Arkiv

Ask HN: How to get started with robotics as a hobbyist?

Lots of ways to start. None of them are wrong. Just let your passions lead you to something you’d like to explore. Maybe start with a hackable 3D printing kit that will let you build parts for more robots. Hacking the 3D printer can directly teach you a lot about robotics. https://simplefoc.com/ Is my type […]

Exploring a Modern SMTPE 2110 Broadcast Truck

In October, my Dad and I got to go behind the scenes at two St. Louis Blues (NHL hockey) games, and observe the massive team effort involved in putting together a modern digital sports broadcast. I wanted to explore the timing and digital side of a modern SMPTE 2110 mobile unit, and my Dad has […]

Implementing Auto Tiling with Just 5 Tiles

Auto tiling is a powerful technique in 2D gamedev that allows you to build levels much easier by setting a tile as populated or not, and having the editor programmatically place the corresponding tile. Typically this involves checking the 8 neighbours and choosing from 16 to ~47-56 Tiles. In theory there are 256 permutations, but […]

Font Rendering from First Principles

February 1, 2026 Font rendering is a technology that often gets taken for granted — it’s hard to imagine interacting with computers without it. But how hard could it really be? Turns out, way harder than you might think: Text can be rendered at arbitrary sizes. How is font data encoded such that glyphs remain […]

An open replacement for the IBM 3174 Establishment Controller

IBM 3270 terminal controller – a replacement for the IBM 3174. This project aims to create an open replacement for the IBM 3174 Establishment Controller, specifically for users looking to connect an IBM 3270 type terminal to the Hercules emulator. For background on this project, IBM 3270 type terminals and controllers, see Building an IBM […]

Take a trip to Japan’s Dododo Land, the most irritating place on Earth

Have fun and feel annoyed at the same time! It seems like these are especially stressful times, no matter where you are or what your background is. Whether it’s from unreasonable behavior, things not turning out as you expect, or being the victim of someone’s cruel actions, we all are inflicted with feelings ranging from […]

GLM-OCR: Accurate × Fast × Comprehensive

👋 Join our WeChat and Discord community 📍 Use GLM-OCR’s API Model Introduction GLM-OCR is a multimodal OCR model for complex document understanding, built on the GLM-V encoder–decoder architecture. It introduces Multi-Token Prediction (MTP) loss and stable full-task reinforcement learning to improve training efficiency, recognition accuracy, and generalization. The model integrates the CogViT visual encoder […]

We interfaced single-threaded C++ with multi-threaded Rust

← Blog Senior Engineer, Antithesis This blog post is adapted from a talk Shuxian Wang and I gave at the Rust UnConf, organized by Rust NYC. The UnConf was a truly awesome group of Rust enthusiasts who met for a couple hours of deep technical conversations (and also gelato). When you give us your software to […]

Hacking the last Z80 computer – FOSDEM 2026 [video]

The Z80 CPU has been extremely popular in home computers of the eighties, but as 16-bit and 32-bit processors became more popular, the only new computers built using the Z80 were continuations of some legacy lines (like the Amstrad PCW). And yet, in 1999 a company named Cidco unveiled a completely new computer line named […]

Rome is studded with cannon balls (2022)

Did you know that Rome is studded with cannon balls? Not many know that the city is full of sites where you can still see cannon balls. Rome has been the center of many battles and there are many sites around the city, that remind us of this. If you want to take a TOUR […]