Collaborate Disseminate
[Punxatawny Phil]’s prognostications aside, winter isn’t over up here in the Northern Hemisphere, and the snow keeps falling. If you’re sick of shoveling the driveway and the walk and you …read more Continue reading Fail of the Week: The Little Remote-Controlled Snowblower That Couldn’t
How hard can it be to kill a flash drive? Judging by the look of defeat on [Walker]’s face in the video below, pretty darn hard. To bring you up …read more Continue reading Fail of the Week: This Flash Drive Will NOT Self-Destruct in Five Seconds
A lot of what real engineering is all about is designing to the limits of your materials, with a healthy margin for error. On the other hand, seat-of-the-pants engineering often …read more Continue reading Fail of the Week: Car Starter Motors Aren’t the Best Fit for eBikes
If we’re being honest, the main reason to buy a power tool is to avoid the pain of using one’s muscles. Oh sure, we dress it up with claims that …read more Continue reading Fail of the Week: A Bigger Hacksaw Isn’t a Better Hacksaw
If you’ve got a few self-designed PCBs under your belt, you probably know the pain of missing some little detail and having to break out the bodge wires to fix it. So we feel for [Arsenio Dev], who placed an SD card slot next to an SoC, only to find …read more
To those who choose to overclock their PCs, it’s often a “no expense spared” deal. Fancy heat sinks, complicated liquid cooling setups, and cool clear cases to show off all the expensive guts are all part of the charm. But not everyone’s pockets are deep enough for off-the-shelf parts, so …read more
Continue reading Fail of the Week: How Not to Watercool a PC
Typically when we select a project for “Fail to the Week” honors, it’s because something went wrong with the technology of the project. But the tech of [Leo Fernekes]’ innovative LED sign system was never the problem; it was the realities of scaling up to production as well as the …read more
Continue reading Fail of the Week: Bright Idea for LED Signs Goes Bad
They say you can’t actually die from boredom, but put a billion or so people into self-isolation, and someone is bound to say, “Hold my beer and watch this.” [Daniel Reardon]’s brush with failure, in the form of getting magnets stuck up his nose while trying to invent a facial …read more
Continue reading Fail of the Week: How Not to Die of Boredom During Isolation
Anyone in the know about IoT security is likely to steer clear of a physical security product that’s got some sort of wireless control. The list of exploits for such devices is a long, sad statement on security as an afterthought, if at all. So it’s understandable if you think …read more
Continue reading Fail of the Week: Padlock Purports to Provide Protection, Proves Pathetic
Fair warning: any homeowners who have thermostats similar to the one that nearly burned down [Kerry Wong]’s house might be in store for a sleepless night or two, at least until they inspect and perhaps replace any units that are even remotely as sketchy as what he found when he …read more
Continue reading Fail of the Week: Thermostat Almost Causes a House Fire