Colin O'Flynn
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oflynn.com
Colin O'Flynn
@oflynn.com
1.3K followers 160 following 150 posts
Colin is a huge nerd. Hardware hacking, open-source hardware, electronics design, academic stuff, dog stuff in some order. Assistant Prof @ Dalhousie Uni, advisor/co-founder NewAE Technology Inc.
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oflynn.com
Colin O'Flynn @oflynn.com · Nov 30
Reviving my Twitter pinned post until I find something new to put here (Halloween 2021).
A dog blocking the path dressed as the Evergiven ship, with another dog in the background with a captains hat
oflynn.com
Magnet wire should be a restricted hacking tool based on the metric of how many attacks it enables.
A chip with magnet (thin wire) being used to access various test points.
November 14, 2025 at 11:49 PM
Reposted by Colin O'Flynn
pinkflawd.bsky.social
Squeeeee 🥳 I'll be teaching my Advanced Linux Malware Reverse Engineering class at RE//verse conference in 2026!! MORE Linux APT insides and peculiarities😍🥰🤩Pls share if you can🙃
shop.binary.ninja/products/re-...
RE//verse 2026 Training - Advanced Linux Malware Reverse Engineering with Marion Marschalek
This fast-paced 3-day training explores Linux internals and Linux binary analysis techniques, before jumping right in with common Linux malware. Work through advanced samples, Linux software protectio...
shop.binary.ninja
November 12, 2025 at 6:59 PM
Reposted by Colin O'Flynn
brendannyhan.bsky.social
A staggering statistic: "North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year." What are we doing?
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 6d
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 12, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Colin O'Flynn
tinytapeout.com
3 days left for our ChipFoundry sponsored TTSKY25b shuttle!

We still have 36 early bird dev kits available, so you can tapeout and receive a copy of the ASIC for just €185!

Plenty of interesting projects already submitted: app.tinytapeout.com/shuttles/tts...
November 7, 2025 at 11:08 AM
oflynn.com
Made a very simple python-based simulator for working on LCDs using u8g2 (embedded graphics lib). Not well tested & half vibe coded, but so far has been useful and saved a lot of time when it comes to playing around with fonts, spacing, etc. github.com/colinoflynn/... #embeddedguis #u8g2
October 29, 2025 at 2:04 AM
Reposted by Colin O'Flynn
theonion.com
Katy Perry Releases New Single About Superiority Of Canadian Manufacturing
Katy Perry Releases New Single About Superiority Of Canadian Manufacturing
MONTECITO, CA—Signaling a new chapter in her career, pop star Katy Perry released a new single Monday about the superiority of Canadian manufacturing. “When I learned about the strength of Canadian au...
theonion.com
October 20, 2025 at 5:59 PM
oflynn.com
A little friend swam by me to feed on a floating whale carcass while I'm down by #brierisland volunteering on a lighthouse restoration project. #greatwhite #shark
September 5, 2025 at 10:06 AM
Reposted by Colin O'Flynn
largecardinal.bsky.social
We also made @wired.com ! www.wired.com/story/fully-...
August 29, 2025 at 2:56 PM
oflynn.com
LPT: Put your dog's face on PCB silkscreens and it might end up in official marketing material for other companies (source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXI6...).
A youtube video from Langer EMV, with my dog (Bergen's) face on the silkscreen in a PCB.
August 29, 2025 at 12:39 AM
Reposted by Colin O'Flynn
retr0.id
lenovo laptop motherboard, with a temperature-controlled hot plate under the memory chips, with kapton tape covering surrounding parts. lionel hutz business card from the simpsons, but it says: memory not user replaceable but it's been edited with a red pen to say: memory note: user replaceable!
August 15, 2025 at 1:39 AM
oflynn.com
Currently *not* at BH/DC... While I miss catching up, happily doing things like taking videos of my dog unsuccessfully trying to dry themselves instead of walking around in 42C weather.
August 6, 2025 at 12:51 AM
Reposted by Colin O'Flynn
johndmcmaster.bsky.social
Check out FOSSF Silicon at Open Sauce this weekend! We're showing off the FOSS semiconductor design + fabrication ecosystem including a Hacker Fab stepper, tube furnace, Maasi spin coater, prototype devices, and much more! Booth C.18
July 19, 2025 at 7:05 AM
oflynn.com
Not tech, but have taken a few trips out to a place here in #novascotia that has #puffins lately - here were a couple recent shots
A Puffin diving underwater. A Puffin with some Razorbills in background A Puffin flying
June 15, 2025 at 1:23 AM
Reposted by Colin O'Flynn
wootsecurity.bsky.social
Want to go to WOOT and learn about the latest hardware & software attacks? Registrations are now open!

If you can't afford traveling ✈️ to Seattle on your own and need financial support for a ticket, apply for a grant until July 7: www.usenix.org/conference/w...
WOOT '25 Grant Opportunities
www.usenix.org
June 9, 2025 at 7:33 PM
oflynn.com
Oops! Broke a tap in a part, a while ago I bought that low cost EDM machine to try out, it works surprisingly well:
A broken tap. A machine that says "portable EDM machine"
June 9, 2025 at 12:11 AM
oflynn.com
Almost 13 years ago we were lucky enough to adopt Luna. Sadly our time to say goodbye is near, but for now we're giving her the ultimate dog days while we still can. To keep the "sad scrolling" all in one place I'll use this thread for photos this week, starting with a cart trip to a little park.
An older dog (Luna) in a cart.
May 13, 2025 at 1:43 AM
oflynn.com
In 2020 I started a pandemic project of writing down lessons learned building @newae.com using a kind of partially-OSHW partially-commercial and no-VC model. This has spun into a book proposal, I've now got a landing page at colinoflynn.com/making-it-sm... as I will be releasing more from this!
Small Scale Electronics: Making it Small (The Book!) – Colin O'Flynn
colinoflynn.com
May 12, 2025 at 6:48 PM
oflynn.com
I was thinking Mother's Day would be a perfect time for someone to setup a phishing site to collect CC's by claiming last-min mothers day flower delivery. But then you burn yourself, so ideally you subcontract a low quality delivery service and you keep it going. Then I realized this is FTD Flowers.
May 8, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Reposted by Colin O'Flynn
whitequark.org
implemented a high performance ARM JTAG debug probe (for ARM7TDMI) that can do about 1 MB/s of useful bandwidth at 24 MHz TCK, bottlenecking on waiting for core synchronization
May 1, 2025 at 9:02 AM
oflynn.com
April snow..... at least someone here enjoys it in #halifax! Anyone who traveled for #atlseccon I'm sure had a surprise on landing.
A dog in the snow A dog rolling in the snow
April 10, 2025 at 2:10 AM
Reposted by Colin O'Flynn
pinkflawd.bsky.social
Save the date - BlackHoodie will be offering a free reverse engineering training for women by women in Stockholm at @sec-t.bsky.social conference on September 10th! Thanks to the wonderful people of SEC-T ♥️
April 8, 2025 at 6:43 PM
oflynn.com
Finally finished uploading my "Intro to PCB Design" lectures from my class this semester - Part 1 at youtu.be/N544CMR8I-M and rest linked from there. Slides and example project for students to complete at github.com/colinoflynn/... if you want to reuse it! #pcb #pcbdesign #electronics #kicad
Colin's Into to PCB Design Part 1 - PCBs, Traces, and More (Dalhousie 2025 ECED Lecture)
YouTube video by Colin O'Flynn
youtu.be
March 30, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Reposted by Colin O'Flynn
hforsten.com
Assembled PCB for my newest project just arrived. This should be 10 MHz to at least 8 GHz VNA. Next is powering it on and testing if it works.
March 17, 2025 at 3:07 PM
oflynn.com
Anyone in #Halifax - Thursday March 20th the finale of my ECED3901 "Robot Competition" is happening, see more details at roboheist.com - this year the theme means robots will be defeating RFID readers and cracking safes among other challenges! All day at Sexton Campus (Downtown) #ros2 #robotics
March 20, 2025 at 12:50 AM
oflynn.com
Was able to recover some old test equipment for running an RF chamber which used one of these cursed "put a battery inside the RTC package" devices (M48T86PC1). Eternally grateful for the author posting this guide: github.com/targeted/m48... #repair #retrocomputing
March 18, 2025 at 5:25 PM