Easily open a Masterlock padlock by tapping it with a hammer

Using a clunky old desktop as a dev box? Wasting money every month on the cloud? Trash it all and use an old phone instead—so long as you're OK with its very specific environment and limitations. The instructions focus on Ruby frameworks but once you have Termux up and running a more generic LAMP stack… READ THE REST

No engraving tool? Etch it with copper sulfate! A pound of this stuff [Amazon] costs very little and will be enough to etch everything in the house. As the presenter notes, if you're etching a chisel remember to scrape all the "fat" off first. You can use the remainder as a fungicide and fertilizer in… READ THE REST

Maker B shows how to make a tiny but functional gasoline-powered engine. You'll need about $1,000 worth of precision shop equipment, 1,000 hours to burn, and 1,000 milliliters of gasoline. One of these things is unreasonably expensive. READ THE REST

As much as you hate it, sometimes we have to search for things in places we never want to go, like the kitchen sink's drain, the dusty attic, or the spider-web-laden area underneath the house. Your shrieks might just bring music to their ears! But as much as we don't want to see what's in these… READ THE REST

Whether you have your own cookie business or run a celebrity gossip blog, having an unimpressive landing page can really slow things down. Sure, hiring a professional developer to create a website would be awesome, but their rates can be pretty steep, and that's not something you want to budget for these days. Just because… READ THE REST

How much of your Mac's storage space is actually stuff you use? Odds are good a significant portion of your hard drive is filled with untouched downloads, duplicate files, and apps you forgot existed. You may not have noticed it, but the gradual slowing of your computer could be due to all those files just sitting… READ THE REST