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Making your own circuit boards can be a daunting challenge. You have to design a schematic, test it on a breadboard, design the board layout, and then after all of that, you still have to print and etch a board! Luckily, we have Fritzing. Fritzing is a free open-source PCB d ...more

In mathematics, a knot is a closed circle in a three-dimensional space that crosses itself multiple times. Since it is closed, it has no ends to tie, meaning you can't actually create such a knot. However, if you tie the ends together after you create a knot in the standard wa ...more

WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the most ...more

Math Craft admin Cory Poole provided quite a few recipes for sonobe models in his blog, and I followed one to make the pentakis dodecahedron here. I wasn't that happy with my first result because the colours kept on coming out wrong—i.e. two of the same colour next to each ot ...more

OSPD1 In 1978, the first SCRABBLE Dictionary was conceived and published by Merriam-Webster, with the help of the National Scrabble Association (NSA). The idea was to include any word that was found in one of the five major dictionaries at the time: Merriam-Webster's Collegi ...more

I have an absolutely wonderful time making projects and writing articles for all of you mad scientists! Today, I will bring you behind the scenes for a look at the workbench, tools, and software that make the Mad Science World possible. Above is my beautiful workbench! My who ...more

For as long as I've loved SCRABBLE, I can't believe I've never come across this before. "CRAZIEST" - A short story by Liz Dubelman about words and numbers as a religion (think Pi), about SCRABBLE being the oracle, about her quest for the "triple-triple". This spoke words to m ...more

If you have a bunch of spare toilet paper tubes lying around, you're in luck this holiday season. With wrapping paper, a couple trinkets, and a pack of cracker snaps, you can make your very own Christmas crackers. Traditionally used in holiday celebrations in the United Kingd ...more

In June at the eMerge Americas investors conference, Magic Leap founder (and NR50 member) Rony Abovitz proclaimed that the launch of their flagship product was "not far away." Nearly three months later, an eternity in the tech world, and we have not heard an official launch d ...more

I was a slap-happy T-Mobile customer before, but now, after hearing that the company sent out a box of rolling papers to certain media sites with memes bad mouthing #VerHIGHzon ... I love you even more, John Legere! Yesterday, the Washington Post was all about pointing out th ...more

When you think of all the fun and games smartphones have to offer, it's easy to forget that they also make a great tool for getting things done. With utilities like document scanners, calendars, to-do lists, office apps, and password managers, that little computer you carry ar ...more

As sure as death and taxes, sitting at a wobbly table at one time or another is inescapable. With your weight on it, the table shifts from one end to the other, lifting one leg in the air and then the other; a parade of seesaws, especially if you have someone sitting on the ot ...more

When you go to the grocery store, chances are you're confronted with the usual piles of apples, berries, bananas, and melons. All well and good, right? Sure—except it gets a little dull, and every now and then, you've gotta seek out something different. Something with a littl ...more

You can almost detect the collective breath-holding of the augmented reality industry as it waits for Apple's inevitable entry. A new Apple wearable built with augmented reality technology is likely the device that will finally make the smartphone take a backseat. Apple's for ...more

While Leap Motion has given makers a DIY solution for building their own augmented reality headset with Project North Star, a self-described "AR wonk" has taken the blueprints one step further by creating an untethered version. Noah Zerkin, a research and development project ...more

Who likes to buy apps? The answer is no one, of course. Unfortunately, as in life, the best apps and games don't come free. That's why it makes sense to wait until those apps go on sale before handing over your hard-earned cash. And what better day to find discounts in the iOS ...more

One lump or two? That was the age-old question with sugar cubes, which used to be a staple of any tea salon or dignified household this side of Downton Abbey. These days sugar isn't really used in cubes much except in bars and restaurants, and that's a shame. Cubes are a lot l ...more

When you're expecting an important call or text, it's pretty annoying to hear or feel your phone go off just to find out it was your reminders app telling you that you need to buy more contact lenses. Not quite as annoying as phantom phone vibrations, but it's up there. Remin ...more

Foodborne infections often occur through the contamination of equipment, food-prep tools, and unsanitary surfaces. A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reminds us that breast pump parts are part of the food-delivery chain — and they can bec ...more

We know that healthcare-related facilities can be fertile ground for antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but recent research suggests your produce aisle might be too. In a presentation at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, researchers from California State Univers ...more

An innovative new wound dressing has been developed by a research team at Lodz University of Technology in Poland that uses crustacean shells to create a bandage that packs an antimicrobial punch — and even more potential to help solve a global problem. Bandages typically hel ...more

Food is a necessity, sure, but every now and then it's so satisfying to eat something because it is fun and delicious. While eating a whole tub of homemade ice cream might satisfy your need for gluttony, there's a way to take it even further—make your dinnerware edible. The B ...more

I'm one of those types of people who waits until the very last minute to find a Halloween costume, and thanks to last year's attempt at buying one at a local costume shop the day before Halloween, I will just settle for the things I have lying around in my house from now until ...more

One of the more enjoyable parts of Christmas (other than opening gifts of course) is going out to find the perfect tree, struggle bringing it into the house, and decorating it. As the years went by, I realized that our tree looked exactly like every other tree in the neighborh ...more

Andre was enjoying the carefree life of a 12-year-old with his friends, riding his bike and playing sports, like all kids that age. Schoolwork wasn't hard for him, and his grades showed that. Then, the headaches began. He lost vision in one eye, symptoms that drove his famil ...more

Businesses leave paper trails for nearly every activity they do, making it easy for a hacker or researcher to dig up everything from business licenses to a CEO's signature if they know where to look. To do this, we'll dig into the databases of government organizations and priv ...more

Update: The LG G8 ThinQ has been announced. You can read all of the official specs at our full article on the new phone. 2018 was another rough year for LG. The mobile division lost over $700 million last year despite releasing four flagship-caliber phones. LG, however, remai ...more

Welcome to the first annual Next Reality 30, our list of people who've made the biggest impact on the augmented reality space in the last 12 months — and what a 12-month roller-coaster ride it's been. Apple introduced ARKit-powered apps last fall, Google launched ARCore for An ...more

Using Netcat to backdoor a macOS device has its short-comings. If the compromised Mac goes to sleep, the Netcat background process will occasionally fail to terminate correctly; This leaves Netcat running infinitely in the background and the attacker with no new way into the d ...more

At a global security conference in Munich, philanthropist and businessman Bill Gates spoke about the next pandemic and a dire lack of global readiness. Here's how his statement could come true—and how to be ready when it does. On Saturday, Bill Gates joined hundreds of heads- ...more

Even when no one is in your kitchen, it is crowded. The refrigerator, sink, and counters are all covered with microbes that are just hanging around. They are inadvertent remnants from the raw chicken you used in that recipe last night, brewing a bacterial cocktail in your Nesp ...more

So you're finally ready to head out on that big trip you've been planning for months, huh? It's an exciting time, but there are plenty of things you'll need to prepare before you head out. For instance, it's hard to imagine life without a smartphone these days, and with useful ...more

While landing a job isn't the easiest thing in the world, you can probably blame your résumé for a number of lost opportunities. Writing up a cover letter and résumé is frustrating and time-consuming, but if you spend the time to get them right, the effort will drastically inc ...more

Offline maps help you get around an unfamiliar area whenever you anticipate encountering bad cellular reception and no internet connectivity. Google Maps and other map apps have had offline maps for a while now. But Apple Maps only had a little-known caching workaround to prod ...more

Apple wants to support the advertising economy, but its primary focus of late has been user privacy and security. In Safari, cross-site tracking, which lets content providers track you across websites and apps to show you more targeted ads, is disabled by default. However, con ...more

"What's your Wi-Fi password?" That's usually the first thing guests ask for when you have them over. You tell them the network name, then try to explain your complicated hacker-resistant password, which becomes a whole ordeal. But there's a better way to do it, which doesn't r ...more

Smartphones and laptops are constantly sending Wi-Fi radio signals, and many of these signals can be used to track us. In this guide, we'll program a cheap IoT device in Arduino to create hundreds of fake networks with common names; This will cause nearby devices to reveal the ...more

If we were to assign a theme for the 2019 edition of the Next Reality 30 (NR30), it might be something along the lines of, "What have you done for me lately?" Many of the top names in the industry from the 2018 edition remain the same, but their positions have shuffled. The p ...more

A PirateBox creates a network that allows users to communicate wirelessly, connecting smartphones and laptops even when surrounding infrastructure has been disabled on purpose or destroyed in a disaster. Using a Raspberry Pi, we will make a wireless offline server that hosts f ...more