foam board

CGP Grey compares airplane boarding methods, based on an arXiv paper, and shows why the intuitive back-to-front approach is slow while random or outside-in boarding does better.

Ben Vallack walks through designing a custom keyboard PCB from scratch using Ergogen and KiCad, ending with a gerber file ready to order from a PCB fabricator. The example is a split keyboard.

Tom Scott explains how he built his emoji keyboard, which turned out to be a series of bodged-together tools including AutoHotkey and LuaMacros. He tells stories about the value of quick-and-dirty solutions.

Louis Rossmann discusses failing keyboards on newer MacBooks, comparing a Dell keyboard repair with an Apple keyboard repair and explaining why Apple's design is costly and hard to fix.

Ben Vallack compares finger movement on a staggered keyboard with an ortholinear grid keyboard, using an Anne Pro 2 and a ZSA Planck EZ. He argues the stagger forces awkward finger motion.

Ben Eater explains why he builds computers on breadboards, including testing their signal behavior on an oscilloscope. It is a companion to his 6502 breadboard computer series.

Tom Scott shows a full-size real-life emoji keyboard built from 14 keyboards and over 1,000 hand-placed stickers, covering all of Unicode 8.

A short video arguing that the iPhone keyboard has gotten worse, showing slow-motion footage of taps registering the wrong letters. It claims the problem is iOS itself rather than user error.

A short Google Japan promotional video, in Japanese, for Gboard Double-Sided, a keyboard with no back side that comes in a paper-craft version and a full electronics version. It is a playful April-Fools-style product concept.

Ben Heck modifies a keyboard with magnets, Hall effect sensors and an Xbox controller so the WASD keys give analog control. He walks through the hardware build.

A review of the Symbolics Space Cadet keyboard, with its Honeywell Hall effect switches, including how it sounds and feels, and a typing demonstration. It is part of a series of vintage keyboard reviews.

A one-minute demonstration of iOS 14's new paste notification, which revealed popular apps silently reading the clipboard each time they were opened. It credits the mysk research write-up.

Ben Eater explains how a USB keyboard communicates, covering the electrical interface, bit and packet encoding, packet contents, and a comparison with PS/2.

Cathode Ray Dude's hour-long retrospective on the ABIT BP6, the dual-Celeron motherboard. He covers early multiprocessing, its legend, a build, running NT 4, benchmarks and the pros and cons of early SMP.

Ben Eater explains how the PS/2 keyboard interface works, covering its clocked serial protocol and scancodes. He builds up the hardware-level understanding needed to read keypresses.

Promotional video from Zapata Racing showing Franky Zapata flying the Flyboard Air prototype, claiming autonomous flight to 10,000 feet, 150 km/h top speed and 10 minutes of endurance.

Neil and Laura Westwood pitch their Magic Whiteboard, reusable static-cling whiteboard sheets, to the investors on the BBC's Dragons' Den and win 100,000 pounds of investment.

An over-the-shoulder view of StarCraft 2 pro player Sound at a WCS qualifier, showing his monitor, keyboard and mouse. It shows his very fast actions per minute in real time.

Onboard footage of Timo Bernhard driving the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo to an all-time Nurburgring Nordschleife record lap of 5:19.

Matt Adereth's Clojure/conj talk covers the history of keyboards and how he used Clojure generating OpenSCAD to design and build his custom Dactyl ergonomic keyboard, including 3D printing and laser-cut parts.

Skateboarding pioneer Rodney Mullen talks about how the open skate community and its environments drive the invention of new tricks out of pure passion. He draws parallels to collaboration and open source.

Tech Ingredients shows how to build flat panel speakers from exciters and foam board, with construction guidelines, measured SPL comparisons and a complete system playing music.

Sped-up onboard camera footage of the Falcon 9 first stage landing on a drone ship during the THAICOM 8 mission on May 27, 2016. It shows the descent from grid fin deployment to touchdown.

A 1960 CBS clip in which Leonard Bernstein introduces and conducts Bach's Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D minor with a 28-year-old Glenn Gould at the piano. Gould's performance starts around 5:08.

The official video for Boards of Canada's Dayvan Cowboy, built from reassembled documentary footage. It forms a dreamlike journey from space to the sea and shore, including Kittinger's 1960 high-altitude jump and surfing footage.

Der8auer tours Hetzner's test lab and shows a custom AM5 server motherboard with the CPU socket rotated 90 degrees, built for rack airflow in their AX52 servers.

Kenneth Finnegan shows how USB-C Power Delivery trigger boards like the ZY12PDN negotiate 5V to 20V so you can power projects from a USB-C charger, including the color coding for each voltage.

A satirical Onion News Network piece announcing the 'MacBook Wheel', a laptop with no keyboard where users type by spinning and clicking a wheel. It parodies Apple product launches and minimalist design.

Peter Munch-Ellingsen explains at NimConf 2021 why he wrote his own keyboard firmware in Nim instead of using QMK or Arduino. He shows that the resulting firmware is very small.

Johnny Chung Lee shows how infrared light pens and a Wii Remote can make a very low-cost multi-point interactive whiteboard or tablet display. Software is available for download.

Louis Rossmann, an independent repair shop owner, explains a recurring MacBook logic board design problem that leads to failures such as a black screen. The video is part of his right-to-repair advocacy.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day documents boarding a US Navy nuclear submarine in the Arctic during the ICEX 2020 under-ice exercise. It is the first of a series on life aboard a fast attack submarine.

mitxela shows his KiCad plugin that rounds PCB tracks to give circuit boards organic, melted-looking layouts instead of rigid geometric ones.

A short demo of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon's adaptive keyboard row, which changes its keys based on the user's activity.

Motherboard's 2014 visit to a secretive Bitcoin mining operation in a repurposed factory in Liaoning, China, one of six sites producing about 4,050 bitcoins a month. It shows the machines and the workers' living conditions.

A Motherboard documentary in which a reporter lives on nothing but Soylent for 30 days after founder Rob Rhinehart's own experiment. It looks at the effects on health, Silicon Valley and the future of food.

Mark Rober shows an automatic bullseye dartboard that tracks a thrown dart with motion capture and moves in real time so it always hits the center. He spent over three years on the project.

Tech Ingredients shows how to build cheap, high-performance flat-panel speakers using audio exciters on sheet materials such as foam-core board. It explains how distributed-mode speakers work and walks through experiments to find good designs.

ETH Zurich researchers demonstrate a quadrocopter that keeps flying stably after losing a motor and propeller entirely, with the algorithm running onboard while a pilot flies it.

An animated National Film Board of Canada short about a young woman who picks a log driver as her partner because his work makes him a great dancer. It is set to Wade Hemsworth's folk song sung by Kate and Anna McGarrigle.