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FLOSS Weekly Episode 875: JavaScript as a Systems Language

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This week Jonathan chats with Nariman Jelveh about Puter! It’s the project that takes the idea of the Browser-as-the-OS seriously. Why did a simulated desktop on the web take off, what the story of making it Open Source, and what’s coming next? Watch to find out! https://github.com/jelveh https://github.com/HeyPuter/puter https://puter.com/ 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 FLOSS Weekly Podcast: Spotify RSS Theme music: “Newer Wave” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License from Blog – Hackaday https://ift.tt/Kycb8rW

Benchmarking Repairability Scores with an Asus Tablet

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A few years ago, France introduced a mandatory repairability score for consumer goods like laptops and tablets. It involves five criteria that range from documentation and availability of spare parts to ease of disassembly, with the manufacturer using a government-provided checklist to determine their score. Recently Asus determined that their Asus ROG Flow Z13 – model GZ302EA – scored a 10 out of 10 using this system. This led [iFixit] to run the same tablet/laptop hybrid through their own rating system . You can find the filled-out spreadsheet for this device here , with this Asus-provided site showing a list of devices that all score a 10/10 or a measly 9.9/10 according to this system. As a self-reported score it is hard to take it as the objective truth, as there is every incentive for the manufacturer to tweak the truth to their own benefit and gloss over inconveniences. This is where it’s interesting to compare it with [iFixit]’s 7/10 score. On document...

Full Body VR Tracking Is Just Some Recycled Hardware Away

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Full body tracking in VR applications involves attaching sensors to one’s body, and [Jaki] has a DIY method to do it on the cheap: the Vive Tracker Lite project repurposes Vive controllers as lighthouse-based trackers, no hardware modifications required. A common method of doing body tracking is to strap on some Vive trackers . Those are extremely hacker-friendly pieces of hardware, but [Jaki] observed that older Vive VR controllers can be had for cheap, and already contain everything a tracker needs. Some new firmware and a custom mount is all it takes to turn them into perfectly usable body trackers. But what about a wireless receiver? [Jaki] has that covered as well with the $5 Viva Dongle , which uses a Pro Micro NRF52840 to act as a cheap DIY alternative to the official dongle hardware. We appreciate the effort put into making this project accessible to everyone, even novices. [Jaki]’s put effort into a Python program with a full GUI to make the flashing of firmware...

The Neo Geo Does Run DOOM After All

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Demonstration of the DoomGeo port of Doom to the Neo Geo. (Credit: Sabino, GitHub ) Perhaps the most ridiculous statement that anyone can make is that a computer system with clearly enough processing power ‘cannot run  DOOM ‘. This is why we accept the premise that a PDP-11 cannot run this game, but something on the order of a Neo Geo gaming console with its 68000 processor and for the time impressive GPU definitely ought to be able to. The stated problem here is a lack of RAM for a framebuffer, with the CPU only having 64 kB to play with. This limitation now has seen two different approaches to try and circumvent it, as covered by [Modern Vintage Gamer]. The first project here is Doom64kB , which as the name suggests tries to somehow work with this system RAM limitation. It uses the Doom8088 port for the original IBM PC and similar Intel 8088-based systems. This had to massively reduce the feature list, including the lack of texture mapping for floors and ceiling, no sa...

2026 Frikkin Lasers Challenge: Laser Bandsaw

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Can you call it a bandsaw if it has neither band nor saw? [WeldingRod1] does, with his entry in the laser contest — a manually-controlled laser cutter that he’s dubbed a Laser Bandsaw. Some might quibble that it’s not actually sawing with the beam, and others will inevitably find the safety implications rather frightening. We think it’s a fun project and that [WeldingRod1] can call it what he wants, as long as he follows his own advice and keeps his laser goggles firmly on his precious vision orbs. He has actually put some thought into what started as the physical manifestation of a joke in a podcast. The blue diode laser — a NUBM44 diode rated at 7 W — got a custom-made copper heatsink. It’s also got a hefty beam dump in the form of a stack of box knife blades. That’s very necessary to keep the beam from reflecting where it shouldn’t, especially when you consider this operates like a regular band saw: you turn it on, and it’...

Can’t Find That ISA Sound Card? No Worries!

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Many older hackers will have at some point gotten rid of an old piece of hardware that they later ended up regretting. All those ISA cards were next to useless back in 2006, but now their relative rarity plus the popularity of retrocomputing makes them sought-after. But if it’s a sound card you’re after then never fear! [Schlae] has got you covered, with the Beavis Ultrasound . It may have a name reminiscent of a ’90s cartoon series, but it’s a clone of the Gravis Ultrasound from back in the day. There is of course a snag, to build one you need an AMD AM78C201. Assuming you’ve found one in a surplus supplier though, the rest of the card is analogue, some glue logic, and a ROM for samples. There is also a GAL for driving the IDE CD-ROM interface, from the days when sound cards came with such things. New ISA cards are cropping up here from time to time, such as this very handy storage and network card . from Blog – Hackaday https://ift.tt/tleojp5

Get your ESP32 Sunny Side Up with this Solar Dev Board

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There are a lot of ESP32-based development boards out there– and why not? It’s a versatile chip that can be used in all sorts of situations, and people want boards to match them. Not finding one to his liking that was specifically built for solar powered IoT projects, [Narrow Studios] rolled his own . Well, designed it; like most these days, he’s outsourced the manufacturing to PCBWay, which is where you’ll need to go if you want one. Why might you want one? Well, if you have similar goals in mind to [Narrow Studios]. He’s put an ESP32-C6 Mini on the board, which means it’s got most of the IoT communications protocols you might be interested in — bluetooth, wifi, Matter, Thread, and Zigbee, too. Ten 10 IO pins have been broken out, plus I2C on a QWIIC connector, which gets you a whole ecosystem of sensors to easily plug into. The “solar” part is justified by the inclusion of a BQ25186 linear battery charging IC from Texas Instrumen...