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Longform articles, the best of what the Hackaday writing crew has to offer.

Hackaday Europe 2025: Speakers, Lightning Talks, And More!

February 18, 2025 by 1 Comment

If you’ve been waiting for news from our upcoming Hackaday Europe event in March, wait no longer. We’re excited to announce the first slice of our wonderful speakers lineup! Get your tickets now,

Hackaday Europe is going down again in Berlin this year on March 15th and 16th at MotionLab. It’s Hackaday, but in real life, and it’s too much fun.  The badge is off-the-scale cool, powered by the incredible creativity of our community who entered the Supercon SAO contest last fall, and we’re absolutely stoked to be tossing the four winning entries into your schwag bag in Europe.

If you already know you’ll be attending and would like to give a seven-minute Lightning Talk on Sunday, we’re also opening up the call for talks there. Tell us now what you’d like to talk about so we can all hear it on Sunday morning.

We’re looking forward to the talks and to seeing you all there! We’re getting the last few speakers ironed out, have a keynote talk to announce, and, of course, will open up workshop signups. So stay tuned! Continue reading “Hackaday Europe 2025: Speakers, Lightning Talks, And More!” →

The “Unbreakable” Beer Glasses Of East Germany

February 17, 2025 by 80 Comments

We like drinking out of glass. In many ways, it’s an ideal material for the job. It’s hard-wearing, and inert in most respects. It doesn’t interact with the beverages you put in it, and it’s easy to clean. The only problem is that it’s rather easy to break. Despite its major weakness, glass still reigns supreme over plastic and metal alternatives.

But what if you could make glassware that didn’t break? Surely, that would be a supreme product that would quickly take over the entire market. As it turns out, an East German glassworks developed just that. Only, the product didn’t survive, and we lumber on with easily-shattered glasses to this day. This is the story of Superfest.

Continue reading “The “Unbreakable” Beer Glasses Of East Germany” →

NASA Taps Webb To Help Study 2032 Asteroid Threat

February 13, 2025 by 43 Comments

In all likelihood, asteroid 2024 YR4 will slip silently past the Earth. Based on the data we have so far, there’s an estimated chance of only 2.1% to 2.3% that it will collide with the planet on December 22nd, 2032. Under normal circumstances, if somebody told you there was a roughly 98% chance of something not happening, you probably wouldn’t give it a second thought. There’s certainly a case to be made that you should feel that way in regards to this particular event — frankly, it’s a lot more likely that some other terrible thing is going to happen to you in the next eight years than it is an asteroid is going to ruin your Christmas party.

That being said, when you consider the scale of the cosmos, a 2+% chance of getting hit is enough to raise some eyebrows. After all, it’s the highest likelihood of an asteroid impact that we’re currently aware of. It’s also troubling that the number has only gone up as further observations of 2024 YR4’s orbit have been made; a few weeks ago, the impact probability was just 1%. Accordingly, NASA has recently announced they’ll be making time in the James Webb Space Telescope’s busy scientific schedule to observe the asteroid next month.

So keeping in mind that we’re still talking about an event that’s statistically unlikely to actually occur, let’s take a look at what we know about 2024 YR4, and how further study and analysis can give us a better idea of what kind of threat we’re dealing with.

Continue reading “NASA Taps Webb To Help Study 2032 Asteroid Threat” →

Plastic On The Mind: Assessing The Risks From Micro- And Nanoplastics

February 12, 2025 by 49 Comments

Perhaps one of the clearest indications of the Anthropocene may be the presence of plastic. Starting with the commercialization of Bakelite in 1907 by Leo Baekeland, plastics have taken the world by storm. Courtesy of being easy to mold into any imaginable shape along with a wide range of properties that depend on the exact polymer used, it’s hard to imagine modern-day society without plastics.

Yet as the saying goes, there never is a free lunch. In the case of plastics it would appear that the exact same properties that make them so desirable also risk them becoming a hazard to not just our environment, but also to ourselves. With plastics degrading mostly into ever smaller pieces once released into the environment, they eventually become small enough to hitch a ride from our food into our bloodstream and from there into our organs, including our brain as evidenced by a recent study.

Multiple studies have indicated that this bioaccumulation of plastics might be harmful, raising the question about how to mitigate and prevent both the ingestion of microplastics as well as producing them in the first place.

Continue reading “Plastic On The Mind: Assessing The Risks From Micro- And Nanoplastics” →

The Science Behind Making Buildings Comfortably Non-Combustible

February 11, 2025 by 33 Comments

Although the most fire-resistant building is likely a windowless, concrete bunker, this tends to be not the vibe that most home owners go for. This is why over the years construction of buildings in areas prone to bush- and wildfires – i.e. an uncontrolled fire in an area with combustible vegetation – has adapted to find a happy medium between a building that you’d enjoy living in and a building that will not instantly combust the moment an ember from a nearby wildfire gently touches down upon any part of it.

To achieve this feat, the primary means include keeping said combustible vegetation and similar away from the building, and to make the house as resistant to ember attacks as possible. That this approach is effective has been demonstrated over the course of multiple wildfires in California during the past years, whereby houses constructed more recently with these features had a much higher chance of making it through the event unscathed.

Naturally, the devil is in the details, which is why for example the Australian standard for construction in bushfire-prone areas (AS 3959, last updated in 2018, 2009 version PDF) is rather extensive and heavy on details, including multiple Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) ratings that define risk areas and legally required mitigation measures. So what does it take exactly to survive a firestorm bearing down on your abode?

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How Magnetic Fonts Twisted Up Numbers And Saved Banking Forever

February 10, 2025 by 47 Comments

If you’ve ever looked at the bottom of a bank check, you probably glanced over some strangely formed numbers? If you’re a fan of science fiction or retro computers, you’ve probably spotted the same figures on any number of books from the 1980s. They’re mostly readable, but they’re chunky and thin in places you don’t expect.

Those oddball numerals didn’t come from just anywhere—they were a very carefully crafted invention to speed processing in the banking system. These special fonts were created to be readable both by humans and machines—us with our eyes, and the computers with magnetic sensors. Let’s explore the enigmatic characters built for Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR). Continue reading “How Magnetic Fonts Twisted Up Numbers And Saved Banking Forever” →

How Do We Deal With Microplastics In The Ocean?

February 6, 2025 by 47 Comments

Like the lead paint and asbestos of decades past, microplastics are the new awful contaminant that we really ought to do something about. They’re particularly abundant in the aquatic environment, and that’s not a good thing. While we’ve all seen heartbreaking photos of beaches strewn with water bottles and fishing nets, it’s the invisible threat that keeps environmentalists up at night. We’re talking about microplastics – those tiny fragments that are quietly infiltrating every corner of our oceans.

We’ve dumped billions of tons of plastic waste into our environment, and all that waste breaks down into increasingly smaller particles that never truly disappear. Now, scientists are turning to an unexpected solution to clean up this pollution with the aid of seashells and plants.

Continue reading “How Do We Deal With Microplastics In The Ocean?” →