Homemade Liquid Oxygen Demonstrates Paramagnetism

https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=UPJS0mtUoME

Liquid nitrogen isn’t exactly an everyday material, but it’s acquired conveniently enough to be used in extreme overclocking experiments, classroom demonstrations, chemistry and physics experiments, and a number of other niche applications. Liquid oxygen, by contrast, is dangerous enough that it’s only really used in rocket engines. Nevertheless, [Electron Impressions] made some of his own, and beyond the obvious pyrotechnic experimentation, demonstrated its unusual magnetic properties. Check out the video, below.

The oxygen in this case was produced by electrolysis through a proton-exchange membrane, which vented the hydrogen into the atmosphere and routed the oxygen into a Dewar flask mounted at...

Accidental Climate Engineering With Disintegrating Satellites

For many decades humankind has entertained the notion that we can maybe tweak the Earth’s atmosphere or biosphere in such a way that we can for example undo the harms of climate change, or otherwise affect the climate for our own benefit. This often involves spreading certain substances in parts of the atmosphere in order to reflect or retain thermal solar radiation or induce rain.

Yet despite how limited in scope these attempts at such intentional experiments have been so far – with most proposals dying somewhere before being implemented – we have already embarked on a potentially planet-wide atmospheric reconfiguration...

GEEKOM A5 Pro 2026 Edition Review – Part 2: An AMD Ryzen 5 7530U mini PC tested with Windows 11 Pro

After checking out the hardware of the GEEKOM A5 Pro 2026 Edition mini PC with an unboxing and a teardown in the first part of the review, I’ve now had time to test the AMD Ryzen 5 7530U mini PC with Windows 11 Pro. We will now report our experience by providing an overview of the software, testing features, running benchmarks such as PCMark 10, 3DMark, PassMark PerformanceTest 11, Cinebench R23, and Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0, testing 2.5GbE and WiFi 6 networking performance, evaluating the cooling system, and measuring fan noise levels and power consumption. Software overview and features testing...

Simple D-STAR Transceiver Uses Inexpensive Hardware

https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=e5j2WmVVSnE

[Yeckel] recently put the finishing touches on an ambitious implementation of a simple D-STAR (Digital Smart Technologies for Amateur Radio) transceiver using some very accessible and affordable hardware. The project is D-StarBeacon, and [Yeckel] shows it working on a LilyGO TTGO T-Beam, an ESP32-based development board that includes a SX1278 radio module and GPS receiver. It even serves a web interface for easy configuration.

What is D-STAR? It’s a protocol used by radio operators for voice that also allows transmitting low-speed data, such as short text messages or GPS coordinates. While voice is out of scope for [Yeckel]’s project (more on...

Examining A World’s Record From The Age Of Steam

https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=MmliJof_VhQ

There aren’t many speed records that remain unbroken for the greater part of a century, but one of them is that of the fastest steam locomotive. As with so many such things, there’s a bit of controversy and more than one contender, but the one in the record books is the A4 Pacific, Mallard. In 1938, this locomotive thundered down an incline on the London & North Eastern Railway’s mainline in the north of England at 126 MPH. But can that number be taken as reliable? The Institute of Mechanical Engineers has a video in which they investigate.

It’s a fascinating...

Teardown of Dangerous Fake Wago Connectors

https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=RJoKmGda1bw

Everyone loves Wago connectors for how versatile and effective they are for quickly and securely connecting conductors, but it can be tempting to buy a bag of the significantly cheaper knock-offs. The reason why this can be a terrible idea is explained by [Big Clive] who tore down a few bags of them to ogle at their internals.

The main problem with some of these knock-offs is the way that they use the plastic molding as part of the structure that holds the conductors in place. Over time this plastic will develop larger tolerances, with heat developed from passing large currents...

Lenovo ThinkEdge SE60n Gen 2 fanless edge AI computer features up to 97 TOPS Intel Core Ultra 7 265H SoC

Lenovo has recently unveiled new ThinkEdge devices for edge AI applications: the Intel “Arrow Lake”-powered ThinkEdge SE60n Gen 2 fanless computer for up to 97 TOPS of AI performance, the ThinkEdge SE10n Gen 2 edge gateway, the compact ThinkEdge SE30n Gen 2 “Raptor Lake” edge client with up to Intel Core 7  150U, and the company’s first industrial all-in-one (AIO) Panel PC, the ThinkEdge SE50a. We’ll focus on the ThinkEdge SE60n Gen2 fanless embedded computer in this article. It’s powered by an up to Intel Core Ultra 7 265H SoC paired with DDR5 memory, M.2 NVMe and/or SATA storage, and...

DFI IRN556 3.5-inch SBC supports Atom x7000RE and Twin Lake CPUs

DFI has introduced the IRN556, a 3.5-inch single board computer supporting Intel Atom x7000RE “Amston Lake” processors and Intel Processor N-series “Twin Lake” parts. The board targets industrial and embedded deployments requiring extended temperature operation and flexible I/O expansion. The IRN556 supports Intel Atom x7211RE, x7433RE, and x7835RE processors with up to eight cores and […]

Making a 286 Think It’s Alive Again

[Nagy Krisztián] had an Intel 286 CPU, only… There was no motherboard to install it in. Perhaps not wanting the processor to be lonely, [Nagy] built a simulated system to bring the chip back to life.

Okay, 68 pins does look like a lot when you arrange them like that.

The concept is simple enough. [Nagy] merely intended to wire the 286 up to a Raspberry Pi Pico that could emulate other parts of a computer that it would normally expect to talk to. This isn’t so hard with an ancient CPU like the 286, which has just 68 pins compared to...

Rockchip RK3588 and RK3576 video decoder support lands in mainline Linux

Collabora has announced that support for the VDPU381 and VDPU383 video decoder IP cores used in Rockchip’s RK3588 and RK3576 SoCs has been merged into the upstream Linux kernel. The update brings improved hardware decoding support for H.264 and HEVC to mainline Linux on these platforms. The VDPU381 decoder is found in the RK3588, while […]