Some of the largest objects in the night sky to view through a telescope are galaxies and supernova remnants, often many times larger in size than the moon but generally much less bright. Even so, …

Whatever your day job, many of us would love to jump behind the controls of a dump truck for a lark. In the real world, that takes training and expertise and the opportunity is denied to many of us…

For whatever reason, certain pieces of technology can have a difficult time interacting with the physical world. Anyone who has ever used a printer or copier can attest to this, as can anyone whose…

Although we might all fundamentally recognize that gaming consoles are just specialized computers, we generally treat them, culturally and physically, differently than we do desktops or laptops. Bu…

This week, we announced the winners for the previous Pet Hacks contest and rang in our new contest: The One Hertz Challenge. So that’s got me in a contesty mood, and I thought I’d share a little bi…

If you’re unfamiliar with Beyblades, they’re a simple toy. They consist of spinning tops, which are designed to “fight” in arenas by knocking each other around. While the of…

Ceran is a name brand for a type of glass ceramic that has a very low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE). This is useful for stovetops, but it is also a highly desirable property for optical gl…

Old hardware tends to get less support as the years go by, from both manufacturers and the open-source community alike. And yet, every now and then, we hear about fresh attention for an ancient dev…

For over a decade, most passports have contained an NFC chip that holds a set of electronically readable data about the document and its holder. This has resulted in a much quicker passage through …

The world of custom mechanical keyboards is vibrant, with new designs emerging weekly. However, keyboards are just one way we interact with computers. Ploopy, an open-source hardware company, focus…

The humble piezo element is often used as little more than a buzzer in many projects. However, you can do more with them, as [Something Physical] demonstrates with their nifty piezo noise box. Chec…

Taking a picture with a single photoresistor is a brain-breaking idea. But go deeper and imagine taking that same picture with the same photoresistor, but without even facing the object. [Jon Bumst…

There was a time when print-in-place moving parts were a curiosity, but [Tomek] shows that things are now at a point where a hand-cranked turbine blower with integrated planetary gears can be entir…

Ever since the invention of the microscope, humanity has gained access to the world of the incredibly small. Scientists discovered that creatures never known to exist before are alive in an uncount…

Scanners for loose papers have become so commonplace that almost every printer includes one, but book scanners have remained frustratingly rare for non-librarians and archivists. [Brad Mattson] had…

When you hear “PS2” and “Windows 95,” you probably think someone forgot a slash and are talking about peripherals, but no — this hack is very much about the Sony PlayS…

In today’s episode of “AI Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” we feature the Hertz Corporation and its new AI-powered rental car damage scanners. Gone are the days when an ov…

In the world of information security, much thought goes into ensuring that no information can leave computer networks without expressly being permitted to do so. Conversely, a lot of effort is expe…

People have been talking about switching from Windows to Linux since the 1990s, but in the world of open-source operating systems, there is much more variety than just the hundreds of flavors of Li…

For those of us who aren’t blessed with a green thumb and who are perhaps a bit forgetful, plants can be surprisingly difficult to keep alive. In those cases, some kind of automation, such as [Just…