Top all-time · #2599
Project Gus
Personal blog · projectgus.comhardwaresystems
Project Gus is a personal blog at projectgus.com about hardware and systems. Since 2010, 29 different Hacker News readers have linked it 57 times, most often “Mysteries of the Griffin iMate and the Apple Extended Keyboard II”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2024-12-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Project Gus for hands-on hardware posts: a USB-to-Mac ADB keyboard adapter teardown, fake Apple cable and charger findings, an EV conversion series, and phone and tablet teardowns.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Mysteries of the Griffin iMate and the Apple Extended Keyboard II5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-04-30
- Anatomy of a cheap USB to Ethernet adapter4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-08-29
- Simplifying the Bench Kona2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-10-27
- The Sad State of Open Source in Android Tablets2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-07-25
- Inside a $34 smartphone2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-05-17
What Hacker News says?
I spent a few minutes looking up whether a Mac could be booted from a Bluetooth keyboard but couldn't find any documentation of that. Back in the day some(?) Mac models could be booted by a USB keyboard, see https://www.projectgus.com/2023/04/griffin-imate/ for technical details.
Comment linking /2023/04/griffin-imate/
on “M4 Mac mini's efficiency”Submitted The motor turns too much as a story · 386 points
HN discussionYou can configure udev to blacklist the device. https://projectgus.com/2014/09/blacklisting-a-single-usb-dev...
Comment linking /2014/09/blacklisting-a-single-usb-device-from-linux/
on “Bash functions are better than I thought”Submitted Anatomy of a cheap USB-to-Ethernet adapter as a story · 279 points
HN discussionIt's really anything branded as by "Apple" on Amazon. Look at the reviews of the Apple Thunderbolt Cable [1] -- 40% are 1 star reviews and many mention the cable being fake. Similar story on the Apple USB Ethernet adapter [2]. I bought one a few years back and it identified itself with Chinese lettering in System Preferences. Ken Shirriff did an amazing teardown of fake Apple chargers [3] and found a number of safet…
Comment linking /2013/03/anatomy-of-a-cheap-usb-ethernet-adapter/
on “Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting”Submitted BMW F Series Gear Selector, Part Two: Breakthrough as a story · 186 points
HN discussionHey! Post author here. I appreciate the insight from someone who's worked on this kind of thing formally, thanks. > Most likely what’s happening is that the creep torque is applying a constant small torque and the wheel sensors are reading 0 continuously, so it continues to apply a constant small torque. This was also my hypothesis at the time of the post. Turned out it's less constrained than this, a fully operatio…
Comment linking /2024/04/unremarkable/
on “The motor turns too much”Submitted Inside a $34 smartphone as a story · 169 points
HN discussionIf you're interested in this check out the previous posts: Part 1 https://www.projectgus.com/2023/03/ev-conversion-one/ Part 2 https://www.projectgus.com/2023/03/ev-conversion-two/ Part 3 https://www.projectgus.com/2023/10/kona-can-decoding/ ...and the follow-up posts: Part 5 https://www.projectgus.com/2024/04/unremarkable/ Part 6 https://www.projectgus.com/2024/10/simplifying-bench-kona/
Comment linking /2024/10/simplifying-bench-kona/
on “The motor turns too much”Submitted BMW F Series Gear Selector, Part One: Failures as a story · 140 points
HN discussionFreescale i.MX6 is a really nice platform. Shame it hasn't gotten broader traction, I think because it is moderately more expensive than its competition. Since May I've been using an imx6 based gk802 ($70 quad core "Android TV" stick) as a personal server (email, RSS, VPN, etc.) Has worked really nicely considering. (Blog post about installing debian on it: http://projectgus.com/2013/05/debian-installer-for-zealz-gk…
Comment linking /2013/05/debian-installer-for-zealz-gk802-android-tv-quad-core-arm-minipc/
on “Tiny $45 cubic mini-PC runs Android and Linux”Submitted 18 Months with a Framework 13 as a story · 132 points
HN discussionI bought an Android set-top-box, the Flexiview FV-1, ($120ish, 1Ghz Cortex A8) at the end of last year and got Debian running on it. http://projectgus.com/tag/fv-1/ I haven't run one 24/7 for more than a week or two though, so I don't really know how good it would be as a server.
Comment linking /tag/fv-1/
on “VIA launches $49 Android PC”Submitted Mysteries of the Griffin iMate and the Apple Extended Keyboard II as a story · 121 points
HN discussionGoogle's hypothesis was "Does Bing use Google data in its rankings?" That hypothesis was proven (because there was no other way to get those crazy links except for clickstream data showing users going from a google search for those nonsense terms to those sites). If you want to explore a very different hypothesis, namely "Does Bing single out Google in its weightings of clickstream data?" then I suggest you go here:…
Comment linking /files/googlebing/seaport-trace.txt
on “Bing search results showing up in Google”Submitted $34 Smartphone Part II – Teardown as a story · 98 points
HN discussionHow easy is this thing to hack? Easy-ish. It's a Wondermedia WM8505-based tablet, so there are a bunch of other relatives (same Android port, AFAIK) like the Eken M001. Here are some resources: * Teardown/serial console: http://projectgus.com/2010/06/eken-m001-teardown-serial-cons... (disclaimer: that's my blog.) * Debian port (forum is offline atm, though): http://www.slatedroid.com/eken-m001-debian/ * Open source…
Comment linking /2010/06/eken-m001-teardown-serial-consol/
on “Worst gadget ever? Ars reviews a $99 Android tablet”Submitted Sharing bikes in Shanghai as a story · 84 points
HN discussionSomebody just last year finally worked out what that battery is doing and why the adapter doesn’t work after it dies: https://www.projectgus.com/2023/04/griffin-imate/#mystery-ba... (discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35772131 ) (TLDR: compatibility with Apple’s off-USB-spec keyboard power button, but the circuit they used accidentally injects noise which wreaks havoc on the data lines when it’s u…
Comment linking /2023/04/griffin-imate/
on “Building a USB to Mac ADB keyboard adapter”Submitted The risks of "$15 for $2097 worth of mobile internet" as a story · 60 points
HN discussionMatt's assertion about "Suggested Sites" sending this data seems to be conjecture. I ran some packet captures and didn't find anything of that kind. However, if you install the Bing Toolbar then it does send URL clickstream data. It explicitly asks you beforehand if you want to send info about "the searches you do, websites you visit..." though. Full post: http://projectgus.com/2011/02/bing-google-finding-some-facts…
Comment linking /2011/02/bing-google-finding-some-facts/
on “Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate”Submitted The Sad State of Open Source in Android Tablets as a story · 41 points
HN discussionIt's funny you say that because the version of Android developed for the WM8505 (the SoC in the Walgreens) silently phones home to a company in China for "license verification". Or, at least it did a few months ago. http://projectgus.com/2010/07/eken-m001-phone-home/ (As I said in my blog post, nothing in the device indicated it was phoning home and the code was obfuscated to disguise these details. There's nothing…
Comment linking /2010/07/eken-m001-phone-home/
on “Walgreen’s now selling $99 Android tablet”Submitted Unlocking an encrypted rootfs over ssh-server in initramfs as a story · 23 points
HN discussionI have a Huawei Sonic (successor to the Ideos), cost $180AU unlocked and I like it very much. My previous smartphone was an iPhone 3GS. http://projectgus.com/2011/08/huawei-sonic-review/ . Specs are not high end like the phone mentioned in the article, but its very usable.
Comment linking /2011/08/huawei-sonic-review/
on “The Cheap Android Phone Is Here, But It's Not What You'd Expect.”Submitted Mysteries of the Griffin iMate as a story · 4 points
HN discussionYou could try this: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.39670 It's nowhere near as open, and nowhere near as cute, but it does have a larger screen & keyboard, and 128Mb of RAM. A debian port appears to exist. (I reviewed a very similar tablet device - same chipset - on my blog, here: http://projectgus.com/2010/06/eken-m001-android-tablet-revie... )
Comment linking /2010/06/eken-m001-android-tablet-review-pt-1/
on “$99 copyleft ultra-portable laptop is Arduino for linux developers”Submitted BMW F Series Gear Selector, Part Three: Success as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI expanded this comment into a blog post, and corrected some of the factual errors in the comment: http://projectgus.com/2013/06/sonys-open-source-smartwatch/
Comment linking /2013/06/sonys-open-source-smartwatch/
on “Sony Smartwatch now open-sourced”Submitted Salvaging a Kona as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
