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News: What to Expect from Null Byte in 2015

Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers, and happy New Year! Now that your heads have recovered from your New Year's Eve regaling, I'd like to grab your attention for just a moment to preview 2015 here at Null Byte. I hope you will add your comments as to what you would like to see, and I'll try to honor as many requests as I can.

How To: Calm Your Fear of Public Speaking for Better Presentations

Sweaty palms, stuttered speech, and terror blackouts: if you're someone who absolutely despises speaking before audiences, you've probably experienced side effects like these. No matter how well prepared we are, or how familiar our audience is, giving a presentation can be an experience more terrifying than death, according to psychologists. Unfortunately, it's impossible to avoid public speeches, but you can make these events less frightening with a few simple hacks.

How To: Apply POR 15 for Rust

The Problem If you are working on a car restoration project, then you are going to faced with rust damage. This problem can’t be overlooked, as the entire project depends on repairing and eliminating rust. This would be like laying down new carpet to a house that was flooded, without cleaning the mess and making necessary repairs before laying the carpet down. The problem will still be there and the new carpet will be ruined.

How To: Fix a Huge Dent in Your Car at Home Without Ruining the Paint Job

There are two options when it comes to a dent in your car — live with it, cringing each time it enters your view, or get rid of it. While the latter is obviously the best option, most of us will probably just live with dents and dings since spare money is better spent on the actual functionality of the vehicle. However, there is a way to knock out automobile dents yourself with relatively little cash in the bank.

How To: Fix a Hole in a Wall. The Proper Way!

How to patch a hole in drywall / plasterboard / Sheetrock. Everyone at some stage in their life will need to patch a hole in drywall / plasterboard / sheetrock. Instead of doing some dodgy patchwork, watch this video to see how simple the job is. The steps are as follow in point form. This method is particularly suitable for holes that are larger than about 100mm or 4 inch's in size.

Steampunk's Rising Popularity: How to Take Advantage of the Hottest 'New' Trend

As practically the entire Steampunk world knows by now, IBM has predicted that Steampunk will be the big new trend from 2013 to 2015. They based this prediction on their computers, which sift through broad swathes of the internet in order to see patterns that may help commercial industries. According to them, Steampunk has been on the rise for the last few years, and they predict that it will explode into peak popularity within the next two years. But what does that mean and how will it impac...

How To: 5 Great Reasons Why You Should Use Private Browsing Online

The creation of private browsing was brought upon by the backlash against ad tracking and other ways that sites and agencies take away users' privacy online. People were tired of getting spammed with ads for Vitamin C pills simply because they visited WebMD. Private browsing is now built into all of the major browsers and is used frequently. While private browsing is more infamously known as the "Porn Portal," and does prove to be a great way of keeping racy content out of the sight of others...

How To: Torrent Without Getting Caught

I'm not admitting to anything, but let's be honest, most of us download content on the Web from time to time. With copyright holders laying down the law more and more often, it can't hurt to do so with caution. And even if you aren't downloading copyrighted material, you still don't want companies snooping in on your online activities. So just how do you protect yourself when torrenting? Avoid "Open Communities"

How To: Start Fires in Style with a Glass Matchjar, Plus 9 More Clever Uses for Mason Jars

Mason jars are a DIYer's best friend, nearly on par with duct tape and paper clips. Why? Because you can use mason jars for so many things besides just canning and drinking, and I'm not talking about other obvious uses like basic storage containers or miniature terrariums. I'm talking about MacGyver-style ingenuity. With a little creativity, the uses for those jars are practically endless.

Robot Basics: Using an H Bridge to Move Your Bot Backwards

I love robots. They have the potential to evolve into Asimovian destroyers of the human species, but have only just mastered the art of cleaning my rug. They have an ever increasing cool factor and a growing number of cheap and simple components that let the hobby roboticist reach for the burning miasmas of plasma. But to get to the stars, we need to start with the basics.

How To: Build Your Own Mini Altoids Guitar Amp for About $5

I love making beeps and bloops with the Arduino pitches library, but sometimes archaic 8-bit tunes just don't cut it. Whether you want your robot to terrify your enemies with a demonic synthetic voice, you just need a pocket boom box on the go, or you want to a miniature guitar amp, a simple LM386 amplifier can crank up those signals loud enough to play through any speaker.

How To: Build a Laser Trip Wire Alarm System

Building a DIY Alarm System: The Concept So, you want to protect your property, or maybe a room, car, or even your backyard. The concept of an alarm system is to notify the "alarm administrator" that there is an intruder entering the previously designated boundaries. The triggers for this boundary could be as simple as a pressure sensor, or as complicated as a laser network. They all do the same thing, but some work better than others.

How To: Make the Platonic Solids Out of Playing Cards

Computer Science Professor Francesco De Comité has a fantastic gallery of mathematical images on Flickr. As part of this collection, he has a few hundred images of real or rendered polyhedra made out of paper or playing cards which he calls "slide togethers." These are constructed by making cuts and then sliding one component into the other, creating a shape without using any glue. He constructed the entire set of the platonic solids—the cards form their edges—which can be seen in the image b...