Image of paten office's official statement of IPR change

US Patent Changes Promise Severe Consequences

November 27, 2025 by 19 Comments

When someone creates a US patent, they go through a review process to stop the most blatant copies from previous patents or pre-existing work. After this, you may still have bad patents get through, which can be removed through litigation or publicly accessible methods such as Inter Partes Review (IPR). The latter of which is planned to be changed as we know it in the near future.

IPR is a method where an individual can claim that an existing patent is invalid due to pre-existing work, such as something the individual should have creative ownership over. While there is always the litigation method of removing blatantly fraudulent patents, a small business or the average person is unlikely to have the funds.

New regulations are changing how IPRs can be filed in some substantial ways. Now, if someone files an IPR, they give up the right to future litigation on their rights over a patent. This is obviously not ideal for someone who may have their own products on the line if an IPR is to fail. Additionally, IPRs will no longer be able to be even tried if there are existing cases against the patent, even under poor previous cases. While this change is meant to increase the efficiency of the patent office, there are some serious consequences that must be looked into either way. The patent office also cites IPRs being beneficial to larger organizations rather than the smaller businesses, though you can make your own conclusions based on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s arguments here.

Hackaday certainly can not give any legal advice on how this change will affect you, but there are cases given by both sides that may persuade you to write to your legal representatives if you live in the States. Even still, we here at Hackaday have seen our fair share of patent trolls causing issues. If you want a case of blatant patent shenanigans check out these 3D printing layers that promise improved strength!

Thanks [patentTrollsAreTheWorst] for the tip!

Snapshot of topology analysis

Designing PLA To Hold Over A Metric Ton

November 27, 2025 by 10 Comments

There’s never been such a thing as being “too competitive” when it comes to competition. This is something that [Tom Stanton] from “Tim Station”, [Tom]’s 2nd channel, took to heart for Polymaker’s 3D design challenge. The goal was simple: a single 3D printed part to hold as much weight as possible.

While seemingly simple, when considering the requirements, including a single print in addition to being able to open up for the mounts, the challenge gets exponentially more complicated. While the simplest and strongest joint would be a simple oval for uniform stress, this isn’t possible when considering the opening requirements. This creates a need for slightly more creativity.

[Tom] starts out with two flat C-shaped geometries to test his design. The design includes teeth specially placed to allow the forces to increase their own strength as force is applied. Flat features have the unfortunate quality of being able to slide across each other rather easily, which was the case during testing; however, the actual structures held up rather well. Moving onto the final design, including a hollow cavity and a much thicker depth, showed good promise early on in the competition, leading up to the finals. In fact, the design won out over anything else, getting over double the max strength of the runner up. Over an entire metric ton, the piece of plastic proved its abilities far past anything us here at Hackaday would expect from a small piece of PLA.

Design can be an absolute rabbit hole when it comes to even the simplest of things, as shown with this competition. [Tom] clearly showed some personal passion for this project; however, if you haven’t had the chance to dive this deep into CADing, keep sure to try out something like TinkerCAD to get your feet wet. TinkerCAD started out simple as can be but has exploded into quite the formidable suite!

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Hydrofoil Bikes Are Harder To Build Than You Think

November 27, 2025 by 6 Comments

Hydrofoils are perhaps best known for their application on boring ferries and scary boats that go too fast. However, as [RCLifeOn] demonstrates, you can also use them to build fun and quirky personal watercraft. Like a hydrofoil bike! Only, there are some challenges involved.

Hydrofoils work much like airfoils in air. The shape of the foil creates lift, raising the attached vehicle out of the water. This allows the creation of a craft that can travel more quickly because the majority of its body is not subject drag from the water. The key is to design the craft such that the hydrofoils remain at the right angle and depth to keep the craft lifted out of the water while remaining stable.

The hydrofoil bike is created out of a combination of plywood, foam, and 3D printed components. It uses a powerful brushless motor for propulsion, and that’s about it. Sadly, despite the simplicity, it wasn’t an instant success. As you might expect, balancing on the bike is quite difficult, particularly when trying to get it started—as the foils need some speed to actually start generating meaningful lift.

After further research into commercial hydrofoil bikes, [RCLifeOn] realized that the buoyancy of the bike made it too hard to straddle when starting out. Some of the 3D printed foils also proved more than a little fragile. It’s back to the drawing board for now—the power system is likely up to snuff, but the dynamics of the platform need work. It’s perhaps no surprise; we’ve covered the challenges of hydrofoil stability before. If you want to go fast on water, you could go the easier route and just build an electric surfboard. Video after the break.

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One-Way Data Extraction For Logging On Airgapped Systems

November 27, 2025 by 48 Comments

If you want to protect a system from being hacked, a great way to do that is with an airgap. This term specifically refers to keeping a system off any sort of network or external connection — there is literally air in between it and other systems. Of course, this can be limiting if you want to monitor or export logs from such systems. [Nelop Systems] decided to whip up a simple workaround for this issue, creating a bespoke one-way data extraction method.

The concept is demonstrated with a pair of Raspberry Pi computers. One is hooked up to critical industrial control systems, and is airgapped to protect it against outside intruders. It’s fitted with an optocoupler, with a UART hooked up to the LED side of the device. The other side of the optocoupler is hooked up to another Raspberry Pi, which is itself on a network and handles monitoring and logging duties.

This method creates a reliable one-way transmission method from the airgapped machine to the outside world, without allowing data to flow in the other direction. Indeed, there is no direct electrical connection at all, since the data is passing through the optocoupler, which provides isolation between the two computers. Security aficionados will argue that the machine is no longer really airgapped because there is some connection between it and the outside world. Regardless, it would be hard to gain any sort of access through the one-way optocoupler connection. If you can conceive of a way that would work, drop it down in the comments.

Optocouplers are very useful things; we’ve seen them used and abused for all sorts of different applications. If you’ve found some nifty use for these simple parts, be sure to drop us a line!

Stack N’ Rack Your Hardware With The HomeRacker Project

November 27, 2025 by 7 Comments

Things are cooler when rack-mounted, and [KellerLab] aims to make that all far more accessible with the HomeRacker, a modular and 3D-printable rack building system designed to let you rack-mount to your heart’s content. While it can handle big things, it seems especially applicable to tasks like mounting one’s home network equipment and Raspberry Pi machines.

A rack is a great place for those Raspberry Pi servers and home networking equipment, but it can also handle bigger jobs.

The basic system (or core) consists of three different parts: supports, connectors, and lock pins. The supports are the main structural bars, the connectors mostly go at the corners, and the lock pins ensure everything stays put. The nominal sizing is a 15 mm x 15 mm profile for the supports, with lengths being a multiple of 15 mm.

All is designed with 3D printing in mind, and requires no tools to assemble or disassemble. There are design elements we really appreciate, like how parts are printed at an angle, which improves strength while eliminating the need for supports. The lock pins (and the slots into which they go) are designed so that they are effective and will neither rattle nor fall out.

But the core system is just the foundation. There’s plenty of modularity and expansions to handle whatever one may need, from Gridfinity shelves and drawers to various faceplates and other modules. There are some example applications available from [KellerLab]’s HomeRacker models page, like CD shelf, under-desk drawer, or filament rack.

[KellerLab] welcomes any collaboration, so check out the GitHub repository for CAD references and design files.

One last point to make about the value of printing objects like this at an angle: not only can the resulting layer lines provide better strength and reduce or eliminate the need for supports, but printing at an angle can help hide layer lines.

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Google Is Building A New OS

November 27, 2025 by 54 Comments

Windows, macOS, and Linux are the three major desktop OSs in today’s world. However, there could soon be a new contender, with Google stepping up to the plate (via The Verge).

You’ve probably used Google’s operating systems before. Android holds a dominant market share in the smartphone space, and ChromeOS is readily available on a large range of notebooks intended for lightweight tasks. Going forward, it appears Google aims to leverage its experience with these products and merge them into something new under the working title of “Aluminium OS.”

The news comes to us via a job listing, which sought a Senior Product Manager to work on a “new Aluminium, Android-based, operating system.” The hint is in the name—with speculation that the -ium part of Aluminium indicates its relationship to Chromium, the open-source version of Chrome. The listing also indicated that the new OS would have “Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the core.” At this stage, it appears Google will target everything from cheaper entry level hardware to mid-market and premium machines.

It’s early days yet, and there’s no word as to when Google might speak more officiously on the topic of its new operating system. It’s a big move from one of the largest tech companies out there. Even still, it will be a tall order for Google to knock off the stalwart offerings from Microsoft and Apple in any meaningful way. Meanwhile, if you’ve got secret knowledge of the project and they forget to make you sign an NDA, don’t hesitate to reach out!

Phone-grabbing robot

This Bedtime Bot Enforces Better Sleep Hygiene

November 27, 2025 by 5 Comments

[Will Dana] is engineering his way to better sleep hygiene. Not satisfied with a simple bedtime reminder notification — such things are easily dismissed, after all — [Will] is offloading self-control onto a robot which will take his phone away at bedtime.

Scrolling in bed is allowed up to a prescribed time. At that time, a rack and pinion-mounted arm rises up from behind his mattress, presenting an open hand, ready to accept the object of his addiction. At this point, a countdown begins. If he does not hand over the device in a matter of seconds, the robot escalates by flashing obnoxiously bright lights in his face.

The nocturnal technology detox is not absolute, however. A button allows [Will] to temporarily retrieve his phone after it has been confiscated. This safety override accounts for the Inevitable situation where he will need to send a last-minute text before nodding off. The flashing light disincentive countdown is restarted upon retrieval, ensuring that [Will] does not cheat his own system for additional scroll time.

As a brief sidebar, [Will] does a nice job explaining how pulse-width modulation works for the purpose of controlling the speed of the rack and pinion mechanism.

For more of [Will’s] projects see this iPad suspension system a Lamp that tracks the location of the ISS and a drum that uses the piezoelectric effect to charge mobile devices.

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