Hackaday Newsletter 0xD1

You live by the sword... [Hackaday] We Ruined Status LEDs. That Needs to Change [Read article now »]( ...You Die By the Sword By [Elliot Williams]( It finally happened. My trusty old Thinkpad X220, constant companion for a decade now, bit the dust. And worse, it died of unnatural causes, at my own hands. I bought a docking station to help clean up some of the cable pasta on my desk. As I cradled the laptop down into the dock, something must have been wrong, because the laptop reported that the battery was overheating, and now it won't turn on whether it's on the wall-wart or the lithium-ions. I suspect the power management circuitry is fried. [RIP Blacky!]It's basically OK, because the hard drive is just fine, and I have backups anyway. A replacement is on its way, courtesy of online auction houses. But what's astounding is how much I've built my work/life around a pile of scripts. All of my passwords, OATH tokens, bank details, and the entire workflow for writing this very newsletter are on that computer. Even some aspects of our home-automation system live there: I had to manually press a button to roast coffee this morning, because my coffee roaster and logger script is down. Funny how it takes a broken system to point out how much that same system makes your life easier. I'm sure that you've all experienced something similar. The good news is that I'll be back up and running in a day or two, and I got to try out a few thumbdrive-based live Linux distros. ([Linux Lite]( has basically saved my bacon.) And now I've got a laptop LCD screen that needs to be hacked on. Like my Grandma used to say: "When life gives you busted laptops, make Raspberry Pi displays." From The Blog [How Does Starlink Work Anyway?]( By [Dan Maloney]( SpaceX wants to cover the earth with Internet from space. We want to know how the satellites work. [Read more »]( [DNA Now Stands for Data and Knowledge Accumulation]( By [Bob Baddeley]( Technology frequently looks at nature, and we may be nearing a new breakthrough in copying how nature stores data. [Read more »]( [MakerBot Targets Schools With Rebranded Printers]( By [Tom Nardi]( MakerBot was poised to be one of the greatest success stories of the open source hardware movement, and then went closed. Now they're looking to schools. [Read more »]( [Hackaday Podcast EP055]( By [Hackaday Editors]( Hackaday Editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams talk about all the articles on Hackaday that you will love. [Read more »]( If You Missed It [Stout Homebrew Radio Pumps Out 200W of AM Goodness]( [DIY Power Station Puts Ryobi Batteries to Work]( [The Art Of USB Dongle Repair]( [Insecure Surveillance Cameras Provide Dystopian Peep Show]( [DIY Dispenser Places Solder Paste Without The Mess]( [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