Different cultures have their own conventions for naming locations, for example in the United Kingdom there are plenty of places named for monarchs, while in many other countries there are not. An aspect of this fascinated [Ben Ashforth], who decided to find all the streets in Europe named after auspicious dates, and then visit enough […]
[Stephen Woodward] is familiar with digital potentiometers but is also familiar with their limitations. That spurred him to create the PWMPot which performs a similar function, but with better features than a traditional digital pot. Of course, he admits that this design has some limitations of its own, so — as usual — you have […]
If you’ve owned a CD player or other piece of consumer digital audio gear manufactured since the 1980s, the chances are it has a TOSLINK port on the back. This is a fairly simple interface that sends I2S digital audio data down a short length of optical fibre, and it’s designed to run between something […]
This week, Jonathan Bennett and Randal chat with Matija Šuklje about Open Source and the Law! How do Open Source projects handle liability, what should a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) look like, and where can an individual or project turn for legal help? https://matija.suklje.name/ https://openchainproject.org https://matija.suklje.name/fiduciary-license-agreement-20 Did you know you can watch the live recording […]
There are many AI models out there that you can play with from companies like OpenAI, Google, and a host of others. But when you use them, you get the experience they want, and you run it on their computer. There are a variety of reasons you might not like this. You may not want […]
You probably get a few of these things each week in the mail. And some of them actually do a good job of obscuring the contents inside, even if you hold the envelope up to the light. But have you ever taken the time to appreciate the beauty of security envelope patterns? Yeah, I didn’t […]
Modern remote control (RC) radios are capable of incredible range, but they’re still only made for line-of-sight use. What if you want to control a vehicle that’s 100s of kilometers away, or even on the other side of the planet? Cellular is an option, but is obviously limited by available infrastructure — good luck getting […]
How do you know that your patch cables are good? For simple jumper wires, a multimeter is about all you need to know for sure. But things can get weird in the RF world, in which case you might want to keep these coaxial patch cable testing tips in mind. Of course, no matter how […]
Face it, we’ve all been there, in a crowded workshop building something, and horror of horrors, things are going to get a little… windy. Do you try to drop it quietly and hope nobody says the rhyme, do you bolt for the door, or can you tough it out and hold it in? Never fear, […]
[Nicholas Carlini] found some extra time on his hands over the holiday, so he decide to do something with “entirely no purpose.” The result: 84,688 regular expressions that can play chess using a 2-ply minmax strategy. No kidding. We think we can do some heavy-duty regular expressions, but this is a whole other level. As […]