Ask Hackaday: Is Our Power Grid Smart Enough to Know When There’s No Power?

Just to intensify the feeling of impending zombie apocalypse of the COVID-19 lockdown in the British countryside where I live, we had a power cut. It’s not an uncommon occurrence here at the end of a long rural power distribution network, and being prepared for a power outage is something …read more

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Ask Hackaday: Are 80 Characters Per Line Still Reasonable In 2020?

Software developers won’t ever run out of subjects to argue and fight about. Some of them can be fundamental to a project — like choice of language or the programming paradigm to begin with. Others seem more of a personal preference at first, but can end up equally fundamental on …read more

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Ask Hackaday: Wink Hubs, Extortion as a Service?

Wink Labs just announced that their home automation hub, the Wink Hub, is “transitioning to a $4.99 monthly subscription, starting on May 13, 2020.” Should you fail to pay the fiver every month, you will lose access to their app, voice control, and automations, which is everything it does as …read more

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Ask Hackaday: What Should We Be Doing During Coronavirus Lockdown?

There’s a lot of good in the world and that includes you. Humanity has a way of coming together at crucial moments and we have certainly reached that with the outbreak and spread of the novel coronavirus. At this point, most people’s daily lives have been turned upside down. We …read more

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Sky is New Limit for Dot Com Domain Prices

Earlier this week, domain name registrar Namecheap sent out an email to all customers advising them of a secret deal that went down between ICANN and Verisign sometime late last year. It has the potential to change the prices of domain names drastically over time, and thus change the makeup …read more

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Ask Hackaday: How Do You Keep the 3D Printer From Becoming eWaste

One thing we sometimes forget in our community is that many of the tecniques and machines that we take for granted are still something close to black magic for many outsiders. Here’s a tip: leave a 3D printer running next time you take a group of visitors round a hackerspace, …read more

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Ask Hackaday: Drone Swarms Replace Fireworks; Where are the Hackers?

Your mom always warned you that those fireworks could put an eye out. However, the hottest new thing in fireworks displays is not pyrotechnic at all. Instead, a swarm of coordinated drones take to the sky with different lighting effects. This makes some pretty amazing shows possible, granting full control …read more

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Ask Hackaday: Is Anyone Sad Phone VR is Dead?

It’s official: smartphone-based VR is dead. The two big players in this space were Samsung Gear VR (powered by Oculus, which is owned by Facebook) and Google Daydream. Both have called it quits, with Google omitting support from their newer phones and Oculus confirming that the Gear VR has reached …read more

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Ask Hackaday: What’s The Perfect Hacker Smart Watch?

Since Dick Tracy all the way back in ’46, smart watches have captured the public imagination. After several false starts, the technology has gone through a renaissance in the last 10 years or so. For the average consumer, there’s been a proliferation of hardware in the marketplace, with scores of …read more

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Ask Hackaday: Does Your Car Need an Internet Killswitch?

Back in the good old days of carburetors and distributors, the game was all about busting door locks and hotwiring the ignition to boost a car. Technology rose up to combat this, you may remember the immobilizer systems that added a chip to the ignition key without which the vehicle …read more

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