Blog

Custom Bluetooth Joystick in a Nunchuk Shell

With the Wii’s unique controller, Nintendo not only provided new gaming experiences to players, but gave hardware hackers a platform for experimentation that’s still going strong. Case in point, this modification of a third party Wii “Nunchuk” by [Giliam de Carpentier] that turns the accessory into a stand-alone wireless controller powered by a ATtiny44A. Milling

Read More
    • A deep dive into Clubhouse, an invite-only audio-based social network, how it might evolve, and its long-term potential as a business (Nathan Baschez/Divinations)

    Nathan Baschez / Divinations: A deep dive into Clubhouse, an invite-only audio-based social network, how it might evolve, and its long-term potential as a business  —  About a month ago I got a DM inviting me to “a community for casual, drop-in audio conversations.”  So I downloaded the app, created a profile, and was greeted

    Read More
    • Germany says it will adopt a decentralized approach to digital contact tracing backed by Apple and Google, abandoning its home-grown alternative (Douglas Busvine/Reuters)

    Douglas Busvine / Reuters: Germany says it will adopt a decentralized approach to digital contact tracing backed by Apple and Google, abandoning its home-grown alternative  —  BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany changed course on Sunday over which type of smartphone technology it wanted to use to trace coronavirus infections … Germany says it will adopt a

    Read More
    • Executives at construction startups discuss how they are automating parts of their work and what it will take to create fully autonomous construction projects (Khari Johnson/VentureBeat)

    Khari Johnson / VentureBeat: Executives at construction startups discuss how they are automating parts of their work and what it will take to create fully autonomous construction projects  —  Built Robotics executives are fond of saying that their autonomous system for construction equipment, like dozers and excavators … Executives at construction startups discuss how they

    Read More
    Cable Driven Robotic Joint

    Even the oldest of mechanisms remain useful in modern technology. [Skyentific] has been messing with robotic joints for quite a while, and demonstrated an interesting way to use a pulley system in a robotic joint with quite a bit of mechanical advantage and zero backlash. Inspired by the LIMS2-AMBIDEX robotic arm, the mechanism is effectively

    Read More
    • A look at the origin of the conspiracy theory linking 5G to COVID-19, which went mainstream as influential people and celebrities started amplifying it in March (Rebecca Heilweil/Vox)

    Rebecca Heilweil / Vox: A look at the origin of the conspiracy theory linking 5G to COVID-19, which went mainstream as influential people and celebrities started amplifying it in March  —  Damaged cabling and telecommunications equipment is pictured following a fire at a phone mast attached to a chimney in Huddersfield, northern England, on April

    Read More
    • The coronavirus pandemic shouldn’t legitimize permanent surveillance after the crisis

    In Shoshana Zuboff’s 2019 book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, she recalls the response to the launch of Google Glass in 2012. Zuboff describes public horror, as well as loud protestations from privacy advocates who were deeply concerned that the product’s undetectable recording of people and places threatened to eliminate “a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy and/or anonymity.”

    Read More
    • The internet tailwinds that propelled meteoric growth in Silicon Valley are stalling, which will accelerate zero-sum games between startups and incumbents (John Luttig/luttig's learnings)

    John Luttig / luttig’s learnings: The internet tailwinds that propelled meteoric growth in Silicon Valley are stalling, which will accelerate zero-sum games between startups and incumbents  —  The Internet tailwinds that propelled Silicon Valley’s meteoric growth for decades are stalling out.  The ripple effects will jolt the tech industry. The internet tailwinds that propelled meteoric

    Read More