Ep113: Python Switching to Match, a Magnetic Dyno, a Flying Dino, and a Spinning Sequencer

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up in a new disposable location to give the lowdown on this week's best hacks. First up in the news -- the Home Sweet Home Automation contest is still going strong. You've still got plenty of time, so get on over to Hackaday.IO and start your entry today. In the news, the UK is asking how powerful an electric bike should be (more than 250 Watts, certainly), and legal pressure from Nintendo has shut down two emulators.

Then it's on to What's That Sound. Kristina failed again, although she was pretty confident about her answer. Can you get it? Can you figure it out? Can you guess what's making that sound this week? If you can, and your number comes up, you get a special Hackaday Podcast t-shirt.

But then it's on to the hacks, beginning with a Wi-Fi toothbrush hack from [Aaron Christophel]. This can only mean the beginning of some epic toothbrush firmware, right? From there, we marvel at moving cat food, the ultimate bulk material, and the idea of spoofing a whole cloud of drones. Finally, we examine one of Jenny's Daily Drivers in the form of Damn Small Linux (the other DSL), and reminisce about dial-up (speaking of DSL).

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

It's a leap year, so Elliot and Dan put the extra day to good use tracking down all the hottest hacks from the past week and dorking out about them. There's big news in the KiCad community, and we talked about all the new features along with some old woes. Great minds think alike, apparently, since two different e-ink weather stations made the cut this week, as did a floating oscilloscope, an automated film-developing tank, and some DIY solar panels. We talked about a hacker who figured out that water makes a pretty good solar storage medium, and it's cheaper than lithium, another who knows that a crappy lathe is better than no lathe, and what every hacker should know about Ethernet. Is there a future for room-temperature superconductors? Maybe it just depends on how cold the room is.

Check out the links over on Hackaday.

Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Al Williams sat down to compare notes on their favorite Hackaday posts of the week. You can listen in on this week's podcast. The guys talked about the latest Hackaday contest and plans for Hackaday Europe. Plus, there's a what's that sound to try. Your guess can't be worse than Al's, so take a shot. You could win a limited-edition T-shirt.

In technical articles, Elliot spent the week reading about brushless motor design, twin-t oscillators, and a truly wondrous hack to reverse map a Nintendo Switch PCB. Al was more nostalgic, looking at the 555 and an old Radio Shack kit renewed. He also talked about a method to use SQL to retrieve information from Web APIs.

Quick hacks were a decided mix with everything from homemade potentiometers to waterproof 3D printing. Finally, the guys talked about Hackaday originals. Why don't we teach teens to drive with simulators? And why would you want to run CP/M -- the decades-old operating system -- under Linux?

Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi discuss all the week's best and most interesting hacks and stories, starting with Canada's misguided ban on the Flipper Zero for being too spooky. From there they'll look at the state-of-the-art in the sub-$100 3D printer category, Apple's latest "Right to Repair" loophole, running UNIX on the NES (and how it's different from Japan's Famicom), and the latency of various wireless protocols.

After singing the praises of the new Bus Pirate 5, discussion moves on to embedded Linux on spacecraft, artfully lifting IC pins, and the saga of the blue LED. Finally you'll hear the how and why behind electrical steel, and marvel at a Mach 10 missile that (luckily) never needed to be used.

Head on over to Hackaday and check out the links!

Last week, we held an Episode 256 celebration round-table, but Kristina and I also met afterwards to talk about all the week's hacks.  That part didn't fit, but we didn't want to deprive you of your weekly hack fix either, so here they are!

For this week's episode, we did something super special -- we all convened to answer your burning questions about your hosts, both as hackers and as humans. We kick things off with a segment featuring a hearty round-table discussion between Elliot, Al, Dan, Kristina, and Tom. What's on our benches? What do we type on? Go find out!

None of us figured out What's That Sound though a few of us had some creative guesses. Can you guess the sound? There could be a t-shirt in it for ya.

Kristina and Elliot went on to have a normal podcast too, but since the round table section went so long, we'll process up that section and put it out early next week. Stay tuned!

This week, Dan joined Elliot for a review of the best and brightest hacks of the week in Episode 0xFF, which both of us found unreasonably exciting; it's a little like the base-2 equivalent of watching the odometer flip over to 99,999. If you know, you know. We had quite a bumper crop of coolness this week, which strangely included two artifacts from ancient Rome: a nanotech goblet of colloidal gold and silver, and a perplexing dodecahedron that ends up having a very prosaic explanation -- probably. We talked about a weird antenna that also defies easy description, saw a mouse turned into the world's worst camera, and learned how 3D-printed signs are a whole lot easier than neon, and not half bad looking either. As always, we found time to talk about space, like the legacy of Ingenuity and whatever became of inflatable space habitats. Back on Earth, there's DIY flux, shorts that walk you up the mountain, and more about USB-C than you could ever want to know.

And don't forget that to celebrate Episode 256 next week, we'll be doing a special AMA segment where we'll get all the regular podcast crew together to answer your questions about life, the universe, and everything. If you've got a burning question for Elliot, Tom, Kristina, Al, or Dan, put it down in the comment section and we'll do our best to extinguish it.

This week Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Al Williams chew the fat about the Haier IOT problem, and all other top Hackaday stories of the week. Want to prove your prowess at C programming? Take a quiz! Or marvel at some hairy display reverse engineering or 3D-printed compressor screws. On the lighter side, there's an immense water rocket.

After Al waxes nostalgic about the world of DOS Extenders and extended memory, the guys talk about detective work: First detecting AI-written material, and finally, a great detective story about using science to finally (maybe) crack the infamous DB Cooper hijacking case.

Follow along with the links over at Hackaday. Don't forget to tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

This week Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start things off with a traffic report from the Moon, which has suddenly become a popular destination for wayward robots.

[caption id="attachment_657278" align="alignright" width="300"] Anonymizing an ATtiny85 via laser[/caption]

From there, they'll go over a fire-tending contraption that's equal parts madness and brilliance, two decades of routers being liberated by OpenWRT, impressive feats of chip decapping, and USB-C's glorious rise to power.

You'll also hear about the latest developments in laptop RAM, exploits against the flash encryption used on the ESP32, and Android powered oscilloscopes. The duo will wrap things up with horror stories from the self-checkout aisle, and a look at the fantastical rolling power station that Dan Maloney has been building in his driveway.

Check out the links over at Hackaday, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up to discuss the best hacks of the previous week. It's CES time once again in Las Vegas, and you know what that means -- some wacky technologies like this AI pet door that rejects dead mice.

Then it's on to What's That Sound, which Kristina managed to nail for once. Can you get it? Can you figure it out? Can you guess what's making that sound this week? If you can, and your number comes up, you get a special Hackaday Podcast t-shirt.

But then it's on to the hacks, beginning with a new keyboard from [Joe Scotto] and an exploration of all you can do with an LED strip, like 1D fireworks and roller coasters without any moving parts. From there, we marvel at the ability of sound waves to extinguish flames, and the tech behind life as a quadriplegic. Finally, we examine not one, but two of Jenny List's finely-crafted rants, one about web browsers, and the other about the responsible use of new technology.

Check out the links over at Hackaday if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!