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LineShine Is Fastest Supercomputer at Over 2 Exaflops

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There is a phenomenon where as you get older, your sense of scale becomes somewhat fixed in the earlier era that shaped you– things like expecting the Dollar Store to carry items for 1$, or to get a burger and fries for less than twenty bucks– or, in this case, thinking of supercomputers as being petaflop-scale machines. That’s not wrong, per se– most of the world’s fastest machines benchmarks are best measured in petaflops– but when you’re clocking at 2198 of the things, it becomes easier just to say that the LineShine computer can do 2.188 exaflops. At double precision. With CPUs only. Yes, we are impressed. Even more impressive is that this machine just debuted in China, which means it was built without the benefit of the latest-and-greatest Western chips, thanks to US sanctions. It’s using a made-in-China LX2 CPU with 304 ARMv9 cores onboard. Well, it’s actually using around 46 thousand of them, but who’s counting? Each ...

All The Different Lasers, And How Well They Mark 3D Prints

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[Stefan] of CNC Kitchen has an informative video describing his experiences with trying to cleanly laser-mark 3D printed plastics using different methods, and it also happens to be a fantastic tour of all the different laser options available to hobbyists and workshops these days. Laser marking is a fast and effective way to put things like product names, serial numbers, and other information on plastics. [Stefan] wondered whether laser options would be capable of creating clean and professional marks on 3D-printed items, and approached things with his usual attention to detail. Great results can be had, but using the right tool and dialing in the right settings is critical to results. How does a laser mark plastic? When the laser hits the material, its energy is dumped into it and can cause pigment bleaching, microfoaming, charring, melting, or ablation (vaporizing) of the surface. The goal is to have a combination of laser and material that delivers a crisp, high-contrast resul...

Laser Scanning A Cave With Homebrew Gear

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How do you measure the inside of a cave? You could do a bunch of hard work with classic surveying gear… or you could just use a laser scanner. [9nl] did the latter, with a scanning rig of his own creation. The build is based around an Ouster VLP-16 mid-range lidar sensor. It shoots out pulses of light and measures how long it takes them to bounce back in order to determine the range of objects in the vicinity, and thus can be used to great effect for 3D scanning tasks. For [9nl], though, the sensor had a serious limitation. Since it only had a 40-degree field of view, it wasn’t ideal for the desired application of scanning a cave. However, by building a custom rig that could rotate the sensor , [9nl] ended up with a rig that could 3D scan an area through a full 360 degrees. There’s nothing wildly complex involved, just some good old mechanical engineering—putting the sensor on a shaft and spinning it with a belt drive. Then it’s just a matter of processing the d...

FLOSS Weekly Episode 872: I’m Not Satoshi

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This week Jonathan chats with Tristan Sherliker about the Craig Wright case, Open Source and the law, and Tristan’s own Open Source project, BunTool. How did Open Source help win the day at the Bitcoin trial? And why is right now such an interesting time to be in the legal field? Watch to find out! https://www.twobirds.com/en/people/t/tristan-sherliker https://buntool.co.uk/ https://www.twobirds.com/en/insights/2024/global/a-different-way-to-defraud-the-lessons-from-the-trial-of-bitcoins-origins Evidence Download Full Ruling: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/COPA-v-Wright-Judgment.pdf Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show right on our YouTube Channel ? Have someone you’d like us to interview? Let us know, or have the guest contact us! Take a look at the schedule here . Direct Download in DRM-free MP3. If you’d rather read along, here’s the transcript for this week’s episode . Places to follow the...

EVs Always Beat Combustion Emissions Performance

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A pervasive story is that electric vehicles (EVs or BEVs) are actually dirtier than combustion vehicles if charged by a fossil fuel-based electricity grid. A new study reaffirms others that show, at least in the US, EVs have lower lifetime emissions than an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle, regardless of the grid mix . Comparing data on the mix of generation types by ZIP code using data from OpenGrid and eGRID , the researchers were able to create maps and comparisons of the efficiency of ICE, hybrid, plug-in hybrid (PHEV), and electric vehicles. If you want to compare some specific examples, there’s an interactive chart using the research data at carboncounter.com . PHEVs can achieve 80-90% of the emissions reductions of a full EV in urban environments, but become less beneficial as distances increase or if drivers choose not to charge the battery. The researchers have extensive breakdowns of the comparisons including total cost to operate the vehicle compared with em...

A Commodore Boombox: The 1350 as You’ve Never Heard it Before

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No, this isn’t another product from [PeriFractic]’s revived company, though we hope he’s taking notes. This is, in fact, a hack on the beloved 1530 Datasette, using the tape mechanism and case to create a portable audio device for your precious remaining mix tapes. Well, [Jan Derogee]’s precious mix tapes, at any rate; we aren’t the government, we don’t know if you have any tapes, mixed or otherwise. [Jan] started, obviously enough, with a Datasette, but they key was apparently to use a Made-in-Japan model–  the Made-in-Taiwan units are a later development and victims of the old Commodore’s infamous obsession with cost-cutting. The main difference is that the Japanese-built Datasettes have two sets of screws: one to hold the tape mechanism in place, and the other to hold two halves of the case together. The Taiwanese units make one set do double duty. Doubtless more was saved through streamlining assembly than the cost of four screws, bu...

Reviving MSN Messenger’s i-Buddy USB Accessory

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Some of our esteemed readers were not yet out of diapers back in 2013 when Microsoft decided to put MSN Messenger out to pasture, but the memories that this instant messenger’s (IM) interface and notification sounds have left are hard to erase. This also includes some of the weirdest accessories that this IM spawned, such as the USB-connected i-Buddy. Recently [Rayly Retro] got his mittens on a new-in-box one to revive alongside an era-appropriate Windows 7 PC. What the i-Buddy gets you is the ability to light up the head in seven different colors, twist the torso and flap the butterfly wings, all of which can correspond to certain events in the MSN IM or for more general notifications, as set by software running on the connected PC. Interestingly, this i-Buddy is recognized by Windows as a USB HID, so no special driver is needed. A range of ways to program it exist too, including a .NET-based library from back when it was still being sold for around $20. Although the MSN Mess...