Important news about HackSpace

We have some important news to share about HackSpace: Issue 81 was the last issue of HackSpace as a standalone magazine, and HackSpace has become part of The MagPi, the official Raspberry Pi magazine. Starting with issue 145, We’ll be adding pages to The MagPi to make room for the stories and tutorials you’ve come to expect from HackSpace.

Quantum Death Machine

By Andrew Gregory. Posted

If you had a background in quantum physics, what would you build? A time machine? A teleporter? Or, a box that detects the presence of a human, then tells them how they’re going to die (based on utterly nothing)? Maker Gocivici decided to do the latter, and here it is: the Quantum Death Machine. It’s an audacious exercise in over-engineering, using IBM Quantum – an online quantum computer that can provide truly random data (randomness is something that computers struggle with on their own).

It also uses a Raspberry Pi 3, an Adafruit thermal printer, an Arduino Nano, and a fingerprint sensor.

In use, the clever quantum computing is hidden away: the user sticks a finger into the opening where the sensor is mounted, the machine registers that you’re there, then it gives you a prediction of how you’ll meet your end. That’s it. It doesn’t ask if you smoke, drink too much, drive without a seatbelt on, or any of that; it just uses the randomness of quantum computing to print you a response from a pre-populated list of deaths.

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