In 1997 a set of DEC tapes were provided by Dennis Ritchie, as historical artifacts for those interested in the gestation of the UNIX operating system. The resulting archive files have recently been analysed by [Yfeng Gao], who has succeeded in recovering a working UNIX version from 1972. What makes it particularly interesting is that […]
OpenSCAD has a lot of fans around these parts — if you’re unaware, it’s essentially a code-based way of designing 3D models. Instead of drawing them up in a CAD program, one writes a script that defines the required geometry. All that is made a little easier with the Belfry OpenSCAD Library (BOSL2). Designing a […]
There are a wide range of typing tutors out there that will educate you in the glorious skill of touch-typing. Many just focus on the basics, ranking you on accuracy and speed. However, there’s a nifty little online tutor that can help you with one skill specifically—it’s aim is to teach you to use the […]
Disk space is allocated in clusters of a certain size. When a file is written to disk and the file size is smaller than the cluster(s) allocated for it, there is an unused portion of varying size between the end of the file’s data and the end of the allocated clusters. This unused space is […]
The days that PDFs were the granny-proof Swiss Army knives of document sharing are definitely over, according to [vk6]. He has managed to pull off the ultimate mind-bender: running Linux inside a PDF file. Yep, you read that right. A full Linux distro chugging along in a virtual machine all encapsulated within a document. Just […]
The BASIC language may be considered old-hat here in 2025, and the days when a computer came as a matter of course with a BASIC interpreter are far behind us, but it can still provide many hours of challenge and fun. Even with our love of all things 8-bit, though, we’re still somewhat blown away […]
For those times when you could really use a quick 3D model, this metric screw generator will do the trick for screws between M2 and M16 with matching nuts and washers. Fastener hardware is pretty accessible, but one never knows when a 3D printed piece will hit the spot. One might even be surprised what […]
[Stephen] recently wrote in to share his experiments with using the LimeSDR mini to conduct a bit of piracy on the airwaves, and though we can’t immediately think of a legitimate application for spamming the full FM broadcast band simultaneously, we can’t help but be fascinated by the technique. Called the Taylorator, as it was […]
[wunderwuzzi] demonstrates a proof of concept in which a service that enables an AI to control a virtual computer (in this case, Anthropic’s Claude Computer Use) is made to download and execute a piece of malware that successfully connects to a command and control (C2) server. [wonderwuzzi] makes the reasonable case that such a system […]
Back in November we first brought you word of a slicing technique by which the final strength of 3D printed parts could be considerably improved by adjusting the first layer height of each wall so that subsequent layers would interlock like bricks. It was relatively easy to implement, didn’t require anything special on the printer […]