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IoT-ize Your Old Gadgets With a Mechanical Hijacking Device

Cars That Think

Connectivity usually comes at a premium, and it also usually involves buying a brand new whatever it is, because new hardware and software and services are required. It's also possible to build your own MHD device for cheap , if you know what you're doing. Whether or not every device you own actually.

DIY 138
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Thermal Energy Storage Is No Longer Just Hot Air

Cars That Think

The bathtub is cheap for us, so when it comes to how much we can store, we can increase that capacity quite cheaply,” says Michael Simpson , the cofounder of Cheesecake Energy. When does it make sense to buy electricity directly from the grid? Batteries have a powerful spigot, but that comes at the cost of a small tub.

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SpaceX to launch Varda Space’s first Rocket Lab-derived ‘space factory’ satellite

Teslarati

While far from the commercial orbital laboratory many at NASA would like to paint it as, the joint NASA-Russia International Space Station (ISS) routinely hosts payloads from paying customers, some of which are focused on manufacturing (albeit at an absurdly low volume) materials that can only be made in microgravity (i.e.

Russia 145
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Intel Will Keep Selling RealSense Stereo Cameras

Cars That Think

If you want to buy a RealSense camera from a distributor, great, go ahead and do that, but I wouldn't look for much else. Intel had the resources to make sensors with excellent performance and sell them for relatively cheap, and they've done exactly that. Also, "continue to provide" doesn't necessarily mean "continue to manufacture."

Wind 145
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SpaceX is building launch pad tanks out of Starship parts and that’s a big deal

Teslarati

For SpaceX to design and build its own custom bulk commodity storage tanks instead of buying what is arguably a fairly routine and cheap off-the-shelf technology, Starship production has to be DIRT CHEAP. Just dawned on me that this is a much bigger deal than it might seem.

Building 116
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Wireless Heater Made From a Leaf Skeleton Is Fully Biodegradable

Cars That Think

We’ve gotten very, very good at making things that are cheap and durable. A quick word about things that are “biodegradable”: The words “biodegradable,” “compostable,” and ecological buzzwords don’t actually have meanings that are all that consistent (or useful) when applied to commercial products. Katherine W. Song et al.

Waste 66
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EnerNOC and Tesla to collaborate on stationary energy storage

Green Car Congress

a provider of energy intelligence software (EIS), will collaborate with Tesla on the deployment and management of energy storage systems in commercial and industrial buildings. Energy management today is more complicated than simply buying power from the utility. Cheap cells made in the Gigafactory are only part of the puzzle.