Hardware
Your Xiaomi Isn't Really Xiaomi: Who Actually Makes Chinese Phones
Many budget Chinese phones aren't designed or manufactured by the brands on their labels. Three invisible ODM giants control nearly half of global smartphone production.
Hardware
Hardware
Why Don't We Have L5 CPU Caches?
A deep dive into CPU cache hierarchy: why we can't just build one big cache, and why physics prevents L5 from existing.
Hardware
Cray: Reviving a Legend
Enthusiasts have breathed new life into a mythical Cray supercomputer through a painstaking simulation project — now anyone can run authentic UNICOS on their Linux machine. Here is how to set it up from scratch.
Hardware
Building a Medical Exoskeleton
A former aerospace engineer, now working remotely from a wheelchair due to multiple sclerosis, spent two years designing and building an open-source medical exoskeleton for under 60,000 rubles — and is releasing everything publicly so others can build it for people who need it.
Hardware
Why Your SSD Quietly Loses Data While Sitting on a Shelf
SSDs rely on trapped electrons to store data, but quantum tunneling causes gradual charge leakage when drives are unpowered. This article explains the physics of NAND flash retention, the differences between SLC/MLC/TLC/QLC, temperature effects, and practical advice for long-term storage.
Hardware
ATCU-ESP32: How I Built a Custom Transmission Control Unit Smarter Than the Factory One
A hands-on project building a custom ESP32-based automatic transmission control unit with WiFi configuration, solving noise, protection, and usability problems that plague existing DIY solutions.
Hardware
The Secret of the Motorola E398: The Best Music Phone of the 2000s
A deep technical dive into the Motorola E398 — the legendary $150 music phone from 2004 — covering its ARM7-based hardware, the Neptune platform architecture, and how a passionate modding community reverse-engineered its bootloader to create custom firmware with features far beyond the original.
Hardware
How a Bug in Chinese Software Helped Revive an Ancient Ultrasound Machine: Flashing an SSD for a Good Cause
A medical technician's adventure in flashing SSD firmware to clone serial numbers, tricking a Toshiba Aplio 500 ultrasound machine into accepting replacement drives — and discovering that a quirky bug in Chinese flashing software was the key to success.
Hardware
Why One Arduino Did More for Robotics Than All the Universities in the World
A simple blue board from Italy demolished the barriers of academic elitism and created an entire army of engineers. Here's how Arduino democratized robotics.
Hardware
Memory of Depth: Submerging Lithium Batteries to 1,500 Meters
An experimental study of LiFePO4 18650 batteries subjected to hydrostatic pressures up to 14 MPa (equivalent to 1,400 meters depth), revealing that the cells continue to function and even show a statistically significant increase in discharge energy under pressure, with a minor but measurable hysteresis effect.
Hardware
Disposable Vapes: Thousands of Useful Components Heading to the Trash
A teardown of a disposable vape reveals a surprisingly powerful device inside — a dual-core DSP microcontroller, Bluetooth 5.3, a color IPS touchscreen, and a lithium battery — all destined for the landfill after just three months of use.
Hardware
RAM: A Comprehensive Guide. Part 1 — The Physical Design of RAM, from Silicon Atoms to Real Chips
A deep-dive into how RAM actually works, starting from the behaviour of individual silicon atoms and ending with the complete architecture of a physical memory module. The article builds every concept from first principles — semiconductors, transistors, capacitors, memory cells — before showing how they are assembled into the chips and DIMMs on your motherboard.