We have no intention of wading into the vacuum tube versus silicon debates audiophiles seem to thrive on. But we know a quality build when we see it, and this gorgeous tube preamp certainly looks l…

Remember learning all about functions in algebra? Neither do we. Oh sure, most of us remember linear plots and the magic of understanding y=mx+b for the first time. But a lot of us managed to slide by...

Home automation seems to be working its way to a computer-controlled future in which humans will be little more than an afterthought. Eventually they will take over Skynet-style, but until then, we wi...

The world of the subsoil is a fascinating place. Our whole ecosystem depends on its variety of fungus, bacteria and detritivore creatures that break down and decay dead matter and provide the nutri…

The semester is wrapping up at Cornell, and that means it’s time for the final projects from [Bruce Land]’s lab. Every year we see some very cool projects, and this year is no exception…

[Rick] knew that the blinking, beeping microcontroller kits that are commonly used for educational soldering workshops just would not cut it for a serious combat among SMD reworking professionals. …

Wait a minute. We're almost through June and we haven't seen anyone's 'DIY air conditioning' setup. Oh the shame! How could we ever argue about thermodynamics otherwise? Here's some copper tubing wrap...

When a supersonic aircraft goes faster than the speed of sound, it produces a shockwave or sonic boom. MIT researchers have found a similar optical effect in graphene that causes an optical boom and c...

One of the more popular security builds in recent memory is USB password vaults. These small thumb drive-sized devices hold all the passwords you have to deal with, and are locked behind a authenticat...

Sooner or later, we’ve all got to deal with torque measurement. Most of us will never need to go beyond the satisfying click of a micrometer-style torque wrench or the grating buzz of a cordl…

What's green and black and used all over the shop? It's [Make It Extreme]'s newest build, a scratch-built belt grinder. And as usual, the build video gets us in the mood to cut metal.

We'll go out ...

Lasers are optical amplifiers, optical oscillators, and in a way, the most sophisticated light source ever invented. Not only are lasers extremely useful, but they are also champions of magnitude: Whi...

Space. The final 360-degree frontier. These are the voyages of the Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS), whose ongoing mission is to seek out new civilizations and launch rockets at them. For th…

One of the keys to our scientific community is the concept of Peer Review. When important discoveries are made, the work is reviewed by others accomplished in the same field to test the findings. This...

Summer is nearly here, and with that comes the preparations for the largest gathering of security researchers on the planet. In early August, researchers, geeks, nerds, and other extremely cool peo…

Lots of solutions have been proposed and enacted for multi-color and multi-material 3D printing, from color mixing in the nozzle to scripts requiring manual filament change. A solution proposed fai…

A few months ago, we caught wind of someone doing something remarkable. [Clinton Westwood] built a pistol from plans he found on the Internet. You can find plans to build anything on the web, from hou...

Often, CPUs that work together operate on SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) or MISD (Multiple Instruction Single Data), part of Flynn’s taxonomy. For example, your video card probably h…

Every hacker has a USB thumb drive on their keyring, filled with backup files and a way to boot up a broken computer. One feature that most are missing though is USB On The Go (OTG) support, which al...

Choosing between manually changing endmill bits on a CNC machine and investing in an expensive automated solution? Not for [Frank Herrmann], who invented the XATC, an eXtremely simple Automated Too…