Mashable: Meta quietly added facial recognition code for smart glasses to its app, says it’s just exploring. “A Wired investigation discovered that the code has been added to Meta’s AI app over ‘multiple updates this year.’ The feature is internally called NameTag, and it can reportedly identity people captured by the camera on Meta’s smart glasses, including Ray-Bans and Oakleys, as well as […]

Dirt Cheap Probe V2

https://www.dirtcheaphackingtools.com/product/probev2

#hardware #hacking #fedishop

Today in 1954, Turing Award recipient E. Allen Emerson was born. Together with Edmund Clarke and Joseph Sifakis, Emerson received the 2007 #ACMTuringAward for developing Model-Checking into a highly effective verification technology that is widely adopted in the hardware and software industries.

Emerson explains Model-Checking in 2019: https://youtu.be/sUwxA8px7O8
#ACM #Computing #TuringAward #ComputerScience #SoftwareEngineer #Software #SoftwareDevelopment #ModelChecking #Technology #Hardware

Valve Takes Crazy Pills and Jacks Up Steam Deck Pricing: https://boilingsteam.com/valve-takes-crazy-pills-and-jacks-up-steam-deck-pricing/

#linux #linuxgaming #update #gaming #hardware #steamdeck #pricing #epicfail #valve #pricegouging

How do you pronounce "FIFO"?

#FPGA #Verilog #hardware

Hoodline San Francisco: SF Lawyers Say Hisense TVs Turn Your Living Room Into a Spy Den. “San Francisco lawyers say Hisense USA has turned millions of its smart TVs into always-on surveillance tools, according to a federal class-action lawsuit filed last Tuesday. The complaint alleges the sets’ automatic content recognition, or ACR, can grab snapshots of what is on a screen as often as every […]

Mashable: ACLU and other organizations warn Meta against adding facial recognition to smart glasses. “Per Wired, a cavalcade of more than 70 organizations such as the ACLU and Fight for the Future have signed a letter urging Meta to ‘immediately halt and publicly disavow’ its plans to bring facial recognition tech to its growing lineup of smart glasses. In March, a separate group of […]

Formatting a C64 Disk In 15 Seconds
Recently Commodore History investigated just how Commodore 1541 disk drives format disks, and why it took them over a minute. It was also an explanation of just what it means to format a floppy disk. We linked that last week.

Well, yesterday they posted a second video on matters involving formatting disks. (16½ min
https://setsideb.com/formatting-a-c64-disk-in-15-seconds/
#hardware #retro #1541 #c64 #commodore #DiskDrive #formatting #hardware #retro

Hmm, do slotted carriage bolts no longer exist, or are they called something else? (looking to replace some from an old wheelbarrow). #random #hardware

How the C64’s Disk Drives Formatted Disks
The 1541 disk drive was infamously slow, probably the slowest of the 8-bit floppy disk drives, the result of a VIC-20 Kernal bug that was inexplicably kept in the C64 for the sake of backwards compatibility. The problem could be fixed by writing your own disk routines, which is why so many games used fastloaders.

But the
https://setsideb.com/how-the-c64s-disk-drives-formatted-disks/
#hardware #retro #1541 #c64 #disk #format #hardware #retro

Variable Screen Position on the Commodore 64
I keep forgetting what this trick is called so even though I've mentioned it here before, I'm hoping this will cause it to stick.

Variable Screen Position, or VSP, is basically an abuse of the C64 hardware, a way to make its VIC-II graphics chip do something it's really not meant to do,
https://setsideb.com/variable-screen-position-on-the-commodore-64/
#retro #hardware #MayhemInMonsterland #retro #supermariobros #VariableScreenPosition #VSP

This has to be the worst thing Sun has ever done.

#Sun #SunMicrosystems #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #UNIX #keyboard #keyboards #photo #workstation #Solaris #hardware

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Neon pink Sun workstation rubber keyboard

I was pleased to hear BenQ now provide a Linux version of its Display Pilot 2 software!

The app is used to control/configure some of the extra bells and whistles on its 'RD' series of programmer monitors.

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/03/benq-display-pilot-2-linux

#Linux #BenQ #hardware

Gizmodo: Concerns Over Meta’s Smart Glasses Have Reached the U.S. Senate. “Consternation about smart glasses is ramping up, and it looks like those fears are officially hitting the national stage. This week, U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley (both D-Ore) officially inquired about Meta’s plans to add facial recognition to its Ray-Ban smart glasses, painting the idea as an existential […]

White_Pointer Gaming Examines All the SNES Graphic Modes
White_Pointer Gaming's series examining how different graphic tricks were pulled off in 8- and 16-bit games has been great, and now they have a video going over all eight (Modes 0-7) of the SNES background modes. (42 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UhnR4foGc0
https://setsideb.com/white_pointer-gaming-examines-all-the-snes-graphic-modea/
#retro #hardware #Mode7 #retro #snes #superfamicom #VideoModes #WhitePointerGaming

MARCHintosh 2026
I feel like I'm a bit late on this one, but there's still two weeks of March left. Some crazy wonderful people every year devote the month of March to classic Macintosh stuff, both hardware and software, and primarily things before the release of OS/X in 2001. The original MacOS traces its lineage all the way back to 1984's original Macintoshes, and existed as Apple's pr
https://setsideb.com/marchintosh-2026/
#niche #retro #apple #hardware #mac #MARCHintosh #niche #retro

RE: https://techhub.social/@jolla/116158230446200276

Made in Europe. Actual Linux (Sailfish OS). Physical privacy button. Replaceable battery. Optional Android compatibility feature that supposedly can run your bank app. Mediocre specs but only so the price can be kept low. Rather impressive!

#hardware #phones #privacy #madeineu #jolla #sailfishos #linux

PS5 Turned Into Linux Gaming PC: What Sony's Hardware Says About Digital Freedom

#PS5 #Linux #Gaming #Hardware #AusNews

https://thedailyperspective.org/article/2026-03-07-ps5-turned-into-linux-gaming-pc-what-sonys-hardware-says-about-digital-freedom-a1020b8a

- a neat hack for the properly paranoid -

Your computer is likely generating random noise on your sound card. On some systems you can harvest this noise as true random entropy. This entropy can be diffused and whitened for use in cryptography.

https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2026-March/039388.html

#Random #Entropy #Cryptography #Crypto #Hardware #Hacks #Sound #Audio #Chaos

@cypherpunk@soc.octade.net @cryptography@soc.octade.net @crypto@infosec.pub @cryptography@fed.dyne.org @cryptography@lemmy.ml

Alt...

Source code screenshot for harvesting entropy from a sound card. Follow the link to read the source code text.

I'm looking for a cheap N150 small form factor PC for testing purposes. Are there any brands on Alibaba that are worth looking at or keeping away from? Boosts appreciated, thanks. #hardware #n150 #computers

Finally!

Smartphones are getting innovative again!

Galaxy S26 Ultra's Privacy Display is the best truly-new smartphone feature in years [Gallery]

https://9to5google.com/2026/02/25/samsung-galaxy-s26-ultra-privacy-display-demo-hands-on/

#Samsung #Galaxy #S26 #Privacy #Display #Security #Hardware #Mobile #Tech

"To understand the Archive is to understand the physical reality of digital memory. It is a story of 20,000 hard drives, 45 miles of cabling, and a vision that began in 1996. . . ."

Bruce Li for HackerNoon: https://hackernoon.com/the-long-now-of-the-web-inside-the-internet-archives-fight-against-forgetting

#Longreads #Internet #Web #Technology #Hardware #Servers #WaybackMachine #InternetArchive

After, I have visited one of the few arcades in my city. I was fairly disappointed by the game choice. The biggest problem is that most of the newer games play themselves. One was a racing game, and it almost made no difference if you drove straight into a wall or not. You were also bombarded by fancy items. Suffice to say, that I have stayed the remainder of my stay at the pinball machines. I actually never played pinball and was pleasantly surprised how fun it is. My training in 3D Pinball actually paid off, big time.

The reason why I am so joyful is that I have naturally thought about making my own arcade, after seeing in what disastrous state they are (at least here). My first test was if it was feasible to make a GPIO controller I could use to play native games on Linux, and it was such a breeze!!! After a quick search, I found python-evdev, which I could easily install thanks to apt and the Raspbian repository. I remember that I always had trouble with Python, but it's so cool to be able to do everything just using apt, and if some dependency is missing, I could easily enable a virtual environment with pip. It even told me that when I tried to do it wrong the first time around! All python-evdev does is inject input right into the kernel of Linux! This is so awesome! I'm amazed at how stupid simple it is. Only been using Linux for a year or so, but every time I learn how smart it is, I am overwhelmed with joy. I wrote a couple of lines of Python, shown below, and was able to create a virtual controller. Running evtest, I was able to see the controller and its inputs, but most critically, when running supertux2, Tux was jumping!

Next up I have to hook up the buttons via GPIO. I already found a library I could use to talk with it more easily https://gpiozero.readthedocs.io.

It's really hard for me to express how happy I am about all those tools we have available, and how well they fit together. It's amazing how I am able to create a virtual controller just from some lines of code, without any drivers that have to be installed in every corner of the OS. Love Python, Love Linux, Love python-evdev and I also still like the Raspberry.

from evdev import UInput, ecodes as e
from time import sleep
capabilities = {
    e.EV_KEY: [
        e.BTN_A
    ]
}

ui = UInput(capabilities, name="VirtualController", vendor0x1234, product=0x5678)

while (True):
    ui.write(e.EV_KEY, e.BTN_A, 1)
    ui.syn()
    sleep(1)
    ui.write(e.EV_KEY, e.BTN_A, 0)
    ui.syn()
    sleep(1)

#linux #python #hardware #hacking #rpi #project #opensource

"It’s stories like these, spread among friends, neighbors, and Facebook acquaintances, that have helped devices like SuperBox and vSeeBox gain a foothold across America."

Janko Roettgers for The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/streaming/873416/piracy-streaming-boxes

#Longreads #Television #Streaming #Entertainment #Piracy #Hardware #Technology #SuperBox #vSeeBox

About Arcade Game Startup Displays
I was just thinking a few days ago, It's been quite some time since we've heard from Retro Game Mechanics Explained. In fact, looking at their channel, it's been eight months since their last deep dive into video game internals, their terrific (if somewhat dry) look i
https://setsideb.com/about-arcade-game-startup-displays/
#niche #retro #galaxian #hardware #Joust2 #niche #pacman #retro #retrogamemechanicsexplained #rgmex #startup #SuperPacMan #TeddyBoy

Can someone please #ExplainToMeLikeIm5 WHY THE FUCK DOES A #CHARGER NEED "#Cloud" and "#AI" 'features' or a shitty, non-self adjusting #Clock ???

• Worse even: This isn't like some fancy "Lab Equipment" to do custom charge voltage and amperage curves or something where said settings may come in handy (Like needing to charge or discharge a custom cell / battery pack design/chemistry), but it's just a giant #GaN #USB #PowerDelivery block, so there is no reason to shove an #LCD (or even #OLED) into that case to begin with!

THIS IS NOT A "BENCHTOP POWER SUPPLY" WITH DIALS AND KNOBS!

• All this #Enshittification - #Bloat will only drive up prices cuz #Greedflation is a thing!

#Bloatware #WTF #ProductDesign #HardwareDesign #Commentary #tech #technology #Anker #Prime #AnkerPrime250W #AnkerPrime #AntiFeatures #AntiFeature #Hardware #Charging #USBcharger #USBc #USBpd

Alt...

A charger advertisinge "OTA Cloud Upgrade Protocol"

Alt...

The same charger advertising "AI Power Mode"

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The same charger adveritising a useless clock to waste energy on a display it didn't need in the first place, because it's a USB-C PD Charger and not a benchtop power supply!