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Hack a Day
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[l] at 4/18/26 11:00am
There are two UNIVAC 1219B computers that have survived since the 1960s and one of them is even operational. [Nathan Farlow] wanted to run a Minecraft server on it, so read more

[Category: Games, Retrocomputing, assembly code, Claude Code, emulators, minecraft, RISC-V, univac]

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[l] at 4/18/26 8:00am
There is a currently ongoing debate in the neuropsychology world about how we relate to the tools that we use. The theory of “tool embodiment” says that when we use read more

[Category: Hackaday Columns, Rants, newsletter, rants]

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[l] at 4/18/26 5:00am
[Jeremy Bell] loves scratching, but he had a problem. His Hercules DJ controller wasnt really doing a great job at emulating the kind of action one would get with a read more

[Category: Musical Hacks, DJ controller, DJ rig, Hercules, midi controller, scratching]

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[l] at 4/18/26 2:00am
Theres something to be said for a simple wind-up, free flight model airplane. With no controls, it must be built very well to fly well, and with only the limited read more

[Category: Battery Hacks, Toy Hacks, model airplane, supercapacitor, tom stanton]

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[l] at 4/17/26 11:00pm
Generally when a game console with an optical drive stops reading discs the first thing that people do is crank on the potentiometer that controls the power to the laser read more

[Category: Nintendo Hacks, Repair Hacks, gamecube, nintendo gamecube]

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[l] at 4/17/26 8:00pm
Those who have worked on a hobby operating system for x86 will have interacted with its rather complex and confusing interrupt model. [Evalyn] shows us why and how to use read more

[Category: Software Hacks, FRED, IDT, x86-64]

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[l] at 4/17/26 5:00pm
Although modern-day silvered glass mirrors have pretty much destroyed the market for bronze mirrors, these highly polished pieces of metal once were the pinnacle of mirror technology. Due to the read more

[Category: History, Misc Hacks, bronze, bronze casting, mirror]

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[l] at 4/17/26 2:00pm
Cooking food with fire is arguably the technology that propelled humans to become the dominant species on Earth. Its pretty straightforward to achieve, just requiring a fuel source, a supply read more

[Category: cooking hacks, cooking, discharge, flyback transformer, high voltage, lipo battery, plasma, portable, ZVS]

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[l] at 4/17/26 11:30am
Weve all had those times when your electrical device of choice is running low on battery. Sometimes you even plan ahead and are also carrying a battery pack, but what read more

[Category: contests, green hacks, Solar Hacks, 2026 Green-Powered Challenge, battery bank, IP5306, solar panel]

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[l] at 4/17/26 10:30am
Its the evening before publication, and a pair of Hackaday writers convene to record the weeks podcast. This week Elliot Williams is joined by Jenny List, and its a bumper read more

[Category: Hackaday Columns, Podcasts, Hackaday Podcast]

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[l] at 4/17/26 9:30am
Well, this might just be a Hackaday first. Certainly not the circuit sculpture part, nor the wearable aspect, but the glorious combination of the two. Behold [CMoz]s Fashionably on Task: read more

[Category: Wearable Hacks, Circuit Sculpture, epaper, esp32-C3, pink microcontroller, reminder, to-do list, wearable]

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[l] at 4/17/26 8:00am
CVE-2026-34040 lets attackers bypass some Docker authentication plugins by allowing an empty request body. Present since 2024, this bug was caused by a previous fix to the auth workflow. In read more

[Category: Hackaday Columns, Security Hacks, docker, malware, microsoft, nist, openssl, rockstar, security, x.org, xwayland]

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[l] at 4/17/26 5:00am
You probably dont spend a lot of time using the FAT32 file system anymore, since its thoroughly been superseded many times over. Even so, Microsoft has seen fit to deliver read more

[Category: computer hacks, News, FAT32, file system, microsoft, windows]

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[l] at 4/17/26 2:00am
Unlike the current era where most consumer electronics are black rectangles, or the early 90s where most consumer electronics were black rectangles, we got a brief glimmer of color, light, read more

[Category: Games, animation, console, console mod, controller, gamecube, hot tub, model, nintendo, playable]

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[l] at 4/16/26 11:00pm
Kei trucks are some of the smallest commercial vehicles out on the roads today. You can also get lots of cute kei RC cars if youre into the toy side read more

[Category: Toy Hacks, ESP32, kei truck, R/C car, xbox one]

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[l] at 4/16/26 8:00pm
That boiling water is a contentious topic of discussion is clear, but what about hot air? When you take a 12 VDC, 280 Watt-rated air fryer and pit it against read more

[Category: cooking hacks, 12v, air fryer, power usage]

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[l] at 4/16/26 5:00pm
Its fair to say that there are a lot of development board form factors for MCUs, with [Tech Dregs] over on yonder YouTube on the verge of adding another one read more

[Category: hardware, development boards]

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[l] at 4/16/26 2:00pm
Oscilloscopes and to lesser extent signals generators are useful tools for analyzing, testing and diagnosing circuits but we often take for granted how they work. Luckily, [FromConceptToCircuit] is here to read more

[Category: FPGA, Tool Hacks, diy oscilloscope, fpga, signal generator]

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[l] at 4/16/26 12:30pm
While it might seem quaint these days, weve met many makers and hackers who reach for a pen and a pad when learning something new or working their way through read more

[Category: digital cameras hacks, Tool Hacks, digitizing, notes, notion, ocr, openai, optical character recognition, scanner, tesseract]

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[l] at 4/16/26 11:00am
Floyd Collins, the unfortunate star of this post. (Public Domain) Information, it seems, flows at the speed of media. In the old days, information traveled with people on ships or horses, so if, say, a battle was won or lost, it could be months or even years before anyone back home knew what happened. While books and movable type let people store information, they still moved at the speed people moved. Before the telegraph, there were attempts to use things like semaphores to speed the flow of information,  but those were generally limited to line-of-sight operations. Carrier pigeons were handy, but dont really move much faster than people. The telegraph helped, but people didnt have telegraph stations in their homes. At least not ordinary people. But radio was different. It didnt take long for every home to have a radio, and while the means of broadcasting remained in the hands of a few, the message could go everywhere virtually instantly. This meant news could go from one side of the globe to the other in seconds. It also meant rumors, fads, and what we might think of today as memes could, too. You might think that things going viral is a modern problem, but, in reality, media sensations have always been with us. All that changes is the number of them and their speed. One of the earliest viral media sensations dealt with William Floyd Collins, an unfortunate man who was exploring caves during the Kentucky Cave Wars. Background Mammoth Cave in Kentucky had become a major tourist attraction. The accessible entrance to the cave was located on land owned by the Croghan family. The massive cave system had been made famous in the 19th century, and with the construction of a lock and dam nearby in 1906, Mammoth Cave became accessible to ordinary tourists. Rescuers weighing options at the entrance to Sand Cave. (Public Domain) However, the cave wasnt completely under the Croghan land. There were also other caves that may or may not have been connected with Mammoth Cave. This led to fierce competition. The Croghan family suppressed information about exactly what land was over the cave. Meanwhile, other cave owners would intercept people heading for the cave, tell them that Mammoth Cave was closed, and helpfully direct them to another location. By the 1920s, George Morrison blasted new entrances to the cave on non-Croghan land. There was fierce interest in finding new entrances to the cave or nearby caves to capture tourist money. Back to Floyd Floyd Collins found an entrance into what would become known as the Great Crystal Cave in 1917 and opened it to tourists in 1918. Unfortunately, the cave was hard to access, so it didnt make much money. Floyd had started entering caves in 1893 at the age of six. He discovered his first cave in 1910. But Great Crystal Cave was too far off the main road. He entered into a deal with three farmers who owned land closer to the main highway. If Floyd could find a suitable cave or, even better, an entrance to Mammoth Cave, hed partner with them and create a mutually profitable tourist attraction. Floyd found a hole in what would become known as Sand Cave. Some of the passages he had to move through were as tight as 9 inches, which, of course, would not be suitable for tourists, but they opened, apparently, into a large grotto. He was determined to expand the entrance to make the cave commercially viable. In January of 1925, he was working in the cave when his gas lamp started to dim. He tried to leave, but while trying to move through a small passage, he knocked over his light, leaving him in total darkness. In the dark, he put his foot against a seemingly stable wall and caused a shift that pinned his leg with a rock weighing nearly 30 pounds. He was also buried in gravel. At this point, he was 150 feet from the hole to the surface. The Media The next day, people noticed Floyd was missing, but no one would dare to follow him through the narrow passages. His younger brother finally got close enough to determine what happened. He was able to give Floyd food and water as plans for a rescue developed. After four days in the cave, several people tried to pull Floyd out using a rope and a harness, but they only wound up injuring him. Meanwhile, the media had taken interest in the case, and the publicity drew hundreds of tourists and amateur spelunkers. Campfires and, possibly, the electric light that had been placed to give Floyd some light and warmth, melted ice inside the cave, creating puddles of water around the trapped man. Two days after the failed rescue attempt, rain and the melting ice caused the cave passage to collapse, and the rescue team determined it was too dangerous to dig it back out after making an attempt to do so. They decided to dig straight down to reach Floyd. Digging Unfortunately, the cave drew air in so they decided they could not use mechanical diggers without risking suffocating Floyd. That meant humans would have to dig the 55-foot shaft to reach the victim. The initial estimate that 75 volunteers could dig the shaft in 30 hours proved optimistic, as conditions worsened and the hole grew deeper. Someone disconnected the wires from the light bulb and connected them to an audio amplifier to detect signs of life from the victim. They believed the repetitive crackling noise meant he was breathing. The light bulb went open on February 11th, twelve days after the incident started. Five days later, they reached his body. He had died and had been dead for several days. You can find a well-done documentary from Remix Films in the video below. For a movie inspired by the event, check out the Billy Wilder film Ace in the Hole (1951) starring Kirk Douglas. Viral A newspaper reporter, William Miller, was on the scene and, being a small man, was able to actually help remove gravel from Floyd before the cave-in. His interview with the man from inside the cave won a Pulitzer Prize. Not a circus. A cave rescue. There was a time when this would have been only a sensational local story, but by the modern year of 1925, reports went out on the wire by telegraph and were picked up by newspapers worldwide. The nearest telegraph station was miles away, so two ham radio operators (9BRK and 9CHG) provided a link between the site, the newspaper, and the authorities. The first broadcast radio station, KDKA, was only five years old, but stations provided news bulletins detailing the progress. Thanks to the media, crowds were reported to number in the tens of thousands. Eventually, the National Guard arrived to help control the crowds. Vendors popped up to sell hamburgers and memorabilia like a macabre circus. As you can see in the video below, memorabilia about the event and Floyd Collins can be worth a pretty penny to collectors. The whole thing became one of the three largest media events between World War I and World War II. The other two were Lindberghs transatlantic flight (1927) and the kidnapping of Lindberghs baby (1932). Oddly, Lindbergh was an acquaintance of Floyds and also flew news photos from the scene (although, reportedly, to the wrong newspaper). While it wasnt quite as big an event, Canadas 1936 Moose River Gold Mine collapse was a similar situation and also received worldwide media attention. It has the distinction of being the first 24-hour radio coverage of a breaking news story in Canada. Today These days, sensational news stories pop up everywhere. It seems as if they hardly get started when they are displaced by another one. But we submit that going viral isnt a modern phenomenon. Only the speed at which it happens. Even an 1835 newspaper was able to spur a viral hoax. Featured image: Mammoth Cave Saltpeter Mine by [Bpluke01]

[Category: Featured, history, media, viral]

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[l] at 4/16/26 9:30am
Imagine you and your friend are enjoying a nice sunny day, and BAM they start to have a severe allergic reaction to who knows what. You have an EpiPen, read more

[Category: Medical Hacks, air cannon, air compressor, epipen]

As of 4/18/26 1:10pm. Last new 4/18/26 12:38pm.

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