Hackaday.com

When you first learn to program, memory seems pretty straightforward. You have a bunch of bytes, each with an address. If you want to read or write something, you specify …read more

It’s one of the great mysteries of computing, how somehow in the Year Of OLlama 2026, tape remains the god of cheap storage. A while back [Ben Pettis] recounted his …read more

If you would like an AI “personal agent” but don’t want your data on some opaque cloud computer, there’s a new option that appears to be somewhat nicer: [rociiu] has …read more

Retrocomputer enthusiasts have a bad rap as nerds who just want to play old video games. There’s some truth in this, but the reality is that we’re nerds who want …read more

Game jams are a fun competition in which the aim is to write a game under a particular theme while under a time constraint, usually a weekend.  [Hoani] entered one …read more

It probably goes without saying that if you send four humans to observe the Moon up close, they’ll see things that those of us stuck here on Earth have never …read more

Although the demise of the Zilog Z80 processor has long been predicted, it would seem that this moment has finally arrived. The owner of the Zilog name – Littelfuse – …read more

Atomic clocks are super accurate. But, unsurprisingly, some atomic clocks are better than others, depending on your definition of better. Researchers at Vienna University claim to have a superior thorium-based …read more

Recently [Ken Shirriff] got handed a mystery IC by [CuriousMarc] who had found said IC in a box of various old chips. Labelled only with a date code of the …read more

Despite the recent leaps forward in other forms of computer-driven design, the reliability of PCB autorouters remains questionable; on the positive side, though, the lack of massive training data makes …read more

You’ve probably heard of Mars Pathfinder, the NASA lander and its Sojourner rover that took up residence on Mars in 1997. At first, all was well, but after a few …read more

Small displays are affordable and easy to use, but their size can present a challenge. To help address this, [mcer12] created PixelFonts, a family of condensed fonts designed specifically for …read more

The Abric Romaní site in Spain is rather unique in archeology for one simple reason: the caves in its limestone-rich cliff have seen humanoid occupation for thousands of years. A …read more

Although the asking price of $209 plus shipping seems high for the Radxa Dragon Q8B, featuring the Qualcomm SC8280XP and 8 GB of LPDDR4X, this is 2026, and amid the …read more

Valve recently began shipping its long-awaited VR headset, the Steam Frame. Now, there is a hardware reference repository that includes everything a budding modder might need, and then some. Want …read more

Finding inexpensive broken hardware for sale, buying it, and restoring it to working condition is a long-standing tradition for hackers on a limited budge. But there are some devices that …read more

We were looking into the marvelous recent project by [Throaty Mumbo] to recreate and reimagine the forgotten world of VHS-tape-based video games. Wait, what? Yes, back in the day, when …read more

[Hyperfixed] has a podcast episode that does a deep dive into exactly why bags of microwave popcorn advise against using your microwave’s popcorn setting (in North America, anyway.) The answer …read more

The IKEA Kortlinje is a digital clock that costs around 20 dollars, featuring a hygrometer and thermometer. It’s another cheap appliance, you might think, were it not that the display …read more

As a portable media player, Microsoft’s Zune simply couldn’t compete with Apple’s juggernaut iPod — the latter essentially becoming the de facto personal media player until smartphones took over. But …read more