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With Sales & Dungeons, you can create highly customizable handouts, quick reference and much more for your Dungeons and Dragons (or other PnP) sessions. Most thermal printers are small in size and can be taken with you and kept right at the gaming table. Use-cases range from printing out magic items, spells, a letter that […]

Sylwester (DatanoiseTV on GitHub) is pulling forgotten hardware out of the parts bin and getting it running on current software. He is bringing the Next Thing Co. PocketCHIP back from the drawer of dead electronics with a current mainline Linux kernel, current U-Boot, and a properly small OpenWrt userspace you can actually ssh into. A […]

Norbert Landsteiner does a deep dive into the font of the “Dead Test” diagnostic cartridge of the C64, including an Easter egg, a look into the implementation, and, finally, some Commodore 8-bit character ROMs for download. The C64 “Dead Test” diagnostic cartridge Rev. 718220 (Commodore part № 314139-03) famously comes with a special font, embedded […]

We’re taking a look at an oldie but goodie, our GEMMA hoop earrings. GEMMA jewelry! The bitty board fits perfectly in the center of a NeoPixel ring for flashy hoop earrings or a charming pendant. This guide was written for the ‘original’ Gemma board, but can be done with either the original or M0 Gemma. […]

Dropbox founder Drew Houston is stepping down as CEO after 19 years and will become executive chairman, with product chief Ashraf Alkarmi set to take over after a co-CEO transition period. CNBC reports: Drew Houston founded Dropbox nearly two decades ago at age 24, eventually becoming a household name in Silicon Valley and the first tech entrepreneur to take a company from the Y Combinator incubator program all the way to the public market. Now, at 43, Houston is ready to do something else. [...] By almost any measure, Houston has had a great run at Dropbox, helping pioneer the cloud storage market, competing head-to-head with Google and Apple and building a net worth of more than $2 billion, thanks to substantial ownership in his company. But in the land of outsized expectations, Houston has overseen a company that peaked too soon and never became a generation-defining brand. Dropbox's current market cap of just over $6 billion is down by half from the high price on its first day of trading in 2018, and is below the $10 billion valuation it was ascribed by private market investors in 2014. [...] In its latest quarterly earnings report, Dropbox said it has more than 18 million paying users, and the service remains popular with media professionals, graphic designers, architects, and others who share files and photos as part of their daily work. "Part of me has always thought, oh yeah, I'll be the CEO of Dropbox until my last gasp of my career," he said. "There's never a perfect time, there was no part of me where I was like, 'oh, this date is the date where it's going to happen.'" Since Alkarmi joined Dropbox from Vimeo in late 2024, the company has "become a lot more responsive to our customers and is taking bigger swings on innovation," Houston said. "I trust the right leader," he said. "The company's in the right place."

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Ken Shirriff provides another excellent post, this time on the computer used on Spacelab back from 1980. Spacelab was a reusable laboratory that could be carried in the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle, providing lab space for astronauts and experiments. Spacelab was controlled by a French-built minicomputer, called the Mitra 125 MS. Unlike modern […]

Olimex posts about TuxCon 2026 being a great experience filled with good conversations, interesting sessions, and plenty of fun. Saturday was packed with meetings and conversations with colleagues and friends throughout the conference. The lecture sessions sparked many discussions. On Sunday, the traditional soldering workshop took place in the training building of Olimex. Participants ranging […]

joshuark writes: BusPatrol, a company that has installed AI-powered cameras in tens of thousands of school buses around the U.S., now plans to turn those cameras into automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), capturing the location of every vehicle the buses drive past, and give that data to law enforcement, 404 Media has learned. BusPatrol has already taken steps to share the collected data with law enforcement contracting giant Axon, according to leaked BusPatrol documents and a source with knowledge of the plans. BusPatrol has acknowledged how controversial its plan to collect and share this data is, pointing specifically to concerns about ICE using license plate data, but emphasizes the likely success of selling the angle of protecting children. "Who would have thought that school buses would be turned into the mass surveillance state?," Michael Soyfer, an attorney from the Institute for Justice, which has various ongoing ALPR-related lawsuits The Institute for Justice argues that warrantless use of ALPR systems is unconstitutional, describing similar systems as a "dragnet." Kate Spree, senior manager of brand communications at BusPatrol, said in an email "This inquiry is based on a false premise and inaccurate information. BusPatrol does not pool or sell data across communities; student safety program data is used only to support the BusPatrol program in the community where that data was created." When 404 Media asked clarifying questions and said that the reporting is based on leaked BusPatrol material, Spree stopped replying to text messages and emails. This plan gives new meaning to the animated cartoon series "The Magic School Bus"... Further reading: FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers

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Selenite has become one of the most recognizable crystals in modern energy work. People use selenite crystals in meditation spaces, daily routines and crystal collections because the believe the crystals cleanse unwanted energy and encourage calm, clarity and balance.

Thoth was one of the most important deities in ancient Egyptian religion, serving as the god of wisdom, writing, magic and the moon. In ancient Egypt, he acted as the divine scribe who recorded the decisions of the gods and preserved cosmic order.

Viking symbols give us a compact way to talk about Norse mythology, Viking history and the ideas that shaped medieval Scandinavian life. These marks were not just cool designs stamped on war gear. Many carried symbolic meaning tied to protection, fate, travel, death, courage and the Norse gods.

The Lyra constellation is one of the easiest star patterns to spot in the northern sky during summer. Even people who know very little about astronomy often notice Vega first because it shines brighter than almost every other star visible from Earth.

This new learn guide is inspired by Olivia Zhu’s A Minimal Self-Perceiving Embodiment for Large Language Models (2026, zenodo, GitHub). The core idea of the project is to give an LLM agent access to a device that can be used to sense the environment that its human user is in, and to express itself in […]

The AAPI History Hub provides K–12 educators with Lesson Plans, Books, Films, and more ready to integrate into teaching and classrooms, via AAPIhistoryhub The AAPI History Hub provides K–12 educators with a vetted collection of resources, including Lesson Plans, Books, Films, and more, that are ready to integrate into your teaching and classrooms. … We […]

Maker Luke Ditria has once again revisited his Python and Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W-powered bird-spotting wildlife camera project. This time, he upgrading it with a 3D-printed enclosure and a solar panel with custom-designed photovoltaic HAT add-on for full off-grid operation. Check out the video below and more on GitHub and hackster.io.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Elon Musk's Starlink and Amazon's low-earth-orbit satellite business may be able to acquire some European mobile satellite spectrum next year, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday. But they said two-thirds of the satellite spectrum that allows mobile devices and vehicles to communicate seamlessly even in remote locations, would be reserved for European companies. U.S. companies Viasat and EchoStar hold licenses that are due to expire in May 2027 and the European Commission has been considering how to allocate future spectrum at the same time as the bloc pushes to reduce reliance on U.S. tech. The European Union's IRIS2 multi-orbit array of 290 satellites, a response to Starlink, will be among the European companies to receive some spectrum, the sources said. British and Norwegian companies can also bid for a license, the people said. Details of the proposal, set to be announced on Wednesday, could still change at a meeting of commissioners on the day, one of the sources. Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier said EU-wide satellite connectivity was "synonymous with resilience, security, and capability" given the current geopolitical context. "Satellite connectivity is a key piece of our technological sovereignty, our security, and our defense, as also highlighted by IRIS2," he added.

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American Airlines plans to install SpaceX's Starlink Wi-Fi on more than 500 narrow-body Airbus aircraft starting early next year. It does not, however, have any immediate plans to change providers on its Boeing fleet, which currently uses a mix of Viasat and Panasonic. CNBC reports: American in January rolled out free in-flight Wi-Fi for members of its frequent flyer program, following United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and others. Delta in March said it would use Amazon Leo for in-flight Wi-Fi for hundreds of jets starting in 2028. United, Southwest Airlines and Alaska Airlines, which merged with Hawaiian Airlines in 2024, have selected Starlink. The move is a big win for SpaceX as it prepares for a potentially massive IPO next month. SpaceX said Starlink and its connectivity business generated $11.39 billion in revenue last year, accounting for 61% of the company's total sales.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Aerodynamic drag is a major "barrier" in high-speed airplanes, automobiles, and bullet trains. This is because a design with less aerodynamic drag allows the aircraft to move at higher speeds with less energy. When an aircraft or car body moves at high speed, a thin layer of air called the "boundary layer" is formed on its surface. This boundary layer has two states: laminar flow, in which air flows in an orderly fashion, and turbulent flow, which involves turbulence. The longer the air stays in the laminar flow state with low friction, the smaller the air resistance becomes, but as the air speed increases, it transitions to turbulent flow. The key to reducing aerodynamic drag is how to delay this transition to turbulence. For more than 80 years, the principle of "the surface of an object must be smooth" has been the basic premise of aeronautical engineering throughout the world in order to suppress the transition to turbulence and reduce aerodynamic drag. This premise was based on the results of a 1940 study by Ichiro Tani, a Japanese aerodynamicist who quantitatively demonstrated the relationship between "surface roughness" (an indicator of the state of the machined surface) and turbulent transition, arguing that surface roughness, which was unavoidable with the manufacturing technology of the time, prevented laminar flow from being realized. However, in 1989 Tani reinterpreted the experimental data on rough-surface pipes obtained by fluid engineer Johann Nikulase in the 1930s, bringing a new perspective that "roughness may not necessarily only promote turbulent transition and increase fluid resistance." Inheriting this idea, a research group led by Yasuaki Kohama of Tohoku University experimentally demonstrated in the 1990s that fibrous rough surfaces, which have fine fibrous irregularities on their surface, have the effect of delaying transition under certain conditions. The same Tohoku University research team recently announced a discovery that significantly advances this trend. Aiko Yakino, associate professor at Tohoku University's Institute of Fluid Science, and her research group were the first in the world to demonstrate that aerodynamic drag can be reduced by up to 43.6 percent simply by applying distributed micro-roughness (DMR), a surface roughness so fine and irregular that it cannot be distinguished by the naked eye. This technology is fundamentally different from the "rivulet (shark skin) process," which is known as a typical aerodynamic drag reduction technology. The rivulet process mimics the fine longitudinal grooves in shark skin, and by carving grooves approximately 0.1 mm wide along the direction of airflow, it aligns the vortices that occur near the wall surface of turbulent airflow areas. DMR, on the other hand, delays the switch from laminar to turbulent flow by means of random and minute irregularities. The flow zones it affects and the mechanisms it employs are based on completely different concepts.

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