El cumplimiento de la ecuación de Moore ha sido posible hasta la fecha gracias a la reducción constante del tamaño y el precio de los chips, unido al aumento de su potencia de cálculo. Sin embargo, los límites de la física están comenzando a imponerse sobre los pronósticos de Moore. » David Pérez | elconfidencial.com
Computers have come a long way since the early days, when two of the machines could take over a four-story building and weigh up to 250 tons. As early as the 1930s, inventors, engineers and physicists were figuring out ways to use machines to perform complex calculations and processes, employing pioneering methods to achieve their goals. Although some of those techniques and devices are now blissfully obsolete, many early innovators hit upon technologies that are still in use today. These 10 colossal old computers are a testament to the alluring potential of computing and the ingenuity of early computer scientists – as well as a visual demonstration of just how far we’ve come. ...
Everything described here is based on a project I completed in early 2011, which was originally started several years earlier. While attending CanSecWest in 2009, Anibal Sacco and Alfredo Ortega from Core Security did a presentation on ’Persistent BIOS Infection’ where they demonstrated how it was possible to patch the BIOS to do some nasty/awesome things. Their Phrack write-up is here: http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=66&id=7. At the time this seemed really cool, but I never ended up getting the chance to try it out. A year later I needed to do a term project for school, so I decided to revisit BIOS hacking, and implement some of it myself. ...
I dumped the ROM of a Tamagotchi using the code execution ability I posted previously. I wrote 6502 code that dumped each byte of the memory space of the Tamagotchi, and output it over port A (which is usually the Tamagotchi button input) via SPI. » Natalie Silvanovich | kwartzlab.ca
When you buy a Raspberry Pi, the $35 computer doesn’t come with an operating system. Loading your operating system of choice onto an SD card and then booting the Pi turns out to be pretty easy. But where do Pi-compatible operating systems come from? With the Raspberry Pi having just turned one year old, we decided to find out how Raspbian”the officially recommended Pi operating system”came into being. The project required 60-hour work weeks, a home-built cluster of ARM computers, and the rebuilding of 19,000 Linux software packages. And it was all accomplished by two volunteers. ...
Un equipo de investigadores de la Universidad de Stanford ha desarrollado el primer transistor biológico a partir de materiales genéticos: ADN y ARN. Bajo el nombre de ”transcriptor”, los científicos hablan de este transistor biológico como el componente final necesario para la construcción de computadoras biológicas que funcionen dentro de las células vivas. » Miguel Jorge | alt1040.com
On the surface, a microprocessor’s registers seem like simple storage, but not in the 8085 microprocessor. Reverse-engineering the 8085 reveals many interesting tricks that make the registers fast and compact. The picture below shows that the registers and associated control circuitry occupy a large fraction of the chip, so efficiency is important. Each bit is implemented with a surprisingly compact circuit. The instruction set is designed to make register accesses efficient. An indirection trick allows quick register exchanges. Many register operations use the unexpected but efficient data path of going through the ALU. ...
No Starch Press and I have decided to release this free ebook version of Hacking the Xbox in honor of Aaron Swartz. As you read this book, I hope that you’ll be reminded of how important freedom is to the hacking community and that you’ll be inclined to support the causes that Aaron believed in. I agreed to release this book for free in part because Aaron’s treatment by MIT is not unfamiliar to me. In this book, you will find the story of when I was an MIT graduate student, extracting security keys from the original Microsoft Xbox. You’ll also read about the crushing disappointment of receiving a letter from MIT legal repudiating any association with my work, effectively leaving me on my own to face Microsoft. ...
Un equipo de investigadores del Instituto de Tecnología de Suecia ha conseguido que unos cuadricópteros sean capaces de lanzar péndulos invertidos y, lo que es más sorprendente, atraparlos al vuelo y equilibrarlos. Para lograrlo, tienen que ser conscientes del ángulo de lanzamiento y de ’aterrizaje’ del péndulo, entre otros factores, y deben tener la capacidad de aprender de sus errores. » Guillermo del Palacio | alt1040.com
Estudiantes de ingeniería de la Universidad del Sur de Florida han trabajado durante 2 años en un proyecto que les ha llevado a construir una bobina de Tesla de 3 metros de altura capaz de producir corriente alterna. Su creacíon tiene además la particularidad de que se puede configurar para que reproduzca versiones de melodías famosas mediante el tono de los grandes arcos eléctricos que genera. Para demostrarlo, han hecho que imite el tema principal de Super Mario Bros. Este es el resultado que han obtenido: ...