You often learn the golden rule or some variation of it as early as kindergarten. There are several ways to phrase it, but you most often hear: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” While that’s catchy, it is really an aphorism that encourages us to consider the viewpoints of others. As people who design things, this can be tricky. Sometimes, what you want isn’t necessarily what most people want, and — conversely — you might not appreciate what most people want or need.
EDIT/1000
HP/1000 CC-BY-SA-3.0 by [Autopilot]I learned this lesson many years ago when I used to babysit a few HP/1000 minicomputers. Minicomputer sounds grand, but, honestly, a Raspberry Pi of any sort would put the old HP to shame. Like a lot of computers in those days, it had a text editor that was arcane even by the standards of vi or emacs. EDIT/1000 couldn’t be sure you weren’t using a printing terminal, and the commands reflect that.
For example, printing a few lines around the current line requires the command: “/-2,L,5” which isn’t that hard, I suppose. To delete all lines that contain a percent sign, “1$ D/%/A/” assuming you don’t want to be asked about each deletion.
Sure, sure. As a Hackaday reader, you don’t find this hard to puzzle out or remember. But back in the 1980s, a bunch of physicists and chemical engineers had little patience for stuff like that. However, the editor had a trick up its sleeve.
Now, our judges are hard at work ranking all 80 of the entries, and we have a fantastic range of entries all around, so I’m not calling any winners yet. But have you ever seen a project milled into a chip before? Nope, me neither.
What’s amazing is that this happens every time we run a contest. The second you put limitations on a project, there’s always someone out there who says “Hold my beer” and blows the limits out of the water. Indeed, the frequency with which we see someone pull off the impossible on Hackaday makes me wish I were buying more lottery tickets. You all really are stupendous.
We hope that feats like this are as inspirational to you as they are to us. No idea is too bonkers to not at least give it a try. Who knows, it might work! And when it does, please write it up and let us know. Keep the cycle of inspiration going!
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Programming languages are generally defined as a more human-friendly way to program computers than using raw machine code. Within the realm of these languages there is a wide range of how close the programmer is allowed to get to the bare metal, which ultimately can affect the performance and efficiency of the application. One metric that has become more important over the years is that of energy efficiency, as datacenters keep growing along with their power demand. If picking one programming language over another saves even 1% of a datacenter’s electricity consumption, this could prove to be highly beneficial, assuming it weighs up against all other factors one would consider.
There have been some attempts over the years to put a number on the energy efficiency of specific programming languages, with a paper by Rui Pereira et al. from 2021 (preprint PDF) as published in Science of Computer Programming covering the running a couple of small benchmarks, measuring system power consumption and drawing conclusions based on this. When Hackaday covered the 2017 paper at the time, it was with the expected claim that C is the most efficient programming language, while of course scripting languages like JavaScript, Python and Lua trailed far behind.
With C being effectively high-level assembly code this is probably no surprise, but languages such as C++ and Ada should see no severe performance penalty over C due to their design, which is the part where this particular study begins to fall apart. So what is the truth and can we even capture ‘efficiency’ in a simple ranking?
The Hackaday comments section is generally a lively place. At its best, it’s an endless wellspring of the combined engineering wisdom of millions of readers which serves to advance the state of the art in hardware hacking for all. At its worst — well, let’s just say that at least it’s not the YouTube comments section.
Unfortunately, there’s also a space between the best and the worst where things can be a bit confusing. A case in point is [Bryan Cockfield]’s recent article on a stealth antenna designed to skirt restrictions placed upon an amateur radio operator by the homeowners’ association (HOA) governing his neighborhood.
Hiding an antenna in plain sight.
Putting aside the general griping about the legal and moral hazards of living under an HOA, as well as the weirdly irrelevant side-quest into the relative combustibility of EVs and ICE cars, there appeared to be a persistent misapprehension about the reality of the US Federal Communications Commission’s “Over-the-Air Reception Devices” rules. Reader [Gamma Raymond] beseeched us to clarify the rules, lest misinformation lead any of our readers into the unforgiving clutches of the “golf cart people” who seem to run many HOAs.
According to the FCC’s own OTARD explainer, the rules of 47 CFR § 1.400 are intended only to prevent “governmental and nongovernmental restrictions on viewers’ ability to receive video programming signals” (emphasis added) from three distinct classes of service: direct satellite broadcasters, broadband radio service providers, and television broadcast services.
Specifically, OTARD prevents restrictions on the installation, maintenance, or use of antennas for these services within limits, such as dish antennas having to be less than a meter in diameter (except in Alaska, where dishes can be any size, because it’s Alaska) and restrictions on where antennas can be placed, for example common areas (such as condominium roofs) versus patios and balconies which are designated as for the exclusive use of a tenant or owner. But importantly, that’s it. There are no carve-outs, either explicit or implied, for any other kind of antennas — amateur radio, scanners, CB, WiFi, Meshtastic, whatever. If it’s not about getting TV into your house in some way, shape, or form, it’s not covered by OTARD.
It goes without saying that we are not lawyers, and this is not to be construed as legal advice. If you want to put a 40′ tower with a giant beam antenna on your condo balcony and take on your HOA by stretching the rules and claiming that slow-scan TV is a “video service,” you’re on your own. But a plain reading of OTARD makes it clear to us what is and is not allowed, and we’re sorry to say there’s no quarter for radio hobbyists in the rules. This just means you’re going to need to be clever about your antennas. Or, you know — move.
If you’re like us, you’ve studied the mathematician [Euler], but all you really remember is that you pronounce his name like “oiler” and not much else. [Welch Labs], on the other hand, not only remembers what he learned about logarithms and imaginary numbers but also has a beautiful video with helpful 3D graphics to explain the concepts.
This post, however, isn’t about that video. If you are interested in math, definitely watch it. It’s great. But it also got us thinking. What would it be like to be a high school math student today? In our day, we were lucky to have some simple 2D graph to explain concepts. Then it hit us: it probably is exactly the same.
Hackaday’s own [Arya Voronova] has been on a multi-year kick to make technology more personal by making it herself, and has just now started writing about it. Her main point rings especially true in this day and age, where a lot of the tech devices we could use to help us are instead used to spy on us or are designed to literally make us addicted to their services.
The project is at the same time impossible and simple. Of course, you are not going to be able to build a gadget that will bolster all of your (perceived or otherwise) personal weaknesses in one fell swoop. But what if you start looking at them one at a time? What if you start building up the good habits with the help of a fun DIY project?
That’s where [Arya]’s plan might just be brilliant. Because each project is supposed to be small, it forces you to focus on one specific problem, rather than getting demoralized at the impossibility of becoming “better” in some vague overall sense. Any psychologist would tell you that introspection and dividing up complex problems are the first steps. And what motivates a hacker to take the next steps? You got it, the fun of brainstorming, planning, and building a nice concrete DIY project. It’s like the ultimate motivation, Hackaday style.
And DIY solutions are a perfect match to personal problems. Nothing is so customizable as what you design and build yourself from the ground up. DIY means making exactly what you need, or at least what you think you need. Iteration, improvement, and the usual prototyping cycle applied to personal growth sounds like the ideal combo, because that’s how the tech works, and that’s also how humans work. Of course, even the coolest DIY gadget can’t instantly make you more mindful, for instance, but if it’s a tool that helps you get there, I don’t think you could ask for more.
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on the web version of the newsletter.
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The opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics is going on today. It’s an over-the-top presentation meant to draw people into sport. And for the next few weeks, we’ll be seeing people from all across the world competing in their chosen physical activities. There will be triumph and defeat, front-runners who nonetheless lag behind on that day, and underdogs who sneak ahead. In short, a lot of ado about sport, and I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. Sports are fun.
But where is the Hacker Olympics? Or even more broadly the Science Olympics or Engineering Olympics? Why don’t we celebrate the achievements of great thinkers, planners, and builders the same way that we celebrate fast runners or steady shooters? With all the pomp and showmanship and so on?
Here at Hackaday, we try our best! When we see a cool hack, we celebrate it. But we’re one little blog, with about a millionth the budget of the International Olympic Commission. However, we have you all as our biggest multiplier. It would be awesome if we could take over the entire city of Paris in celebration of science and engineering, but until then, if you see something smart, share it with us. And if you see something on Hackaday that you think was awesome, share it with your friends.
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on the web version of the newsletter.
Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning? You should sign up!
