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Launch a single static binary executable, send someone a QR code or URL (or failing that, text a numerical code or shout it across a room), and they’ll get an encrypted terminal in their browser. No VPN, no port forwarding, no firewall modifications, and no account setup required. It’s BitBang by [Rich LeGrand], and there is a lot to go through in this one.

The best part? It’s not actually limited to just firing off a terminal. It’s a whole open framework for establishing an encrypted peer-to-peer connection between two systems over WebRTC without needing either a trusted central authority, or any special network configuration.
The signaling server brokers the handshake, then has no further involvement. By design, it couldn’t see application data even if it wanted to. Click to enlarge.
Opening a remote terminal, transferring files, or accessing web apps on a remote machine’s network is done with bitbang-cli, an implementation of BitBang focused on providing simple, zero-config remote access.

Before we go on, we want to mention that BitBang does require a lightweight, trustless signaling server only to broker the initial connection, but more on that in a moment.

On the machine to be shared, one first downloads the binary. Easiest way to do that is to go to bitba.ng and download manually, or copy and paste the one-line installer to auto-detect one’s system, download the correct release, and verify the checksum.

After the binary is downloaded, simply run it in a terminal and receive a QR code to scan, a URL to copy & paste, or a numerical code if those are inconvenient. One the remote side, one accesses the signaling server and the connection is made — one gets a terminal on the target machine open in the browser tab, with added options for file sharing and accessing web applications on the target network.

The signaling server isn’t involved in authentication or encryption, and couldn’t see private data between the two ends even if it wanted to. Prefer not to use someone else’s regardless? Run your own local instance with bitbang-server.

Originally developed as an easy way to securely make telepresence robots reachable over the Internet with nothing more than a QR code, today it’s a whole framework.

It includes not just the remote-access tool mentioned above, but also a BitBang Octoprint plugin for cloud-free remote access to 3D printers, and bitbang-python is a library for turning local Python web applications into a URL that can be opened from anywhere.

We’re sure some of you are getting more than a few ideas from this. If it lets you bring a project over the finish line, let us know on our tips line.

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hackaday.com/2026/08/03/get-a-…

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Emacs is one of the big classic text editors, right up there next to vi. It’s famous for its interface and its ubiquity across the *nix world. It’s such a core piece of software in the coding world that it has showed up a fair few times in popular culture—and [Ian Y.E. Pan] has collated some of those appearances.

Emacs played a role in The Social Network, the retelling of the origin story of Facebook (the social network everybody used to use). Notably, Mark Zuckerberg used the tool to slap together a script for scraping a website. It also appears in Tron: Legacy, Arctic Blast, and the tech TV comedy Silicon Valley—more than once, in fact.

Other appearances include comics, Japanese anime series Key The Metal Idol, and a few miniseries and documentaries to boot.

[Ian]’s list is unlikely to be exhaustive. Both because he hasn’t seen every movie or TV show ever made, and because you can make new content featuring Emacs references tomorrow if you so desire. Still, it’s fun to see some of the famous properties that have featured good ol’ Emacs.

Don’t hesitate to let us know if you happen to put together a similar list about vi. The tipsline is waiting.

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As easy as it is to make a late 1980s-style game console using a modern microcontroller, there’s arguably more fun in doing things the traditional way. This is the challenge that [Throaty Mumbo] took upon himself when he embarked on his retro game console project, called simply the Game Console V2.

In the accompanying video the development process and other details are covered and demonstrated. Most notable perhaps are the proper cartridges with ROMs on a parallel bus rather than something like SD cards, and the absence of any modern ports including even VGA. This means only composite AV output like in the good old days of RF splitters and other assorted fun.

The NTSC output signal is generated by an RP2350 MCU in the form of the PGA-shaped PGA2350 breakout board that’s wired into a 6-bit R-2R network for RGB332 output via the RCA jack, while audio is fed into a PCM5102A I2S DAC. For controllers you get 4-pin Bulgin SA2367 connectors and an N64-compatible protocol.

It’s noted that the use of an RP2350B MCU is temporary, as the goal with the V3 version of the project is to take it into a proper 8- or 16-bit CPU direction. We’re certainly looking forward to seeing this next revision of what looks to be a pretty interesting game console.

youtube.com/embed/S81iN-z0ouo?…

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hackaday.com/2026/08/02/making…

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The Theremin is that classic electronic musical instrument that makes those weeee-ohhhhh noises which were so popular in mid-century science fiction movies. Mid-last-century, that is, because this century is just beginning. In any case, you could build one with old-school analog electronics, or you could go a more modern route, as [ericCycles] did.

The build relies almost entirely on an ESP32 microcontroller with minimal supporting circuitry. Like any other Theremin, pitch and volume are controlled by moving hands closer or farther away from two antenna. In this case, the ESP32 uses its capacitive touch circuitry to detect effectively detect hand proximity to the two antenna in question, and uses those values to control the pitch and volume of a synthesized waveform. That waveform is then pumped out over the onboard digital-to-analog converter for playback on external speakers.

If you want to build a simple Theremin-like instrument quickly and easily, it’s hard to beat the simplicity on offer here. We’ve featured some other fun variants over the years, too, like this version that uses time-of-flight sensors for the human interface.

youtube.com/embed/12lPUvlJ7es?…

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About a month ago, we brought you word that the commercial rescue mission designed by Katalyst Space to save NASA’s Swift gamma-ray observatory had reached orbit and early indicators were looking good. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for things to start going sideways, and up until very recently, the situation seemed pretty dire. But according to an interview with Katalyst’s CEO published yesterday by Ars Technica, the company has made some impressive progress on getting things back under control.

For reasons unknown, the robotic vehicle started tumbling out of control last week. Shortly after that, mission controllers lost contact with Swift. After 24 hours without contact from the ground, the spacecraft automatically performed a sort of “hard reset” in an attempt to regain communications. That got it talking again, but somewhere along the way the craft overheated, which in turn cooked the control circuitry for the reaction wheels, which would usually be used to control its orientation. Not great, not terrible.

As of yesterday’s update, we now know that engineers have figured out a way to gimbal the thrust from the craft’s xenon-fueled electric thrusters — which were originally intended for orbit-raising — to counteract its spinning. It’s slow going as these thrusters don’t have a lot of kick, but it seems to be working. We’ll keep an eye on this one and let you know when we know more.

Katalyst isn’t the only company producing a robotic savior with an uncertain future. If you enjoy starting the day with some freshly prepared eggs, but never quite mastered the skills required to make them, the Efficient Gastronomic Operational Robot (EGOR) may be for you. The $400 countertop gadget, which can be had for 50% off during the Kickstarter campaign, can not only crack the eggs for you, but can cook them to whatever style you wish. It even has the ability to start the process at a specific time, say a few minutes before your alarm goes off in the morning.

There’s a certain Jetson’s-like appeal to EGOR, but it’s hard to imagine there’s a huge market for a $400 “robot” that’s only function is to cook eggs. At the same time, we don’t think comparisons with the disastrous Juicero Press are entirely accurate. What doomed the Juicero, beyond the $700 price tag, was the fact that it was only capable of squeezing juice out of proprietary pouches that needed to be purchased separately. If you could have put whole fresh fruit into the machine and it could have automatically rendered it into juice, as you can put eggs from the grocer into EGOR, it probably would have stayed on the market for a bit longer.

All that being said, the end result is still going to be the same for folks like us. Eventually somebody is going to take apart an EGOR, and we’ll get to see what makes the breakfast bot tick. Then we just have to wait until these things start hitting the curb to see what the community can do with their guts. Maybe it will be as fun as our teardown of the Quirky Egg Minder.

On the subject of impending gadgetry, 9to5Google has released leaked images of what appears to be Google’s long-awaited answer to Apple’s AirTag. While the search giant has offered their “Find Hub” service for a while now, there hasn’t actually been an official first-party device to utilize it. All we know about Google’s offering is that it’s visually differentiated from Apple’s device thanks to its more oval shape, and goes by the highly imaginative name of “Google Pixel Tag.” More official information is likely to start appearing in the coming weeks, coinciding with the launch of the Pixel 11. We’ll have to wait a bit longer to find out when the company will decide to unceremoniously abandon them all, however.

Finally, we leave you with a recently uploaded video from the USS Cod Submarine Memorial that explores an area of the WWII Gato-class submarine that we had no idea existed, but which makes perfect sense in retrospect. Given the enormous number of vacuum tubes required by the submarine’s 1940s vintage radio equipment, and the vital wartime necessity to minimize the downtime of said systems, the submarine has a dedicated storage compartment specifically for tubes and other spare parts directly under the radio room. The radio operator could simply open a hatch at his feet, descend a small ladder, and have immediate access to shelves full of the parts he would need to keep his station up and running.

youtube.com/embed/i71yK0R4_W4?…

Of course, modern naval vessels will have stores of critical spare parts as well. But the unique storage and organization requirements of vacuum tubes, combined with the near certainty that some number of them would need to be replaced while the submarine was on patrol, meant they needed to be kept close at hand at all times.

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See something interesting that you think would be a good fit for our weekly Links column? Drop us a line; we’d love to hear about it.

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hackaday.com/2026/08/02/hackad…

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[Jumpor] lives in a part of India where the water infrastructure is a little frustrating to use. Water gets delivered to underground tanks outside of homes, and must then be regularly pumped into rooftop tanks prior to use inside the building. Typically, this pumping is handled manually—by switching on a pump and running it until water comes out of an overflow pipe to indicate the rooftop tank is full. [Jumpor] decided to improve this wasteful and time consuming process with a little automation project.

The build is based around an ESP32 microcontroller. It’s hooked up to an ultrasonic sensor which can measure the water level inside the rooftop water tank. When the sensor detects the level descending below a set point, the microcontroller fires a relay to trigger the lift pump to fill up the tank. Once the sensor detects the tank is full, the pump is shut off, saving liters of water compared to waiting for water to pour out of the overflow as an indicator of the same.

It’s a simple enough project, but [Jumpor] was sure to include the important practical considerations. Since the rig was being installed in a rental, it was desirable to not make any permanent modifications to the water system. Thus, a fresh cap for the water tank was modified to host the electronics and level sensor, such that the original could be replaced at a later date. Due consideration was also paid to things like avoiding crossing the minimum detection threshold of the sensor, which could lead to accidental overflows if not managed correctly.

The aim of this project was to ease the day to day burden of maintaining a basic utility. That’s the sort of project we love to see around these parts.

youtube.com/embed/BdRhofXOIGM?…

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One of the best parts about DIY chemistry and physics projects is that you get to decide how early in the supply chain you want to begin, such as with [Hyperspace Pirate]’s adventures in ethanol production from sugar fermentation. Although you can certainly just buy packs of sugar and yeast from the store and pretend that this will be helpful once the world embraces its Mad Max era, you may as well start with the stuff that actually grows on trees, like fruit.

While you could use the ethanol produced this way as ethanol fuel in combustion engines and the like, you can also turn the ethanol into ethylene and ethane. That way you can fill up your refrigerator, freezer, and air conditioner to keep your perishable foods and yourself fresh as the outside world descends into highly questionable fashion choices.

Even outside such a scenario it makes sense to generate your own ethane and ethylene, due to how much these refrigerants cost. Once you have the ethanol, some aluminium oxide catalyst at 350°C is enough to produce ethylene and water. Producing ethane is admittedly a bit more involved, requiring acetobacter bacteria to produce acetic acid, along with baking soda, a platinum anode and a few more odds and ends.

Producing butene and even longer chains from ethylene is also possible as a next step, but this gets even hairier than producing ethane from ethanol, so we’re likely to see this in a future update after all the low-hanging fruit has been harvested.

youtube.com/embed/5CVnrzNm310?…

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Many of us will be used to the idea of a KVM, a device that pipes keyboard, video, and mouse over the network from a remote machine to your own. But many remote machines don’t run a GUI, so there’s not always the need for a full video experience. Enter [morpheuslord] with the PicoTTY. It’s somewhere between an old-fashioned serial terminal and a KVM.

The system has two components, a Pi Pico which plugs in to the USB port of any one of a number of machines and has a wireless card, and a Pi Zero which forms the hub. The Pico acts as both a keyboard and a serial terminal, and streams both to the user via a web interface on the Zero.

We can see the use of a machine like this, but we have a few questions. Why for instance is the keyboard needed, given that the serial terminal could provide input in itself. But however it works we can see it might have a use in cases where a terminal can’t be accessed over the network directly, and we especially like it that a single USB peripheral does the job that a conventional KVM would use a bunch of cables for.

If it’s a more conventional KVM you seek, they can now be done using a microcontroller.

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hackaday.com/2026/08/02/a-kvm-…

Nell’estate del 2023 Elon Musk (proprietario del social X/Twitter) e Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook, Instagram, ecc.) hanno animato il dibattito pubblico con una sfida un po’ insolita: affrontarsi in un incontro di MMA (Arti Marziali Miste). Tutto è nato da un botta e risposta su Twitter, alimentato dalla rivalità tra i due imprenditori, esplosa soprattutto dopo il lancio di Threads, il social network concorrente di X.
Per un momento è sembrato persino che l'evento potesse svolgersi a Roma, nella cornice del Colosseo. Poi è iniziato il solito teatrino: «Dimmi quando», «Dimmi dove», «Quando?», «Dove?». Alla fine non se n’è fatto nulla. I due hanno ripreso la loro vita da supermiliardari per poi ritrovarsi, pochi mesi dopo, seduti fianco a fianco in prima fila alla cerimonia di insediamento di Donald Trump.
Oggi la politica italiana sembra offrire uno spettacolo per certi versi molto simile: lo scontro a distanza tra Matteo Renzi e Roberto Vannacci.
A lanciare il guanto di sfida è stato Renzi, che ha proposto una maratona. Vannacci ha subito rilanciato con una gara di nuoto seguita da una mezza maratona, da disputare in Sardegna il 4 ottobre. Renzi ha replicato di essere già impegnato in quella data per la Leopolda e di non voler fare le cose a metà: se maratona dev'essere, che sia completa. A quel punto Vannacci ha alzato ulteriormente la posta: appuntamento a metà ottobre per tre miglia nautiche a nuoto e una maratona intera, senza soluzione di continuità.
È difficile non vedere l'ennesima trovata mediatica. In un momento storico segnato da due conflitti devastanti — in Ucraina e in Medio Oriente — con pesanti conseguenze sugli equilibri geopolitici; mentre Gaza affronta una catastrofe umanitaria senza precedenti; mentre il costo dell'energia continua a gravare su famiglie e imprese e la produzione industriale rallenta, con ripercussioni su occupazione e potere d'acquisto, il dibattito pubblico rischia di ridursi ad un duello tra finti gladiatori: il Kraken contro il Generale. Un’americanata ad uso e consumo dei media per conquistare titoli e visibilità senza sfiorare i problemi reali.
Il Paese non può continuare a essere ostaggio di chi vive di personalismi, provocazioni, battute da stadio e ostentazioni di virilità — eredità del "celodurismo" che ha segnato una stagione della nostra vita pubblica. La politica deve tornare a essere il luogo del confronto serio, della competenza e della ricerca di soluzioni per la collettività, non dell'avanspettacolo. Non c’è più tempo, è ora di invertire la rotta.