#Technology, #science, and #computing #journalist and #photojournalist. #Author, #Microbit & #RaspberryPi User Guides. Custom PC columnist. Bylines Hackster.io, Make: Magazine, The Register, Bit-Tech, Wevolver, Tom's Hardware, The MagPi, PC Pro, & more. For fun, #retrogaming, #vintagecomputing, #scifi. User of #opensource including #riscv, #linux, #libreoffice, #thegimp. He/Him.
Profile listed on #fedi22.
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| Work | https://freelance.halfacree.co.uk |
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They're all available via the #GeminiProtocol, too:
Raspberry Pi price hikes:
gemini://tilde.club/~ghalfacree/202604/20260401-pi.gmi
Great EL display "laptop":
gemini://tilde.club/~ghalfacree/202604/20260401-el.gmi
Bambu Lab retires the X1 family:
gemini://tilde.club/~ghalfacree/202604/20260401-bambu.gmi
Space Drums:
gemini://tilde.club/~ghalfacree/202604/20260401-drum.gmi
VisiPrint 3D print preview engine:
gemini://tilde.club/~ghalfacree/202604/20260401-visi.gmi
And to finish, some #science: a paper detailing a new approach to previewing 3D prints, which uses "AI" (again, stay with me, it's not LLM slop, I promise) to combine a 3D model with a photo of the material it's to be printed in - giving you a more accurate idea of what the finished thing will look like before you print.
Back to great projects: a "laptop" (not a laptop, more like a weirdly thin desktop) which uses a custom graphics card (built around a VGA chip from 1995!) to drive a lovely glowing electroluminescent display panel.
#Technology #News #Hackster #Makers #VintageComputing #OpenHardware
Less welcome is the news that Bambu Lab is discontinuing the whole X1 family of fused filament fabrication 3D printers - but at least you can get software updates for a few years yet, and spare parts under a best-effort promise out to 2031.
A great project next: Space Drums, which combine IMU motion tracking and "AI" (don't worry, it's just traditional computer vision - a pose estimation algorithm - not LLM slop) to make a couple of bulky drumsticks into a full virtual drumkit.
It's the 1st of April and the US is now waking up, which means I'll be ignoring all press releases for the next 24 hours or so.
My #Hackster round-up, you'll be pleased to hear, contains only the truth - starting with, yes, the sad news that #RaspberryPi has hiked prices *again*, for the third time in five months. The big 'uns, with 16GB RAM, are now $100-150 more than yesterday. Ouch.
Happy(!) The #RaspberryPi 5 16GB is Now Nearly Three Times the Price it Was Back in November Last Year Day, everyone!
Why? The AI bubble. Most other current models have gone up, too, bar the 1GB/2GB variants - the Raspberry Pi 500+ is hit the hardest, going up a massive $150 since yesterday(!)
Three months ago, I reviewed the Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 2 and said the 8GB of on-board RAM was "a red flag in terms of future pricing." Today it just went up by $50. And it was already overpriced.
As always, all those articles are also available ad- and tracker-free via the #GeminiProtocol:
cssDOOM:
gemini://tilde.club/~ghalfacree/202603/20260330-cssdoom.gmi
Free RISC-V GitHub Runners:
gemini://tilde.club/~ghalfacree/202603/20260330-rise.gmi
A lovely LattePanda Mu handheld cyberdeck:
gemini://tilde.club/~ghalfacree/202603/20260330-ben.gmi
And finally, a sweet handheld #cyberdeck from Ben Makes Everything, built around a LattePanda Mu for desktop-class performance.
Well, cheap-laptop-class performance, at least.
If you develop open-source software in a GitHub repo, you've now got access to a GitHub Actions Runner that'll execute on actual decently-performing #RISCV hardware - and the best part is it's free.
