Running A Minecraft Server On A WiFi Light Bulb

November 13, 2025 by Maya Posch 34 Comments

WiFi-enabled ‘smart’ light bulbs are everywhere these days, and each one of them has a microcontroller inside that’s capable enough to run all sorts of interesting software. For example, [vimpo] decided to get one running a minimal Minecraft server.

The Bl602-equipped board inside the LED lightbulb. (Credit: vimpo, YouTube)

Inside the target bulb is a BL602 MCU by Bouffalo Lab, that features not only a radio supporting 2.4 GHz WiFi and BLE 5, but also a single-core RISC-V CPU that runs at 192 MHz and is equipped with 276 kB of RAM and 128 kB flash.

This was plenty of space for the minimalist Minecraft server [vimpo] wrote several years ago. The project says it was designed for “machines with limited resources”, but you’ve still got to wonder if they ever thought it would end up running on a literal lightbulb at some point.

It should be noted, of course, that this is not the full Minecraft server, and it should only be used for smaller games like the demonstrated TNT run mini game.

Perhaps the next challenge will be to combine a large set of these light bulbs into a distributed computing cluster and run a full-fat Minecraft server? It seems like a waste to leave the BL602s and Espressif MCUs that are in these IoT devices condemned to a life of merely turning the lights on or off when we could have them do so much more.

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Wayland’s Never-Ending Opposition To Multi-Window Positioning

November 11, 2025 by Maya Posch 127 Comments

There are many applications out there that use more than one window, with every modern-day platform and GUI toolkit offering the means for said application to position each of its windows exactly where it wants, and to restore these exactly in the configuration and location where the user saved it for that particular session. All toolkits but one, that is, for the Wayland project keeps shooting down proposals. Most recently merge request #264 for the ext-zones protocol by [Matthias Klumpp] as it descended into a 600+ comments spree.

This follows on an attempt two years prior with MR#247, which was rejected despite laying out sound reasons why the session protocol of Wayland does not cover many situations. In the breakdown video of the new ext-zones protocol discussion by [Brodie Robertson] the sheer absurdity of this whole situation becomes apparent, especially since KDE and others are already working around the Wayland project with their own extensions such as via KWin, which is being used commercially in e.g. the automotive world.

In a January 2024 blog post [Matthias] lays out many of his reasonings and views regarding the topic, with a focus on Linux desktop application usage from a scientific application perspective. When porting a Windows-, X11- or MacOS application to Wayland runs into compatibility issues that may necessitate a complete rewrite or dropping of features, the developer is more likely to stick to X11, to not port to Linux at all, or to use what eventually will amount to Wayland forks that patch around these missing API features.

Meanwhile X11 is definitely getting very long in the tooth, yet without it being a clean drop-in replacement it leaves many developers and end-users less than impressed. Perhaps the Wayland project should focus more on the needs of developers and end-users, and less about what it deems to be the One True Way?

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Moving From Windows To FreeBSD As The Linux Chaos Alternative

November 11, 2025 by Maya Posch 102 Comments

Back in the innocent days of Windows 98 SE, I nearly switched to Linux on account of how satisfied I was with my Windows experience. This started with the Year of the Linux Desktop in 1999 that started with me purchasing a boxed copy of SuSE Linux and ended with me switching to Windows 2000. After this I continued tinkering with non-Windows OSes including QNX, BeOS, various BSDs, as well as Linux distributions that promised a ‘Windows-like’ desktop experience, such as Lindows.

Now that Windows 2000’s proud legacy has seen itself reduced to a rusting wreck resting on cinderblocks on Microsoft’s dying front lawn, the quiet discomfort that many Windows users have felt since Windows 7 was forcefully End-Of-Life-d has only increased. With it comes the uncomfortable notion that Windows as a viable desktop OS may be nearing its demise. Yet where to from here?

Although the recommendations from the peanut gallery seem to coalesce around Linux or Apple’s MacOS (formerly OS X), there are a few dissenting voices extolling the virtues of FreeBSD over both. There are definitely compelling reasons to pick FreeBSD over Linux, in addition to it being effectively MacOS’s cousin. Best of all is not having to deal with the Chaos Vortex that spawns whenever you dare to utter the question of ‘which Linux distro?’. Within the world of FreeBSD there is just FreeBSD, which makes for a remarkably coherent experience.

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Testing Whether Fast Charging Kills Smartphone Batteries, And Other Myths

November 10, 2025 by Maya Posch 27 Comments

Calendar aging of NMC Li-ion cells at 50 ℃ at various SoCs. (Credit: Wiljan Vermeer, IEEE, 2021)

With batteries being such an integral part of smartphones, it’s little wonder that extending the period between charging and battery replacement has led to many theories and outright myths about what may affect the lifespan of these lithium-ion batteries. To bust some of them, [HTX Studio] over on YouTube has spent the past two years torturing both themselves and a myriad of both iOS and Android phones to tease out some real-life data.

After a few false starts with smaller experiments, they settled on an experimental setup involving 40 phones to investigate two claims: first, whether fast charging is worse than slow charging, and second, whether limiting charging to 80% of a battery’s capacity will increase its lifespan. This latter group effectively uses only 50% of the capacity, by discharging down to 30% before recharging. A single control phone was left alone without forced charge-discharge cycles.

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Recreating The Destroyed Case Of LGR’s Rare 1980s Laptop

November 9, 2025 by Maya Posch 4 Comments

A while back [Clint Basinger] of Lazy Game Reviews fame purchased a rare 1980s Halikan laptop. When he received the parcel, at first glance, everything seemed in order. Upon opening the original laptop bag, however, it was found that the combination of the heavy power supply in a side pocket and the brittle plastic of the laptop’s case had turned the latter into sad fragments of regret. At the time [Clint] wasn’t sure what he’d do, but fortunately [polymatt] stepped in with the joyful news: we can rebuild it; we have the technology.

Obviously, the sad plastic fragments of the original case weren’t going together again in any meaningful way, nor would this have been helpful, but the pieces, along with photos of an intact laptop, helped with the modelling of a digital model of the case. One model and one 3D printer is all you need. For this case, the print used ABS, with gaps between the segmented prints filled with an ABS slurry, as the case was too large to be printed without jumping through some hoops.

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Autopsy Of A First-Generation RX7 Mazda Rotary Car Engine

November 8, 2025 by Maya Posch 13 Comments

The eccentric shaft and rotor of the Mazda 12A rotary engine. (Credit: Baked Beans Garage, YouTube)

In theory, Wankel-style rotary internal combustion engines have many advantages: they ditch the cumbersome crankcase and piston design, replacing it with a simple, single-chamber design and a thick, plectrum-shaped chunk of metal that spins around inside that chamber to create virtual combustion chambers. This saves weight and maximizes performance-to-weight. Unfortunately, these types of engines are also known for burning a lot of oil and endless seal troubles, especially with early rotary Mazda engines that easily died.

Yet even 1980 versions were not without issues, a case in point is the Mazda 1st gen RX7 with a 12A rotary engine that the [Baked Beans Garage] over at YouTube got their paws on. Starting with unsuccessful attempts to make the car start, the next step was to roll the car into the ~~morgue~~ garage for a full teardown of the clearly deceased engine.

About 35 minutes into the video, we get to the teardown of the engine, with its parts contrasted with those of a newer revision rotary engines alongside illustrations of their functioning, making it as much an autopsy as a detailed introduction to these rotary engines. Technically, they also aren’t the original DKM-style Wankel engines, but a KKM-style engine, as designed by [Hanns-Dieter Paschke]. [Wankel] didn’t like the eccentric KKM design, as he thought it’d put too much stress on the apex seals, but ultimately the more economical KKM design was further developed.

During the autopsy of the 12A revision Mazda engine, it becomes clear that it was likely overheating that killed the engine over the course of years of abuse, along with ‘chatter’ marks of the apex seals destroying the inner chrome coating. This would have compromised compression and with it any chance of the engine running, not unlike a piston engine with badly scored cylinder walls after ingesting some metal chunks.

While the Mazda 12B and subsequent designs addressed many of the issues with the early rotary engines, its use was limited to some sports models, ending in 2012 with the RX-8. The currently produced Mazda MX-30 does use a rotary engine again in its plug-in hybrid version, but it’s only as a range extender engine that drives a generator. Looking at the internals of those Mazda rotary engines, it’s easy to see how complex they are to keep running, but you cannot help but feel a little bit of sadness that these small-but-powerful engines didn’t make much more of a splash.

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OldVersion.com Archive Facing Shutdown Due To Financing Issues

November 7, 2025 by Maya Posch 26 Comments

Finding older versions of particular software can be a real chore, all too often only made possible by the sheer grace and benevolence of their creators. At the same time older versions of software can be the only way to dodge undesirable ‘upgrades’, track down regressions, do historical research, set up a retro computer system, and so on. This is where an archive like OldVersion.com (HTTP only so your browser may shout at you) is incredibly useful, offering thousands of installers for software covering a number of platforms.

Unfortunately, as noted on the website, they recently lost their main source of income in the form of Google advertising. This means that after launching in 2001, this archive may soon have to be shut down before long. Confusingly, trying to visit the blog throws a HTTP 503 error, and visiting the forum currently forces a redirect to a random news site unless you can mash that Esc button really fast, perhaps as alternative advertising partners are being trialed, or due to a hack.

Although these days we have sites like Archive.org to do more large scale archiving, OldVersion.com is special for being focused and well-organized, along with a long and rich history that would be a shame to lose. We have referenced the site in the past for old versions as far back as 2008. Hopefully we’ll soon find out more about what is going on with the archive and what its future will be.

Thanks to [Philip Perry] for the tip.