The hard stuff

• Need to identify an old piece of whatever? Try FCC search - many ancient pieces of hardware can be identified by their FCC ID located somewhere on a circuit board.
• Some harddrive basics
• Want to know how stuff works? Try Howstuffworks.com - searchable. You will find an explanation for almost everything.
• Confused by a bazillion of CPUs (well, at least I am on a regular basis): CPUs explained by Wikipedia and a list of sockets used.
• Databases of supported Laptops for Linux and FreeBSD
• Things you always wanted to know: what kind of hardware do people shoot up there and why

Real life - using things

• arduino, universal open-source electronics platform, cheap and easy to use.
• Circuit Exchange International: nice list of electronics circuits
• freedatasheets - component datasheets for download

security?!

• have i been pwned? by Troy Hunt
• BSI Sicherheitswarnungen des Bundesamts für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik
• Kuketz german security blog
• naked security
• prism-break.org fighting global data surveillance programs
• suckless.org