The hottest Hardware Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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10 AI Stories That Shaped 2025

Artificial Ignorance • 84 implied HN points • 04 Jan 26
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. AI leadership is no longer a U.S. monopoly—lean, well-engineered models from other countries proved they can match top performance without massive budgets.
  2. Reasoning models and AI agents improved very quickly and competition shuffled leadership often, and that progress is already reshaping work and creative industries, with entry-level roles hit hardest.
  3. The AI boom is tied up with geopolitics, chip supply, talent wars, and massive infrastructure builds, creating local backlash and hard questions about ROI and inflated valuations.

One Law to Rule All Code Optimizations

Confessions of a Code Addict • 817 implied HN points • 08 Jun 25
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Code optimization can be unpredictable, and not every change will guarantee improved performance. It's important to understand why an optimization might succeed or fail.
  2. The Iron Law of Performance provides a framework for evaluating software optimizations. It focuses on three key factors: the number of instructions, cycles per instruction, and cycle time.
  3. Optimizations like loop unrolling and function inlining reduce the number of instructions executed and can increase instruction throughput. However, they might also lead to some challenges like register spills and increased cache pressure.

What’s a Datacenter?

Technically • 25 implied HN points • 12 Feb 26
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Datacenters are the physical homes for thousands of servers that power everyday apps and critical services, so keeping them running reliably is essential.
  2. They’re tightly controlled, standardized facilities with strict access rules, dense racks of servers, and heavy cooling systems that create hot and cold aisles.
  3. Big datacenter investment is driving economic growth, but new projects often spark local opposition over environmental impact, utility strain, and property concerns.

Lunduke's Quest - December 16, 2024

The Lunduke Journal of Technology • 1723 implied HN points • 17 Dec 24
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Everyone deals with challenges, it's a universal experience. We all face tough times, and it's important to recognize that you're not alone.
  2. Being real about feelings can help you connect with others. Sharing your honest emotions can strengthen relationships.
  3. Understanding that struggles are part of life can be comforting. It helps to remember that overcoming difficulties is how we grow.

What can still be a reasonable AI bear thesis?

Metacritic Capital • 27 implied HN points • 06 Feb 26
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Investors are worried big tech is overbuilding compute and burning cash on AI capex without a clear path to high returns. If AI labs don’t turn revenue into sustainable margins, those capex bets may not pay off.
  2. Capabilities have advanced a lot, but that hasn’t translated into many profitable public businesses outside the labs and infrastructure sellers. Open-source models and commoditization could quickly squeeze margins and force labs to find new, hard-to-execute business models.
  3. A software-driven automation surge could be deflationary and displace white‑collar jobs, hurting consumer demand and traditional revenue streams. That macro uncertainty makes investors more risk‑averse and raises the bar for further AI spending.
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Eight More 8-Bit Era Microprocessors

The Chip Letter • 4368 implied HN points • 18 Feb 24
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Designs that were not commercially successful can still be interesting and hold value for learning.
  2. Intel's 8085 microprocessor, while not a bad design, was overshadowed by Zilog's Z80 due to lack of major improvements.
  3. Signetics 2650 microprocessor faced limitations such as delayed time to market and segmented memory, showing the importance of timely releases and memory efficiency.

AI Roundup 150: Empire State Defiance

Artificial Ignorance • 88 implied HN points • 27 Dec 25
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. New York passed the RAISE Act forcing big AI companies to publish safety protocols, report serious incidents quickly, and face stiff penalties. It directly challenges federal efforts and could make state rules the de facto industry standard.
  2. Nvidia struck a $20B licensing deal with Groq to gain low‑latency chip designs and talent, showing a playbook of absorbing specialized rivals instead of fighting them head‑on. That move fills a gap for fast inference workloads and helps Nvidia protect its market lead.
  3. Autonomous AI shopping agents threaten to cut retailers like Amazon out of customer relationships and margins, so Amazon is blocking bots, suing scrapers, and building its own agent tools. The technology is still early, giving Amazon a narrow window to influence how agentic commerce develops.

Acorn Genetics - Working Solid State Nanopores "Right Now"?

ASeq Newsletter • 29 implied HN points • 04 Feb 26
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Acorn Genetics says it is building solid-state nanopore DNA sequencing technology.
  2. Solid-state nanopore sequencing has been extremely hard historically, with no clear proof-of-concept despite decades of work and hundreds of millions spent.
  3. The company raised about $2M to build an alpha and has roadmap timing for a beta around now, but the small funding and the field’s challenges make the timeline and prospects uncertain.

MakerNews - January 2026

Maker News • 22 implied HN points • 31 Jan 26
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Investing in the right bench tools and setups makes everyday electronics work faster, safer, and more reliable.
  2. Creative hardware hacking and reverse engineering often reveal far more capability than expected, from PID‑controlled glue guns to running DOOM on a smart pressure cooker.
  3. Open source projects and detailed writeups turn experiments into shared learning, helping others reproduce fixes, learn tapeout and PCB tricks, and build fun projects like 1D Pong or a lock‑picking robot.

Vote for the November 2025 + Post Topic

Computer Ads from the Past • 128 implied HN points • 22 Nov 25
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Vote on the topic for this month’s paid post; the poll is open for one week so act soon.
  2. The newsletter is running behind schedule, and last month’s paid post is expected to be published in a few days.
  3. The topic options are illustrated with vintage magazine images, and readers can continue reading for free or subscribe for paid access.

IEEE-754: THE floating-point standard

Fprox’s Substack • 124 implied HN points • 22 Nov 25
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. IEEE-754 created a common binary floating-point standard that gives hardware and software consistent formats and behaviors, making numerical results more portable and predictable.
  2. Major revisions added practical features — notably the 2008 update introduced decimal formats, half-precision and the fused multiply-add (FMA) for better performance and accuracy, while later updates clarified edge cases and added augmented operations for exact-error reporting.
  3. Work is ongoing (including a 2029 revision and the P3109 effort for tiny formats), because emerging vendor-specific small formats for machine learning could fragment the ecosystem unless standards converge.

This number does nothing...

atomic14 • 346 implied HN points • 23 Aug 25
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. The common baud rate of 115200 is often used in Arduino projects, but testing shows that actual data rates can be much higher on some newer boards, like the ESP32-S3.
  2. Using USB connections instead of traditional serial connections can lead to significantly faster data transfer speeds, sometimes reaching over 9.6 Mbit/s.
  3. Performance tests can vary, especially between different firmware versions, and while raw numbers are interesting, real-world performance can be quite different.

Hands-on graphics without X11

Blog System/5 • 1240 implied HN points • 17 Jan 25
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Using NetBSD's wscons framework, you can access and manipulate the graphical framebuffer directly without needing X11. This lets programmers draw graphics in a simpler way.
  2. The architecture of wscons is structured in layers, making it possible to interact with various hardware devices uniformly. It ensures that both output and input devices work across different machines.
  3. You can handle keyboard input using a feature called wsmux, which allows you to manage multiple keyboard devices easily. It makes your program more robust if a keyboard isn't connected right away.

AMD MI300 Ramp, GPT-4 Performance, ASP & Volumes

SemiAnalysis • 4141 implied HN points • 01 Nov 23
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. AMD's MI300 is positioned as a strong competitor in LLM inference against Nvidia and Google hardware.
  2. Major companies like Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, Google, and Amazon have already placed orders for AMD MI300.
  3. AMD's Datacenter GPU revenue is expected to reach over $2 billion in 2024 with strong demand from customers and supply constraints.

Microlog Babytalk

Computer Ads from the Past • 384 implied HN points • 31 Jul 25
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Microlog Babytalk was a multifunction board created for IBM and Texas Instruments computers in the early 1980s. It had capabilities like handling communications while the main computer worked on other tasks.
  2. The Babytalk board was priced at $895 and featured a built-in modem, print spooling, and could emulate various terminal protocols. It was designed to make data management easier for users.
  3. Microlog became a part of Terminal Unlimited, which faced bankruptcy in 1985. Despite its interesting features, there's little information about how well the Babytalk performed in the market.

The Sequence Radar #791: The Eastern Surge & The Silicon Valley Shuffle

TheSequence • 42 implied HN points • 18 Jan 26
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Engram shows that offloading static facts to a huge O(1) lookup memory lets neural experts focus on reasoning, and allocating roughly 20–25% of sparse parameters to that memory hits an optimal loss curve.
  2. Chinese labs are rapidly closing the gap with stronger unified multimodal architectures like Baidu’s Ernie 5, and Zhipu’s GLM-Image—trained entirely on Huawei Ascend chips—demonstrates domestic hardware can support SOTA training runs.
  3. Talent is extremely scarce and fiercely contested, evidenced by rapid co-founder departures and rehires, while large bets on non-invasive brain-computer interfaces signal a push to boost human-AI bandwidth beyond typed text.

Oops I Did It Again

atomic14 • 346 implied HN points • 02 Aug 25
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. A new PCB was made, but it had a mistake where the LED didn't work because of wrong connections. The designer mixed up common cathode and common anode.
  2. Fixing the issue isn't too hard. It just requires desoldering the LED, adding solder resist, and reconnecting everything correctly.
  3. After making the adjustments, the LED finally worked, showing a successful blink. It took some effort and frustration to get there.

AI Roundup 148: GPT-5.2

Artificial Ignorance • 79 implied HN points • 12 Dec 25
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. OpenAI released GPT-5.2 (Instant, Thinking, Pro), which significantly improves performance on professional workflows like spreadsheets, coding, and multi-step projects while reducing hallucinations to make agents more enterprise-ready.
  2. The U.S. federal government is centralizing AI policy by threatening to override state rules and by allowing controlled chip exports to China for a revenue share, mixing regulatory power, national security concerns, and commercial incentives.
  3. Hollywood is adapting to generative AI: Disney struck a $1 billion deal letting users create short character videos under strict guardrails. This shows legacy studios will both license and tightly control AI-generated content while pursuing legal action over unauthorized model training.

Announcing the ESP32 ZX Spectrum

Single Board ESP32 ZX Spectrum • 99 implied HN points • 13 Jun 24
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. The ESP32 ZX Spectrum is a recreation of the ZXSpectrum using ESP32-S3 based PCB, with unique features like capacitive touch pads and a colorful display.
  2. Challenges faced include variability in displays and the need to improve the keyboard functionality to avoid ghosting of keys.
  3. Production risks include the complexity of larger production runs, the need for a stable display vendor, and the dependence on individual initiative for the project.

The Checkmate Move

Sector 6 | The Newsletter of AIM • 479 implied HN points • 27 Dec 23
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Sam Altman is looking for talented people to challenge Apple, especially those who have worked on its products like the iPhone.
  2. He has teamed up with Jony Ive, a famous designer known for the iPhone, to work on a new AI hardware project.
  3. Altman's efforts show he's serious about competing in the tech scene and bringing fresh ideas to the market.

Last week at The Lunduke Journal (Nov 10 - Nov 23, 2024)

The Lunduke Journal of Technology • 1148 implied HN points • 25 Nov 24
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Mozilla's Firefox is running out of money, with just nine months of funds left. This raises concerns about its future as a popular web browser.
  2. The Linux community is facing chaos as its Code of Conduct Board blocks essential file system changes. This conflict highlights issues within the community's governance.
  3. Red Hat is shifting focus from Linux to artificial intelligence, suggesting a major change in their business strategy and the future of open-source operating systems.

The Sequence Radar #787: Rubin, Raises, and Returns: 2026 Starts Fast

TheSequence • 42 implied HN points • 11 Jan 26
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. AI hardware is moving to rack-scale "AI factories," with companies like NVIDIA and AMD designing integrated systems where chips and CPUs work as a single supercomputing unit. This shifts the unit of compute from individual GPUs to whole racks optimized for large-scale inference and training.
  2. Massive capital rounds are reshaping who can compete in frontier models, as multibillion-dollar raises make training and infrastructure effectively affordable only to hyper-scalers and well-funded entities. That level of spending is turning top labs into utility-like, enterprise infrastructure players.
  3. China’s AI firms proved public markets can reward consumer-facing model strategies, with IPOs like MiniMax and z.AI showing rapid monetization and liquidity. This underscores a growing bifurcation: the West doubling down on heavy infrastructure for AGI, while the East pushes fast consumer exits and application-led growth.

Vision

Sucks to Suck • 707 implied HN points • 13 Jun 23
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Software designers should be eager for the success of new technologies like AR/VR for continued employment opportunities.
  2. Apple's new AR/VR headset, Vision, follows a historical pattern of product launches indicating a potential for success.
  3. An important consideration for the future of Vision is whether it will evolve to address hardware design, pricing, and human possibilities.

Are You Ready for 2024?

Sector 6 | The Newsletter of AIM • 439 implied HN points • 26 Dec 23
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. AMD is making big strides in AI, partnering with major customers to improve data center capabilities and deploying new technologies like MI300 accelerators.
  2. The market for data center AI accelerators is growing rapidly, with projections increasing from $150 billion to over $400 billion by 2027.
  3. AMD is also enhancing software development tools to better support AI workloads, making it easier for businesses to integrate AI into their operations.

8-Bit : Learning from the Sources

The Chip Letter • 2839 implied HN points • 19 Dec 23
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. You can learn about computer hardware by studying assembly language of 8-bit systems.
  2. Studying 8-bit architectures is easier to grasp than modern instruction set architectures.
  3. Hacking on 8-bit systems can be a fun and instructive way to understand the basics of microprocessors.

Revisiting 2025 Predictions

next big thing • 46 implied HN points • 24 Dec 25
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Small, capital-efficient teams built AI-native products that scaled extremely quickly, creating many new businesses that reached tens of millions in revenue.
  2. AI shifted from being an assistant to a collaborator: code generation and app-building tools lowered the barrier to making software, but fully autonomous end-to-end AI workers still fell short of expectations.
  3. Markets and infrastructure tightened around AI — liquidity returned with major M&A and stronger exits, big tech earnings accelerated, and huge investments flowed into data centers and energy/cooling to support AI demand.

LFG (for semiconductors)

State of the Future • 47 implied HN points • 19 Dec 25
💼 Business Hardware
  1. Semiconductors are the best area to invest right now because system-level innovations like chiplets, advanced packaging, and heterogeneous computing are creating new opportunities beyond Moore’s Law. These shifts make startup-driven hardware innovation more valuable than before.
  2. With the right funding and momentum, Europe could produce many semiconductor giants; the region has the talent and existing industrial strengths to support about 20 potential unicorns in the next 3–4 years. Keeping founders and capital in Europe is key to building that pipeline.
  3. Cloudberry VC is a dedicated European semiconductor fund offering early capital, industry partnerships, and hands-on support to help hardware founders focus on building instead of chasing grants or ill-suited investors. The fund connects startups to manufacturing and photonics partners to speed prototype-to-volume paths.

Is Kimball Still Relevant?

Joe Reis • 648 implied HN points • 22 Jul 23
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. There are abundant tools and computing power available, but focusing on delivering business value with data is still crucial.
  2. Data modeling, like Kimball's dimensional model, remains relevant for effective analytics despite advancements in technology.
  3. Ignoring data modeling in favor of performance considerations can lead to a loss of understanding, business value, and overall impact.

Block’s 40% purge, Karpathy’s agent lab & the vibe coding retention crisis

HackerPulse Dispatch • 2 implied HN points • 13 Mar 26
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Mass layoffs sold as “AI replacements” often look like plain cost-cutting, and the promised savings are mostly theoretical once you include compute, verification, and the work to redesign processes.
  2. Autonomous research agents can run hundreds of experiments overnight and find real, transferable improvements, shifting researchers’ jobs from running experiments to designing objectives, constraints, and evaluation.
  3. AI-driven ‘vibe coding’ makes quick prototypes but breaks in production—edge cases, security, integrations, and rising costs push users away, so experienced engineers are still needed to build reliable products.

How to Invest in AI Sovereignty — Sovereign Albion w/ Andrew Bennett

State of the Future • 7 implied HN points • 12 Feb 26
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. The future of AI hardware is heterogeneous computing — many specialised chips (like compound semiconductors and photonics) will handle edge workloads for latency, privacy, and cost reasons rather than everything running in giant data centres.
  2. Europe and the UK can win by focusing on niche, strategic semiconductor areas and building specialist funds and industry partnerships instead of trying to match global capex-heavy players on their own turf.
  3. Successful AI industrial strategy needs fast, experimental, venture-style public support and a cultural shift toward bigger ambition and patient capital to back risky founders and long-term roadmaps.

Oxford Nanopore P2 Support Extended, Remembering the SmidgION

ASeq Newsletter • 21 implied HN points • 28 Jan 26
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Oxford Nanopore faced major customer backlash after announcing the P2 Solo withdrawal, and they extended support to 2030 by about 1.5 years.
  2. The way the P2 issue was handled risks eroding customer trust, and the incoming CEO will likely need to address that damage.
  3. Patent digging turned up evidence suggesting the SmidgION — a previously missing nanopore product — may exist or be in development.

Firmware Vibing

atomic14 • 346 implied HN points • 04 Jul 25
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. There's a new one-button keyboard that makes coding simpler and fun. It's designed just for 'vibe coding'!
  2. The keyboard uses advanced technology to manage power efficiently, making it more effective than older designs.
  3. Creating low profile keys was tricky due to size differences, but it worked out in the end, making for a unique typing experience.

NVLink Fusion: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

Mule’s Musings • 417 implied HN points • 27 May 25
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Nvidia has a strong edge in the market with its NVLink technology, allowing fast communication between chips. This positions Nvidia favorably against competitors who are still developing their own solutions.
  2. By licensing its C2C technology and selling NVLink chiplets, Nvidia is opening its technology to others while still maintaining a competitive advantage. This strategy helps Nvidia grow its influence and solidify its market position.
  3. The 'embrace, extend, extinguish' strategy means Nvidia is likely to dominate the market by allowing others to use its technology while quickly outpacing them with its own products and innovations.

The Sequence Opinion #770: The Post-GPU Era: Why AI Needs a New Kind of Computer

TheSequence • 63 implied HN points • 11 Dec 25
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Modern AI depends on massive matrix multiplications run on GPUs, and much of its progress has come from scaling up models and GPU clusters.
  2. This brute-force scaling is hitting diminishing returns because it consumes huge amounts of energy and hardware, making further improvements increasingly costly.
  3. Researchers and startups are exploring radically different hardware—like analog chips, photonics, neuromorphic designs, and quantum systems—to build more efficient AI computers and move beyond GPUs.

Altima NSX

Computer Ads from the Past • 256 implied HN points • 30 Jul 25
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Altima was a computer company that didn't last long, but it made important contributions to the personal computer world. It's a reminder of many small companies that helped shape technology.
  2. The Altima NSX was known for being heavy and bulky compared to other notebooks. While it had good features for its time, like a backlit display, it wasn't very portable.
  3. Despite its short battery life and weight, the NSX included a full-sized keyboard and some unique features like a fax modem. It was a mixed bag in terms of performance and design.

DeepSeek's Edge

ChinaTalk • 741 implied HN points • 12 Jan 25
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. DeepSeek has no business model, which allows its team to experiment freely without pressure to earn money. This gives them a unique advantage over most other AI labs that need to focus on revenue.
  2. DeepSeek runs its own data centers instead of relying on external cloud services. This means they have better control over their resources and can optimize their setup for efficiency.
  3. The company's success comes from their innovative software optimization techniques. By being smart about how they use their hardware, they've achieved high performance even with limited resources.

Synology DS923+ vs. FreeBSD w/ZFS

Blog System/5 • 827 implied HN points • 13 Dec 24
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Synology DS923+ and FreeBSD with ZFS offer different approaches for storage solutions. The DS923+ is a dedicated device designed for ease of use, while FreeBSD requires more manual setup and maintenance.
  2. The Synology system provides a friendly user interface and features like cloud backup options, while FreeBSD offers powerful command-line control but can be less user-friendly.
  3. Using the Synology NAS can give more peace of mind regarding data health and security due to its built-in features like encryption and monitoring alerts, compared to a DIY FreeBSD setup.

Sustaining Nvidia's Long Game

The Chip Letter • 2402 implied HN points • 24 Sep 23
🕹 Technology Hardware
  1. Nvidia's success is attributed to strategic management and positioning.
  2. There is a narrative suggesting Nvidia's success is partly due to luck in benefiting from the AI boom.
  3. Jensen Huang is credited for creating his own luck, but there is still debate over the fairness of this perception.