We think of radios as audio devices, but for people who are visually impaired, it can be difficult to tell which channel you are listening to at any given time. …read more
Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS) is one of those things that sounds like it must be woo when you first hear of it. “A trickle of current that can deal …read more
A Crookes radiometer, despite what many explanations claim, does not work because of radiation pressure. When light strikes the vanes inside the near-vacuum chamber, it heats the vanes, which then …read more
That MacOS (formerly OS X) has BSD roots is a well-known fact, with its predecessor NeXTSTEP and its XNU kernel derived from 4.3BSD. Subsequent releases of OS X/MacOS then proceeded …read more
One of our newer writers, [Tyler August], recently wrote a love letter to plasma TV technology. Sitting between the ubiquitous LCD and the vanishing CRT, the plasma TV had its …read more
We absolutely adore inspired labor-of-love tales such as this one. [Alastair] wanted to build a synth for his daughter’s third birthday in spite of having no prior hardware knowledge. It …read more
There’s more to making an oscillator than meets the eye, and [lcamtuf] is here with a good primer on the subject. It starts with the old joke that if you …read more
The history of the game Zork is a long and winding one, starting with MUDs and kin on university mainframes – where students entertained themselves in between their studies – …read more
You have that slide rule in the back of the closet. Maybe it was from your college days. Maybe it was your Dad’s. Honestly. Do you know how to use …read more
[Andrew Greenberg] has some specific ideas for how open-source hardware hackers could do a better job with their KiCad schematics. In his work with students at Portland State University, [Andrew] …read more
For those of you who haven’t spent time in North America around this time of year, you may be unaware of two things: one, the obligatory non-stop loop of “All …read more
When people talk about the lack of a DOOM being the doom Commodore home computers, they aren’t talking about the C64, which was deep into obsolescence when demon-slaying suddenly became …read more
Wait, what? Is it time for the podcast again? Seems like only yesterday that Dan joined Elliot for the weekly rundown of the choicest hacks for the last 1/52 of …read more
Have trouble sleeping, or getting to sleep in the first place? You’ve no doubt heard of white noise machines, but know it would be much cooler to make your own. …read more
You may have noticed that large pieces of the Internet were down on Tuesday. It was a problem at Cloudflare, and for once, it wasn’t DNS. This time it was …read more
The original Xbox was different from the consoles that had gone before, in that its hardware shared much with a PC of the day. It was found to be hackable, …read more
Have you ever wondered what goes into making it possible to use the restroom at 30,000 feet (10,000 m)? [Jason Torchinsky] at the Autopian recently gave us an interesting look …read more
Since the dawn of computers, we’ve tried different ways to store data. These days, you grab data over the network, but you probably remember using optical disks, floppies, or, more …read more
On November 18 of 2025 a large part of the Internet suddenly cried out and went silent, as Cloudflare’s infrastructure suffered the software equivalent of a cardiac arrest. After much …read more
If you’ve ever used an NE602 or similar IC to build a radio, you might have noticed that the datasheet has a “gilbert cell” mixer. What is that? [Electronics for …read more