Twist Promises Easier Quantum Programming

February 5, 2022 by Al Williams 17 Comments

We keep trying to learn more about quantum computers. But the truth is, the way we program quantum computers — or their simulators — today will probably not have much in common with how we program them in the future. Think about it. Programming your PC is nothing like programming the ENIAC. So we expect we’ll see more and more abstractions over the “bare metal” quantum computer. The latest of these is Twist, from MIT.

According to the paper (and the video, below), Twist expresses entangled data and processes in a way that traditional programmers can understand. The key concept is known as “purity” of expressions which helps the compiler determine if data is actually entangled with another piece of data or if any potential entanglement is extraneous. A pure expression only depends on qubits it owns, while a mixed expression may use qubits owned by other expressions.

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Hackaday Invades The FLOSS Weekly Podcast

February 2, 2022 by Tom Nardi No comments

Regular Hackaday readers will know that we’re big supporters of free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) around these parts. There’s an excellent chance you are too, as so many of the incredible projects you send our way make it a habit to share their innermost details, from firmware source code to the OpenSCAD files that generate its 3D printed components. So when our recently minted Editor in Chief [Elliot Williams] was invited to join This Week in Tech’s FLOSS Weekly podcast, he jumped at the chance to represent our little corner of the Internet to the wider world of open source aficionados. (Ed: The final version is now live! How did we get episode 666?!)

Hosted by [Doc Searls], FLOSS Weekly is known for its in-depth interviews with “the most interesting and important people in the Open Source and Free Software community”, so we hope the incursion by hacker rabble such as ourselves doesn’t taint their brand too much.

It’s live streamed every Wednesday at 12:30 PM Eastern / 9:30 AM Pacific / 17:30 UTC, which means that by the time this post hits the main page of the site, you’ve still got time to tune in. For those of you with gainful employment who can’t slack off for an hour or so in the middle of the workweek, the recorded version will be available afterwards for your time-shifted viewing and or listening pleasure.

[Elliot] will be joined by Hackaday writer and regular co-host of FLOSS Weekly [Jonathan Bennett], making this something of a Jolly Wrencher double-feature. [Jonathan] has been providing readers with a regular peek into the other type of hacking with his fantastic This Week in Security column, and is himself a devout FOSS supporter with a particular passion for GNU/Linux. We’re excited to listen in as the trio riffs on open source at the crossroads of hardware and software, not just because it promises to be an entertaining bit of programming, but because it’s a great opportunity to introduce the world of Hackaday to the wider open source audience.

A graph visualising approximation errors - the specific principle pictured is described well by the linked article

Time And Accuracy In Las ATMegas

January 31, 2022 by Arya Voronova 4 Comments

Do you ever have to ensure that an exact amount of time passes between two tasks in your microcontroller code? Do you know what’s the difference between precision and accuracy? Today, [Jim Mack] tells us about pushing timers and interrupts to their limits when it comes to managing time, while keeping it applicable to an ever-popular ATMega328P target! Every now and then, someone decides to push the frontiers of what’s possible on a given platform, and today’s rules is coding within constraints of an Arduino environment. However, you should check [Jim]’s post out even if you use Arduino as a swearword – purely for all of the theoretical insights laid out, accompanied by hardware-accurate examples!

This will be useful to any hacker looking to implement, say, motor encoder readings, signal frequency calculations, or build a gadget processing or modifying audio in real time. To give you a sample of this article, [Jim] starts by introducing us to distinctions between precision and accuracy, and then presents us with a seemingly simple task – creating exactly 2400 interrupts a second. As much as it might look straightforward, problems quickly arise when clock crystal frequency doesn’t cleanly divide by the sampling frequency that you have to pick for your application! This is just a taste of all the examples of hidden complexity presented, and they’re accompanied with solutions you can use when you eventually encounter one of these examples in your hacker pursuits. In the end, [Jim] concludes with links to other sources you can study if you ever need to dig deeper into this topic.

Keeping our projects true to the passage of time can be an issue, and we’ve been at it for ages – calibrating your RC oscillator is a rite of passage for any ATTiny project. If you ever decide to have an interrupt peripheral help you with timing issues, we’ve gone in-depth on that topic in the past, with a three-part series describing the benefits, the drawbacks and the edgecases of interrupts. Going for a more modern target? Our piece on using interrupts with STM32 is a great path for trying out tools of the modern age.

Apollo Guidance Computer Gets The Rust Treatment

January 29, 2022 by Tom Nardi 8 Comments

Seems like all the cool kids are rewriting legacy C programs in Rust these days, so we suppose it was only a matter of time before somebody decided to combine the memory-safe language with some of the most historically significant software ever written by way of a new Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) emulator. Written by [Felipe], the Apache/MIT licensed emulator can run either ROM files made from the computer’s original rope core memory, or your own code written in AGC4 assembly language.

It’s worth noting that the emulator, called ragc, needs a bit of help before it can deliver that authentic Moon landing experience. Specifically, the code only emulates the AGC itself and stops short of recreating the iconic display and keyboard (DSKY) module. To interact with the programs running on the virtual AGC you’ll need to also install yaDSKY2, an open source project that graphically recreates the panel Apollo astronauts actually used to enter commands and get data from the computer.

Of course, the next step would be to hack in support for talking to one of the physical recreations of the DSKY that have graced these pages over the years. Given the limitations of the AGC, we’d stop short of calling such an arrangement useful, but it would certainly make for a great conversation starter at the hackerspace.

Thanks for the tip, [CJ].

Code Wrong: Expand Your Mind

January 29, 2022 by Elliot Williams 24 Comments

The really nice thing about doing something the “wrong” way is that there’s just so much variety! If you’re doing something the right way, the fastest way, or the optimal way, well, there’s just one way. But if you’re going to do it wrong, you’ve got a lot more design room.

Case in point: esoteric programming languages. The variety is stunning. There are languages intended to be unreadable, or to sound like Shakespearean sonnets, or cooking recipes, or hair-rock ballads. Some of the earliest esoteric languages were just jokes: compilations of all of the hassles of “real” programming languages of the time, but yet made to function. Some represent instructions as a grid of colored pixels. Some represent the code in a fashion that’s tantamount to encryption, and the only way to program them is by brute forcing the code space. Others, including the notorious Brainf*ck are actually not half as bad as their rap — it’s a very direct implementation of a Turing machine.

So you have a set of languages that are designed to be maximally unlike each other, or traditional programming languages, and yet still be able to do the work of instructing a computer to do what you want. And if you squint your eyes just right, and look at as many of them all together as you can, what emerges out of this blobby intersection of oddball languages is the essence of computing. Each language tries to be as wrong as possible, so what they have in common can only be the unavoidable core of coding.

While it might be interesting to compare an contrast Java and C++, or Python, nearly every serious programming language has so much in common that it’s just not as instructive. They are all doing it mostly right, and that means that they’re mostly about the human factors. Yawn. To really figure out what’s fundamental to computing, you have to get it wrong.

An Up-To-Date Development Environment For The Nokia N-Gage

January 27, 2022 by Jenny List 18 Comments

One of the brave but unsuccessful plays from Nokia during their glory years was the N-Gage, an attempt to merge a Symbian smartphone and a handheld game console. It may not have managed to dethrone the Game Boy Advance but it still has a band of enthusiasts, and among them is [Michael Fitzmayer] who has produced a CMake-based toolchain for the original Symbian SDK. This is intended to ease development on the devices by making them more accessible to the tools of the 2020s, and may serve to bring a new generation of applications to those old Nokias still lying forgotten in dusty drawers.

In much of the public imagination, the invention of the smartphone came with the release of the first Apple iPhone in 2007. Hackaday readers will of course trace the smartphone back much further than that to an original IBM prototype, and will remind any doubters that the Nokias which the iPhone vanquished were very successful smartphones without any of Cupertino’s magic in sight. Nokia’s tragedy was that they appeared not to understand what they had in Symbian, and released a bewildering array of devices intended to satisfy every possible market without recognizing that the market they needed to serve was their customers being easily able to run the apps of their choice on the things.

Symbian itself has long ago become a piece of abandonware, but during its chequered history there was a period in which an open-source version was released. It would be nice to think that projects such as this one might revive interest in this capable yet forgotten operating system, as with the passage of a decade the cost of hardware which might run it has fallen to the point of affordability. Does anyone want to relive the 2000s?

Header image: Evan-Amos, Public domain.

Web-Centric Gabuino Has Compiler, Will Travel

January 23, 2022 by Tom Nardi 16 Comments

Arguably the biggest advantage of the Arduino platform is its ease of use, especially when compared to what microcontroller development looked like before the introduction of the open source board and its associated software development environment. All you need to do is download the IDE for your platform, plug in your Arduino, and you can have code running on the hardware with just a few clicks.

But can it get even easier? [Gabriel Valky] certainly thinks so, which is why he’s developed the cloud-based Gabuino platform. As of right now it only supports the DS213 pocket oscilloscope and LA104 logic analyzer, but he says the code is lightweight enough that it should work with any STM32 board that has the appropriate bootloader. Using Gabuino requires no software to be installed on the computer, just plug in the board, and you’re already half way there.

Gabuino processing data from digital calipers.

The trick is that the code editor and compiler have been moved into the cloud, and are accessed through the host computer’s web browser. The web interface also integrates an impressive “Console”, which [Gabriel] likens to the Serial Monitor and Plotter functions of the Arduino IDE, but is actually far more capable. The Gabuino Console is not only bi-directional, but through the use of libraries such as Three.js and WebGL, it’s able to render video output from code running on the microcontroller.

[Gabriel] takes us through some of the capabilities of Gabuino in the video below, and we have to say, it looks pretty impressive. We especially liked the built-in debugging capabilities that let you set breakpoints and examine variables. This plug-and-play approach certainly holds promise for students or beginners, though we think the hardware compatibility will need some work before the project really takes off.

Incidentally, this isn’t the first time [Gabriel] has written some code for the LA104. Last year we covered his very impressive custom firmware for the ~$100 USD gadget, which should sweeten the deal considerably if you end up getting one to experiment with Gabuino on.

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