Vintage hi-fi gear can be very attractive, particularly compared to modern stuff. However, when this stuff starts getting into its third or fourth decade after production, things start to wear out. Chief among them—the little incandescent bulbs that light up the dials with such a beautiful glow. [Piffpaffpoltrie] was suffering just this problem on an […]
While you tend to think of diamonds as ornamental gemstones, diamonds also have many important industrial uses, and many of those diamonds are now synthetic polycrystalline diamonds. How are they made? [JerryRigEverything] takes us behind the scenes at a diamond manufacturing facility, something you don’t get to see every day. Check out the giant presses […]
Altermagnetism is effectively a hybrid form of magnetism and ferromagnetism that might become very useful in magnetic storage as well as spintronics in general. In order to practically use it, we first need to be able to control the creation of these altermagnets, which is what researchers have now taken the first steps towards. The […]
[CNLohr] has been tinkering with some fun parts of late. He’d found out that ordinary LCD screens could be used as simple touch sensors, and he had to try it for himself. He ended up building a little doohickey that combined USB C, an LCD display, and a touch interface, all for under a buck. […]
There’s a Blue Bendix in Texas, and thanks to [Usagi Electric] it’s the oldest operating computer in North America. The Bendix G-15, a vacuum tube computer originally released in 1956, is now booting, and running code from paper tape. [David, aka Usagi] received the G-15 about a year ago from The System Source museum. The […]
Readers may recall when we first covered the $5 Xiaomi LYWSD03MMC temperature and humidity sensor back in 2020. Prolific hacker [Aaron Christophel] wrote a custom firmware for the affordable gadget that was so capable and well implemented that it kicked off a whole new community. It’s recently been brought to our attention that the Xiaomi […]
Although the world of the X86 instruction set architecture (ISA) and related ecosystem is often accused of being ‘stale’ and ‘bloated’, we have seen a flurry of recent activity that looks to shake up and set the future course for what is still the main player for desktop, laptop and server systems. Via Tom’s Hardware comes […]
The Swiss Army knife is the most well-known multitool, combining a bunch of functionality into a compact package. [Jeff Gough] decided to build a custom example featuring a selection of his favorite tools. He documents the build in a video series on YouTube (see below). [Jeff] decided to take on the project as a gift […]
There are certain tasks that humans perform every day that are notoriously difficult for computers to figure out. Identifying objects in pictures, for example, was something that seems fairly straightforward but was only done by computers with any semblance of accuracy in the last few years. Even then, it can’t be done without huge amounts […]
LEGO make lots of neat floral arrangements these days, and even little Christmas trees, too. While they’re fun to build out of tiny little blocks, they’re a little small for use as your main Christmas tree. Sadly, a bigger version simply doesn’t exist in the LEGO catalog, so if that’s your desire, you’ll have to […]