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For those not familiar with the concept, a Useless Machine is a device with only one function, specifically the ability to turn itself off. In other words, when you turn it on, it turns itself off. Now, I’m sure DIYers could easily make a machine that can turn itself off…

I guess that China was feeling a little behind the curve from Japan and their wacky inventions, so they decided to come up with their own. What you’re looking at here is a vending machine that dispenses not candy bars or cans of soda, but live crabs.

Yup. This machine…

Not that this idea is really good for anything other than looking cool, you’ve gotta hand it to these Japanese researchers, who have managed to create a special tank which can momentarily suspend illustrations in water.

By sending precisely coordinated pulses through the water, the National Maritime Research Institute is…

For so long, the breakfast options of lazy people like me were severely limited: either eat something that you only need to take out of its package, something with no cooking or preparation required, or wait for someone to prepare food for you. No more! Teacher/artist/lazy man’s hero Yuki Suzuki…

It’s a little after 2 am, and you’re heading home. It’s dark. You’re alone. Suddenly you catch the sound of gears turning, tightening some unknown part. The sound bounces off the walls around you, amplifying. You shake it off and walk a bit faster. You can still hear the gears…

The man in the picture below is UC San Diego Computer Science Ph.D. student Stephen Checkoway. In his hands is a printout that proves that his team’s “return-oriented programming” exploit was successfully able to steal votes from a Sequoia AVC Advantage electronic voting machine. Checkoway was probably like, “Yay! Our…

There are two things that have to be said about this custom Xbox 360 arcade cabinet: it’s big (like the original Xbox, only even bigger…) and it’s pretty pricey. Only serious Xbox devotees need apply at $2250… but that is, after all, cheaper than a lot of gaming PCs,

The fifth version of world-renowned artist Wim Delvoye’s sculpture is now on exhibit at the Université du Québec à Montréal’s gallery up until Valentine’s Day. Why should we care? Because his sculpture is actually a machine. A machine that “reproduces the human digestive system, from mastication to excretion”. In other…

Now I haven’t played with model trains since I was a kid, but when I saw these miniature arcade cabinets for model railroaders, I had to give them a mention.

J & C Studios makes these teeny, tiny retro arcade machine models built to O-Scale proportions. Each 1.75″ tall game cabinet…

Bloggers/photographers/tiny mecha manufacturers Lenny & Meriel take cold and complicated computer innards and turn them into something heartwarming: Sparebots.

The photo above is captioned, “I think we should try a 5.” Awwww.

And that’s a robot dog that poops lead. I think. I also think that Lenny & Meriel could…