Today is Debian‘s 20 anniversary. Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. Debian started as Linux distribution, but Debian systems currently use the Linux kernel or the FreeBSD kernel (work is in progress to provide Debian for other kernels). Debian was begun in August 1993 by Ian Murdock, as a new distribution →
Playing with an oscilloscope you’ll (probably) never own article tells that Hackaday staff were really jealous when [Shahriar] a video he made, in which he casually explains how a $500,000 160GS/s 62GHz oscilloscope works and then starts playing with it. Looked interesting do I thought to link it to my blog as well. Experiments and →
USB was originally designed for desktop use, but it is increasingly used for industrial applications. For USB to survive in those environments, it needs to be made more rugged. It means that ruggedizing USB for ground loops and using better (more protection and better locking) connectors are often needed. Ruggedize USB connections for tough environments →
How to hack to an embedded device? On-chip debug (OCD) interfaces can provide chip-level control of a target device and are a primary vector used by engineers, researchers, and hackers to extract program code or data, modify memory contents, or affect device operation on-the-fly. Depending on the complexity of the target device, manually locating available →
Do LEDs cause blindness? article tells that According to a study led by Dr. Celia Sánchez-Ramos, of Complutense University in Madrid, prolonged and continuous exposure to LED light might be sufficient to damage the retina. Her study, published in the journal Photochemistry and Photobiology in 2012 found that LED radiation caused significant damage to human →
Last weekend I repaired two unreliable radio remote controllers with contact spray. One of the remotes was for Nikko RC car and other was for mains outlet remote controlling (bought from Clas Ohlson). In the Nikko remote has small joystick like controls, but underneath them there was just small cheap buttons on the circuit board. →
Slashdot informs (and I have seen it also on other news) that the Matriculation Examination Board of Finland (Upper Secondary School Exams) has opened an international hacking contest to find flaws and exploits in Digabi Live. Digabi Live is a Live Debian based operating system to be used in the all-digital final exams by the →
Star Wars Imperial March Played by Dual Floppy Drives Join the Dark Side, we have floppy disks! Ghostbuster’s Theme on eight floppy drives Somethin strange in your floppy drive. Who you gonna call? Tech support! I ain’t afraid of no DOS. Building a six-channel floppy drive synth from start to finish →
Shields are your friend, except when… article tells that engineers just love to put shields on circuits, mostly as a defensive measure against signals on the outside getting into and disturbing our circuits, but they also keep signals inside from getting out and this really makes the folks responsible for EMI compliance happy. Even on →
Assembly Summer 2013 computer festival was held last weekend. Many earlier years I have been actively participating in it (even been on organizers team), but for last few years I have skipped that event (I am getting too old for this?). In assembly Assembly event there has been interesting computer demos on the competitions. Something →