Hackaday Podcast Episode 356: Nanoprinting, Vibe Coding, and Keebin’ with Kristina, IN HELL!

This week, Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up over coffee to bring you the latest news, mystery sound results show, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous seven days or so.

We found no news to speak of, except that Kristina has ditched Windows after roughly 38 years. What is she running now? What does she miss about Windows? Tune in to find out.

On What’s That Sound, Kristina thought it was a jackhammer, but [Statistically Unlikely] knew it was ground-tamper thingy, and won a Hackaday Podcast t-shirt! Congratulations!

After that, it’s on to the hacks and such, beginning with 3D printing on the nano scale, and a couple of typewriter-based hacks. Then we take a look at the beauty of the math behind graph theory, especially when it comes to circuit sculptures and neckties.

We also talk display hacking, macro pads with haptic feedback knobs, and writing code in Welsh. Finally, we discuss the Virtual Boy, and ponder whether vibe coding is killing open source.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

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Download in DRM-free MP3 and savor at your leisure.

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Episode 356 Show Notes:

News:

• No news is good news, except that Kristina ditched Windows after ~38 years!

What’s that Sound?

• Congrats to [Statistically Unlikely] who knew this was an Earth-stomping machine!

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• The Latest From RepRapMicron – Nail Gel, First Objects, And More
• Lego Typewriter Writes Plastic Letters
• Comprehensive Power Management For The Raspberry Pi
• Crouching Typewriter, Hidden PC
• The Graph Theory Of Circuit Sculptures
  
  • The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie
  • The Mathematics of Tie Knots

  
  

• DIY Macropad Rocks A Haptic Feedback Wheel
  
  • Simplifying The SmartKnob

  
  

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  
  • 5K IMac Turned Into 5K Display
  • CPU Scheduler Divines The Will Of The Heavens
  • An Event Badge Re-Imagined As A Cyberdeck
  • Ysgrifennu Côd Yn Gymraeg (Writing Code In Welsh)

  
  

• Kristina’s Picks:
  
  • Ordering Pizza On Your Sega Dreamcast Is Very Clunky Indeed
  • Need A Curved Plastic Mesh? Print Flat, Curve Later
  • Running DOOM And Super Mario 64 Inside A PDF File

  
  

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• After 30 Years, Virtual Boy Gets Its Chance To Shine
• How Vibe Coding Is Killing Open Source

hackaday.com/2026/02/06/hackad…

It’s Not a Lomo Smena 8M, But it’s Not Far Off

The joy of camera hacking lies for many at the low end of the market. Not working with many-thousand-dollar Leicas, but in cheap snapshot cameras that can be had for next to nothing at a thrift store. [Marek Sokal] has a perfect example, in a 3D printed 35mm camera body using the lens and shutter assembly from a vintage Soviet Lomo Smena 8M.

The build is a work in progress, a printed assembly that holds the 35mm film cartridge, provides the focal plane for the film, and houses the take-up reel. It fits together with M2 screws, as per the Lomo lens.

We like this build, because we can see beyond the Lomo. In a box above the desk where this is being written there is a pile of old plastic snapshot cameras from the 1960s through 1980s, none of which is worth anything much, but all of which have a similar shutter and lens assembly. In many cases it’s not a huge task to do with them what [Marek] has with the Lomo and mount them to a back like this. The LEGO film camera may not have gained approval, but this prove that making cameras of your own is still pretty easy.

hackaday.com/2026/02/06/its-no…

The Weird Propeller That Offers Improved Agility On The Water

When it comes to seaborne propulsion, one simple layout has largely dominated over all others. You pair some kind of engine with some kind of basic propeller at the back of the ship, and then you throw on a rudder to handle the steering. This lets you push the ship forward, left, and right, and stopping is just a matter of turning the engine off and waiting… or reversing thrust if you’re really eager to slow down.

This basic system works for a grand majority of vessels out on the water. However, there is a more advanced design that offers not only forward propulsion, but also steering, all in the one package. It may look strange, but the Voith Schneider propeller offers some interesting benefits to watercraft looking for an edge in maneuverability.

Spinning Underwater Wings

A modern Voith-Schneider propeller. Credit: Voith AG, Heidenheim
The Voith Schneider propeller design looks rather unlike any propeller you might have seen before. Perhaps the most obvious reason is because of its axis of operation. Traditional propellers tend to operate in an axis parallel with the waterline, or at least within a few degrees or so. However, the Voith Schneider design spins about the vertical axis instead. This is because it uses vertically-oriented blades mounted on a rotating plate. Each blade has a hydrofoil profile, which enables it to generate thrust when moving through the water. By spinning these blades at speed and varying their angle of attack, it’s possible to create a thrust vector in any direction on the horizontal plane. A special gear system is used to vary the angle of each blade as the plate rotates, such that the overall net thrust generated by all the blades is in the desired direction of travel.
The angle of attack of each blade changes as the disc rotates, providing thrust in the desired direction. Controlling the angle of attack of all the blades in this way allows the thrust vector to be pointed in any direction in a full 360 degrees of rotation. It thus provides a great deal of flexibility when controlling a vessel on the water. Credit: Voith AG, Heidenheim
This design has certain key advantages over a traditional maritime propulsion setup. Namely, by fitting a vessel with Voith-Schneider propellers, it’s possible to add a great deal of maneuverability, to the point where a traditional rudder becomes entirely unnecessary. Instead of having to thrust the ship forwards and then turn, it’s possible to directly push the vessel with each individual thruster in the direction that is desired. This can be particularly useful for low-speed operations like docking, and provides a much more instantaneous change of direction than is possible with a regular propeller and rudder setup.

Voith Schneider thrusters are particularly useful for ships like tugs where precision maneuverability is a huge aid to operations. Numerous thrusters are often to a given vessel, providing greater total thrust and additional control. It’s also typical to fit Voith Schneider propellers with a guard underneath, which prevents grounding damage and can act as a sort of nozzle that improves low-speed performance. These propellers are perhaps not the ideal choice for watercraft aiming for outright speed, but for lower-speed work, they can offer great benefits in control.
A pair of Voith Schneider propellers fitted to a tug. Note the protective plate underneath the thrusters which protects against damage. Credit: Voith AG, Heidenheim
The design looks somewhat unintuitive and even futuristic, but it actually goes back a long way. The first prototype was actually designed as a water turbine for generating electricity. However, it proved unexceptional in this role. It was only when the device was tested as a pump that engineers realized it could be repurposed as a combined thruster to replace a traditional propeller and rudder. A patent was issued in Germany in 1972, and the first prototype was tested on the water all the way back in 1928, on a small 60-horsepower vessel known as the Torqueo. The design soon found use on a number of German vessels in the interwar period, including minesweepers. The Voith Schneider design can be operated quite slowly while still providing thrust, minimizing cavitation and thus sound signature, which is considered advantageous for this role. In some German designs, such as the failed Graf Zeppelin aircraft carrier, the thrusters were even installed alongside regular propulsion systems, and made retractable so they wouldn’t present additional drag when not in use. Some decades later, the US Navy itself would later field similarly-equipped minesweepers in the 1990s, though all examples were dismantled and sold off by the early 2000s. Beyond military uses, the thruster has found application in a number of ferries and tugs around the world, and remain in production today.
The US Navy’s Osprey class minehunters used twin Voith Schneider propellers, including the USS Raven pictured here in the North Arabian Gulf. Top speed of the class stands at 12 knots, a hair slower than the Italian Lerici class the type is based on, which uses conventional propulsion and rudders. Credit: public domain, DOD
Despite their unique abilities, Voith Schneider propellers remain a curio rather than a fixture in the shipping world. In the past century of their existence, just 4,500 examples have been built, near exclusively by Voith AG, and thus they are equipping a relatively small amount of the global maritime fleet. They compete with more familiar designs, such as azimuth thrusters, which are widely popular and more intuitive to understand. Given their oddball nature, and moderate level of mechanical complexity, they’re perhaps never going to supplant the tried-and-true prop and rudder that propels most conventional vessels. Still, if you’re looking to build a ship that can elegantly strafe in any direction you want to go, it’s hard to go past the Voith Schneider concept for all the benefits it brings.

hackaday.com/2026/02/06/the-we…

Нэнси Пелоси, почетный спикер Палаты представителей США:

Америка переживает кризис совести. У нас есть президент, провозгласивший себя королем, сам себя устранивший Конгресс и вышедший за пределы своих полномочий Верховный суд.

BreezyBox: A BusyBox-Like Shell and Virtual Terminal for ESP32

Much like how BusyBox crams many standard Unix commands and a shell into a single executable, so too does BreezyBox provide a similar experience for the ESP32 platform. A demo implementation is also provided, which uses the ESP32-S3 platform as part of the Waveshare 7″ display development board.

Although it invokes the BusyBox name, it’s not meant to be as stand-alone as it uses the standard features provided by the FreeRTOS-based ESP-IDF SDK. In addition to the features provided by ESP-IDF it adds things like a basic virtual terminal, current working directory (CWD) tracking and a gaggle of Unix-style commands, as well as an app installer.

The existing ELF binary loader for the ESP32 is used to run executables either from a local path or a remote one, a local HTTP server is provided and you even get ANSI color support. Some BreezyBox apps can be found here, with them often running on a POSIX-compatible system as well. This includes the xcc700 self-hosted C compiler.

You can get the MIT-licensed code either from the above GitHub project link or install it from the Espressif Component Registry if that’s more your thing.

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hackaday.com/2026/02/06/breezy…