Hackaday Newsletter 0xE4

Rubbing ideas together [HACKADAY]( What’s the Deal With Snap Packages? [Read Article Now»]( Nothing Comes From Nowhere By [Elliot Williams]( How do you come up with new ideas? As much as it sometimes seems like they arrive in a flash out of the blue, they don't just come out of nowhere. Indeed, we all have well-stocked mental toolboxes that say "this thing can be used to do that" and "if you want to get there, start here". One incredibly fertile generator of "new" ideas is simply putting old ideas next to each other and realizing that a chain of two or three can get you to someplace new. It just happened to me while listening to Mike and myself on [this week's Hackaday Podcast](. [bikelangelo] Here's the elevator pitch. You take something like the [player-pianoesque MIDI barrel piano]( that we featured last Thursday, and mix it together with [the street-painting bicycle trailer]( that we featured on Friday. What do you get? A roll of paper that can be drawn on by normal kids, rolled up behind a bicycle, with a tank that they can pressurize with a bike pump, that will spray a pixelated version of their art as they roll down the sidewalk. Now how can I make this real? One of my neighbors has a scrap bike trailer... But see what I mean about ideas? I just took two existing ideas and rubbed them together, and in this case, they emitted sparks. And I've got a mental catalogue of all of the resources around me, some of which fell right into place. This role as fountain of good proto-ideas is why I started reading Hackaday fifteen years ago, and why it's still a daily must-read for folks like us everywhere. A huge thank you to everyone who's sharing! Read more Hackaday! From the Blog --------------------------------------------------------------- [Netbooks: The Next Generation — Chromebooks]( By [Jonathan Bennett]( After the netbook burned out, the Chromebook rose from the ashes. Why don't people just buy real laptops? [Read more »]( [Ask Hackaday: Is Our Power Grid Smart Enough to Know When There’s No Power?]( By [Jenny List]( You used to have to call the utility when your power was out. No longer. How do they know? [Read more »]( [USB-C Is Taking Over… When, Exactly?]( By [Lewin Day]( USB-C connectors have taken over cellphones. Why aren't they on the desktop? [Read more »]( [Hackaday Podcast]( [Hackaday Podcast 073: Betrayal By Clipboard, Scratching 4K, Flaming Solder Joints, and Electric Paper]( By [Hackaday Editors]( What happened last week on Hackaday? Editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams get you up to speed. [Read more »]( If You Missed It --------------------------------------------------------------- [A True 4K Projector From Scrap eBay Components]( [An Open Source Tool to Document Your Wiring]( [Teardown Of The Singaporean COVID-19 TraceTogether Token]( [Creating A Custom ASIC With The First Open Source PDK]( [Boot-To-BASIC Box Packs A Killer Graphics Engine]( [How To Retrofit a Pick and Place Machine For OpenPnP, in Detail]( [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