Field News

When home computers first appeared, disk drives were an expensive rarity. Consumers weren’t likely to be interested in punch cards or paper tape, but most people did have consumer-grade audio cassette recorders. There were a few attempts at storing data on tapes, which, in theory, is simple enough. But, practically, cheap audio recorders are far […]
Facebook and Yandex have been caught performing user-hostile tracking. This sort of makes today just another Friday, but this is a bit special. This time, it’s Local Mess. OK, it’s an attack with a dorky name, but very clever. The short explanation is that web sites can open connections to localhost. And on Android, apps […]
Despite the repeated warnings of system administrators, IT personnel, and anyone moderately aware of operational security, there are still quite a few people who will gladly plug a mysterious flash drive into their computers to see what’s on it. Devices which take advantage of this well-known behavioral vulnerability have a long history, the most famous […]
Do you like Nintendo games? How about handhelds? Do you prefer the now-venerable Game Boy Advance (GBA) to more modern platforms, but wish your aging eyes could enjoy its content on a large CRT instead of a dinky LCD? If you answered yes to all those questions, you are exactly the type of person [GouldFish […]
What do you do when you’re a starving student and you need a 400 MHz logic analyzer for your digital circuit investigations? As [nanofix] shows in a recent video, you find one that’s available as an open hardware project and build it yourself. The project, aptly named LogicAnalyzer was developed by [Dr. Gusman] a few […]
[Bhuvanmakes] says that he has the simplest open source photobioreactor. Is it? Since it is the only photobioreactor we are aware of, we’ll assume that it is. According to the post, other designs are either difficult to recreate since they require PC boards, sensors, and significant coding. This project uses no microcontroller, so it has […]
They’re marketed as “Solar Generators” or “Solar Power Stations” but what they are is a nice box with a battery, charge controller, and inverter inside. [DoItYourselfDad] on Youtube decided that since all of those parts are available separately, he could put one together himself. The project is a nice simple job for a weekend afternoon. […]
What’s the GitHub repository you have created that you think is of most note? Which one do you think of as your magnum opus, the one that you will be remembered by? Was it the CAD files and schematics of a device for ending world hunger, or perhaps it was software designed to end poverty? […]
This Pet Hacks Contest entry from [Andrea] opens the door to a great collaboration of sensors to solve a problem. The Cat At The Door project’s name is a bit of a giveaway to its purpose, but this project has something for everyone, from radar to e-ink, LoRa to 3D printing. He wanted a sensor […]
Since October 1978, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has operated its fleet of Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) — the data from which has been used for a wide array of environmental monitoring applications, from weather forecasting to the detection of forest fires and volcanic eruptions. But technology marches on, and considering that […]