Welcome to 2024! This time around, Elliot and Dan ring in a new year of awesome hacks with quite an eclectic mix. We kick things off with a Pluto pity party and find out why the tiny ex-planet deserved what it got. What do you do if you need to rename a bunch of image files? You rope a local large-language model in for the job, of course. We’ll take a look at how pinball machines did their thing before computers came along, take a fractal dive into video feedback, and localize fireworks with a fleet of Raspberry Pi listening stations. Ever wonder what makes a GPS receiver tick? The best way to find out might be to build one from scratch. Looking for some adventure? A ride on an electroluminescent surfboard might do, or perhaps a DIY “Vomit Comet” trip would be more your style. And make sure you stick around for our discussion on attempts to optimize surgery efficiency, and our look back at 2023’s top trends in the hardware world.
Grab a copy for yourself if you want to listen offline.
Episode 251 Show Notes:
News:
- Happy New Year!
What’s that Sound?
- Congrats to [Crazy Horse] who won a Podcast T-shirt by identifying the ring of a field telephone.
- Thanks to Chaosvermittlung for setting up the demo.
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
- 37C3: You Think It’s Bad With Pluto? A History Of The Planets
- Localizing Fireworks Launches With A Raspberry Pi
- Video Feedback Machine Creates Analog Fractals
- Building A GPS Receiver From The Ground Up
- Pinball With No Computers
- Using Local AI On The Command Line To Rename Images (And More)
Quick Hacks:
- Elliot’s Picks:
- Dan’s Picks:
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Sorry the show’s coming out late this week! Long story. Better late than never?
Meh, I’ve seen worse.
:-D
Thanks for doing what you do.
I look forward to this podcast every week. Thanks so much!
Yay! We have a great time making it.
Thank you, great episode as always :) An ode to Pluto from my FIL: https://youtu.be/TZPG9uczjKA?si=cP1zT5QZCKjVIWEW
Never would have gotten What’s That Sound, so I’m glad it was something I had never heard of. Last week’s Rubik’s Cube hurt…didn’t get it.
So, while Europe was upset with the US over the Iraqi war, a (very small) group of astrophysicists wait till the end of a meeting of the APS in Europe, when most members had left, to vote for a measure that would remove the only US found planet from the list of ‘planets’. They had an extraordinarily thin idea which they used to try to define ‘planet’ as something it had never been defined before, that looked to be designed particularly to exclude Pluto. Their other idea was “we might have too many planets” as more were being found in the Oort Cloud. Without a majority of the members who attended the meeting (since most had left), they “voted” Pluto out.
I don’t believe they did this with the best of motives, and believe the vote should be reversed.
(I was not at the meeting but heard about it from someone who was)