Hardware Archive
When it comes to open hardware, choices are not exactly abundant. Truly open source hardware – open down to the firmware level of individual components – that also has acceptable performance is rare, with one of the few options being the Talos II and Blackbird POWER9 workstations from Raptor Computing Systems (which I reviewed). Another option that can be fully open source with the right configuration are the laptops made by MNT, which use the ARM architecture (which I also reviewed). Both of these are excellent options, but they do come with downsides; the Talos II/Blackbird are expensive and getting a bit long in the tooth (and a possible replacement is at least a year away), and the MNT Reform and Pocket Reform simply aren’t for everyone due to their unique and opinionated design. Using an architecture other than x86 also simply isn’t an option for a lot of people, ruling out POWER9 and ARM hardware entirely. In the x86 world, it’s effectively impossible to avoid proprietary firmware blobs, but there are companies out there trying to build x86 laptops that try to at least minimise the reliance on such unwelcome blobs. One of these companies is NovaCustom, a Dutch laptop (and now desktop!) OEM that sells x86 computers that come with Dasharo open firmware (based on coreboot) and a strong focus on privacy, open source, customisability, and repairability. NovaCustom sent over a fully configured NovaCustom V54 laptop, so let’s dive into what it’s like to configure and use an x86 laptop with Dasharo open firmware and a ton of unique customisation options. Hardware configuration I opted for the 14″ laptop model, the V54, since the 16″ V65 is just too large for my taste. NovaCustom offers a choice between a 1920×1200 60Hz and a 2880×1800 120Hz panel, and I unsurprisingly chose the latter. This higher-DPI panel strikes a perfect balance between having a 4K panel, which takes a lot more processing power to drive, and a basic 1080p panel, which I find unacceptable on anything larger than 9″ or so. The refresh rate of 120Hz is also a must on any modern display, as anything lower looks choppy to my eyes (I’m used to 1440p/280Hz on my gaming PC, and 4K/160Hz on my workstation – I’m spoiled). The display also gets plenty bright, but disappointingly, the V54 does not offer a touch option. I don’t miss it, but I know it’s a popular feature, so be advised. While the V54 can be equipped with a dedicated mobile RTX 4060 or 4070 GPU, I have no need for such graphical power in a laptop, so I stuck with the integrated Intel Arc GPU. Note that if you do go for the dedicated GPU, you’ll lose the second M.2 slot, and the laptop will gain some weight and thickness. I did opt for the more powerful CPU option with the Intel Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, which packs 6 performance cores (with hyperthreading), 8 efficiency cores, and 2 low-power cores, for a total of 16 cores and 22 threads maxing out at 4.8Ghz. Unless you intend to do GPU-intensive work, this combination is stupid fast and ridiculously powerful. Throw in the 32GB of DDR5 5600MHz RAM in a dual-channel configuration (2×16, replaceable) and a speedy 7.400 MB/s (read)/6.500 MB/s (write) 1TB SSD, and I sometimes feel like this is the sort of opulence Marie Antoinette would indulge herself in if she were alive today. It won’t surprise you to learn that with this configuration, you won’t be experiencing any slowdowns, stuttering, or other performance issues. Ports-wise, the V54 has a USB-C port (3.2 Gen 2), a Thunderbolt 4 port (with Display Alt Mode supporting DP 2.1), a USB-A port (3.2 Gen 2) and a barrel power jack on the right side, a combo audio jack, USB-A port (3.2 Gen 1), microSD card slot, and a Kensington lock on the left, and an Ethernet and HDMI port on the back. Especially the Ethernet port is such a welcome affordance in this day and age, and we’ll get back to it since we need it for Dasharo. The trackpad is large, smooth, and pleasant to use – for a diving board type trackpad, that is. More and more manufacturers are adopting the Apple-style haptic trackpads, which I greatly prefer, but I suspect there might be some patent and IP shenanigans going on that explain why uptake of those in the PC space hasn’t exactly been universal. If you’re coming from a diving board trackpad, you’ll love this one. If you’re coming from a haptic trackpad, it’s a bit of a step down. A standout on the V54 is the keyboard. The keys are perfectly spaced, have excellent travel, a satisfying, silent click, and they are very stable. It’s an absolute joy to type on, and about as good as a laptop keyboard can be. On top of that, at least when you opt for the US-international keyboard layout like I do, you get a keyboard that actually properly lists the variety of special characters on its keys. This may look chaotic and messy to people who don’t need to use those special characters, but as someone who does, this is such a breath of fresh air compared to all those modern, minimalist keyboards where you end up randomly mashing key combinations to find that one special character you need. Considering my native Dutch uses diacritics, and my wife’s native Swedish uses the extra letters å, ä, and ö (they’re letters!), this is such a great touch. The keyboard also has an additional layer for a numeric pad, as well as the usual set of function keys you need on a modern laptop, including a key that will max out the fan speed in case you need it (the little fan glyph on my keyboard seems double-printed, though, which is a small demerit). I especially like the angry moon glyph on the sleep key. He’s my grumpy friend and I love him. Of course, the
There’s quite a few ways to mess around with home automation, with the most popular communication methods being things like ZigBee, plain Wi-Fi, and so on. One of the more promising new technologies is Thread, and Dennis Schubert decided to try and use it for a new homebrew project he was working on. After diving into the legalese of the matter, though, he discovered that Thread is a complete non-starter due to excessive mandatory membership fees without any exceptions for non-commercial use. To summarize: if you’re a hobbyist without access to some serious throwaway money to join the Thread Group, there is no way to use Thread legally – the license does not include an exception for non-commercial uses. If you’re like me and want to write a series of blog posts about how Thread works, there’s also no legal way. A commercial membership program for technology stacks like Thread isn’t new; it’s somewhat common in that space. Same with requiring certifications for your commercial products if you want to use a logo like the “Works with Thread” banner. And that’s fine with me. If you’re selling a commercial electronics product, you have to go through many certification processes anyway, so that seems fair. But having a blanket ban on implementations, even for non-commercial projects, is absolutely bonkers. This means that no hobbyist should ever get close to it, and that means that the next generation of electrical engineers and decision-makers don’t get to play around with the tech before they enter the industry. But of course, that doesn’t really matter to the Thread Group: their members list includes companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, Nordic, NXP, and Qualcomm – they can just force Thread into being successful by making sure it’s shipped in the most popular “home hubs”. So it’s just us that get screwed over. Anyway, if you planned to look at Thread… well, don’t. You’re not allowed to use it. ↫ Dennis Schubert So you can buy Thread dev kits to create your own devices at home, but even such non-commercial use is not allowed. The situation would be even more complex for anyone trying to sell a small batch of fun devices using Thread, because they’d first have to fork over the exorbitant yearly membership fee. What this means is that Thread is a complete non-starter for anyone but an established name, which is probably exactly why the big names are pushing it so hard. They want to control our home automation just as much as everything else, and it seems like Thread is their foot in the door. Be advised.
GlobalFoundries today announced a definitive agreement to acquire MIPS, a leading supplier of AI and processor IP. This strategic acquisition will expand GF’s portfolio of customizable IP offerings, allowing it to further differentiate its process technologies with IP and software capabilities. ↫ Press release about the acquisition MIPS has a long and storied history, most recently as it abandoned its namesake instruction set architecture in favour of RISC-V. MIPS processors are still found in a ton of devices though, but usually not in high-profile devices like smartphones or whatever. Their new RISC-V cores haven’t yet seen a lot of uptake, but that’s a problem all across the RISC-V ecosystem.
The GPU in your computer is about 10 to 100 times more powerful than the CPU, depending on workload. For real-time graphics rendering and machine learning, you are enjoying that power, and doing those workloads on a CPU is not viable. Why aren’t we exploiting that power for other workloads? What prevents a GPU from being a more general purpose computer? ↫ Raph Levien Fascinating thoughts on parallel computation, including some mentions of earlier projects like Intel’s Larabee or the Connection Machine with 64k processors the ’80s, as well as a defense of the PlayStation 3’s Cell architecture.
Following rumors, Xiaomi today announced that it will launch its very own chip for smartphones later this month. The “XRING 01” is a chip that the company has apparently been working on for over 10 years now. Details about the chip are scarce so far, but GizmoChina points to recent leaks that suggest the chip is built on a 4nm process through TSMC. The chip supposedly has a 1+3+4 layout and should lag just a bit behind Snapdragon 8 Elite and Dimensity 9400 in terms of raw horsepower, sounding familiar to Google’s work with Tensor chips. ↫ Ben Schoon at 9To5Google I like this. Having almost every Android device use Qualcomm’s chips is not good for fostering competition, and weakens Android OEMs’ bargaining position. If we have more successful SoC makers, consumers will not only gain access to a wider variety of chips that may better suit their needs, it will also force Qualcomm to lower its prices, compete better, or both. Everybody wins. Well, except Qualcomm, I guess.
The title is a lie. This isn’t brief at all. Picture the keypad of a telephone and calculator side by side. Can you see the subtle difference between the two without resorting to your smartphone? Don’t worry if you can’t recall the design. Most of us are so used to accepting the common interfaces that we tend to overlook the calculator’s inverted key sequence. A calculator has the 7–8–9 buttons at the top whereas a phone uses the 1–2–3 format. Subtle, but puzzling since they serve the same functional goal — input numbers. There’s no logical reason for the inversion if a user operates the interface in the same way. Common sense suggests the reason should be technological constraints. Maybe it’s due to a patent battle between the inventors. Some people may theorize it’s ergonomics. With no clear explanation, I knew history and the evolution of these devices would provide the answer. Which device was invented first? Which keypad influenced the other? Most importantly, who invented the keypad in the first place? ↫ Francesco Bertelli and Manoel do Amara Sometimes, you come across articles that are one-of-a-kind, and this is one of them. Very few people would go to this length to document such a particular thing most people find utterly insignificant, but luckily for us, Francesco Bertelli and Manoel do Amara went all the way with this one. If you want to know anything about the history of the numerical pad and its possibly layouts, this is the place to go. What I’ve always found fascinating about numerical pads is how effortless the brain can switch between the two most common layouts without really batting an eye. Both layouts seem so ingrained in my brain that it feels like there’s barely any context-switching involved, and my fingers just effortlessly flow to the correct numbers. Considering numbers tend to confuse me, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find myself having issues switching between the two layouts. What makes this even more interesting is when I consider the number row on the keyboard – you know, 1 through 0 – because there I do tend to have a lot of issues finding the right numbers. I don’t mean it takes seconds or anything like that, but I definitely experience more hiccups working with the number row than with a numerical keypad of either layout.
Chips and Cheese takes a very detailed look at the latest processor design from Zhaoxin, the Chinese company that inherited VIA’s x86 license and has been making new x86 chips ever since. Their latest design, 世纪大道 (Century Avenue), tries to take yet another step closer to current designs chips form Intel and AMD, and while falling way short, that’s not really the point here. Ultimately performance is what matters to an end-user. In that respect, the KX-7000 sometimes falls behind Bulldozer in multithreaded workloads. It’s disappointing from the perspective that Bulldozer is a 2011-era design, with pairs of hardware thread sharing a frontend and floating point unit. Single-threaded performance is similarly unimpressive. It roughly matches Bulldozer there, but the FX-8150’s single-threaded performance was one of its greatest weaknesses even back in 2011. But of course, the KX-7000 isn’t trying to impress western consumers. It’s trying to provide a usable experience without relying on foreign companies. In that respect, Bulldozer-level single-threaded performance is plenty. And while Century Avenue lacks the balance and sophistication that a modern AMD, Arm, or Intel core is likely to display, it’s a good step in Zhaoxin’s effort to break into higher performance targets. ↫ Chester Lam at Chips and Cheese I find Chinese processors, like the x86-based ones from Zhaoxin or the recent LoongArch processors (which you can buy on AliExpress), incredibly fascinating, and would absolutely love to get my hands on one. A board with two of the most recent LoongArch processors – the 3c6000 – goes for about €4000 at the moment, and I’m keeping my eye on that price to see if there’s ever going to be a sharp drop. This is prime OSNews material, after all. No, they’re not competitive with the latest offerings from Intel, AMD, or ARM, but I don’t really care – they interest me as a computer enthusiast, and since it’s highly unlikely we’re going to see anyone seriously threaten Intel, AMD, and ARM here in the west, you’re going to have to look at China if you’re interested in weird architectures and unique processors.
If RISC-V ever manages to take off, this is going to be an important tool in RISC-V users’ toolbox: felix86 is an x86-64 userspace emulator for RISC-V. felix86 emulates an x86-64 CPU running in userspace, which is to say it is not a virtual machine like VMware, rather it directly translates the instructions of an application and mostly uses the host Linux kernel to handle syscalls. Currently, translation happens during execution time, also known as just-in-time (JIT) recompilation. The JIT recompiler in felix86 is focused on fast compilation speed and performs minimal optimizations. It utilizes extensions found on the host system such as the vector extension for SIMD operations, or the B extension for emulating bit manipulation extensions like BMI. The only mandatory extensions for felix86 are G, which every RISC-V general purpose computer should already have, and v1.0 of the standard vector extension. ↫ felix86 website The project is still in early development, but a number of popular games already work, which is quite impressive. The code’s on GitHub under the MIT license.
Late last year, I went on a long journey to rid myself of as much of my remaining ties to the big technology giants as I could. This journey is still ongoing, with only a few thin ties remaining, but there’s one big one I can scratch off the list: mobile in-store payments with NFC tap-to-pay. I used Google Pay and a WearOS smartwatch for this, but neither of those work on de-Googled Android – I opted for GrapheneOS – and it seemed like I was just going to have to accept the loss of this functionality. That is, until I stumbled upon a few forum posts here and there suggesting a solution: Garmin, maker of fitness trackers and smartwatches with a strong focus on sports, health, and the outdoor lifestyle, has its own mobile NFC tap-to-pay service that supposedly worked just fine on any Android device, de-Googled or not. In fact, people claimed you could even remove the companion Garmin application from your phone entirely after setting up the payment functionality, and it would still keep working. This seemed like something I should look into, because the lack of NFC tap-to-pay is a recurring concern for many people intending to switch to de-Googled Android. So, late last year, many of you chipped in, allowing me to buy a Garmin smartwatch to try this functionality out, for which I’m incredibly grateful, of course. Here’s how all of this works, and if it’s a good alternative for Google Pay. The Garmin Instinct 2S Solar First, let’s dive into which watch I chose to buy. Garmin has a wide variety of fitness trackers and smartwatches in its line-up, from basic trackers, to Apple Watch/WearOS-like devices, to outdoor-focused rugged devices. I opted for one of the outdoor-focused rugged devices, because not only would it give me the Garmin Pay functionality, but also a few other advantages and unique features I figured OSNews readers would be interested in: a simple black-and-white transflective memory-in-pixel display, a battery life measured in weeks (!), a solar panel built into the display glass, and a case constructed out of lightweight but durable plastics instead of heavy, scratch-prone metal. The specific model I opted for was the Instinct 2S Solar in Mist Grey. I wasn’t intending for this to become a review of the watch as a whole, but I figured I might as well share some notes about my experiences with this particular watch model. It’s important to note though that Garmin offers a wide variety of smartwatches, from models that look and feel mostly like an Apple Watch or wearOS device, to mechanical models with ‘invisible’ OLED displays on the dial, to ruggedised, button-only watches for hardcore outdoor people. If you’re interested in a Garmin device, there’s most likely a type that fits your wishes. The Instinct 2S is definitely not the most beautiful or attractive watch I’ve ever had on my wrist. It has that “rugged” look some people are really into, but for me, I definitely had to get used to it. I do really like the colour combination I opted for, though, as it complements the black/white transflective memory-in-pixel display really well. I’ve grown to… Appreciate the look over time. The case and bezel of the watch are made out of what Garmin calls “fiber-reinforced polymer”, which is probably just a form of fiber-reinforced plastic. Regardless of the buzzwords, it feels nice and sturdy, with a great texture, and not at all plasticy or cheap. Using a material like this over the metals the Apple Watch and most WearOS devices are made of has several advantages; first, it makes the device much lighter and thus more pleasant to wear, and it’s a lot sturdier and resilient than metals. I’ve banged this watch into door sills and countertops a few times now, and there’s not a scratch, dent, or discoloration on it – a far cry from the various metal Apple Watches and WearOS devices I own, which accumulated dings and scratches within weeks of buying them. The case material is one of the many ways in which this watch chooses function over form. Sure, metals might feel premium, but a high-quality plastic is cheaper to make, lasts longer, is more resilient, and also happens to be lighter – it’s simply the objectively better choice for something you wear on wrist every day, exposed to the elements. I understand why people want their smartwatch to be made out of metal, but much like how the orange-red plastic of the Nexus 5 is still the best smartphone material I’ve ever experienced (the white and black models uses inferior plastics), this Garmin tops all of the metal watches I own. The strap is made of silicone, and has an absurd amount of tightly-spaced adjustment holes, which makes it very easy to adjust to changing circumstances, like a bit of extra slack for when you’re working out. It also has a nice touch in that the second loop has a little peg that slots into an adjustment hole, keeping it in place. Ingenious. Other than that, it’s just a silicone band with the clasp made out of the same sturdy, pleasant “fiber-reinforced polymer” as the case. The lens over the display is made out of something Garmin calls “Power Glass™”, and I have no idea what that means. It just feels like a watch lens to me – solid, glassy, and… I don’t know, round? The unique aspect of the display glass is, of course, the built-in solar panel. It’s hard for me to tell what kind of impact – if any – the solar panel has on the battery life of the device. What quite obviously does not help is that I live in the Arctic where sun hours come at a bit of a premium, so it’s been impossible for me to stand outside and hold out my arm for a while to see if it had an effect on the charge level. There’s a software
“Synology-branded drives will be needed for use in the newly announced Plus series, with plans to update the Product Compatibility List as additional drives can be thoroughly vetted in Synology systems,” a Synology representative told Ars by email. “Extensive internal testing has shown that drives that follow a rigorous validation process when paired with Synology systems are at less risk of drive failure and ongoing compatibility issues.” Without a Synology-branded or approved drive in a device that requires it, NAS devices could fail to create storage pools and lose volume-wide deduplication and lifespan analysis, Synology’s German press release stated. Similar drive restrictions are already in place for XS Plus and rack-mounted Synology models, though work-arounds exist. ↫ Kevin Purdy at Ars Technica I’m honestly surprised it’s taken Synology this long to start nickle-and-diming its users. I’m sure the “Synology-branded” drives will carry substantial markups over regular drives, despite the drives being otherwise identical. Charging insane markups for expansion options is a tried-and-true way to increase your margins, with Apple being the classic example of charging insane prices for basic RAM or SSD upgrades. I think most of us here on OSNews could easily build our own NAS, as it’s not a particularly complex project. The various software options could be a bit more complicated to navigate, but I don’t think it’s insurmountable for most of us. Normal, average people, though, would most likely do best to just buy an off-the-shelf NAS for their storage and local back-up needs, and it’s those kind of people who Synology is aiming this policy at. They’ll be easily fooled into thinking Synology-branded drives are somehow special, and not just a generic drive with a fancy sticker. This is how the world works, but that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant.
This is a very small blog post about my first reverse engineering project, in which I don’t really reverse engineer anything yet, but I am just getting started! A family member asked me to add additional book data to the LeapStart he bought for his son, this is the starting point here. ↫ leloubil’s blog We’ve all seen toy, child-focused computers like these, and I always find them deeply fascinating. I’m not buying them for my own kids – they’ll get their start on a “real” computer I’ll set up for them to explore and break – but I see their value, and they’re probably a better choice than giving a kid a tablet or whatever (which my wife and I are opposed to for our kids). What fascinates me about them is, of course, what software, and more specifically, what operating system they run. It turns out this one most likely runs on something called µC/OS-II, one of the many relatively obscure embedded operating systems you never hear about. µC/OS is a full-featured embedded operating system originally developed by Micriµm. In addition to the two highly popular kernels, µC/OS features support for TCP/IP, USB-Device, USB-Host, and Modbus, as well as a robust File System. ↫ µC/OS GitHub page The documentation provides a lot more detail about its capabilities, so if you’re interested in learning more, that’s your starting point.
The AlphaStation 500 is a workstation from Digital, circa 1996. Mine is a 500 MHz model and has an Alpha 21164A processor (aka EV56). And the way it boots is weird. On your common-or-garden PC, there has always been some kind of ROM chip. It holds a piece of firmware known as the BIOS. This ROM chip is available at a well-known location in the processor’s address space (remembering that any PC processor boots up in 16-bit, 8088 compatible mode, with a 1 MiB address space, just like an IBM PC 5150) and the processor just starts executing code in it after reset. The Alpha (or at least this AlphaStation 500 – although I think they mostly worked like this) is different. ↫ Jonathan ‘theJPster’ Pallant A great read, but a little bit over my head considering I’m anything but a programmer or developer. Still, even I managed to get the basic gist and learn quite a bit from this article, and especially the part about how the AlphaStation uses a little jumper to tell the SROM exactly which stream of boot code to send to the processor is fascinating. I’m not sure just how unusual the Alpha’s way of booting is, but I’d at least never heard of it.
SoftBank Group Corp. today announced that it will acquire Ampere Computing, a leading independent silicon design company, in an all-cash transaction valued at $6.5 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Ampere will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank Group and retain its name. As part of the transaction, Ampere’s lead investors – Carlyle and Oracle – are selling their respective positions in Ampere. ↫ SoftBank and Ampere Computing press release Despite not really knowing what SoftBank does and what their long-term goals are – I doubt anyone does – I hope this at the very least provides Ampere with the funds needed to expand its business. At this point, the only serious options for Arm-based hardware are either Apple or Qualcomm, and we could really use more players. Ampere’s hardware is impressive, but difficult to buy and expensive, and graphics card support is patchy, at best. What Ampere needs is more investment, and more OEMs picking up their chips. An Ampere workstation is incredibly high on my list of machines to test for OSNews (perhaps a System76 model?), and it’d be great if economies of scale worked to bring the prices down, possibly allowing Ampere to developer cheaper, more affordable variants for us mere mortals, too. I would love to build an Arm workstation in much the same way we build regular x86 PCs today, but I feel like that’s still far off. I have no idea if SoftBank is the right kind of company to make this possible, but one can dream.
It’s barely been two months after the announcement that Pebble would return with new watches, and they’re already here – well, sort of. Pebble has announced two new watches for preorder, the Core 2 Duo and the Core Time 2. The former is effectively a Pebble 2, upgraded with new internals, while the Core Time 2 is very similar, but comes with a colour e-ink display and a metal case. They’re up for preorder now at $149 and $225, respectively, with the Core 2 Duo shipping in July, and the Core Time 2 shipping in December. Alongside this unveil, Eric Migicovsky, the creator of Pebble, also published a blog post detailing the trouble Pebble is and will have with making smartwatches for iOS users. Apple effectively makes it impossible for third parties to make a proper smartwatch for iOS, since access to basic functionality you’d come to expect from such a device are locked by Apple, reserved only for its own Apple Watch. As such, Migicovsky makes it explicitly clear that iOS users who want to buy one of these new Pebbles will are going to have a very degraded experience compared to Android users. Not only will Android users with Pebble have access to a ton more functionality, any Pebble features that could exist for both Android and iOS users will always come to Android first, and possibly iOS later. In fact, Migicovksy goes as far as suggesting that if you want a Pebble, you should buy an Android phone. I don’t want to see any tweets or blog posts or complaints or whatever later on about this. I’m publishing this now so you can make an informed decision about whether to buy a new watch or not. If you’re worried about this, the easiest solution is to buy an Android phone. ↫ Eric Migicovsky I have to hand it to Migicovksy – I love the openness about this, and the fact he’s making this explicitly clear to any prospective buyers. There’s no sugarcoating or PR speak to try and please Tim Cook – he’s putting the blame squarely where it belongs: on Apple. It’s kind of unreal to see such directness about a new product, but as a Dutch person, it feels quite natural. We need more of this style of communication in the technology world, as it makes it much clearer that you’re getting – and not getting. I do hope that Pebble’s Android support functions without the need for Google Play Services or other proprietary Google code, since it would be great to have a proper, open source smartwatch fully supported by de-Googled Android.
Brother laser printers are popular recommendations for people seeking a printer with none of the nonsense. By nonsense, we mean printers suddenly bricking features, like scanning or printing, if users install third-party cartridges. Some printer firms outright block third-party toner and ink, despite customer blowback and lawsuits. Brother’s laser printers have historically worked fine with non-Brother accessories. A YouTube video posted this week, though, as well as older social media posts, claim that Brother has gone to the dark side and degraded laser printer functionality with third-party cartridges. Brother tells Ars that this isn’t true. ↫ Scharon Harding at Ars Technica I find this an incredibly interesting story. We all know the printer space is a cursed hellhole of the very worst worst types of enshittification, but Brother seemed like an island of relative calm in a sea of bullshit. In turn, people are so used to printers being shit, that any problem that comes up is automatically explained by malice, which is not entirely unreasonable. Borther insists, though, that it does not break printers using third-party toner or ink through firmware. Brother does make it very clear that it is standard procedure to only perform troubleshooting on Brother printers using ‘genuine’ Brother ink and toner, which is not entirely unreasonable in my book. There’s no telling what kind of effects third part cartridges – which do contain electronics – have on the rest of the printer, and I don’t think it’s fair to expect Brother to be able to document all of those possible issues. As long as using third-party toner and ink cartridges doesn’t invalidate any warranties, and as long as Brother doesn’t intentionally break printers for using third-party toner and ink, I think Brother meets its obligations to consumers. If you choose to use third-party ink and toner cartridges in Brother printers, I think it’s only reasonable you remove those during the troubleshooting process to ensure they’re not the cause of any problems you’re experiencing.
If you have type 1 diabetes, you need to keep track of and manage your blood glucose levels closely, as if these levels dip too low, it can quickly spiral into a medical emergency. Andrew Childs’ 9 year old son has type 1 diabetes, and Childs was unhappy with any of the current offerings on the market for children to keep track of their blood glucose levels. Most people suggested an Apple Watch, but he found the Apple Watch “too much device” for a kid, something I personally agree with. It ships with so many shiny features and apps and notifications. It’s beautifully crafted. It’s also way too distracting for a kid while they’re at school. Secondly, it doesn’t provide a good, reliable view of his CGM data. The Dexcom integration is often backgrounded, doesn’t show the chart, only the number and an arrow. People use hacks like creating calendar events just to see up-to-date data. And the iOS settings, Screen Time, and notification systems have ballooned into a giant ball of complexity. What we need is something simple. ↫ Andrew Childs And so Childs set out to design and prototype a smartwatch just for his son to wear, trying to address the shortcomings of other offerings on the market along the way, and possibly even bring it to market for other people in similar situations. After six months, he managed to create several prototypes, with both the software and hardware designed from the ground up, that he and his son still wear to this day, to great satisfaction. Since Childs didn’t really know where to go from there and how to turn what he had into an actual product people could be, he decided to document his effort online. In the process, he had to overcome a ton of hurdles, from iOS’ strict BLE limitations, difficult-to-reach soldering points that can’t be moved due to the small size of the PCB, optimising the battery life, dealing with glass manufacturing, and many other issues, big and small. Oh and also, he was a software engineer, not a hardware one, so he had to learn a lot of new skills, from working with 3D modeling to PCB design. In the end, though, he’s now got a few devices that look quite professionally made, that are incredibly easy to repair, and that are focused solely on those things he and his son need. This project has increased the quality of life for his son, and that’s genuinely all that really matters here.
Eric Migicovsky, founder of Pebble, the original smartwatch maker, made a major announcement today together with Google. Pebble was originally bought by Fitbit and in turn Fitbit was then bought by Google, but Migicovsky always wanted to to go back to his original idea and create a brand new smartwatch. PebbleOS took dozens of engineers working over 4 years to build, alongside our fantastic product and QA teams. Reproducing that for new hardware would take a long time. Instead, we took a more direct route – I asked friends at Google (which bought Fitbit, which had bought Pebble’s IP) if they could open source PebbleOS. They said yes! Over the last year, a team inside Google (including some amazing ex-Pebblers turned Googlers) has been working on this. And today is the day – the source code for PebbleOS is now available at github.com/google/pebble (see their blog post). ↫ Eric Migicovsky Of course, this is amazing news for the still-thriving community of Pebble users who have kept the platform and their devices going through sheer force of will, but it also means Pebble is going to making a comeback in a more official capacity: alongside the announcement of PebbleOS becoming open source, there’s also the unveiling of rePebble, a brand new Pebble watch that retains all of the popular features and specifications of the original devices. It’ll run the open source PebbleOS, of course, and will be compatible with the existing ecosystem of applications. I’ve never had a Pebble, but there’s no denying the company hit on something valuable, and I know people who still rock their original Pebble devices to this day. The excitement about this announcement is palpable, and I’m pleasantly surprised Google cared enough to work on making an open source PebbleOS a reality (I know of quite a few other companies sitting on deeply loved code and IP rotting away in obscurity). I can’t wait to see what the new device will look like!
On Monday at CES 2025, Nvidia unveiled a desktop computer called Project DIGITS. The machine uses Nvidia’s latest “Blackwell” AI chip and will cost $3,000. It contains a new central processor, or CPU, which Nvidia and MediaTek worked to create. Responding to an analyst’s question during an investor presentation, Huang said Nvidia tapped MediaTek to co-design an energy-efficient CPU that could be sold more widely. “Now they could provide that to us, and they could keep that for themselves and serve the market. And so it was a great win-win,” Huang said. Previously, Reuters reported that Nvidia was working on a CPU for personal computers to challenge the consumer and business computer market dominance of Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and Qualcomm. ↫ Stephen Nellis at Reuters I’ve long wondered why NVIDIA wasn’t entering the general purpose processor market in a more substantial way than it did a few years ago with the Tegra, especially now that ARM has cemented itself as an architecture choice for more than just mobile devices. Much like Intel, AMD, and now Qualcomm, NVIDIA could easily deliver the whole package to laptop, tablet, and desktop makers: processor, chipset, GPU, of course glued together with special NVIDIA magic the other companies opting to use NVIDIA GPUs won’t get. There’s a lot of money to be made there, and it’s the move that could help NVIDIA survive the inevitable crash of the “AI” wave it’s currently riding, which has pushed the company to become one of the most valuable companies in the world. I’m also sure OEMs would love nothing more than to have more than just Qualcomm to choose from for ARM laptops and desktops, if only to aid in bringing costs down through competition, and to potentially offer ARM devices with the same kind of powerful GPUs currently mostly reserved for x86 machines. I’m personally always for more competition, but this time with the asterisk that NVIDIA really doesn’t need to get any bigger than it already is. The company has a long history of screwing over consumers, and I doubt that would change if they also conquered a chunky slice of the general purpose processor market.
So we all know about twisted-pair ethernet, huh? I get a little frustrated with a lot of histories of the topic, like the recent neil breen^w^wserial port video, because they often fail to address some obvious questions about the origin of twisted-pair network cabling. Well, I will fail to answer these as well, because the reality is that these answers have proven very difficult to track down. ↫ J. B. Crawford The problems with nailing down an accurate history of the development of the various standards, ideas, concepts, and implementations of Ethernet and other, by now dead, network standards are their age, as well as the fact that their history is entangled with the even longer history of telephone wiring. The reasoning behind some of the choices made by engineers over the past more than 100 years of telephone technology aren’t always clear, and very difficult to retrace. Crawford dives into some seriously old and fun history here, trying to piece together the origins of twisted pair the best he can. It’s a great read, as all of his writings are.
We’ve all had a good seven years to figure out why our interconnected devices refused to work properly with the HDMI 2.1 specification. The HDMI Forum announced at CES today that it’s time to start considering new headaches. HDMI 2.2 will require new cables for full compatibility, but it has the same physical connectors. Tiny QR codes are suggested to help with that, however. The new specification is named HDMI 2.2, but compatible cables will carry an “Ultra96” marker to indicate that they can carry 96GBps, double the 48 of HDMI 2.1b. The Forum anticipates this will result in higher resolutions and refresh rates and a “next-gen HDMI Fixed Rate Link.” The Forum cited “AR/VR/MR, spatial reality, and light field displays” as benefiting from increased bandwidth, along with medical imaging and machine vision. ↫ Kevin Purdey at Ars Technica I’m sure this will not pose any problems whatsoever, and that no shady no-name manufacturers will abuse this situation at all. DisplayPort is the better standard and connector anyway. No, I will not be taking questions.
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