Wireless earbuds are notoriously tiny. Want to see inside? [MCH170] did and published a Soundcore Space A40 Teardown.
In this teardown, you’ll see inside the charging case and one of the earbuds. Starting with the case, removing the back cover revealed the charging coil and a few screws holding the PCB in place. Removing the screws allows for removing the coil. The main PCB and the magnets that hold the earbuds in place are then visible. The microcontroller is an SS881Q from Sinhmicro. The back side of the main circuit board has a handful of SMD components, including some status LEDs. The battery is a 13450 with a nominal voltage of 3.72V and a capacity of 800mAh or 2.967Wh.
He then goes on to have a look inside one of the earbuds, which were not working prior to disassembly. The earbuds are held together with friction clips. The top of the PCB has two ribbon cables that need to come off. The top ribbon connects to the battery, and the bottom one is for the speaker and charging connections. The three pogo pins connect the touch sensor, which is installed in the outer casing. The back of the PCB is densely populated with SMD components. The main IC is a WQ7033AX Bluetooth audio SoC from WUQI Microelectronics. Under the PCB, we find the battery and the speaker. The battery has a nominal voltage of 3.85V and a capacity of 53mAh, equivalent to 0.204Wh.
All in all, an interesting look into some fairly state-of-the-art technology! If you’re interested in earphones, you might like to check out Cheap DIY High Impedance Earphones. Or, perhaps you’d rather convert an old pair to twice as much wireless.
Bottom of the PCB with most of the ICs. (Credit: Brian Dipert, EDN) People think about NiMH cell chargers probably as much as they think about batteries, unless it’s time to replace the cells in whatever device they’re installed in. This doesn’t make a teardown of one of these marvels any less interesting, especially when you can get an 8-bay charger with eight included NiMH cells for a cool $25 brand new. The charger even has USB ports on it, so it’s got to be good. Cue a full teardown by [Brian Dipert] over at EDN to see what lurks inside.
Of note is that [Brian] got the older version of EBL’s charger, which requires that two cells of the same type are installed side-by-side instead of featuring per-bay charging. This is a common feature of cheaper chargers, and perhaps unsurprisingly the charger was struggling with NiMH cells that other chargers would happily charge.
Opening up the unit required hunting for hunting plastic clips, revealing the rather sparse internals. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t a lot to look at, with the two USB ports apparently wired directly into the AC-to-DC section. There’s a CRE6536 AC-DC power management IC, the full-bridge rectifier and an unmarked 16-pin IC that presumably contains all of the charger logic. On the positive side, the mains-powered charger didn’t catch on fire (yet), but for anyone interested in leaving battery chargers unattended for extended periods of time, perhaps look at a more reputable brand.
Your kid has a toy remote control fire truck. You have an RTL SDR. See where this is going? [Jacob] couldn’t resist tearing into the why and how of the truck’s remote control protocol.
The entire process began with a basic GNU Radio setup to determine the exact frequency of the signal. Then a little analysis suggested that it might be using amplitude shift keying. That is, the information is in the amplitude of the signal, where one possible amplitude is completely off in some cases.
Some FFT decoding started to reveal the coding when someone pressed a remote button. None of the standard GNU Radio blocks would get the right decoding, so that called for a custom Python block.
When you get to the end of the post, don’t forget to scan back up to the top where the final diagram is. It will make more sense after you’ve read the post, although it is reasonably straightforward except for the custom block, of course.
This is a great example of how you can reverse engineer something like this. Cheap SDRs and computers make something like this less of a science project and more of an afternoon puzzle to solve. What will he do with it? Our guess is nothing. And we totally get that.
The Biological Rulebook Was Just Rewritten—by Ants
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that transgressed the rules, explored extraterrestrial vistas, and went with the flow.
First, ants are doing really strange things again. I don’t even want to spoil it—you’ll just have to read on! Then, plan your trip to the latest hot exoplanet destination (literally, in the case of the lava planets), and check out Saturn’s new bling on the way. Lastly, all aboard on a trip to the riverboats of the past.
Scientists have discovered a gnarly reproductive strategy that is unlike anything ever documented in nature: Ant queens that produce offspring from two entirely different species by cloning the “alien genome” of males from another lineage. This unique behavior has been dubbed “xenoparity,” according to a new study.
Researchers were first tipped off to this bizarre adaptation after they kept finding builder harvester ants (Messor structor) in the colonies of Iberian harvester ants (Messor ibericus). Field and laboratory observations revealed that, in addition to mating with males of their own species, M. ibericus queens mate with M structor. The queens store and clone this sperm to produce hybrids with M. structor genomes and M. ibericus mitochondria. Even though these two ant species diverged five million years ago and don’t share the exact same range, the queens rely on M. structor males exclusively for its worker caste, suggesting a “domestication-like process,” the study reports.
“Living organisms are assumed to produce same-species offspring,” said researchers co-led by Y. Juvé, C. Lutrat, and A. Ha of the University of Montpellier. “Here, we report that this rule has been transgressed by Messor ibericus ants, with females producing individuals from two different species.”
“M. ibericus queens strictly depend on males of M. structor, which is a well-differentiated, non-sister species,” the team added. “To our knowledge, females needing to clone members of another species have not previously been observed.” youtube.com/embed/H-Y6-j8FlIQ?… Iberian harvester queens only produce females when they mate within their own species, which may have prompted this cross-species adaptation. By producing cloned M. structor males, the queens ensure the continuation of a worker caste as well as a supply of male mates for later generations of queens.
“At the intraspecific level, several cases of ants cloning males from their own species’ sperm have been observed,” the researchers noted. “Here, our results imply that this phenomenon has crossed species barriers.”
“Taken together, these results further support the idea that clonal males should be characterized as a domesticated lineage of M. structor,” they continued. “Although matching all criteria of domestication, the relationship we describe is both more intimate and integrated than the most remarkable examples known so far.”
What’s next, dogs giving birth to whales? Probably not, but still, these transgressive queens have rewritten the reproductive rulebook in a truly astonishing way.
In 2015, NASA released a bunch of splashy retro posters that imagined exoplanets as travel destinations, as part of a collaborative project between scientists and artists. A new study dissects the huge success of that campaign, which engaged the public in the burgeoning field of exoplanet research and helped scientists visualize their distant observational targets. Exoplanet posters. Image: NASA
The Exoplanet Travel Bureau posters “were not images designed to be understood by the public as objectively ‘real’ or ‘scientific’, yet they were still scientifically informed,” said author Ceridwen Dovey of Macquarie University. “As tourism posters proposing travel to extremely distant exoplanets, they were not pretending to be direct images of astronomical objects, yet they were also not pure speculation or fantasy. They sat very comfortably—and alluringly—somewhere in between.”
There’s always a fine line to tread when depicting alien exoplanets, given how little we know about what it is really like on these distant worlds. But since interstellar travel does not seem to be coming anytime soon, the NASA posters served as a powerful imaginative stopgap for thinking about these new worlds—even if their amenities remain unknown.
Saturn has ‘strange dark arms’ and beads to match its rings
The James Webb Space Telescope is most famous for peering farther back in space and time than ever before, revealing amazing insights about the early universe. But JWST is also shedding light on planets right in our own backyard, as evidenced by a new study about “dark beads” and “strange dark arms” that showed up in its observations of Saturn.
These features arise from Saturn's stratosphere and ionosphere, which were captured in "unprecedented detail” by JWST’s near-infrared instruments. The “arms” are methane-gas structures that extend down from the poles toward the equator while the beads emerge “in a variety of sizes and shapes” on one side of the ionosphere.
“This stratospheric structure is again unlike anything previously observed at other planets,” said researchers led by Tom Stallard of Northumbria University. “While we do not understand how or why these dark arms are generated, it is perhaps noteworthy that they occur in a region where the underlying atmosphere is also disturbed, suggesting this stratospheric layer might be influenced from below.”
Given its famous rings and now its beads, my prediction is that they will discover a bedazzled bangle on Saturn next.
Rivers are often employed as metaphors for the passage of time into the future, but a new study is paddling upstream into the past. The goal was to reconstruct the navigability of rivers in ancient times, which is important information for understanding past trade networks, migrations, and social connections. However, it is difficult to pinpoint how ancient peoples traversed these waterways using only archeological sites and historical documents.
“The very notion of a navigable river seems problematic, as the possibilities for navigation on a river are highly dependent on the section considered, the type of boat, the climate and seasonal cycles,” said researchers led by Clara Filet of the Bordeaux Montaigne University.
To address this gap, the researchers developed an algorithm that searched for flat and calm stretches of a river, called “plain sections.” They tested out their approach on dozens of rivers used by cultures in ancient Gaul and Roman and concluded that it “provides a good approximation of navigable sections.”
“Applying this method offers a new perspective on navigable areas in the Roman world, providing a reasonable first guess that could guide future empirical research into the navigability of ancient rivers,” the team concluded.
In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same mother having distinct genomes and morphologies.
Do you or a loved one suffer from distorted 3D prints? Does your laser cutter produce parallelograms instead of rectangles? If so, you might be suffering from CNC skew miscalibration, and you could be entitled to significant compensation for your pain and suffering. Or, in the reality-based world, you could simply fix the problem yourself with this machine-vision skew correction system and get back to work.
If you want to put [Marius Wachtler]’s solution to work for you, it’s probably best to review his earlier work on pressure-advance correction. The tool-mounted endoscopic camera he used in that project is key to this one, but rather than monitoring a test print for optimum pressure settings, he’s using it to detect minor differences in the X-Y feed rates, which can turn what’s supposed to be a 90-degree angle into something else.
The key to detecting these problems is the so-called ChArUco board, which is a hybrid of a standard chess board pattern with ArUco markers added to the white squares. ArUco markers are a little like 2D barcodes in that they encode an identifier in an array of black and white pixels. [Marius] provides a PDF of a ChArUco that can be printed and pasted to a board, along with a skew correction program that analyzes the ChArUco pattern and produces Klipper commands to adjust for any skew detected in the X-Y plane. The video below goes over the basics.
Designer furniture generally comes with excellent aesthetics and (sometimes) functionality. However, such furniture comes with a price to match. One such piece of furniture is the Magis Spun Chair. It’s a striking piece with a fun party trick to match: it works like a top spinning while you sit inside. However, it has a prohibitively expensive price tag of $1,200 to match. That’s why [Morley Kert] is on a mission to build one for less.
This isn’t [Morley]’s first time building a spinning chair. The first attempt featured numerous 3D printed pieces glued together. It did not inspire confidence in spinning, nor was it a striking piece of furniture. So a revisit was in order.
This time around the chair’s construction was CNC milled plywood. Some surfaces featured 3D carving, but the majority were left raw with carving the final shape handled manually. Despite its size, the chair only took four and a half sheets of 3/4 inch plywood by hollowing out the base allowing for more efficient use of material. Once the router had completed the pieces, they were stacked and glued together. Each layer was aligned with hidden dowels making the assembly process fairly straightforward.
However, while usable, the chair looked rather unfinished, so [Morley] went to town on it with a power carving angle grinder. To ensure even carving on the circular profile of the chair, he placed it, or for some sections glued it, on an electronic lazy Susan. After some practice, the carving process turned out really well with a well-shaped and professional looking chair. Some wood varnish and a large amount of sanding finished up the chair very nicely for a total material cost of under $500.
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo articolo21.org/2025/09/aylan-n… Ve lo ricordate il piccolo Aylan Kurdi, il bambino curdo-siriano riverso sulla spiaggia turca di Bodrum? Aveva tre anni, era il settembre 2015 e l’immagine di quel bambino con la magliettina rossa, morto annegato durante uno dei tanti viaggi della speranza e della disperazione cui abbiamo assistito
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo articolo21.org/2025/09/enzo-ti… Ciò che mi aveva colpito di Enzo Tinarelli, nel periodo in cui insegnavamo entrambi all’Accademia di Carrara, ancor prima del suo talento innato era stata la spiccata indole di maestro. Forse suggestionato dalla sua origine ravennate, mi è sempre apparso un
🎭 Pacco a sorpresa – 10 Kg di meraviglie vintage su L'Isola che c'é.
Descrizione: Non è un semplice pacco. È un viaggio nel tempo, un tuffo nell’imprevisto, un rituale per chi ama l’insolito.
Su L'Isola che c'é ti propongo un pacco misterioso da circa 10 Kg, pieno di oggetti che raccontano storie dimenticate:
📚 Libri 🗞️ Riviste vintage 📖 Fumetti 🖼️ Manifesti 🧸 Oggettistica ❓ E altro ancora Ogni pacco è unico, assemblato con passione e un pizzico di mistero. Perfetto per collezionisti, appassionati di mercatini, creativi e anime curiose.
Questa' proposta sarà valida fino alle 13:07 di sabato 20 Settembre 2025
🎁 Un pacco a sorpresa di circa 10 kg che contiene libri, oggettistica, riviste vintage, fumetti, manifesti e altro.
🎭 Pacco a sorpresa – 10 Kg di meraviglie vintage su L'Isola che c'é.
Descrizione: Non è un semplice pacco. È un viaggio nel tempo, un tuffo nell’imprevisto, un rituale per chi ama l’insolito.
Su L'Isola che c'é ti propongo un pacco misterioso da circa 10 Kg, pieno di oggetti che raccontano storie dimenticate:
📚 Libri 🗞️ Riviste vintage 📖 Fumetti 🖼️ Manifesti 🧸 Oggettistica ❓ E altro ancora Ogni pacco è unico, assemblato con passione e un pizzico di mistero. Perfetto per collezionisti, appassionati di mercatini, creativi e anime curiose.
Questa' proposta sarà valida fino alle 13:07 di sabato 20 Settembre 2025
Roberto Vannacci ha ragione dicendoci che noi italiani da Nord a Sud dobbiamo essere uniti e che dobbiamo difenderci dagli immigrati subsahariani, magrebini e mediorientali che vengono ogni giorno coi barconi sulle nostre coste? Io dico si.
probabilmente sarebbe saggio che ognuno rimanesse solo nel suo quartiere. il resto deve essere tabù. niente viaggi fuori dal quartiere. e la pelle deve avere un colore preciso. canoni precisi per tutto. anche l'altezza deve essere italica o regionale. dobbiamo essere tutti più ariani: la perfezione.
P.S. ad andare al mare si diventa marocchini quindi non va bene.
Il summit dei Volenterosi, riunitosi questa settimana, ha evidenziato ancora una volta le divisioni tra gli Stati europei sul sostegno all’Ucraina. Francia e Regno Unito, principali promotori della Coalizione, si dicono pronti a impegnarsi boots
Il lavoro sporco per ora sembra all'Occidente un'operazione per il suo interesse, ma potremmo risvegliarci con lavori sporchi di altri (alleati o nemici) contro di noi se non combattiamo subito i crimini di guerra: fanrivista.it/2025/08/soldato-…
Che la supremazia strategica sia una diretta conseguenza di quella tecnologica è una costante della storia militare. Dall’invenzione della ruota all’avvento dell’intelligenza artificiale, la componente tecnologica ha sempre rivestito un ruolo di primo
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo Coloni israeliani volontari, spesso senza la supervisione dei militari, abbattono le case dei palestinesi per conto di una società privata al servizio dell'esercito L'articolo Forza Uria: pagineesteri.it/2025/09/06/med…
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo L'indagine dell'agenzia di stampa rivela che le forze israeliane hanno utilizzato proiettili di carri armati ad alto potenziale per colpire il complesso ospedaliero di Khan Yunis, prendendolo di mira quattro volte, il tutto senza
Nonostante Pechino si sia sempre dichiarata neutrale rispetto al conflitto in Ucraina, le evidenze emerse recentemente dimostrano un coinvolgimento ben più concreto nella guerra di Vladimir Putin. La Cina, infatti, fornisce a Mosca componentistica e materiali essenziali
Tom Petty – la fondazione celebra Wildflowers con un regalo ai fans….. freezonemagazine.com/news/tom-… La fondazione Tom Petty ha celebrato il trentesimo anniversario di Wildflowers pubblicando un autentico tesoro per i fan: un filmato inedito delle prove accompagnato dalla struggente ballata Crawling Back To You. Il video d’archivio, diretto da Justin Kreutzmann, mostra le prove del tour Dogs With Wings del 1995 riprese dal
Tom Petty – la fondazione celebra Wildflowers con un regalo ai fans….. freezonemagazine.com/news/tom-… La fondazione Tom Petty ha celebrato il trentesimo anniversario di Wildflowers pubblicando un autentico tesoro per i fan: un filmato inedito delle prove accompagnato dalla struggente ballata Crawling Back To You. Il video d’archivio, diretto da Justin Kreutzmann, mostra le prove del tour Dogs With Wings del 1995 riprese dal
come accennavo nella precedente presentazione, cercavo un luogo dove poter far vetrina delle 'robe che cucio'.
sono completamente autodidatta e mi muovo con il passaparola per ricevere commissioni per consolidare tecniche e ampliare gli orizzonti, oltre che per guadagnarmi da vivere.
studio modellistica appena ho un attimo, ma mi appoggio anche ad artigiani modellisti che creano cartamodelli che poi cucirò per voi (adulti e bambini).
uso solo tessuti certificati, da rivenditori scelti.
come piattaforma ho scelto di utilizzare Pixelfed.uno.
sperando di non sbagliare proverò a linkare la mia vetrina.
fatemi sapere se l'operazione è andata a buon fine, grazie
Abito bimba in popeline 100% cotone certificato GOTS. Cucio robe tentando di guadagnarmi da vivere. Cucio più o meno di tutto. Autodidatta, ho iniziato un anno fa e sono aperta a sperimentazioni. Studio modellistica nelle ore buche e propongo prezzi accessibili che mi consentano di cucire sempre di più e sempre con più precisione e tecnica. Se sei interessat*, contattami!
We were pleasantly surprised when congressional Republicans introduced our farewell article to the former president, titled Biden’s press freedom legacy: Empty words and hypocrisy, into the record at a House Judiciary Committee hearing this week.
That’s great — it’s always nice to have our work recognized. But if Republican lawmakers agree with us that former President Joe Biden was bad on press freedom, someone should really tell them about this Donald Trump character who’s in office now. All the abuses we identified in the article Republicans cited have (as the article predicted) worsened under the new president, and he’s come up with plenty of new ones too.
We wrote a letter to let the committee know that if it’s serious about addressing the issues our article discussed, regardless of who is in the White House, we’re here to help. We’ll let you know if they reply (but don’t hold your breath). Read the letter here or below.
For 164 days, Rümeysa Öztürk has faced deportation by the United States government for writing an op-ed it didn’t like, and for 83 days, Mario Guevara has been imprisoned for covering a protest. Read on for more, and click here to subscribe to our other newsletters.
Recording police is not ‘violence’
It was bad enough when government officials claimed that journalists are inciting violence by reporting. But now, they’re accusing reporters of actually committing violence.
The supposed violence by reporters? Recording videos. At least three times recently, a government official or lawyer has argued that simply recording law enforcement or Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers is a form of violence. Read more here.
Thanks for citing us, House Republicans. Now do something
That’s great — it’s always nice to have our work recognized. But if these lawmakers agree with us that former President Joe Biden was bad on press freedom, someone should really tell them about this Donald Trump character who’s in office now. All the abuses we identified in the article Republicans cited have (as the article predicted) worsened under the new president, and he’s come up with plenty of new ones too.
We wrote a letter to let the committee know that if it’s serious about addressing the issues our article discussed, regardless of who is in office, we’re here to help. We’ll let you know if they reply (but don’t hold your breath). Read the letter here.
Will secret law prevail in drug boat massacre?
The Trump administration has not provided any legal justification for blowing up a boat carrying 11 alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers on the Caribbean Sea. We filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out if lawyers at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel were consulted before the slaughter and, if so, what they said.
If there is an OLC opinion about the targeting of the Venezuelan boat, the public and Congress should be able to debate it right now. Unfortunately, the government has long taken the position that OLC opinions should be secret, even though there should be no such thing as secret law in the United States. Read more here, and, if you want to learn more about government secrecy and what we’re doing to combat it, subscribe to The Classifieds.
Stop the judicial secrecy bill
An amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act would allow lawmakers to scrub information about themselves from the internet. The bill fails to achieve its stated purpose of keeping lawmakers safe — except from investigative journalism.
This week we helped lead a letter to senators from press freedom and civil liberties organizations objecting to the misguided legislation. Even if the NDAA amendment does not succeed, it’s likely that this bill will be back, and we’ll be ready to fight it. Read the letter here.
ICE revives contract for spyware
In 2023, Biden issued an executive order limiting government use of commercial spyware. Subsequently, the Biden administration issued a stop-work order on a $2 million contract between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Paragon, a spyware vendor that makes products that have reportedly been used to spy on journalists.
Editor and Publisher Trump’s anti-press rhetoric is “not bluster; it is not a personality trait. It is deliberate,” our U.S. Press Freedom Tracker’s Stephanie Sugars said. “It is very much at the cost of the strength of our social fabric and our shared reality.”
RSF Great work by our friends at Reporters Without Borders organizing this response to Israel’s slaughter of journalists in Gaza. It’s unfortunate that more U.S. outlets did not participate. If the outlets you support were not among the few, ask them why.
The Dissenter We spoke to The Dissenter about the Illinois Supreme Court’s ridiculous ruling that the state’s law against strategic lawsuits against public participation doesn’t protect reporting, and the recently passed bill to repair the damage.
The New York Times We talked to the Times about influencers replacing journalists at the White House. Yes, it’s awful that Trump won’t grant reporters the honor of getting lied to at press briefings. But the decimation of FOIA — a source of facts, not spin — is even more concerning.
The Hill Kristi Noem’s complaints underscore why news outlets can’t settle frivolous lawsuits. Now, the door is wide open for government officials to question every editing decision news outlets make, whether to shorten an interview for time or to not air lies and nonsense.
Reason A good recap of why “originalist” attacks on the actual malice standard — which limits defamation claims by public figures — are so disingenuous.
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss slop in history, five-alarm fires, and AI art (not) at Dragon Con.
EMANUEL: We published about a dozen stories this week and I only wrote one of them. I’ve already talked about it at length on this week’s podcast so I suggest you read the article and then listen to that if you’re interested in OnlyFans piracy, bad DMCA takedown request processes, and our continued overreliance on Google search for navigating the internet.
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#NoiSiamoLeScuole questa settimana è dedicato ai nuovi Asili nido all’avanguardia in provincia di Cremona e di Brescia, realizzati grazie al #PNRR.
Qui tutti i dettagli ➡ https://www.mim.gov.
Il Consiglio dei Ministri ha approvato il decreto-legge recante la riforma dell’Esame di Stato del secondo ciclo di istruzione, misure per la valorizzazione del personale scolastico e per la sicurezza dei viaggi d’istruzione.
PresaDiretta 2025/26 - Dalla prigionia alla libertà, le parole di Assange sul giornalismo -...
PresaDiretta 2025/26 - Dalla prigionia alla libertà, le parole di Assange sul giornalismo - 07/09/2025 - Video - RaiPlay share.google/QXCAZZDvu3XT1uyzl
PresaDiretta 2025/26 - Dalla prigionia alla libertà, le parole di Assange sul giornalismo - 07/09/2025 - Video - RaiPlay https://share.google/QXCAZZDvu3XT1uyzl
