For as good as solar panels are at converting sunlight directly into usable electricity, especially for how cheap they’re becoming, they can still only gather around 20-30% of the energy …read more
At one point in time web rings were one of the best ways to find content on the World Wide Web — involving not just a directory of participating sites, …read more
Once upon a time, there was a bit of a fad for fingerprint authentication in laptops and desktop computers. It has long since faded, but [superdog] wanted just such a …read more
Much like radio operators being encouraged to use the least possible amount of power to make a contact, chemists have a similar rule encouraging using the least amount of materials …read more
Humans are odd creatures, and no two are exactly alike, which is likely why so many different methods exist for tracking the progress of tasks that must be accomplished. [Simone …read more
If you asked us to build you a KVM last week, we’d likely have reached for a Raspberry Pi. Now, thanks to [JonathanRowny], we’d seriously consider an ESP32-P4, because his …read more
For some reason there’s heated debate around the topic of whether high current carrying wiring ought to use crimped or soldered connections, even though the industry standard is to crimp …read more
Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Al Williams were in a retro mood this week. There was a new ‘486 computer, a new mechanical TV, and a USB stick with a magnetic …read more
When we think of 1960s synthesizers it’s usual to imagine instruments with vast arrays of controls and patch cables for configuring their many filters, oscillators, and other parameters. They created …read more
Unsurprisingly to many of us, app stores for smart televisions are also trash. Perhaps even more full of trash than other app stores due to the smaller ecosystem and fewer …read more
Like so many large and popular open source projects these days, the Godot game engine struggles with an influx of pull requests. The situation has become increasingly dire due to …read more
People have been attempting to turn Kindles into more than e-readers since the first devices came out nearly two decades ago. The e-ink displays are low-power and great for displaying …read more
After the Nintendo 3DS saw various Nintendo 64-era titles like Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask ported to it, there was a lot of speculation that the GameCube/Wii title of Twilight …read more
Researchers [Charles Ye], [Jasmine Cui], and [Dylan Hadfield-Menell] have shown that AI Large Language Models (LLMs) can fail to correctly distinguish between different instruction sources because they prioritize writing style …read more
Many of us remember back in our school days taking tests and filling out answers on a Scantron sheet, those long rows of A, B, C, D, and E that …read more
There are plenty of radios you can buy that pick up MW and SW bands if that’s what you’re into. Or, you can follow [mircemk]’s example, and whip one up …read more
This is one of those projects that was both inspired and made possible by the absolute embarrassment of dev boards available to the modern hacker. In this case, the dev …read more
It’s a fact of life when starting a computer, that booting into whatever operating system you use will take a while. Mine takes somewhere around 30 seconds, and yours probably …read more
If you want to get around Monaco, a map — digital or otherwise — is probably the best way to navigate. But if you just want to appreciate the city’s …read more
A few weeks ago we published the first in a new series of articles, Know Your Food. It was born out of the realisation that most people know surprisingly little about …read more