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A useful add-on for any computer is a plug-in macro keyboard, a little peripheral that adds those extra useful buttons to automate tasks. [Sayantan Pal] has made one, a handy board with nine programmable keys and a USB connector, but the surprise is that at its heart lies only the ubiquitous ATmega328 that you might find in an Arduino Uno. This isn't a USB HID keyboard, instead it uses a USB-to-serial chip and appears to the host computer as a serial device. The keys themselves are simple momentary action switches, perhaps a deluxe version could use key switches from the likes of Cherry or similar. The clever part of this build comes on the host computer, which runs some Python code using the PyAutoGui library. This allows control of the keyboard and mouse, and provides an "in" for the script to link serial and input devices. Full configurability is assured through the Python code, and while that might preclude a non-technical user from gaining its full benefit it'

Vertically-aligned boxes are beautiful. That's the first thing I learned from NZXT's H1 Mini PC, a new pre-configured gaming PC sporting the elegantly monolithic H1 mini-ITX case on the outside and impressive space economy on the inside. This article is really about two items NZXT released this past week. The first one is the H1 case, a $349 small form factor enclosure built from black or white steel and tinted tempered glass. At 13.6 liters it's not the smallest mini-ITX case capable of housing most full-size graphics cards, but it is one of the most convenient I've encountered. The H1 is designed to facilitate an easy, efficient build. Its cables are pre-routed. It comes with a SFX-L 650 watt power supply, a 140 millimeter all-in-one liquid cooler, and a PCIe riser card, three fewer things for builders to worry about. While the end result is a pretty cramped box, the H1 features a dual-chambered design, meaning the CPU and GPU have their own dedica

Earth receives a new moon most months, but this month, we obtained two. About 4 a.m. on Feb. 15 at the Mount Lemmon Observatory, 9,000 toes above Tucson, two astronomers from the Catalina Sky Survey, Kacper Wierzchos and Theodore Pruyne, watched as their desktop displays registered a dot relocating in opposition t a static history of stars. "It didn't appear to be any different than the different close-Earth asteroids that we discover," Dr. Wierzchos talked about, "except that it turned into discovered to be orbiting Earth as a substitute of the sun." If the discovery holds up, the thing, named 2020 CD3 for now, may be the second mini-moon ever discovered. The photo voltaic system is filled with primordial crumbs, most of which circle the solar in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. every so often, Jupiter's gravitational have an effect on sends those space rocks careening toward the internal photo voltaic device, where some might threaten Earth. whe