Hackaday Newsletter 0xA4

Inspiration vs Perspiration [HACKADAY]() A Brief History of Perpetual Motion [Read Article Now»]( Halfway Between Inspiration and Engineering By [Elliot Williams]( We see a lot of hacks where the path to success is pretty obvious, if maybe strewn with all sorts of complications, land-mines, and time-sinks. Then we get other hacks that are just totally out-of-the-box. Maybe the work itself isn’t so impressive, or even “correct” by engineering standards, but the inner idea that’s so crazy it just might work shines through. This week, for instance, we [saw an adaptive backlight LED TV modification that no engineer would ever design](. Whether it was just the easiest way out, or used up parts on hand, [Mousa] cracked the problem of assigning brightnesses to the LED backlights by taking a tiny screen, playing the same movie on it, pointing it at an array of light sensors, and driving the LEDs inside his big TV off of that. No image processing, no computation, just light hitting LDRs. It’s mad, and it involves many, many wires, but it gets the job done. Similarly, we saw an [answer to the wet-3D-filament problem]( that’s as simple as it could possibly be: basically a tube with heated, dry air running through it that the filament must pass through on it’s way to the hot end. We’ve seen plenty of engineered solutions to damp filament, ranging from an ounce of prevention in the form of various desiccant storage options, to a pound of cure – putting the spools in the oven to bake out. We’re sure that drying filament inline isn’t the right way to do it, but we’re glad to see it work. The idea is there when you need it. Not that there’s anything wrong with the engineering mindset. Quite the contrary: most often taking things one reasonable step at a time, quantifying up all the unknowns, and thinking through the path of least resistance gets you to the finish line of your project faster. But we still have to admire the off-the-wall hacks, where the way that makes the most sense isn’t always the most beautiful way to go. It’s a good week on Hackaday when we get both types of projects in even doses. From the Blog --------------------------------------------------------------- [USB And The Myth Of 500 Milliamps]( By [Arya Voronova]( Ever wonder where the current limit for USB came from? Or went? [Read more »]( [Peering Into The Black Box of Large Language Models]( By [Donald Papp]( New developments may help figure out how LLMs represent the world after all. [Read more »]( [Access To Fresh And Potable Water: An Ancient And Very Current Challenge]( By [Maya Posch]( Civilizations have risen and fell on water access. Maybe ancient tech can help us in the modern age. [Read more »]( [Hackaday Podcast]( [Hackaday Podcast Episode 278: DIY Subs, the ErgoRing, and Finding NEMA 17]( By [Hackaday Editors]() What happened last week on Hackaday? The Podcast will get you up to speed. [Read more »]( If You Missed It --------------------------------------------------------------- [Lasers Al Fresco: Fun with Open-Cavity Lasers]( [Smartwatch Snitches on Itself and Enables Reverse Engineering]( [A Second OctoPrint Plugin Has been Falsifying Stats]( [Cloudflare Adds Block for AI Scrapers and Similar Bots]( [Shapeways Files for Bankruptcy]( [Build A DIY Spinner To Get Your Tempest Game Going]( [Hackaday]() NEVER MISS A HACK [Share]( [Share]( [Share]( [Terms of Use]( [Privacy Policy]( [Hackaday.io]( [Hackaday.com]( This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?]( [unsubscribe from this list]( [update preferences]( Hackaday.com · 61 S Fair Oaks Ave Ste 200 · Pasadena, CA 91105-2270 · USA