Sooner or later, you’re going to need a logic analyzer. If you don’t have a Bus Pirate or Logic Sniffer lying around, [Joonas] has a great MacGyverism that turns an oscilloscope into the simplest logic analyzer ever.

The basic premise of the build is tying four digital lines to the analog input of an oscope. This is done with a 74HC126 buffer … Read More → "Turning an oscilloscope into a logic analyzer"

If you’re never content with Wi-Fi speeds, rest assured that scientists are trying to help. In fact, a team of Japanese researchers has just broken the record for wireless data transmission in the terahertz range—with a data rate 20 times higher than most current Wi-Fi connections.
via Gizmodo

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Technology moves fast. Often, you’ll be hard-pressed to force devices that are just a few years apart to interface. Sometimes though, it’s surprisingly easy. Aliencurv accomplished quite the feat in that regard by modifying a 1983 TRS-80 with 20kb memory to control a 2012 Wall-E robot. Sure, it’s not quite modifying a telegraph key to tweet, but I’d argue this is somehow crazier.
via Geekosystem

Read More → "Controlling a 2012 robot with a 1983 notebook PC"

One of the world’s leading rugby teams is about to learn whether the sport, once described as “a ruffian’s game played by gentlemen,” can benefit from the genteel field of science.

The Leicester Tigers are the most successful English rugby union club of the past 25 years, winning the Premiership title a record nine times and twice capturing the European championship. Later this month, they’ll play in their eighth consecutive league final. In an effort to maintain that impressive success, the club is working with IBM to use … Read More → "Pro rugby club enlists IBM to predict when players will be injured"

Who’s playing fast and loose with your data? The Big Brother Awards, billed as the “Oscars for data leeches” by the hackers and privacy advocates who hand out the prizes, shine a high-intensity spotlight on companies and individuals with poor privacy track records. Since 1998, Privacy International and a host of affiliated organizations have singled out the worst privacy violators in various countries including the UK, Austria, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Japan, New Zealand and the U.S. The title evokes the totalitarian cult personality featured in George Orwell’s 1984, … Read More → "And the Privacy Invasion Award goes to …"

Add this to the increasing number of unusual weapons straight out of a sci-fi movie: A repurposed Nerf gun equipped with a Tesla coil that can shoot up to 20,000 volts of electricity. This electrifying gun created by Rob Flickenger was inspired by the fictional Tesla gun from the steampunk graphic novel The Five Fists of Science. It may not make as much fashion statement as this crazy-looking Tesla coil hat, … Read More → "Man builds Tesla gun that can shoot 20,000 Volts of electricity"

We’ve seen the wacky homebrew projects of computer hardware hacker Mike Schropp before. Mindful Gizmag readers may recall his triple quad-core i7 LEGO PC housing that we looked at last July. But his latest project, the “Bio Computer,” is rather more oddball, taking a turn distinctly towards the horticultural with a PC case adapted to … grow wheatgrass.
… Read More → "Home-built “Bio Computer” runs Linux, grows wheatgrass"

There’s a lot of talk about what NASA’s deep space manned missions will look like, and now a news article is giving us a sneak peek ahead of any official announcement: sending a crew of astronauts to land on a nearby asteroid, which would mean boldly going where no human has ever gone before.

While NASA isn’t set to reveal details of a manned asteroid mission until later this month at a conference in Japan, early details a leaking out in a report by Richard Gray for the U.K.’s& … Read More → "NASA to train astronauts for asteroid landings"

A new startup company’s $10 space posters come with a chance to win a ride on a suborbital space vehicle.

Called ”I Dream of Space,” the company is selling 25,000 posters at $10 apiece, the proceeds of which should cover a $200,000 ride on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo or a $95,000 seat on XCOR Aerospace’s Lynx, plus some profit for the company’s founders.

No … Read More → "Startup company raffles a ticket to space"

I’m not sure how, but I’d never seen any clips of young Richard Feynman speaking until physicist Walid Younes posted this video to Google+.

The talk itself is great and covers some important stuff. (Of course, it’s Feynman!) The key thing here is the connection between theoretical understandings of how the universe works and practical observations. Theories are used to make predictions. When the predictions turn out to be correct, we get some more evidence that the theory is on the right track. Here, Feynman talks about how the theory of gravity … Read More → "A bit of classic Feynman"