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While it has become a word, laser used to be an acronym: “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”. But there is an even older technology called a maser, which …read more

Home automation with high usefulness and low annoyance tends to rely on reliable person sensing, and [francescopace]’s ESPectre shows one way to do that cheaply and easily by leveraging hardware …read more

If your travels take you near Mountain View, California, you can have the pleasure of visiting the Computer History Museum. You can see everything from a PDP-1 to an Altair …read more

Decades ago, shows like Star Trek, The Jetsons, and Lost in Space promised us a future full of helpful computers and robot assistants. Unfortunately, we haven’t quite gotten our general-purpose helper to do …read more

For most people, calculators are cheap and simple devices used for little more than addition and the odd multiplication job. However, when you get into scientific and graphical calculators, the …read more

Smoothie bikes are a great way to make a nutritious beverage while getting a workout at the same time. [Tony Goacher] was approached by a local college, though, which had …read more

Everyone knows that bearings are a consumable wear item, and that the power head of a vacuum likely contains bearings that will eventually need to be replaced. Yet when the …read more

When you can buy something at a low price in one location, and sell it at a higher price somewhere else, you’re engaged in what economists call “arbitrage”. We’re not …read more

The human body is remarkably good at handling repairs. Cut the skin, and the blood will clot over the wound and the healing process begins. Break a bone, and the …read more

In 1993, DOOM was a great game to play if you had a 486 with a VGA monitor and nothing to do all weekend. In 2026, you can play it on …read more

The very concept of the web browser began with a humble piece of software called NCSA Mosaic, all the way back in 1993. It was soon eclipsed by Netscape Navigator, …read more

With the powerful off-the-shelf hardware available to us common hardware hobbyist folk, how hard can it be to make a smartphone from scratch? Hence [V Electronics]’s Spirit smartphone project, with …read more

When last we saw [xoreaxeax], he had built a lens-less optical microscope that deduced the structure of a sample by recording the diffraction patterns formed by shining a laser beam …read more

If you are interested in historical big computers, you probably think of IBM, with maybe a little thought of Sperry Rand or, if you go smaller, HP, DEC, and companies …read more

Today marks an auspicious anniversary which might have passed us by had it not been for [Diamond Geezer], who reminds us that it’s a hundred years since the first public …read more

An analog telephone adapter (ATA), or FXS gateway, is a device that allows traditional analog phones to be connected to a digital voice-over-IP (VoIP) network. In addition to this, you …read more

Before the refrigerator became a normal part of any kitchen, those with enough money to throw around could get an icebox, which used melting ice to cool food and drinks …read more

I love, love, love Saturn by [Rain2], which comes in two versions. The first, which is notably more complex, is shown here with its rings-of-Saturn thumb clusters. So what was …read more

Although there are a few hobbies that have low-cost entry points, amateur astronomy is not generally among them. A tabletop Dobsonian might cost a few hundred dollars, and that is …read more

Carbon fiber (CF) has attained somewhat of a near-mystical appeal in consumer marketing, with it being praised for being stronger than steel while simultaneously being extremely lightweight. This mostly refers …read more