The meaning of Inception’s ending famously revolves around a top which spins forever in dreams, but in real life comes to a stop like any other top. Any other top, that is, except for [Aaed Musa]’s self-spinning top, which can continuously spin for about two hours before coming to a stop. The one constraint was […]
Your new project really could use a block device for Linux. File systems are easy to do with FUSE, but that’s sometimes too high-level. But a block driver can be tough to write and debug, especially since bugs in the kernel’s space can be catastrophic. [Jiri Pospisil] suggests Ublk, a framework for writing block devices […]
DDR3 seemed plenty fast when it first showed up 19 years ago. Who could say no to 6400 Mb/s transfer speeds? Of course compared to the modern DDR5 that’s glacially slow, but given that RAM is worth its weight in gold these days– with even DDR4 spiking in price– some people, like [Gheeotine], are asking […]
When you’re driving a car with a stickshift, it’s pretty easy to keep track of which gear you’re in. That can be a little bit more difficult on something like a motorcycle with a sequential shifter. [decogabry] built a neat gearshift indicator to solve this issue. An ESP32 devboard is used as the brain of […]
If you were asked to pick the most annoying of the various Microsoft Windows interfaces that have appeared over the years, there’s a reasonable chance that Windows 8’s Metro start screen and interface design language would make it your choice. In 2012 the software company abandoned their tried-and-tested desktop whose roots extended back to Windows […]
Space telescopes are all the rage, and rightfully so. The images they take are spectacular, and they’ve greatly increased what we know about the universe. Surely, any picture taken of, say, the Andromeda galaxy before space telescopes would be little more than a smudge compared to modern photos, right? Maybe not. One of the most […]
Modern cellular networks are built to serve millions upon millions of users, all while maintaining strict encryption across all communications. But earlier cellular networks were by no means so secure, as [Nostalgia for Simplicity] demonstrates in a recent video. The video begins with an anecdote — our narrator remembers a family member who could listen […]
You’ve likely at least heard of Marion Stokes, the woman who constantly recorded television for over 30 years. She comes up on reddit and other places every so often as a hero archivist who fought against disinformation and disappearing history. But who was Marion Stokes, and why did she undertake this project? And more importantly, […]
It is a movie staple to see an overworked air traffic controller sweating over a radar display. Depending on the movie, they might realize they’ve picked the wrong week to stop some bad habit. But how does the system really work? [J. B. Crawford] has a meticulously detailed post about the origins of the computerized […]
3D scanners rely on being able to identify physical features of an object, and line up what it saw a moment ago with what it sees now in order to build a 3D model. However, not every object is as distinct and visible as others at all angles, particularly in IR. One solution is reflective scanning […]