Hackaday Links: September 6, 2015

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The MeArm is a cool little robot arm that can be controlled with just about any microcontroller. There’s a new version of it up on Thingiverse.

Here’s something to get kids interested in robotics: the GoBox is a robot kit with multiple ‘missions’ delivered monthly. The robot is based on the Raspberry Pi and Scratch – the Apple II and BASIC of today, I guess.

What happens when a popular electronics YouTuber completely debunks a product? Hundreds of dislikes appear on the YouTube videos he made. Hundreds of dislikes from Vietnam appeared on [Dave Jones]’ videos debunking the Batterizer. In fact, more people from Vietnam disliked the video than viewed it. Yes, weird YouTube dislike farms like this exist, and if you can do it on the Internet, you can also pay people to do it on the Internet.

The ESP8266 is slowly becoming a board that’s as easy to use as an Arduino. Now there’s a board that turns it into an Arduino.

The Vintage Computer Festival Midwest was last week,  and [chris537a] shot a video of all the cool stuff. [vikram4819] put an album up on imgur. Yes, someone was selling a Sparcbook for $300. I’m holding out for a PowerPC ThinkPad, though…

Washington DC area hackers, don’t forget to RSVP for the Hackaday Meetup on Saturday. Bring a hack to show off and spend the evening socializing with the Hackaday community. Check out the announcement post for more info.

10 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: September 6, 2015

  1. Here’s a bit of doggerel verse I wrote in honor of VCF-MW. Imagine it as the words to the Mickey Mouse cartoon “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. :-)

    Junk, ‘n junk, n’ junk, incredible
    Junk, ‘n junk, n’ junk, it’s wonderful
    Junk, ‘n junk, n’ junk, the attic’s full
    Closets, garages, and basements are all full of
    Junk, ‘n junk, n’ junk, a teletype
    Junk, ‘n junk, n’ junk, an organ pipe
    Junk, ‘n junk, n’ junk, a Norden sight
    Somebody paid a grand; I paid a dollar for
    Junk, ‘n junk, n’ junk, a PC clone
    Junk, ‘n junk, n’ junk, got 10 at home
    Junk, ‘n junk, n’ junk, a piece is gone
    I know I’ve got it, but what did I do with it?
    Junk, ‘n junk, n’ junk, it was the means
    Junk, ‘n junk, n’ junk, now it’s the end
    Junk, ‘n junk, n’ junk, how do I stop?
    PILED HIGH, mountains of junk are everywhere
    All of my time, and all of my money are buried in!
    JUNK, ‘N JUNK, N’ JUNK, it’s never through
    JUNK, ‘N JUNK, N’ JUNK, what will I do?
    JUNK, ‘N JUNK, N’ JUNK…
    HOW WILL IT END ???
    THROW IT ALL OUT !!!

  2. One thing that amazes me about the whole batterizer thing is that they did not make a simple side by side demonstration: look this with only battery, this with our product lasting 8X more.
    (i did not follow it after initially seeing it was bullshit…so maybe they did)

    1. Now i finally get where they come up with 8X longer…basically they have not found any product that works 8X longer with their improvement, they just played with the numbers:

      From their website: “This study shows that 10% of the batteries thrown away have roughly enough energy left in them to be considered Unused. 20% of the perceived “dead” batteries have, on average, 93% of their energy still left in them. This study further shows that if you take an average of 30% of the “least Dead” batteries, 84% of energy is still left inside. .”

  3. The news about Dave Jones’ youtube videos being downvoted by some astroturfing shop in Vietnam should deserve an article by itself. They’re clearly people directly or indirectly paid by Batteriser.

    1. Agreed. Prior to this latest development I had held out some hope that the people behind batteriser were just stupid. The up-voting, view spamming, 2 word positive comments on their own videos could have just been fanboys. Now it is very plain that they are scamming and doing it in as dirty a fashion as possible.

      I’d like to see some legal penalties directed to the jerks. They are conning people out of money use technobabble. At the very least, they are slandering/libeling a great person that is providing education and entertainment to others and doing it in an organized, international way.

    2. He’s wrong that only companies would be buying votes/views though, some people are really fanatic for fan/political/religious reasons, and of course there is money to be made on youtube and I would not be surprised that there are one or two big ‘famous’ YT people who are half fake.

      But not dave though, he and his channel are not that type and it would not fit at all.

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