The Simulated Universe Thought Experiment And Information Entropy

October 26, 2023 by Maya Posch 38 Comments

Do we live in a simulation? This is one of those questions which has kept at least part of humanity awake at night, and which has led to a number of successful books and movies being made on the subject, topped perhaps by the blockbuster movie The Matrix. Yet the traditional interpretation of the ‘simulated universe’ thought experiment is one in which we – including our brains and bodies – are just data zipping about in a hyper-advanced simulation rather than physical brains jacked into a computer. This simulation would have been set up by (presumably) a hyper-advanced species who seem to like to run their own version of The Sims on a Universe-sized scale.

Regardless of the ‘why’, the aspect of this question where at least some scientific inquiry is possible concerns whether or not it would be possible to distinguish anything uniquely simulation-like in our environment that’d give the game away, like a sudden feeling of déjà vu in the world of The Matrix where you can suddenly perceive the fabric of the simulation. However, the major problem which we have to consider when trying to catch a simulation in the act is that to this point we cannot ourselves create even a miniature galaxy and intelligent beings inside it to provide a testable hypothesis.

Beyond popular media like movies and series like Rick & Morty, what do science and philosophy have to say about this oddly controversial subject? According to some, we have already found the smoking gun, while others are decidedly more skeptical.

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2023 Hackaday Supercon: Cory Doctorow Signs On As Keynote Speaker

October 25, 2023 by Tom Nardi 9 Comments

As if you weren’t already excited enough about the speakers and events that will be part of this year’s Hackaday Supercon, today we can finally reveal that journalist, activist, author, technologist, and all around geek Cory Doctorow will be presenting the keynote address on Saturday morning.

Cory has always been an outspoken supporter of digital freedom, from helping develop OpenCola in 2001 as a way to explain the concepts behind free and open source software, to his more recent work at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He’s made his novels available for purchase directly from his personal website in DRM-free file formats, and he’s even developed a habit of releasing some of them for free under the Creative Commons license. The hacker ethos is strong with this one.

Over the last year, he’s been particularly vocal about what he calls Enshittification — the inevitable decay of any online service where the users are, whether they realize it or not, the product. It’s a concept that’s perfectly exemplified by the ongoing slow-motion implosion of Twitter, and Reddit’s increasingly hostile treatment of its community. Cory explains that one of the signposts on this particular journey is when user-created tools, such as web scrapers or bots, are banned by the powers that be. Reverse engineering, especially when it can uncover a way out of the Walled Garden, is strictly forbidden.

Luckily, there’s a way out. Cory will be delivering his talk An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw It Into Reverse, not only to those who will be physically attending Supercon, but to the entire Hackaday community via our live YouTube stream of the event. It’s a presentation that’s critically important to an audience such as ours — while nearly anyone with an Internet connection can appreciate the problem he’s describing, hackers and makers are in a unique position to actually do something about it. Following the principles Cory will detail in his talk, we can build services and networks that actually respect their users rather than treating them like the enemy.

It Won’t Be Long Now

By the time this post hits the front page of Hackaday, there will be slightly more than a week to go before several hundred of our best friends descend on the city of Pasadena for Supercon. We recently unveiled the Vectorscope badge, dropped two posts listing off all of this year’s presenters, and offered up a list of fascinating workshops. The stage is now officially set for what we consider, as humbly as possible, to be the greatest gathering of hardware hackers, builders, engineers, and enthusiasts in the world. Check out the schedule and plan your Supercon ahead of time.

Tickets for the 2023 Hackaday Supercon are, perhaps unsurprisingly, completely sold out. But you can still add your name to the wait list on Eventbrite, which will put you in the running to grab any returned tickets should somebody have to back out at the last minute. Failing that, there’s always 2024.

Featured Image: Copyright Julia Galdo and Cody Cloud (JUCO), www.jucophoto.com/, CC BY-SA 2.0

Game Graphics: Racing The Beam

October 24, 2023 by Julian Scheffers 15 Comments

Have you ever wondered how the graphics in your favorite video games worked? This is the start of a series on game graphics, and what better place to start than how exactly the original Mario Bros. got those glorious pixely pixels onto the screen. Buckle in, because we’re “racing the beam” with systems like the NES, Commodore 64, and many other classics from the 1980s.

And to understand the 1980’s, it’s important to understand how the televisions of the time worked. Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) televisions work by precisely bombarding a phosphor layer with electrons, which excites the phosphor, which then releases visible light. The beam scans from left to right then top to bottom, giving each pixel a small fraction of a second of time. All of this effectively means that pixel data needs be sent at the same time as when the pixels are being lit up, which is why this type of graphics is often dubbed “racing the beam”.

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When Is Damascus Steel Not From Damascus?

October 23, 2023 by Jenny List 47 Comments

If you grow up around a working blacksmith’s forge, there are a few subjects related to metalwork on which you’ll occasionally have a heated discussion. Probably the best known is the topic of wrought iron, a subject I’ve covered here in the past, and which comes from the name of a particular material being confused with a catch-all term of all blacksmith-made items. I’ve come to realise over recent years that there may be another term in general use which is a little jarring to metalwork pedants, so-called Damascus steel. Why the Syrian capital should pop up in this way is a fascinating story of medieval metalworking, which can easily consume many days of research.

Damascus? Where’s That?

A section of a knife blade with various silver grey and black layered patterns in the metal. — The banded pattern of the laminate formed from pattern welded layers of differing steels in a modern Damascus steel knife. “DamaszenerKlinge” by Soerfm

The Damascus steel you’ll see in YouTube videos, TV shows, and elsewhere is a steel with complex bands and striations on its surface. It’s often used in knife blades, and it will usually have been chemically treated to enhance the appearance of the patterns. It’s a laminate material made by pattern welding layers of different steels together, and it will usually have been worked and folded many times to produce a huge number of very thin layers of those steels. Sometimes it’s not made from sheets or ingots of steel but from manufactured steel products such as chains, in an attempt to produce a result with more unusual patterns. Continue reading “When Is Damascus Steel Not From Damascus?” →

NFTs And Tulipmania: A Little Bit Of History Repeating

October 20, 2023 by Al Williams 123 Comments

We were not surprised to read that a company that tracks NFTs declared that most NFTs are now worthless. But the NFT — non-fungible token — market was huge, so around 23 million people invested in NFTs that are now worth nothing. Worse still, the company notes that because of oddities in how NFTs are priced, the real number of worthless assets is probably even greater than they think.

It is easy to look back and think that it was obvious. After all, an NFT of the Mona Lisa isn’t really the Mona Lisa. Nor does owning it confer any real benefit other than “bragging rights” of owning an NFT of the Mona Lisa. But that’s like saying Luke should have known Darth Vader was his father — it’s only evident after the fact. History is replete with bad ideas at the time that paid out down the road. Of course, history is also full of bad ideas that were simply bad ideas. For every Apple or Google stock you didn’t buy at $4 a share, there are a hundred $4 stocks that you shouldn’t have bought.

The Virus

The NFT craze was sort of a viral event. We usually think of these as part of the Internet culture, but that’s not really true. There is actually very little new on the Internet. The Internet just lets things reach further and faster than before.

Don’t believe me? Kilroy was a viral meme in the 1940s. Fads such as hula hoops, phone booth stuffing, and flagpole sitting were the ice bucket challenges of their day. But, of course, these things weren’t economic. Just fun fads. But economic fads that turn out to be a bad idea are nothing new, either.

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You’ve Got Mail: Grilled, Scrambled, And Other Delicious Stamps

October 19, 2023 by Kristina Panos 8 Comments

Well, we’re just zipping right through this series, no? So far we’ve looked at various postal machines and how they work to flip mail around, cancel the postage, and sort it, all in a matter of seconds. We explored the first automated post office and found out why it was a failure, and we learned why it all depends on ZIP code. Now, it’s finally time for some really fun stuff: the stamp trivia.

Now I’m no philatelist by any standard, though I do have a few hundred stamps strewn about the house. The danger in philately is that you learn all sorts of cool things about stamps and their history, and you just want to buy more and more of them. So let’s go!

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2023 Hackaday Supercon Badge: Welcome To The Vectorscope

October 18, 2023 by Elliot Williams 48 Comments

This year, the Supercon badge goes analog! (Or at least fakes it pretty convincingly.) Taking inspiration from the phosphor scopes of yesteryear, the 2023 Vectorscope badge is part analog audio playground, part art project, and all about prototyping. Who doesn’t like the warm glow and lovely green fade of an old Tektronix tube scope? That’s what we’re after.

Conceptually, the badge is two separate devices in one. Most obvious is the vectorscope, which takes in voltages in the 0 V – 3 V range and plots them out in X-Y mode in glorious fake-phosphor effect on the lovely round IPS screen. We’ve also tied an audio amplifier to the Y input that plays whatever waveform you’re watching.

But you don’t have to bring your own waveforms with you – the other half of the badge is an arbitrary programmable waveform generator that drives two channels. Off the bat, it’s configurable with the front panel controls, so you’re obviously invited to make Lissajous figures and store them in the program memories.

Combining the two halves lets you draw in voltages and time, but not until you connect them together, naturally. You see, this isn’t an analog simulation – it’s the programmable equivalent of the real deal, courtesy of the AK4619 ADC/DAC. Voltages go out on one set of pins and come back in on the other.

And you get to play around with these voltages in through-hole space too, because we’ve included a very generous prototyping board for your analog explorations. Does this instantly suggest a curve tracer to you? Be our guest! Other forms of analog video-mangling? We want to see what you come up with. Make an audio filter and watch it work on the screen in front of your very eyes.

Of course we’re not leaving you code monkeys out in the cold. MicroPython puts the “programming” in the programmable waveform generator. If you’re not content with the four stock waveforms, you’re invited to write your own. And this is where it gets artsy.

You can upload your own repetitive waveforms to the onboard direct digital synth routine, but why stop there? We’ve left most of the processing power of the underlying RP2040 untouched, for you to use. And four buttons on the front panel let you store and play back your code, so you have space to stash your demos, and a sweet joystick with a custom keycap gives you control.

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