Want To Learn Binary? Draw Space Invaders!

This was the week that I accidentally taught my nearly ten-year-old son binary. And I didn’t do it on purpose, I swear. It all started innocently enough. He had a week vacation, and on one of those…

Ask Hackaday: What’s In Your Garage?

No matter what your hack of choice is, most of us harbor a secret fantasy that one day, we will create something world-changing, right? For most of us, that isn’t likely, but it does happen. …

Wireless All The Things!

Neither Tom Nardi nor I are exactly young anymore, and we can both remember a time when joysticks were actually connected with wires to the computer or console, for instance. Back then, even though…

One Project At A Time, Or A Dozen?

We got a bunch of great food for thought in this week’s ask-us-anything on the Hackaday Podcast, and we all chewed happily. Some of my favorite answers came out of the question about how many proje…

In Defense Of Anthropomorphizing Technology

Last week I was sitting in a waiting room when the news came across my phone that Ingenuity, the helicopter that NASA put on Mars three years ago, would fly no more. The news hit me hard, and I moa…

In Praise Of “Simple” Projects

When I start off on a “simple” project, experience shows that it’s got about a 10% chance of actually remaining simple. Sometimes it’s because Plan A never works out the way I think it will, due to…

Ask Hackaday: What About Imperfect Features?

Throughout the last few years’ time, I’ve been seeing sparks of an eternal discussion here and there. It’s a nuanced one, but if I could summarize, it’s about different feat…

Bell Labs Is Leaving The Building

If you ever had the occasion to visit Bell Labs at Murray Hill, New Jersey, or any of the nearby satellite sites, but you didn’t work there, you were probably envious. For one thing, some of …

Hardware Should Lead Software, Right?

Once upon a time, about twenty years ago, there was a Linux-based router, the Linksys WRT54G. Back then, the number of useful devices running embedded Linux was rather small, and this was a standou…

USB-C PD: New Technology Done Right

There is a tendency as we get older, to retreat into an instinctive suspicion of anything new or associated with young people. All of us will know older people who have fallen down this rabbit hole…

It’s The Simple Things

I love minimal hacks. Limitations are sometimes the spark for our greatest creativity, and seeing someone do something truly marvelous with the simplest of technological ingredients never fails to …

New Year’s Resolutions

As we stand here looking at the brand-new year ahead, we find ourselves taking stock, and maybe thinking how we can all be better people in the next year. More exercise, being nicer to your neighbo…

The World Of Web Browsers Is In A Bad Way

There once was a man who invented a means for publishing scientific documents using hypertext. He made his first documents available from his NeXT cube, and a lot of the academics who saw them thou…

A Few Reasonable Rules For The Responsible Use Of New Technology

If there’s one thing which probably unites all of Hackaday’s community, it’s a love of technology. We live to hear about the very latest developments before anyone else, and the c…

Don’t Give Up

I’m at Chaos Communication Congress this weekend, and it’s like being surrounded by the brightest, most creative, and being honest, nerdiest crowd imaginable. And that’s super inv…

You Can’t Make What You Can’t Measure

What’s the most-used tool on your bench? For me, it’s probably a multimeter, although that’s maybe a tie with my oscilloscope. Maybe after that, the soldering iron and wire strippers, or my favorit…

Thanks For Hacking

Hope you’re all having a great Thanksgiving weekend, and are getting your fill of family, food, and maybe even a little bit of fun. Aside from the cranberries, Thanksgiving is probably one of my fa…

Does Getting Into Your Garage Really Need To Be Difficult?

Probably the last thing anyone wants when coming home from a long day at work or a trip is to be hassled at the last possible moment — gaining entrance to your house. But for some home automa…

The UK Online Safety Bill Becomes Law, What Does It Mean?

We’ve previously reported from the UK about the Online Safety Bill, a piece of internet safety legislation that contains several concerning provisions relating to online privacy and encryptio…

Impostor Syndrome: It’s Not Your Fault!

[Crispernaki] and I have something in common. We both saw this awesome project that made a scroll wheel out of a VHS head back in 2010, and wanted to make one. We both wanted to put our own spin on…