Simulating And Visualising The Central Limit Theorem

November 10, 2026 by Maya Posch No comments

Statistics is one of those fields which people tend to love or hate when they’re confronted with it during their school time. Although incredibly useful and even essential in many fields, including finance and engineering, it’s not always easy to grasp even the basics such as those pertaining to distributions. The Central Limit Theorem (CLT) is an essential element there, which [Greg Foletta] tried to make easier to comprehend using some code samples and visualizations.

The essential summary of the CLT is that if you take the mean of each sample in a set, once you have enough (>30) samples, the distribution of the sample means approaches a normal distribution. This is quite the theorem to put out there, with the supporting proof and explanations on e.g. Wikipedia being very mathematics-heavy.

We’d be remiss not to also mention the excellent [3Blue1Brown] video on the topic, which has even snazzier visualizations if you’re more into learning in that fashion. Even if you don’t think that you need to learn statistics and how distributions work, chances are that you’ll come across a situation where it could have come in handy, or at least have deepened your understanding of a topic like the probability of something happening.

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DeviceTree For Hackers: Intro

November 10, 2026 by Arya Voronova 1 Comment

Raspberry Pi has just leaked information on the Pi Zero 3W. They did it by publishing a DeviceTree file that describes the hardware of the Pi Zero. This is how we know it has the BCM2711 (Pi 4 CPU), makes use of PCIe (maybe it’s even exposed!), has an onboard power button, an extra power LED, and an eMMC option. If I were to guess, this will be the first dual-sided Pi Zero board, and if I were to have hope, it finally has USB-C.

Don’t believe it? Go read the DeviceTree file for yourself — it’s exceptionally easy to read it between the lines. DeviceTree files tell the Linux kernel, or other OS kernels, what CPU to expect, what drivers to load, which interfaces are exposed on your board, and the devices connected to those interfaces. Sometimes a proper DeviceTree file is the only thing you need to make a modern Linux OS run on a neglected SBC you own.

There are DeviceTree files powering technology all around you. Your phone has one, so does your router, your ARM laptop, and not even to speak of your SBCs. Some DeviceTree files are evil, being merely a thin layer between the Linux kernel and proprietary drivers; you will find these in phones with CPUs made by evil corporations. Most DeviceTree files are simply there to do their job.

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Have You Ever Heard Of The Lobo MAX-80?

November 10, 2026 by Donald Papp 3 Comments

[Adrian Black]’s enthusiasm is palpable as he shows off something truly unusual: a Lobo MAX-80 computer from 1982. To call this machine rare would be an understatement, as the company folded soon after its release. The one shown here is the first one [Adrian] has ever seen, never mind that he had never even heard of it before.

The MAX-80 was a Z80-based computer that was CP/M and LDOS compatible. As [Adrian] puts it, many companies and innovative products came and went during this time period. There was so much, and most of it has simply disappeared.

He was able to find information about the Lobo MAX-80 from advertisements, media coverage, reviews, and more (and he has thoughtfully uploaded everything, see the video description for links) and even pieced together a short history of a company that got its start making TRS-80 and Apple II disk drives before transitioning to producing their own machine. The MAX-80 was released in 1982, but sadly the company didn’t last much longer.

After sharing what history he was able to dig up, [Adrian] opens the unit he has and goes through diagnostics. It’s actually in remarkably good shape, and he’s eventually able to get it to actually boot into CP/M.

There’s still more work needed before he can put it through its paces, but getting a formerly completely unknown machine from the 80s operational is pretty wild. Watch the whole thing in the video below.

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A T-mobile Sidekick 3 phone. It has an LCD screen that swings up above a backlit QWERTY keyboard sitting between a joystick and illuminated call start and end buttons on the right and a directional pad on the left. The screen shows the selected application, a visual novel called "Class of 09."

Hacking The Sidekick In 2026

November 10, 2026 by Navarre Bartz 2 Comments

The early 2000s saw a Cambrian Explosion of form factors for mobile devices, and one of the most feature-rich phones of the time was the Danger Hiptop, better known as the T-Mobile Sidekick. [ashe] wanted to get the phone going again, which took some sleuthing.

While not advertised as such at the time, the Hiptop was primarily a client for web apps from the Danger servers. So, when Danger was shuttered, so were most of the phone’s features. [ashe] was able to track down the SDK for the device’s Java-based OS, but to get any programs running on an actual device, they needed a developer key. After finding a few more clues, they were able to use CADO-NFS, a general number sieve, to crack the 512-bit encryption scheme for the system’s developer key and generate a new one for their device.

[ashe] ported a visual novel to their Sidekick 3 with their new key, saying “Endings arrive as real Sidekick text notifications, using an emulated modem.” Work continues on the Re:Danger server to bring other functionality back, including plans to spin up a GSM network to connect an actual Sidekick. The server replication only works with an emulated Sidekick so far. They did include a Sidekick emulator on their site if you’d like to try it yourself.

If you’re a fan of the form factor but would like something with a bit more power, we’ve seen a UMPC inspired by the Hiptop/Sidekick a few years back.

Robotic Car Charger Locks On With Suction

November 9, 2026 by Donald Papp No comments

Not only does [Mew463]’s robotic car charger take care of plugging in his vehicle for him, it has some really clever features that are great to see in action.

We’ve seen a rover-platform-based robotic car charger before, but what’s different here is that [Mew463]’s robot isn’t particularly husky. It’s designed to be low-profile, snug right up against the vehicle during use, and park itself against the wall when not.

As an added touch, one doesn’t even have to manually open the car’s charge port door. The robot uses API calls that — once it confirms the vehicle is parked and not in use — unlocks and opens the charge port remotely. People used to be able to pop the charge port with a plain old wireless replay attack, but an API is the better way to go about it.

Four Mecanum wheel and LiDAR get the robot into more or less the right position, then fine-tuning happens with the help of an onboard camera and a ChARuco board pattern on the car just under the charging port.

Once things are lined up just right, the charger moves forward to plug into the car. Here’s where [Mew463] had to get clever, because plugging in a car charger actually takes a decent amount of force, and the robot is not particularly heavy. The solution is two suction cups that anchor the robot to the car as a gear assembly pushes the charger home. We really like how the robot snugs right up, so while the car is charging there isn’t a big thing in the way.

Disconnecting is the reverse of the process, and for the robot to park itself again it simply swivels the camera backward so it can see the marker on the wall without the whole robot having to turn around. It’s all very slick, and you can watch it in action in the video embedded below.

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You Wouldn’t Download A Car…

November 9, 2026 by Jenny List 14 Comments

For as long as there have been sports cars, there have been blokes in tin sheds making their own sports cars. It’s a pursuit that has birthed famous marques and more than one motor racing series. Over the years these home made autos have been variously made of steel, aluminium, and fibreglass, and now thanks to [Kevin Kuehn] they can also be 3D printed.

His car little open top number with a body 3D printed ion PETG, and finished with a layer of carbon fibre. The styling is very organic, but maybe that windscreen needs a little work. Under the hood are the mechanicals from a Nissan Leaf. It’s fully driveable, and road legal in California.

Perhaps the most unexpected part is that the PETG part was 3D printed in 600 small parts and heat-stapled together. He’s even created the software to do this, which could be useful in other large projects.

Having been involved in a few builds, we can see that this is a fascinating project that we hope will be the first of many. If the next generation of self-built cars are 3D printed, that can’t be a bad thing. Perhaps the worthy successor to the most hackable car will be 3D printed.

Free Your Harley From The Dealer

November 9, 2026 by Jenny List 13 Comments

Vehicles have come with diagnostic ports for many years now, and there are a host of easily available tools to interrogate them. Despite that, there are still proprietary aspects that remain out of reach. For one of them there may be a way to know more though, as [Daniel Henzulea] has made what he describes to us as a dealer-grade diagonostic tool for Harley-Davidson motorcycles. These machines don’t come with the familiar OBD-II port.

The Harley diagnostic port is a custom six-pin socket that carries a CAN bus. Into this is plugged a CAN transceiver, and to that is connected one of the Xtensa-based ESP32s. The magic then is in the software, which exposes and makes accessible every function. What used to be closed source and prohibitively expensive, is now open to all.

You might not be surprised to read that this isn’t the first time we’ve featured a project diving into a Harley-Davidson’s data bus.

Header: Reinhold Möller, CC BY-SA 4.0.