",
"content": "Thanks for pointing out this dupe, by the way. Nice catch. I have let the editors know, it’s up to them whether this post gets deleted or reworded or what. Thanks again. And yes, I definitely have this project bookmarked for when I one day need it! I really like this software defined approach to ROMs.",
"parent_id": "8151770",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151852",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T12:29:15",
"content": "I think there’s been enough new work to highlight that this post still has value. Which is really impressive, considering it’s only been a couple of weeks.",
"parent_id": "8151749",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151924",
"author": "DeveloperLen",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T15:49:27",
"content": "1991: A Grammar Engine “ROMulator” quadrupled my development production rate developing an i386 bootloader in an embedded system.1997: Grammar Engine produced a “PromIce”, which had logic that allowed a program to communicate back toward the developer by sequenced reads of a few well-placed addresses.Hardware was generally a (few) static RAMS, an Intel 8035 / Signetics micro and a serial port, with a ribbon cable to a 2732 / 2764 EPROM.It has been interesting and wonderful to hear from the creative people who are now doing it in software (!!). I have seen a few people use the Raspberry Pi Pico with its PIO block.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,478.70027
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/19/symbos-is-a-funhouse-mirror-look-at-a-future-that-never-was/
|
SymbOS Is A Funhouse Mirror Look At A Future That Never Was
|
Tyler August
|
[
"Retrocomputing"
] |
[
"amstrad cpc",
"msx",
"sinclair spectrum",
"z80"
] |
The Z80 might be decades obsolete and a few years out of production, but it’s absolutely a case of “gone but not forgotten” in the hacker world. Case in point is
SymbOS, a multitasking OS for Z80 machines
by Amstrad, Sinclair, and the MSX2 family of computers that updated to version 4.0 earlier this year.
The best way to describe SymbOS is like looking at an alternate reality where Microsoft created Windows 95 ten years early to put on the MSX instead of the BASIC they were paid to provide. SymbOS 4.0 comes even further into alignment with that design language, with a new file explorer that looks a lot like Windows Explorer replacing (or supplementing) the earlier Midnight Commander style utility in version 3.
Thanks to the preemptive multitasking, you can listen to tracker music while organizing files and writing documents, and even play a port of DOOM. Chat with your friends on IRC while watching (low res) videos on SymboVid. If you’re looking for productivity, all the old business software written for CP/M can run in a virtual machine. There’s even an IDE if you can stand the compile times on what is, we have to remember, an 8-bit, 1980s machine. It’s hard to remember that while watching the demo video embedded below.
The operating system supports up to 1024 KB of RAM (in 64 KB chunks, of course) and file systems up to 2 TB, which is an absolutely bonkers amount of space for this era’s machines. One enterprising dev has even got his
CPC talking to ChatGPT
, if that’s your jam. You can try
SymbOS for free online on an MSX emulator,
or toss it
onto a spare Raspberry Pi.
If you’re feeling adventurous, there’s a port in the works for the
Isetta TLL retrocomputer.
This isn’t the
first modern OS we’ve featured for the Z80,
the processor which will
live forever in our hearts and tapeouts
.
Thanks to [Manuel] for the tip.
| 66
| 11
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8151718",
"author": "JRD",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T01:06:07",
"content": "SymbOS looks neat, but is clearly requires for big “Super-Z80” systems with fancy color graphics. It requires a minimum of 128K banked RAM and would really like 356K, plus lots of drive space. (Kind of like the minimum requirements for the first version of Windows kept growing bigger and bigger than the first PCs. Any graphical windowing system gets memory-hungry.) Also, it’s not open source although it is free.The latest version of Zeal, linked, is actually more interesting because one version can even run in RAM less than 64K, although it can use banked RAM. Of course it’s more limited and doesn’t try for multithreading, CP/M emulation, or any graphics at all. It is open source.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151768",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T05:55:11",
"content": "Going from a single-task OS to a multitasking one is going to require more RAM by definition, so that comparison isn’t particularly fair. And RAM expansions might not have been common back in the day, but now they’re trivial to acquire and cheap.And SymbOS can handle whatever graphics hardware you have, even going back to a simple text console if necessary – it is atrueOS, not just a graphical shell. But seriously, “fancy colour graphics”? This isn’t 1978.There’s no competition between Zeal and SymbOS and there shouldn’t be. Play with whatever grabs your interest, or don’t.",
"parent_id": "8151718",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151841",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T12:12:07",
"content": "“And RAM expansions might not have been common back in the day, but now they’re trivial to acquire and cheap.”I’m not entirely sure if that was the case.Especially back in the 80s, there had been a lot of electronic hobbyists, radio amateurs, SWLs and hackers.Having a soldering iron, cables and spare switches at home was just normal for people with such hobbies.It wasn’t being too uncommon to upgrade Amiga or Atari STs, for example.Home computer magazines of the time were full of modifications of all sorts.Especially RAM upgrades were common on 16-Bit systems or very limited 8-bitters such as ViC20, ZX81 etc.Because programs and games became more and more sophisticated and users had to keep up with it.",
"parent_id": "8151768",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151853",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T12:29:31",
"content": "I think you’re arguing a completely different point and thinking far too late. We’re talking the 8-bit computers of the late 70’s and early 80’s here. RAM expansions weren’t rare (depends on the platform) but they certainly weren’t cheap.PCs and the 16-bitters came in progressively as time went on for the wealthy but the 8-bit market was still the only affordable option for a lot of people until the early 90’s.",
"parent_id": "8151841",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151864",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T13:02:43",
"content": "Zero RAM upgrades in the 70s? Really? 😮That was the heyday of my father’s electronic tinkerings.He told me endless stories about how he built CP/M computers (from scratch) on Europa cards or about his Sharp computer.I can’t imagine him not having upgraded to full 48 KB of RAM (on his Sharp), for CP/M’s wake .Because his Sharp MZ-80K was from 1978/1979 era and didn’t have full memory expansion as standard yet.It were 20 KB in original configuration, merely, which left little memory to CP/M applications.Even 48 KB wasn’t “great” by an means.. Close to 64 KB was more reasonable.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_MZ",
"parent_id": "8151853",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151904",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T14:52:12",
"content": "“PCs and the 16-bitters came in progressively as time went on for the wealthy”Or other way round. Depends on point of view, I guess.I know of a fellow who said that he’s too poor for bad tools.To those who were working, a proper computer was a serious piece of equipment rather than a toy.it was a long-time investment rather, something that pays off over time, too.So especially the “poor” have had no money to waste on something limited.Those with their underpowered home computers were family users/home users who had computers for joy, to play games.They had no obligation to have to have a serious configuration, undetstandably.",
"parent_id": "8151853",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151909",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T15:06:14",
"content": "Zero RAM upgrades in the 70s? Really? 😮Where did I say that? Maybe take a breath and actually read what you’re responding to before you go off half-cocked. You’ve just spewed out multiple paragraphs arguing against a position I didn’t take.",
"parent_id": "8151853",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151934",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T16:32:24",
"content": "@pelrun “Where did I say that ?”Sorry, I must been reading between the lines here.",
"parent_id": "8151853",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153719",
"author": "Sykobee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:30:46",
"content": "SymbOS started on the Amstrad CPC.64KB and 256KB expansions were common fairly early on. Internal 512KB expansions were also available even just a year after the 464 was released.SymbOS also runs on the Amstrad NC100/NC200 with some screen restrictions, and that’s just monochrome. The fancy MSX graphics option just makes for nice screenshots.",
"parent_id": "8151853",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151815",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T10:40:11",
"content": "SymbOS will happily run in 1-bit color mode, depending on the hardware, but yeah, it’s a lot heftier than Zeal. That’s only to be expected considering what it can do.It certainly does restrict it, hardware-wise.",
"parent_id": "8151718",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151835",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T11:41:20",
"content": "SymbOS should rather be compared to MP/M or CP/Net than CP/M 2.2, I think.Even the later CP/M 3 (CP/M Plus) had used bank-switching and was meant for > 64KB systems such as Commodore 128D.Besides, if you look closely, MSX2 computers had more than 128KB of main RAM, often.“People tend to stick to 256kB main RAM as unofficial standard.”That’s in addition to 128KB of video RAM.Source:https://www.msx.org/wiki/MSX2",
"parent_id": "8151718",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151725",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T01:45:12",
"content": "Surely you mean 1024 kB of RAM, not “1024kb of RAM”. Though a megabit of RAM was still a hefty (and expensive!) amount in 1980.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151825",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T10:54:54",
"content": "Surely I did. Fixed!And yes, it would have been absurd in 1980 for home use in 1980– 6,480 USD, accordingto this source. That’s over 25 grand today. That said, the system is “up to 1024 kB of RAM” — I don’t have hardware to try it, but if I’m reading their site right it should run on an Amstrad CPC, which has only 128K.",
"parent_id": "8151725",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151857",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T12:39:31",
"content": "Technically it can mostly start up on a base 128K CPC, but you just can’t do very much with it.",
"parent_id": "8151825",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151886",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T13:58:30",
"content": "Can or could you do much with a base 128K CPC, anyway?I would assume that good games and applications wanted more RAM.I haven’t have one, but I had a Sinclair ZX81 once.And without the memory pak, only a few programs ran.The classic “3D Monster Maze” needed 16K, for example.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_packhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Monster_Maze",
"parent_id": "8151857",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151910",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T15:11:20",
"content": "facepalmJust because the ZX81 (sold with only ONE KILOBYTE of ram I might add) couldn’t run much without a ram expansion, it doesn’t mean that the CPC also needed one. It hasone hundred and twenty eight timesmore memory!",
"parent_id": "8151886",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151930",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T16:22:12",
"content": "@Pelrun “facepalm”🤷♂️I’m more familiar with the PCW line, which was sold as Schneider Joyce over here.And it had 256KB or 512KB of RAM, rather than 128 KB.",
"parent_id": "8151886",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151837",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T11:46:23",
"content": "Kilobyte used to be abbreviated in several ways, I think.There were users which wrote 128 K instead of 128 KB, for example.The “K” usually was in upper case, to distinguish it from kilobit (“k”).But that being said, aren’t we supposed to say “KiB” by now? Kibibyte? ;)",
"parent_id": "8151725",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151856",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T12:38:12",
"content": "Yes, you could invent your own abbreviations, and give people the joy of solving a puzzle. Or you could use a standard abbreviation, forcing your reader to suffer a more boring, less ambiguous life.",
"parent_id": "8151837",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151866",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T13:11:47",
"content": "I see. Just like there’s English (BE) and English (simplified), right?",
"parent_id": "8151856",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151872",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T13:29:04",
"content": "Or Noah Webster’s perversions of the language.vive la différencebut don’t let it hinder communication. For example, what is “English (BE)” Basic English? Bastardized English? Beginner English? British Empire? Even in context it’s ambiguous.",
"parent_id": "8151866",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151891",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T14:01:28",
"content": "@Paul I guess this soon doesn’t really matter anymore.We soon find ourself learning Chinese, I guess.",
"parent_id": "8151866",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152022",
"author": "poglad2011",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T22:26:35",
"content": "Well it wasn’t just some users that used 16K or 128K as the abbreviation, it was literally moulded into the casings of Sinclair devices such as the 16K RAM pack and the 128K Spectrum, but to mention being written thus in all the manuals and magazines. The BBC Micro booted up with “32K” on the screen. Being raised on such stuff as a nipper, it’s a habit I’ll probably never lose now.",
"parent_id": "8151837",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152023",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T22:31:56",
"content": "I second that – Kibibytes, Mibibytes, Gigibytes, Tibibytes.",
"parent_id": "8151837",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151727",
"author": "LambdaMikel",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T01:49:19",
"content": "There aren’t that many hackers left that can work on that level. Insane and amazing achievement Absolutely nuts.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151876",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T13:45:22",
"content": "BIOS writers.",
"parent_id": "8151727",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152015",
"author": "rudisimo",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T22:12:27",
"content": "Come on now. How many BIOS engineers do you know personally? Please don’t answer that if you’re a BIOS engineer yourself.",
"parent_id": "8151876",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151728",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T01:49:36",
"content": "Sure wish the C64 back in the day could have had a speedy multitasking OS like that!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151786",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T08:35:26",
"content": "One thing that’s left me puzzled is, how did these old systems ever integrate to any sort of useful workflow? I personally started using computers when it was all PCs with Windows 3.11 for Workgroups and the rest had pretty much fallen by the wayside.Like, you’re using an Amstrad with GEM, and some other guy is on a C64, and a third guy is hacking on an early Apple machine – nobody’s got any sort of software compatibility, file formats don’t match, even the physical interfaces like cassettes or floppies don’t match and there’s no practical way to get data from one machine to the other. In the best case you have a dot matrix printer so you can at least do something, like print out your own cookie recipes, but keeping your cookbook in your computer seems pretty contrived.What did you actually manage to do with these machines, besides playing games?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151839",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T12:00:55",
"content": "3-wire null-modem cable and terminal program or basic Kermit program?It surely needed level RS232/TTL conversion at one point (some transistors).For PC-C64, for example.Also, there were programs for data exchange.The Macintosh had Apple File Exchange/PC Exchange, which did write DOS files on a 3,5″ floppy (and vice versa).For DOS, there was Teledisk and some Mac specific utilities that would read/write Mac floppies.The Atari ST could use MS-DOS formatted floppies out-of-box.TOS 1.04 (Rainbow TOS) even switched the formatting routine to a more DOS compatible method.Amiga had PC bridgeboards, which also supported file transfer between PC side and Amiga side.The 1541 Commodore floppy drives had an IEC serial port (and internal parallel port)and there was Star Commander for DOS in the 90s that allowed using them on PC.Not sure how it was done in the 1980s, though.",
"parent_id": "8151786",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151844",
"author": "Bagles",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T12:18:21",
"content": "Windows 3.1x was never an operating system. It was a gui shell that ran on top of MS-DOS. MS DOS is based off of CPM. So It was already in antiquated OS when it came to market. Give Bill Gates credit, selling to anybody created the PC clone market.It’s a little silly to expect some of the things we can do with 8-bit programming today… 2. TB of memory did not exist back then. 1mb ram For a 1 MHz CPU?In 1986, the cost for two megabytes of RAM and the expansion board was about $2,000. I know, because I still have mine. It’s a size and weight of a brick.The computer industry grew from people learning about the tech when it was just coming out for home users. We couldn’t. Just skip 1980 technology into 2000 technology.I still have my 1980s computers. Amiga 1000, Amiga 3000. They work. They can even get on the internet a little bit. There are adapters to use SD cards to replace hard drives. A 1987 Amiga was still more advanced than Windows 3.1, and in some ways more advanced than Windows 95.It could do multitasking since 1985 was version 1.0. It boots into a GUI to set up a hard drive (ver 2.0 /1990). Not even Windows XP from 2002 could do that. It still booted into DOS, press F keys , select DOS text menu setup.The 1985 Amiga could run Macintosh software just fine. . the floppy disk was a little tricky. But there were Mac compatible drives available. I know, because it was a fact and I used to do it myself. I could actually multitask with the Amiga OS, and the MacOS at the same time. Well, that was the norm.Ms- DOS/PC users back then paid extra money for low tech computer hardware and software. But eventually, PC surpassed Amiga and Mac.",
"parent_id": "8151786",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152001",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T21:46:58",
"content": "“Windows 3.1x was never an operating system. It was a gui shell that ran on top of MS-DOS.”That’s the general consensus, but it’s way too simplified.Windows 3.x isn’t “just” a GUI, because it has characteristics of an operating system.– its own API (Windows API)– its own executable format (NE)– printer spooler– its own memory managment (himem.sys merely is used toaccessXMS memory)– multitasking, scheduler (message queue based)– Protected-Mode DOS Extender– preemptive DOS VMs (in 386 Enhanced-Mode)So it’s more like a “graphical environment”, rather than a plain GUI such as DOS-Shell.That’s exactly what Windows 3.0 had written on the box art, still.Also, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 has VFAT, VSHARE, its own networking stacks and network card drivers that run on Windows!If both FastDisk/32-Bit Disk Access (HDD driver) and 32-Bit File Access (HDD cache) are enabled, it will barely ever call MS-DOS again.It has become self-reliant at this point, filtering both in21h and int13h calls.By definition, that makes it a Network OS (NOS), comparable to Novell Netware.And Netware also booted from DOS, by the way, before it took over the hardware.",
"parent_id": "8151844",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152768",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:28:38",
"content": "And about the Amiga.. The A1000 and 2000 were respectable desktop computers, I think.The A500 and A2000 use same chipset, but the A500 is the low-end, consolized home computer version (wedge design).The A2000 was designed in Braunschweig/Germany and was a rock-solid design.It had been made with upgrades in mind. Hence the graphics card slots and the processor slot.From what I’ve learnt, the A2000 was intended to have been used with an 68020 or 68030 card (with cache).Which makes sense, because the default processor was very weak.The Amigas from the 90s seem a little bit alien to me.A600, A1200, A3000, A4000 and how these things were used to be called..They can’t run original AmigaOS 1.x anymore, also.As for the OS: To me, “Amiga OS” 1.x was the real thing (Kick 1.3, WB 1.3).Anything from the 90s was when the star of the Amiga was sinking.That’s when “normal” software started to disappear from the Amiga software library.Kick 1.3 also had HDD booting and AutoConf, already, I think.But it was needed to install and HDD driver, if memory serves.",
"parent_id": "8151844",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151845",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T12:20:30",
"content": "Before the last two decades where everyone does everything online, everyone’s interaction with the world was predominantly face-to-face, on paper, or on the phone. Data transfer was doneon paper, because the world ran on paper.You had to keep track of your own financial and personal records, and you had to write letters and keep receipts and balance your chequebook. A word-processor, a spreadsheet, and a printer made those tasks easier. You typed in your data yourself, and if you needed to give it to someone else, you printed it out and gave them that.",
"parent_id": "8151786",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151870",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T13:21:33",
"content": "Nope. Not for my father, at least. He used X.25 pads since the 1970s.– We still have printouts on endless paper here, with the connection dates.There was Datex-P in my country, which was an X.25 provider commonly used in business and at university.A serial, 80 column ASCII terminal (-VT52 or VT100 was better-) and an 300/1200 Baud acoustic coupler was all it needed.Then there was BTX service shortly after (our country’s Minitel counterpart).He went online shopping via PC in late 80s, already.In the US, CompuServe must been common at the time.Because PC public domain software from the 80s usually shipped with a readme file.And in this readme file, there was a CompuServe e-mail address mentioned in most cases.Or Nifty address, if it was of Japanese origin.",
"parent_id": "8151845",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151871",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T13:26:30",
"content": "“Data transfer was done on paper, because the world ran on paper.”Hi, did you ever wonder youself how ATMs in whole world did communicate with the banks?It wasn’t via paper or ordinary dial-up connection.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.25#Worldwide_public_data_networks",
"parent_id": "8151845",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151912",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T15:24:07",
"content": "Wow, you’re young. Did you ever wonder how the world operated before computers, or do you think business was invented only in the 1950’s?",
"parent_id": "8151871",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151932",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T16:28:11",
"content": "Thank you. Hm. I’d like to ask my grand grandfather about it, he was born 1904 or so.Unfortunately, he passed a way a few decades ago. 😟He was always being interested in new technologies, by the way.Got a TV and a telephone among the first where he lived..",
"parent_id": "8151912",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153726",
"author": "Sykobee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:40:24",
"content": "An ATM is not an 80s home computer though, which is what we are discussing here.Yes, more expensive systems were networked.Businesses standardised on PCs (in the UK in the 80s maybe a few PCWs)But home computers were their own little silo with a box of tapes/disks on the shelf next to it.",
"parent_id": "8151871",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154315",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T19:40:53",
"content": "True. But my dad used to connect to X.25 networks via both terminal and home computers.There was a local Datex-P PAD in our home city, from ~1980 onwards, with auto-baud detection.For logon, all it needed was a serial terminal and an acoustic coupler or modem.The X.25 link itself used plain ASCII and didn’t care about numbers of columns of the terminal device.The databases on other end might have, however.",
"parent_id": "8153726",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151855",
"author": "eto",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T12:38:05",
"content": "Before workflows there were tasks. Computers started as tools to support specific, isolated tasks, in the beginning predominantly calculations, later, when storage became affordable, also anything that requires information to be stored and reused later again.Cookie recipes might actually be a bad example as they don’t help a lot if you have your computer in a bed room and not in the kitchen. While everyone had such a program that offered to store your local knowledge I don’t know anyone who actually used it regularly as it was quite inconvenient if you could not do the actual task close to your computer.But as a small business owner it’s a huge change having all your bills on disks instead of in a folder. You can manage them, make corrections, do some basic reporting on them, print out a report for the tax authorities…For a student it was a convenient way to learn programming without the need to get a seat at the university at one of the computers there. Or to write a program that helps analysing data from experiments.Or just that it was possible to write an academic paper at home and print it out was SUCH a huge advancement.It was possible to get creative in a different way than with e.g. paint. It was possible to start experiments with sound and music other than playing an instrument.Sure. nothing was integrated yet but it was a whole new experience.",
"parent_id": "8151786",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151860",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T12:46:55",
"content": "BBS!Controlling telescopes!Numerical modelling!Digital data logging!Digital image processing!Laboratory instrument control!And even plain old writing.And that newfangled “spreadsheet” thing too (Visicalc).Games? pshaw! Who had time for that?",
"parent_id": "8151786",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151874",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T13:34:25",
"content": "I’m sure users with brains played a fine game of chess.Or enjoyed demanding interactive fiction (Infocom)..",
"parent_id": "8151860",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151984",
"author": "jtg",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T20:55:25",
"content": "YOU ARE STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK BUILDING.AROUND YOU IS A FOREST. A SMALL STREAM FLOWS OUT OF THE BUILDING ANDDOWN A GULLY.",
"parent_id": "8151874",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152576",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T02:11:35",
"content": "👍 🫵",
"parent_id": "8151984",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151939",
"author": "arifyn",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T17:22:43",
"content": "Hey you could program games too, not just play them!Speaking as someone who dealt with all of this in the 80’s, it wasn’t as much of a problem as you might imagine, though there were a lot of reasons:1) there were plenty of useful things people could do on even a low-end, isolated, single computer of the era – accounting, data analysis, word processing, simulation, etc. Pretty much everyone either owned a printer or knew someone/somewhere that could print things for them2) in more professional computing situations where people needed to regularly share information between computers (research/business/???) the parent organization had usually rallied around one particular type of computer so this was simple and/or they were still using a mainframe/terminal model.3) there were a surprising number of hardware and software solutions to deal with incompatibilities between different file formats and physical media types4) when that failed, most computers hadsomekind of serial capability that either spoke RS-232 or could be adapted to speak it. If you were fancy, you had a modem to plug in and could connect directly to another computer or to a BBS. If you were less fancy, you at least had a null modem cable to plug into a machine next to yours, and could bring the two together (all computers are “portable” if you’re motivated enough)5) we didn’t realize how much of a pain in the ass all this was because there was no other option.",
"parent_id": "8151786",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152002",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T21:47:59",
"content": "Hey you could program games too, not just play them!I did that. I also remember plugging two machines together with a null modem cable to transfer data that was too big for floppies – and play Doom head to head. What I didn’t have was a modem (too expensive to operate), so no BBS or other remote connectivity.My PC was already powerful enough that it could record CD quality audio, cut and edit it, and then play it out onto a C-cassette, which we used in some school play production to make “sound effects” on stage. Someone was there behind the curtain to press play at the appropriate moment.For doing paperwork though, I always found the computer an interesting machine but practically useless. Consider filling forms: the form was given to you, perhaps by mail, or you’d take the form from a folder and xerox yourself a copy, and you’d either fill it by hand or slot it into a mechanical typewriter, then mail it or hand it in yourself. Getting the form into the computer, then filling it, then printing it, seemed like extra work for nothing.There was of course word processing, but most of the time you were required to give hand-written notes, you’d do your math homework by hand, and frankly I could write faster than type. These days it’s the opposite.",
"parent_id": "8151939",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152006",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T21:58:04",
"content": "In fact, any time we did use computers in school was for the explicit point of using the computer – like typing something in WordPerfect or drawing a picture in Paint – but that did not extrapolate to anything we did in the real world. We were taught to use the computer for the sake of using the computer – until much later when we got internet connectivity, websites, online chats, and access to much more software like electrical simulation tools or proper image editing. Before that, everyone just had the same Works and Paint that didn’t do much.So, the computer I had at home was simply used for playing games and making cool BASIC programs, mostly in the attempt to create games.",
"parent_id": "8152002",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152010",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T22:02:11",
"content": "Hmm. Given that experience, you’re quite a bit younger than you come across in most of your posts.",
"parent_id": "8152006",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152714",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T13:18:20",
"content": "Or we had computers later than you and skipped a bunch.My first experiences in using computers were with a Commodore 64 though.",
"parent_id": "8152006",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8154774",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2025-07-27T06:57:22",
"content": "In the early 90s I felt like a god because my Amiga spreadsheet could do graphs. It made that part of my homework MUCH faster than drawing them by hand !I used the time I saved to hack an old PC CDROM drive I got for free to the Amiga’s IDE port. This was my first PCB design too, a 12V/5V PSU for the CDROM. Straight from the 7805/7812 datasheet. Hand etched. I might still have it somewhere…",
"parent_id": "8152006",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152075",
"author": "arifyn",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T01:56:10",
"content": "I think your perspective on word processing would be quite different if you’d had to write anything of length during the typewriter era.I don’t think I can convey how epic it was to suddenly be able to cut and paste without literally cutting and using paste.(and that’s not meant as any sort of criticism! Nor would I ever want to go back to the era of strikeout and correction fluid. It’s just amazing how quickly we all take for granted what seemed miraculous just a few decades ago.)",
"parent_id": "8152002",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152729",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T13:47:22",
"content": "Well, that’s the thing. If you were faster with a pen than hunt-and-peck, the added ability to move the text around didn’t seem that important, because getting the text IN was the bigger chore.",
"parent_id": "8152075",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152733",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T14:02:23",
"content": "And by that, I mean, getting the textrightfrom the beginning was the goal of the operation on a typewriter. The draft would exist as hand-written notes, which could easily be mixed and matched.",
"parent_id": "8152075",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152305",
"author": "fallous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T13:41:15",
"content": "File interchange was, for the most part, an intra-business concern so a company would generally settle upon a standard system and deploy amongst those who required such interchange. Inter-business concerns are less concerned with data and more the results of business… things like money (interchange solved by banks) or legal contracts (interchange solved by written documents and court filings).There were public online services which did result in certain standardized interchangeable file formats (GIF for example) and raw text tends to be pretty useful.Keeping your cookbook on your computer wasn’t really a concern given that cookbooks were already a solved problem (the hint is in the name), but certainly some people did because they were especially interested in doing meal planning or the like. Again, result-driven rather than an overly expensive solution to an already-solved problem.One thing that might be helpful to keep in mind regarding personal home computers in the 80s is the term “personal.” Because everything shipped with BASIC, and usually booted directly into it, the computer was a tool for many early adopters as opposed to yet another means of consuming content. My first paid computer-related job was writing some software to do loan amortization tables for a realtor when I was in junior high school. The BASIC listing for that was repurposed to different machines over the next few years due to minor display formatting differences between platforms, but they were able to do all of that themselves.Steve Jobs may have been full of shit in many ways, but one thing he got right was describing the early home computer as “a bicycle for the mind.” It was able to amplify, augment, and on occasion automate things for the person that used it.",
"parent_id": "8151786",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152564",
"author": "hwertz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T00:42:58",
"content": "People pretty much didn’t exchange documents between their CP/M, Commodore, Apple, and Atari systems. People really did keep recipes on the computer, put their own numbers into their own spreadsheet, and type up theor own documents. (Recall back then people would still type documents out on a typewriter, so getting it just how you wanted then printing it was a big improvement.)If you wanted to exchange documents… like plain text ASCII was standardized for quite a while by then (except IBM mainframes that used EBCDIC), and to physically get files from one to another you’d use your modem and use Xmodem, Zmodem, or possibly Kermit to actually send the files. (Or a null modem serial cable rather than modems if they were near each other.)A nuill modem cable or adapter just crossred the send and receive, and possibly a cts/rts flow control lines, so the serial ports could be directly connected to each other.",
"parent_id": "8151786",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152566",
"author": "hwertz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T00:49:20",
"content": "Side note. GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) was developed by Conpuserve (essentially dial in and have live chat (‘CB Simulator’), games, forums, and file download and upload with others all over the country) in 1987 to allow for… well… interchange of graphics. The native format on most systems then amounted to maybe a header saying which format the pic was in and then a raw duimp of video memory, so before GIF you usually had no compatible format to make something on an Amiga and view it on an Atari or whatever.",
"parent_id": "8152564",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152759",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:13:42",
"content": "CompuServe’s GIF exist as GIF87a and GIF89a.Older programs such as Easel (Windows 2.x) may expect the GIF87a version.XNView has the ability to write as GIF87a.The old Compuserve Information Manager (CIM, WinCIM, OS/2 CIM, MacCIM etc)can still be used as an “official” GIF viewer, too, despite CS being defunct now.Fun fact: The original graphics format of CompuServe was the HiRes format in black/white.Back then, the TRS-80 Coco was a common terminal for CS and could display that..Examples:https://planetcalc.com/8626/",
"parent_id": "8152566",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152755",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:07:15",
"content": "“A nuill modem cable or adapter just crossred the send and receive, and possibly a cts/rts flow control lines, so the serial ports could be directly connected to each other.”Small comment: The CTS/RTS pair was more common in modern era, like 90s computing on DOS.In early-mid 80s, DTR and DTS were common.Sounds like nitpicking, I know, but good to keep in mind when dealing with older hard/software..https://www.delock.de/infothek/Nullmodemkabel_RS-232/nullmodemkabel_e.html",
"parent_id": "8152564",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151919",
"author": "Quazatron",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T15:43:05",
"content": "I actually installed it in my ZX Spectrum Next and it is quite awesome. The multitasking aspect is very cool, I wish we had this 40 years ago. 😅",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151928",
"author": "dremu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T16:04:47",
"content": "Is “Can it run WordStar?” the new “Can it run D00m?”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152333",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T14:50:00",
"content": "Tried SymbOS on RP Zero 2W – boots up in less than a second. Zero Problems (pun intended). BTW, 2W is quite a powerhouse for such a tiny ware.We could use more of these tiny footprint efficient OSs that JUST RUN.Comes with Visicalc (pre-Lotus 123) and Wordpad. To tell the truth, most things I do at home (book keeping, etc) won’t need anything moar. Maybe a compiled SQLite for a standalone database engine, but that’s about it for the house office needs. PDF? No, I’ve long figured there are better LaTeX ways, and vector stuffs embedded within.Thank you for sharing. Awesome starting/jumping point.(games or not – those are really priority #13 – usable office computer that fits in a standard mint tin form factor, batteries and all, are the priorities #1, #2 and #3; also, as you know, tin acts as a shield against WiFi signal, so the design readily lends itself to the feature – open the tin door and WiFI is enabled, close it and it is not, methinks a microswitch might also helpful/decisive factor, but you get the scoop, simple and efficient).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152462",
"author": "prevtenet",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T20:44:50",
"content": "FYI, for anyone wanting to try SymbOS on real 80s hardware, I’ll be running a SymbOS exhibit at VCF West, Aug 1-2, 2025 in Mountain View, CA. The display should include a working Amstrad CPC 464 (1984, UK), National FS-4700 MSX2 (1986, Japan), and some other gear.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152753",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:01:38",
"content": "By the way, it’s possible to write your own programs for SymbOS.Using Quigs IDE or the older SymStudio, for example.It’s also possible to run SymbOS in a special VM on Windows and Raspberry Pi at best speed and in hi-res.Older Raspberry Pis have Composite Video output, so that a CRT video monitor can be used, even.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153364",
"author": "Ellisgl",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T22:37:24",
"content": "Given that the Z80 is 8080 compatible, I think an x86 version would be fairly doable.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8153944",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T22:48:46",
"content": "The NEC V20/V30 processors had 8080 emulation mode..Maybe the author of SymbOS could re-write some parts to be 8080 compatible and then utilize 8080 emulation mode in the PC port ?Like with the CP/M-80emulators of the 1980s (NICE22) ?An 4,77 MHz PC compatible with 640KB RAM, V20 CPUand Hercules graphics shouldn’t be a worse experience than using an an Amstrad PCW.It’s just an idea, though. Especially since we don’t know much the SymbOS applications depend on Z80 instructions.An SymbOS emulator could perhaps be written that emulates Z80 specific instructions in software, but use 8080 emulation mode otherwise ?",
"parent_id": "8153364",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,478.657172
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/19/picogus-adds-cd-rom-emulation-to-isa-bus/
|
PicoGUS Adds CD-ROM Emulation To ISA Bus
|
Tyler August
|
[
"Retrocomputing"
] |
[
"CD-ROM",
"disk emulator",
"isa bus",
"rp2040"
] |
Everything fails eventually, but moving parts fail fastest of all– and optical drives seemingly more than others, at least in our experience. Even when they work, vintage drives often have trouble with CD-R, and original media isn’t always easy to find. That’s why it’s so wonderful that [polpo]’s
RP2040 ISA card, the PicoGUS 2.0, now supports CD-ROM emulation.
We covered PicoGUS when it
first appeared as an ISA sound card,
and make no mistake, it can still emulate sound cards for retro-PC beeps and boops. It’s not just the Gravis Ultrasound (GUS) from which the project took its name, but Sound Blaster 2.0, MPU-401 for MIDI, Tandy 3-voice, and CMS/GameBlaster are all soft options. Like most sound cards back in the day, PicoGUS provides game port support as well.
We don’t recall sound cards that served as CD-ROM controllers, but apparently, that was a thing before IDE became the standard for optical drives. We do recall old
CD-ROM drives that shipped with proprietary driver boards,
and PicoGUS emulates Panasonic’s MKS standard, which apparently did show up on some sound cards. For the end-user, that doesn’t matter much: once it’s all set up using the open-source utilities (and appropriate drivers), you’ll have an optical drive sitting at D:.
There’s a USB port on the PicoGUS that lets you use a FAT32 formatted USB stick not as a CD drive, but a CD changer. You can access multiple disk images from the drive, selecting them with the utility software. There’s even a feature that lets you automatically advance to the next disk by removing and reinserting the drive, which is invaluable for multi-CD game installers. It’s not super speedy: in USB mode, expect it to run as fast as a 4x drive. (2x if the PicoGUS is emulating a Sound Blaster at the same time.) Considering that’s all with a single RP2040 in charge, it’s pretty fast. For a DOS box, it’s probably period appropriate, too.
The Almighty Algorithm reminded us about PicoGUS in a video by [vswitchero], which is embedded below for those of you who would like more information in the form of rapidly flickering images and sound.
| 29
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8151645",
"author": "Cogidubnus Rex",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T20:17:46",
"content": "There never was an ISA standard for CD-ROM drives, perhaps you mean IDE?Greetings from one that does remember the Sound Blasters with proprietary CD-ROM interfaces.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151648",
"author": "smartroad",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T20:27:18",
"content": "I was just thinking the same thing, feels like a few errors here 😂",
"parent_id": "8151645",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151652",
"author": "Rog Fanther",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T20:45:47",
"content": "I came here to say the same thing. Many cards of the time had the interfaces, before IDE or ATAPI cdrom drives started to appear.",
"parent_id": "8151645",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152603",
"author": "Jimmy Neutron",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T04:29:03",
"content": "Exactly. Countless cards had this feature, it was extremely common. Like the sound cables that ran from the drive to the cards (later, motherboards). Boy I miss those days of computing.",
"parent_id": "8151652",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151654",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T20:50:04",
"content": "Yes, it was meant to say IDE. Slip of the tongue.",
"parent_id": "8151645",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151687",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T23:24:31",
"content": "Either way, it’s not really wrong. :)IDE (or ATA rather) is based off ISA bus/AT-Bus.The physical part ATAPI is more or less directly interfacing to ISA.The “IDE controller” of a CD-ROM drive is merely a simple host adapter in most cases.There are very minimalist “IDE controller” cards that merely have a single chip,an address decoder IC, to make the drive available at secondary IDE channel (usually I/O port 170 hex).The rest connects directly to the ISA bus.The ATAPI protocol is done in the DOS CD-ROM driver (oakcdrom.sys, videcdd.sys etc) and the CD-ROM drive.The vintage PC doesn’t need to know about it,it can be an original 286-based IBM/AT from 1984, even.Using a separate IDE “controller” (host adapter) has the nice side-effect that the HDD on primary-master channeland CD-ROM at secondary-master channel don’t need to share the same ribbon cable.Because cable select and master/slave didn’t work well in early 90s.The IDE drive of the time didn’t like that. There were incompatibilities, still. Especially between different manufacturers.That’s why SCSI was favored by professionals. It was more mature at the time.",
"parent_id": "8151654",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151740",
"author": "Glen Hinckley",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T02:49:57",
"content": "SCSI More mature not sure about that, had more things you could hook to it. But there was a lot of scsi stuff that only worked with the card that came with it.",
"parent_id": "8151687",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151769",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T06:24:00",
"content": "SCSI didn’t have the headaches of CHS/E-CHS addressing and the various BIOS/IDE limitations that plagued the DOS era.SCSI had used logical sectors from start, rather.It was using the equivalent to LBA, so to say.The issues that SCSI had on PC were software issues, rather. Or lack of proper termination.There had to be an int13h handler for HDD support, for example.If the SCSI controller had no ROM chip with BIOS compatible firmware w/ int13h support,then the SCSI controller was like a dead fish in the water untila compatible SCSI driver was loaded that supported the SCSI chip.",
"parent_id": "8151740",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151671",
"author": "Nicholas Sargeant",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T22:00:46",
"content": "There was a brief flirtation with SCSI CD-ROM interfaces on sound cards as well – Creative SB16 SCSI ?",
"parent_id": "8151645",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151681",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T22:59:35",
"content": "ProAudioSpectrum 16 (PAS16), too! :DIt had an 8-Bit Trantor SCSI interface, based on a popular Zilog (?) Chip.Early OSes such as OS/2 or NT supported PAS16/Trantor out-of-box.The mainstream users probably had Sound Blasters with some Sony/Philips/Mitsumi interface.Speaking of Mitsumi, the LU005S single-speed drive and its 8-Bit controller card (DMA capable!) used to be popular in early 90s.It’s among the oldest known standard, I think, not counting the 80s era external CD Playerswith their serial computer interfaces and proprietary interface cards (Philips CDD 462 etc). And except SCSI, of course.SCSI was available since the mid-late 80s and not just on PCs.It was also widely used Macintoshs, for example.",
"parent_id": "8151671",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151710",
"author": "Rob Gries",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T00:39:07",
"content": "It’s not quite a standard, it’s the proprietary Matsushita protocol called MKE.",
"parent_id": "8151645",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151720",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T01:22:19",
"content": "Early on CD-ROM didn’t work on IDE because BIOS didn’t have CD-ROM support and DOS couldn’t access it. Early sound card had propriety CD connector and handled the data between early CD-ROM and DOS through ISA.Later version of CD-ROM worked on IDE via drivers to get around old BIOS limitation before BIOS supported CD-ROM directly.I may be off on a few points but yeah CD-ROM originally only worked through ISA on a propriety interface or sound card and not through IDE.",
"parent_id": "8151645",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151851",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T12:28:16",
"content": "Hi there! Do you mean BIOS support for booting from CD-ROM?“El Torito” came out in 1995 or so (in the Pentium days), but didn’t do much for DOS CD-ROM support.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9660#Extensions_and_improvementsOn DOS, there’s MSCDEX CD-ROM extension and the hardware-dependent CD-ROM driver (SBIDE.SYS, OAKCDROM.SYS, VIDE-VDD.SYS etc).MSCDEX was shipped with Windows 3.1x and MS-DOS 6.x, but also available elsewhere (BBS, FTP, CD-ROMs).It also worked on and older DOS, such as DOS 3.3..Compatible replacements existed, as well.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSCDEX#Alternatives",
"parent_id": "8151720",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151791",
"author": "Roland",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T09:26:19",
"content": "Kids these days…Of course you connected your double speed cd-rom drive to your sound card on your brand new ‘multi media’ 486 pc in the early 90’s",
"parent_id": "8151645",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151858",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T12:42:34",
"content": "That’s because they both were sold as part of an “multimedia upgrade kit“.Having a soundcard was needed to meet MPC-Level 1 specification of multimedia PCs.At the time, CD-ROM technology and multimedia were a huge thing in PC industry.So it made sense to add a CD-ROM controller on soundcard, it saved an expansion slot, too!In early 90s, we were promissed a bright future and a wonderful ride on the Datenautobahn, err, information super highway.There also were soundcards with integrated modem, too!Such as IBM MWave, miro CONNECT34 WAVE or CreativePhone Blaster (CT3110).Did I mention that VGA cards used to have mouse ports? :DHave a look at the “ATI VGA Wonder XL”, for example.",
"parent_id": "8151791",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152044",
"author": "Chris Colvin",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T00:39:08",
"content": "Ah the mwave…. Modem and sound card both and with a firmware upgrade from 28.8 to 33.6…",
"parent_id": "8151858",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152604",
"author": "Jimmy Neutron",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T04:34:46",
"content": "Those cards were a nightmare when it came to drivers. I’ll never forget those cards thanks to their black plastic housing covering part of the components.",
"parent_id": "8151858",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152606",
"author": "Jimmy Neutron",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T04:48:23",
"content": "You’re mistaken, this is NOT a (PS/2) mouse port. It’s used for an ATI accessory cable that was included. Usually including either s-ideo and composite or s-video in/out with a composite audio and Video Port. I had a few of these back in the day.Other video cards had similar ports that were for s-video output. It’s easy to get them confused as it was a popular connection style at the time.",
"parent_id": "8151858",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151646",
"author": "Stuart Longland",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T20:22:06",
"content": "We don’t recall sound cards that served as CD-ROM controllers, but apparently, that was a thing before ISA became the standard for optical drives.Ohhh I do… I have a SoundBLASTER 16 here that gives you the pick of Panasonic, Sony and Mitsumi proprietary CD-ROM drive interfaces… a later Creative Vibra16C had a IDE controller for an IDE (ATAPI) CD-ROM drive.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151651",
"author": "Computerwurm",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T20:44:35",
"content": "Oh yes. The extra controller e. g. on a sound card was necessary, even if you had a free IDE port, because CD ROM drives required E-IDE (ATAPI), while the original IDE (ATA) could just do hard drives.",
"parent_id": "8151646",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151655",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T20:51:59",
"content": "I had a SoundBlaster 16, but I’m pretty sure I never knew it could do that. If I did read the manual, I forgot that tidbit long ago.",
"parent_id": "8151646",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151682",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T23:07:06",
"content": "ISA was known as “AT-Bus” originally.In the late 80s, “AT-Bus Fixed-Disk Drives” were really just IDE HDDs (Intelligent Drive Electronics).Eventually, IDE became EIDE (Enhanced IDE) in mid-90s and ATA (AT-Attached) in late 90s.Before it was retro-actively renamed “PATA” (Parallel ATA) because of SATA.The term “IDE/ATAPI” or just ATAPI is the most correct one, I think.It means AT-Attached, Packet Interface.It’s an extension to IDE or AT-Bus with some useful SCSI commands for removable media.Speaking under correction here. It’s just an summary.",
"parent_id": "8151646",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151656",
"author": "just6979",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T20:56:52",
"content": "“We don’t recall sound cards that served as CD-ROM controllers”Really? Pretty sure every machine in our family room, up until I built myself a K6-2 SuperSocket7 machine in ’98, had their CD-ROM drives attached via the sound card.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151686",
"author": "SETH",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T23:16:07",
"content": "An IDE connected CDROM would often pipe the audio to the soundcard via a small bridge wire. This was optional, the drives had headphone ports on the front. Not sure when this changed.",
"parent_id": "8151656",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151700",
"author": "Cody",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T23:54:33",
"content": "The early CD-ROM drives actually required the audio cable to the sound card. Many of the drives didn’t support sending the audio over IDE. Even if they did, it would be too CPU intensive and you wouldn’t be able to do anything else on the computer while the CD was playing.I think the audio connectors started going away in the early 2000’s. Computers got fast enough that the processing power required to play a CD was insignificant.",
"parent_id": "8151686",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151701",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T00:01:49",
"content": "Windows happened.. That’s why! :DWindows 98 added “digital” playback directly over ribbon cable.It made Windows 98 read raw PCM audio data off CD audio tracks via data cable and did stream it to the soundcard driver/soundcard.It was an optional feature that could be enabled in Control Panel.“Enable Digital CD audio for this CD-ROM device” or something.Located on Device Manager or under Multimedia settings, not sure anymore.And since many users played all kind of games on Windows 9x anyway (including DOS games!) no one card or noticed about the loss at the time.That was until nostalgic users or retro gamers started to re-discover MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 in the late 2000s..Then it became obvious that a CD/DVD/BD-ROM drive without a built-in, autonomous Audio-CD player is a disadvantage.",
"parent_id": "8151686",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153737",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:57:08",
"content": "I have SATA DVD burners that not only have the analog stereo connector, but also S/PDIF on a 2-pin, 0.1″ header. I’ve never owned a motherboard with an S/PDIF input, though.",
"parent_id": "8151686",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151842",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T12:13:48",
"content": "It’s a factual statement, confused by the royal we of our editorial style: I literally meant “I don’t remember seeing that.”Of course my brain is swiss cheese, so that really means nothing. Weirdly enough I think I do remember the proprietary control cards. So my family probably jumped from an old CD with its own ISA card to one that sat on the IDE bus without going through the sound blaster– or it was hooked up through the sound card and I just misremember the whole thing.I absolutely remember the bridge cable for audio, though.",
"parent_id": "8151656",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151929",
"author": "NQ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T16:20:55",
"content": "Let me just leave this here after reading all the replies: ackchually",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,478.553347
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/19/punch-card-controlled-cyberdeck-lives-in-80s-toy/
|
Punch Card Controlled Cyberdeck Lives In 80s Toy
|
Tyler August
|
[
"Cyberdecks"
] |
[
"cyberdeck",
"morse code",
"Pi Zero W",
"punch card",
"VTech"
] |
Have you ever seen a toy and said “That wants to be a deck”? [Attoparsec] did, when his eyes fell upon the Little Talking Scholar, a punch card driven toy from the 1980s.
It’s now a punch card driven cyberdeck.
The punch card interface on the toy is only six bits, but sixty-four application cards are probably more than parents would have wanted to keep track of in 1989. Originally, they cued up simple matching games on an anonymous epoxy-coated microprocessor; after [Attoparsec]’s surgery, they do the same thing, cuing up custom Python applications on the Raspberry Pi Zero he’s implanted into this thing.
The square display comes courtesy of HyperPixel. It’s designed for a Pi, but both the display and the case needed a bit of surgery to get it to fit. First, a bit of milling was required on the plastic case to make room for the printed bracket to hold the display. That left depth, as the original toy had no display, which means the lid of this faux-laptop is quite thin. (The punch cards were printed with all you needed to play the games and were visible through the hole that now shows the LCD.) By removing the headers and soldering directly to the board, [Attoparsec] was able to get the display to fit, but space was then too tight for punch cards to slide in easily. Some washers added the extra space required.
A battery lives inside of the original battery compartment, but because the lithium cell he’s using is thicker than the AA’s this toy was designed for, a little bit more milling was required. A couple more holes gave a charging button and a power port.
The buttons and the punch card contacts are connected to the Pi via MCP23017 I2C port expanders, since the square display provides a handy I2C pass-through. A nice detail was putting the MCP23017s onto a custom PCB that sat directly on the contacts of the original button board. We might have used those eight buttons for a chording keyboard, but [Attoparsec] isn’t a fan of cording. Instead, the buttons are context-dependent based on the application. For text input in his note-taking application [Attoparsec] fell back on Morse, with two keys acting as paddles. We’ve seen
Morse keyboards before
, and while they seem like great HAM training,
they can also be assistive devices
.
The whole video is absolutely worth a watch, for all the details and the fun tangents [Attoparsec] goes off on. We’re grateful to [smellsofbikes] for tipping us off to this project. The tips line is always hungry for cyber decks, so
let us know if you find one
— or anything else interesting.
| 11
| 4
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8151683",
"author": "Gus Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T23:07:20",
"content": "Angry toddler indeed! For I2C port expansion, I love to use Arduino minis, micros, and what not flashed with my I2C slave firmware, which allows me to add both analog inputs and outputs as well as GPIO.https://github.com/judasgutenberg/Generic_Arduino_I2C_Slave",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151717",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T01:04:41",
"content": "Once again, not a cyberdeck…You can’t just use words wrong because you think they sound cool.They have one job. They convey an idea as completely and concisely as possible.Using words wrong on purpose just makes it harder for the rest of us to communicate.A cyberdeck is a general purpose computer that:1. Is designed with multiple discreet/separate components, each being required to function.2. Is portable by design.(There are a few counterexamples but they are usually in-universe corruptions).3. Is assembled at the location of use, which isn’t specifically designed for use.4. Disassembled and moved after use.The design intention and actual use is important to the definition.What is a “coffee mug”? A cup with a handle, used for drinking coffee.Remove any of the intention OR use, and it becomes something else.A smartphone is not a cyberdeck. (Only one component)A smartphone with an external display and keyboard, used in a classroom to take notes, and taken away by the student after, is a cyberdeck. (Multiple parts. Assembled on location. Removed.)A PlayStation is not a cyberdeck. (Not general purpose. Not assembled/disassembled and moved.)A laptop is not a cyberdeck.A laptop at the the beach, with external cameras/microphones and a teleprompter, used to Livestream an interview, is a cyberdeck.Get it?There are dozens of examples that created the archetype.Gibson novels.Johnny Mnemonic.Cyberpunk tabletop/games.Shadowrun.Etc…They all share the same features.That is why the word HAS a meaning.It’s not just “cool portable electronic thing”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151723",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T01:40:34",
"content": "Citation required. Bill Gibson left it pretty loose, up to the imagination of the reader, in the very best way.Trying to constrain the definition to one person’s interpretation is narrowminded and self-centered. Diversity of ideas should be welcomed.So give it a rest. Really.If you really want to be specific about word definition and meaning, perhaps start with your own usage of “discreet”.",
"parent_id": "8151717",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151742",
"author": "KDawg",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T03:11:53",
"content": "So you are saying I can’t drink tea or hot coco out of a coffee mug or else it magically morphs into an entirely new object.God you got your panties in a twist over some complete fiction (that frankly holds up about as good as your silly little rant)",
"parent_id": "8151717",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151775",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T07:24:52",
"content": "But we’re not reliant purely on words, we have pictures and a build log so any confusion can be cleared up. Also, the discrete component claim is very suspect. Just because they can work with discrete components, that doesn’t make it a core requirement to meet the description.No problem at all if that’s your personal definition, it just isn’t that of the author or many other people. The best thing you can do is submit your cyberdeck project to HaD.",
"parent_id": "8151717",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151849",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T12:26:48",
"content": "Can I ask, in your exacting source-material-based definition, why you don’t consider the neural interface important? If you need to be true to source, most of the examples you cite either plug into your brain explicitly, or are implied to. I’m honestly curious why “assembled-in-place” is your hill to die on, but the ‘jack is unimportant.In any case, other people– like, an entire community dedicated to building things they call “cyberdecks”– has decided on a different definition. It happens, and I’m sorry to say that words are defined by usage, not origin. Take a look at an etymological dictionary sometime; go back far enough to their roots and many of the words you use daily are “wrong”.",
"parent_id": "8151717",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152155",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T05:52:13",
"content": "No, we have to shelve the term until the requisite interface is available. /sJoking aside, I think “highly customized portable computer” is a good enough working definition. That “assembled in place” part indicating modularity is part of it being a personalized build, and not everyone wants their portable device to be in pieces.",
"parent_id": "8151849",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152058",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T01:21:36",
"content": "tl;dr",
"parent_id": "8151717",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152157",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T05:58:50",
"content": "Your own examples break the rules you have listed. Rule 1 states “each being required to function”.You don’t NEED an external display or keboard to take notes in class, or additional microphones and cameras to livestream an interview.You’ve picked a really weird hill to die on, but at least please be consistent.",
"parent_id": "8151717",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152377",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T16:33:26",
"content": "I love the underlying idea of one app per punch card and I’d love to see a community of these with people trading cards the way people used to trade custom roms for gaming hardware. “Hey I have a new update for the mastodon card!” “lemme try it out!”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152927",
"author": "Cad the Mad",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T22:03:51",
"content": "I got to see this live at OpenSauce last weekend. It is really neat, and Attoparsec is a really friendly dude.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,478.747785
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/19/elegoo-rapid-petg-vs-petg-pro-same-price-similar-specs-which-to-buy/
|
Elegoo Rapid PETG Vs PETG Pro: Same Price, Similar Specs, Which To Buy?
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"3d Printer hacks"
] |
[
"3d printer filament",
"polylactic acid"
] |
Even within a single type of FDM filament there is an overwhelming amount of choice. Take for example Elegoo’s PETG filament offerings, which include such varieties like ‘Pro’ and ‘Rapid’. Both cost the same, but is there a reason to prefer one over the other, perhaps even just for specific applications? To test this, [Dr. Igor Gaspar] over at the
My Tech Fun
YouTube channel bought some spools of these two filaments and
subjected both to a series of tests
.
Obviously, the Rapid filament is rated for higher extrusion speeds – <270 vs <600 mm/s – while the website claims a higher required nozzle temperature that confusingly does not match those listed on the spool. There are quite a few differences in the listed specifications, including the physical and mechanical properties, which make it hard to draw any immediate conclusions. Could you perhaps just use Rapid PETG and forget about the Pro version?
Test objects were printed with a Bambu Lab P1P with an AMS unit. After calibrating the ideal temperature for each filament, a tensile break test gave a win to the Rapid PETG, followed by a layer adhesion test win. This pattern continued across further tests, with Rapid PETG either matching or beating the Pro PETG.
There are only two advantages of the Pro version that can be seen here, which are less moisture sensitivity and stringing risk, and you of course get the luxury cardboard spool with the closed edges. Whether that’s enough to make you go ‘Pro’ remains to be seen, of course.
| 16
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8151575",
"author": "Ric",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T16:04:57",
"content": "Just started my second spool of Elegoo Rapid PETG (transparent) and is a very good PETG obviously if you want the “glass” effect you can forget the Rapid part of the name. But both at low speed and high I can’t fault it. No stringing, excellent fluidity and really tough.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151589",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T16:33:05",
"content": "I’ve always avoided the high-speed PETG variants just because of their low heat deflection temperature. Seems barely better than PLA. I guess it would make sense if you’re using PETG mainly for its mechanical properties and don’t mind keeping everything indoors.",
"parent_id": "8151575",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151649",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T20:39:22",
"content": "PLA has completely warped sitting in my car while PETG did better. Shrug",
"parent_id": "8151589",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151721",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T01:32:17",
"content": "Don’t get me wrong, PETG in general is great. It’s just these “high speed” variants that tend to have HDTs around 60C or so, which isn’t much better than the ~55C you get from PLA.",
"parent_id": "8151649",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151988",
"author": "Tom",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T21:01:29",
"content": "VoxelPLA’s PETG has been great for me in my P1S for high speed PETG printing. Stringing is minimal, I don’t much if any buildup in the nozzle, and it does have a higher HDT thank other high speed PETG brands (about 72C according to their datasheet) 👍",
"parent_id": "8151721",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151624",
"author": "cplamb",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T18:37:59",
"content": "I’m amazed at the extensive testing he’s doing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151673",
"author": "LookAtDaShinyShiny",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T22:11:53",
"content": "His content is always information heavy, he’s that kind of guy, less of an influencer, much, much more of an educator/solid information giver.",
"parent_id": "8151624",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151625",
"author": "pigster",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T18:48:53",
"content": "Well here is a thing – the mentioned 270 and 600 mm/s is not “extrusion speed” it is “printing speed”. Why do suppliers specify max movement speed? For me, it was always somehow more natural to think about movement limits as a property of the printer (how fast i can go without causing unwanted artifacts) and than for filament to limit flow rate – or how much plastic can i safely melt per unit of time / how fast i can push the plastic through the hotend.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151674",
"author": "LookAtDaShinyShiny",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T22:19:44",
"content": "because the first number is a general number for standard settings, 0.4mm, 0.2mm layer height usually, although higher speeds may also be achieved on lower layer heights etc.But the proof is usually in the pudding, it’s what your machine can handle at the settings you want to use vs what the filament can do. And that will be entirely dependent on many things, like your melt zone volume for instance, which to a point, most people should be aware of through max volumetric speed testing.Like I know that my machine(s) hotend can all cope with a minimum of 23mm3/s with standard settings, so around 300mm/s but whether the filament can do better or not is entirely down to testing at the settings you choose :-)",
"parent_id": "8151625",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152373",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T16:21:37",
"content": "It’s still a lot of math for something that shouldn’t be complicated. I want to know how much faster it is when pushing through a hotend and those speeds are related to the xy stepper motors and rigidity of the frame. That’s why I see that as complete nonsense when they tell me something like 270-600. Unless they find a magic way to push 270mm3/s through a hotend (i’d love to see that), it’s not telling me anything at all.",
"parent_id": "8151674",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8154358",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-25T22:40:51",
"content": "This isn’t complicated at all, age you are taking about materials science. The “max” is something youdon’twant to approach as mechanical properties are worse the closer you get. Even with some kind of annealing this isn’t going to change much unless accuracy isn’t important at all.",
"parent_id": "8152373",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151632",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T18:54:53",
"content": "in the last paragraph of this article it finally said something i wanted to hear :)in the comments on a different article, someone mentioned “taulman 910”, which i looked up and it’s apparently a nylon+ sort of filament. and the manufacturer has all these claims about its strength, as do the reviewers. but i found a review that said “easy to print”, “prints like a dream”, “Absolutely zero warp. None.” “80mm/s”, “I have almost never had anything bridge better”. and that kind of talk got me excited. the only other sentence i would have liked to see was “no stringing.”personally, easy to print is my #1. i feel pretty happy that i’ve solved by bed adhesion woes with petg (wash the bed with soap; increase bed temp 5C at a time until success) but i’d have just as soon had a material that is well known to be always stick when it should, and release when it should.i found a pla that was easy to print and i was really sad to see every single object turn into brittle garbage. so the material qualities do matter in the end. but i hate experimenting with other filaments. i want something that’s decently tolerant of humidity while it’s on the spool, that prints well over a wide range of temperatures or at least pretty reliably at the temp written on the spool, that doesn’t string too much or tolerates retraction, that sticks and releases, that bridges alright, preferably not too stringy.iow, a petg that doesn’t string so much as it absorbs my basement air definitely interests me more than one that’s 20% stronger.and if you google any of these filaments, you’ll see on the forums, what people are talking about, is these “ease of use” things. why does it string? why doesn’t it adhere? what do i need to do with temp / fan / enclosure / drybox? that’s where the meditation should be :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151974",
"author": "N/A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T19:54:49",
"content": "Taulman 910 is amazing, I’ve printed with it and all it needs is pva on the bed to stick. Moisture will ruin it, so don’t get any without a dry box. That said I plan to move onto regular nylon now that I got a Prusa XL.",
"parent_id": "8151632",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151982",
"author": "Nate Reinhold",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T20:25:18",
"content": "Sounds like you would definitely benefit from a biqu cryogrip print bed. There are 2 types, one is finner texture and is good for just about every filament and can be cleaned with soap or alcohol. Absolutely everything sticks like it should, releases like it should, even at waaaay lower temps than suggested. Even ridiculously narrow and tall stuff.",
"parent_id": "8151632",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151637",
"author": "Andy P",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T19:23:39",
"content": "I used rapid PETG, my only negative is that it’s a bit glossy",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153223",
"author": "Richard Silberfeld",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T15:44:00",
"content": "How about some real PETG? GreenGate3D: Made in the USA from recycled plastics! None have a better layer adhesion, clarity, intensity of color, or flexibility AND you can print itanywherebetween 205C and 250C. Runs at high speeds, too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,479.126562
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/20/researching-glow-powder-left-a-few-scars/
|
Researching Glow-Powder Left A Few Scars
|
Brian McEvoy
|
[
"chemistry hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] |
[
"biocompatible",
"biosafe",
"body mod",
"body modification",
"fluorescence",
"glow",
"glow in the dark",
"glow powder",
"light",
"scarification",
"tattoo"
] |
Content warning
: Human alteration and scalpels.
General warning
: We are not speaking as doctors. Or lawyers.
If you watch sci-fi, you probably do not have to think hard to conjure a scene in a trendy bar where the patrons have glowing make-up or tattoos. That bit of futuristic flair was possible years ago with UV-reactive tattoo ink, but it has the unfortunate tendency to permanently fade faster than traditional ink. [Miana], a biohacker, wanted something that could
last forever and glow
on its own. After months of research and testing, she presents a technique with a silica-coated powder and scarification. Reddit post with
graphic content
.
The manufacturer does not sell the powder for internal use, so it requires sterilization in an autoclave, which should tell you why this is a hack and not just repurposing. The experimentation includes various scarification techniques and different bandaging approaches, but this is still a small group, and the oldest is measured in months, not years, as of the time of writing.
We think these look amazing, but there are significant caveats. If you have never done scarification, spoiler, it hurts! If the flesh cutting is not bad enough, someone gets to rub sand into the open cuts. You may find yourself carrying a UV flashlight everywhere to charge it up. [Miana] was kind enough to provide the
link to the powder
she uses, but this link is provided solely so our readers can investigate the ingredients.
If you are more interested in the glowing aspect than the biohacking part, be sure to read about
making strontium aluminate
. If you want to get into the weeds, you can make a
phosphorescence detector
and quantify how glow-y something is.
| 34
| 10
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152173",
"author": "macsimki",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T06:41:43",
"content": "ah. I feel 8 again with all those warnings. I’ve missed it. maybe start every blog post with these things. you never know and don’t forget, in the USA, sueing is like breathing…But to get on topic again, i think tattoos are a thing, not my thing, but they are quite popular. Ithink this technique is quite rudimentary and leaves a lot of scars. if thats your thing, fine. but I dont think this is a topic for hackaday. i cannot lay my finger on it, but it just feels off.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152189",
"author": "Miana",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T07:35:04",
"content": "These are not like UV tattoos, they glow without UV light independently for hours, it’s like the glow in the dark stars kids have on their ceiling etc.I tried tattoos but the pigment damaged the needles with electric machines and since silica is non Newtonian the “ink” behaved very strange with the vibrations.Some people have tried this recently with stick and poke tattoos and that works but is very slow and results in a much less intense glow.Also Scarification is a thing people still get, I have scars that don’t glow, plus the scars look awesome imo even when not glowing.But yeah, it’s a seemingly safe, long lasting, mark that glows for 12 hours or so on its own, there’s nothing else like that available 🤷♀️",
"parent_id": "8152173",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152339",
"author": "NetNrrd",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:02:32",
"content": "Thanks for the clarifications – and I didn’t realize silica was non-Newtonian!",
"parent_id": "8152189",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152346",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:14:35",
"content": "Silica is a solid, so they’re wrong.",
"parent_id": "8152339",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152357",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:44:28",
"content": "Confidently Incorrectsilica is a solid, so youre not wrong,but silica particles in an aqueous suspension do in fact exhibit non-Newtonian fluid behavior",
"parent_id": "8152346",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152360",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:50:21",
"content": "In the clear context of a tattoo machine where the silica must be suspended in water to form an ink the ink is non-Newtonian.Also if you’re going to be this picky you should know that “solids” don’t follow Newtonian fluid viscosity laws, they are by definition non-Newtonian.So you’re double wrong.",
"parent_id": "8152346",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152521",
"author": "Miana",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T23:12:37",
"content": "You are most welcome 💜It is when suspended in fluid, should have been more specific. You can see it demonstrating those properties when walking on wet sand at the beach actually. 😊",
"parent_id": "8152339",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152363",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:54:53",
"content": "If this material behaves anything like photochromic pigment does, which your description here seems to suggest, consider this procedureSeparate your design into single color templatesUse your machine without ink to open up the skinmassage your pigment slurry into the skinGive 1-2 weeks between each colors applicationOnce youve completed all colors and at least 1 month has passed since the first color application,repeat process,continue until you are happy with the level of pigmentation",
"parent_id": "8152189",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152526",
"author": "Miana",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T23:37:31",
"content": "Someone recently tried that and it seems to be a viable method, still waiting for everything to fully heal but so far it looks promising. Ty for the info it’s good to hear about similar applications 💜",
"parent_id": "8152363",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152174",
"author": "Stefan Hennig",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T06:41:53",
"content": "To me, it doesn’t, not at all, so at least for me, the disclaimers were OK. Not required, but useful.Do whatever you like to feel fine, nobody has to ask me, but please understand that there are people who see some things differently.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152260",
"author": "Puff Kitty",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T11:50:10",
"content": "Putting strontium aluminate under the skin: what could possibly go wrong? :D",
"parent_id": "8152174",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152192",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T07:40:44",
"content": "I think the warnings are wise – this isn’t ear piercing, and it’s not even scarifying as practiced by various indigenous groups over hundreds/thousands of years. It’s very experimental, and could potentially be fine or have serious long-term side effects, we don’t know yet. It’s also a very different risk profile to eg pressurising PVC tubing, or building your own pulse jet, or many of the other projects we see here.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152303",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T13:37:51",
"content": "In the US, this would be considered a medical procedure using unapproved products and done by someone with no medical credentials. The disclaimer is necessary to avoid liability and possible criminal charges.",
"parent_id": "8152192",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152337",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:00:33",
"content": "I never want to be the kind of person who lives with this kind of fear on a daily basis. I feel like your soul leaves your body the second you internalize more than a few words of legalese. I’d rather be sued than talk like that, honestly.",
"parent_id": "8152303",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152238",
"author": "Stephen Mewller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T10:37:18",
"content": "Strontium Aluminate, Europium & Dysprosium formulashudders at the encapsulation breaching and that stuff leaking into the bodyNo amount of disclaimers can make me trust a company.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152338",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:01:29",
"content": "The human body is remarkably tolerant of inorganic contaminants. They’ll be fine.",
"parent_id": "8152238",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152365",
"author": "Actually...",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:57:40",
"content": "strontium aluminate is nontoxic, biologically inert. and generally considered biocompatible,But dont take my word for it.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35328831/",
"parent_id": "8152238",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152417",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:13:49",
"content": "Hey that’s a selling point to some. It is pretty cyberpunk",
"parent_id": "8152238",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152280",
"author": "Steven-X",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T12:30:19",
"content": "“manufacturer does not sell the powder for internal use”, so it requires sterilization in an autoclave.While being sterile is an important concern, it does not make it “USP Class 6” (Implantable) nor ISO 10993 compliant. Cytotoxicity is the low-hanging fruit, but anything but casual contact would also require sensitization and irritation testing. It can run $8000 for all three, which might explain why the powder was not tested (ie, they are not in the medical market).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152308",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T13:49:44",
"content": "it’s tested now :)",
"parent_id": "8152280",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152314",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T14:02:13",
"content": "Have you ever reviewed how the “magnets in the human body” group made out? Not quite as harmless as hoped. (Not particular bad either, but still).",
"parent_id": "8152308",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152518",
"author": "Miana",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T23:06:40",
"content": "Actually once we started using titanium laser welded casings on the magnets the issues are mostly resolved. Which makes sense, one of mine a repurposed cochlear implant magnet for example 💜",
"parent_id": "8152314",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152341",
"author": "metalman",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:03:58",
"content": "Someone ( who does not need the props) said “the future is here now, it’s just not evenly distributed”light sabers, hover boards, personal quad copters and lots moreearly bio hacking involved putting bio luminesant jelly fish DNA into monkeys, which was partialy successfull ,but the only monkeys to growup, needed florecent lights to glow, all.the ones that could just glow under ambient conditions, died of complications….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152378",
"author": "Chr El",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T16:41:38",
"content": "I was always told, “If you don’t have anything nice to say…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152410",
"author": "Maria",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:05:31",
"content": "…say it anyway. It’s the foundation of our western society.If someone doesn’t want to hear things they have the right to walk away.",
"parent_id": "8152378",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152438",
"author": "Chr el",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T19:23:06",
"content": "Nobody’s saying you don’t have the right to be a jerk, but just know that in doing so people will think you’re a jerk…",
"parent_id": "8152410",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152458",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T20:24:37",
"content": "Your the kind of person the encourages a talentless person to go on a TV talent show.Aka an cruel asshole.When you were told ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say’.You were saying things to little children.It’s a good rule when talking to curtain climbing snot monkeys.When dealing with adults ‘you have to be cruel to be kind’.",
"parent_id": "8152438",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152494",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:59:28",
"content": "The secret is that people also think that the “let people enjoy things” preschool teacher types are also domineering freaks and jerks, but those people have a specific morality code that doesn’t allow them to understand why, so they are blind to the fact that lots of people around them think they’re pompous and grating. Often worse than the people who publicly make subjective judgements about things they don’t like, which used to be a very normal and non-offensive thing to do.",
"parent_id": "8152438",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152513",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T22:57:49",
"content": "Okay, I’m a jerk. The tattoos aren’t great.",
"parent_id": "8152438",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152420",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:17:16",
"content": "Using “and” instead of “an” here is perfect, well done",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152520",
"author": "Miana",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T23:09:24",
"content": "It’s Missus not sir actually, but I’m probably an idiot yes, I have vials of radioactive gas in my body not just the glowing scars. 🤭",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152671",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T11:07:04",
"content": "Um… do you have a write up about that too?",
"parent_id": "8152520",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152727",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T13:41:49",
"content": "Tritium vials with glass casing? That faint glow must be barely visible…",
"parent_id": "8152520",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152522",
"author": "Miana",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T23:19:26",
"content": "It makes me happy and that’s all I care about not others opinions on the artistic merit so it’s okay you think that, I shared my original post because I think the artificial ”bioluminescence” to be really interesting, and it ended up on here so clearly others agree lol.I also let people who are still learning Scarification do a bunch of them, they have to learn somehow and I don’t particularly mind how they look so it makes sense a lot are “crude”.Out of curiosity what is vulgar about the wolf in your opinion?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,478.976323
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/20/remembering-chiptunes-the-demoscene-and-the-illegal-music-of-keygens/
|
Remembering Chiptunes, The Demoscene And The Illegal Music Of Keygens
|
Tyler August
|
[
"Musical Hacks"
] |
[
"chiptunes",
"computer history",
"demoscene",
"keygen"
] |
We loved keygens back in the day. Our lawyers advise us to clarify that it’s because of the demo-scene style music embedded in them, not because we used them for piracy. [Patch] must feel the same way, as he has a lovely historical retrospective out on
“The Internet’s Most Illegal Music”
(embedded below).
After defining what he’s talking about for the younger set, who may never have seen a keygen in this degenerate era of software-by-subscription, [Patch] traces the history of the jaunty chiptunes that were so often embedded in this genre of program. He starts with the early demoscene and its relationship with cracker groups — those are coders who circulate “cracked” versions of games, with the copyright protection removed. In the old days, they’d embed an extra loading screen to take credit for the dastardly deeds that our lawyer says to disavow.
Because often the same people creating the
amazing audio-video demos of the “demoscene”
were involved in cracking, those loading screens could sometimes outshine the games themselves. (We saw it at a friend’s house one time.) There was almost always excellent music provided by the crackers, and given the limitations of the hardware of the era, it was what we’d know of today as a “chiptune”.
The association between crackers and chiptunes lasted long after the chips themselves had faded into obsolescence. Part of the longevity of the tracker-built tunes is that in the days of dial-up you’d much rather a keygen with a .MOD file embedded than an .mP3, or god forbid, an uncompressed .WAV that would take all day to download.
Nowadays, chiptunes are alive and well, and while they try and hearken back more to the demoscene than the less savory side of their history, the connection to peg-legged programmers is a story that deserves to be told. The best part of the video is the link to
keygenmusic.tk/
where you can finally find out who was behind that bopping track that’s been stuck in your head intermittently since 1998. (When you heard it at a computer lab, not on your own machine, of course.)
The
demoscene continues to push old machines to new heights,
and its spirit lives on in
hacking machines like the RP2040
.
| 39
| 18
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152088",
"author": "WTF Detector",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T02:35:30",
"content": "For more info on the demoscene itself, “Moleman 2: The Art of the Algorithms”, from 2012, is a feature-length documentary that’s available for free on YouTube, and it goes into more detail about the demoscene and its history.For a great site on the music front of things that’s still alive despite some pretty terrible server issues of late, don’t hesitate to check out SceneSat.For demos themselves across all platforms, Pouët is a one-stop-shop for all your needs.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152268",
"author": "Winston",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T12:03:37",
"content": "Moleman 2 – Demoscene – The Art of the Algorithms (2012)Moleman6 Apr 2012https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRkZcTg1JWU",
"parent_id": "8152088",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152089",
"author": "Derek Tombrello",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T02:46:59",
"content": "Your lawyers are no fun.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152146",
"author": "Ewald",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T05:34:16",
"content": "useless use of Your ;)",
"parent_id": "8152089",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152195",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T07:58:38",
"content": "+1",
"parent_id": "8152146",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152430",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:59:12",
"content": "Honestly, I didn’t check with legal; I just ran with the least fun thing they could say as a gag.",
"parent_id": "8152089",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152126",
"author": "NFM",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T04:46:10",
"content": "Um….. what?Ok, I’ll bite.If you claim a god to exist, you have to prove that it exists, not demand others to prove the negative.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152148",
"author": "Ewald",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T05:35:51",
"content": "of course God exists, the babelfish is clear proof of His existence.",
"parent_id": "8152126",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152208",
"author": "RIP DNA",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T08:49:47",
"content": "+42 for this post.",
"parent_id": "8152148",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152154",
"author": "axet",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T05:48:02",
"content": "You can not clam ownership based on fact that owner is not here with you. Can you? That is called piracy! I’m using common sense since “tools in a God’s hands” is a common knowledge. So before you sell you have to prove God does not exists or refuse to believe in God before make a sell or purchase. Or it will be called piracy.",
"parent_id": "8152126",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152228",
"author": "imqqmi",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T09:57:30",
"content": "All that talk about clams is making me hungry.",
"parent_id": "8152154",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152245",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T10:59:01",
"content": "Praise be to Xenu!",
"parent_id": "8152228",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152294",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T13:22:21",
"content": "Which God, whose version do you beleive? It’s ass backwards thinking like yours weilded by manipulative people that’s caused the some of the bloodiest wars in all of history.",
"parent_id": "8152154",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152139",
"author": "PPJ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T05:21:04",
"content": "“But to make that initial clam you have to at first prove that we are not a tool in a Gods hands.”God either gave us free will therefore we can’t be tools in his hands or we are tools in his hands therefore every crime is on his account:)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152159",
"author": "axet",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T06:05:47",
"content": "You getting to this! Now keep going. Obliviously if every crime we commit on a God’s hands, then you are in devil hands. Therefore selling or buying intellectual property (music, movies, etc) Gods property ignoring his rights makes you a devil servant. And second if God gives you a free will to commit a crime, then when you get back to the God you will get back to the Justice – you will repay back all sins you committed in your live. Or will never return to the God. God never gives you a free will – free will is a illusion and lie, lie gives by devil. Since you will return to the God here were no free will.",
"parent_id": "8152139",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152258",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T11:44:42",
"content": "What? No free will? Thanks for nothing, god. And why did you make me write this comment?",
"parent_id": "8152159",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152144",
"author": "WTF Detector",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T05:33:31",
"content": "Take your medication.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152160",
"author": "axet",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T06:07:05",
"content": "I were blind but now I see!",
"parent_id": "8152144",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152211",
"author": "hammarbytp",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T09:09:01",
"content": "Is that while you struggle to correctly copy the text?",
"parent_id": "8152160",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152197",
"author": "Johnu",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T08:02:02",
"content": "Well, you’re definitely a tool. Whether in God’s hands or not is another question.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152199",
"author": "Kalts",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T08:04:10",
"content": "Aren’t you supposed to be supervised when you use the computer?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152221",
"author": "RetepV",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T09:37:29",
"content": "So, you are advocating to use mussels instead of false clams?Well, if it helps against painful fillings, it might save a trip to the dentist.About God, though. God himself claims no rights, as far as I know. He gave his children freedom to grow and do what they want to do, and missteps are to be reckoned for after death, whereby Jesus has stated multiple times that God is forgiving. So why are you saying that Gods children have no rights? Seems you are denying Gods children the freedom that God himself gifted to them, along with quite detailed boundaries.Are you displaying that cardinal sin: jealousy? Why are you hurting God with your jealousy against all His other children? Are you angry at Him?I think you should talk with a priest about your thoughts. Why have you not done so yet? Do you think you know better?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152255",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T11:36:49",
"content": "Oh God, it’s philosophy class all over again, complete with integral paradoxes. Proofs for the existence of God; the predeterminism of free will…. what’s next, having to prove that anyone other than myself exists? How the heck am I supposed to do that while living in a simulated Universe created for my sole benefit that – based on available limits of observation – I am literally in the center of?Whoever wrote this game is nuts – I want my quarter back!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152259",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T11:48:13",
"content": "…and don’t give me that “Oh, the rest of the Universe is out of render” line!",
"parent_id": "8152255",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152279",
"author": "axet",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T12:28:43",
"content": "That is crazy, I’m not asking such nonsense. I’m only saying: prove you are not the tool (therefore God does not exists) or refuse God (therefore give yourself a right to buy and sell IP).",
"parent_id": "8152259",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152271",
"author": "Winston",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T12:06:13",
"content": "Introduction to Chiptunes – InversePhase (Brendan Becker)Vintage Computer Federation14 Jul 2025https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0v712l2RWE",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152353",
"author": "Maave",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:30:42",
"content": "awesome talk and perfect timing. Toby Fox got me on a chiptunes kick. I’m gunna go jam on a SNES",
"parent_id": "8152271",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152277",
"author": "Shoe",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T12:14:53",
"content": "When Introversion released Darwinia in 2005 they had a few “bootloader” screens as a nod to the past, including one with moving text claiming the game had been cracked by the DMA Crew. Allegedly it caused a bit of a panic when someone at Valve saw it just before the game was due to be released, and there were a lot of slightly concerned forum posts asking about it as well. I remember watching those screens for a while, just because of the music.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152283",
"author": "Sagan Android",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T12:40:43",
"content": "All I want is a safe copy of Photoshop 2020, and I don’t care if there are chip tunes! Adobe removed it from their site so you can’t even legit buy it any more! They’re evil. I would even be happy with Photoshop CS2019 but no, they removed that too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152369",
"author": "SETH",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T16:08:31",
"content": "Chiptune is a rather vague umbrella term, including but not limited to:Integrated synthesizers and drum machines on 8/16/32 bit hardware (2A03, YM chips)Sound font playback (SNES, PS1)At some point certain things should not be colloquially referred to as chiptune:MOD music (is more a PC specific thing, is not part of any game consoles)Any physical performance whatsoever (chip tunes are a subset of computer music)New or modern instruments or hardware (which might emulate chiptune sounds but is still distinctly not a chiptune. Chiptunes must be on hardware with integrated sound capabilities, which is NOT a PC. However FM synthesis from a soundcard might qualify.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152433",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T19:07:03",
"content": "MOD music originated on the Amiga with Ultimate Soundtracker– which absolutely was on hardware with integrated sound capabilities. The Amiga was a “personal computer” but not a PC. I’ll let you decide how that fits into your definition. In any case, for me (and I suspect the majority) it’s about the sound, not the synthesis method.",
"parent_id": "8152369",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152370",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T16:10:32",
"content": "Back in the day my back then employer hosted a server for demo scene music. These were exe files with a maximum size of 64kb and they had to have an entire song with music video inside them. There were thousands of files stored there and synced to other servers. It was pretty crazy. We had a program running with a TV in the background, playing random scene music all day long on a CRT TV.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152425",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:29:02",
"content": "Good to have a source for these old tunes without having to get a trojan on my machine :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152455",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T20:13:54",
"content": "I love how every comment I post pointing out editing errors gets deleted but the errors don’t get fixed.Effort well spent.Really professional.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152514",
"author": "Tyler August",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T23:01:14",
"content": "I see one comment from you in the trash pile. I did not delete it, but I expect someone felt it did not meet minimum standards of decorum.I was also left puzzled by the correction you posited because it looks like in every version of the post stored on our servers, [Patch]’s name was, in fact, present; what I as the author didn’t realize is that wordpress takes “patch” as a tag when you put it in square brackets. I had left his name uncapitalized to match his YouTube handle. That’s my bad for doing my proofreading in the editor, I suppose.This was corrected in the first paragraph, by the editor you were maligning. You were correct in pointing out we’re missing a name or pronoun in the second paragraph (again, P vs p in the name made it not show up), but you did it in a way that makes your complaints about professionalism ring very hollow.",
"parent_id": "8152455",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152534",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T23:54:34",
"content": "At least he didn’t mention clams.",
"parent_id": "8152514",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152594",
"author": "Ben",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T03:23:31",
"content": "Many current keygens continue have wonderful music.",
"parent_id": "8152455",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152930",
"author": "CG",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T22:26:51",
"content": "It should be noted that many early crack intros (C64 specifically) used music that were made for other games. One of the more famous examples of this is the classic Fairlight intro that uses music from the C64 game Druid II – Enlightenment from Firebird Software. The use of existing in-game music also spread to the demo scene (though I am lacking a good example of that at the moment). A good tune is a good tune. Conversely, some demoscene chiptune artists also wound up contributing to games (JCH / Maniacs of Noise for the game Batman, I believe).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8162911",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2025-08-14T20:23:31",
"content": "Wow, they really went crazy with the “delete-silence-censor” button on this one.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,479.249528
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/20/hackaday-links-july-20-2025/
|
Hackaday Links: July 20, 2025
|
Dan Maloney
|
[
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] |
[
"android",
"asteroid",
"coding",
"dart",
"exoplanet",
"gamification",
"hackaday links",
"jwst",
"MIRI",
"morse",
"planetary defense",
"TWA 7b",
"webb"
] |
In the relatively short time that the James Webb Space Telescope has been operational, there’s seemingly no end to its list of accomplishments. And if you’re like us, you were sure that Webb had already achieved the first direct imaging of a planet orbiting a star other than our own a long time ago. But as it turns out,
Webb has only recently knocked that item off its bucket list
, with the direct visualization of a Saturn-like planet orbiting a nearby star known somewhat antiseptically as TWA 7, about 111 light-years away in the constellation Antlia. The star has a significant disk of debris orbiting around it, and using the coronagraph on Webb’s MIRI instrument, astronomers were able to blot out the glare of the star and collect data from just the dust. This revealed a faint infrared source near the star that appeared to be clearing a path through the dust.
The planet, dubbed TWA 7b, orbits its star at about 50 times the distance from Earth to the Sun and is approximately the size of Saturn, but only a third of its mass. The star itself is only about 6.4 million years old, so the planet may still be accreting from the debris disk, which might present interesting insights into planetary formation, assuming that other astronomers confirm that TWA 7b is indeed a planet. But what’s really interesting about this discovery is that because the star system’s orbital plane appears to be more or less perpendicular to ours, the standard exoplanet detection method based on measuring the dimming of the star by planets passing between it and us wouldn’t have worked. This might open the doors to the discovery of many more exoplanets, and that’s pretty exciting.
Question: What’s worse than a big space rock that’s on a collision course with Earth? Answer: Honestly, it feels like a lot of things would be worse than that right now. But if your goal is planetary protection, one possible answer is doing something that turns the one big rock into a lot of little rocks.
That seems to be just what NASA’s DART mission did
when it smashed into a bit of space debris named Dimorphos back in 2022, ejecting over 100 boulders from the asteroid-orbiting moonlet. LICIAcube, an Italian cubesat that hitched a ride on DART, used optical cameras to observe the ejecta, and measured rocks from 0.2 m to 3.6 m in diameter as they yeeted off at up to 52 meters per second. Rather than spreading out randomly, the boulders clustered into two different groups, something that years of playing
Asteroids
has taught us isn’t what you’d expect. The whole thing just goes to show that planetary protection isn’t as simple as blasting into a killer asteroid and hoping for the best. And please, can somebody out there type “NASA DART” into Google and tell me what they see? Because if it’s not an animated spacecraft zipping across the screen and knocking the window out of kilter, then I need a vacation. K, thanks.
Do you even code? If you’re reading Hackaday, chances are good that you at least know enough coding to get yourself into trouble. But if you don’t, or you want to
ruin somebody else’s life
bring someone new into the wonderful world of bossing computers around, take a look at
Micro Adventure
, an online adventure game aimed at teaching you the basics — err, BASICs — of coding. The game walks you through a text-based RPG (“You’re in a dark room…”) and prompts you to code your way through to a solution. The game has an emulator window that appears to be based on MS/DOS 1.00, so you know it’s cutting-edge stuff. To be fair, it’s always been our experience that coding is mostly about concepts, and once you learn what a loop is or how to branch in one language, figuring it out in another language is just about syntax. There seem to be at least six different adventures planned, so perhaps other languages will make an appearance in the future.
And finally, while we’re talking about the gamification of nerd education, if you’ve been meaning to learn Morse code, you might want to check out
Morse Code Defender
. It’s an Android app that uses a
Missile Command
motif to help you learn Morse, with attacking missiles having a character attached to them, and you having to enter the correct Morse code to blow the missile up before it takes out your ham shack. We haven’t tried it yet, so there may be more to it, but it sure seems like a cute way to gamify the Morse learning process. Honestly, it’s got to be better than doomscrolling Instagram.
| 10
| 6
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8152033",
"author": "John Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T00:00:12",
"content": "Cooool.Now we just need to mod Sega’s Typing of the Dead into Morse Code of the Dead.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152040",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T00:20:15",
"content": "Re: DART – this, dear children, is why we practice saving the world on a dummy ateroid first.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152047",
"author": "Marc",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T00:41:36",
"content": "This post is rather vague about it (read the actual article), but the intent of this portion of the DART mission was to transfer the satellite kinetic energy to a perturbation in the orbit of Dimorphos by a measurable amount, which it apparently did.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152156",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T05:52:24",
"content": "And unless the size of the ejected boulders scales with the size of the asteroid being impacted, it doesn’t seem pieces a couple of meters across would even pass through the atmosphere.",
"parent_id": "8152047",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152059",
"author": "0xdeadbeef",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T01:22:55",
"content": "And please, can somebody out there type “NASA DART” into Google and tell me what they see? Because if it’s not an animated spacecraft zipping across the screen and knocking the window out of kilter, then I need a vacation. K, thanks.Yep, that’s exactly what I see, too. That’s an amusing animation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152253",
"author": "Bike",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T11:28:27",
"content": "Love it",
"parent_id": "8152059",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152070",
"author": "LookAtDaShinyShiny",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T01:47:30",
"content": "TWA7, really made me chuckle, I can’t think why… :-D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152244",
"author": "cdilla",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T10:58:33",
"content": "Me too. Nothing anti-septic about it at all. Just humourous :-)",
"parent_id": "8152070",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152282",
"author": "LookAtDaShinyShiny",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T12:33:51",
"content": "I like to think the TWA part was chosen on purpose for this very moment, can’t wait till they discover no.77!!",
"parent_id": "8152244",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152372",
"author": "Beowulf Shaeffer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T16:15:49",
"content": "I love little teaching games. I’ll give those a look. Thanks!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,479.170697
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/20/designing-an-open-source-multimeter-the-hydrameter/
|
Designing An Open Source Multimeter: The HydraMeter
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"Microcontrollers",
"Tool Hacks"
] |
[
"Ammeter",
"digital multimeter",
"HydraMeter",
"ohmmeter",
"voltmeter"
] |
Our hacker [John Duffy] wrote in to let us know about a video he put together to
explain the design of his open-source multimeter, the HydraMeter
.
If you’re interested in how the circuitry for a voltmeter, ohmmeter, or ammeter might work, this video is a masterclass. In this long and detailed video, [John] walks us through his solutions to various challenges he had while designing his own multimeter. We
covered this multimeter last year
, and this new video elaborates on the design of the HydraMeter which has been a work in progress for years now.
The basic design feeds voltage, current, and resistance front-ends into an Analog to Digital Converter (ADC), which then feeds into a microcontroller and out to the (detachable) display. You can find the KiCad design files on
the GitHub page.
There is also a
write-up on hackaday.io
.
The user interface for the meter is… opinionated, and perhaps not to everyone’s taste. In the video, [John] talks a little bit about why he made the UI work the way that it does, and he noted that adding a rotary range switch is a goal for version 2.0.
Thank you, [John], for putting this video together; it is an excellent resource. We look forward to seeing version 2.0 develop soon!
| 23
| 5
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8151997",
"author": "Tom G",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T21:38:58",
"content": "I’m not going to spend 1h40m trying fo find whether or not the design covers one important aspect of multimeter design: protection against gross overloads. TAoE and X-Chapters covers the HP34401A protection mechanisms in some detail.Anybody care to comment about this design?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152003",
"author": "bob",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T21:49:10",
"content": "at 1m50s he wields a beige lunchbox that allegedly produces over a kilovolt for testing. also, the main pcb has cut outs for hv isolation, so he’s going about it the right way.I gave up watching the video because the background music upset me. i guess i’m not hip enough like electrical engineers to be able to groove to it.",
"parent_id": "8151997",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152747",
"author": "John D",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T14:49:15",
"content": "Fair enough, thanks for the feedback on that! Most other videos I found had some background music (also it helps keep edits from being as annoying/apparent), but I’ll definitely tone it down or remove for long talking sections in future.The big lunchbox goes up to about 8KV ;)triggered spark gap to discharge some caps into whatever is unlucky enough to be attached, once I’ve got measurement worked out I’ll post some details of that.In the process now of seeing if those MOVs and slots and fuses actually do what they’re supposed to. Current input protection I’m not too worried about, voltage will likely be tweaked but is probably close, and I have no idea on resistance.",
"parent_id": "8152003",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152004",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T21:51:32",
"content": "For those who don’t want to spend the time to go through 4000+ pages of TAoE and X-chapters, can you indicate which volume and page the discussion of the HP34401A appears? It’s not in the index or tables of contents of the Second, Third or X editions (sorry, I don’t have the 1st ed. handy to thumb through).",
"parent_id": "8151997",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152232",
"author": "Tom G",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T10:16:56",
"content": "Actually, the 34401 info is in the ToC, viz:5.12 Designs by the masters: Agilent’s accurate DMMs5.12.1 It’s impossible!5.12.2 Wrong – it is possible!5.12.3 Block diagram: a simple plan5.12.4 The 34401A 6.5-digit front end5.12.5 The 34420A 7.5-digit frontendand4x.16 Designs by the masters: Bulletproof Input ProtectionIt only took <5mins to locate the books, locate the sections, and type this. Much less than1:40",
"parent_id": "8152004",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152269",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T12:03:52",
"content": "Silly me, looking for “HP”, “protection”, “overload”.",
"parent_id": "8152232",
"depth": 4,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152299",
"author": "Tom G",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T13:29:59",
"content": "As always, search terms are critical :)Helps to have a PDF; fortunately Win Hill did upload TAoE3 (not x-Chapters) in 2017.It is still there, and I’m not going to say where other than a dropbox account: I’ll let you search for it :)",
"parent_id": "8152269",
"depth": 5,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152296",
"author": "Tom G",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T13:23:20",
"content": "It couldn’t be in the first or second edition (1989), since the HP34401 was introduced in 1994",
"parent_id": "8152004",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152008",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T21:58:42",
"content": "And for those few who wonder what TAoE is, run (don’t walk) tohttps://artofelectronics.net/and buy the books. (And donotview any of Horowitz’s interviews — he’s a much better human on paper.)",
"parent_id": "8151997",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152471",
"author": "Clara Hobbs",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T21:02:58",
"content": "I think it’s important to know why his interviews (and views, and activities) are harmful, and make an informed decision as to whether to financially support him.",
"parent_id": "8152008",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152904",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T20:35:33",
"content": "I made no claims of harm, no mention of views or activities, and did not counsel not supporting. Do your own research if you feel a person’s interview performance is an important factor in your buying decisions. I just shared my opinion that his contributions in printed form are better (i.e., more pleasant, more valuable use of time). I apologize if that turned out to be a trigger for something — That was not my intent.",
"parent_id": "8152471",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152995",
"author": "Josh B",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T02:59:08",
"content": "Are you mistaking Paul Horowitz for the late David Horowitz. He received criticism for his SETI work with Carl Sagan as a waste of resources but that’s purely scientific.",
"parent_id": "8152471",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152045",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T00:40:51",
"content": "I’m also not going to watch an 1h40m video right now, but the Hackaday article has a direct link to the github page with KiCad project, schematic and PCB.So you can easily look for yourself whether the hardware suits your needs, and you can also add any extra protection you like. Also, on the project page of this project, you can see some decent sized fuses, and both MOV’s and gas discharge tubes, so at least some thought has been put into input protection.For the rest. The github repository apparently has not been updated for 7 months, and that sort of lines up with the previous article from Hackaday about this DMM.In due time I’m going to have a closer look at this project. I’m not looking for another handheld, but I am interested in a cheapish benchtop DMM with a quick update rate >100Hz and big display (LED or TFT). And a meter like this can be a decent start for a similar project.“I gave up watching the video because the background music upset me. ”Ah yes, that annoys me too. If you want to hear music, it’s so easy to mix in your own music. Either directly form your PC, or mix it acoustically from a completely separated stereo.",
"parent_id": "8151997",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152233",
"author": "Printplaatreparatie",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T10:17:47",
"content": "I asked notebookLM, the author doesn’t seem to be too sure about the safety:The HydraMeter_0.4 open-source multimeter incorporates several safety mechanisms to protect against gross overloads, though it iscrucially important to note that the designer explicitly states this meter is not designed, rated, or intended to be used with mains voltage and has no serious design analysis or testing[1]. It should not be used for anything with serious power [2]. The current version (0.4) also has some unverified tweaks and known issues with its protection circuits [3-5].Here’s a breakdown of the intended and implemented overload protection mechanisms:General Safety Warnings and Design PhilosophyThe designer’s intent was to explore how to achieve certain protection levels (e.g., CAT3 600V for voltage measurement), butthe meter itself is not rated for such use and should not be used on mains[6].The goal of protection is to limit current and voltage during an overload to prevent component damage, arc flash (which can be deadly), and explosion [2, 6, 7].Current Input ProtectionThe main danger in current measurement is overcurrent transients, which can cause arcing and explosion of the fuse or within the meter [1, 2].*High Rupture Capacity (HRC) Fuse:* This is thecore solution[2]. HRC fuses are designed to contain high currents (tens of thousands of amps for milliseconds) andsnuff out arcsby filling the gap with sand as the metal melts, preventing continuous conduction [2].* The meter uses smaller HRC fuses, rated for similar braking current but a lower voltage (400V instead of 1000V found in standard meters) [2].*Diodes Across Shunt Resistors:* To protect the shunt resistors (low-value resistors used to measure current) from overheating and to limit overvoltage downstream,pairs of diodes are connected in reverse parallel across each shunt resistor[8].* These diodes conduct very little current at low voltages (sub-nanoamps below ~100 millivolts) but conductvery strongly(amps or tens of amps) above a few hundred millivolts (e.g., 200mV burden voltage) [8]. This shunts excess current around the resistor, saving it from power dissipation [8].*Current Limiting Resistor: A 1kΩ resistor is placed before the Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) to limit current if a high voltage makes it past the initial stages and feeds into the ADC [6].*Metal Oxide Varistor (MOV): A MOV is used to clamp the voltage to a manageable level. The specific MOV chosen (nominally 3.3V) will turn on around 5V and might allow up to 8V across it with significant current [6].*Internal ESD Protection Diodes: The final stage of protection relies on theinternal electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection diodespresent in the ADC chip [6].Voltage Input ProtectionVoltage protection aims to tolerate high voltages continuously and even higher voltage transients without damage or arc flash [6].*First Stage – Resistor and MOV:* Acritical 1kΩ resistoris placed at the input [7]. It must withstand several kilovolts (e.g., 5kV) for microseconds,limiting the maximum currentthat passes through the meter andpreventing arc flash[7].* AnMOV(rated for ~1000V) suppresses arc flash, limits the voltage to the next stage, and helps to smooth out sharp edges offast transients[7].*RC Filtering (Resistor-Capacitor Filter): A 100kΩ resistor followed by a ~200pF capacitor forms an RC filter, effectively suppressing sharp voltage edges with a time constant of about 20 microseconds [7, 9].*Gas Discharge Tube (GDT):* A GDT providesadditional protection[9]. Unlike an MOV, which still maintains a standoff voltage, a GDT can“crowbar”the voltage to almost zero (a few volts) even at very high currents once it “strikes” [9, 10].* It is slower than an MOV, so fast transients might initially pass it, but it will clamp the voltage to a tolerable level within a microsecond or two [9]. It helps contain the overload to the upstream part of the front end [9].*Series Resistors (e.g., 10MΩ): High-value resistors, often composed of several smaller resistors in series, are used to withstand the kilovolt-level voltages that might appear across them during transients [10].*BJTs (Bipolar Junction Transistors): A pair of BJTs configured to act as alow voltage, fast, low capacitance, and low leakage protection circuit. They clamp and absorb any smaller transients that make it through the earlier stages, typically turning on between 5V and 10V [11].*Internal ESD Diodes: Similar to current protection, these serve as a final line of defense for small current amounts that reach the ADC [11].Important Caveat for Voltage Protection: The designer notes thatthe actual implemented design (version 0.4) is “worse”than the theoretical ideal. It includes a large capacitor that would pass the entire overload voltage to subsequent stages, potentially blowing them up, and lacks sufficient downstream filtering, making it noisy [4].Resistance Measurement ProtectionResistance measurement involves supplying current and measuring voltage, making it vulnerable to both high voltages and currents during overload [11, 12].*Resistor and PTC (Positive Temperature Coefficient) Thermistor:* APTCis intended near the front of the circuit [11]. These components exhibit adramatic increase in resistance(into megaohms) when their temperature rises above a certain “Curie temperature” (e.g., 70-100°C) [11, 13].* During an overload, current flowing through the PTC heats it up, causing its resistance to skyrocket, which in turn limits the current and power dissipation, eventually equalizing to a tolerable amount [13].*However, the current version of the meter does not include a PTC[11].*Metal Oxide Varistor (MOV): Similar to voltage protection, an MOV blocks current flow at low voltages but conducts strongly above a threshold (e.g., 200V) to protect against voltage overloads [13].*Diodes for Positive Voltage: A simple diode is used to allow current to flow out but not in, protecting against positive voltage overloads [14].*PNP BJT (or Darlington Configuration) for Negative Voltage:* This is a more complex circuit designed to handle negative voltage overloads [14]. It allows current to pass in one direction butprevents the output from being pulled too far below groundif a high negative voltage is applied [14].* The circuit uses a PNP BJT (in aDarlington configurationfor higher current gain), which effectively biases on during normal operation but acts as a constant current source during overload, protecting upstream components [15].* This stage can beduplicated in seriesto extend the voltage range it can withstand, potentially up to 1000V [15, 16].Important Caveat for Resistance Protection: The designer states that the protection circuit for the resistance current sourcing“does not work and has been thrown in bad idea jail”[5].In essence, the multimeter’s overload protection is like a series of gates and shock absorbers along an electrical highway. Fuses are like emergency exits that completely shut down the flow in extreme situations, while MOVs, GDTs, and diodes are like speed bumps and crash barriers that absorb and divert excess energy, preventing it from damaging the sensitive parts of the circuit. The PTC is like a self-regulating valve that chokes off the flow when things get too hot. However, it’s crucial to remember that some of these safety features in the current design are theoretical, unverified, or known to be deficient, emphasizing the need to treat this as a proof of concept and not a fully protected commercial instrument.",
"parent_id": "8151997",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152394",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T17:37:16",
"content": "Please do not pollute the comments with AI summaries. If I wanted to ask an AI, I would do so myself.",
"parent_id": "8152233",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152745",
"author": "John D",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T14:41:38",
"content": "Video was done to cover all aspects, input protection starts around the 40 minute mark (current, then voltage, then ohms).The ohms negative voltage protection is pretty much identical to the design you’re referring to, voltage needed a little different design because I can’t switch the HV side, everything has to be done low side, and I’m shooting for a higher rating than most bench meters are designed to.",
"parent_id": "8151997",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152027",
"author": "Alex99a",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T23:16:00",
"content": "Massive feature creep…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152744",
"author": "John D",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T14:36:36",
"content": "Yep :)This entire project is scope creep starting from “I need to buy a new mulitmeter”.I have cut like half the functionality I was initially planning on to get it working, but plan to add back on just as much eventually.",
"parent_id": "8152027",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152132",
"author": "Jim J Jewett",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T05:07:48",
"content": "Most of the first hour is about “here is the obvious simple thing, why I can’t just do that, and what I added to get around it.” Usually, the reason was concerns about gross overloads.I am often annoyed by the background music, but not so much here. I don’t know if that is a quirk of volume or a new upload or just different tastes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152354",
"author": "Jacob Christ",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:35:58",
"content": "Fluke makes a meter called the Hydra",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152748",
"author": "John D",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T14:52:53",
"content": "crap.It looks like it is discontinued, but they might still have copyright/trademark.thanks for letting me know! I did look for anything else called hydra meter, but I guess it being classed as a DAQ made it hard to find.",
"parent_id": "8152354",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152356",
"author": "Josephus",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T15:43:40",
"content": "Having done a module on Solid Edge in college, I will say that I had glowing things to say about it … glowing with anger at the way it was done",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152758",
"author": "John D",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T15:12:00",
"content": "❤️hahahaYes!It seems like they wanted to keep it from stepping on NX/other sw sales by crippling the functionality for professional use, problem is they just made it so bad no one wants to use it. IMO NX is already kind of slow and annoying to use though, so making it substantially worse makes it basically unusable…At least it’s not Catia 🙃",
"parent_id": "8152356",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,479.37076
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/20/when-a-record-player-doesnt-work-due-to-solid-state-grease/
|
When A Record Player Doesn’t Work Due To Solid State Grease
|
Maya Posch
|
[
"Repair Hacks"
] |
[
"grease",
"phonograph",
"record player"
] |
Normally, mechanical devices like record players move smoothly, with well-greased contact surfaces enabling the tone arm to automatically move, the multi-record mechanism to drop down a fresh disc, and the listener to have a generally good time. Unfortunately, the 1972-era ITT KP821 record player that [Mark] got recently handed by a friend
wasn’t doing a lot of moving
, with every part of the mechanism seemingly frozen in place, though the current owner wasn’t certain that they were doing something wrong.
Fortunately, this record player was in exceptionally good condition.. The primary failure was that the BSR record player mechanism, with its many touching metal surfaces, was suffering from a bad case of solidified grease. Although this is easily fixed with some IPA and a lot of elbow grease, the biggest trick with these mechanisms is putting it back together after cleaning, with many seemingly randomly shaped parts and every single E-clip that the manufacturer could design for and source at the time.
With that complete, this just left some pot cleaning and replacing a busted fuse in the amplifier section. The selenium rectifier was still functional, as were the
SGS TAA621AX1
audio amplifier ICs. Despite the age of this ‘portable’ record player, both its BSR mechanism and the twin speakers that are part of the record player are in remarkably good condition. Much like with a car, it seems that you just have to swap out the liquid-y elements before they turn into a solid.
| 24
| 8
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8151943",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T17:28:02",
"content": "Good to see this kind of problem getting attention. These kind of grease related problems are nothing new but are easily overlooked if you are not aware of it. And it happens in all sorts of mechanical devices not only record players. The video shows nicely a method of how this can be easily solved and I’m sure this will inspire many people for future similar repairs.Perhaps Hackaday can make a service/repair corner. In the spirit of the frequently mentioned “right to repair”, Hackaday could perhaps create a page that allows for easy searching within the articles (other than searching for a word in the headline alone) so that people who are searching for a particular problem might find a similar problem with a practical solution. Just a thought, an idea inspired by the highly inadequate current Hackaday search function, which sometimes more feels like a Nilfisk (a neat way of saying that it really sucks).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151965",
"author": "Mould",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T18:31:25",
"content": "Such a section would also be an amazing resource for repair cafe volunteers.",
"parent_id": "8151943",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151986",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T20:58:27",
"content": "Repair-A-Day corner? That’s a RAD idea!",
"parent_id": "8151943",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152082",
"author": "Dale A Kaup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T02:09:40",
"content": "In about 1710 the world’s most accurate clock was made largely due to the fact that it was unlubricated except that it used naturally oily woods from the tropics rather than man made lubricants.",
"parent_id": "8151943",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152224",
"author": "RetepV",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T09:43:35",
"content": "I have a really nice autoreversing walkman, only slightly larger than the cassette itself, who’se grease has solidified. I really want to get it going again. But man, is its mechanism complex. I have watches that are less conplex. :/",
"parent_id": "8151943",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152257",
"author": "Peter M Casarian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T11:43:10",
"content": "Wow. Walkman! That’s really old school. I had one and miss it dearly. The familiar all yellow chassis and rubber covered everything. Phenomenal sound, even by today’s standards. Imo",
"parent_id": "8152224",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151946",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T17:33:31",
"content": "Selenium rectifiers are subject to be replaced as preventative maintenance, but it’s not as bad as with electrolytics or the Rifa filters.I don’t have 46 minutes of patience for this video, but I did see the epoxy mixing @42:35. Yes, uneven extraction of those tubes is a nuisance. Separating and discarding a bit of the unmixed epoxy is better then making an unequal mix. Especially if you know in advance you squeezed out a bit too much. Just make a visual volume estimate and brush some unmixed epoxy to the side of your paper.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152134",
"author": "Jon Mayo",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T05:10:47",
"content": "Sometimes I use a scale if I’m mixing a tiny dab. Helps that I already have a microgram scale. Useful for a lot of purposes and dirt cheap these days.P. S. I assumed both parts are a similar density, would be annoying to mix if they weren’t.",
"parent_id": "8151946",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151947",
"author": "Fred Love",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T17:34:20",
"content": "Back in the day, When I worked in the repair business, we used to refer to this as the Garrrard syndrome As in gaarrrard record players. BSR came from the same country. (Britain) . They actually call there grease paraffin. It is oil mixed with paraffin wax. When the oil evaporates. only the wax is left behind . Which then burns and hardens. The record players would pour into the shop just before Christmas . I don’t know how many hundred we repaired over the years. The stuff would sometimes get so hard. we would have to heat up the parts with a soldering gun to get them apart.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152429",
"author": "Akimmet",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T18:57:51",
"content": "Whenever I get a British turntable to work on, I automatically assume i will need to get out the big soldering gun out to melt the grease. The old grease seems to have a consistency of cured rubber cement.",
"parent_id": "8151947",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151953",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T17:42:59",
"content": "I had the same problem with an old – albeit much younger than that BSR deck – Baygen FPR2 clockwork radio. A co-worker was throwing it out because it no longer worked, and all that was wrong was the grease on the gear shafts had gone like half-set glue. A good clean and a bit of fresh stuff had it up running again… sometimes the line from all those eBay listings – “could be a simple fix” – turns out to be true!As a footnote, the spring doesn’t get used a lot these days since I replaced the puny 1.5V solar panel with an identically-sized 5V one from Aliexpress. Now you can sit it on a window ledge in normal daylight and it plays happily without any winding required at all.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151956",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T18:00:09",
"content": "Modern watch lubricants have solved this problem. At least from my reading. They don’t harden with age (which would cause the amount of friction to change with obvious detrimental effects) they just evaporate to nothing.Service interval for mechanical watches used to be 3 years and is now 10, at least for the omegas I looked into. Less cleaning of old funk, better lubricants. Love that archaic tech is still pushing boundaries.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151959",
"author": "alialiali",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T18:16:51",
"content": "The 3 year service interval some apply to Rolex is the modern equivalent of giving your cars 6 month oil changes.Rolex also recommends 10 years now, shortening to 5 years as the watch ages. Still a watch like a record player will probably tell you if you’re leaving it too late (poor timekeeping and poor playback).Difference I suppose is most people will get a Rolex cleaned, water tightness checked and time keeping checked every year or two.",
"parent_id": "8151956",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152330",
"author": "KenN",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T14:48:20",
"content": "I’m finding that the better grades of synthetic greases for bicycles and marine winches don’t seem to harden like the olde greases of yore.",
"parent_id": "8151956",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151960",
"author": "Observer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T18:17:37",
"content": "Came into possesion of a wind-up phonograph, clockworks frozen with solidified grease. A few drops of CLP liquified everything, the goo ran out, and after a few iterations, I added fresh lubricant. The gears now spin as free as a top.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151990",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T21:07:05",
"content": "What is CLP? Clear Liquid Petroleum?",
"parent_id": "8151960",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151992",
"author": "alialiali",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T21:11:48",
"content": "Cleaner Lubricant Preservativd",
"parent_id": "8151990",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151995",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T21:16:55",
"content": "Is isopropyl alcohol a reasonable solvent for grease? I’ve never found it to be much use – very slow acting, despite being nominally miscible.Naptha works wonders though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152057",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T01:20:47",
"content": "(lubricating) “grease” is a combination of a “soap” and oil. The oil does the lubrication, while the soap provides the stiffness so it does not run or leak away. And there are at least 6 different soap types in common use (Calcium and lithium soaps are very common).And different types of grease need different solvents. Both “break cleaner” and regular diesel are commonly used solvent for grease.I once tried to clean up hardened grease from a sowing machine with WD40, but that did not work very well. But WD40 does work with some types of grease. You just have to try which combination works.",
"parent_id": "8151995",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152096",
"author": "Dale A Kaup",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T03:05:48",
"content": "‘brake’, not ‘break’",
"parent_id": "8152057",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152267",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T12:03:24",
"content": "There is a product out there for this purpose called “break-free”. But I know where you are coming from.",
"parent_id": "8152096",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152078",
"author": "Derek Tombrello",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T01:59:54",
"content": "Back when I was doing audio repairs, I used a combination of carburetor cleaner and methanol / denatured alcohol.",
"parent_id": "8151995",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152320",
"author": "KenN",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T14:19:35",
"content": "Varsol works pretty good on hardened grease. I wouldn’t myself use carburetter cleaner; it can damage or mar some plastics.I’ve freed up some “stuck” mechanisms (eg bicycle gear shifter) with light machine oil, but if they really need grease for long-term use, you still have to disassemble, clean and regrease them.",
"parent_id": "8151995",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152620",
"author": "Doug Romeo",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T06:52:07",
"content": "I just discovered this. Very interesting. Thank you.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,479.309543
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/20/8-bit-mechanical-computer-built-from-knex/
|
8 Bit Mechanical Computer Built From Knex
|
Bryan Cockfield
|
[
"computer hacks"
] |
[
"ALU",
"calculator",
"computer",
"knex",
"math",
"mechanical",
"mechanical computer"
] |
Long before electricity was a common household utility, humanity had been building machines to do many tasks that we’d now just strap a motor or set of batteries onto and think nothing of it. Transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, and essentially everything had non-electric analogs, and perhaps surprisingly, there were mechanical computers as well. Electronics-based computers are far superior in essentially every way, but the aesthetics of a mechanical computer are still unmatched,
like this 8-bit machine built from K’nex
.
The K’nex computer is built by [Shadowman39], and this first video features just the ALU. It can accept numbers from 0-255 or -128 to 127 and can add two of these numbers by storing them in registers using levers to represent each digit. A drive system underneath with a rack and pinion system operates on each digit, eventually outputting the sum. It can also perform other mathematical operations like subtraction and handling negative numbers using the two’s complement method.
Although this video only goes over the ALU for the mechanical computer, we look forward to [Shadowman39]’s future videos, which go over the other parts of the machine. The basics of the computer are shown in intricate detail. Mechanical computers like these, while generally built as passion projects and not as usable computers, are excellent ways to get a deeper understanding of their electronics-based cousins.
Another way to dive deep into this sort of computing world is by building a relay computer
.
| 24
| 14
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8151893",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T14:07:08",
"content": "About the first paragraph: Strictly speaking, the electric car was first.But the petrol based car won, because electric batteries were still in early development.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151985",
"author": "Not Jah Leno",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T20:57:17",
"content": "I think you’ll find the steam car came first.",
"parent_id": "8151893",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152216",
"author": "Melroy van den Berg",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T09:27:11",
"content": "Steam -> electric -> gasoline.",
"parent_id": "8151985",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151906",
"author": "Mark",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T15:00:57",
"content": "Super fun! Great imagination.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151945",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T17:31:55",
"content": "Fascinating! A very impressive project in so many ways.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151951",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T17:37:08",
"content": "If Charles Babbage had KNEX, he probably would have made his machines on time and within budget.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151979",
"author": "Neil",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T20:11:18",
"content": "..and Lada Ada would have been in to plastic surgery.",
"parent_id": "8151951",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151954",
"author": "Niklas",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T17:52:16",
"content": "Konrad Tuse would be proud of Shadowman39 :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151966",
"author": "make piece not war",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T18:35:49",
"content": "Zuse.Konrad Ernst Otto Zuse.",
"parent_id": "8151954",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151961",
"author": "Thinkerer",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T18:22:05",
"content": "Digi-comp 1 grows up!https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digi-Comp_I",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151971",
"author": "vendooradam",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T19:14:18",
"content": "Okay sure but did [Shadowman39] ever actually finish the rollercoaster?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152017",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T22:13:24",
"content": "My brother got that for Christmas when he and I were kids, we took it with us to our grandparents’ house on Boxing day (the day after Christmas day) and built it there. Dad had to go round with his van to pick it up.",
"parent_id": "8151971",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152000",
"author": "Llaves",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T21:42:51",
"content": "Back in ’75 Danny Hillis and Brad Silverman built a computer that could play tic-tac-toe entirely from Tinkertoys.https://www.retrothing.com/2006/12/the_tinkertoy_c.html",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152014",
"author": "Gus A Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T22:12:02",
"content": "errrhm…. i failed to see Doom being played on it",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152110",
"author": "Cody",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T04:03:17",
"content": "Well, it’s not a computer yet. Only the ALU has been built so far.",
"parent_id": "8152014",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152289",
"author": "RaoulDuke",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T13:01:35",
"content": "I always wonder if aliens with far superior tech have a Doom equivalent. “Cool planetary Dyson sphere run quantum computer – but can it run ___?”",
"parent_id": "8152014",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152016",
"author": "Jonathan Wilson",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T22:13:08",
"content": "I wonder how hard it would be to build something like this out of LEGO Technic.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152109",
"author": "Gary Briggs",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T03:58:02",
"content": "I was thinking the same thing, if anybody had done it yet.",
"parent_id": "8152016",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152248",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T11:18:05",
"content": "It should be considerably easier to build with Technic. Technic has so many parts for implementing mechanisms. In fact, just recently the design “Turing Machine – Working Lego Computer” was declined for being a commercial Lego Creator set.https://beta.ideas.lego.com/product-ideas/10a3239f-4562-4d23-ba8e-f4fc94eef5c7",
"parent_id": "8152016",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152076",
"author": "Steve Kovner",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T01:56:35",
"content": "Is that a voice I hear from Charles Babbage’s grave “If I only had KNEX!”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152251",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T11:23:15",
"content": "Babbage wouldn’t create such a nuisance of himself, in fact he’d be writing strongly worded letters to the council if he heard voices from other graves.",
"parent_id": "8152076",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152464",
"author": "yugiohfan2010",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T20:49:34",
"content": "Now if only we could make a certain computer… say, the “Commodore KNEXty-Four”…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152509",
"author": "DiPDoT",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T22:19:50",
"content": "Awesome on so many levels! Looking forward to seeing this interacting with registers and a KNEX-based memory system. Well done!!!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8153012",
"author": "Kurt Christensen",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T04:18:08",
"content": "That is truly genius, mesmerizing, incredible to watch and see it work so beautifully, what a masterpiece!!! I love knex, built most things strictly from imagination, but never a mathematical marvel!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,479.432145
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/20/engine-data-displayed-live-on-dash/
|
Engine Data Displayed Live On Dash
|
Lewin Day
|
[
"car hacks"
] |
[
"dash",
"dashboard",
"digital dash",
"digital dashboard",
"raspberry pi",
"Suzuki"
] |
In the auto world, there are lots of overarching standards that all automakers comply with. There are also lots of proprietary technologies that each automaker creates and uses for its own benefit. [Shehriyar Qureshi] has recently been diving into Suzuki’s Serial Data Line standard,
and has created a digital dash using the data gained.
The project started with Python-based scanner code designed to decode Suzuki’s SDL protocol. Armed with the ability to read the protocol, [Shehriyar] wanted to be able to do so without having to haul a laptop around in the car. Thus, the project was ported to Rust, or “oxidized” if you will.
More after the break…
[Shehriyar] has installed the system in a Suzuki Baleno. The Raspberry Pi uses a VAG KKL interface to connect to the car via its OBD port and connect to the SDL line. It decodes this data, and processes it to pull out parameters like speed, RPM. It then drives an LCD display on the double-DIN stereo in the dash. A simple composite output allows the system to display live data while driving the vehicle. The UI
uses the Ratatui library.
The result is a display that both updates smoothly and rapidly. It has a great retro vibe that kind of reminds us of some interfaces seen in Hollywood movies. Despite being analog video, the results are pretty sharp.
We’ve seen a few great digital dashboards over the years.
Crazy news: Ratatui made it into a car dashboard 😱🎉🚗 suzui-rs — Suzuki Serial Data Line viewer in Rust📟 Displays live car data, powered by Pi and shown on stereo over RCA🦀 Written in Rust & built with @ratatui.rs ⭐ GitHub: github.com/thatdevsherr…#rustlang #ratatui #tui #car #suzuki
—
Orhun Parmaksız (@orhun.dev)
2025-07-14T12:27:41.398Z
| 12
| 3
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8151935",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T16:32:32",
"content": "So you’re driving in the dark, looking at a display that is so bright that the camera has to do significant exposure time reduction to show the image. What a wonder full Idea. (But it does like the person videoing the stuff is not behind the wheel, so that’s a good thing).The Ratatui library may be a very nice library worth looking into. Looks like a (more capable?) variant of ncurses.I’m quite curious about making a “universal display” that can be combined with multiple backends, for example on hardware such as:https://hackaday.com/2025/07/02/subpixel-rendering-for-impossibly-small-terminal-text/Leaning more towards the hardware side, there are displays such as the “Nextion” frameworks, but for those (best I know) you first have to design the whole GUI on a PC. But nextion software does not run on Linux, and Wine is apparently also a bit problematic.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152214",
"author": "thatdevsherry",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T09:24:59",
"content": "Hi, I’m the author of the tool.I get the concern. The stereo is number one (from the bottom). The camera does injustice to the actual brightness since turning on parking/tail lights dims the display, so it’s not “that” bad at night.I had swapped out the previous “better” android head unit for this cheap stereo as the brightness of android one was too much for me (maybe due to the bigger size as well). This is way better in terms of low brightness even though the quality is crap.There has been work by people making ratatui work on embedded hardware. Linking one below in case you find it interesting.https://github.com/j-g00da/mousefood",
"parent_id": "8151935",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152019",
"author": "bootstrap",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T22:14:22",
"content": "This highlights that cars should be able to display all that live data on one of the displays already in the car. Maybe not while driving. There are some diagnostic functions available, but not live data like throttle position or EGO voltage.Needing a separate scan tool seems a little silly given all the hardware is already there",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152037",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T00:10:04",
"content": "For what purpose? Curiosity?Those systems connected to displays are not usually on the same bus as the power train. You’d require the car not to have any significant electrical issues for it to even function, so it would pay to have a proper tool. Would also be unwise to give it the ability to issue diagnostic commands. Playing around with the infotainment system shouldn’t give someone the ability to test airbag deployment.",
"parent_id": "8152019",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152051",
"author": "fonz",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T00:49:15",
"content": "a lot of the data is standardize OBD UDS, Lots of aftermarket devices that will show you data that way.you can only read, not control anything unless you have the key code.",
"parent_id": "8152037",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152113",
"author": "NSFW",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T04:06:57",
"content": "My 2002 Corvette’s instrument cluster has a small display that can read OBD2 trouble codes from the powertrain control module (GM’s term for what everyone else calls an engine control unit or ECU).So I wonder when (or if) modern cars started keeping the UI and the ECU on separate networks.",
"parent_id": "8152037",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152121",
"author": "Franz Oskar Quant",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T04:19:09",
"content": "Typically cars use CANbus, and all the different control units are connected to the same bus. Which means, every control unit can pull out the data it needs anyway. They have access to everything when needed, so all it would require is a bit of software to display values.But that doesn’t mean, every device can control everything. The airbag control unit is the authority to decide, when an airbag deployment is necessary, it won’t receive that command from any other device.",
"parent_id": "8152037",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8152334",
"author": "Joe",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T14:50:28",
"content": "I know VW stuff uses a gateway module that arbitrates communication between busses. This module provided the necessary abstraction to prevent things from going too awry in normal operation.The infotainment bus was connected to the gateway, as was the powertrain. The infotainment would read vehicle speed from powertrain for speed sensitive volume. One example of many where data is routed over several buses.That said the necessary communications to actually invoke diagnostic functions or change programming is usually quite complex and generally requires a lot of other prerequisite conditions that aren’t possible in a drive readiness state.The main hiccup with getting anything to show on a factory display isn’t the lack of data on the CAN bus, it’s that the display module is built to a price point and probably doesn’t even use CAN. I did display engine parameters over the factory dot matrix display, but that display was connected by LIN and used a serial like BAP protocol. An aftermarket device was added that read the CAN bus and spat out BAP on the LIN bus. The factory display would invoke the hands free calling module, which the aftermarket device was man in the middle to. It would read CAN data, parse it and kick out display data. It read the steering wheel button presses over CAN to manipulate its own interface and also forwarded the actual hand free module functionality. Clever little thing really. Too bad the car got scooped up in dieselgate.",
"parent_id": "8152037",
"depth": 3,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152467",
"author": "S O",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T20:52:02",
"content": "Given that the device only needs to speak OBD2 or CAN, this is a trivial thing and has been done for ages. Some cars even had the information available without 3rd party tools, Notably the Nissan Skyline.",
"parent_id": "8152334",
"depth": 4,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153818",
"author": "draeath",
"timestamp": "2025-07-24T17:38:59",
"content": "My 2019 Honda’s OEM head unit is absolutely connected to the bus. You can see this from the hidden diagnostic menu, where it will show GOOD/NOGOOD flags for various bits and pieces and such, including for a CAN bus connection itself.",
"parent_id": "8152037",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8152322",
"author": "Jeff",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T14:28:12",
"content": "Cool. But anything below 1995 has OBD 1. 1982 was the start of OBD 1.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152670",
"author": "thatdevsherry",
"timestamp": "2025-07-22T11:04:47",
"content": "Hi, I’m the author of the tool.That was the point of decoding SDL. The engine is Suzuki’s G13BB w/o O2, which came ~1995. There were two variants, one with and other without oxygen sensor. Mine’s w/o O2 sensor and suzuki only provided SDL to get all data (immobilizer + engine data).For O2 equipped engine they provide 2 lines, a normal K-line (9141-2) (OBD2) (for engine data) and SDL is also there but mostly just for interfacing with immobilizer.",
"parent_id": "8152322",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
}
] | 1,760,371,479.482855
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/19/neon-lamp-detects-lightning-strikes/
|
Neon Lamp Detects Lightning Strikes
|
Bryan Cockfield
|
[
"Radio Hacks"
] |
[
"antenna",
"charged clouds",
"led",
"lightning",
"lightning detector",
"neon lamp",
"radio"
] |
For as mysterious, fascinating, and beautiful as lightning is at a distance, it’s not exactly a peaceful phenomenon up close. Not many things are built to withstand millions of volts and tens to hundreds of thousands of amps. Unsurprisingly, there’s a huge amount of effort put into lightning protection systems for equipment and resources that need to be outside where thunderstorms sometimes happen. Although most of us won’t be building personal substations, church steeples, or city-scale water towers in our backyards, we might have a few radio antennas up in the air, so it’s a good idea to have some lightning protection
and possibly an alert system like [Joe] built
.
The start of this project came about when [Joe] noticed static on his crystal radio’s headset when there was a storm in the distance. When disconnecting the antenna in this situation, he also noticed sparks, and then thought that placing a neon lamp in the circuit would essentially allow those sparks to form in the lamp itself. The sparks only cause the neon to glow dimly, so a capacitor was added to allow the voltage to increase, making the sparks of light in the lamp more visible. These sparks are still quite dim, though, so two LEDs were added in series with opposite polarity, allowing one to detect negative charge and the other to detect positive.
With the LEDs installed in the circuit, it’s much more apparent when there are charged clouds around, and with the addition of an RF choke, [Joe] can use this circuit at the same time as his radio while also getting alerts about potential thunderstorm activity. This isn’t the only way to detect lightning strikes, though.
There are plenty of other ways to get this job done
, and we’ve even seen lightning detectors so sensitive that
they can detect socks-on-carpet static discharges as well
.
Thanks to [Charles] for the tip!
| 16
| 7
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8151549",
"author": "Unochepassa",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T12:12:36",
"content": "Very nice project! I wonder how to make it just like a charged cloud detector without increasing the danger of lightning.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151600",
"author": "JB",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T17:15:00",
"content": "I remember when I was younger, tuning to dead medium wave frequencies on the radio as I could hear clouds charging up before a lightning strike. You could possibly use an SDR and some clever software to start listening out for these events.",
"parent_id": "8151549",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151733",
"author": "Joel B",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T02:16:22",
"content": "I wonder if it would be possible to do that, but with three SDRs spaced apart, and triangulate where the lightening is charging up.",
"parent_id": "8151600",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151570",
"author": "Charlie Merritt",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T15:23:52",
"content": "I once used a “long” wire of 30 feet connected to a pair of FETs each with an LED powered by a 9v battery and an in series resistor. Almost any cumulus cloud would make one LED glow continuously. Clear air would sometimes do the same.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151599",
"author": "retrosurf",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T17:06:33",
"content": "This is excitation in an H field antenna, a magnetic antenna. Definitely want a a lightning diverter upstream of your crystal set, to give the lightning an opportunity to find ground instead of coming into your house on the channel of copper plasma that used to be your antenna wire.There’s awesome stuff happening in the electric field, as well, which might also be in play with the neon detector. Franklin’s bells is the prettiest demonstration I’ve seen of it:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR7rH9McYEw",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152379",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T16:42:35",
"content": "TIL from messing around: you can make a franklin’s bells setup with a couple of pop cans sitting side by side, with a pencil sitting on top of them, with one of the pop cans’ tabs ripped off and hanging from the pencil by a string. One can hooked to ground, the other hooked to an antenna, and they clang happily as a little electron motor.To test this out I put a piece of aluminum foil on the face of an old color TV. That shocked the hell out of me. That was really unpleasant. Get this set up and THEN turn on the TV.",
"parent_id": "8151599",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151603",
"author": "Will",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T17:21:15",
"content": "The most important thing I learned from this project is that Angelfire still exists. XD",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151653",
"author": "scott_tx",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T20:49:17",
"content": "Time to check my Geocities account.",
"parent_id": "8151603",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151731",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T02:09:40",
"content": "People have been doing this with neon bulbs for longer than I’ve been alive, and I’m old.What I think might be more interesting would be to make it audible … like maybe a low impedance speaker in series with a couple of back-to-back diodes and probably a current limiting resistor across the feedline.By the way, I almost always put a short across my coax during the lightning season, but a few years ago I had left the end of the coax from an 80m Inverted-V just laying on the floor … disconnected from the rig of course. There was an incoming storm that was still several miles away, but we already had clouds building over head. I had one hand on the floor and as I bent down to put a short across the coax with my other hand and I drew a thick blue arc about two inches long. The current ran through both arms (and obviously also through my chest) and both of my biceps were sore for about three days afterward. Supposedly the voltage required to jump two inches in reasonably dry air is on the order of 150,000 volts … possibly a bit less in this case since the end of the coax had a PL-259 with a sharp tip. This was all without any nearby lightning strike.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151743",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T03:16:31",
"content": "Now you are going to make me have to go look it up to heck my ‘calibration’…My internal voice says it’s ~10kv/0.25inch @ 50% humidity.But who knows what it actually is?Remember kids, just because you remember something, doesn’t mean it’s correct…",
"parent_id": "8151731",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152021",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T22:18:00",
"content": "Well, I absolutely remember the heavy blue 2″ long arc, and I am very good at estimating dimensions. The humidity was probably more like 30% (I live in southern Arizona), but who knows what it actually was. But yes, I’ve seen figures over almost a 3:1 range for the voltage required to jump that distance. 150 KV was the middle ground.",
"parent_id": "8151743",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151755",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T04:26:30",
"content": "I want to know what coax you were using, and especially the connector, that can withstand 150 kV, even briefly. I’ve used plain old RG-59 with no problem at 3500 V with MHV connectors, but I’ve also seen N connectors on RG-214 break down at 2 kV (though I’m sure the cable itself is good for better than 10 kV). I’ve never tested it, but I would guess a PL-259 would not be better.",
"parent_id": "8151731",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152018",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T22:13:53",
"content": "You didn’t understand what I wrote, then. I never said that the voltage was differential on the coax … I said it jumped from the coax to ground, which made it common mode and not relevant to the breakdown voltage of the dielectric inside the coax.",
"parent_id": "8151755",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151796",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T10:05:30",
"content": "funny little spring-loaded contacts for wire attachment. Looks very old-school. I guess the author had some drawers full of those ?What are those contacts exactly ? Still manufactured ? They are new to me.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8152090",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2025-07-21T02:47:14",
"content": "They are called Fahnestock Clips, and they are still manufactured.",
"parent_id": "8151796",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8153249",
"author": "Edward Wade",
"timestamp": "2025-07-23T16:42:19",
"content": "Remember picking up a laptop computer from a hotel in Florida during winter. The room was heated so the humidity was probably closer to 20%. Walked on plush carpet and reached for doorknob. Drew an arc about six inches before I touched doorknob. Luckily, the computer still worked after arriving to destination and testing computer.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,479.536035
|
||
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/19/garageminder-automatic-garage-door/
|
GarageMinder: Automatic Garage Door
|
John Elliot V
|
[
"car hacks",
"home hacks"
] |
[
"ble",
"bluetooth low energy",
"garage door"
] |
After getting a new car, [Solo Pilot] missed the automatic garage door opening and closing system their old car had. So they set about building their own, called
GarageMinder
. On the project page you will find a bill of materials, schematics, and some notes about the approach taken in various versions of the software. [Solo Pilot] also made the
software
available.
The basic hardware centers around a Raspberry Pi Zero W, but there are plans to switch to an ESP32. From the car side of things there are built-in continuous Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) advertisement broadcasts, which the Raspberry Pi can detect. Building a reliable system on top of these unreliable signals is difficult and you can read about some of the challenges and approaches that were taken during development. This is a work in progress and additional techniques and approaches are going to be trialed in future.
If you’re interested in Bluetooth garage door openers be sure to read about
using a Bluetooth headset as a garage door opener for your Android device
.
| 12
| 8
|
[
{
"comment_id": "8151505",
"author": "tiopepe123",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T08:25:26",
"content": "A very old resistor and capacitors 1970?¿",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151509",
"author": "Julianne",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T08:47:12",
"content": "Might find ancient components in my own stock as well… unless they’re electrolytics or some other thing that degrades noticably, I see no issue using what’s there.",
"parent_id": "8151505",
"depth": 2,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151532",
"author": "Lindsay Wilson",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T10:40:27",
"content": "Uh…..what capacitors are you talking about? The only one I see in the photo is a brown ceramic disc capacitor (on left, just above the black 100k potentiometer). I do not see any electrolytic capacitors, which are the kind you’re talking about (and yes, they do have a limited lifespan).",
"parent_id": "8151509",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151732",
"author": "jolness1",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T02:14:58",
"content": "Yes, electrolytic capacitors leak after decades (or sooner if they have issues) but those are ceramics. Which.. don’t.",
"parent_id": "8151509",
"depth": 3,
"replies": []
}
]
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151564",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T14:44:14",
"content": "Could have been done with a 555.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151594",
"author": "MW",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T16:53:58",
"content": "I guess pressing a button is too difficult…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8151668",
"author": "macsimki",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T21:52:27",
"content": "do you know how many buttons current cars have?????? i would get crazy in such a thing.",
"parent_id": "8151594",
"depth": 2,
"replies": []
}
]
},
{
"comment_id": "8151602",
"author": "Christoph",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T17:21:00",
"content": "So the security of this solution depends on the reception of BLE beacon broadcasts? How difficult can it be to sniff some BLE packets from that Tesla and replay them when the owner is not at home? Will the system be able to tell the difference? At least the creator of this project doesn’t claim that this setup is secure.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151657",
"author": "ViciousNarwhal",
"timestamp": "2025-07-19T21:00:36",
"content": "I use homeassistant, my phone, ir sensor, and some Shellys. For coming home, if my phone is within range of house (within eye sight), and it is connected to my car bluetooth, then it opens the door. There is an IR sensor that detects if the car is there. If the car leaves and the door is open then it closes it after a few seconds. The door opener also beeps for 10 seconds letting anyone near know it is closing. If you want to be working in the garage with the door open, then I have a little cap to put on the sensor so it doesn’t close on you. Works like magic!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151705",
"author": "Kelly",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T00:31:42",
"content": "Newer garage door openers (such as Chamberlain/Liftmaster myQ) rely on their coporate cloud for authentication. This does give some drama when their server or app is not working.I’ll take a couple relays and resistors over that anyday. Older openers, it’s a two-wire bus with wall control and obstacle sensors mux’ed on the same bus. Some use different resistor values for light on/off, door open/close and I have seen some use a capacitor – the bus has a safety aspect so it’s not simple DC levels there, it’s pulses.I use an ESP8266 and it works fine, as long as it can connect to your WiFi router (LAN). No need for Big Brother to know when I got home. I use DNP3 protocol aspect from substations where a digital output (breaker) gets switched with two commands (select, then operate) which gives some extra coverage for errors.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151713",
"author": "Pepe",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T00:40:22",
"content": "Isn’t there a patent on a two way garage door status?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8151734",
"author": "Kelly",
"timestamp": "2025-07-20T02:35:41",
"content": "You can’t really patent using two-wires. I think the old patent is for having three devices (obstacle sensor and emitter, and wall switch) on the same bus- data and power, but with safety features so a dead obstacle sensor is detected.Of course new Chamberlain uses proprietary serial protocol. They had many product recalls with their “Smart” wall control panels. Super-cap failed, F/W bug where it could squish somebody, LCD died etc. Not high quality product designs unfortunately. Ref. LiftMaster 889LMMC, 888 recalls etc.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,479.60331
|
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