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Hackaday Links: March 30, 2025

30 Marzo 2025 at 23:00
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The hits just keep coming for the International Space Station (ISS), literally in the case of a resupply mission scheduled for June that is now scrubbed thanks to a heavy equipment incident that damaged the cargo spacecraft. The shipping container for the Cygnus automated cargo ship NG-22 apparently picked up some damage in transit from Northrop Grumman’s Redondo Beach plant in Los Angeles to Florida. Engineers inspected the Cygnus and found that whatever had damaged the container had also damaged the spacecraft, leading to the June mission’s scrub.

Mission controllers are hopeful that NG-22 can be patched up enough for a future resupply mission, but that doesn’t help the ISS right now, which is said to be running low on consumables. To fix that, the next scheduled resupply mission, a SpaceX Cargo Dragon slated for an April launch, will be modified to include more food and consumables for the ISS crew. That’s great, but it might raise another problem: garbage. Unlike the reusable Cargo Dragons, the Cygnus cargo modules are expendable, which makes them a great way to dispose of the trash produced by the ISS crew since everything just burns up on reentry. The earliest a Cygnus is scheduled to dock at the ISS again is sometime in this autumn, meaning it might be a long, stinky summer for the crew.

By now you’ve probably heard the news that genetic testing company 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy. The company spent years hawking their spit-in-a-tube testing kits, which after DNA sequence analysis returned a report revealing all your genetic secrets. This led to a lot of DNA surprises, like finding a whole mess of half-siblings, learning that your kid isn’t really related to you, and even catching an alleged murderer. But now that a bankruptcy judge has given permission for the company to sell that treasure trove of genetic data to the highest bidder, there’s a mad rush of 23andMe customers to delete their data. It’s supposed to be as easy as signing into your account and clicking a few buttons to delete your data permanently, with the option to have any preserved samples destroyed as well. Color us skeptical, though, that the company would willingly allow its single most valuable asset to be drained. Indeed, there were reports of the 23andMe website crashing on Monday, probably simply because of the rush of deletion requests, but then again, maybe not.

It may not have been 121 gigawatts-worth, but the tiny sample of plutonium that a hapless Sydney “science nerd” procured may be enough to earn him some jail time. Emmanuel Lidden, 24, pleaded guilty to violations of Australia’s nuclear proliferation laws after ordering a small sample of the metal from a US supplier, as part of his laudable bid to collect a sample of every element in the periodic table. Shipping plutonium to Australia is apparently a big no-no, but not so much that the border force officials who initially seized the shipment didn’t return some of the material to Lidden. Someone must have realized they made a mistake, judging by the outsized response to re-seize the material, which included shutting down the street where his parents live and a lot of people milling about in hazmat suits. We Googled around very briefly for plutonium samples for sale, which is just another in a long list of searches since joining Hackaday that no doubt lands us on a list, and found this small chunk of trinitite encased in an acrylic cube for $100. We really hope this isn’t what the Australian authorities got so exercised about that Lidden now faces ten years in prison. That would be really embarrassing.

And finally, we couldn’t begin to tote up the many happy hours of our youth spent building plastic models. New model day was always the best day, and although it’s been a while since we’ve indulged, we’d really get a kick out of building models of some of the cars we had an emotional connection to, like the 1972 Volkswagen Beetle that took us on many high school adventures, or our beloved 1986 Toyota 4×4 pickup with the amazing 22R engine. Sadly, those always seemed to be vehicles that wouldn’t appeal to a broad enough market to make it worth a model company’s while to mass-produce. But if you’re lucky, the car of your dreams might just be available as a download thanks to the work of Andrey Bezrodny, who has created quite a collection of 3D models of off-beat and quirky vehicles. Most of the files are pretty reasonably priced considering the work that obviously went into them, and all you have to do is download the files and print them up. It’s not quite the same experience as taking the shrink-wrap off a Revell or Monogram box and freeing the plastic parts from they’re trees to glue them together, but it still looks like a lot of fun.

An Inexpensive Way to Break Down Plastic

27 Marzo 2025 at 23:00

Plastic has been a revolutionary material over the past century, with an uncountable number of uses and an incredibly low price to boot. Unfortunately, this low cost has led to its use in many places where other materials might be better suited, and when this huge amount of material breaks down in the environment it can be incredibly persistent and harmful. This has led to many attempts to recycle it, and one of the more promising efforts recently came out of a lab at Northwestern University.

Plastics exist as polymers, long chains of monomers that have been joined together chemically. The holy grail of plastic recycling would be to convert the polymers back to monomers and then use them to re-make the plastics from scratch. This method uses a catalyst to break down polyethylene terephthalate (PET), one of the more common plastics. Once broken down, the PET is exposed to moist air which converts it into its constituent monomers which can then be used to make more PET for other uses.

Of course, the other thing that any “holy grail” of plastic recycling needs is to actually be cheaper and easier than making new plastic from crude oil, and since this method is still confined to the lab it remains to be seen if it will one day achieve this milestone as well. In the meantime, PET can also be recycled fairly easily by anyone who happens to have a 3D printer around.

Twisting Magnetism to Control Electron Flow

23 Marzo 2025 at 02:00
Microscopic view of chiral magnetic material

If you ever wished electrons would just behave, this one’s for you. A team from Tohoku, Osaka, and Manchester Universities has cracked open an interesting phenomenon in the chiral helimagnet α-EuP3: they’ve induced one-way electron flow without bringing diodes into play. Their findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The twist in this is quite literal. By coaxing europium atoms into a chiral magnetic spiral, the researchers found they could generate rectification: current that prefers one direction over another. Think of it as adding a one-way street in your circuit, but based on magnetic chirality rather than semiconductors. When the material flips to an achiral (ferromagnetic) state, the one-way effect vanishes. No asymmetry, no preferential flow. They’ve essentially toggled the electron highway signs with an external magnetic field. This elegant control over band asymmetry might lead to low-power, high-speed data storage based on magnetic chirality.

If you are curious how all this ties back to quantum theory, you can trace the roots of chiral electron flow back to the early days of quantum electrodynamics – when physicists first started untangling how particles and fields really interact.

There’s a whole world of weird physics waiting for us. In the field of chemistry, chirality has been covered by Hackaday, foreshadowing the lesser favorable ways of use. Read up on the article and share with us what you think.

Laser Harp Sets the Tone

20 Marzo 2025 at 20:00

In many ways, living here in the future is quite exiting. We have access to the world’s information instantaneously and can get plenty of exciting tools and hardware delivered to our homes in ways that people in the past with only a Sears catalog could only dream of. Lasers are of course among the exciting hardware available, which can be purchased with extremely high power levels. Provided the proper safety precautions are taken, that can lead to some interesting builds like this laser harp which uses a 3W laser for its strings.

[Cybercraftics]’ musical instrument is using a single laser to generate seven harp strings, using a fast stepper motor to rotate a mirror to precise locations, generating the effect via persistence of vision. Although he originally planned to use one Arduino for this project, the precise timing needed to keep the strings in the right place was getting corrupted by adding MIDI and the other musical parts to the project, so he split those out to a second Arduino.

Although his first prototype worked, he did have to experiment with the sensors used to detect his hand position on the instrument quite a bit before getting good results. This is where the higher power laser came into play, as the lower-powered ones weren’t quite bright enough. He also uses a pair of white gloves which help illuminate a blocked laser. With most of the issues ironed out, [Cybercraftics] notes that there’s room for improvement but still has a working instrument that seems like a blast to play. If you’re still stuck in the past without easy access to lasers, though, it’s worth noting that there are plenty of other ways to build futuristic instruments as well.

Chemistry Meets Mechatronics in This Engaging Art Piece

20 Marzo 2025 at 11:00

There’s a classic grade school science experiment that involves extracting juice from red cabbage leaves and using it as a pH indicator. It relies on anthocyanins, pigmented compounds that give the cabbage its vibrant color but can change depending on the acidity of the environment they’re in, from pink in acidic conditions to green at higher pH. And anthocyanins are exactly what power this unusual kinetic art piece.

Even before it goes into action, [Nathalie Gebert]’s Anthofluid is pretty cool to look at. The “canvas” of the piece is a thin chamber formed by plexiglass sheets, one of which is perforated by an array of electrodes. A quartet of peristaltic pumps fills the chamber with a solution of red cabbage juice from a large reservoir, itself a mesmerizing process as the purple fluid meanders between the walls of the chamber and snakes around and between the electrodes. Once the chamber is full, an X-Y gantry behind the rear wall moves to a random set of electrodes, deploying a pair of conductors to complete the circuit. When a current is applied, tendrils of green and red appear, not by a pH change but rather by the oxidation and reduction reactions occurring at the positive and negative electrodes. The colors gently waft up through the pale purple solution before fading away into nothingness. Check out the video below for the very cool results.

We find Anthofluid terribly creative, especially in the use of such an unusual medium as red cabbage juice. We also appreciate the collision of chemistry, electricity, and mechatronics to make a piece of art that’s so kinetic but also so relaxing at the same time. It’s the same feeling that [Nathalie]’s previous art piece gave us as it created images on screens of moving thread.

A Look at the Panasonic FS-A1FM

16 Marzo 2025 at 11:00

MSX computers were not very common in the United States, and we didn’t know what we were missing when they were popular. [Re:Enthused] shows us what would have been a fine machine in its day: a Panasonic FS-A1FM. Have a look at the video below to see the like-new machine.

The machine isn’t just an ordinary MSX computer. The keyboard is certainly unique, and it has an integrated floppy drive and a 1200-baud modem. The case proudly proclaims that the floppy is both double-sided and double-density. Like most MSX computers, it had a plethora of ports and, of course, a cartridge slot. Unfortunately, the machine looks great but has some problems that have not been repaired yet, so we didn’t get to see it running properly.

He was able to get to the MSX-DOS prompt to show along with the BIOS menu. We hope he manages to get the keyboard working, and we were glad to see another computer from that era we had not seen before.

We don’t think anyone made one at the time, but we’ve seen a modern take on a luggable MSX. Of course, you can emulate the whole thing on a Pi and focus on the aesthetics.

High-Speed Reservoir Computing With Integrated Laser Graded Artificial Neurons

Por: Maya Posch
13 Marzo 2025 at 11:00

So-called neuromorphic computing involves the use of physical artificial neurons to do computing in a way that is inspired by the human brain. With photonic neuromorphic computing these artificial neurons generally use laser sources and structures such as micro-ring resonators and resonant tunneling diodes to inject photons and modulate them akin to biological neurons.

General reservoir computing with laser graded neuron. (Credit: Yikun Nie et al., 2024, Optica)

One limitation of photonic artificial neurons was that these have a binary response and a refractory period, making them unlike the more versatile graded neurons. This has now been addressed by [Yikun Nie] et al. with their research published in Optica.

The main advantage of graded neurons is that they are capable of analog graded responses, combined with no refractory period in which the neuron is unresponsive. For the photonic version, a quantum dot (QD) based gain section was constructed, with the input pulses determining the (analog) output.

Multiple of these neurons were then combined on a single die, for use in a reservoir computing configuration. This was used with a range of tests, including arrhythmia detection (98% accuracy) and handwriting classification (92% accuracy). By having the lasers integrated and the input pulses being electrical in nature, this should make it quite low-power, as well as fast, featuring 100 GHz QD lasers.

Meshtastic Adds Wireless Connectivity to Possum Trap

13 Marzo 2025 at 05:00

Perhaps every gardener to attempt to grow a tomato, lettuce, or bean has had to contend with animals trying to enjoy the food before the gardener themselves can, whether it’s a groundhog, rabbit, mouse, crow, or even iguana. There are numerous ways to discourage these mischievous animals from foraging the garden beds including traps, but these devices have their downsides as well. False alarms can be a problem as well as trapping animals that will be overly aggravated to be inside the trap (like skunks) and while the latter problem can’t easily be solved by technology, the former can with the help of Meshtastic.

[Norman Jester]’s problem was an errant possum, but these nocturnal animals generally come out while humans are asleep, and other nighttime animals like rats can activate the trap and then escape. To help with this, a Meshtastic node was added to the San Diego mesh using a 3.5mm audio jack as a detector. When the trap is activated, the closing door yanks a plug out of the jack, alerting the node that the trap has been closed. If it’s a false alarm the trap can be easily and quickly reset, and if a possum has found its way in then it can be transported to a more suitable home the next day.

It’s worth noting that American possums (distinct from the Australian animals of the same name) are an often-misunderstood animal that generally do more good than harm. They help to control Lyme disease, eat a lot of waste that other animals won’t, don’t spread rabies, and don’t cause nearly as much disruption to human life as other animals like feral cats or raccoons. But if one is upsetting a garden or another type of animal is causing a disturbance, this Meshtastic solution does help solve some of the problems with live traps. For smaller animals, though, take a look at this Arudino-powered trap instead.

Thanks to [Dadsrcworkbench] for the tip!

Solar-Powered E-Reader With No Buttons

10 Marzo 2025 at 20:00

Modern e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle are incredible pieces of engineering, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement. A device custom-built to your own specifications is always going to provide a more satisfying experience than something purchased off the shelf. That’s why [fel88] put together this custom e-reader which offers a number of unique features, such as a solar panel on the back and button-free operation.

One issue with modern e-readers, at least as [fel88] sees it, is that they have a lot of unnecessary features. This project removes most of them, stripping down the device to its core functionality: a straightforward menu for selecting books and gesture-sensing for navigating the menu as well as changing the pages. The only physical input on the device is a small reed switch to turn the device on. A 3D printed case holds the e-ink display and encloses the inner workings, driven by an Arduino Mega 2560 and powered by three lithium-ion capacitors (LICs) and a small solar panel.

By dropping all of the unnecessary features, the device doesn’t need to waste energy with things like WiFi or Bluetooth and can get around 880 pages on a single charge, not counting any extra energy coming in through the solar panel while it’s operating. The LICs will also theoretically improve its life cycle as well. If you’re still stuck with a paperweight when you formerly had a working e-reader, though, there are plenty of ways to bring old devices back to life as well.

ZX Spectrum, Soviet Style: A 44-IC Clone You Can Build

10 Marzo 2025 at 08:00
Soviet ZX Spectrum clone on a table

If you’ve ever fancied building a ZX Spectrum clone without hunting down ancient ULAs or soldering your way through 60+ chips, [Alex J. Lowry] has just dropped an exciting build. He has recreated the Leningrad-1, a Soviet-built Spectrum clone from 1988, with a refreshingly low component count: 44 off-the-shelf ICs, as he wrote us. That’s less than many modern clones like the Superfo Harlequin, yet without resorting to programmable logic. All schematics, Gerbers, and KiCad files are open-source, listed at the bottom of [Alex]’ build log.

The original Leningrad-1 was designed by Sergey Zonov during the late Soviet era, when cloning Western tech was less about piracy and more about survival. Zonov’s design nailed a sweet spot between affordability and usability, with enough compatibility to run 90-95% of Spectrum software. [Alex]’ replica preserves that spirit, with a few 21st-century tweaks for builders: silkscreened component values, clever PCB stacking with nylon standoffs, and a DIY-friendly mechanical keyboard hack using transparent keycaps.

While Revision 0 still has some quirks – no SCART color output yet, occasional flickering borders with AY sound – [Alex] is planning for further improvements. Inspired to build your own? Read [Alex]’ full project log here.

Get Into Meshtastic On the Cheap With This Tiny Node Kit

8 Marzo 2025 at 09:00

There’s been a lot of buzz about Meshtastic lately, and with good reason. The low-power LoRa-based network has a ton of interesting use cases, and as with any mesh network, the more nodes there are, the better it works for everyone. That’s why we’re excited by this super-affordable Meshtastic kit that lets you get a node on the air for about ten bucks.

The diminutive kit, which consists of a microcontroller and a LoRa module, has actually been available from the usual outlets for a while. But [concretedog] has been deep in the Meshtastic weeds lately, and decided to review its pros and cons. Setup starts with flashing Meshtastic to the XIAO ESP32-S3 microcontroller and connecting the included BLE antenna. After that, the Wio-SX1262 LoRa module is snapped to the microcontroller board via surface-mount connectors, and a separate LoRa antenna is connected. Flash the firmware (this combo is supported by the official web flasher), and you’re good to go.

What do you do with your new node? That’s largely up to you, of course. Most Meshtastic users seem content to send encrypted text messages back and forth, but as our own [Jonathan Bennett] notes, a Meshtastic network could be extremely useful for emergency preparedness. Build a few of these nodes, slap them in a 3D printed box, distribute them to willing neighbors, and suddenly you’ve got a way to keep connected in an emergency, no license required.

Why Are Cassette and CD Players So Big Now?

1 Marzo 2025 at 21:00
An image showing an original grey and blue Sony Walkman with the text "1970" below it, and an arrow pointing to the right of it at a much smaller blue Walkman with the text "2000" underneath it, and a final arrow pointing to the right to a bright orange cassette player by We Are Rewind in a man's hand with the text "now" beneath it.

The early 2000s were the halcyon days of physical media. While not as svelte as MP3 players became, why are those early 2000s machines smaller than all the new models popping up amidst the retro audio craze?

We’ve bemoaned the end of the electromechanical era before, and the Verge recently interviewed the people at We Are Rewind and Filo to get the skinny on just why these newer cassette and CD players aren’t as small as their predecessors. It turns out that all currently produced cassette players use the same mechanism with some small tweaks in materials (like metal flywheels in these higher quality models) because the engineering required to design a smaller and better sounding alternative isn’t warranted by the niche nature of the cassette resurgence.

A similar fate has befallen the laser head of CD mechanisms, which is why we don’t have those smooth, rounded players anymore. Economies of scale in the early 2000s mean that even a cheap player from that era can outperform a lot of the newer ones, although you won’t have newer features like Bluetooth to scandalize your audiophile friends. A new Minidisc player is certainly out of the question, although production of discs only ended this February.

If you’re looking to get back into cassettes, this masterclass is a good place to start. If you don’t fancy any of the players the Verge looked at, how about rolling your own incarnation with the guts from a vintage machine or just going for the aesthetic if cassettes aren’t your jam?

Cheap Fiber Optic Wand Toy Becomes Tiny Weird Display

Por: Lewin Day
28 Febrero 2025 at 21:00

If you’ve ever seen those cheap LED fiber optic wands at the dollar store, you’ve probably just thought of them as a simple novelty. However, as [Ancient] shows us, you can turn them into a surprisingly nifty little display if you’re so inclined.

The build starts by removing the fiber optic bundle from the wand. One end is left as a round bundle. At the other end, the strands are then fed into plastic frames to separate them out individually. After plenty of tedious sorting, the fibers are glued in place in a larger rectangular 3D-printed frame, which holds the fibers in place over a matrix of LEDs. The individual LEDs of the matrix light individual fibers, which carry the light to the round end of the bundle. The result is a tiny little round display driven by a much larger one at the other end.

[Ancient] had hoped to use the set up for a volumetric display build, but found it too fragile to be fit for purpose. Still, it’s interesting to look at nonetheless, and a good demonstration of how fiber optics work in practice. As this display shows, you can have two glass fibers carrying completely different wavelengths of light right next to each other without issue.

We’ve featured some other great fiber optic hacks over the years, like this guide on making your own fiber couplings. Video after the break.

[Thanks to Zane and Darryl and Ash for the tip! This one was all over the tipsline!]

New Camera Does Realtime Holographic Capture, No Coherent Light Required

26 Febrero 2025 at 12:00

Holography is about capturing 3D data from a scene, and being able to reconstruct that scene — preferably in high fidelity. Holography is not a new idea, but engaging in it is not exactly a point-and-shoot affair. One needs coherent light for a start, and it generally only gets touchier from there. But now researchers describe a new kind of holographic camera that can capture a scene better and faster than ever. How much better? The camera goes from scene capture to reconstructed output in under 30 milliseconds, and does it using plain old incoherent light.

The camera and liquid lens is tiny. Together with the computation back end, they can make a holographic capture of a scene in under 30 milliseconds.

The new camera is a two-part affair: acquisition, and calculation. Acquisition consists of a camera with a custom electrically-driven liquid lens design that captures a focal stack of a scene within 15 ms. The back end is a deep learning neural network system (FS-Net) which accepts the camera data and computes a high-fidelity RGB hologram of the scene in about 13 ms.  How good are the results? They beat other methods, and reconstruction of the scene using the data looks really, really good.

One might wonder what makes this different from, say, a 3D scene captured by a stereoscopic camera, or with an RGB depth camera (like the now-discontinued Intel RealSense). Those methods capture 2D imagery from a single perspective, combined with depth data to give an understanding of a scene’s physical layout.

Holography by contrast captures a scene’s wavefront information, which is to say it captures not just where light is coming from, but how it bends and interferes. This information can be used to optically reconstruct a scene in a way data from other sources cannot; for example allowing one to shift perspective and focus.

Being able to capture holographic data in such a way significantly lowers the bar for development and experimentation in holography — something that’s traditionally been tricky to pull off for the home gamer.

Taking Cues From a Gramophone To Make a Better Marble Music Machine

26 Febrero 2025 at 00:00

[Martin] of [Wintergatan] is on a quest to create the ultimate human-powered, modern marble music machine. His fearless mechanical exploration and engineering work, combined with considerable musical talent, has been an ongoing delight as he continually refines his designs. We’d like to highlight this older video in which he demonstrates how to dynamically regulate the speed of a human-cranked music machine by taking inspiration from gramophones: he uses a flyball governor (or centrifugal governor).

The faster the shaft turns, the harder the disk brake is applied.

These devices are a type of mechanical feedback system that was invented back in the 17th century but really took off once applied to steam engines. Here’s how they work: weights are connected to a shaft with a hinged assembly. The faster the shaft spins, the more the weights move outward due to centrifugal force. This movement is used to trigger some regulatory action, creating a feedback loop. In a steam engine, the regulator adjusts a valve which keeps the engine within a certain speed range. In a gramophone it works a wee bit differently, and this is the system [Wintergatan] uses.

To help keep the speed of his music machine within a certain narrow range, instead of turning a valve the flyball governor moves a large disk brake. The faster the shaft spins, the harder the brake is applied. Watch it in action in the video (embedded below) which shows [Wintergatan]’s prototype, demonstrating how effective it is.

[Wintergatan]’s marble machine started out great and has only gotten better over the years, with [Martin] tirelessly documenting his improvements on everything. After all, when every note is the product of multiple physical processes that must synchronize flawlessly, it makes sense to spend time doing things like designing the best method of dropping balls.

One final note: if you are the type of person to find yourself interested and engaged by these sorts of systems and their relation to obtaining better results and tighter tolerances, we have a great book recommendation for you.

PCB Dielectric Constant Measurements, Three Ways

25 Febrero 2025 at 09:00

FR4 is FR4, right? For a lot of PCB designs, the answer is yes — the particular characteristics of the substrate material don’t impact your design in any major way. But things get a little weird up in the microwave range, and having one of these easy methods to measure the dielectric properties of your PCB substrate can be pretty handy.

The RF reverse-engineering methods [Gregory F. Gusberti] are deceptively simple, even if they require some fancy test equipment. But if you’re designing circuits with features like microstrip filters where the permittivity of the substrate would matter, chances are pretty good you already have access to such gear. The first method uses a ring resonator, which is just a PCB with a circular microstrip of known circumference. Microstrip feedlines approach but don’t quite attach to the ring, leaving a tiny coupling gap. SMA connectors on the feedline connect the resonator to a microwave vector network analyzer in S21 mode. The resonant frequencies show up as peaks on the VNA, and can be used to calculate the effective permittivity of the substrate.

Method two is similar in that it measures in the frequency domain, but uses a pair of microstrip stubs of different lengths. The delta between the lengths is used to cancel out the effect of the SMA connectors, and the phase delay difference is used to calculate the effective permittivity. The last method is a time domain measurement using a single microstrip with a couple of wider areas. A fast pulse sent into this circuit will partially reflect off these impedance discontinuities; the time delay between the reflections is directly related to the propagation speed of the wave in the substrate, which allows you to calculate its effective permittivity.

One key takeaway for us is the concept of effective permittivity, which considers the whole environment of the stripline, including the air above the traces. We’d imagine that if there had been any resist or silkscreen near the traces it would change the permittivity, too, making measurements like these all the more important.

Genetic Algorithm Runs on Atari 800 XL

22 Febrero 2025 at 03:00

For the last few years or so, the story in the artificial intelligence that was accepted without question was that all of the big names in the field needed more compute, more resources, more energy, and more money to build better models. But simply throwing money and GPUs at these companies without question led to them getting complacent, and ripe to be upset by an underdog with fractions of the computing resources and funding. Perhaps that should have been more obvious from the start, since people have been building various machine learning algorithms on extremely limited computing platforms like this one built on the Atari 800 XL.

Unlike other models that use memory-intensive applications like gradient descent to train their neural networks, [Jean Michel Sellier] is using a genetic algorithm to work within the confines of the platform. Genetic algorithms evaluate potential solutions by evolving them over many generations and keeping the ones which work best each time. The changes made to the surviving generations before they are put through the next evolution can be made in many ways, but for a limited system like this a quick approach is to make small random changes. [Jean]’s program, written in BASIC, performs 32 generations of evolution to predict the points that will lie on a simple mathematical function.

While it is true that the BASIC program relies on stochastic methods to train, it does work and proves that it’s effective to create certain machine learning models using limited hardware, in this case an 8-bit Atari running BASIC. In previous projects he’s also been able to show how similar computers can be used for other complex mathematical tasks as well. Of course it’s true that an 8-bit machine like this won’t challenge OpenAI or Anthropic anytime soon, but looking for more efficient ways of running complex computation operations is always a more challenging and rewarding problem to solve than buying more computing resources.

Hacking Flux Paths: The Surprising Magnetic Bypass

22 Febrero 2025 at 00:00
Schematic of a circuit

If you think shorting a transformer’s winding means big sparks and fried wires: think again. In this educational video, titled The Magnetic Bypass, [Sam Ben-Yaakov] flips this assumption. By cleverly tweaking a reluctance-based magnetic circuit, this hack channels flux in a way that breaks the usual rules. Using a simple free leg and a switched winding, the setup ensures that shorting the output doesn’t spike the current. For anyone who is obsessed with magnetic circuits or who just loves unexpected engineering quirks, this one is worth a closer look.

So, what’s going on under the hood? The trick lies in flux redistribution. In a typical transformer, shorting an auxiliary winding invites a surge of current. Here, most of the flux detours through a lower-reluctance path: the magnetic bypass. This reduces flux in the auxiliary leg, leaving voltage and current surprisingly low. [Sam]’s simulations in LTspice back it up: 10 V in yields a modest 6 mV out when shorted. It’s like telling flux where to go, but without complex electronics. It is a potential stepping stone for safer high-voltage applications, thanks to its inherent current-limiting nature.

The original video walks through the theory, circuit equivalences, and LTspice tests. Enjoy!

 

4 Juegos GRATIS en Epic Games Store: World War Z: Aftermath, Garden Story y Star Wars: KOTOR I & II para Mobile

Por: Pey
20 Febrero 2025 at 18:59

Epic Games Store anunció hoy que desde el 20 al 27 de febrero está regalando dos títulos en tu tienda: World War Z: Aftermath y Garden Story para PC.

Además, se pueden canjear STAR WARS Knights of the Old Republic I y STAR WARS Knights of the Old Republic II mediante la App Mobile de Epic Games Store, pero debao podrán encontrar los enlaces directos para canjearlos desde la PC.

  • 📱 STAR WARS Knights of the Old Republic I (Android)|Juego Base
  • 🍎 STAR WARS Knights of the Old Republic I (iOS)|Juego Base
  • 📱 STAR WARS Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords (Android)|Juego Base
  • 🍎 STAR WARS Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords (iOS)|Juego Base

Pueden consultar una lista de todos los títulos regalados por Epic Games Store en este enlace.

Acerca de World War Z

World War Z: Aftermath es el shooter cooperativo de zombis definitivo basado en el taquillazo de Paramount Pictures y el siguiente paso de World War Z, el éxito que ha cautivado a más de 20 millones de jugadores. Cambia el curso del apocalipsis zombi en consolas y en PC con cross-play completo.

Únete a hasta tres amigos o juega en solitario con compañeros de IA contra hordas de zombis insaciables en una historia intensa por episodios que se desarrolla en nuevas ubicaciones arrasadas de todo el mundo: Roma, el Vaticano y la península rusa de Kamchatka.

Nuevas historias de un mundo en guerra

Episodios de historia completamente nuevos en Roma, el Vaticano y la zona más oriental de Rusia: Kamchatka. Juega tanto con personajes nuevos como con otros conocidos para enfrentarte a los muertos vivientes con un nuevo sistema brutal de combate cuerpo a cuerpo, decimar a los zekes con movimientos únicos, ventajas y armas duales como la hoz y el cuchillo. Rechaza a nuevas monstruosidades muertas vivientes, incluyendo manadas de ratas hambrientas que desatarán el caos en tu equipo.

Progreso detallado y una nueva perspectiva

Vive una nueva perspectiva con el inmersivo modo de primera persona de Aftermath. Sube de nivel ocho clases únicas: pistolero, destructor, rebanador, médico, manitas, exterminador, maestro de drones y una nueva: vanguardista, cada una de ellas con sus propias ventajas y estilos de juego.

Personaliza tus armas para sobrevivir a cualquier desafío y conquista nuevas misiones diarias con modificadores especiales para conseguir recompensas adicionales.

Acerca de Epic Games Store

Epic Games es una empresa estadounidense cuyo director ejecutivo, Tim Sweeney, fundó en 1991. Su sede está en Cary, Carolina del Norte, y tiene decenas de oficinas en todo el mundo. Epic es una empresa líder en el entretenimiento interactivo y es proveedora de tecnología de motores 3D.

Epic Games opera uno de los juegos más grandes del mundo, Fortnite, el cual es un vibrante ecosistema de experiencias de entretenimiento social, que incluye juegos propios como Fortnite Battle Royale, LEGO Fortnite, Rocket Racing y Fortnite Festival, como así también experiencias de los creadores.

Epic Games tiene más de 800 millones de cuentas y más de 6000 millones de amigos conectados en Fortnite, Fall Guys, Rocket League y la Epic Games Store. Además, la empresa desarrolla Unreal Engine, que impulsa muchos de los juegos más importantes del mundo y que también otras industrias han adoptado, como el cine y la televisión, transmisiones y eventos en vivo, la arquitectura, la industria automotriz y la simulación.

A través de Fortnite, Unreal Engine, la Epic Games Store y Epic Games Online Services, Epic proporciona un ecosistema digital completo para que los creadores y los desarrolladores creen, distribuyan y operen juegos y otros contenidos.

La entrada 4 Juegos GRATIS en Epic Games Store: World War Z: Aftermath, Garden Story y Star Wars: KOTOR I & II para Mobile apareció primero en PC Master Race Latinoamérica.

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