Hackaday Links: April 3, 2016

April Fool’s Day was last Friday, and the Internet was garbage for a day. Our April Fool’s prank was amazing, and in a single day garnered more views than the Raspberry Pi 3 launch announcement from a month prior. There just might be a market here for Apple. Here’s a short roundup of some of the best electronics April Fool’s posts:

This, surprisingly, was not an April Fool’s post. [Dave Jones] has been looking to upgrade his workspace for a few years now. He’s finally found a place. It’s the old Altium office in Sydney. [Dave] worked at Altium before spinning up the EEVblog, so this really is his old stomping grounds. It’s 4000 square meters (43,000 square feet), and exactly 3950 square meters larger than his current lab. What is he going to do with all that space? He’s looking for suggestions, but I would suggest an awesome model train layout. A [Dave Haynie]-style tour would also be acceptable.

Yesterday was the unofficial geekhack / deskthority / r/mechanicalkeyboards SoCal Mechanical Keyboard meetup at Datamancer in Montclair, CA. I was there, got a Control key to replace the Caps Lock key on my Novatouch, and took a lot of pictures.

It’s a presidential election year in the US, and that means millions of people are going to make America great again by polluting their front yard with campaign signs. These campaign signs are usually made out of coroplast, a material that looks like corrugated cardboard, but is made out of dead dinosaurs instead of dead trees. Coroplast is a very interesting material, and [uminded] tipped us off to some guy that makes mini speedboats in this rather uncommon material.

There are some things you just shouldn’t do. Combining octocopters with chainsaws, for example. You shouldn’t do it, but someone will anyway, and YouTube exists. Here’s an octocopter with a chainsaw.

Foxconn is buying Sharp. Sharp has a rather large portfolio of LEDs and optoelectronics, but this deal is mostly for Sharp’s large contract manufacturing business.

27 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: April 3, 2016

        1. Hey YOU!
          If Brian says it’s true, then IT’S TRUE!! Even if it wasn’t true, Dave now must buy that huge ex-Altium office to make it true. Brian NEVER gets anything wrong! Ever!
          Think about it… It would be silly if Hackaday actually paid Brian good money to just make stuff up and post garbage that does nothing but irritate people with actual engineering degrees.
          Keep up the good work Brian.
          Love,
          AC

          1. April fools double post… gg HaD making it look like my post didn’t go through but actually working and making me rewrite it anyway.. You win this round…

      1. Hey YOU!
        If Brian says it’s true, then it’s true! Think about this for a second… How stupid would it be for Hackaday to pay Brian actual money to just make stuff up and post all kinds of articles without any technical merit or check any of the facts. That would be ridiculous, so Brian can’t be wrong!
        Keep up the good work Brian!
        Love always,
        AC

    1. I guess Brian Benchoff was fooled by the fact that Australia is almost a day ahead of the United States, so all their April Fools pranks are earlier than everyone else’s.

  1. April 1st isn’t everyone’s bag, but I read someone observe that as the ~one~ day on which everyone critically evaluates what they read on the internet carefully before deciding to believe it or not, it’d be a shame to lose it.

  2. “These campaign signs are usually made out of coroplast, a material that looks like corrugated cardboard, but is made out of dead dinosaurs instead of dead trees. Coroplast is a very interesting material, and [uminded] tipped us off to some guy that makes mini speedboats in this rather uncommon material.”

    There is just so much wrong with this part of the post HaD, you really tried to milk this one dry…. Coroplast(tm) is not a “very” interesting material – it is simply corrugated (or fluted) plastic; instead of (e.g.) corrugated paper. Coroplast(tm) [or Coroflute(tm)] is a common propylene-group plastic with class-5 recycle classification. So it doesn’t necessarily need to originate entirely from “dead trees”. Finally – “dead dinosaurs” are (in the end) made from “dead trees” to begin with.

    1. Correction to my post: ‘So it doesn’t necessarily need to originate entirely from “dead trees”’ – should read – ‘”So it doesn’t necessarily need to originate entirely from “dead dinosaurs”’.

  3. “Foxconn is buying Sharp. Sharp has a rather large portfolio of LEDs and optoelectronics, but this deal is mostly for Sharp’s large contract manufacturing business.”

    This is not really true HaD. Foxconn (China) is a large Contract Manufacturer in the regular sense; they make (or integrate) products (like hand phones) under contract. Sharp (Japan) however is valued by Foxconn as a true Manufacturer; Sharp manufactures products from basic materials. Sharp’s key manufacturing capability of interest to Foxconn is their display technology business – and all the Fabrication (Fab) capability, Intellectual Property (I.P. or Patents) that come with it. It makes sense for Foxconn to add a true component manufacturing capability to their portfolio, especially if the component is display panels, which make up a significant percentage of the hardware costs of the products Foxconn integrates under contract. Yes, in a strict case it is possible for Sharp to manufacture display products for a customer “under contract”, so yes – they can be considered a “contract manufacturer”. But that’s not why Foxconn is buying Sharp – as implied in your post.

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