マリウス 4 days ago

KTT x 80Retros GAME 1989 Orange

I picked up the KTT x 80Retros GAME 1989 Orange switches a while ago at Funkeys , a physical brick-and-mortar mechanical keyboard store in Yongsan-gu, Seoul , and it’s my first linear switch. Given its surprisingly cheap price I really didn’t expect much from it to be honest. KTT is a name people normally associate with budget options, like Peaches , Sea Salts , and Strawberries . It’s the kind of switches that show up in beginner build guides and they are generally good stuff, but not really the kind of thing that made me stop and think about what I was typing on. However, the GAME 1989 Orange changed that perception for me, and it did it in a way I genuinely didn’t see coming. But before we get into the switch itself, we need to talk about the vibe , because the vibe is half the story here. 80Retros is a relatively young brand out of China that debuted on ZFrontier around December 2023 with an interest check for their GAME 1989 cherry-profile PBT keycap set inspired by the original Game Boy . They describe themselves as lovers of all things vintage and retro, and unlike a lot of brands that slap “retro” on things as a marketing afterthought, they actually seem to mean it. What’s remarkable is how fast they’ve moved since then. Within a few years, they went from a single keycap IC to pushing out nearly a dozen different switches across two separate manufacturers ( KTT and HMX ), along with matching keycap sets in multiple colorways. The G.O.A.T. of switch reviews himself, ThereminGoat , covered this in detail in his HMX Volume 0-T review , and the GAME timeline is pretty interesting: The original HMX -manufactured GAME 1989 switches came first, followed by what he calls the “Film Trio” (the KD200 , FJ400 , and GAME 1989 Classic ), all packaged in these absolutely gorgeous film canister-inspired containers that look like oversized Kodak rolls. The film canister thing started as a nod to the KD200 and FJ400 being camera-brand-inspired, but the community loved the packaging so much that 80Retros seemingly just kept using it for everything. Even for switches that have nothing to do with photography. The KTT -manufactured GAME 1989 Orange and Red are the newer entries in this expanding catalogue, released as part of an “Expanded Film Series” in early 2025 alongside a Silent White variant and an HMX XMAS switch. So we’re looking at a brand that is absolutely not slowing down. On paper, PC top and PA66 bottom is a pretty classic material combo. KTT has used variations of this pairing for years. What makes this switch interesting is the KT2 stem made out of their proprietary UPE blend. UPE ( ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene ) is a material that’s been showing up more and more in the switch world, but it’s one of those things where the specific manufacturer’s blend matters enormously. Keygeek ’s U4 , for example, sounds glassy and solid. KTT ’s KT2 is more dry, a bit foamy, and (this is the part I didn’t expect) it brings an audible character that I can only describe as “marble-y” . It’s not soft, but it’s not hard either. It sits in this interesting middle ground. At 4mm travel with a pole bottom-out the switch is technically a long-pole linear, but the full travel distance means it doesn’t feel like one in the snappy, sharp way that most long-poles do. The pole bottom-out is there, but it’s mellowed out by the travel length and the stem material. More on that later. Stock smoothness is good, and I mean genuinely good. Probably not HMX -tier buttery, and probably not the absolute smoothest thing I’ve tried in the recent years, but there’s a quality to the travel that feels deliberate and controlled. The factory lube is present but light. A thin coating on the bottom housing railings, some on the stem legs and leaf, and the springs seem lightly done too. There is a texture to the keystroke and some people might call it scratch, but I’m not sure that would be fair, though it’s not entirely wrong either. UPE blends can be unpredictable when paired with other housing materials. Sometimes you get something silky, sometimes you get audible friction. The KT2 blend with this PC/PA66 housing produces a slight tactile grain in the travel that I genuinely enjoy. It’s subtle enough that you won’t notice it during normal typing speed, but if you slow-press a single key at ear level, it’s there. Spring-wise, 40g actuation bottoming out at around 50g is on the lighter side, especially for me and my usual Frankenswitches . I wouldn’t call it featherweight, but if you tend to bottom out hard, you’ll definitely hit the end of the stroke with minimal effort. The springs are clean, without noticeable ping in my set. The factory lube on the springs seems to do its job. One thing to note is that there’s reportedly about a 3g variance between individual switches. I couldn’t verify that precisely, but I did notice the occasional key that felt marginally different. Not a dealbreaker for me, but if you’re the kind of person who weighs every spring in a batch, keep it in mind. As for wobble, it is present. There’s some slight vertical (north-south) wobble and maybe a touch of east-west if you go looking for it. This seems to be a known trade-off with KTT ’s newer molds. Their older switches like the Hyacinths seemingly had incredibly tight tolerances, but those molds are from a different era. KTT has been retooling to accommodate new materials like their KT2 and KT3 blends, and the fit isn’t quite as snug as the old stuff. As for films, they probably do help to tighten up the housings and I’ve read that filming the switches apparently also compresses the sound profile slightly. Personally, the wobble doesn’t bother me too much. The sound profile is where the GAME 1989 Orange gets genuinely interesting, because the sound profile is busy , and I mean that in a good way. The bottom-out is lower-pitched than you’d typically expect from a PC -topped switch. The PA66 bottom housing and the KT2 stem material seemingly pull the tone down into a territory that’s thocky without being mushy. There’s a definite pop to the keystroke, and the bottom-out has weight to it. The top-out (the return stroke) is a touch brighter, creating this slight tonal contrast between the downstroke and upstroke that gives the switch a lot of auditory dimension. There’s a lot happening acoustically at any given keystroke and none of it sounds muddied or confused. The “marble-y” quality I mentioned earlier really comes through in the sound. It’s not a wet, lubed sound, but a relatively dry and more textured one, with a character that feels… natural, in lack of better words. The slight scratch in the travel actually adds to the sound profile rather than detracting from it. The initial contact, the pole hitting bottom, the spring compression, the return remains distinct of each other and layered. Volume-wise, it’s moderate. Definitely not silent, but also not exactly loud. Slightly quieter than your average long-pole, which makes sense given the full 4mm travel and the way the KT2 material absorbs some of the impact energy. I haven’t yet tested it on any of my aluminium builds , but at least on the few keyboards Funkeys had these switches on, as well as on my Kunai , I find that the sound profile works beautifully. Having that said, these switches are definitely less ideal for quiet/public environments, like open space offices and cafes. The switches come factory lubed and they work just fine stock. I’d personally resist the urge to lube them further unless you specifically want to kill the audible scratch, which I think is part of the charm. If you do lube, know that you’re trading character for smoothness, and these are already reasonably smooth to begin with. They accept films, and filming them does seem to tighten the sound slightly with less resonance in the housing, a more compressed signature. Depending on your build and plate material, that might be exactly what you want or exactly what you don’t. Try a few with and without before committing. As for the packaging, if you buy the 35-switch sets, they come in those aforementioned film canister containers. It’s genuinely lovely and a nice touch that makes the whole experience feel considered. Not something I’d pay extra for, but it’s a detail that matters for the overall product identity. One thing to note is that the canisters open very easily. I wouldn’t walk around holding them upside down unless I’d want to play find 35 switches hidden underneath the furniture . The KTT x 80Retros GAME 1989 Orange surprised me. It’s a switch that trades the ultra-polished, frictionless perfection for something with a dry, textured, slightly scratchy keystroke that somehow comes together into a sound profile that’s warm, full, and more complex than it has any right to be at this price point. It’s not perfect. The wobble is there, and the housing tolerances aren’t as tight as the best in the business. It doesn’t feel like every other linear on the market, at least not like the ones I had the chance to try over the past years. It has character, which, in a hobby that’s increasingly crowded with technically excellent but personality-free switches, has its charm. If you want the smoothest linear available, look elsewhere. If you want something that sounds interesting, feels engaging, and comes wrapped an homage to a long gone era give the 1989 Orange a shot. I’m genuinely glad I did. Disclaimer: I’m not a switch scientist. I don’t own a force curve rig, I can’t tell you the exact durometer of the KT2 blend, and my ears are probably not calibrated to the standards of someone like ThereminGoat . This review is based on my personal experience typing on these switches across a few different boards and ultimately actively using them on my primary keyboard . Your mileage may vary based on your plate material, case, keycaps, and other factors. Take everything here as one person’s experience and use it as a starting point for your own.

Electronics Hardware Java

Kev Quirk 1 weeks ago

Why Have a Dedicated Music Device?

In the last year or so I've read about many people moving from streaming services, like Apple Music and Spotify, to their own music library. To support these local libraries, many seem to be getting themselves a music player, such as the Fiio Echo Mini . While moving to a local library is something that I've thought about many times 1 , I don't understand why people are buying these little music players. The big selling points generally seem to be: With the exception of the 3rd point, pretty much every smartphone on the market will do all of this. And let's be honest, #3 doesn't really matter as most people use Bluetooth buds these days. Yes, I know some people still use old school wired earphones. I don't need an email from you. So if the device that's already in your pocket will do everything these little music players will already do, why get an extra device to lug around everywhere? I want to stress, these look really cool, and if that's why you want one, that's totally fine. But anecdotally, that's not what I'm seeing. Can someone enlighten me? I see the advantages of owning your own music library, but I don't get why people want to carry another device everywhere. I've decided to stick with streaming, but that's a post for another day.  ↩ Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment . Bluetooth connectivity so you can use with buds, or in your car. Plenty of local storage. Audio jack. Easy to drag and drop music. I've decided to stick with streaming, but that's a post for another day.  ↩

Electronics Culture Music

Jeff Geerling 2 weeks ago

DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

Today Raspberry Pi announced more price increases for all Pis with LPDDR4 RAM , alongside a 'right-sized' 3GB RAM Pi 4 for $83.75. The price increases bring the 16GB Pi 5 up to $299.99 . Despite today's date, this is not a joke. I published a video going over the state of the hobbyist 'high end SBC' market (4/8/16 GB models in the current generation), which I'll embed below: But if you'd like the tl;dr :

Business Hardware Electronics

Andy Bell 2 weeks ago

I want an alarm clock

Nothing fancy is needed here and certainly nothing “smart”, but my one actual use for an Apple Watch — as a chill alarm clock — is silly really. I’m so fed up of my Apple Watch, so has anyone got a recommendation for an alarm clock that: Is chill with the sounds. I don’t need to be yelled awake thanks. Allows me to set a different time alarm — or no alarm — for different days Is not smart and never connects to the internet Doesn’t tick

Hardware Electronics

Stratechery 2 weeks ago

Apple’s 50 Years of Integration

Listen to this post : There is a weird phenomenon as a sports fan where the athletes on the field or court are older than you…and then they’re your age…and then they’re all younger than you; for me the last athlete I could look up to, at least in terms of age, was Tom Brady. Tech companies are similar, in a way. I like to write about tech history, and the importance of origin stories for understanding company cultures, and I’m fortunate enough to have witnessed most of those origins. However, there are still some companies that pre-date me — the Tom Brady’s of the industry, if you will — and one of those is Apple, which turns 50 tomorrow. My first computer was a hand-me-down IBM-compatible 286 — I don’t even remember the brand — but I mostly cut my teeth building my own computers with overclocked Celeron chips in college, using parts procured by leveraging unsustainable dot-com era customer acquisition strategies (a unique email address meant a PayPal account with a free $25 and a single-use credit card with another free $25 used for a Value America account with a $50 off coupon). Needless to say I not only witnessed many of these companies’ births, but also their deaths! There were Apple II’s at my elementary school, where I would type out programs in BASIC, but my first serious interaction with the company’s products was at the college newspaper doing layout in QuarkXPress; after I graduated I was smitten by the iMac G4 and its adjustable arm, and the GarageBand addition to the iLife suite; I ended up buying an iBook, and here I am, a quarter of a century later, typing this Article on a MacBook Pro. In my history is much of Apple’s history. I missed the very early years, when the Apple I was a mere circuit board created by Steve Wozniak; Steve Jobs bought the parts for the initial batch on net-30 terms and paid them off by receiving cash-on-delivery from a computer shop in Mountain View; it was the Apple II, released in 1977, that made the company, and that was my first encounter with Apple. The Mac came out in 1984, and found its niche in desktop publishing; that’s how I came back to Apple in college. Apple, however, was struggling in the face of more capable modular Windows PCs, which I was happily building in the meantime. It was OS X that changed Apple’s fortunes with nerds , and Jony Ive’s stunning designs that changed the value proposition for everyone else; iLife, meanwhile, made the Mac useful from day one. It was the combination of all three that made me a customer, and as the Internet destroyed lock-in, it was the fit and finish of the operating system and Apple’s independent developer ecosystem that made my two years at Microsoft with Windows a drag; then, in 2020, Apple’s differentiation came full circle : Macs were the fastest personal computers — particularly laptops — in the world. There were, of course, other parts of the Apple story, including the iPod and, most importantly, the iPhone. Those were the products that made Apple the most valuable company in the world for years (today Apple is surpassed only by Nvidia). These products, however, might have been in a form that addressed a far larger market, but were still very much Apple, a company that, all these years later, faces no competition when it comes to integrating hardware and software. What do I mean by “no competition”? Well, consider Apple’s nominal competitors through the years: IBM: This is, perhaps, the most iconic photo from early Apple: The Apple I launched in a world where computing was primarily for the enterprise, and primarily happened on IBM’s mainframes. Increased accessibility of processors and memory, however, made hobbyist computers possible, which is exactly what the Apple I was. It was the Apple II, however, that made IBM pay attention; I explained in 2013’s The Truth About Windows Versus the Mac : In the late 1970s and very early 1980s, a new breed of personal computers were appearing on the scene, including the Commodore, MITS Altair, Apple II, and more. Some employees were bringing them into the workplace, which major corporations found unacceptable, so IT departments asked IBM for something similar. After all, “No one ever got fired…” IBM spun up a separate team in Florida to put together something they could sell IT departments. Pressed for time, the Florida team put together a minicomputer using mostly off-the-shelf components; IBM’s RISC processors and the OS they had under development were technically superior, but Intel had a CISC processor for sale immediately, and a new company called Microsoft said their OS — DOS — could be ready in six months. For the sake of expediency, IBM decided to go with Intel and Microsoft. IBM was, in the end, just a hardware maker; they couldn’t be bothered to make the software. Microsoft: Software fell to Microsoft. Continuing from that 2013 Article: The rest, as they say, is history. The demand from corporations for IBM PCs was overwhelming, and DOS — and applications written for it — became entrenched. By the time the Mac appeared in 1984, the die had long since been cast. Ultimately, it would take Microsoft a decade to approach the Mac’s ease-of-use, but Windows’ DOS underpinnings and associated application library meant the Microsoft position was secure regardless. For decades after the fact, conventional wisdom was that Microsoft’s modular approach — the one that let me build my own computers — was unquestionably superior to Apple’s integration of hardware and software. In fact, it was Apple’s integration that kept the company afloat: all of those Macs used for desktop publishing were expensive, and gave Apple enough revenue to (barely) stay in business; the company’s brief foray into licensing Macintosh OS was a major contributor to the company nearly going bankrupt. Or, to put it another way, Apple only briefly competed with Microsoft, and it nearly killed them. Consumer Electronics Companies: It’s difficult to choose a company to represent the iPod era, because Apple didn’t really face any meaningful competition. There was Sony and the Discman, and Diamond and Creative with some of the first MP3 players, but the reality is that no one had the combination of hardware and software that made the iPod special; in this case, the software was iTunes, and putting iTunes on Windows is what propelled Apple far beyond the Macintosh, and laid the groundwork for what came next. RIM, Palm, and Nokia: It was early smartphone makers who were, in the framing I am taking in this Article, the only true competition Apple has ever had. All three of these companies integrated hardware and software, which makes sense given that the smartphone category was so nascent — that’s when integration is particularly important. The iPhone, however, was different in one important regard: RIM, Palm (which also sold phones with Microsoft’s Windows Mobile), and Nokia first and foremost made phones ; the iPhone was a full-blown computer, built on a foundation of OS X. That, combined with the iPhone’s innovative multi-touch input method, resulted in a vastly more capable and compelling device that wiped out all three companies. Android: Android is, in many respects, the Windows to Apple’s iOS — which was why many commentators predicted that Apple was doomed . One critical difference, however, is in the Article I excerpted above: whereas DOS came before the Mac, the iPhone came before Android. That meant that Apple had a critical mass of users and developers first, in contrast to the 1980s. Another difference is that the iPhone sold to end users, not IT departments, who actually cared about the look and feel of the device they were spending their money on. A third difference is that Apple had (and continues to have) the performance advantage, thanks to their investment in their own silicon, a stark difference from the dead end the company found itself in with the Mac. Android is, of course, a big success, with more unit market share worldwide (although the iPhone has majority share in the U.S.). There is a place for modularity, and companies like Samsung have done well to build high-end Android-powered devices, with a host of Chinese companies in particular filling in the lower-end. And, it should be noted, that Google makes its own Pixel phones as well; that is true competition, albeit one that barely registers given Google’s commitment to the entire Android ecosystem (so few, if any Pixel-exclusive features, at least not for long), and Apple’s grip on the high-end of the market. Perhaps Apple’s most interesting new product is one that takes the company full circle. The MacBook Neo is the cheapest Mac laptop ever, and has the company poised for major gains in the low-end of the market. Notably, in defiance of the assumption that modular offerings take share by being cheaper and “good enough”, Apple, by making everything from operating system to device to chip, is selling a computer that is both higher quality and has higher performance with lower component costs than the alternatives in its class; and, now that there is no more software lock-in — the Neo runs a browser and an AI chat client just like Windows machines do — Apple is poised to make major gains in its oldest market. More generally, Apple’s market share in all of its markets, including the phone, continues to increase over time, not decrease. This is happening despite the fact that Apple is not investing at a meaningful level — at least compared to its Big Tech peers — in AI server capacity, and has yet to ship the new AI-empowered Siri it promised nearly two years ago . The reason it doesn’t matter is that no matter how powerful AI becomes, you still need to access it with a device, and Apple, thanks to its integration of hardware and software, makes the best devices. Now, according to Bloomberg , Apple is planning to leverage its position with end users to give access to multiple AI providers: Apple Inc. plans to open Siri to outside artificial intelligence assistants, a major move aimed at bolstering the iPhone as an AI platform. The company is preparing to make the change as part of a Siri overhaul in its upcoming iOS 27 operating system update, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The assistant can already tap into ChatGPT through a partnership with OpenAI, but Apple will now allow competing services to do the same… The company is developing new tools to allow AI chatbot apps installed via the App Store to integrate with the Siri assistant, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven’t been announced. The chatbots will also work with an upcoming Siri app and other features in the Apple Intelligence platform. That means, for instance, if users have Alphabet Inc.’s Google Gemini or Anthropic PBC’s Claude installed, they’d be able to send queries to those services from within the Siri voice assistant, just like they have been able to with ChatGPT since Apple Intelligence launched in 2024. The approach also should allow Apple to generate more money from third-party AI subscriptions through the App Store. This isn’t quite Safari search, wherein Apple earns a revenue share from Google for searches made through the iPhone’s built-in browser, but given that AI assistants are largely monetized through subscriptions, it’s not far off: Apple will happily sell subscriptions through the App Store and take 30% of the price for the first year, and 15% after that. Owning the device means Apple gets to aggregate AI (and the company is already making $1 billion a year from chatbot subscriptions ). This is exactly what I expected after Apple announced that initial partnership with OpenAI; from a 2024 Update Apple, probably more than any other company, deeply understands its position in the value chains in which it operates, and brings that position to bear to get other companies to serve its interests on its terms; we see it with developers, we see it with carriers, we see it with music labels, and now I think we see it with AI. Apple — assuming it delivers on what it showed with Apple Intelligence — is promising to deliver features only it can deliver, and in the process lock in its ability to compel partners to invest heavily in features it has no interest in developing but wants to make available to Apple’s users on Apple’s terms. The company that owns the point of integration in the value chain never wants to have an exclusive supplier; it wants to commoditize its complements, which means creating a modular interface for multiple companies to compete on the integrator’s terms, which is exactly what these AI extensions for App Store apps sound like. Of course there still is the matter of getting Apple Intelligence to work; this upcoming feature is separate from Apple’s deal with Gemini for foundation models for Siri. I explained the distinction in this Update , and concluded: The big problem with this vision is that it assumed that Apple Intelligence would be competent, and it simply wasn’t; just as the iPhone search deal wouldn’t be worth much if the iPhone sucked, Siri chatbot integration isn’t worth much if Siri sucks. Now, however, Google is selling the underlying model to make Siri good, and their biggest hope is that they can pay Apple all of their money back — and more! — to have a money-making Gemini sit on top. Apple will let the users decide who is on top; I’m sure the company would also be amenable to be paid to be the default! Many people are taking a victory lap about Apple’s decision to not compete in AI models, claiming that the company is winning by not trying; I previously linked to Horace Dediu’s The most brilliant move in corporate history? , but it’s a good articulation of the argument: The hyperscalers are now spending 94% of their operating cash flows on AI infrastructure. Amazon is projected to go negative free cash flow this year with as much as $28 billion in the red. Alphabet’s free cash flow is expected to collapse 90% from $73 billion to $8 billion. These companies used to be the greatest cash machines ever built. Now they’re borrowing money to keep the data center lights on… And what are they getting for that $650 billion? AI services generate roughly $35 billion in total revenue or 5% of what’s being spent on infrastructure. There are dreams of more of course, but the business models of AI have yet to resonate, especially for consumers… Apple didn’t miss the AI revolution. It just bet that the winners won’t be the ones who build the infrastructure. They’ll be the ones who own the customer and no one else on Earth owns the best customers. Apple owns the best customers because it makes the best devices, thanks to its integration of hardware and software. And, as I recounted above, it is somehow, fifty years on, the only company of its kind. There is, however, an emerging threat that Apple is seeking to head off. Again from Bloomberg : Apple Inc. awarded rare bonuses to iPhone hardware designers this week, aiming to stem a wave of departures to AI startups like OpenAI that are building their own devices. The company granted out-of-cycle bonuses worth several hundred thousand dollars to many members of its iPhone Product Design team, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Apple’s leadership has grown increasingly concerned about the number of engineers being poached by potential rivals. OpenAI, which has tapped former Apple design chief Jony Ive to help design a new generation of AI-centric products, has emerged as a particular threat…OpenAI’s hardware division is run in part by Apple veteran Tang Tan. He used to oversee the iPhone product design team that’s receiving the bonuses. Tan’s group at OpenAI has hired several dozen Apple engineers, and not just ones who worked on the iPhone. The startup has lured employees who helped develop the iPad, Apple Watch and Vision Pro. OpenAI isn’t just hiring designers; the company is also building out operations capabilities to be able to actually make the upcoming Ive-designed device at scale (presumably in China). Still, many are wondering about the status of OpenAI’s hardware device given the news about Sora; from the Wall Street Journal : OpenAI is planning to pull the plug on its Sora video platform, a product it released to great fanfare last year that has since fallen from public view. The move is one of a number of steps OpenAI is taking to refocus on business and coding functions ahead of a potential initial public offering as soon as the fourth quarter of this year. CEO Sam Altman announced the changes to staff on Tuesday, writing that the company would wind down products that use its video models. In addition to the consumer app, OpenAI is also discontinuing a version of Sora for developers and won’t support video functionality inside ChatGPT, either. OpenAI is in the middle of a strategy shift to redirect the company’s computing resources and top talent toward so-called productivity tools that can be used by both enterprises and individual users. Last week, OpenAI announced that it was combining its ChatGPT desktop app, coding tool Codex and browser into one “superapp.” The company expects the consolidated product to align its employees around a single vision. In fact, cutting Sora but keeping the hardware initiative fits this strategy shift: Sora, along with the also indefinitely delayed adult-mode , were products that drive more attention, which lends itself to the more traditional consumer business model of advertising. Productivity, on the other hand, is a much better fit for enterprise, where Anthropic is making major gains. The problem, however, is that most consumers aren’t willing to pay for software; what they are willing to pay for are devices . This was the secret of the iPhone; from 2016’s Everything as a Service : Apple has arguably perfected the manufacturing model: most of the company’s corporate employees are employed in California in the design and marketing of iconic devices that are created in Chinese factories built and run to Apple’s exacting standards (including a substantial number of employees on site), and then transported all over the world to consumers eager for best-in-class smartphones, tablets, computers, and smartwatches. What makes this model so effective — and so profitable — is that Apple has differentiated its otherwise commoditizable hardware with software. Software is a completely new type of good in that it is both infinitely differentiable yet infinitely copyable; this means that any piece of software is both completely unique yet has unlimited supply, leading to a theoretical price of $0. However, by combining the differentiable qualities of software with hardware that requires real assets and commodities to manufacture, Apple is able to charge an incredible premium for its products. OpenAI is approaching this space from the opposite direction: it has a massive consumer user base for ChatGPT, and an impressively large number of subscribers; it is also adding advertising. However, to truly monetize consumers the most attractive business model is the Apple model: integrated hardware and software. The truth is that Apple’s lack of investment in AI was always going to be a short to medium-term win: the company doesn’t have to spend on infrastructure, and everyone still needs a device. The real threat is in the long-term: what happens if AI becomes so good that it obviates traditional user interfaces? Or, to put it another way, what if the point of integration that is most compelling is not a traditional operating system and hardware device, but rather AI and a dedicated device? If this threat materializes, it won’t be with OpenAI’s initial offering; the smartphone is the ultimate form factor, and does so many jobs that depend on its flexibility and capability and 3rd-party ecosystem that no new entrant could hope to compete (indeed, Google and Android is arguably a bigger threat for this reason). However, just how capable might AI be not just next year, but in five years, or ten years? If ever a better interaction paradigm were to succeed the smartphone surely it will be rooted in AI — and Apple, by giving up now, won’t be in the game. This absolutely is not a prediction. Indeed, if I had to bet, I would bet on Apple keeping its place: It’s also worth noting that OpenAI has, in its relatively short life, managed to frame itself as a competitor to basically everyone in tech, from Google to Meta to Microsoft, only to find itself forced to pivot in the face of Anthropic and its focused approach on coding and productivity in the enterprise. The audacity of taking on everyone is impressive; the effectiveness of fighting everyone for everything may be less so. Still, there is an angle here for OpenAI, and a point of vulnerability for Apple. The company made it fifty years with no one truly competing with its integrated business model; the fate of its next fifty years may rest on the question of just how compelling AI ends up being — and if OpenAI can out-Apple the original. First, there is the likelihood that the smartphone, thanks to its screen, connectivity, and battery life, is in fact the best device for AI, and that furthermore, AI will be just one capability alongside everything a smartphone already does. Second, to the extent that AI inference moves to the edge, Apple has a big advantage thanks to its industry-leading chips. Third, Apple always has the option of opening up its devices to allow for much deeper integration with 3rd-party AI providers other than OpenAI, in order to effectively fight off a potential threat.

Electronics History Business

HeyDingus 2 weeks ago

I’m returning my Studio Display XDR and buying another one

Sooo… I did a thing. I couldn’t help but be slightly dissatisfied by the clarity of my Studio Display XDR ’ s nano-texture display. It just made everything look a little less than Retina-quality. And for this price, I don’t want to have lingering regrets each time I use it. So, I ordered a second non-nano-texture version, banking on Apple’s generous return policy . It came in today. I set it up about 30 minutes ago. I put the two displays side by side and… it’s no question. The nano-texture is going back. Showing the same content on each display, at the same brightness level, I can absolutely see the fuzziness introduced by the “ matte” display. It’s not that nano-texture is all bad. I love how it looks when the display is dark — there are zero reflections. 1 But the point is to enjoy it while the display is on . Without nano-texture, everything is as crisp as I had hoped. I tend to lean toward the display when I’m concentrating, and even close up, the display is razor sharp. I technically have until April 9th to send back the nano-texture XDR , but, honestly, I think I’m going to package it up tonight. Well… maybe tomorrow. I might as well enjoy having 10k pixels of display at my disposal while I can. If I hold onto the original display until the last day that I can send it back, I will have had it for 24 days. That’s a full 10 extra days beyond the stated 14-day return period. It’s possible that I could have squeezed in even a few more days by initiating the return today, the 14th day after it was delivered, instead of the 11th. With that in mind, one could get nearly a month of use for testing and comparison of Apple’s products, with the ability to return it (free shipping both ways) for a full refund. That’s serious commitment to customer satisfaction, and one area where Apple’s standards haven’t slipped. To boot, by paying with Apple Card’s Monthly Installments (which allow you to pay for an item over 12 months with 0% interest), I’ve only been charged $287.92 for the nano-texture display, and $263.92 for the regular one. I think that was just the taxes for each one. To be sure, it’s a privileged position I’m in to be able to do these shenanigans, but there’s a lot to be said for how easy Apple has made it to purchase even it’s most expensive products with very little risk. If I were in an environment with light sources behind me, my decision might be very different. I think there’s definitely a place for this non-reflective display — it’s just not in my home office. ↩︎ HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts , shortcuts , wallpapers , scripts , or anything — please consider leaving a tip , checking out my store , or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated! I’m always happy to hear from you on social , or by good ol' email . If I were in an environment with light sources behind me, my decision might be very different. I think there’s definitely a place for this non-reflective display — it’s just not in my home office. ↩︎

Hardware Electronics Finance

Kev Quirk 2 weeks ago

I Think I've Been Scammed On eBay!

Back in November I pre-ordered an Ollee Watch , which was delivered in February. After playing with the watch, I decided I didn't want it, so I posted it up on eBay - never worn, so brand new. A week or so later it sold and I posted it off to its new owner. A day or 2 later, the buyer messaged me saying the backlight wasn't working. This immediately raised my suspicions as the watch was brand new and I had packaged it up well. Anyway, I gave them the benefit of the doubt after they had sent a video of the apparent problem, accepted the return, and paid for them to return the watch to me. I took delivery of the watch yesterday, opened the package and all of the Olle packaging has been removed, as well as the original Casio module. It came back like this, with only half of a Casio box: I tested the backlight; low and behold, it's working fine! So now I have a new Ollee watch, with no packaging, and no Casio module. So it's worth a lot less than it was previously. Fucking brilliant. I've asked eBay to step in and help resolve the situation, so we will see what happens. But there's a lot of buyer protection on eBay (and rightly so) but there's very little in the way of seller protection, even though I'm not a business. So I have a feeling they will find in favour of the buyer and I'll be out a few quid. Double fucking brilliant. I messaged the buyer once I'd received the watch back, politely asking WTF? and they replied with: I'm sorry I thought the original packaging was all there, there definitely was a problem with the backlight and I think the original Casio thing is in the little compartment on the stand. The module is 100% not there. Now, the buyer may be legit. The backlight may not have been functioning properly while they had it. They may have binned all the Ollee packaging 1 , and the Casio module, but I find it hard to believe. The backlight works flawlessly. It's not like it works occasionally or anything like that. You tap the light button and it lights up every single time. It's in perfect working condition. My guess is that they've done this to get the Ollee packaging, then they're going to scam some other poor bastard by selling them a standard F-91W (which costs around £15) dressed up as an Ollee watch for around £100. Anyway, we will see what happens as eBay get involved. If you're in the UK and interested in getting yourself a fully working, brand new, Ollee watch (albeit with no Ollee packaging) for cheap, get in touch. Why would you keep the other half of the packaging though??  ↩ Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment . Why would you keep the other half of the packaging though??  ↩

Programming Electronics Business

Jeff Geerling 2 weeks ago

Bring back MiniDV with this Raspberry Pi FireWire HAT

In my last post, I showed you to use FireWire on a Raspberry Pi with a PCI Express IEEE 1394 adapter. Now I'll show you how I'm using a new FireWire HAT and a PiSugar3 Plus battery to make a portable MRU, or 'Memory Recording Unit', to replace tape in older FireWire/i.Link/DV cameras. The alternative is an old used MRU like Sony's HVR-MRC1 , which runs around $300 on eBay 1 .

Hardware Electronics Tutorial

Jeff Geerling 3 weeks ago

Using FireWire on a Raspberry Pi

After learning Apple killed off FireWire (IEEE 1394) support in macOS 26 Tahoe , I started looking at alternatives for old FireWire equipment like hard drives, DV cameras, and A/V gear. I own an old Canon GL1 camera, with a 'DV' port. I could plug that into an old Mac (like the dual G4 MDD above) with FireWire—or even a modern Mac running macOS < 26, with some dongles —and transfer digital video footage between the camera and an application like Final Cut Pro.

Electronics Hardware Tutorial

Brain Baking 3 weeks ago

A Satisfied Customer Review Of The Yogurtia

And now for something completely different. For years, we’ve been happy users of the Yogurtia , a Japanese “fermented food maker”. That alone should sound enticing enough to warrant this small review! What’s a fermented food maker? I’m glad you ask. It’s a maker for food to ferment. Next question. In case that wasn’t crystal clear, here’s a common way we employ our Yogurtia: to make yoghurt. Shocking, given the name, right? There are plenty of mundane looking kitchen appliances out there that can “make yoghurt” so why should you import a Japanese device instead? While researching yoghurt making machines, we often encounter contraptions you can put multiple small containers in that will be heated to 40 degrees Celcius for eight to twelve hours. Once it’s done, you pull out the containers and voilà: your very own yoghurt pots. The Yogurtia doesn’t do this. Instead, there’s one giant contiainer where you pour in milk and remnants of your previous yoghurt. That means you can make much more in one go—but that also means you can more easily put in other stuff. The biggest reason for buying the Yogurtia is the capability to precisely configure the temperature and time it needs to ferment. Most basic yoghurt makers just come with an on/off switch. We can set it to 60 degrees instead of the usual 40 if we want to more easily ferment other stuff. Preparing breakfast with a freshly made yoghurt container thanks to the Yogurtia maker. Perhaps I should elaborate on the “other stuff”. While the Yogurtia obviously markets itself in the west towards yoghurt lovers, the real purpose of this neat little contraption is to make amazake and nattō . I’ve had great success with the former. To make amazake, you’ll need to grow a specific mold on rice first called koji . Activating that koji is done at 60 degrees which is too hot for most small fermentation chambers/yoghurt makers. I produce koji-fied rice in my fridge-hacked inoculation room . A rice cooker that can be properly configured might be another option, but cheaper machines often have trouble maintaining the temperature, requiring you to add some cold water. If the temperature is too high, the koji will be killed off, resulting in a less sweet beverage as the mold is responsible for breaking down the carbs of the rice into simple sugars. In a previous employer’s cantine, I was known as the amazake guy. I brought the smelly stuff to work for interested colleages to try it out and enthuse them to get started on fermenting stuff themselves. The result was met with mixed success: most people said yuck! , I got the label “the amazake guy”, and one time I forgot to take the canister out of the fridge at work. Or maybe the order is reversed here, that would certainly make more sense. I tried once more with spamming everyone to go out and buy Sandor Katz’ The Art of Fermentation bible. Then I tried bringing pickled stuff to work. More yuck! and what strange colour does that radish have? The one thing I didn’t try, which I’m making up for by writing this satisfied customer review, is convincing them to buy a Yogurtia. Maybe I should have done that instead. In Belgium, yoghurt is one of the few “fresh” fermented products almost everyone eats regularly (we’ll ignore cheese; sausages; wine; olives; and yes, even chocolate ; …. for now). Did you know you can use a spoonful of sourdough starter to jump-start the yoghurt making process? Did you know you can jump-start the bread rising process by using a spoonful of yoghurt? Food for thoug—no, a new blog post. A+++. Would buy again. (And did buy again. Never connect a Japanese electronic device that assumes directly to the European power grid of . Ouch. That plastic did melt good.) Related topics: / fermentation / By Wouter Groeneveld on 20 March 2026.  Reply via email .

Electronics Hardware

Jeff Geerling 3 weeks ago

The best laptop Apple ever made

Today I posted a video titled The best laptop Apple ever made , and tl;dw 1 it's the 11" MacBook Air. I acknowledge in the video my pick is slightly subjective, and I also asked a number of other YouTubers which Mac laptop they consider the best (or at least most influential). If you don't want to watch the video, I'll summarize their choices here:

Electronics Business Hardware

Jeff Geerling 1 months ago

Can the MacBook Neo replace my M4 Air?

Many of us wonder if the MacBook Neo is 'the one'. Because I have a faster desktop (currently a M4 Max Mac Studio), I've always used a lower-end Mac laptop, like the iBook or MacBook Air, for travel. I've used MacBook Pros in the past, but I like the portability of smaller, cheaper models. In fact, my favorite Mac laptop ever was the 11" Air.

Hardware Gaming Electronics

Stavros' Stuff 1 months ago

I made a voice note taker

Have you ever always wanted a very very small voice note recorder that would fit in your pocket? Something that would always work, and always be available to take a note at the touch of a button, with no fuss? Me neither. Until, that is, I saw the Pebble Index 01 , then I absolutely needed it right away and had to have it in my life immediately, but alas, it is not available, plus it’s disposable, and I don’t like creating e-waste. What was a poor maker like me supposed to do when struck down so cruelly by the vicissitudes of fate? There was only one thing I could do: I could build my own, shitty version of it for $8, and that’s exactly what I did. Like everyone else, I have some sort of undiagnosed ADHD, which manifests itself as my brain itching for a specific task, and the itch becoming unbearable unless I scratch it. This usually results in me getting my phone out, no matter where I am or who I’m with, and either noting stuff down or doing the task, which some people perceive as rude, for inexplicable reasons that are almost certainly their fault. Because, however, it has proved easier to just not get my phone out in polite company than convince everyone of how wrong they are, I just do the former now, but that makes the itch remain. Also, sometimes I’m just in the middle of something, and an idea pops into my head for later pursuit, but I get distracted by a squirrel, a car going by, or the disturbing trend of the constant and persistent erosion of civil rights all over the world, and I forget the idea. The Pebble Index showed me that there’s a better way, a device that’s unobtrusive, available, and reliable enough that I could just press a button, speak into it, and know for sure that my sonorous voice would reach the bowels of my phone, where it would be stored safely until I was bored and wanted something to do. I didn’t want to have to get my phone out, unlock it, open a voice recorder app, hold down a button, speak, wonder if it heard me, look at the button, realize I had already pressed it, press it again, say the thing again, press it again to stop, exit the app, lock my phone, and put it back into my pocket. I wanted to take a thing out, press a button, speak, release the button, done. The initial thinking was that I’d use a microcontroller (an ESP32 is my microcontroller of choice these days), a microphone, and a lithium battery, and that’s basically all the hardware this needs! Most of the heavy lifting would need to be done in software. This would need: Luckily, I know enough about electronics to know that LLMs would definitely know how to build something like that. Indeed, Claude confirmed my suspicions by saying that all I need is a microphone and an ESP32. It recommended an ESP32-C6 but I went with an ESP32-S3 , as it had an onboard charge controller and would be able to charge a lithium battery from USB, which is very handy when you’re making a thing that runs on battery. The ESP32 is a microcontroller, a little computer that’s just really small. The main difference of the S3 from the C6 is that the S3 is more capable, and has more power. I keep an assortment of random components around, so I had an ESP32-S3 board. It’s a no-name, crappy one from AliExpress, not a good, Seeed-branded one from AliExpress, but it would have to do. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a MEMS microphone (which is basically an angelic grain of rice that can hear, with excellent quality), but I did have an electret mic, which is huge and bad quality and would sound like an old-timey radio, but it was there and it was ready and it was willing, and after a few beers it seemed like it was right, or at least right for right now. I also had a very thin LiPo battery, which would suit very well. For the final device I’d want a battery that’s a tiny bit shorter, as this one was around 40% longer than the ESP32, but it would do great for now. I quickly soldered everything together and recorded some audio. It worked! It worked and nobody was going to take that from me, even though it was crackly and the quality wasn’t great. Unfortunately, at this stage I realized that the analog electret microphone consumes too much energy, even when sleeping, which is terrible on a device that would spend more time sleeping than the beauty from that fairytale, Sleepy the Dwarf. To counteract that, I decided to use a MOSFET to cut power to the mic when the device was asleep. A MOSFET is a little switch that you can turn on and off from a microcontroller, basically. Full disclosure here, before using the MOSFET to turn the mic on and off, I went down a multi-hour rabbit hole trying to design a latching circuit that would allow the ESP32 to turn itself off and consume almost no power. Instead, it consumed a lot of my time, without anything to show for it, because I didn’t manage to make it work at all. The MOSFET for the mic worked fairly well, though, and the device didn’t consume much power when asleep. The real gains, however, were going to be had when the MEMS microphone I ordered arrived, as those use infinitesimal amounts of current when asleep, and have much better sound quality as well, as they are digital. The analog microphone crackled and popped and took a while to stabilize after boot, which was unfortunate because I wanted the device to be ready as soon as the user pressed the button. There was also a recording bug where the recording was missing a few milliseconds of audio every so often, which led to dropped phonemes and words sometimes sounding like other words because parts of them were dropped. All these problems were weird enough and hard enough to debug that I resolved to just wait for my digital MEMS microphone to arrive, which would solve them in one fell swoop, as it is digital and amazing. After the relatively easy part of connecting a few wires together, now came the hard part: Designing a case for the whole thing that would fit without leaving much empty space, to make the device as small as possible. This was very hard to do with this massive microphone that was as tall as everything else (including battery) combined. I initially tried to point the microphone downward while mounting it at the top, so it would take up the least amount of vertical space possible, but the PCB made that hard, as the microphone was soldered to it. I ended up desoldering the mic from the PCB, trimming the PCB to make it shorter, and connecting the mic to it with wires. That allowed me to make the case (and thus the device) smaller, but at what cost? Nothing, turns out, because it worked great. The device was working great, but I didn’t want it tethered to my computer, I wanted to be able to take it out and about and show it the wonders of the world. To do this, I needed Bluetooth. Unfortunately, I have exactly zero idea how Bluetooth works, and would need to spend days or weeks figuring stuff out, but, luckily for me, I had a Claude subscription. It took a bit of back-and-forth, but I did manage to end up with a Python script that would connect to the pendant, download the audio files, and convert them from ADPCM to MP3, for expanded compatibility. To maximize battery life, the way things worked was: This worked really well, the device was awake for a small amount of time (10 seconds), but it could be awoken at any time just by tapping the button. At that point, it would transfer to the PC any files that were on the pendant, and go back to sleep. One downside was that transfers would take an inordinate amount of time, sometimes reaching 2 minutes for a 10-second clip. OpenAI’s Codex was really helpful here, finding a solution for fast BLE transfers that made sending files 100x faster than it was before. Because I’m too impatient to wait for the slow boat from China, I ordered the same microphone locally. I had to pay an arm and a leg in shipping and impatience fees, but it was worth it, because I finally had a MEMS mic! It’s so cute and tiny, I immediately found a spot for it over the board, added the switch, added a voltage divider for sensing battery voltage, and that was it! The new mic sounds fantastic, it sounds better than recording with your phone, for some odd reason that I’m sure is all in my head. What’s more, it doesn’t have the weird bugs that plagued me with the analog mic. With this smaller mic, I could now design a better case. I designed the case you see on the right, which is the second generation. There will be a third, when I receive the shorter battery, which means I will have a choice of either making the device longer but half as thick, or around 40% shorter. I think I will go for longer but thinner, I’d quite prefer to have a thin device in my pocket, even if it’s long, than a stubby one that pokes out. Still, the new battery (and the new case) will mark the completion of this project and make me a very happy man. For the second-gen case, I decided to jazz it up and add a red stripe around it, because it was easy to do and because I think it looks good. Unfortunately, the feature I wanted most (fillets, i.e. rounded corners) wasn’t possible due to the lack of empty space inside the case. I hope the final device will have some more space for fillets, at least. Once I was done with the device, it was time to make it more ergonomic: I’d need to create an Android app so I wouldn’t have to wait to get to my PC. I also knew I wanted note transcription, as it’s really useful to be able to see what you said without having to listen to the audio again. Unfortunately again, I have no idea about Android development, only having written a small app years ago. Fortunately, though, Claude turned out to be pretty good at it, and one-shotted this app that you see here. For the transcription, I used GPT-4o Transcribe, which is great and understands both English and Greek, languages I fail to speak in equal measure. I have to say, it’s pretty magical to speak into a little box and to see the audio already captured and transcribed on your phone. With the Android app, I could now test the device in real-world use. One thing I noticed is that battery dies way too fast. I suspect that has something to do with the cheap board, so I’ve ordered an original Seeed Xiao board, and I hope that will fix the problem once and for all, as they advertise low power usage and they’re a trustworthy brand. I also added a “webhook” convenience function to the Android app, so that the latter would be able to send the transcription to a server for further processing. The device is extremely reliable, which makes me a lot more likely to use it. I know that, if I press the button, the audio will be recorded and stored, and nothing will happen to it, which makes for a very relaxed and calming experience. Before I continue, I want to say you can find all the files in this project (firmware, Android app, whatever else) in its GitHub repository: https://github.com/skorokithakis/middle That’s right, I called it Middle, because it was the next thing after the Index. I know it’s a silly name, I don’t care, don’t use it, I’m not changing it. In the “draw the rest of the fucking owl” portion of this article, I realized I didn’t want the notes to just go to my phone when LLMs exist. I wanted an LLM to take the notes and do something with them, so I spent a few weeks writing an AI agent that’s more useful than what currently exists. The device’s Android app sends the transcribed text to this AI, which processes it. I’m going to write another post about this, but basically, I wanted an AI personal assistant that could help with all the little chores in my life. AI assistants are interesting because they’re: This means that, when everyone inevitably asks “what is it good for”, I can’t really give a good answer, because the answer is “it takes care of all the little annoyances for me”, but nobody has the same annoyances and can’t really imagine what the bot does, so they don’t engage with it. The amazing thing for AI assistants for me is the fact that they can string together multiple (otherwise small) tools to do something that’s more valuable than the sum of its parts. For example, I asked the agent to give me a daily briefing every morning, consisting of my todos for the day, my calendar events, whether any refund has hit my bank, and whether any packages are due to be delivered today. The agent also checks my gym bookings and asks me every morning if I do plan to go, or if I intend to cancel. If I tell it to cancel, it does, but if I say I’ll go, it sets an alarm for a few minutes before, which I’m much more likely to see than my calendar’s one. It will also (entirely of its own volition) mention things like “you have a gym booking today 7-8pm but you have a restaurant booking at 9pm and it’ll take you more than an hour to shower and make it”, which a regular calendar wouldn’t be able to figure out. I’ve made it fantastically secure, everything is sandboxed and you can run it on your laptop without fear. I use it constantly throughout the day for many little things, and the integration with the device takes the whole setup to another level. You can find the bot here: https://github.com/skorokithakis/stavrobot Do let me know if you try it, it’s like OpenClaw but won’t steal your data and eat your firstborn. If you have any ideas, feedback, flamebait, or whatever, you can Tweet or Bluesky me, or email me directly. A way for the device to record audio onto some sort of persistent storage, for the case where you didn’t have your phone close to you. A way for the device to sleep, consuming almost no power, until it was woken up by the button. A way to transfer the files from the device to the phone, for later listening. A battery indicator would be very nice, so I knew when to recharge it. You pressed the button. If you held it down for more than half a second, the recording would “count”. If there was a recording made (i.e. if you held the button down long enough), it would be saved. Bluetooth would turn on and look for a phone or computer that’s ready to receive. The device would send the file and go to sleep again. Very open-ended tools, and Highly personal.

Python Hardware Electronics

Circus Scientist 2 months ago

SmartPoi Accelerometer Controller

Connects to your Poi Gets a list of images available Every time it stops spinning sends a “Change Image” signal to the poi* *only works for the newer SmartPoi firmware with Single Image selection. Code is on GitHub: https://github.com/tomjuggler/SmartPoi_Accelerometer_Controller – includes all install instructions needed (ESP32 C3 only – PlatformIO firmware). Extra: Battery, charger and switch, for one you can clip onto poi.. The post SmartPoi Accelerometer Controller appeared first on Circus Scientist . ESP32 with C3 chip: recommended: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008593933324.html (just choose the correct one with antenna). I used C3 SuperMini which also works (WiFi not the best though), my better ones are still in the post. MPU-6050 Accelerometer: https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_c40exNFh

HTML Electronics Open Source Hardware

Brain Baking 2 months ago

Creating Buttons To Remember Things

My wife recently bought a device to scratch her creative crafting itch: a button press . At first, I dismissed it as yet another thing requiring space in her increasingly messy atelier. I don’t know how we manage to do it but we seem to be experts in gathering things that gather things themselves: dust. But now that she finally started doing something with it, I was secretly becoming interested in what it could mean for our scrapbook making. The button press in question is a “We R Makers Button Press Bundle All-In-One Kit” that comes with press, a few add-on peripherals that allow you to modify how it cuts and presses, and of course the buttons themselves. The button press in action, about to create a 'little monster'. Since handling the lever requires a bit of pressure to correctly cut and a second time fit the cut circle inside the button, I yelled TSJAKKA every time she would press it, to great joy of our daughter. She now calls it the Tsjakka . “Daddy, can we make another little monster with Tjsakka?” Because my first instinct after thinking about what kind of buttons I wanted was to print a variant of the Alien Lisp Mascot —a green monster with five eyes. Fellow nerds reading this might have covered their entire laptop back with cool looking stickers: a Docker container sticker, an IDEA logo one, the GitHub Octocat, and god knows what else you managed to nab from a conference table. While I always found those laptops to be just cute, I never wanted to soil mine with a sticker of some technology stack that I would grow to hate a few years later. Thanks to a random takeover by Microsoft sharks, for instance. *cough* Give Up Github *cough*. So why not a programming language mascot? Java’s The Duke? No way, I’m not that big of a Java fan. The Gopher perhaps? Better, but no. If I was to wear a badge, smack on a sticker somewhere prominent, it would have to be of something that makes me happy. Go is cool but boring. Java brings in a lot of money but smells like enterprise mud. So far, I haven’t encountered a single programming language that truly makes me happy. But Lisp is coming very close. The Lisp Alien it is, then: The result: three buttons pinned to the inside of my bike bag. One of the other two buttons is self-explanatory: the Brain Baking logo. The first one on the upper left is a part of my late father-in-law’s master’s thesis; an electronic schematic with resistors. The embossed logo on the button press, below the We R name, reads: Memory Keepers. Which is exactly what that button is for. They market it as a way to permanently record precious memories—and wear them on your sleeve . I think it’s brilliant. We don’t have an endless supply of metal clips and plastic caps to press that memory in so we have to be mindful: which one’s do we really want to create? Sure you can buy more and it’s not expensive, but that’s not the point. The point is that there won’t be a Duke on my bag, but there will be a Brain Baking logo. And, apparently, a warning. Most folks pin these buttons onto the obvious visible part of their bag. But I don’t want to come across as a button lunatic (at least not at first sight). A more convincing argument then: the bag I pinned it on is a simple detachable laptop cycle bag . The exterior gets wet now and then. I highly doubt that the button is water resistant. The third but slightly less convincing argument is that the buttons rattle quite a bit as the needle on the back used to pin it onto something sits quite loose in its metal socket. Perhaps that depends from product type to type. As you might have guessed, our daughter now is dead set on pinning a little monster on her bag she uses carry her lunch go to school. We’ll first have to ask Tjsakka to get back to work. Related topics: / crafting / By Wouter Groeneveld on 7 February 2026.  Reply via email .

Design Electronics Hardware Java

Stephen's Site 2 months ago

Building a 24-bit Arcade CRT Display Adapter, From Scratch

Tutorial Electronics Hardware

./techtipsy 2 months ago

Meet the Garbage PC

This is the Garbage PC. Not too long ago, I received a half-broken Dell Inspiron N5110, sporting 6 GB of RAM, a dual core Intel i3-2110M, and an unsupported NVIDIA GPU of some sort. One of the hinges was loose from the case because it was screwed into plastic (common issue for these types of laptops), the touchpad did not work, and to insert a drive into it, you had to disassemble the whole machine. I’m quite confident that I’ve worked on this laptop model in a very distant past, around 2012-2013, and I remember it well because during the disassembly plastic bits were falling off everywhere and the right hinge was broken in exactly the same way. I’ve always wanted to take a half-broken laptop and to mount it on some acrylic panels (plexiglass) using brass standoffs. I love how bare PCB-s look. They’re just so damn cool, and I can’t be the only one who thinks this way, right? I also get a good feeling out of taking trash/obsolete parts and making them useful once again. This laptop was destined for the e-waste pile, which meant that it was a fantastic candidate to try this idea on. The main constraint in this project was time. I’m a parent, I have a job, and sometimes between all that I like to rest, so the amount of available time for this project was about 8 hours spread across a month. I also lack proper tooling to do a good job, so this was achieved using whatever I had available, mainly a cordless jigsaw and a hand drill. On the upside, this means that if I can do it, then you can likely do it as well! This laptop turned out to be a total pain to work on. During initial testing, it was very clear that the laptop needed a good thermal paste and pads replacement, as it tried to overheat playing casual videos off of YouTube. After I disassembled the laptop to bare essentials and put it together as a test run for the “mount it on acrylic panel” idea, the extension board containing two USB ports and the Ethernet port just stopped working. I probably broke something, but annoying nevertheless. On the positive side, the overall size of the build was smaller as a result of this happy little accident. Using this laptop via the HDMI output only also turned out to be an unnecessary headache. LibreELEC did not play well with it, often resulting in a blank screen, and on Fedora Workstation 43, there was a “ghost” display somewhere that always showed up on the display settings view. So did the internal display, even when it was disconnected. This caused an issue when trying to get Fedora installed on this machine, as the installation UI would be placed on a screen that was not the HDMI output one that I was actually using. This issue can be mitigated similar to my LattePanda V1 adventure by disabling video outputs completely. For this laptop, I modified kernel parameters via and added the following kernel parameters: Yes, it’s possible to modify the display setup on your desktop environment of choice to disable certain outputs that way, but using kernel parameters ensures that if you change monitors, you won’t have to do that all over again. To make this whole build even more garbage-tier, I used an 256GB SATA SSD with 5 known bad blocks. I sourced a large 4mm thick plexiglass panel from a hardware store, as that seemed to be the most accessible place where I can get one. In Estonia, these types of panels are often sold in the gardening sections of general hardware stores. For attaching the motherboard to the board, I sourced an assortment of M2.5 brass standoffs and screws, and multiple sets in case I need more of a specific height (turned out to be a good call on my part). I chose M2.5 because the laptop used screws of that size, and this size is common in the world of Raspberry Pi and other SBC-s, which can be handy for any future dumb ideas experiments. To mark the positions on the plexiglass, I put the motherboard assembly on it, marked some good spots with an awl 1 , and then drilled holes using a hand drill and 2.5mm drill bit. I also sourced heat inserts so that I can melt them into the plexiglass assembly, but those didn’t work out very well. I used my Pinecil soldering iron to push these in to the 2mm pre-drilled holes that I set up for these, but I had alignment issues and the threads ended up getting gunked up by the melted remains of the plexiglass, so I could not screw any brass standoffs in there. I tried to be very careful with getting the drill holes to line up, and it went mostly alright. My recommendation here is to be precise, and don’t screw everything tight before you’ve got screws and standoffs lined up for all planned holes, otherwise you lose the option of wiggling things a bit to get them to line up. The standoffs and screws were screwed on tight enough to keep things in place, but not too tight to avoid cracking. For the other panel, I cut out a similarily sized plexiglass panel, marked the holes again, and repeated the process. Since I was using a cordless jigsaw, I positioned the new piece so that the flat side of the plexiglass panel that I bought lined up with the other straight end on the existing assembly, because I will never get a good straight cut with a freehanded jigsaw. That worked out well enough. For the power button, I reused the small PCB that contains the power button and power LED-s from the original case. To house that, I drilled a small hole with 1cm diameter to slip the ribbon cable in, and I used small pieces of 3M VHB double-sided tape 2 to secure it to the panel. And there you have it, the garbage PC. The shine of the plexiglass does a fantastic job of bringing out the beauty of the motherboard and all its components. Standoffs leave plenty of room for the machine to breathe. Since the extension board is missing, this build relies heavily on one USB port and one eSATA port that also supports USB connectivity. WiFi, Bluetooth, keyboard/mouse, it’s all over USB 2.0 ports. One thing that I have yet to do is to add a base to the build so that it does not tip over that easily. Double-sided tape plus a wooden trim piece might do the trick. This build is using parts that are about 15 years old. For context, that was when dubstep was popular, it was cool to hate on Justin Bieber, rage comics and bad memes were a thing, and the news in Europe were worried about Greece going bankrupt or something. That does mean that the performance on this machine is not great. The machine still runs warm, but not nearly as hot as before. In its stock form and before any thermal paste replacements, it ran about 85+°C, but now it doesn’t seem to ever hit 70°C. As a basic desktop PC, assuming that you’re not trying to run a 1440p or 4K display, the experience feels completely usable! If you’re thinking about setting this up as a media player PC, then you’re limited to H.264 playback. H.265 was just too much for this machine. If you use Kodi with Jellyfin, then it is luckily possible to enforce transcoding content to H.264, ensuring a smooth experience on the client side. I wish that this laptop supported a “power on with AC attach” type feature that turns the laptop on once the power adapter is connected, that would’ve made it more useful as a crappy little home server. If you don’t mind extended downtime during a power outage, then it can still do that job well enough, but it’s just something I was slightly annoyed with. The board has a small SATA port that can be converted to a normal SATA port, plus an eSATA port, making it perfectly plausible to add two drives to this and to totally turn it into a home server. I tried running Windows 11 on it once, but I tried to do that with the official installer and didn’t get past the “lol your hardware is too old” view. I know that you can remove that limitation, but given the 6GB of RAM and Windows 11 being awful with using resources, it was probably for the best to give up here. The fan is audible when doing things. I did in fact take it apart and added some silicon oil inside the center to give it a fighting chance and it did improve the acoustics, but it’s something to keep in mind if you’re doing similar projects with these old laptops. There does seem to be a way to control the fan by writing values to kernel module controls in , and if you overwrite the value often enough, like in a 0.1 second loop, then you can definitely overpower the BIOS fan control on this board. The control does not seem to be fine-tuned, it’s either off, on, or full speed, but at least you can get some control over the fan speed if you really need to. Alternatively, you can slap a huge heat sink on the CPU and GPU if you want to, and you should be getting away with it. The CPU throttles heavily once you hit 80°C while playing back video, so that seems to be the soft temperature ceiling for this laptop. Overall, I’m happy I did this project. There were way more obstacles and challenges associated with this project that I expected, but the end result looks cool, so that makes it worth it in my view. It was also a good trial run to work with plexiglass and brass standoffs, and I will very likely do something cooler in the future based on this experience. I hope that this inspires more people to reuse older hardware instead of just throwing it into the e-waste pile, especially with new computer parts sometimes experiencing price spikes due to the economy doing weird things. If you’ve built something similar, then do share a link to it (ideally in blog post format) and I will happily link to it here! this is the first time I actually have referred to this tool in English. What a weird word.  ↩︎ it’s good, but it smells like microplastics and cancer.  ↩︎ this is the first time I actually have referred to this tool in English. What a weird word.  ↩︎ it’s good, but it smells like microplastics and cancer.  ↩︎

Electronics Hardware

Daniel Mangum 2 months ago

Making Ferrite Core Inductors at Home

I have recently been working on tuning circuits, which typically consist of an inductor and a capacitor (i.e. an LC circuit). For those not familiar with inductors, they are passive components that store energy in a magnetic field. They oppose changes in current, meaning that they pass direct current (DC) and block alternating current (AC). While there are many types of inductors, ferrite core inductors are useful because the high magnetic permeability of ferrite leads to a significant increase in induction.

Jeff Geerling 2 months ago

Ode to the AA Battery

Recently this post from @Merocle caught my eye: I'm fixing my iFixit soldering station. I haven't used it for a long time and the battery has gone overdischarge. I hope it will come back to life. Unfortunately, there are no replacements available for sale at the moment. Devices with built-in rechargeable batteries have been bugging me a lot lately. It's convenient to have a device you can take with you and use anywhere. And with modern Li-ion cells, battery life is remarkable.

Hardware Electronics UI

@hannahilea 2 months ago

Telegraph Key(singular)board: Morse for the modern era

.... .- ...- . / -- --- .-. ... . / .-- .. .-.. .-.. / - .-. .- ...- . .-.. / ... - --- .--.