Telling Time Used to be a Ball
<img width="800" height="534" src="![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Working_New_Years_Eve_Social_Media_for_NBC_.jpg?w=800")
alt=""/>If you watch the New Year’s festivities from New York, you know that they mark midnight with the dropping of a big, gaudy ball. You might assume this was just 
alt=""/>If you watch the New Year’s festivities from New York, you know that they mark midnight with the dropping of a big, gaudy ball. You might assume this was just Hackaday
Telling Time Used To Be A Ball
If you watch the New Year’s festivities from New York, you know that they mark midnight with the dropping of a big, gaudy ball. You might ass...
Hackaday
Telling Time Used To Be A Ball
If you watch the New Year’s festivities from New York, you know that they mark midnight with the dropping of a big, gaudy ball. You might ass...
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/diycap_feat.jpg?w=800")
alt=""/>How any string instrument sounds depends on hundreds of factors; even the tiniest details matter. Seemingly inconsequential things like whether the tree that the wood came from grew on the 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Keebin.jpg?w=800")
alt="Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands."/>Have you ever wished you could experiment with different layouts super easily, just by adding or removing a few switches here and there and printing a new case? Well, [heyisjambo] 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/rain.png?w=800")
alt=""/>It isn’t that hard to make an electronic rain gauge if you have a steady source of power or you don’t mind changing batteries often. But [Matthew Ford] offers a 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/leg-tattoo-1200.jpg?w=800")
alt="A guy's leg encased in a 3D printer showing a fresh printed tattoo"/>This unusual tattoo hack by [Emily The Engineer] is not for the weak of heart, but let’s be frank: we kind of know her for that. And she gives out 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ps.png?w=800")
alt=""/>You’ve probably noticed that everywhere you go — the doctor’s office, hotels, or retail shops, there are tiny PCs everywhere. These small PCs often show up on the surplus market 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/backyard.jpg?w=800")
alt=""/>Living with Type 1 diabetes is a numbers game. There’s not a moment in the day free from the burden of tracking your blood glucose concentration, making “What’s your number?” 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ocxo_insides_kerry_wong_youtube.jpg?w=800")
alt=""/>Crystal oscillators are incredibly useful components, but they come with one little snag: their oscillation is temperature-dependent. For many applications the relatively small deviation is not a problem, but especially 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/051q8bzd03081-e1738310760212.webp?w=800")
alt=""/>Redbox was a company with a moderately interesting business model—it let you rent DVDs from automated kiosks. It’s an idea so simple it’s almost surprising it didn’t appear sooner. Only, 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/calc.png?w=800")
alt=""/>What do you do with a circa 1985 Casio FX-451 calculator with a bad keyboard? Well, if you are [Poking Technology], you transplant the inside of the calculator to a 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/he-final-e1738313963117.jpg?w=800")
alt=""/>The Timex Sinclair 1000 was a sleek and compact machine, and the US counterpart to the more well-known Spectrum ZX-81. Timex may not have come to dominate the computer market, 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/microphone.jpg?w=800")
alt=""/>It was Dan and Elliot behind the microphones today for a transatlantic look at the week in hacks. There was a bucket of news about AI, kicked off by Deepseek 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/pcb_4e6389.png?w=779")
alt=""/>If you compare a modern PCB with a typical 1980s PCB, you might notice — like [lcamtuf] did — that newer boards tend to have large areas of copper known 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/openscad-screw-nut-washer-generator.png?w=800")
alt=""/>For those times when you could really use a quick 3D model, this metric screw generator will do the trick for screws between M2 and M16 with matching nuts and 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Monolayer_TMDC_structure.jpg?w=800"/>Transition-metal)
dichalcogenides (TMDs) are the subject of an emerging field in semiconductor research, with these materials offering a range of useful properties that include not only semiconductor applications, but also 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Ethernet.jpg?w=800")
alt=""/>Do they teach networking history classes yet? Or is it still too soon? I was reading [Al]’s first installment of the Forgotten Internet series, on UUCP. The short summary is 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/ribbon-mic-featured.jpg?w=800")
alt=""/>There’s a mystique around ribbon microphones due to their being expensive studio-grade items, which has led more than one experimenter down the rabbit hole of making one. [Catherine van West] 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/charger-heater-main.png?w=800")
alt=""/>As the electric vehicle takeover slowly lumbers along, marginally increasing efficiencies for certain applications while entrenching car-centric urban design even further, there are some knock-on effects that are benefiting people 
![image](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/day-clock-800.jpg?w=800")
alt="A light-up clock displays the day of the week."/>If you’re lucky enough to work from home, you’ll soon find that it presents its own set of challenges, mostly related to work/life balance. It can get so bad that 