Custom Firmware For Even Cheaper Bluetooth Thermometers

Readers may recall when we first covered the $5 Xiaomi LYWSD03MMC temperature and humidity sensor back in 2020. Prolific hacker [Aaron Christophel] wrote a custom firmware for the affordable gadget…

Better C Strings, Simply

If you program in C, strings are just in your imagination. What you really have is a character pointer, and we all agree that a string is every character from that point up until one of the charact…

See What ‘They’ See In Your Photos

Once upon a time, a computer could tell you virtually nothing about an image beyond its file format, size, and color palette. These days, powerful image recognition systems are a part of our everyd…

Tldr-pages Keeps It Short, Wherever You Need It

Let’s face it, even the most accomplished console cowboy can’t keep everything memorized. Sure, you might know all the important arguments for a daily-use tool like tar or ls, but what …

Cranking Up The Detail In A Flight Simulator From 1992

Nostalgia is a funny thing. If you experienced the early days of video games in the 1980s and 90s, there’s a good chance you remember those games looking a whole lot better than they actually…

It’s Like LightScribe, But For Floppies!

Back when CD-Rs were the thing, there were CD burner drives which would etch images in the unoccupied areas of a CD-R. These so-called LightScribe drives were a novelty of which most users soon tir…

Massive Mural From Thermal Receipt Paper

Turning trash into art is something we undoubtedly all admire. [Davis DeWitt] did just that with a massive mural made entirely from discarded receipt paper. [Davis] got lucky while doing some light…

An Animated Walkthrough Of How Large Language Models Work

If you wonder how Large Language Models (LLMs) work and aren’t afraid of getting a bit technical, don’t miss [Brendan Bycroft]’s LLM Visualization. It is an interactively-animated…

Exploring The Gakken FX Micro-Computer

Early computer kits aimed at learning took all sorts of forms, from full-fledged computer kits like the Altair 8800 to the ready-made MicroBee Computer-In-A-Book. For those just wanting to dip thei…

Register Renaming: The Art Of Parallel Processing

In the quest for faster computing, modern CPUs have turned to innovative techniques to optimize instruction execution. One such technique, register renaming, is a crucial component that helps us ac…

Nix + Automated Fuzz Testing Finds Bug In PDF Parser

[Michael Lynch]’s adventures in configuring Nix to automate fuzz testing is a lot of things all rolled into one. It’s not only a primer on fuzz testing (a method of finding bugs) but it…

Hardware-in-the-Loop Continuous Integration

How can you tell if your software is doing what it’s supposed to? Write some tests and run them every time you change anything. But what if you’re making hardware? [deqing] has your bac…

Lock-In Thermography On A Cheap IR Camera

Seeing the unseen is one of the great things about using an infrared (IR) camera, and even the cheap-ish ones that plug into a smartphone can dramatically improve your hardware debugging game. But …

Seven New Street Fighter 2 Arcade Rom Hacks

[Sebastian Mihai] is a prolific programmer and hacker with a particular focus on retrocomputing and period games, and this latest hack, adding new gameplay elements to Capcom’s Street Fighter…

Behold A First-Person 3D Maze, Vintage Atari Style

[Joe Musashi] was inspired by discussions about 3D engines and decided to create a first-person 3D maze of his own. The really neat part? It could have been done on vintage Atari hardware. Well, mo…

Winamp Taken Down: Too Good For This Open Source World

If you picked today in your hackerspace’s sweepstake on when Winamp would pull their code repository, congratulations! You’re a winner! The source for the Windows version of the venerab…

ANTIRTOS: No RTOS Needed

Embedded programming is a tricky task that looks straightforward to the uninitiated, but those with a few decades of experience know differently. Getting what you want to work predictably or even f…

A RISC-V LISP Compiler…Written In Lisp

Ah, Lisp, the archaic language that just keeps on giving. You either love or hate it, but you’ll never stop it. [David Johnson-Davies] is clearly in the love it camp and, to that end, has pro…

Alphabet Soup: Haskell’s Single-Letter Naming Quirks

When you used punch cards or tape to write a computer program, brief variable names were the norm. Your compiler or assembler probably only allowed six letters, anyway. But times change, and people…

Supercon 2023: Thea Flowers Renders KiCad Projects On The Web

Last year’s Supercon, we’ve had the pleasure of hosting Thea [Stargirl] Flowers, who told us about her KiCanvas project, with its trials, its tribulations, and its triumphs. KiCanvas br…