Klingon

Christmas: a good time to broach a topic of hope. We’re talking Esperanto. This language that spurred the hope it one day could hack the barriers between people, eliminating war and miscommunication. The video below unpacks the history of this linguistic marvel. Esperanto was a constructed language dreamed up in 1887 by Ludwik Zamenhof, a Polish-Russian eye doctor with a knack for linguistics and great ideals. If you’re a little into linguistics yourself, you’ll sure know the name stems from the Latin sperare: to hope.

Inspired by the chaos of multilingual strife in his hometown, Zamenhof created Esperanto to unite humanity under a single, simple, easy-to-learn tongue. With just 16 grammar rules, modular word-building, and no pesky exceptions — looking at you, English — Esperanto was a linguistic hack ahead of its time.

But Esperanto wasn’t just a novelty—it almost became the lingua franca of diplomacy. In 1920, Iran proposed Esperanto as the official language of the League of Nations, but the French vetoed it, fearing their language’s global dominance was at risk. From there, Esperanto’s journey took a darker turn as both Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia persecuted its speakers. Despite this, Esperanto persisted, surfacing in quirky corners of culture, from William Shatner’s Esperanto-only horror film Incubus to its inclusion on NASA’s Voyager Golden Record.

Fast-forward to the digital age: Esperanto is thriving on online learning platforms, where over a million learners explore its minimalist elegance. It appears at places in various editions of Grand Theft Auto. It has even inspired modern makers to create new constructed languages, like Loglan, Toki Pona, and even Klingon. Could Esperanto—or any reimagined language—rise again to unite us? For curious minds, watch the video here.

Continue reading “Esperanto: The Language That Hoped To Unite The World” →

It has come to my attention that a few of you don’t know about Crystalfontz, an online store where you can find displays of all types, from USB LCD displays to I2C OLEDs, to ePaper displays. Thanks to [arthurptj] for that tip. Yes, Crystalfontz is cool, but have you ever heard of Panelook? Oh boy are there some displays at Panelook. Here’s a 1024 by 768 resolution display that’s less than half an inch across.

The comments section of Hackaday has been pretty tame as of late, so here’s why Apple is the king of design. It’s a question of fillets. There are a few ways to add a fillet to the corner of an icon or a MacBook. The first is to draw two perpendicular lines, then add a fixed radius corner. The Apple way is to make everything a squircle. The ‘squircle’ way of design is that there are no sudden jumps in curvature, and yes, you can do this in Fusion360 or any other design tool. This is also one of those things you can’t unsee once you know about it, like the arrow in the FedEx logo.

The ESP8266 simply appeared one day, and it changed everything. The ESP32, likewise, also just arrived on the Internet one day, and right now it’s the best solution for a microcontroller, with WiFi, that also does things really fast. Someone over at Espressif is dropping hints of a new microcontroller, with a possible release on April 1st (the same date that Apple released their competitor to the Raspberry Pi). Is it RISC-V? Is it 5V tolerant? Who knows! (Editor’s note: it’s not RISC-V. Though they’re saying that’s in the pipeline.)

The Verge got their hands on an original iPhone engineering validation unit. It’s a breakout board for an iPhone.

San Dimas High School Football Rules

There’s a screwdriver in your toolbox that has a cast clear handle, a blue ferrule surrounding the shaft, and red and white lettering on the side. Go check, it’s there. It’s a Craftsman screwdriver. It’s an iconic piece of design that’s so ubiquitous that it’s unnoticeable. It’s just what a screwdriver is. It’s a prototypical screwdriver. Thanks to the rise of resin and turning craftsmanship, there’s now a gigantic version of this screwdriver.

[The 8-Bit Guy] posted the following message on his Facebook on March 19th: “Just FYI – somebody hacked and totally erased my website. So, it’s going to be down for a while.” At the time of this writing, everything looks okay, which brings up the larger question of why Facebook is still a thing. We’re on a gradient of coolness here, and the sooner you delete your Facebook, the cooler you are. I, for example, deleted my Facebook during the Bush administration, and we all know how cool I am. I’ll never get to the singularity of coolness of kids who never had a Facebook in the first place, but the point remains: delete your Facebook old man.

[SirEdmar] wants to bring Fusion 360 to Linux users. Autodesk wants the same, and they tried a web-based version of Fusion 360, but… it’s a web version of Fusion 360. Right now the best solution is Wine, and thanks to [SirEdamr] 360 works in Wine.

Bing translate does Klingon! How well does it work? Not bad, it could use some work, mostly with non-standard vocabulary: