Cryptography is a funny thing. Supposedly, if you do the right kind of maths to a message, you can send it off to somebody else, and as long as they’re the only one that knows a secret little thing, nobody else will be able to read it. We have all sorts of apps for this, […]
When Asteroid 2024 YR4 was first discovered, it created a bit of a kerfuffle when it was reported it had a couple-percent chance of hitting the Earth in 2032. At 60 meters (196 feet) across, this would have been in the “city killer” class that nobody really wants to see make landfall, so NASA and […]
It’s hard to deny that label printers have become more accessible than ever, but an annoying aspect of many of these cheap units is that their only user interface is a proprietary smartphone app connected via Bluetooth. The Fichero-branded label printer that [0xMH] obtained for a mere 10 Euro at a store in the Netherlands […]
The rapidly-improving speed and versatility of digital computers has mostly driven analogue computers out of use in modern systems, as has the relative difficulty of programming an analogue computer. There is a kind of art, though, in weaving together a series of op-amps to perform mathematical calculations; between this, a historical interest in the machines, […]
The various Raspberry Pi camera modules have become the default digital camera hacker’s tool, and have appeared in a huge number of designs over the past decade. They’re versatile and affordable, and while the software can sometimes be a little slow, they’re also of decent enough quality for the investment. Making a Pi camera can […]
As pointed out by Tom’s Hardware, it’s been 26 years since the introduction of the gigahertz desktop CPU. AMD beat Intel to the punch by dropping the 1 GHz Athlon chip on March 6th of 2000, and partnered with Compaq and Gateway (remember them?) to deliver pre-built machines featuring the speedy silicon just a week […]
With the RAM and storage crisis hitting personal computing very hard – along with new software increasingly suffering the effects of metastasizing ‘AI’ – more people than ever are pining for the ‘good old days’. For example, using that early 2000s desktop PC with Windows 98 SE might now seem to be a viable alternative […]
A long winter has a way of making a lot of us northerners a little bit squirrly. In [Build N Pulsejets]’s case, squirly enough to mount a home-made propane-powered pulse-jet to a kids’ kick scooter and take to the frozen lake for a rip. Okay, well, it started as a kid’s scooter, but after trying […]
The restored PET/CBM 3032. (Credit: Drygol, retrohax.net) The Commodore CBM 3032 is a successor to the original Commodore PET 2001, yet due a conflicting trademark issue with Philips these first European PETs were called ‘CBM’ instead. Hence the labeling on the CBM 3032 that [Drygol] had in for a restoration, which would have been produced […]
There’s a well-known movie trope in which a hacker takes control of the traffic lights in a city, causing general mayhem or creating a clear getaway path. Unlike many Hollywood representations of hacking, this is actually possible in principle; many cities install Emergency Vehicle Preemption (EVP) systems in their traffic signals to turn them green […]