Science

Building The Stranger Things Lights For Halloween

When Stranger Things came out all those years ago, one image left an indelible mark on pop culture. A set of Christmas lights, lined up with letters of the alphabet, such …read more

Hackaday · EN

A Hackable Analog Phone System

Do you have old landline phones laying around the house, with touchtone buttons or rotary dials? Perhaps you’d like to do something with them! [Scott Dylewski] has built hardware to …read more

Hackaday · EN

Static Radio For The Chumby One

If you haven’t heard of Static Radio, it’s basically an online radio station made up of podcast content. [Brendan Fitzpatrick] decided to take an old 2009 Chumby One and turn …read more

Hackaday · EN

Looking For A Cellular Modem?

Cellular modems come and go, and they can be tricky beasts to tame – yet, in every portable computer project I’ve worked with, “LTE modem” has been a top-three request …read more

Hackaday · EN

Solar Light Shows Why Replacing NiMH with Li-Ion is Dangerous

Recently [DiodeGoneWild] got his paws on a purportedly IP44-rated outdoor solar light with PIR motion sensor that also contains an 18650 Li-ion cell. Since it’s being sold in Czechia in …read more

Hackaday · EN

Ask Hackaday: What Puts This Photo In The Pink?

It’s an exciting time to be a camera hacker, because we are at a moment when even cheap camera hardware is starting to have high resolution sensors, and the awesome …read more

Hackaday · EN

Investigating whether Zener Diodes work for ESD Protection

Sometimes the naming of parts in electronics can contribute to confusion about what they are good for, with the topic of Zener diodes in the context of fast surges like …read more

Hackaday · EN

People I’d never heard of

I think I mostly hang out with the right people (although, I was associating with a bad crowd when I was active in that New Atheist thing), because the news keeps popping up with all these horrible people I knew nothing about until they committed their crimes. Which is not surprising, since that’s how news […]

Pharyngula · EN

I’m pretty sure we have no flat earthers here

But if we do, let’s smoke them out. For those unfamiliar with the region, Mt Rainier (correct spelling) is about 80 miles (130 km) north-north-east of Mt St Helens. That photo is a good visual aid for refuting flerfs. Argue away! Or can I expect dead silence because no one is stupid enough to fall […]

Pharyngula · EN

A long long night at the motion picture show

We’re strapped for volunteers at the Morris Theater because it’s Hallowe’en and there are so many events going on, so last night I did a triple-shift, sort of. The first show was The Other Mommy, which has received such dire reviews that I didn’t bother to watch it — and neither did anyone else, apparently. […]

Pharyngula · EN

We had our first trick-or-treaters of the evening

Three little kids, the youngest no more than 3 years old…and our evil cat tried to kill them. Seriously: hissing, spitting, snarling, clawing at them, and I just managed to intercept the attack with my foot. After they escaped, she was prowling by the door, evil in her eye, waiting for her next victim. She […]

Pharyngula · EN

The latest corruption scandal in Minnesota

There’s a sleepy little town, Appleton, just a few miles south of Morris. I’ve visited it a few times to check out the spiders there — there’s no other reason to go there, it’s not much of a tourist attraction. Population 1400, no particular businesses there, they had a defunct prison that was shut down […]

Pharyngula · EN

We have a new grandson!

Born last night, seen here in his larval form: We’ll learn more when his limbs have extended and his wings have inflated and flattened. Right now we’re just happy that the ordeal is over and everyone is healthy.

Pharyngula · EN

No “blue wave” — can we get a wave of thoughtful voters instead?

I must express my gratitude to Hayley Stevens. She lost a primary election for the Michigan senate to Abdul El-Sayed, but promised to endorse him anyway, and then over the weekend, just before the midterm elections, changed her mind and endorsed the Republican candidate, Mike Rogers. It was a breathtaking betrayal. A stunning stab in […]

Pharyngula · EN

This kind of story still gives me the heebie-jeebies

Too many years ago, I was a die-hard bicyclist who pedaled everywhere. That habit died here in Minnesota, where we’re buried in snow for 6 months of the year, and half the remaining time is non-stop prairie winds. Some people do manage it, though, and I was thinking maybe I should start up again in […]

Pharyngula · EN

IEEE Xplore Digital Library Adds AI Assistant

IEEE recently released the IEEE Xplore AI Research Suite , built on the full text of millions of peer-reviewed publications in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library . The library offers full-text access to IEEE standards , journals, magazines, conference proceedings, and more. Researchers who use the AI suite to search the digital library receive answers grounded in verified scientific results, ensuring a high level of accuracy and trust. The suite is available as an optional subscription upgrade to all IEEE Xplore Digital Library institutional subscribers. Powered by a proprietary AI system optimiz

IEEE Spectrum · EN

I Used AI to Fake a Scientific Paper. Here’s What Happened

Science has a spam problem. And the spam filter is getting clogged up. According to all reports, academic publishing is drowning in what has come to be called AI slop: low-quality, mass-produced content generated with AI. By 2025, an estimated 57 percent of all published academic articles exhibited detectable evidence of large language model (LLM) influence, a massive jump from 12 percent in 2023. What’s more, over 12 percent of Nature Communications reviews were found to be completely AI-generated in 2025. Given that for every 40 papers showing statistical evidence of AI usage in 2025, only o

IEEE Spectrum · EN

Your Robot’s Safety Functions Already Work. What If the Input Lies?

This article is brought to you by VicOne . A mobile robot slows for someone in a hallway. A collaborative arm eases its movement as a worker approaches. A humanoid pauses to let a person pass. Each response depends on information about the robot or its surroundings: a distance reading, a position estimate, or a stop signal. But what happens when one of those inputs is wrong, and the robot still responds exactly as designed? The mobile robot reads the hallway as clear while someone is still there. The arm estimates that the worker is farther away. The humanoid does not receive a stop signal as

IEEE Spectrum · EN

How Beta Technologies Is Clearing the Runway for Electric Flight

In the cockpit of Beta Technologies’ Alia CX300, pilot Chris Caputo steers onto Runway 33 at Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport in Vermont. Cleared for takeoff, he releases the brakes and nudges the throttle forward. At the back of the aircraft, the five-blade pusher propeller snaps awake, and the Alia bolts forward. There’s no shriek of a turbofan spooling up, no shudder of a piston engine, and no wait for thrust. Just the low hum of an electric motor and a shove of instant acceleration. Within a few seconds, we’re at 85 knots (almost 160 kilometers per hour), and Caputo rotates t

IEEE Spectrum · EN

Systems Thinking Is Vital in the Age of AI

Modern engineering projects increasingly combine human judgment with machine capability. An engineer can define a problem, then ask an artificial intelligence tool to search relevant research and technical standards, generate design options, test them in simulation, and compare the results. The engineer can then bring the results to specialists who understand the parts AI cannot judge on its own, such as whether a design can be built safely, whether it makes sense in a particular setting, or how it might affect its users. The final decision about whether and how to move forward remains a human

IEEE Spectrum · EN

Consumer Appetite for Personal AI Goes Mainstream

This article is brought to you by Qualcomm Technologies . For many consumers, much of the promise and appeal of AI is personal. Consumers are looking past generic tools and want to know how these technologies will help them in their daily lives. These trends coincide with the advent of new classes of wearable devices that, in addition to being able to leverage powerful frontier models, feature built-in intelligence that understand the context of a user. Where are they? What are they seeing and hearing? What are their habits, their preferences, their schedules? It’s an astonishing pivot, from p

IEEE Spectrum · EN

When Electric Cars Were for Women

At the turn of the last century, the automobile industry was still new and evolving rapidly. In 1898, there were about 50 carmakers in the United States. A decade later, that number had increased fivefold. In 1901, the companies produced 7,000 vehicles. By 1910, production had reached 181,000. For several decades, electric cars vied with those powered by steam and internal combustion, and nobody was sure which technology would come out on top. Steam had the legacy of locomotive technology behind it but came with a risk of fire. Steam-powered vehicles could also become exceedingly hot, dependin

IEEE Spectrum · EN

Guarding the Gates of Knowledge

A recent scroll through social media got me thinking about trust. About half my feed was filled with AI slop that astute users would call out as being machine-generated, often to the embarrassment of the rube who unknowingly spread it and sometimes to the delight of the poster who shared it deliberately because they found it amusing or useful for sowing confusion. Remember the good old days of GPT-3 when we could ask the chatbot anything and it would almost instantly and very confidently spit back a plausible but false answer? That’s when the word “hallucination” as applied to AI answers enter

IEEE Spectrum · EN

Arguments in Favor of AI Fair Use

I made some notes on the nature of the training of LLMs, and about whether we as a society should consider the material used to train them as a fair use of that material. I believe it would be best … Continue reading →

Kevin Kelly Technium · EN