Build a bottle opener that uses magnet magic to catch your caps

Take a stroll through your favorite DIY website and you’ll find all sorts of bottle openers, from vintage to sports-themed. You’ll even find ones with little cups that sit below to catch the caps, which is both clever and convenient. But catcher cups don’t have any flair — so to make the uncapping even more magical, this project harnesses the power of rare-earth magnets

Rare-earth (neodymium) magnets are insanely powerful, widely available in all sizes and shapes, and perfect for all sorts of maker projects. In this case, we buried one in the back of a board, where it reaches through the wood and grabs the falling beer caps. Your drunken friends will marvel at the cluster of caps hanging in mid-air.

On the front side, where the caps gather, it make sense to place a sticker of some kind, or a laser-burned pattern, or whatever. If your favorite logo, or Chinese character, or ironic picture of a reviled political character doesn’t quite fit, we trust you will shape the board accordingly.

This project is so quick, easy, and useful that you’ll probably make a stack of them as gifts. Everyone needs another bottle opener somewhere. By the way, this is one of many simple but stylish projects in my new book, Build Stuff with Wood. Here’s how to build it!

Make it with basic tools

The only cutting tool you’ll need here is a jigsaw, which is an inexpensive and underappreciated tool that can cut curves and straight lines. The secret is putting a better blade on the saw — one designed for making clean cuts in hardwoods. A bandsaw will work even better here if you gave access to one.

The only other power tool you’ll need is a drill, armed with a cool bit called a Forstner bit. Forstner bits specialize in drilling smooth holes with flat bottoms, which is exactly what you’ll need to hold the magnet.

As for the hardware (aside from the big magnet) you’ll need to pick up a classic Starr X opener for the front, and a couple keyhole hangers for the back. Just drive two small-headed screws into the wall, and these hangers will grab them firmly when you lever a bottle down to pop off the top.

Tools and Materials

• Jigsaw
• Cordless drill
• Forstner bit, 1-3/8 in. diameter
• Compass
• Starr X bottle opener
• Rare earth (neodymium) magnet, 35 mm (1-3/8 in.) by 5 mm, with countersunk hole
• Keyhole fitting – double, 9/16 in. x 3 in.
• Wood board, approx. 3/4 in. thick and at least 12 in. long by 6 in. wide.
• Sanding block and sandpaper
• Polyurethane, oil-based, satin, quick-drying
• Superglue
• Foam brushes

Step-by-step instructions

Pencil the layout

Start with any nice board, at least 12 in. long by 6 in. wide, and mark center lines on the front and back, down the length of the board. These will help you center the curves, the magnet, and the bottle opener.
Mark two arcs with a compass. The smaller one goes at the top of the board, and the other radius should be 1 in. bigger than bigger than your logo sticker, so the wood ends up bordering it nicely.
Connect the curves with straight lines to complete the perimeter layout.
One more arc. This circle is just a hair bigger than the sticker, to help you center it when you stick it on. Draw this arc lightly so it’s easy to erase.

Cut and smooth the board

Cut out the perimeter. Clamp down the workpiece, and stay just outside the line when cutting. Use your inside hand to hold the base of the jigsaw flat on the wood.
Sand it smooth. Use any wood block wrapped with 80-grit paper to sand the edges and to the line. Then switch to 120-grit paper to smooth them. Feel with your fingers to see if the curves are even and smooth. Smooth the face of the board now too, and then sand a little bevel on the top and bottom of the edges.

Add the magnet and sticker

Mark the center point. This is the same center point you used on the front of the board, just on the back this time.
Fire up the Forstner bit. You’ll need a 1-3/8 in. bit, just a hair larger than the 35-mm diameter magnet. Start with a light touch until the bit is fully engaged in the wood. The deeper you go, the better the magnet will work, but check the depth frequently to make sure you don’t drill through to the front of the board! The goal is leave about 1/4 in. of wood at the bottom of the hole.
Drop in the magnet and then run a bead of super glue around the upper edges to lock it in place.
Stick on the sticker. A lot of vinyl stickers are designed for glass, so they might not be sticky at all. In that case, just spray the back first with contact cement, also called spray adhesive or craft spray. Then use that light circle you drew to apply the sticker in the right spot.
Locate the hardware. Place the bottle opener on the centerline wherever it looks best, and mark the centers of the screw holes. Then flip over the board and place the little hanger plate right behind the bottle opener, marking its holes, too.
Pre-drill. First use a small nail to make a small dent at each mark for the drill to follow. For these pilot holes, choose drills a bit smaller than the screws, and add a little tape flag to help you avoid drilling through the board. When the flag brushes the chips away, stop drilling. This is the best trick ever.

Finishing up

Before brushing on the polyurethane finish, erase all the pencil marks and wipe off the dust.
Get some oil-based satin polyurethane, stir it well, and brush it on smoothly with a foam brush. Do the top and edges, let it dry, and then flip the board and finish the back too.
Sand and repeat. Using 220-grit paper, sand the wood areas lightly—not the sticker—wipe off the dust with a paper towel, and brush on one more coat.
Screw on the hanger and bottle opener. You’ve already got your pilot holes drilled, so this goes fast.

From the Editor’s Desk: We don’t need longer battery life, we just need to use our phones less

Consider this option.

I haven’t met someone who doesn’t complain about the battery life on their phone to some extent. Walking through airports, as I so often do, people aggressively hunt for power outlets so they can charge up their phone. On the streets of every major city I visit there are people walking with a power bank stacked underneath their phone with a USB cable so they don’t have to stop using it on the go. Market demand has generated a near-infinite number of car phone charger choices for topping up while driving. If you asked anyone in these situations what they’d give up to get something like 30% longer battery life, I bet the list would be extensive and perhaps worrisome.

But here’s an idea: what if instead of complaining about battery life and chasing power outlets or buying battery packs, we just chose to use our phones a little less?

In your desire to find an airport power outlet, you’re making your traveling experience far more stressful. By connecting to that 5000mAh battery pack to juice up on the go, you aren’t paying attention to the world around you. And for what? So you can scroll through Twitter endlessly, play Pokémon Go for a couple more hours, watch 15 episodes of a series on Netflix, or add posts to your Instagram story? The lengths we’ll go to power up our phones seem like they introduce far larger trade-offs than the benefit we gain from the increasingly meaningless and mundane things we’re so often doing with our phones.

Smartphones are used for many critical things — but most of our battery goes down the drain on useless things.

Yes I understand that for some people, using their phone is critical and not a choice. A parent needs to be able to keep in touch with their kids. A worker on a remote job site has to be able to connect back to the home office for information and reporting. All sorts of very important communication, information gathering, commerce and, well, downright fun stuff comes through our smartphones — most of which is improving and enriching our lives. The question is whether or not we’re able to take an honest look at our usage of smartphones and decide that if we really only used them for things that “matter” (which is different for everyone), perhaps their current battery life offering is more than sufficient.

In the past year there has been a groundswell of people talking about smartphone addiction, along with plenty of thoughts of just how bad it is and what can be done — either personally or societally — to slow its effects. It generally centers around the idea that people have gotten so deep into interactions with their phones that they see the phone as the center of their world and the real world as secondary in many circumstances. Tons of research on smartphone addiction shows that despite people’s awareness of the issue, they continue (or increase) their use. Children and young adults are facing it the most.

So maybe instead of artificially extending our phone’s battery life to do all sorts of menial things for no reason other than it’s just a thing that has become ingrained in us, we just use our phones a bit less and enjoy the extended battery life as a result. As an upside, you’ll cut way back on all of these power-related accessories — not to mention the mental overhead and frustration of constantly being worried about the battery percentage on your phone. The latter, at a minimum, can have a positive effect on your life.

And with all of that deep thought out of the way, a few more quick hits:

• If you’re on the fence about a Galaxy S9, you’ll want to see my initial impressions of its cameras.
• The short version: this new sensor and lens combination is legit. Daylight photos are pretty great, and low light photos are incredibly sharp with low noise.
• The longer take on this whole new camera setup (and everything else about the phone) will have to wait for my review, which is coming soon!
• Coming back from MWC 2018 at the end of this week, I was surprised when i looked back and saw just how many good announcements came from the show. Despite being a “slow” year on account of Samsung’s dominance of the news cycle, lots of great stuff — like the new Nokia announcements — made a splash.
• We’re now in a tiny bit of a lull, but expect more stuff to happen as we get through March. Early leaks point to a possible release of the Android P Developer Preview, and multiple companies have phones to release before the midway point of 2018.

That’s it for now — have a great week, everyone.

-Andrew

Here’s what you missed at MWC 2018

This year’s Mobile World Congress has been strangely quiet. Despite Samsung’s return to the event to launch its latest flagship phones and Google unveiling new Android Go devices, the convention has been almost uneventful. In fact, the most interesting thing to have happened this show has been snow falling in Barcelona, with temperatures dipping close to 38 degrees Fahrenheit (almost 0 degrees Celsius). Although Nokia’s parent company tried to drum up interest by reviving an old favorite like it did before, people just didn’t care as much the second time around.

There was plenty of news around 5G developments, since an early version of the spec was approved late last year. Every major company had its own demos of achieving 5G speeds on all varieties of communications — from phones and detachables to cars, drones and VR headsets. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai himself was here to share plans to open up 28GHz and 24GHz spectrum for auction late this year, as well as to discuss his belief that the US needs light regulation to “enable the 5G applications of the future.”

Despite it being an underwhelming show this year, there were still a few surprising reveals from the likes of LG, ASUS and Huawei. To catch up on all that you might have missed, check out the video above.

Catch up on the latest news from MWC 2018 right here.

VW’s Seat unveils the first fully electric touring-class race car

You’ve seen electric Formula cars, Le Mans racers and even a Pikes Peak machine, but there’s still room for more firsts in EV racing. VW’s Seat brand has unveiled the Cupra e-Racer, which it says is the first completely electric touring-class race car. It’s built on the existing Cupra Leon TCR design and promises the kind of performance you’d expect in this category: it can muster 402HP of continuous power, and 670HP at peak.

There’s no question that Seat is treating this as a halo car, particularly for its newly formed Cupra sports badge. However, it’s not just for show: it’s helping to start a new “E TCR” (no prizes for what the “E” refers to) category. It may soon be a question of which racing classes haven’t been electrified, even though it’ll likely take a long while before the EVs dominate.

Via: Autoblog

Source: Seat

LTE security holes could lead to fake emergency alerts

Vulnerabilities in cellular network technology definitely aren’t things of the past. Researchers at Purdue and the University of Iowa have outlined exploits in LTE protocols that would let intruders conduct ten serious attacks, including spying on calls and text messages, tracking locations, knocking devices offline and even faking emergency alerts. Intuders can take advantage of three key protocol tasks (such as attaching a device to the network and maintaining a connection) to conduct authentication relay attacks that not only let them connect to the network without credentials, but masquerade as the victim’s device. A hacker could not only compromise the network, but frame someone else for the crime.

These aren’t just theoretical attacks, either. The team tested eight of the ten attacks using SIM cards from four large US carriers.

While the issues have to do with LTE itself, it is possible to fix them — at least one of the big US carriers already has. There’s still a race against time, however. You can build the necessary LTE exploit tool for as little as $1,300 using readily available parts, so a determined attacker could infiltrate a network without an abundance of resources.

This stresses the importance of testing cell standards in the real world. It’s relatively easy to fix security flaws before a standard is finalized and rolls out in earnest — it’s another when it’s already in use by cell carriers that may have to patch vast networks.

Source: ZDNet

Amazon offers free sound effects to Alexa skill creators

Amazon is making it easier for developers to add a variety of sound effects to their Alexa skills. The tech giant has launched a library full of built-in audio clips people can use to add — in Amazon’s words — “unique sounds” to their creations. Of course, by the time most developers are done tweaking their skills to add the audio clips, they’ll no longer seem unique. In fact, you should probably probably get used to hearing the same thing again and again. But developers do have quite a wide selection to choose from with 14 categories that include sounds you’d usually hear in cartoons and sci-fi shows, as as well as sounds of nature, humans and animals.

Amazon says developers can use those effects, say, to add applause for correct answers in a trivia game or spooky ghost-like moans for a horror/adventure game. The whole library is free for skill-makers, who can use the sounds on their own or combined with other files. If you’d like to get an idea of what could hear on your Dot or Echo on a regular basis, check out the full collection on Alexa’s Skills Kit page.

Source: Amazon, Alexa Skills Kit Sound Library

Porsche starts work on flying passenger drones

You might have to cross another item off of the list of things you never thought Porsche would do. Automobilwoche has claimed that Porsche is developing passenger drones, and is close to showing off its first design sketch. While there’s clearly not much to show at this point, you would have some control over the machine but wouldn’t need a pilot’s license — like other in-progress drones, a large chunk of the flight control would be automated.

While it’s not clear that Porsche is ready to confirm the details, it’s clearly open to the idea. Company sales lead Detlev von Platen noted that it takes him “at least half an hour” just to drive from Porsche’s plant in Zuffenhausen to the airport in Stuttgart, but just “three and a half minutes” with an aircraft.

It may seem odd for Porsche to not only venture into flying vehicles, but hands-off vehicles. Isn’t that anathema to enthusiasts used to taking the wheel? However, it’s likely feeling pressure to do something in the passenger drone space. Its rival Daimler is backing Volocopter’s drone, while Volvo parent Geely recently bought Terrafugia. Even Porsche owner Volkswagen has dipped its toes into the waters: its Italdesign wing partnered with Airbus on the Pop.Up flying car concept. If Porsche doesn’t explore passenger drones, there’s a possibility that it could miss out as the transportation world shifts away from human-piloted cars and toward autonomous vehicles of all kinds.

Via: Reuters

Source: Automobilwoche (sub. required)

Apple might offer lower-cost MacBook Air in spring

Apple has left the MacBook Air mostly untouched for years, including its price. Ever since the 11-inch model disappeared in 2016, you’ve been looking at $999 or more for Apple’s ‘starter’ laptop — a tough sell given the aging design. It might become a better value before long, however. KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (who has a mostly solid track record for Apple leaks and rumors) has claimed that Apple is preparing a MacBook Air with a “lower price tag” for release this spring.

Details are scarce at the moment, but 9to5Mac noted that this corroborated a sketchy claim from Digitimes.

This doesn’t mean that Apple will redesign the MacBook Air. It gave the system just a modest spec bump in June 2017, and then only by using an older processor. It may have reasons to make a more substantial update this year, however. It might not have much choice but to upgrade to a modern processor thanks to Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. There’s also the question of ports. While plenty of people still rely on USB-A peripherals, it’s hard to see Apple keeping the connector on laptops for much longer when the MacBook Pro and 12-inch MacBook both rely exclusively on USB-C. The big question is whether or not Apple can move past the Air’s old 1,440 x 900 display, which isn’t very competitive when many newer laptops have 1080p displays with richer colors.

Whatever happens to the hardware, a lower price would represent an acknowledgment that the MacBook Air is too important to cut from the lineup. Many had suspected that the 12-inch MacBook would eventually take its place, but the newer machine’s high price, lone port and limited performance have kept it from usurping the Air’s throne. Apple still has to lean on the Air whether or not it wants to move on, and that means making the system attractive enough to reel in buyers who would balk at the prices for other Mac portables.

Source: AppleInsider, 9to5Mac

Nest will stop selling products on Amazon following a ban on its latest hardware

This ongoing feud just keeps getting more annoying.

There’s been a lot happening in the smart home space over the past month. Nest announced at the beginning of February that it was merging with Google’s hardware team, and a few weeks later Amazon purchased Nest-competitor Ring. Now, it’s been reported that Nest is deciding to pull its products from Amazon’s website.

Last year, Nest released the Thermostat E and Secure home security system. Both are commendable smart home gadgets, but Amazon chose to not sell either of them. Following weeks of radio silence from the online retailer, Business Insider reports that Amazon later called Nest to tell them that this decision had “come from the top.”

Although no names were specifically mentioned, Nest was under the impression that this was coming from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Not wanting to sell just a few of its products and being restricted by Amazon on which ones it could list, Nest then decided to not restock any inventory of its hardware that’s currently available on Amazon.

Amazon and Google’s inability to get along is bad news for consumers, plain and simple.

Why is any of this happening in the first place? Unfortunately, it can be attributed to Amazon’s ongoing feud with Google. Last year saw a lot of drama between Amazon and Google regarding the use of the YouTube app on the Echo Show and Fire TV, and while Amazon offered a few olive branches to calm things down, nothing ever came of this.

Now that Nest is part of Google and Amazon’s purchased one of its biggest competitors, Nest is in Amazon’s way.

You’ll likely still be able to purchase Nest products from third-party sellers on Amazon as time goes on, but none of them will officially be sold by Nest from here on out.

This Amazon vs. Google battle has been nothing but bad news for consumers since it started, and thanks to this latest development, it doesn’t look like it’ll be stopping anytime soon. I’m personally pretty sick of the whole thing, so I hope and pray these two companies can work out their differences sooner rather than later. What about you?

Are Nest Products Worth It?

FIFA rulemakers approve the use of video referees

Like it or not, video assistant referees are about to become a mainstay of the beautiful game. The International Football Association Board, which sets rules for FIFA as well as UK associations, has unanimously approved the use of VARs in soccer (aka football) matches on a permanent basis. So long as they go through a “mandatory approval process,” they can implement the play review technology if they like. The decision comes after an independent university study showed that VARs had a net positive effect.

As elsewhere, the aim is to produce more accurate play calls when there are serious disputes, such as for goals, penalties, red cards (but not a second yellow card) and cases of punishing the wrong person. This theoretically prevents game-changing mistakes while keeping the downtime to a minimum, and real-world tests have shown that the technology can work. In the US’ Major League Soccer, for instance, it decided the outcome for matches soon after its introduction.

Not everyone sees VARs this way, of course. Some have argued that it still slows down the game too much, and that the process of using it is too opaque for fans. And of course, it’s limited by the nature of the hardware. In at least one match (between Portugese teams Aves and Boavista), the referee had to let a questionable goal stand after a fan inadvertently blocked a camera with a flag during the crucial moment.

As it stands, whether or not your favorite league or tournament uses VARs is up in the air — they’re not obligated to implement it. FIFA World Cup organizers are expected to decide on using VARs on March 16th and are likely to adopt them, but it’s not so clear elswhere. The UK’s Premier League and Europe’s Champions League aren’t adopting the technology for their next seasons, but France’s Ligue 1 is; Germany’s Bundesliga makes its choice on March 22nd. It’s doubtful they’ll reject the technology outright, however. Rather, it’s more a matter of waiting until video refs are established and refined enough that they won’t create problems on the pitch.

Via: BBC

Source: IFAB