On this episode, Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi discuss their love of electronic paper, clunky cartridges, and keeping old games alive by any means possible. You’ll also hear about getting the most out of the sensors in our 3D printers, playing with X-rays at home, a ring that runs Java, and a roulette wheel that outgrew its 555 timer. Stick around to the end to learn about a different sort of IRC that’s even more niche than the one you’re probably familiar with, as well as the logistical challenges and potential benefits of catching rockets with a giant net.

Check out the links if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download in DRM-free MP3.

Episode 379 Show Notes:

News:

• 2026 Hackaday Supercon: Call For Proposals
• Remembering The Zilog Z80 As It Turns Fifty Years Old

What’s That Sound:

• We’re putting What’s That Sound on hold while we sort out new prizes. Stay tuned.

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• 20 FPS On E-Paper Display Without Help
  • E-ink Display Driven DIY
  • Clever E-Ink Driver Does 32 Levels Of Grey, Avoids Update Flicker, And More
  • Behold A 60 Hz Refresh Rate E-ink Monitor
• Old SSDs Find New Life As Game Cartridges
• 60 FPS NES Emulator On ESP32
• Automated Pressure Advance Using A Bed-Leveling Sensor
  • Direct Pressure Advance Measurement For Fast Calibration
• Old TV Vacuum Tube Turned DIY X-Ray Machine
  • X-rays with a DY86 – BOGIN, JR.
• Dress Up Your YubiKey With This Web-Based Tool

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  • Echolocation For Drones
  • Java Ring Restored After Nearly 30 Years
  • Tired Of Xargs?
• Tom’s Picks:
  • Seven Ways To Install Magnets Into Your 3D Prints
  • ESP32-driven Roulette Wheel Could Have Used A 555, But That Didn’t Have WiFi
  • Flex Filament Stuck To Your Build Platform? Reach For The Isopropanol

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• Postal IRCs Are Almost A Thing Of The Past
• Launching Rockets Is Hard, Bring Them Back Is Harder

Trade in those thirsty water hogs for some of these water-wise options  

On the latest episode of Equity, we debate whether Apple's lawsuit will cast a shadow over OpenAi's much-discussed plans to get into hardware and go public.

It’s a hot one at both microphones, as Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos wilt in the heat with ice lollies and freezer packs. But still, we persevered long enough to make a podcast.

In Hackaday news, Supercon is on! It’s going down in Pasadena, California, but the talks will be somewhere slightly larger, with a courtyard instead of an alley. Get your talk proposals in now! In other Hackaday news, we still have our Frikkin’ Lasers Contest going on until Thursday, July 23rd.

Interestingly enough, we got a comment on an older article from none other than [Michael J. Van de Graaff], whose grandfather invented the Van de Graff generator and was “quite upset” when plans for a DIY version appeared in Scientific American. And finally, Google Earth’s desktop client is being discontinued, but you can still travel the globe on your phone, or in your PC’s browser.

Not only do we have another triple mailbag this week, we have another failed attempt at guessing the Sound by Kristina. However, [Alexander] knew that it was CD-ROM drive a-spinnin’. Speaking of What’s That Sound, be sure to let us know your ideas for the new prize.

That sounds like a lot of preamble, but we quickly get to a full slate of hacks, a couple of which are pretty retro in retrospect. Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Download in lovely MP3.

Episode 378 Show Notes:

News:

• 2026 Hackaday Supercon: Call For Proposals
• Google Earth Desktop Client To Be Retired In 2027
• Frikkin Lasers Challenge
• The Book That Could Have Killed Me

Mailbag:

• Two-fer! [Jonathan Comer] has many ideas for generating random numbers when it comes to rolling for the What’s That Sound winner, and [Paul Clyne] wants to know how to get a jolly wrencher sticker.

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• Making A Locked Down Wearable Work Without A Subscription
  • GitHub – OpenStrap/protocol: Pure Dart WHOOP 4.0 protocol decoder. Bytes off the band in, named records out. Zero deps, no backend, runs on-device. · GitHub
• Get A Handle On This Compact Pi Portable
  • It’s Not A Computer If It Doesn’t Have A Cartridge Slot
• AIM-ing For A More Open Platform Than Discord
  • AOL/AIM Sounds – YouTube
• Reject Modernity, Return To 80s, Learn C.
  • Program in C – YouTube
  • Write in C – YouTube
  • Alice_(software) – Wikipedia
• Building A Better CNC Hot Wire Foam Cutter
• Clay Extruder Enables Printable Pottery
  • Printed Film Camera Gets 10 Seconds Out Of A 35mm Roll

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  • Full Body VR Tracking Is Just Some Recycled Hardware Away
  • Star Trek Was Right About Prompt Injection, Sorta
  • 2026 Frikkin Lasers Challenge: Laser Bandsaw
  • DOOM Runs (slowly) In A IBM PC-Compatible CSS Sheet
  • Printing Fungal Art With Laser Control
• Kristina’s Picks:
  • Reviving Mystery Nintendo 64 Game Cartridge Found In The Woods
  • Radio-Gaga Is A Toddler Friendly Remote In A Radio
  • 3D Printed Scooter Fits In Your Luggage, Some Assembly Required

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• • Hackaday Europe 2026 – Build A Cable Modem For Your Arduino
  • The Death Of Physical Media And The Real Challenges To Software Archiving

(Video) Artificial intelligence is transforming cybersecurity, but are governance, compliance, and security practices evolving fast enough to keep up?

The post Podcast: Broken Governance, Agentic AI, and the MindStone Agent Exclusive appeared first on SecurityWeek.

The tech industry is measuring AI productivity all wrong, and Mozilla MLOps engineer and University of Chicago instructor Chelsea Troy makes a strong case for why. The real opportunity, she argues, isn’t shipping more code faster but finally having the bandwidth to run the experiments, tests, and simulations that engineering teams have always wanted to […]

This week’s podcast sees Elliot joined by Jenny List, as both suffer silently in the European summer heat because the sound of a desk fan would come over on the recording.

A stand-out hack of the week comes from [Bitluni], whose GPU made from thousands of cheap microcontrollers is on a scale we’ve never seen before. It’s an amazing project in itself, but the manufacturing and power consumption issues of so many processors running at the same time make for a discussion of their own.

Otherwise, we have diecasting on the bench, an impressive achievement by any measure, a Raman spectrometer, and an open source take on something like a Kei truck. In quick hacks there’s a dicussion of soldering versus crimping for high current connectors, and neon tubes used as digital logic in an organ. The recording finishes with a discussion of 7-segment display history, and whether an engineering education teaches design for manufacture.

Or download it yourself, in glorious 192-bit MP3.

Episode 377 Show Notes:

Mailbag:

• We were contacted by long-time listener [Alex], with a question about the deadline for What’s That Sound entries. The podcast is recorded on Thursday evening European time, most of the time, but Wednesday evening when Tom is onboard. If you get your entry in by Wednesday morning, wherever you are, you’re safe. Good luck!
• Then we had a couple of responses to Zoe Skyforest’s pitot tube air speed sensor piece. Reese Johnson suggested that some version of this might be found in motorcycle fuel gauges, and Jeff told us about very similar differential pressure airflow sensors being used in the climate control systems of large buildings. So we’re closer than we think to these devices.

What’s that Sound:

• Have an idea what the sound is?  Enter your guess here.

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• Gluing 8192 MCUs Together To Make A GPU
• Die Casting Comes Home
  • Retrotechtacular: The Tools And Dies That Made Mass Production Possible
• 2026 Frikkin Lasers Challenge: A 3D-Printed Raman Spectrometer
• A New Challenger Approaches The Open Source Vehicle
  • A Minimal Motoring Manifesto
• The Persistent Display We Never Got
  • Smectic Liquid Crystals, via ScienceDirect
• Why The NES Put Out A Wobbly Picture

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  • Settling The Debate On Soldered Versus Crimped High-Current Connectors
  • Microdistillery For Microchemistry
  • Time Never Moves Slowly With This Clock
• Jenny’s Picks:
  • This KVM Runs A P4 Instead Of A Pi.
  • The Organ That Forgot To Use Transistors
  • Old Midi Instruments Don’t Like Modern Midi. What’s To Be Done?

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• A Brief History Of The Crazy Old 7-Segment Display
  • Why Have Seven Segments When You Can Have 21?
  • Where We’re Calculating, We Don’t Need No Seven Segments!
  • Segmented Displays – YouTube
• When An Engineering Education Doesn’t Teach You How To Really Make Anything

Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Al Williams were in a retro mood this week. There was a new ‘486 computer, a new mechanical TV, and a USB stick with a magnetic personality. Can you watch YouTube on a Game Boy? Maybe.

For the can’t miss articles, this week, Elliot and Al reflected on the awkward phase of 3D printers when they transformed from being expensive commercial machines, to where they are now. Meanwhile, Al was interested in how airplanes know how fast they are going. Along the way, there were musical hacks, precision machine tools, and a quantum 8 ball.

Check out the links if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments! Or write or record something for our mailbag segment.

Direct download in authentic retro DRM-free MP3.

Episode 376 Show Notes:

Mailbag:

• Thanks to Tom Lyons for calling [Elliot] out on the weather in the Garden State. Why don’t you write or record something? Send us your questions or comments, and you might hear them in a future show.

What’s that Sound:

• Congrats to [PostalPreacher] for correctly guessing last week’s sound. Be sure to drop in next week for your chance to win an exclusive Hackaday Podcast T-shirt.

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• Hackaday Europe 2026 – Building A Retro PC From Scratch
• Building A Micrometer-Level Displacement Sensor With 3D Printed Parts
• Hack Improves Cheap Speed Controllers
  • Running Four Brushless Motors With A Single Pi Pico
  • Motors Make The Best Knobs With SimpleFOC
• Watch YouTube On A Game Boy Color With A Special Cartridge
  • Dumping Game Boy Cartridges Via The Link Cable Port
  • GB Interceptor Enables Live Screen Capture From Game Boy
  • The Ultimate Game Boy Talk
• Mechanical TV, Without The Benefit Of New Parts

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  • Reflective LCD Slabtop Terminal Runs Homebrewed Solar OS
  • Fixing An Elgato Cam Link’s USB Current Draw Issue
  • GPU-Accelerated Autorouter Handles Monstrous PCB Designs
  • Piano Escapement Migrates To Drum Kit
  • Hard Drive Speakers Crank Out Classic Demo
  • Bite Into Strange Sounds With NOISFERATU
• Al’s Picks:
  • RF Hacking A Ceiling Fan Via The Remote
  • Accurate Split-Flap Display Can Be 3D Printed
  • A Quantum Magic 8-Ball

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• The Teenage Angst Of 3D Printing: Solidoodle, Printrbot, And Bridges
• How Airspeed Sensors Work
  • Tech In Plain Sight: Speedometers
  • Encyclopedia of Sensors