DIYs & Mods

Kinect hacks are emerging at a rapid pace; it�s hard to recall a mass-market gadget so quickly adapted to new uses. As Bruce Sterling points out, �Microsoft accidentally invented a primo piece of art-installation hardware.� It's this kind of DIY innovation that keeps tech feral.

Perhaps the most useful�and certainly the most whimsical�pick on Time�s list of the 50 Best Inventions of 2010, Sugru is a moldable, self-adhesive, self-curing silicone elastomer. That doesn�t sound whimsical? Then you haven�t watched the video yet.

The ease with which the Microsoft Kinect can be torn down�and the familiarity of the software driving it�has quickly proven a feature and not a bug for hackers. Hacking commercial gadgets is nothing new of course; but the pace at which hacks now appear, as well as the appeal they generate, is something to watch.

Jonathan Safran Foer's new book, The Tree of Codes, has a marvelous title. But the real marvel begins when you turn the cover to find that the story is literally carved out of another work�namely, The Street of Crocodiles, the 1934 cycle of short stories by martyred Polish writer Bruno Schulz. There's a gadget angle to all this, but you'll have to follow the jump for it.

�Repair is green�repair is joyful�repair injects soul and makes things unique.� Those are some of the claims of Ifixit�s "Self-Repair Manifesto," which is not a self-help tract but a hacker�s call to arms.

A great series of videos made by the chemistry department at the University of Nottingham in England�one for each of the elements in the periodic table, 118 in all. It's full of insights�and it will have you wondering about the activation energy of professor Martyn Poliakoff's hair.

Ford's 2012 Mustang Boss 302 is a high-tech reboot of the muscle car packed with treats. But the key to its real secrets don't merely lie under the hood, but in the code.

The Space Shuttle Program, which employs five thousand people and comprises more than a quarter of NASA infrastructure, is set to end in early 2011. How to commemorate the program that has defined manned spaceflight for more than thirty years? How about with an astronaut-helmet tea cozy!

Digital filmmaker Fran�ois Vautier installed an ant colony in his scanner and scanned it every week for five years. The movie he made of the results is fairly astonishing. It's high-tech ruin porn at insect scale.

Artist and technologist Aram Bartholl is mortaring USB drives into brick walls and curbstones throughout New York City and inviting people to use them to share files. His "Dead Drops" project offers a glimpse of a utopian, DIY darknet in RL.