Copper sulfate crystals are probably among one of the prettiest crystals you can grow at home, with even just a simple setup with some copper scrap and vinegar already capable …read more
The discerning modern gamer’s quest is to find a quieter computer without sacrificing performance. That proves challenging when modern components are highly efficient at producing monumental quantities of thermal energy. …read more
Hollywood has a lot to answer for when it comes to “silencers” on firearms. On screen, a suppressed pistol makes a pinging thud, and the bad guy in the next …read more
Most of the time, assuming nothing’s gone wrong with them, we take our hands so much for granted that it’s easy to forget what remarkable pieces of engineering they are: …read more
Last time, we looked at getting started with the GOWIN tools and a Tang Nano 20K FPGA. The software from GOWIN isn’t bad, but it isn’t open source, and there …read more
Although VHS-based games have existed for about as long as VHS players have sat in millions of living rooms, they always tended to be rather sparse gaming experiences. For example, …read more
It must be April in October again, because Google Japan has a new, hilariously impractical reimagining of the keyboard: a conveyor belt. This time it’s on GitHub with firmware, STLs, …read more
Back in the old days the IBM-PC, like most of its contemporary computers, shipped with BASIC in ROM. Even after it stopped living in ROM, IBM-Compatibles shipped with GW-BASIC, and …read more
One fascinating thing about a pulsed laser is that, though the average power may be measured in watts or milliwatts, the peak power can easily reach millions of times that. …read more
If you’re interested in aerospace, there’s an excellent chance you’ve heard the rumor that NASA is trying to get its SR-71 flying again. Or at the very least, they are …read more
When [Thomas] showed his 1960s-era Tektronix 545A oscilloscope in a recent video, it made us both nostalgic and happy. Nostalgic because we miss the days when our oscilloscopes were “mainframes” …read more
If you saw a device that had a laptop form factor playing sound and video, alt-tabbing over to play a game or take some notes, then back to the video …read more
[Tolko] wanted to encourage kids to have some physical activity, but noted that they only wanted to play games. That led to BlobJump, a Raspberry Pi-based game sort of like …read more
If you want to experiment with LLMs, you typically have a choice of sending your requests to someone else’s computer or fielding a very large GPU and CPU setup to …read more
It’s no secret that the size of webpages has been slowly — or not so slowly — creeping up over the years. Does a simple website need to span multiple …read more
Whereas PlayStation 3 and earlier were rather specialized consoles, today’s consoles like the PlayStation 5 are essentially x86-based gaming PCs in a fancy case, with custom firmware to lock it …read more
Solder stencils are a fantastic way to accurately apply solder paste to a PCB. Professionally-made stencils are cut from steel, but for the home hacker, soda cans continue to be …read more
[Nick Bild] evidently has a soft spot for the 6502, given that his Vectron65 Plus home computer project uses at least one of them, depending on the add-ons. You see, …read more
Perhaps the most famous of all the software-defined radio (SDR) receivers is the RTL-SDR, a digital TV receiver on which an undocumented feature was found. Perhaps other radio-enabled chips also …read more