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MegaDeKay

2,768 karma · joined May 11, 2014

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MegaDeKay··on Root shell on Samsung TV
People were up in arms (and rightly so) when the LG TVs were found out for their spying thanks to the Gamers Nexus investigation. At least LG TVs can be rooted and you can install apps like Glasshouse [0] to disable all the telemetry and add substantial new features that you can't do via the officially sanctioned Dev Mode. The vulnerability that enabled rooting was recently patched so hopefully another can be found.

Hopefully similar apps will come along for Samsung now that root on it can be achieved [1].

[0] https://github.com/rorygallagher2024/glasshouse

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50218633

MegaDeKay··on Musk's Fake Flying Car and 'CEO Said a Thing ' Journalism
It doesn't fly, but the 2000 lbs of downforce on the McMurtry Spéirling Electric Hypercar means it can drive upside down. Sort of. A bit. [0] Top Gear took the car for a spin around the track in a very entertaining video, where a jaded car reviewer is in disbelief about the cars performance pretty much the whole time [1].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6LYcgaQ46c

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPZxcfglU2Q

MegaDeKay··on Chicago O'Hare digs up 50-ton boulder under airfield, asks public for name ideas
Came here with that same name in mind. It would be a stone cold crime if that wasn't picked.
MegaDeKay··on Will Linux phones become a viable alternative to the Android/iOS duopoly?
> Because I see design as a proxy to build quality and ergonomics

It isn't a good proxy. Couple examples: Apple sold laptops with wonky keyboards for years and still sells a mouse that charges from the bottom when the battery dies.

MegaDeKay··on OpenSCAD the Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller
I hear what you're saying but good written stuff takes longer to produce than a video so there's that much less of it.

What I've found pretty handy for learning FreeCAD is finding an existing model and messing around with it to see how the original creator did stuff. That's where I started with my pinball cabinet. Once you get the basics down it is much easier to pick up on new features, many of which are enhancements to existing functionality.

MegaDeKay··on OpenSCAD the Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller
The FreeCAD wiki is very good. The release notes for 26.3 are at https://wiki.freecad.org/Release_notes_26.3 and those entries link to relevant sections of the wiki that go into more detail. For example, changes to the Measurement tool on that page link to https://wiki.freecad.org/Std_Measure where you'll see notes like "introduced in 26.3".

The wiki tells you what the tools do. For learning how to use those tools to model something, YouTube channels like Mango Jelly's are a better bet. The pace of FreeCAD development has definitely picked up since the 1.0 release

MegaDeKay··on OpenSCAD the Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller
I agree with your ordering of the various programs out there but FreeCAD 26.3 is now available as a release candidate with a wonderful collection of improvements. I'd think for many people, FreeCAD is now "good enough" for a lot of things. I'm building a virtual pinball cabinet and the whole thing is modeled in FreeCAD.

Mango Jelly's overview of some of the biggest new features: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdTyFHY-5r4

MegaDeKay··on VECOS – A windows-like operating system for the Vectrex for the UVMC2 [video]
The IPS 800 x 480 display won't do it justice, I'm afraid.
MegaDeKay··on VECOS – A windows-like operating system for the Vectrex for the UVMC2 [video]
Well...

You can take a regular CRT and rewind the deflection coils on the yoke to work as a vector CRT display. Arcade Jason has a good video on how to do this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci9qiGVMF7s

Then you need a vector generator if you don't have an OG vector game. This one on Github is pretty good and can be connected to either an oscilloscope or vector monitor.

https://github.com/english1234/vstcm

If you use the vstcm to drive your rewound crt, you still have a problem. The deflection coils are very low impedance (around an ohm I think), so you need an amplifier stable at very low impedances that can generate a voltage sufficient to get deflection across the full screen in x and y. I think Arcade Jason was working on one of these too but I don't think it is out yet. ElectronAsh was working on one as well but I don't think he finished it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tybGveLtlkA

https://github.com/ElectronAsh/Vector-XY-Deflection-Board

Or you could follow iz8dwf's amazing series on how he built a black and white vector monitor.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbKEoUHtoVucsrySlogDz...

MegaDeKay··on VECOS – A windows-like operating system for the Vectrex for the UVMC2 [video]
$199 when it was introduced in 1982. It was discounted a couple times after that after Milton Bradley bought them and got down to $100. That's a pretty decent price considering the Atari 2600 debuted in 1977 at $199.

It was basically a whole arcade machine, just a lot smaller :-)

MegaDeKay··on The top secret URSALA, RAQUEL, and FARRAH satellites (2025)
And passive SAR is a lot less accurate than active SAR.

There isn't much need for stealth in all this the same way there isn't for an optical spy satellite. The adversary knows it is there and what it is looking at. The adversary just doesn't know its exact capabilities, and there's not much they can do about it being up there that doesn't lead to a sudden military escalation of some kind.

MegaDeKay··on Recreating Voodoo Graphics and a Late-1990s Gaming PC on an FPGA
If you want something more powerful than MiSTer and have a bit of patience, there is the Replay R2 being developmed around the Agilex 5.

- Agilex 5 E-Series 043 (Replay2 phat) has 434,240 logic elements (LEs).

- Agilex 5 E-Series 013 (Replay2 lite) has 138,060 Logic Elements (LEs).

The website (https://www.fpgaarcade.com/news-2/) hasn't been updated in some time but the dev now has prototype boards that he's in the middle of bringing up. It is purpose built for arcade emulation and has tons of I/O, lots of memory (both SRAM and HyperRAM), and (on the phat) a PCI connector. One or both (can't remember which) accepts an ARM daughterboard for hybrid emulation. There's a Discord for it you can track down to follow its progress basically in real time as mikej progresses.

MegaDeKay··on Recreating Voodoo Graphics and a Late-1990s Gaming PC on an FPGA
The latter. Official MiSTer targets the DE10 nano.
MegaDeKay··on Recreating Voodoo Graphics and a Late-1990s Gaming PC on an FPGA
Check out the Superstation One [0]. Outer shell modelled after the original PS1. Optional optical disk dock. Simplified UI. Lots of outputs. Well priced.

[0] https://retroremake.co/pages/superstation%E1%B5%92%E2%81%BF%...

(Don't mind the strange characters in the URL above. That's a superscripted "one". Use https://retroremake.co/ if you feel better about that).

MegaDeKay··on The "$60 Gaming PC" – AMD BC-250 (2025)
Might the UGreen adapter mentioned in this Reddit post do the trick?

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1pkdfcm/ugree...

It was all the rage towards getting 4K 120 Hz VRR on Linux before AMD came along to contribute proper HDMI 2.1 support to the kernel. There is also mention in that thread of a CableMatters adapter that could be flashed with an alternate firmware but it wasn't as stable.

MegaDeKay··on How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+
A simple Google search showed they are right here: https://www.fairphone.com/spare-parts
MegaDeKay··on Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc
Rather than download the 30GB Master Chief collection, you might try downloading the Xemu OG XBOX emulator plus the original game on archive.org.

https://xemu.app/

MegaDeKay··on Kenji/Serious Eats – 30-Min Pressure Cooker Pho Ga
Electric cookers don't "measure" pressure. They are thermostatically controlled via a sensor touching the bottom of the bowl and, because they are sealed, that temperature directly translates to the same pressure no matter what altitude you're at.
MegaDeKay··on IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center
Russia has not formally declared they are at war. Some like Peskov have stated that they are in a state of war but that's different. In fact it is illegal in Russia to refer to it as a war. This law was introduced in 2022 and has not been repealed.

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/05/1084729579/russian-law-bans-j...

MegaDeKay··on Teardown: A Generic 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub That Wasn't
Yep. I bought one of these intentionally for that reason. The USB port on my Kobo Clara HD stopped working one day after I hadn't used it in a wile. Couldn't connect to it via my PC or my laptop. I did a bit of research and realized the Kobo I had won't work on a USB 3.0 connection, and that I had upgraded my PC and my laptop (all equipped with fancy smanchy USB 3.0 port) since I'd last used the Kobo.
MegaDeKay··on Beavis Ultrasound PnP ISA Sound Card Replica
If this is the case, they should start using AI less.
MegaDeKay··on Beavis Ultrasound PnP ISA Sound Card Replica
You didn't mention that he also co-authored the book "Open Circuits" that shows cross sectional images of a wide variety of electrical and electronic components. The pictures are beautiful.

His "secret" is basically sanding. Lots and lots of sanding.

https://www.amazon.com/Open-Circuits-Beauty-Electronic-Compo...

MegaDeKay··on Cannabis users face substantially higher risk of heart attack (2025)
Q: What do you call the person that graduated medical school with the worst grades?

A: Doctor

MegaDeKay··on Reducing tick density along recreational trails in Ottawa, Canada
Deer ticks will go after pretty much anything warm blooded: coyotes, mice, dogs, etc etc etc.

Proximity to water doesn't seem to factor much either. Where I live, ticks this year are horrendous and everywhere.

MegaDeKay··on PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts
I'd recommend usenet over torrents tbh.
MegaDeKay··on Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040
Its not so much the days but the hours. Days start getting pretty short in winter. The sun also doesn't get as high in the sky so the efficiency of a fixed panel drops further.
MegaDeKay··on Ask HN: Are you still using a Vision Pro?
Two out of the three links in this post are from less than a week ago and paint a much less optimistic picture.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48467606

MegaDeKay··on 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building
I know what you're meaning but the 5800X3D is still a beast of a gaming CPU. It remains a great option for AM4 gaming.
MegaDeKay··on HP re-releases classic computer science calculator: The HP-16C
I somehow got my 15C's slip case wet and so the calculator sticks out the end a wee bit. And a couple of the rubber feel fell off and got lost. Other than that, it works perfectly despite being treatly roughly as well. Like yours, the keys are still in Day 1 condition. And like yours, I've changed the batteries maybe two or three times since I got it back around 1984, which is unfathomable to me.

It is probably the finest piece of electronics I've ever owned.

MegaDeKay··on Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release
They've made major strides in the last two years. Give the next LTS a shot and I think you'll agree.
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