Hackaday Links: December 4, 2016

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The Chaos Communication Congress is growing! Actually, it’s not, but there may be an ‘overflow venue’ for everyone who didn’t get a ticket. There’s a slack up for people who didn’t get a ticket to 33C3 but would still like to rent a venue, set up some tables, stream some videos, and generally have a good time.

Need to test a lot of batteries? Have one of those magnetic parts tray/dish things sitting around? This is freakin’ brilliant. Put your batteries vertically in a metal dish, clip one lead of a meter to the dish and probe each battery with the other lead of your meter.

Pravda reports the USS Zumwalt and HMS Duncan – the most technologically advanced ships in the US and Royal Navies – have turned into, ‘useless tin cans due to China’, with ‘Microchips made in China putting the vessels out of action’. Again, Pravda reports this, so don’t worry. In other news, someone found a few USB drives in a parking lot in Norfolk, Virginia.

Here’s how discourse goes on the Internet. Someone does something. Everyone says it’s stupid. We wait a few days or weeks. Someone posts something on Medium telling everyone it’s actually okay. Public opinion is muddled until the actual issue being discussed is rendered technologically irrelevant. For the newest MacBook Pro, we’re currently at stage 3 and ‘it’s kind of great for hackers’. Now if only we knew how to make USB-C ports work with microcontrollers…

If you have a Prusa i3, here’s a free gift: a Spitfire. The files to print a remote control, 973mm Spitfire Mk XVI are now free for Prusa i3 and i3 Mk 2 owners. Why? Because it’s cool, duh, and [Stephan Dokupil] and [Patrik Svida], the guys behind the Spitfire and other 3D printed RC planes, are also in Czech. Now all we need are Czech roundel stickers.

14 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: December 4, 2016

  1. Companies that want to have components built in China are idots. The reason is China reverse engineer all things they build for the western world. The parts are cheaply constructed and tend to breakdown unexpectly. The western world is teaching China how to become advance in electronics without knowing they do! This how China builds advance weapons. This is my option about China, everything is been built in China; Because it is cheap. Companies are money hungry for profit!

    1. I’m guessing your first language isn’t English but it is good enough that I understand what you are saying. Yeah China is stealing tech from the west on an industrial scale. The Tech that isn’t sent to china to be made if deemed important enough the Chinese government hack and steal the data anyway. The thing is you need to build a strong band once you have that even if china does copy your products then it won’t matter because your branding will be more trust worthy. I mean look at Arduino, They are open hardware and I am guessing 90% of all Arduino’s sold are clones but they still turn a profit. Why? because people want to support that company (or did before they fucked around). china is going to be a Power with or without the west. They are past the point of no return it’s too late, all we need to do now is make sure we delay them as much as we can.

    2. I’m sure Western companies and the Soviets never reverse engineered anything, right? China is not the problem, they simply built everything to the client’s spec and costing. You want a phone charger for 1$? No problem! Except it will probably be unsafe and stop working after a week. But iPhones and Playstations are also built in China.

      1. It was the most densely coded malware found to date, which basically looked for specific serial numbers before activating. It was a weapon produced by Unit 8200, the NSA and GCHQ.

  2. I made fun of the new Macbook Pro enough to even have created a single-key keyboard for the now-soft ESC key as a joke (https://hackaday.io/project/18374-esc-key) but actually I think USB-C is going to be all kinds of wonderful. Currently I have to plug & unplug at least four cables to my Macbook Pro when I go mobile or return it to the desktop (power, additional monitor, ethernet, audio plus various traditional USB devices). USB-C promises to change that to a single cable since there can be a hub left on the desk that connects to all the various devices. It also seems to be fertile ground for all kinds of cool hacking projects since it has so much capability.

  3. FYI: the original Pravda ended with the end of the soviets but some of its staff created an online version. Or in other words it’s not the old state-run thing anymore. But of course the staff from soviet times might not exactly be said to be raised on journalistic principle.

    However if either the old or modern Pravda has anything to do with this youtiube channel remains an open question, since pravda is just a word that anybody can use and the channel is called “Pravda Report” linking to pravdareport.com and not to http://www.gazeta-pravda.ru which is the spinoff of the old Pravda.

    But Again, HaD reports this, so don’t worry. In other news ..

    1. Pravda was doing then what most of the Western media is doing now: spin the news the way you like it. Otherwise A. Stroessner, P. Botha, and many others would not have been in power for very long.

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