Author Archive

https://betanews.com/2017/07/19/raspberry-pi-eben-upton-qa/ “I grew up in a world of UK-designed, often UK-manufactured computers like the BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC, and it’s fantastic to take our place alongside them.” The super-affordable ARM GNU/Linux computer has brought programming back into schools (and beyond) and enjoyed staggering success. It is becoming the most successful British computer →

https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/processors/chip-hall-of-fame-intel-8088-microprocessor Was there any one chip that propelled Intel into the Fortune 500? Intel says there was: the 8088. This was the 16-bit CPU that IBM chose for its original line of PCs, which went on to dominate the desktop computer market. 8088 was “a castrated version of the 8086.”  →

http://spectrum.ieee.org/ns/IEEE_TPL_2017/index/2017/1/1/1/1/1/50/1/50/1/50/1/30/1/30/1/30/1/20/1/20/1/5/1/5/1/20/1/100/ This web page app ranks the popularity of dozens of programming languages. You can filter them by listing only those most relevant to particular sectors, such as “Web” or “embedded programming.” Rankings are created by weighting and combining 12 metrics from 10 sources.  You can take control to create your own ranking by adjusting each →

https://www.lut.fi/web/en/news/-/asset_publisher/lGh4SAywhcPu/content/turning-electricity-into-food- Did you know that it is possible to transform carbon dioxide and electricity into cattle feed and food for humans? Because it is. Using renewable electricity and carbon dioxide extracted from air, microbes can be used to produce a single cell protein that is over 50% protein and 25% carbohydrates, with the remaining part →

https://blog.hackster.io/why-hardware-is-hard-but-easier-than-ever-eeca5d464726 Hardware is hard is so commonly said it has become a cliché. Yeah, you know it’s hard, but why exactly? This article discusses this in detail. Fortunately, there is good news too — developing and launching a new hardware product is easier now than it’s ever been.  Making hardware is hard because developing a hardware product encompasses multiple fields →

https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/optoelectronics/chip-hall-of-fame-texas-instruments-digital-micromirror-device Today movie projectors based on this digital light-processing technology—or DLP, as TI branded it—are used in thousands of theaters. It’s also integral to rear-projection TVs, office projectors, and tiny projectors for cellphones. →

https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-agile-and-especially-scrum-are-terrible/ Agility is a good thing, no doubt, and the Agile Manifestoisn’t unreasonable. Compared to a straw-man practice called “Waterfall”, Agile is notably superior.  This article argues that much of Agile as-practiced is deeply harmful. The writer don’t really think that the Agile/Waterfall dichotomy is useful in the first place. Writer has seen a variety of Agile, →

https://repology.org/statistics/newest Who has the most up-to-date packages? This is a comparison has several BSD and Linux distributions. What do you think? →

This article talks about measuring 10 Mbit/s (10Base-T) and 100 Mbit/s (100Base-TX) twisted pair Ethernet signals. Those standards use two wire pairs for the communications and use differential signaling. Differential signaling is a method for electrically transmitting information using two complementary signals. The technique sends the same electrical signal as a differential pair of signals, →

http://blog.sec-consult.com/2017/07/reverse-engineering-hardware.html?m=1 Nowadays, we are living in a world dominated by embedded systems. Everyone can be spied on through various channels. Routers, IP-cameras, phones, and other embedded devices are affected by security vulnerabilities and are therefore easily hack-able.  This article covers some basic hardware reverse engineering techniques on PCB-level, which are applicable to any electronic embedded →