In this specially-numbered podcast episode that lines up quite nicely with our Retrocomputing Challenge, Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met over surprisingly low latency and loud beverages to bring you the best of the previous week’s hacks.

But first, the news. German company Isar Aerospace can now claim that they’ve launched the first spacecraft into orbit from Europe. Be sure to check out the in-link, where we reported on the building of the spaceport.

In Hackaday news, the aforementioned Retrocomputing Contest had 64 entries at last check, which is just perfect for Episode 386. Will yours be the 65th?

Supercon Ten tickets are selling out, and per Elliot, the talks have been chosen, pending approval by each submitter.  Keep an eye on the blog for the official announcement!

After reviewing the news, Elliot reached into the ol’ Mailbag and found two missives, including another from [Vik Olliver] regarding the printing of LEGO. The other is from [Mendel Munkis], who has been enjoying Wikipedia offline since 2018, thanks to a 32-bit ARM9 processor. Then, it was on to the hacks.

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 386 Show Notes:

News:

• The First Spacecraft Launched To Orbit From Europe
• Announcing The 2026 Hackaday Retrocomputing Challenge
• Retro Computing Contest
• Wikipedia: Unusual articles

Mailbag:

• This week, we have a double feature!

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• Making A Pole Balance Itself With Propellers
  • 3D-Printed Self-Balancing Robot Brings Control Theory To Life
• Free Your Rotary Telephone From Its Wire
  • • Simplify Your Life With This Pocket Rotary Cellphone
    • The Open Source Rotary Cell Phone, Two Years Later
    • Using Old Phones As An Intercom In Your VW Bus (or Anywhere Else)
    • Wikipedia: Intercept messages
    • This Is a Recording
• Printing Micron-Scale Benchies With Resin And Turmeric
  • GitHub – 0x23/MicroManipulatorStepper: A sub-micrometer 3D motion control plattform. · GitHub
• This Clavichord Is A Well-Tempered Project
• The Different Ways To Look At Negative Resistance
• There’s A Whole Computer Inside This Mouse

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  • If It’s Electronic Paper, Why Not Print To It?
  • 3D Printable Lenticular Indicators
  • The Helicopter With Radioactive Blades
• Kristina’s Picks:
  • A Split Keyboard Designed For Human Hands
  • Take Tool Photo, Generate Custom Gridfinity Bin
  • Anti-Doomscroll Tamagotchi Only Lives If You Do

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• Hackaday Europe 2026: Outdoors With Robots
• Hunting The Wild Vibrotruck

Pete Warden has spent his career on the frontier of small, local AI, first as one of deep learning’s earliest engineers (he coined the term “TinyML”) and now as founder of Useful Sensors and Moonshine AI, where he builds voice models that run entirely on-device. Pete joined Ben to make the case that local AI […]

As the calendar turns a leaf into September, Elliot Williams is joined by Jenny List for our weekly look at all things Hackaday.

In the news, our retrocomputing competition is well under way, but there’s plenty of time to get an entry in if you’ve got a cool old-style project to show us. And then Elliot’s been chasing seismic surveyors in Munich, where they’re looking for geothermal energy.

In the stand-out hacks there’s a discussion of smoothing 3D prints using frickin’ lasers, the effect of unreasonably high RAM and storage prices on the single board computer ecosystem, and an unfortunate air conditioning system that’s tricked into believing it’s a hot day. Finally, we look in depth at PETG, and take a dive into reverse Polish notation.

Download your own personal version of the podcast right here.

Episode 384 Show Notes:

Mailbag:

In out mailbag this week we had [Kevin Opalka] asking about roadtrip hacks and [Matthew Rowberry] explaining that most versatile yet underrated prototyping medium: the humble Lego brick. Which in turn gives us the chance to mention Lego House: Right Next To Denmark’s Legoland, But Way Cooler, a trip we made back in 2019.

Got something to say? Send an e-mail or an audio clip to mailbag@hackaday.com.

News:

• Announcing The 2026 Hackaday Retrocomputing Challenge
• Seismic investigation for Munich’s geothermal project.

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• Laser Your Way To Smoother FDM 3D Prints
  • Has FDM 3D Printing Hit Its Peak?
• Has the time of esoteric operating systems arrived?
  • Haiku OS Releases Beta 6
  • ReactOS Gets An Upgrade
  • Amiga-Inspired AROS Goes Bare Metal On Raspberry Pi
• Tricking An Air Conditioner Into Cooling
• Wikipedia On A Cheap Yellow Display
• HDMI For The Color Computer 2
• RAM And EMMC Prices Are So High, Pine64 Has Stopped Linux Device Production

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  • Doubling Thermal Printer Resolution By Wiggling
  • A Defrag Simulator In Your Browser
  • Reactive Heat And Wind Come To VR, Thanks To Smart Plugs
  • Get Your Monitor Transmitting VHF With A Browser Tool
• Jenny’s Picks:
  • Digital “Film” For Your Pi Camera
  • Giving The NES An Optical Data Storage Add-On
  • How A 1981 RAM Expansion Worked

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• PETG: The PLA Filament Alternative That Just Works
• “I’m Not Dead Yet!” Reverse Polish Notation Calculators You Can Still Buy
  • Teardown With A Twist: 1975 Sinclair Scientific Calculator
  • Reverse Polish Notation And Its Mildly Confusing Elegance

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Bill Gates published a new essay warning that the AI industry is crossing the safety lines it set for itself, and that nobody is preparing for what’s coming. At age 70, he also uses AI more than most people half his age, and he finds it enthralling, as you’ll hear on this week’s show, with highlights from our interview with him.

Along the way, we dig into his three proposals: new institutions for managing the transition, a category of jobs reserved for humans, and a tax on the use and purchase of AI and robots.

The change in his own tech usage: “I joke with people that I used to have Claude-like people that I would send email to, but they were so slow, and there were some topics they didn’t actually know. … It’s three a.m. I want to understand sodium batteries, and now there’s no reason to go to sleep. Here we go. Yeah, it’s crazy.”

How he uses AI specifically: “If you’re a curious person, this is a mind-blowing time. When I’m working on malaria, nutrition, my poor humans that I work with always get these long conversations from me, where I paste in — me, Claude, me, ChatGPT. Sometimes I do it if there’s three of us: Claude, ChatGPT and me, debating these things.”

On where personal agents are headed: “We will get to a point where you won’t buy things yourself. You just won’t. … You won’t go to those applications. You’ll just go to your personal agent. … From a productivity point of view, we are in heaven.”

What has surprised him: “I was shocked by ChatGPT, and I was shocked by Claude Code. Those are both things where I went, oh my God. … I did not expect that a statistical machine would essentially learn to read, and the idea that the code is better than human code. Those are two stunning thresholds.”

On writing this essay: “It’s very unnatural for me to think that innovation may be a net negative if it’s not managed properly. The more I wrote the memo, the more I was like, Jesus, we really need to get our act together here. Even though this may come across as negative, that’s the truth. If we don’t step up, the negatives will substantially outweigh the positives.”

What AI leaders say privately: “You’re in this perverse period right now where people in the AI industry who are willing to say that AI might have some negative effects are told, ‘Hey, you’re hurting our PR while we’re trying to raise trillions of dollars.’ … I know they’re all worried. Or all of them that I know, which is basically everybody but Elon.”

On losing control of AI: “The wake-up for the memo is that the bad stuff thresholds are all being crossed. Even lack of control that I thought would be many years from now, we’re seeing lack of control. … These are people who are super expert on the thing, going, well, maybe we won’t be able to control these things. What kind of risk have we chosen to run here?”

On how fast robots are coming: “What’s weird about AI is it’s better at doing jobs across the entire economy, including physical jobs when the robots come — which you can guess when that is, but my view is it’s only a couple of years.”

Is he still an optimist? “I don’t think being pessimistic is helpful. I do think, wow, this is sure an interesting time. I’m the guy who in my 30s thought people in their 50s or 60s didn’t understand anything. So it’s kind of bizarre if a guy who’s 70 comes and writes a memo that’s actually helpful. … But I am very concerned. And honestly, when you get people one-on-one, so are they.”

Related headlines and links

• The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical. — Bill Gates, Gates Notes
• ‘I am very concerned’: Bill Gates says the world needs a plan to deal with AI, and he has three ideas to start
• Bill Gates says there’s ‘no upper limit’ on AI, citing opportunity and risk
• Etzioni on AI: Bill Gates has the right diagnosis but the wrong prescription
• Dwarkesh Podcast: Ryan Greenblatt — What happens once AI can automate AI research?
• NPR: Trump’s new AI safety order seeks voluntary review of new models
• New York Times: Bill Gates is warning that A.I. is more dangerous than Big Tech will admit
• Wall Street Journal: Three takeaways from Bill Gates’s 5,784-word warning on AI: ‘There is no plan’
• MIT Technology Review: Bill Gates says we’ve passed AI’s danger thresholds. Now what?
• Axios: Gates confronts the Epstein questions hanging over his AI push
• Transcript: Here’s what Bill Gates told lawmakers in his recent Epstein testimony
• OpenAI: A Collective Approach to Cyber Defense

Subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Edited and produced by Curt Milton. Music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.

What did Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Al Williams read in Hackaday last week? Probably everything, but you can tune in and hear about their favorites on this week’s podcast. They heard from lots of listeners this week, and also saw DIY projects running from a 3D-printed Stirling engine, to clogs, to LEDs.

There are some over-the-top hacks like a refit for a decades-old watch to do tap-to-pay and a — for lack of a better word — a record player that optically reads MOD files. Want to emulate an iPod? Talk to Eliza? Print a hand-operated rail car? Hackaday is the place to read about it all.

The can’t miss articles included a talk from Hackaday Europe about making magical PCBs and a not-so-brief history of space stations starting in the 1800s.

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 MP3 suitable for hand-decoding.

Episode 384 Show Notes:

Mailbag:

• [Joshua Wiebe] had questions about using MOSFETs to drive motors. The guys had their thoughts, but feel free to send in yours.
• [Jake Wachlin] wanted to talk about using AI in projects.
• [Caleb Butler] spammed us, but all in fun.
• [Alexander] wrote in to response to last week’s podcast talking about his experiece with an ultrasonic knife.

Got something to say? Send an e-mail or an audio clip to mailbag@hackaday.com.

News:

• Announcing The 2026 Hackaday Retrocomputing Challenge
  • Linux Fu: The Old School Terminal
• Supercon 2026!

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• Thermoacoustic Stirling Engine Is Now Fully 3D Printable
  • Thermoacoustic engines paper (pdf)
  • Thermoacoustic Organ
  • A DIY Pulse Tube Cryocooler In The Quest For Home-Made Liquid Nitrogen
• Straight Talk On 3D Printing Footwear At Home
• The Shutter Makes This 3D Printed Camera Special
• Making LEDs In The Home Fab
• Encoding MOD Files Optically On Paper, Because Amiga’s Legacy Will Outlast M-Disks
• The Casio F-91W As A Contactless Payment Device.

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  • Making An LCD UI Look More Like Classic Indicator Lamps
  • Emulating The iPod
  • Quest VR Headset Becomes Unlocked Hardware
• Al’s Picks:
  • Artificial Intelligence As It Once Was
  • Neo-Cyclostyle: Automatic Document Copying Devices In 1890
  • 3D Printing A Railway Pump Car

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• Hackaday Europe 2026: PCBs With A Plot
• An Early History Of Space Stations: The Brick Moon Made Real
• An Early History Of Space Stations: Where’s My Wheel?

Our guests name their favorite shade-loving plants for tough conditions, including sedges and sages that shrug off deep shade

In this week’s episode, Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start things off by getting excited about the recently announced 2026 Retrocomputing Challenge. From there the conversation will cover efforts to improve desktop 3D printing with lasers, an expensive grill with an ESP32 controller and an open source firmware, open source tools underground, and some impressive techniques to squeeze a bit more utility out of the common QR code.

You’ll also hear about turning PVC pipes into flat stock, old school Radio Shack electronic kits, and VR soldering demos. Stick around to the end of the episode learn about the latest developments in over-the-counter hearing aids and the 1-bit CPU that’s enjoying an unexpected fandom nearly 50 years after its release.

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 383 Show Notes:

Mailbag:

• Alexander wrote in praise of buying ultrasonic knife guts. Donald Papp wrote up his experience with a hacked dental tool a few years back. Now you can get it over the counter.
• Joey wrote in asking if we can add video/visuals to the Podcast. We complain about how difficult that would be.  :)
• Mailbag still needs intro/outro music. Anyone want to whip something up? Send it to mailbag@hackaday.com.

News:

• Announcing The 2026 Hackaday Retrocomputing Challenge
• Using The Famicom Network System In 2026

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• Laser Layers For (Almost) Isotropicly Strong Prints
  • 3D Print Smoothing, With Lasers
  • More On Wave Overhangs For 3D Printing
• Reverse Engineered Grill Controller Gets Open Firmware
• Hackaday Europe 2026: Open Source Hardware Goes Underground, Literally
  • GitHub – furbrain/STIC · GitHub
• Building Custom Backyard Solar Lights
  • PVC Pipe Transformed Into Handy Tool Box
• Compress Links For Optimal QR Codes
  • http://ha.mr#2)22
  • Store Tunes On Paper And Stream Them Over LoRA
• Radio Shack Toy Returns To Life

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  • Joy-Cons Plus WiiMotes Make For Switch 2 Wii-Cons
  • So, You Want To Fix An Old Camera
  • Watch Soldering Up Close And From Any Angle, In VR
  • May This Balloon Banjo Resonate With You
• Tom’s Picks:
  • Snooping Flume Water Monitor Data On The Wire
  • Smarting Up A Doorbell With Zigbee
  • Scanning For Lifesigns With ESP32 And Raspberry Pi

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• Smartphones And The Next Generation Of Hearing Aids
• Hackaday Europe 2026: The 1-Bit CPU That Ran Factories
  • Building An Industrial Control Unit With An Industrial Control Unit
  • A one-bit processor explained: reverse-engineering the vintage MC14500B
  • WDR-1-Bit-Computer
  • Too Cool For 8-bit Retro? Try 1-bit Gaming

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

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 […]