Artificial intelligence chips benefit from a good night’s sleep

Artificial neurons are already far more human-like than traditional computers, and now it turns out they might also need sleep to function at their peak. And it’s not just a matter of turning them off every now and then – a new study shows that the neu… Continue reading Artificial intelligence chips benefit from a good night’s sleep

Hand-Made Drum Carder Gets Wool Ready for Spinning

Making a natural fiber like wool into something useful like a sweater involves a lot of steps. We might be familiar with shearing the sheep, spinning the wool into yarn, or knitting and weaving, but between shearing and spinning there’s another unfamiliar process you’ll have to go through. Known as …read more

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How To Get Started With Fadecandy And LEDs

The internet is awash with millions of stunning LED projects, and for that, we are all very thankful. For those outside the hacker/maker matrix, it can be difficult to know how to approach such a build. Never fear, for [Amy Goodchild] has put together a beginner’s guide to building pretty …read more

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Interactive LED Dome Glows With The Best Of Them

With the price and availability of components these days, it’s easier than ever to throw a whole pile of LEDs at a build and get them flashing away. The hard part is doing it well. [Amy Goodchild] is an artist, and has a knack for producing rather beautiful LED projects. …read more

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This Robot Barfs Comics!

If there’s one thing that’s more fun than a comic, it’s a randomly generated comic. Well, perhaps that’s not true, but Reddit user [cadinb] wrote some software to generate a random comic strip and then built a robot case for it. Push a button on the robot and you’re presented with a randomly generated comic strip from the robot’s mouth.

The software that [cadinb] wrote is in Processing, an open source programming language and “sketchbook” for learning to code if you’re coming from a visual arts background. The Processing code determines how the images are cropped and placed and what …read more

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GDPR data mapping: How to tackle complex processes

As part of your EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance project, your organisation will need to understand what personal data it processes. You will likely choose data mapping as a way to meet these requirements. Key elements of data ma… Continue reading GDPR data mapping: How to tackle complex processes

Hackaday Links: October 8, 2017

On the top of the popcorn pile for this weekend is an ambiguous tweet from Adafruit that was offered without comment or commentary. [Lady Ada] is holding some sort of fancy incorporation papers for Radio Shack. The smart money is that Adafruit just bought these at the Radio Shack auction a month or so ago. The speculation is that Adafruit just bought Radio Shack, or at least the trademarks and other legal ephemera. Either one is cool, but holy crap please bring back the retro 80s branding.

A Rubik’s Cube is a fantastic mechanical puzzle, and if you’ve never taken …read more

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