Collaborate Disseminate
Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack, announced the general availability of version 6.7 of the Elastic Stack. This release delivers two new solutions: Maps, for advanced, layered visualization of geospatial data on a map in K… Continue reading New Elastic Stack features and solutions expand Elastic’s data management capabilities
One thing 3D printers excel at is being able to easily create objects that would be daunting by other methods, something that also allows for rapid design iteration. That’s apparent in [Canino]’s palm-sized, gatling-style, motorized 32-elastic launcher.
The cannon has a rotary barrel driven by a small motor, and a clever sear design uses the rotation of the barrels like a worm gear. The rotating barrel has a spiral formation of hooks which anchor the stretched elastic bands. A small ramp rides that spiral gap, lifting ends of stretched bands one at a time as the assembly turns. This movement …read more
Continue reading Palm-Sized Gatling Gun Has 32 Mini Elastics With Your Name On Them
Have you ever noticed how “one size fits all” often means “one size poorly fits all”? This became especially clear to me when I started using a compression sleeve on my arm. Like any hacker, this seemed like something I could fix, so I gave it a shot. Boy, did I learn a lot in the process.
A little over a year ago, I started dropping things. If I was holding something in my left hand, chances were good that it would suddenly be on the ground. This phenomenon was soon accompanied by pain and numbness, particularly after banging on …read more
Continue reading Stretching My Skills: How (and Why) I Made My Own Compression Sleeves
Swiftype isn’t just a startup that we write about — we also use the technology to provide site search on TechCrunch itself. Now it’s being acquired by Elastic, the company behind the open source technology Elasticsearch. It turns out the two companies are already connected, because Swiftype uses Elasticsearch for indexing and storing its search content. In fact, Swiftype CTO… Read More Continue reading Elastic acquires search startup Swiftype
This project by [blackfish] shows off a cardboard lookalike of an MP5 that loads from a working magazine, has a functional charging handle, and flings paper projectiles with at least enough accuracy to plink some red party cups. It was made entirely from corrugated cardboard, paper, rubber bands, and toothpicks.
In the video (embedded below) you can see some clever construction techniques. For example, using a cyanoacrylate adhesive to saturate areas of wood, cardboard, or paper to give them added strength and rigidity. The video is well-edited and worth a watch to see the whole process; [blackfish] even uses a …read more
Continue reading Cardboard and Paper Gun Shows Off Clever Construction
What happens when you throw a ball into a box? In the real world, the answer is simple – the ball bounces between the walls and the floor until it eventually loses energy and comes to rest. What happens when you throw a virtual ball into a virtual box? Sounds like something you might need a program running on a digital computer to answer. But an analog computer built with a handful of op amps can model a ball in a box pretty handily too.
OK, it takes quite a large handful of op amps and considerable cleverness to model …read more
Hordes of new enterprise-IT upstarts have popped up in Silicon Valley, with some drawing lofty valuations from investors. They’re driven by new, more-advanced technologies in areas such as databases, software development, networking and cloud computing. And many are taking aim at incumbents like Dell, EMC, Oracle and IBM. But will these new companies ever be as valuable as those big names? Read More Continue reading How viral open-source startups can build themselves into enterprise-IT powerhouses
For the last several years, Elastic has offered a range of analytics and visualization tools to go with its open source search engine. Today, it announced it was pulling those pieces together into an integrated stack.
The new product known as Elastic Stack includes all of the companies products: Elasticsearch, Kibana, Logstash and Beats. It’s available for download or as part of the… Read More Continue reading Elastic brings order to its product line with Elastic Stack
Electronic components are getting smaller and smaller, but the printed circuit boards we usually mount them on haven’t changed much. Stiff glass-epoxy boards can be a limiting factor in designing for environments where flexibility is a requirement, but a new elastic substrate with stretchable conductive traces might be a game changer for wearable and even implantable circuits.
Researchers at the Center for Neuroprosthetics at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne are in the business of engineering the interface between electronics and the human nervous system, and so have to overcome the mismatch between the hardware and wetware. To that end, …read more
