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Testing a Soviet 1000 Volt Insulation Tester from 1985 Although the term ‘Iron Curtain’ from the Cold War brings to mind something like the Berlin Wall and its forbidding No Man’s Land, there was still active trade between the https://hackaday.com/2026/03/17/testing-a-soviet-1000-vol… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/17/testing-a-soviet-1000-vol…

Preparing to Fire Up a 90-Year-Old Boiler After Half a Century Continuing the restoration of the #1 Lancashire boiler at the Claymills Pumping Station in the UK, the volunteers are putting on the final touches after previously passing the boiler inspection. https://hackaday.com/2026/03/17/preparing-to-fire-up-a-90… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/17/preparing-to-fire-up-a-90…

Hackaday Podcast Episode 361: Hackaday Podcast Mailbag, A Phone is Not a Computer, 3D Printing History is New Again <img width="800" height="484" src="" alt=""/>Join Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi as they cover their favorite hacks and stories from the week. The episode kicks off with some updates about Hackaday Europe and https://hackaday.com/2026/03/13/hackaday-podcast-episode-… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/13/hackaday-podcast-episode-…

Running a PC off AA Cells With Buck Converters Really Boosts Performance <img width="800" height="388" src="" alt=""/>After the previous attempt of running a PC off AA cells got a lot of comments, [ScuffedBits] decided to do the scientifically responsible thing and re-ran the experiment with all https://hackaday.com/2026/03/13/running-a-pc-off-aa-cells… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/13/running-a-pc-off-aa-cells…

This Week in Security: Plenty of Patches, Replacing Old Gear, and Phrack Calls for Papers <img width="800" height="484" src="" alt=""/>When Friday the Thirteenth and Patch Tuesday happen on the same week, we’re surely in for a good time. Anyone who maintains any sort of Microsoft ecosystem knows by now https://hackaday.com/2026/03/13/this-week-in-security-ple… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/13/this-week-in-security-ple…

OS/2 Never Went Away. Its Successor Has Received An Update <img width="800" height="450" src="" alt=""/>ArcaOS is an operating system you might not have heard of, but you will recognize it when we tell you that it’s the direct descendant of IBM’s OS/2. It’s just https://hackaday.com/2026/03/13/os-2-never-went-away-its-… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/13/os-2-never-went-away-its-…

Perfecting the Shape-Changing Fruit Bowl <img width="800" height="450" src="" alt=""/>Fruit bowls have an unavoidable annoyance– not flies and rotten fruit, those would be avoidable if your diet was better. No, it’s that the bowl is never the right size. https://hackaday.com/2026/03/13/perfecting-the-shape-chan… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/13/perfecting-the-shape-chan…

Nintendo’s Family BASIC Keyboard Gets USB Upgrade <img width="625" height="625" src="" alt=""/>America knew it as the Nintendo Entertainment System, but in Japan, it was the Family Computer (Famicom). It was more than just a home console—it was intended to actually do https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/nintendos-family-basic-ke… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/nintendos-family-basic-ke…

Replicating a Nuclear Event Detector For Fun and Probably Not Profit <img width="800" height="451" src="" alt=""/>Last year, we brought you a story about the BhangmeterV2, an internet-of-things nuclear war monitor. With a cold-war-era HSN-1000 nuclear event detector at its heart, it had one job: announce https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/replicating-a-nuclear-eve… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/replicating-a-nuclear-eve…

Mapping The Sound Field Of An Acoustic Levitator <img width="800" height="450" src="" alt=""/>Sound! It’s a thing you hear, moreso than something you see with your eyes. And yet, it is possible to visualize sound with various techniques. [PlasmatronX] demonstrates this well, using https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/mapping-the-sound-field-o… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/mapping-the-sound-field-o…

How Would a Field Sequential Home Computer Have Worked? <img width="800" height="450" src="" alt=""/>The early history of colour TV had several false starts, of which perhaps one of the most interesting might-have-beens was the CBS field-sequential system. This was a rival to the https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/how-would-a-field-sequent… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/how-would-a-field-sequent…

Controlling Vintage Mac OS With AI <img width="800" height="450" src="" alt=""/>Classic Mac OS was prized for its clean, accessible GUI when it first hit the scene in the 1980s. Back then, developers hadn’t even conceived of all the weird gewgaws https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/controlling-vintage-mac-o… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/controlling-vintage-mac-o…

Pokemon Go Had Players Capturing More Than They Realized <img width="800" height="484" src="" alt=""/>Released in 2016, Pokemon Go quickly became a worldwide phenomenon. Even folks who weren’t traditionally interested in the monster-taming franchise were wandering around with their smartphones out, on the hunt https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/pokemon-go-had-players-ca… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/pokemon-go-had-players-ca…

Selective Ironing Adds Designs To 3D Prints <img width="800" height="450" src="" alt=""/>While working on a project that involved super-thin prints, [Julius Curt] came up with selective ironing, a way to put designs on the top surface of a print without adding https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/selective-ironing-adds-de… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/selective-ironing-adds-de…

Open Source Radar Has Up To 20 KM Range <img width="800" height="449" src="" alt=""/>Phased-array radars are great for all sorts of things, whether you’re doing advanced radio research or piloting a fifth-generation combat aircraft. They’re also typically very expensive. [Nawfal] hopes to make https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/open-source-radar-has-up-… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/open-source-radar-has-up-…

A Radio Power Amplifier for Not a Lot <img width="800" height="450" src="" alt=""/>When building a radio transmitter, unless it’s a very small one indeed, there’s a need for an amplifier before the antenna. This is usually referred to as the power amplifier, https://hackaday.com/2026/03/11/a-radio-power-amplifier-f… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/11/a-radio-power-amplifier-f…

Hands on with Creality’s new M1 Filament Maker <img width="800" height="450" src="" alt=""/>Ever since 3D printing has become a popular tool, the question of waste has been looming in the background. The sad reality of rapid prototyping is that you’re going to https://hackaday.com/2026/03/11/hands-on-with-crealitys-n… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/11/hands-on-with-crealitys-n…

Printing an Underwater Diving Helmet With Floating Air Supply <img width="800" height="507" src="" alt=""/>Old-school diving helmets are deceivingly simple, even if they are – as [Hyperspace Pirate] puts it in a recent video – essentially the equivalent of an upside-down bucket with an https://hackaday.com/2026/03/11/printing-an-underwater-di… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/11/printing-an-underwater-di…

3D Printing a Harmonic Pin-Ring Gearing Drive <img width="800" height="315" src="" alt=""/>Cycloidal drives are a type of speed reducer that are significantly more compact than gearboxes, but they still come with a fair number of components. In comparison, the harmonic pin-ring https://hackaday.com/2026/03/11/3d-printing-a-harmonic-pi… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/11/3d-printing-a-harmonic-pi…

Are We Finally At The Point Where Phones Can Replace Computers? <img width="800" height="450" src="" alt=""/>There was an ideal of convergence, a long time ago, when one device would be all you need, digitally speaking. [ETA Prime] on YouTube seems to think we’ve reached that https://hackaday.com/2026/03/11/are-we-finally-at-the-poi… https://hackaday.com/2026/03/11/are-we-finally-at-the-poi…