Steam turbines have helped drive a large chunk of our technological development over the last century or so, and they’ll always make for interesting DIY. [Hyperspace Pirate] built a small turbine and boiler in his garage, turning fire into flowing electrons, and learning a bunch in the process. [Hyperspace Pirate] based the turbine design on […]
In 2020 international shipping saw itself faced with new fuel regulations for cargo ships pertaining to low sulfur fuels (IMO2020). This reduced the emission of sulfur dioxide aerosols from these ships across the globe by about 80% practically overnight and resulting in perhaps the biggest unintentional geoengineering event since last century. As detailed in a […]
Venus hasn’t received nearly the same attention from space programs as Mars, largely due to its exceedingly hostile environment. Most electronics wouldn’t survive the 462 °C heat, never mind the intense atmospheric pressure and sulfuric acid clouds. With this in mind, NASA has been experimenting with the concept of a completely mechanical rover. The [Beardy […]
The Geochron World Time Indicator is a clock that doubles as a live map of where the sun is shining on the Earth. Back in its day, it was a cult piece that some have dubbed the “Rolex on the wall.” Wired’s recent coverage of the clock reminded us of just how cool it is […]
A joke in networking circles is that the switch from IPv4 to IPv6 is always a few years away. Although IPv6 was introduced in the early 90s as a result of the feared imminent IPv4 address drought courtesy of the blossoming Internet. Many decades later, [Geoff Huston] in an article on the APNIC blog looks […]
An unlikely theatre for an act in the right-to-repair saga came last year in the form of McDonalds restaurants, whose McFlurry ice cream machines are prone to breakdown. The manufacturer had locked them down, and a franchisee with a broken machine had no option but to call them for an expensive repair job. iFixit and […]
Scanning the firehose of new electronic kits and modules coming from the usual Chinese suppliers can be a rewarding experience, as sometimes among the endless breakout boards comes an item that looks interesting enough to try. As an example there’s a receiver kit being given a quick review by [Tech Minds], offering AM and HF […]
This DIY lasertag project designed by [Nii], which he brought to Tokyo Maker Faire back in September, is a treasure trove. It’s all in Japanese and you’ll need to visit X (formerly Twitter) to see it, but the images do a fine job of getting the essentials across and your favorite translator tool will do […]
It’s a staple of spy thriller movies, that the protagonist has some kind of electronic scanner with which he theatrically searches his hotel room to reveal the bad guys’ attempt to bug him. The bug of course always had a flashing LED to make it really obvious to viewers, and the scanner was made by […]
As natural as walking is to us tail-less bipedal mammals, the fact of the matter is that it took many evolutionary adaptations to make this act of controlled falling forward work (somewhat) reliably. It’s therefore little wonder that replicating bipedal walking (and running) in robotics is taking a while. Recently a Chinese humanoid robot managed […]