Hackaday Newsletter 0xA1

Doing the impossible, daily! [Hackaday] In Space, No One Can Hear You Explode [Read article now »]( Indistinguishable from Magic By [Elliot Williams]( Everyone with even slightly geeky tendencies knows the third of [Arthur C. Clarke's three laws]( "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." But how about the first two laws? The one about the irreversibility of thermodynamics? No, that was Newton. Here's Clarke's first law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." I think it's within the spirit to translate "scientist" liberally. It goes for any other elder figure who has acquired enough experience of the way the world used to be to be wrong. (Clarke's second law: "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.") The point of these laws, written down tongue-in-cheek in an essay titled "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination", should be pretty clear to the Hackaday reader: don't be surprised by someone making something surprising, and if someone older and wiser tells you that you can't do something, hack away at it anyway. Wow them with your magic when you get it done. Why mention any of this? I was looking over the hacks this week, and some of them were nearly magic, executed by the new (and newest!) generation of hackers. Specifically, watching Fran Piernas go from a plain-vanilla DIY X-ray setup [straight to a full-on CAT scanner]( in a garage in a month and a half distinctly pushes the boundaries of what I would have said was possible. But unlike a magician, [Fran lead a Hack Chat]( giving away all the tricks. It turns out it was just science, and persistence. But if you needed a glimpse at the outer edge of the possible, [how about nuclear fusion at home]( How about a 12-year-old leading the project, funded by very understanding parents? Surprisingly, there's a vibrant community of hackers working on making fusion more DIY-friendly, and succeeding. It's not generating power, and it's not going to any time soon, but neither are the Tokomaks, and this ones in a kid's house. I wouldn't have said "magic" but I certainly wouldn't have thought that was possible. So remember to take Clarke's Second Law to heart, if you find yourself in the old and wise category. Remember that you will see the impossible done over and over again. And from us at Hackaday, we salute those of you wresting of the possible out of the inky grasp of the impossible! From The Blog [Understanding Math Rather Than Merely Learning It]( By [Al Williams]( There’s a line from the original Star Trek where Khan says, “Improve a mechanical device and you may double productivity, but improve man and you gain a thousandfold.” Joan... [Read more »]( [When Will Our Cars Finally Speak the Same Language? DSRC for Vehicles]( By [Tom Nardi]( At the turn of the 21st century, it became pretty clear that even our cars wouldn’t escape the Digital Revolution. Years before anyone even uttered the term “smartphone”, i... [Read more »]( [The Woeful World of Worldwide E-Waste]( By [Kerry Scharfglass]( How large is the cache of discarded electronics in your home? They were once expensive and cherished items, but now they’re a question-mark for responsible disposal. I’m going to... [Read more »]( [Hackaday Podcast EP7]( By [Hackaday Editors]( Hackaday Editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams talk about touch-sensitive cloth, new microcontrollers, accurate clock chips, and the A380. [Read more »]( If You Missed It [WiFi Hides Inside a USB Cable]( [Juicing Up the Chevy Volt with Raspberry Pi]( [How To Program A Really Cheap Microcontroller]( [Active Strain Relief for 3D-Printer Filament]( [Anti-Lock Brakes for Bike Might Make Rides a Little Safer]( [Hackaday]( NEVER MISS A HACK [Share]( [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 subscription preferences]( SupplyFrame, Inc · 61 South Fair Oaks Avenue · Suite 200 · Pasadena, CA 91105 · USA