N
NYC Resistor
nycresistor.com · Group blog · on HN since 2008
Brooklyn hackerspace NYC Resistor shares member projects like hardware hacks, DIY electronics, and retro computer write-ups.
What HN saysCommenters call it one of the best East Coast hackerspaces, recommend it for private workspace and Thursday open hack nights, and cite its ROM easter egg post.
39HN people shared it
20linked it in comments
24stories submitted
1.4Kstory points
10 months agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Homepage11 people · first shared 2008
- 2Ghosts in the rom4 people · 401 points · first shared 2012 · 23 comments on HN
- 3Hello from 19782 people · 246 points · first shared 2014 · 38 comments on HN
- 4DIY: Cheap, ultra low-power radios that communicate over thousands of miles2 people · 88 points · first shared 2010 · 29 comments on HN
- 5Oscilloscope clock2 people · 48 points · first shared 2012 · 5 comments on HN
- 630th Anniversary Macintosh2 people · 1 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 7DIY Sunrise Alarm Clock2 people · 1 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 8Reviving the Apple 410 Color Plotter1 people · 237 points · first shared 2017 · 15 comments on HN
- 9The Joy of Dumping1 people · 112 points · first shared 2012 · 14 comments on HN
- 10Hacker builds working 1/10th scale Cray 11 people · 86 points · first shared 2010 · 14 comments on HN
- 11Life Size Katamari1 people · 54 points · first shared 2009 · 3 comments on HN
- 12A physical, open source time puncher for freelancers1 people · 42 points · first shared 2012 · 19 comments on HN
- 13Running Colossal Cave Adventure on a PDP-11/34 [video]1 people · 20 points · first shared 2014 · 3 comments on HN
- 14Extracting the Vector Font from the Apple 410 Color Plotter (2012)1 people · 5 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 15The legoland matrix1 people · 2 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
beagle3 · 2014-05-10
One of the best east coast hackerspaces, http://www.nycresistor.com/ has practically made it the official drink of the place.
bootload · 2008-12-31
"... I'd like to meet up with a group of people that are technology-oriented ... recent transplant to New York ..."
Might be worth checking out http://www.nycresistor.com it provides a private workspace (something like $30/month) and project groups, accessing smart locals on Saturdays & Sundays. The events are here http://www.eventbrite.com/org/52408308?s=1 and you can read an NYT article ~ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/nyregion/thecity/28tink.html?_r=1 There is also HN thread somewhere (I killed 'SearchYC.com' looking for it).
officeplant · 2024-06-26
Some links in the comments from ex-engineers and people who knew about the easter egg apparently documented for over a decade when this was published.
>https://www.nycresistor.com/2012/08/21/ghosts-in-the-rom/comment-page-…
>https://discussions.apple.com/thread/122367?sortBy=best
gregsadetsky · 2023-02-05
I feel like https://www.nycresistor.com/ and https://www.nycmesh.net/ still embody the spirit of those early communities!
zeeshanm · 2016-03-15
You should def go to NYC Resistor in Brooklyn. They have open hack nights every Thursday evenings. http://www.nycresistor.com/
ilovecomputers · 2011-01-06
I wouldn't say New York is lacking a geek scene. They have a major hackerspace of all things: http://www.nycresistor.com/
glenra · 2010-08-05
Cool startup: http://makerbot.com
News source: http://www.nycresistor.com/
dskhatri · 2010-02-04
I'm a big fan of hacker labs/collectives like Saul's Squid Labs. Here are some others I know of:
Squid Labs (Bay Area): http://www.squid-labs.com/
Applied Minds (LA): http://www.appliedminds.com/
Syyn Labs (LA): http://syynlabs.com/
NYC Resistor (NYC): http://nycresistor.com
Any others?
Wouldn't medium-sized and large companies benefit a lot from having small but independent (free to hack on whatever they feel like) "skunk works" labs like these? I'm not sure if the research labs at Microsoft, IBM are equivalent.
The Synn Labs folk are cool hackers. They often have their interactive tech projects on display at Mindshare. If you're in LA, Mindshare (http://mindshare.la) is a monthly event that I highly recommend.
ape4 · 2025-12-23
A maker space https://www.nycresistor.com/
aditya · 2011-01-24
Yeah, nycresistor comes much closer: http://nycresistor.com
krschultz · 2009-03-26
HeckFeck · 2024-06-26
Surreal indeed. Here he is: https://www.nycresistor.com/2012/08/21/ghosts-in-the-rom/comment-page-…
As early as 2012 he was sharing the gospel of what was to become TempleOS.
GhettoComputers · 2021-11-16
Honestly it looks dreadful. The nixie isn’t high power usage as much as high voltage. In the dark you can probably better emulate it with an old android screen with oled. It looks like prison food of nixie clocks, where you want to build a clock, a nixie but cheap out and use something completely terrible, like a prison cake made of sugarless corn flakes. This looks much better. https://www.nycresistor.com/2011/10/15/el-wire-nixie-tubes/
Someone · 2017-09-25
Apple cannot guarantee I will not include any of that in my firmware.
They also should not be that surprised to find photos in my firmware, as they have shipped photos in their firmware in the past (https://www.nycresistor.com/2012/08/21/ghosts-in-the-rom/)
tyingq · 2017-03-19
Not quite as cool as laser beams, but if you have an oscilloscope with an x/y mode: https://www.nycresistor.com/2012/09/03/vector-display/
LeafStorm · 2012-06-04
But you can't tap a NFC tag from a distance. You can interact with QR codes from a range only limited by the size of the image, but NFC requires you to bring your reader within a few centimeters of the tag. And you can't print an NFC tag from a LaserJet, broadcast one on TV, or make one into a waffle [1].
Not that I have anything against NFC -- it's a rather interesting technology, with many useful applications that QR codes don't have. But QR codes have several properties that NFC doesn't, and by definition can never have.
[1] http://www.nycresistor.com/2010/11/24/our-demoslam-entry-tasty-qr-code…
kellysutton · 2011-12-17
Not to take away from the accomplishment, but NYC Resistor did this 2 years ago: http://www.nycresistor.com/2009/02/27/sudo-make-me-a-sandwich-robot/
jbeluch · 2010-03-11
For anyone in the NYC area, Rob Carlson will be speaking at NYCR this Saturday (Mar 13).
http://www.nycresistor.com/2010/03/10/reminder-bioengineering-oracle-a…
alx · 2008-11-29
The ones collected in my rss reader after years, as hackers in the general sense, not just security:
http://blawg.72dpiarmy.com/
http://arduino.cc/blog/
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/arduino/
http://events.ccc.de/
http://chaosradio.ccc.de/chaos_tv.html
http://chaosradio.ccc.de/chaosradio_international.html
http://charlie137-2.blogspot.com/
http://www.flylogic.net/blog/
http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/
http://ha.ckers.org/blog/
http://har2009.org/
http://neil.fraser.name/
http://www.nycresistor.com/
http://schulzeandwebb.com/blog/
http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/
http://thepiratesdilemma.com/
http://the-shoebox.org/
Good luck, looking to see your memetracker ;)
Create · 2014-04-14
However, this is the wrong thread
This thread is about a branding exercise on CERN. Which is a pity, because trendy retro hipster feel-good sugar-coat marketing propaganda will do more harm to CERN and its cause than good on the long run. Ask Herwig Schopper if in doubt.
Just to illustrate my point, here is a quote:
After digging and digging, we came to the conclusion that the font rendered on screen wasn’t going to be a font-file, it was probably C code in the drivers for the screen. This was disheartening since there was no easy template to build from or convert.
The guy and his audience has apparently very little notion on how a terminal works (let alone how it is built), never mind about the computer itself. For educational purposes, here is a better way to go about a similar digging:
http://www.nycresistor.com/2012/08/21/ghosts-in-the-rom/
Which would actually lead to the old character map in the ROM that would be seen glowing on a CRT.
Case in point about XOFF: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7587088
And again, right on topic, however only accessible for those who do not suffer from functional analphabetism:
Strangely, not only has it forgotten how to fly, it also seems to have forgotten that it has forgotten how to fly. Legend has it that a seriously worried kakapo will sometimes run up a tree and jump out of it, whereupon it flies like a brick and lands in a graceless heap on the ground.
ps: the post is old, because the issue is old and recurring. It…