Category: Rants
by admin
April 12, 2026

What’s Your Favorite Kind of Hack?
Talking with [Tom Nardi] on the podcast this week, he mentioned his favorite kind of hack: the community-developed open-source firmware that can be flashed into a commercial product that has crappy firmware, thus saving it. The example, just for the record, is the CrossPoint open e-book reader firmware that turns a mediocre cheap e-book into […]
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by admin
April 1, 2026

Ask Hackaday: Using CoPilot? Are You Entertained?
There’s a great debate these days about what the current crop of AI chatbots should and shouldn’t do for you. We aren’t wise enough to know the answer, but we were interested in hearing what is, apparently, Microsoft’s take on it. Looking at their terms of service for Copilot, we read in the original bold: […]
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by admin
March 24, 2026

Age-Verification and the World Before Social Media
Although it may be hard to believe for current generations, there was a time when the Internet and the World Wide Web were not as integrated into society as it is today. The only forms of online ‘social media’ that existed came in the form of IRC, forums, BBSes, newsgroups and kin, while obtaining new […]
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by admin
March 21, 2026

The Unreasonable Power Density of Lithium-Ion
We’re all used to it by now, but I’d just like to reflect on how insanely power-packed lithium ion batteries are, and everything that’s afforded us. I’m trying to think of a gadget, a hobby, or nearly anything in my house that’s not touched by the battery chemistry. I’m looking at my portable wireless keyboard […]
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by admin
March 14, 2026

What is a Computer?
On the podcast, [Tom] and I were talking about the new generation of smartphones which are, at least in terms of RAM and CPU speed, on par with a decent laptop computer. If so, why not just add on a screen, keyboard, and mouse and use it as your daily driver? That was the question […]
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by admin
March 7, 2026

Choice, Control, and Interruption
We were talking about [Maya Posch]’s rant on smartphones, “The Curse of the Everything Device”. Maya’s main point is that because the smartphone, or computer, can do everything, it’s hard for a person to focus down and do one thing without getting distracted, checking their whatever feed, or getting an important push notification about the […]
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by admin
March 6, 2026

California’s Problematic Attempt to add Age-Verification to Software
Last year California’s Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043) was signed into law, requiring among other things that operating system providers implement an API for age verification purposes. With the implementation date of January 1, 2027 slowly encroaching this now has people understandably agitated. So what are the requirements, and what will its impact be, […]
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by admin
February 28, 2026

The Joys of 3D Printing
Al and I were talking on the podcast today about a sweet 3D printed wide-format camera build, and we got to musing on why we 3D-print. For Al, it’s an opportunity to experiment with 3D printing itself: tweaking his machines to get the best performance out of them. Other people make small, functional objects that […]
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by admin
February 27, 2026

Reflections On Ten Years With The Wrencher
An auspicious anniversary passed for me this week, as it’s a decade since I started writing for Hackaday. In that time this job has taken me all over  Europe, it’s shown me the very best and most awesome things our community has to offer, and I hope that you have enjoyed my attempts to share […]
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by admin
February 26, 2026

The Curse of the Everything Device
In theory having a single device that combines the features of multiple dedicated devices is a great idea, saving a lot of space, time and money. However, in reality it mostly means that these features now conflict with each other, force us to deal with more complex devices that don’t last nearly as long, and […]
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