#725 – The Secret Life of Circuits with lcamtuf / Michał Zalewski

s Welcome Michał Zalewski, AKA lcamtuf! The lcamtuf Substack is where Michał is writing most these days Chris first found and geeked out about the CNC guide on the lcamtuf original site (discussed many times here) Michał is interested in the craft of teaching electronics He recently published The Secret Life of Circuits with No Starch Press Use the code AMPHOUR26 for 30% off The Secret Life of Circuits valid from June 1st through June 30th It was announced on his blog here Deriving fomulas from basic trigonometry sometimes bugs people who think electronics should only work with calculus Software geeks follow the site, often getting lots of attention on Hacker News Row hammer DRAM There were no Information Security degrees in the early days, so the field was made up of folks with backgrounds in math and EEs Fuzzing for security SMBC cartoon for blming humans Books American Fuzzy Lop The Tangled Web P0f v3 Silence on the Wire Security stuff (including books on the subject) ages over time, as opposed to electronics On the subjects of Calculators (and Michał’s collection) Calculators are a footnote in the history of computing, but still intriguing Dead ends in calculators CRT displays on calculators Nixie tubes Discrete moving into logic gates into processors Mechanical calculators are rare and get a high price online Working with transistors The Secret Life of Circuits start with FET based transistors vs BJT BJTs are often right after diode chapter because of the multiple junctions in an NPN, but that doesn’t make it easier to understand Projects A recent project involved making a clock out of current meters  Woodworking and AI example Want to see all lcamtuf articles in one place? Sokoban Sir box-a-lot