This Useless Machine (previously) has a series of strategies to confound and distract the enemy, but knows when it's time to give up. Jeffrey Kohler:

Useless Box with several additions: buzzer, audio output, motors and wheels, sonar, and a surrender flag.

We're big fans of useless machines around here: those boxes with one or more switches, that, when toggled, trigger some kind of arm that pops out and puts the switch back in the off position, before retreating to the inside of the box.

Coffeeman 500's Useless Box – Multi Switch project is an open-source hardware project that's an ambitious variant on the beloved "Useless Machine" — 2010, 2010 (Lego)), 2010 Political edition), 2011 (HOWTO), 2012 (politics), 2013 (fancy), 2013 (advanced) (vs human), 2016 (most useless), 2017 (vs twisty vase).

It's not a good machine or a precise machine, but it is still a machine that will wrap gifts (and sandwiches and ankles) in 10 seconds.

But the best part of this video isn't the present wrapping, it's when inventor Joseph Herscher of Joseph's Machines shows his many attempts at automating the Christmas-tree-decorating process.

What's better than a Useless Machine? One that is built on a clever, threaded "twisty vase" whose lid twirls open and shut!

A classic favorite of Boing Boing editors, the Useless Machine has been implemented as a website for your button-pressing pleasure.

I could watch this all day. — Read the rest

The Useless Machine Advanced Edition: eight times more useless than the original!

Earlier this week, Mark posted a fancy Useless Machine that had all sorts of exciting behaviors when you turned it on. But I think I prefer the
Useless machine advanced edition, with its many switches and prodding metal fingers, built from organs harvested from a donor printer. — Read the rest

[Video Link] Here's a useless machine that puts on a great show.

[Video Link] I feel cheated because this Useless Machine video runs out after only 11 minutes and five seconds.

Buy a Useless Machine kit from The Frivolous Engineering Company Inc

A couple of years ago I was on The Colbert Report showing some fun projects from MAKE, and Stephen fell in love with a project called "The Most Useless Machine." (Watch the episode here.) The Most Useless Machine is a box that shuts itself off when you turn it on. — Read the rest

Here's a new wrinkle on the Most Useless Machine (a box with a single switch, which, when toggled, causes a mechanical finger to leap out of the box and switch it off). After a certain number of duelling on-off cycles, this jolly Most Useless iteration does something VERY EXCITING! — Read the rest

Here's an amusing metaphor for polarized US politics: take two Useless Machines (a box with a switch: when you press the switch, a hand shoots out of the box and switches it off again) and daisy-chain them so they battle to switch one another off. — Read the rest

YouTube user Invisibules recreated Minsky and Shannon's "Most Useless Machine" (a box with a switch on it; switch it on and a hand emerges from the box and flips the switch to off) using Lego: 'The hardest part was probably getting the flap to operate easily and smoothly, and to open and close at the correct parts of the cycle. — Read the rest

Images that Sound are AI-generated spectrograms—visual representations of audio data—which look like the thing represented by the sound. It can be prompted, though there doesn't appear to be a public demo. The examples are amazing enough.

Spectrograms are 2D representations of sound that look very different from the images found in our visual world.

In the grim confines of 19th century British prisons, wardens sought ever more sadistic ways to punish inmates through forced labor. — Read the rest

I'm a big fan of this ghostly pair of shoes connected to an unusual looking contraption by artist Nik Ramage. The wire that the shoes hang from while they move makes me imagine that I'm watching an invisible tightrope walker, or that the garments hanging from a clothesline have come alive. — Read the rest

Move over Flowbee, inventor Joseph Herscher of Joseph's Machines has figured out a fresh new way to cut one's hair at home using a swinging chandelier and a large kitchen knife. He calls it the "Terrifying Automatic Hair Cutter." — Read the rest

Joseph Herscher of Joseph's Machines has outdone himself with his latest machine. It's an incredibly complex Rube Goldberg machine that took him three months to make called "The Cake Server" and it does just that… serve cake. The "cherry on top" is literally a cherry on top. — Read the rest