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{ Category Archives } Computers

All of the stuff that makes computers work, how they work, and what we know that makes it all possible.

Wrist Actigraphy and Latest Crazes: Fitness Trackers

It started with a report based on How Much Sleep Do Fitbit Users Really Get? A New Study Finds Out by Danielle Kosecki. That lead to research about Wrist actigraphy. And then Amazon had a sale on the Letscom Fitness Tracker. Actigraphy has been around since the 50’s. The cell phone sensor revolution has put it […]

latency

Why Modern Computers Struggle to Match the Input Latency of an Apple IIe By Joel Hruska — “The system with the lowest input latency — the amount of time between when you hit a key and that keystroke appears on the computer — is the Apple IIe, at 30ms.” There is a table of measurements that […]

ESP32 and where we are now

Back a year ago, Hackaday found a Basic Interpreter Hidden In Esp32 Silicon (by Elliot Williams).  Documentation now exists at Read the Docs. Now, for comparison, consider the TRS 80 Model I “introduced by Radio Shack on August 3, 1977….The initial price was $599.95, which included a typewriter-style (not membrane) keyboard, monitor, and cassette recorder. … It ran […]

Torvalds priorities say a lot about success

At the Register: Linus Torvalds on security: ‘Do no harm, don’t break users‘ By Simon Sharwood — “Fixing for the sake of security alone means ‘all your work was just masturbation’“ Torvalds was angry that developers wanted to kill dangerous processes in Linux, a measure that would have removed potential problems but done so in ways […]

Self defense and Parakeets: Culture and history speaking

Two stories uncovered today provide a lot of insight into who we are and how we got that way. One is about The American Indian foundation of American gun culture by David Kopel. This is on Wapo in the Volokh Conspiracy, a lawyer’s blog so it’s got reader harassment and bias to watch out for. The essay […]

Headless via VNC

Headless machines need a head somewhere. A barebones text terminal run via a serial port is the base option. A remote graphics desktop gets into the virtual machine and full access territory. Faster networks and more capable computers and graphics have made the full desktop option feasible enough that Raspbian takes very little to set […]

Guide to the Galaxy for Mobile App Developers

freetechbooks.com has posted Don’t Panic: Mobile Developer’s Guide to The Galaxy, 17th Edition.   More than 20 writers from the mobile community share their know-how in dealing with topics such as accessibility in mobile apps, UX design, mobile analytics, prototyping, cross-platform development, native development, mobile web and app marketing. It is an easy to read rundown about […]

The Amazing $1 microcontroller – a treasure chest for building modern electronic devices

The Amazing $1 microcontroller by Jay Carlson — “A new series that explores 21 different microcontrollers — all less than $1 — to help familiarize you with all the major ecosystems out there.” It is a good overview of what is out there for the electronics guiding much modern equipment as well as a guide […]

ten years on and a lot of small (and some big) steps

How I would explain a decade of web development to a time traveler from 2007 by Ivan Zarea  Today we have many more of them than we did 10 years ago, and that comes with new challenges. We wear computers on our wrists and faces, keep them in our pockets, and have them in our fridges and […]

Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) adjustments and workarounds for the Beta

October is around the corner so a new Ubuntu version is getting ready. See the Release Notes. The control buttons for each window are moved back to the right top after seven years and Unity has been replaced by Gnome 3.26 so you might be a bit discombobulated by user interface changes. The standard issue image […]