To design the 100-year storm, the model never saw one
A new MIT algorithm generates plausible extreme-event scenarios without ever training on an extreme event. The trick, and its limits, live in what is imposed on the model.
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A folding e-bike held together with aerospace glue
The FLIT M2i swaps the welds on its aluminium frame for structural adhesive. Welding weakens thin tubes; bonding buys back alignment and weight, but raises repair questions that are not new.
Three years after Intel's promise, glass chip substrates still have no commercial product
Glass-core substrates were meant to replace organic packaging after Intel's 2023 announcement. Three years on, they are only entering package qualification, and the first product keeps slipping.
A 130 € workbench: the IKEA module as a constrained build platform
Michael Green built a €130 workbench from a KALLAX unit and an old desk top, against €1,000 for custom furniture. The point is not the price, but a standard module becoming a reversible fabrication platform.
Draw on a wall with a laser that never actually touches it
Laser Graffiti runs in the browser and paints on a wall from a laser pointer. Behind the gimmick: calibration across camera, projector and surface, plus a neat feedback problem.
He can't write Verilog. His chip is chasing real silicon anyway.
Ken Chang admits he cannot write Verilog, yet an AI co-wrote a handwritten-digit classifier that is heading for a TinyTapeout shuttle. Everything checks out in simulation; the foundry remains the real test.
Plug in one prong set and this adapter's other prongs go live
A nine-dollar universal travel adapter bus-bars every set of prongs onto one conductor. Plug in one set and the others sit at mains voltage.
An orchestra without an address made a typeface its facade
Orkest Phion is a travelling orchestra with no permanent hall. Thonik anchored its identity in the variable font GT Planar, whose slant angle acts as a score for every campaign.
To make King Kong move, they simulated his muscles first
Ziva VFX builds the muscles, fat, fascia and skin of a digital character, then lets a solver compute how the matter deforms. VFX work moves before the drawing: you build an anatomy instead of sculpting a surface.
Getting a shuttlecock into an industrial arm took more patience than robotics
Travis Mitchell turned a used Denso industrial arm into a badminton shuttlecock feeder. The robot behaved. Two small launch wheels nearly sank the whole project.